The Los Angeles Times highlighted UCLA’s Mathias Botanical Garden and its upcoming Clarkia Flower Festival, which celebrates native California wildflowers and community education. Victoria Sork, director of the garden and herbarium and a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said the event is an opportunity to showcase plant diversity beyond familiar blooms, while outreach manager Chantal Ochoa-Clark noted strong public interest in accessible, free programming. Read more about UCLA in today’s Associated Press, New York Times and others.

More highlights from UCLA in the News: May 4, 2026

Los Angeles mayoral race | KABC-TV

“It was a political setback for her, there’s no question. I don’t think she would argue with that. And it has stuck with her quite a bit. The polling that we’ve done at UCLA and others have done around town show that she’s taken a hit, political hit. but she also bounced back,” said UCLA’s Zev Yaroslavsky.  

Landlords want to be paid for pandemic losses | Associated Press

Eviction bans “were a powerful intervention to keep people in their homes,” said Kathryn Leifheit, assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and lead author of a study published in April in the medical journal JAMA Network Open that found homelessness rose 11% in a typical state in 2022, and would have increased 20% without state eviction moratoriums.

Amid a housing crisis, LGBTQ+ seniors turn to community | Philadelphia Gay News

According to recent research from the Williams Institute at UCLA, about 20% of LGBTQ+ older adults in America live below the poverty line, 5 percentage points higher than straight and cisgender people. At the same time, about a quarter live alone, compared to 15% of non-LGBTQ+ Americans. Nearly a third of this population is confronting anxiety, and almost as many are dealing with depression — but about one in six struggle to access mental health support, a rate nearly double that of their straight and cisgender counterparts. (UCLA’s Ilan Meyer was quoted.)

Fewer American workers are earning a living wage | Marketplace

“Certain workers are always more vulnerable when the economy drops in any kind of way,” said Saba Waheed, director of the UCLA Labor Center. “When there’s an unemployment bump, you often see Black workers to experience it harder, first, and so on.” Waheed said one way to alleviate wage gaps is to elevate the lowest wages. The federal minimum wage, she pointed out, hasn’t increased since 2009.

Thousands rally for worker and immigrant rights | LAist and The LA Local

Westlake is no stranger to International Workers’ Day, said Victor Narro, project director with the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, which sits across the street from MacArthur Park. “We’re dealing with so much this year, and I think May Day is going to be a chance for us to come together,” Narro told The LA Local ahead of the rally.

5 money lessons from readers in the trenches of elder-parent care | New York Times

Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing and behavioral decision making at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies how envisioning your future self can help you plan. He describes older relatives’ experiences as either associative or dissociative, or behaviors and habits that you choose to emulate or avoid entirely.

Redistricting war accelerates winner-take-all political combat | Associated Press

With fewer limits — either legal or self-imposed — people expect the issue to become a perpetual race to squeeze every possible advantage out of legislative maps. “It’s hard to know where it ends,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA.

Spotify adds verification to distinguish human artists from AI | Los Angeles Times

This new badge is necessary for Spotify to protect its own credibility, according to Tiffany Naiman, the director of Music Industry Programs at UCLA. She notes that the verification doesn’t restrict AI content and could pose other limitations. “This move reflects a repositioning toward something closer to an editorial and authenticating authority, a role historically held by labels, tastemakers and curators,” Naiman said in a statement. “When a streaming platform starts deciding who qualifies as a legitimate artist ... That’s not a technical question. It’s a cultural and economic one.”

California researchers devise treatment for deadly pregnancy condition | SFGate

Dr. Yalda Afshar, an associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UCLA Health, who was not involved with the study, said although the trial was small, it “lays the groundwork” for future research and “flips that script” by targeting the cause of preeclampsia.