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A new Pixar animated film, the sequel to Lionsgate’s “Michael” and a large crop of indie projects are among the latest films to be awarded a California tax credit for in-state production.

In total, 35 films — including 28 independent projects — received production incentives in the latest round of incentives.

Together, the projects are expected to contribute more than $1 billion in direct production spending in-state and hire more than 5,400 cast and crew members and more than 24,800 background actors, the California Film Commission said Wednesday.

“California is the home of entertainment, full stop,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not just protecting that legacy; we’re investing in its future.”

Pixar received the largest credit ($40.1 million) for an untitled animated film, followed by Lionsgate, which was awarded $30.8 million for the sequel to “Michael,” the film based on the life of Michael Jackson. Paramount Pictures got $29.3 million for an untitled crime thriller.

The latest round of tax credit awards comes less than a month after Newsom signed a bill to create the state’s first post-production incentive. Industry editors, sound mixers, visual effects artists and composers had said such a credit was necessary to lure jobs back from overseas.

On a national level, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is pushing to create a federal tax credit for film and TV. The bill is expected to be introduced in Congress in early November and backers are aiming to get it passed by Dec. 11, when the current Congress ends. If passed, the credit would take effect in 2027 and would be stackable with states’ production incentives.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied across Spain as protests have spread since the conservative-dominated parliament rejected a bill proposing measures to tackle a housing crisis.

Parliament on Friday voted down two decrees proposed by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority left-wing coalition government that were intended to address the housing crisis.

The protests erupted late last month after an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her home of 70 years in the capital, Madrid. Maria del Carmen Abascal’s eviction came after an international investment fund bought her building and hiked the rent.

Local media reports have suggested that Sanchez could call snap elections for as early as November after watching the strength of Saturday’s protests across the country. Spain’s current legislative term is set to end next summer.

Will the housing crisis trigger snap elections? Here’s what we know:

What happened on Friday in parliament?

The emergency measures proposed by Spain’s leftist government to tackle the country’s housing affordability crisis failed to pass on Friday.

The government had proposed two measures to protect renters in the country. The first decree was meant to stop evictions of vulnerable people, make real estate speculation harder, impose tighter restrictions on short-term leases and provide tax incentives to encourage renting and the construction of housing.

The second decree proposed making leases automatically renew when they are set to expire, essentially making them indefinite. A property owner would have to pay a tenant 12 months of rent to break the contract.

Sanchez, who leads a coalition government composed of his Socialist Party and the far-left Sumar, ⁠appealed to lawmakers in the run-up to the vote to put aside political calculations and pressure.

“Think about ordinary people, about those who most need the protection of public institutions. Think about the millions of young people who ⁠cannot afford to ⁠move out of their parents’ homes. Think about the families living with the constant ⁠anxiety of ever-rising rents,” he said before the voting.

But his government’s proposed measures were shot down by the majority of ⁠the 350-seat lower house of parliament.

The right-wing ⁠Catalan separatist ⁠party Junts refused to back the housing decrees, saying they would ultimately tighten the housing market. The centre-right Popular Party and far-right Vox also voted against the measures.

Miriam Nogueras of Junts argued the decrees would lead only to owners removing their properties from the rental market and thus driving up prices even further.

“If they really wanted to protect people, collar the vulture funds, and reactivate housing, they would have already done it. They’ve had eight years,” she added on X, referring to Sanchez’s government.

Health Minister Monica Garcia said on X that the right-wing parties “have voted for a feudal economy in which a minority extracts the salary from a majority that works for their luxuries. And they do it against their own voters, who also suffer increasingly high rents, live in fear that the contract will end and can even be evicted.”

“Today the right has given rent-seeking a parliamentary majority that it doesn’t have on the street, but it’s going to pay for it sooner rather than later,” she added.

Before the parliamentary vote, Marta Soler Gallart, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Barcelona, explained that neither of the two decrees addressed the housing problem in the medium or long term.

“Models such as Vienna’s with its low rents are cited in support of these decrees, but it is overlooked that the Vienna model and others have low rents because of their long history of creating and maintaining public social housing,” Soler Gallart told Al Jazeera on September 30.

“In Spain, however, public funds are invested in social housing which, after a while, the recipients sell at market price.”

Soler Gallart also said the new measures disadvantage landlords with small or few properties by extending five-year tenancy agreements by a further two years and by providing an indefinite extension of their leases.

“However, these extensions are not compulsory if the landlord can prove that they need the property for their own use,” she said.

Why are people protesting across Spain?

Protests erupted across Spain in late September after 87-year-old Abascal was evicted from her home. The investment fund that bought her building hiked her rent by more than 200 percent to roughly $1,880 a month, a move aimed at pushing out the long-term tenant to make way for lucrative tourist apartments.

In recent years, Spain has seen protests against mass tourism, which has been linked to the housing crisis and soaring cost of living. Spain is the second most visited country in the world, attracting 97 million tourists last year.

While Abascal has returned to her home, according to her representatives, she has become the face of the country’s housing crisis, and people across Spain have been demanding the government address the issue.

Angered by parliament’s rejection of the government measures, tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

“It’s a shame,” Nando de Anguulo, 26, who joined Saturday’s protest in Madrid, told the Reuters news agency.

“It only proves that it is us, the people, who have to adapt to the political parties and not the politicians to what the people want, and this can’t go on like that.”

While the protests were mostly peaceful, in the southeastern city of Valencia, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to break up demonstrations. About 30 protesters managed to get inside the City of Arts and Sciences, a landmark cultural building, before police removed them.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, Spanish police arrested three members of a far-right group and fired rubber bullets on Saturday night.

Far-right activists, some of whom performed Nazi salutes, tried to reach demonstrators camped out in the Puerta del Sol, a central square in the Spanish capital, the Spanish government said.

Valeria Racu, a spokesperson for the Tenants’ Union, said Saturday’s rallies revealed “a new energy that we haven’t seen in a long time and energy that is showing that eight days of people’s power can achieve more than eight years of progressive government”.

“Now begins real politics – politics which has always belonged to the people and which will return once and for all to the streets,” Racu added.

Could the housing crisis lead to snap elections?

Housing is a sensitive issue in Spain because it impacts how people vote. The average rent in the country has almost doubled in the past 10 years. The average price per square metre has risen from 8.20 euros (about $9.08 at the time) in 2016 to 15.1 euros ($17.15) this year, according to the real estate website Idealista.

In an October 1 article for Vanity Fair, Spanish journalist Jorge Dioni Lopez noted that after eight years in power, housing is what is causing Sanchez to lose support among educated young people, children of the middle classes.

“The government faces a difficult situation. Firstly, because most of the relevant powers lie with other levels of government. Secondly, because Spain is a nation of homeowners. Unlike in other European countries, almost all the public housing that has been built has ended up in private hands, and historically, homeownership has been more attractive than renting,” he wrote.

“Housing is our savings system and also the primary means of transmitting wealth between generations,” he added.

After Spain’s parliament rejected the government’s housing reform bills on Friday, the leader of the centre-right People’s Party, (PP) Alberto Nunez Feijoo, urged Sanchez to “call elections as soon as possible”, claiming he had the support of “neither the streets nor parliament”.

While Sanchez has not officially announced new elections, the Spanish online news site El Diario has reported that elections could take place as early as November 29. Spain’s general elections are currently scheduled for July 2027.

Oct. 3, 2026 3:03 AM PT

Menopause has been having a moment lately, and Washington is taking notice. On Sept. 16, the Senate held its first hearing on the dismal state of federally funded menopause research and vast gaps in treatment and care. Within 24 hours, the Department of Health and Human Services also convened pharmaceutical manufacturers and physicians to troubleshoot the alarming lack of availability of estradiol patches, an essential menopause hormone treatment, and the Food and Drug Administration held a full day of expert panels on female-dosed testosterone, which is currently only FDA-approved for men.

One week later, Health and Human Services joined the American Urological Assn. for a discussion about a silent killer of postmenopausal women: urosepsis from recurrent urinary tract infections. There is a simple solution — localized vaginal estrogen — and yet because of outdated guidelines and lack of clinician training, the medication is too often ignored or denied. Nor is the prescription routinely covered by Medicare, despite its well-established health and longevity benefits for women over age 65.

These are among the attempts to now, finally, address decades of policy failures — a refreshing change, quite frankly, given neither political party has ever prioritized menopause. That 2026 marks the year when menopause has entered the policy arena comes as little surprise to me. I’ve been beating this drum for years. Every aspect of daily life that menopause touches — the soaring cost of medical care, inadequate access to health insurance, extreme underinvestment in scientific research focused on women’s health, even the myriad ways midlife women are stretched to the limit caring for kids and aging parents — is smack in the middle of the political zeitgeist. These are the kitchen table issues on the minds of voters this election.

Menopause moment, meet the midterms.

Another issue rightly revealed by menopause is the chasm of public trust in government. As one of the four expert witnesses who testified at the Senate, I was heartened that it was a true bipartisan endeavor. But that’s a rarity these days in Congress, an institution rife with dysfunction. Our federal health agencies have become so shamelessly politicized they are on a collision course with science — from HHS’ overt moves to undermine childhood vaccines, to the decimation of leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is struggling to respond to the crisis of measles outbreaks across the country.

My goal as a policy advocate is to help turn the tide on this country’s long record of neglect when it comes to menopause. Like many other women’s and reproductive health advocates, after the 2024 election l turned my attention to state legislatures — not just as a consolation prize but as a way to test what range of reforms were feasible and to get as many good laws as possible passed. It was the right move. Over the last two years, more than 60 bills have been introduced in 28 states — to do things like require private insurance and Medicaid to cover menopause care and treatment, improve clinician training and public education, and bolster antidiscrimination protection in the workplace. Ten of those states now have 21 laws on the books.

California is one and can claim real leadership. Among the bills passed by the Legislature, Assembly Bill 2270 from 2023-24 incentivizes continuing medical education on menopause for clinicians, the majority of whom receive little to zero training while in medical school and residency. The California Department of Corrections is now collaborating with medical experts to help bring menopause resources to incarcerated women in state prisons.

Newsom also just vetoed AB 1940, which would have codified menopause as a protected category in the state’s workplace antidiscrimination laws.

The Legislature has been especially deft at easing access to FDA-approved hormonal treatments, including testosterone, often used off-label by menopausal women: AB 82 ends the requirement to report prescriptions to the state’s tracking database; AB 1778 proactively declassifies testosterone as a controlled substance under state law, should there be action in Washington to do the same under federal law.

Although Newsom twice vetoed bills to mandate insurance coverage for menopause treatment — and deserved all the flak he received — the 2026-27 state budget includes a minor course correct: a $3.4-million “trailer bill” to invest in public education and make menopause treatments more affordable; Medi-Cal patients are not fully covered by the addendum, though, making it a toothless reform for those who need support the most.

Why should California’s menopause agenda, or that of the other 27 states that have introduced reforms, matter to the rest of the country? They offer useful models of what to do — or in the case of Medicaid exclusion, what not to do — in crafting meaningful policies. Perhaps more important, they offer a rationale that can help persuade the public; those who might balk at a congressional bill or federal policy, in part because of skepticism of the federal government or the current administration, can listen to and learn from other stakeholders, including governors and state lawmakers and activists.

Take for example the FDA decision in November 2025 to remove the long-critiqued “black box” warning on estrogen products for menopause. This was the culmination of a decade-long campaign by physicians, researchers and scientists — who had been waging the fight for accurate labeling well before the acronym MAHA ever existed and regardless of which party held power. Yet the very image of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. using his moment at the podium to credit the Trump administration’s deep commitment to women’s health posed a serious credibility challenge. Aligned and contemporaneous state reforms offered much-needed reassurance and clarity to many.

Trust in government is understandably at a low point, but this happens to be when menopause finally has caught the attention of policymakers at all levels of power. Some are taking long-overdue steps for women’s health, however implausibly. Let’s take the wins.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the author of “When in Menopause: A User’s Manual & Citizen’s Guide.” She is executive director of NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills this week designed to help a San Diego stadium and development project led by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke sidestep environmental review hurdles.

Newsom signed Senate Bill 344 and Senate Bill 958, which were put forward by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson (D-La Mesa) to help the stadium project, known as Midway Rising. The project would replace the decades-old Pechanga Arena and include a new 16,000-seat facility, 4,254 homes, including up to 2,000 affordable units, and commercial and outdoor space. The site is south of Mission Bay.

Newsom cast the bills as part of a package to help speed up the construction of much-needed housing.

“Every Californian deserves a fair shot at a stable home — families shouldn’t have to wait years for housing to be approved and built in their communities,” he said in a written statement.

Senate Bill 344 deems Midway Rising in full compliance with the state’s landmark California Environmental Quality Act, known was CEQA.

The act, adopted in 1970, has been credited for protecting California’s natural resources and minimizing pollution. It also has been criticized for sometimes being weaponized by opponents of a project, including housing developments.

After the state Legislature’s vote last month, Weber Pierson said the project would provide “much-needed affordable housing, permanent jobs, community spaces, and health resources in a part of our city that is ready for investment.”

Former San Diego Assemblymember Lori Saldaña, a longtime critic of the proposal, called Senate Bill 344 “reckless and rushed” because it was introduced late in the session without public input. Saldaña said the site isn’t suitable for development because of sea-level rise that she said is causing street flooding in the area.

Senate Bill 958 states that a project’s increased building height, and any related noise, shadows, or impact on wildlife shall not be considered significant environmental impacts, if the project meets a host of conditions.

It would apply to any development in the state but was introduced to benefit Midway Rising, according to Weber Pierson.

Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) was among those who voted against both bills.

The developers “don’t want to play by the rules, so they came here to Sacramento asking for a special exemption,” DeMaio said during a discussion on Senate Bill 958 last month.

“We’re talking about the coast. I think a big condo tower on the coast impeding the view is a significant environmental impact, and I think deep down in your heart of hearts, you know that,” DeMaio said.

State lawmakers routinely carve out environmental exemptions for proposed sports stadiums, sometimes in the closing days of the legislative session.

Former Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) led his colleagues in passing a bill in 2013 that helped the Sacramento Kings arena by limiting environmental lawsuits. The new arena for the Golden State Warriors basketball team in San Francisco also benefited from CEQA reforms passed by state lawmakers in 2011.

The San Diego City Council still needs to approve the project.

SACRAMENTO — Days after signing a package of bills to rebuff aspects of federal immigration enforcement in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills from Los Angeles lawmakers that targeted public employment for federal agents.

One of the bills, backed by Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), would have blocked agents and contractors who worked to enforce federal immigration laws from state and local jobs in California, including for law enforcement agencies. It was called the “Get the Feds Out” or “GTFO” Act.

Newsom said the bill goes “a step too far.”

“It is a mistake to discourage empathetic and qualified Americans from working in the federal government, or choosing to leave long-standing employment with the federal government because they find the current administration’s policies and tactics reprehensible,” the governor wrote in a veto letter to the Legislature made public on Wednesday.

The governor added that hiring for public employment already includes personal conduct evaluations. He emphasized the “horrific tactics” used by immigration agents during President Trump’s second term but said it is the responsibility of Congress to hold the administration and individual agents accountable.

Newsom signed a similar bill that prevents federal agents from becoming police in California if their federal badge was revoked for misconduct.

While he expressed disappointment in the veto, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles), the author of Assembly Bill 1896, applauded Newsom for signing “a strong package of legislation that will protect Californians and stand up for our immigrant communities.”

“From the beginning, the GTFO Act was about a simple principle: We should never use public dollars to reward conduct that has caused fear, terror, and pain in our communities. I am proud to have stood alongside my brother, Speaker Rivas, in this fight and this fight is not over,” Gonzalez said in a statement to The Times.

A spokesperson for Rivas said while the proposal did not become law, “Californians know Trump’s immigration agenda is failing and doesn’t keep anyone safe. That’s why Assembly Democrats are leading the nation in holding ICE accountable. The Speaker thanks his colleagues for delivering real results this year.”

The outgoing governor also vetoed a proposal from Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Culver City), Assembly Bill 1537, that would have prevented sworn law enforcement officers from taking secondary employment or contract jobs for immigration enforcement.

Newsom took issue with the prospect of prohibiting “secondary employment law enforcement officers choose to do in their free time.”

“State and local peace officers already must abide by specific standards and rules, including ones that apply to their personal conduct,” Newsom wrote in the veto letter. “Any officers who violate those standards are held accountable through investigations that may culminate in their peace officer status being suspended or revoked entirely.”

Bryan, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the veto.

Earlier this week, Newsom signed 21 bills aimed at federal immigration enforcement, including bans on electric shock gloves and face coverings for law enforcement. Other laws impose a 25% tax on companies that operate private detention centers, along with additional oversight of the facilities.

“No tax will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make California safe again,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email. “While California sanctuary politicians continue to release pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and murderers onto their streets, our brave law enforcement will continue to risk their lives to arrest these heinous criminals and make California safe again.”

California voters will decide whether to establish a $7.5-billion state scientific research arm — similar to the National Institutes of Health — after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will put the proposal on the March 2028 ballot.

The new state fund would aim to blunt federal research cuts by the Trump administration and ensure state and private institutions — including the University of California and California State University — can continue to produce scientific breakthroughs.

If voters approve the measure, $7.5 billion in bonds would fund California scientific and medical research into diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and ALS. Other research areas include reducing wildfire risk and fighting pandemics and climate change.

“This is a research and science bond that does the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing that will allow us to double down on what makes this state great — what makes America great,” Newsom said Wednesday during a bill signing atop the Golden Gate Bridge. “We are the tentpole of the U.S. economy because we invest in the future so that we can all do well there.”

The legislation to establish the bond measure, state Senate Bill 895, was authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who in a statement called it a “bold step to protect science, improve lives, and continue California’s global leadership on innovation for many years to come.”

The bill was sponsored by the Union of American Physicians and the University of California, as well as the United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents some 60,000 UC academic workers.

The bond measure represents a pullback from what Wiener and supporters first proposed.

Originally conceived as a $23-billion bond measure that the Legislature would approve to go before voters in November, it was whittled down to $12 billion. But lawmakers then did not approve it in time for the November ballot.

Wiener said legislative leaders and the governor’s office then worked out a compromise, deciding on a $7.5-billion bond measure for 2028.

The measure also calls for the new state fund to establish regulations that would allow it to recoup part of its investments while not damaging innovation.

“This is a major achievement, made possible by an extraordinary coalition of people who understand the importance of investing in scientific research,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a landmark bill that would give a financial boost to California’s struggling newsrooms.

Assembly Bill 2222 will create refundable tax credits for California local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ. It passed through both houses. It marks an innovative yet controversial attempt to slow the decline of local journalism.

The bill, called the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act, works by assigning a “job retention credit” of $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions, and after that $15,000 for every additional journalist. Part-time positions will be awarded half-credits. It also stacks an additional $15,000 credit for each new hire, to incentivize expanding journalist head counts.

Before signing the bill Wednesday morning, Newsom spoke about what he called the “assault on the free press and the First Amendment..coming from Washington D.C. and Donald Trump.”

“It’s journalists that need to report those stories and local journalists that need to uncover and sort of peel back the facade if democracy is going to survive, let alone thrive,” Newsom said.

The bill was supported by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member and a wide range of other community news boosters. Backers said it could be a lifeline to local news organizations, many of which have struggled to maintain staffing levels over the past two decades.

California has lost more than 12,000 of its local journalists since 2002, according to nonprofit advocacy group Rebuild Local News. And almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, according to an annual report on the state of local news put out by Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school.

To pay for the credits, the bill would amend California’s tax code to align with a little-discussed component of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that expanded taxes on some companies by eliminating a deduction for executive salaries of over $1 million annually.

It is common practice for the state to consider aligning its tax code with the federal structure to make filing taxes easier and administering them more cheaply. But California has not yet sought to adopt this federal tax change, a move which would increase tax revenues to the state.

The California Taxpayers Assn. and groups representing business interests such as the California Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill because it raises taxes on employers that they argue already face billions of dollars in new taxes.

They contend that the higher costs will be passed along to consumers.

The governor’s finance office issued an analysis opposing the bill for not including a cap on the tax credits, thus creating “unlimited fiscal liability to the state,” and argued the bill mainly subsidizes existing activity rather than encouraging the creation of new jobs.

While speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Newsom acknowledged some of the concerns that have been raised about those who will receive benefits from the bill’s funds, specifically hedge funds and billionaire owners and outlets who he says spread propaganda.

“It does subsidize those that don’t need to be subsidized,” he said. “We have hedge funds in this space. We have billionaires in this space. We have people that are profiteering in this space by gutting the newsrooms and extracting value out of the space that also are the beneficiaries.”

Newsom said he chose not to veto the bill because he believes its benefits outweigh the liabilities. He added that he hopes the legislature and next governor can work to narrow down who benefits most from the legislation.

“We should not be subsidizing hedge funds,” he said. “We should be focused on where the need is the greatest, in my humble opinion, and I do think when you have no cap, the limitlessness of this…to some of the most well-heeled organizations, where now they simply could pull from this bill the benefits that they didn’t even ask for or need, is self-evident.”

Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), who authored the bill, said the governor’s signature shows California’s commitment to the free press at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and misinformation is rampant.

“Local journalism is the backbone of an informed democracy, and today California made clear that the people doing this essential work are worth investing in,” Ward said in a statement. “This historic investment will help keep reporters in our communities, strengthen nonprofit and public media, and ensure Californians continue to have access to trusted, fact-based local news.”

In signing the bill, Newsom emphasized the role of journalism in uncovering scandal and wrongdoing.

“The L.A. Times to their credit did a big investigative piece on Bell, and people getting paid a million dollars in some cases, local government officials, a million damn dollars a year. No one would have known had it not been for local journalism. How many more Bells are out there, not just in this state, but all across the country?”

California is set to bring back a program aimed at reducing conflict between wild animals and people, as the state’s rebounding wolf population continues to cause concern among ranchers.

Newsom signed a bill restoring the program Tuesday ahead of a “fireside chat” focused on biodiversity and natural resources, during which he described growing up with a father who was dedicated to protecting mountain lions, condors and other wildlife.

Protecting nature is “a moral issue,” Newsom said, describing a “relationship we have to what’s above us, and … how that connects us to our Creator.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife once employed 13 specialists dedicated to resolving human-wildlife conflicts, but it let all but one of them go after funding ran dry in 2024. The loss came as such clashes are increasing, with climate change and urban sprawl bringing people closer to bears, mountain lions and other animals.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, author of Senate Bill 1135, said she’s seen it play out with sea lions around La Jolla Cove. This year, someone kicked one of the marine mammals, she said, and in general there have been no government staffers “to provide the guardrails.”

When the program ended, “we weren’t doing the education, and we didn’t have staff at the state that could help intervene or provide guidance,” Blakespear (D-Encinitas) told The Times. “It was a clear lack.”

The legislation also codifies a program to compensate ranchers when they lose livestock to wolves or suffer indirect harm. The program also provides money for nonlethal equipment to deter wolves, such as electric fences with bright flags.

Part of the law is rebranding, adding “coexistence” to both programs’ names.

The California Cattlemen’s Assn. and the California Farm Bureau shifted from opposing the bill to an “enthusiastic neutral,” said Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs for the former trade group, noting his colleague coined the term.

Wilbur’s group was initially concerned about parts of the bill focused on livestock compensation, but he said they were amended in a way to avoid impeding how the program operates. However, the changes “didn’t quite get us to a support position because we didn’t necessarily view it as a significant improvement over the status quo.”

His group is in favor of the bill’s requirement to relaunch the Wildlife Coexistence Program, as it’s now called, saying it “does provide resources, for instance, for my members that are contending with mountain lion depredations of their livestock.”

The bill signing comes as California’s gray wolves had at least 42 pups this year — a record. The apex predators were extirpated in the state in the 1920s, beginning to naturally recolonize their native digs only 15 years ago.

“It’s a great sign for the conservation of the species that the population continues to reproduce, and that the number of individuals continues to reproduce,” said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The animals’ success has delighted conservationists but frustrated some cattle ranchers, whose livelihood can become dinner for the endangered canids.

Hunnicutt spoke to The Times from Siskiyou County, where he was trying to get more GPS collars on wolves in the Whaleback pack, linked to 41 confirmed or probable livestock attacks this year, according to a recent report. That’s by far the most of any pack in the state.

Hunnicutt’s team consists of him and two other employees, along with temporary staffers. Collaring wolves in a pack that doesn’t already have the devices is challenging, he said. It involves setting up cameras, howling throughout the night to try to get the animals to respond and sometimes driving hundreds of miles looking for tracks.

Some members of the Whaleback pack are collared, providing a good starting point. While on the phone, he said he could see the tracks of two wolves on the road where he was walking.

Proponents of SB 1135 say it could lead to the expansion of Hunnicutt’s team or more resources for efforts such as collaring, which wildlife officials say helps reduce conflicts by enabling ranchers to know where wolves are.

However, the legislation does not guarantee funding for the programs it establishes.

Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, a co-sponsor of the bill, said advocates asked state leaders for $18 million in one-time funding for the human-wildlife coexistence program, followed by $15 million annually. They also asked for around $30 million for wolf compensation and management.

What they got this year is $6 million, with $2.5 million earmarked for compensation, according to Flick.

“It’s really a drop in the bucket when we’re talking about statewide human-wildlife conflicts,” she said. “So we will be advocating for additional funds in out years for sure.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills designed to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in California, including bans on electric shock gloves and a revamped ban on law enforcement face coverings after a previous law was blocked by a federal judge.

The more than 20 bills approved by the governor Tuesday were crafted to thwart tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including the use of facial coverings and making arrests outside immigration hearings. Other bills are meant to boost state oversight of federal detention centers in the state.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities. We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.”

The governor signed legislation to ban the use of electric shock gloves by any law enforcement in the state, which was hastily written and passed after reports that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend $20 million to outfit agents with the gloves.

One bill, dubbed the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, such as racial profiling, unlawful searches or interfering with the right to free speech.

Its author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said the law already applies to state and local officials and that his bill, SB 747, closes a loophole that exempts federal officials.

Newsom signed another bill by Wiener that bans ICE agents and other law enforcement from wearing face coverings or masks while on duty. After a federal judge blocked his prior bill, which applied to federal agents but not state police, Wiener passed legislation that applies to both.

Many of the bills Newsom signed Tuesday aim to improve state oversight at immigration detention centers within the state and slowroll the development of new facilities.

Among them is AB 1801, which requires municipalities to wait at least 180 days and hold public hearings before approving any plans to build or convert facilities into immigration detention centers.

Newsom signed a 25% tax on companies that operate immigration detention centers in the state. Most of the detention centers in California are run by the private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, under contracts with the federal government. AB 1633 by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would raise an estimated $177 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.

Another new law requires local agencies to disclose 911 calls made from immigration detention centers. It stems from a CalMatters investigation which found alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa, a detention center in San Diego, were being investigated by CoreCivic, the company that operates the facility, rather than local law enforcement.

“Our communities deserve safety, and no person in detention should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voice heard,” Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus and the bill’s author, said in a statement after lawmakers passed her legislation.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers have raised alarms about the rising number of in-custody deaths and poor conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The federal government has reported 57 in-custody deaths during Trump’s second term, up from the 26 deaths reported during the previous four years.

During reviews of detention centers around the state last year, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office found substandard conditions including overcrowding, delays in medical care and poor quality food and drinking water. At one center, detainees were not given clothing warm enough to protect against extremely low temperatures in the facility, Justice Department staff reported.

Newsom signed legislation indefinitely extending the attorney general’s duty to review private detention centers, which had been set to expire next year.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Monday is expected to approve a bipartisan bill that would give the NCAA and its member conferences the authority to enforce uniform national rules on college athletics.

If the bill is passed by the Senate, it would move to the House and, if approved, on to President Trump for his signature to become law.

What the Protect College Sports Act would do

Under the Protect College Sports Act — co-authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — the NCAA would be granted a limited antitrust exemption that would allow the organization to create standardized rules around athlete eligibility, limit conference realignment and prevent the creation of a super league — a private-equity model for college sports that would replace NCAA subdivisions.

The bill is also an attempt to codify the $2.8-billion antitrust settlement reached last year in House vs. NCAA, which allowed Division 1 schools to share revenue with their current players and compensate past players. The new bill would increase the revenue sharing cap to around $50 million per school from $21.5 million, albeit with a more strict and enforceable model.

Under Name, Image and Likeness deals, wealthier schools were able to circumvent the “soft” $21.5-million cap by lining up lucrative corporate sponsorships and endorsements for prospective athletes. The bill would allow the NCAA to crack down on attempts to bypass the limit by incorporating booster or affiliated-entity money into total revenue sharing calculations, while also giving schools an additional $27 million in the funding cap to retain current athletes.

Potential boost for smaller schools

A potential consequence of the bill could be that big-name programs lose their ability to draw the best college athletes with promises of massive compensation, allowing smaller programs to compete under NCAA regulations.

The NCAA and its affiliates have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for congressional intervention on its rule-making power over the last seven years. Supporters of the bill, including Cruz, have said the bill would bring order and consistent regulation to college sports.

“If we’re going to be having a national competition … it is only Congress that can establish a clear and enforceable legal rule book,” Cruz said on the Senate floor last week.

Influential figures in college sports, including former Alabama head football coach Nick Saban and ESPN analyst Pat McAfee, have publicly called on Congress to pass the measure. It has also drawn support from 24 of the NCAA’s athletic conferences.

“Congress does need to fix the mess in the courts and create a national framework so the people inside college sports can enforce fair rules,” Saban said during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee hearing in June. “Without that legal certainty, every rule becomes another lawsuit, every standard becomes another risk, and the system keeps drifting toward a professional model.”

What the opponents say

The legislation is not without its opponents. Some players, labor organizations and members of Congress argue that the bill would prevent highly sought-after college athletes from participating in their own negotiation process.

“What this bill does, at its core, is protect a system of exploitation,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an AFL-CIO trade union press release. “This bill protects the billions of dollars that coaches and executives are making by suppressing compensation for some of the most highly valued athletes in the world.”

The Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP have also brought forward concerns that the bill does not allow Black athletes — who make up a majority of players in the football and basketball programs — into the collective bargaining process.

The NCAA plans to enforce a five-year eligibility rule, cap agent fees at 5%, put penalties on second transfers and codify student-athlete protections, such as 10-year degree completion assistance and post-eligibility healthcare. If the bill passes, all challenges to these rules would have to be handled in federal court.

Some senior Republican officials in the House, including Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), have expressed some hesitance in passing the legislation without clarity as to whether student-athletes will be considered employees and if further limits should be placed on international student-athletes. If changes are made in the House, the bill would be returned to the Senate for another vote.

Support from Trump

Trump, on the other hand, has expressed strong support for the bill.

“THE PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT is a great Bill, and the Senate will hopefully stay in D.C. until it passes,” he wrote on Truth Social last month. “Without this Bill, millions of young Athletes will be hurt, programs will be canceled … the fans will be robbed, and Universities will go broke”

More state money to pay for arts teachers will reach local schools if legislation signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom works out as intended, but the new law will not resolve a lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles school district of misspending as much as $77 million in its share of the funding.

The aim of Assembly Bill 2440 is to encourage more school systems to use arts funding made available through Proposition 28, which voters passed in November 2022.

“The clear message we heard was that many school districts have been struggling to navigate legal ambiguity regarding compliance with Proposition 28,” said bill author Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates) in a recent statement to The Times. He said his goal was to provide “statewide guidance” so that all or most school systems could use the money without concern over violations of spending rules that could result in financial penalties.

Proposition 28 sets aside an amount equal to 1% of the state’s base education funding — close to $1 billion per year — to increase arts education. This extra funding is drawn down from the state’s general fund — so it adds to the total allotted for education.

The initial funding, nearly a billion dollars statewide, went out for the 2023-24 school year and has continued annually. But millions of dollars have not yet been spent, according to early reviews of the data.

Some local officials said they were holding back over concerns that they would inadvertently violate the rules for spending the money — and would then have to pay it back, creating significant financial risk.

This bill had backing from arts organizations, education and school district officials and the California Teachers Assn. No opposition was recorded in the legislative record; nor were there any opposing votes as the bill worked its way through the legislative process.

But then Austin Beutner — the author of Proposition 28 — learned of the measure and stepped forward with concerns. He contendedthe bill would make using the arts money easier, but in wrong ways. He said the bill would undermine the guarantee that new arts funding would reach every school. Also it would in effect eliminate the provision that campuses serving low-income communities receive higher levels of new funding. Moreover — and of key importance — the legislation would allow districts to use the new arts money to replace existing arts funding, leaving students no better off than before, he said.

Beutner had structured Proposition 28 precisely to prevent this supplanting of funds. Districts not willing to provide the required increased instruction at every school would, by design, lose access to the new arts money.

Beutner began to rally opposition, including United Teachers Los Angeles, L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and San Diego school board President Richard Barrera, who is running for state superintendent of public instruction — and who has the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn.

Beutner also announced his attention to file litigation against the bill.

Muratsuchi said he had no intent to undermine the goals of Proposition 28 — and a compromise soon emerged.

The final version — which has Beutner’s approval — clarifies that small schools or small school districts can pool their money to share an arts teacher, provided that every school gets the additional arts instruction. The bill also gives some legal protection for school districts against financial penalties if their arts funding decreases as a result of factors beyond their control, such as the expiration of a grant.

An LAUSD lawsuit continues

Beutner alleges that L.A. Unified has intentionally misused the new arts money.

Beutner pursued passage of Proposition 28 after serving as superintendent of L.A. Unified. His stint ended in mid-2021 with the expiration of a three-year contract.

“LAUSD has done exactly what the law prohibits,” Beutner alleged in an ongoing lawsuit filed in February 2025. “It has eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers, and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources.”

The lawsuit lists 37 elementary schools with the same or reduced money for arts instruction from 2022-23 to 2023-24 — when the new funding first arrived — and alleges that most L.A. Unified schools faced a similar funding situation.

Before the lawsuit, but in response to growing criticism, L.A. Unified officials quietly added $30 million to the elementary school arts budget for the 2024-25 school year amid ongoing accusations from Beutner, union leaders and parents.

The district has defended its actions.

“We continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop. 28,” the district said in a statement at the time of the lawsuit, a contention that it has made repeatedly.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill that prohibits third-party brokers from advertising, selling or transferring tee-time reservations at publicly owned golf courses without the written consent of the course operator.

The state legislation is a response to a network of brokers that had sprouted up around Los Angeles municipal golf course tee times.

These brokers, many of whom were in the Korean community, would gobble up tee times, then advertise them on social media, particularly the Korean app KakaoTalk. They charged up to $40 as a booking fee.

Getting tee-time reservations at L.A. municipal golf courses had long been difficult. But after golf influencer Dave Fink revealed evidence of the broker network to his viewers, the problem became public.

“This is an issue that affects everybody who pays taxes in the city, and anybody who plays golf as well, so I just felt like it was my duty to say something,” Fink said in an interview with The Times in March 2024.

After Fink’s videos went viral, the L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks announced an investigation into the practice.

The state has more than 200 municipally owned golf courses, according to Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), who authored the bill.

“Public golf courses belong to the public, and residents shouldn’t have to compete with brokers buying up tee times just to turn around and sell them at inflated prices,” he said in a statement Sunday.

The legislation “puts an end,” he said, “to this unfair practice and helps ensure local residents, seniors, students and families can continue accessing the public courses their communities support.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed legislation that bars public officials from issuing meme coins and restricts cryptocurrency platforms from offering certain tokens linked to politicians to California residents.

Assembly Bill 2409, authored by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, is aimed at preventing

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a package of bills that he says are intended to build on California’s record of protecting reproductive rights and expanding access to care.

One of the measures, sponsored by Assemblymember Catherine Stefani (D-San Francisco), increases access to medication abortion by making it available on community college campuses.

Another bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), focuses on military veterans, aiming to address a gap in their healthcare after the Trump administration largely banned the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from providing abortion services. The measure enables California veterans to access abortion and contraception services through a state program.

“Freedom means being able to make deeply personal decisions without elected officials inserting themselves in pursuit of a political agenda,” Newsom said. “California is protecting that freedom and showing the nation, particularly under increasingly severe attacks by the Trump administration, what is possible when we put patients and people first — not politics.”

The governor announced the signing of the bills on Sunday, saying they will strengthen reproductive healthcare in the state.

One of the bills, introduced by Stefani, expands the ability of certified nurse-midwives to provide care for pregnant and postpartum patients by specifying that supervision by a physician is not required when providing certain services.

The legislation also included a bill sponsored by Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez (D-San Fernando) that aims to expand access to breast pumps and services for nursing mothers through Medi-Cal.

Five months after pulling back from most of its Los Angeles soundstage business, production services company Quixote is selling much of its equipment operation.

Equipment rental house Cinelease recently announced that it had acquired Quixote’s grip and lighting and production supplies assets in Los Angeles and New York. The transaction resulted in roughly 60 layoffs, Quixote said. Most of the affected employees were based in L.A. with a few in New York.

The production supplies business will operate as Cinelease Pro Supplies.

“Our sales team is reaching out directly to clients with active or upcoming rentals from these businesses and will work with Cinelease to help ensure a smooth transition,” the company said in an email on Sept. 15 to its clients. “It has been our privilege to serve you, and we look forward to continuing to be your source for production and events transportation.”

In April, Quixote announced it was winding down most of its Los Angeles soundstage business, including its main commercial studio in West Hollywood and its North Valley studio in Pacoima. A producer has since taken over the Pacoima site.

Quixote has also closed its production services operation in Atlanta, following earlier closures in New Orleans and Albuquerque. Quixote’s Griffith Park studio will remain open.

Cinelease, a Los Angeles lighting and grip rental company founded in 1977, has been expanding in recent months. It has added rigging and fencing businesses and is pursuing work in live events and sports alongside film and TV.

Quixote was founded in 1995. Los Angeles-based real estate company Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. bought it in 2022 for $360 million, saying at the time that the acquisition would help address growing demand for soundstage space.

Quixote’s retreat comes amid a major slowdown in Hollywood production, as many productions leave California in pursuit of tax incentives around the world. The downturn has hit studio real estate hard. Radford Studio Center, which sold for $1.85 billion in 2021, was seized by lenders after its previous owner defaulted on its debt. Netflix agreed to buy the lot for between $330 million and $400 million. The Television City lot is also up for sale.

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of congressional leaders introduced a bill to create a federal film and television tax credit, the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act. It would establish a 20% tax credit on U.S. labor for eligible film and TV productions. Its path is uncertain, however. The House is in recess until after the midterm elections, and supporters hope to pass the bill at the end of the year.

“As we enter this next chapter, our Fleet team remains committed to providing the service, expertise and support our clients have come to expect from Quixote,” the company wrote in an email. “We look forward to continuing to work with you to make your visions a reality.”

Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

At first glance, it looks like a typical Republican campaign advertisement. As images of President Trump flash across the screen, the 30-second spot says, “America will never be a communist country” and boasts about the “largest tax cuts in history.”

But there’s something different near the end — a bit of text at the bottom that says “paid for by the U.S. government.”

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the advertisement cost $14,000 and it ran during conservative shows on Fox News and Newsmax.

The White House said in a statement the ad is “educational and unapologetically patriotic.”

“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House statement said.

Fox News and Newsmax did not immediately return a request for comment.

The White House did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning “love me” over and over.

The advertisement does not say who voters should support in the midterms, but it meshes with campaign messaging from Trump and other Republicans, particularly during the party’s unusual convention in Dallas earlier this month.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins the majority in November, said in a social media post that it’s a violation of the Hatch Act for government employees to work on such a video.

“It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” Raskin wrote.

Republicans also criticized the ad.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who is not running for reelection, referenced the former right-wing Hungarian prime minister to critique the advertisement.

“It’s inappropriate. It’s not like they need a GoFundMe page to have the dollars to do that sort of ad and they could do it. But using taxpayer dollars, it feels like Viktor Orban,” he said.

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he hadn’t seen the ad but questioned whether it was legal.

“I don’t generally like to see politicians use public money to pay for their own campaign ads,” he said.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Joey Cappelletti and Steven Sloan in Washington contributed to this report.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill aimed at deprioritizing commercial logging in a unique state forest system, arguing the measure would jeopardize the ability to test best management practices.

At issue are the state’s 14 demonstration forests — managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire — which are billed as “living laboratories” for forest management practices. Under existing law, they’re directed to produce as much timber as can be sustained over time, while considering factors like recreation and wildlife.

Assembly Bill 2494 would have eliminated what’s often characterized as a logging mandate in favor of prioritizing values such as carbon storage, wildfire resilience and biodiversity conservation. It also would have directed state officials to seek agreements with Native American tribes to integrate their traditional knowledge into managing the land.

In Newsom’s veto message, he said the forests “produce cutting-edge strategies that inform forest management on public and private lands across California,” which is key for fighting climate change and improving wildfire resilience.

“By narrowing the management of these forests to a limited set of public benefits, this bill risks the state’s ability to fully demonstrate the best science-based practices,” he wrote Friday. “At a time when California is racing to keep pace with a rapidly changing climate, we cannot afford to lose the flexibility needed to safeguard our forests for future generations.”

The move deals a blow to a grassroots coalition that included tribes, environmentalists and mountain bikers, some of whom have fought for decades to rein in logging at Jackson Demonstration State Forest in Mendocino County. In recent years, activists have staged protests and tree sits, harkening back to the “timber wars” of the 1980s and ‘90s.

The bill grew in part out of discussions with constituents who wanted to see the forest run differently, according to its author, Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa).

Rogers, who represents the North Coast, called Newsom’s veto message “nonsensical” and said it didn’t reflect the language of the bill.

“Current law says that the guiding principle for the management of the forests is maximum sustained production of high-quality wood products,” he told The Times. “That’s much more narrow as a directive on how to manage those lands than by expanding it to include biodiversity, carbon sequestration, research, recreation.”

Polly Girvin, who pushed for changes at Jackson along with her late partner and tribal leader Priscilla Hunter, said the fight will continue under California’s next governor. She wants to see Native Americans take an even stronger leadership role going forward, pointing to rights afforded to them by state law.

“Our local tribal voice is not pro-logging; it’s really to keep the world in balance, to honor the cries of the ancestors, to try to save the trees from commercial logging,” said Girvin, a retired attorney focused on Native American law.

Leaders in Mendocino and Humboldt counties backed the measure. Humboldt County Supervisor Steve Madrone saw it as codifying practices that could help rebuild trust in the community, which he said Cal Fire had lost.

“It was not going to restrict it from being able to do all kinds of things,” he said. “Frankly, it was going to be better than just letting them kind of focus on board feet.”

Cal Fire’s Kevin Conway, who oversees the state’s demonstration forests, said he could not comment on the measure.

The bill was opposed by the Rural County Representatives of California, an advocacy group representing 40 counties, along with many in the timber and agriculture industries.

Staci Heaton, senior policy advocate for RCRC, echoed Newsom’s concerns that the legislation would have limited what could be done in the forests to achieve resilience, such as the ability to harvest trees of different sizes and types. She said they also had concerns about the funding structure and what she described as vague definitions in the bill, which could invite litigation.

“We appreciate the governor signaling that we’re going to continue to use sound forest management in California,” Heaton said.

Asked about the disagreement among some counties, she said there tends to be “more of a split in what people think good forest management looks like” when it comes to coastal redwood forests.

“We maintain that a lot of our forests really aren’t healthy in their current condition, and there’s too many straws in the ground, and there does need to be, in some areas, more aggressive management,” she said.

Washington — Two leading progressive lawmakers, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, are unveiling legislation Wednesday that would ban artificial superintelligence and create a federal agency to oversee advanced AI as some of the industry’s own leaders urge Congress to impose guardrails on the advancing technology.

The bill, provided first to the Associated Press, would also pause advanced AI development until guidelines are implemented while creating the Department of Artificial Intelligence. Multiple employees at leading AI companies are endorsing the bill.

“It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘slow it down,’” Sanders, I-Vt., said in an interview with AP. “Do we really want to develop a super intelligence that when it becomes smarter than human beings could act independently of human control? I don’t think we do.”

Congress has so far done little to rein in the AI industry even as some of its most prominent leaders warn about potentially catastrophic risks. President Trump has resisted recent calls for greater government oversight, putting him at odds with tech leaders including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk.

The bill aims to dramatically slow down AI development

The legislation would permanently prohibit artificial superintelligence, which it defines as a system that exceeds human cognitive ability or has sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity.

It would temporarily pause development of the most advanced AI systems until new federal safety rules are established by a new Department of Artificial Intelligence. Advanced AI systems would then need federal approval before they could be deployed. Violations could carry significant penalties, including up to 20 years in prison in some cases.

A number of current employees at AI companies and experts signed on in support of the bill, according to a statement shared with AP.

Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe, a researcher in OpenAI’s Safety Systems, said in a statement supporting the bill that “superintelligence could either go extremely right or extremely wrong” and that “we shouldn’t be playing such games.”

Swante Scholz, a software engineer at Google DeepMind who said he was not speaking on behalf of his employer, said on the current path of development, the “most likely outcome is an existential catastrophe for humanity.”

“A ban on superintelligence development would be a positive change for the foreseeable future,” Scholz said in a statement.

The bill faces long odds but draws a line in a growing fight

The bill from Sanders and Casar faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress, where lawmakers have struggled to coalesce around even less sweeping AI regulations.

But it offers a window into how the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is approaching AI regulation ahead of November’s midterms and a 2028 presidential campaign in which the technology is expected to be an increasingly prominent issue. Casar, a Democrat from Texas, is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Potential 2028 presidential candidates have rushed in recent weeks to release proposals showing they’re taking the issue seriously. Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore announced a plan to regulate AI on Tuesday, while California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to accelerate implementation of a California law that calls for independent oversight of AI companies last week.

Sanders, a two-time presidential candidate who is now 85, has especially focused on the issue in recent months. In June, he introduced legislation to create a sovereign wealth fund financed through a one-time tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Last week, he hosted colleagues for a briefing with experts and also attended a conference focused on the issue alongside Republicans, including former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

The debate over AI regulations has scrambled political alliances both in Washington and for voters across the country.

Americans have grown more concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence over the last year, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

The survey data say about half, 53%, of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts. That is up from 41% last year. Democrats are driving much of the increase in environmental concern, but the poll also reveals broader worries about the local impact of data centers, which power AI and cloud computing.

Trump has shown little interest in curbing AI risks

While some industry leaders have called for new safeguards, Trump has pushed in the opposite direction. On Tuesday, Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that artificial intelligence will be renamed “super intelligence.”

“I think Trump has very little understanding of what this issue is about,” Sanders said. “I think he’s mainly concerned about the economic implications of a slowdown.”

AI safety is expected to be a central part of talks between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping at the White House this week as the countries compete for dominance in the sector. The prospect of slowing development in the United States while China continues on has also been one of the central arguments against sweeping restrictions.

Sanders argued that avoiding the most dangerous forms of AI would ultimately require cooperation between the two countries, comparing the challenge to nuclear arms control during the Cold War.

“Ronald Reagan, arch-conservative, was smart enough to understand that he had to sit down with Gorbachev, a communist, and work out a nuclear treaty that protected humanity,” Sanders said. “I think we can do that again now.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 21, 2026 12:58 PM PT

The Queen of Country is being honored with a special day on Californians’ calendars.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Sunday that establishes Sept. 25 as Dolly Parton Day. The date’s significance may be obvious to fans of the late country legend: 9-2-5 references Parton’s hit single “9 to 5” from the soundtrack of the 1980 comedy film of the same name that starred Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

“Dolly Parton was an icon,” Newsom said in a video accompanied by his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, announcing the bill’s passage. “Dolly was larger than life with big hair and a bigger heart. People around the world have been touched by her music, by her philanthropy, and by her humor.”

Parton died Aug. 25 at 80 years old following a battle with cancer. The beloved songwriter, recording artist, actor and businesswoman was an honored musician, earning 10 Grammy Awards and 10 Country Music Assn. Awards, as well as two Academy Award nominations and a Primetime Emmy. She was the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts in 2005 and the Kennedy Center for the Arts Award in 2006. Parton was also inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

“Her legacy goes well beyond her music,” Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), who co-authored the bill with Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), said in a statement. “Through the Imagination Library, she put books into the hands of millions of children, and throughout her life she led with kindness, acceptance, and a belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. She was also no stranger to the Central Coast, where she performed for packed crowds and spent time over the years. Now, every 9-2-5, California gets to celebrate Dolly and the remarkable legacy she shared with all of us.”

SACRAMENTO — California’s growing data center industry will have more oversight after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven bills to regulate the industry’s electricity costs and track water consumption.

The new laws come amid growing public concerns about environmental and economic impacts of the massive facilities, and are aimed at protecting consumers from growing electricity costs and tracking the centers’ immense energy and water consumption.

Newsom on Monday criticized President Trump for dismissing calls to curtail or regulate the facilities and heralding them as “money machines,” even as states and communities across the nation take action to ban or regulate the centers.

“While the Trump administration moves toward deregulation, communities are left to deal with the consequences — higher electricity demand, grid constraints, water use, and pollution,” Newsom said in a written statement Monday. “With these laws, we are ensuring that Californians remain in the driver’s seat — and that those profiting from data centers aren’t doing so at our expense.”

Senate Bill 886 by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) and Assembly Bill 2383 by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) establish special rules for data centers’ electrical use. The law orders California Public Utilities Commission to create special requirements and rates for data centers’ use of electricity, including the costs for new power and for infrastructure upgrades.

Scores of other states have already passed similar legislation, according to utility groups.

Two bills by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) will require oversight of data center water consumption. One measure will require data center operators, when applying for a business license or permit, to disclose an estimate of their water use and the expected source of water. Another will bar cities and counties from approving a new or expanded data center unless the developer submits a water assessment and a water scarcity plan, and will require developers to cover the cost of any water system upgrade that is necessary.

Newsom vetoed a similar Papan bill last year that would have required new data centers to disclose their expected water use. The governor said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements” on “this critically important digital infrastructure” without understanding the full impact on the businesses.

But over the past year, a wave of data center pushback has swept the nation, including California, where dozens of cities and counties have proposed or adopted moratoriums on the facilities. While California lawmakers have hesitated to pursue outright moratoriums and bans that the public is calling for, the political tide has nevertheless turned against the facilities.

Data centers have existed for decades but are rapidly expanding because of the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI. The centers help power everything from streaming services to videoconferencing calls.

Data centers in California are typically smaller than the mammoth, 500+-megawatt AI facilities making headlines in other parts of the country. Electricity costs and state regulations on gas-powered generators limit the vast majority of them to under 100 megawatts.

But as proposals increase in number, opposition has been fierce and growing. A Public Policy Institute of California poll from July showed that 73% of residents oppose the construction of data centers in their communities.