What to know about the air traffic controller shortage

• May 7, 2025

By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press

The Trump administration is promising to fix the nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers after recent control tower mishaps and a string of crashes earlier this year.

The need for more controllers who direct planes across increasingly crowded skies, though, isn’t a new issue or one that will be resolved quickly.

How big is the shortage of controllers?

The Federal Aviation Administration has about 14,000 air traffic controllers. More than 1,800 were hired last year, the largest number in nearly a decade, and the government is on track to hire even more this year. Still, there’s a need for about 3,000 more to fully staff the system.

What are the impacts?

Understaffing has meant controllers often are forced to work mandatory overtime, sometimes six days a week. That has led to concerns about fatigue after highly publicized close calls between planes that were following orders from controllers. The FAA agreed last summer to increase the minimum rest time between shifts. In some high-traffic areas, including New York and Florida, the FAA has limited the number of flights because of the lack of controllers.

Why is there a shortage if thousands are being hired?

It’s a demanding and stressful job with unpredictable hours and a high turnover rate. Many don’t make it though the first few years. And experienced controllers face a mandatory retirement age of 56.

Is this just a recent concern?

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has been raising concerns for more than decade, telling Congress in 2015 that the shortage was at a crisis level. It said then that the FAA had missed its hiring targets for five years in a row. The union again said last spring that the number of fully certified controllers was down 10% from where it was 10 years ago.

What’s the Trump administration’s plan?

The administration wants to “supercharge” the controller workforce and announced a program last week to speed up hiring and give existing controllers more money not to retire early. But because it takes years to train and certify new hires, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it still will take at least three or four years to meet the current needs.

How do you become a controller?

Most go through several months training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma, although about one-third of the candidates don’t make it to the end. Others are taught the job in the military, and a handful of colleges offer the same training found at the academy. Trainees then go on to work as developmental controllers in airport towers or radar centers until they’re ready to be certified. That final step typically takes two to three years.

What are the requirements?

The FAA says trainees must be willing to go anywhere across the U.S. while working nights and weekends. Applicants must be a U.S. citizen, younger than 31 and able to pass a medical exam, background check and a skills assessment. The FAA says less than 10% of applicants are accepted into the training program.

​ Orange County Register 

GOP lawmakers berate Haverford College president for not discussing discipline for antisemitism

• May 7, 2025

By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of Haverford College was berated by Republican lawmakers in a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism Wednesday, with some suggesting the school should lose federal funding because of her refusal to discuss student discipline in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests.

Wendy Raymond appeared alongside two other college presidents on Capitol Hill but was singled out as the only one who would not detail punishments for students and faculty accused of anti-Jewish bias. Asked repeatedly, Raymond said her institution does not publicize the outcomes of disciplinary processes.

“I suppose it’s your First Amendment right to be evasive, but it’s also our right to decide that such institutions are not deserving of taxpayer money,” said Republican Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri.

Also appearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce were Jeffrey Armstrong of California Polytechnic State University and Robert Manuel of DePaul University. It was the latest in a series of hearings scrutinizing university presidents over their responses to allegations of anti-Jewish bias in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and a wave of protests that swept the nation’s campuses. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Unlike other hearings that featured leaders of Harvard, Columbia and other elite institutions — with stumbles that later contributed to their resignations — this one intentionally focused on lesser-known schools. Republicans sought to look beyond the Ivy League to underscore the pervasiveness of antisemitism on U.S. campuses.

The committee’s leaders aimed to choose a diverse mix of colleges. Haverford is a small liberal arts school outside Philadelphia, founded by Quakers. DePaul is a Catholic university with an urban campus in Chicago. Cal Poly is a campus of 22,000 students in San Luis Obispo.

For more than three hours, Republicans grilled the presidents over reports of anti-Jewish harassment on their campuses, ranging from social media posts to the physical attack of two Jewish students at DePaul. Democrats denounced the hearing, calling it political theater that does little to fight discrimination.

The trio of presidents mostly struck a deferential tone, acknowledging some missteps while highlighting work to make students feel safer. Raymond and Manuel apologized for shortcomings, while Armstrong said “we have to do better” holding people accountable for prejudice.

But while the presidents of Cal Poly and DePaul shared information on disciplinary action against antisemitism, Raymond refused.

“We do not talk about those numbers publicly,” she said when pressed on the question. She acknowledged some action had taken but declined to go further.

It drew a searing rebuke from Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., known for orchestrating fiery exchanges with former presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania that contributed to their resignations last year.

“Respectfully, president of Haverford, many people have sat in this position who are no longer in their positions as presidents of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions,” Stefanik said.

Stefanik questioned Raymond over a professor’s social media post describing the Hamas attacks as “imprisoned people breaking free from their chains.” Raymond called it repugnant but refused to discuss individual cases.

DePaul’s president faced scrutiny over his handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment. Protesters took over a campus quad at the Chicago university for 17 days, causing $180,000 in property damage, according to the school. Police cleared the encampment and said they found knives, a pellet gun and other weapons.

“My question is, if there is another encampment, are you taking it down that next day?” asked Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill.

“Yes,” Manuel said.

Other Republicans endorsed the idea of funding cuts for schools that refuse to disclose punishments, saying Congress should explore the issue. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania said it should be a baseline for receiving funding.

Republicans began the series of hearings in late 2023 and have routinely called education leaders to Capitol Hill to testify. Those called include chiefs of Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Trump administration has separately frozen billions of dollars in grants to colleges targeted by a federal antisemitism task force. Those targeted include Columbia, Penn and Harvard, which is suing to restore $2.2 billion in grants. The Education Department doubled down last week, saying Harvard is no longer eligible for new grants.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Ex-model takes the stand in Harvey Weinstein’s retrial. The prior jury never heard about her

• May 7, 2025

By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Days into Harvey Weinstein’s first sexual assault trial in 2020, prosecutors privately spoke for the first time with a former model who alleged that he had forced oral sex on her.

But that jury was never told about Kaja (KEYE’-ah) Sokola’s claim. Prosecutors have said they still were investigating the allegation when Weinstein, a onetime movie tycoon-turned- #MeToo pariah, was convicted in February 2020 of charges based on other women’s accusations.

On Wednesday, Sokola began to tell a new jury her story.

Sokola didn’t look at Weinstein as she walked past him and onto the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom where he’s on trial again. An appeals court overturned his 2020 rape and sexual assault conviction, sending those charges back for retrial, and prosecutors subsequently added another sexual assault charge based on Sokola’s allegations.

As she began testifying about her life before the alleged 2006 assault, Weinstein looked toward her, with his right hand across his mouth.

Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. His lawyers contend that his accusers consented to sexual encounters with him in hopes of getting movie and TV opportunities, and the defense has emphasized that the women stayed in contact with him for a while after the alleged assaults.

The women, meanwhile, say the Oscar-winning producer used the prospect of show business work to prey on them.

The Polish-born Sokola, 39, is a psychotherapist and author and said she recently launched a film production company.

She sued Weinstein after industry whispers about his behavior toward women became a chorus of public accusations in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct. Prosecutors have said Sokola eventually received $3.5 million in compensation.

Sokola testified that she was never interested in modeling — but rather in acting and writing — but her mother and sister decided she should enter a Polish modeling contest at age 14. She won a contract with a modeling agency and was soon juggling middle school with photo shoots.

The next two years “were a very fast growing-up lesson,” she said. By 2002, she was 16 and in New York to make the modeling rounds, without any of relatives on hand.

Sokola, who’s expected to continue testifying Thursday, hasn’t been asked yet about Weinstein. Prosecutors have said she was introduced to him while on that 2002 modeling trip to New York.

In her lawsuits, Sokola said that shortly after she met Weinstein, he invited her to lunch to discuss her career but then sexually assaulted her. The lawsuits alleged he sexually harassed and emotionally abused her for years afterward.

The criminal charge stems from one instance when Sokola maintains that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in a Manhattan hotel in May 2006.

Prosecutors have said it happened after Weinstein arranged for Sokola to be an extra in the film “The Nanny Diaries” and met her visiting older sister, whom she was trying to impress.

“She was proud of knowing him,” her sister, cardiologist Dr. Ewa (pronounced EH’-vah) Sokola, told jurors Wednesday.

She said the three of them met in a hotel lobby, chatted about Italian movies and the heavyset Weinstein’s heart health, and then he and the model left the table together.

Kaja Sokola was tense when she returned about a half-hour later — “like somebody waiting for the result of an exam” or the Oscars — but didn’t say anything about the alleged sexual assault, Dr. Sokola told jurors.

She said she was shocked to learn about the claim over a decade later, when she read about it in a magazine article.

Weinstein’s lawyers will get a chance to question Kaja Sokola in the coming days. In an opening statement last month, defense attorney Arthur Aidala questioned why she waited years to come forward. Prosecutors have argued that accusers were reluctant to speak up because of Weinstein’s wealth and influence.

Prosecutors have said they began investigating Sokola’s claims after her attorneys called on the eve of Weinstein’s first trial. But prosecutors set the inquiry aside after he was convicted and the coronavirus pandemic loomed.

They revived the Sokola investigation after New York’s highest court reversed Weinstein’s conviction.

Weinstein’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully to keep Sokola’s allegation out of the retrial. They accused prosecutors of “smuggling an additional charge into the case” to try to bolster other accusers’ credibility.

One of the others, Miriam Haley, testified last week that Weinstein forced oral sex on her in 2006. The third accuser in the case, Jessica Mann, is expected to testify later.

The Associated Press generally does not name sexual assault accusers without their permission, which Haley, Mann and Sokola have given.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers get relief from Landon Knack, Matt Sauer in victory over Marlins

• May 7, 2025

MIAMI — Not since Crockett and Tubbs has a duo laid down the law in Miami like Landon Knack and Matt Sauer.

Promoted from Triple-A with an assignment to soak up innings so the rest of the Dodgers’ pitching staff could catch its breath, Knack and Sauer combined to take a shutout into the ninth inning as the Dodgers beat the Miami Marlins, 10-1, on Wednesday.

They opened the roof at loanDepot Park for the series finale and seemed to let all the offense out. Whether it was the sunshine and blue sky or the combined efforts of Knack and Marlins starter Valente Bellozo, the Dodgers and Marlins combined for just three hits through the first five scoreless innings.

Bellozo, a Mexican right-hander with an unremarkable track record through six professional seasons, baffled the Dodgers with his six-pitch repertoire. He allowed just one hit in 5⅓ innings – a first-inning single by Freddie Freeman that extended his hitting streak to 12 games – and walked one while striking out six in a Dodgers lineup devoid of Teoscar Hernandez (injured) and Will Smith (day off).

The first run of the day didn’t come until Bellozo was lifted in the sixth inning and was a combined product of Shohei Ohtani and Freeman – another duo that stars in Miami.

After walking in his first two at-bats, Ohtani ripped a triple to center field with one out in the sixth inning. Mookie Betts drew a walk and Freeman drove Ohtani in with a single to left field.

In eight career games at loanDepot Park, Ohtani is a .394 hitter (13 for 33) with three doubles, Wednesday’s triple and six home runs – half of them in his 50/50 game last September. Those numbers do not include another career highlight – the 2023 World Baseball Classic championship game played here.

That was all the support Knack and Sauer needed.

Knack allowed just one baserunner through the first four innings and two hits in the first five. As his pitch count crossed 70, he gave up a pair of singles to start the sixth inning.

Sauer took over from there. He got a double-play grounder and struck out Jesus Sanchez (Tuesday’s walk-off hero for the Marlins) to escape harm.

The margin for error got much bigger after the Dodgers broke the game open with a six-pack in the top of the seventh.

Hyeseong Kim drove in the first run with a single. With runners at the corners, the Marlins intentionally walked Ohtani. Betts drew an unintentional walk to force in a run and Freeman unloaded them with a three-run triple. Andy Pages drove Freeman in with an RBI single.

Freeman shares Ohtani’s fondness for the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami.

In 95 games there, Freeman has hit .328 (120 for 366) with 18 of his 42 home runs against the Marlins.

James Outman piled on with a three-run home run in the ninth. But a pair of errors on the infield led to a run for the Marlins in the bottom of the inning, spoiling the shutout.

More to come on this story.

​ Orange County Register 

Salman Rushdie as graduation speaker upsets Muslim students at Claremont Colleges

• May 7, 2025

Muslim advocacy groups are calling on Claremont McKenna College to address concerns about author Salman Rushdie serving as its graduation speaker because of what they call his anti-Muslim comments.

Rushdie, an Indian-born British and American novelist known for his works about religion and politics, has drawn criticism before, including when he received death threats in the 1980s for his book, “The Satanic Verses.”

The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on Wednesday, May 7, said in a news release that Rushdie has “made troubling statements about Islam and Palestine.”

Also, the Claremont Colleges Muslim Students Association, in a Friday, May 2, statement criticized the college’s choice, calling it “disrespectful” and out of step with Claremont McKenna College’s commitment to inclusion.

“Protecting free speech is vital on campus, but platforming a speaker at a ceremonial event is an endorsement, not an act of open dialogue,” states the letter, which asks all to call upon the college to withdraw the invitation.

Rushdie is scheduled to speak at Claremont McKenna College’s graduation ceremony Saturday, May 17, the release states.

Rushdie’s writing, “especially ‘The Satanic Verses,’ and his statements conflating Islam with terrorism and extremism in interviews have fueled Islamophobic narratives and emboldened those who portray Islam as inherently violent,” Enjy El-Kadi, digital communications manager for CAIR-LA wrote in an email.

CAIR-LA also cites an article on the news website Middle East Eye that points to a 2024 Rushdie interview with German broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.

In the interview, analyzed by the website, Rushdie said pro-Palestine student protests often “slide into antisemitic discourse” and called Hamas “a terrorist organization.” Rushdie said in that interview that a Palestinian state would be “run by Hamas” and be “a Taliban-like state, a satellite state of Iran,” the website reported.

Claremont McKenna College’s website does not name a commencement speaker. A spokesperson for the college, one of the seven Claremont Colleges, could not be reached Wednesday.

A representative for Rushdie also could not be reached.

In the release, CAIR-LA’s Legal Director Amr Shabaik urged the college’s leaders to “address the sincere concerns raised” by the student group.

“CMC cannot claim to value diversity and inclusion while dismissing the voices of its students, Shabaik said in the release.

Rushdie, 77, is best known for “The Satanic Verses,” which sparked death threats from Iran’s leader in the 1980s. In 2022, he was stabbed before giving a lecture in western New York and testified this year at the trial of his attacker, Hadi Matar, who was convicted of assault and attempted murder.

Rushdie’s “The Eleventh Hour,” is set for publication in November and is a collection of novellas and short stories. It will be his first published fiction since the attack in western New York.

Rushdie’s memoir about the attack, “Knife,” was published last year and was a finalist for a National Book Award. He has spoken of fiction as a sign of further healing and restored imaginative powers, whether after being forced into hiding in 1989 because of the alleged blasphemy of the “The Satanic Verses” or recovering from the attack three years ago that blinded him in one eye and caused lasting nerve damage.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

OC Streetcar’s first train arrives, will connect Santa Ana to Garden Grove

• May 7, 2025

The first blue and orange OC Streetcar train has arrived, a milestone for the delayed project that will soon start testing on tracks and aims to start service in a year.

OC Streetcar is a 4.15-mile system from the Santa Ana train station, through downtown, to the southeastern edge of Garden Grove at Harbor Boulevard and Westminster Avenue.

Construction broke ground in 2018, and after delays, the Orange County Transportation Authority expects service to begin in spring 2026. Building the system has reached $649 million in costs.

OCTA unveiled the first train delivery on Wednesday, May 7, at a maintenance facility in Santa Ana to its board members and local elected officials. The train was built in Sacramento and delivered on April 30, with seven more to come over the next two months.

“We’re very excited about the investment in central Orange County for the project,” OCTA CEO Darrell Johnson said. “There’s been a lot of construction over the last number of years around stations and tracks and all the things there. But this really is what people are going to use, the streetcar vehicle.”

The trains are like other light-rail vehicles used in transit systems around the state. The seats are slightly padded, and there are hanging straps to grab hold of for standing passengers.

The trains will carry up to 211 passengers and go up to 44 mph when traveling along the old Pacific Electric right of way. Throughout the train, there are accessible seats, bike racks and displays showing travel information.

“It’s like, wow,” Fourth District Supervisor Doug Chaffee said upon seeing the first vehicle. “It’s the first of eight cars, and it’s kind of a culmination of a lot of years of waiting and work. It’s finally here, and you can finally get it tested, put it out on the street and have our passengers enjoy the ride.”

Chaffee said the hope is that OC Streetcar will be a boon to businesses along the route, like in downtown Santa Ana. Many have had to contend with closures over the years during construction.

Success, Chaffee said, will be judged on ridership.

“Hopefully, it will be standing-room only going back and forth,” Chaffee said.

The trains will mix in with traffic along much of the line, where the vehicles won’t go over the speed limit.

Johnson said a public awareness campaign will start about six months before operations begin to teach people how to drive safely with streetcars in traffic and make people aware that the system will open for service soon.

One modern feature for the trains allows them to run for 300 feet off an emergency battery if power is lost from the overhead centenary system.

The streetcar system will have 10-15 minute headways at all of its 10 stops in each direction. Fares will work like OCTA’s buses, where people can purchase a single ride or a day pass.

Johnson said the overall project is 92% complete, and testing will begin in the late summer or early fall ahead of its planned service start the following spring.

“We feel like we have enough schedule capacity to mitigate any delays,” Johnson said. “Of course, if there’s something that’s significant, we will have to readjust. But right now we feel fairly confident for the spring of ’26.”

Talks about the future of OC Streetcar have been around well before the system broke ground. Connecting the OC Streetcar system north into Anaheim or south toward John Wayne Airport has been brought up, but past efforts to get a head start on expanding the system never came through.

Johnson said there aren’t any plans for the future of the system, but “the general consensus is this is the beginning of something.”

“This is not a standalone project,” Johnson said. “What happens next is unknown. We’ve done transit studies as part of our long-range transportation planning process of looking at key corridors. Harbor Boulevard has been talked about; that’s our busiest bus route.”

“But we don’t have any plans at this point, and our focus right now is getting this up and running in the spring of 2026,” he added.

Second District Supervisor and OCTA board member Vicente Sarmiento, who represents the area the system is in, said the arrival of the first vehicle was a milestone for the project, but “comes at the end of a long and painful journey for many reasons beyond the control of OCTA.”

“In order to serve the community well and specifically to meet the needs of working families, students, and seniors, expansion that allows for the development of a true system is critically important,” Sarmiento said.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Millions out on the street virtually overnight’: How Trump budget could affect California

• May 7, 2025

In California, millions are served by these funds and state and local governments depend on them to operate affordable housing, rental assistance, homeless service, planning and legal programs.

In a letter to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, the president’s budget director, Russel Vought, laid out $163 billion in annual spending cuts coupled with “unprecedented increases” in military and border security spending. The cuts, Vought wrote, are directed at areas of spending that the administration found to be “contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”

That includes $33.5 billion in proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Development department, a 44% reduction from current levels.

Presidential budget requests rarely reflect what Congress ultimately passes into law but are instead often viewed as something between an opening negotiating bid and a political vision board.

Even so, the budget document makes for quite a vision — one that, if realized, would upend decades of federal housing policy and affect millions of lives.

The sheer breadth of the cuts provides an odd kind of solace to some affordable housing advocates.

“By following through on such a huge level with so many proposals that are going to gut assistance to low-income people across the country, including his own party’s states, he’s putting his own members of Congress in a very difficult place,” said Matt Schwartz, president of the California Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for more affordable housing. “The level of carnage that would be involved in doing these things is probably going to send some Republican senators running for the exits.”

A handful of powerful GOP senators have, indeed, already pushed back on the president’s proposal, though much of their ire was directed at what they saw as a lack of sufficient military spending.

The largest single cut in federal housing policy would target the Housing Choice Voucher program. Better known as Section 8, it’s currently administered by the federal government and helps low-income tenants with their rental payments. The White House is proposing shifting responsibility for the administration of that program, which it calls “dysfunctional,” to states, while cutting its funding in half.

It also proposes a two-year limit on how long a single person can receive help. That change is “completely out of touch with what people are facing in the housing market,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. With soaring rents outpacing people’s incomes, low-income tenants aren’t going to be able to magically earn enough money to start paying rent in two years, he said.

Additional cuts to four other housing voucher programs are meant to save $27 billion annually.

“You’d be looking at millions of people out on the street virtually overnight,” said Schwartz. “There’s no way states could maintain the same level of assistance.”

The administration proposes to save nearly $5 billion more by eliminating funds for local economic development grants, affordable housing developments and local initiatives to reduce regulatory barriers to new housing.

That latter program, a Biden-era initiative known as Pathways to Removing Obstacle Housing, was denounced in the administration’s budget write-up as a “woke” program that has pursued “radical racial, gender, and climate goals.”

The White House pointed specifically to a $6.7 million grant made to Los Angeles County to fund infrastructure planning, public transit-oriented housing and, as described in the county’s funding proposal, rezoning that would reverse the region’s “legacy of past systemic racism.”

Radical reshuffle of homelessness policy

The budget would slash federal homelessness funding by $532 million, while also radically changing the way those funds are distributed. The Continuum of Care program – the main way the federal government distributes funds to fight homelessness – would effectively end. It would be replaced by an Emergency Solutions Grant program.

The continuum program funds long-term solutions to homelessness, including permanent supportive housing, which is housing that comes with case management, counseling and other services for people with disabilities, mental illnesses, addictions or other struggles that mean they require extra help. Emergency Solutions Grants, on the other hand, fund more short-term solutions, such as homeless shelters, or short-term rental assistance for people who don’t need extra services.

That shift in funding would mean thousands of people would lose their supportive housing and end up back on the street, said Visotzky from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“This would be a significant shift away from the solution to homelessness, which is housing, towards shelter,” he said. “This budget is going to take away all the pathways to get out of shelter and into housing.”

Homeless veterans fared better. The budget proposes a $1.1 billion increase “for the President’s commitment to ending veterans’ homelessness.” Those funds would go to Veterans Affairs for rental assistance, case management and support services.

The budget also calls for the elimination of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an agency tasked with coordinating homeless policy at the federal level, which the administration had already gutted.

End of ‘fair housing’ enforcement as we know it

The White House also proposes zeroing out a grant program that funds nonprofit legal aid organizations that enforce national fair housing laws. According to the explanatory summary of the cuts published by the administration, these organizations advocate “against single family neighborhoods and promote radical equity policies.”

That characterization is strongly disputed by Caroline Peattie, executive director of the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. Federally recognized nonprofit fair housing groups processed 74% of all fair housing complaints submitted across the country in 2023, according to data compiled by the National Fair Housing Alliance. The remainder go to federal and state housing regulators.

“A recent example: In 2022, Peattie’s organization received a complaint that a Nevada-based appraisal company had undervalued the home of a Black and Latino couple. The nonprofit investigated and submitted a complaint. The California Civil Rights Department reached a settlement with the appraisal company in mid-April.”

If all the cuts go into effect as proposed, Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California would lose roughly 75% of its funding, said Peattie.

“It’s just appalling,” she said. “When the fair housing organizations go away, then what?”

The across-the-board cuts come after months of legal battle between fair housing organizations and the administration. In February the Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by Elon Musk, abruptly terminated a key source of funding, authorized by congress in 2023, for dozens of private fair housing organizations, including Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. The groups sued. With that lawsuit pending, funding for 2024 is “still in the ether,” said Peattie.

Last month, Congress passed a bill to keep government spending at current levels from the prior year, meaning that fiscal year 2025 spending is in a holding pattern for now.

“But as for fiscal year 2026, all bets are off,” said Peattie.

For the record: An earlier version of this story misstated the scope of the complaint received by the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, as well as the year Congress funded the source terminated by DOGE.

​ Orange County Register 

Many Californians can’t get mental health help. Is it too hard to become a therapist?

• May 7, 2025

But in rural Amador County, where she lives, mental health providers are few and far between, and it took Moen about two and a half years to find help.

“I was actually turned away,” she said. “I was told that my mental health problem wasn’t severe enough. I had to get to a point to where suicide was a thought for them to help me.”

All across the state, but especially in rural areas like Amador County, finding a therapist is challenging. California has a “major, ongoing” shortage of mental health providers, and it’s “especially dire” in rural areas, according to a 2022 survey commissioned by the state. Nearly one-third of California’s residents were living in an area with an insufficient ratio of providers to patients, the report found.

In 2021, state leaders began pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into increasing the pipeline for therapists, but many students say the educational requirements are still too onerous or costly.

Part of the problem is that it takes a long time to become a therapist. Every licensed therapist needs at least a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Psychiatrists have a medical degree, and psychologists often have a doctorate. For the master’s degree route, which is most common, students can take a variety of different paths, including programs in social work, marriage and family therapy, clinical counseling or school counseling. Most master’s programs take about two years and some cost over $60,000. Often, students have to work hundreds of hours in an unpaid internship in order to graduate.

Then, after graduating with a master’s degree in social work or marriage and family therapy, they have to spend at least 3,000 hours under supervision before they can bill most insurance companies for their services. Some graduates take up to six years to meet their required hours before they can make a regular salary as a therapist.

The long road to becoming a therapist

On Jan. 21, 2011, Moen asked a neighbor to babysit her 2-year-old son while she went to work at a local U-Haul store in Cleveland, where she was living at the time. The babysitter attacked the boy, strangling him. Moen said she found her son’s body when she came home from work that evening. She said the babysitter was asleep on the couch.

“For a long time that image was burned into my brain,” she said. “That whole situation is what started my mental health problems: My anxiety, my constant thought of death, and PTSD.”

She moved to the Bay Area, where she became homeless. But in 2017, a friend helped her build a new life in Amador County, where the cost of living is much lower. She found a job at a casino and began reflecting on her own mental health, ultimately deciding that she wanted to become a therapist to help others like her.

She started college in 2021 but it’s unlikely she’ll reach her goal before 2030. With the help of a private scholarship, she started taking online courses at a community college in Orange County but had to stop after being diagnosed with cancer.

She re-enrolled in 2024 and is now taking a full course load while simultaneously homeschooling her daughter. Through the scholarship, she also found a paid internship at a local organization, the Sierra Wind Wellness and Recovery Center, which offers mental health services. She said she’s maxed out her federal and state financial aid, receiving just under $20,000 this academic year, though she said that’s still not enough to cover the cost of housing, food and transportation.

“The money is not the most important part to me,” Moen said. “I’m doing it because I want to be able to add to this lacking workforce. I know that we don’t have enough so I will be one extra person to help.”

If all goes according to plan, she’s set to graduate with an associate degree in social and human services in January, at which point she hopes to transfer to either Cal State Chico or Humboldt and pursue a bachelor’s degree.

Then, to become a licensed therapist, she’ll need at least a master’s degree. Along with two additional years of school — and more if the student is part-time — the master’s degree programs in social work require at least 900 hours in an internship, which is typically unpaid. Master’s programs for marriage and family therapists require 225 internship hours. While social workers and marriage and family therapists can offer similar mental health services, social workers have a broader training and more potential career paths, said Kimberly Warmsley, the former executive director of California’s association of social workers.

For many master’s students, meeting the internship requirement often means quitting a part-time job. While pursuing a master’s in social work at California Baptist University, Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Moreno Valley Democrat, continued to serve as the CEO of a nonprofit organization, but he left that position in order to take an unpaid internship that would meet his graduation requirements.

In an interview with CalMatters, he said he still has “a little over $40,000” in student debt for that program, plus another $40,000 because he pursued a doctorate.

Are interns employees?

In the Legislature, Jackson helps oversee the state’s licensing board for mental health providers, and he is pushing for a law that would make it easier for some out-of-state therapists to get licensed in California. But the workforce shortage requires major investments and has no easy solution, he said.

“It reminds me of the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis. We have dug such a big hole, especially with so many retirements and people who have left the field.”

A group of social work students across the country is advocating for more graduate students to be compensated during their required internship hours, and the movement, called “Payment for Placements,” has chapters at seven California universities, including San Diego State, UCLA and UC Berkeley.

While social work master’s students are required to work at least 900 internship hours, San Diego State’s program asks its students to work 1,050 hours. For Jacqueline Guan, a student in the program, these required internships “should be compensated labor.” Like Jackson, she said she quit a full-time job in order to take on an unpaid internship.

Organizations and government agencies that offer unpaid internships take on additional liability by hiring graduate student interns and the students get a “unique training opportunity,” said Amanda Lee, the director of field education at San Diego State’s School of Social Work. While these employers aren’t required to pay interns, she said “quite a few students” receive some money, either through their employer or through a fellowship.

Assemblymember Jackson said he “absolutely” supports paying more social work students for their internships but hasn’t pushed for it in the Legislature. “It’s hard to advocate for additional funds for just about anything right now,” he said, referring to the state’s fiscal uncertainties.

Instead, he said he’s interested in expanding loan forgiveness and limited forms of tuition assistance, as well as finding ways to improve social work licensing exams, which have disproportionate pass rates for certain groups of students: those who identify as Black, Hispanic or Native American score lower than their peers.

The ‘toughest’ clients with the fewest mental health workers

In 2022, San Diego County found that it needed roughly 8,100 more mental health providers to meet the region’s demand — but that 7,800 were likely to leave the profession in the following five years, either because of retirement, burnout, or other reasons, such as a career change.

All across the state, mental health providers are nearing retirement, according to the 2022 state survey, which found that roughly 40% of psychologists and certain kinds of therapists were over 50 years old. Demand for mental health services is going up too, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a new initiative, pumping $4.4 billion into youth behavioral health, including $700 million to train the next generation of providers, said Andrew DiLuccia, a public information officer with the state’s department of health care access. He said the money has mostly been spent and has created thousands of new scholarships, grants and training programs.

More therapists may soon join the workforce. A 2025 state report found that the number of licensed social workers, marriage and family therapists, clinical counselors and school counselors has increased by about 3% over the last five years.

But those new therapists may not work in the areas with the highest need. In Solano County, where the Bay Area’s suburban sprawl mixes with rural farming towns, recruitment is a persistent challenge, said Jennifer Mullane, director of the county’s behavioral health department. Private hospitals, such as Kaiser, pay better, she said, while many other therapists want to do telehealth or private practice. “We have to compete with all of the Bay Area counties for the same workforce and you can guess how we fare,” she said.

The Solano County behavioral health system served more than 5,300 patients last year, said Mullane, including some of “the toughest clients” — those with mild to severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or substance use disorders. And yet, she added, “We have the smallest workforce pool to draw from.”

Her department is supposed to have just under 290 positions but she said that about 20% are currently vacant.

Vacancies also persist in Amador County, where Moen lives and which is designated by the federal government as an area with a shortage of mental health providers. Roughly half of California’s counties meet that designation, which reflects the ratio of providers to the number of residents.

“I like it here because it’s beautiful,” said Moen, who lives just below the snow line of the mountains. “There’s just not enough resources.”

She said she was recently inducted into an honor society at her community college, and it’s made her more aware of her own potential, including ways to advance policy that might improve her county’s provider shortage.

“I would like there to be a lot more trained providers,” Moen said. “And I would like there to be more affordable, attainable ways to get to these providers.”

​ Orange County Register