Segura on Democrats’ Push to Win Over Latino Voters

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UCLA Luskin’s Gary Segura spoke to USA Today about efforts by Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign to reach out to Latino voters, who make up an estimated 15% of the U.S. electorate. “The first thing people have to do to win Latino votes is try,” said Segura, a professor of public policy and director of polling research. “For decades, candidates paid insufficient attention to Latino voters. I know the Harris campaign has prioritized this because of her California experience.” The article noted that the Latino electorate, which varies greatly by geography, income, education and immigration story, is crucial to Harris’ electoral chances. That’s true not just in states such as Arizona and Florida, where Latino voters make up a sizable portion of the electorate, but in states where the Latino population may be small but the margin of victory is expected to be tight — including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

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Tilly on Raising California’s Minimum Wage

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to CalMatters for a story about California’s Proposition 32, a measure on the November ballot that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $18 in the coming year. The proposed increase follows minimum hikes enacted in 2016 to boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Experts, advocates and workers have questioned whether the most recent hike will be enough to make a significant difference in Californians’ lives. A number of California cities already have enacted higher minimum wages, motivated by the higher cost of living, while unions have successfully pushed for higher wages for specific industries including fast food and health care, and are pushing for more. “In some ways, at the point where this measure is heading to the ballot, it’s kind of underwhelming,” said Tilly, who studies labor markets.

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LAX People Mover Now on Track for 2026 Opening

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An LAist article on delays in the completion of LAX’s automated people mover called on UCLA Luskin’s Jacob Wasserman for context. The elevated train could welcome riders as soon as January 2026 after the recent settlement of a series of contract disputes. “Unfortunately, this is par for the course for transit projects in general across the U.S.,” said Wasserman, research program manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. “Cost overruns and delays like this are frustrating, especially when they report the project is 95% or 96% completed.” Wasserman also spoke to the Detroit News about the Michigan city’s troubled bus system, noting that shortages of both drivers and working vehicles have become common in some metropolitan areas after the pandemic. And he told the Columbus Dispatch that questions about the salary of a transit agency executive could draw further scrutiny from voters asked to approve a sales tax to raise revenues for transportation improvements.

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A Closer Inspection of Trump’s Comments on Immigration

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A Los Angeles Times article about Donald Trump’s statements about actions he would take if reelected asked UCLA Luskin’s Chris Zepeda-Millán to weigh in on the former president’s comments on immigration. Trump has said he will “seal the border” with a physical wall, “carry out the largest deportation operation in American history,” order the military to attack foreign drug cartels and do away with birthright citizenship. While there is debate about whether to take the candidate at his word or chalk up his comments to populist rhetoric, Trump’s recent comments are his way of “doubling down on getting the most racist white Americans out to vote,” said Zepeda-Millán, associate professor of public policy and co-author of “Walls, Cages, and Family Separation: Race and Immigration Policy in the Trump Era.” Zepeda-Millán’s research shows that most Americans did not support Trump’s first-term immigration policies, and those who did held the “most racist views,” including general discomfort with growing Latino populations.

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Climate Resilience Through Local Investments, Trust-Building

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Streetsblog California put a spotlight on new UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation reports assessing the impact of California’s Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program, which helps local communities lead and plan projects that reduce emissions and bring economic, environmental and health benefits. In addition to describing individual projects funded by the program, the reports contain personal stories and testimony from participants. One case study demonstrated the trust that the program has built among initially skeptical residents. Phillip Martinez, a resident of Pacoima in the San Fernando Valley, was seeing his energy bills rise with the heat — but he did not initially believe an offer to install solar panels on his home at no charge, a benefit of the TCC program. Once Martinez was reassured, the panels were installed and his power bills immediately went down. In addition to the Pacoima program, the Center for Innovation is evaluating TCC investments in Fresno, Ontario, Stockton, South Los Angeles and Watts.

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Yaroslavsky on Olympics’ Legacy in L.A.

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An L.A. Daily News article on Los Angeles’ long history with the Olympic Games quoted Zev Yaroslavsky, longtime public servant and director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. The Summer Games first came to Los Angeles in 1932 then returned in 1984, when Yaroslavsky was a member of the L.A. City Council. “It was a huge success financially,” Yaroslavsky said of the first privately financed games, which produced a surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars used to launch a foundation to promote youth sports. Yaroslavsky also credits the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, a 10-week event that preceded the games and drew 1.25 million visitors, for elevating the region’s reputation as a cultural hub. “L.A., which was already a cultural mecca, really went to a new level,” he said. “I think the arts was a bigger legacy of the Olympic Games than the games were.” The Olympics will return to Los Angeles in 2028.

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L.A. Transportation Goals for the 2028 Olympics and Beyond

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Dwell about Los Angeles’ pledge to expand transit options in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will add an estimated 10 million ticketholders to an already crowded metropolis. Organizers who once promoted a “car-free games” now prefer the phrase “transit-first,” as a number of hoped-for projects will not be completed in time. “Moving ‘car-free games’ from marketing slogan to reality would have required the government sending clear, unambiguous signals that the city and county would de-prioritize automobile transportation relative to other modes, in order to bring modes like walking, biking and public transit to greater parity with driving,” Matute said. He said officials can still act to make streets safer and more multimodal ahead of the games. This fall, ITS will present the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium exploring how Los Angeles can advance long-term transportation goals through mega-events such as the Olympics.

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Spill-Over Effect of Strong Native American Economies

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Strong Native American economies can provide benefits to non-Native neighbors, according to new research that could give tribal communities seats at the economic development table that weren’t available before, according to UCLA Luskin’s Randall Akee. The research by the Center for Indian Country Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis showed that Native economic well-being can spill over into surrounding areas, providing them with more business and wider access to federal contracts. These findings could impact policy discussions both on tribal and intergovernmental levels, Akee said during a webinar about the research covered by Tribal Business News. “We can see ourselves and our communities and our economies in the national picture, and start to assert ourselves in these discussions,” said Akee, a professor of public policy and chair of UCLA’s American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program.

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Going Car-Free, by Choice or by Necessity

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Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg spoke to USA Today about Americans who are going car-free, by choice or by necessity. Of the roughly 8% of U.S. households that don’t own a vehicle, some are drawn to options such as e-bikes and public transit, taking advantage of a multitude of incentives for reducing car use. However, most of those households fall below the poverty line. “A very small percentage of those without cars truly make that choice,” said Blumenberg, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. Car ownership is associated with a greater likelihood of finding and retaining employment, a study co-authored by Blumenberg found. And some places in the country are ill-designed for moving from place to place without a car. “We have created an urban environment around the automobile, with a few exceptions, in the U.S.,” she said. “It makes it very difficult for most households to be car-free.”

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‘Look What These Students Have Gone Through’

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor spoke to The 74 about new federal data showing that troubling student behavior — from a lack of attentiveness to threats made to classmates in person or online — has continued years after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered disruptions to learning. The Department of Education research indicated that students’ well-being has been impacted by high rates of trauma, a fraught political climate, and the feeling that they are unsafe or unseen in school. “Look what these students have gone through … not only the pandemic, through wars. Through a tumultuous, divisive political environment in the last six or seven years that’s only intensifying between right and left, between Black and white, between immigrant and non-immigrant,” said Astor, an expert on school violence and campus culture. Students are also witnessing state legislatures and local school boards limit what classrooms can and cannot teach, leading them to question whether they belong in their school, he said.

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