The Brief

On a beautiful summer day in July, 7-year-old Penelope is turning into a mermaid.

"I like playing mermaid," she says, with her feet dangling in the swimming pool at Beauvoir Summer Camp in Washington, D.C.

"Like, I'm a human, and then I turn into a mermaid, and I use one of the pool noodles as a dolphin, and I play with my friends," she says.

It's Friday, which means free swim, and the kids are splashing around on blue kickboards and sinking miniature torpedo toys. In the kiddie pool, the littlest campers jump in and show off their twists and turns with screeches of delight.

Penelope and her best friend Sam, also 7, say pool time is their favorite activity at this camp. NPR is only using the kids' first names because they are minors.

The pool was empty during the last free swim. Campers spent the day indoors to avoid hazardous air quality from wildfire smoke. And, earlier in the summer, the heat forced them to cut down their outside play time, says Drew Mackay, the director of auxiliary and summer programs at Beauvoir School.

This summer has brought no shortage of extreme weather and wildfires across the country. In northern Minnesota and Canada, fires devastated communities and caused dangerous smoke to blanket large swaths of the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. Deadly floods prompted disaster declarations in parts of Texas. And an extreme heat wave in July was dubbed the "new normal" for July Fourth celebrations.

As the climate warms due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, research shows that heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and floods have become more intense and more frequent.

Families are feeling it. Further north in Pennsylvania, Lauren Smith and her kids have had a summer full of dangerous weather. First, it was the extreme heat that disrupted normal activities at a soccer camp, with temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit on a big, treeless field. Then, wildfire smoke kept the family in the house. When the nonstop rain hit, it was almost a blessing.

"The kids are going crazy in the house — that's it, we're going for a walk," she remembers thinking. "Then, they're like, 'It's starting to rain.' I'm like, 'Doesn't matter. It's an adventure.' "

Smith added that, surprisingly, her kids have enjoyed helping her declutter the house. They also took up baking and painting acorns. But on the few days of sunny bliss, she can't get them back inside, she said. "The summer is just like a waiting game — just waiting to do some stuff outside," Smith says.

This generation of school-aged kids has already dealt with the isolation of COVID-19, the global pandemic that forced students to work from home. Now, they're up against extreme weather.

Throughout the summer months, parents scramble to get kids out of the house. But with weather conditions that make outdoor fun not just impossible, but dangerous, parents, summer camp leaders and school-aged kids told NPR how they're experiencing the effects of the changing climate.

"It's changed my summer a lot," Penelope, the mermaid, says. She describes climate change as "the areas around you are just, like, changing all around you all the time."

Summer camps confront 'a new reality'

For many kids, summer is an around three-month break from school routines and homework.

A 2024 Gallup survey found that 55% of U.S. parents reported their school-aged kids attend at least one structured summer program. Henry DeHart, the CEO of the American Camp Association, which provides resources and accreditations to hundreds of camps across the country, says the skills kids learn at camp — independence, problem-solving and teamwork — will equip them for the future, especially in an increasingly AI-centric world.

"Kids need camp now more than ever," DeHart says.

While dealing with the whims of weather is nothing new for camps, and accredited ones are required to have thorough safety plans, DeHart says the frequency of these extreme weather events is noticeable.

In the past few decades, he says, "A camp might have had three or four or five days with the heat index over 105 [Fahrenheit]". Now they may have eight or 10."

The impacts on specific camps across the country are varied. In Ohio, Ellen Watkins directs Miakonda Day Camp on a 160-acre site for Scouting groups. When wildfire smoke filled the air, they were able to move inside and provided masks.

While inside, they did swim exercises on dry land and pulled out an inflatable archery set. She said she got many comments from parents thanking them for finding a way to keep the camp running.

"Was it stressful to have campers inside of buildings all day when they would rather be outside? Yes. Did it stress our program? No, we were fine," Watkins said.

But for some camps, switching up activities to deal with the smoke wasn't an option. That was the case in Ely, Minn., at Camp Widjiwagan. The camp, which hosts over 700 kids each summer and leads programs across North America, evacuated in July.

The camp drew considerable attention after a haunting photo showing 19 of its canoes under water was widely seen online. Ben Hoffman, the camp's executive director, said they decided to submerge the historic canoes that were too fragile to move to safety.

"This is a pivotal moment," Hoffman said. "We have never sunk canoes at camp."

Camp Widjiwagan submerged some of their canoes in lake waters to protect them from the wildfires.

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Eleanor Pitts, a 17-year-old camper at Widjiwagan, went on the camp's 26-day backpacking trip in Willmore Wilderness Park in Alberta, Canada, starting in June with four other girls and a counselor.

"It was an experience like no other," Pitts, who has attended the camp for seven summers, said. "We become the closest group of people. They were genuinely my family by the end."

The last day of the trip was supposed to be a homecoming back at the base camp in Ely with a huge celebration of hot dogs and watermelon and campfire skits. Her group found out the day before that the wildfire smoke would force them to miss that last day. " 'Wait, so this is our last night?' " Pitts said she and her fellow campers asked their counselor. "And we all just started crying."

Pitts said it brought the reality of climate change right before her eyes. Beyond the wildfires, throughout the trip, her counselor pointed out flooded rivers in Canada because of extreme heat melting snow runoff.

"Going forward, trips are just going to be different because of this climate change situation," Pitts said. "It hasn't affected me until I'm seeing it right now and I'm just like: Now it's too late."

In D.C., at Beauvoir Summer Camp, summer programs director Mackay said adapting to extreme weather is now part of the summer camp job. "For us, it's a new reality," he said.

The kids, on the other hand, are just worried about getting as much pool time as possible.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The Los Angeles Police Department wants 300 new vehicles for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it's asking the city to pay for them.

LAPD officials say the request for around $30 million to procure the vehicles would help temporarily expand the Police Department's fleet during the summer of 2028, so the police force could patrol Olympic venues while maintaining its presence around the city.

City officials are skeptical. The L.A. City Council discussed the request at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting earlier this month, where councilmembers questioned why the city should cover the cost.

"I'm incredibly uncomfortable with spending $30 million on cars, and the excuse being used that we need them for the Games, when the Games are going to be a month long," Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, told LAPD officials.

The committee kicked the decision down the road, asking the city administrative ffficer for more information on the financial impact of procuring the vehicles, the different options to pay for them and where else LAPD might find the resources, including from other law enforcement agencies in the state.

But the request highlights an increasingly thorny question around the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Who will pay for astronomical security costs?

The price tag for LAPD activity during the Olympics is of huge importance to the city of L.A., which is the financial backstop for the Games. The Olympics are intended to be privately funded and cost-free for the taxpayer.

Private Olympics organizing committee LA28 has not included expenses for police in its more than $7 billion budget, and is banking on the federal government covering security costs.

The Trump administration has allocated $1 billion for security at the Games, but those costs will be distributed among the many cities with Olympic and Paralympic venues, and it's not clear how much Los Angeles will get.

LAPD's vehicle request is one example of the limits of that support, according to Police Chief Jim McDonnell, who wrote in a July letter to the Budget and Finance Committee that he does not expect federal funds to cover the 300 additional vehicles he's requesting.

That's because LAPD is anticipating federal dollars to go toward paying to deploy thousands of officers across the city during the Games.

According to one estimate sent to the City Council by LAPD in May, the department's personnel costs for the Olympics and Paralympics could be more than $730 million, with close to half of that money going to outside law enforcement brought in to fill staffing holes.

As the council delays a decision on new patrol vehicles, the city is moving ahead with a separate request. It already approved $13 million to procure 107 non-patrol vehicles for the Games in its 2026-2027 budget. Those include trucks, prisoner transport vans and unmarked investigative vehicles.

According to the department, vehicles acquired for the Olympics won't permanently expand the LAPD fleet. Instead, new vehicles will replace old ones once the Games are over.

A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

"What a glorious dawn launch," NASA's Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, said at a press briefing soon after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

More good news came shortly after launch as the telescope began deploying its solar panels and other instruments. "Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

The journey to Roman's new home

Roman has an unusual origin story: Initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spacecraft was donated to NASA instead. The new telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer who was known as the 'Mother of Hubble' for her championing of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake telescope will have the sharpness of Hubble but a field of view that is at least 100 times larger, allowing it to image huge swaths of the sky at once.

Before it can do that, the Roman Space Telescope will have to get to its new home in the sky about a million miles away. Roman will live at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2. There, the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun help the telescope keep a steady orbit while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

"It takes us a good three-plus months to get out there, and we're spending that time checking everything out and doing a whole bunch of calibrations and making sure everything is working the way we know it can," said NASA's Jeremy Perkins, an integration and test scientist on the mission. "It's basically like our time to kick the tires and just make sure that the focus is right, the pointing is right."

Uncovering cosmic mysteries

Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. Roman will study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky. By doing this, the telescope will help map both normal and dark matter, giving scientists a better understanding of just what this elusive substance might be.

Astronomers will also use Roman's observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe. Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname "standard candles." By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.

Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. Since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. With Roman, NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star. The telescope also hopes to find some 1,000 through microlensing — a technique that searches for tiny changes in background starlight caused by the gravity of a far-off planet.

"Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals at NASA is answering the question: Are we alone in the universe?" Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator of the science mission directive, said at the Sunday morning briefing.

The spacecraft is poised to bring scientists a step closer to answering that question: It will demonstrate technology that can take a picture of a planet by selectively blocking out the light from its home star.

"We are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know if they could be habitable," she said.

A deluge of data

The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

"Roman's database at the end of its prime mission after five years is going to be bigger than your standard music streaming platform," Perkins said.

Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. For Perkins, that's what makes this mission unique — anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

"It's all the things that we are not expecting to see," he said. "It's all these one-in-a-million things that we're going to be able to see with Roman that really excites me."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday backed off his proposal to reduce costs for electrical utilities after their equipment sparks wildfires, agreeing instead to a narrower deal after homeowners, insurers and fire survivors argued his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

Instead, Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

The deal is a victory for lawmakers who refused to reduce damages to victims and shift costs away from utilities. Opponents included insurance companies, consumer advocates and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire caused by Southern California Edison equipment that killed 19 people in Altadena.

Under the agreement announced Saturday, the state would create a “fast-pay” program for survivors’ property loss, pain and suffering in the wake of a utility-caused fire. It would include deadlines for determining which claims are valid within 60 days of receipt, and settlement offers within 30 days after that, but survivors could still pursue the long process of suing utilities if they choose.

The state also commits to improving its local wildfire mitigation efforts and sharing more data on insurance coverage in areas with fire risk.

The final agreement, which lawmakers will vote on in Senate Bill 492, caps a contentious series of closed-door negotiations between Newsom’s office and legislative leaders on how much utility companies should pay after fires.

Newsom wanted utilities to have to pay less to insurance companies, some wildfire survivors, local governments and corporations claiming damages after a fire. His administration is concerned the mounting costs threaten investor confidence in the state’s three major for-profit utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He said that could lead to higher borrowing costs for the companies and higher electricity bills for Californians.

Newsom also argued his plan would prioritize paying survivors who lose their homes. In past fires, investors have funded lawsuits or claims have been sold to hedge funds, increasing the number of third parties seeking to profit from wildfire payouts, Newsom’s office has said.

SB 492 does not include most of the proposals Newsom wanted and does not substantially change how much utilities must pay after fires they cause. California’s $18 billion wildfire fund that utilities draw from to pay fire damages — and which would fund claims in the fast-pay program — is funded 50-50 by utility customers and shareholders. Proponents of Newsom’s proposals remain concerned that another catastrophic fire could drain that money, leaving utilities facing a mountain of costs and another round of potential bankruptcies.

Nine of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires were caused by electrical equipment or power lines.

“This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday morning. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

Negotiations may resume next year

Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat who was closely involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that lawmakers would likely have to return to the issue of utility liabilities under a future governor.

“What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders was that they’re willing to do that,” he said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

“We certainly stood with fire survivors,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Palisades Fire survivors. “Challenges with affordability of electricity (remain). That’s not going away.”

The utilities agreed and said there needs to be a long-term solution.

“While we appreciate the efforts made, we are disappointed that the state couldn’t develop comprehensive wildfire reform,” said Southern California Edison spokesperson David Eisenhauer.

San Diego Gas & Electric would not comment and referred questions to Wildfire Victims First, the utility-backed campaign whose priorities aligned with the governor’s wish list.

Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs to make urgent structural reforms “to ensure a fair recovery system.”

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company is reviewing the bill and is “focused on helping wildfire survivors recover faster, making communities safer, and protecting customer utility bills.” Company stocks tumbled Friday after reports of a potential agreement that did not include any utility cost-shifts.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, the Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus opposed Newsom’s cost-shifting proposals, said in a statement the agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who led negotiations for the Assembly, in a statement called the deal “an important step forward.”

“We held the line to protect the people who needed it most,” she said.

The biggest sticking point was the governor’s insistence on eliminating subrogation, which allows insurance companies to sue utilities to recoup their costs for wildfire claims. Lawmakers were staunchly opposed to eliminating that avenue out of concern that it would disrupt the state’s fragile insurance market, raise premiums and cause insurers to flee the state, and they rejected it.

“This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

While the deal is a win for the insurance industry, a senator who represents Eaton Fire survivors said it’s important to also hold insurers accountable.

“We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” said Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

State lawmakers also resisted the governor’s effort to limit survivors’ non-economic damages, an important victory for the Eaton Fire survivors who relentlessly campaigned against the proposal.

Fire survivors and consumer advocates credited the Senate, especially Limón, for pushing back on Newsom.

“In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which worked in concert with fire survivors, called the negotiations “an exercise in the democratic process.”

“(The Legislature) told (Newsom) they wouldn’t bend in closed-door negotiations,” said Jamie Court, president of the group.

Pérez commended survivors for pressuring lawmakers over the past couple of weeks.

“The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” Pérez said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

For many millennials, '90s Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug, and Rocko’s Modern Life represent a golden age of animation, with theme songs and music scores often just as weird and offbeat as the characters and storylines.

Take the theme song of Hey Arnold! — an earworm that introduced a generation of young TV viewers to acid jazz, funk, hip-hop and more, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the show's music on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

LAist’s Robert Garrova caught up with Lang to talk about the show’s endearing music legacy.

On whether he and the other musicians on the show set out to introduce young people to new musical genres

Lang:  I wish I could take credit for being that intentional about it. But we weren't really hoping to introduce anybody to jazz. That was just a wonderful kinda side benefit of the way the show played out.

Was the music too good for a kids' show? Take for instance the theme music for the fan-favorite Pigeon Man episode

Lang:  I don't think there's any such thing as music that's too good for a kids' show. I think children have the hugest imagination for absorbing things that they've never seen before, for being delighted by the unusual.

Those things [music scores] all work because the writers and the animators and the background artists and everybody did such an incredible job before it ever showed up at my studio. That's it. You just kind of shut up and get out of the way and let the image kind of play through you in a way.

On what it felt like being at Nickelodeon in the '90s when the bosses were saying, 'Hey, yeah, let's do some acid jazz on a kids show'

Lang: Well, the women that started Nickelodeon and that ran that company in that era were a really unusual breed, and they were super adventurous. They didn't discourage, you know, people doing crazy stuff.

On what fans' reactions are at the live shows

Lang: Oh, it's just such a love fest. It is nostalgic. The music is meaningful to them because the show, after five seasons, there was a sound to it, and people found it relatable. So getting to hear a band actually play that stuff live, it sounds familiar to the audience in a way that I think people were just thrilled by.