What to expect: The Santa Anas are expected to die down in the early afternoon, but a red flag warning remains in effect until 6 p.m. for parts of northern L.A. County.
Today's weather will be warm, gusty and dry as the Santa Anas continue, but the good news is that those winds will die down come this afternoon.
Todays highs along the coast will be in the upper 70s, up to 81 in Long Beach and Newport Beach. In downtown Los Angeles, the average will reach 82 degrees.
Highs for the valleys will climb a few degrees — 82 for San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley, upper 70s for Santa Clarita and a high of 67 in the Antelope Valley.
Inland, Riverside and San Bernardino counties will be a few degrees warmer today with an average of 77 — up to 80 for inland Orange County.
The high desert will see an average of 63, whereas the low desert temperatures have slowly climbed back to 81.
Tonight's lows are in the 50s, in the 30s for Antelope Valley and 40s for the mountains.
The National Weather Service has issued a fire weather watch starting this afternoon until Thursday at 6 p.m. for these areas:
A wind advisory has been issued for the areas where the fire weather watch is in effect until 11 a.m. Thursday. Gusty winds will also affect the Riverside and San Bernardino county valleys and mountains, including the Santa Ana mountains foothills until 2 p.m. Thursday.
Wind gusts are expected to reach between 40 to 50 mph, and the strongest winds will be felt on the mountains and foothills.
Southern California Edison is still warning customers that they could experience a preemptive power safety shutoff today if the Santa Ana winds get worse and the wildfire risk increases as a result.
That means 5 million customers could potentially lose electricity throughout the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside.
To see if you could be impacted, you check here.
On this day in 1982, seven tornadoes touched down in the L.A. basin in a span of six hours.
It's Friday eve! How about a night out with the stars?
Check out our full list of things to do this week.
Topline:
Advocates say the recently passed post-production tax credit will make California more competitive, but a federal production tax credit may be the blockbuster.
Why it matters: TV and film productions and their post-production work, such as editing, color correction and sound mixing, are being pulled to other states and countries because of attractive tax incentives. It’s hoped this new tax credit will begin drawing work back to California.
Why now: The bill was recently signed into law by Gov. Newsom, although it currently offers $10 million a year, much lower than the $100 million originally asked for. It’s likely to make California more competitive — but a federal production tax credit bill now going through Congress may be the blockbuster. The Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act is co-authored by Sens. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Tim Scott, a Republican. President Donald Trump supports it.
The backstory: California started a tax incentive in 2009 to try to stop runaway productions. The current version of the incentive was extended three years ago.
What's next:
Read on… To hear about the limitations of the new California post-production tax credit law.
At Signature Post in Burbank, Mariella Abaunza, the post-production company’s executive vice president for business development, shows off a photo of her talking to Gov. Gavin Newsom at the recent signing of AB 2319 at the Television Academy in North Hollywood.
She was there with the coalition that lobbied for the creation of a new stand-alone tax credit for post-production work done in California.
“It definitely restored my faith in government. ... Advocacy works,” she said.
It was a sizable coalition. Abaunza is president of the California Post Alliance, the post-production industry’s trade group. Leaders of the Motion Picture Association and the Editors Guild were there too.
It definitely restored my faith in government… advocacy works.
The post-production tax credit is aimed at stopping the flight of TV and film work to other states and countries, attracted by generous tax incentives.
While there are existing tax credits for filming in California, under the new law, productions qualify for a 35% to 50% tax credit if post-production work such as editing, color correction, scoring and sound mixing is done in California, even if the filming was done outside the state.
But industry advocates acknowledge there’s a weakness in the law: Proponents initially asked lawmakers to set aside $100 million for the post-production tax breaks. By the time Newsom signed the bill into law, that amount had been drastically reduced to $10 million.
“That's going to get used up in a couple days. … It's not hard to allocate $10 million in post-production in California,” said Stephen Weizenecker, an entertainment lawyer based in Atlanta who advises TV and film productions on how to take advantage of tax credits in U.S. states and overseas.
But he said that regardless of the much lower cap, the credits will make California more competitive.
It's not hard to allocate $10 million in post-production in California.
Abaunza hopes it will be a boost for Signature Post. The 6-year-old post-production company, which mixed sound for films and shows like "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "American Fiction," and "Lessons in Chemistry," has been experiencing a slowdown, like many others.
“We're still ahead of the game, and we still have the largest concentration of post-production talent of anywhere in the world,” Abaunza said of Southern California.
But she said that post-production advantage has been eroded by new facilities and worker talent in the U.K. and Canada, among other countries.
Monica Levinson, executive producer of FX’s "Love Story," "Say Nothing," and many other TV and film projects, points out that those countries have another advantage: a lot more government social services.
She compared that to the U.S. “The one thing that this country has are unions, and it has health insurance, and it has pension plans, and the things that need to be put into the budgets of productions,” she said.
Weizenecker also noted that as much as producers might want to keep production in California or the U.S., they may not be the ones making the decisions about where work is done.
“ If Netflix only gives you so much to spend on the production, including post,” he said, “you're gonna go where it's the most cost-effective.”
While the California tax credit is a step in the direction of keeping productions in the state, a much bigger tax credit is now making its way through the federal legislative process that may be even more transformative.
It’s called the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act and was co-authored by U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina. President Donald Trump has also said he supports it.
If the bipartisan birth and early life of the bill isn’t enough to raise eyebrows, what it promises may be: a 20% federal, labor-based tax credit to U.S. TV and film productions where 75% of the days spent on principal photography happen in this country.
The bill would also favor post-production work and extend benefits to productions in some rural areas and places affected by disasters.
“These things could be real game changers to bring back the work here,” Levinson said. She’s the co-chair of the legislative committee for Producers United, a 3-year-old group that advocates for established TV and film producers. That position led her to join the coalition of groups working to get the federal bill passed.
TV and film production and post-production used to be dominated by California, and L.A. County in particular. But Hollywood, as it refers to what you see on the big and small screen, is a national business now.
“Everybody in this country is behind this federal incentive. And therefore, that's why it's become such a bipartisan effort because there's production in every state right now,” Levinson said.
Supporters have not said how much less money would go to public coffers if this federal tax credit passes.
Topline:
A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.
What does the decision mean? A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.
Background: The years-long court battle was initiated in 2023 by veterans struggling with homelessness in L.A. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.
What’s next? VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”
Read on… to see what veteran advocates have to say about the latest development.
A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.
A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs, told LAist the delay could spell life or death for unhoused veterans, especially as the region braces for strong El Niño-driven storms.
“These are veterans who risked their lives and suffered both the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Rosenbaum said. “What the government is saying to them is, you're supposed to stay on the street."
VA officials did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.
Veterans' lawyers in a court filing called a possible appeal to the Supreme Court a “hopeless shot.”
“The government has lost every time they have taken this to court. No court has ruled for them on any of these matters,” Rosenbaum told LAist. “This is part of the administration’s war on its own veterans, and it’s time for that war to come to an end.”
The litigation was initiated in 2023 by L.A. veterans struggling with homelessness. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.
In 2024, Carter ordered officials to add thousands of temporary and permanent homes, and end leases with UCLA, a private K-12 school and an oil drilling company, which he said did not serve the needs of veterans.
An appeals court last month blocked the federal government’s efforts to halt the housing construction. But veteran advocates knew that federal officials could ask for further delays as the case winds through the courts.
VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”
Topline:
The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms. Applications for the district’s magnet, dual-language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.
The backstory: If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward; there’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.
Those include:
What's next: LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October. The on-time application deadline is Nov. 6, 2026, and the late application process starts Dec. 1.
Read on … to learn more about the Choices process and all the options available.
The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms.
Applications for the district’s magnet, dual language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.
If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward. There’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.
There are two windows to apply — on-time and late. The latter consists of all the spaces left after families who applied on time accept their offers.
Here’s the timeline for the 2027-28 school year:
LAUSD will no longer accept paper Choices applications. If families do not have a computer, they can use a smartphone to complete an application. LAUSD will also allow families to use computers at school parent centers.
Every child within LAUSD boundaries is assigned a school — find yours through the district’s “resident school identifier.”
But there are also hundreds of other programs available through the Choices process.
Those include:
No one type of school is inherently better than another, and no one metric defines a great school — there are many factors beyond test scores to consider, and we go over some of those here.
By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.
“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”
Some schools post tour information online, but you may need to call for details.
LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October.
Topline:
The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.
DOJ findings: The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.
The backstory: Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but President Donald Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.
The announcement follows a similar finding against the university’s medical school and comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students. The administration also has accused the UC Berkeley Law School and the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, of illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants.
The UCLA School of Law said in a statement that it was committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws.
“Students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant’s achievements and experiences,” the statement said. “We are confident in our process.”
Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.
The department also said admissions staff at the law school instructed applicants during recruitment efforts, including one called the “Diversity Admissions Open House,” how to reveal their race in essays.
“Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin,” said Harmeet Dhillon, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, in a news release.
California voters ended affirmative action in college admissions in a 1997 ballot measure. In a brief filed in the Supreme Court case, the UC system said the change led to a precipitous drop in underrepresented minorities, especially at the system’s most selective campuses. The brief said UC went on to implement a range of race-neutral measures to increase diversity.
The Trump administration also has sued over the main UCLA campus’s response to allegations of antisemitic harassment. The administration’s latest finding sets the stage for a voluntary resolution to bring UCLA into compliance with the Justice Department’s legal interpretation or, if none can be reached, potential legal action.
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