The Brief

The 2028 Olympics are coming to Los Angeles as a multi-billion dollar operation funded by massive private and federal government investments and backed by city and state pledges to cover cost overruns.

The current privately funded budget for the Games is more than $7 billion. The federal government has agreed to chip in $1 billion to pay for security and is being asked to contribute another $2 billion to pay for Games-specific transit plans.

But the city of L.A.'s financial exposure is essentially unlimited. The city is on the hook for the first $270 million in losses, if they occur. The California Legislature has agreed to make statewide taxpayers pick up the next $270 million. After that, any additional financial burden will fall on Los Angeles taxpayers.

L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson told LAist that he doesn't think such overruns will happen but acknowledged it was "a risky proposition" for the city. 

"There's a lot of things that can go wrong," he said.

What financial costs have other cities faced?

The last time L.A. hosted in 1984, the Olympics did turn a profit. But that was a rare feat. Many host cities have been left with costly bills. Still, L.A. agreed to be the financial guarantor of the 2028 Games in order to clinch the Olympic bid. 

A general view of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum stadium during the 1984 Olympic Games.

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In 2016, Rio de Janeiro became a poster child for the failed promises of the Olympics after the Games ended with crushing debt and derelict infrastructure. Then, Tokyo's expenses spiked when the 2020 Games were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those games cost $13 billion — and Japanese taxpayers covered more than half of that, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Unlike other recent host cities, organizers of the Paris Games announced in June that they had a budget surplus.

The Paris Games were cheaper than recent summer Olympics, according to Victor Matheson, a professor at College of the Holy Cross who studies the economics of the Olympics. He attributed this, in part, to reforms implemented by the International Olympic Committee to help keep costs down, including by encouraging host cities to use existing venues rather than building elaborate new facilities. Paris also had plenty of capacity for tourists already.

That's the strategy L.A. is banking on to deliver a financially successful Olympics. The 2028 competition will take advantage of the region's glut of already-existing hotels and venues, from Dodger Stadium to the Rose Bowl to Crypto Arena to SoFi Stadium.

How billions in Olympic costs could hit taxpayer wallets

"We have an advantage over every other city in the world, and that is the existence of the venues and the facilities that we have here," said Paul Krekorian, the former L.A. councilmember who now leads the city's major events office, at a recent Olympic event in Venice Beach.

What protections are in place for L.A.?

L.A. may be hosting the Games, and backing them if costs run over, but the city isn't the one running the show. The event itself is privately planned and intended to be largely privately financed. That effort is led by the nonprofit LA28, a group led by sports agent and entertainment mogul Casey Wasserman. In its latest annual report, LA28 outlined a more than $7.1 billion budget to deliver the games.

The International Olympic Committee, the organization that oversees all Olympic Games, is kicking in around $1.39 billion. After that, LA28 expects to raise the money it needs to run the games from corporate sponsorships, ticket sales and licensing. 

LA28 officials say they are confident in their progress. But there are also some safeguards in place for Los Angeles in case there are overruns. The city's agreement with LA28 requires the organizers to establish a $270 million contingency fund that the city will control. LA28's latest budget includes an overall contingency of $613.5 million, which includes the city's portion.

The organizers are also required to take out a number of insurance policies, including to protect against event cancelation, natural disasters, terrorism, and other potential calamities. Not all of the insurance plans are in place yet, and it's unclear if they will offer enough coverage to fully protect the city.

At an L.A. City Council meeting last week, LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said the Olympics are on track financially.

"We continue to feel very optimistic about our path forward," he told the council, referencing recent corporate partnerships with Google, Starbucks and an electric bus company to transport athletes and Olympics staff.

LA28 has an overall goal of raising $2.5 billion in domestic sponsorships to help fund its budget. Hoover, told the council that LA28 had so far raised about $1.7 billion of that — a figure he said was more money than Paris raised ahead of 2024.

Can the city of L.A. control costs?

The city has only limited ability to intervene in LA28's decision-making.

Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. County supervisor who was on the City Council when it negotiated the 1984 Olympic Games, told LAist that the city doesn't have much legal leverage to dictate Olympics planning. Its main point of influence is political.

"The only leverage the city has is the bully pulpit," Yaroslavsky said. "City Hall and the LA28 committee have their reputations on the line."

L.A. City Council greenlit re-locating Olympic diving from Exposition Park to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

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In terms of legal leverage, the city's contract with LA28 requires that city appointees comprise at least one-sixth of its board of directors. In addition, LA28 gave the city council veto power over decisions to move a venue outside of the city. This summer, the city council greenlit LA28's plan to move Olympic diving from Exposition Park to the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, when LA28 organizers said that change would save millions of dollars.

The city is also currently negotiating with LA28 to define what extra city resources Olympics organizers will need to pay for, such as additional police officers on the streets. That was supposed to be completed by Oct. 1, but the two sides haven't come to an agreement yet.

What role will the federal government play?

One factor outside of both LA28 and City Hall's control is President Donald Trump. The president has named himself the head of a federal Olympics task force and allocated $1 billion in federal funds for Olympics security. How those funds will be spent remains to be seen, but some of it is expected to flow to local and state law enforcement agencies. Hoover told the city council last week that LA28 is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on how that money will be dispersed.

At the council meeting, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield asked Hoover, LA28's CEO, to have a back-up plan in case federal funds don't come through, or are withheld.

"What I'm concerned about is while they're being cooperative now, at some point they're gonna do what they've done with funding to universities and others. And they're going to create a condition that we cannot meet," Blumenfield said of the federal government. "What protections do we have in place to protect us against that kind of last minute extortion?"

Hoover responded saying that no one at the White House or in the federal government has put a condition on support for the Games so far.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a task force on security and other issues related to the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

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"Now, what the administration will do later, I wouldn't sit here and be able to say or predict what they would do," he said.

Another big ticket item organizers are expecting the federal government to cover is a giant fleet of additional buses to transport fans during the Games. Those buses will be key to hosting the mega-event, which will span three counties in Southern California. Metro is seeking more than $2 billion for that project. 

A spokesperson for LA28 told LAist that the federal government provided financial support for bus programs for the 1996 and 2002 Olympic Games, in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

"Our public agency partners are requesting similar support for 2028," Jacie Prieto Lopez, LA28's Vice President of Communications said in an email. She also said that LA28 had a "positive partnership" with the federal government. 

How will the Convention Center factor into costs?

One city project that could throw a wrench in L.A.'s Olympic plans is the controversial $2.6 billion expansion of the downtown Los Angeles Convention Center that the City Council approved in September. The plans include connecting the West and South halls and adding an estimated 325,000 square feet of space. 

That project, which is not expected to be finished until 2029, broke ground last month. But the Convention Center is slated to host a handful of Olympic competitions come 2028. 

Construction will need to pause and restart for the Games, according to a report from the city administrative officer. 

L.A. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the budget and finance committee, estimated that pausing and restarting construction would cost the city $30 million. She voted against the expansion project.

If construction gets in the way of Olympics planning, organizers would have to find somewhere else to host a number of sports, including fencing, taekwondo and table tennis.

Ted Rohrlich, Kavish Harjai and Frank Stoltze contributed to this story.

The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.

LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.

“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”

Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.

LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.

At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.

“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.

On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.

Federal funds at risk

LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.

“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”

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

What went wrong 

Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.

Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.

He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.

LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.

Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.

“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”

O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.

“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.

Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.

A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.

The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.

"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.

Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.

The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.

In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.

NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.

How the executive order seeks to change voting

Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.

The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.

It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."

The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.

The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.

Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.

"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."

The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.

That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.

The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.

The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.

In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.

The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.

More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.

The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

The program is for businesses in Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park.

Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open. 

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

Who is eligible?

The program is open to independently owned businesses and street vendors located within District 1.

To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Businesses that changed owners can also apply if they’re essentially running the same operation.

How can the money be used?

Grants can be used for daily operational expenses, including rent, payroll, utilities, overhead and other business costs. Roochnik said the funding could also help businesses cover missed rent payments.

Who is running the program?

The grants will be distributed in partnership with the PACE Business Development Center and New Economics for Women. The two organizations provide support to small and immigrant-owned businesses across Los Angeles.

How will recipients be selected?

Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out, Roochnik said. 

What’s the goal?

Hernandez said the program is meant to help stabilize neighborhoods that have been affected by immigration enforcement and economic hardships.

“These small businesses are the backbone of our neighborhoods,” she said, adding the funding is meant to help them “stay open, keep workers employed, and continue serving our communities.”

Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, CD1 communications director, said the announcement was made during a press conference at Delicias Bakery and Some, a longtime Latina-owned business in Highland Park. The neighborhood has experienced significant rising rents due to gentrification and the location was meant to highlight the kinds of businesses the program is meant to support.

How to apply:

To apply, small businesses and vendors can complete the application at bit.ly/cd1smallbizsupport.

Is this a one-time program or part of a larger effort?

The grant is part of a pilot program, with the possibility of it expanding depending on demand and outcomes. The council office has launched similar aid efforts in the past, Roochnik said, such as food distribution and rental assistance. 

Businesses that may not qualify for this specific grant can be connected to other resources, according to Roochnik, including the city’s legacy business program, which is for businesses operating for at least 20 years. 

The post Small businesses, vendors struggling against ICE raids, economic uncertainty eligible for up to $10,000 in grants appeared first on LA Local.