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COMPUTEX 2026 In his Computex keynote speech this week Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon offered a glimpse of an AI-augmented future straight out of an episode of Black Mirror. According to Amon, agents — automated systems which harness AI models to automate complex tasks without the need for human supervision — will fundamentally change humanity’s relationship with technology. “The phone, today, is at the center of your digital life and therefore everything is around the phone,” he said. But in the not too distant future, Amon argues that agents will take their place. Phones, like wearables, will simply become an extension of the agent. Imagine your own personal Jarvis accessible from any connected device whether it’s a pair of earbuds, smart glasses, smartphone, or notebook. These devices will be constantly feeding sensor data to an agent. “The agent isn't tied to the device, it actually moves with the user. It’s there with the user, regardless of the device that you have,” he explained. “Once you understand that change, you understand how the whole mobile industry is going to change.” And of course, Amon expects, 6G networks will supercharge these sensing capabilities. “If you have smart glasses, they see what you see, so the connectivity needs to enable a very fast uplink,” he said. “6G is going to make all of us into walking cameras in this world.” Not creepy at all then. It’s no wonder Meta is so keen on making smart glasses a thing. Agentic AI adoption becomes yet another funnel by which data can be used to serve you ads. It doesn’t stop there. If Amon is to be believed, realtime AI analysis of 6G radio waves will allow for even more pervasive prediction models. Each radio connection, he explains, will be like a radar, and by tracking and triangulating hundreds or millions of these connections, network operators will be able to generate a digital twin of your neighborhood, city, and eventually country. “You're going to detect on every road, every car, every bicycle, every truck, every pedestrian,” he explained. “You can actually identify those objects.” Like most things in modern society, this shift will be driven by economics. “Resistance is futile,” the chip exec said. That’s because for this vision of the future to be economical, the agents can’t just run in the datacenter. Each of these devices will be responsible for offloading varying degrees of the workload. For example, an agent harness might run on your smartphone’s CPU. Smaller, less complex tasks might run on a local model on the device's NPU or GPU, while more complex tasks might run at the network edge or a neighboring datacenter. And to Qualcomm’s credit, while local AI can offer greater privacy, that’s only true so far as the software vendor’s willingness to respect it. Last we checked, Google’s business model revolves around turning telemetry gathered from your digital life into targeted advertising. Amon claims that distributing the load can drive down costs by as much as 4x. And if done right, it will be entirely transparent, much like how most users have no idea how much they already rely on cloud compute until they toggle airplane mode on their phones. Naturally, all of this is going to need new software and hardware, and according to Amon, Qualcomm is already well positioned to build it. “It plans, it executes, you verify, will keep interacting with it until the task is done, and that by definition changes the hardware,” Amon said. “If it is challenging to make your phone last all day with you operating it, what happens when you and the agent are operating it?” “We now have the ability to build systems that are sub two milliwatts from an ear bud with micro power Wi-Fi that connect to an agent for personal AI audio devices all the way to kilowatts,” he said. The latter end of that refers to Qualcomm’s Dragonfly datacenter-scale compute platform, which Amon teased toward the end of his keynote. “Now with Dragonfly, our portfolio spans every single tier of the compute continuum, from the smallest wearables that will connect to agents to datacenters at a very high performance,” he said. But for details we’ll have to wait until Qualcomm’s investor day on June 24. ®

This post is updated throughout the day to reflect the latest incidents. It was last updated at 6:31 a.m..

Here’s what’s happening on the roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 6:30 a.m. on June 2

• Southbound Porter Dr and southbound Salinas Rd are closed from San Juan to Railroad in the Watsonville/Pajaro area due to road and weather conditions. The closure is expected to last until 4:00 a.m. today.
   
• North Highway 1 at 41st Avenue in Capitola / Soquel is facing closures because of striping work. The closure will last until 4:59 a.m. tomorrow.
   
• South Highway 1 at Park Avenue in Capitola / Soquel is facing closures for roadway excavation. The closure is expected to end at 7:01 a.m. on August 19.
   
• Alternating lanes are closed on South Highway 1 at Grant Street in Eastside / Live Oak because of bridge work. The closure is expected to end at 6:01 a.m. today.
   
• A lane on westbound SR-152 at Clifford Drive/Ohlone Parkway in Watsonville and Pajaro is closed for asphalt paving. The closure will last until July 3 at 5:59 a.m.
   
• Alternating lanes are closed on Highway 9 at Pool Drive in San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. This closure will last until April 30 at 6:59 a.m.
   
• Highway 9 at Cascade Avenue in San Lorenzo Valley has one-way traffic due to ongoing work. The closure is expected to end at 7:01 a.m. on August 31.
   
• A lane on North/South Highway 9 at Kirby Street in San Lorenzo Valley is closed for utility work. The closure will last until 6:01 a.m. tomorrow.
   
• Highway 17 at Granite Creek Road in Scotts Valley had one-way traffic because of bridge work. The closure is expected to end at 6:01 a.m. today.
   
• A lane on Highway 17 at Beulah Park/La Madrona in the Eastside / Live Oak area is closed for utility work. The closure is expected to end at 2:59 p.m. on June 8.
   
• A lane on east SR-129 at Riverside Rd in Watsonville / Pajaro is closed for electrical work. The closure will last until June 4 at 2:01 p.m.
   
• There is one-way traffic on SR-152 at Holohan Road in the Watsonville and Pajaro area because of pavement repair. The closure will end at 3:01 p.m. today.
   
• A man was seen walking south on the right shoulder of Highway 1 North at 41st Avenue in Capitola/Soquel. No vehicles were involved. The incident was reported as a traffic hazard today.
   
• CHP helped with construction work at 10395 Soquel Dr in Aptos today. The CAL TRANS YARD was also mentioned. There were no crashes or injuries.
   

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Tuesday morning traffic: Highway 1, 9, 17 lane closures, detours in effect appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Have you ever dreamed of becoming a Pokémon trainer? Of course you have. What a joy it would be to catch ‘em, train ‘em, and get into some epic battle action. LEGO is giving Pokémon fans the chance to live out that fantasy with a whopping twelve new sets, two of which include a SMART brick to bring a fantastic interactive element to life. 

The two all-in-one sets include LEGO Pokémon SMART Play: Training House with Pikachu and Charizard vs. Jolteon Ultimate Battle. Here’s a bit more about what comes with Pika’s set as well as a few photos, including some that we captured at LEGO and Pokémon’s premiere : 

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Training House with Pikachu (72164) All-in-One set for ages 6+. This set includes a Pikachu-inspired tree house, training items, a Poké Ball, buildable sandwich, and more. Fans can get the chance to become a Pokémon Trainer as they nurture, feed, play, train and battle LEGO Pikachu. Includes 1 SMART Brick, 4 Tags, Figure and Charger.  

Click To View Gallery LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company

And get into the details about Charizard and Jolteon’s super fierce battle:

LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Charizard vs. Jolteon Ultimate Battle (72167) All-in-One set for ages 8+ features Charizard and Jolteon in a fierce battle between the two iconic LEGO Pokémon. Look around and use the healing spray for support in the battle or have the Pokémon jump into a friendly training session together on the training grounds. Includes 2 SMART Bricks, 4 Tags, 2 Figures and Charger.   

Click To View Gallery LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company

The other sets include the following Pokemon and, while they do not have a SMART play brick, they are interactive and fans can use a SMART brick with any of them. When you pop that brick onto an item or a character, it makes incredibly realistic sounds that are true to the universe. Here’s the list of what you have to choose from or you can, ahem, catch ‘em all:

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Berry Bash with Bulbasaur and Bidoof (72155) compatible set for ages 7+. In this set, children can roleplay one of the key steps of any great Pokémon Trainer – nurturing your LEGO Pokémon. The set comes with two Pokémon, the beloved Bulbasaur and Bidoof. Make a delicious berry smoothie in the juicer and feed the snack-hungry Pokémon!  

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Trainer’s Buggy Adventure with Squirtle (72156) compatible set for ages 7+. Fans can take LEGO Squirtle out for a ride on the passenger seat in a beach buggy. The vehicle has 2 water stud shooters and a water stud storage compartment for Squirtle and the Trainer to extinguish fires at the veggie grill.  

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Charmander and Geodude’s Cavern Clash (72157) compatible set ages 6+. Fans can play out the ‘Trainer’s First Adventure’ with LEGO Charmander and Geodude. Charmander explores a cave with treasure and crystals. Stay alert and watch out for the angry Geodude. 

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly Battle (72158) compatible set for ages 8+ lets children play out stories for the three Paldean First Partner Pokémon. Each of the three LEGO Pokémon has a different type: Sprigatito is Grass-type, Fuecoco is Fire-type and Quaxly is Water-type. The spinning wheel can help choose your opponent and determine who gets to battle next! 

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Jigglypuff Concert (72159) compatible set for ages 7+ features LEGO Jigglypuff. This Pokémon loves to sing and play music, with key elements like microphones, speakers and a music stage. 

Click To View Gallery LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company LEGO/The Pokémon Company

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Drone Search for Mythical Mew (72161) compatible set for ages 8+ shows the Mythical Pokémon Mew. Children can go on searching for LEGO Mew, using a Poké Ball inspired drone to search for the ancient ruins where Mew hides. 

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Eevee and Lapras’s Treasure Hunt (72162) compatible set for ages 8+ features LEGO Eevee and Lapras off on a sea adventure to find the map to the shipwreck. Lowering the mast to lift a rock reveals a treasure chest full of coins and gems.  

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Mewtwo’s Lab Break (72163) compatible set for ages 10+ lets fans recreate a scene where LEGO Mewtwo breaks out of its lab tank. The set includes an adjustable lab tank, Mewtwo info screen, rare Master Ball and Mewtwo figure. 

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Umbreon vs. Garchomp Championship Battle (72165) compatible set for ages 10+ sees LEGO Umbreon and Garchomp together in a fun championship, battling to win the Poké Ball trophy. A giant Poké Ball is included.  

• LEGO® Pokémon™ SMART Play: Cubone and Gengar’s Spooky Showdown (72166) compatible set for ages 8+ shows LEGO Cubone trying to defeat Gengar to collect the treasure hidden underneath.  

This really makes a collection feel expansive and, of course, means there are more Pokemon to catch and train. Whether you like a fast attack or want to charge them up and go for a major strike, you can get into the action as you please. 

In addition to battles, you can even feed and tickle them for some heartwarming fun. It’s the perfect marriage of two fervent and fun fandoms because, according to LEGO Chief Product & Marketing Officer Julia Goldin, there’s an 80% crossover between LEGO and Pokémon fans. These LEGO Pokémon SMART play sets go on sale on August 1, but you can get your pre-order in for them right now. 

The post You’ll Wanna Catch All of These LEGO Pokémon SMART Play Sets appeared first on Nerdist.

The new Wetland Intrinsic Potential tool provides both agricultural and conservation interests a more accurate way to find wetlands that might need preserving. By Chad Small for Inside Climate News As the United States limits what can be considered a wetland, and qualify for federal conservation measures, many Washington state residents are trying to protect more of them for water…

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Masters of the Universe is a movie that has no business being as delightful as it is. That’s partially because MOTU, as a property, has no business working as well as it always has, going back forty years. Mattel Toys originally conceived it as an action figure line to compete with Star Wars. Mattel employees Roger Sweet and Mark Taylor took 1970s-era Frank Frazetta fantasy artwork, Flash Gordon sci-fi, and the in-vogue bodybuilding mania of the Arnold Schwarzenegger era, and smashed it all together into something that obsessed kids in the ‘80s. And all of those elements have now been translated miraculously onto the big screen into something so fun, one can’t resist it.Amazon MGM

In the beginning, MOTU barely had any lore or story, it was a concept they sold to kids on vibes. And boy oh boy, did those vibes work on a whole generation. (Well, they worked for about five years or so.) But one of those “He-Man generation” kids was me. So, director Travis Knight’s movie had the uphill battle of both being a fun, solid fantasy movie, while also delivering on recreating those vibes of yesteryear on my now adult (adultish?) brain. He absolutely succeeded in this regard. I’m here to tell you Masters of the Universe is a blast, working onscreen even when it probably shouldn’t.

RELATED ARTICLEThe Weirdest Deep Cut MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE CharactersWithout a doubt, MOTU borrows heavily from relatively recent hit movies, specifically from Marvel Studios. There’s a great deal from Thor and Thor: Ragnarok, the humor of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the “wink-wink-nudge-nudge,” self-aware camp of 1980’s Flash Gordon. And much like Flash Gordon, there’s even a Queen needle drop in this movie. All of these references are rather obvious, held together with Scotch tape and a prayer. But that’s almost exactly like how the original concept was back in the day, a mashup of different pop culture artifacts that just somehow works.Amazon MGM Studios The movie is largely faithful to the original MOTU brand, with one big exception. In the world presented in the film, the mythical planet Eternia was conquered by the evil Lord Skeletor (Jared Leto) when Prince Adam was about 10 years old. The opening sequences of the movie show how Adam was small for his age, and struggled to keep up with the other kids in his combat training. His mentor, King Randor’s Man-At-Arms, a gruff but charming Idris Elba, is stern but loving with Adam, who is best friends with Man-At-Arms’ daughter, Teela. We get a few brief glimpses of life in Eternia before Skeletor attacks, hoping to seize Castle Grayskull, the source of all power in Eternia.Amazon MGM StudiosThe key to Castle Grayskull is the Power Sword. So, Adam’s mother, Queen Marlena, rushes to Grayskull’s Sorceress (Morena Baccarin) so she can open a portal to send her son to safety, along with the Power Sword. She sends him to Earth, where she’s from (that’s canon!), but on the way to our world, Adam and the Power Sword are separated. This is a sequence very reminiscent of Thor from his first movie, where he’s banished to Earth and separated from his mystical hammer. Only Adam is stuck on Earth for 15 years, not a few days. And in Oklahoma City, no less.Now an adult played by a delightfully bumbling (yet wildly handsome) Nicholas Galatzine, Adam lives a mundane existence, working in a cubicle and living with a roommate who thinks he’s a bit nuts. He spends all of his free time looking online for the Power Sword, to the detriment of his work. This leads to a pretty funny bit with his boss, played by Agatha All Along’s Sasheer Zamata. We already knew that Travis Knight was a Gen Xer who grew up with the cartoon, but now we can also infer that he probably really loved Office Space in his 20s. There’s a lot of that movie in these scenes.Amazon MGM StudiosAdam finally finds his sword in a comic book shop, and steals it in a rather hilarious sequence, but his finding it activates Skeletor’s forces as to its location. Skeletor’s minion Beast-Man is sent to Earth to retrieve it, but Adam’s childhood friend, Teela (Camila Mendes), intercepts him, and we get the film’s first big battle, and a sweet reunion between friends. From this point on, we leave Earth behind, and the rest of the movie takes place on Eternia. This is where MOTU improves on Thor, which mostly took place on Earth and not Asgard. Travis Knight understood that no one is paying to see sword fights in Oklahoma City for 90 minutes.Adam and Teela return to a devastated Eternia, ruled by Skeletor. And although I don’t like Leto personally, he absolutely rules in this role. He doesn’t have the high-pitched voice from the cartoon, instead affecting a British accent with some digital enhancements. But his campy evil just works. We hate to make another Flash Gordon comparison, but it feels like Max Von Sydow as Ming. An Oscar-worthy talent just basking in the camp ridiculousness of it all. And Alison Brie’s Evil-Lyn brings her own level of arch kitsch to the role, playing perfectly opposite Leto’s Skeletor. Any time they are together on screen, it’s perfection.Amazon MGMAt one point, Adam asks Teela why Skeletor does what he does. This is the part of the modern blockbuster where we learn the villain’s tragic backstory. Whatever it is that led him down the path of evil. But Teela simply says “He has a skull for a face.” I couldn’t help but think this was Travis Knight saying, “Sometimes a mustache-twirling bad guy can be just that with zero explanation.” And he’s right. No kid in the ‘80s asked why Skeletor was evil, he just was. And no kid who watches MOTU today is going to ask either. Like Teela says, “Because he has a skull face.”The score by Daniel Pemberton is also absolutely fantastic. We can’t forget to mention that. It just screams the ’80s, with all the dramatic guitar riffs. And it does a lot of the heavy lifting when a particular scene is not all that great. It helps that Queen’s Brian May contributed a lot to the guitar portions, which just makes it all the better. Also, retro-influenced rock band the Darkness contributes a theme song, simply titled “Masters of the Universe,” and it’s everything you could want it to be.Is everything great in this movie? Nah. Sometimes the digital compositing is wonky, particularly in the chase scene where He-Man battles Skeletor’s Roton vehicles. The production design is great overall. But there are more than a few moments where the heavy CGI of it all is just too much. A few of the jokes are awkward and forced, and just don’t land. Or, they interrupt a genuinely emotional beat with an ok joke that feels out of place. James Gunn was much better at nailing this kind of tone. But these flaws don’t drag the movie down in a significant way. It’s just too fun and colorful to let the negatives bring down a movie that’s such a pure good time.Amazon MGM Studios A lot of the general consensus is MOTU feels like a true ‘80s movie, in the best possible way. But what’s great about MOTU is that it feels not like the ‘80s movies everyone names first. For every Conan the  Barbarian, there was a Beastmaster. A slightly more off-brand version, one that nevertheless won us over with its less ambitious charm and energy. And sometimes, those movies were more fun than the bigger films whose coattails they rode. In a similar fashion, MOTU is sometimes more enjoyable than the arguably more polished MCU movies it riffs on. Oh, and like all those MCU movies, you definitely want to stay for the post-credits scenes. Masters of the Universe had everything going against it, but we have a feeling that pound for pound, it’ll wind up as the sci-fi fantasy favorite of the summer of 2026.Amazon MGM Studios ⭐ (Youtube Video)

The post MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Is a Colorful Retro Adventure (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

Microsoft has moved to calm an increasingly noisy backlash from the security community after appearing to threaten legal action against a researcher who spent the past several weeks dumping Windows zero-days onto the internet. In a statement published on Monday, Redmond said it has "no intention to pursue action against individuals conducting or publishing security research”, a noticeably softer position than the one it adopted just days earlier when it condemned a string of public vulnerability disclosures and invoked its Digital Crimes Unit. The updated statement follows a public feud with a researcher known as Nightmare-Eclipse, who released multiple Windows zero-days along with proof-of-concept exploit code. Several of those vulnerabilities have since been exploited in the wild, turning what might have remained an obscure disclosure dispute into a much larger argument about how vendors handle security researchers. Last week, Microsoft described the publication of exploit code for unpatched flaws as "never justifiable" and warned it would work with law enforcement when criminal activity harmed customers. The statement triggered immediate criticism from parts of the security community, with researchers warning that the language risked creating a chilling effect around vulnerability research. Former Microsoft employee and security researcher Kevin Beaumont described the company's position as a "dumpster fire of its own making," while Luta Security founder Katie Moussouris, who created Microsoft's bug bounty program, told The Register the response sent mixed messages. She questioned Microsoft's decision to tout researcher compensation and recognition while responding to a researcher who claims he received neither, and argued that references to the Digital Crimes Unit made the post feel "vaguely threatening." She added that, regardless of the specifics of the dispute, Microsoft risked creating a chilling effect on other researchers considering whether to report vulnerabilities. What’s more, if Microsoft's goal was to isolate Nightmare-Eclipse, that may not be going entirely to plan. The researcher claimed over the weekend that other researchers had begun handing over vulnerabilities following Microsoft's response, including an alleged flaw dubbed "Bitskrieg" that breaks Secure Boot trust guarantees and bypasses BitLocker. Nightmare-Ecipse said the bug will be released “sometime in June”. Against that backdrop, Microsoft's Monday message read more like damage control than deterrence. "We have no intention to pursue action against individuals conducting or publishing their security research," Microsoft said, adding that legal referrals would be reserved for people engaging in malicious activity that causes harm to customers. The company also acknowledged that "some interactions have fallen short" and said it was working to learn from feedback. Notably, Microsoft stopped well short of conceding any of Nightmare-Eclipse's specific allegations. The researcher had accused Microsoft of deleting accounts used for vulnerability reporting, refusing to pay bounties, and mishandling communications through the Microsoft Security Response Center. The company has not publicly addressed those claims directly. Nobody should mistake Monday's statement for a sudden conversion to the church of full disclosure. Microsoft remains firmly of the view that researchers should report vulnerabilities privately, give vendors time to fix them, and avoid dropping working exploit code onto the internet for everyone else to play with. The problem for Redmond was that the argument had drifted well beyond the actions of one researcher. What began as a dispute over a string of Windows zero-day releases was rapidly turning into a debate about Microsoft's relationship with the security community and whether the company was comfortable invoking lawyers when that relationship soured. The updated statement looks very much like an attempt to slam the brakes on that narrative. ®

A new AI compliance service sits between AI models and end users to flag and replace any messages that might present a compliance problem.

A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Fake ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants…

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Polls are open until 8 p.m. across Santa Cruz County for the June 2 primary election. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY>>  We’ve arrived: it’s Election Day!

Polls are open for the final day of voting for the June primary election. Here’s how to make sure your vote counts.

How to vote

By mail. Ballots must be postmarked today and received by June 9.

By drop box. Drop boxes close today at 8 p.m.

In person. Vote centers are open today from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

Voters can fill out a paper ballot or:

• Return the ballot that was mailed, with or without an envelope.
• Get a replacement vote-by-mail ballot. 
• Use a tablet to vote on a ballot in Spanish, or an accessible ballot with large print, text-to-speech and a connection for a personal assistive device. 
• Register and vote on the same day. You can also register to vote online with a driver’s license or state ID.  

If you did not provide identification when you registered to vote, you may need to provide it to vote in person. Options for identification include a drivers license, passport, student ID card, or utility bill.

At a mobile vote center. A county votemobile with the same services as a vote center will be available:

• 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at UC Santa Cruz, location to be determined, stay tuned.
• 5 – 8 p.m. at 701 Ocean St.

Where to vote

View a map of polling places.

Any Santa Cruz County voter can go to any voting location in the county. Click on each pin to see voting hours.

Vote centers, open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Santa Cruz:

• Santa Cruz County Clerk, 701 Ocean St., Rm 310, Santa Cruz
• Simpkins Family Swim Center, 979 17th Ave., Santa Cruz
• Bonny Doon Elementary School, 1492 Pine Flat Rd., Santa Cruz
• Depot Park, 119 Center St., Santa Cruz
• Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, 5200 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz
• UCSC Merrill Cultural Center, 641 Merrill Rd., Santa Cruz
• Masonic Center, 828 N Branciforte Ave., Santa Cruz
• Christian Life Center, 1009 Mission St., Santa Cruz

Watsonville and South County:

• 275 Main St., 4th Floor, Watsonville. 
• Westridge County Building, 500 Westridge Dr., Watsonville. 
• Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds – Heritage Hall, 2601 East Lake Ave., Watsonville
• La Selva Beach Clubhouse, 314 Estrella Ave., Watsonville
• Pajaro Valley Community Trust, 85 Nielson St., Watsonville
• Corralitos Community Church, 26 Browns Valley Rd., Corralitos

Mid-County:

• Cabrillo College Extension Rm 2100B, 6500 Soquel Dr., Aptos
• St. John’s Episcopal Church, 125 Canterbury Dr., Aptos
• Soquel High School, 401 Old San Jose Rd., Soquel
• New Brighton Middle School gym, 250 Washburn Ave., Capitola

Santa Cruz Mountains:

• Scotts Valley Public Library, 251 Kings Village Rd., Scotts Valley
• Scotts Valley High School gym, 555 Glenwood Dr., Scotts Valley
• Felton Library, 6121 Gushee St., Felton
• Boulder Creek Fire Station, 13230 Highway 9, Boulder Creek
• Loma Prieta Temp. Community Center, 23845 Summit Rd., Los Gatos
• Pacific Elementary School, 50 Ocean St., Bonny Doon

Where to find results

Santa Cruz Local will post stories tonight with initial vote counts for local races. Early counts will be updated multiple times this week, and counts will be finalized by July 2. 

Questions or comments? Email info@santacruzlocal.org. Santa Cruz Local is supported by members, major donors, sponsors and grants for the general support of our newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Learn more about Santa Cruz Local and how we are funded.

Learn about membership Santa Cruz Local’s news is free. We believe that high-quality local news is crucial to democracy. We depend on locals like you to make a meaningful contribution so everyone can access our news. Learn about membership

The post It’s Election Day: here’s what you need to know appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for its newsletters.

Even after all the ballots have been cast on Tuesday, it might be a while before Californians know the results of some significant races this election, given the state’s notoriously slow counting.

California has made headlines for trailing other states when it comes to tallying its votes. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter last month to all 58 county elections officials urging them to “accurately count every lawfully cast ballot as quickly as possible,” saying that “mis- and dis-information” can spread in the time between Election Day and when the results are certified as official. 

The delay is due in part to ways California has endeavored to make it easier to vote since the COVID-19 pandemic: Every registered voter gets a mail-in ballot, and ballots are valid as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day and arrive at county elections offices within seven days of the election. California is one of eight states that allow all elections to be conducted by mail, with varying grace periods for ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. Those grace periods are at risk with the U.S. Supreme Court currently weighing a change that would require ballots to arrive by Election Day.  

For mail-in ballots that arrive before Tuesday, elections officials can begin certifying signatures and preparing the ballots for counting; for those that come in later, elections clerks must do this work later, delaying results.

According to voter data firm Political Data Inc., nearly 17% of registered California voters had cast their ballots as of Monday afternoon, a similar return rate as in 2022. 

Paul Mitchell, the founder of Political Data Inc., said he expects a higher turnout than in 2022, since early returns already have shown a higher Republican turnout, and some of the Democrats hanging onto their ballots are “high-propensity voters.”

“There’s a lot of evidence here that we’re probably headed towards 38%, 40% turnout in total, rather than 33% which was the turnout in 2022,” he said.

Elections experts say California’s high proportion of competitive districts and generous windows to fix errors have also added to the longer wait time for results. 

Changes aim to speed up counting

Several recent changes could make a dent in when Californians know the outcome of certain races. 

The first is a change to how long elections officials have to count: Due to Assembly Bill 5, which was signed into law last year, counties now have 13 days to finish counting most ballots, down from 30 days. Newsom pointed to the change during a news conference last week as a move toward “timely ballot counting.” County officials still have 30 days to finalize their official results.

However, Jesse Salinas, Yolo County’s top elections official and the president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials, said the new law doesn’t apply to the ballots that take the most time to count, including those filed by voters who registered on election day and those where a signature doesn’t match what’s on file. State law provides a weeks-long window for those questions to be addressed. 

“I’m hearing these comments about ‘We should be done by the 13th day,’ — that’s legally not possible by state law,” he said. 

Another is trying to pare down the glut of mail-in ballots that come into ballot boxes on Election Day, which slows down vote counting, according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

A survey conducted by the foundation found that 26 of the state’s 58 counties will give voters the option of bringing their mail-in ballot to the elections office Tuesday and having it scanned and counted that day as an “in-person” ballot. The change was made possible by Assembly Bill 626, passed in 2023. 

In Placer County, where the system debuted in 2024 as “sign, scan and go,” officials said it cut post-election processing time by about three to four days. 

Some have issues with the assertion that the long tabulation process makes it easy for people to sow distrust in election results. 

Mindy Romero, a political sociologist and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California, said the argument is based on repeatedly discredited claims of voter fraud. She said the narrative that anyone is tampering in elections has been “artificially generated” by politicians like President Donald Trump to undermine the electoral process.

“I think the focus should not be on fixing something that is flawed or wrong, because that long count is a product of making sure that every ballot is verified — indeed, just the opposite of the claims around fraud,” she said.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post California voting ends Tuesday. The results? Don’t expect them anytime soon appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Engineering physical systems still depends on human talent, according to Impulse Space president Eric Romo.

Claude has gone offline on the day after its maker Anthropic filed for what is expected to be a blockbuster IPO. The popular chatbot and coding tool suffered an outage from around 0600 UTC on Tuesday, with Anthropic saying the team was investigating the issue. By 1042 UTC, the status page said a fix had been implemented and the technical team was monitoring the results. Some users continued to complain to The Register about the disruption after that point. Downdetector shows users reporting the LLM service from Anthropic was down twice momentarily yesterday. A surge in reports started from 0700 UTC today and peaked at 0948 UTC, after which they started to fall. The timing of the technical difficulties is unfortunate for Anthropic, the company founded in 2021 by former employees of OpenAI. Yesterday, the company submitted a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) for common stock. It has yet to set the price of shares but a May funding round which raised $65 billion valued the company at around $965 billion (£717 billion), more than rival OpenAI, makers of chatbot ChatGPT. It is set to be a monster year for IPOs, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and OpenAI also anticipated to join the frenzy. Each is expected to be valued at around $1 trillion. Claude Code has bolstered Anthropic’s reputation and has been well-received by some developers. Reportedly, Anthropic earns more in revenue despite having a fraction of the users OpenAI claims to serve. According to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic is on the verge of reporting its first quarter of operating profit, according to people at the company who spoke anonymously. ®

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing.

Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste. 

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many rivals have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester.

Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion—that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.

The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated.

Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon. 

“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so—at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh. 

What seems more likely is the fashion industry expands its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric—and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.

Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester—mostly through recycling.

The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear. 

The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ‘90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes…be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals.”

Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units—building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality. 

That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multi-year agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries here in the United States.

Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.

Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can in principle produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”

In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible—at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.

One expert said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes…be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said. 

Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively? 

Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s—whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes—production of “circular” fabric would likely pale in comparison to the more than 169 million metric tons of polyester projected to be manufactured annually by then. Dionisios Vlachos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

Instead, companies need to “reverse the trend of fast fashion,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation. That means making less clothing overall, whether it contains recycled or virgin materials.  Last year, growth in recycled polyester—mostly from bottles—was dwarfed by an even larger increase in the production of fossil fuel-based polyester.

Urbancic sees chemical recycling as “an excuse to keep producing plastic clothes” and advocates for a shift away from polyester altogether; the material sheds microfibers and may expose consumers to hazardous chemicals.

Nike, Syre, and Loop Industries did not respond to interview requests or detailed lists of questions, highlighting a transparency problem flagged by Singla, Vlachos, and others Grist spoke with. Industry confidentiality makes it difficult to know what’s actually going on in these firms—and whether “#TheGreatTextileShift” they promise will be different from failed chemical recycling initiatives in the past.

It’s worth noting that Loop Industries has never turned a profit since its founding in 2010. The company is under investigation by the SEC following a 2020 report accusing it of systematically misrepresenting its technology to regulators and investors, and in 2022, it settled a class-action lawsuit over similar accusations. Syre, for its part, has not said how the “gigascale” factory it plans to build in Vietnam will be able to process consumers’ old clothes, given the country’s ban on used apparel imports.

“It remains to be seen whether [Nike’s announcement] amounts to anything,” Singla said. For the foreseeable future, it seems chemically recycled polyester will be limited to niche products like World Cup uniforms.

HPE just posted its biggest earnings beat since 2018, and CEO Antonio Neri wasted little time taking a victory lap for the company's $14 billion Juniper acquisition. The infrastructure giant posted record quarterly revenue of $10.7 billion on Monday, up 40 percent year over year, while networking revenue surged to $2.7 billion and AI systems orders reached $1.8 billion. Investors liked what they saw, sending shares sharply higher after the results landed. If there was a theme to Neri's remarks, it was that HPE's networking strategy has gone from an expensive gamble to an apparent success story. "The Juniper acquisition in my mind has been a home run," he said. “We believe the strategy is working.” That is a notably different tone from the skepticism that greeted HPE's attempt to spend $14 billion on Juniper last year. The deal spent months stuck in regulatory limbo while investors debated whether HPE had overpaid. Those concerns are a little harder to hear now that networking orders are growing far faster than revenue and AI-fueled demand is piling into the backlog. Neri repeatedly pointed to networking as a beneficiary of the AI boom, arguing that enterprises are increasingly investing in the plumbing required to move data between servers, storage systems, accelerators, and data centers. "The self-driving network is no longer a concept. It is a reality," he told analysts, highlighting deployments at organizations including the UK Ministry of Justice. He claims the department cut network operations center incidents by roughly 75 percent after deploying HPE's self-driving networking tech. The AI story was not limited to networking, as Neri spent much of the call arguing that demand is broadening into traditional enterprise infrastructure as customers deploy agentic AI and inferencing workloads. HPE claims the trend is already visible inside its own walls. According to Neri, the company has developed roughly 1,200 internal AI use cases, while CFO Marie Myers has deployed more than 52, most of them agentic AI systems. Neri revealed HPE is also using AI to manage its own supply chain headaches, saying teams have become "much more proficient" at matching hard-to-come-by components to customer demand with AI tools. Given the company's warnings about memory and networking supply constraints, the machines appear to have found themselves another job. "We have not seen any pull in. We do not see a cliff," he said when asked about concerns that customers might be rushing purchases ahead of a slowdown. "Nobody wants to be left behind when it comes down to deploying AI." The strength of demand has prompted HPE to do something few large enterprise vendors attempt: pull forward long-term targets. The company now expects to exceed financial goals originally set for fiscal 2028 by the end of fiscal 2026. Neri argued that the results reflect more than a single strong quarter. "We are building durable momentum for the future," he said. "These results is [sic] not a one-time thing." Whether the momentum proves as durable as HPE claims will become clearer over the next few quarters. For now, though, Neri has something he lacked a year ago: numbers that make the Juniper acquisition look considerably easier to defend. ®

Pacific Fusion's sub-scale prototype delivered enormous amounts of power in a flash, setting the company up for its demonstration power plant.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is warning the public to be wary of scammers spoofing its switchboard number in an attempt to profit by calling marks from a "trustworthy" number. A member of the public reported an attempted scam on Monday afternoon. A phone call came in from what appeared to be the PSNI’s switchboard number, and the caller pretended to be a member of the force inquiring about a case in which the recipient was involved. “The caller told the person there was an investigation linked to their name involving money transfers to narcotic-related countries and was subsequently asked to provide information about their bank cards,” said the PSNI’s Inspector Walker. We don’t have any expert criminals here at The Register, but we think it would be pretty sage advice for someone looking to increasingly pass as a police representative not to be so stupid as to ask for gift cards as “part of the investigation process.” “The caller then asked them to purchase gift cards and send across the codes for those, stating that this was part of the investigation process and that the money would be returned to them,” Inspector Walker added. “This made the reporting party suspicious, however, and thankfully, the victim didn’t share any of their personal or bank details with the caller, who they then blocked.” Officials confirmed to The Register that the police’s number was spoofed, and this case was not instigated by a real member of the switchboard team. Spoofing the switchboard’s phone number marked “a very concerning situation,” Walker said, urging the public to remain vigilant to similar calls. The PSNI is continuing to make follow-up enquiries about the report, but has not yet detained any individual in connection with the attempted fraud. Anyone who falls victim to digital fraud in the UK should contact the police, their bank, and Action Fraud, all of which can offer the necessary assistance. “Our advice is that you should never disclose your personal or financial details over the phone, in person, or by email, to someone you don't know,” said Walker. “Guarding your personal and banking details is essential.” The attempted scam is the second disclosed by the PSNI in as many days. On Monday, it warned of a separate case involving an elderly woman being defrauded of a sum north of £250,000 ($336,000) after being targeted by individuals operating a fake cryptocurrency scheme. “After initially sending a relatively small amount, the woman then ‘invested’ larger amounts on a number of occasions after the criminals convinced her that she needed to send more in order to get her initial investment back,” said Detective Inspector Moffett, of the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch. “After she unknowingly downloaded malware at their instruction, they were able to gain control of her electronic devices and, we believe, transfer further sums from her account.” Cryptocurrency investment scams are among the most pervasive in the world, with figures from the US suggesting the problem is growing increasingly severe. According to the FBI’s annual digital crimes report, it received 48 percent more complaints about crypto investment scams last year than it did the year before, with losses also rising 25 percent. Much of this pain was shouldered by those aged 60 and over, the agency added. ®

A newly released cache of communications involving Peter Mandelson show the UK former ambassador to the US invited Prime Minister Kier Starmer to meet Palantir founder Peter Thiel in July last year. More than a decade ago, Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel, a lobbying biz which included Palantir as a client. The US spy-tech company – prior to the current administration coming to power in July 2024 – won government contracts, including multi-million-pound deals with the NHS. It signed an agreement with the Ministry of Defence in January. Palantir was awarded more than £60 million in UK health service deals during the Covid era without any competition. It later won the £330 million NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) deal after a much-criticized procurement the government maintained was fair and open. In an email with the subject line “Peter Thiel,” Mandelson last year addressed Morgan McSweeney, then chief of staff to the Prime Minister. The email said the “celebrated techie” Thiel would be in London during August 2025 and asks whether “the PM would like to meet him.” Another email dated March 2025, from an unnamed third party, which was addressed to Louis Mosley, executive vice-president of Palantir Technologies for UK and Europe, as well as to Mandelson, said that Mandelson himself was set to arrive at The Hill & Valley Forum 2025 event — run by “a private bipartisan community of lawmakers and innovators committed to harnessing the power of technology” — with Mosley. The email suggested inviting Mandelson to the “daytime forum and dinner” and to “grab a coffee or tea sometime in DC.” Some of the references to Palantir in the documents — released in connection with Mandelson’s links with convicted sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein — have been redacted on the basis of being "prejudicial to UK national security or international relations." Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel in 2010. In 2022, The Register uncovered its role in lobbying on behalf of Palantir in the build-up to the US spy-tech firm winning the £330 million contract for the FDP. Matthew Swindells was national director for operations and information at NHS England and Improvement (NHSE&I), a non-departmental public body under the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), until the end of July 2019. From September 2019, he began working for Global Counsel. The association with Palantir was such that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the flagship Palantir user where Swindells is a chairman, said he would be excluded from "any decision making in relation to Palantir [PDF]." The NHS began work with Palantir in March 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, after it was awarded a contract for just £1. It went on to win £60 million in resulting contracts without competition. In December 2021, Global Counsel and Palantir jointly hosted a webinar to consider the "next steps the UK should take in realising UK's life sciences vision." The event also launched Palantir's white paper, titled A National Technical Framework to Underpin the UK Life Sciences Vision. Swindells chaired the webinar meeting. Also speaking were professor Martin Severs, former medical director at NHS Digital, and Dr Claire Bloomfield, then deputy director for value of data, Centre for Improving Data Collaboration, NHSX, the disbanded digital strategy unit under the Department for Health and Social Care. Officials said NHS management might take part in supplier events to ensure the health service is "part of the conversation" in the health tech industry. The Palantir white paper argued for "a logically federated, locally controlled cloud-based data infrastructure," while the later NHS data strategy of June 2022 said the NHS was “looking to develop a federated data platform which will be a system of connected platforms." Palantir won the £330 million Federated Data Platform contract in November 2023 after a procurement process with NHS England, the soon-to-be-defunct health quango, maintained was open and fair. Swindells stepped down from his role in the health service earlier this year after the Financial Times reported that he'd urged colleagues to add more patient data into a Palantir-built platform while he was advising the US spy-tech firm. Swindells told the FT he was stepping down at the “end of my term of office, leaving the hospitals improved on when I started.” ®

As Santa Cruz County faces difficult budget decisions, including using $43 million in reserves to cover deficits, residents have an opportunity to shape what matters most, write three members of advocacy group Care Not Cages. Tamar Ragir, Kathy Lass and Leslie Potenzo argue that protecting healthcare and community support programs is essential to building a safer county. They question why health and human services departments had a decrease of more than 50 positions in the proposed budget while the sheriff’s office and probation face no staff cuts. On Election Day, they remind us to pay attention to county decisions and attend upcoming county budget meetings.

COMPUTEX 2026 Intel is working with Foxconn and other infrastructure providers to develop rack-scale reference designs based on the chipmaker’s Xeon processors. Announced during Intel’s Computex keynote on Tuesday, these blueprints aim to provide greater CPU compute densities for running AI agents at scale. While AI models predominantly run on GPUs and other AI accelerators, the agent harnesses, like OpenClaw, which are used to connect them to tools, terminal shells, code interpreters, and other APIs, still run on CPUs. “Our customers are asking us to think at the system level to help them serve real agentic workloads at scale,” Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan said. On stage, Tan revealed two examples of these blueprints. One is aimed at latency-sensitive agentic workloads and another designed for maximum density. Both designs support up to 128 of either Intel’s 128-core Granite Rapids Xeon 6 or 288-core Clearwater Forest Xeon 6+ processors, totaling between 16,384 P-cores and 36,864 E-cores, alongside up to 384 TB of DDR5 in a 100kW power envelope. The reference designs come just months after Nvidia announced a similar rack-scale CPU platform packing 256 of its 88-core Vera CPUs. Arm is also working on a pair of rack-scale reference designs for agentic workloads based on its new AGI CPUs: a 36 kW air-cooled system with 8,160 cores and a 200 kW liquid cooled rack with 45,696 cores. Tan expects systems based on these reference designs to be broadly available from its ODM and OEM partners. Alongside agentic AI workloads, the company also revealed that newly launched inference cloud provider Vector Core Compute will be among the first to deploy the platform, and that Together.AI is its first commercial customer. The approach is based on Intel's earlier disaggregated AI blueprint it co-developed with partner SambaNova. The architecture desegregates compute heavy prefill operations to Nvidia GPUs while using SambaNova’s AI accelerators for bandwidth-intensive decode operations to boost per-user token output by between 2-3x. If that sounds familiar it’s not dissimilar to what Nvidia is doing with Groq’s LPUs or what AWS is doing with Trainium and Cerebra's waferscale AI accelerators.®

As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet. 

Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average over the past 10 years.

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away. 

At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response.

“I think this is going to be the year,” warned Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “The conditions are just ripe for some really bad outcomes.”

Indeed, 2026 is already off to an inauspicious start.

As of Friday, the NIFC reported that some 2.4 million acres had burned in wildfires for which it had generated incident reports. That’s almost double the 10-year average for the time of year.

So far, much of the area burned this year has been in the southeast U.S. and Plains states, including Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. For the most part, these have been grass fires.

Now we are moving toward peak wildfire season for much of the West, where the availability of moisture to help prevent forests from igniting across the summer months depends heavily on the slow melting of snow that has accumulated over the previous winter.  

And that’s thin on the ground.

This chart is derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Snow Data Assimilation System, which combines satellite data and ground-based observations to estimate the extent and condition of the U.S. snowpack.

Following a mild winter in which precipitation frequently fell as rain, mountain ranges including the Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada were left with one of the lightest snowpacks in recent history. This means that its continued melting won’t do much to dampen forests on lower slopes that are the focus of concern as the West moves into the peak of fire season.

Soil moisture content across the nation has also been low — although this is a much more volatile measure that can change rapidly with a burst of storms. This chart, derived from data from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite mission, shows that soil moisture has been low across the year so far.

Indeed, much of the nation remains unusually and worryingly dry.

This chart, showing a U.S. Drought Monitor measure summarizing the extent and severity of drought across the nation, reveals that current conditions are drier for the time of year than they have been so far this century.

As this map shows, the severity of drought varies widely across the nation, with the Southeast, the southern part of the Great Plains and the Mountain West among the most affected. As we move into the summer months, the Upper Colorado Basin and the Four Corners region — where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet — will likely experience the most severe wildfire risks.

California, frequently wracked by drought, looks in better shape this year after some heavy rains, despite its minimal snowpack. “California is a little bit more of a wild card. I’m not sure how it is going to go,” said Daniel Swain, a weather and climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

While things look primed for a severe Western fire season, Swain and other experts say much will depend on regional weather patterns in the coming months that are very hard to predict. 

“I personally think it’s hard to say, ‘This is what the season is going to be,’” said Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Laboratory at San José State University.

One big unknown is what will happen with the North American monsoon, which typically brings afternoon and evening thunderstorms to Arizona and New Mexico from July to September. These storms are expected to increase in intensity with emerging El Niño conditions. And while that should bring increased rainfall to the Southwest, reducing fire risk, there is also the possibility in its early stages of storms that feature lightning strikes but little rain, igniting parched vegetation—similar to the dry lightning storms of August 2020 that triggered the most extensive wildfires in California history, including the CZU Lightning Complex fire that devastated the Santa Cruz Mountains.

“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Swain. “Those early storms could be a big problem. They could ignite many lightning fires.” 

Are federal firefighters ready?

The vagaries of weather systems are not the only unknown. The federal firefighting effort is in the midst of a major shake-up directed by the Trump administration, and its readiness for an unusually bad year is not at all clear. 

While coordinated by the NIFC, for years federal wildland firefighters have worked across multiple agencies. The Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has the biggest firefighting force. Others have been employed by four agencies within the Department of the Interior. 

But in June 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to “consolidate their wildland fire programs.”

Fire crews conduct a firing operation to control the Sandy fire on May 18 in Simi Valley. Credit: Ethan Swope / Associated Press

In September, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to unite his department’s programs into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The Forest Service, which would lose a large part of its funding if its firefighting programs were merged into the new Interior agency, is promising to coordinate while retaining its independent workforce. 

Forcing consolidation across the Interior Department and the Forest Service would in any case likely require approval from Congress, which has shown little enthusiasm for the Trump administration’s plans and did not appropriate funds for Interior’s Wildland Fire Service for the 2026 fiscal year.

Burgum’s previous efforts to centralize power at Interior drew complaints about the organizational chaos that followed: Some 5,000 staff were moved from the department’s component agencies to his office in May 2025, and almost 1,800 quit, retired or were pushed out afterward. That’s sparked concern about how smooth his overhaul of the department’s firefighting efforts will be. 

“The bottom line is it’s disorganization,” said Ingalsbee.

Beyond the federal reorganization, the main concern is how many staff remain at both Interior and the Forest Service with “red card” certification to work on wildfire incident teams, many of whom provide vital logistic support to those battling the blazes on the fireline itself. 

Data on the number of red-carded staff is not publicly available, but as of the end of March the Department of the Interior had lost about 17% of its total staff during the second Trump administration, while the Forest Service had lost almost 11%, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data. 

A Sierra Hotshots captain directs crew members during a burn operation near Jerseydale as the Ferguson fire burns in the Sierra National Forest in July 2018. Credit: Kari Greer/U.S. Forest Service via Inside Climate News

This loss of staff may help explain why the Forest Service treated roughly 35% fewer acres across the nation last year with prescribed fires, forest thinning and brush clearing to reduce hazardous fuels than in 2024, leaving communities “more exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire,” according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities in Denver.

The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.

As of May 11, the Forest Service announced that it had almost 10,500 wildland firefighters. In a statement to Inside Climate News, the service said it was on track to meet its hiring goals for the peak of the 2026 wildfire season, including dedicated firefighters and red-carded staff: “Across the agency, we have about 10,000 non-fire employees who are also qualified to perform essential roles during wildfire response, even though their everyday job is not firefighting.”

But former wildland firefighters argue that staffing targets have long been too low, given the increasingly severe blazes being driven by climate change. And they worry that 2026 is poised to throw a severe challenge at teams that are overworked and low on morale.

“You’re not talking about firefighters who are making $150,000 a year like a city firefighter,” said Bobbie Scopa, executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which campaigns for the rights of those tasked with battling wildfires. “Their base salaries are like $60,000 to $70,000. So you’re asking an awful lot from a workforce that has not been taken care of.”

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