UCLA in the News lists selected mentions of UCLA in the world’s news media. Some articles may require registration or a subscription. See more UCLA in the News.

UCLA professor on Trump’s new AI executive orders | ABC News

“I think generally, we’re going to see the Trump administration taking a much more hands-off approach to AI regulation than we saw in the Biden administration,” said UCLA’s John Villasenor.

Trump order could threaten hundreds of NIH research projects | Science

Matthew Mimiaga, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is running a large trial of a phone app aimed at preventing HIV in young transgender women, says the order “could significantly limit the scope of research [in] critical areas in need of attention and continued funding.”

The chaos in higher ed is only getting started | The Atlantic

The UCLA professor Lindsay Wiley echoed the sentiment, adding on Bluesky that the pause, which affects the distribution of a multibillion-dollar pool of public-research money, “will have long-term effects on medicine and short-term effects on state, higher education and hospital budgets. This affects all of us, not just researchers.”

How Trump’s pause on wind projects could threaten jobs, climate goals | NPR’s “Morning Edition”

China is also pushing onshore and offshore wind, says Alex Wang, a professor of law at UCLA focused on Chinese climate policy. Meanwhile, he says in the U.S., “We’re taking a U-turn that will really harm these industries and it’ll be hard to compete with China.”

With Trump OK’ing immigration enforcement at schools, California legislators move to protect students, families | Orange County Register and Southern California News Group

Patricia Gándara, who teaches education at UCLA where she is the co-director of the Civil Rights Project, said she is concerned about the psychological ramifications the threats of immigration enforcement have on students.

Trump routinely calls this data ‘fake.’ Here’s why that’s dangerous | CNN

The extent to which data may be scaled back or information removed could have chilling effects for underserved communities, according to a report released last week by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, which conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. (UCLA’s Christy Mallory was quoted.)

State Department halts ‘X’ passport gender marker applications | ABC News

The State Department doesn’t publish data on how many applicants have selected “X” since it was introduced, but UCLA’s Williams Institute estimated at the time that 16,700 people might apply for passports with the “X” identifier each year. (The Williams Institute was also cited by the Washington Post and The Advocate; UCLA’s Elana Redfield was quoted by the latter.)

What 9th Circuit shift means for abortion, reproductive care | CalMatters

In the wake of Dobbs, states are becoming more creative in interpreting how their own constitutional provisions about “life and liberty and equal protection” may protect reproductive autonomy, said Diana Kasdan, Legal and Policy Director for the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy. “Over time even federal courts can be influenced by a really persuasive and well-reasoned state court decision of a constitutional provision if there is no Supreme Court precedent,” Kasdan said.

Does Trump’s return mean it’s time to admit he’s right? | Los Angeles Times

“There is no mandate,” UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck said Thursday during a Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior seminar on “Hate and Politics.”

Trump’s claims about fires inaccurate, misleading | Bay Area News Group

“An urban water system is built to handle a house fire, a building fire or an electrical fire,” said Gregory Pierce, co-director of UCLA’s Water Resources Group. “Urban water systems are not designed to fight wildfires and put out mountainsides.”

Should L.A. be in such a rush to rebuild after wildfires? | The Guardian

“There are lots of reasons to consider whether or not the public – the state taxpayers, the federal taxpayers – should be spending billions of dollars to fight these fires and rebuild in places that we know are highly flammable,” echoed Stephanie Pincetl, the director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. “Unfortunately, we’re having a very hard time contemplating a different kind of building in a different kind of place.”

Here’s how likely debris flows are near burn scars | San Francisco Chronicle

Previous research on California burn scars found that sediment erosion is often three or four times greater after a wildfire, according to Chuxuan Li, a research climate scientist and hydrologist at UCLA.

How domestic workers have been impacted by the L.A. fires | Time

A study by UCLA, published on Jan. 15, showed that 85% of individuals employed as household workers in Los Angeles are Latino. And, among these individuals, 47% are self-employed, making them ineligible for unemployment benefits or formal protections such as paid leave.

Storm brings rain, snow and risk of mudslides | Los Angeles Times

“I think this [rainy] period will very likely be a period of greatly reduced fire risk,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a recent video briefing. “Once we get back to the end of the first week in February, though, unless it rains again, we’re going to be at the mercy of the winds, because all it will take is one Santa Ana event to evaporate all of this water, and we’ll be right back to where we started.”