Feed aggregator

The JavaScript development ecosystem may be a security nightmare, but it's also ripe for improvement. One such tool is the CVE Lite CLI, a free open source dependency scanner that helps reduce the risk of software supply chain attacks. It runs locally and provides actionable vulnerability fixes, if any are available. The tool, endorsed by OWASP, has recently been updated to include override auditing, which has the potential to avert transitive dependency vulnerabilities such as the March 2022 node-ipc package incident. The Shai-hulud software supply chain attacks that have been vexing security professionals for the past few months underscore how common it has become for threat actors to target the developer ecosystem, including CI/CD, package registries, and developer tooling. Software developers can reduce their risk by making sure the dependencies in their apps are up to date and free of known vulnerabilities, but that's more difficult than it should be. It's generally apparent when a particular library or module relies on a vulnerable dependency. But there isn't necessarily an available fix or clear remediation path. Modern JavaScript applications, like many other programming languages, allow developers to incorporate pre-existing solutions to particular problems in the form of packages – modular code that can be imported to implement particular functionality. These packages commonly depend on other packages, which is why they're known as dependencies. And these dependencies in turn may also depend on still more packages, referred to as transitive or indirect dependencies. A common security scenario goes something like this: A developer creates an app using some application framework. The app includes a dependency on "Package A", which itself relies on "Package B" – the transitive or indirect dependency in this situation. If the maintainers of "Package B" have deployed a patch addressing a reported CVE, but the maintainers of "Package A" haven't gotten around to incorporating that change into their code, apps incorporating "Package A" may be vulnerable to attack. Among other possible responses, affected developers may choose to create an override to replace the outdated, vulnerable version of "Package B," a configuration entry that can be removed once "Package A" gets repaired. But Sonu Kapoor, creator of CVE Lite CLI, explained to The Register that overrides represent a legitimate security tool but have limitations. "When a transitive dependency has a CVE and the upstream maintainer hasn't shipped a fix yet, you pin it via npm overrides, pnpm overrides, or Yarn resolutions," Kapoor explained in an email. "Once the vulnerability is addressed and CI passes, you move on. The problem is what happens after that." Kapoor recently added an override auditing tool to the CLI. When he scanned four popular JavaScript open source projects, he found that three of the four had broken overrides. "Cal.com has 90 override entries and 11 that are silently doing nothing," he said. "Jest has an override for its own package name pointing at nothing in the resolved tree. NoCoDB has entries using wildcard patterns that never matched any path in the graph. Next.js was the only clean one with zero findings, which tells me the tool is finding a real pattern, not noise." This can be dangerous, he said, when a project migrates between package managers (e.g. npm to pnpm) that looks for overrides in a different location. "npm reads from overrides, pnpm from pnpm.overrides, Yarn from resolutions," he explained. "When a team migrates package managers and forgets to move their security pins, the package manager silently ignores them. No error, no warning, the vulnerable package ships unconstrained." Kapoor said that AI coding assistants commonly advise developers to add override entries when asked to fix a transitive dependency vulnerability. "That advice is correct at the moment," he said. "None of them ever tell the developer to come back and verify the entry still works." CVE Lite CLI, Kapoor said, does not recommend overrides as the way to properly address a vulnerable dependency. "Overrides look like a security fix in package.json, but routinely outlive their purpose – they can point at packages no longer in the dependency tree, apply to the wrong package manager entirely, or shift to an unintended version on every install," he said. "The override hygiene feature exists precisely because of this failure mode: teams add an override to address a CVE, move on, and years later, the override does nothing while they still believe they're protected." ®

OpenAI is attempting to tackle the security issues of the open source software community.

OpenAI announced a flurry of cybersecurity-related AI news on Monday, releasing an improved version of GPT‑5.5‑Cyber, its most advanced vulnerability-finding model, along with an expanded partner program for cybersecurity vendors, an update to its Codex Security scanner⁠, and an initiative to “Patch the Planet” – or at least 30 high-profile open source projects. The announcements come as Anthropic’s Mythos mess keeps getting more complicated, with national security concerns clouding defenders’ abilities to use that AI company’s most advanced models to find and fix vulnerabilities – or perhaps it’s just politics as usual. They also coincide with a general feeling of FUD around AI cyberattacks and the impending vulnpocalype. The Reg’s vultures will keep out collective eyes on all of this. First off: GPT‑5.5‑Cyber. After releasing a preview version of the model to a select group of “trusted defenders,” OpenAI on Monday released an update that it says makes the model even better at finding – and also fixing – bugs in code. “It is our strongest model yet for finding and helping patch software vulnerabilities, while retaining GPT‑5.5’s general-purpose intelligence and ability to work across long, complex tasks,” the AI shop said. “The model can sustain deeper analysis across large codebases: identifying security-relevant components, tracing whether vulnerable code is reachable, validating likely issues in controlled environments, developing and testing patches, and preparing evidence for human review.” OpenAI said it evaluated the update and 5.5 preview using a few different benchmarks: CyberGym, which test how well AI systems can reproduce known vulnerabilities; ExploitGym, which determines how well models can turn known vulnerabilities into working exploits that achieve unauthorized code execution; and SEC-bench Pro, which measures AI systems’ long-horizon vulnerability discovery and proof-of-concept generation capabilities. The updated version 5.5 outperformed the preview model in all three tests, we’re told. On CyberGym, the updated GPT‑5.5‑Cyber reached 85.6 percent success, compared with 81.8 percent for GPT‑5.5. On ExploitGym, it outperformed the earlier model 39.5 percent versus 25.95 percent. And on SEC-bench Pro, GPT‑5.5‑Cyber hit 69.8 percent, compared with 63.1 percent for GPT‑5.5. Plus, OpenAI assures everyone that it’s had “ongoing dialogue” with the US government, including about its latest model plus upcoming releases, so hopefully that insulates the company against any surprise export controls. OpenAI also expanded its partner program. The OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program currently has about 30 security-vendor and service-provider partners, and only these select firms get to use the updated GPT‑5.5‑Cyber model. OpenAI says it plans to add more organizations to the elite group “in the coming months.” FOSS flaw-finding Also on Monday, OpenAI announced Patch the Planet, an initiative to help open source project maintainers find and patch vulnerabilities. This initiative, co-founded with Trail of Bits and launched in collaboration with HackerOne and AI-powered bug hunting outfit Calif, provides participating open source projects with ChatGPT Pro, conditional access to its Codex Security scanner, and API credits for core development, maintainer automation, and release workflows. “Maintainers define their priorities, preferences, and established disclosure processes,” according to OpenAI. “Patch the Planet security researchers then manage the work end to end - validating and deduplicating both vulnerabilities and patches before they reach maintainers, significantly reducing the burden on maintainers and speeding up remediation.” Trail of Bits reports that in the first week alone, Patch the Planet uncovered hundreds of bugs, and generated 64 pull requests with 51 issues filed across 19 projects. The 19 projects Patch the Planet assists includes cURL, NATS, pyca, Sigstore, aiohttp, the Go project, freenginx, Python and python.org, urllib3, PyPI, SimpleX, Valkey, and RustCrypto. More than 30 projects have joined so far, and project maintainers can apply to join the initiative. Some of the initiative’s highlights from the week include using GPT-5.5-Cyber to build a full-scale fuzzing lab in under a day – an effort we’re told would have take human fuzzing experts two or three weeks to do manually. Patch the Planet also used Codex to build a CVE variant analysis pipeline. This also took less than a day to complete. Speaking of Codex: OpenAI on Monday released a Codex Security plugin⁠ that the company says “enables out-of-the-box defensive security workflows,” allowing developers to integrate Codex into their workflows and CI/CD pipelines. The scanner, which was released as a research preview in March, has so far scanned more than 30 million commits across more than 30,000 codebases, according to OpenAI. Of these, human reviewers have manually marked about 70,000 findings as fixed, and AIs have auto-determined that more than 500,000 findings are fixed. In addition to performing automated scans and reviewing code changes, the new plugin can “triage and validate existing findings from scanners, advisories, bug-bounty reports, or ticketing systems, then automate patch generation at scale to quickly close a backlog of vulnerabilities,” OpenAI said. After it completes a scan, the AI coding agent can export reports to existing vulnerability management systems or integrate into tools with SARIF files and CodeQL queries. “The plugin makes these capabilities much more accessible to support automated pipelines with Codex CLI or integrate into developer workflows in the Codex app,” according to OpenAI. ®

As the political climate gets increasingly noxious for President Donald Trump and his captured Republican Party, it’s becoming clearer that Democrats are favored to retake the House this November. The Senate is a tougher lift, but it’s no longer just in play. Democrats may now be the slightest of favorites to win it. That is a remarkable state of affairs. Democrats are operating on largely…

Source

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Republicans only like an Iran deal if Trump’s name is attached It’s amazing how opinions change depending on who introduces the deal. Why Republicans suck at being patriotic Patriotism is about a lot more than just being strong and powerful.

Source

Whether the Autopilot system was truly active, overridden, or malfunctioning likely won't be resolved until investigators finish combing through the vehicle's data logs.

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | MAGA kooks are drowning in dirty reflecting pool conspiracies…

Source

As another school year comes to a close, we’re reflecting on the students, educators and community partners who helped make this our most impactful year yet.

2025-26 impact snapshot

10,000-plus students reached through Lookout in the Classroom.

450 educators engaged across Santa Cruz County through Lookout for Teachers.

130 student submissions to our Student Journalism Scholarship, our largest cohort to date.

Dozens of classroom visits, workshops and student engagement opportunities throughout the county.

National recognition from the American Press Institute for innovative youth engagement and media literacy work.

Student voices elevated through classroom projects, scholarship stories and published Student Stories.

Expansion beyond Santa Cruz County as Lookout in the Classroom launched in Eugene-Springfield, Oregon.

Five years ago, Lookout set out to strengthen local journalism in Santa Cruz County, and one main focus has always been helping young people engage with trusted local news and better understand the communities they call home.

This past year, Lookout in the Classroom and our new Lookout for Teachers initiative continued to grow, creating opportunities for students and educators to engage with local journalism as a tool for civic participation, media literacy and community connection.

Expanding access to local journalism

One of the year’s biggest milestones was the launch of Lookout for Teachers.

Thanks to the generosity of donors, sponsors and community supporters, hundreds of middle and high school educators now receive free access to Lookout’s journalism, along with classroom-ready resources designed to help students connect local news with their learning.

The program reflects a simple belief: Every student deserves access to trusted information about the community in which they live – and teachers are the key.

Critical to the success – and growth – of our student and school programs is your support. All Lookout memberships help, but our new One-for-One Membership supports them best. Each membership purchase gives one membership to a local teacher! Sign up for one today, or upgrade to it, and you’ll be supporting this great work in the high schools and middle schools across Santa Cruz County.

Support free teacher access with your Lookout membership

You can help Lookout expand local news access for educators by joining or upgrading your membership. For every member who joins at the One-for-One level, Lookout is able to offer free access to an additional local teacher — including when members upgrade their existing membership!

Give a teacher free local news access Student voices at the center

A cornerstone of our work is ensuring students don’t simply consume journalism – they help create it. This year, students reported stories, interviewed local leaders, explored community issues and shared their perspectives through a variety of programs.

Our annual Student Journalism Scholarship saw record participation, with more than 130 students submitting profiles of local unsung heroes. Their reporting celebrated the people who strengthen Santa Cruz County every day while helping students develop skills in interviewing, research, writing and storytelling.

From personal reflections and community reporting to opinion pieces and feature stories, Student Stories provides a space where young people can contribute to local conversations and see their work published for a wider audience. 

The resulting stories offered powerful reminders that young people have important perspectives to contribute to community conversations.

Journalism in action across Santa Cruz County

Throughout the school year, Lookout partnered with educators and schools across the county to bring journalism directly into classrooms.

• Students at Watsonville’s Diamond Technology Institute continued the program’s founding tradition by engaging in hands-on journalism experiences and community storytelling.
• Student journalists at Soquel High School demonstrated the power of youth reporting through thoughtful, community-centered work. 
• At Santa Cruz’s Mission Hill Middle School, students combined climate science and storytelling to better understand environmental challenges affecting their region.

These partnerships illustrate how local journalism can become a bridge between classroom learning and civic engagement.

National recognition for local impact

This spring, Lookout in the Classroom earned national recognition from the American Press Institute, which highlighted our work as a model for connecting local journalism, education and civic engagement. 

While the recognition was meaningful, it also served as a reminder that the program’s success belongs to our community. Teachers, students, families, donors, members and partners have all played a role in building something that extends far beyond a traditional classroom program.

Together, they have helped create opportunities for young people to become informed, engaged participants in local democracy.

Investing in the next generation

This year also brought the opportunity to work alongside an exceptional group of student interns.

Our interns contributed to classroom engagement efforts, educator outreach, content creation, research and storytelling projects throughout the year. Their curiosity, creativity and dedication strengthened our programs and enriched our newsroom.

As they conclude their internships, we invite you to read their reflections on what they learned about journalism, community engagement and the role local news can play in strengthening communities. Their experiences are a powerful reminder that investing in young people today helps shape the journalists, educators and civic leaders of tomorrow.

Looking ahead

As Lookout continues to celebrate its fifth anniversary, we’re reminded that none of this work happens alone. Every classroom visit, scholarship submission, student story and educator membership is made possible through a community that believes local journalism has a place in education.

As we prepare for the 2026-27 school year, our goals remain ambitious: reach more students, support more educators, publish more student voices and continue building meaningful connections between journalism and learning.

Thank you to every teacher, student, member, donor, sponsor and community partner who helped make this work possible.

Together, we’re not just building stronger journalism. We’re helping cultivate the next generation of informed, engaged community members.

Help us keep growing

If you believe local journalism belongs in classrooms, consider supporting Lookout’s mission. Every membership, donation and partnership helps expand opportunities for students and educators throughout our community.

The post Lookout in the Classroom 2025-26: A year of growth, student voices and connection appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

The lawsuit, led by a Detroit pension fund, alleges Uber's board and management has cut too many compliance corners, resulting in thousands of lawsuits.

Like the Strait of Hormuz, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has exposed the limits of the power of the United States of America: President Donald Trump is also losing his war against algae.

In the face of thriving algal blooms and peeling “American flag blue” paint, the National Park Service on Monday began draining the pool for repairs. A contractor performing the work told E&E News that those repairs would not be done by July 4. The prior rehab, which Trump rushed to complete via no-bid contracts and more than $14 million in spending so far, has failed.

Trump, though, has blamed the problems on vandalism. And he has dispatched a hodgepodge army of law enforcement to protect the pool from “Radical Left Lunatics,” who he has said should face “Years in jail!”

Observing the action at the pool over much of the long weekend, we did not spot any antifa dumping algae, as MAGA conspiracy theorists allege. The hot temperature, shallow water and flawed filtration system means the green Scenedesmus algae can conquer the pool without human help.

There were, however, lots of cops. Walking around the pool at about 4 p.m. ET on Saturday, we counted at least seven US Marshals, some in “fugitive task force” tactical gear. They were supported by around 30 local police officers, volunteers who said they had been deputized for 30 days by the Marshals Service to help provide security for 250th anniversary celebrations. They came from Oklahoma City; Idaho Falls; Sarpy County, Nebraska; as well as Ontario, Wayne and Monroe counties in New York. They were mostly standing in the shade, and friendly. Some were hoping to catch Nationals game on a day off. They seemed sort of bored.

The cops were coordinating with a handful of Park Police officers and maybe a dozen National Guard troops from Georgia and Louisiana, who were patrolling the pool in small groups. Over the last few days, agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also appeared poolside.

On Saturday, there were issues with radio frequency connections, so a mounted Park Police officer rode a white horse between groups of officers to share information on potential threats to the pool. He was less chatty than the volunteer officers, but he said that the horse’s name was Delilah, and that she was 21 years old.

The officers explained that visitors could take paint chips, but peeling paint still attached was forbidden.

In the pool, seven or so Park Service employees, wearing boots, waterproof overalls and NPS hoodies for the sun—it was about 86 degrees and sunny—were vacuuming up algae using pumps attached to long poles. (They had by then given up pouring in hydrogen peroxide.) Machines were pushing what looked like white foam into the water: the “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” that the administration has claimed would kill the algae. Generators powering the pumps hummed loudly as green-tinted water poured out into drains on the Mall.

Another dozen or so uniformed Park Service employees looked on from the shade. On the north side of the pool, a duck and eight ducklings sat on the edge of the water. A park ranger sitting nearby said neither the algae nor cleaning efforts would hurt them.

From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, tourists took pictures of the scene. A band, in traditional Polish garb, prepared to play folk music for a holiday marking the summer solstice. A tourist shop nearby sold $18 water bottles with stickers advertising Freedom 250, the semi-private group Trump is using to organize highly personal celebrations linked to the 250th anniversary.

By the pool, a person in a pink frog costume brandished a “Team Algae” sign and heckled two National Guard troops. “Let’s go algae, let’s go,” the frog chanted, along with something about “pond scum.”

A small boy, in an ice cream cone shirt, asked his mother if the critics were protesting the algae. “No,” she answered. “They’re mad at the president.”

“Did he mean to grow the algae?” the boy asked. “No,” she said. Then they went to get ice cream.

Near one of the drains, an older couple, maybe in their sixties, picked through the grass nearby for loose pieces of blue paint, having first checked with the Park Police that doing so was permissible.  

The officers explained that visitors were allowed to put their hands in the water. They could even take paint chips that were already detached. But peeling the paint still attached to the pool was forbidden.

The administration said Monday that Park Police have made five arrests and issued five citations for alleged vandalism. But an officer on the scene Friday evening said that they had also detained more than 20 people, in many cases without further action, for suspected pool tampering.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted that he had “just inspected the pool” and decried the vandalism he said he observed.

“WOW, who would do such a thing?,” Trump wrote. “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE!”

The president, though, didn’t view the pool from the ground. He appears to have formed his impression from a helicopter as he returned to the White House from Camp David.

Down below, one of the ducklings was photographed floating dead in water. (Experts note that most ducklings in the wild die before reaching maturity, so it’s not clear whether the algae or chemicals used to clean the pool were to blame.)

On Saturday around 5:30 p.m., the radios of the marshals we were walking past barked. “One male, black shoes, white socks, currently being detained,” someone said. “Eleven Charlie moved to intercept.” Two officers sped away in a golf cart.

Across the pool, Delilah galloped toward a group of National Guard troops surrounding a young man, in white socks, seated with his ankles crossed on the grass by the north side of the pool. A Park Police cruiser, siren on, pulled up.

By the time we made it around, a half dozen of the local police, seven National Guard troops and a couple Park Police officers surrounded the suspected vandal in a semi-circle, facing a small crowd of onlookers.

After a few minutes, they let the guy go. He declined to give his name. But he said he was from Indiana, and that he had stuck his hand in the water and pulled out a piece of floating paint. The officers had suspected that he pulled it off. He received a citation, he said. He walked off with his family, looking embarrassed.

The cops dispersed. There was a big pile of poop where Delilah had stood. In the water, the feds kept vacuuming the algae.

I didn’t know quite what to expect when I started the school year as Lookout’s Educational Programs Assistant, but I was excited to challenge myself and learn more about the Santa Cruz County community I became a part of a year before, when I started my college journey at UC Santa Cruz. Nine months later, I can recognize what a valuable learning experience this internship has been. 

For one, I’ve been able to transfer skills I’ve gained in my academics into a new context and put them to use in a different way. As a literature major, I’ve practiced close reading and careful textual analysis to extrapolate a deeper meaning in my classes, a skill that has helped me when writing weekly educator newsletters for Lookout, in which I must understand and expand on the significance of recent Lookout articles in order to pose discussion questions that teachers are invited to use in their classrooms. 

I’ve also been able to expand my ability to structure ideas effectively in text. I’ve grown used to using this skill for formal academic essays, but at Lookout, I’ve been able to practice this in a variety of forms of writing – writing educator newsletters, Inside Lookout reflections about Lookout’s educational initiatives and while conducting outreach. At Lookout, I especially have to consider my changing audience, and let that influence how my tone and how I structure my writing – for example, experimenting with spacing and visuals more than I have in my academic work in order to be attention-grabbing and engaging. 

Besides developing tangible skills, this internship has shown me that learning is achieved in more places than just the classic classroom or a lecture hall. Learning can be through community events (such as Lookout’s election forums), through classroom workshops, through internship or work experience, and through challenging yourself to discover what’s possible.

YFIOB Luncheon 2026

With this year’s Student Journalism Scholarship, students learned what they were capable of, dove deeper into the inspiring stories they’d heard from their community heroes and used their voice to share the stories of these local heroes with the rest of us.

I am proud to have been a part of this project by spreading awareness of it to local educators, reading and evaluating the 130 submissions Lookout received (a new record!), helping to coordinate the winning stories’ publication, and meeting the wonderful winners themselves at this year’s Your Future Is Our Business annual luncheon.  I encourage you to learn about the community through these students’ eyes by checking out their “unsung hero” profiles, as well as the rest of the student-authored stories from this school year. 

I joined a handful of Lookout’s 20 classroom workshops this school year, which covered a variety of topics, from career panels to the importance of journalism in democracy. Lookout also had its first visit to a middle school classroom, where we talked to a seventh grade science class about the importance not just of science, but also of how to communicate scientific topics. 

Exercising my communicative skills, I got to take the lead for parts of the presentation and practice holding the attention of a middle school classroom. Having stickers to hand out to participants definitely helped, but so did paying attention to how my phrasing was landing and making adjustments for the next class.  

Because climate change can be hard to talk about, even for adults, we helped students identify effective science storytelling and journalistic practices – information gathering, interview techniques, the value of talking to people affected, how to decide what to include and how to consider one’s audience. 

It was a real treat to be invited back to see these students put these fundamentals to work at their Climate Change Symposium, where I saw how each student used their own unique creativity to make the project their own, be it an interactive game, sculpture, comic book, news anchor-style video or something else. To me, this is what learning is all about – curiosity and engagement, no matter where that learning takes place or in what form. 

Reading over student reflections after all of these classroom visits, it became clear that the visits not only helped students understand effective storytelling, but also helped them walk away from these workshops feeling empowered to engage more with their local community and keep themselves informed about local issues.  

These reflections were motivating to read, and I too look forward to continuing to engage with Santa Cruz County and learning more about this special place. Though I’ll be home in the East Bay for the summer working as a writing tutor, I’ll return to Lookout Santa Cruz next school year as a Lead Educational Programs Fellow.

Ava Salinas is a student at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Lookout Santa Cruz through the Humanities EXCEL program led by the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division with strategic support from The Humanities Institute.

The post Learning beyond the classroom; reflections on the school year appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

In a letter to the editor, a Pleasure Point resident outlines the importance of Capitola Boat & Bait to the village’s tourism and business.

As this school year and my internship at Lookout Santa Cruz comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the incredible journey it has been. Working as a Community Engagement Intern, I have been able to expand my sense of community within Santa Cruz, gain real-life experience in an office setting and more. I am so grateful for all of my time, connections and opportunities that I have been given at Lookout and will take what I have learned with me into future jobs and work experiences. 

When I first began at Lookout Santa Cruz, I hadn’t had much work experience in an office setting, having spent past internships doing remote work or in other sorts of spaces. Because of this, I entered Lookout a bit anxious about communicating with co-workers and advocating for help when I was confused on assignments. As I progressed in my internship and collaborated more with my co-workers, I grew more confident in my own abilities and learned how to ask for clarification when I needed it.

At Lookout, I had the chance to participate in projects and to help organize events it facilitated throughout the year. I joined Lookout in its fifth year as a Santa Cruz County news site, and therefore many of my projects centered around highlighting the work that Lookout has done for the community over the years. In the fall quarter, at the start of my internship, I created a five-year timeline of Lookout’s history. As a history major, I enjoyed getting to comb through the different projects and stories that Lookout has published. This project allowed me to learn about Santa Cruz County and situate myself in a place that I was still growing familiar with as a sophomore in college. I compiled the timeline into posters and was given the opportunity to write an article about my experience creating the timeline: Telling Lookout Santa Cruz’s story — and finding my own place in it. At the end of the project, I displayed my timeline posters in Lookout’s newsroom, leaving my mark on the office space. 

In the winter quarter, I worked on the HERStory project, collaborating with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History to create visuals for its annual event honoring the women changemakers of Santa Cruz. For each woman who was nominated, representing the past, present and future of Santa Cruz, I made a poster including descriptions of each awardee and their achievements. I was inspired by the work that these women were doing across the county and feel extremely proud and grateful to have been a part of this celebration and honoring of these women. Attending the event at the MAH, which was full of community pride and happiness, and seeing my work displayed was an amazing experience.

Wrapping up my internship in the spring quarter, I focused on creating election materials, infographics and images for candidate forums hosted by Lookout. I especially enjoyed getting information translated into Spanish, using my bilingual skills to create material for the first Watsonville election event hosted by Lookout. Throughout this process, I was able to better get to know Santa Cruz County’s political climate. I also crafted an impact report to showcase Lookout’s work and hopes for its future. Getting to conclude my internship with this work was very rewarding and motivating. 

My time at Lookout Santa Cruz was special and allowed me to work on multiple projects. I gained many skills that I will take with me into future employment as well as a strong sense of pride in my new home and community connection. 

Galicia Stack Lozano is a student at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Lookout Santa Cruz through the Humanities EXCEL program led by the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division with strategic support from The Humanities Institute

The post Building connections through community journalism appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

ph @stithc

The administration’s efforts to force states to let President Donald Trump control elections keep getting shot down by courts unwilling to warp the Constitution to grant Trump’s wishes, so it’s changing tactics. If they can’t win on the law, they’ll win with the purse strings and illegally withhold money from states that won’t comply with Trump’s conspiracy-addled demands.

Source

“What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Now!”

This was one of the first slogans I heard approaching the No Kings protest, the first event that my editor at Lookout Santa Cruz tasked me with covering. I could feel my heart pounding its way out of my chest. I had been interning here for a month and half; I thought, they must really trust me to let me cover something this big. I’ll never forget this moment  – it was the first time I got to practice interviewing local residents, and I even got to speak to the event coordinator. 

No Kings 3

A month later, I got the opportunity to write a piece about the delay of CalFresh benefits for the month of November, and how that has affected UC Santa Cruz students who rely on them. Through this experience, I had the opportunity to practice the art of interviewing people, which provided me with insight into what matters most to Santa Cruzans. Some of the most notable people I got the chance to interview were Mayor Fred Keeley and Rep. Jimmy Panetta. 

On top of doing editorial work, I also got the opportunity to help out with our community outreach. I helped out at one of Lookout’s 2026 election forums, where candidates running for mayor and city council spoke about some of Santa Cruz’s most pressing issues. 

I really leveraged my communication skills in this role. Studying the humanities has helped me learn to share information clearly and thoughtfully, in an understandable, unbiased way. That skill became especially important when interviewing sources, writing stories and making complex local issues accessible to readers.

This summer, I will be attending the UC Center Sacramento program, where I will intern for a local organization such as Capitol Weekly or the governor’s office. 

If you want to support work like this, one simple but meaningful action is to subscribe to local news outlets and stay engaged by reading local journalism. And if you’re a student at UCSC, you can get a subscription to Lookout Santa Cruz for free, so I encourage you to take advantage of this resource.

Ashley Palma-Jimenez Intern

Ashley Palma-Jimenez is a student at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Lookout Santa Cruz through the Humanities EXCEL program led by the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division with strategic support from The Humanities Institute.

The post Covering Santa Cruz: An intern’s introduction to local journalism appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

On the morning of Father’s Day, seven cars of ICE agents barreled through Santa Barbara, California, and detained anywhere from nine to 11 people, including one U.S. citizen.

The Santa Barbara Independent reported that three of the people detained were mariachi musicians, according to a spokesperson for an activist group that had been following the agents. The musicians may have been in the act of serenading fathers as part of a Mexican immigrant Father’s Day tradition, or on their way to do so.

As part of the action, ICE agents reportedly detained a U.S. citizen before releasing him at a nearby hospital. They also bear-sprayed a woman who was part of an ICE-monitoring organization through the rear window of her car.

Activists trailing ICE said that the agents didn’t just arrest people in the city but also sped down the streets in the early morning, and did donuts with their cars under the highway for 15 minutes. When they got on the freeway, the activists reported that the agents were going over 100 miles an hour.

Meanwhile, the Santa Barbara police chief, Kelly Gordon, had no idea ICE was in town. “We didn’t have any calls for service from 1 a.m. that were remotely close to what was being alleged on the Westside,” she said.

The loop takes agentic AI a step further, by authorizing a swarm of agents to work continuously in the background, endlessly.

Planned Parenthood is on the path to having its funding restored thanks to Republican chaos in Congress.

The nonprofit health care organization could regain access to federal funds as soon as July 4, exactly one year after the Senate parliamentarian allowed Republicans to pass a one-year ban on national funding for the program, NOTUS reported Monday.

Amid all the chaos related to the Iran war, economic fallout, severed alliances over Trump’s midterm election endorsements, and a lapsed federal spy bill, Republicans have been unable to galvanize their party to vote to extend the limited ban.

“I think at this point, it’d be unlikely,” Montana Senator Steve Daines told NOTUS.

One possible pathway to advancing the anti-abortion agenda item would be to find a vehicle such as a third reconciliation bill to pass the ban, though Daines recognized that such bills are “hard to pass.”

Anti-abortion groups are pushing GOP lawmakers to find a way to pass a reconciliation bill regardless.

“Budget reconciliation remains the only viable legislative path to continuing to defund Big Abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wrote in a letter to Senate Republicans last week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled that he intends to push for a third reconciliation bill in the near future, even as other top Republicans reject the idea. Senators Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins have already said they don’t see it happening.

“I think it’s safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill,” McConnell, the chair of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said during a hearing earlier this month.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy also said he didn’t believe a third round of budgetary efforts would garner much support from the party, considering the difficulty the party faced during attempts to muster a second bill. “It’s not looking real good,” he told reporters.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, but that’s not the only service it offers. The nonprofit provides critical services such as physicals, cancer screenings, STI testing, and birth control access, and it does not use public funds to provide abortion care. Performing abortions with federal funds is already illegal based on the parameters set by the Hyde Amendment, which became law in 1976.

Microsoft inked a 20-year power purchase agreement with Chevron, locking in decades of carbon emissions from a new natural gas power plant.