The Brief

L.A. City Council President Paul Krekorian recalls the pandemonium following the release on Oct. 9, 2022, of a secretly recorded audio tape of colleagues making racist and derogatory remarks. For weeks, council meetings were marked by loud, angry protests that often shut down the proceedings.

City Hall was in crisis.

“The anguish was visceral in the council chambers and the council meetings were bedlam,” Krekorian remembers. “We could barely proceed with the work of the city.”

The scandal involved former councilmembers Nury Martinez and Gil Cedillo, Councilmember Kevin de León, and Ron Herrera, the former president of the influential L.A. County Federation of Labor. The audio was from a meeting where the four were discussing how to redraw council district boundaries in a way that would maintain their power.

In the year since the tapes were leaked, the fallout from the scandal has fundamentally changed City Hall. Martinez resigned, and Cedillo was voted out of office. (Herrera also resigned from the labor federation.) De León was urged to resign but remained defiant, not only staying on the council but announcing that he’ll run for reelection next year.

File: Los Angeles City councilmembers Gil Cedillo (L) and Kevin de Leon (R) speaking at separate events in 2021.

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There was also turmoil apart from the scandal. Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was convicted on federal charges of bribery and corruption. Councilmember Curren Price was indicted on charges of embezzlement and perjury. Just last week, Councilmember John Lee was accused of ethics violations. Former Councilmember José Huizar pleaded guilty to federal charges of racketeering and tax evasion.

Perhaps most importantly, the tapes scandal laid bare the racial dynamics that sometimes pit council members against one another and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to maintain power. Combined with the corruption charges against sitting and former council members, it upended public trust. Six new members were voted onto the council and one was appointed — none of whom had previously held elected office — and calls for government reform are now at the center of council politics.

The City Council, then and now

Martinez was council president at the time and stood at the center of the controversy. Her comments on the tape were the most offensive. In an exclusive interview, she talked to LAist Studios for a new podcast “Imperfect Paradise: Nury & The Secret Tapes."

“There is no way I could undo what I said, or undo the hurt that I created,” she says on the podcast. “So the only thing I knew how to do was hand over my responsibilities as a council president and make sure that I didn't mess up anything else there.”

Krekorian replaced the often confrontational and sometimes bellicose Martinez as council president.

“The difference is dramatic,” said Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson. “They have a very different style and personality.”

He said Krekorian “refrains from strong-arming” the council.

Rob Quan heads Unrig LA, an organization focused on money in politics and representative government in the city. He’s a regular observer of the council.

“The biggest thing was it dislodged a tyrannical council president,” Quan said of the release of the audio recording. In the podcast, Martinez said she believed she was a fair president who championed the rights of working families.

Krekorian prides himself on collegiality and believes it's been important to moving the council beyond the controversy.

“My style is to welcome debate, to welcome different viewpoints,” he told LAist.

Progressives have gained a foothold

It's also a vastly different council.

Seven of the 15 members joined it in the past year. None of them had ever held elected office.

And the council leans decidedly more left.

“Things that I didn’t think would necessarily pass previously like renter protections are passing unanimously,” said Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College.

The more progressive council has focused less on the role of policing in addressing homelessness — something that in the past produced acrimonious debate and protests. Some council members continue to request the use of LAPD officers under Municipal Code 41.18 to remove unhoused people from around schools and daycare centers. But any debate is cordial if there is one at all, said Harris-Dawson.

It helps that Mayor Karen Bass, who took office just two months after the release of the tape, generally opposes the use of LAPD officers to remove unhoused people from encampments and has centered attention on her Inside Safe program.

“I think having a new mayor has breathed new life into the council,” Sadhwani said. “You see the mayor’s call to lock arms being quite effective at pulling the council members together.”

An outcry for reform

Amid calls for government reform, Krekorian in December created an ad hoc committee to examine changes to L.A. city government. On Thursday, that committee voted to refer to the full council charter amendments to create an independent redistricting commission.

If passed by voters, it could be one of the biggest changes to result from the release of the audio recording.

Removing the once-every-10-years redrawing of council district boundaries from council members and handing it over to an independent panel would end the kind of backroom dealing heard on the audio, supporters of the idea have said.

It's not a new idea. Reformers have been lobbying for it for years. The state and L.A. county already use independent commissions.

The City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform took public comment on a proposal to establish an independent redistricting commission at a hearing on Oct. 5, 2023.

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The release of the tapes breathed new life into the idea for the city.

The ad hoc committee is also considering a proposal to increase the size of the council.

Expanding the council would mean each council member would represent fewer people and, ideally, be more responsive to constituents. It is also an old idea that’s gained support.

Sadhwani is part of the L.A. Governance Reform Project, which is making proposals to the council reform committee on independent redistricting, council size, and changes to ethics laws. So is Gary Segura, dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA and part of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at the university. He said the project’s aim is to “ensure a governance structure that secures fair and adequate voice for all Los Angeles communities.”

“Structures have a big impact on how people behave,” Segura said.

It’s up to the full council to decide whether to place the reforms on the ballot — likely in November 2024. But it may be eight years — during the next redistricting process — before the changes are implemented. That frustrates reform advocates who say any changes should be implemented immediately.

“It's the same old City Hall culture of doing far too little too late,” said Quan, who noted Krekorian’s committee has yet to vote on what reformers say is the much needed strengthening of city ethics laws.

“Until you have some reforms that bolster our Ethics Commission, it’s all for not,” said Sadhwani.

Krekorian has said he intends to place ethics on the agenda at a future date.

The power play behind the racist comments

The anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and other derogatory language used on the tapes shocked and angered many people. But the discussion around carving up council districts based on race surprised few.

Martinez and the others can be heard lamenting that half the city’s population is Latino, but Latinos hold only four of 15 council seats. In the course of the conversation, de León is heard saying essentially that Black people have too much power. Black people represent about 8% of the L.A. population and hold three seats on the council.

While the comments were denounced in both Black and Latino communities, there’s likely “simmering tension” over what was heard on the tape, Segura said.

“I suspect there is a hangover,” he said. “Distrust between and among communities is inevitable when you play zero sum politics.”

Sadhwani said the Governance Reform Project will take those dynamics into account.

“I think there are still conversations about race relations in the city that haven’t yet been had, and I hope we don’t just gloss over these dynamics,” she said.

How the renters rights movement fits in

A woman calls for rent relief as a coalition of activist groups and labor unions participate in a May Day march for workers' and human rights in Los Angeles on May 1, 2021.

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One aspect of the conversation on the tapes that is often forgotten is how Martinez and others were scheming to dilute the power of renters in the city. It was not just a conversation.

The city council under Martinez’s leadership approved a redistricting map that changed the constituency of Councilmember Nithya Raman — a champion of renters rights — by 40%.

The result: Raman faces a tough reelection battle next year.

No other councilmember’s district changed by more than 18% and most changed by single digits or not at all, according to a New York Times analysis.

In the wake of the release of the tapes, state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced an investigation to determine if the conversation violated the state Voting Rights Act as it pertains to redistricting. A statement from Bonta’s office last week said the investigation is ongoing.

Whether the conversation was illegal, it added to the perception that there exists a culture of corruption at L.A. City Hall. Over recent years, three former members of the council, and more than a half dozen City Hall staffers and others have been convicted of various charges, including bribery and obstruction of justice.

Krekorian rejects the idea of any cultural problem.

“That suggests that corrupt intent is widespread..at City Hall and I refuse to accept that’s true,” he said.

The council president said this the day after Councilmember John Lee was accused of ethics violations. Lee has denied the allegations.

A year later, Council politics are still ‘challenging’

Council members are seated alphabetically around the horseshoe of desks inside city council chambers. That means Harris-Dawson, who is Black, sits next to de León, who expressed anti-Black sentiment on the tape.

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“It's challenging,” Harris-Dawson said. “It tests my home training.”

After the tape scandal, de León was removed from all of his committees and censured by the council. Every other member has called on him to resign. He’s convinced his constituents will forgive him and re-elect him to a second term next year.

One of the enduring mysteries surrounding the tape is who recorded it. Using unnamed sources, Los Angeles Magazine has reported it was a union bookkeeper who was spying on Herrera, the labor leader, whom he believed was sleeping with his wife. Neither the union nor the LAPD, which is investigating the potentially illegal secret recording, has commented.

On Friday, Councilmember Kevin de León and former council member Gil Cedillo filed separate lawsuits over the release of the tape, alleging it did permanent harm to their reputations as well as invasion of privacy and negligence. The lawsuits name the bookkeeper and his wife, both of whom are no longer employed by the Federation of Labor. Cedillo also names the federation. The tape is believed to have been recorded during a meeting at the federation’s offices.

An equally intriguing mystery is who leaked the tapes and why a year after it was recorded. Police searched the Eagle Rock home of the bookkeper and his wife in July with a search warrant alleging eavesdropping and destroying or concealing evidence. Neither has been charged.

There is an argument that the release a month before the 2022 mayoral election was to foment anti-politician attitudes and help businessman Rick Caruso beat Mayor Karen Bass. That obviously didn’t work. Besides, the opposite can be argued — that only a Black mayor could heal the city after the release of a recording featuring racist comments.

Harris-Dawson is well aware of the challenges facing City Hall one year after the bombshell of the tapes.

“We are fighting for our credibility,” he said.

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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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.”

Responding to the potential loss of relief

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.

The original, unfinished portrait of Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas.

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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.

Building trust 

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.

Community members watch Artist Hedy Torres update the portrait at Plummer Park in West Hollywood.

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‘A sense of freedom’  

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.”

Torres completed her portrait of Pérez Cuevas in September 2026. Four other portraits remain unfinished.

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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.