The Brief

Good news for one of nature’s rarest and unlikeliest species: The critically endangered Devils Hole pupfish has been making a resurgence after a very close brush with extinction last decade.

The fish — whose full natural habitat consists of a hole in Death Valley National Park with a surface area of about 10 feet by 60 feet, little oxygen and very warm water — has been central for conservationists and biologists interested in how the species managed to develop in such extreme conditions.

So it was with guarded optimism that officials announced a few weeks ago that the spring pupfish census had counted 191 of the silvery fish, which measure little more than an inch long. That's a far cry from the 35 counted in 2013, when the species was at its closest to the brink since being studied.

Back from the brink

Before the population started declining a few decades ago, roughly 200 to 250 specimens were counted each spring by scuba divers. Typically, the population roughly doubles for the fall count, Death Valley National Park aquatic ecologist Kevin Wilson said, because sunlight starts to reach the water in the hole in the late spring and summer. That allows for algae to grow as a food source.

However, the species has faced a series of challenges. First, development in the 1960s threatened the fish’s habitat, which is connected to an underground aquifer that started being tapped in the desert for agricultural purposes. And even after protections were put in place to save the endangered fish, the population started declining in the mid-1990s before reaching its low point in 2013.

Although the population’s been on the rise for a few seasons, officials said they wanted to be cautious before publicizing the upswing since the count is prone to major swings, with fall typically having much higher numbers than spring.

This pupfish’s unique habitat

Devils Hole is located within Death Valley National Park, though it’s easy for visitors to miss since it’s located in an exclave of the park across the Nevada border, about 10 miles from Death Valley Junction. The hole itself is at least hundreds of feet deep — its bottom has never been mapped.

“It's not a flowing spring. It's not a bubbling spring. It's just kind of this geological fault that opened up this cave, and you're looking at the aquifer,” Wilson said. “It's kind of a strange term for folks, but you're just looking at water that's underground and we just have a window to see it.”

It’s in this unlikeliest of spots that the Devils Hole pupfish managed to take root, eventually evolving into a separate species from other local pupfishes, with a tolerance for extreme conditions and no pelvic fins.

“There's a lot of species that we don't expect to survive because humans have manipulated the environment to the extent that we have driven them to extinction,” said Michael Schwemm, senior fish biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service. “What's unique about this one is the isolation. The fish managed to get [to Devils Hole] during times of high water and evolve independently and go on their own trajectory.”

Devils Hole as pictured from above.

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Courtesy National Park Service/Kim Stringfellow

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Other than the isolation and unique evolutionary developments, Devils Hole pupfish are remarkable for another reason: Wilson said they live in the smallest habitat for any known vertebrate species.

You can actually see the pupfish for yourself: Just keep in mind that the hole is fenced off to protect the fish, so you may need to bring binoculars.

A conservationist flashpoint

The Devils Hole pupfish isn’t just notable from a biological perspective, it was also at the center of a debate over water use and conservation in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“A local landowner put a well in right on the boundary of National Park Service land, turned it on, and the water level went down right away and the pupfish population declined,” Wilson said.

The debate got contentious enough that bumper stickers that read “kill the pupfish” or “save the pupfish” were popular.

The battle made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 1976, when the court decided in Cappaert v. United States that the federal government could restrict pumping of the aquifer that feeds Devils Hole in order to preserve the pupfish population. This set the precedent for the federal government to claim the rights to not just water sources on federal lands, but also adjacent aquifers in order to protect endangered species.

The future of the Devils Hole pupfish

Conservation biologists have been working to restore the pupfish population since the decline started, which Schwemm called one of the “smallest population sizes that a population has ever rebounded back from in a completely natural setting.”

Scientists routinely monitor the pupfish in Devils Hole.

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Kurt Moses

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National Park Service

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Though scientists want to keep the Devils Hole pupfish in its natural environment, they’ve had a little intervention: Owing to the population decline and scarce food sources, scientists started to feed the fish in 2007, and the population numbers have been monitored via diving expeditions for decades.

According to Schwemm, the fish is of great interest to researchers as they work to understand how the fish evolved to survive in high-temperature water with low levels of oxygen and food.

But even if the species’ natural habitat changes and becomes unviable for the fish in the years to come – which is possible with climate change – scientists have instituted a stopgap measure. A nearby tank mimicking the natural conditions of Devils Hole, including a 93-degree water temperature and very low oxygen, has managed to sustain a separate pupfish population.

And since pupfish populations appear to be stable or growing in both the natural and artificial habitats, officials are looking forward to being able to study the fish without devoting most of their energy to survival.

“It really opens up the door for future research,” Schwemm said. “We were really limited on our ability to do research before, and I think that's going to really help us.”

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.

Marielle Abaunza holds a photo of her and Gov. Gavin Newsom at the signing ceremony for California's new stand-alone post-production tax credit.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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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.

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.

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.”

Federal game changer

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.

Marielle Abaunza is executive vice president of business development for Signature Post in Burbank.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“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.

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.”

Could long-running case end up at the Supreme Court?

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.”

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.

How does it work?

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:

• Sept. 2026: School fairs start.
• Oct. 1, 2026: Choices application opens.
• Nov. 6, 2026:  Deadline to apply online.
• Dec. 1, 2026:  Late applications begin. 
• February 2027: On-time applicant results sent. 
• March 5, 2027: Deadline to accept or decline school offers for on-time applicants. School assignments for late applications follow the processing of on-time applications. Students may be offered a spot through the start of the spring semester. 
• Aug. 12, 2027: The school year begins.

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.

How to prepare

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:

• Magnets: Programs on a specific theme, such as science, math, language, advanced studies or art. These programs were originally established to integrate segregated schools and have a unique “points” system to prioritize applications. 
• Dual language or immersion: Students learn in English and in a second language such as Spanish, Mandarin, Korean or Armenian. 
• Affiliated charter schools: District-run schools with more freedom to try different types of teaching or other programs. 

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.

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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