The Brief

Nine months after the Palisades Fire erupted, killing 12 people and destroying more than 6,800 structures, authorities announced that they've arrested and charged 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht in connection with starting the deadly blaze.

Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Rinderknecht was arrested Tuesday in Florida. He has been charged with destruction of property by means of fire, which is a felony that carries a minimum sentence of five years in federal prison.

This undated photo provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office shows Jonathan Rinderknecht, a suspect in the Palisades Fire.

(

U.S. Attorney's Office

)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been investigating since January and has determined that it was a reignition of an earlier fire. Officials said at a news conference Wednesday that Rinderknecht started that fire six days earlier while working as an Uber driver — around midnight on Jan. 1 — after dropping off a passenger.

The 8-acre Lachman Fire didn't spread far, as L.A. city and county helicopters made water drops and hand crews cut a fire line, helping to contain the blaze before moving on to mop up. Firefighters then patrolled the burned area to extinguish smoldering stumps, logs and piles of ash, as there was a risk of reignition later.

That's exactly what appears to have happened.

According to Essayli, the fire smoldered underground until strong winds on Jan. 7 caused the fire to surface and spread, becoming one of the most destructive fires on record.

Speculation about the cause of the fire had centered on fireworks, but Essayli said that authorities have no evidence that's the case. Rinderknecht reportedly lived in the Pacific Palisades, but had relocated to Florida since then.

Authorities gave no potential motive. They projected AI images, said to have been generated by the suspect, at a news conference.

Rinderknecht remained in custody Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, and it was unclear when he would be extradited to California.

AI-generated images were displayed by federal officials when they announced the arrest of a man in connection with the Palisades Fire.

(

Courtesy U.S. Attorney's Office

)

In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass thanked federal and local investigators for the work that led to the arrest.

"Each day that families are displaced is a day too long," Bass said, "and as we are working tirelessly to bring Angelenos home, we are also working towards closure and towards justice — and today is a step forward in that process."

The backstory

The Palisades Fire sparked about 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, amid a massive windstorm in Southern California. By the time it was fully contained 24 days later, the fire had burned more than 23,000 acres and destroyed more than 6,800 structures and damaging 937 more. Twelve people were killed.

An LAist review of after-action reports released following the January fires and the 2018 Woolsey Fire — which killed three people and destroyed nearly 2,000 structures across L.A. and Ventura counties — found similar shortfalls in L.A. County’s emergency response. The reports offer similar recommendations for how to fix the issues too.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Fire Department said comparing the reports wasn't reasonable and told LAist that they are pursuing recommendations from the report on the Eaton and Palisades fires and other changes.

The Los Angeles Fire Department released its after-action report later on Wednesday.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is blaming Boeing and his own agency for botching a test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

A 311-page report details the issues that led to the failure of Starliner's first crewed test flight, which in June 2024 launched NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The duo's launch was initially a success — but as their Starliner spacecraft approached the station, multiple thrusters failed, hampering the crew's ability to steer toward the station and dock.

After months of deliberation, NASA and Boeing made the decision to send Starliner back to Earth without Wilmore and Williams on board. Instead, the astronauts remained on the space station and returned home nine months later — in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

In a news conference Thursday, Isaacman said the report classified the failure as a Type A Mishap — the highest classification for a mission failure. The Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents, along with the Apollo 1 fire, were also classified as a Type A Mishap. While those accidents resulted in the deaths of crewmembers, the Starliner mission was "ultimately successful in preserving crew safety," according to the report.

The report identifies the thrusters as a key technical issue leading to the failure, although an investigation is still ongoing and a root cause has not yet been found.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected," said Isaacman. "But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

He said those organizational and leadership problems were seen at both Boeing and NASA, Isaacman's own agency.

The report identified an erosion of trust between the two organizations and leadership that was "overly risk-tolerant."

Isaacman said that the more than 30 launch attempts for this mission led to "cumulative schedule pressure and decision fatigue." When discussing whether to return Wilmore and Williams in Starliner, Isaacman said the "disagreements over crew return options deteriorated into unprofessional conduct while the crew remained on orbit."

Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability," but didn't offer any details.

"These are very complex programs, and complex programs like this fail in complex ways," said Don Platt, department head of aerospace engineering, physics and space science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. "Those organizational issues are oftentimes, maybe even more important than the technical problems that they're facing."

Such a public scolding of NASA and one of its contractors by its own leader is uncommon, says Platt, who worked on the construction of the space station.

"I think it's really setting the stage for sort of the new way that NASA plans to do business here in his administration," says Platt.

He says that could mean greater transparency and oversight over NASA's contractors

Despite NASA's plans to decommission the space station by the end of the decade, Isaacman says he is still committed to flying Starliner. That would leave NASA with two options, Boeing and SpaceX, to fly astronauts to the station — something SpaceX already does with regularity.

The report offered 61 formal recommendations ahead of the next crewed Starliner mission.

"We're grateful to NASA for its thorough investigation and the opportunity to contribute to it," Boeing said in an emailed statement. "We're working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA's vision for two commercial crew providers."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of close to 600 employees, a move the LBUSD says is necessary to stabilize its ballooning deficit.

Board members approved two separate resolutions, the first of which does not renew the contracts of 515 certificated employees, who are on temporary contracts that must be re-upped annually. Though it is common for the district to choose not to renew some temporary contracts, the non-renewal of hundreds of TK-12 teachers, early childhood education teachers and social workers represents a massive change for the next school year from the current workforce of 10,000 total employees. While schools across the district will feel the cuts, Poly and Jordan high schools may be especially hard hit; 14 and 12 teachers at each site are listed on the district’s document of non-renewals.

The second resolution authorized the district to formally lay off 54 classified district positions: non-teaching staff members ranging from office support staff to instructional and recreation aides to library media assistants to parent liaisons.

The board votes come after months of warnings from the district that costs and spending have outpaced the district’s funding, saddling LBUSD with a $70 million deficit. The district is now attempting to shrink that deficit through a fiscal stabilization plan that “has prioritized preserving core instructional, wellness, and student support services,” the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.

Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized — “a really grave situation, fiscally,” she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.

Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it’s still not enough, Baker said.

“The release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,” the district wrote in the agenda item.

For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it’s a way that “the district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,” said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.

Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.

While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is “reading the tea leaves” and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.

In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and “choose to protect the people who serve students every single day.”

On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel López was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.

Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. “There’s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,” said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions “sadly, reluctantly and necessarily.”