legislation

PHOENIX — Former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, a longtime Republican lawmaker from Arizona who shaped landmark water policies in the U.S. West and guided the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has died. He was 84.

Kyl died Wednesday night from a neurological disorder, said Gordon James, a communications professional who is a longtime friend of the Kyl family. Kyl had withdrawn from public life in December 2025 after announcing he had been diagnosed with dementia.

Kyl spent almost three decades in Congress, serving in both chambers, and watched his party undergo a drastic transformation, with his career spanning Ronald Reagan’s presidency to President Trump’s first term.

Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who considered Kyl a mentor, described the former senator in a February 2025 interview with the Associated Press as a true statesman and a “workhorse” among Washington, D.C.’s “showhorses.”

“If you saw him on the plane, he was sitting in the aisle, in coach, and he was reading,” Ducey said. “And he was reading potential bills or Senate business.”

Kyl returns briefly to Senate to fill McCain seat

Kyl rose to a leadership position during his last full term in the Senate, when his Republican colleagues selected him as minority whip. After retiring from politics in 2013 and becoming a lobbyist, Kyl returned to Congress briefly in 2018, when Ducey appointed him to fill the vacancy left by the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.

His appointment drew high praise from Trump, who said he was looking forward to working with “the extraordinary senator.” Kyl stayed for less than four months before rejoining lobbying firm Covington and Burling.

“At the federal level, and I regret to say that this is the case, but probably a lot of my better achievements were in preventing bad things from happening (rather) than forcing good things to happen,” Kyl said in a 2012 conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Lawyer with expertise in water gets elected

Kyl was born in Oakland, Nebraska, on April 25, 1942, and grew up in a rural farming district in Iowa that his father represented in the U.S. House. At 18, he headed southwest to attend the University of Arizona, where he met his wife, Caryll, and earned a law degree.

Before being elected for the first of his four terms in the House in 1987, Kyl was a key participant in shaping Arizona’s 1980 groundwater code as a lawyer representing a large water utility. The first-of-its-kind code created a regulatory framework for managing groundwater in the drought-stricken state, largely centering on the state’s population centers, including Phoenix and Tucson.

In 2004, Kyl authored legislation that provided one of the largest tribal water rights settlements, which, after a decades-long battle, gave the Gila River Indian Community enough water to fill nearly 313,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who later served as majority leader, called Kyl’s work ethic “legendary” in a 2012 floor speech and said Kyl had labored mostly behind the scenes for 15 years to advance the settlement.

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I was in a position to be the catalyst,” Kyl told the Phoenix New Times in a 2006 interview. “There wasn’t anybody else who could do that water deal. And it had to be done.”

Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy takes its name from him. Its director, Sarah Porter, said Kyl was generous with his time and an effective member of the state’s congressional delegation who took a practical approach to water policy. “He’s always sort of cared about the public good and been able to think about, ‘What will this mean for the generations to come?’” Porter said, adding that Kyl remained “quite a dynamo” until recent years, as his wife battled health problems.

‘Giant’ in the Senate kept Republican caucus together

Ducey said Kyl was a “giant” in the Senate, further describing him as serious, engaging, forthright and thoughtful. His biggest impacts, Ducey said, came from the way he kept the Republican caucus together in opposition to Obamacare and his staunch support of Israel.

Kyl also backed legislation to authorize construction of a fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S.-Mexico border. He later joined with Democrats to support a bill that would provide a path to citizenship and temporary guest-worker status for those in the U.S. without authorization. The proposal ultimately failed.

As a lobbyist, Kyl helped guide the confirmation of Trump-picked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. When Kyl returned to the halls of Congress in 2018, he was known as Kavanaugh’s chief Sherpa — an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.

In a statement disclosing his dementia diagnosis, Kyl harkened back to the words of Reagan, when the former president revealed his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis and said he was starting a journey that would lead him to the end of his life.

Kyl said he shared Reagan’s confidence for Arizona and the nation’s future, and that despite his diagnosis, he was a “very fortunate man.”

Billeaud writes for the Associated Press. Former Associated Press writer Sejal Govindarao contributed to this report.

Byron Sher, a Stanford law professor-turned California legislator who wrote some of the state’s most far-reaching environmental laws, died Saturday. He was 98.

Cerebral and soft-spoken, Sher was the antithesis of politicians nowadays. He rarely issued press releases, didn’t convene news conferences, and disliked raising campaign money.

But he left an indelible mark on the environment, authoring legislation offering incentives to recycle, limiting advertisers’ inflated claims about products’ environmental benefits and combating water and air pollution.

He helped lead the effort to preserve ancient redwoods in Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County in 1999, pushing the state and federal government to buy it from Texas financier Charles Hurwitz, who owned Pacific Lumber Co. and was preparing to log it.

A decade earlier, in 1988, Sher authored legislation requiring that California take stock of the sources of greenhouse gases. It was the first time the legislature in California — or any other state — embedded the term “global warming” into a state law, and became the foundation for bills in later decades to combat climate change.

“The heat is on,’’ Sher said presciently, as quoted by the Sacramento Bee on May 5, 1989. “The state can either ignore what science is telling us, or we can respond to this challenge in a responsible way.’’

Because of his legislation, manufacturers today sell more products in spray bottles rather than aerosol cans, people can more easily dispose of televisions and other electronic waste, and underground gasoline storage tanks rarely leak and foul groundwater.

“Byron Sher built the legal and research foundation for California’s climate change regime and by extension helped shape how the world has tried to handle climate change,” said Joe Mathews, a Berggruen Institute fellow who is working on a book about the state’s legislative efforts to confront global warming.

Today, Sher’s 1989 legislation creating state wild and scenic rivers is a barrier to President Trump’s proposal to raise Shasta Dam north of Redding to increase water storage, an idea backed by Central Valley farming interests. His legislation protects the McCloud River, which feeds Shasta Reservoir. Raising the dam would inundate habitat along the McCloud.

That Sher placed such ideas into law reflected his ability to persuade and compromise. Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican, signed the wild rivers legislation, and Sher’s Clean Air Act, which helped shape federal clean air legislation signed in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.

Their partisan differences aside, Deukmejian viewed Sher as having “great personal integrity,” said Steve Merksamer, who was Deukmejian’s chief of staff.

“When Byron Sher wanted to come into the office and had the bill, would he get in? Absolutely. Would the governor listen to him? Yes,” Merksamer said.

Sher did fall short of convincing Deukmejian to sign one of his bills — a whimsical measure inspired by a Camp Fire girls and boys troop to proclaim the banana slug to be the official state mollusk. Deukmejian vetoed the bill, though Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation in 2024 designating the slimy yellow creature as the official state slug.

Sher was born in St. Louis in 1928, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1952, and joined the Stanford Law School faculty in 1957. He served on the Palo Alto City Council in the 1960s, got recalled in 1967 over his opposition to development and won back his seat in the 1970s. Sher was Palo Alto mayor in 1980 when he won an Assembly seat. He remained in the Assembly until 1996 when he was elected to the state Senate, serving until 2004 when term limits forced him to step aside.

Among the students who passed through his Stanford classrooms was Newsom’s father, William Newsom, who became a state court of appeals justice.

Sher and his aide and friend Kip Lipper attended a 2010 banquet in San Francisco at which the California League of Conservation Voters honored Justice Newsom with the Byron Sher Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Newsom recalled that Sher was the only Sanford professor who gave him a C. When Lipper asked whether the story was true, Sher deadpanned, “He deserved it.”

“There aren’t a lot of tales to tell about Byron Sher,” said Bill Lockyer, who was Senate leader when Sher won a state seat in 1996. “He went home at night and tended not to get into the Capitol gossip.”

In 1996, Lockyer entrusted Sher to serve on a joint Assembly-Senate conference committee that produced landmark legislation that sought to deregulate California’s electricity system.

Sher added provisions expanding requirements that the state use renewable sources of electricity and called the legislation “an extraordinary result” given the issue’s complexity. Lockyer said Sher’s additions, while important, were “the cherry on top of the toxic sundae.”

The legislation was blamed for California’s electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001 when swashbuckling energy traders manipulated the markets, causing prices to spike, resulting in rolling blackouts, and fueling the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

Sher was notable for measures he refused to support. With a few other liberal Democrats, nicknamed the Grizzlies, Sher would pick through turgid language of legislation looking for provisions that reflected the undue influence of special interests.

Sher voted against 1986 legislation that purported to open the way for a shrimp processing facility in West Sacramento. The bill turned out to be part of an elaborate FBI sting that resulted in 14 legislators, lobbyists and others being sent to prison.

“He wasn’t a comfortable politician,” said San Mateo County Supervisor Jackie Speier, a former Democratic congresswoman who served in the Legislature with Sher. “He didn’t speak up a lot. So, when he did, people listened.”

He displayed partisan side in 1994 when Republicans took a 41-seat majority in the 80-seat Assembly, and Republican Assemblyman Jim Brulte was in line to be elected speaker. But Democratic Speaker Willie Brown had a Republican supporter, Paul Horcher, who voted to retain Brown as speaker, plunging the two parties into a yearlong fight for control.

To wrest control from Republicans, Brown asked the professorial Sher to challenge one Republican’s right to remain in the Assembly. That Republican, Richard Mountjoy of the San Gabriel Valley, won two elections that November — one to the Assembly and the other in a special state Senate election to fill the seat vacated when the incumbent, Frank Hill, was sentenced to prison in the corruption scandal.

Sher reasoned that Mountjoy had to make up his mind — stay in the Assembly or move to the Senate. Facing term limits in the Assembly, Mountjoy joined the Senate in January 1995. The partisan battle went on all that year.

Brulte, who never did become speaker, was elected to the Senate in 1996, as was Sher. On Sunday, he called Sher “a wonderful man.”

“Everything in politics today is personal. It wasn’t personal,” Brulte said of Sher’s role in the speakership battle. “Somebody may have taken it personally, but I certainly didn’t.”

Sher retired to a pear orchard in the Sierra Nevada foothills and served on Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

His wife of 62 years, Linda Bowser Sher, died in 2014. He is survived by three children, five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Morain is a former Los Angeles Times reporter.

Paris: The French government submitted a reworked proposal to ban social media for children, after its previous ban was struck down by the country’s top constitutional authority, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.

“After rigorous technical work the government today is notifying” the European Commission of the new draft, Macron wrote on X. The notification is a key step, as it ensures that the legislation is in line with European Union laws.

SACRAMENTO — In a show of defiance to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, California lawmakers on Monday voted to ban federal immigration agents from being hired for many local and state government jobs and to outlaw electric-shock gloves similar to those that may be distributed to federal officers.

The two bills were among a slate of legislation approved by the Democratic-led state Legislature to thwart certain tactics and tools used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, such as arresting people who appear at courthouses for scheduled immigration hearings.

“We have the fourth largest economy in the world because of our immigrant and undocumented community, and they’re being penalized and targeted by the Trump administration,” said Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles). “This package of immigrant bills that we’ve sent [to the governor] is trying to say that we are here to defend you.”

Gonzalez is the author of a bill to prohibit agents and contractors involved in immigration enforcement from being employed in the future by the state, cities, counties, school districts and other public entities. It was supported by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and called the “Get the Feds Out” Act, or “GTFO.”

It would allow an exception for officers who are accepted to a police agency and take the state’s basic police training course, but notes that “suitability shall be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, said the state “expects its public employees to be moral” and to defend the state and U.S. constitutions.

“Anyone who is participating in the raids have shown that they do not live up to the bar that Californians deserve from their public servants. This bill says that individuals who participated in immigration enforcement activities will be disqualified from holding state, county or local public employment in California” except in certain circumstances, she said.

A separate bill by Assemblymember Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles) would block police and other law enforcement officers from taking second jobs or working as contractors on federal immigration enforcement.

“If you sign up to protect and serve our communities during the day with a local law enforcement agency, you cannot moonlight with ICE,” Bryan said.

During a June hearing, state Sen. Kelly Seyarto (R-Murrieta) said the bill was “based on anger at an issue” that “a lot of people disagree on,” which Republican lawmakers commonly cited when debating the immigration-related bills.

“It opens up this can of worms of interpretations that are sometimes not based on reality,” he said.

State and federal law enforcement officers will be banned from using electric-shock gloves until 2030, and the state Department of Justice will be required to study their safety, under a bill passed Monday night. The last-minute legislation was introduced last week after a report that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security planned to purchase the gloves for use in immigration enforcement.

The bill “draws a clear line,” said state Sen. Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley): “Public safety technology must be proven safe and accountable before it’s deployed, not after someone is killed or seriously injured.”

Republicans opposed the bill, arguing the gloves could be a safer way to subdue suspects than firearms.

“If electric shock is a better alternative than actually shooting someone, I don’t think we should take it off the table,” said state Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach). “Law enforcement deserves the tools they need to keep us safe.”

Lawmakers on Friday approved legislation to ban federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing masks in the state. The measure, Senate Bill 1004, was introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to fix an earlier law that was struck down as unconstitutional by a federal judge.

Other bills would prohibit arrests of people traveling to or from court, as federal agents have arrested people who show up for immigration hearings; impose a 25% tax on income earned by companies operating immigration detention centers; and allow individuals to file lawsuits against federal agents over alleged civil rights violations such as excessive force, unlawful home searches and interfering with the right to protest.

Critics argued that some bills might not stand up to legal challenges.

“This seems to fit the general pattern that California will bend over backwards to protect people who are in the country illegally, even if it means putting the public at risk,” said Ira Mehlman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates for strict immigration limits.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto bills approved by the Legislature.

SACRAMENTO — Long the epicenter of the global tech industry, California is taking more action to shield its children, communities and workers from the threats posed by the very industry that’s become central to the state’s identity and enviable economy.

State lawmakers on Monday passed new safeguards around social media and artificial intelligence — and are poised to approve restrictions on data centers — at a time when technology has become intertwined with people’s daily lives.

Efforts to rein in the power of Big Tech extend beyond concerns that TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms are harming young children.

Unions and workers worry that AI will take their jobs, and lawmakers are trying to tackle privacy and safety issues as AI features get added into smart glasses and toys. Californians are concerned that the proliferation of data centers will increase their electricity bills and strain water supplies.

“There’s a heightened level of tech anxiety right now, and that manifests itself from social media to data centers to AI taking jobs,” said Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach). “People are coalescing and they’re demanding that policymakers make change.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has previously vetoed some bills aimed at adding restrictions on Silicon Valley businesses, will still have to weigh in on whether to sign the pieces of legislation into law.

The Democratic governor has acknowledged the challenge of adopting regulations that protect the public without going too far and potentially stifling the technology industry’s growth, which brings critical revenue to the state budget.

“I think that’s the constant tension,” Newsom said in an interview earlier this summer. “We’re constantly sort of fighting that balance.”

The governor, who has close relationships in the technology industry from his time in San Francisco, said only a couple other states have attempted to regulate artificial intelligence like California. The state, he said, leads on regulation of social media.

“We’re not rolling over, certainly,” Newsom said. “We’re leaning forward, and we’re iterating. We will push the boundaries and litigate.”

The looming restrictions on social media follow a landmark Meta Platforms legal settlement aimed at making social media safer for young people. Parents, politicians and child advocacy groups are worried that social media is contributing to depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other issues.

The actions being pushed in the California legislature are more sweeping than that settlement, however. One of the bills passed by lawmakers on Monday, Assembly Bill 1709, would bar certain online platforms from providing an “addictive feature” to users under 16 years old and add ways to verify users’ ages.

Under the bill, prohibited addictive features include autoplay and feeds that display recommended content.

The addictive nature of autoplay and other features is “harmful, full stop, and that they’re not appropriate for the developing brain,” said Lowenthal, who authored the bill.

After watching technology “run free” in California for years, legislators are now seeking to “pump the brakes a little bit,” said Samantha Vigil, a UC Davis researcher who built a registry tracking social media legislation in states across the country.

“They want to reevaluate what is working,” said Vigil. “What is healthy and beneficial, and what is progress just for the sake of having a new iteration of something?”

All 50 states have introduced or passed some type of digital media or technology-related legislation, tackling smartphone use in schools, social media and chatbots, Vigil said.

Other countries have taken more stringent steps to limit social media use among young people. Australia banned social media use for those under 16, but enforcing the law has been challenging because young people have tried to get around the restrictions.

California isn’t trying to ban social media; instead, it’s trying to limit how platforms design their features.

Parents and state attorneys general have not waited for policy makers to act. They have sued Meta, Google and other tech companies over the alleged harms their products have done to young people.

In late August, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed to pay up to $17 billion and make child-safety changes to resolve a multi-state lawsuit alleging the tech company designed and deployed harmful features while misleading the public about potential harms. Meta and YouTube also lost a social media addiction lawsuit earlier this year in Los Angeles.

Assembly Bill 1709 goes further. For example, Meta’s settlement gives teens the option to pick a non-algorithmic feed and turn off autoplay but, unlike in the legislation, it’s not mandatory. The bill would also apply to other platforms outside of Meta. Meta declined to comment.

Tech industry and business group opposing the bill say it is too blunt and could cut off access to social media’s benefits, according to the bill’s analysis.

“The durable path is to enforce the targeted laws California already has and to strengthen parental tools rather than an overlapping framework whose scope can be redrawn by regulation,” said Robert Boykin, TechNet’s Executive Director for California and the Southwest.

California lawmakers passed another Lowenthal bill aimed at holding social media liable for harm caused to children. Under Assembly Bill 2, social media companies could face fines of up to $1 million per child for negligent harm.

California lawmakers this year also attempted to tackle two other perils of the technological world — the rapid development and implementation of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of the massive data centers that are essential to sustaining the AI universe.

National and state union leaders have urged California legislators and Newsom to protect workers from the threats of AI to replace workers, saying it posed an existential threat to the foundation of a healthy, productive democracy.

“AI must remain a tool controlled by humans, not the other way around,” said Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton).

The state Legislature on Monday approved McNerney’s bill, Senate Bill 947, which would bar employers from “solely” using automated decision-making systems to discipline or fire employees. If an employer primarily relies upon this system, a human must verify the decision.

Lawmakers also approved Senate Bill 951, introduced by Sen. Eloise Gomez Reyes (D-Colton), which would require employers to provide a 60-day advance notice to workers and local and state governments before AI-related layoffs. Lawmakers also approved Assembly Bill 1609, which requires large private businesses that serve customers to provide access to human customer service representatives and to disclose to use of chatbots.

They passed another bill by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) that enacts a four-year moratorium on the sale and manufacturing of AI-chatbot powered toys over concerns that the technology can harm children.

On Friday, lawmakers agreed on a compromise on proposed legislation to regulate energy use by California’s growing data center industry, measures prompted by community fears about the massive complexes. Lawmakers say the legislation would help protect consumers from growing electricity costs driven upward by the sprawling facilities and to track the centers’ immense energy and water consumption.

At a June hearing on Senate Bill 886 to regulate data centers’ energy use, Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth) said it’s just “a handful of companies that are gonna make trillions of dollars” from AI. They should pay for related utility infrastructure upgrades, she added.

“People, I would argue, are not even begging to use AI,” she said. “They’re struggling to figure it out to keep up with the times, but don’t even really want it.”

The California legislature is expected to vote on two of the bills to regulate the controversial industry within the next day.

Whether Newsom will embrace the legislature’s efforts to corral big Tech in California — in part of in whole — remains unclear.

Newsom last year vetoed a similar AI bill from McNerney to ban automated decision-making systems to discipline employees over worries that it could restrict companies’ ability to use customer ratings. That element was dropped in this year’s legislation.

Newsom last year signed Assembly Bill 56 that required social media platforms to display mental health warning labels to users under 18 starting in January 2027. But he also vetoed Senate Bill 771 that aimed to hold social media platforms liable if they amplified content that contributed to hate crimes and other violent acts, saying that the legislation was “premature” and current civil rights laws might be adequate.

Lowenthal said he’s heard from California families who are anxious about social media and seeking “relief” from their concerns about how the platforms are affecting their children.

“This is a kitchen-table topic,” he said. “I’ve yet to find a family with school-age children in the state of California, any corner of the state, that is not going through this right now.”

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — After weeks of intense negotiation, state lawmakers on Friday reached a compromise on legislation to regulate energy use by California’s growing data center industry, action triggered by community anger over the facilities and fears of high utility bills in some communities.

The goal, according to legislators and advocates, is to protect consumers from growing electricity costs driven upward by the sprawling facilities and to track the centers’ immense energy and water consumption.

Business groups representing tech companies argued that some of the proposed restrictions and requirements, along with California’s high energy costs and lack of available land, would make it difficult for data centers to open in the state.

Municipalities risk missing out on tax revenues and jobs from the centers if the industry goes elsewhere, they said.

Two bills to regulate the controversial industry consumed the state Legislature in the final weeks of the 2026 session, drawing in Gov. Gavin Newsom and industry organizations and lobbyists representing some of the world’s most influential companies, including Google, Meta, Amazon and artificial intelligence firms such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Proposed legislation by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), finalized Friday, would establish special rules for data centers’ electrical use. The legislation requires the California Public Utilities Commission to create special rates and updated rules for data centers’ use of electricity, including the costs for new power for infrastructure upgrades.

The debate in Sacramento around the data centers centered on how much they should pay for power and infrastructure, and whether that should be mandated by the state Legislature or the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned utilities and is controlled by a board appointed by the governor.

Unlike some other states, California hasn’t seen an overwhelming wave of new large-scale data centers, nor have state leaders sought moratoriums such as the ones enacted by governors in Texas and New York.

An aerial view of a 49.5-megawatt data center under construction in Vernon last month.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Nevertheless, advocates focused on reforming the state’s utilities sought this year to seize the moment to enact tough regulations, including forcing data centers to pay for transmission upgrades and wildfire mitigation efforts.

Utility reform advocates and environmental leaders offered mixed reaction on Saturday.

Matthew Freedman, a senior staff attorney for The Utility Reform Network (TURN), praised the final language in the two bills, saying the legislation would prevent data center costs from “being foisted on other customers” while helping California meet its clean energy goals.

Monica Embrey, the founder of Affordable Energy Campaign, called the last-minute amendments “concerning.”

In particular, she pointed to a lack of clean energy requirements for data centers who use their own energy, and a provision that allows a utility to enter into its own agreement with a data center for energy in the interim period before the state finalizes its regulations.

A representative for the Data Center Coalition, whose members include Google and Microsoft, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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.

Opposition centers on water use, air and noise pollution, and the potential for data centers to raise utility bills as they add strain to the grid requiring costly upgrades and new electricity supply.

The California Energy Commission expects data center electricity use, currently 2% of the state’s demand, to double in the next 10 years.

Monterey Park became the first city in the country in June to permanently ban data centers by a popular vote, and at least four other San Gabriel Valley cities have enacted moratoriums.

Southeast of L.A., Imperial County, Desert Hot Springs, and Palm Springs also voted on moratoriums, while Coachella permanently banned the facilities. In the Central Valley, Tulare County adopted a moratorium this month as residents voiced opposition to proposals to develop tiny data centers on local fairgrounds in the region.

And in San José, the state’s hot spot of data center development, residents flooded a recent public hearing to call for a moratorium while the city updates its data center standards.

Newsom last year vetoed legislation by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) that would have required data centers to disclose and certify their water consumption. The governor said he was reluctant to impose “rigid” reporting requirements on the development of “this critically important digital infrastructure.”

Separate bills that would require the centers to disclose their energy and water use were recently approved by state lawmakers.

Like other state legislators, Papan said she wants to work with the centers, not ban them.

“I constantly say, ‘Help us help you.’ We will all get this right if we can just be transparent and methodical,” said Papan, whose district includes Silicon Valley.

Padilla’s district includes Imperial Valley, where a developer’s plans for a data center on 75 acres is sparking fierce backlash.

Advocates and lawmakers fought over two approaches on the issue of regulating data centers’ energy use.

A wider coalition of environmental groups supported the bill from Padilla, SB 886, sponsored by TURN, that would have required data centers to pay up front for broader power grid updates required to meet their demand. That approach made it into the final package.

TURN pointed to a recent transmission plan from California’s grid operator projecting that increased power demands from data centers in PG&E‘s service territory, where the majority of current and proposed data centers are concentrated, would create up to $1.8 billion in upgrade costs for the power grid, including transmission lines.

PG&E favored a less stringent approach. In an email earlier this week, a PG&E spokesperson argued SB 886 would “risk higher costs for customers and delay critical infrastructure needed to serve the state’s growing energy demand.”

The Data Center Coalition had opposed both bills for “singling out” one type of power user.

The high cost of land and power, as well as lack of available land, are just some of the reasons that California hasn’t seen a flood of data centers, said Khara Boender, a director of government affairs at the Data Center Coalition. She said dozens of states offer some type of exemption for data centers, but California does not.

Additional regulation in the Golden State, she said earlier this week, “would be another signal that the state is a more challenging place for data center development.”

In a late-night deal with lawmakers, Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to drop his push for legislation that would have shifted more of the cost of utility-sparked wildfires to property insurers, sharply raising premiums across the state.

After weeks of closed-door negotiations with lawmakers and protests by wildfire survivors, the governor also backed away from a proposal that reduced amounts fire victims could receive and transferred more of the damage costs to local governments.

Wildfire victims and other critics had called the plan a corporate bailout.

According to a 96-page bill, published at 7:26 a.m. Saturday, Newsom and lawmakers agreed on some measures aimed at reducing the costs of future utility-sparked wildfires.

The bill would limit certain fees of attorneys representing insurance companies, while also stopping hedge funds and private equity firms from profiting on wildfire claims.

Last year, hedge funds were offering to buy claims that insurers had against Southern California Edison for the Eaton fire, leading to calls for reform.

The bill would also create a state program to get payments more quickly to wildfire victims.

“This is all real progress for future fire survivors,” Newsom said in a statement.

“Nonetheless, this system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” he added. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

The complex legislation — added by gutting and amending a bill known as Senate Bill 492 — was introduced less than three days before the legislative session was to end Monday.

The session must now be extended until Tuesday because of a 2016 voter-approved proposition that requires bills or amendments to be in print at least 72 hours before the state Senate or Assembly can vote on them.

Eaton wildfire survivors and other groups had been calling on Newsom for weeks to unveil the legislation so that they could see the details.

More than 50 Eaton fire survivors showed up to protest in front of the governor’s mansion on Monday night in Sacramento, where Newsom was holding an event for legislators.

“Who should pay?” they chanted. “Shareholders should pay!”

On Saturday, wildfire victims praised lawmakers who had stood up to the governor’s push for legislation benefiting the utilities.

“Survivors from across California came to Sacramento and asked our elected representatives to stand with the people whose homes, communities and lives have been devastated,” Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, said. “They listened. And in the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered on survivors and California families.”

Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit utilities had been lobbying Newsom and lawmakers to further shield them and their shareholders from wildfire liabilities ever since last year’s Eaton fire caused some investors to flee and the price of their stock to tumble.

Government fire investigators said the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes, was caused by electrical arcing on Edison’s out-of-service transmission line in Eaton Canyon. Edison kept the line in place despite not using it since 1971.

More than 11,000 households have filed suit against the utility, claiming it acted negligently, which the company denies.

Utilities asked Newsom to strengthen a framework that he and lawmakers created in 2019 to protect utilities from bankruptcy after their equipment ignites a catastrophic fire. The law created a $21-billion wildfire fund, which is now reimbursing Edison for the settlements it is making to victims who agree not to sue.

Last year, also in legislation revealed in the session’s last days, Newsom created a second fund of $18 billion to pay for future fires.

According to a confidential document Newsom’s staff sent to lawmakers, the governor also wanted to cap the amount the fund would reimburse a utility for wildfire damages at $6 billion and require electric customers to pay for costs above that amount. That would have limited utilities’ liability for the fire but increased electric bills.

That measure was not in the legislation published Saturday morning.

Newsom said in his statement Saturday that the bill would strengthen accountability for utilities that spark fires by stopping executives from receiving bonuses after a fire.

The fine print in the bill states that the company must have a plan that prevents top executives from receiving “short-term” bonuses after a fire that results in 500 or more structures damaged.

The governor had touted in 2019 that his legislation had tied utility executive pay to the company’s safety performance. But the language allowed the companies to decide how to do that.

Despite the deadly Eaton fire, bonuses awarded to Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International and other executives soared last year. Pizarro received $16.6 million in cash, stock and other compensation last year, up 20% from 2024.

The new legislation applies only to Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. Those three for-profit utilities have caused at least seven of California’s 20 most destructive fires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

California lawmakers have passed legislation that will make it easier for government agencies to protect themselves from the rising use of artificial intelligence for public comment, records requests and other forms of civic engagement.

Senate Bill 1159 from Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento) prohibits anyone from knowingly using AI to falsely represent that a real person engaged with a government agency. It also specifies that agencies are not required to treat engagement from AI or bots as if they were real humans.

“What we have seen with the result of the advent of artificial intelligence and other similar technologies is the capability for these systems to flood the zone — to drown local governments, and potentially state agencies as well, in inauthentic, non-human engagement” Cabaldon said during a March meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The legislation was introduced shortly after a February report from The Times about a campaign to sway a vote on gas-powered appliances at the South Coast Air Quality Management District. A Southern California based public affairs consultant named Matt Klink took credit for the campaign, stating that he used a platform called CiviClick to flood the district with 20,000 public comments opposing the rule ahead of the air board’s vote.

CiviClick describes itself on its website as “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.” Company officials maintain that AI was not used in the AQMD campaign, but said it is a tool they offer and use in other campaigns. Chief executive Chazz Clevinger said he could not share how the 20,000 comments to the air board were generated or how constituents were identified and contacted.

Agency insiders said the onslaught of emails almost certainly influenced the air board’s decision to reject the proposed rules, which would have imposed fees on new gas-powered furnaces and water heaters for some 10 million appliances across the South Coast region.

Cabaldon cited The Times story when he introduced the legislation, noting that at least three people contacted by the air district said they had not submitted the public comments attached to their names.

He also cited a report from the San Francisco Chronicle about a similar campaign to sway a different rule at the Bay Area Management District, which was run through a platform called Speak4 that advertises its ability to produce custom AI-powered letters.

The business advocacy group that ran the campaign also denied that AI was used. However, 10 people contacted by The Chronicle said they had not written the letters attributed to them. “This was forged,” one person said.

Reached by phone, Cabaldon said the legislation will help public agencies navigate how to respond to the deployment of AI, which is increasingly being used in a way that “swamps our civic engagement process, but also disables our state and local governments altogether.”

For example, the California Public Records Act requires government agencies to respond to requests for public records within 10 days, while the Brown Act and the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act guarantee the right to participate in public meetings and provide public comment.

“The point of the bill is to say that these laws are about humans, and just because it comes in the form that a human would write it, does not mean you have to treat each of these communications as if it’s a human being, and therefore, AI is not entitled to 10 days, AI is not entitled to three minutes at the school board meeting,” he said.

Experts said the use of AI for “astroturfing,” or faking, civic engagement is a growing trend. In the United Kingdom, a service called Objector.ai is using AI to identify and generate formal objections to local planning applications, garnering the concern of experts, The Guardian reported.

Public officials in California are worried, too. Vacaville vice mayor Michael Silva said the city has been receiving AI-generated public records requests, which are slowing its ability to respond to other legitimate requests submitted by residents.

Dylan Plummer, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Heat Campaign, said many AI campaigns have benefited the fossil fuel industry and pose an “existential threat to public participation in our democracy.”

“The passage of Senate Bill 1159 is an important step to clarify the law and discourage the use of emerging technologies to falsify public records and mislead regulators in California,” he said. “That said, much work still needs to be done to understand how widespread this practice is, and to hold bad actors accountable for laws that may have already been broken.”

Lawmakers acknowledged that the legislation is just a start, and that it is increasingly difficult for public officials to detect bespoke letters, deepfake videos or other kinds of engagement powered by AI. The bill authorizes government agencies to use disclosure verification tools to determine if AI is present — something the Bay Area Air District already indicated it may do by replacing its email system with a website for public comment submissions instead.

The legislation does not preclude real people from using AI to facilitate genuine public engagement, such as someone using ChatGPT or Perplexity to improve the text of a letter, so long as the volume and frequency of their engagement are consistent with ordinary participation from a real person.

For its part, CiviClick notes on its website that it supports SB 1159, and said its platform already complies with what the bill proposes.

Some lawmakers said the use of AI in a civic capacity represents a new frontier.

“If I’d have read this bill back when I was on the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, I would have wondered what you were smoking,” Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) said during the March meeting of the Judiciary Committee.

“But that’s how things have progressed, and the development of technology will always outpace the development of defenses against the undesirable effects of technology,” he said.

SB 1159 passed the legislature this month and will head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for signature in September.

A bipartisan package of bills aimed at punishing unethical attorneys and hedge funds that have flourished within California’s legal industry is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

The two bills would bar lawyers from prioritizing the desires of private investors who fund lawsuits, and ramp up penalties for lawyers who scout for clients at hospitals, jails and accident sites.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), one of the bill authors, said the legislation is intended to police the state’s bruised legal profession in response to “a wave of inappropriate attorney conduct” reported by The Times.

Times investigations last year found some clients within L.A. County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement said they were paid to sue and, in some cases, fabricate claims.

“When attorneys are exploiting vulnerable people, including paying folks to file fraudulent claims, they’re not just breaking the law, they really undermine the credibility of the legal system and every attorney,” Zbur said.

Both bills were sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful trial lawyer trade group that says it wants to beef up punishment for misconduct.

“If we are going to demand that corporations, government, and powerful institutions be held accountable, we must be — and we are — willing to hold ourselves to that same standard,” Doug Saeltzer, head of the association, said in a statement.

California law already bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.

Zbur’s legislation, Assembly Bill 2039, would require that attorneys lose their license if they’re convicted of felony capping or a misdemeanor capping conviction in which they “acted knowingly and for financial gain.” The lawyers could also be fined $25,000 per violation.

The bill also creates whistleblower protections for law firm employees who report misconduct, and would enact new restrictions on loans that attorneys give their clients. California is one of the few states where lawyers can lend money directly to plaintiffs.

Lawyers who use the loans to sway the client’s decision-making around “legal strategy, settlement decisions, or continued representation” can be fined $15,000 per offense.

The second bill aims to bar private investors from influencing a case — for example, telling a lawyer how many clients to take on or when to settle — in lawsuits they fund.

California allows lawyers to take high-interest rate loans from investors, such as private equity firms or hedge funds, who expect to profit from the payout when a case is settled. Critics of this litigation funding claim investors sometimes exert themselves in legal strategy to the detriment of the clients, such as requiring a case to settle prematurely so the law firm can repay the loan faster.

“We don’t want them having any influence in the outcome of a case,” said Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San José), who authored AB 2305. “We want the lawyers to be able to represent their clients, and then not have those financial pressures play any role.”

A spokesperson for Newsom’s office said they don’t comment on pending legislation.

Lawyers already are barred under State Bar rules from allowing a third party to dictate case strategy. Kalra has said the goal of the bill is to provide additional “clear statutory safeguards.”

Law firms would also be barred from using money from private investors to market for cases, Kalra said. The State Bar would be tasked with disciplining lawyers that flout the rule.

A Times investigation last year found law firms that have filed thousands of sex abuse claims in California are funded by private investors, meaning an unknown chunk of the $4-billion settlement will go into the pockets of opaque funders.

It’s unclear how violations of the law would come to the attention of the State Bar. Litigation funding agreements are typically private between the funder and the law firm, and clients often don’t know their cases are being funded by private investors.

Jaime Huff, the head of the Civil Justice Assn. of California, which advocates for lawsuit reform on behalf of business interests, said her group — a frequent foe of California trial lawyers — ultimately pulled their support from the bill because they found it toothless.

“I don’t trust the State Bar to tie their own shoes in the morning, much less govern this stuff,” said Huff. “It’s basically gaslighting the public into thinking, ‘Yes, they’ve done something.’”

“It’s like the mall cop of self-policing,” she added.

Kalra said the point was to send a blunt message to the state’s legal bar.

“There may be loopholes that folks find in this one, and they have to follow up and close those loopholes,” he said. “But ultimately, it makes a very clear rule as to how that funding can be used. Once that rule is in place, it’s the law. And lawyers have to follow the law.”