The Brief

Wendy Tang pauses while presenting in front of class. It’s not an easy feat for anyone to speak in front of nearly 20 peers, even harder for someone whose primary language isn’t English. She laughs from embarrassment and discloses that she’s nervous.

Inspired by the “cajita” project, students have filled “sacred boxes” with significant personal belongings and artifacts that honor family struggles and triumphs.

This is the end of the unit on identity for the lowest credit language class for English learners at Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC). These kinds of classes are meaningful for the students enrolled in them. They’re also in decline, as transfer reforms and other factors shape community college course offerings.

Giving voice to past and present

Tang moved from China to the U.S. on her own. Sharing various items with the class, she points to a small glass bottle containing blades of grass that she’s chosen to represent herself.

“I feel grass is the strongest plant because it doesn’t matter where you put the seeds. It doesn’t matter if there’s a lot of rain,” Tang said. “You just give them a little bit of sunshine and they will grow everywhere. Like the grass, you put me here, I can grow. You put me in another place and I can grow too.”

Students chose items to represent their past cultures, their adjustment to the U.S., and their futures. This project modeled sentipensante — a sensing, thinking approach to learning, professor and chair of Mt. SAC’s American Language program Elizabeth Casian said.

Their boxes are also informed by a True Colors personality test, which Casian uses to help students find more congruence between their values and lives.

Coming to the U.S. from another country is a chance to redirect one’s course, Casian said; immigrants who may have come from more collectivist cultures may not have pursued their individual dreams before, a defining characteristic of American culture.

A former student from Hong Kong told Casian that taking the personality test changed her life when she realized she was in the wrong career — banking. After getting encouragement from Casian, the student embarked on a career change.

Moving between countries and cultures

Through thoughtfully chosen objects, students shared a longing for family and friends, challenges they’ve faced, and changes in perspective. One student shared a picture from his brother’s birthday of them eating hot pot together, a reminder of his Chinese culture. Deanna Contreras brought a baseball hat from the Carl’s Jr. fast food restaurant chain. It represented her growing pains upon coming to the United States from Mexico.

“It was my first job here in the U.S.,” Contreras said. “It was really difficult because I was still learning. I didn’t know any English and a lot of people were mean.”

Referring to a U.S. dollar bill, the student Tang said that money has represented both her Chinese and American cultures. Her relationship toward money has changed. Once seen as an end in itself, she now sees money as a means for having life experiences.

Nguyen Huynh, who goes by Tom, poses by his cajita – a box that includes significant personal belongings and family artifacts that would be transported across borders. It includes a bottle of Vietnamese Chin-Su hot sauce that he attests can be used in every meal and a printed image of the “lady justice” which represents his future in America, where he plans to improve public safety as a police officer.

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“After coming to America, I tried to find life’s meaning. What’s the meaning for my life? Making money to buy a house — is that happy? Or is it making money so that I can go travel? The world is so big,” Tang said.

Another student from China, Wayne Wang, had a different perspective on money.

“My favorite perfume — Chanel!” Wang said, presenting the bottled fragrance to his class. Unabashedly laughing, he said it represents luxury and his love of money and beauty.

Across California, advancing in English more quickly 

Changes to English-as-a-second-language (ESL) credit courses have been underway since the implementation of Assembly Bill 705, which nominally took effect in January 2018 and aimed to get community college students to higher levels of math and English more quickly. For example, English-learners who graduated from high school in the U.S. who may have otherwise placed in a lower level of English in the ESL program now start at a higher level of college composition.

“It's now that we have to meet students where they are, whereas before, if you don't have these skills, then you need to get these skills in these lower level classes,” Casian said. “The reason why they pushed AB 705 through in the first place was that the more levels a student has to take, the more chances we have of losing them from college.”

Findings from a 2022 report by the Public Policy Institute of California on the early effect of AB 705 on credit-level English Second Language showed that colleges have been shortening ESL course sequences. Prior to the law, some colleges offered course sequences with as many as six levels or more. According to PPIC, in 2021, over half of colleges offered sequences of four levels or less, compared to just one-third in 2016.

Another consequence of AB 705 includes a decline in student enrollment at Mt. SAC’s American Language Program, according to Casian, who suggested that students may bypass the program for the English department. Casian said the COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions also contributed to the decline. Based on data provided by Mt. SAC, student enrollment for credit-level courses in the American Language Program declined substantially, from nearly 1,400 in 2018-2019 to less than half (just over 600) in 2022-2023. (Students may be counted more than once if enrolled in more than one course.)

One concern of the effect of AB 705 is placing students in classes before they’re ready. While getting English learners to higher levels faster is beneficial, Casian said there is still value in offering lower-level credit ESL courses where students can build foundational skills.

A cajita project box.

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“I think that's a testament to what is still needed,” said Casian, who pointed out that while recent legislation asserts all students have a right to take transfer-level courses, not everyone should start there.

Referring to her class, she said, “If you can imagine these students in English 1A [a freshman composition transfer-level class] with the skills that they have, that's not equitable. So that's why we're still here. We're here to provide equity. We're here to provide that support to get students from where they are, to that next level where they need to.”

Second chances and wanting to connect

Damayanthi Jesudason moved to the U.S. in 1996 in response to the Sri Lankan civil war. Over the years, Jesudason said she has not passed a number of English learner classes due to difficulty writing essays and understanding grammar. She said she was also identified as having a learning disability.

Her English language level has affected her regular interactions with others.

“Even when I say ‘vaccine’ at the pharmacy, they don't understand,” she said. “So it was really frustrating me, making me sad because the other person cannot understand my pronunciation. So I thought of coming to class. In that way, I can learn.”

Taking this class has been a way to improve and get closer to her goal of working with animals as a pet groomer. Jesudason recites the maxim “practice makes perfect.”

Another student who goes by the name Ryder Freeman has found it to be a safe haven, a place to make friends. Freeman moved to the U.S. in 2022 and said he is a political refugee from China.

Before taking this class, Freeman stayed home and didn’t know that many people.

“After I took this class, I met my classmates and made friends with them,” he said. “That's a big change to my life.”

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 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 Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla — also 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,” Thompson said. “It can really help fill the gaps that people need to get home.”

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

“It's clearly political, and politics have no place in disaster,” she said.

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.

It’s been a busy week with the Trump administration’s legal battle over mail in ballots.

The Supreme Court weighed in and fresh court documents were filed as preparations for the November general election are well underway.

Confused about where things stand? You’re not alone.

One Southern California county tells LAist nothing has happened that changes how it runs elections since last time around in the June primary. And an election law expert says that as of now, people should plan to vote as you normally would.

“If there is some interference with mail in ballots, there are lots of voting centers and other ways that people can cast ballots,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “But I don't think it's going to come to that.”

As the Nov. 3 general election approaches, local officials are encouraging voters to turn in their ballots early.

Here’s what we know.

Counties deep in election prep

As the legal battle plays out, local election officials are already gearing up for the November general election.

Bob Page, Orange County Registrar of Voters, told LAist his office starts working on an election up to nine months ahead of time, with the first November ballots being printed for overseas and military voters at the end of next week.

County election officials in California will start mailing ballots to all voters by Oct. 5. Page said O.C. will start printing ballots for the 1.9 million local voters the week of Labor Day.

“Those deadlines are set. You can't mess with them,” Page said in a briefing from the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions Wednesday.

A woman casts her ballot at an official Orange County ballot drop box in Santa Ana in October 2020.

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Hasen told LAist elections take a really long time to put in place, and something as mundane as envelopes are bought by the millions in counties such as L.A. and Orange. The design of mail in ballot envelopes are part of the new government requirements being challenged in court.

“In California, we now mail ballots to every single voter, so it would be incredibly expensive and difficult to try to change what that mailing would look like,” Hasen said.

In Orange County, for example, ballot envelopes are already in the works. Page noted the U.S. Postal Service approved of the design last month.

What does it mean for local voters?

O.C. will be handling the November election like it did with the June primary, following existing state and federal law, Page said.

“We have to keep track of what's going on in the different courts … But for right now, there's nothing that's happened that changes how we would conduct this election,” he said in an interview.

He also noted that he will make sure O.C. voters get a ballot, “however that gets to them.”

Hasen shared a similar message for voters.

“As of now, nothing has changed,” he said. “And let's wait and see where things are in a week.”

Get your ballots in early

Local election officials, including Page, are encouraging voters to turn in their ballots before Election Day. Ballots can start being processed as soon as they’re returned, so the more people vote early, the more ballots can be included in the first round of results released on election night.

“If there's concerns about the speed at which ballots get counted or processed, the best way to address that for voters … is to vote early,” Page said.

An election clerk holds “I voted” stickers at Beverly Hills City Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.

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Hasen agreed, adding that it’s much better for election administration and voter confidence if more ballots are returned and processed earlier.

O.C. voters will be able return their ballots by mail, to 128 drop boxes and to more than 190 vote centers, according to Page. L.A. County has started to send outreach postcards with early election reminders to most of its more than 5.8 million registered voters as of last week.

What’s going on with the legal battle?

In March, President Donald Trump issued another executive order on voting that he said was to reduce “the risk of fraud.” Trump has claimed for years that there's widespread voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence.

The order, among other things, instructs federal officials to create lists of eligible U.S. citizen voters in each state, directs USPS to only send mail in ballots to people on those lists and have USPS review the design of ballot envelopes.

Parts of the order were blocked in June by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston. The Supreme Court paused that ruling earlier this week, giving what’s been described as an interim win to Trump. The administration saw another win on Wednesday when Talwani lifted her nationwide ruling that blocked USPS from moving forward with the executive order.

“The court cases are coming fast and furious right now after the Supreme Court's ruling,” said Aaron Blacksberg, lead legal analyst on federal policy for the Institute for Responsive Government, during a virtual briefing earlier this week.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and nearly two dozen other attorneys general filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging a USPS final rule stemming from the executive order that was released last week.

Bonta argued its “President Trump's latest unlawful attempt to take control of mail voting.” Bonta vowed in a news conference to “fight this every step of the way,” adding that he expected to see other lawsuits from Democratic party leadership and the League of Women Voters.

USPS did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.