The Brief

On a warm October morning in 2021, three men and one woman met in a squat, unassuming building in a working-class neighborhood in the middle of Los Angeles.

They were four of the most powerful people in the city: Ron Herrera, the head of a prominent union group, and three L.A. city council members: Gil Cedillo, Kevin de León and then-council president Nury Martinez. They didn’t know it at the time, but everything they were saying was being secretly recorded.

For the next 90 minutes, the four Latino leaders would speak candidly using demeaning and racist terms about colleagues on the council, Black political power, indigenous people and even a child — all within the context of a meeting held to strategize how to advance Latino power in the city.

A year later, on Oct. 9, 2022, that recording was leaked to the public.

When the media began publishing excerpts from the tape, they shook Los Angeles to its core. It led to protests outside — and inside — City Hall and at the homes of the people on the tape. There were calls for resignation from fellow council members, national politicians, and even the president of the United States.

Now, in her first interview since the scandal broke, we pressed former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez about the racist and offensive things she said.

We also asked Martinez to engage and think through how her comments were connected to the larger systemic issues of anti-Black racism and colorism in the Latino community. Over the course of our six-hour interview, Martinez largely declined to do so.

“I don't even know if I'm the right person to even have these conversations anymore,” she said in Episode 2, “because I've been tainted in such a way where I don't even know if I would even be welcome. Even in this conversation, I feel really scared and nervous to even dive into that.”

She also discussed her experience of the scandal and how it has affected her mental health.

Antonia Cereijido and Martinez spoke over the course of two days at LAist’s Pasadena studio. The conversation below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Listen to more in LAist Studios’ Imperfect Paradise podcast. The series includes interviews with those who were most impacted by the hurtful comments on the tape including former L.A. city councilmember Mike Bonin, current councilmembers Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Eunisses Hernandez and Nithya Raman, indigenous human rights organizer Odilia Romero, and Professor Tanya Hernández, who has written about anti-Blackness in the Latinx community.

Listen 52:50

Apple

Spotify

Host Antonia Cereijido presses former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez to account for the racist, hurtful comments she made on the secret recording that rocked Los Angeles and led to her resignation. CONTENT WARNING: Sensitive subject matter.

Nury & The Secret Tapes: Part 3

Host Antonia Cereijido presses former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez to account for the racist, hurtful comments she made on the secret recording that rocked Los Angeles and led to her resignation. CONTENT WARNING: Sensitive subject matter.

Subscribe

• Apple
• Spotify

Learning about the tapes, and the decision to resign

Antonia Cereijido: Let's talk about the day when the tapes were published. When did you hear about the tapes and their existence?

Nury Martinez: I was having coffee with my husband at our kitchen table, and it's about 9 or 9:30 a.m. when I get a phone call. My then-chief of staff, Alexis Wesson, calls me and says, “there is a tape.”

And her exact words were, “Do you remember wearing Doc Martens to a meeting?”

[Note: One of the first things Martinez says on the tape is that she’s wearing Doc Martens].

I go, “Doc Martens? Like the shoes? I have Doc Martens, but I don't know what you're talking about.”

She goes, “Someone found tapes of you where apparently you're at some meeting and you're wearing Doc Martens because you mentioned Doc Martens in the meeting.” And I was like, ‘I have no idea what you're talking about.’”

By 8:30 or 9:30 a.m. the next day, which was now Oct. 9, there's a story in the L.A. Times, and now by this time I'm getting phone calls from folks asking me what this is about. By that time it's now clear to me that the meeting they're talking about is the Oct. 18, 2021 meeting that the four of us held at the County Federation of Labor. And now it's like, who taped this? Who could have done this?

By that Sunday, the protesting had begun. I had people at my front door on my driveway shouting just absolute obscenities into my child's bedroom, calling me the C word. “You, you racist C word, you effing B word. We're gonna kill you, you should die.” It was all happening really, really fast.

Protestors demonstrate outside City Hall calling for the resignations of L.A. City Council members Kevin de Leon and Gil Cedillo in the wake of a leaked audio recording on Oct. 12, 2022.

(

Mario Tama

/

Getty Images

)

I had already internally, even though I did not say this to anyone, I had already accepted that this was so big that there is nothing that I could say or do to undo this and that I needed to step down. A hundred percent. I knew that there was gonna be consequences, that I needed to pay for this.

On Joe Biden, Karen Bass and Alex Padilla

Over the next 48 hours, dozens of elected officials called for the resignations of Martinez, Cedillo and de León, including U.S. Senator Alex Padilla and former Congressmember Karen Bass, who was, at the time, running for mayor of L.A. Martinez had recently endorsed Bass for mayor, and she was close with Padilla and his family; they went to the same high school in San Fernando, and Padilla’s brother, Ackley Padilla, was her former chief of staff.

On Oct. 11, 2022, President Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said during a press conference, “the president is glad to see that one of the participants in that conversation has resigned. But they all should. He believes that they all should resign. The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable and it was appalling. They should all step down.”

NM: During the first 24 hours of the tapes being leaked, Karen Bass did reach out to me and we talked several times. She was very supportive. And at one point I said, “if you have to renounce my endorsement, I will completely understand.” She didn't think we needed to do that the first 24 hours.

And she actually thought that somehow this would settle down or blow over in about one or two days. And we were actually expecting President Biden in Los Angeles that Thursday, and I was supposed to have a fundraiser, a Latino fundraiser for her that Saturday as well. When I talked to her on the phone, I'm like, “What do we do about President Biden's visit? Do I not show up? Like, what do you want me to do?” She's like, “No, we're moving forward. You show up.” And, you know, thinking this was gonna blow over.

I wanted to believe her, but I think deep down in my heart, I'm like, there is no way that this is gonna blow over. She also reached out to Ron Herrera for a possible press conference with the two of us. And then that didn't go anywhere. She was discouraged by a group of ministers, I think. But the intent of her standing with us was there. And I appreciate it.

Bass called me afterwards and she said, did you see Senator Alex Padilla's statement? I said, “No.” She goes, “It's bad.”

Alex never shared his statement with me. We did have a conversation. In fact, I was curled up in the bathroom when I took Alex's phone call, like at seven in the morning [on Monday], and he was really hard on me. And I was trying to explain what had happened and I wasn't getting through. And all I kept saying is, “But you know me.” And I might've said, “I don't know if I can withstand this, I'm scared.” And I didn't hear anything back.

U.S. Senator Alex Padilla. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

And soon after that, the cries for resignation were so loud. I then got on the phone with [L.A. city councilmember] Paul Krekorian and told him that I was gonna step down as council president.

AC: What strikes me about how you're describing those couple of days is that it sounds like you were sort of in “logistics brain.” But in terms of sitting down and thinking about why people were upset about the tapes, or processing, was that going through your mind?

NM: Oh yeah. That went through my mind, at night 'cause I wasn't sleeping. And so the first thing I attempted to do is take full responsibility and apologize, which I know was not accepted at the time, and then fix what I had done. Of course, I thought about what this has done. Of course I thought about Mike's baby. Of course. But once phone calls kept coming in, I didn't necessarily feel comfortable with these people on the phone. I didn't know if I was being recorded. I didn't know if they were talking to the press. So I didn't talk about these things with anybody on the phone. The only thing I knew how to do is hand over my responsibilities as a council president and make sure that I didn't mess up anything else.

AC: How did it feel to hear that President Biden had weighed in?

NM: I was in shock. I wanna believe that he had to do it because he was coming into Los Angeles on that Thursday. Maybe he just wanted to get it out of the way. That's what I thought.

Senator Padilla told us he does not dispute Nury’s account of this call. LAist reached out repeatedly to Mayor Bass, described this story to her spokesperson and asked for her comment, but we never heard back. In a later interview with LAist’s Larry Mantle, Bass denied she thought it would blow over, and added, “even if it was, I wanna take a crisis and seize it as an opportunity.”

Redistricting and Black political power

In another part of the tape, the four Latino leaders discuss redistricting, the once in a decade process of drawing new city council district lines. 

They focus on Council District 9, a majority Latino district in South L.A. that’s currently represented by a Black man, Curren Price. They care about this district because it’s become the district with the highest percentage of Latino residents in the city, and they think it will be represented by a Latino in the future. They want District 9 to have some good economic “assets,” like universities, stadiums, airports, etc, that are tied to good union jobs and bring resources into the district.  And they’re concerned the redistricting commission might take some of those “assets” away.

In particular, the four people in the room wanted the University of Southern California – USC – to remain in Council District 9. But that would mean leaving Council District 8, which is also right next door to USC in South LA, with very few economic assets. 

District 8 has the highest percentage of Black residents in the city. On the tape, Martinez proposed that Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who represents Council District 8 take LAX from his “brother,” Mike Bonin, whose district included the airport. Some people interpreted this as the four Latino leaders scheming to keep resources out of the hands of the Black community. 

AC: For me, listening to the tapes, just the fact that you do hear redistricting talked about in these racialized terms and it does sound like there's a zero sum. Like, “us Latinos get this, Black people get this.” I think it was shocking for the average person to hear that. I wanna give you the opportunity to respond to that.

NM: That wasn't the intent, and I think … of course, it's shocking. It makes people angry.

I think the Latino community, particularly that the Latino leaders in Los Angeles, have been incredibly cognizant about not starting a war over these seats, that eventually these seats will flip and they will turn Latino because that's what they're trending. But we as leaders in Los Angeles have never engaged in trying to, for example, run a Latino candidate against an African American candidate. I don't remember the time that I've been on the city council that I have not supported an African American colleague or an African American friend who happens to be running for that seat. And so that is, I think the misperception about why we were in that room is that there is this false narrative that we were meeting to dilute or take away political power from the African American community. And that's simply not true.

AC: Do you think Black people have disproportionate political power in Los Angeles and do you think it's come at the expense of Latinos?

NM: Not necessarily. I think the Latinos need to work on unifying our community. I don't think we have to blame anybody else. I think it's up to us to get people to turn out to vote.

AC: One thing that comes through in the tapes is that there's sort of a positioning of like, it's like white liberals in L.A. are allied with Black progressives and like Latinos seem left out. Do you think that's an accurate–

NM: You know what, I don't, I don't know if that was an accurate description of it.

I will tell you that the conversation and other conversations we've had as Latinos is, Latinos are becoming more and more invisible.

And that is something that I saw not only in the media, but I see in politics. I see in everyday life. When you turn on the television, our stories are not being told. And when we do tell them and when we are frustrated, even in a private conversation, it's turned against us. Like we don't have a right as a community to advocate for ourselves because somehow that goes against another ethnic group. I don't know why we do that.

AC: The way the Latino and Black community were talked about was like a zero sum game. Like there's a Latino seat and there's a Black seat, and that would negate Afro-Latinos as a community. I don't know if when you say Latinos, if you think of the Afro-Latino community.

NM: No, I can't say I do, but it's not on purpose. ‘Cause Afro-Latinos, particularly in Los Angeles ... I think you see more Afro-Latinos in Florida and New York and DC.

On L.A. District Attorney George Gascón

On the tape, Martinez disparages L.A. district attorney George Gascón, saying, “F*** that guy. I'm telling you now, he's with the Blacks.” Gascón was elected in 2020 on a platform of criminal justice reform and ending mass incarceration in the city. 

L.A. district attorney George Gascón,

(

Justin Sullivan

/

Getty Images

)

AC: You said, “Gascón, he's with the Blacks.” What does that mean?

NM: You know, I walked in there really angry and frustrated and it was, it was a mean and insensitive thing to say, and I didn't mean anything by it.

The conversation that we were having didn't have to do with Gascón himself, just had to do with so much of the frustration and anger that I was carrying with me inside me when I walked into that room. And that is no fault of the African American community.

It's just everything that was going on during COVID, with me as council president, the lack of support for what we were trying to do on the council, the amount of personal attacks against me, my leadership and my family were taking a toll on me. And that was it. There is absolutely no excuse for us. I think I let my anger and my frustration get the best of me, and that was it.

AC: There was no policy issue that you –

NM: No. I have absolutely no relationship with him whatsoever.

Racist comments about former Councilmember Mike Bonin's son

On the tape, Martinez told a story about being on a float during L.A.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade in 2017 with a number of elected officials and their family members, including Karen Bass, Karrie Harris-Dawson, who is married to councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, former city councilmember Mike Bonin and his son, Jacob, who was then a toddler. According to Martinez, the women were discussing Jacob’s behavior on the float. In recounting the story during the meeting that was secretly recorded, Martinez described Jacob, who is Black, by saying, “parece changuito,” which means, “he seems like a little monkey.” 

Martinez and the other leaders on the tape also described how Bonin would bring Jacob to city council and other events during Black History Month, which Kevin de León compared to Martinez bringing her designer handbags to council meetings. Herrera suggested the child was a prop and a statue on a plantation, and Martinez compared him to an accessory. Martinez later said, “Ahí trae su negrito, like on the side,” which means, “there he brings his little Black one.” 

AC: What did you mean when you said, about Mike Bonin’s son, “parece changuito”?

NM: The way I grew up with that word, “parece changuito." It has nothing to do with skin color. It has more to do with behavior. You're sort of just playing around. You're horsing around. Another word that we use in Spanish, “es travieso” [mischievous], you can’t stay put.

It's a conversation I should not have repeated. And I think that's an example of a bunch of moms sitting around you know, being critical of little boys' behavior. That was my mistake.

It was insensitive. It was mean. I never meant to hurt Jacob, and I'm going to have to live with that for the rest of my life, you know? I've never romanticized motherhood. Anybody who knows me and has been around me knows my child is also pretty wild. And now she's a teenager and it's even crazier at a different level. I've never romanticized parenthood. It's really, really hard. And I've been around those moms who sometimes we're critical of other children and we kind of talk smack about with one another. We're moms, right? I never meant to hurt Jacob. I thought about this a hundred times of what I would say to him if I would see him.

Former councilmember Mike Bonin photographed in his home.

(

Samanta Helou Hernandez

/

LAist

)

AC: What would you say?

NM: I would hug him. [I would say,] “I never meant to hurt you baby. That was never my intent. It was a conversation I had with four women that I should not have repeated.”

AC: Had you used that particular word [changuito] to describe children before?

NM: Yes, in my family, yes. In fact, my mother said that to me. It was common when I was growing up, and my mom actually pointed that out to me when the tapes broke. She said we used that word at home. [I told her] my mistake was that I was referencing an African American baby and I shouldn't have done that.

AC:  Why do you think it's different to say it about a Black kid versus a kid of another race?

NM: I did not mean it in a derogatory way, and it wasn't meant to describe him as a Black child. That was not the intent of the word.

AC: But do you understand why is it that that word specifically is offensive when talked about a Black kid versus another kid?

NM: Oh, a hundred percent.

AC: No, just the why –

NM: The word was not meant to be derogatory, and I was not describing him in that way because he is a Black child. I was simply referring to his behavior and that was it.

AC: Mike Bonin and [councilmember] Marqueece Harris-Dawson told me that the way you were talking about Jacob on the float is what a lot of people do to Black boys, treating him like he's older, like he has more agency or responsibility than he really does. What do you think about that characterization?

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson photographed near USC.

(

Samanta Helou Hernandez

/

LAist

)

NM: No, I think it was just moms just being critical of you know, a rowdy kid. Just like they would’ve been of my own kid. That was just us being moms.

AC: Would you have used that word in English?

NM: Never. Never have I ever used those words in English. I think in Spanish, then I speak in English. And so my vocabulary comes from me being an English learner. And I think for me, those words are not meant to hurt anybody, or to sound racist at all. I think it's just words that I grew up with.

Racist comments about Oaxacans

The four leaders discussed Koreatown, a neighborhood in Los Angeles that has a large Indigenous Mexican population. On the tape, Herrera says, “my mom used to call them indios.” 

Martinez says, “I see a lot of little short dark people,” and, “I don’t know where these people are from, like I don’t know what village they came out of, how they got here, but, tán [short for están] feos!,” which means, “they’re ugly.”

Protesters dance outside City Hall while calling for the resignations of L.A. City Council members Kevin de Leon and Gil Cedillo in the wake of a leaked audio recording on Oct. 12, 2022 in Los Angeles.

(

Mario Tama

/

Getty Images

)

AC: So the next part of the tapes I want to talk about is actually the part that, knowing your personal and political history, I was most surprised to hear, and that was your comments about Oaxacans. What did you mean when you called them ‘tan feos’?

NM: Oh my goodness. That's another thing that I will never forgive myself for. That was just a horrible, insensitive thing to say. I certainly don't have anything against the Oaxacan community. I feel horrible for having insulted the community.

AC: Do you think there's a colorism problem in Latino communities?

NM: Yes. Yes. I think there is. I think we're getting better and certainly my comments didn't help.

AC: So you, you don't think though, that you harbor a bias against people with darker skin?

NM: No way.

Anti-Black bias in the Latino/x community

AC:, I'm curious, looking back, why do you think you said that? Where was it coming from? Have you thought about why you said what you said?

NM: I've thought about that particular day, God, a thousand times, if not more. I was so frustrated. It's so angry and so alone and so abandoned by, by just, by everyone, particularly other members. And I think that over the two and a half years that I was council president, I just grew more frustrated and angry and pissed off at everything. And that's what you saw. That's it.

AC:  I understand the frustration, but I think there's like a difference between being frustrated and saying things that are insensitive, like you said. And so what I'm trying to do with this interview is unpack where the things were coming from. Because I think that there are a lot of internal biases that we as Latinos hold in the community that people picked up on, and they wanted to use it as an example to talk about this larger conversation about race. Do you think there's an anti-Blackness problem in the Latino community?

NM: I don't know. I mean, that's a really good question. I never felt we had one, um, on the council. Just speaking personally. My personal experience, that's all I can speak to.

AC: Do you think that there is a conversation to be had about anti-Blackness in the Latino community?

NM: Not in my household. Those conversations, um, have never, we've never had to have those conversations 'cause we've never felt that way. And that's just me personally. I don't know about other households or what else is happening in other communities, but I certainly have never felt that.

AC: One of the things that did happen was this larger conversation about how we talk about race in our communities and in many ways I think that part of it is good, like that we have to try more to have–

NM: You know, I wish I could dive more into that, because what this has caused for me is I don't even know if I'm the right person to even have these conversations anymore. 'Cause I've been tainted in such a way where I don't even know if I would even be welcome on a panel or in a group conversation to really dive into these issues, to figure out how we really feel about this. Because of what, how I've been perceived and characterized, that I could even in this conversation — I'm very worried, um, and feel really scared and nervous to even dive into that, if that makes any sense.

I'm not avoiding your question, but I'm just really scared to answer it. What if I say the wrong thing and now we're back to square one? I do not know if today I'm the right person to have those conversations. Do I believe they need to be had? Yes. I'm just being honest. I just don't know how to answer that.

The tape leak

In California, secretly recording a private conversation is a crime. The LAPD is investigating who recorded the meeting. Over the summer, Los Angeles Magazine and the L.A. Times reported that the police were investigating a former employee of the LA County Federation of Labor and his wife, who also worked there. The LAPD declined to comment or provide LAist with an update into the investigation.

In October 2022, a Reddit user named Honest-Finding-1581 posted nine pieces of audio – portions of various conversations that were secretly recorded in the L.A. County Federation of Labor a year or so earlier, which is how journalists discovered the tapes.

NM: I have always felt that as a Latina, I have never really been given a fair shake by the media. The coverage of these tapes in and of itself, says it all. I think there was a deliberate concerted effort to take snippets of the conversation and put them out to the general public. I have not found anyone who said to me, “I actually listened to the entire thing to get some context about what was taking place.”

AC: So you think if it had been presented whole, it wouldn't have blown up in the same way?

NM: Yeah, I do. [NOTE: The LA Times posted the full audio on YouTube within a week of publishing their first article about the tapes, and later published an annotated transcript of the full conversation.]

AC:  So what I hear you saying is that you feel like this is something that happened to you, not something you did.

NM: No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, this is a conversation that took place in a private setting out of frustration and anger for whatever, everything that was going on. And I take full responsibility for it. And there's nothing that I'm ever gonna be able to do to express how horrible I feel about it. That's what I'm saying.

On Kevin de León

Kevin de León speaks to council member Paul Krekorian on Oct. 12, 2022, during the first L.A. city council meeting after the media began reporting on the secret tapes.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

AC: What do you think about Kevin de León's decision not to resign?

NM: I think it was the right decision for him. Kevin didn't commit a crime. I think we can count how many members on the city council have been indicted to date for really troubling corruption charges. But Kevin did not commit a crime, and Kevin is not a racist.

The effect of the tape scandal on her life

NM: If it wasn't for my mom, I wouldn't even be alive. There were so many times during the first three months of what had happened where I didn't get out of bed. And I remember my mom was so scared that I would hurt myself, that she would call me every hour on the hour.

She couldn't come over 'cause there were so many cameras. And I was so ashamed that I have — I still can't talk about those horrible, dark, dark days. I would go to sleep and, I remember this, I don't wanna wake up tomorrow.

And then I would have visions of my mom burying me. And I just couldn't, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't see my mom burying me. I am not at all suggesting that all should be forgotten. Absolutely not. I think these conversations need to be had. Um, but the sense of not being worthy enough to be forgiven or to be listened to was so hard.

People make mistakes. I would hope that after this people would find a different way to hold people accountable. Um, I hope you do it differently. I don't want this to happen to anybody.

AC: What is a typical day like for you now?

NM: I see my daughter off to school and make breakfast, have a cup of coffee with my husband, talk about the day. He's also not working. So we're constantly trying to figure out what our finances are gonna look like the next month, which has been really, really hard.

On the really, really difficult days, I'll just go to church. My mom, to get me out of the house, told me, “You need to go to church and you need to go ask God to forgive you. Man isn't gonna forgive you. God is. You own up to everything you said and what you meant, and that's all you can do.”

When I would have these dark thoughts, I would get so scared that I just would jump in my car and go to church, and oftentimes I would sit there by myself and just cry. For hours. I would come home around dinner time, and I would start making dinner or lunch for my daughter after she got home from school. And that would be my day.

I journal just to get some of these things off my chest, to remind myself that I'm still a good person even though I didn't hear it at the time. That I'm worthy. That I did a lot of good work, that I helped a lot of people, that I loved my career, my job. It was my passion. And that this too shall pass. I don't know what's next, but I do believe this too shall pass. But, I just gotta just be honest. What this has done to me and my family has completely destroyed us. I don't know what's next. I know that this took my passion and my light. I don't know how to describe it in any other way besides, I'm lost.

Rebecca Katz contributed to this story.

Want more Olympics updates? Get our behind-the-scenes newsletter for what it's like to be at these Games.

It's the Winter Olympics, that special season every four years in which everyone you know is suddenly an expert on luge strategy and curling technique from the comfort of their couch.

There's plenty to dive into this year, at the unusually spread-out Milan Cortina Olympics.

Hundreds of athletes from around the world — including 232 from the U.S. — will descend on over two dozen venues across northern Italy to compete in 16 different sports. There are 116 medal events on the line throughout the 2 1/2 weeks. And this time, unlike the COVID-era 2022 Beijing Winter Games, spectators will be allowed to watch in person.

But you don't have to board a plane or sport hand warmers to get a good view, thanks to NBC's robust broadcasting rights and NPR's scrappy team of journalists on the ground. Here's how to follow the action — and peek behind the curtain — from home.

How to watch the opening ceremony

The Feb. 6 opening ceremony marks the official start of the Games (even though several sports, including curling and ice hockey, start competing two days earlier).

It will be held primarily at the historic San Siro Stadium in Milan, featuring performances by icons like Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli, as well as traditional elements like the Parade of Nations and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.

But there will also be simultaneous ceremonies and athlete parades at some of the other venues — scattered hundreds of miles apart — and, for the first time in history, a second Olympic cauldron will be lit in the co-host city of Cortina d'Ampezzo.

NBC's live coverage of the opening ceremony (also streaming on Peacock) will begin at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 6, with a prime-time broadcast planned for 8 p.m. ET the same day.

How to keep up once the Games begin

There are 16 days of competition between the opening and closing ceremonies, with contests and medal events scattered throughout, depending on the sport. Here's the full schedule (events are listed in local time in Italy, which is six hours ahead of Eastern time).

NBC says it will broadcast events live throughout the day, with a nightly prime-time highlights show at 8 p.m. ET, followed by a late-night version.

U.S.-based viewers can watch on NBC, Peacock and a host of other platforms, including the apps and websites of both NBC and NBC Sports. Seasoned Olympic viewers will recognize Peacock viewing experiences like "Gold Zone" (which whips around between key moments, eliminating the need to channel surf) and "Multiview," now available on mobile.

The Feb. 22 closing ceremony will be broadcast live starting at 2:30 p.m. ET, and again on prime time at 9 p.m. ET.

It will take place at a historic amphitheater in Verona, which will also host the opening ceremony of the Paralympics on March 6. Some 600 Para athletes will compete in 79 medal events across six sports — including Para Alpine skiing, sled hockey and wheelchair curling — before the closing ceremony in Cortina on March 15.

How to follow NPR's coverage

All the while, you can check out NPR's Olympics coverage to better understand the key people, context and moments that make up the Games.

NPR's five-person Olympics team will bring you news, recaps and color from the ground in Italy, online, on air and in your inbox. Plus, expect updates and the occasional deep dive from NPR's journalists watching from D.C. and around the world.

You can find all of NPR's Winter Olympics stories (past, present and upcoming) here on our website.

To listen to our broadcast coverage, tune to your local NPR station and stream our radio programming on npr.org or the NPR app.

Plus, subscribe to our newsletter, Rachel Goes to the Games, for a daily dose of what it's like to be there in person.

We'll also have a video podcast, Up First Winter Games, to further dissect the day's biggest Olympic stories and oddities. You can find it on NPR's YouTube page.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Californians could get instant rebates on electric vehicle purchases under Gov. Gavin Newsom's $200 million plan, which would require automakers to match state incentives dollar-for-dollar.

The plan, which the Legislature must still approve, lays out for the first time how the governor plans to steer a California-specific rebate program to bolster a slowing electric car market after the Trump administration cancelled federal incentives last year.

The California Air Resources Board would oversee the program, offering rebates at the point of sale to lower upfront costs for buyers instead of reimbursing them later. The draft does not specify rebate amounts, which the air board will determine during program design and discuss at a public workshop this spring, said Lindsay Buckley, a spokesperson for the agency.

The proposal exempts the program from the state’s usual rule-making requirements, allowing California to design and launch the rebates more quickly than typical for new programs.

Newsom first unveiled the incentive proposal as part of his January budget plan but released few initial details. State officials cast the subsidy as a response to President Donald Trump’s dismantling of incentives and blocking of California’s clean-vehicle mandate.

How the rebates would work

Outside experts and clean vehicle advocates said the details raise new questions about how the program would work in practice and who would benefit.

Ethan Elkind, a climate law expert at UC Berkeley, said structuring the incentives as grants allows the state to set the terms automakers must meet to access the money, giving California leverage over manufacturers.

But Mars Wu, a senior program manager with the Greenlining Institute, which advocates for investments in communities of color, said the draft plans fall short on equity, arguing the proposal does little to ensure the incentives reach the Californians who need them most.

“[The] proposal sets up a first-come, first-serve free-for-all scenario, which is not a prudent use of extremely limited public dollars in a deficit year,” she wrote in an email.

How far could the money go?

The proposal limits eligibility by vehicle price, not buyer income. New passenger cars qualify only if priced at or below $55,000, while vans, SUVs and pickup trucks are capped at $80,000. Used vehicles are limited to a sales price of $25,000. All vehicles must be registered to California residents.

The newly released details also add context about the size of the program. A CalMatters estimate of the governor’s initial proposal found that the $200 million would cover rebates for only about 20% of last year’s electric vehicle sales.

The proposed matching funds from auto manufacturers could allow the program to cover a larger share of buyers or provide larger point-of-sale rebates, depending on how the incentives are structured.

One clean car advocate said the details aren’t locked in yet — including how the rebates could be targeted. Wu said the state could move quickly without abandoning equity by deciding who qualifies in advance while still offering rebates at the dealership. “There is a way to balance equity and expediency,” Wu wrote.

On a clear January day about a week ago, California water resources engineer Jacob Kollen jammed a blue Mt. Rose sampler deep into the snow at Phillips Station, near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada.

The second California Department of Water Resources survey of the season showed the snow was 23 inches deep, with a snow water equivalent (the amount of water contained) of eight inches. That’s just 46% of average, an alarming fall from the 89% of average seen at the beginning of the month.

These are crucial measurements to watch, as the snowpack is California’s most important reservoir. As snow melts throughout the year, it provides residents, agriculture and the state’s vast landscapes with much-needed moisture.

Our wet season began with quite a strong showing of rain, but a dry January coupled with warm weather has set California off in the wrong direction.

“ Statewide, we were better off last year than we are at this point,” said David Ricardo, the Department of Water Resources hydrology section manager, during a news conference about the snow survey results. “Something to be cognizant of, especially if we can make up more ground in the northern and central part of the Sierra Nevada.”

California's snowpack is at 56 percent of normal as of February 3, 2026.

(

California Department of Water Resources

)

As of Tuesday, the statewide snowpack is at just 56% of normal for this date, with the southern Sierra doing the heavy lifting at 74%. The central and northern portions are at 56% and 43% respectively.

For now, California reservoirs are well stocked, and drought conditions have been rained away, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. However, our snow water totals are just about in line with what we saw in 2012, the beginning of a catastrophic drought period.

Over in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies Southern California with about 20% of its water, snowpack is at about 64% of normal.

“ There's no way to sugarcoat it,” said Kathryn Sorensen,  director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “ I've been doing Colorado River stuff for 25 years. This is the worst I've seen.”

In the upper basin, the snow water equivalent is lower than it was in 2002 — a period of time so alarmingly dry that seven states and Mexico came together to hash out how to manage Colorado River water. The agreement, which has been in place since 2007, is set to expire at the end of 2026.

Because California enjoys senior water rights, it’s unlikely that the state will see Colorado River cuts for the next couple of years, Sorensen said. Arizona, however, will.

The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting below average precipitation across much of California through the end of the state's rainy season.

(

Climate Prediction Center

/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

)

Where will things go from here?

Experts are eyeing April 1, which is usually when the snowpack reaches its apex. If we manage to get a few sizable snowstorms by then, we should be sitting pretty heading into the dry months.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is forecasting likely above average precipitation over the next few weeks for California. Over the next several months though, forecasts are for below-normal precipitation with elevated temperatures.

Longer term, higher temperatures as a result of climate change can cause more precipitation to fall as rain rather than as snow, and for snow on the ground to melt faster. Warming air temperatures dry out soils and vegetation more quickly, too, meaning even an average amount of precipitation may not be enough for some ecosystems. Overall, snowpack could decline by more than 50% by the end of the century, according to California's Fourth Climate Change Assessment.