The Brief

Voter turnout among Native American communities is growing — and California organizers are working to build a network of engaged young people throughout the state.

"I realized that it's not just presidential elections that define the lay of the land for my community, the state, the country," said Maya Sanchez, a youth organizer with California Native Vote Project. "There's local elections. There's people that we put in power that I actually could go and meet… this is where real change can happen today.”

The nonprofit, founded months ahead of the 2016 election, focuses on increasing political power in Native American communities throughout the state. Despite recent growth, Native American election participation nationally still trails the overall population and other ethnic groups.

“There are some of us out there that don't even believe in this voting system because of all the historical trauma that there is with the U. S. government,” Sanchez said. “We're trying to flip the narrative.”

Congress granted U.S. citizenship to Native Americans in 1924, but until 1957 some states barred them from voting. Restrictive voting laws, and a lack of polling sites and broadband access in tribal areas are among the biggest obstacles that continue to disenfranchise Indigenous voters.

Native youths have driven civic engagement nationally during recent elections. One 2018 poll found more than half encouraged their friends and family to register or vote and about 27% volunteered for a candidate or participated in voter outreach. California has one of the highest rates of eligible Indigenous voters in the country.

“I hope that we have set [the youth] up with enough resources for them to go out and get curious,” said Maya Sanchez, a youth organizer with California Native Vote Project. “Build up a network, build up a community, start campaigns of their own.”

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The California Native Vote Project coordinates an annual series of workshops for young people about topics ranging from advocacy to mental health. This year the Native Youth for Justice Organizing Academy ended with an in-person gathering in downtown Los Angeles that mixed activism with artistic practices including beading and printmaking.

“Our activities are grounded in cultural revitalization,” said Youth Organizing Coordinator Liam Walsh. “Making sure that the youth have access to cultural resources so that they can practice it and reaffirm their own identity as an American Indian or an Indigenous person.”

Participants at this year's Academy made "seed bombs" with the seeds from native plants including coastal sunflower, saltbush, and California poppy.

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Another activity was printmaking.

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LAist spoke with a few of the youths who participated about their relationship to voting and the civic, community, and social issues they feel most passionate about. Their responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Panchebe Manahuiatlaka, a youth member of the California Native Vote Project. He's also the brother of Maya Sanchez.

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Panchebe Manahuiatlaka, 20, is Diné and Mexica. He lives in Hacienda Heights and is a student at Mt. San Antonio College. 

“I honestly believe it's more important to watch out for our local elections because those impact our community a lot more than the presidential elections … I don't care about the Democrats or Republicans because all the way in the beginning they were the people who enslaved our people, continued Manifest Destiny, had these broken treaties, these broken promises. Maybe we should be more aware of what's happening politically, so our people can be educated. Instead of maybe focusing so much on the presidential [election], we can work our way up from local.”

Manahuiatlaka says the Academy has helped connect him to a community.  

“There are people out there who care for me and I think that's what a lot of youth are missing out [on]. Sometimes we don't have those communities or we don't have an outlet or someone to vent to, or a best friend. Being in like these communities or these spaces grounds me and humbles me. I'm happy to be a part of this community and grateful to be myself.”

Tlakatl Atl, a member of the Native Youth for Justice in Los Angeles.

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Tlakatl Atl, 18, is K'iche, Huichol, Mexica, and Filipino and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. They are studying dance at Cal State Long Beach.  

“I'm very excited to vote … I still feel like it's important to still have Native communities vote because … we didn't get the right to vote until later in time, and I think it's important for the youth now, this new generation is seeing what's needed to be done.”

Atl says they are focused on issues like climate change, affordability and homelessness. Growing up, Atl moved often, sometimes couch-surfing or living in the family car. 

“No one should be homeless on stolen land, first off, but also, I think it's just incredibly hard to see our own relatives living on the streets when they should be able to be living in territories that belong to them specifically and their families and their ancestral families.

"The misplacement is really discouraging sometimes to be able to feel like, [Where] is there a place I can rest? But I know that someday there's going to be a time where we're going to be able to live on our traditional homelands.”

Joey Gonzales, a member of the Native Youth for Justice in Los Angeles.

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Joey Gonzales, 20, is Chumash and Chicano and is an actor and content creator in Huntington Beach. 

“Looking at my community and seeing the diversity not being shown in film and television. A lot of the times we see in film and media, the stereotypes of Native people is the long thick black hair and dark skin tone, and it's always during colonial times … Whenever I see my community, I see beauty that's not often represented correctly, so I want to be able to do that and represent all of my relatives in media.”

"I'm learning what sound healing is and how to bring it to my community," Gonzales said. He helped open Artivism Day by inviting participants to listen to the tones created by the mallet and wooden bowl.

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Gonzales says he wants to use his platform to spread the word about voting this year. 

“When I grew up, we didn't really have our family members going out and voting. They just really didn't think that it mattered. So, growing up, I thought the same thing. Like, my vote isn't gonna make a difference. But as I started seeing polls and statistics showing the numbers of Native people voting or Latino people voting— it was low, I was like, ‘OK, my voice does matter, so my vote matters.’”

Junie Ponce first got involved with the California Native Vote Project in 2021, at the invitation of a family friend who "would always try to get me into community work."

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Junie Ponce, 19, Chicane and Diné and is concerned by how gentrification and rising rents are reshaping their Echo Park neighborhood. 

“I've seen some people struggle with houselessness and like struggling to get back on their feet, whether it was by trying to apply to Section 8, which is an extremely long process, or trying to get into shelters. It's a bit of a tough thing to witness.”

Ponce strings beads and acorns onto a keychain. "I think culture exchange is a really big thing, especially within native communities," they said. "There was a lot of trading that used to happen so things like that helps me feel like I'm reconnecting."

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LAist asked how they’re starting to think about what their role might be in changing things.

“That's definitely a hard question, but I guess finding more spaces where I can talk about these problems, and bring them to people in powers’ attention, and let them know that these are really big things that are really impacting our communities.

"I've seen [voting] in a new light. Learn the system so that we can use it to our advantage, which is something I'm trying to bring back to my family."

At this year’s Academy, they led a panel about mental health. 

“I've been meeting people and talking about this work and they're telling me I'm doing such great things for my community, and it's like I didn't even realize. So that's something I'm still working on acknowledging.”

Heslatkala-kaluluka Layfield got involved with the California Native Vote Project through another youth group.

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Heslatkala-kaluluka Layfield, who also goes by Kalu, 21, lives in Sacramento and is Nomtipom Wintu and Lakota. 

“I don't live on the rez, but when I go to the rez to dance, there's been a noticeable neglect of the elders there, and blatant disrespect, definitely. So I just want more support for elders, medical, financial, especially, because they're old, so they need all the support they can get, especially from us younger people who are very able-bodied.”

Indigenous youth gather for the California Native Vote Project "Artivism Day".

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“Keeping it light and keeping it fun is definitely really important because sometimes organizing can be kind of like a grueling, kind of a monotonous process and you don't always want to be so serious in what you do. You want to take what you're doing seriously, but you don't want to burn yourself out.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cannot impose dramatically different conditions for homelessness programs for now, according to an oral ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island.

McElroy granted a preliminary injunction to a group of states, cities and nonprofits who said a last minute overhaul of how to spend $4 billion on homelessness programs was unlawful. She also agreed with their argument that it likely would push many people back onto the streets in the middle of winter, causing irreparable harm.

"Continuity of housing and stability for vulnerable populations is clearly in the public interest," said McElroy, ordering HUD to maintain its previous funding formula.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement the order "means that more than 170,000 people – families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities — have respite from the government's assault."

HUD has sought to dramatically slash funding for permanent housing and encourage more transitional housing that mandates work and treatment for addiction or mental illness. The overhaul — announced last month — also would allow the agency to deny money to local groups that don't comply with the Trump administration's agenda on things like DEI, the restriction of transgender rights and immigration enforcement.

"HUD will continue working to provide homelessness assistance funding to grantees nationwide," said HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett in a statement to NPR. "The Department remains committed to program reforms intended to assist our nation's most vulnerable citizens and will continue to do so in accordance with the law."

'Chaos seems to be the point'

McElroy expressed frustration with a series of HUD actions in recent weeks. Just hours before a Dec. 8 hearing, the agency withdrew its new funding notice, saying it would make changes to address critics' concerns. But on Friday, HUD's attorney said the new version would not be ready until the end of the day.

"The timing seems to be strategic," McElroy said, asserting there was no reason the document could not have been ready before the hearing. "The constant churn and chaos seems to be the point."

In defending the agency, attorney John Bailey said HUD was simply trying to change its policies to reflect President Donald Trump's executive orders, which he called "legal directives." The judge interjected repeatedly to explain that he was conflating things, noting Congress — not the president — makes laws.

'It's kind of shocking'

HUD's changes were announced in November with little notice and only weeks before local homeless service providers must apply for new funding.

"Our agencies are just scrambling right now to try to respond," said Pam Johnson with Minnesota Community Action Partnership, whose members provide housing and other services for homeless people. "It also just reverses 40 years of bipartisan work on proven solutions to homelessness. So it's really, it's kind of shocking."

For decades, U.S. policy favored permanent housing with optional treatment for addiction or mental illness Years of research has found the strategy is effective at keeping people off the streets.

But many conservatives argue it's failed to stop record rates of homelessness.

"What is the root cause of homelessness? Mental illness, drug addiction, drug abuse," HUD Secretary Scottt Turner said recently on Fox Business Network. "During the Biden administration, it was just warehousing. It was a homeless industrial complex."

Turner and others who support the changes say the goal is to push people towards self-sufficiency.

But local advocates say mental health and substance abuse are not the main factors driving homelessness.

"It's poverty. Poverty, low income and significant lack of affordable housing," says Julie Embree, who heads the Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board in Ohio.

Many in permanent housing have disabilities that make it hard to work full time, she said. Embree agrees with Trump administration goals like efficiency and saving money, but says pushing people back into homelessness, where they're more likely to land in jail, the courts or a hospital, is not cost-effective.

"One emergency room visit is just as expensive as a month of sustaining this [permanent housing] program," she said.

In Los Angeles, Stephanie Klasky-Gamer with LA Family Housing said there is a need for more transitional housing, but not at the expense of long-term housing. And the idea that programs could simply switch from one to the other is not only unrealistic, it's illegal.

"You cannot take a building that has a 75-year deed restriction and just — ding! — call it interim housing," she said.

Those challenging HUD say providers who own such properties – or states who've invested millions of dollars in permanent housing projects — face "significant financial jeopardy" if their funding is not renewed.

In addition to the legal challenges, members of Congress from both parties have questioned HUD's sudden shift on homelessness. Advocates have lobbied lawmakers to step in and, at the least, push for more time to prepare for such a massive overhaul.

President Donald Trump said the administration has reached agreements with nine more drugmakers to bring their U.S. drug prices more in line with what other wealthy countries pay.

Fourteen companies in total have now reached what the administration calls most-favored-nation pricing deals. The companies that took part in Friday's announcement were: Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi.

They agreed to charge the U.S. government no more for new drugs than the prices paid by other well-off countries. The agreements will allow state Medicaid programs to access lower prices from the nine companies. In a statement, the White House said the change will result "in billions of dollars in savings."

The drugmakers also agreed to invest at least $150 billion in manufacturing operations in the U.S. The president is seeking to increase domestic production of pharmaceuticals.

In addition, the companies agreed to make some of their most popular drugs available at lower prices to consumers who pay out of pocket through a government website called TrumpRx.com. The TrumpRx website is expected to launch in early 2026, and would take consumers to pharmaceutical companies' direct-to-consumer websites to fulfill orders.

For example, Merck will reduce the price of Januvia, a medication for Type 2 diabetes, from $330 to $100 for patients purchasing directly through TrumpRx, the White House said. Amgen will reduce the price of Repatha, a cholesterol-lowering drug, from $573 to $239 when purchased through TrumpRx.

In exchange for these concessions, the companies will be exempt from possible administration tariffs for three years.

The extent of savings for consumers under the agreements is unclear. Medicaid and its beneficiaries already pay some of the lowest prices for drugs. And people with health insurance could spend less on copays for their medicines than paying cash for them through the drugmakers.

Separately, Trump said during the press event that he would like to get health insurers to lower their prices, too.

"I'm going to call a meeting of the insurance companies," he said. "I'm going to see if they [will] get their price down, to put it very bluntly."

America's new top health diplomat is Bethany Kozma.

The job she took on this week — leading the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Global Affairs — does not have a high profile. And Kozma herself is not a familiar name in the world of public health.

But it is a position with power — and Kozma has a record of public statements and activism on health issues, equating abortion with "murder" and campaigning against gender-affirming care.

The office sometimes is referred to as the "diplomatic voice" of HHS. As director, Kozma will have considerable influence over how the U.S. shapes health policy in other countries in the wake of the Trump administration's foreign aid cuts and withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Kozma declined to be interviewed for this story. She doesn't appear to have a background in global health based on publicly available information online. The HHS website offers few details about her professional profile. In response to questions about her qualifications and vision for the role, HHS responded with this statement.

"The Office of Global Affairs (OGA) advances the Trump administration's agenda and priorities by bringing common sense, transparency and gold-standard science to global partners. Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, OGA is committed to strengthening the United States' position as the global gold-standard for public health and ensuring Americans are protected at home and abroad."

Who is Bethany Kozma?

Kozma began her career in public service during the George W. Bush administration, working at the White House Homeland Security Council. During the Obama years, she re-entered public life as an activist.

In a 2016 commentary for The Daily Signal, a conservative news website founded by the Heritage Foundation, she argued against the Obama administration's guidance that public schools should allow children to use the bathroom that comports with their identity.

"This radical agenda of subjective 'gender fluidity' and unrestricted shower and bathroom access actually endangers all," she stated, noting that "predators" could abuse the policy.

In 2017, she joined the Trump administration as senior adviser for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the United States Agency for International Development, eventually being promoted to deputy chief of staff. In videos obtained and released by ProPublica, Kozma recalls calling the U.S. a "pro-life" country in a closed-door U.N. meeting about women's rights in 2018, when access to abortion still was protected nationally by Roe v. Wade.

In August 2020, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and four other Democratic senators issued a letter labeling Kozma and several other political appointees at USAID as "prejudiced" and called for them to be removed from their posts. Kozma has "spoken extensively and derisively of trans people and trans issues," the senators wrote.

During the Biden administration, she also was involved in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's "blueprint" for a new Republican administration. She played a prominent role in Project 2025 training videos, obtained and published by ProPublica.

In one nearly 50-minute training video focused on left-wing language, she called for a Republican administration to "eradicate 'climate change' references from absolutely everywhere," and said that concerns over climate change are efforts at "population control." She also called gender-affirming care "absolutely infuriating" and said "the idea that gender is fluid is evil." Overall, she argued that changing language around these policies should be a priority for political appointees.

Kozma joined the second Trump administration as a chief adviser at the HHS Office of Global Affairs. In September, she spoke at a U.N. event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the declaration that denying women's rights is a human rights violation.

"While many may celebrate so-called successes gained for women over the last 30 years, one must ask what defines true success for women?" she began, adding that "biological reality is rooted in scientific truth and is confirmed by the universal truths that we are endowed by our creator who made us 'male and female.'"

Those views can be divisive but have garnered some support for Kozma's promotion.

"Bethany is an excellent pick for global affairs at HHS," says Roger Servino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. "She was an early champion of protecting children from gender ideology back when the medical establishment was able to silence voices of reason and dissent and she is perfectly placed to help push back on global health bodies trying to impose left wing pseudoscience on the American people and the world."

What will her goals be at the Office of Global Affairs?

Kozma is taking over as director of the HHS Office of Global Affairs at a time of drastic change for global health.

In previous administrations, a main focus of the office was dealing with the World Health Organization. Typically, the director, who usually has a background in public health, is involved in negotiations on sharing data for pathogen surveillance or developing vaccine policy, for example.

After President Trump withdrew the U.S. from WHO, the administration has started a new strategy: striking deals with individual countries to give health aid in exchange for their meeting certain policy prescriptions. Kozma has been involved in some of those negotiations, but the details aren't quite finalized.

Some reproductive rights advocates believe Kozma will use her new position to insert anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ policies into these agreements.

"[Kozma] is vehemently anti-trans, anti-LGBTQI+, anti-abortion," says Keifer Buckingham, managing director at the Council on Global Equality, a coalition of advocacy organizations that focuses on LGBTQ issues. "For those of us who want to ensure that the provision of U.S. foreign assistance and health doesn't discriminate against people based on who they are, [Kozma's appointment] raises a lot of red flags."

One particular worry is about the Helms Amendment, a U.S. policy that prohibits foreign aid being used to fund abortion services.

"There's been speculation that there's an intention by the U.S. government to expand the Helms Amendment beyond abortion to include LGBTQ's as well," says Musoba Kitui, director of Ipas Africa Alliance, a non-profit that works to provide access to abortion and contraception. He's concerned that health groups that serve those populations could lose funding. That speculation is backed up by reporting from The Daily Signal that the administration is planning to prohibit U.S. aid funding for "gender ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives."

Given LGBTQ people are often at higher risk for diseases like HIV, such policies could make these communities even more vulnerable, says Kitui.

"We could see more marginalization, inequality, spikes of infection," he says. While many African governments signing these deals understand those dynamics, Kitui says they may still agree to more restrictive conditions as aid cuts have "starved health systems to a point of desperation."

Have information you want to share about ongoing changes at federal health and development agencies? Reach out to Jonathan Lambert via encrypted communications on Signal: @jonlambert.12