The Brief

Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.

All are part of federally funded TRIO programs — like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars — based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles like the University of Southern California. TRIO reaches children as young as middle school, preparing them to enroll in college and providing mentorship, academic advice and research opportunities when they do. In California, the programs served over 100,000 participants in the 2023-24 academic year.

“I really don’t think I could have made it through City College [of San Francisco] without them,” said Ekaterini Stamatakos, 22, a psychology major and TRIO student who earned an associate degree and then transferred to UCLA, where she will start her junior year this year. “I think these kinds of programs really go beyond whatever they might say on their profiles or the paragraphs that they have on their webpages — it really does make such an impact on students’ lives.”

But hanging over TRIO programs like Talent Search and Student Support Services is a Trump administration proposal to eliminate them. If Congress enacts that plan, all TRIO Student Support Services — such as tutoring in reading, help with college applications and workshops in financial literacy — would be defunded starting in fiscal year 2026. Their funding is uncertain until Congress finalizes the appropriations bill later this year.

TRIO, whose name derives from an original group of three programs but now includes eight, has largely prevailed in past funding battles. With an annual budget now exceeding $1 billion, it continues to garner significant bipartisan support. But a White House budget request released in the spring argues that TRIO programs, rooted in 1960s anti-poverty policy, are now “a relic of the past.”

“Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,” the budget request says. Colleges “should be using their own resources to engage with K-12 schools in their communities to recruit students, and then once those students are on campus, aid in their success through to graduation.”

The threat has mobilized TRIO supporters to redouble a public awareness campaign aimed at persuading lawmakers to maintain the programs. In California, there were about 450 TRIO programs in the 2023-24 academic year, an EdSource analysis of federal data shows, with most of that funding flowing to programs housed at more than 100 colleges and universities.

The proposal to sever funding for TRIO comes as the Trump administration has notched a U.S. Supreme Court victory that clears the way for mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. This month, California joined a coalition of states suing for the release of $6.8 billion in federal school funding that has been frozen by the federal government. Since January, the White House has enacted or attempted a host of other changes affecting areas like financial aid and how the federal government interprets civil rights law.

TRIO programs based on California campuses like Sonoma State University, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis eachreceive millions of dollars annually and are funded to serve thousands of participants per campus, the analysis shows. Smaller TRIO programs, many at community colleges, may work with dozens or hundreds of students on a budget of less than $300,000.

At Cal Poly Humboldt, high school students and rising college freshmen this summer read an August Wilson play before venturing on a field trip to see it performed live at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. At Cal Poly Pomona, peer coaches prepare presentations for fellow students on such topics as artificial intelligence and summer internships. At Columbia College, a community college 50 miles northeast of Modesto, a TRIO director said she’s worked with everyone from 14-year-olds in dual enrollment programs to 72-year-olds advancing toward master’s degrees.

Decades of consensus meets partisan divides

Studies generally suggest TRIO has a positive effect on academic outcomes, such as enrolling in college or completing a degree. Supporters also tout the success of alumni — some of whom have gone on to become lawmakers, astronauts, and in many cases, leaders of local TRIO programs themselves — as evidence of a positive impact on families and communities.

“I have alumni whose kids are now in college and thriving, or have graduated college,” said Rafael Topete, who leads the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Cal State Long Beach.

But this is not the first time TRIO programs have faced Republican-led challenges. Under President Ronald Reagan, TRIO advocates blocked an attempt to halve the program’s budget. Bipartisan support again thwarted a bid to eliminate TRIO funding during the Clinton administration.

TRIO’s critics point to a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored 2009 study finding that Upward Bound did not have a statistically significant impact on overall postsecondary enrollment. (The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO and other college access programs, later sponsored a rebuttal study, which found Upward Bound had a strong positive impact on students.)

Two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office reports argue that the federal Department of Education could improve how it evaluates TRIO. The department has said further steps to verify data depend on the agency having adequate staff.

Educational Talent Search and Cal-SOAP students at Cal State Long Beach attend a workshop to help rising seniors get ready for college applications and financial aid.

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Courtesy of Jesus Maldonado

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon this spring resurrected such accountability arguments to justify defunding the programs. “I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” McMahon said at a June budget hearing.

People who work for TRIO programs object to those criticisms. In interviews, many named by memory the metrics they report as a condition of receiving federal funding, like high school graduation rates and college enrollment statistics. “Every year, we report data to verify we are doing what we said we would do,” said Kathy Kailikole, who has had a 30-year career in TRIO programs and currently works at San Diego State University.

There are signs that TRIO remains a point of agreement in a Congress more often divided along party lines. Federal funding for TRIO has climbed from $838 million in 2014 to almost $1.2 billion in 2023. And of the 130 members in the Congressional TRIO Caucus, 26 are Republicans. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpsonof Idaho are among the Republicans who have vocally questioned cuts to TRIO.

Today’s bitter ideological divides may test that consensus.

In May, three Upward Bound grantees outside California received notice from the Department of Education that their funding would not be continued due to conflicts with Trump administration priorities, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education.

A copy of one such cancellation letter provided to EdSource by Jones said the grants “violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

Overcoming distance and doubt in rural California

Jen Dyke directs the Upward Bound program at Cal Poly Humboldt where, years ago, she was once a student. Today, she travels hundreds of miles to recruit students from rural Hayfork, South Fork and Hoopa. It’s a region where rural schools often contend with high teacher turnover rates, low math test scores and an uncertain economic outlook, Dyke and her colleagues said.

“Timber is already gone. Fishing is already gone. Tourism is now something that is not super strong because of wildfires,” Dyke said during a lull in Upward Bound’s summer academy, which brings 27 high school-age students on campus to take classes and live in dorms. “So these areas that we serve are, once again, facing dismal futures if we also cut TRIO.”

Cal Poly Humboldt’s TRIO initiatives are among dozens of TRIO programs in California — and more than 500 in the U.S. — that reach participants in predominantly rural communities and remote towns, an EdSource review of federal data found.

Rose Sita Francia, who directs another Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program called Talent Search, tries to expose students as early as sixth grade to careers that give them a reason to consider postsecondary education. The first step, she said, is to put college on the map for them — literally.

“Many students don’t know where Arcata is, where Cal Poly Humboldt is located,” she said. “And so we have teachers ask us regularly, ‘Will you show us some geography of college-going, and will you talk to us about trade school options as well?’”

Associate degree students at Columbia College tour a Humboldt County forest while on a trip to visit Sonoma State University and Cal Poly Humboldt on Sept. 17, 2024.

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Courtesy of Anneka Rogers Whitmer

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Anneka Rogers Whitmer oversees TRIO programs housed at Columbia College, more than an hour’s drive from the two nearest four-year universities, Stanislaus State University and UC Merced. The college’s Educational Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 people across five counties with just two staff members, who visit places like prisons and social service agencies. The TRIO staff have had to overcome distrust of college degrees, Whitmer said, by offering advice on how to apply for financial aid and where to find vocational training.

“We’re an education desert, no doubt,” she said, “but we just have to think more creatively about how we’re going to reach the folks.”

‘It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged’

The program Ghislaine Maze coordinates at City College of San Francisco may be called the TRIO Writing Success Project, but it does much more than provide writing workshops and embedded tutors in English classes.

Ekaterini “Kat” Stamatakos and Ghislaine Maze pose for a photo at the City College of San Francisco commencement ceremony in May 2025.

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Courtesy of Ghislaine Maze

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“So many students are trying to figure things out on their own, on the fly, with just a few hours on campus,” said Maze, whose program is funded to serve 310 students on a budget of roughly $485,000 a year. “It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged.”

Tight campus budgets may leave other academic advisers on campus so overbooked that students struggle to get appointments, she said. A trusted TRIO mentor can help navigate financial aid and plan a student’s academic schedule. “That’s where a program like ours kind of fits in,” Maze said.

Before Ekaterini Stamatakos got to City College, she attended four high schools. She thinks she must have missed hundreds of days of school in that time, a consequence of housing instability. She struggled academically, but finished at a credit recovery school.

Stamatakos, who goes by Kat, was retaking an English class at City College when a tutor from the TRIO Writing Success Project explained that it provided feedback on writing assignments, mentorship and a place to hang out at the library, complete with snacks. “This is perfect,” Stamatakos thought. “I’m just going to basically live there.”

With assistance from a writing tutor, Stamatakos earned an ‘A’ in the course. “I don’t think I ever imagined that I would get an ‘A’ after my years of failing classes,” she said.

EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.

Alysa Liu’s comeback at this year’s Olympics — and her stunning gold medal win — has rocked the world of figure skating, making headlines due to her joy while performing and her commitment to mental health on and off the ice.

Though she primarily trained in Oakland, Liu, who’s also a psychology student at UCLA, has used a facility in Lakewood as one of her home bases away from home. The 20-year-old started training there as she came back from retirement and prepared to take the gold medal (not that that was necessarily her goal, to hear her tell it).

It’s part of a long history for the Rinks-Lakewood ICE, which has also hosted many champions and Olympians over the years, including Mariah Bell, Nathan Chen, Ashley Wagner and Adam Rippon, and counts prominent figure skaters among their staff.

“ We're not unfamiliar with Olympic ties,” said Braden Overett, the skating manager at Lakewood ICE, though he also clarified, “that does not in any way diminish the fun and the coolness [of Liu’s win].”

Lakewood ICE’s place in this year’s Olympics

Working with her coaches remotely, Liu started to drill down on perfecting her skating while also attending classes at UCLA. And though she moved on to her home base at Oakland Ice Center as the Olympic training started to ramp up, the staff who worked with her at Lakewood ICE kept cheering her on.

Overett said that he loves highlighting the Olympic connections at the rink, which may not be obvious to everyone who skates there.

“It's always fun just to connect the dots, right?” Overett said. “It's like going to a restaurant and then you find out later it's your favorite actor's restaurant.”

Ashleigh Ellis runs the nonprofit Unity Ice Academy, which focuses on increasing access to figure skating for kids of all backgrounds at Lakewood ICE.

“ That's just very much how the skating world is. It's very small, you never know who you're going to run into at any time,” Ellis said. “ Could you imagine just being on the ice with a national champion and Olympic skater of any sort? It's just so inspiring for the kids to see that and be within the vicinity of that.”

And Liu wasn’t the only 2026 Olympic figure skater who's used the facility. Li Yu-Hsiang, the Taiwanese national champion who represented Chinese Taipei in Milan this year, also trains in Lakewood.

The rink’s coaches

The small world of skating means that even novice skaters can take classes from world-class skaters: 1976 Olympic silver medalist Dianne de Leeuw teaches there, as do national medalists (and future Olympic contenders) Starr Andrews and Josephine Lee.

 "To get to see them and to get to share ice with them just has a layer of magic that you can't replace and you can't get anywhere else,” Overett said. “ You see the turnover of generations, and it brings in a huge element of history.”

What Liu’s win means for the skating world

Ellis is already using Liu’s example to stress the importance of mental health to the kids and families she works with, like one parent who was worrying about her child taking two weeks off skating due to pneumonia.

“I was like, ‘Alysa Liu took two plus years off and she just won the Olympic gold. Do not worry about it this two weeks,’” she said.

A bipartisan bill aimed at protecting pets during disasters has been introduced in Congress, with a Southern California representative citing the rescue efforts of local organizations during last year’s L.A.-area fires.

The PETSAFE Act of 2026 — which stands for Providing Essential Temporary Shelter Assistance For Emergencies — would expand the use of emergency management funds so local governments can plan for evacuations that move animals to safety, as well as provide veterinary care and rescue equipment during disasters.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) helped introduce the bill earlier this month with several House of Representatives colleagues, including Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida and Democrat Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada.

Chu, who represents Pasadena and Altadena in the 28th Congressional District, said when the Eaton Fire tore through her district, many families delayed evacuations because they couldn’t bear to leave their pets behind.

She told LAist she’ll never forget seeing the cats, dogs and other animals with burned feet and singed fur who were being cared for by Pasadena Humane in the aftermath.

“But to think, if there is even one more thing we could do to keep our precious pets safe, wouldn't we want to do that?” Chu said. “So this PETSAFE Act could go a long way towards making sure that our loved pets can indeed survive a disaster.”

About the bill

Pasadena Humane teams looked for pets and wildlife in Eaton burn zones, dropping off food and water along the way.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

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The PETSAFE Act now has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The bill would amend the Emergency Management Performance Grant program to increase the federal cost share for certain animal-related preparedness activities from 50% to 90%.

Supporters say this would lower barriers and make it more affordable for communities to roll out emergency protection plans for people and pets.

Specifically, the PETSAFE Act would allow state, local and tribal governments to use grant money awarded by FEMA toward pet supplies, crates, veterinary equipment, emergency generators and training, among others.

Pet owners whose homes are under disaster-related evacuation orders can be faced with an “impossible choice” — leaving their pets behind or staying home with them, which risks the owner’s own safety and complicates rescue efforts for first responders, according to Chu’s office.

The bill aims to address the challenges pet owners and first responders face without authorizing new federal spending, according to Mast’s office.

How we got here 

Chu said local shelters, including Pasadena Humane, and communities across California stepped up to care for all kinds of animals during the Eaton Fire, which ignited in January 2025.

Pasadena Humane helped more than 1,500 pets and wildlife during the fire and in the aftermath by providing shelter, medical care and emergency resources.

A horse was housed in the organization’s garage when Chris Ramon, Pasadena Humane’s president and CEO, ran into its owner walking down Raymond Avenue for miles.

“Part of me likes to think that this won’t happen again,” Ramon told LAist last month. “But the realist in me realizes … disaster preparedness is something that just is an ongoing conversation for us at Pasadena Humane.”

Chu also cited the work of the ASPCA, which helped more than 530 animals during the Eaton Fire, including goats, parakeets, pigs and a gecko, according to the organization.

She said local organizations did “tremendous” work and “lovingly cared for” the rush of animals affected by the fire.

“But what we would want to do is to make sure that there is an even better system for animal evacuation and ways to ensure that pets could be safe,” Chu said, adding that would relieve the burden on places like Pasadena Humane.

Other laws aiming to protect pets

This is not the first time last year’s fires have led to new legislation focused on protecting pets during emergencies.

A new state law known as the FOUND Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, was inspired by Oreo the Pomeranian, who reunited with its Pacific Palisades owner in an emotional, viral video during the Palisades Fire.

The law requires cities and counties to include procedures for rescuing pets during mandatory evacuations in their next emergency plans, which need to be updated every five years to qualify for FEMA assistance.