Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a budget deficit that can likely only be closed with tax increases or major cuts.
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Topline:
As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to release his spending plan this Friday, a projected $18 billion deficit awaits. Will he raise taxes or cut spending? Either could spell trouble for Newsom’s legacy.
Why it matters: The deficit could balloon to $35 billion annually in the next few years if state leaders don’t pursue long-term solutions, namely making sustainable revenue increases or cutting spending, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal adviser to lawmakers.
Some background: It’s the fourth consecutive year in Newsom’s tenure that the state is projecting a deficit even as revenue grows. In the past, state Democratic leaders resorted to temporary fixes such as internal borrowing, deferring payments, one-time cuts and drawing from California’s rainy day fund to avoid cutting into the social safety net.
Read on ... for more about the upcoming spending negotiations.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
In 2019, first-year Gov. Gavin Newsom inherited a state flush with cash. With a $21.4 billion budget surplus to play with, an ambitious Newsom invested billions in affordable housing, child care and healthcare expansion while paying down the state’s debt and shoring up reserves.
The next governor won’t be that lucky.
When Newsom unveils his last spending plan as governor Friday, he will do so with the specter of a projected $18 billion deficit — the result of the state’s fast-growing spending, federal funding losses and heightened economic uncertainties under President Donald Trump’s administration.
The deficit could balloon to $35 billion annually in the next few years if state leaders don’t pursue long-term solutions, namely making sustainable revenue increases or cutting spending, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal adviser to lawmakers.
But neither will be appealing options to Newsom and legislative leaders this year.
They have repeatedly resisted increasing taxes on average Californians and high-income earners alike — a politically dicey pitch to make in a state with high tax rates and increasing revenue. Spending cuts are equally painful to swallow, especially for Democrats running for re-election in November who have fought to expand services, such as Medi-Cal, that may now be rolled back.
For Newsom, a lame-duck governor with presidential aspirations, there is even less incentive to address the state’s long-term budget health through major policy changes, political strategists say.
“It’s not an uncommon occurrence in California for a departing governor to leave a note on the new governor’s desk that they’ve got a budget deficit,” said longtime Democratic consultant Garry South.
But how Newsom tackles the structural deficit will almost certainly have implications for his expected presidential bid. State Republicans, such as Assemblymember David Tangipa of Fresno, are already blaming the budget problem on Newsom’s mismanagement. “A Newsom presidency would be a fiscal and governance disaster of historic proportions,” Tangipa wrote in a December op-ed.
It’s the fourth consecutive year in Newsom’s tenure that the state is projecting a deficit even as revenue grows. In the past, state Democratic leaders resorted to temporary fixes such as internal borrowing, deferring payments, one-time cuts and drawing from California’s rainy day fund to avoid cutting into the social safety net.
But that cushion is deflating: The state’s reserve stands at $14 billion, half its peak balance, after two years of withdrawals. State leaders have borrowed more than $20 billion from other state funds, debts that will come due in later years. Continuing to rely on those options would leave the state “undeniably less prepared” for an economic downturn, the LAO warned.
“Eventually you are going to run out of Band-aids,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist who worked for then-Gov. Gray Davis during a massive budget deficit. Newsom "has used every trick in the book, and after a certain point, there’s nothing left.”
More healthcare cuts to come?
Newsom has not indicated whether he’ll consider cuts to Medi-Cal, the state’s primary health insurance program for low-income residents. But as the state’s most expensive program, it is an attractive target. More than half of the $200 billion program’s funding comes from the federal government.
Last year, as Newsom and legislators scrambled to close a $12 billion budget gap, they froze new Medi-Cal enrollment for undocumented immigrants, charged immigrant enrollees a $30 monthly premium and delayed cutting certain benefits. The cost of Medi-Cal has been rising faster than expected, forcing the state Legislature to allocate $6.2 billion midyear to prevent a shortfall.
The decision was contentious, with some healthcare advocates and Democratic lawmakers slamming their leaders for creating a “two-tiered healthcare system” that deemed immigrants less worthy of quality coverage.
“That was an incredibly disappointing backslide,” said Amanda McAllister-Wallner, executive director of Health Access California, which advocates for universal healthcare.
This year, Trump’s budget reduced the federal government’s share of funding to Medi-Cal, requiring the state to pay more to provide the same benefits. California is projected to spend at least $1.3 billion more to implement that change, a figure that could reach $5 billion by fiscal year 2029-30, the LAO estimated.
The Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Los Angeles.
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Assemblymember Mia Bonta, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Assembly Health Committee, said solving the state’s budget crunch shouldn’t come at the expense of health care.
“California needs its state and federal leaders to look for more innovative solutions to fill the gaps, make healthcare affordable, and keep our families healthy,” she said in a statement that did not offer specific alternatives.
Any cuts to Medi-Cal could bring political consequences for Democrats who often pride themselves on expanding social services. Rolling back Medi-Cal could hurt Newsom’s legacy, too, since it was under him that the state began offering Medi-Cal to immigrants.
“Democrats are the party of expanding healthcare,” Maviglio said. “To slash it goes against everything they stand for.”
McAllister-Wallner acknowledged she isn’t optimistic about the budget outlook. But she said she hopes the state finds new revenue through taxing corporations instead of making cuts to vulnerable populations.
If “we are addressing this through cuts only, and cuts to the most vulnerable, that’s … not the leadership that we are looking for,” she said.
State leaders could also walk back some of last year’s funding commitments in other areas. While state lawmakers negotiated $500 million for homelessness to counties and delayed it until next year, it is not guaranteed. Newsom, who has blamed the state’s homelessness problem on local governments, could withhold the money.
Newsom also promised last year he’d reach a deal with Bay Area transit advocates over state funding. But last month, in light of the budget shortfall, Newsom urged advocates to dip into previously allocated dollars to save the regional transit network, instead of a $750 million loan the advocates had requested.
Taxing the rich a nonstarter for Newsom
It’ll be hard to muster the political will in Sacramento to raise taxes.
Former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Los Angeles Democrat running for state superintendent of public instruction, said he’s long supported higher taxes on industries that have “skated away from taxation for a long time.”
But even the most progressive Democrats in California have had little appetite to raise taxes, he said, because many represent affluent areas such as Silicon Valley where their wealthy donors live.
Even when the state faced a projected $56 billion deficit over two years in 2023, Rendon said Democrats were “shrugging” at the problem and pointing to the state’s reserves as a solution, which he said reflected a culture of reliance on the rainy day fund.
This year, Newsom has already spoken out against a proposed labor-backed wealth tax ballot measure, consistent with his past opposition to similar proposals.
The ballot measure, titled “The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act” and filed with the state attorney general’s office in October, seeks to tack a one-time 5% tax on those with a net worth of at least $1 billion and use the money to fund the state’s healthcare and education programs. The effort is led by the SEIU-UHW, a powerful labor union representing healthcare workers, and St. John’s Community Health, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare providers in Los Angeles County.
State. Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican and vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee, applauded Newsom’s opposition to the proposed tax increase.
“To have a situation where we have developed an increasing deficit in the face of an economy that is not in recession, and revenues are increasing, it would seem to be silly to solve that by further increasing revenue,” he said.
While taxing the rich is a popular Democratic talking point, backing a proposal like that could mean alienating the wealthy donors Newsom will likely rely on for his presidential run.
There would also be no political gain for Newsom in his last year to stabilize the state’s progressive tax structure, which heavily relies on high-income earners, despite him promising to do so when he took office.
“He’s going to make more enemies doing it than he would not doing it,” Maviglio said.
Yusra Farzan
wants to help Southern Californians connect with faith communities around the region.
Published January 7, 2026 1:55 PM
The Eaton Fire destroyed buildings at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center a year ago.
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Topline:
The Eaton Fire destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, where over 400 families would gather to worship and which has served as a Jewish community space for over 100 years. Josh Ratner, the senior rabbi at the temple, says that in the year since he has been leaning on the Jewish history of resilience and rebuilding to provide pastoral care to the congregation.
The context: Thirty families of the congregation lost their homes, while another 40 families have had to relocate.
Read on ... for more of what the synagogue's rabbi said on LAist's AirTalk.
The Eaton Fire destroyed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, where over 400 families would gather to worship and which has served as a Jewish community space for over 100 years.
On the anniversary of the fire Wednesday, Josh Ratner, the senior rabbi at the temple, told LAist’s AirTalk program that the congregation has been gathering at the First United Methodist Church in Pasadena.
“ It has certainly been a unique challenge," he said, "in a sense of us going through a double crisis, a double tragedy of the loss of our building, which has meant so much to so many of our congregants, and the loss of so many congregants’ homes.”
Thirty families of the congregation lost their homes, while another 40 families have had to relocate.
As the fire raged, Cantor Ruth Berman Harris raced to save all 13 sacred Torah scrolls, pieces of parchment with Hebrew text used at services, including Shabbat. The scrolls are now being stored at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
Everything else in the temple was lost in the fire.
In 2019, UCLA acquired temple records, including newsletters, yearbooks, board minutes, membership directories, financial reports, booklets, photographs and video and audio recordings. Community members can access that information, tracing Pasadena’s Jewish history from the 1930s to present day.
Ratner said that since the fire, he has leaned into what led him to becoming a rabbi — “the ability to provide pastoral care and love” as the congregation has grappled with losing their spiritual home.
“ The Jewish tradition and Jewish history is we're no strangers to crisis and to dislocation and to exile," Ratner said. "So there are a lot of themes from the Bible itself and the idea of the Israelites wandering for 40 years in the wilderness before reaching the promised land and living in that sense of dislocation and impermanence.”
From ancient times to the recent past, he went on, temples are destroyed and Jewish people are persecuted and forced to relocate.
”We have overcome so much before as a people. I think that that gives us some firm foundation to know that we can recover from this as well,” he said. “And not just recover, but really our histories of people is one of rebuilding even stronger than before. Each time there's been a crisis, we've been able to reinvent different aspects of Judaism and to evolve.”
A brief history of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center
The building was built in 1932 and sits on a 91,000-square-foot parcel of land, according to L.A. County records.
The congregation traces its roots to 19th century Jewish residents of Pasadena. Official incorporation of Temple B’nai Israel of Pasadena by the State of California happened in 1921.
In the 1940s, the congregation purchased the a Mission revival building that later burned in the Eaton Fire.
In 1956 the congregation changed its name to the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center.
Rock singer David Lee Roth had his Bar Mitzvah at the center in the 1970s.
In the late 1990s and 2010s, the congregation merged with synagogues in Sunland-Tujunga and Arcadia.
In 2014 it became the first Conservative congregation to employ a transgender rabbi when it hired Becky Silverstein as education director.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new dietary guidelines for Americans focused on promoting whole foods, healthy proteins and fats.
The new food pyramid: At a press conference today, the administration unveiled a new food pyramid with red meat, cheese, vegetables and fruits pictured at the top. The guidelines will set limits on added sugar, and encourage diets that include meat and dairy. For years, Americans have been advised to limit saturated fat and the new pyramid is facing criticism.
Why it matters: Though most Americans don't actually read the dietary guidelines, they are highly influential in determining what's served in school meals and on military bases, as well as what's included in federal food aid for mothers and infants, as the guidelines set targets for calories and nutrients.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced new dietary guidelines for Americans focused on promoting whole foods, healthy proteins and fats.
At a press conference today, the administration unveiled a new food pyramid with red meat, cheese, vegetables and fruits pictured at the top.
Secretary Kennedy described the new guidelines as the most significant re-set on nutrition policy in history, calling for an end to policies that promote highly-refined foods that are harmful to health.
The guidelines will set limits on added sugar, and encourage diets that include meat and dairy.
"Protein and healthy fats are essential and were wrongly discouraged in prior dietary guidelines," Kennedy said. "We are ending the war on saturated fats."
As an introduction to the new guidelines, Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called for a dramatic reduction" in the consumption of highly processed foods," ladened with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats and chemical additives.
"This approach can change the health trajectory for many Americans," they wrote, pointing out that more than 70% of American adults are overweight or obese due to "a diet that has become reliant on highly processed foods and coupled with a sedentary lifestyle."
For years, Americans have been advised to limit saturated fat and the new pyramid is facing criticism.
"I'm very disappointed in the new pyramid that features red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that's something to prioritize, it does go against decades and decades of evidence and research," says Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert at Stanford University. He was a member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which reviewed all the nutrition evidence.
The guidelines also elevate cheese and other dairy to the top of the pyramid, paving the way for the option of full-fat milk and dairy products in school meals. There's growing evidence, based on nutrition science, that dairy foods can be beneficial.
"It's pretty clear that overall milk and cheese and yogurt can be part of a healthy diet," says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist, public health scientist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. "Both low fat and whole fat dairy versions of milk, cheese and yogurt have been linked to lower cardiovascular risk," he says.
"What's quite interesting is that the fat content doesn't seem to make a big difference. So both low fat and whole fat dairy versions of milk, cheese and yogurt have been linked to lower cardiovascular risk," Mozaffarian says.
Mozaffarian says he supports the recommendations to lower consumption of highly processed foods. "Highly processed foods are clearly harmful for a range of diseases, so to have the U.S. government recommend that a wide class of foods be eaten less because of their processing is a big deal and I think a very positive move for public health," he says.
Though most Americans don't actually read the dietary guidelines, they are highly influential in determining what's served in school meals and on military bases, as well as what's included in federal food aid for mothers and infants, as the guidelines set targets for calories and nutrients.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Family members of victims of the Palisades Fire participated in memorial events Wednesday.
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Topline:
In the Pacific Palisades and Altadena today, families of fire victims, survivors, elected officials and others gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of the fires that killed 31 people and reduced L.A. neighborhoods to ash and rubble.
Pacific Palisades: A memorial honored the 12 people who died. Then people gathered for a protest that directed anger at L.A. city leadership.
Altadena: Survivors called for more support — from SoCal Edison, from insurance companies and from the federal government — at a news conference.
Read on ... for details about the events and photos.
At American Legion Post 283 in the heart of the Palisades, more than 100 fire survivors gathered Wednesday morning for a private ceremony for the families who lost loved ones in the fire. After the memorial, Los Angeles police officers on horseback led a procession, followed by bagpipers, then families of those who lost their lives in the fire a year ago.
Then in a ceremony on the Palisades Village Green, a bell was rung 12 times for the 12 people who died in the fire.
“No community should have to endure this level of devastation and loss and trauma,” said Jessica Rogers, executive director of the Palisades Long Term Recovery Group, which organized the memorial. “This past year has tested us beyond measure — physically, emotionally and spiritually. And yet, here we stand together.”
Eaton Fire survivors call for support
Hundreds of people turned out for a news conference in Altadena on the one-year anniversary of the Eaton Fire.
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Meanwhile, in Altadena, survivors and elected officials held a news conference to raise concerns about their recovery experience so far and to call for action.
They said survivors have been wrongfully denied the support they need to stay housed in the wake of losing their homes — by the utility company whose equipment is believed to have started the fire, by key insurance companies and by the federal government.
Southern California Edison has acknowledged that its equipment likely started the fire, speakers Wednesday said. But they added that the compensation offered by the utility is inadequate.
State Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, who represents Altadena, said she had sent a letter to SoCal Edison leadership urging the company to provide urgent housing relief to the community.
“Part of them taking responsibility is providing the financial resources that this community needs to thrive,” Perez said to applause from the crowd. “We will not allow this community to fall into homelessness. Edison, you need to step it up.”
That was a worry for fire survivor Ada Hernandez, who said her family is at risk of having to live in their car when their housing support runs out next week.
Ada Hernandez, joined by her young daughter at Wednesday's news conference, says her family may have to live in their car.
Other speakers called out their home insurers, some of whom, they said, have illegally delayed and denied coverage. A particular focus was State Farm. A spokesperson for the insurer said they couldn't discuss individual customers' cases, but that the company is "committed to continuing being a partner with our customers throughout their recovery."
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the area, also called on President Donald Trump to approve California’s request for tens of billions in relief to help people rebuild.
The events were just two among many held or planned for this week and in coming weeks — marking the tragedy, honoring victims, creating art and building community.
L.A. mayor's role
A key figure missing from the Palisades event, which transitioned to a planned protest as the morning progressed, was L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Her office told LAist the mayor was attending private vigils and directed flags at City Hall to fly at half-staff.
Anger about her role in the early days of the fire response remains fresh for many Palisades Fire survivors, as evidenced by a sign at the memorial calling on her to resign, as well as people wearing shirts that said, “They let us burn.”
At a protest after the vigil, dozens of Palisadians gathered to share their frustration and demand accountability and action, including officials taking responsibility for the cause of the fire, waiving rebuild permit fees and improving responses in the case of the next disaster.
Anger was directed at L.A. city leaders at a protest in the Palisades on Wednesday.
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Bass said on LAist’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle on Wednesday that the anniversary is a difficult day of remembrance and mourning, but she also said that it’s “a day to recommit and be hopeful and to forge on.” She added that she was encouraged to see so much rebuilding underway on recent trips to fire areas.
“I did not have a hand in writing the report, in editing the report, or, frankly, in reading the reports, the various versions,” Bass said on AirTalk. “I had no idea there were so many versions of the report.”
Bass said she requested that the City Administrative Officer review the report’s characterization of the Fire Department budget: “I just said, ‘Get accurate information,’ and that’s what I assume they did.”
Matt Szabo holds that role. LAist has reached out to him for comment.
In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, misinformation spread almost as fast as the flames. Some of these false narratives on social media, especially about water, have had a direct impact on California policy, legal and water experts tell NPR.
Why it matters: False narratives can distract from how best to respond to these kinds of disasters, says Max Boykoff, a University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor who studies media and climate change. " These are tactics to muddy the waters of public discussions," he says.
Misinformation derails a solution for misinformation: One example of false narratives having an impact was the fate of something called Senate Bill 549, says Julia Stein, deputy director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.
Read on... for more on the impact of state policy.
When Chad Comey's five-story condo building burned down in the Palisades Fire early last year, all that was left was the parking garage, a brick and stucco wall, and a few charred trees. Comey's street is now full of empty lots stretching up into the green hills.
Comey is a musician and caretaker for his two disabled parents. In the past year, they've moved five times, not wanting to overstay their welcome with friends and family, while looking for a wheelchair-accessible apartment to rent.
" I think we have a right to be angry," Comey says. "I am housed, but I am homeless."
He says some people on social media try to minimize the pain of fire survivors. "People who are trying to reduce our anger do not understand what it feels like to be homeless," he says.
Comey says some social media posts about the fire play to anger and rage, and they don't always contain accurate information. " In today's day and age on social media, one kernel of truth can be spun off into reels and rage bait," he says. "There's a lot of that."
In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires, misinformation spread almost as fast as the flames. Some of these false narratives on social media, especially about water, have had a direct impact on California policy, legal and water experts tell NPR.
Comey, 32, got most of his news about the fires from traditional news sources like the Los Angeles Times and LAist, and he still relies on those outlets for information about the fires' aftermath. But more than half of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, according to Pew Research.
Thirty-one people died in the fires in the Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods. An area roughly three times the size of Manhattan burned.
False narratives can distract from how best to respond to these kinds of disasters, says Max Boykoff, a University of Colorado Boulder environmental studies professor who studies media and climate change. " These are tactics to muddy the waters of public discussions," he says.
A portion of the Palisades fire burned in the hills of Los Angeles last January. After the fires, misinformation on social media had an impact on state policy.
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Misinformation derails a solution for misinformation
One example of false narratives having an impact was the fate of something called Senate Bill 549, says Julia Stein, deputy director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.
Senate Bill 549 (SB 549), which was first introduced last February, would have done two things. It would have helped local governments get money to build transit-oriented development and low-income housing. And, it would have allowed for the creation of a central hub to manage LA's post-fire recovery. The hub was the recommendation of an independent panel of experts and local leaders.
Last summer, incorrect narratives about the bill spread quickly on social media. A key false narrative was that SB 549 would result in an influx of new, high-density affordable housing in areas impacted by the fires.
Spencer Pratt, a podcaster and former reality TV star who lost his home in the Palisades Fire, made a TikTok video about the bill, which he shared with his more than 2 million followers. In the video, Pratt says he consulted AI chatbots about the legislation. He says that the bill grants "LA County authority to purchase fire destroyed lots for minimal cost and convert them into low income housing."
Pratt also says the bill would "force low-income housing mandates." Pratt's TikTok video received over 286,000 views. Other influencers made videos and posts on X with similar messages.
The bill would not have led to more low-income housing in the Palisades, Stein says. It was designed to finance transit-oriented development for areas within half a mile of "major transit stop" as defined by California law. Those include a rail or bus rapid transit station, or a ferry terminal. The Palisades, a neighborhood near the ocean and in the Santa Monica mountains, is not near a "major transit stop."
"You have injected this narrative that what this bill is trying to do is build dense, affordable housing and big apartment buildings in the Palisades," Stein says. "Even though the bill wouldn't have done those things."
In an emailed statement to NPR, Spencer Pratt wrote, "Pacific Palisades is a multi-generational family town with rich history and character. SB 549 would drastically change the Palisades and other wildfire disaster areas by allowing government to purchase fire damaged lots and bank them for affordable housing. In the aftermath of the greatest tragedy of our lives, we just want the Palisades to be what it once was."
While SB 549 did grant the proposed central hub the ability to purchase fire-affected land at a fair price, the bill imposed no requirement that such land be used for affordable housing.
Pratt's representative, Kyell Thomas, wrote in an email, "AI is not an ongoing source of information for him."
A sign in the Palisades marks a protest a year after the LA fires. There's a widespread lack of trust with state and local agencies amongst many fire survivors.
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Pratt posted his video on TikTok on July 15. On July 16, the bill's author, California state Sen. Ben Allen, paused the bill. Allen's office received hundreds of calls and emails. The office normally receives a few dozen calls for a hot-topic bill.
" I'm all for community engagement and public participation," Stein says, "but, in this case, folks were reacting to information that was factually incorrect."
Allen wrote in an email to NPR, "The absence of good journalism, along with misreads of the bill, allowed false narratives to spin around on the internet, which then impacted AI-generated descriptions of the bill, which people unfortunately turn to for information now. It hampered our ability to have a productive conversation on the matter."
He added, "I have no plans to move SB 549 forward."
The aftermath of the Palisades Fire is seen on an impacted stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway.
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Stein provided academic research to the expert panel that recommended LA make a central recovery hub after the fires, also called the "rebuilding authority." She says the delay in creating this centralized authority because of the pausing of the bill is unfortunate. The central hub was meant to be a "single point of accountability" and information for residents who lost their homes in the fires.
"Right now," Stein says, "folks don't know where to turn."
Better fact-checking is important
There's widespread lack of trust with state and local agencies among many fire survivors, says Jake Levine, whose mom lost her home in the Palisades Fire. Levine, a former climate and energy director at the National Security Council and former adviser to a fire rebuild nonprofit, is running for Congress in a district that includes the Palisades.
Some of that mistrust may be justified, Levine says. The Los Angeles Times recently published an investigation that found that the Los Angeles Fire Department deleted and revised drafts of a key report after the fires, changing words like "failures" to "primary challenges." The Los Angeles Fire Department did not respond to a request for comment.
"I think one of the reasons why people are looking for information from all sorts of sources is because the normal institutional sources that we rely on have allowed there to be a bit of a vacuum in terms of official and reliable information," Levine says.
Levine hopes that in the future, more state, local and federal government agencies can share information directly with residents about things like air quality after fires, so that residents don't have to rely on nonprofit or commercial apps that sometimes have inaccurate information.
Boykoff says another solution is for news organizations to maintain robust fact-checking. He says as more people use AI to get information, many people are "not really tracking back to what the original sourcing is," Boykoff wrote in an email. "And so, in that new environment, there is much higher potential for mis and disinformation."
Addressing misinformation is particularly important, he says, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of disasters.
Copyright 2026 NPR
