The Brief

Artist Hedy Torres asked a 20-something student from Cal State Northridge to sit for a portrait nearly a decade ago. Using charcoal on paper, she drew the dark-haired young man in black and white — but she deliberately kept the portrait unfinished.

The idea was that she would complete the piece if her subject, a DACA recipient named Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, ever attained lawful permanent residency.

And now he has.

DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that provides two-year work permits and deportation relief for people who were brought to the U.S. as children. The permits can be renewed, but the program does not grant a pathway to citizenship. 

In late September, Pérez Cuevas — who is now married, a father, a green card holder and an adjunct instructor at his alma mater — sat with Torres once again.

Torres’ project involves interviewing subjects as she sketches them. This year, she invited the public to watch her complete the portrait as she spoke to Pérez Cuevas about what it took for him to get a green card and what that means for his life.

About two dozen people gathered at a community center in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park to see her add details to the piece that speak to the passing of time.

“I just wanted to make people empathetic to what [immigrants] go through during this process,” she said. “You have to be very patient. There is a lot of uncertainty.”

Responding to the potential loss of relief

Pérez Cuevas, who was born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 2.

When Torres drew him in 2017, he was pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge. That year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced intentions to rescind DACA, which had enabled him to set goals without the fear of being deported. A 2020 Supreme Court decision allowed the program to continue.

Torres was once undocumented herself, so she understood the 2017 announcement was earth-shattering for the approximately 800,000 people who were then in the program, she said.

The original, unfinished portrait of Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas.

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Courtesy

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Hedy Torres

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That year, Torres was also a student at CSUN, working toward a master’s in fine art.

She recalled recently that she wanted people to see DACA recipients as people, not numbers. And so, for her master's project, she proposed creating portraits of DACA beneficiaries.

The portraits would be rooted in interviews conducted as she drew her subjects. Leaving them unfinished, she said, would symbolize the precarity of the moment.

The pieces would have enough detail for viewers to see the subjects’ faces clearly, particularly their eyes and expressions. Other elements, including their bodies and clothing, would be more of an initial sketch.

The university greenlit her project and gave her a grant to pursue it. There was just one problem: Torres had to convince reticent DACA recipients to share their stories.

Building trust 

When Torres first messaged Pérez Cuevas about the project, he ignored her for two weeks, he said. But because they had a mutual friend, he eventually agreed to meet with her.

“I was trying to see whether this person was just an academic trying to complete a project for her own benefit, or whether she really cared about the community,” he told LAist.

They met at a coffee shop. Pérez Cuevas learned about the artist’s journey from the Mexican state of Colima and everything she’d lived through since.

Before 2015, for example, an undocumented person in California could not get a driver’s license. When she was undocumented, Torres was stopped by police and had her car impounded. She said he had to cobble together thousands of dollars to get her car back from a tow yard.

Pérez Cuevas could relate. He had experienced the same thing.

He decided to trust her.

After she drew him, Pérez Cuevas helped Torres connect with more DACA recipients at the university. She drew four other portraits, which were also left unfinished.

These works were acquired by the university, with the agreement that Torres would be able to borrow and complete them when — and if — her subjects attained lawful permanent residency.

Community members watch Artist Hedy Torres update the portrait at Plummer Park in West Hollywood.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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‘A sense of freedom’  

As she worked on the portrait, Torres added soft lines rendered in charcoal to the image of Pérez Cuevas’ face, along with a robust mustache. And she continued the interview.

“What did you imagine your life would be like when you were young?” Torres asked.

Thinking back to high school, Pérez Cuevas said he realized then that not having a social security number barred him from decent-paying work.

“I didn't really understand what I was doing with my life,” he said, adding that he used to not think higher education was for him even while he was at CSUN. “My state of mind was really dark back then.”

He credited a college counselor with helping him navigate school.

Pérez Cuevas said he has intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live with constant uncertainty: not knowing how he would pay for college because he did not qualify for federal financial aid; not being able to travel outside the country; and waiting anxiously for federal officials to make decisions on immigration laws that could transform his life.

“I can't stress enough how difficult it is psychologically to wait because it's something that can revolutionize your life,” he said. “You're betting your whole life on this approval and just that suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting, living with that anxiety.”

Torres completed her portrait of Pérez Cuevas in September 2026. Four other portraits remain unfinished.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, but the agency is no longer approving first-time applications.

Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have been deported. According to the agency, the median processing time for DACA renewals was one month in 2023. Currently, it’s taking seven months to process most cases.

Pérez Cuevas said he was able to adjust his immigration status after marrying a U.S. citizen and consulting with an attorney. His lawyer helped him secure a document that allowed noncitizens to travel abroad and seek legal re-entry.

“Did getting permanent residency give you a sense of freedom, a freedom you probably didn't have when you were under DACA?” Torres asked him.

“Absolutely,” Pérez Cuevas said. “The biggest freedom was psychological freedom. You have this weight that you've been carrying all these years that finally just gets thrown off your shoulders.”

One of the things he feared most was long-term separation from his parents, he said.

When his mother and father migrated to the U.S., they did not see their own parents — his grandparents — for 40 years, Pérez Cuevas added. After his parents moved back to Mexico during the pandemic, he feared they would also go decades without seeing each other.

But having a green card enables him to travel and see his family.

Pérez Cuevas told Torres that, paradoxically, the threat of losing DACA made him “weirdly ambitious."

He said he doubled down on his studies and took on every internship he could. He figured that if the U.S. decided to deport him, he’d still have his education and work experience.

“Even on the days where I didn't necessarily have the greatest energy or the greatest state of mind, I showed up for myself,” Pérez Cuevas said.

Southern California is expected to see the longest heat wave of the season.

The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for the greater Los Angeles area from Friday through at least next Thursday, and forecasters say it’ll likely extend beyond that.

Temperatures are expected to be in the mid-90s to mid-100s, even in coastal areas.

“Unfortunately, we don't really see an end to it as far as we can tell, and that's probably the biggest thing we wanna highlight, is that while we have had hotter events this season already, this one might be the longest-lasting,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Kittell said they expect to see a few daily records to be broken.

Southern California saw a record-breaking 10-day heat wave in the summer of 2022.

What does the hot weather mean for fire risk? 

Forecasters say conditions likely won’t meet the threshold for issuing red flag warnings (extremely dry air and windy conditions), but the risk of fire is still going to be high during the heat wave.

“It’s still concerning, and if a fire were to get started in the wrong area, it could grow pretty fast,” Kittell said. “ We do have a history of large fires in similar environments with similar heat, similar time of the year.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Southern California Edison said nearly 10,000 customers in parts of Riverside County were under consideration for power shutoffs, which are used to reduce the risk of electrical equipment starting a fire.

How do we manage through the heat? 

Kittell said people should make plans to stay cool during the long heat wave, and check in on neighbors who are elderly, or on families with young children.

Officials say residents should limit outdoor activities to the early morning hours, stay in air-conditioned places in the afternoon and evening hours, and stay hydrated.

When Naoko Takei Moore, the author of Simply Donabe, was growing up in Tokyo, some of her earliest memories were of the family donabe.

Donabe, which means “clay pot” in Japanese, is an earthenware cooking vessel that has been part of Japanese home cooking for centuries.

On weekends, her mother would set the donabe on a tabletop burner at the center of the table, with the broth already made and the ingredients prepped. She would let Moore, then about 4, add them to the pot.

"It made me feel like I was cooking it," Moore said. "I was a hero."

Her late mother had one piece of advice about the pot: “Just let the donabe do the work for you."

That’s what Moore wants to do at our latest Cookbook Live at the Crawford in Pasadena on Thursday Oct. 8, in partnership with the James Beard Foundation.

What a donabe can do 

"Just let the donabe do the work for you," Moore's late mother used to say.

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Matt Russell

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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Because the clay is porous, a donabe heats slowly and retains heat long after the flame is off, allowing savory, umami-rich flavors to build without heavy seasoning. It handles almost anything: hot pots, rice, braises, soups, stews and steamed dishes.

"If you have good ingredients, you really don't need to cover up the flavors with so many different things," Moore said.

In Japan, it's often served as a communal pot meal, set at the center of the table so everyone can cook and eat together.

Donabe in L.A.

When Moore moved to L.A. in 2001, she found that her friends loved sushi and ramen, but thought Japanese home cooking was too complicated. The donabe dinners she hosted changed their minds.

On a trip home to Tokyo, she tasted rice cooked in a donabe made by Nagatani-en, an eighth-generation kiln in Iga founded in 1832.

"Oh my gosh, what is this about this particular donabe?" she remembered thinking. She contacted the kiln and began importing its pots.

Moore's West Hollywood shop, TOIRO, carries an array of artisan donabe that she selects herself.

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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Moore launched TOIRO in 2008 as an online import business, shipping orders from her basement and teaching donabe classes in her home kitchen. She opened the West Hollywood shop in 2017.

"First I had to start by telling people how to pronounce it," she said. (It's doh-nah-bay.)

Now, she said, major publications print "donabe" without translating it, and in 2015 she co-wrote her first book on the subject. Simply Donabe is her second.

What's cooking Oct. 8

Naoko Takei Moore's new cookbook, Simply Donabe: Japanese One-Pot Recipes.

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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For Moore, the upcoming cooler weather means hot pot season.

"The season is changing, and it's getting cooler, which I love," she said. "I love making all different kinds of hot pot dishes."

Onstage, she'll make a chicken-and-lemon hot pot from the new book, with sweet saikyo miso, kabocha squash, enoki mushrooms, spinach and thinly sliced lemon.

"I hope you'll be surprised how simple it is," she said. "And I hope you get to smell it."

As the city of Los Angeles continues to struggle to reduce traffic deaths, local officials are planning to use new cameras to detect speeding drivers.

In a Thursday news conference, city leaders said that by the end of the year, cameras at 125 locations throughout the city will all be online. The first cameras will be operational by the end of October.

“Speed is the primary difference between a crash that injures and a crash that kills,” said L.A. Department of Transportation General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo at the news conference, held near an elementary school in East Hollywood where crews have installed a camera.

In the last decade, between 250 and 350 people in the city have died every year from traffic collisions. LAPD data from the end of September show that traffic deaths are up 14% compared with last year.

A program launched under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, known as Vision Zero, aimed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by 2025. Instead, last year, 290 people died in traffic fatalities, exceeding homicides for the third year in a row.

“The implementation of speed safety systems in the city of Los Angeles is as groundbreaking and potentially lifesaving as the implementation of seat belts,” said Damian Kevitt, the head of the nonprofit Streets are for Everyone, which has long advocated for the cameras.

Where are the cameras and how will they work?

Each of the 125 locations will have two cameras monitoring cars traveling in both directions.

You can see an interactive map of camera locations here. LAist reported on the city’s methodology for choosing locations earlier this year.

If a driver is going at least 11 mph above the posted speed limit, a camera will capture a photo of the rear of the vehicle, including the rear license plate.

“This information is and will remain the sole property of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation,” Rubio-Cornejo said. “It cannot be shared with any law enforcement agencies without a court-issued subpoena.”

After the cameras at each of the locations are installed, there will be a 60-day period during which speeding drivers will receive a warning.

Citations and fines, which range from $50 to $500 depending on the severity of the speeding, will follow the warning period.

All warnings, citations and fines will be mailed to the registered owner of the offending vehicle.

Revenue generated from the cameras is required by state legislation to be invested in the city’s efforts to make streets safer.

Evidence from other cities show cameras deter speeding

L.A. is one of several cities permitted to pilot the speed cameras by state legislation authored by then-Assemblymember Laura Friedman.

“We have people who walk around our community every single day, who more and more are the victims of traffic violence from drivers who are driving recklessly and with a wanton disregard for the safety of other people,” said Friedman, who is now a Democratic U.S. Representative for California’s 30th Congressional District.

San Francisco deployed its cameras in May 2025. A year into the program, the city’s transportation agency said it had observed an 80% drop in speeding cars at camera locations. Two-thirds of drivers who were warned about or cited for speeding did not get another ticket, according to the agency.

The data is similar in Oakland, which launched its cameras in January. The Oakland Department of Transportation said that within six months, the number of cars speeding dropped by an average of 70% across the locations compared to baseline data it collected before the cameras were installed.

Other L.A. County cities, including Malibu, Glendale and Long Beach, are also participating in the program.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill legalizing balcony, or “plug-in,” solar Wednesday.

The device is a twist on rooftop solar: smaller, portable, and relatively inexpensive.

Balcony solar kits consist of just a few panels, an inverter that converts solar energy into the kind used in a home, and cables. In places where the technology is popular, like Germany, it can be plugged into a standard wall outlet.

The new law comes as Californians struggle to pay outsized electricity bills, which have risen substantially in recent years. Plug-in devices open the solar market to renters, people with unsuitable roofs, and those without the money to invest in a rooftop system.

“These small, easy-to-use solar panels will give everyone, including renters, the relief they desperately need on our outrageous energy bills,” said state Senator Scott Wiener (D – San Francisco) in a press release. Wiener authored the legislation.

Plug-in solar panels sit on top of an accessory dwelling unit in Agnes Chan’s backyard in Berkeley, California, for KQED on Aug. 23, 2026.

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Tâm Vũ

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KQED

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The bill received overwhelming bipartisan support from state lawmakers before landing on Newsom’s desk.

Panels can hang from a balcony, out a window, or be tented in the backyard. Existing models range from $300 to $2200, depending on size.

One reason the technology is substantially less expensive than rooftop solar is that it cuts out the costs of installation. Customers themselves set it up, which some have said is straightforward and others have found more challenging than advertised.

California’s law comes with a wrinkle, however. Plug-in solar panels must be certified by an outside safety organization. Since the technology is new in the U.S., there is just one existing certification offered by Underwriters Laboratories. Depending on how manufacturers innovate and roll out products, some may require an electrician’s help to install, while others may be truly “plug and play.”

Electrical experts and other advocates of California’s new law are still calling its passage a massive win, and expect the safety certification to evolve and eventually allow the plug-in panels to connect to a standard wall outlet.

“We are celebrating,” said Cora Stryker, co-founder of plug-in solar advocacy group Bright Saver. “The market is sending a clear signal to manufacturers that they need to develop a California system.”

The new law will exempt plug-in panels from the typical way rooftop solar must be registered with utilities. Instead of paying upwards of a hundred dollars and waiting days to weeks, the new registration process will be free, straightforward, and immediate.

A handful of states have passed similar legislation within the past 18 months. Utah was the first, with a law passed in March 2025.

Ten states now have bills on the books that allow a relatively straightforward process for purchasing and setting up balcony solar systems, including Colorado, Virginia and Maine.

Supporters of the technology include hundreds of environmental and community groups, who argue plug-in solar democratizes access to solar power. They believe adoption by the most populous state would be a boon for the nascent U.S. balcony solar market.

Some of the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, including PG&E and SDG&E opposed the legislation, citing safety and a concern that the systems would shift energy costs to people without solar power in any form.

Labor unions representing firefighters and PG&E employees initially opposed the bill, but took a neutral stance once lawmakers included requirements that systems must comply with state and national electrical codes.

Some Californians have already installed plug-in solar panels, but utilities ask them to complete an interconnection agreement, citing state rules. If done through PG&E for example, representatives from the utility said that process would cost between roughly $100 to $800 and take about an hour. Typically, the approval comes through in three days, PG&E staff said.

Plug-in solar advocates argued that the interconnection process defeated the plug-and-play goal of the technology, and could double or triple its cost.

Their hope is to make the panels as ubiquitous and easy to install as any off-the-shelf appliance dotting the racks of a Home Depot or Costco.

Rupert Mayer installs power inverters on the solar panels at Matthew Milner’s home in Kensington on May 23, 2025.

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Martin do Nascimento

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KQED

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Proponents of the technology say it can meet up to 20% of a home’s electricity needs and save as much as $500 annually for a small apartment.

The new law outlines several device requirements. The balcony solar systems must not generate more than 1,200 watts per home — enough energy to power a window air-conditioning unit — and offset a customer’s onsite electricity use. They must be certified by an outside safety organization and have a feature that would prevent electricity from feeding back into the grid if there’s a power outage.

Plug-in solar products currently on the market do not yet meet the outlined requirements, and customers therefore must still register the available systems as though they are rooftop solar. The sale of non-compliant systems will become illegal in 2030.

Groups that sponsored the bill said there are a few companies already developing systems meeting the specific California standards, and they expect these models to hit the market in the spring.

The legislation goes into effect in 2027, and sunsets Jan. 1, 2030, “making it a fight that continues,” said Stryker.