Talking local politics with 🐦 The LA Reporter at your neighborhood doughnut shop — debuting 🍩 The Doughnut Shop Interviews
There is probably a doughnut shop in almost every neighborhood in Los Angeles. So what better place than a doughnut shop to talk to your neighbors about local politics, and to bring local politicos out of their fluorescent-lit civic offices and into the community?
This week, The LA Reporter is debuting The Doughnut Shop Interviews, a series in which we interview a major figure in local politics at a neighborhood doughnut shop, and chat with shop regulars and others about their views on the same topics.
For the first interview in this series, The LA Reporter talked to Raymond Meza, chair of a commission that’s helping to rewrite the Los Angeles city charter. We also interviewed shop regulars at Monterey Donut in northeast Los Angeles about how they think changes to the charter could improve things in their community.
Meza, who is deputy chief-of-staff for the labor union SEIU 721, described the opportunity to sit on the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission as “awe-inspiring” and a “privilege.” The last time comprehensive revisions were made to the charter was in 1999.
Changes made to a city charter have the potential to shift politics in Los Angeles in a different direction — because it can change the powers of elected officials, how elections are conducted, what ethics laws are adopted, and many other rules around city governance.
Monterey Donut, where The LA Reporter spoke to Meza, is a beloved local spot in the small, northeast neighborhood of Hermon where patrons walking in greet the owner, Mrs. Lee, like their friend or family member.
Her regulars had much to say about their love for her doughnuts, as well as what they wanted to see improve in Los Angeles through charter changes. They include Manuel Berru of El Sereno, who said he thought it “would be a blessing” if the reform commission were to push through a way to hold the LAPD accountable.
Read The Doughnut Shop Interviews here. And share your recommendations for doughnut shops and interview subjects with The LA Reporter at [email protected].
Ex-finance guy, ex-LA Times publisher, and ex-LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner is set to announce Monday that he will challenge LA Mayor Karen Bass, says the New York Times.
The news confirms weeks of rumors. He’s seen as the most widely known of the candidates who has entered the race, though some are still asking, “who?” There are seven other candidates who have filed paperwork to challenge Bass, and they’re even lesser-known than he.
Early indications of Beutner’s plans leaked Saturday when the soon-to-be candidate’s X.com social media account was updated to say, “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026,” and a graphic that said “Austin for LA Mayor.”
After The LA Reporter posted a screenshot of Beutner’s profile page, reporters from the LA Times appeared to catch on as well. The LA Times sought comment from Beutner, who appeared to mix up their phone number with that of The New York Times, which then broke the official news and got the scoop — but had little else of interest to say, probably because their journalists live farther away than many others who live here in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Beutner appeared to have already talked to the LAist some time in the past week, making comments that criticized Bass’s leadership in talking points some suspect was cribbed from a certain upstart City Controller, whom many have lamented to The LA Reporter should have been the one to challenge Mayor Bass.
Beutner, meanwhile, entirely and devastatingly ignored The LA Reporter’s request for confirmation that he was officially running. Can anyone please share Mr. Beutner’s cell phone number and the name of his favorite doughnut shop?
LISTEN TO THIS: LA unhoused residents put Eunisses Hernandez staffer in the hot seat, after her office orders encampment sweeps that bring heavy turnout of LAPD officers
Residents of the encampment in Westlake sought housing and shelter from Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez staffer Eric Ares, who is wearing sunglasses, in a conversation during a sweep that was preceded by a heavy presence of LAPD officers. (Video clip courtesy of LA Street Care)
Unhoused constituents in progressive LA City Council member Eunisses Hernandez’s district reported waking up to a heavy turnout of LAPD officers, just before an encampment sweep on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. Residents of the encampment said they were lined up and detained, before sanitation workers had shown up, with many of them issued citations for LA's anti-camping law 41.18.
Some of those constituents confronted and sought answers from Hernandez's staffer, Eric Ares, who identified himself as the office's district director (he has also served as the office's Director of Housing and Homelessness). They described their situation after the sweeps as “dangerous,” telling Ares that they were “treated like criminals” during the the raid by LAPD.
The LA Reporter was present for that six-and-a-half-minute-long conversation in which Ares said he had ordered the sweep. Ares also said he could not guarantee temporary shelter to the encampment’s residents, who were afraid they would no longer be welcome back on the street they had been rudely forced out of that morning.
You can listen to the audio recording of the interaction between Ares and residents below. You can also read The LA Reporter’s on-the-ground reporting about that conversation here.
Local emergency on immigration raids at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. If it passes, is a countywide eviction moratorium next?
With LA’s economy taking a hit amid the federal government’s immigration raids, the LA County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is set to vote on declaring a local emergency at its meeting beginning at 11 a.m.
If passed, the emergency declaration (item 24) would lay the groundwork for an eviction moratorium to protect tenants struggling due to the raids and other crises, such as the January wildfires. The Los Angeles County Counsel had said at last week’s meeting that a local emergency is needed before any moratorium could be done.
A draft declaration of local emergency from the County Counsel being taken up at Tuesday’s board meeting states that “indiscriminate immigration raids have destabilized entire neighborhoods and reverberate through critical sectors of the economy, leading to long-term harm to workers, families, and businesses.”
It references a study that points to the construction and agricultural industries contracting by 16% and 14%, respectively statewide, with the potential impact being a $275 billion loss in GDP output due to the reduction in jobs.
The declaration also points to a survey by The Rent Brigade that found a 62% decline in weekly earnings for immigrants, with 71% saying they were returning to work because they were worried about getting evicted.
The local declaration of emergency follows several months of activity by activists and organizers. They include The Rent Brigade’s report, Disappeared and Displaced, with the surveys done in August and the findings released in early September.
Emily Phillips, the lead researcher for that report, told The LA Reporter last month they hoped it would bring a “sense of urgency” to the Board of Supervisors to take up proposals to pause evictions for tenants as immigration raids make it difficult for many residents to go out and make a living.
The Brigade is made up of community members who came together to use data to advocate for tenants wanted to convey what was happening in on-the-ground and in real-time to policymakers in their own language, Phillips said.
Activists and community members have banded together to form community patrols, often going out from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., to spot federal immigration officials, and organized efforts to support street vendors who were in danger of being abducted by federal officials by buying out their carts, Phillips said.
Lupita, of the LA Tenants Union, said that their members have had to quickly go beyond their usual tenant organizing activities, “almost overnight.” Amid all that activity, there has been a void in what policymakers at the county and city have been doing, she said, and that would include getting an eviction moratorium passed, both Phillips and Lupita said.
But now, with court rulings failing to stop the Department of Homeland Security from violating people’s civil rights, “more and more people are getting organized and really demanding that our politicians do something more than just talk,” Lupita said.
Now, she says, it’s time for local leaders like the Board of Supervisors to step up. “Ordinary people are stepping in to protect our neighbors, but the way that policymakers can protect their neighbors is through policy,” Lupita said.
LA Tenants Union and the Rent Brigade are also part of the newly formed Evict ICE, Not Us Coalition. That coalition also now includes POWER (People Organized for Westside Renewal), Pasadena Tenant Union, Long Beach Tenant Union, Community Power Collective, Aetna Street Solidarity, Norwalk Tenant Union, CCED (Chinatown Community for Equitable Development), PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ACCE Los Angeles, SCALE-SJP (Student Coalition Against Labor Explotation), DSA Los Angeles and ORALE.
Controversial LAPD commissioner Southers resigns, a week after he hid from the spotlight of his hot-button confirmation
Erroll Southers, a former president of the Board of Police Commissioners, took a backdoor route to get confirmed last month. But now he’s backing out.
The USC security officer and ex-FBI agent had been under fire from activists over his role in clamping down on pro-Palestinian dissent at the university he works at, and this week the LA Times reports that he has decided step down. He also told the LA Times he was not asked to resign.
Last month, The LA Reporter reported that the LA City Council had maneuvered at a meeting at Van Nuys City Hall to get Southers installed for a second term on the police commission. They did this by delaying a vote past the deadline for them to act on his confirmation. And by not acting by the deadline, Southers’ confirmation flew through by default. Instead of a pocket veto — in which something doesn’t get approved by someone failing to act — it was a pocket confirmation. And on the same day council members dodged comment on the hot button issue of his confirmation during that meeting, Southers was across town at LA City Hall, placing his hand on a book and raising his right hand to be sworn in in the City Clerk’s Office.
The LA Squawk Box: Some tidbits from LA City Hall.
LA Mayor Karen Bass urged him not to, but the governor still went and signed SB 79, which is aimed at boosting housing production. This was so exciting for some, especially for the folks who love to see housing built near transit, that they were eager to party hardy in celebration.
The City Council took a step forward on Monica Rodriguez and Ysabel Jurado’s motion to prohibit city employees from finding a side gig working for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), or any of the other Department of Homeland Security offices, such as Customs and Border Patrol, that have been helping to carry out the federal immigration raids. The motion was approved earlier this month, and now it awaits ordinance language to be brought back from the City Attorney’s Office.
Brian Williams, a former mayoral deputy of public safety who called in a fake bomb threat, was sentenced by a judge to probation last Monday, Oct. 6. His plea deal revealed that he had used a Google Voice number to call in the threat to his city-issued phone. Meanwhile, he had repeatedly denied to FBI agents that it had been a Google Voice number tied to him that had been used in making the threat, even though they had those records.
Mar Vista Voice has been keeping tabs on what’s happening with the Venice Dell project, a low-income housing project on the west side that is supposed to be going up near the affluent Venice Canals community. The project has faced numerous hurdles, including lawsuits trying to block the project. Those have been dismissed, but the project now faces further stalling after a transportation commission took a vote blocking the project, which had already been approved by the City Council. Now, the delay has prompted the state to issue a letter of rebuke to the city, saying that holding up the project would lead to the city losing its “prohousing” designation, which helps with qualifying for grants.
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