Saturday, November 7, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
**Hammer Forum is made possible by the Rosenbloom Family** Co-presented with the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law Join the Hammer for a free panel discussion exploring what the 2026 midterms mean for the country and for California. What do the results reveal about the last two years of President Trump’s term, and about the country’s direction in 2028 and beyond? Where are voters divided, and where do they agree? What can November’s vote teach us about California voters? Moderated by **Rick Hasen**, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, with **Christian Grose**, professor of political science and public policy at USC; **Sara Sadhwani**, award-winning political scientist and professor of politics at Pomona College; and **Chris Tausanovitch**, professor of political science at UCLA. Rick Hasen (Ha-ssen) is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), and Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law. He is an internationally recognized expert in election law, writing as well in the areas of legislation and statutory interpretation, remedies, and torts. He is co-author of leading casebooks in election law and remedies. Hasen served in 2022 and 2024 as an NBC News/MSNBC Election Law Analyst. He was a CNN Election Law Analyst in 2020. Sara Sadhwani, PhD Associate Professor of Politics, Pomona College Commissioner, California Citizens Redistricting Commission Chair Pro Tem, Los Angeles County Governance Reform Taskforce Sara Sadhwani is an award-winning scholar, political commentator, and governance reformer. She is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and senior researcher at AAPI Data. Her research has been widely published in academic journals examining elections, representation, and public opinion with a focus on Asian American and Latino voting behavior. Her analysis of elections has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN and many others. She is a trusted voice in Los Angeles politics, making regular appearances on CBS-Los Angeles, LAist’s AirTalk, and KNX Radio, and has co-hosted two political podcasts. This year she brought the CBS-California Gubernatorial debate to the Pomona College campus, where she served as a moderator. Outside the classroom, Professor Sadhwani prioritizes good governance and responsive representation for residents. She serves as a commissioner and rotating chair for the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission and as a member of the Los Angeles County Governance Reform Taskforce implementing a once in a century reform approved by voters in 2024, Measure G. She has been involved in numerous ballot measures including this year’s Measure E, the passage of ethics reforms and the development of an independent redistricting commission for the city of Los Angeles. She served as lead author of a scholars’ amicus brief before the California Supreme Court in support of voting rights of underrepresented communities and is currently writing a book about the future of redistricting. Sara earned her doctorate in political science from the University of Southern California and has held fellowships at Stanford University and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is the recipient of the Emerging Scholar award from the American Political Science Association, the Wig Distinguished Professor Award from Pomona College for excellence in teaching, congressional, gubernatorial, and local recognitions and many other honors and awards. Chris Tausanovitch is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He studies the relationship between constituency opinion and the actions of elected officials in the United States. His book, *The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy *(with John Sides and Lynn Vavreck) coined the term “calcification” to describe the combination of entrenched partisanship and closely contested elections that characterizes today’s polarized politics. Tausanovitch is Co-Principal Investigator (with Lynn Vavreck) of Nationscape, a project that surveyed 500,000 Americans during the 2020 election cycle. He is also the Co-Principal Investigator (with Christopher Warshaw) of the American Ideology Project, a project that produces estimates of the average political ideology of every state, congressional district, state legislative district, county and medium-sized city in the United States. Data from Nationscape and the American Ideology Project have been made freely available to the research community, and his related publications have been cited in over 1,000 scholarly books and articles. His work has appeared in The American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis, among many other outlets. His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Houston Chronicle, The Economist, Forbes, Vox, and USA Today, among others, and he has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post. Professor Tausanovitch received his PhD from Stanford University in 2013. In 2012 he worked for the Senate Finance Committee as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. He is a recipient of the UCLA Hellman Fellowship and the UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy Kenneth L. Sokoloff Fellowship. He is a 2024 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.