The Brief

The presentation was unassuming, just a handful of picture books arrayed on the side of a bookcase — the ABCs of a Pride parade, biographies of the gay World War II codebreaker Alan Turing and 50 LGBTQ+ people who made history, the sex education manual “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a retelling of the Stonewall riot and “My Shadow Is Pink,” in which a young boy explores his gender identity.

But when Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau heard a complaint from a constituent that Clovis librarians had put together a graphic Pride Month display for the children’s section, he was concerned enough to check it out. It wasn’t the type of material that he thought should be available alongside books about skunks and pirates.

“I don’t like a kid going in there and seeing ‘I can choose to be a boy or girl,’” Brandau said. “It didn’t seem age-appropriate, especially without the parent being involved.”

After flipping through the books, Brandau said he left the library in June 2023 “horrified” by images he believed were too sexually explicit and topics he felt were too mature for young readers. He began reaching out to local officials elsewhere — in states such as South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas, where library book controversies have become commonplace — to learn what they were doing.

Last November, Brandau led Fresno County in creating one of California’s first citizen review committees for library books, which could soon decide whether to move material with “sexual references” and “gender-identity content” to a restricted area where it could only be checked out with a parent’s permission.

Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau stands outside his office in the Fresno County Hall of Records on Aug. 1, 2024

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters/CatchLight Local

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The committee, which has not yet been selected, is already a lightning rod for fears about parents’ rights, censorship, the politicization of libraries and LGBTQ people being pushed out of public life again. Supporters say they are concerned about sexual content, not LGBTQ themes, and they do not want to ban books from the library entirely.

Tracy Bohren, a queer mother of two from Clovis who helped rally local LGBTQ residents against the committee, said adults who object to books about gay and transgender people are applying their own biases to sexualize material meant to help children understand the world. She said it’s important to have library books about marginalized groups available to LGBTQ kids who don’t come from supportive homes and need the message that they are loved.

“Somehow in the ‘we need to protect kids’ platform that they have stated, trans kids, LGBTQ kids, have not been considered part of that population that they need to protect,” Bohren said.

Now the book battle has become another front in the intensifying clashes between more conservative pockets of California and the state’s liberal government over values and local control. A bill on track to pass the Legislature before the session ends on Aug. 31 would effectively outlaw book review committees and other policies that limit access to materials at public libraries — potentially shutting down Fresno County’s efforts before they ever get off the ground.

“It appears to me that they believe that children are best educated and raised as wards of the state,” Brandau said. “We have age limits for movies. We have age limits for alcohol. And it’s not unreasonable to have age limits on sexually graphic material.”

Book bans surging nationwide

Though disagreements over what constitutes suitable reading material for young people are nothing new, public libraries have been thrust into a pitched culture war over the past few years as conservative activist groups across the country organized to demand more books be removed from collections.

The American Library Association has tracked a massive increase in the number of books being challenged at schools and libraries, which soared by 65% in 2023 to a record 4,240 titles. Nearly half featured LGBTQ or racial themes, according to the association.

Many Republican-led states have subsequently embraced policies requiring schools and libraries to remove books with any sexual content — including nudity, masturbation and homosexuality — or keep them in a separate adult section. New statewide restrictions have taken effect in Utah, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee in recent weeks.

California is not at the center of this conflict, though it has faced scattered fights over school materials, including a high-profile showdown last year between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Temecula school board that tried to ban an elementary school social studies textbook because it incorporated a lesson about assassinated gay politician Harvey Milk of San Francisco. In response, Newsom signed a law to penalize local districts that block books for including the history or culture of LGBTQ people and other diverse groups, while voters recalled the school board president in June.

The public library in Huntington Beach Nov. 11, 2023.

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Lauren Justice

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CalMatters

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Besides Fresno County, the city council in Huntington Beach, the iconic Orange County surf community, has also voted to create a citizen committee to review children’s library books, part of a broader push by local officials to establish a bulkhead against progressive California policies. In the latest salvo of a bitter brawl over the political future of the city, opponents are collecting signatures to place a repeal of the review board before voters next spring.

These incidents caught the attention of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat, who said public libraries are cornerstone institutions that should provide all Americans with a diverse range of perspectives.

“Teens exploring gender identity issues absolutely should have access to books that speak to their experiences and that may provide support or guidance,” he told CalMatters.

His proposal, Assembly Bill 1825, would require public libraries in California to establish a clear policy for choosing books, including a way for community members to voice their objections, but would prohibit banning material because it deals with race or sexuality. It also clarifies that library material can include sexual content that’s not obscene and leaves to the discretion of librarians where to display those books, though they could not prevent minors from checking them out.

“At the center of this bill is the fundamental respect for professionally trained librarians to be making the decisions as to what book titles and how to present them to the general public,” Muratsuchi said.

The measure has received the support of the California Library Association. Peter Coyl, the director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library and a member of the association’s intellectual freedom committee, said librarians want to provide people with information, not pornography. While parents have the right to decide what their own children read, he said, libraries need to have materials available to serve their full communities, including families with same-gender couples and children who are questioning their identities.

“Not every book is meant for every reader,” Coyl said. “You can’t then take your belief about what’s right for your child and apply it to everyone else.”

The bill, which won overwhelming approval in the Assembly in May and has advanced smoothly through Senate committees since, must pass the Legislature by the end of August to reach the governor’s desk. A spokesperson for Newsom said the governor would not comment on pending legislation.

If it is signed into law, it could still potentially face legal challenges from defenders of library book review committees, who argue the bill prevents parents from protecting their children from adult material.

“How do we make sure our public libraries really are tools that can be used by everyone?” said Diane Pearce, a city councilmember in Clovis, a fast-growing and Republican-leaning Fresno suburb. “We want to empower our parents in this situation and the state is telling us that they can do it better than we can.”

LGBTQ families feel targeted

The debate over the book review board in Fresno County has been deeply enmeshed with anxieties around LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender youth, underscoring how advocates on either side see the committee in starkly different terms.

Clovis City Councilmember Diane Pearce posted these photos on Facebook on June 28, 2023, warning constituents: “Might want to wait until June is over to take your kids to the Clovis Public Library.

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Diane Pearce’s Clovis City Councilmember Facebook page

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As Brandau was researching his proposal last summer, the issue blew up publicly when Pearce posted a warning on Facebook that people “might want to wait until June is over to take your kids to the Clovis Public Library” alongside photos of the Pride display and a page from a book about gender identity.

Pearce said she does not object to LGBTQ content, but rather to graphic sex education books and others dealing with “transgender ideology” being targeted to young children, which she said are not appropriate themes for that age.

“I looked at it as a public service announcement,” Pearce said. “I believe that parents should be involved in their children’s exposure to that. Those issues are controversial.”

Pearce asked her city council colleagues to send a letter to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors seeking a solution, though they did not ultimately agree.

That effort mobilized local members of the LGBTQ community, such as Boren, who said the library skirmish is part of a broader pattern of religious conservatives in Fresno County overlooking or discriminating against LGBTQ families.

The Clovis school district was one of the first in the state last year to require parental notification when a student changes their name, pronouns or gender identity — a policy that the Legislature and Newsom recently made illegal in California, effective in January and pending several lawsuits.

When advocates rallied against the review committee proposal before the board of supervisors last fall, Bohren said officials ignored their expressions of support for the library and seemed only concerned with serving their constituents who aligned with their ideology.

An art display in the children’s section in the Fresno County Library Clovis Branch on July 31, 2024

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters/CatchLight Local

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“I feel like it was contrived,” she said. “It’s one specific group of people — Christian nationalists — who are deciding what is appropriate or not appropriate for my children to see.”

Brandau said opponents fundamentally misunderstood his proposal, known as the Parents Matter Act, which he already considered a compromise. No books will be banned, he said; the committee will merely move material to a restricted section of the library that parents can access if they want, allowing Fresno County to set its own community standards for what books should be readily available to children.

He said he took months to develop a policy that was “not targeting one lifestyle,” though he acknowledged that language limiting “gender-identity content” and other “content deemed age-inappropriate” encompasses books about sexuality and transgender people.

“I’m not against this material. I’m against it at the wrong age,” Brandau said. “If this didn’t involve children, it’s not the biggest deal on the planet.”

Librarians under siege

California librarians say morale in their profession has plummeted in recent years. The backlash to certain books has fomented public distrust of their intentions and stoked a host of stressful and sometimes terrifying new threats — protesters, prank calls, bomb threats and “First Amendment auditors,” who record their encounters with library workers on their phones.

“These are things we never worried about before,” said Coyl of the Sacramento Public Library. “It’s not what we signed up for as library workers. And it is probably the worst that it’s ever been.”

Some libraries that have not faced a huge number of book challenges are making precautionary changes to their policies, such as requiring that demands come from someone who proves that they actually reviewed the material and not allowing another challenge if the library keeps the book on the shelf.

The tumult has stretched even to liberal California communities not used to conflicts over cultural values. Programs where drag queens read stories to children have become a particular flash point. Two years ago, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys stormed a drag storytime at a library in the East Bay city of San Lorenzo.

The library in Redwood City, on the San Francisco peninsula, started a drag queen story program remotely during the pandemic. When it hosted the event in-person for the first time in 2022, several groups protested that the library was grooming and indoctrinating children. The protesters included people associated with the Proud Boys and a local homelessness nonprofit with an evangelical Christian affiliation, according to Derek Wolfgram, interim director of Redwood City’s parks and recreation department.

Wolfgram, a past president of the California Library Association, said he tries to use these situations as an opportunity to engage positively with the community. The evangelical nonprofit wanted to host a Bible storytime in response to the drag queen event, so the library created a series of story hours with faith leaders of different denominations, which Wolfgram said has been popular and appeared to draw new library users.

He recalled another exchange with a man who said the library didn’t have enough books with conservative viewpoints. Wolfgram asked for a list of recommendations, some of which were already in Redwood City’s collection and at least one — “Why I Stand,” the memoir of NBA player Jonathan Isaac — that the library added. It has since been checked out several times.

“Don’t tell me what you want to take away from anybody else. Tell me what you want to add so you feel included,” Wolfgram said.

Parents divided over review committee

In Fresno County, another Pride Month has come and gone and the library book review committee still has not launched. The deadline for applications was in April, but more than three months later, the board, which will primarily be selected by county supervisors, remains vacant.

Brandau said he received more than 40 applications, which he is reviewing. He expects to finish interviews and choose his two representatives to the committee by the end of the month.

A spokesperson said the library is waiting to receive direction from the review committee before it moves any material. In the meantime, the Clovis branch put together an elaborate Pride display in June, with a case of featured books, a historical timeline and, in the children’s section, a banner depicting melting popsicles of every color in the rainbow, with the slogan “Love is Love.”

John Gerardi, executive director of Right to Life of Central California, is among the applicants waiting to find out whether he’ll be on the committee. The Clovis father of three “frequent library-goers” under the age of 10 said he wants to move books about sexuality that he believes are being presented to children who are far too young.

On several library visits, Gerardi said, his wife has found books in the children’s section that included explicit material that did not seem appropriate for the marked grade level, such as “Sex Is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth. The sex education comic book for 8- to 10-year-olds has been one of the most challenged books in the country in recent years because of its frank discussion of sexual topics. Gerardi objected to an image that depicts a character masturbating in a bathtub and a passage about the meaning of the word sexy.

An image from the sex education comic book “Sex Is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth depicts a character masturbating in a bathtub, which some parents argue is too graphic for the children’s section of the library.

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Photo courtesy of John Gerardi

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“Some of these books just seemed completely inappropriate for healthy childhood development around sex,” Gerardi said.

Gerardi said he has lost confidence in library officials, who he believes have been dismissive of parents’ concerns even though they are not all experts on early childhood development.

“There’s this idea that they have access to some secret hidden knowledge that we don’t have. And I just don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think that appropriate presentation of sexual themes to children is something that the taxpayers who are paying for this darn library can understand.”

Others are seeking positions on the library book review committee precisely because they do not believe it should exist at all.

“It’s absolutely disgusting trying to control a public library that way,” said Jamie Coffman, a Fresno mother of four children ranging in age from 2 to 11. She said it’s a parent’s job to monitor what their kids are reading, not anybody else’s, and people should trust the librarians’ judgment about what books they put on the shelves.

Coffman said she submitted her application with vague answers that she hoped would conceal her true intention to “take it down from the inside.” She has yet to hear back.

Raised in a conservative, Southern Baptist family, Coffman said reading helped expose her to other viewpoints as she was growing up. She worries that society is moving backward on accepting diversity and said she’s scared that her own children might have fewer books available to them.

“You can’t hide the world just to make your children into who you want them to be,” she said.

In Los Angeles, Thai food is something many of us take for granted — as central to how Angelenos eat as tacos or sushi. But in 1969, when one of the first Thai restaurants, Chao Krung, opened its doors, the cuisine was so unfamiliar that its owners had to offer Chinese dishes to put customers at ease.

"My mom had a chalkboard — barbecue chicken, wonton soup, chow mein," recalled Amanda Maneesilasan of her mother, Supa Kuntee. "She'd start seeing people coming in, and then slowly introduce them to something Thai."

The restaurant mostly served L.A.'s scattered Thai community — years before Thai Town existed.

Boon and Supa Kuntee, along with Supa's sister, Nillaung, opened Chao Krung’s first location, a small storefront on Western Avenue, not long after the couple arrived in California in pursuit of a better education and a better life.

The family later closed that location for a second spot on Hollywood Boulevard, a narrow, single storefront where the same struggle to explain Thai food to Angelenos continued — and the same Chinese menu holdovers stuck around to keep customers coming in.

It wasn't until the family opened its third and current location on Fairfax Avenue in 1972 that Chao Krung began to take the shape it's known as today.

As Thai food became more popular and moved into the mainstream in the '70s and '80s, its clientele grew, boosted by staffers at nearby CBS Television City. You can see family photos in the space spanning the past few decades, in between statues of the Thai Buddha and colorful tapestries, showcasing Los Angeles' restaurant history.

Sisters Katy Noochlaor (left) and Amanda Maneesilasan (right), second-generation owners of Chao Krung, behind the bar.

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Courtesy Chao Krung Thai

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Second generation

As children, Maneesilasan and her sister, Katy Noochlaor, grew up in the restaurant — doing homework between tables, playing behind the building — wherever the family was, they were there, too.

Which is why it made sense in 2017 for them to step into their parents’ shoes. "We knew we would take over the restaurant," Noochlaor said. "We live and breathe that restaurant."

The menu still had vestiges of the original compromise their parents had to make to survive. The sisters, however, were determined to restore it to its true Thai roots.

For Maneesilasan, learning to make green curry from her grandmother was a turning point, almost a lightbulb moment, in her understanding of the cuisine.

Weekly curry nights

As part of the reclamation effort, the sisters have unveiled a new weekly Kanom Jeen Curry Night, Wednesdays only, which features a trio of curries and grilled skewers.

When I visited, small ceramic vats of curry crowded the table, alongside plates of rice noodles — steam still rising, their funky aroma enough to make a famished stomach growl.

The curries consist of Gang Kieaow Waan Gai, the green curry recipe they learned from their grandmother, made with chicken, a coconut curry base, fresh herbs, Thai eggplant and Thai chili.

Mae's Nam Ya Trout is made with tender bits of trout in a Southern Thai coconut curry, built on house-ground red curry paste, and is the most labor-intensive of the three, taking about five hours to complete. The Nam Prik is a roasted chili curry with smoky herbs and nutty undertones from peanuts. The layered flavors are savory, but when mixed with rice noodles, fresh vegetables, and dried chilies, they take on a new dimension — silky smooth at first, then leaving your lips burning the next.

A selection of Ping Ping skewers at Chao Krung, including roasted eggplant, lemongrass chicken, beef satay, and shrimp, alongside Isaan-style pork sausage.

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Sydney Yorkshire

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Courtesy Chao Krung

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"Curry is so important in Thai culture, it's part of our tradition," Maneesilasan said. On the trout curry specifically: "I can guarantee you can't find this anywhere else."

The skewers range from house-made Isaan-style sausage to a surprisingly spicy eggplant, glazed with roasted chili, garlic, and makrut lime leaf — a welcome kick from a vegetable so often relegated to the sidelines.

In addition to taking over the family restaurant, the sisters have also built their own ventures over the years — Tuk Tuk Thai, a street-food-driven spot now on Sawtelle, and Ban Ban Burger, a Thai-inflected smashburger concept located next door.

This fall, a second Ban Ban Burger location opens next door to Chao Krung on Fairfax, with the wall between the two restaurants coming down to make way for an archway connecting them. It's a literal and symbolic union of the family's two generational concepts under one roof.

It’s been nearly 600 days since the L.A. fires became one of the most destructive in U.S. history, yet the federal government has still not appropriated more than $15 billion in long-term recovery funds to help survivors get back home. That’s longer than the previous record of 500 days survivors of the Maui fires had to wait, according to After the Fire USA.

“ It's really like nothing we've ever seen before,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, the nonprofit’s founder and CEO.

Deep partisan divides and repeated government shutdowns under the Trump administration have been major causes for the delays, officials say.

“Disaster relief should not be a political bargaining chip — but that’s exactly how the Trump administration has made it out to be,” Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement.

The state has also lagged, with $2.5 billion in recovery funds only just starting to be released, according to reporting by NBC4.

Meanwhile, L.A fire survivors are facing massive financial gaps to rebuild, on average between $200,000 and $500,000, even with insurance. And as temporary housing insurance dissipates, many are now being forced to decide whether they can afford to rebuild at all.

“ The community is struggling and is fighting to come back — and determined to come back — but we are really lacking the state and federal support that is necessary to help get us there,” said Sam James, a sixth-generation Altadenan whose family lost multiple generational homes in the Eaton Fire.

James founded the Altadena Recovery Team to support fellow survivors in lieu of reliable government and insurance-funded safety nets. Multiple local creative financing efforts are also cropping up more quickly feed that gap.

“The delay is just really hard to rationalize given how much need there truly is on the ground,” she said.

In recent months, delegations of local officials as well as Eaton and Palisades fire survivors have traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with lawmakers about the much-needed federal funds, which experts say can often be used to fill such gaps in finances.

In June, the White House requested more than $85 billion in supplemental funds, primarily to support the war on Iran. The next month, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger sent letters to the Senate Committee on Appropriations urging disaster needs be included in such requests.

“It's on D.C. to begin to move the narrative from an ask to a make it happen,” Barger told LAist.

Four U.S. senators from states affected by recent disasters — including two Republicans from Utah and North Carolina, as well as California senators Padilla and Adam Schiff — sent a letter in July expressing their concern that no disaster funds were included in the White House’s supplemental appropriations request.

The senators called the omission an effort by the Trump administration to punish Los Angeles and the state of California.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested more than $10 billion for what’s called “Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery,” which can help survivors finance their rebuilds, as well as help local governments rebuild infrastructure, such as water systems, community centers, roads and more.

“It's the largest bucket of money any community receives in order to recover after a disaster,” said Thompson, from After the Fire USA. “It can really help fill the gaps that people need to get home.”

On average, the wait for such funds — from appropriation to allocation — is two years, Thompson said. Yet it’s been nearly two years since the L.A. fires, and the funds have yet to be appropriated at all.

Laura Richardson pays $450 a month out of pocket for a drug that could keep her off insulin for the rest of her life. She's a California state senator — and even she can't get her own insurance to cover it.

Richardson started using a GLP-1 a year ago after learning she was pre-diabetic. Her state health plan does not cover it.

“If something is available to help you to be more healthy, to avoid comorbidities … why would we want to wait till a person became diabetic to help them?” she told lawmakers in a June hearing.

Her experience is not unusual. For many Californians, popular weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy continue to be elusive despite their clinical promise. While prices are dropping, these drugs continue to be unaffordable for many; most insurers don’t cover them; and state programs, wary of costs, have rolled back access.

Senate Bill 1089, which would expand access to the class of drugs known as GLP-1s, is clearing its final hurdles this legislative session. The bill would direct the state to seek to partner with a drug manufacturer to increase competition and lower prices for GLP-1s under its CalRx program, a state program created to distribute popular, expensive drugs at a fraction of the cost.

It is unclear how long that could take, but it’d likely be a yearslong endeavor. It took the state three years to bring its $55 insulin into the market under CalRx. Today the state program also distributes albuterol inhalers and naloxone.

Richardson, an Inglewood Democrat, authored the bill, which is a watered-down version of its original, more ambitious form. Previously, the bill also sought to require that CalPERS, the health plan that insures 1.3 million public employees and retirees, cover GLP-1 drugs.

CalPERS opposed the bill and argued that the drug’s high cost would increase premiums by $28 per member per month.

Richardson added that she had discussed including GLP-1s in the CalRx program with the governor, and “he was very positively open to that.” State health officials have said that GLP-1s are among the drugs they are considering for the program.

A boom in GLP-1 spending

The bill follows California’s recent elimination of GLP-1 coverage for the treatment of obesity in its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. The state cited growing pharmacy costs and budget pressures for cutting the benefit. The state still pays for certain GLP-1s when prescribed specifically for diabetes treatment.

GLP-1s have helped many people to better manage their obesity and chronic healthcare conditions. Obesity is a well-known contributor to conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

State data show that the number of GLP-1 prescriptions solely for weight loss jumped from 20,000 to 700,000 between 2018 and 2023 across both Medi-Cal and commercial plans. In 2023, California spent $416.8 million on GLP-1 prescriptions for weight loss in the Medi-Cal program and commercial payers spent $405.2 million, according to state data.

An analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that during this time, California’s pharmacy spending nearly doubled, and tied that growth to drugs that treat diabetes, obesity, and inflammatory diseases.

California is not the only state feeling the burden of these drugs' popularity and cost: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and South Carolina also recently eliminated Medicaid coverage for GLP-1s when used solely for weight loss.

Today 12 states cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment under their Medicaid programs, although Rhode Island will cease coverage in October.

Similarly, coverage of GLP-1s under private insurance varies widely; there’s no clear standard. Health plans have also pointed to costs , noting they are currently a key contributor to premium increases.

Alison Sexton Ward, an economist and research scientist at the University of Southern California, said that data show huge benefits for peoples’ health. Modeling projects long-term savings in healthcare spending as well as a narrowing of health disparities, but she noted it’s a tricky investment for insurers to make. There are significant upfront costs before plans may start to see savings because of the reduction of obesity-related health problems, and insurers may not capture those savings when people tend to switch health plans every few years, she explained.

“The thing about treating obesity is just because you lose weight today doesn't mean that your healthcare costs go down tomorrow,” Ward said. “There's been this unique pressure on these drugs that they pay for themselves.”

One pilot that researchers and providers are looking at is the new federal Medicare GLP-1 Bridge Program, a temporary project that seeks to bring down the cost of Zepbound, Wegovy and Foundayo to about $50 a month.

Patients seeking cheaper options 

Dr. Wayne Ho, an obesity specialist and researcher in Los Angeles, sees the consequences of patchwork access to the drugs in his patients. Patients who can pay cash or whose insurance covers the drugs tend to be able to better manage their health conditions. Those without access try other, less effective therapies.

“It's really disheartening to see because we have these wonderful innovative treatments that really are life altering,” he said.

The cost is also driving some of his patients to seek cheaper, compounded versions of the drug, which some doctors warn against because they lack FDA approval.

Compounding typically involves custom-making a drug for a specific need — removing an allergen, for example. Increasingly, compound pharmacies and telehealth platforms are offering versions of GLP-1s that swap out an ingredient or two. Ho says these compounded drugs carry higher risk because they bypass the FDA’s rigorous vetting and approval process.

Nationally, calls to poison centers related to weight loss drugs increased by 1,500% between 2019 and 2025, according to data from America’s Poison Centers. Studies and reports have shown that compounded GLP-1s are more likely to cause adverse effects and have a higher risk of preparation errors. A Binghamton University study found that the odds of hospitalization were higher for compounded products. The FDA also warns of the prevalence of counterfeit products.

Ho calls GLP-1s one of the best tools he has as a provider. He remains hopeful that affordable access to the FDA-approved weight loss drugs is on the horizon. Continued efforts by state lawmakers to expand access are a critical step, he said.

“I think there's more and more pressure to cover these medications as more and more scientific data come out to show how it affects the body in a very positive manner,” he said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

UCLA is launching the nation’s first digital humanities department and bachelor’s degree this fall. The new discipline combines classical humanities with technical know-how to examine a digitized and increasingly AI-enhanced world.

The major fuses technological tools for statistical analysis, coding, 3D mapping and data visualization with traditional humanities subjects like history, literature and global cultures. It’s a multidisciplinary approach to education that capitalizes on employers’ growing desire for recent graduates to think critically while also being able to harness new technology. And the major requires a great deal of teamwork among students, another skill hiring managers seek.

Students will learn how new technologies shape culture and the human biases that enter into the use of these new tools. Top of mind is the rise of generative artificial intelligence and training students to use it ethically while also understanding how easily it can produce misleading content.

Todd Presner is a UCLA professor of European languages and transcultural studies, and co-led the effort to create the digital humanities department. He said contemporary culture has witnessed a rift between computational subjects and the traditional humanities, and both are enhanced by merging the two.

“It's actually at our own peril when scientists are not speaking to folks in the humanities with historical knowledge, ethical knowledge, cultural knowledge, right?” he said. “And at the same time, I'd say when the humanities are not understanding the technologies in the world today, they also could be seen as irrelevant.”

Presner has taught a course showing students how to get under the hood of large language models, which store the reading material generative AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT use to spit out answers. “Students can essentially upload their own training data to some of these smaller models and see how easily they can be manipulated,” he said.

New major, old discipline

UCLA students will be able to declare digital humanities as a major this year, but campus professors have taught courses in the discipline for more than two decades. It’s the second most popular minor at UCLA, which was one reason the school decided to transform it into a major, said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA College Division of Humanities where digital humanities is based. Last academic year 750 UCLA undergraduate students took a course in digital humanities. Stern expects 50 to 100 students to eventually declare the major, and would be thrilled if 40 signed up this year.

The department will launch with 23 faculty, including lecturers, plus four staff members. Stern eventually wants a few more faculty, but UCLA’s currently under a hiring freeze. No academic unit at the university was cut to make way for the new digital humanities. Faculty hail from multiple humanities fields as well as information studies and data science, so classes will occur across several campus buildings.

She said at least one museum will provide internship opportunities. Based in the Los Angeles area, the Wende Museum specializes in collecting artifacts and oral histories of refugees as well as other dissident groups and digitizing them — a key aspect of digital humanities training. She aims to secure similar arrangements with other museums so students can further apply what they learn in professional settings.

The major’s introductory courses are clustered around data networks, such as statistical reasoning, and courses on culture, such as the symbolic history of Jerusalem or film depictions of antiquity. Upper division courses can center on how contemporary technology is shaped by political, cultural, and social forces or a class on social media data analysis.

One student’s experience

Kedaar Sridhar, 26, graduated from UCLA in 2022 with a computer science major and a minor in digital humanities.

The social media data analysis course was his favorite in the minor. For a class project, he and a team of students analyzed the hashtag “facemask” on social media while much of the world was still in the throes of COVID-19. He relied on the coding language Python as well as sentiment analysis tools to classify how different countries felt about face masks in public based on the social media posts featuring that hashtag.

If he could do college all over, he’d major in the new digital humanities program because it combines the application of contemporary data software with the probing analytical questions that the humanities embody.

“I think computer science is the what, digital humanities is the how and the why, and how do you actually apply it, and why is it important to be applied,” he said.

Sridhar credits the minor with landing him an internship at Microsoft. All the applicants knew computer science, but digital humanities distinguished him, he said. An interviewer asked what the minor entailed, and he said “it’s human-centered data storytelling, working with groups, working in projects, getting a tangible outcome.”

The interviewer said that’s what they’re looking for.

In the past year he co-founded his own company, Grantlytics, an AI-based platform focused on helping nonprofits fundraise by writing proposals, finding funding opportunities and identifying promising donors.

As an employer, he’s looking for much of what the digital humanities major offers. Without it, Sridhar would prefer a candidate with a humanities and coding or math background. But digital humanities “automatically is that interdisciplinary nature because it combines those two worlds together.”

What employers want

Sridhar’s preference for someone who is well-rounded appears to be backed by recent survey data.

Hiring managers who recruit recent college graduates indicated this year that these workers are mostly employable, but with caveats. The annual survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows that the skills recent graduates are most proficient in aren’t what employers prioritize most.

For example, 99% of hiring managers say oral and written communication and persuasion skills are important. But the same hiring managers indicated that just 55% of recent college graduates score well in communication skills. The same goes for critical thinking: Around 94% of hiring managers rate this competency highly but they report that just half of recent graduates are able to gather data from diverse sources and draw conclusions or work well in a fast-paced setting.

Where recent graduates do better is in technology, but hiring managers care slightly less about those. About 75% of employers place high importance on adapting to new technology or using tech to achieve company goals; they say that about 65% of recent grads are competent in that skillset.

Stern, the dean, is careful not to overstate the promise of digital humanities to halt the freefall of the broader humanities as a major students want. The share of U.S. college students majoring in fields such as literature, history, philosophy and foreign languages is at a historic nadir — just 8% of degrees conferred were in the humanities, down from nearly 15% nearly two decades ago. The trend at UCLA is similar.

She knows things are tough for humanities departments, but “an art history grad is more likely to get a job these days than a computer science grad,” she said, citing data tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “There are ebbs and flows across time” with which degrees lead to jobs and that students gravitate toward.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.