The Brief

July 14th marked five years out from the opening ceremony for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in L.A. Planning is begin to ramp up, as the city anticipates an influx of thousands of spectators and athletes from around the world.

LAist's public affairs show AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM, talked with local officials and experts familiar with the preparations about what's in the works, what's expected to be done when, and how we'll gracefully press pause on many of these massive projects for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Transportation

Los Angeles CA March 27

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Los Angeles is known for many things, but zippy and convenient public transportation isn't one of them. The 2028 Olympics Games may help change that. The Olympics often offer host cities the opportunity to work on and prioritize long-standing projects that may not otherwise have the necessary public support or financing.

Seleta Reynolds, chief officer of Strategic Innovation at L.A. Metro, is overseeing the agency's Olympic efforts and she hopes these large projects will get a much-needed surge in support as the games approach. One of those projects is the Purple Line out to UCLA, where most—if not all—the athletes will be housed. The airport connector is another one.

"Those are going to be game changers," Reynolds tells us.

The region will be transformed, transportation experts like Reynolds say. "With or without the games, the voters endorsed [these projects] as part of measure M," Reynolds said about some of the current construction already taking place in the city. L.A. is also hosting the 2026 World Cup, and Reynolds said the city will have to "gracefully keep our construction projects moving" while also making sure spectators have a great experience at that event.

The Olympics is a car-free event, Reynolds notes. City transportation officials have their work cut out for them.

Economics

Historically, most Olympic host cities don't turn a profit, and instead end up in debt with a glut of empty venues that have little purpose beyond hosting Olympic events. After the 1984 Summer Games, however, Los Angeles had a surplus of $230 million. This was unprecedented and may have been one of the deciding factors that helped the city win its bid for the 2028 games.

"The economic opportunity is immense," said Dean Baim, an economics professor at Pepperdine University. Baim, who has studied the impact of sporting venues and written about the financial impact of Olympics on host cities, warns of the common pitfall — a misstep in construction leading to large and unexpected expenditures. Fortunately for L.A., most of the sporting venues already exist and just need to be updated.

In the case of L.A., Baim says, the economic prospects might outweigh the downsides. The Olympics could pump money into the local economy and be a huge win for the hard-hit mom-and-pop stores that squandered during the pandemic. The job opportunities will be plentiful as well, he says.

Housing

Homelessness is far and away the biggest issue of concern for Angelenos, and is one that will only become more urgent the closer we creep to the games. So, how will the city house tens of thousands of people in five years? It's a question local officials are still working on answering.

"Remember that we all have to be a part of the solution. It's all hands on deck," Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said. Wraparound services are necessary to prevent people from returning to homelessness, she says. State and federal funding are expected to help with job training. Solis said it's also important to expunge people's records, making it easier for them to find and keep work.

As for event housing, athletes will be at UCLA, which has spent a lot of money upgrading the dorms. Housing athletics has historically been one of the biggest price tags of the Olympic Games. Los Angeles is fortunate to have housing available. Media will be housed at USC, along with other officials.

Venues

The 1984 Summer Olympics was the most viewed event in television history at the time, with more than 180 million Americans tuning in to watch. At the time, L.A.'s Memorial Coliseum was the most fit location for the opening and closing ceremonies. It was the focal point for athletic events as well.

Runners in the Men's 3,000 meter steeplechase final compete on August 6, 1984 during the Track and Field competition of the 1984 Olympic Games at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Visible at left wearing red is Brian Diemer of the USA, the eventual bronze medalist; Julius Kariuki of Kenya is at center right, wearing red shorts and red shoes; Joseph Mahmoud of France is at center rear midair above torch.

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This next Olympics has more options for venues. SoFi Stadium will take on the bookend ceremonies, but not entirely. The Inglewood-based arena will kickoff the opening ceremony and the torch will make its way to the Coliseum in a nod to the 1984 Games.

Other local venues will include the Kia Forum, where we'll see several gymnastics disciplines like trampoline and artistic gymnastics, the Honda Center in Anaheim, which will host volleyball, and the Rose Bowl, which will be the home of the final rounds of the soccer tournament (BMO Stadium, where LAFC plays, will host the preliminaries).

Arts and culture

In 1984, L.A. was eager to transform its image, and its infrastructure, from laid-back surfer town with heavy congestion to world-class economic and cultural epicenter with state-of-the-art facilities and venues. Fortunately for the city and its residents, it did just that.

The legacy of the '84 Summer Games continues to this day in many ways, maybe most visibly in the LA84 Foundation, which administers the surplus money generated by the 1984 games and distributes it in the form of grants to non-profit youth sports organizations. Its success resonated for years and decades beyond its summer hosting responsibilities. Now, cultural ambassadors, economists and city planners are eager to build on that success.

"We want to pick up what we learned from the 1984 Olympics, because there were so many cultural activities," said Solis, who authored a motion this past May to uplift arts, culture, and recreation during the '28 summer Olympic Games.

While L.A. City is the official host of the games, Solis says she understands that the county also has a great opportunity to buttress neighborhoods and communities, and her hope is that L.A. Metro and L.A. County can integrate their efforts. "This work really needs to happen now, even five years out from the Olympics."

A mural reveals the new LA28 logo, with the "A" designed by Orlando Pride player Alex Morgan, at the Delano Recreation Center on September 01, 2020 in Van Nuys.

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Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, agrees on the need to build on the successful history of the 1984 games. From a policy perspective, arts and culture are core to our economy, she reminds us. The games, she said, are "an opportunity to increase and celebrate our local cultural diversity that speaks to the world."

The 1984 Olympics pulled off an arts festival that brought communities together throughout the county. Solis and Sakoda are working to make the '28 games reflect the rich and diverse ecosystem of arts in L.A., that visitors from around the world might not otherwise see and experience. They remind us too, that no single arts entity can pull this off alone, and that it will take a phenomenal amount of planning and collaboration, which is in its nascent stages.

The International Olympic Committee does periodic check-ins with every host city, typically done in person to get a real-time sense of the progress. L.A.'s next meeting has been planned on Zoom, which local officials say suggests things are going well.

While five years might seem far away, in Olympic years it's right around the corner.

Listen to the conversation

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

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