Susan Stamberg, an original National Public Radio staffer who went on to become the first U.S. woman to anchor a nightly national news program, died Thursdayat the age of 87.
Public media legacy: Stamberg was born Susan Levitt in Newark, New Jersey in September 1938 and was raised and educated on Manhattan's Upper West Side. After graduating from Barnard College, she took a job at WAMU, the public radio station. She made her on-air debut when the weather girl (as the job was then called) got sick. in English literature while living at home. After joining NPR, Stamberg rose quickly from producer to anchor of All Things Considered in 1972. After 14 years, Stamberg shifted to hosting Weekend Edition Sunday, which afforded her the chance to keep doing the kind of coverage she wanted, given NPR's evolution into an increasingly formal news organization. She retired in September.
Founding mother: Few figures have informed the sensibility of NPR more than Stamberg. Colleagues considered her a mentor, a yenta, a founding mother — always tough, and always true to herself. Stamberg's stories and segments over the decades spanned the human experience, from examining matters of state to illuminating pointillist details of artistic achievement. She would be recognized by her peers with honors from the National Radio Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and more.
Susan Stamberg, an original National Public Radio staffer who went on to become the first U.S. woman to anchor a nightly national news program, died Thursdayat the age of 87.
Few figures have informed the sensibility of NPR more than Stamberg. Colleagues considered her a mentor, a yenta, a founding mother — always tough, and always true to herself.
Stamberg is survived by her son, the actor Josh Stamberg, and her granddaughters Vivian and Lena.
NPR host Scott Simon contended she was the first real human being to host a regular evening newscast. Stamberg even knit while sitting in front of the microphone at All Things Considered.
Stamberg's stories and segments over the decades spanned the human experience, from examining matters of state to illuminating pointillist details of artistic achievement. She would be recognized by her peers with honors from the National Radio Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and more. She retired in September.
Such a reception was not guaranteed when NPR hired Stamberg before its broadcast debut more than five decades ago. She originally was assigned to cut audio tape — it was literally tape back then — with a single-sided razor blade.
Women didn't yet have a clear place in broadcast journalism, finding themselves sidelined and dismissed at major television networks and even in radio.
At the outset, Stamberg and another of NPR's "founding mothers," Linda Wertheimer, insisted they deserved to have an office. They shared a room with photocopiers.
"Susan and I disagreed about politics," Wertheimer recalled. "That is to say: I thought it was fantastically interesting. All I wanted to do was cover politics. She thought it was the most boring thing imaginable. She couldn't think why anyone would want to do that."
Instead, Stamberg interviewed the jazz great Dave Brubeck at her own home, a yellowing copy of a song's score clipped out of an old musical magazine atop her piano for him to play from.
She called the dentist of then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter to learn more about his notably toothy smile.
And Stamberg famously shared her mother-in-law's recipe for cranberry sauce — she insisted on calling it cranberry relish — with millions of listeners year after year. She inflicted it on such on-air guests as White House chefs, the former editor of Gourmet magazine and the rapper Coolio.
A big break comes by dialing the weather
Stamberg was born Susan Levitt in Newark, New Jersey in September 1938 and was raised and educated on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
She was an only child — and the first in her family to go to college, earning a degree from Barnard College in English literature while living at home.
She met Louis Stamberg while working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Once married, they moved to Washington D.C. He went on to have a long career with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
She took a job at WAMU, the public radio station. She made her on-air debut when the weather girl (as the job was then called) got sick.
"It was very sophisticated," Stamberg told an interviewer for the Jewish Women's Archive in 2011. "You picked up the phone and dialed WE 6-1212. And they told you what the weather was and you wrote it down. We didn't have meteorologists, there were no computers, and there were no windows in the studio."
Yet when it came time for Stamberg to speak in front of the microphone for the first time, she realized she had forgotten to make that call. So she said the first thing that came to mind: It was 98 degrees.
The problem: it was February.
"We had probably two listeners. Neither of them called," she said. "But it taught me enormously important lessons: Always prepare. You don't go on the air unprepared. And don't lie to your listeners even if they never hear you and they never call."
Stamberg continued to recite the weather on WAMU, but found it rather boring. To spice things up — for both herself and her listeners — she added a few lines of weather-appropriate poetry to each report, drawing on her English literature degree.
When Louis Stamberg headed to India for a two-year stint, Susan worked for the wife of the American ambassador there and filed stories for Voice of America, the U.S.-backed international broadcaster.
'Be yourself'
After joining NPR, Stamberg rose quickly from producer to anchor of All Things Considered in 1972. The first journalists hired at NPR were feeling their way, she said, and that was doubly true for women.
"There were no role models, there were these men, these deep-voiced announcers, and they were the authoritative ones," Stamberg recalled years later. "So I lowered my voice" — here her raspy voice descended what seemed like two octaves — "and I talked like this."
She said Bill Siemering, NPR's first program director, showed courage by putting her behind the microphone.
"He said two magical words to me very early on," she said. "He said, 'Be yourself.' And what he meant was, we want to hear from — we want to hear voices on our air that we'd hear across our dinner tables at night or at the local grocery store. And we want our announcers and our anchor people to sound that way, too."
Her colleague Jack Mitchell, the initial producer of All Things Considered, said sexism wasn't the only obstacle that Stamberg had to surmount.
"Besides being a woman, the Jewish element was another aspect," Mitchell said. "Here is somebody whose name is Stamberg. She had an obvious New York accent. Made no bones about it."
Mitchell said that did not play well with NPR board members from stations in the Midwest.
"They, for instance, said, 'too New York.' And the president of NPR asked that I not put her in there for those — because of the complaints from managers," Mitchell said. "We did it anyway and he was very supportive afterwards."
The Wint-O-Green science experiment
Wertheimer, Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts — the other founding mothers of NPR — all made their careers covering various facets of federal Washington. Stamberg was a few years older and she followed a decidedly different path, holding All Things Considered true to its name.
"I say let's go into the closet and find out," Flatow teased her in a segment that has been handed down as lore for decades inside NPR.
Stamberg laughed. "I'm game if you're game."
"I saw it!" She triumphantly called out from the storage closet where Flatow was crunching down on a mint. "I saw a flash of, kind of, a greenish light just for a fraction of a second."
NPR's Susan Stamberg was honored with a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles on March 3, 2020.
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After 14 years, Stamberg shifted to hosting Weekend Edition Sunday, which afforded her the chance to keep doing the kind of coverage she wanted, given NPR's evolution into an increasingly formal news organization.
In 1987, she used her platform to launch an NPR institution: the Sunday puzzle.
"Her idea was that Weekend Edition Sunday should be the radio equivalent of a Sunday newspaper. You get your news and culture and sports and everything," NPR Puzzle Master Will Shortz recalled on that show years later. "We all know what's the most important part of the Sunday paper. And it's the puzzle."
That same year, Stamberg invited a pair of brothers who were mechanics, Ray and Tom Magliozzi, to talk about cars in a weekly segment inspired by their gig on Boston's WBUR. Nine months later, they had their own national show on NPR. Others claimed credit for first hearing their promise; she put Car Talk on the air.
Probing both famous directors and never-seen actors
She saw cultural journalism as a respite from news, but also brought a seriousness of purpose to it. She believed listeners' relationship with culture, high and low, defined how they experienced the world around them. Such matters were neither trivial nor flighty.
When the famous film director Elia Kazan appeared in 1988 to promote his memoir, she leaned into the surrounding controversy. Decades earlier, in testimony before a Congressional committee known as HUAC — the House Un-American Activities Committee — Kazan named people in Hollywood he believed to be Communists. Such actions often prompted people to be pressured to recant their beliefs or face blacklisting. They also sparked intense debate.
Stamberg didn't duck the controversy; she led with it.
"There are 40 pages in the book [about HUAC], and that's all there is," Kazan complained. "And every interview that comes out, that's the most important thing, and I'm tired of it."
Stamberg persisted and on it went for quite some time.
"It was a very intense experience," Stamberg recalled decades later. "We were not face to face. He was in our New York studio and I was in Washington.
"When I left the studio, I said to the person who was going to edit that tape, 'Leave that argument in and we'll start with it.' And I've often asked myself: if it had been a face-to-face interview, would I have been able to be that persistent — and stayed with it? I bet not."
Stamberg yielded the weekend host's chair after just a couple of years, choosing instead to roam around as a special correspondent in search of sound-rich stories about culture.
After her husband died in 2007, Stamberg spent more time at NPR West as her son Josh built a career as an actor in California.
Stamberg profiled the hidden hands of Hollywood each year during Oscar season. In March 2015, for example, she looked at loopers, the voice actors brought in after a TV show or film is finished to add background texture to the sound of a scene.
"What about the part of never being seen?" Stamberg asked looper David Randolph. "You're neither seen nor heard, really. You're sort of background mumble."
"We believe that what we do is really important. And it's collaborative. Every part of this industry has lots and lots of layers," Randolph replied.
Stamberg had her own layers, leaving a legacy both as an unabashed truth teller and a spinner of stories. More tangibly, she leaves an irreplaceable mark on NPR's headquarters in Washington: Her recorded voice welcomes those who enter the elevators, announcing each floor.
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The backstory: Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans. The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Lack of evidence: In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents. In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network."
In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.
The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.
The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.
The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."
In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.
In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."
On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.
NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.
Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"
Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.
"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."
Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.
The U.K. cases are focused on corruption
In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.
After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.
Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.
Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases
Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.
McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.
Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.
Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.
Other potential charges are also a difficult path
Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."
But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."
"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."
But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.
Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.
The current evidence lacks context
Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.
Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.
One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.
Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.
"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified: Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
Underidentifed students: Researchers also found that the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness
Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.
Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.
The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.
Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.
As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.
There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:
Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
A third of homeless students were in high school
Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates
While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.
The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.
“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.
School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.
That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.
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Updated April 3, 2026 3:36 PM
Published April 3, 2026 1:59 PM
The Spring Fire around 11 a.m. in east Moreno Valley.
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Alert California
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UC San Diego
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Topline:
Multiple evacuation orders are in place for residents near the Spring Fire burning east of Moreno Valley in Riverside County. The fire was first reported around 11 a.m.
Multiple evacuation orders are in place for residents near the Spring Fire burning in east of Moreno Valley in Riverside County. The fire was first reported around 11 a.m.
As of this afternoon, the fire has reached over 2,800 acres.
West of the Spring, a separate bush fire near Acton also began Friday afternoon. The Crown Fire has burned 280 acres and is 20% contained.
Evacuation orders have been issued by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for the following areas:
MOE-0507
MOE-0747
MOE-0745
MOE-0641
MOE-0746
MOE-0744
RVC-0748
RVC-0826
RVC-0825
Evacuation warnings
Authorities say those who require additional time to evacuate and those with pets and livestock should leave immediately.
MOE-0504
MOE-0505
MOE-0506
MOE-0633
MOE-0636
MOE-0637
MOE-0638
MOE-0639
MOE-0640
MOE-0743
MOE-0822
MOE-0823
Evacuation shelters
Valley View High School 13135 Nason St. Moreno Valley, 92555
Animal Shelter
San Jacinto Animal Shelter 581 S. Grand Ave. San Jacinto 92582
Road closures
Gilman Springs Road is closed from Alessandro Road to Bridge Street, according to Cal Fire.
What we know so far
The Spring Fire was first reported around 11 a.m. Friday near Gilman Springs Road as a 5-acre fire that grew to 1,000 acres by 1:45 p.m.
VEGETATION FIRE - rpt @ 10:59AM. 15900 block Gilman Springs Road, east of Moreno Valley. Firefighters are on-scene of 5-6 acres burning in light flashy fuels. Gilman Springs Road is closed from Alessandro Road to Bridge Street. #SpringsIC@RivCoNowpic.twitter.com/KsTOq4QxM5
— CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire Department (@CALFIRERRU) April 3, 2026
Conditions are fairly windy and dry in that area, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts reached 20 to 30 mph from the east.The Santa Ana wind event is expected to last into tomorrow.
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The president’s budget request released Friday didn’t provide a dime of the $2 billion the countywide transportation agency seeks.
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Topline:
The Trump administration did not include funding in its federal budget proposal for Los Angeles Metro’s key plan to use thousands of buses to transport fans to scattered venues hosting the 2028 Games.
The plan: Metro plans to essentially double its bus fleet for the 2028 Games by temporarily acquiring, operating and storing nearly 1,750 additional buses for spectators. The agency says that will cost about $1 billion. The remainder of the $2 billion appropriations request would be for pedestrian improvements and designing a network of roads for Games vehicles, among other uses.
Final opportunity? California Democratic congressional representatives have repeatedly appealed to the Trump administration to provide funding for Metro. In their latest letter from February, they said this budget process is the “final opportunity” to secure Metro’s funding request.
Read on … for more details on Metro’s plan, how buses were used in the 1984 Olympics.
The Trump administration did not include funding in its federal budget proposal for Los Angeles Metro’s key plan to use thousands of buses to transport fans to scattered venues hosting the 2028 Games.
L.A. Metro’s Board and California Democrats have repeatedly appealed to the administration to provide federal dollars for the region’s "transit-first" Games. The president’s budget request released Friday didn’t provide a dime of the $2 billion the countywide transportation agency is seeking.
The 92-page document is a signal of the administration’s priorities for the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Ultimately, the U.S. Congress decides how federal dollars are spent.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who represents Culver City and parts of Los Angeles, wrote a letter with her California Democratic colleagues to the administration in February calling this budget process the “final opportunity” to secure Metro’s funding request.
U.S. Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove is one of the California Democrats leading advocacy in Washington, D.C., to secure L.A. Metro's $2 billion federal funding request.
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Assembleymember Sydney Kamlager Facebook Page
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In a statement to LAist, Kamlager-Dove said she was “incredibly disappointed” that Metro was excluded in the president’s budget request.
“At the end of the day, Congress has the power to appropriate money,” she said. “Despite the president’s lack of foresight, I will continue to advocate to ensure this funding is included so L.A. Metro has what they need to succeed.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar, who has a seat on the Congressional subcommittee overseeing federal transportation appropriations, said President Donald Trump has talked about the Olympics “time and time again,” pointing to the most recent State of the Union as an example.
“Our charge is to ensure that they adequately fund this and that they put the resources behind it so they aren't just using it as a talking point, but they're actually leaning in,” Aguilar told LAist in an interview before the president’s proposed budget request was released.
What would the money be used for?
Metro plans to essentially double its bus fleet for the 2028 Games by temporarily acquiring, operating and storing nearly 1,750 additional buses for spectators. The agency says that will cost about $1 billion. The remainder of the appropriations request would be for pedestrian improvements and designing a network of roads for Games vehicles, among other uses.
Seleta Reynolds, Metro’s chief of innovation and Games mobility planning, said at a January Metro Board meeting that finding and preparing the real estate where the buses will be staged involves a lead time of two years, meaning the agency would need a “chunk of funding available by this summer.”
Initially, Metro had asked for $3.2 billion to support a plan to temporarily use 2,700 buses. Metro reduced the estimate for the number of buses needed after LA28, the Games organizing committee, refined the venues and schedule for events.
That reduction, plus other federal funding that Metro has received to partially support station and light rail improvements, brought the total amount of money in the federal appropriations request down to $2 billion, the countywide transportation agency said.
“Without the full level of funding requested, the complete scope of the [Games Enhanced Transit System] would not be feasible, as the cost of operating this temporary system exceeds Metro’s available operating resources,” the agency said in its statement.
Jacie Prieto Lopez, a spokesperson for LA28, told LAist in a statement before the president released his budget request that the organizing committee was supporting partners in Congress and the administration, who are leading the budget and appropriations process.
"With the full support of federal transit money for the games, we can collectively create a positive commuting experience," Prieto Lopez said.
Success with buses during LA84
A bus system similar to the one Metro is planning for 2028 was critical to the success of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Metro's predecessor, Southern California Rapid Transit District, deployed 550 additional buses, hundreds of new drivers and 24 routes to move people around the city for the Olympics.
A view of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the closing ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics, Los Angeles, 12th August 1984.
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In the run-up to those Games, one California Highway Patrol official warned the L.A. Times that congestion around the L.A. Memorial Coliseum would be so extreme that drivers would abandon their cars on the freeway. Headlines warned of "traffic woes."
Rich Perelman, who led press operations for the 1984 Olympics and edited the official report on the Games, told LAist that in 1984, no public funds were used for the additional bus fleet. Bus tickets and some donations and corporate sponsorships covered the cost.
Perelman said organizers pulled off the bus system by staying focused on the areas where parking was sparse, such as the Coliseum. According to the official report, nearly 80% of rides on the bus system were to Exposition Park.
" It was a transit-smart approach," Perelman said. " If there was plenty of parking, we didn't say you have to take the bus. We didn't make any nonsensical claims of 'no-car Games' or 'transit only Games.’"
Security funding from the federal government
Transportation funding is just one bucket that the federal government is expected to contribute for the Olympics.
The budget released by the Trump administration Friday contained major increases for the Department of Homeland Security, including some linked to Olympics preparations. It asks for additional funding for the FBI and Secret Service, which leads security planning for the Games.
But exactly how that money will be distributed has yet to be determined — and L.A. politicians have expressed concern that the funds may come with strings attached that the city of L.A. will find hard to swallow.
It's also possible that money could face delays that could disrupt Olympics planning. The federal government was late in awarding hundreds of millions of dollars that it promised for security for the World Cup this year — a delay the Trump administration attributed to the Homeland Security shutdown.
