The Brief

Good morning and welcome to Monday. We're going to experience a cooler afternoon with partly cloudy skies today.

Along the coasts you can expect highs in the lower 60s, up to 64 degrees in Santa Monica. In downtown Los Angeles expect a high of 65 degrees. Inland areas including the valleys will see highs in the mid 60s, up to 66 degrees in Riverside and Anaheim.

Tonight's lows will drop to the 50s. Tomorrow will be much like today, except just a couple of degrees warmer.

A wind advisory has been issued for the high desert specifically Apple and Lucerne Valleys where west winds will range between 20 to 30 mph, some gusts reaching up to 50 mph.

This day in history

On this day in 2011, the effects of a 9.1 magnitude earthquake in Japan was felt all the way in San Diego and the SoCal coast, producing some minor but strong waves.

Things to do

• Real Estate: Indie rockers Real Estate bring their sixth album, Daniel, on tour to the Bellwether this week. Pitchfork compared the band’s latest, an REM-inspired collection of songs recorded at Nashville’s RCA Studio A, to "having beers in your neighbor’s garage" – in a good way.

Check out our full list of things to do this week.

Tech giants Meta, Google, and TikTok are suing to block a landmark California law meant to protect kids’ mental health on social media platforms.

The law, one of a slate of bills signed by Gov. Newsom this year to protect kids online, would block social media companies from offering “addictive” features to teens under 16.

Set to go into effect in January, the law defines addictive features as design choices like infinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendations. Those features are blamed in part for a teen mental health crisis, which the law seeks to curb.

The three suits, filed in multiple federal courts in California this week, argue that the law would infringe on the companies’ First Amendment rights. The Meta suit, for example, says that the law undermines the “fundamental principle” of free speech by making the state “the editor, curator, and controller of online speech.”

Google, which owns YouTube, similarly argues in its lawsuit that the law would “frustrate YouTube’s efforts to provide under-16 users with safe, responsible, and enriching experiences on the platform.”

The companies want the courts to block the law before it takes effect.

When the measure was before the California Legislature, some groups, like digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argued the law would amount to a full ban on social media for teenagers because it was so broad and the features it regulated so fundamental to the platforms. Teens would then miss out on precious online resources, the groups said.

NetChoice, a tech industry-aligned group, also criticized the law. It released a statement supporting the lawsuits, saying “the state cannot restrict minors' access to protected expression simply because it thinks the expression is bad for them.”

A supporter of the law, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in response to the lawsuits that courts have already been “rejecting the industry’s claims that the First Amendment shields them from accountability.”

The bill’s passage was just one in a recent series of damaging moments for the tech industry, which has faced intense scrutiny over its impact on teens’ mental health. Meta agreed in August to pay as much as $17 billion as part of a settlement with 47 states that argued the company had engineered its products to be addictive to children.

A TikTok spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the suits. A Meta spokesperson declined to attach their name to a statement and CalMatters declined to publish it.

“We believe parents are best positioned to make the right decisions for their families, which is why we offer a range of protections and tools that put parents in control,” José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said in an email. “Overly broad laws like this actually break the systems we’ve built to help kids find high-quality, age-appropriate videos.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Three stories about climate change are playing out like popular movie genres as United Nations climate negotiations begin in Antalya, Turkey.

There’s the horror story. Many scientists believe global warming is accelerating. Two months ago, the U.N. readjusted its decade-old goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) because the world is blowing past that threshold. The fallout from rising temperatures is felt globally, with Europe’s deadly summer heat waves and Nepal’s devastating flooding as stark examples.

There’s the love triangle. For more than a century, the world has been powered by coal, oil and gas. This love affair spurred economic development, as well as the emissions warming the planet. But renewable energy is capturing some of the world’s attention because it’s cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels. Instead of switching from one to the other, the world is using both to meet demand from power-hungry artificial intelligence and ever-growing economic development. This isn’t helping curb climate change.

Then there’s the war movie. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a European energy shock. This year the United States and Israel bombed Iran. The conflict closed the Strait of Hormuz and sent fossil fuel prices skyrocketing, forcing nations to rethink their energy systems.

These stories are colliding as the 31st Conference of Parties, or COP31, starts Monday with speeches from world leaders and will later dig into how to follow through on past climate pledges.

A key issue this year is the implementation of promises to transition away from fossil fuels. Co-host Turkey is also pushing a separate plan that would help do that by shifting more global energy use — including transportation — to electricity generated from solar and wind power. Negotiators also will hash out how to provide promised funds to poor countries to switch to renewables, adapt to a warmer world and recover from climate-induced damage.

“It’s really the moment that we place a magnifying lens on what’s happening in the world on climate change, both good and bad,” David Waskow, international climate chief at the World Resources Institute, said.

While the U.S. is the world’s largest historic carbon polluter, it skipped last year’s COP and isn’t expected to participate this year.

“There’s always two topics in the climate negotiations that are relevant and difficult,” said Niklas Höhne, co-founder of Germany’s NewClimate Institute. “The first one is who produces emissions (and) how much. That is difficult enough. But what is even more complicated is the other issue, and that is who pays. And on this one, we are particularly in a difficult situation because the U.S., as the largest contributor, has dropped out. And there’s no other player who can jump in.”

Global climate efforts are off track

Eleven years ago, the world was on track to hit 4 C (7.2 F) of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. In 2015, nations set the goal of keeping warming to below 2 C (3.6 F), but with a preferred limit of 1.5 C (2.7 F), as measured over a multi-year period.

Now, the world is at 1.4 C (2.5 F) of warming and is hurtling toward 2.6 C (4.7 F), the U.N. found.

October 2026 was the hottest October on record, and 2026 is virtually certain to end up as the second year to exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius level, behind 2024, the European climate agency Copernicus announced Friday.

“We have failed so far,” said Johan Rockström, director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Rockström said Earth will likely experience more extreme weather, such as floods, droughts and storms, and may soon reach “tipping points,” such as ocean currents changing and the Amazon rainforest collapsing.

It comes down to fossil fuels

Even though burning fossil fuels is the main cause of warming, it has rarely been targeted in final documents agreed upon at the conference, mostly because those decisions require consensus.

“The reason we are seeing the breach of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is because we avoided the absolutely fundamental question of how climate change happened and what’s responsible, the source of the problem and that’s fossil fuels,” said Harjeet Singh, founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. “Unless and until we resolve the issue of fossil fuel phase out, we will not be able to deal with the problem.”

Brazil, which hosted COP30 last year, this month released a detailed voluntary roadmap for how countries could transition away from fossil fuels.

The roadmap is meant to turn the “big problem” of reducing fossil fuels into “smaller actionable solutions,” Ana Toni, who served as CEO of last year’s climate talks, said. One key thing nations must do is stop subsidizing fossil fuels, she said. The U.N. estimates fossil fuel subsidies globally hit $1.1 trillion this year.

“What’s standing in the way is not so much technology as governments and incumbent industries,” said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics. “One cannot underestimate the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry in slowing down action.”

Climate talks bring hope and frustration

Barbados youth activist Ashley Lashley’s first COP was five years ago. She was frustrated by the lack of progress then, but hopeful because there was urgency to keep the 1.5-degree goal alive.

Lashley still attends negotiations with some hope, but she is more frustrated than ever. She said “the science has become more alarming, but yet politically we seem to be negotiating how much failure we are prepared to tolerate.”

Qiyun Woo, a Singaporean youth environmentalist, said her generation is tired of “seeing their present and futures blanketed in wildfire smoke, in devastating floods (and) landslides.”

What gives most experts hope is how cheap solar and wind energy are, along with electric car growth, strengthening the economic argument for transitioning away from fossil fuels.

“It has never been as easy to reduce emissions as it is today because, again, this year, renewable energy has been developing faster than before,” Höhne said.

Hope for progress on the sidelines

Much of the work at climate negotiations happens on the sidelines, where not everyone has to agree and some nations do more than others.

One important sideline initiative this year is Turkey’s goal of increasing electricity’s share of global energy use from 21% to 35% by 2035, preferably by using renewable power.

Mohamed Adow, a veteran COP observer and director of Power Shift Africa, said the conference is taking place at a time when the world is deeply fragmented.

“The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has intensified economic and energy security pressures,” he said. “We don’t expect this particular conference to be able to sufficiently respond to the present day challenge ... that is affecting livelihoods and economies.”

The climate talks are hindered by the continued absence of the U.S., Adow said, adding that it wasn’t fair to nations like Nepal, which have to face catastrophic destruction alone while the world’s wealthiest country and biggest polluter sits on the fence.

“A time will come when we will have to hold the U.S. accountable for the climate harms that it’s caused,” he said.

___

Borenstein reported from Washington, Delgado from Bangkok and Arasu from Bengaluru, India.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

This is the Nov. 6 issue of Make It Make Sense, LAist's elections newsletter breaking down the results of the 2026 general election. You can sign up here to receive issues in your inbox through the end of November.

Good morning! We’re beginning to feel the drag of Election Month. Cue the 🎶 Jeopardy music 🎶. We’re still waiting for an outcome on a lot of our statewide propositions, but we’ve got some juicy tax updates (if you can call them that) and another key race call.

First, now that Nithya Raman will be L.A.’s next mayor, what happens to her current council seat that stretches from the San Fernando Valley to the Santa Monica Mountains?

LAist asked L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s office: “We look forward to working with Mayor-elect Raman and will discuss with her an appointment who best serves the residents of the Fourth District,” Martin Schlageter, a senior adviser to Harris-Dawson, said in a statement.

That indicates the district could avoid a special election, but who could be appointed is still very much up in the air.

Meanwhile, Raman will have to work closely with a City Council that didn’t back her bid for mayor. LAist asked the 12 members who will be working alongside her about how they plan to work with her — read what they said here.

🌴 L.A. city attorney: Marissa Roy takes the win with a commanding lead

• What happened: Marissa Roy will be the next L.A. city attorney. Her opponent, John McKinney, conceded the race, saying in a statement, “While the results are not what we hoped for, I accept the outcome and congratulate Marissa Roy on her victory. I wish her well as she prepares to serve as Los Angeles City Attorney. Her success in protecting our residents and serving the public interest will be important to the future of our city.”
• How we got here: Roy held onto a strong lead over McKinney ever since polls closed, and currently has more than twice as many votes. Roy will be a fresh face in the role after incumbent city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto was ousted in the June primary in a rare defeat of an elected city official.
• What the candidates had to say:
  
  • Roy said on social media Wednesday that election night was “a really good night for the people who believe that we should take care of one another, that we can stand up for our rights — even in what feels like an increasingly lawless world — and that we will achieve justice when we fight for it.”
  • McKinney added that he is deeply grateful for everyone who supported his campaign, including voters, volunteers and supporters.
• What’s at stake: The city attorney runs an office of more than 550 lawyers representing L.A. in all legal matters, including filing lawsuits and defending against them. Roy, backed by powerful progressives like U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has vowed to take on the Trump administration in court.

💸 L.A. and O.C. voters are saying yes to dozens of tax measures

• What happened: By LAist’s count, more than 30 cities or districts in L.A. and Orange counties asked voters to approve tax measures this election. They include sales taxes — like Measure FD in the city of Los Angeles — hotel taxes, business taxes and utility taxes. So far, all but six seem likely to pass.
• 🌴Measure FD is passing: L.A. city voters are steadily approving (53.68%) another half-cent sales tax, this time to bolster L.A. Fire Department resources. The sales tax will go up to 10.75%, although residents likely won’t start paying the higher rate until spring. And it still won’t be the highest in the county — Palmdale and Lancaster pay 11.75%, and San Gabriel's newly passed Measure PS brings its combined rate to 12%.
• 🌴 South Gate utility users tax is failing: The L.A. County city is asking residents to approve an 8% tax that would be added to bills for utilities such as electricity, water, cable and phone services. Voters are resoundingly rejecting Measure SG, with nearly 70% saying “no.”
• 🌴🍊 Transient occupancy taxes: Nearly a dozen of these proposals, which tax overnight hotel guests or short-term rentals, are passing in cities from Burbank in L.A. County to Los Alamitos in O.C. You can see more details in our roundup here.
  

Check out the vote count charts for these too-close-to-call races

🌴 L.A. City Council District 3

• What’s happening: This San Fernando Valley race to replace Bob Blumenfield is getting spicy as more results roll in. Tim Gaspar, an entrepreneur who has said the city needs someone coming from the outside, is losing his early lead. He’s fallen 875 votes behind Barri Worth Girvan, a Valley community advocate with experience in various government offices.
  
  • Worth Girvan said in a social media post Thursday that she is encouraged by the trend so far. “While many ballots remain to be counted and results will continue to shift, we expect this trend to continue as more mail-in ballots are tallied, and we remain cautiously optimistic that when all the votes are counted, we will prevail.”

🌴 L.A. City Council District 9

• What’s happening: The race to succeed Curren Price has been narrowing each day. Jose Ugarte had more than a 14-point lead over Estuardo Mazariegos when polls closed, but it has since shrunk to about four. Ugarte, a community outreach director, is endorsed by Price and a few other members of the City Council. Mazariegos leans more to the left and is supported by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
  
  • Ugarte said on social media Thursday that while ballots are still being counted, “we remain optimistic.”

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 4
In the race for the Fourth District, Democrat and Buena Park mayor Connor Traut is leading with 50.80% of the vote over Republican Tim Shaw, a member of the O.C. Board of Education.

🍊 O.C. Supervisors District 5
Democratic incumbent Katrina Foley is still on track to keep her Fifth District seat against Republican Assemblymember Diane Dixon, with a gap that’s widened to 7,600 votes. If either Republican wins, it will change the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors.

What else got called

• 🥑 State superintendent: Republican Sonja Shaw is conceding the race to Democrat Richard Barrera, who is more than a million votes ahead. In a social media post Wednesday, Shaw wrote, “Last night, voters made their choice. I would be lying if I said my heart wasn’t heavy.” Barrera is a labor leader and union organizer in San Diego, and has served on the board of San Diego Unified for nearly two decades.
• 🌴 L.A. County Superior Court judge: Office No. 87 is settled. Attorney David DeJute has conceded the race to Anthony "A.J." Bayne, a deputy public defender with over 30 years of courtroom experience. Bayne ran without a long roster of Democratic endorsements, which were a common fixture this cycle for judicial candidates. He was rated “well qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Association.

👀 We’re still watching 👀

• 🥑 Insurance commissioner: We’re still holding our breath on the race to lead the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance market. Two Democrats are trying to take on the role: State Sen. Ben Allen and attorney Jane Kim. Allen (47.3%) has been steadily trailing Kim (52.7%), who slightly bumped up her lead in the last few days.
• 🥑 The remaining props:
  
  • Prop 4: This proposal would lift the ban that keeps California and many local governments from using tax dollars to fund political campaigns. It could reshape how elections are funded, but so far, it’s failing by a few percentage points.
  • Prop 5: Should California change how it replaces elected state officials being recalled? The Legislature put it on the ballot, and it’s succeeding by 2 percentage points. If it holds on to the lead, voters would no longer vote on a recall and a replacement in the same election, instead punting a successor to a separate ballot.
  • Prop 38: This proposition is passing by a decently wide margin (55.1%). It would pave the way for the state to borrow $8.4 billion in bonds for immunology research. Supporters argued that the research could lead to treatments that help people living with cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's, but opponents say half the funds would go to just one research group.
  • Props 40, 41, 42: This is the billionaire’s tax and the two countermeasures designed to kill it. So far, it’s looking like Prop 40, the wealth tax, is failing (54.5% “no”), as well as Prop 41 (53.4% “no”), which would prohibit new tax revenue from being excluded from the state spending limit. The other, Prop 42, may pass (53.3% “yes”), which would ban new wealth taxes on personal property.
  • Prop 43: Speaking of taxes … this would make it harder to pass and raise some local taxes by bumping up the threshold of votes to a two-thirds majority. It would specifically apply to special tax measures put up by voters. It’s currently failing by about a million votes.
  • Prop 45: This is designed to limit environmental reviews for certain projects, such as housing and infrastructure, by cutting the time it takes to go through the state’s evaluation process. It’s opposed by groups like the National Wildlife Federation, and it's failing by about a 10-point margin.
• 🌴 L.A. County’s judicial seats: The races for offices 64 and 65 are still up in the air, but there are clear leaders. Maria Ghobadi, a deputy district attorney running for seat 64, has nearly 53% of the vote, while Justin Allen Clayton, a deputy public defender running in 65, has 56%. Neither of their competitors has conceded yet. Meanwhile, the fight for Office No. 131 between two public defenders is narrowing. David Ross trails Donna Tryfman, but he picked up more votes in this morning’s drop.

😰 Is it over yet? 😰

These results are based on about 8.9 million votes counted so far statewide — more than 2.5 million in L.A. County and nearly 892,000 in Orange County.

We still have a ways to go! The California secretary of state estimates there are 4.8 million ballots left to count overall, which includes 642,000 in L.A. County and 298,270 in O.C.

This election is turning out to be a banner year for voter turnout — we’re on track to far exceed the 2022 midterms. But we won’t know the full picture until after Nov. 10, the deadline for mail-in ballots to arrive. You can check on the status of your ballot via the state’s BallotTrax system.

The next local ballot counts drop this afternoon starting around 4 p.m., but hey, we’re going into the weekend! From here on out, we’ll only be back in your inboxes when there’s major news to share — like a call on the billionaire’s tax — and we’ll focus on understanding what these results mean for your life in Southern California.

📰 Catch up quick

If this is your first day reading Make It Make Sense, you can get caught up on our past issues here:

• Nov. 5: Nithya Raman wins the L.A. mayor’s race
• Nov. 5: All 8 L.A. city measures could pass
• Nov. 4: We’ve got a new governor, plus voter ID fails

Otherwise, you can keep up with the results here:

• L.A. County
• Orange County

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Were you affected by the Lineage warehouse fire this summer and have something to say? 

CASA 0101 Theater is calling on community members, regardless of writing experience, to express themselves through storytelling in the wake of environmental disasters on the Eastside.

A free, six-week playwriting workshop will guide participants through writing monologues and formatting short plays about their experiences during the fire or their feelings about the history of other environmental disasters on the Eastside, including the March oil spill in East L.A. and the years of toxicity caused by the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon. 

Ten works will be produced and featured in “Fire in the Eastside,” a short play festival at CASA 0101 Theater in spring 2027.

The idea, by CASA 0101 Artistic Director Josefina López, will focus on the personal experiences of people who lived them, said Ignacio Gonzalez, a stand-up comedian and playwright who will lead the workshops. 

“Rather than just point the finger and say Lineage is bad, the government is bad … we want to tell the stories from the individual people and how they were impacted,” Gonzalez said. “We hope that people can look at these and say, ‘You know what, I never thought about that. I never thought that people would have to take these measures or be impacted in this way.’”

For Gonzalez, there is power in performing a 10-minute play in front of a crowd. Though the performances will be short, participants will have the undivided attention of an audience to share an experience that has deeply impacted them, he said. 

Gonzalez recalls watching the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire unfold through news reports and updates on his phone and thinking about the residents living nearby. 

“We can put the phone down and go about our business, and we have clean air, and there are no flies, and everything’s fine. But I just understand there are human beings living there with stories to tell,” Gonzalez said.  

More about the workshops

The free workshops will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. every Monday from Nov. 9 to Dec. 14 at CASA 0101 Theater, located at 2102 E. 1st St. 

All levels of experience are welcome. Spanish-speaking participants can also attend and write their work in Spanish. 

How to sign up

To register for the workshops, fill out the form on CASA 0101’s website here.

If you cannot attend the workshops but still want to share your play or monologue, CASA 0101 will be accepting individual submissions. To be considered, submit your work by sending an email to classes@casa0101.org by Dec. 14 at 11:59 p.m. 

Any works that are not chosen can still be performed during a public reading at CASA 0101.