Here’s what a second Trump presidency could mean for Los Angeles

With former president Donald Trump set to return to the White House, state and local leaders in California say they’re determined to use their political office to resist his policies.

But what has Trump proposed to do on key issues facing Californians like housing, the environment, health care and the border? And what could local leaders do in overwhelmingly Democratic cities like Los Angeles to thwart his campaign promises?

LAist interviewed experts on these topics to get a sense of what’s in store for L.A.

The border and immigration

Trump made mass deportations a centerpiece of his campaign, and promised on his first day in office to close the U.S. border with Mexico and restrict migrants from seeking asylum.

Those policies, if carried out, have the potential to profoundly disrupt daily life in L.A. County, where one-in-three residents are immigrants and 8% lack legal authorization, according to USC Dornsife’s 2024 State of Immigrants report.

“We can expect Trump's approach to the border to include policies and practices that intentionally seek to foment chaos,” said Monika Langarica with the UCLA School of Law’s Center for the Immigration Law and Policy.

But Langarica said California has already enacted local policies to limit cooperation between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement, who would need to play a crucial role in scaling up deportation efforts to meet Trump’s goals.

Deportations of millions of migrants would be unlikely to happen right away. Such a large-scale effort could first require massive government spending and coordination.

Trump’s former senior advisor Stephen Miller has said mass deportation could involve building staging grounds near the border. And Trump has said he would rely on local police to work with the federal government’s 6,000 Enforcement and Removal officers.

“In California there are already important protections built in,” she said. “There is a lot more that can be done by way of state policies to further limit the ability of the federal government to come in and seek to collude with local law enforcement agencies to seek to carry out these so-called mass deportation plans.”

Niels Frenzen, director of USC’s Gould School of Law Immigration Clinic, said Trump could also try to end a program that extends authorization to live and work in the U.S. to those who arrived in the country illegally as children. About 64,000 people in the L.A. area currently have authorization under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Under Trump’s first administration, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his efforts to dismantle the program.

Another possibility: California officials who resist Trump’s immigration policies could find themselves threatened with losing federal resources, Frenzen said.

“In Trump campaign rallies, he said if Newsom doesn't get in line, the federal government is not going to provide FEMA assistance for wildfire recovery,” Frenzen said. “Then it's just a question of, does the state have the political and the financial capability of resisting those pressures from the federal government?”

Housing affordability

Deportation has also been a cornerstone of Trump’s message on housing affordability, with the former president saying expelling immigrants would free up more housing and reduce costs for others.

But housing analysts in California say the more likely outcome from such efforts could be ballooning construction budgets that translate into steeper rents.

“[Deportations] will cause massive pain and hardship for the people who are affected. And a lot of the folks getting deported are actually critical for housing supply,” said Ben Metcalf, managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. “Most of the [construction] workforce these days is being made up of immigrants, including many who may not have all their citizenship or legal documentation perfected."

Trump’s plans to raise tariffs could also cause the cost of imported homebuilding materials, such as lumber and steel, to spike, Metcalf added.

“One could imagine 20% tariffs massively raising the cost and decreasing the availability of the materials that are needed to build homes,” he said. “Those would be huge drags, I think, on forward supply in California.”

LGBTQ+ communities

Trump repeatedly took aim at LGBTQ+ communities on the campaign trail, airing ads that disparagingly said Vice President Kamala Harris’ positions on issues affecting transgender people showed she was for “they/them” while he was for “you.”

Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, said California has maintained an affirming policy environment, and she expected that to continue under state law.

“What we might see in California is that LGBT people would retain many of the same rights that they have enjoyed under the Biden administration, or any administration,” she said. “But what would happen is we would expect some significant conflict with the federal government.”

For example, in education, California has a number of laws protecting LGBTQ+ students’ rights to participate in sports and use gender-affirming restrooms. Redfield said those aren’t directly threatened by a Trump administration.

“The federal government, under a conservative administration, might narrowly define Title IX and prohibit, for example, the inclusion of trans youth in sports that match their gender identity, or prohibit schools from allowing trans youth to use bathrooms that match their gender identity,” Redfield said. “The main result there is the risk of losing funding.”

Reproductive rights

In the 2022 mid-term election, about two-thirds of California voters decided to guarantee the right to an abortion and contraception in the state’s constitution following a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Proposition 1 inserted language into the state constitution saying, “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual's reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

But with conservatives soon to control the White House, the Supreme Court and potentially both houses of Congress, could the federal government override California’s protections? That’s unlikely. Even abortion opponents say they are not expecting big changes in the state.

“California already has such strong protections for the abortion industry that a Trump administration would not change anything, really,” said Mary Rose Short, the director of outreach for California Right to Life. “There is a lot of talk about, what if Trump signed a national abortion ban, or something like that. But that would require that to be presented to him by a majority of the states. And that is not feasible in the next four years.”

Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said in a written statement on Trump’s victory, “Planned Parenthood health centers in California will continue to be open for any person seeking care — even for those who do not call California home — and we will fight like hell to ensure it stays that way.”

Environmental protection

During Trump’s first term in office, climate goals became a central point of contention between the federal government and California, which often leads the U.S. on environmental standards.

Trump took aim at the state’s ability to set stronger tailpipe emission limits for cars back in 2019. A federal court decision earlier this year upheld California’s right to set these standards.

Julia Stein with the UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said these disputes could come roaring back with Trump returning to power.

“California will need to think of creative ways to continue to regulate in that space without a federal partner,” Stein said.

Stein added that the world is at a critical tipping point for addressing climate change, and other countries around the world will be looking to see what happens in the U.S.

“California kind of stepped up to fill that void last time,” Stein said. “Being able to make progress on these issues is incredibly important, and to be seen as a strong leader globally — not just domestically — on these issues is also hugely important.”

Health care costs

Trump has talked about lowering the expenses Americans face when seeking medical care and prescription drugs, but has not provided specifics on his health care policy priorities. During the presidential debate in September he said he had “concepts of a plan.”

Trump has said recently that he won’t try to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which a majority of Americans rate favorably, according to recent polling data.

His administration will face a decision next year on whether to back an extension of enhanced premium subsidies for ACA insurance plans. Those expanded subsidies were passed under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and will come up for renewal next year.

Geoffrey Joyce, health policy director at USC’s Schaeffer Center, said getting rid of the subsidies would mean big changes locally.

“It would have a huge effect on California,” Joyce said. “Anytime you cut subsidies, you make it less attractive. More people would decide not to get insurance.”