The Brief

One year into President Donald Trump’s second term, Californians who voted for him are mostly happy with how his policies have played out so far.

Trump’s support among California Republicans has slipped to 79%, down from 84% near the start of his term, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released last month.

The survey found that Californians name the cost of living and the economy as the most important issues facing the state today. Those concerns also dominated follow-up conversations KQED had with voters first interviewed 100 days into Trump’s second administration. From Southern California and the Central Valley to the North Coast, seven voters offer a mixed review of Trump’s performance.

They weigh in on a range of issues, including sweeping tariffs, immigration raids, National Guard deployments and a redistricting battle. While there is general support for his “America First” platform, they are divided on whether the president’s actions fulfill that mandate. Several also criticized Trump’s rhetoric and tone.

Emerson Green, 26, El Dorado County

Of all of his expectations for Trump’s second term, Emerson Green had been most optimistic that the president would improve the economy. Instead, he said he’s deeply disappointed and believes Trump let him down.

“I wish I never voted for him,” Green said. “It’s not that he lied or he didn’t hold up his promise. It is that he did the exact opposite, with intent, of what he promised he was going to do.”

Since Trump returned to the White House, Green got engaged and is expecting a baby in May. The 26-year-old now works at O’Reilly Auto Parts after changing jobs twice last year. He said he’s noticed the cost of some car parts rising because of tariffs, though not as dramatically as he expected when Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs last April.

Emerson Green sits during a hike in Adams Canyon, Utah, on May 4, 2025.

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Courtesy of Emerson Green

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He’s also noticed everyday expenses like groceries and medication becoming more expensive and has begun to see home ownership as nearly unattainable.

“The idea of owning a house at this point in my life seems like something that is, if I even do it, it might be 30 years out at this point,” Green said. “It’s probably as bleak as it gets for young people these days … and [Trump] has done nothing to improve that.”

Last year, Green’s mom received an offer letter for a job with the Internal Revenue Service, but when Trump issued a government hiring freeze, her offer was rescinded. It took her a couple of months to find another job, and she now works in funeral insurance sales.

“She is really struggling to make ends meet,” Green said.

Beyond his dissatisfaction with the economy, Green is most critical of Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela, which he sees as veering away from the president’s pledge to prioritize America first. On Jan. 3, Trump ordered U.S. forces to seize President Nicolás Maduro in a stunning extraction that resulted in Venezuela’s leader facing federal charges in New York.

“I can’t see a strategic benefit to it at all,” Green said. “I do think he did it as, like, a stunt to boost his approval ratings.”

Green also faults Trump for repeatedly delaying the release of the Epstein files, then issuing heavily redacted documents despite vows on the campaign trail to declassify them.

“You may as well have red hands,” he said.

Ben Pino, 56, Los Angeles County

Following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis over the weekend, Ben Pino still stands behind the administration’s immigration tactics. The shooting marks the second killing this month of a Minneapolis resident during an operation after 37-year-old Renee Good was fatally shot in her car by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer earlier in January.

Pino believes Pretti and Good were “antagonizing the feds,” echoing statements made by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who said Pretti approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun and claimed, without evidence, that he attacked officers with intent to harm them.

Ben Pino in his neighborhood in Los Angeles County on May 7, 2025.

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Video footage shows Pretti holding a phone, with his concealed gun removed from his waistband by an agent, before he was shot.

“I think the loss of life is tragic. I think that those young people used poor judgment and got themselves killed,” Pino said. “I don’t understand the outrage, to be quite honest with you.”

Pino lives in the Diamond District in Los Angeles and works in Carson. He supported Trump’s decision to deploy thousands of California National Guard troops to Southern California, without the governor’s approval, to quell anti-ICE protests last summer.

“If you ask me, ICE needed some kind of protection because people were going nuts,” he said.

In December, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling barring Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Chicago without Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s permission.

“I’m a little bit surprised that they can take that kind of power away from the president of the United States. He is the ultimate leader of our country,” Pino said.

While he bristled at limits on the president’s authority at home, Pino praised Trump for exercising that power abroad by ordering a military incursion into Venezuela.

“I’ve never seen a president take an action like going into a foreign country, grabbing its Communist criminal leader and bringing them back to face trial,” Pino said. “It’s one of the most spectacular foreign policy events that I’ve seen any American president make in my lifetime.”

Pino, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba, hopes Trump will intervene there, too.

“As a Cuban American, I feel that direct U.S. intervention should happen if you want to protect something that’s that close to your shores,” he said.

One year in, Pino remains fully on board with the administration.

“I approve of everything he’s done so far,” he said. “I’m a bigger fan now than you found me last year.”

Kim Durham, 68, Sacramento County

Kim Durham is thankful to have Trump in office, but wants to see him temper his rhetoric.

“I think he shoots himself in the foot by saying things he doesn’t need to say,” she said. “Decorum could be utilized a little bit in public speaking.”

Immigration ranks among Durham’s top policy concerns, and she supports Trump’s rapid push to secure the southern border as well as his aggressive approach to deportations. Her daughter is a police officer, and Durham believes national media coverage has fueled hostility toward ICE that has spilled over to local law enforcement.

Kim Durham sits outside of an apartment she rents outside of Sacramento on May 6, 2025. 

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Beth LaBerge

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“It’s just infuriating to watch just regular people in uniforms … have to fight through angry mobs of cars,” she said.

In response to the killing of Pretti, Durham repeated Noem’s rhetoric, blaming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for not coordinating with ICE.

“If they’ve let ICE do the job that they’ve been called to do, this wouldn’t be happening,” she said.

Durham would not condemn the individual officers involved, saying that a final judgment should come from the courts.

“There’s no guarantee that individually every ICE agent is gonna act perfect,” she said. “So, I don’t believe as a whole ICE is wrong. Or even necessarily overreaching.”

Durham also backs Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, and said she wishes state leaders would cooperate with the president.

“There are some that say he’s a dictator. Well, no, he’s not a dictator — we voted him in,” she said. “I think it would all be a lot better if we didn’t resist the federal government and instead just got together and said, ‘Hey, I’m with you … Let’s sit down, work together and clean it up instead of fight it.’”

On health care, Durham said she’s glad to see the administration target Medicaid fraud. In July, Trump signed into law his sweeping policy bill, including an estimated $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts. Much of that reduction would come from new work requirements and additional paperwork demands that would shrink enrollment.

“I honestly believe if all the fraud could be cut out of Medicaid and Medicare, we would be in a surplus of money,” she said.

Durham also praised Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again initiatives, especially efforts to remove synthetic dyes from the food supply and curb ultra-processed foods, raising concerns about what her grandchild eats. She’s also in favor of his updated childhood vaccine schedule, calling the previous standard “ridiculous” and saying families need choices.

Cindy Cremona, 66, formerly San Diego County

When Cindy Cremona heard about Proposition 50, the November 2025 ballot measure approved by voters that redraws California’s congressional maps, she felt Republicans would never have a voice in the state.

“I think for many, people just felt that it was going to lock in California as a blue state forever and ever,” she said.

In September, Cremona moved from Encinitas, a coastal city in northern San Diego County, to Wellington, Florida. She had been considering the move since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019 and was even more compelled to leave during the pandemic, when she felt the state went too far with vaccine and mask mandates and lockdowns.

Cindy Cremona and her 12-year-old Andalusian horse, Durango, in San Marcos, California, on May 8, 2025. 

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Carolyne Corelis

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Last year, she reached her breaking point and decided to move, citing “the politics, the taxes, the over-regulation, the traffic, the overdevelopment.”

Cremona finds Florida’s housing costs and policies preferable to California’s. For instance, she took issue with last year’s passing of SB 79, which makes it easier to build apartment buildings near major public transit stops.

She’s optimistic about Trump’s housing proposals, including a recent pledge to target institutional investors who buy up single-family homes. Newsom echoed a similar stance toward corporate landlords in his State of the State address, a rare instance of political overlap between the Democratic governor and the president.

Looking ahead, Cremona expressed confidence in the president’s ability to deliver on other economic promises, like lower food and energy costs.

“I think 2026 is the year where we’ll see some of those policies borne out,” she said.

Debbie Pope, 60, Long Beach

Debbie Pope is deeply disillusioned with Trump’s first year back in office. At the beginning of 2025, she welcomed what she described as Trump’s “guns-a-blazing” return. But her view shifted in the second half of the year, following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and repeated delays in releasing the Epstein files.

“I saw a whole different view of Trump after that for some reason,” she said. “The biggest disappointment is the Epstein files. It’s just like, Trump, you’re in them. You’re in it.”

Debbie Pope in her Long Beach home on May 10, 2024.

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 (Courtesy of Debbie Pope)

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Pope voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, but before that, she was a Democrat and voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Her party switch was driven by a distaste for Hillary Clinton and Trump’s hardline stance on immigration, one of her top policy concerns.

The daughter of a Nicaraguan immigrant, Pope supports stricter border enforcement — and thinks Trump has failed to deliver on promises of mass deportations.

She wants to see the president focus on domestic issues, like ramping up deportations even more, rather than foreign military interventions in Venezuela and Iran.

“He’s veered off the America First train, I think,” she said. “So yeah, I’m a little disappointed in him.”

These days, Pope sees Trump as prioritizing the interests of billionaires over those of his constituents. She also points to his massive ballroom renovations and putting his name on the Kennedy Center as diversions from America First.

“Dude, we know you’re a narcissist, but really, you’re getting carried away,” she said.

Ron Dawson, 68, Eureka

Ron Dawson said he would give Trump’s performance in 2025 a B+. He feels his cost of living has improved since Trump took office, noting lower grocery and fuel prices. He still wants to see the president lower the federal deficit.

Dawson voted for Trump in 2024, but his preferred presidential candidate was Nikki Haley. He still favors the president over Kamala Harris.

Once a Democrat like his parents, Dawson said the last time he voted blue was for Bill Clinton in 1996. Since then, he’s felt like the Democratic Party has become elitist, prioritizing identity politics and social justice issues, which he said have “nothing to do with running a country.”

Before settling in Eureka six years ago, Dawson spent almost five decades in Southern California. He recalls working as a machinist in 1980 and losing the job to an immigrant.

“He could work cheaper than I would accept,” he said. “I have a problem with the system. The system I recognized way back then is really broken.”

Today, Dawson approves of Trump’s secure border platform.

Now living in far Northern California, Dawson is critical of Proposition 50 and the newly redrawn 2nd Congressional District. Previously stretching from Marin County to the Oregon border, the new boundaries push further inland to the Nevada border, pulling in Siskiyou, Modoc and Shasta counties.

“Our congressional representative, Jared Huffman — he already has a very, very large district and a lot of people say, like, you never see him, never hear from him,” Dawson said. “They didn’t stop and think, how does this one guy represent such a large area?”

Those concerns deepened following the recent death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican who represented rural Northern California for more than a decade.

Mari Barke, Orange County

Mari Barke, president of the Orange County Board of Education, has mostly positive things to say about the president.

“He puts our country first, which to me is critically important of somebody who is president,” she said.

Mari Barke, photographed at the California Policy Center in Irvine in 2024. 

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(Courtesy of Mari Barke)

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Above all, she aligns with Trump’s education agenda, like his executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and his push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from schools with DEI initiatives.

“I think it’s important to get rid of all the biases and just let people enter higher education based on merit,” Barke said, arguing that merit incentivizes students to work hard and reduces the likelihood of academic failure.

Barke is a staunch advocate for parental notification policies, which require school teachers and staff to notify parents if their child identifies as a gender other than what they were assigned at birth.

“I never think it’s a good idea to teach children to lie to their parents,” she said. “I think if a child is going through something like that, nothing is more important than having your parents’ love. I have a gay son who has a husband, and I love him to death, no matter who he is or what he decides.”

Despite her alignment with the administration, Barke occasionally finds fault with Trump’s delivery, suggesting he could behave “more presidential” so as not to offend people.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”