PBS News Hour interviewed election law expert Rick Hasen, who cautioned that recent federal actions targeting local election offices could pose serious risks to the integrity of future U.S. elections. Hasen, who is also the founding director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, said an FBI raid on voting offices in Fulton County, Georgia — more than five years after the 2020 election — appears legally dubious and may be less about accountability than about perpetuating unfounded claims of election fraud. Read more about UCLA in today’s CNN, Time and other outlets.
More highlights from UCLA in the News: Feb. 2, 2026
U.S. leaders gather in LA to share ICE resistance strategies | Los Angeles Times
The park was just one of several stops the community organizers made that day. They visited the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, an advocacy and research institution that partners with labor unions and community groups to address labor rights and social justice. Saba Waheed, director of the center, said the institution produces “know your rights” materials and other resources for local groups assisting immigrants. “The mission of the center has always been to provide research by and for the community,” she said.
ICE roundup | LAist’s “AirTalk”
“The First Amendment doesn’t block the government from tracking protesters. There may be, in some situations, some federal laws like the Privacy Act, which may limit that in federal policies. But the First Amendment … doesn’t say anything about the government trying to figure out who it is that is protesting,” said UCLA’s Eugene Volokh (approx. 10:05 mark).
Oaxacan leaders on red alert ahead of ICE operations | La Opinión
(Translated from Spanish) Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, an academic of Oaxacan origin and director of the UCLA Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies, says we are living through an extremely difficult time for the immigrant, Mexican and Latino community. “These raids are not like those of the past. We haven’t reached the levels of Mexican deportations under Obama’s Secure Communities program, but we are seeing the disproportionate and open use of federal officers — not only from the Border Patrol but also from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and other federal agents — with heavy-handed tactics.”
It looks inevitable that Trump will strike Iran | HuffPost
Dalia Dassa Kaye, an expert on U.S.-Iran relations at UCLA, expressed concerns about the process by which Trump’s policy is being crafted. “I don’t think that’s a great thing, whether you like the outcome or no … that the protection of U.S. national security is dependent on whether three Gulf states get [Trump’s] ear on a given day or not,” she told HuffPost.
How Trump’s words have scrambled America’s gun politics | CNN
“It feels like we’re in a bizarro world,” said University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Adam Winkler, an expert on constitutional law and the Second Amendment. “Republicans are saying, ‘Don’t bring your guns to protests,’ after 10 years of saying, ‘Of course you can bring guns to protests.’ And many liberals saying, ‘You have a right to bring a gun to protest,’ even though they’ve been saying for years it would be irresponsible to bring a gun to a protest.”
DHS’s false claims about people a broader pattern | NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday”
Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at UCLA School of Law, said he believes the prevalence of what he called “macro lies” from the White House has “translated down into the behavior of lower level government officials.”
Do you need more vitamin D in winter? | Time
“Some people can meet some or all of their vitamin D needs through exposure to sunlight,” says Dr. Elizabeth Ko, an associate clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and medical director of the UCLA Health Integrative Medicine Collaborative. “However, the season, time of day, length of day, cloud cover, smog, skin melatonin content and sunscreen use are among the factors that affect UV radiation exposure and vitamin D synthesis.”
FBI’s search of Georgia election center is “dangerous,” experts warn | Salon
“I’m not aware of something like this happening ever before,” said Rick Hasen, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. “The idea that federal officials would seize ballots in an attempt to prove fraud is especially dangerous in this context when we know there is no fraud because the Georgia 2020 election has been extensively counted, recounted and investigated.”
Kettleman City residents say pollution protections aren’t enough | CalMatters
Scientific research backs up community concerns that pollutants add up in the body and worsen health impacts, said Lara Cushing, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at UCLA. ”We can’t consider each pollution source in isolation, because we know communities are disproportionately exposed to multiple different types of contaminants at the same time, and they can accumulate,” Cushing said. “Chemicals can interact with each other in the body, and none of that’s considered in the current rulemaking.”
Have Democrats learned anything? | Los Angeles Review of Books
(Review written by UCLA’s Jon Christensen) It’s probably unfair to compare Jon Ralston’s new book “The Game Changer: How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats How to Fight to Caro’s opus,” or even to just one volume in the series. Plus, the late Harry Reid (1939–2021), who was most definitely a master of the Senate in his own way and served as majority leader as well, apparently hated being compared to LBJ.
More than half of trans youth live in states with restrictive laws or policies | Phys.org
A report published today by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law shows that 53% of transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S. — approximately 382,800 young people — live in 29 states with laws or policies that restrict their access to gender-affirming care, sports, bathrooms and facilities or restrict the use of gender-affirming pronouns in schools … “For the past few years, we have witnessed a trend of escalating state legislation affecting transgender youth,” said the report’s lead author, Joshua Arrayales, a law fellow at the Williams Institute.
Puffy baby planets reveal a missing stage of planet formation | ScienceDaily
By studying the V1298 Tau system, the researchers captured an unusually early snapshot of planetary development. Their measurements reveal planets caught in the act of changing into the super-Earths and sub-Neptunes seen throughout the galaxy … “For astronomers, our go-to ‘Doppler’ method for weighing planets involves making careful measurements of the star’s velocity as it’s tugged by its retinue of planets,” said Erik Petigura, a co-author from UCLA. “But young stars are so extremely spotty, active, and temperamental, that the Doppler method is a non-starter.”
Immunotherapy drug has dramatic effects against one melanoma | HealthDay News
An already-approved immunotherapy drug can dramatically shrink — or even eliminate — tumors associated with a rare and aggressive form of melanoma, a new clinical trial has found … “We’re seeing that desmoplastic melanoma, which can be challenging to remove surgically, responds extremely well to immunotherapy,” said senior researcher Dr. Antoni Ribas, director of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Tumor Immunology Program.
Backsliding on your resolutions? Here’s how to get on track | New York Times
In January, the new year can feel brimming with possibility. Researchers call this the “fresh start effect,” and it can allow you to view yourself in a more optimistic light, said Hengchen Dai, associate professor and behavioral scientist at UCLA Anderson School of Management. This can help you to motivate, but it can also lead you to set overly ambitious or unrealistic resolutions.
Water company is charging a new ‘fire recovery fee’ | Los Angeles Times
UCLA researchers said in a report last year that because these small water systems are struggling financially, “sustained local, state and federal support is essential.” Such problems will probably beset other utilities in the western U.S. in the coming years as climate change drives larger and more intense wildfires.
Eviction of Boyle Heights family sparks outrage | Los Angeles Times
Jonathan Zasloff, a land use professor at the UCLA School of Law, said the emotional power of seeing the current tenants pushed out of their home is easier to empathize with than what the loss of 50 units of housing means for the city.
