lawmaker

WASHINGTON — As Congress responds to President Trump’s attack on Iran, lawmakers who served on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan are making their voices heard in a war debate that has taken on intensely personal meaning.

Many admit mixed feelings, taking satisfaction in seeing vengeance taken on the leadership of an Iranian regime that has targeted U.S. service members for decades, yet fearful that another generation of soldiers could soon face the same combat experiences that they did.

“Do I take gratification? You know there’s the Marine side of me: Yeah, of course,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, whose company suffered some of the heaviest losses on the U.S. side during the Iraq War. “I know they killed a lot of American soldiers, American Marines. But do I also understand that I have a responsibility not to let my lust for revenge drive my country into another war?”

Experiences in the post 9/11 wars are also coloring the decisions of the Trump administration, given that top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were once deployed to Iraq.

Gallego, like others on Capitol Hill, leaned heavily on his firsthand experience of fighting in the wars after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as he assessed the Iran conflict. Lawmakers wore bracelets etched with the names of friends killed in battle, told stories of coming under attack from Iran-backed militant groups and reflected on their own life-changing injuries suffered during combat.

Veteran lawmakers are wary of war

While the initial votes on Iran saw Congress divide mostly along party lines, with Republicans backing Trump’s actions and Democrats warning of an extended conflict, veterans in both parties share deep reservations about entering the conflict.

“As somebody who knows a lot of friends that didn’t come home and a lot of Gold Star families, that’s why the week before the attack, I was actually one of the ones that was talking about caution and why we needed to avoid at all costs getting into another long, drawn-out Middle Eastern war,” said Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a former Navy SEAL who left college to enlist the week after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Crane said his concerns were partially assuaged by briefings from the Trump administration that indicated to him the president is not planning a drawn-out war. He voted against a war powers resolution that would have halted attacks on Iran unless Trump got congressional approval.

But Crane said wars are never straightforward. “I’ve been on military operations that did not go to plan many times, and so I understand the nature,” he said, adding that he was calling for the Trump administration to approach the conflict with “humility and caution.”

Gallego and other Democrats worried that it was too late for that approach. They paid tribute to the six U.S. military members who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait and worried that there could soon be more American casualties. A seventh service member died on Sunday from wounds suffered during a March 1 attack in Saudi Arabia.

“War is dirty, and mistakes happen,” Gallego said. The longer the conflict drags on, he added, the greater the chance there will be for U.S. military members to be killed. He experienced that firsthand in Iraq when friends would be killed by seemingly random shots from enemy combatants.

Still, many Republicans argued that it was necessary to attack Iran to stop a regime that for decades has helped train and arm militant groups throughout the Middle East. Republican Rep. Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led the debate on the House floor against the war powers resolution.

Mast, who served as an Army bomb disposal expert, now uses prosthetic legs after receiving catastrophic injuries from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. “Me especially, many of my other colleagues, no one wants to see our military go into combat or war,” he said.

Then he added, “But Iran’s terror, which has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, it has to stop.”

Trying to push soldiers to forefront of war debate

Important questions loom for Congress as the conflict with Iran unfolds and spreads to other parts of the Middle East. The price of the operation is already likely running into the billions of dollars, likely forcing the Trump administration to soon seek billions in funding from Congress. The outbreak of war has also scrambled global alliances and the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Shadowing it all is the potential of another drawn-out conflict. Lawmakers said they owe it to their fallen comrades to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“To me, it’s to speak out. It’s to say another generation should not go fight in an open-ended, ill-conceived regime change war in the Middle East,” said Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, his hand moving to a bracelet etched with the names of friends who were killed during his two Army combat tours in Iraq.

Others remembered how frustrated they became with Washington during their service, especially as soldiers tried to fight with insufficiently armored vehicles and not enough troops.

“I know what it was like to be on the very end of the receiving line of the decisions made in Washington,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, who entered the Army as a private before being promoted to a captain and deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crow said that front-line soldiers often suffered “because people stopped asking tough questions. People stopped being held accountable. Congress stopped voting on it.”

Another veteran, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, said that was one of the reasons she sought a congressional seat in the first place. As a Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the Illinois National Guard, Duckworth lost her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.

“I ran for Congress so that when the drums of war started beating once again, I’d be in a position to make sure that our elected officials fully considered the true cost of the war,” she said. “Not just in dollars and cents but in human lives.”

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

The Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration agreed to conduct anti-drone laser tests in New Mexico after the military’s deployment of the lasers led the FAA to suddenly close airspace in Texas twice in the last month.

The newly announced testing was being carried out to “specifically address FAA safety concerns,” the military said Friday in a statement. It was to take place over the weekend at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Lawmakers were concerned about an apparent lack of coordination after the Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use an anti-drone laser in early February without notifying the FAA. The federal agency that ensures safety in the skies decided to close the airspace over El Paso for a few hours, stranding travelers.

The Trump administration said it was working to halt an incursion by Mexican cartel drones, which are not uncommon along the southern border.

On Feb. 26 the U.S. military said it used the laser to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said.

The incident led the FAA to close the airspace around Ft. Hancock, about 50 miles southeast of El Paso.

“We appreciate the coordination with the Department of War to help ensure public safety,” the FAA said of the testing in a separate statement, referring to the Department of Defense. “The FAA and DOW are working with interagency partners to address emerging threats posed by unmanned aircraft systems while maintaining the safety of the National Airspace System.”

The military is required to formally notify the FAA when it takes any counter-drone action inside U.S. airspace.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the ranking member on the Senate’s aviation subcommittee, previously called for an independent investigation after the two February incidents.

Ding writes for the Associated Press.

March 5 (Asia Today) — A South Korean lawmaker said Wednesday that the country’s Cheongung-II surface-to-air missile system demonstrated high effectiveness in real combat conditions in the Middle East, citing reports of a 96% interception rate during recent missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates.

Rep. Yoo Yong-won of the conservative People Power Party, who serves on the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, said the result showed the strength of South Korea’s defense technology.

“The fact that Cheongung-II achieved an interception rate exceeding 90% in an intense real-world combat environment in the Middle East is a great victory for South Korea’s defense science and technology,” Yoo said.

According to information Yoo said he confirmed with sources familiar with the United Arab Emirates air defense operations, two Cheongung-II missile batteries deployed in the UAE fired more than 60 interceptor missiles during recent attacks.

About 96% of those missiles successfully intercepted their targets, the sources said.

Cheongung-II is a medium-range surface-to-air interceptor missile system developed by South Korea to defend against aircraft and ballistic missile threats.

Yoo said the reported interception rate was notable even compared with leading Western air defense systems.

“A 96% real combat interception rate is a figure that even the U.S. Patriot system would find difficult to achieve,” he said, referring to the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system widely used in missile defense operations.

The lawmaker said the performance of the Cheongung-II system could strengthen confidence in South Korea’s Korean Air and Missile Defense architecture, which is designed to counter potential missile threats from North Korea.

“The Cheongung-II deployed by the UAE is the same model currently operated by the South Korean military,” Yoo said. “Its success in neutralizing Iranian missile attacks increases the credibility of our missile defense system.”

The remarks come amid escalating tensions in the Middle East following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran and subsequent missile retaliation across the region.

The United Arab Emirates reportedly used a multi-layered air defense network during the attacks, combining U.S.-made THAAD and Patriot systems with South Korea’s Cheongung-II and Israeli air defense systems including Arrow and Barak-8.

Despite large-scale missile and drone attacks, the UAE is reported to have achieved an overall interception rate exceeding 90%, limiting damage.

Yoo said South Korea’s parliament would support further development and exports of the missile system.

“We will provide strong legislative and policy support so that Cheongung-II, whose performance has been proven in real operations, can expand exports across the Middle East and global defense markets,” he said.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260305010001399

When a Los Angeles County judge ordered a notorious Watts scrap metal yard to permanently halt its operations last year, many residents and environmental advocates thought it might finally bring an end to the facility’s dangerous pollution. Instead, the shutdown may have only marked the beginning of what could be a lengthy process to erase decades of environmental degradation.

For nearly 75 years, S&W Atlas Iron & Metal had crushed car parts, shredded aluminum cans and processed an assortment of recyclable metals. Over that time, the facility and its owners racked up dozens of environmental violations and were eventually criminally convicted of crimes that endangered students next door at Jordan High School and residents of Watts.

Since Atlas’ court-ordered closure, the towering piles of scrap metal have largely disappeared from the 3-acre recycling facility. Jordan High’s campus hasn’t been rocked by explosions, pelted with shrapnel or blanketed in layers of toxic, metallic dust.

But one of the most serious, and remaining, threats has gone unnoticed until recently.

A contractor hired by Atlas recently measured a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals percolating in the soil and groundwater beneath the site at orders of magnitude above California’s standards, according to court documents. Around five feet underground, a soil probe detected the highest reading of vinyl chloride — just one of the several carcinogens at the site — more than 1.3 million times higher than the state benchmark.

“What they found were astronomical levels of these contaminants,” said Danielle Hoague, director of research for the Better Watts Initiative.

“I think it’s definitely a hidden danger. I don’t think that the community has been informed of what underlies Atlas. But I would assume that people are experiencing the health effects of this.”

State regulators are still hashing out the scope of the cleanup at the shuttered industrial site. But, more concerning, Watts residents and school district officials fear these contaminants may be migrating with groundwater, posing a risk to neighboring Jordan High School and Jordan Downs housing complex. If that is the case, the question is who will foot the bill to clean up this pollution?

“The cleanup of the Atlas site has been slow, and Atlas is proceeding with a lack of executed urgency,” an L.A. Unified School District spokesperson said in a statement.

Atlas “has failed to advise Los Angeles Unified promptly of contamination found just feet away from the school campus and the adjacent Jordan Downs Housing Development,” the spokesperson added.

Shutting down a source of pollution is only the first step in campaigns for cleaner air. It’s often equally burdensome, time-consuming and expensive to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up the legacy contamination at their own property. And it’s even more difficult to compel companies to decontaminate nearby properties that may have been affected by their operations.

In Lincoln Heights, decades passed after the closure of a massive dry-cleaning operation before residents learned of underground contamination spreading off-site, potentially threatening nearby homes and an elementary school. In Newport Beach, a sprawling aerospace and defense hub was converted into luxury homes three decades ago, and homeowners were only recently informed about residual toxic pollution. In Jurupa Valley, residents were alarmed to learn about toxic vapors seeping into their homes after contaminated groundwater migrated several miles from a former hazardous waste dump uphill.

In Watts, many residents were already aware of the danger posed by toxic metals produced by Atlas’ operations. At times, metallic dust left parts of Jordan High’s campus covered in an iridescent sheen, and the school district has in the past removed contaminated soil from the campus.

But it was far more difficult to predict that pollution could be spreading underground. Many of the chemicals found beneath Atlas evaporate at room temperature and sneak into buildings through cracks in foundations, floor drains or other gaps — a process known as vapor intrusion.

Over the past year, an LAUSD consultant conducted two rounds of air sampling at Jordan High. The levels of airborne chemicals the detected in gym’s basement suggest toxic vapors are infiltrating the building. However, the consultant has said more air sampling is necessary to determine whether it constitutes an unacceptable health risk.

So far, the district says the concentrations have not warranted closing school buildings yet.

In the meantime, the school district is pleading with the state regulators to get Atlas to commit to cleaning up the toxic fallout.

A Los Angeles County judge recently ordered an audit of Atlas’ finances, raising doubts about the company’s ability to pay potential damages.

But community leaders, like Timothy Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, won’t be satisfied until the case moves from courtroom to cleanup.

“There’s no champion for us. So we have to find a way — with very, very limited resources — to get our story out in a way that begins to raise some kind of alarm and awareness of the danger here.”

More recent air news

New research suggests some air pollutants can significantly alter insect behavior, science journalist Gennaro Tomma writes in National Geographic. Smog-forming emissions can interfere with insect communication by breaking down pheromones, causing ant colonies to exhibit aggression toward their own members and neglect their larvae.

The Trump administration reversed a Biden-era rule limiting brain-damaging mercury emissions from coal plants, arguing compliance costs threatened energy reliability, Guardian environmental reporter Oliver Milman writes. The rollback allows some of the coal plants to avoid expensive upgrades, sparking debate over the trade-off between economic concerns and public health risks.

The California Air Resources Board set an Aug. 10 deadline for some of the nation’s largest companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Sacramento Bee’s climate reporter Chaewon Chung. A pair of state laws enacted in 2023 required companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to adhere to the reporting requirements.

In other climate news

As Western states brace for deep cuts to their allotments of Colorado River water, one California water agency may be in a position to help. San Diego County Water Authority’s board recently voted to consider selling a portion of its water to Arizona and Nevada, reports Ian James for the LA. Times. The San Diego area is home to the nation’s largest desalination plant, allowing the agency to rely less on unpredictable reservoirs.

The escalating war in the Middle East has triggered the biggest oil and gas market disruption since 2022, driving a surge in energy prices and forcing a re-evaluation of energy security, Bloomberg reports. While high prices could bolster the case for deploying renewable energy, experts warn that worsening inflation — from higher energy costs — could ironically hamper the shift to clean energy.

A Southern California architect is challenging the notion that wildfire-resistant designs can’t also be visually stunning. L.A. Times wildfire reporter Noah Haggerty interviewed a Palisades fire survivor who is so confident about the design of his newly constructed Spanish-revival home, he asked the fire department if he could spark a controlled fire on his property.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more air quality news, follow Tony Briscoe on X and LinkedIn.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a war powers resolution Wednesday designed to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in Iran, as the Trump administration accelerates its military campaign in a conflict that has killed hundreds, including at least six American service members.

The motion failed in a vote of 47-53.

In addition to pulling out military resources from the Middle East, the measure — introduced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — would have required Congress’ explicit approval before future engagement with Iran, a power granted to the legislative branch in the Constitution.

The House, where Republicans also hold an advantage, is scheduled to weigh in on a similar measure Thursday. Even if both Democratic-led measures were to succeed, President Trump was widely expected to veto the legislation.

“We are doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” President Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday afternoon. The president, who has come under scrutiny for offering shifting explanations on the war’s endgame, said that if he was asked to scale the American military operation from one to 10, he would rate it a 15.

Democrats dispute that Trump possesses the authority to wage the ongoing operation in Iran without explicit congressional approval.

Acknowledging the measure was unlikely to succeed, they framed the vote as a strategy to force lawmakers to put their support for or opposition to the war on record.

“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Schumer said. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East, or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and most of his Republican colleagues have maintained that the president carried out a “pre-emptive” and “defensive” strike in Iran, giving him full authority to continue unilateral military operations.

Republicans saw the vote as the “last roadblock” stopping Trump from carrying out his mission against the Islamic Republic.

“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities and operations that are currently underway there. There are a lot of controversy and questions around the war powers act, but I think the president is acting in the best interest of the nation and our national security interests,” Thune said at a news conference.

Senators largely held to party loyalties, with the exception of Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who broke ranks to support the measure, and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who opposed it.

The vote comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war against Iran is “accelerating,” with American and Israeli forces expanding air operations into Iranian territory. He pointed to evidence released by U.S. Central Command of a submarine strike on an Iranian warship, and also lauded other strikes throughout the region as civilian casualties in Iran surpassed 1,000 on the fourth day of the conflict, according to rights groups.

“We’re going to continue to do well,” Trump said Wednesday. “We have the greatest military in the world by far and that was a tremendous threat to us for many years. Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people and killing people all over the world, and we have great support.”

Republicans blocked a similar war powers vote in January after the president ordered U.S. special forces to capture and extradite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on drug trafficking charges.

GOP leaders argued that the outcome of that mission equated to a quick success in the Middle East, despite an uncertain timeline from the Department of Defense.

In the House, lawmakers will vote on a separate war powers effort Thursday. That bill is led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the two lawmakers who authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“Instead of sending billions overseas, we need to invest in jobs, healthcare, and education here,” Khanna said on X.

In addition to that proposal, moderate Democrats in the House have introduced a separate resolution that would give the administration a 30-day window to justify continued hostilities in the Middle East before requiring a formal declaration of war or authorization from Congress.

WASHINGTON — Former President Clinton is testifying Friday before members of Congress investigating convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, answering for his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.

The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, N.Y., will mark the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It comes a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.

Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she expected her husband to testify that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sexual abuse at the time they knew each other.

Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.

“The Clintons haven’t answered very many, if any, questions about their knowledge or involvement with Epstein and Maxwell,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday.

“No one’s accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” he added.

Republicans finally get a chance to question Bill Clinton

Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein’s 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.

Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice’s first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she’s innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.

Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton’s presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work.

In the lead-up to the deposition, Bill Clinton has insisted he had limited knowledge about Epstein and was unaware of any sexual abuse he committed.

“I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein’s criminal activities came to light,” Hillary Clinton said at the conclusion of her deposition Thursday.

Comer has pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.

Has a precedent been set?

Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.

“We’re demanding immediately that we ask President Trump to testify in front of our committee and be deposed in front of Oversight Republicans and Democrats,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said Thursday.

Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.

Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.

“He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.

Comer on Thursday said that it was “very possible” that Lutnick would be called to testify.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

The latest news about the Colorado River is dire. Since 2000, the river’s flow has shrunk about 20%. An extremely warm winter has brought very little snow in the Rocky Mountains. Reservoirs are declining to critically low levels. And the leaders of seven states are still at loggerheads over the water cutbacks each should accept to prevent reservoirs from falling further.

Here are six things to know about the current crisis:

A short-term deal, at best: Negotiators for the seven states still are discussing ways they might reach a short-term deal as a “bridge into a longer-term agreement,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary. But after missing a Feb. 14 federal deadline, the states are running out of time. Gov. Gavin Newsom told governors in a letter that California would welcome joint investments in water recycling and desalination, and that he believes it’s still possible to agree on a plan “for the next several years.”

States drawing up Plan B: Officials are talking about what they will do if no deal is reached. Representatives of Arizona, Nevada and California already offered cuts of 27%, 17% and 10%, respectively. But that hasn’t been enough for negotiators representing Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Utah. Crowfoot said the talks about a Plan B among California, Arizona and Nevada officials focus on what water agencies could do to stabilize the level of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, which is 34% full and set to decline further.

A court battle looms: As the Trump administration considers ordering cuts, state officials are bracing for potential lawsuits. Utah and Arizona have begun setting aside money for legal bills. A fight could take years until there is a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona emeritus law professor, said no one knows what the court would do. “This is rolling the dice on something that is really quite profound,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to go to Vegas and play the craps.”

Arizona is most vulnerable: Arizona is preparing for the largest cutbacks. That’s because the Central Arizona Project, the series of canals that runs to the Phoenix and Tucson areas, isn’t nearly as old as other aqueducts, giving it low-priority water rights that put it among the first in line for cuts. Farmers who rely on the CAP already have been forced to leave many fields dry. The coming cuts likely will prompt Arizona cities to drill more wells and pump more groundwater, which is declining in many areas.

Less for farms: Nearly half the water that is taken from the river is used to grow hay for cattle. In all, agriculture consumes about three-fourths of the water. In the last few years, farmers have left some hay fields dry part of the year in exchange for federal funds. Glennon said agriculture needs to conserve more, and an agreement among the states could include a fund to help farmers switch to irrigation systems that use less.

Cutbacks carry costs: For cities, adapting will require more conservation and searching for alternative water sources, which will cost money and push up water bills, said Rhett Larson, an Arizona State University law professor. Some cities probably also will have to buy out farmers or pay them to leave fields fallow, which will push up urban water costs further, he said. And as farms produce less, he said, “eventually you’ll feel it in the grocery store.”

More water news

With very little snow in the Rocky Mountains, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation now projects the runoff flowing into Lake Powell, the Colorado River’s second-largest reservoir, will decrease so much that by later this year the water level probably will drop too low to spin turbines and generate hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam. As Shannon Mullane reports for the Colorado Sun, that would remove a cheap, renewable and reliable power source for communities across the West.

Glen Canyon Dam also has design flaws that create problems at low reservoir levels. As I’ve reported, if the reservoir declines to a point that water can pass through only four 8-foot-wide bypass tubes, that would limit how much can reach California, Arizona and Nevada. Those states have urged the Trump administration to fix or overhaul the dam to address this problem.

Last week, Jonathan P. Thompson wrote in his newsletter The Land Desk that the impasse among the states is pushing Glen Canyon Dam closer to the brink. He said federal officials could decide to reengineer the dam to ensure water still can pass at low reservoir levels, but that would be only a temporary fix. As Thompson put it, “aridification is rendering the dam obsolete, at least as a water storage savings account.”

Heather Sackett of Aspen Journalism spoke with experts about why the worsening crisis still hasn’t forced a deal. Kathryn Sorensen, a researcher at the ASU Kyl Center for Water Policy, said: “There’s so little water to go around that positions have become hardened as a result. We’re not just talking about inconvenient cuts; we’re talking about severe pain to economies at this point.”

In Arizona, an advocacy group backed by the Central Arizona Project has begun rolling out TV ads and online videos saying the state is being singled out in the options the federal government has outlined. Brandon Loomis of the Arizona Republic reports that an ad aired by the coalition declares: “Arizona is being unfairly targeted for reductions of Colorado River water that would cripple our state.”

In California, Newsom launched a new plan this week that sets a goal of securing 9 million acre-feet of additional water, enough to fill two Shasta Reservoirs, by 2040 in an effort to offset expected losses caused by climate change. As Camille von Kaenel reports for E&E News by Politico, the 2028 water plan will be a blueprint for new reservoirs, conservation efforts and groundwater recharge projects. Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth says the effort “will help us plan smarter to deal with the way climate change is testing our water systems.”

More climate and environment news

California is spearheading a lawsuit against the Trump administration for canceling billions of dollars in funding for clean energy projects awarded during the Biden administration. My colleague Hayley Smith reported the cuts included a $1.2-billion federal grant for California’s hydrogen hub. The hub was part of the Biden administration’s nationwide effort to develop hydrogen projects to replace planet-warming fossil fuels, particularly in hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as heavy-duty trucking.

Illegal cannabis farms are polluting national forests in California, leaving contamination that harms wildlife and watersheds. Reporter Rachel Becker of CalMatters visited an illicit cannabis grow that was raided by law enforcement in Shasta-Trinity National Forest, where a pile of pesticide sprayers was left behind. Researchers are sounding the alarm, she wrote, “that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites — and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more — to foul California’s forests.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more water and climate news, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will deliver his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night at a moment of unusual upheaval, confronting a cascade of crises that have left Washington unsettled and his own political standing diminished early in his second term.

When lawmakers gather to hear the president’s agenda for the year ahead, the scene is expected to reflect an undeterred president under increasing political strain.

The president is facing a partial government shutdown triggered by his administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, rising tensions over the United States’ involvement in foreign conflicts and growing domestic dissent that is fracturing the president’s political alliances and aggravating his rivals.

Adding to the turbulent atmosphere is the economic unease in an election year. The president, who a year ago promised to bring down prices for consumers, insisted Monday that America has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had” even though public polling shows economic pressures are worrying a majority of Americans.

Trump said he plans to talk about the country’s economic successes in his speech, saying “it is going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.”

Republicans have recently pushed Trump to focus on the push to lower costs, a message they see as crucial to help them keep control of Congress. What remains to be seen is how much of Trump’s economic message will be colored by a Supreme Court decision last week that struck down his use of tariffs, a key portion of his economic agenda. In recent days, the president has remained defiant on the issue, lashing out at the justices for delivering a legal setback on his tariffs, and looking to impose new global tariffs in a different way.

Trump said Monday he does not need to seek congressional approval to impose new levies, even though the nation’s highest court ruled his tariffs cannot stand without the approval of Congress.

“As president, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago!”

Trump’s rebuke underscores the president’s increasingly combative posture toward both the judiciary and Congress, at a time when he is heavily relying on his executive authority to advance sweeping policies on immigration, trade and national security.

His willingness to wield executive authority has been seen in the last year as the president led U.S. forces to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatened to seize Greenland, considered an attack on Iran and eyed an armed conflict with drug cartels in Mexico.

At home, Trump has said he thinks the federal government should assert control over state elections as he continues to push false claims of a stolen 2020 election.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen as Republican leaders, and other conservative lawmakers, voice opposition to some of the president’s legislative pitches.

In recent months, Congress has tried to reassert its authority over the executive branch — in some cases led by small Republican defections by lawmakers who have grown concerned about the president’s involvement in foreign wars and his economic policies.

One of the most notable rebukes to Trump’s authority occurred late last year, when a bipartisan group of lawmakers secured legislation that forced the Trump administration to release investigative files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

While Trump maintains the release of those files cleared him of wrongdoing, the findings have so far ensnared key figures in Trump’s political orbit and reinforced a sense of scandal that continues to loom over his administration. Anger over the administration’s handling of the Epstein case has led to bipartisan backlash, even prompting some conservatives to call for U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to resign.

Another sign of the polarized moment Trump will face Tuesday night will be led by Democrats.

About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives plan to boycott the president’s speech and participate in what they have dubbed the “People’s State of the Union.”

“I will not be attending the State of the Union,” U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a social media video over the weekend. “We cannot treat this as normal. This is not business as usual. I will not give him the audience he craves for the lies that he tells.”

In recent years, lawmakers who wished to disavow the president’s address would typically stand and shout in protest, disrupt the remarks or coordinate outfits to signal their opposition.

In 2020, for example, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) stood behind Trump at the podium as he delivered his remarks and then shredded a copy of his script. She later called it a “manifesto of mistruths.”

This year, even the president’s allies appear to be on notice.

While it is a long-standing custom for the Supreme Court justices to attend the president’s annual address, Trump told reporters on Friday that the six justices who voted against his tariffs policy were “barely” invited to the event.

“Three of them are invited,” he said.

Trump’s State of the Union remarks will be dissected to see how he intends to advance his agenda and to deal with a divided Congress that remains at a standstill over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The partial government shutdown was triggered by partisan tensions over Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.

At a White House event Monday, Trump lamented that public polling shows waning support for federal immigration agents.

“It just amazes me that there is not more support out there,” Trump said. “We actually have a silent support, I think it is silent.”

As Paramount moved Monday to sweeten its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a high-stakes political battle is playing out behind the scenes.

Paramount’s latest offer enhanced its earlier $30-a-share bid, valued at $108 billion, said a person familiar with the process who was not authorized to comment publicly. Details of the revised proposal, first reported by Bloomberg, were not immediately available.

The firm is leveraging both the dynastic wealth of Larry Ellison’s empire and his ties to the Trump administration to dismantle Netflix’s rival $82.7-billion deal for Warner, which owns CNN, HBO and the premier Hollywood film and television studios, according to people close to the auction.

Over the weekend, President Trump turned up the heat, demanding that Netflix “IMMEDIATELY” fire Susan Rice — a former Obama and Biden administration official — who serves on Netflix’s 13-member board or “pay the consequences.”

Trump, in a Saturday night social media post, called the former ambassador “deranged … She’s got no talent or skills — Purely a political hack!”

Trump previously said he would not get involved in the pivotal Warner Bros. auction, instead leaving the matter to the Department of Justice, which is investigating whether a Netflix takeover, or Paramount’s alternative bid, would harm competition. Trump has been an outspoken critic of CNN and many of its on-air hosts.

Netflix won the bidding for the storied studio and HBO in December, prompting the spurned Paramount executives to launch a multipronged strategy to scuttle the Netflix deal.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos sought to downplay the latest controversy, saying during a BBC interview Monday: “This is a business deal, it’s not a political deal.”

But Paramount, which declined to comment for this article, has not been shy about playing its political cards.

Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

The company, overseen by Larry Ellison’s son, David, is trying to convince Justice Department regulators and Warner Bros. shareholders that the Netflix deal is too dicey and that they should instead side with Paramount, said sources who were not authorized to comment publicly.

Paramount has attempted numerous maneuvers to gain the upper hand.

“This deal was never going to be decided on the merits of the offer or rigid antitrust considerations,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “This was a classic Trump administration deal where proximity to the president counts a lot more than financial terms.”

Trump’s Saturday night outburst came after Rice, during a podcast interview last week, said that “it is not going to end well” for corporations, media outlets and law firms that “bent the knee” to Trump should Democrats regain control in Washington.

The comments of Rice, a Netflix director for eight years, came as Paramount-owned CBS was involved in a headline-grabbing dust-up with late-night talk-show host, Stephen Colbert, over Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair‘s threat to modify a rule requiring that broadcasters to give political candidates equal time. Colbert has accused his company of kowtowing to Trump, which CBS has denied.

Netflix’s Sarandos and Paramount’s David Ellison have made separate treks to the White House.

In October, Paramount hired a former Trump administration official, Makan Delrahim, who oversaw the Justice Department’s antitrust division during Trump’s first term, to quarterback Paramount’s campaign to win over regulators and politicians.

A formidable ally — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — recently visited Delrahim on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot in Los Angeles. While there, Cruz said he was a fan of the CBS show “NCIS,” which prompted Paramount executives to put together an impromptu tour of the “NCIS Origins” soundstages, according to a person familiar with the visit.

In December, Delrahim made a tactical move to apply for Justice Department approval of Paramount’s deal — despite the absence of a signed agreement with the Warner Bros. board and the consent of its shareholders. The gambit was meant to speed the agency’s approval should the Netflix deal crumble. Warner stockholders are expected to vote March 20.

Last week, Paramount announced that a major deadline had passed without pushback from the Justice Department. “There is no statutory impediment in the U.S. to closing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of WBD,” Paramount said in a regulatory filing.

Paramount faces a separate deadline late Monday to improve the finances of its proposed takeover to shake the support of Warner Bros. Discovery’s board members for the Netflix deal.

Paramount wants to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN.

Netflix, in contrast, does not want the bulk of cable TV channels beyond HBO, and has offered $27.75 a share. It has the right to match any improved Paramount proposal.

Warner is planning to spin off the bulk of its channel portfolio, including HGTV, TBS and Cartoon Network, in a separate company. Its shareholders will receive stock in that entity, slated to be called Discovery Global.

Concerns over Netflix’s deal have been mounting.

Department of Justice regulators have sent inquiries to the three companies, according to one senior executive who was not authorized to speak publicly. The department is said to be looking at Netflix’s historic business strategy of steering most of its film releases to its streaming platform, often bypassing movie theaters. Sarandos has promised to maintain a 45-day theatrical window for Warner Bros. films.

Bloomberg has reported that regulators also are trying to determine whether Netflix has exerted leverage over creators in negotiations when acquiring programming to build its catalog.

This month, Republican lawmakers blasted Sarandos during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights hearing to explore antitrust implications of the Warner Bros. sale. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent Netflix a series of pointed follow-up questions, including: “If allowed to proceed, what effect will the merger have on future competition?”

Ted Sarandos, left, and David Zaslav at the 2026 Golden Globes.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The hearing also veered into culture wars, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) suggesting Netflix was promoting a “transgender ideology” to children, which Sarandos denied.

Another Missouri Republican, Sen. Eric Schmitt, accused Netflix of making some of “the wokest content in the history of the world.”

“Netflix has no political agenda of any kind,” Sarandos told the lawmakers.

David Ellison also was invited to appear at the Feb. 3 hearing, but he declined — which raised the eyebrows of some members of the panel.

Skydance Media founder and Chief Executive David Ellison, who leads Paramount, is shown in 2023 in New York.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) challenged Ellison for failing to answer lawmakers’ questions under oath, including about his dealings with the president.

Ellison instead responded with a statement but Booker and other lawmakers wrote back, saying Ellison’s statement “failed to address” the issues raised by Booker.

“The pattern of evasion, combined with Paramount’s apparent confidence that a politically sensitive transaction will clear without difficulty warrants serious scrutiny,” Booker, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others wrote in the Feb. 19 letter.

The Democrats instructed Ellison “to preserve records related to the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery transaction.”

The move came days after Gail Slater, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, was bounced from her job, reportedly after becoming a thorn in the side of some business interests. Slater’s former top deputy, who also left the Justice Department, publicly warned that antitrust decisions are being influenced by corporate lobbyists — not in the interest of ordinary Americans.

“We see this happen again and again,” USC’s Kahn said.

“Let’s not forget that Larry Ellison’s Oracle was part of the consortium that purchased the U.S. operations of TikTok. Repeated complaints from the FCC about content at CBS have been heeded by the Ellison regime,” Kahn said, adding: “This is the reality of trying to do any business in the Trump administration: It’s about payoffs and proximity.”

There are two, seemingly irreconcilable, stories of how the Palisades fire became a deadly and destructive behemoth dominating post-fire discourse. One is told by the residents who lived through it, and the other by the government officials who responded to it.

Government officials have routinely argued they had little agency to change the outcome of a colossal fire fanned by intense winds. Palisadians point to a string of government missteps they say clearly led to and exacerbated the disaster.

Officials’ unwillingness to acknowledge any mistakes has only sharpened residents’ focus on them, functionally bringing to a grinding halt any discourse around how the two groups can work to prevent the next disaster.

Instead, residents have been left feeling gaslighted by their own government, while fire officials struggle to navigate the backlash to new fire safety measures.

When officials and residents do talk solutions, the former tend to emphasize personal responsibility — most prominently, Zone Zero, which will require residents to remove flammable materials and plants near their homes — while the latter often push for greater government responsibility: a bolstered fire service and a beefed-up water system.

The residents’ account goes like this:

The Fire Department failed to put out the Lachman fire a week prior. Mayor Karen Bass then left the country during dangerous weather while the deputy mayor for public safety position was vacant after Brian K. Williams, who formerly held the role, was put on leave after allegedly making a bomb threat against City Hall. L.A.’s city Fire Department officials failed to deploy 1,000 firefighters in advance of the fire and did not call for firefighters to work extended hours, while dozens of fire engines were out of commission at the time, waiting for repairs.

An aircraft drops fire retardant on the Palisades fire on Jan. 8, 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile the L.A. Department of Water and Power left a water reservoir designed for firefighting empty and the city failed to analyze how it would evacuate the community.

However, when government officials — be it the mayor, the fire chief or the governor — describe the fire, they tell a different story:

The day after the fire erupted, Bass placed some of the blame on climate change, which some scientists argue has exacerbated fires in the area by increasing the frequency and intensity of hot, dry and windy conditions. Fire officials stressed that the winds during the first few days of the fires were so strong that there was little even the best-equipped fire service could do and that the fire grew so large that there wasn’t a single fire hydrant system in the world that could handle the demand.

Many residents don’t deny that, under such extreme conditions and after the fire reached a certain scale and ferocity, the destruction became inevitable — and there are many who would just like to move on from January 2025.

However, others remain frustrated that these official versions of the story do not acknowledge the government’s failure to prepare for such conditions and its failure to stop the fire before it passed the threshold of inevitability. Indeed, at times, officials have shied away from these uncomfortable discussions to shield themselves from potential liability.

One telling example: On the one-year anniversary of the fire, residents gathered to voice these frustrations at a protest in the heart of the neighborhood. But when Bass was asked to comment on the event, she dismissed it as an unfit way to commemorate the anniversary and accused organizers of profiting off the disaster.

Survivors gathered in Palisades Village to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

This sort of dismissal has essentially forestalled any constructive discussions of climate change, the limits of the fire service and water systems and proposals like Zone Zero, since so many Palisadians now feel like any of that is just a fig leaf for the government’s agency and responsibility, and not a good faith discussion of how to solve the wildfire problem.

The reality is, how climate change is influencing wildfires in Southern California is still a subject of debate among scientists. That doesn’t mean that local leaders need to sit on their hands and wait for consensus. Experts can easily point to a litany of steps that can be taken to better protect residents, regardless of how profound the impact is of global warming on fire risk in the region.

Fire scientists and fire service veterans (who have the pleasure of speaking freely in retirement) argue both personal responsibility and government responsibility play key roles in preventing disasters:

Home hardening and defensible space slow down the dangerous chain reaction in which a wildfire jumps into an urban area and spreads from house to house. It is then the responsibility of a prepared and capable fire service to use that extra time to stop the destruction in its tracks.

The bottom line is that neither the government’s story nor the residents’ story of the Palisades fire is fundamentally wrong. And neither is fully complete.

The conversations around fire preparedness that need to happen next will require both homeowners and government officials to acknowledge they both have real agency and responsibility to shape the outcome of the next fire.

More recent wildfire news

Mayor Karen Bass personally directed the watering down of the city Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire in an attempt to limit the city’s legal liability, my colleague Alene Tchekmedyian reports. The revelations come after Bass repeatedly denied any involvement in the editing of the report to downplay failures.

Last Thursday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office had opened a civil rights investigation into the fire preparations and response for the Eaton fire, looking for any potential disparities in the historically Black west Altadena, my colleague Grace Toohey reports. West Altadena received late evacuation alerts, and officials allocated limited firefighting resources to the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the federal government is hard at work attempting to unify federal firefighting resources within the Department of the Interior — including from the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service — into one U.S. Wildland Fire Service by the end of the year. The effort does not yet include the federal government’s largest firefighting team in the U.S. Forest Service. Because it is housed under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior, merging it into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service would probably require congressional approval.

A few last things in climate news

An investigation from my colleague Hayley Smith found that, as Southern California’s top air pollution authority weighed a proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances, it was inundated with at least 20,000 AI-generated emails opposing the measure. When staff reached out to a subset of people listed as submitters of the comments, only five responded, with three saying they had no knowledge of the letters. The authority ultimately scrapped the proposal.

The National Science Foundation announced last week that a supercomputer in Wyoming used by thousands of scientists to simulate and research the climate would be transferred from a federally funded research institute to an unnamed “third-party operator.” It left scientists shocked and concerned.

The Department of Energy has made new nuclear energy a priority; however, no new commercial-scale nuclear facilities are currently under construction, and it’s unclear how the U.S., which imports most of the uranium used by its current reactors, would fuel any new nuclear power plants. These sorts of technical challenges have vexed nuclear advocates who are fighting against a decades-long stagnation in nuclear development, triggered primarily by safety concerns.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

US Senator Graham claims the UAE royal is ‘as sharp as I’ve ever seen him’ in Abu Dhabi encounter.

Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has made his first appearance since rumours about his health spread online.

The Presidential Court on Wednesday shared video footage of the Emirati president, also known as MBZ, smiling alongside Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham during a meeting in Abu Dhabi.

WAM, the UAE’s official news agency, also shared photographs of the encounter at Qasr Al Shati, in which MBZ appeared alongside Graham.

In a social media post, the US senator rebuffed in no uncertain terms any claims that the UAE president may be unwell.

“To those who are perpetuating false narratives against the United Arab Emirates and President Sheikh [Mohamed bin Zayed] personally, you are full of it,” Graham said on X.

“Not only is he alive, but he is also well and as sharp as I’ve ever seen him.”

Graham, a top Republican in Congress, hailed MBZ for embracing the so-called Abraham Accords, a series of US-brokered deals to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states.

The UAE was among the countries to sign on to the initiative, which was unveiled in 2020 during US President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Palestinian leaders condemned the Abraham Accords as a betrayal of their cause and the Palestinian push for self-determination.

Reporting from Sacramento — Uber and Lyft continue to expand their dominance in California, and taxi companies are looking to the state Legislature for some relief.

“If communities value taxicabs, then we’re going to have to have a regulatory environment that allows cab companies to thrive,” said William Rouse, general manager of Yellow Cab of Los Angeles. “Right now, that’s just not the case.”

Rouse and others in the taxi industry have turned to Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) for help. Low has introduced AB 1069, which aims to ease taxi regulations to make the companies more competitive with their ride-hailing rivals.

Under Low’s legislation, which overwhelmingly passed the Assembly last month, taxi regulation would occur regionally rather than city by city. This means, for instance, cabs could pick up passengers in Los Angeles, drop them off in Santa Monica and vice versa without needing multiple permits.

Taxis also could lower or raise their prices — similar to Uber and Lyft’s surge-pricing models — in response to demand, with a maximum price set by each region.

“If we don’t do anything now, they will completely be annihilated,” Low said.

In California, numbers show the extent of the taxi industry’s decline and the ride-hailing boom. Taxi trips dropped nearly 30% in Los Angeles from 2012, right before Uber and Lyft began operating, to 2015. New research from the Brookings Institution shows that the number of ride-hailing drivers doubled in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and San Jose in 2015.

Uber and Lyft’s business models rely on using public pressure and lobbying to shape and change laws and regulations, said Elizabeth Pollman, a professor at Loyola Law School who has written about how Uber and Lyft have challenged existing state and local rules.

“Their business model wasn’t just to replicate the world we had, but rather to create a new model,” Pollman said.

Uber and Lyft have succeeded at the state Capitol in getting regulations and laws passed to benefit their industry and shooting down those that don’t. Even if Low’s bill passes, major regulatory disparities between ride-hailing companies and taxis will remain.

Taxi drivers still will have to pass fingerprint-based background checks, while Uber and Lyft drivers face less onerous rules. After years of delays, the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates ride-hailing statewide, is scheduled in the fall to decide whether ride-hailing drivers will need to pass fingerprint checks as well. Neither Uber nor Lyft has taken a position on Low’s bill, but each company has been generally supportive of loosening taxi regulations.

Still, cab companies and transportation experts said the legislation could have clear benefits for the taxi industry. Currently, it costs more than $3,000 a year for taxi permits to operate in four cities — Torrance, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach — that stretch roughly six miles along the Los Angeles County coast. In Silicon Valley, similar annual city-by-city fees can run $13,000. Low’s bill aims to wipe away such charges and replace them with a single payment.

The measure would promote greater competition by allowing taxis to grow their own on-demand apps and other dispatch services with fewer restrictions, said Bruce Schaller, a New York-based consultant who monitors both industries.

Schaller said the taxi industry’s problems go beyond regulation, and cabs will need to dramatically improve their service and reduce their fares.

“Why do people use Uber and Lyft?” Schaller said. “It’s because they’re cheap and they show up. That’s it.”

Low’s bill faces many obstacles. Last year, he wrote legislation that would have turned over taxi regulation to the state, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it. The governor’s veto message said he didn’t believe such a major change was warranted. Low’s current bill shifts the burden from cities to counties, but counties don’t want the responsibility.

In a May letter opposing the bill, a representative of the California State Assn. of Counties wrote that counties were ill-equipped to handle taxi regulations without help from cities.

“AB 1069 confuses the relationship between counties and cities by arbitrarily placing the entire burden on the county for taxicab licensure,” the letter said.

Low said he’s open to another entity, such as regional agencies including the Southern California Assn. of Governments in the Los Angeles area, to regulate taxis instead of counties handling them. But he warned that local governments shouldn’t be shortsighted in maintaining strict regulations and high fees that could continue driving taxis out of business.

In that case, Low said, cities “won’t get any of their revenues whatsoever.”

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

ALSO

An overhaul of California’s taxi regulations passes the Legislature

With Uber battle raging, one state lawmaker wants to deregulate the taxi industry

Uber and Lyft are winning at the state Capitol — here’s why

Updates on California politics

A shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that took effect early Saturday affects the agency responsible for screening passengers and bags at airports across the country. Travelers with airline reservations may be nervously recalling a 43-day government shutdown that led to historic flight cancellations and long delays last year.

Transportation Security Administration officers are expected to work without pay while lawmakers remain without an agreement on Homeland Security’s annual funding. TSA officers also worked through the record shutdown that ended Nov. 12, but aviation experts say this one may play out differently.

Trade groups for the U.S. travel industry and major airlines nonetheless warned that the longer Homeland Security appropriations are lapsed, the longer security lines at the nation’s commercial airports could get.

Here’s what to know about the latest shutdown and how to plan ahead.

What’s different about this shutdown?

Funding for Homeland Security expired at midnight Friday. But the rest of the federal government is funded through Sept. 30. That means air traffic controllers employed by the Federal Aviation Administration will receive paychecks as usual, reducing the risk of widespread flight cancellations.

According to the department’s contingency plan, about 95% of TSA workers are deemed essential personnel and required to keep working. Democrats in the House and Senate say the Department of Homeland Security won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations.

During past shutdowns, disruptions to air travel tended to build over time, not overnight. About a month into last year’s shutdown, for example, TSA temporarily closed two checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport. That same day, the government took the extraordinary step of ordering all commercial airlines to reduce their domestic flight schedules.

John Rose, chief risk officer for global travel management company Altour, said strains could surface at airports more quickly this time because the TSA workforce also will be remembering the last shutdown.

“It’s still fresh in their minds and potentially their pocketbooks,” Rose said.

What is the impact on travelers?

It’s hard to predict whether, when or where security screening snags might pop up. Even a handful of unscheduled TSA absences could quickly lead to longer wait times at smaller airports, for example, if there’s just a single security checkpoint.

That’s why travelers should plan to arrive early and allow extra time to get through security.

“I tell people to do this even in good times,” Rose said.

Experts say flight delays also are a possibility even though air traffic controllers are not affected by the Homeland Security Department shutdown.

Airlines might decide to delay departures in some cases to wait for passengers to clear screening, said Rich Davis, senior security advisor at risk mitigation company International SOS. Shortages of TSA officers also could slow the screening of checked luggage behind the scenes.

What travelers can do to prepare

Most airports display security line wait times on their websites, but travelers shouldn’t wait until the day of a flight to check them, Rose advised.

“You may look online and it says 2½ hours,” he said. “Now it’s 2½ hours before your flight and you haven’t left for the airport yet.”

Passengers should also pay close attention while packing since prohibited items are likely to prolong the screening process. For carry-on bags, avoid bringing full-size shampoo or other liquids, large gels or aerosols and items like pocketknives.

TSA has a full list on its website of what is and isn’t allowed in carry-on and checked luggage.

At the airport, Rose said, remember to “practice patience and empathy.”

“Not only are they not getting paid,” he said of TSA agents, “they’re probably working with reduced staff and dealing with angry travelers.”

Will the shutdown drag on?

The White House has been negotiating with Democratic lawmakers, but the two sides failed to reach a deal by the end of the week before senators and House members were set to leave Washington for a 10-day break.

Lawmakers in both chambers were on notice, however, to return if a deal to end the shutdown is struck.

Democrats have said they won’t vote to approve more Homeland Security funding until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis last month.

In a joint statement, U.S. Travel, Airlines for America and the American Hotel & Lodging Assn. warned that the shutdown threatens to disrupt air travel as the busy spring break travel season approaches.

“Travelers and the U.S. economy cannot afford to have essential TSA personnel working without pay, which increases the risk of unscheduled absences and call outs, and ultimately can lead to higher wait times and missed or delayed flights,” the statement said.

Yamat writes for the Associated Press.

Ralph C. Dills, a Texas sharecropper’s son who became the longest serving California legislator, died Thursday in a nursing home in the Northern California community of Rocklin. He was 92.

His son, Gregory Dills, said the cause of death was old age.

“My father simply stopped breathing while sleeping, at 5:30a.m.,” he said.

A Democrat, Ralph Dills served Gardena, Compton and Lawndale throughout most of his political career.

He served in the Assembly for 11 years and in the state Senate for 32 years.

His accomplishments included writing the legislation that created Cal State Long Beach, and El Camino College, and facilitating the creation of the UCLA Law School.

He also sponsored bills that instituted driver’s education in high school and advanced collective bargaining for teachers.

Popular with the Japanese American community in Gardena, he was one of just two Capitol lawmakers to oppose the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

He often told colleagues of his friendship with a community member, Joe Kubota, who had once loaned him money to attend USC.

The morning in 1942 that Japanese Americans were assembled for transport to Manzanar, an internment camp in the Owens Valley, Dills said, he drove Kubota to the assembly point at the Santa Anita racetrack.

Forty years later, Dills successfully wrote legislation, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, that gave partial reparations to internees.

Born in Rosston, Texas, Dills moved to California with his parents and eight siblings when he was 15.

He graduated from Gardena High School in 1927 and earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a master’s degree from USC, and law degrees from Loyola University and the University of the Pacific.

He was first elected to the Assembly in 1939. After spending 11 years there, he was a municipal judge in Compton for 14 years before returning to the Legislature in 1966 as a state senator. He retired in 1998 because of term limits.

In 1994, a victim of redistricting, he still managed to win in a new district outside his core area, using the slogan, “Too old to quit.”

An old-fashioned politician, Dills often was accused of catering to special interests, such as the oil industry.

He was once investigated by the FBI for vote-buying but was not charged.

And he usually spent most of his time at his 50-acre ranch in Loomis, in Placer County, rather than in his home district in Southern California.

Still, he repeatedly proved his political durability.

When Robert Pauley, son of oil magnate Edwin W. Pauley, moved into Dills’ Gardena district in 1974, he thought that, with ample money, he could defeat Dills in the Democratic primary.

But when the votes were counted, Dills had 56% and Pauley ran third with 21%. Another candidate got 23%.

“He was one of the toughest men in the Legislature,” Pauley said Thursday.

“He had support from the unions like none other,” Pauley said. “Our brochures had him in a black box, like he was deceased. But he beat me handsomely. He had an organization I underestimated.”

In 1982, another Dills primary opponent, life insurance underwriter Mickey Carson, sent a photographer to Dills’ ranch to get pictures of his “palatial” lifestyle outside the district.

“Call it a mansion, if you want,” he said. “All the newspaper reporters seem to be interested in is where I sleep.”

Conservationists accused Dills in 1994 of having the worst environmental record in the Legislature.

The senator acknowledged, “They were right. I did have the worst record.”

But, he said, in his old district, “I had oil, oil, oil. Tideland oil. Oil all over the joint. [And] I represented my district.”

In his new district, which included beach cities north to Venice, Dills switched to a pro-environmentalist position.

The League of Conservation Voters, which had endorsed an opponent in the 1994 race, gave him a perfect rating for 1995-96.

“I moved over to the beaches … where they don’t like oil,” Dills said.

“They want nice, clean fresh air and water…. [Now], I’m 100% with the environment,” he said.

Dills is survived by his daughter, Wendy Lewellen; two sons, Gregory and Leighton; and three grandchildren.

The family asked that donations in his memory be made to any Masonic order.

They said Dills was a 33rd Degree mason, in the Scottish and York Rites.

These days, almost every cultural or news event seems fleeting. But there’s one thing that feels nearly as momentous as it did 20 years ago: the Super Bowl.

From a personal point of view, I can say that despite basically divesting myself from football (I haven’t watched a non-Super Bowl NFL game in well over a decade, and haven’t played fantasy football for just as long), I still participate in what has become, essentially, a national holiday. Maybe that’s just it: In the ideologically fractured world of 2026, there’s something to be said for having at least one relatively universal experience.

In any case, such a uniquely shared media event inevitably reflects the cultural milieu of the moment. That’s why, for a while now, I’ve been tracking how many of the commercials that air during each year’s Super Bowl have some relation to the environmental issues that I’ve been covering for most of my career as a journalist. I started this project when I was an editor at Time magazine, and thought it merited revisiting this year. Here’s what I found.

During Super Bowl LX on Sunday, there were just two commercials that focused in a meaningful way on products that would advance a transition to a fossil-fuel-free economy. One was for the 2026 Jeep Cherokee Hybrid. The other was for a Chinese supercar made by a vacuum-cleaner company.

It wasn’t long ago that domestic manufacturers were marketing a future based on electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes. During the 2022 Super Bowl, the second year of Joe Biden’s presidency, seven different ads focused specifically on existing and new EV models. Those were in some ways the halcyon days of American EV manufacturing, following the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which, in part, offered a $7,500 tax credit to anyone who bought a new electric car.

The second Trump administration quickly put an end to that; the credit was nixed as of Sept. 30 last year. That was just one of many moves Trump has made since retaking office to anesthetize the United States’ nascent green economy. Over the last year, the Trump administration has tried to shut down offshore wind energy projects while demanding the growth of the coal industry; reversed key policies that previously established legal precedent for the public health impact of greenhouse gases; and generally tried to undermine efforts by many states, California especially, to establish and regulate policies meant to make their infrastructure less dependent on fossil fuels.

So it’s no surprise that in 2026, the second year of Trump’s second presidency, there was just one Super Bowl ad for a domestically produced green product — and it wasn’t even entirely green. Indeed, it reflects a recent trend across the U.S.: Since the federal clean-vehicle tax credits expired in September, sales of purely electric vehicles have plummeted, while those of hybrids have continued to grow, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Tellingly, four different companies — Cadillac, Toyota, Volkswagen and Chevrolet — had ads that showed an EV but didn’t mention it. It’s become more something to hide than to promote.

Then there’s the one other green-energy ad this year, which, honestly, you could quibble with categorizing it as “green.” It’s a reportedly $10-million spot for an electric sports car, theoretically to be made by the Chinese company Dreame, which to date has primarily produced robotic vacuum cleaners. I say theoretical because it seems somewhat unlikely that an outfit that made its nut building knockoff Roombas will be selling an electric super car anytime soon. (As of writing, Dreame has not responded to emailed questions.)

Nevertheless, it is indicative of another trend: Tesla is down; BYD is up. U.S. car companies like Ford can’t seem to figure out how to transition to a gas-less (or, at least, less gas-forward) future, while many Chinese firms, some without any automotive heritage, such as the consumer-tech company Xiomai, are already driving laps around U.S. and European competitors in what is clearly the race for the future of global car-manufacturing dominance.

In 2025, more than half the cars made in China were EVs. And China is working to power those electric cars with renewable energy, while the U.S. is largely swimming against the tide. In 2025, China installed an estimated 315 gigawatts of solar and 119 gigawatts of wind capacity; the U.S. added an estimated 60 gigawatts of solar and 7 gigawatts of wind capacity in the same time.

Green tech doesn’t seem to have much cultural currency right now in the U.S., at least based on the Super Bowl ad lineup. What does, though, is artificial intelligence. There were at least eight different Super Bowl commercials for AI products, and many more that obviously used AI in their production.

Even setting aside the many intellectual-property and ethical issues they raise, there’s the reality that these AI tools rely on data centers that, in turn, require a huge amount of energy to operate — energy that should, ideally, be coming more and more from renewable sources.

Maybe it’s not all that sexy to advertise solar panels or wind turbines — but it also wasn’t that long ago that a pitch about talking to your hand-held computer to help with your scheduling would have seemed pretty lame.

More in climate and culture

One more thing about the Super Bowl: In this pretty cool video, Pearl Marvell, an editor at Yale Climate Connections, broke down the climate change references in Bad Bunny’s halftime performance.

In other sports+climate news, my colleague Kevin Baxter, reporting from Italy, wrote about the impact climate change is having on this — and future — Winter Olympics. The bottom line: Athletes are going to have to expect less fresh powder, and deal with more dangerous, icy conditions.

Last sports-related story of the week: My former colleague Sammy Roth recently wrote a nice profile of Jacquie Pierri, who plays for the Italian women’s hockey team and moonlights as a sustainable-energy engineer and climate activist. Italy plays the U.S. in the quarterfinals on Friday.

On a different note, on the podcast Zero, Akshat Rathi this week interviewed composer Julia Wolfe about how she uses classical music to work through, and communicate, her feelings about the climate crisis.

A couple of last things in climate news this week

California created a program meant to encourage the development of electric semi-trucks. But, as my colleague Tony Briscoe reported a few days ago, Tesla took advantage of it, claiming most of the money while failing to deliver and essentially bullying smaller manufacturers out of the space.

The Trump administration has indicated that it plans this week to rescind the so-called endangerment finding, a policy establishing the fact that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and that essentially acts as the legal underpinning for many climate regulations passed in recent years. Stay tuned — our reporters will have more on this as the story develops.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi repeatedly sparred with lawmakers on Wednesday as she was pressed over the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and faced demands for greater transparency in the high-profile case.

Bondi accused Democrats and at least one Republican on the House Judiciary Committee of engaging in “theatrics” as she fielded questions about redaction errors made by the Justice Department when it released millions of files related to the Epstein case last month.

The attorney general at one point acknowledged that mistakes had been made as the Justice Department tried to comply with a federal law that required it to review, redact and publicize millions of files within a 30-day period. Given the tremendous task at hand, she said the “error rate was very low” and that fixes were made when issues were encountered.

Her testimony on the Epstein files, however, was mostly punctuated by dramatic clashes with lawmakers — exchanges that occurred as eight Epstein survivors attended the hearing.

In one instance, Bondi refused to apologize to Epstein victims in the room, saying she would not “get into the gutter” with partisan requests from Democrats.

In another exchange, Bondi declined to say how many perpetrators tied to the Epstein case are being investigated by the Justice Department. And at one point, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said the Trump administration was engaging in a “cover-up,” prompting Bondi to tell him that he was suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

The episodes underscore the extent to which the Epstein saga has roiled members of Congress. It has long been a political cudgel for Democrats, but after millions of files were released last month, offering the most detail yet of Epstein’s crimes, Republicans once unwilling to criticize Trump administration officials are growing more testy, as was put on full display during Wednesday’s hearing.

Among the details uncovered in the files is information that showed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had closer ties to Epstein than he had initially led on.

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) asked Bondi if federal prosecutors have talked to Lutnick about Epstein. Bondi said only that he has “addressed those ties himself.”

Lutnick said at a congressional hearing Tuesday that he visited Epstein’s island, an admission that is at odds with previous statements in which he said he had cut off contact with the disgraced financier after initially meeting him in 2005.

“I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick told a Senate panel about a trip he took to the island in 2012.

As Balint peppered Bondi about senior administration officials’ ties to Epstein, the back and forth between them got increasingly heated as Bondi declined to answer her questions.

“This is not a game, secretary,” Balint told Bondi.

“I’m attorney general,” Bondi responded.

“My apologies,” Balint said. “I couldn’t tell.”

In another testy exchange, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) pressed Bondi on whether the Justice Department has evidence tying Donald Trump to the sex-trafficking crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

Bondi dismissed the line of questioning as politically motivated and said there was “no evidence” Trump committed a crime.

Lieu then accused her of misleading Congress, citing a witness statement to the FBI alleging that Trump attended Epstein gatherings with underage girls and describing secondhand claims from a limo driver who claimed that Trump sexually assaulted an underage girl who committed suicide shortly after.

He demanded Bondi’s resignation for failing to interview the witness or hold co-conspirators to account. Other Democrats have floated the possibility of impeaching Bondi over the handling of the Epstein files.

Beyond the Epstein files, Democrats raised broad concerns about the Justice Department increasingly investigating and prosecuting the president’s political foes.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Bondi has turned the agency into “Trump’s instrument of revenge.”

“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza and you deliver every time,” Raskin said.

As an example, Raskin pointed to the Justice Department’s failed attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to not comply with unlawful orders in a video posted in November.

“You tried to get a grand jury to indict six members of Congress who are veterans of our armed forces on charges of seditious conspiracy, simply for exercising their 1st Amendment rights,” he said.

During the hearing, Democrats criticized the Justice Department’s prosecution of journalist Don Lemon, who was arrested by federal agents last month after he covered an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a Minnesota church.

Bondi defended Lemon’s prosecution, and called him a “blogger.”

“They were gearing for a resistance,” Bondi testified. “They met in a parking lot and they caravanned to a church on a Sunday morning when people were worshipping.”

The protest took place after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Six federal prosecutors resigned last month after Bondi directed them to investigate Good’s widow. Bondi later stated on Fox News that she “fired them all” for being part of the “resistance.” Lemon then hired one of those prosecutors, former U.S. Atty. Joe Thompson, to represent him in the case.

Bondi also faced questions about a Justice Department memo that directed the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” by Jan. 30, and to establish a “cash reward system” that incentivizes individuals to report on their fellow Americans.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, (D-Pa.) asked Bondi if the list of groups had been compiled yet.

“I’m not going to answer it yes or no, but I will say, I know that Antifa is part of that,” Bondi said.

Asked by Scanlon if she would share such a list with Congress, Bondi said she “not going to commit anything to you because you won’t let me answer questions.”

Scanlon said she worried that if such a list exists, there is no way for individuals or groups who are included in it to dispute any charge of being a domestic terrorists — and warned Bondi that this was a dangerous move by the federal government.

“Americans have never tolerated political demagogues who use the government to punish people on an enemy’s list,” Scanlon said. “It brought down McCarthy, Nixon and it will bring down this administration as well.”

WASHINGTON — A grand jury in Washington refused Tuesday to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video in which they urged U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders,” according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department opened an investigation into the video featuring Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and four other Democratic lawmakers urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful. All the lawmakers previously served in the military or at intelligence agencies.

Grand jurors in Washington declined to sign off on charges in the latest of a series of rebukes of prosecutors by citizens in the nation’s capital, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It wasn’t immediately clear whether prosecutors had sought indictments against all six lawmakers or what charge or charges prosecutors attempted to bring.

Grand jury rejections are extraordinarily unusual, but have happened repeatedly in recent months in Washington as citizens who have heard the government’s evidence have come away underwhelmed in a number of cases. Prosecutors could try again to secure an indictment.

Spokespeople for the U.S. attorney’s office and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

The FBI in November began contacting the lawmakers to schedule interviews, outreach that came against the backdrop of broader Justice Department efforts to punish political opponents of the president. President Trump and his aides labeled the lawmakers’ video as “seditious” — and Trump said on his social media account that the offense was “punishable by death.”

Besides Slotkin and Kelly, the other Democrats who appeared in the video include Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who represents Michigan, said late Tuesday that she hopes this ends the Justice Department’s probe.

“Tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law,” Slotkin said in a statement. “But today wasn’t just an embarrassing day for the Administration. It was another sad day for our country,” she said.

Kelly, a former Navy pilot who represents Arizona, called the attempt to bring charges an “outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies.”

“Donald Trump wants every American to be too scared to speak out against him,” Kelly said in a post on X. “The most patriotic thing any of us can do is not back down.”

In November, the Pentagon opened an investigation into Kelly, citing a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court-martial or other punishment. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has censured Kelly for participating in the video and is trying to retroactively demote Kelly from his retired rank of captain.

The senator is suing Hegseth to block those proceedings, calling them an unconstitutional act of retribution. During a hearing last week, the judge appeared to be skeptical of key arguments that a government attorney made in defense of Kelly’s Jan. 5 censure by Hegseth.

Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press.