The Brief

As Los Angeles firefighters push into their sixth day battling the still-raging wildfires, thousands of residents are beginning to survey the damage left behind in their communities.

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and more than 150,000 residents are under evacuation orders as the city braces for more powerful winds which threaten to exacerbate the already devastating fires.

Last week, President Biden declared a major disaster in the area, opening up federal funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The White House says the funding is being used to provide people with services such as grants for temporary housing and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses.

In an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spoke with host Ayesha Rascoe about how this assistance is being used to help LA County residents affected by the wildfires.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell appears before the Senate Appropriations Committee in November. Criswell says more than 24,000 people have already applied for assistance in California as a result of the L.A. wildfires.

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Mark Schiefelbein

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Interview highlights

You've seen a lot of disasters. What stands out about this one?

People have lost everything. When you look at a hurricane and a tornado, people have something that they can come sift through and try to find their memories. But here, they've lost the physical structure. But they've also lost so many of their memories, which makes this journey that they're going to have to go through that much more difficult in the coming weeks and months.

What sort of financial assistance is FEMA offering people who've lost their properties and possessions?

FEMA has a program called individual assistance, and it's designed to jump start the individual or family's recovery process. If they haven't registered already, they should register for assistance, and they can go to disasterassistance.gov.

And what they need to do too is contact their insurance company, because while our programs jump start the recovery process, we're not going to rebuild their home for them. So the insurance company is the biggest piece that may help with that. If they still have needs, we're going to work with our other partners, like the Small Business Administration or our philanthropic and our nonprofit partners, to help each of these families as they're trying to figure out what they're going to have to do next.

Do you know how many people have applied for FEMA assistance so far?

Over 24,000 have applied already, but we know that that number is going to continue to rise.

You talked about people trying to go to their insurance companies, but we know that a lot of people may not have insurance policies that cover fires. Is there anything that FEMA can do about that?

There's nothing that we can do as far as requiring the insurance company to stay in. What we want to be able to do is work with these communities as they rebuild and rebuild them in a way that makes them more resilient to future disasters so the insurance industry wants to stay there, but I just want to emphasize that we need people to still go to their insurance company and get something that shows that they're either underinsured or uninsured. If they are, it opens up their ability to access the other programs, and so it's a really important step to still reach out to them.

What about people who have evacuated but can't stay with friends or family? Are there temporary shelters?

There are a number of shelters around the area. But one of the programs that FEMA also has is we can reimburse them if they've been staying in a hotel. If you've stayed in a hotel, keep your receipts. Register for that assistance, and then we can help them get reimbursed for the costs that they've had in these initial days of just trying to stay safe and stay out of harm's way.

FEMA money also goes to local governments for recovery efforts. What's the top priority there right now?

For the rebuilding, the first thing that we're going to have to do is remove all of the damaged debris, right, all of the structures that have been destroyed. And so before we can start rebuilding roads and rebuilding homes, rebuilding businesses, we have to get that debris out of the way. That's one of the big steps that needs to start, which is why President Biden gave 100% of cost reimbursement to California for debris removal, as well as covering all of their emergency costs that they've had during the response to this. And then we're going to work with the state of California with what their priorities are to help them in their recovery process.

President-elect Donald Trump is claiming FEMA doesn't have enough money to respond to these fires. Is that true?

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News that Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale has Hollywood buzzing. The legendary film studio, which has grown to include streaming services and cable channels, is currently accepting non-binding bids until Thursday. According to company spokesperson Robert Gibbs, they expect to have a decision about the sale by Christmas.

It's become something of a Hollywood parlor game to guess who will ultimately take over the business, which was founded in 1923 by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner. They owned a movie theater in Pennsylvania before coming to Hollywood to make movies.

Warner Brothers Pictures found one of its first silent picture stars in a German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin. By 1927, the studio made history with its feature-length "talkie" picture: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

Over the years, Warner Brothers has made or distributed countless iconic films including: Casablanca, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon in the 1940's. The list goes on, with titles like A Clockwork Orange, Goodfellas, Barbie, as well as Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons.

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN.

The planned split has not yet happened, and a new buyer might get the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery and its film and TV libraries.

As the film industry continues to consolidate, there's speculation that Warner Brothers' old rival Paramount could take over. Having just merged as Paramount Skydance, CEO David Ellison has already made several overtures.

The idea of streaming giant Netflix buying the company has raised antitrust concerns on Capitol Hill. In an earnings call last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors, "We've been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks. There is no change there."

Industry watchers suggest other suitors could be Comcast, Amazon, or an investor who's not already in the entertainment business.

Regardless of whoever does end up buying the company, theater owners say they hope making movies for cinemas will be a priority.

"As long as we have more movies," says Daniel Loria, senior vice president at The Boxoffice Company, which analyzes data from studios and theaters. "That doesn't mean the same amount, doesn't mean less, but more movies. I think you're going to find folks in the movie theater industry support any business decision that gets us there."

Loria recalls that after Disney purchased Fox and Fox Searchlight, their combined studios significantly reduced the number of films they released in the theaters. Crunching the numbers, Loria says in 2016, a year before the merger announcement, Disney and Fox released a total of 38 theatrical films. This year, the consolidated studios released 18.

That's a problem for theater owners who've been struggling to bring audiences back to cinemas after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down; they're competing with movie-watching on TVs, computers and phones.

Some theater owners and cinephiles also fear studio conglomerates will only greenlight a few big-budget blockbusters, leaving the lower budget indies behind.

"The concern is you're going to see less of that risk taking, less of that experimentation and less of that embracing new directors, new filmmakers in the future," says Max Friend, the CEO of Filmbot, the ticketing platform for independent cinemas in the U.S. "It's really important that there are studios that are funding and supporting, cultivating that kind of work."

He points out that this year, Warner Brothers made a string of critical hits, including Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the horror film Weapons and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.

Friend wonders if the next owner will take similar risks with future original, creative films.

Warner Bros. Discovery is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A downtown hearing kicked off Wednesday, during which a federal judge will consider holding the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court. The hearing is the latest step in a long-running legal saga regarding the city's response to the region’s homelessness crisis.

The hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing a settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners. L.A. Alliance sued the city, and county, in 2020 for failing to adequately address homelessness.

Several witnesses are expected to testify during the contempt-of-court hearing, including Gita O’Neill, the new head of the region’s top homeless services agency, and Matt Szabo, the L.A. city administrative officer.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger watched at least part of Wednesday’s hearing in the courtroom.

Why now?

Carter said in court documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations under court orders. During a hearing last week, the judge pointed to several delays, including recently reported issues related to data and interviewing city employees.

The judge noted that similar concerns have come up at previous hearings. Carter told attorneys for the city in March 2024 that he “indicated to the mayor that I’ve already reached the decision that the plaintiffs were misled” and “this is bad faith,” according to court transcripts.

The judge said in a Nov. 14 order that he’s concerned the “delay continues to this day.”

The contempt hearing is expected to cover whether the city has complied with court orders and provided regular updates to the court under the settlement agreement.

Reducing delays

Attorneys for the city have pushed back against the hearing, filing objections with the judge and making an unsuccessful emergency request with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block it from happening.

City authorities also asked the appeals court to press pause on the judge’s order to appoint a monitor in the case to make sure the city stays on track with the settlement. The city argued that Carter handed the monitor “a blank check to interfere with the democratic process,” according to court documents.

The appeals court partly denied the city’s request. It allowed Wednesday’s hearing to move forward, but it agreed to pause the appointment of Daniel Garrie as monitor.

In light of that response, attorneys for the city have argued that looking at the city’s cooperation with Garrie “would be inappropriate” during the hearing and that L.A. “cannot be held in contempt for either the substance or the manner of its compliance with the order,” according to court documents.

Previous hearings related to the settlement have elicited tense questioning of witnesses and harsh words from the judge, who has been vocal about reducing delays and moving the case forward.

In an opening statement Wednesday, Theane Evangelis — one of the attorneys representing the city — urged the judge to “turn down the heat” on the closely watched case. Evangelis said the “city is constantly under fire” in court while L.A. has made “enormous strides” in getting people off the streets.

Elizabeth Mitchell, lead attorney for L.A. Alliance, said the city treats transparency as a burden.

She said Wednesday that the “city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness” and that the court should address L.A. 's “consistent” delays throughout the case.

What’s next?

The hearing will resume Dec. 2, when more witnesses can appear in person.

City authorities told the court they believed a one-day hearing wouldn't be enough time to go over all the evidence.

If the judge does find the city of L.A. in contempt of court and that it "isn't doing what it promised to do," the consequences could range from nothing all the way up to serious sanctions, according to Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance.

Umhofer told LAist after the hearing that sanctions could include the court ordering more intensive monitoring of the city’s performance, imposing new requirements on the city, monetary penalties or possibly a receivership.

Carter previously stopped short of seizing control of the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in homelessness spending and handing it to a court-appointed receiver, deciding against that option in a June ruling.

L.A. Alliance is considering asking for an extension to the settlement agreement, Umhofer said.

“The city has gotten away with not complying for a very long time,” he said. “So extending the agreement can be among the things that we might ask for ... given the pattern of delay and obstruction."

Evangelis and Bradley Hamburger, another attorney representing the city, declined LAist’s request for comment after the hearing.