It’s hot! It’s been hot and it feels like maybe it’ll be hot forever.
Along with the deaths of American treasure Dolly Parton and the chameleonic English actor Tim Curry, this heat is really making it feel like we’re in hell.
Temperatures all across the Greater L.A. area have hovered above 90 degrees for the last week. In parts of the valleys, they reached north of 100 several times. To make matters worse, the heat has been paired with an uncommon amount of humidity — thanks, in part, to El Niño increasing ocean temperatures.
This ridiculous heatwave is unfortunately our new reality, which is perfectly encapsulated by this Simpsons meme I’ve seen passed around the internet over the last few years. In it, Bart Simpson bemoans the fact that this summer is “the hottest summer” of his life, but Homer quickly corrects him by saying, “This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life.”
Sadly, this isn’t a joke.
The three warmest years on record for average global temperatures are 2025, 2024 and 2023, according to NASA. And I have a feeling that 2026 might crack into the top three by year’s end.
In a recent conversation with my dad, he unironically expressed relief that it was cooling off this Saturday because the expected forecast was set at 95.
But he is far from the only Latino carrying the burden of extreme heat in L.A.
Last year, UCLA debuted a data tool called the Latino Climate and Health Dashboard, which tracks the environmental health disparities between Latino and white neighborhoods in L.A. It revealed that Latino communities experience 23 more heat days that their white counterparts and have air quality that is twice as bad.
Rima Habre, a professor of environmental health and spatial sciences and director of the CLIMA Health and Extreme Weather Center at USC, noted that one of the main reasons Latinos tend to face these more extreme conditions is because many live in urban heat islands.
“Historically, there’s been a lot of a disproportionate amount of pavement, construction, industry and cement surfaces placed in these neighborhoods that really trap heat,” Habre told The Times. “And at the same time, there’s been disinvestment in trees, parks and cooling amenities.”
She pointed out that Latinos are more likely to have adverse outcomes from handling heat because of the general lack of healthcare resources at their disposal. Latinos experience one of the highest uninsured rates among all ethnic groups. A 2026 U.S. Census Bureau study found that 17% of Latinos had no health insurance coverage, which was 9 percentage points higher than the overall U.S. population.
The kinds of work Latinos do also contribute to their exposure.
“Many Latinos [work] in fields that are outdoors or in warehouses that don’t have proper ventilation, let alone air conditioning,” said Michael Mendez, an associate professor of environmental planning and policy at UC Irvine. “Oftentimes times they’re laboring, living paycheck to paycheck, so they have to be out there. They have no choice.”
On top of working long hours in blistering heat and returning to a heat island, many Latinos then must maneuver the issue of older housing.
“Oftentimes because their houses are older, without proper insulation or ventilation, they are retaining the heat, particularly in a heatwave like this, which doesn’t cool down much at night,” Mendez said. “There could be situations where in a bedroom, it’s 10 or even 15 degrees hotter than the ambient air outside at night. That’s an additional toll. It’s literally 24 hours of exposure to various forms of extreme heat.”
As a result, Latino are more likely than any other ethnic group to visit the emergency room for heat-related illness and to suffer heat-related deaths, according to the L.A. County public health department.
Even if people have air conditioning, it can be expensive to run it day and night for weeks on end, especially for families that are already living paycheck to paycheck.
And the problems unfortunately don’t stop there. Neighborhoods like Boyle Heights — which is over 90% Latino — are bordered by freeways, leading to poorer air quality, a 2017 UCLA study showed. Throw in an event like the Lineage warehouse fire and it creates an untenable living situation.
“There are rotting carcasses and food that individuals have to breathe in. Some are not turning on their air conditioner because of the horrendous smell that is coming through the vents,” Mendez said. “And even if they do have air conditioning, they don’t want to smell that and close all their windows and be trapped in with that stench.”
But why are cities letting this happen to such a sizable population?
“These areas were never prioritized because they were low-income or immigrant-serving communities that weren’t seen as a priority for politicians — they included people that couldn’t vote,” Mendez said. “Politicians prioritize their funding and environmental amenities and goods to areas that they see will support their election. [Because of that] Latino communities, for the most part, haven’t had that advantage of having more climate-resilient funding and environmental amenities to protect communities from extreme heat and other climate-induced disasters.”
OK, so these are the major problems, but what is being done and what can be done to help those affected?
Mayor Karen Bass’ office said Monday that L.A. has “hundreds of locations” for residents to stay cool, including Recreation and Parks facilities as well as libraries. The list of those locations is available here. The county also has a litany of cooling centers that residents can take their families and pets to for relief from the the heat.
At USC’s CLIMA center, directors and staff are doing youth development training and education, so that younger people can be better equipped to have more self-efficacy and leadership around climate issues, Habre said. The center runs workshops on how to build air purifiers, how to measure heat and temperature in homes, and teaches solutions for treating those problems. It has also provided data about how under-served population like the Latino community have been disproportionately affected by extreme heat events to L.A. city and the county officials.
Mendez suggests that elected officials should direct more resources to the communities at the front lines of climate change.
“[I’d like for them to] ensure that there is new and more funding prioritized on weatherization of these older homes by providing heating pumps for air conditioning that are more energy efficient and more cost effective for the user itself,” he said. “And ensuring that there’s more green space, trees, natural shade for cooling down our neighborhoods.”
Let’s hope those in leadership positions can finally do something right and heed Mendez’s advice.
In the meantime, stay hydrated, stay cool and keep an eye on the young, the old and the sick!
ICE news and updates 
(Adam Gray / Associated Press)
It may be blistering hot outside but ICE is not melting this summer.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people in July, making it the highest monthly total of President Trump’s second term. The number of arrests jumped 15% from June and have gone up a remarkable 70% since February.
That news came the same week that ICE agent Christian Castro, who was charged with shooting a man and lying about it during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, was released from a Texas jail.
Also this week, it was revealed that ICE detained two Cuban musicians. Pianist Andy García Palacios was on his way to a work event in L.A. when he was arrested by ICE agents on Aug. 15, his legal team told Telemundo. His attorney said García Palacios was in the country legally and that the musicians was waiting to obtain his permanent residency.
ICE claimed that García Palacios was authorized to stay in the U.S. only until May 2024 and had overstayed his visa.
The Cuba native is detained at ICE’s highly scrutinized Adelanto Processing Center.
Latin Grammy-winning composer and percussionist Degnis Bofill was detained by ICE on Aug. 19 at Miami International Airport.
“Bofill legally entered the United States on April 15, 2023, but failed to comply with the terms of his admission and is now in violation of immigration law. He will receive due process,” an ICE spokesperson told CBS News.
The Cuban percussionist is being held at Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County.
Bofill won a Latin Grammy in 2022 for his participation in the LP “Ancestros Sinfónico,” which took home the folk album award.
And in a long-overdue and not nearly forceful enough move, ICE recently implemented new rules for how to deal with officer involved in “deadly force incidents,” the Atlantic reported this week.
“[T]hese officers were able to return to their regular job in as few as three days,” the Atlantic’s Nick Miroff reported. “Now they must remain on desk duty until they are cleared by investigators, according to two senior ICE officials with knowledge of the change, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss agency matters with reporters.”
Previously, officers were encouraged to return to patrol duties as quickly as possible.
This change notably comes a month after ICE agents killed Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Colombian immigrant Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during traffic stops in Texas and Maine, respectively.
Stories we read this week that we think you should read
Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.
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