What to expect: It's just another muggy Monday before the cooldown comes. Highs will be in the low 80s along the coast and mountains to upper 90s in the valleys and inland.
Watches/Advisories: None. For once.
It's just another muggy Monday before the cooldown comes.
It'll be a partly cloudy day, giving us some relief from the hot sun. Highs along the coast will be in the mid to upper 70s and with no beach advisories, it'll make for a nice beach day.
In downtown L.A., highs will be in the low 90s. In the valleys and farther inland, including the Riverside and San Bernardino area, highs will be in the upper 90s.
Over in Coachella Valley, it's going to be another scorcher with highs up to 106.
There's also a less than 20% chance of scattered, isolated showers across the L.A. basin and Orange County but the chances are greater near the mountains like the Santa Monicas, San Gabriels and Santa Ana.
Today marks the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 when a series of terrorist attacks at the Twin Towers in New York killed nearly 3,000 people. Here are a few ceremonies happening across Southern California:
Check out our full list of things to do this week.
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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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Topline:
Local artist Hedy Torres drew unfinished portraits of DACA recipients in 2017, while she was a student at Cal State Northridge, and pledged to finish them when her subjects attained lawful permanent residency. Last month, she reunited with her first subject and invited community members to watch as she asked him how his life has changed over nearly a decade.
The backstory: Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas was brought to the U.S. when he was 2. He is now a parent and an adjunct instructor at Cal State Northridge, but there was a time when he could not envision a stable future.
Why it matters: DACA does not grant lawful permanent status or a pathway to citizenship. Although the federal government continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, 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 also been deported.
Go deeper: Podcast explores a DACA recipient's journey back to Mexico after 30 years
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.”
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.
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.
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 she 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.
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. He earned his degree in 2017.
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.”
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.
Topline:
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.
What's new: 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.
Fire risk: Forecasters say conditions won’t likely meet the threshold of 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. 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.
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.
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.
In L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties, call 3-1-1 or call for a list of cooling centers. In the city of Los Angeles, you can also find a list of recreation centers, senior centers and libraries — all good choices for cooling off — online.
You can get more details of cooling centers in Southern California:
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.
Topline:
Naoko Takei Moore, owner of TOIRO in West Hollywood and author of Simply Donabe, will cook live at LAist Cookbook Live on Oct. 8, in partnership with the James Beard Foundation.
Why it matters: Donabe cooking relies on good ingredients and slow, steady heat instead of heavy seasoning, making it a natural fit for L.A.'s produce and busy weeknights.
Why now: It’s the start of hot pot season, and Moore’s second cookbook, Simply Donabe, is built for cooking at cooler temperatures, perfect for the fall.
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.
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.
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 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.
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."
MORE INFO: Cookbook Live with Naoko Takei Moore
When: Thursday, Oct. 8, 7–8:15 p.m.
Where: The Crawford, 474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena
Tickets: $0–$60, available here
