The Brief

With only six days left in the legislative session, lawmakers refuse to back several of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial proposals for reducing how much for-profit utility companies must pay after causing a wildfire.

Assembly and Senate lawmakers oppose the governor’s proposals to limit survivors’ compensation for pain and suffering, curb reimbursements to insurance companies for massive payouts to homeowners when power lines spark a fire and limit how much local governments can recoup for incinerated infrastructure, according to legislative sources and internal memos obtained by CalMatters.

Those are among the most contentious parts of a high-stakes package of wildfire policies Newsom has been negotiating behind closed doors at the end of his final legislative session as governor.

Neither the governor’s office nor leaders in the Senate and Assembly have released the text of the proposals they are negotiating, setting the stage for them to potentially push through a complex package of policies with little public hearing in the final days of the session that ends Aug. 31.

Newsom’s office has not responded to inquiries about lawmakers’ opposition to parts of his proposal. If they can’t reach an agreement by Friday, the legislative deadline to publish bills before they get a vote, they would punt the issue of rising utility liabilities to the next governor.

At a press conference last week, Newsom said he’s open to amending his proposal but insisted some reforms must be made.

“I feel very strongly that we need to move on this,” he said.

Newsom is concerned, his staff says, with ensuring fire victims’ damage claims get paid faster while freeing utilities from other lawsuits that could shake investors’ confidence in the companies’ financial standing and lead to higher power bills for customers. But opponents, including local governments, wildfire survivors, consumer advocates and insurance companies, argue the plan helps utilities escape accountability.

Though any changes they make would apply only to future wildfires, the negotiations have stoked the anger of a group of Eaton Fire survivors who traveled to Sacramento this week to protest the proposals. Earlier this month, state and Los Angeles fire officials found investor-owned utility Southern California Edison responsible for the January 2025 fire, which ignited under a decades-old decommissioned Edison transmission tower. The blaze claimed 19 lives and destroyed 9,400 structures.

“My job is not to ensure that we’re increasing profits for shareholders for these companies,” Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, a Democrat who represents Altadena, said at a rally with the group on Tuesday. “And we certainly, as a Legislature, are not going to negotiate with companies that want to act like terrorists.”

Lawmakers diverge

Perez was referring to a report that executives of Pacific Gas & Electric and Edison have told Wall Street analysts the companies plan to take unspecified actions to protect their shareholders if lawmakers do not pass laws this year helping them reduce their financial responsibility after fires.

Newsom and Democratic lawmakers agree on a proposal that would curb utility CEO bonuses after a destructive fire and increase fines for utilities with safety violations. Sources familiar with the negotiations said a Senate proposal would go further, targeting utility profits by directing regulators to scrutinize company spending and to consider limiting rate increases in line with inflation.

Lawmakers also agree with Newsom on improving community wildfire mitigation projects and using future insurance taxes to pay for home hardening. And they generally agree on limiting fees for attorneys who represent victims and other plaintiffs in suing utilities for damages after a fire, though the Senate plan would also curb fees for the utilities’ attorneys.

But neither Senate nor Assembly leaders agree with Newsom on eliminating subrogation — the right of insurance companies to recoup their costs for claims from utilities or other corporations responsible for a fire — according to memos of the Assembly’s counterproposals and Senate sources familiar with the negotiations.

The insurance industry has been vocal about the possible effects, arguing it would increase insurers’ costs and lead them to raise their rates.

 ‘A massive new strain’

Sen. Ben Allen, a candidate for insurance commissioner and Democrat whose district includes the Pacific Palisades, which also experienced a deadly fire last January, said killing subrogation to try to address one problem (high electricity rates) could create another problem (even higher insurance rates).

“I fear we will create a massive new strain on the insurance system that could break basic questions of affordability for Californians,” Allen told CalMatters. It could also exacerbate problems in the state’s already challenging insurance market, he said.

Lawmakers are aligned with the governor on limiting the number of middlemen who are entitled to benefit or profit after a disaster, or at least capping how much they can get. Lawmakers in both chambers want to bar insurers from selling their claims and subrogation rights to hedge funds. The Senate plan would still allow it if insurers get approval from the insurance commissioner, which smaller insurers might seek if they need cash quickly to pay claims after a fire.

Assembly leaders also are pushing back on Newsom’s proposal to reduce the amount local governments can recover from utilities after a wildfire by limiting claims to the depreciated value of burned infrastructure, rather than the full cost of rebuilding it. The proposal had sparked outrage from the California State Association of Counties, the League of California Cities and groups representing school districts.

Under pressure from the powerful California Professional Firefighters union, Newsom appears to be backing away from that effort.

On Monday, the union wrote Newsom a letter supporting his overall package and thanking him for “adjustments to ensure that local governments are not unduly impacted by this proposal.” Newsom spokesperson Anthony Martinez did not respond to an inquiry about that proposal.

A fraught proposal

Newsom’s office, lawmakers and the utilities (via their Wildfire Victims First campaign, which includes few fire victims) say their motivation is ensuring fire survivors’ damages are prioritized over other plaintiffs. That means determining which survivors are most deserving, which is among the most emotional and fraught of Newsom’s proposals.

The governor would limit survivors’ damages for pain and suffering to those who lost a family member or suffered an injury. Other survivors would only get to make a non-economic damages claim if they were in the burn perimeter and had to flee, with a cap of $150,000 per person to avoid overdrawing from the state’s wildfire fund, which is paid for by utility customers and shareholders.

Gayle Nicholls Ali, an Eaton Fire survivor, protests outside the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento on Aug. 24, 2026.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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In response to survivors’ objections, the Assembly’s proposal would expand eligibility for those non-economic damages without caps, while the Senate plan would not limit eligibility and instead raise the legal bar for survivors outside the perimeter to prove the fire caused their trauma.

But a month of protests by Eaton Fire survivors opposing Newsom’s plan shows choosing how to prioritize victims remains complicated. Their group, Every Fire Survivors Network, objects to anything seeking to differentiate among fire victims.

“We are the real wildfire survivors,” a few dozen of them chanted outside the governor’s mansion Monday night, where Newsom was hosting state lawmakers for an end-of-session reception.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali’s house in Altadena burned down, and she is starting to rebuild. Her son’s home, around the corner, was not destroyed but has smoke damage. He and his wife have been living in a donated RV on the property, waiting for his insurance company to approve his claims so they can begin repairs.

Under Newsom’s proposal, she’s not sure whether her son would qualify for non-economic damages because he is a survivor who evacuated but was not physically hurt and did not lose his home.

“The mental stress alone” has been immense, she said. A retired public school teacher, Nicholls-Ali and her husband have lived in Altadena for more than 30 years, and it was her son’s dream to buy a home in the same city.

“He wanted to live near home,” she said.

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

A federal judge in Boston has handed the Trump administration another temporary win in the legal fight over the president's executive order to restrict mail-in voting for the midterm election.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Wednesday canceled a nationwide ruling she had issued that blocked the U.S. Postal Service from working on Trump's directives.

The decision sets up another possible consideration of the executive order by the Supreme Court. The court ruled on a procedural issue, but has not weighed in on whether Trump's order is legal.

In that earlier procedural ruling, the Supreme Court halted a similar June ruling from Talwani that applied only to the 23 mainly Democratic-led states, plus Washington, D.C., that sued over the order.

In response to the executive order Trump signed in March, USPS released a final rule for federal ballot mail. It lays out new design requirements for mail-in ballot envelopes, as well as a plan for delivering mail-in ballots only to people on lists of absentee voters that states would have to turn over to the mailing agency.

It remains unclear, however, if and how Trump's directives would ultimately affect voting by mail for the midterms, which is set to start in a matter of weeks.

Trump's order is expected to face more legal hurdles as this lawsuit and other related cases filed by Democrats, voting rights groups and two dozen mainly Democratic-led states proceed.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2026 NPR

Tim Curry, a character actor who created a gallery of delicious, very loony villains for stage and screen, including Dr. Frank-N-Furter in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," has died. He was 80.

Curry, who suffered a stroke in 2012 that put him in a wheelchair, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, according to his longtime manager and friend Marcia Hurwitz. No cause was disclosed.

Known for his arch humor, a putty-like face and gift with voices, Curry earned three Tony nominations — for “Spamalot,” “My Favorite Year” and “Amadeus” — and an Emmy nod in 1994.

“I like playing the more curious corners of the human mind and human behavior, partly because they’re a tad more interesting,” Curry told The Associated Press in 1993.

Curry burst onto the scene as the Transylvanian Frank-N-Furter in the sci-fi, cross-dressing rock musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which premiered in 1973 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went with it to Broadway and then starred in the 1975 cult-classic movie alongside Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf and Susan Sarandon.

The show was ahead of its time in terms of its representation of LGBTQ+ characters and has entered the pop culture lexicon for its many iconic and memorable scenes, including the song “The Time Warp,” which has been covered by a handful of artists, and the often-quoted phrase, “Dammit, Janet!” The show was twice revived on Broadway, most recently in 2026 with Luke Evans playing Frank-N-Furter.

Tim Curry’s take on Frank-N-Furter

Curry’s Frank-N-Furter had a posh British accent, but that almost wasn’t the case. He said he tried German and American accents but pivoted after he heard a British woman on a bus talking with her friend.

“I met a woman on a bus who said, ‘Do you have a house in town or a house in the country’ and I thought, ‘That’s the voice!’” he told LA Magazine in 2015.

For many years after the film’s premiere, the British-born actor declined to discuss it. He didn’t participate in activities promoting the film, which morphed into an interactive event at midnight shows. But he later warmed again to the project and embraced it at public events. Asked by LA Magazine how he viewed “Rocky Horror,” he responded: “With a sort of bemused tolerance. It’s neither a blessing nor a curse. I was lucky to get it.”

Curry’s Broadway career included starring in Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” in 1975-76, playing Mozart opposite Ian McKellen’s Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” and King Arthur in the 2005 production of “Spamalot.” The New York Times said his “stalwart, plummy-voiced Arthur wears a smile as inflexible as armor.”

His screen credits included starring as the child-killing monster in the 1990 miniseries version of Stephen King’s horror novel “It” and the double-dealing Cardinal Richelieu in 1993’s “The Three Musketeers” with Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Chris O’Donnell.

In his 2025 memoir, “Vagabond,” Curry warned readers that while there were scraps of his nature in his characters, he was none of them. “The distinctions between who I really am and who I’ve pretended to be as an actor have proven to be a source of great disappointment to some audiences. It has not caused me much personal distress beyond the periodic necessity to deter stalkers,” he wrote.

Tim Curry’s life and career began in England

Born in Cheshire, England, Curry was the son of a Navy chaplain and a school secretary. He was 12 when his father died and his mother subsequently went to work. Young Tim learned to cook his own breakfast, resulting in a lifelong passion for cooking, and sharpened his humor muscles.

“My father was a Methodist chaplain in the Navy, and we moved pretty much every 18 months,” he said. “So I had to make my mark in new schools and new playgrounds pretty quickly. And a sense of humor is the best way to do that. I was always a kind of mimic, one of those awful, relentless children, I should think.”

Acting did not occur to him until his middle teens, when he attended a school for the sons of Methodist ministers.

“I was lucky that it was a liberal kind of school; many of them in England are rather Dickensian,” he recalled to the AP. “There was a lot of theater, and I sang, too; I had been singing in church from the age of 7. I had enormous opportunities to express myself in that way. I just got hooked, really.”

His training continued in 1965 when he entered the University of Birmingham, at that time one of three English universities with a drama department. “I took an academic course, which I largely ignored, I’m afraid, and just acted all the time,” he said.

He then went down to London and talked his way into his first job, “Hair,” in the West End. Curry went on to the more formalized theater of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre, where he was enlisted for “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Tim Curry’s other roles

He went on, as the smug concierge, to futilely try to stop Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister from taking advantage of New York’s swanky Plaza Hotel in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.” Curry also was Wadsworth, the unhinged butler with a secret past, in the also quotable “Clue.” He also played a wealthy philanthropist in 1995’s “Congo” and opposite Carol Burnett in the movie “Annie.”

“Hollywood tends to use European actors, especially English ones, as villains because they prefer heroes to be Americans. I think we come with a certain amount of style, which is hard for American actors to acquire,” he told the AP in 1997. “They have to choose early on between New York and the theater vs. Hollywood and television and movies. In England there is still regional theater, where you can be assured work for several years doing all kinds of things.”

In later years, Curry lent his baritone voice to many voice-acting roles in children’s TV series, including “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “The Wild Thornberrys” and “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.”

After a yearslong break from live-action roles, he played a plague doctor-masked man in a wheelchair in 2024’s “Stream,” something the film’s director Michael Leavy called a dream come true.

Curry, who never married and had no children, was deeply private about his personal life. But he wrote in his memoir that he was convinced to tell his story thanks to so many moving encounters with fans.

“The notion that my experiences might resonate helps me persevere — if they strike a chord with only one teenager, alone with a book in his room, as I so often was; or that young woman reading this on an interminably long bus ride; or that older queen, hopefully still in his fishnets, who saw ‘Rocky Horror’ upstairs at the Royal Court; or that middle-aged mother who organizes ‘Clue’ watching parties and refuses entry to anybody out of costume; or that buttoned-up bank clerk who relishes musicals; or that woman who kicked me out of the Waverly for being myself,” he wrote.

This story appeared first on LA Local.

Los Angeles is bracing for some of the hottest weather of the summer this week, with temperatures in parts of the city approaching 100 degrees and some areas of Southern California climbing into the triple digits.

Wednesday and Thursday are expected to bring the most intense heat, with extreme temperatures lingering through Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters say downtown L.A. could come close to or break daily temperature records. 

The city has opened dedicated cooling centers, while libraries and recreation centers are also available for people looking to escape the heat. Community groups in Koreatown are increasing water outreach to unhoused residents, who advocates say have few places to get out of the sun. 

Cooling centers

The city is opening nine cooling centers with extended hours, and pets are welcome. For residents in Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake, nearby options include:

Lafayette Multipurpose Community Center

Residents and their pets can also cool off at Recreation and Parks facilities during their regular operating hours: 

Shatto Recreation Center

Normandie Recreation Center

Seoul International Park

Dogs must be on a leash, and all pets must be accompanied by their owners. Kennels can be provided upon request.

Los Angeles Public Library branches also offer free, air-conditioned spaces to escape the heat during regular operating hours. Nearby locations include:

Pico Union Branch Library

Pio Pico Koreatown Branch Library

Felipe de Neve Branch Library

Wilshire Branch Library

Library hours vary, so residents should check current hours before heading out.

The YMCA will also open cooling centers across the region, including two in Koreatown, according to YMCA spokesperson Christina Bragg. People can cool off inside the air-conditioned facilities and refill reusable water bottles, while some locations may also have bottled water available.

Koreatown YMCA Center for Community Well-Being

Anderson Munger Family YMCA

The weather forecast

L.A. could come close to — or break — several temperature records as the heat continues through Friday, according to Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Wofford said high pressure combined with weaker onshore flow from the ocean is helping drive temperatures up.

The ocean itself is also unusually warm, which Wofford said is having a greater effect on nighttime temperatures.

“Our ocean is pretty warm right now, about 5 to 7 degrees above normal around this time, which mainly influences the overnight temperatures,” he said.

Some relief could arrive toward the end of the week.

“We might see a bit of cooling on Friday and over the weekend and by early next week, we should be pretty close to normal temperatures,” Wofford said.

A customer at Country Ranch Market loaded his car with multiple packets of water bottles.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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Free water and other resources

Residents can find hydration stations throughout the city, where they can drink water and refill reusable bottles.

Hydration stations are available at Lafayette Park and MacArthur Park in Westlake, Normandie Recreation Center in Pico Union and the Pio Pico Koreatown Branch Library. 

The Cool Spots LA interactive map can help residents find additional hydration stations and places to cool off in their neighborhoods.

People can also sign up for NotifyLA for emergency alerts, including warnings about extreme weather.

Heat safety tips are also available in multiple languages, including Spanish, Armenian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Unhoused residents face the heat with little protection

For people living outside, escaping the heat can be much more difficult.

Ktown for All, a volunteer-led group that regularly conducts outreach to unhoused residents in Koreatown, is distributing cold water to their community.

“As part of our regular outreach, we always distribute water, but now we are trying to distribute frozen water,” Sherin Varghese, an organizer with Ktown for All, said. 

Varghese said the group is seeing people endure the heat without tents, tarps and other structures that could otherwise provide shade.

“One of the biggest things we’ve been seeing — because there’s been an aggressive push to get rid of homelessness — is that people have lost things like tents and tarps and makeshift structures that would’ve provided some protection,” Varghese said. “We’ve been seeing people without access to any shade or protection from the sun. People are sitting on hot concrete, exposed directly to the sun with no sort of regular access to water.”

Varghese said the effects of the heat extend beyond people living on the streets. She also criticized the city’s Inside Safe program, which moves people from encampments into interim housing.

“We also know and heard that some people in Inside Safe don’t have access to air conditioning, so now we’re even hearing from sheltered folks as well of how bad this is,” Varghese said.

Ktown for All will continue its regular Saturday outreach this week, with volunteers distributing frozen water. While the group has no midweek distribution scheduled, Varghese said some volunteers are making their own drop-offs.

Tam Phan of No Harm KTLA, a volunteer group that does trash pickups in Koreatown twice a month, said volunteers are being encouraged to join Ktown for All’s Saturday outreach. Volunteers will help with water and menstrual product drop-offs.

Phan said she has noticed people living in encampments looking increasingly exhausted as the sun continues to beat down.

“The bigger water bottles left out by volunteer groups look used up or dry,” she said. 

She has also noticed more visible signs of dehydration.

“Stepping outside is unbearable for me, so I could only imagine what they are going through without adequate access to water or a place for air conditioning,” she said.

Free events

A free water slide event is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 29, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Shatto Park, organized by Los Angeles City Councilmember Heather Hutt’s office.

The event is free and open to everyone, and a light lunch will be served to attendees.

City officials are urging residents to limit strenuous outdoor activity during the hottest hours, drink water regularly and check on neighbors, family members and others who may be particularly vulnerable.

Extreme heat can be especially dangerous for children, older adults, pets, people who work outside and people with certain health conditions.

Sign up for heat advisory alerts:

• Alert LA County
• Notify LA
• Cool Spots LA

Updated August 26, 2026 at 10:22 AM ET

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The social media company Meta and states suing it have agreed to a proposed settlement that would resolve a landmark federal child safety lawsuit and could be a turning point for a wave of lawsuits against social media companies.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey represented a larger consortium of states that alleged that Meta designed its apps — Facebook and Instagram — to be addictive to kids, knew about the risks those platforms posed, but hid that information from the public.

In addition to claims that Meta broke state consumer protection laws, the states accused Meta of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data about children under the age of 13. Meta has a policy of not allowing kids under 13 on its platforms, but some skirt the rule by registering with false birth dates.

The proposed settlement would require Meta to pay $17 billion in penalties to the states over 10 years, and to make significant changes to how its platforms operate so that they are safer for minors.

"Today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of a difference for children and their families," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

"Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months," he added.

Meta's Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement the framework was groundbreaking and "will empower parents to easily manage how their children access our platforms." 

"But its success depends on all other social media platforms following Meta's lead," he said, making an explicit call for TikTok and YouTube to implement this same framework.

Tiktok and Google, which owns YouTube, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meta has denied the allegations brought by the states.

Bonta's office also said Meta had agreed to a default time limit of two hours for users under 18 and a nighttime block between midnight and 6am, both of which can only be lifted by a parent; default night and schooltime notification blocks; a ban on displaying the numbers of "likes" or reactions to posts made by minors; a ban on cosmetic surgery image filters for minors; and an option for young users to have a "non-personalized feed" that is not run by an algorithm targeting them with content.

Meta must also bring on an independent auditor with "expansive access to information and resources" and the right to communicate with the attorneys general, the announcement said, and would also be subject to an injunction "prohibiting it from making further false, misleading, or deceptive statements around its safety features."

"I am proud to deliver this settlement that addresses the concerns at the core of our lawsuit and institutes real change, real transparency, and real enforceable protections for children on Facebook and Instagram — right now, no more waiting," Bonta wrote.

The proposed settlement says a portion of the funds would go toward things like youth mental health programs, after school programs and crisis intervention services.

The trial started last week in federal court in Oakland, Calif., and was expected to run through early October. But the settlement announcement comes only midway through the trial's second week.

Key testimony came from insiders who worked at Meta, including whistleblower Arturo Béjar, who testified that the company culture was obsessed with increasing user numbers and that Meta's internal studies showed that young users were exposed to harmful experiences at much higher rates than the company acknowledged publicly.

Yesterday, the states brought Instagram head Adam Mosseri to the stand and questioned him about the effectiveness of some features added to Instagram to try to keep teens from using it too much. They accused Mosseri of publicly touting the use of one of those safety features — called "Take a Break," a feature that nudged kids to close the app — when the reality was that it had very limited uptake by teens.

The proposed settlement must be approved by the judge in the case, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The case is part of a wave of lawsuits that has been compared to litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990s. Those suits led to record settlements, changes to the way the companies operate, and a shift in the public discourse about cigarettes.

The case was consolidated from a series of lawsuits by attorneys general around the country against Meta, and the settlement resolves the cases and claims of 51 of those, according to the California Attorney General's Office.

Copyright 2026 NPR