The Brief

California students are likely to see fewer cell phones and more gender-neutral bathrooms next year as new state education laws go into effect.

Protecting students from immigration raids was a priority for state legislators this year, resulting in several new laws, including one prohibiting school staff from allowing immigration officers to enter campuses or providing student or family information.

The most controversial of the new laws is one meant to target antisemitism, although amendments made during the legislative session resulted in a bill that defines discrimination more broadly.

New Office of Civil Rights to open

Assembly Bill 715 establishes a state Office of Civil Rights to help school districts identify and prevent discrimination based on antisemitism, gender, religious and LGBTQ status. It will also handle questions and complaints.

The legislation, along with Senate Bill 48, creates four positions to track and report discrimination. These positions will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate after Jan. 1.

“California is taking action to confront hate in all forms,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement. “At a time when antisemitism and bigotry are rising nationwide and globally, these laws make clear: our schools must be places of learning, not hate.”

The legislation has been controversial, with some organizations saying it infringes on academic freedom and prioritizes the rights of certain students over others. The California Teachers Association and California Faculty Association have said the legislation could result in the censoring of educators.

Parents can’t be jailed for truant kids

Beginning Jan. 1, parents of chronically truant children will no longer be fined or face jail time.

Assembly Bill 461 amends the state’s Penal Code to remove a section that makes it a criminal offense for a parent to have a child who is chronically truant, which is defined as missing school without a valid excuse for 10% or more of the school year.

California law requires students age 6 to 18 to attend school.

The Penal Code called for a fine of up to $2,000 or up to a year in jail for parents whose children habitually missed school.

“Criminalizing parents for their children′s truancy ignores the root causes of absenteeism and only deepens family hardships, especially as many immigrant families now fear sending their children to school,” said Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Sunnyvale, in a statement. “(This bill) ensures support and resources to keep students in school and on track for success.”

Gender-neutral bathroom required

Beginning on July 1, all California school campuses, except those that have only one bathroom for male students and one bathroom for female students, are required to have a gender-neutral bathroom.

Senate Bill 760, which was signed by the governor in 2023, requires that posted signs identify the designated bathroom as being open to all genders and that it be kept unlocked and available to all students.

“SB 760 is a measure that aims to create a safe and inclusive environment not only for non-binary students, but to all students, by requiring each public school to establish at least one all-gender restroom,” said former Sen. Josh Newman, author of the bill.

Cellphone use to be limited

School districts, county offices of education, and charter schools have until July 1 to adopt a policy limiting the use of cellphones during school hours.

Assembly Bill 3216, renamed the Phone-Free School Act, was approved in an effort to curb classroom distractions, bullying, and addiction to the devices. At least five other states, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, South Carolina and Ohio, have similar laws.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to school district leaders urging them to restrict cellphones. Excessive smartphone use increases anxiety, depression and other mental health issues in children, he said. 

Shielding schools from immigration raids

Protecting students from immigration raids was a priority for legislators this year, resulting in several pieces of new legislation.

Assembly Bill 49, known as the California Safe Haven Schools Act, was passed amid a series of immigration raids that have resulted in the arrest of thousands of people. It went into effect as an urgency measure in September.

The bill prohibits school staff from allowing immigration enforcement officers on school campuses or sharing student or family information with them without a warrant or court order. School districts have until March 1 to update school policies to align with the law.

Senate Bill 98, also effective in September, requires leaders of school districts, charter schools, universities and colleges to notify staff and parents when immigration officers are on a campus. School safety plans should include an official procedure for making these notifications by March 1.

This bill, which is in effect until Jan. 1, 2031, does not prevent governing boards from establishing stronger standards or protections.

Protecting preschools, preparing families

Assembly Bill 495, known as the Family Preparedness Plan Act, expands the pool of relatives that can be authorized to make decisions and care for children if parents are detained by immigration authorities or deported.

Beginning Jan. 1, all adults related to a child by blood or adoption, within five generations, could be authorized to enroll a child in school or make decisions about their medical care while on campus.

The bill also permits courts to appoint a person, nominated by a parent, to have joint custody of a child if they are detained or deported by immigration officials.

It also requires school districts to provide information to parents and guardians regarding the right of children to have a free public education.

The legislation also extends the requirements of AB 49 to child care facilities and preschools, prohibiting staff from collecting information or documents regarding the immigration status of children or their family. Instead, they are required to report requests for this information to the California Department of Education and the state Attorney General’s Office.

Easing the road to college

This year, California high school students will find it easier to be admitted to a California State University campus.

Senate Bill 640 establishes a direct admission program that sends mailers to high school students who are eligible to attend participating campuses, informing them of that status. Qualified students must have completed all the required coursework and maintained the necessary grade point average.

“Tens of thousands of California students are fully qualified to go to CSU, but don’t jump the hurdles of the admissions process,” said Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-Napa, the law’s author. “At the same time, nearly half of CSU’s campuses have substantial available enrollment capacity and need more students to sustain their high quality academic programs.”

The legislation also requires the California Community Colleges system to promote the CSU dual admission transfer program, which guarantees CSU admission to eligible community college students.

Student IDs to include suicide hotline number

Student identification cards issued at California public secondary schools and institutions of higher education after July 1 will include the phone number for The Trevor Project, a crisis and suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people age 10 to 14, and the third leading cause of death for 14- to 25-year-olds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In today’s political climate, LGBTQ+ students face significant levels of bullying, harassment, and discrimination — negatively impacting their mental health and academic success,” according to Assemblymember Mark González, author of the bill. “AB 727 will provide critical resources to support LGBTQ+ youth in crisis and those who have experienced harassment.”

Early education to take seats on board

The next eligible seat that comes open on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing in 2026 must go to an early childhood education teacher, according to Assembly Bill 1123.

The bill calls for one of the six teacher representatives on the commission to hold a child development teacher permit. It also reduces the number of public representatives on the board from three to two to allow the governor to appoint someone who teaches early childhood development at a university or college.

The commission, which governs the licensing and preparation of the state’s teachers, is made up of 15 voting members, including the state superintendent of public instruction, six practicing teachers, a school administrator, a school board member, a school counselor, a faculty member from a teacher preparation program, a human resources administrator, and three public representatives.

The early childhood representatives will be seated after the next eligible seat is vacated or a representative’s term ends.

In the 60 years since California first began issuing child development permits to early childhood educators, there has never been a voting member on the commission, which governs their licensure and preparation, said Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, author of the bill.

Scientists have now gotten closer to understanding how gene mutations may lead some people to develop profound autism.

The clues, they say, lie in the murky space between genes and disease — where key proteins come together and interact.

A team of researchers from UC San Francisco mapped more than a thousand interactions between many proteins that come from certain autism risk genes. This molecular atlas, published in the journal Science, could point researchers toward new and promising treatments.

"It's an unprecedented resource for the field," says Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics, neurology, and psychiatry at UCLA who was not involved with the study. "A lot of people interested in understanding autism and drug development are going to be using this."

For families affected by profound autism, it offers hope for eventual drug therapies. "This is the kind of scientific advance we have been waiting for and praying for," says Alison Singer, president of the nonprofit Autism Science Foundation, who has a daughter with severe cognitive impairment. "There's still a lot of work ahead, [but] this paper makes the path from genetic discovery to treatment much clearer."

The work builds on progress made in recent years to identify single genes that harbor mutations found in a subset of individuals with profound autism.

Getting past the "wall"

People with profound autism often live with severe intellectual disability and require around-the-clock care. They're nonverbal or minimally verbal, and often have serious medical conditions like epilepsy.

Pinning down the biology behind profound autism has always been a complicated endeavor — while both genes and environmental factors play a role, those factors can vary widely from person to person.

In the past decade or so, some genetics researchers have had remarkable success in identifying high-impact genetic differences in a subset of people with profound autism.

"They've discovered several hundred genes and corresponding mutations that are prevalent in [these] individuals," says Nevan Krogan, director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at UC San Francisco.

"But they kind of hit a wall," he added — because scientists haven't been able to turn those gene discoveries into many promising drugs and treatments.

"There was this huge missing piece," says Dr. Matthew State, a clinical psychiatrist and geneticist at UCSF: The genes serve as blueprints for making proteins that drive brain development, but researchers lacked visibility into how those proteins do the work.

State has been a pioneer in identifying high-risk genes, and the mutations in those genes, that are associated with profound autism. Krogan has been at the forefront of using new technology to look into protein interactions.

More than a decade ago, the two researchers were introduced by their mutual boss, the chancellor at UCSF, who encouraged them to collaborate. "[State] had the genes and the mutations. I had the technologies to look at the corresponding proteins," Krogan says.

They focused on filling a knowledge gap. "What we've been missing is the mechanistic understanding of how these mutations [on the genes] are seemingly resulting in autism," Krogan says. "In order to understand that, you need to go to the proteins."

Proteins are the complex molecules that come together to build the body, based on instructions encoded in the genes. "What makes an eye cell an eye cell, and a muscle a muscle, are the proteins and how they work together," State says. "They are the machinery of life."

In this case, the researchers wanted to find the molecular machinery of profound autism — to understand which proteins came from those high-risk autism genes, and how those proteins worked together.

The research was slow at first, but more recent advances in technology — including artificial intelligence — have sped things up.

To start, the researchers went on a "fishing expedition" for protein interactions. They chose 100 proteins from these high-risk autism genes, injected them into lab-grown cells, and then pulled them out, along with the additional proteins that attached to them.

Then, they used an AI system called AlphaFold, developed by Google DeepMind, to help determine which proteins in the clumps were directly touching. "Where AI is playing an important role is being predictive about who's talking to who," says Krogan. "Sometimes they take years to figure out. Now, we can get these insights in an hour." While imperfect, the system has worked well enough to save significant time and money, Krogan says.

Then, they wanted to see what happened to the proteins when the genes got tweaked. They introduced mutations that appear in patients with profound autism, and assessed what changed. "We broke the proteins in the way that they're broken in autism," says State. "That allows us ultimately to answer the question of, when they're going wrong in autism, how are they going wrong?"

They conducted this research in frogs and in organoids, which are lab-grown tissues that model the human brain. In one example, the mutations weakened the connection between two proteins related to which genes turn on and off in a cell. Then, one went rogue, turning on other genes that led to neurodevelopmental defects in organoids.

Molecular convergence

There are hundreds of rare, high-risk autism genes, acting in more than a thousand different ways.

But in mapping more than 1,800 protein interactions, the researchers found that many of them moved along shared biological pathways — particularly those related to early brain development, such as how synapses get constructed, and which neurons develop and when.

The convergence found in this study aligns with other recent publications, adding to an emerging understanding in the field, says Dr. Geschwind of UCLA.

"If we look at multiple mutations and they converge on the same process, that's strong evidence that you're dealing with the things that you want to treat," State says.

Identifying this more limited set of protein complexes that likely contribute to the development of profound autism could change the approach to treatments, says Singer with the Autism Science Foundation. "We've been working gene-by-gene to correct mutations," she says.

And if future drugs could target these shared protein pathways, she adds, "we may not need that separate therapeutic strategy for every autism gene."

Setting sights on new drug-development targets

It takes years to go from a biological discovery like this to an approved drug that treats humans. The findings would need to be translated into drug candidates, then tested for safety and effectiveness.

"It takes time and a lot of persistence and focus," State says. "This [paper] is unlikely to lead to therapies tomorrow — but it lays an important foundation for them."

Most human drugs are made to target proteins, Geschwind at UCLA says, so the newly published map of protein interactions offers an accessible entry point for pharmaceutical development.

And researchers hope to combine recent technological advances in ways that accelerate that progress even more. "When you put together the ability to borrow from successes in other fields [such as cancer treatments], and the development of AI, we're at an inflection point that will hopefully shorten the time cycle," State says.

Last week, Krogan's Quantitative Biosciences Institute received a $46 million grant from the Aligning Research to Impact Autism initiative, funded by philanthropist and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The researchers are already working on next steps.

Copyright 2026 NPR

As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to require data centers to disclose how much water they use, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says concerns over AI’s water use don’t hold “up to any scrutiny.”

On the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath released Tuesday, Altman said that it takes 38,000 ChatGPT queries to use as much water as producing a single almond in California.

“If you look at a modern very large data center, it uses the equivalent amount of water as an office building in terms of, you know, people like running the sinks and the toilets and whatever,” Altman told Heath.

The problem, experts say, is that it’s impossible to verify those numbers given what’s public about the secretive industry.

“The information we have is so limited,” said Shaolei Ren, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside.

Far too many factors affect how much water data centers use to boil it down to any one convenient statistic, Ren said, rattling off a handful of variables: the data center’s location, the temperature outside, the type of cooling system, the length of the prompt, the reasoning required, the output. All affect how much water the data center uses.

“This is the whole reason that these bills need the governor’s signature,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment. “There’s no published data — certainly not for California — and what is public seems all over the place.”

Over the past two weeks, California lawmakers passed two bills by Assemblymember Diane Papan aimed at increasing transparency; both now await Newsom’s signature.

One would require operators to report their water sources and usage when seeking business permits. The other would block local governments from approving new data centers unless developers disclose their water plans. They’d also have to pay for any water upgrades needed to connect to the local supply.

It’s the San Mateo Democrat’s second attempt at more transparency around data center water use. Newsom vetoed her bill last year, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements … without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

The heavy-hitting tech industry and business groups again opposed the bills. But now, as data center fights erupt across the state and local governments ban the facilities outright amid a wider bipartisan backlash, the question of how much water data centers really use is gaining urgency.

“If we know what an almond uses, maybe we can figure out what a data center uses?” said Alex Biering, director of policy advocacy who specializes in water issues for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

What the data actually shows

Regardless of whether it takes thousands of queries to match the water needed to produce a single almond in California (a number that varies substantially over time and space, according to a 2019 study), the Congressional Research Service says data centers are using more water than they used to. 

One study reported the facilities directly used about 17 billion gallons in 2023, up from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014. Another report found that hyperscale data centers could use 150 billion gallons of water from 2025 to 2030 — which is as much water as 4.6 million households use in the U.S. in a year.

Annual water use isn’t the whole story, Ren cautioned. The hottest days, when data centers require the most cooling, can substantially increase peak water demand, according to Ren’s research, which is under review by a scientific journal and available online as a preprint.

“For community water systems, the peak capacity is more important because they need to be designed and built to accommodate the peak demand at all times, similar to our power grid,” Ren said.

Ren’s team found that data center cooling systems could call for 697 to 1.45 billion more gallons of peak water capacity per day. It’s comparable to New York City’s average daily supply, the study says. And unlike irrigation water typically used for farms, water for data centers is often treated, potable water from public water systems, the team reported.

That’s a problem, because water systems across the country — and certainly in California — are “aging, fragmented, and/or financially constrained, thus lacking sufficient available capacity to meet the additional peak water demands of large data centers.”

The researchers pointed to examples in Georgia and Virginia where water suppliers worried they “just don’t have the water” to accommodate peak demand from the data centers drawing from their systems simultaneously.

Ren said water use could drop by as much as 50% if data centers opt for less water-intensive cooling systems, like dry cooling, but there are tradeoffs — such as increased energy needs.

And that, too, requires water.

With a little more than two months to go until the general election, the two mayoral candidates running to lead the city of Los Angeles fielded questions about the environment at a Thursday night forum hosted by LAist.

Incumbent Karen Bass and her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, each answered questions separately about how they would approach many environmental challenges facing the city, including emergency preparedness, water resiliency and transportation policy.

These and other environmental and climate issues are top of mind for many Angelenos during a summer marked by extreme heat, humidity and the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that affected surrounding neighborhoods for months. Communities are also still rebuilding from last year’s destructive Eaton and Palisades fires.

The forum, held at Los Angeles Trade Technical-College, was organized by the L.A. League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment, and was moderated by LAist climate and environment Reporter Erin Stone.

Here are three takeaways from the event:

Differing visions of LA

Bass, who was elected mayor in 2022, painted a picture of an L.A. that’s made significant progress on environmental issues during that time, while Raman said the city has stalled under Bass’ leadership.

Bass referenced her work transitioning the city off of coal-generated energy and expanding the city’s electric bus fleets and clean-energy jobs. She said she wants to build on that momentum, particularly with a focus on helping communities impacted by environmental and industrial pollution.

She pointed to many communities of color that bear the brunt of industrial pollution, including in South L.A. neighborhoods dotted with oil wells and residents who live in close proximity to the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights.

“Where we need to go now in the future is focusing on environmental justice, focusing on the communities that are disproportionately impacted by greenhouse gases and by the environment,” she said.

Raman also talked about a need to focus on environmental justice, but she said environmental programs are underfunded and understaffed, and that she would invest more in them if she becomes mayor.

She said Bass’ administration has not prioritized environmental climate issues enough, and that there should be a more aggressive policy around them.

“Too much of that work remains unfinished,” she said. “Our transition to clean energy has slowed. Efforts to build a resilient water supply, close neighborhood drilling sites, make our streets safer, all of these have slowed over the last four years.”

Raman specifically called out Bass for her proposal to cut funding for the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office as the city faced a billion-dollar budget shortfall last year.

Bass defended the proposal, arguing the program had not developed a climate action plan as directed and needed to be revamped.

The office has shrunk under Bass’ leadership, and she removed the city’s chief heat officer and quietly appointed a new one earlier this year.

Emergency response failures

Both Bass and Raman said L.A. has room for improvement when it comes to preparing for fires, earthquakes and other disasters.

Raman criticized the city’s response to last year’s Palisades Fire, saying there was no clear leadership to guide the community through the recovery effort. She pointed to Bass' appointment of Steve Soboroff to head the recovery. He left the post after his three-month term and was not replaced.

 ”What we saw in the Palisades, I think, was an example of what shouldn't happen,” Raman said. “ A lot of residents in the Palisades have been feeling like they don't know who to reach out to, who is the person that they need to connect with in order to make sure that recovery really happens.”

But she defended her administration’s response, and said confusion over city and state land made it more difficult.

 ”Part of the brush was the city, part of the brush was the state. There was a reluctance to go into state territory because our folks were told they couldn't do that,” Bass said. “As far as I'm concerned, that's not gonna happen again.”

Bass said the biggest impediments to the recovery process — and to people moving back into their homes — are insurance companies and banks. She called for legislative reforms to the insurance process.

Raman also criticized the response to the Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights this summer, calling out Bass directly for sharing misleading information about air quality.

Bass said she relied on inaccurate information from public health and air quality management officials.

Both candidates said there’s a need for stronger enforcement and higher fines that could be levied against corporations like Lineage, the warehouse owner, and better planning for emergencies around industrial buildings.

Shared goals

Although the candidates leaned into their differences, the reality is that they align on many climate and environmental policies.

Unhoused Angelenos are especially at risk from extreme heat, and Bass said the city needs to provide more places for them to cool off.

“My plan, priority one, is to get people off the streets,” Bass said, adding that during heat emergencies that needs to include providing emergency shelters and other ways to cool off.

Raman talked about similar solutions.

“ Responding to people who are experiencing homelessness to ensure that they're actually able to get indoors and off the streets, so that they're not dying from exposure to heat, because that is a very, very high risk that people who are experiencing homelessness face,” she said.

They had other shared goals.

Both said incentives and rebates that keep down the cost of utility bills need to be more accessible, especially in low-income communities.

Both called for more severe penalties for owners of industrial sites like the Boyle Heights warehouse.

And they both said they want to grow the city’s electric vehicle fleet, and decrease car use by building more public transit ridership and expanding biking infrastructure.