The Brief

Long before billionaire Tom Steyer was pouring record-breaking sums into his run for California governor, the family name held significant sway in Sacramento.

The investor-turned-climate activist’s older brother, Jim Steyer, is CEO of the influential California nonprofit Common Sense Media, known for helping parents choose suitable media for kids and warring with the entertainment industry over violent video games. A forceful and well-respected crusader for stricter content regulations for children, Steyer has in recent years turned his attention to social media and artificial intelligence chatbots.

That means if Tom Steyer wins the election, the governor would be close with a prominent advocate of stricter tech laws as Democrats scramble to regulate AI. It would be a shift from current Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has sought to balance AI regulations with a desire to keep technology flourishing in California.

The Steyer relationship makes some advocates optimistic. Lawmakers and advocates for tech regulations said they expect Jim Steyer not to be shy about his policy views with his brother.

Tom Steyer, one of the Democratic leaders in the race, is running as a progressive and promising to strictly regulate industries like oil, utilities and tech. He has promoted an aggressive tech policy agenda that includes privacy and safety restrictions on AI in the workplace, collecting fees from AI data processing to pay for worker retraining and cash benefits, and requiring safety audits on social media.

In his plan, Tom Steyer cites his work with Common Sense Media, which he says he “helped (his) brother Jim Steyer found and build.”

“After watching the experiment that social media companies ran on our children, I know we cannot let the same thing happen with AI,” his tech policy plan states. “As governor, I will do everything in my power to keep California’s kids safe and prepare them for the AI era.”

A greater say on tech policy?

Tech industry advocates are wary. Common Sense and Big Tech have recently clashed over age limits and industry liability over harmful content, though they have also collaborated on promoting tech education and equitable internet access.

“Certainly Jim Steyer and Common Sense Media will have a greater say,” said Peter Leroe-Munoz, a senior vice president at the business group Bay Area Council. “Common Sense Media would have an outsized influence on California tech policy if Mr. Steyer ends up becoming the governor.”

The council’s membership includes Meta, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.

A Common Sense push to restrict social media use for children under 16 has united many Democrats, including Newsom. The proposal amid findings that the platforms are harmful to youth mental health and are designed to be addictive. Tom Steyer supports an age ban, along with several of his Democratic competitors.

The industry balks at the proposal, in part because it would require tech companies to collect mass amounts of user age data, Leroe-Munoz said.

Jim Steyer speaks at the Common Sense Summit on Kids and Families 2025 in San Francisco on March 25, 2025.

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Tom Steyer told CalMatters last week that he hasn’t spoken with his brother about social media and AI policy. He also said he doesn’t have an opinion on two bills inspired by Common Sense and OpenAIthis year to more strictly regulate how chatbots interact with minors.

Asked if the relationship with his brother would influence his tech policy, he said he trusts Jim Steyer’s expertise but would not “slavishly follow what my brother says.”

“My brother’s been protecting kids for 50 years and I listen to him, but it’s not like he’s suddenly going to become me,” he said. “I don’t think it is a conflict of interest for him to try and do his job and for me to try and do my job.”

Jim Steyer did not respond to repeated interview requests sent to a Common Sense Media representative. The nonprofit’s spokesperson, Edda Collins Coleman, wrote in an email that while “Jim strongly supports his brother in his personal capacity,” the nonprofit “does not get involved in electoral politics.”

Strange bedfellows

Jim Steyer has praised his younger brother’s candidacy, writing on X after a televised debate last month that Tom Steyer is “the fighter that California needs right now.” He also helped his brother campaign during a short-lived presidential run in 2020.

Jim Steyer founded Common Sense Media in 2003 as a service to rate movies, TV shows, websites and digital content to help parents evaluate their age-appropriateness. Tom Steyer is a member of the board of advisers, and he and his wife Kat have given the nonprofit at least $5 million over the years.

In 2005, the organization pushed hard for a California law banning the sale of violent video games to children without parental consent. The law was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds.

The organization soon turned toward tech and social media, becoming one of Sacramento’s most influential voices on digital safety for kids and regularly testifying in legislative committee hearings. In 2016, as Common Sense sought to build political clout on children’s issues, Jim Steyer told the San Francisco Chronicle it had “nothing to do with my brother’s political career.” The nonprofit has supported dozens of proposed regulations in the past few years, including a major privacy law passed in 2018 that allows users and customers to have businesses delete personal data collected about them.

Now, Common Sense regularly publishes studies of the effects of social media and AI on child mental health. It also reviews AI tools for parents, rating how they handle young users who express suicidal thoughts or encourage kids to develop healthy human relationships.

Last fall, Newsom vetoed a Common Sense bill that would have created an effective ban on AI chatbots for minors. Lawmakers passed the measure in the wake of a rash of reports of teenagers dying by suicide after developing relationships with ChatGPT, which is made by OpenAI. Some parents, in lawsuits, have alleged that the chatbot encouraged or coached children to harm themselves.

Jim Steyer moved to put a restrictive chatbot measure on the statewide ballot; OpenAI planned to pursue a counter-measure that essentially reflected current law. The pair surprised other regulation advocates in January when they announced they were partnering on a joint ballot measure instead.

Jim Steyer recently drew criticism from fellow advocates when Politico reported that Common Sense was seeking financial support from OpenAI and other companies to form an AI safety institute. Critics worry the partnership would allow the industry to audit itself — especially concerning since many advocates already believed the compromise ballot measure doesn't go far enough.

The discussion has mostly moved to the state Legislature, where lawmakers are advancing two bills based on the compromise measure. They would require tech companies to verify the ages of their users and redesign their platforms to prevent chatbots from encouraging harmful behavior and delivering the sycophantic responses that alarm children’s advocates.

“Children and younger people, they don’t have the ability in the same ways as adults to differentiate between human and quasi-human relationships with these types of technologies,” said bill author Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who used to work at Common Sense Media.

The legislation also requires third-party audits of chatbot safety, which Wicks said the tech industry opposes.

Neither Coleman of Common Sense Media nor a representative for OpenAI responded to inquiries about the potential safety institute.

“We will be as rigorous and honest as ever in evaluating tech products that pose harms to kids and teens and young people’s educational and cognitive development,” Coleman wrote in a statement. “We have long supported third-party child safety audits, which much of the industry opposes.”

Jamie Court, president of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, has worked with both Steyers on policy and is among those who want more stringent restrictions on tech platforms. He said it “bothers” him that Common Sense, the most powerful advocate on tech policy in Sacramento, may partner with the industry, but he doesn’t begrudge Jim Steyer.

“Jim might have a harder audience with Tom than another governor” on tech policy, Court joked. “Jim’s a little bit more accommodating to the companies because he has to work with them. Tom shoots more from the hip. Tom might be a little more radical.”

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

Throne, the smart restroom company at dozens of Los Angeles Metro stations, reached a milestone of 1 million uses last week, the company said.

Metro has partnered with Throne to provide public restrooms since 2023, starting with high-tech toilets at three public stations.

In advance of the World Cup, Metro and Throne wanted to expand their presence in Los Angeles. The company completed those installations on June 4, days ahead of L.A.'s first World Cup match on June 12. Now, 64 locations are operating across the Metro system, according to Throne.

Before the partnership, Metro had just a few publicly accessible restrooms across its coverage area.

In a social post marking the occasion, Throne wrote, “Here’s to the next million.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., died late Saturday night following a "brief and sudden illness," according to a statement released by his office. He was 71.

His office did not immediately reply to a request for information on his cause of death.

Graham served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, when he succeeded Strom Thurmond in the Senate. He was reelected three times and recently won a primary election as he sought a fifth term.

Graham served in the U.S. military for more than three decades. After graduating from the University of South Carolina's law school, he served as an active duty Air Force lawyer for six years. Graham later served in both the South Carolina Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves and retired from the military in 2015 at the rank of colonel.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune called Graham "a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom-loving countries across the globe," in a statement posted on X. "Lindsey fought passionately for the Palmetto State. He was a trusted adviser and colleague to me and many others, and numerous presidents and heads of state have relied on his counsel."

President Trump shared a remembrance on his Truth Social platform: "Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead! He was always working, and was a true American Patriot."

His death comes at a difficult moment for the Senate Republican conference, which has struggled with a narrow majority that includes a handful of outgoing members who occasionally break ranks to oppose the president.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has missed votes during an apparently ongoing hospitalization for an undisclosed health issue, further narrowing the margins for Thune to pass legislation and confirm executive and judicial branch nominees.

Legislative legacy

During his near-quarter century in the Senate, Graham served as chair of two key committees and was instrumental in enacting Trump's policy and staffing priorities.

As chair of the Judiciary Committee during much of Trump's first term, Graham oversaw the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and of scores of federal judges.

Last year as head of the budget committee, Graham shepherded the president's landmark tax package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to passage despite unanimous Democratic opposition and thorny negotiations with his Republican colleagues.

An adaptable and sometimes controversial deal-maker, Graham was the last surviving member of an influential group of Senate defense hawks known as "the three amigos," alongside the late Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-Independent. The group was a fixture of congressional delegations to conflict zones.

Graham was among the most vocal supporters of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran.

"Israel has lost one of its greatest friends. America has lost a great patriot. I have lost a beloved friend," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement posted to X. "Our hearts are with Lindsey's family and with the American people at this difficult time."

Graham also sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and staked a lane as a fierce critic of Donald Trump. In a 2015 CNN interview, Graham referred to then-candidate Trump as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot" who doesn't represent the views of the Republican Party.

In the decade since Trump's victory, though, Graham has become one of the president's staunchest advocates. A longtime friend and ally of McCain, Graham attributed his transformation to a sense of patriotic duty.

"I am not going to give up on the idea of working with this president. The best way I can honor John McCain is help my country," he told CBS News in 2018.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (left) gestures as President Trump speaks with reporters while in flight on Air Force One as they were returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Jan. 4.

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A frequent Trump golf companion, Graham hewed closely to the president in his recent Senate primary election — his campaign website touts the president's "Complete and Total Endorsement."

Graham was born in Central, S.C., in 1955 and lived with his family in a single room behind their liquor store, restaurant and pool hall, according to his campaign biography. His parents died while Graham was still in school. After their death, Graham became the primary caretaker of his younger sister, Darline, whom he eventually legally adopted.

In a statement on the social media platform X, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster described Graham as "irreplaceable," adding, "We shall not see his likes again."

McMaster, a Republican, will appoint a successor to serve the remainder of Graham's term. A replacement Republican nominee for this fall's general election race will be determined by a special election in August.

NPR's Brian Mann and Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A program that helps connect schools and libraries to the internet at discounted rates is under review by the Federal Communications Commission. Educators and advocates are bracing for the funding to shrink or be eliminated.

The so-called E-Rate program, created in the 1990s, has considerable bipartisan support. The agency's recent focus on the program has left educators, including David Thurston, on edge.

Thurston oversees technology for the 33 school districts nested inside San Bernardino County. The area covers more than 20,000 square miles of Southern California: "We have mountain regions, far-flung desert regions, and then our urban and suburban areas. We're a really diverse county," Thurston says.

The county already built the infrastructure to get internet access from the edge of Los Angeles all the way to the state's eastern border, but the spending doesn't end once the fiber-optic cables are installed. Internet access bills come monthly.

"There's no doing without," he says. School districts "are gonna have to pick up the costs."

For San Bernardino districts, that's tens of thousands of dollars every month.

"Those are ongoing, essentially, utility costs," he says. "That's what E-Rate pays for."

A 'healthy' program 

E-Rate has had a notable impact since its founding. It was created by Congress in 1996, when only 14% of schools and libraries could access the internet. That number is now near 100%. The FCC has overseen the program through both Democratic and Republican administrations, so when the agency announced a full review of the program in late June, some were confused.

"By its own data and its own measurement, the program is healthy," Thurston says. "The program is doing what it needs to and is important."

Others saw this coming. The Project 2025 blueprint singled out federal broadband policy as a target for cutting agency spending.

Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr helped write that chapter of the document, compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was meant to guide the second Trump administration.

Less predictable was the chairman's reasoning for reviewing the program: kids getting too much screen time. In the now-approved notice of proposed rulemaking, the FCC calls for a review "to better protect children when using E-Rate-funded networks, including to limit screen time."

His prepared statement at the commission's June hearing focused heavily on the dangers of screen time for kids and the growing body of research around it.

Since January, states including Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have passed some form of legislation that calls for reevaluating technology's role in teaching and testing, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the country, recently approved a policy to limit screen time for its students.

Some advocates for limiting screen time at school say gutting E-Rate funding isn't the way to reduce how much time kids are spending on devices.

"We believe there are ways of strengthening school policies to promote more limited and privacy-protecting use of EdTech without taking away critical E-Rate funding," said Josh Golin, executive director at Fairplay, a nonprofit focused on digital safety for kids, in a statement to NPR.

Although states and districts are searching for ways to limit screen time, few — if any — are looking to operate without the internet altogether. Many schools rely on internet-based systems to track attendance, monitor school bus routes and give tests required by their state. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 states now have some kind of online component with exams.

Bob Bocher, a senior fellow with the American Library Association (ALA), says that because the program is written into the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC likely cannot fully eliminate it. And last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Universal Service Fund, which collects the money that schools and libraries in turn use to lower internet costs, is constitutional.

But the FCC could change the way the E-Rate program is run to make it more complicated, so the ALA is still worried.

Bocher, who helped work on the original law back in the '90s, worries the program could become so onerous it drives schools and libraries away by design.

"It's like death by a thousand cuts," he says, "death by a thousand rules and regulations."

Keeping up with the rest of the world

While internet access has expanded significantly since 1996, internet pricing and options haven't changed the way Bocher or his contemporaries expected.

"A common assumption that a lot of people had [was] … competition will evolve," he says. "And then drive down the price."

In cities, this may be true, but for many rural and remote areas, competition for internet service providers, or ISPs, is nonexistent.

"In rural Alaska, we don't have numerous options," says Patrick Mayer, superintendent for the remote Alaska Gateway School District. "We have one provider."

His district, where some students rely on planes to get to school in the winter months, has just under 400 students. Still, the district spends more than half a million dollars per year to ensure it has internet access at its six schools. The price tag is high, but the connection is what allows them to keep up with the rest of the world.

"It means the difference between having a school in the 21st century," Mayer says, "or a school in the 20th century."

The expansion of connectivity in his district allows students to take dual-enrollment courses online with a local college and access virtual speech and occupational therapy.

"To backfill that funding," he says, "would be very, very difficult."

He imagines there would be no way around cutting down on staff and student services to find money to pay the district's entire internet bill. For now, he's focused on making some noise.

Once the FCC officially publishes notice of its planned review, the public can comment for 60 days. After that, there will be a reply comment period of 30 days, followed by a full review of all of that input by the agency. The process can take a long time, but Mayer and other advocates are already working to draw attention to the issue.

He spent a few days this month in Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators about the importance of keeping Alaska's students connected.

A park is a city’s heart and soul. At its highest calling, it’s a community’s conscience.

Such is the case with Ascot Hills Park, 93 acres of hiking paths and native habitats built 20 years ago in the Eastside neighborhood of El Sereno, thanks to a retired civil engineer and residents who wanted the land to return to nature — and to the community.

"There was nothing there," said Val Marquez, one of those residents, who's lived in El Sereno for more than 50 years. "It was just hillsides, fenced off for the most part."

Ascot Hills Park took 20 years to build.

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Ascot Hills Park.

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Today, dirt trails are molded into the hills. Some dip down to a lush canyon of native trees and shrubs fed by a small stream.

Others take you higher — way higher.

“On a foggy morning, you can go to the east ridge and you're above the clouds,” said Raymond Rios, another early resident behind the efforts. “Or you can go on a beautiful evening to the west ridge and look at what the Lord painted in the sky.”

View of downtown L.A. from Ascot Hills Park.

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Back to nature

The idea of a park came up as early as 1930 but never came to pass.

In the 1990s, Jerry Schneider was getting a master's degree in landscape architecture, a passion of his after retiring as a civil engineer. His thesis fieldwork took him to El Sereno. He and his colleague saw an ideal site in its dormant hillsides — a place to turn natural landscapes into hands-on classrooms for students from two nearby high schools.

"The area was the subject of a lot of political ideas and proposals that did not resonate with me or a lot of the community," Schneider said. Those ideas included a sports complex, proposed in 2000, that would have leveled the hills.

Jerry Schneider at Ascot Hills Park, with the amphitheater in the background.

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Jerry Schneider at Ascot Hills.

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At a community hearing attended by Antonio Villaraigosa — who went on to represent District 14 on the City Council and later became mayor — Schneider remembered, "We lined up all the students and science teachers and others and we all basically told Antonio the neighborhood wants an open space. In fact, nature — it could be the main theme of the park."

How to build a park

Ascot Hills Park.

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Money came through Proposition 40, a 2002 parks bond, and a lease was hammered out between LADWP — which has owned the site for over a century for water storage — and the Department of Recreation and Parks.

"Nothing happens by itself,” said Schneider, who lives in Mount Washington, of importance of Villaraigosa's buy-in.  "He was key because we needed political support."

The park opened in 2006 with little more than a gravel driveway and a few rocks to sit on — what old-timers call Phase 1.

Raymond Rios helped build Ascot Hills Park.

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Val Marquez helped build Ascot Hills Park. Later, he built the El Sereno Arroyo Playground, where he is at.

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"We were ready to have a ribbon-cutting and we were just waiting for the state to pay for the bill, basically," Marquez said. "And they came back and said, 'Where's the bathroom? You forgot the bathroom.'"

The full park — amphitheater, benches, picnic tables, a restored stream, new trails — didn't open until 2011, delayed three years by the Great Recession.

"Jerry [Schneider] made sure that it stayed as a natural habitat," Marquez said. "If it wasn't for him, that could've been a development. That could've been a regular park with soccer fields."

Slow, steady work

Today, the 86-year-old Schneider runs the park's monthly volunteering program and can still be found at Ascot a few times each week, pulling out weeds and checking in on the native plants and trees planted by volunteers over the last two decades. Students from Wilson High drop in to help out routinely for class credit.

Demian Willette chairs the park's volunteer advisory board. He is also conducting research on urban habitat restoration at Ascot.

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Since 2024, an experiment to grow a micro-forest of California natives has been underway over a 10,000-square-foot plot. It's thriving, despite minimal watering and upkeep, proving there's a cost-efficient way to restore habitat anywhere in this city.

"After two years, it's self-sufficient," said Demian Willette, a Loyola Marymount University biology professor who is leading the research. "You plant it, you let it go. You let nature take over."

Willette also chairs Ascot's volunteer-run Park Advisory Board, part of a new generation of stewards that include Lluvia Arras, who remembered what Schneider said when she first started to volunteer.

"He reminded me that it's slow, steady work," Arras said. "He's like, 'One day you're gonna look back and you're gonna see the progress and feel proud.'"

Lluvia Arras is among a new generation of volunteer park leaders at Ascot.

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Their advocacy didn't stop at Ascot. Marquez, an original Park Advisory Board member, went on to build the El Sereno Arroyo Playground in 2012, informed by his experience at Ascot.

Rios, the current secretary, is active at neighboring Hazard Park. In the mid-2010s he worked with residents to beat back a USC proposal to improve its Health Sciences campus that would take away parkland.

"Not only are we park advocates," Rios said. "We're community advocates."

They are one and the same thing.