The Brief

For years, advocates for a more democratic Los Angeles have called for expanding the size of the City Council beyond the current 15 members.

The idea gained momentum in 2022, after the release of secretly recorded audio that came to be known as the City Hall tapes scandal. Two former and one current member of the council were caught engaging in a conversation that included racist and derogatory remarks.

Many proponents of council expansion hoped it would be placed on the November ballot, while the fervor for reform remained strong.

That’s not going to happen.

Council President Paul Krekorian, who created an Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform and promised to take up the issue, said last week that he plans to refer the idea of expanding the size of the panel to a yet-to-be-created charter commission.

The move would indefinitely delay any plan to increase the size of what many believe to be a council too small to represent a sprawling city of nearly 4 million people.

Advocates of the idea said increasing the size of the 15-member City Council would make the panel better reflect the diversity of L.A. and allow residents more access to council members. They pointed to New York, with its 51 council members and Chicago with 50.

The size of the L.A. council has remained the same for 100 years, even as the city has grown dramatically.

The ad hoc committee has had a year-and-a-half to consider the idea.

“This ongoing discussion will require more public input and analysis than can be completed in time for the November ballot,” Krekorian said in a statement to LAist.

The council would have had to act by early July to place any measure on the ballot.

Supporters of council expansion expressed disappointment at the delay.

“It's frustrating to see it get punted,” said David Levitus, who heads LA Forward, a group that works on strengthening democracy.

He cited a poll that showed two-thirds of Angelenos supported expansion, a possible shift in voter sentiment. In past decades, L.A. voters have turned down proposals on three previous occasions to increase the council size.

Jeremy Payne of Catalyst California, which advocates for racial justice, said the time was ripe for expansion.

“We are at a pivotal point following the audio leak, and I want to make sure we seize the opportunity for change,” he said in an interview. “Our council districts are too large for residents to feel truly represented.”

L.A. City Council members represent about 265,000 residents each, the largest local council districts in the country. In New York, each council member represents about 173,000 residents. In Chicago, council members are called aldermen and represent about 55,000 residents each.

Krekorian said he supports expanding the council to 23 members “in order to create greater responsiveness, more potential for inclusiveness, and reduced influence of political campaign funds.”

He has touted progress on other reforms in the wake of the tapes scandal, which involved three members of the City Council and a labor leader secretly discussing how to redraw the council’s district boundaries to maintain their own power. The conversation led to the resignations of Council President Nury Martinez and the head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, Ron Herrera. Former Councilmember Gil Cedillo was voted out of office before the tapes were released.

The only participant in the conversation to have survived the scandal was Councilmember Kevin de León, who faces reelection in November. Earlier this month, Krekorian reinstated De León to his committee assignments after removing him in the wake of the scandal.

To address the type of backroom dealing that played out on the audio tapes, the council has placed on the November ballot a measure that would create an independent redistricting commission to draw City Council district boundaries, taking the decision out of the hands of the council itself.

Council members have been split on whether to increase the size of the government body, which would dilute their individual power.

“I’m just not convinced that more politicians makes for better government,” said Councilmember Traci Park, who represents an area that stretches from Venice to Brentwood.

“I have yet to see any evidence that constituents in city’s with larger councils are any more satisfied with their local elected representatives than our constituents in Los Angeles are with us,” she said.

She argued a bigger budget for her council office would help her improve services to constituents.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the western San Fernando Valley, said of expansion: “You may have less ability to come to compromises.”

Still, he supports adding council members “to have more diversity.”

Levitus of LA Forward suspects opposition is more likely tied to the change in power council expansion would produce. “Expanding the council is going to mean each individual council member is less powerful and the council as a whole is less powerful in relation to the mayor,” he said.

Levitus’ group favors increasing the size of the council to 29.

He said “we need the threat that voters will do this themselves,” by gathering signatures to place a measure on the ballot.

The L.A. Governance Reform Project, a group of leading local scholars, has urged the council to place on the ballot a measure to expand its size and another that would increase the number of school board members at the L.A. Unified School District.

In a December report titled “Toward a Better Governed City of Los Angeles,” the group said the council should increase to 25 members, with 20 members elected by districts and five elected from regional seats that are larger than individual council seats.

It also recommended increasing the size of the LAUSD board from seven to 11 members.

Both would require changes to the city charter, which require a vote of the people.

Last week, the council asked the city attorney to draw up language for an ordinance that would create a charter reform commission, which the council president said was “the most appropriate place” to continue the discussion about expansion..

Krekorian has said new the commission would be able to ask the City Council to place both council and school board expansion on the ballot in 2026.

The ultimate decision for placing a measure on the ballot falls with the City Council.

“A Charter amendment for expanding the Council drafted by such a commission, rather than the Council itself, might well attract more public support, and I believe that approach now offers the best chance for achieving this important goal," he added.

The council also voted last week to place a series of ethics reforms on the ballot, including one that would triple the fines the Ethics Commission could impose on council members and others who violate city ethics rules, including campaign finance laws.

This week, indie musician Mitski is playing a series of sold out shows at an unexpected L.A. venue: Hollywood High School’s auditorium.

For the students, it’s an opportunity to see a beloved artist at “our freaking school.” For the school, it’s a continuation of a “world famous” arts legacy.

“It makes me look at the school with so much pride,” said Lotus Rosby, a junior. “I'm like, ‘Wow, they have a huge artist coming to our school.’”

Music for a ‘good cry’

Mitski has built a dedicated following since she self-released her first album in 2012.

Senior Angel Cueto found the singer in middle school during “a very like, angsty teen part of my life."

“There's so many times where I've just bawled my eyes out in the shower to her music, and she's always like the crying artist that I go to when I just want a good cry,” she said.

For sophomore London James, hearing 2014’s “I don’t smoke” was a canon event in her life.

“Mitski speaks to me,” James said. “I understand her, like she's me and I'm her.”

James searched for tickets as soon as she saw the announcement of the Hollywood High shows.

“I didn't even have time to check the prices because every date was already sold out,” she said.

James, who’s in the school’s theatre program, wondered if there’d be a chance for students to volunteer to work backstage.

“But deep down I knew that was not gonna happen,” James said.

A 1920s era view of the Hollywood High School campus looking northwest from Highland Ave. The school opened in 1903 when the surrounding area was largely farmland.

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Then the school announced a contest. If students attended school every class period, every day for two weeks, they’d be entered into a raffle to win a pair of tickets donated by Mitski’s team.

Attendance is tied to school funding and students’ academic success, both of which are priorities for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Michael Reagan, an attendance counselor at the school, said the 168 students who entered the contest had a 96% attendance rate compared to 89% for those who did not.

“ It's definitely my most effective attendance challenge that I've done all year… probably in my three years in the district,” Reagan said.

Hollywood High School's auditorium, pictured here in 1939, and the library were the only two surviving buildings after the the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake.

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Students James, Cueto and Rosby were among the 46 students who won a pair of tickets.

“I think I've said I'm excited 25 million times and I don't think it's enough,” James said.

For Cueto, who’s a senior, it’s another opportunity to reflect on the arts as a viable career path — not just as an artist, but all the roles it takes to put together a show.

“It’s not just us watching a(n) artist that we like so much,” Cueto said. “But us also maybe getting a peak into our future.”

Why Hollywood High?

Hollywood High School is one of two U.S. stops for Mitski’s tour to support her new album, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me.

“I wanted it to feel special,” Mitski told the show World Cafe earlier this year. “  I wanted it to feel like an experience, I wanted to recreate even the feeling that I had going to shows, going to DIY shows, punk shows.”

The artist is also donating $2 of each ticket sale to nonprofit L.A. afterschool music program In The Band.

There are more than a thousand wooden seats between Hollywood High School's first floor and mezzanine and a pipe organ embedded in the walls. "”We rival some of the playhouses on Hollywood Boulevard," Dovlatian said.

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Cueto, a senior at the school, has a different take on the space. “It's like a, in my head, a janky auditorium that I spent like four years in," she said. "Sometimes it hurts my butt sitting in there for too long."

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Mitski isn’t the first musician to play the auditorium. Former Smiths frontman Morrissey played at the school in 2013 and Hollywood High School’s connection to the arts goes back decades.

Principal Samuel Dovlatian calls the school “world famous” because of the long roster of alumni working in arts and entertainment.

They include:

• Carol Burnett, actress, comedian, singer and writer
• Brandy, singer, songwriter and actress
• Sarah Jessica Parker, actress and producer
• Laurence Fishburne, actor, producer and director

Their names line the school's hallways in red stars. Actress Judy Garland also attended the school, but according to Dovlatian, skipped graduation to finish filming The Wizard of Oz.

Ken Handler, the inspiration for Mattel's Ken doll graduated from Hollywood High School in 1961.

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Principal Samuel Dovlatian in Hollywood High School's museum.

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There’s also a collection of memorabilia in a “museum” attached to the school's library with includes:

• The hammer from The Shawshank Redemption, a film written by alum Frank Darabont, who went on to create "The Walking Dead."
• An original Ken doll modeled after alumni Ken Handler. 
• A pair of rhinestone heels owned by Marge Champion, a dancer and the inspiration for Disney’s Snow White. 

The arts are also a core part of the school’s present.

Dovlatian said even if students don’t go into the entertainment industry, they’ll take away valuable skills about working in teams and communicating.

“You have to go beyond the textbook,” Dovlatian said. “Get [students] hands-on learning, get them to struggle with the problem, the concept, the dance routine, the material, the equipment, and let them figure out for themselves what success means.”

The historic library, which includes a mural of entertainment industry history, is one reason junior Dulce Duque chose to attend the school. “ I really like our old Hollywood vibes,” Dueque said.

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Hollywood High converted the former auto-body shop into a studio where students learn video and film production.

Mawuena Akorli uses that space as a junior in the New Media Academy program. She said as a Black girl, she doesn’t often see herself in the media.

“ I wanna make stories and films that people can relate to and makes them feel seen,” Akorli said.

The same auditorium where Mitski will host her residency is also home to the school’s performing arts magnet, which includes theatre, dance and music.

James has an invitation for anyone else in the audience to see Hollywood High’s Spring musical, which starts in mid-April.

“ If you can go see Mitski, you can come see Into the Woods,” James said. “Y'all know where this auditorium is.”

NASA astronauts could be just days away from blasting off towards the moon for the first time since 1972, when Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan took his last steps in the gray lunar dust.

As soon as Wednesday, a four-person crew could launch on a mission to fly around the moon in an Orion capsule that's currently perched at the top of a 322-foot, orange-and-white rocket waiting at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"When those engines light, this thing is moving out," said Reid Wiseman, the NASA mission's commander, during a briefing with reporters on Sunday. He said that it was "surreal" to drive out to the launch pad and see this massive rocket.

The crew's first launch opportunity will come on April 1, at 6:24 p.m EDT. Mission managers have several more launch opportunities through April 6.

"Things are certainly starting to feel real," said NASA astronaut Christina Koch. She and Wiseman are in preflight quarantine, along with their fellow NASA astronaut, pilot Victor Glover, plus astronaut Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

If their trip goes as planned, it will be the first time that a woman, a person of color, and a non-American will venture out around the moon.

"We are getting very, very close, and we are ready," says Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator for NASA's exploration systems development mission directorate.

During a briefing, mission managers said that launch preparations were going smoothly and they were not dealing with any technical issues that might threaten a Wednesday attempt.

"The one thing we are watching is the weather," says NASA exploration ground systems manager Shawn Quinn, who says the forecast currently calls for an 80% chance of favorable launch conditions.

No moonwalks, but a flyby

This will be the first launch in NASA's Artemis moon program that includes a crew.

Over three years ago, during the Artemis I test flight in November and December of 2022, NASA put an Orion capsule through its paces without astronauts on board. That capsule went on a looping trip around the moon that lasted over three weeks and covered over a million miles before splashing back down in the Pacific.

This time around, the astronauts will first orbit Earth so that they can check out key systems on their spacecraft, including life support, communication, and navigation.

If everything goes as planned, they'll fire their vehicle's propulsion system to send themselves on a looping figure-eight path around the moon and back, a deep space journey that will take them more than 230,000 miles away from Earth. It will take several days to get out to the moon, and the entire mission is expected to last about ten days.

The closest they'll come to the moon is about 4,000 to 6,000 miles above the lunar surface, as they swing behind the moon and briefly lose contact with mission controllers.

At that distance, according to NASA, the moon will appear to be about the size of a basketball held at arm's length, with the distant blue Earth beyond it.

A lander still to come

This mission is a key step towards an eventual moon landing that will support NASA's goal of establishing a permanent lunar presence, including a moon base, with the help of international partners.

But work on critical hardware — most importantly, the landing vehicle — remains incomplete, although NASA has been pushing to speed up its two lunar lander contractors, SpaceX and Blue Origin.

NASA officials now plan to test out one or both landers in Earth's orbit before trying to press on with a lunar landing attempt. To do so, they added a lander checkout mission next year to the Artemis program's lineup of launches.

Under the current timeline, a landing on the moon could be attempted in 2028.

But long-time NASA veteran Wayne Hale, who spent decades as a flight controller and space shuttle program manager before his retirement, thinks that timeline is going to be challenging.

"I kind of worry about whether it will be before 2030 or not, but hopefully not long after that," says Hale.

He says NASA's new roadmap for the moon, unveiled last week at the agency's headquarters, is ambitious, involving multiple robotic missions, a lunar base, and power station development.

"All of these are good but, to use a cliche — show me the money," Hale noted, adding that he hopes Congress will provide the necessary funds, but he's skeptical.

A new moon race? 

Already, the Artemis program has spent something in the range of $93 billion, according to one recent accounting from the agency's inspector general.

NASA's return to the moon has essentially been in the works since 2004, when President George W. Bush gave a speech announcing that NASA would finish building the international space station, retire its fleet of aging space shuttles, and make its new focus the moon, as a stepping stone to Mars.

"It's really the same program, with a little tweaking along the way, that we are trying to execute 22 years later," notes John Logsdon, a space policy historian and professor emeritus at George Washington University. "It's taken forever."

In the 1960s the space race with the Soviet Union seemed existential, says Logsdon, and this generated an urgency that just doesn't exist for the current moon program. "This is just something that seems the logical next thing to do, but not with any great commitment to getting it done on any kind of reasonable schedule," says Logsdon.

China is also seeking to put people on the moon, and some lawmakers in Congress and officials at NASA have tried to use that as a new space race that could inspire more funding and support.

Most people alive today have no memory of being able to look up at the moon and know that astronauts are there. Recent surveys suggest wide support among Americans for NASA's return to the moon, says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator for the Apollo collection at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

"The Artemis program is actually more popular than the Apollo program was," says Muir-Harmony. "In general, the polls suggest that today, Americans are more supportive of the program than they were in the 1960s."

Copyright 2026 NPR

California has managed a remarkable feat over the past 20 years. Even as its economy has grown to overtake Germany’s as the fourth-largest in the world, the state’s consumption of gasoline has declined by almost 15%, and consumption of petroleum diesel has fallen by around two-thirds. This has happened due to some of the world’s most aggressive climate policies, including a tax on carbon emissions and a strict requirement to adopt clean-burning fuels such as “renewable diesel” made from fats and oils.

During the same period, California’s production of crude oil has also fallen by around half, and many oil wells have shut down. The state now imports almost two-thirds of its crude oil from tanker ships, which is cheaper and more practical because it is separated by steep mountains from oil-producing zones such as Texas. Some of the state’s largest gasoline and diesel refineries are also shutting down amid declining demand, which will make the state dependent on imports of refined gasoline, too.

The state’s diminished fossil-fuel sector has made it especially vulnerable to the oil shock of the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran — and to interventions from the Trump administration that could delay or even reverse California’s trend toward renewable energy. Gas prices in the state have spiked toward $7 a gallon in recent weeks, the highest prices in the country. As other economies clamp down on fuel exports, it’s possible the state could face even higher crude prices or a shortage of gasoline.

Two weeks after the war began, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department issued a legal memorandum arguing that the federal government can use the Defense Production Act to preempt state law in the event of energy emergencies. The Department of Energy then moved to restart a long-defunct California offshore oil pipeline owned by the company Sable Offshore. The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “California’s reliance on foreign oil vulnerable to geopolitical disruption,” with “a significant share traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.” The pipeline has been shut down since a 2015 oil spill that killed hundreds of animals, and state officials had not given it clearance to reopen. On the very next day, the pipeline reopened. California has sued to shut it back down.

For now, the Sable pipeline is ramping up to process around 50,000 barrels a day, which would provide around 3 percent of the state’s daily oil needs. Chevron has already said it will buy and refine 20,000 barrels of crude from the pipeline starting in April. The addition of new supply from Sable could lower costs for refineries, said Mike Umbro, an energy entrepreneur who runs Californians for Energy and Science, an educational nonprofit that advocates for increased oil production. Beyond Sable, though, there aren’t many good options for increasing crude supplies in the short term.

“Sacramento’s saying, ‘You don’t have a long-term future here,’ so the companies aren’t going to dump a bunch of money in to increase production,” Umbro said.

Nevertheless, the Interior Department said this week it would consider a proposal from another offshore oil company to frack undersea oil wells in order to increase production. The administration has also held oil lease sales on federal land in California, and has sued to block a state law that would limit drilling near homes and schools, both measures that would open up more onshore oil production in the state.

But more upstream oil production won’t help resolve the current fuel crunch. Even as some oil producers consider pumping more crude, no one has suggested building more refineries. In fact, Chevron and other large refinery owners have warned that California’s “cap-and-invest” program — a carbon tax that gets more expensive as time goes on — could soon drive them out of the state. The California Air Resources Board, the state’s climate regulator, is supposed to debut new rules for the carbon tax later this year, which would reduce the amount of free emissions refineries would be allowed to emit and make refineries less likely to stay in California.

The oil industry’s argument against these regulations follows the same logic as the Trump administration’s. “Continued erosion of California’s refining capacity risks increased reliance on imported fuels that are slower to arrive, more exposed to global supply disruptions, and less reliable during emergencies or periods of heightened geopolitical risk,” Andy Walz, a senior executive at Chevron, wrote in a letter to state leaders.

At the CERAWeek energy conference this week in Texas, Walz said he believes the state could soon have a shortage of gasoline and jet fuel, and that Chevron might close its own refineries within a decade. Those refineries account for 30% of capacity, and losing them could cause huge supply shortages for Bay Area drivers, Central Valley farmers, and even Air Force bases.

Democrats and environmental groups in the state, meanwhile, say that the refiners may be crying wolf about the state’s carbon tax. They see the Iran crisis as more evidence that the state should lean harder into its transition away from oil. Indeed, as Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California state director for the Environmental Defense Fund, sees it, the current gas spike may only speed up the state’s energy transition by making electric vehicles even more attractive. Governor Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposed a subsidy for first-time EV buyers, designed to replace the repealed Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, and she said the Iran crisis could strengthen the governor’s case.

“I do think the war actually makes it even more important to move forward with this, because I think it just underscores how vulnerable we are, being so dependent on fossil fuels,” she said.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-iran-california-oil-sable/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Tickets to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will go on sale Thursday.

The much-anticipated drop is the first opportunity to get seats at Olympic events, including the opening and closing ceremonies — and it's for locals only. The sale will be open to those who pre-registered to buy tickets, and not everyone will be chosen. Fans will be randomly selected and given a time slot to buy tickets.

Fans with eligible Southern California or Oklahoma City ZIP codes will be notified via email if they're selected for a slot to buy tickets in the pre-sale, which runs April 2 to 6. After that, fans from around the world will have their first chance to get tickets from April 9 to 19.

Those who are chosen from the draw will be notified 48 hours ahead of their time slot to buy tickets online, and will have two days to select and purchase their tickets. That means people will know as early as Tuesday if they've been selected to buy tickets.

Each fan can snag up to 12 tickets, and an additional 12 tickets to the Olympic soccer tournament. Tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies are limited to four per person.

If you aren't chosen for the first ticket drop, there will be more in the months to come. Plus, come 2027 there will be a re-sale market for tickets.

How the draw works

If you get an email that you've been selected to buy Olympics tickets, it will include the time window you have to purchase tickets and a link to the website where you can buy them.

You'll have 48 hours to buy tickets, but LA28 recommends logging in as soon as you can to get the best ticket options. Once tickets are in your cart, you'll have 30 minutes to buy them.

LA28 warned fans that they could encounter online queues when buying tickets. Some people reported this when registering for tickets, too.

The ticket site will allow fans to search events by sport, venue and location. Once you choose an event, you'll book in a seating category — but actual seat numbers will be assigned later on.

Fans who want to game out their purchases ahead of time can look at the competition schedule here.

If you purchase tickets in the locals pre-sale, the billing address for the card you buy the tickets with will need to have one of the qualifying local ZIP codes. Here in Southern California, that includes people in L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Prices

Prices for Olympics tickets will vary widely. The cheapest tickets will be $28 a pop, with the priciest tickets upwards of $1,000, according to Olympic organizers.

The majority of tickets to the Olympic Games will run into triple digits. According to LA28, half the tickets will be more than $200 and around 5% of tickets will be more than $1,000. In total, there will be 14 million tickets available across the Olympics and Paralympics.

What exactly different events will cost — and how expensive tickets might get — isn't clear yet. An example in a Youtube explainer posted by LA28 showed ticket options for Track and Field preliminary competitions at the Coliseum ranging from $28 to $1,035.65.

According to the video, there will also be standing room-only tickets for some events.

Tickets to the Paralympic Games will go on sale next year.