politics

An interesting debate about the past two months centers on the extent to which Delcy Rodríguez is finding her new seat comfortable. There are areas where she feels like a smooth operator (or a yes-woman for Rubio and Trump) and levers she can’t yet pull without finding resistance from her old comrades.

One can sense she isn’t too bothered driving Trump’s energy agenda. As Maduro’s economic vice president and oil minister, the last few years saw Delcy spend serious amounts of energy lobbying for sanctions relief, engaging with consecutive US governments, and maneuvering to bring in new players to the oil industry. Experts still cast doubt on her  ability to reinvigorate an economy and energy sector that still requires an institutional revamp much broader than a single piece of legislation. 

The issue is not the written rules themselves, but that the chefs in Washington DC are currently rebuilding the restaurant with the same cooks who, no matter how new the pots and pans, will sooner or later revert to the habits that made the kitchen a pigsty to begin with.

Sure, steps are being taken to move on the economic trajectory the US has imposed. In the first 50 days of the so-called “new political moment,” we have a new energy law, a US Treasury account holding Venezuela’s oil revenues, and dollar auctions for private banks at a free exchange rate. Last week, Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited the country. In front of him, Chevron boasted of its crown jewels. The US followed up with further sanctions relief, albeit limited and subject to specific authorizations.

In the opposite end, the country still lacks clarity over political trajectory. The puzzle of democratization has hundreds of missing pieces. It’s not just a matter of whether elections will be held and results enforced, with the opposition choosing its candidate, with competitors sitting down to discuss the day after the vote, etc. Every question about freedoms and human rights has come attached to the ifs, buts and maybes of a regime that can’t even agree on the degree of control it gives up or whether politicians will be allowed to behave like politicians. The Guanipa incident suggests the answer is still no. So does the fact that Miguelangel Suárez, the Universidad Central student leader, was chased and spied on hours after last week’s Youth Day protest.

It’s still early, but in the sphere of political liberalization, the mantra from Jorge and Delcy Rodríguez seems to be: raise expectations and fall short.

Big headlines, slow progress

As noted by Camila González in our latest post, the Rodríguez siblings are trying to convey the idea that they’re true political reformers rather than the alleged traitors of the revolución that foreign newspapers obsessed with after January 3. Their messages are simple: we know how bad things are, though we can’t always admit it, we will empty the country’s prisons, we’d like to overhaul the courts.

Delcy’s speech at the Supreme Tribunal on January 30^th is a prime example. Not only did she order the creation of an amnesty statute covering chavismo’s lifespan and the shutdown of El Helicoide. She invoked a “great national consultation” for a new justice system (which likely points at behind-the-scenes discussion the ruling elite and the military are having) before naming some of the issues that make the system so dysfunctional: lacking access to justice, procedural delays, and corruption across the country’s tribunals and prosecutors’ offices. Jorge, more adept at improvising to manipulate different audiences, later said that guys like him need to both “forgive and ask for forgiveness” before describing political prisoners as necessary, “due to the realities, circumstances and the concrete situation of a society.” Three weeks after his remarks, 444 political prisoners have been released. Six hundred are still behind bars.

In theory, the amnesty law should also entail the release of the so-called historic, Chávez-era political prisoners.

These performances seem to align with the tendencies of the biggest external stakeholder in the process, Donald Trump, who has publicly praised Delcy Rodríguez and releases as a powerful humanitarian gesture. But in Venezuelan cliques, the implementation and discourses around these initiatives (brought about under a careful management to shield domestic stakeholders from further pressures) underscore the internal resistance and tensions playing inside chavismo.

The amnesty law, a key landmark of any political transition, would open the door to the return of political figures that includes many of chavismo’s longtime enemies, and perhaps more crucially, confrontation with the consequences of years of having imprisoned military officers subjected to the worst kind of punishments under the high command’s oversight. Foro Penal reports that 185 FANB personnel are still imprisoned. Venezuelan journalist Hernán Lugo Galicia affirms that most of them are National Guards and Army officers, and that only a handful have been released since the process began on January 8.

An amnesty in handcuffs

In theory, this policy should also entail the release of the so-called historic, Chávez-era political prisoners: public officials convicted in trials riddled with irregularities. This group includes Héctor Rovaín, Erasmo Bolívar, and Luis Molina—former officers of the now-defunct Caracas Metropolitan Police accused of shooting demonstrators and supplying weapons to coup participants during the massive anti-Chávez protest of April 11, 2002 (the narrative chavismo used to shield armed colectivos and party leaders from legal responsibility). It also includes Otoniel, Juan Bautista, and Rolando Guevara, three police agents convicted for the murder of Danilo Anderson, the prosecutor investigating the planning of the 2002 coup.

These cases are deeply symbolic for the regime: the conviction of the Metropolitan Police officers helped cast blame on a handful of supposedly putschist cops while insulating the Chávez government from responsibility for the violent deaths. The Guevara case, meanwhile, appears designed to silence the controversy and corruption that surfaced during investigations into the events of 2002.

Releasing the históricos (who go back to a time where Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez were not in politics) would be an admission that chavismo engaged in political persecution early on, tearing down the myth of one of its martyrs in Anderson and the Policías Metropolitanos as the sole rotten apples of 2002. Releasing FANB members, many in terrible shape because of mistreatment and prolonged isolation, would of course add another layer of pressure to a military high command embarrassed by the American incursion that killed dozens of subordinates and captured the commander-in-chief, not to mention the array of testimonies and revelations that a decision like that could start to induce. Interior Minister Cabello is well aware of that, and sounds resolute in his opposition to the release of those accused of plotting or rebelling in arms.

The amnesty bill is now stuck. Chavista lawmakers don’t yet agree on the contents of Article 7, which commands dissidents charged with relevant crimes, many of which went in hiding or fled the country, to turn themselves in in order to become amnesty beneficiaries.

Reality suggests that supposed moderates still fall short, unable to break from the dominant logic of  fear and control.

“They said they didn’t do anything. Not lobbying for sanctions, not cheering at the (US) intervention. The amnesty is about acknowledging mistakes,” Iris Varela recently said in a pro-chavista podcast. “If you want both an amnesty and to return to the country, then come over here, prove you were under persecution, and get the amnesty.”

Varela is one of the lawmakers in charge of the amnesty project, but she is known as a radical chavista for more than 20 years. After her intervention in the National Assembly last week, Jorge Rodriguez decided to adjourn the discussion arguing that the minority bloc led by Henrique Capriles had requested further amendments.

Therein lies another distinction in the official choreography surrounding the amnesty saga. Even if all chavista voices ultimately recycle the same talking points about sovereignty, malign NGOs, and chavismo as the guarantor of peace, their performances differ in tone and posture. While figures such as Diosdado Cabello and Iris Varela maintain an unyielding stance toward traditional opponents, more civilian-facing chavista actors are attempting to stage a process in which civil society groups ostensibly have a say in shaping the amnesty bill.

Representatives from leading human rights organizations such as Provea and Foro Penal attended a meeting with the parliamentary Domestic Policy Committee, shortly after Professors Guillermo Aveledo (Universidad Metropolitana) and Juan Carlos Apitz (Universidad Central de Venezuela) were allowed to criticize and question the extent to which reforms are actually in motion, while in the same room as Jorge Rodríguez and Nicolás Maduro Guerra.

These meetings may well be cosmetic, and are unlikely to determine the final legal outcome, but they appear designed to position certain chavista officials within a “moderate” camp: figures supposedly willing to build bridges with the opposition and entertain uncomfortable truths, even if their broader script remains unchanged.

Reality suggests that supposed moderates still fall short, unable to break from the dominant logic of  fear and control. After what appeared to be a staged embrace with relatives of political prisoners, the promise by Jorge Rodríguez to release all detainees held at the PNB jail in Boleíta, eastern Caracas, is yet to materialize. Meanwhile, Jorge Arreaza, who heads the Internal Policy Committee, recently offered little beyond justifying Guanipa’s re-arrest as relatives of victims and journalists pressed him for answers about the release process.

Scenes like these—Rodríguez, however calculated the gesture, appearing outside a political prison, and Arreaza being publicly challenged and scrutinized in the streets—would have been inconceivable just a year ago. They are a novelty in the politics of late-stage chavismo. But novelty is not reform. Such gestures are unlikely to persuade a skeptical public that a genuine shift is underway. Again, emphasis appears to rest more on optics than on tangible results.

Perfume and polish for the security sector

The Interior Ministry is still in Cabello’s hands, with top cops and allies running the main security agencies: Douglas Rico at CICPC, his cousin Alexis Rodriguez Cabello at SEBIN, and his old pal Gustavo González López now commanding both Delcy’s security ring and the fearsome DGCIM (his predecessor was fired after the US captured Maduro and Cilia Flores). Colonel Alexander Granko, who became the face of state violence in the 2020s, remains DGCIM’s special ops star, but has kept a low profile in recent weeks.

Having said that, recent moves suggest that Delcy Rodríguez retains an interest in the structure and functions of a security apparatus she does not fully control—and is willing to upgrade and trim it where possible. On February 9, the government officially dissolved the Strategic Center for Security and Protection of the Homeland (CESSPA), the intelligence body tasked with monitoring “foreign and domestic enemy activity” by centralizing data from all state security organs. Its shutdown came with the elimination of six social missions dating back to the Chávez and Maduro periods.

Senior politicians close to the opposition leader—Guanipa, Perkins Rocha, and Freddy Superlano—remain under house arrest. The amnesty law, scheduled for discussion tonight, would be entirely incompatible with that fact.

Earlier, flanked by senior chavista leaders and military generals, Rodríguez announced the creation of a new intelligence body: the National Office for Defense and Cybersecurity, conceived as a hub “where Venezuela’s scientists and technology experts should come together to defend our cyberspace.” She appointed Gabriela Jiménez to lead it, a biologist who previously served as Science and Technology Minister and was part of chavismo’s delegation during the Mexico negotiations. In August 2024, Jiménez had already alleged that the National Electoral Council (CNE) and dozens of Venezuelan institutions were the target of cyberattacks in the context of the July 28 presidential vote.

Delcy may have already taken a step toward the state goal of reforming the judicial system. This month, the National Assembly approved an amendment to the statute governing the CICPC, emphasizing clearer chains of command and defining officers’ roles in criminal investigations. In a country where the scientific police (whether the CICPC or its predecessor, the Policía Técnica Judicial) has long exercised outsized influence over the justice system, the reform does sound interesting. It doesn’t undo Chávez-era decrees that subordinate judges and prosecutors to intelligence bodies rather than positioning them as institutional checks. Whether this marks the beginning of deeper changes with chavismo in power also remains to be seen.

Information remains scarce and, now more than ever, the country’s future is being discussed behind closed doors, with few listening in—such as yesterday’s meeting between Southern Command chief Francis Donovan and Delcy Rodríguez, Cabello, and Vladimir Padrino López. Our latest Political Risk Report indicates that María Corina Machado’s return to Venezuela featured prominently in conversations between Secretary Wright and Delcy last week. That development would not only deepen tensions within chavismo, but also test the resilience of the supposed transition now being pursued.

Senior politicians close to the opposition leader—Guanipa, Perkins Rocha, and Freddy Superlano—remain under house arrest. The amnesty law, scheduled for discussion tonight, would be entirely incompatible with that fact. We will soon see how far the so-called moderate lawmakers are willing (or able) to push it.

A long-awaited set of reports on how to build a fire-resilient Pacific Palisades, commissioned by Los Angeles city officials for $5 million, found that much of the hilly enclave remains out of compliance with standards for evacuating during a disaster.

The reports, by the city and the global infrastructure firm AECOM, also recommended that the city complete significant brush clearance work, bolster its water system and move electrical wires underground.

All of the recommendations are frequent asks from Palisades residents. Many have already been discussed at length by independent experts. They will inform the city’s “Long-Term Recovery Plan” for rebuilding infrastructure and improving wildfire resilience after the Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in January 2025.

The reports outlined nearly a billion dollars in infrastructure projects through 2033, including more than $650 million for electrical undergrounding and $150 million for water system repairs.

“Full recovery is a long-term, multi-year effort that requires sustained coordination — and it must continue to be community-led,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in a Tuesday newsletter to Palisades residents that included links to the reports. “This past year has been unimaginable for the Palisades community, but I remain committed to supporting you through every step of the recovery.”

She noted that the Long-Term Recovery Plan would be finalized “in the months ahead.”

A month after the fire, Bass selected Illinois-based Hagerty Consulting to work on fire recovery under a yearlong contract for up to $10 million.

However, in June, Bass announced that AECOM would develop a recovery plan for the city. Hagerty, which had struggled to explain its role at community meetings, ultimately focused on debris removal logistics and finished its work in December, billing the city $3.5 million.

In December, the city authorized payments of $5 million for AECOM’s first set of reports — which were originally due in mid-November — and an additional $3 million to the company for long-term recovery planning.

Palisades residents say they are frustrated at the price tag and feel that the effort has been chaotic and lacked urgency. Some have questioned whether the reports would contain an honest assessment of the situation, given that AECOM is not working independently of the city.

The three AECOM reports consist of recommendations for improving the Palisades’ fire resiliency, a plan for rebuilding public infrastructure destroyed in the fire and how to coordinate traffic and other logistics as the area becomes a construction zone.

The resiliency report found that “almost all” local streets within the Palisades are narrower than permitted by the city fire code — particularly in the Alphabet Streets, Rustic Canyon and Castellammare areas. A “majority” of long dead-end streets did not fulfill the sections of the fire code ensuring that fire engines have enough space to turn around, the report said.

A lawsuit filed in December alleged that the city has routinely failed to comply with similar state regulations when it approved new construction in the city’s “very high fire hazard” areas.

These codes “directly impact the ability to fight fires and for civilians to safely evacuate,” said Jaime Hall, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, who are a group of resident associations in the Santa Monica Mountains and a fire safety advocacy organization. “They’re not just regulations on a piece of paper.”

The resiliency report also found that residents experienced “evacuation warning fatigue” from routine false alarms, making them hesitant to evacuate.

Additionally, many intersections in the Palisades could serve as bottlenecks during evacuations, leading to significant delays, the resiliency report said, basing the conclusion on a traffic pattern analysis. A Times investigation found that the city had not conducted a similar analysis to help comply with state law.

Requirements to clear vegetation around homes, including the state’s upcoming Zone Zero regulations, are not enough to meaningfully reduce wildfire risk in the Palisades, with its steep topography and dense vegetation, the resiliency report found. The city should work with land managers — including the state and county — on measures such as cutting gaps in vegetation for firefighter access, maintaining defensible space around community infrastructure and restoring native vegetation, the report said.

The public infrastructure report listed $150 million for “wet” infrastructure repairs, which included replacing aging and leaky water main pipelines.

The resiliency report outlined further potential improvements to provide more water for firefighting, such as building larger pipelines and additional tanks to move and store more drinking water; improving connections between local water systems; and tapping stormwater, treated wastewater or even seawater from the Pacific.

During the Palisades fire, hillside tanks ran out of water. Many fire hydrants, particularly in higher-elevation areas, lost pressure and ran dry. The resiliency report said that installing pressure monitoring systems could “ensure water availability and prevent dry hydrants by streaming live data to fire crews,” and that remote-controlled valves could also help maintain water pressure during a fire.

The city’s Department of Water and Power is already considering options for improving the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which was empty and awaiting repairs of its floating cover when the Palisades fire erupted.

The city has also committed to placing power lines underground in the Palisades where feasible.

The infrastructure report laid out six undergrounding projects that would cost the city $664 million, after nearly 57% of all electric service points — from power distribution poles to transmission lines — were completely destroyed in the fire.

Feb. 19 (UPI) — The Commission of Fine Arts has unanimously approved plans for President Donald Trump‘s almost 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom plans, the first hurdle in starting the building project.

The commission, whose members were all appointed by Trump, including his executive assistant, Chamberlain Harris, 26. The original architect of the ballroom recused himself from the vote. Trump fired all the previous members in October.

But now, the project must win approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which could vote on March 5.

“This is a facility that is desperately needed for over 150 years, and it’s beautiful,” The Washington Post reported Commission Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr. said.

But the CFA’s secretary said comments have been negative.

“In two decades of casework here, I’ve never seen as much public engagement on this. We’ve literally gotten, in the past week or so, more than 2,000 various messages,” said Thomas Luebke, CFA secretary, CBS News reported. “The vast, vast majority is negative, in general.”

Trump initially said the construction would cost $200 million and would be funded by private donations. He later said the project could cost twice that amount, but donors would pay for it. Officials from the National Trust for Historic Preservation challenged the construction in federal court and sought an injunction to stop the build. The judge refused the injunction but ordered the administration to undergo a review process.

The Capital Planning Commission is led by Will Scharf, a White House staff secretary appointed by Trump. Two other White House officials — James Blair and Stuart Levenbach — are also on the commission.

Luebke read a summary of the comments to commissioners, CBS reported. He cited demolition without permits or oversight, a scale that will “dwarf the White House,” lack of transparency in funding and contracts and a “fundamental miscarriage of democratic principles.”

“The ballroom seems to shout power,” one commenter wrote, Luebke said.

Harris responded, “This is sort of like the greatest country in the world. It’s the greatest house in the world and we want it to be the greatest ballroom in the world.”

The public comments, Luebke said, were “overwhelmingly in opposition — over 99%.”

WASHINGTON — In another era, the scene would have been unremarkable. But in President Trump’s Washington, it’s become increasingly rare.

Sitting side by side on stage were Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat. They traded jokes and compliments instead of insults and accusations, a brief interlude of cordiality in a cacophony of conflict.

Stitt and Moore are the leaders of the National Governors Association, one of a vanishing few bipartisan institutions left in American politics. But it may be hard for the organization, which is holding its annual conference this week, to maintain its reputation as a refuge from polarization.

Trump has broken with custom by declining to invite all governors to the traditional White House meeting and dinner. He has called Stitt, the NGA’s chair, a “RINO,” short for Republican in name only, and continued to feud with Moore, the group’s vice chair, by blaming him for a sewage spill involving a federally regulated pipeline.

The break with tradition reflects Trump’s broader approach to his second term. He has taken a confrontational stance toward some states, withholding federal funds or deploying troops over the objections of local officials.

With the Republican-controlled Congress unwilling to limit Trump’s ambitions, several governors have increasingly cast themselves as a counterweight to the White House.

“Presidents aren’t supposed to do this stuff,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said about the expansion of executive power in recent administrations. “Congress needs to get their act together. And stop performing for TikTok and actually start doing stuff. That’s the flaw we’re dealing with right now.”

Cox, a Republican, said “it is up to the states to hold the line.”

Moore echoed that sentiment in an interview with The Associated Press.

“People are paying attention to how governors are moving, because I think governors have a unique way to move in this moment that other people just don’t,” he said.

Still, governors struck an optimistic tone in panels and interviews Wednesday. Stitt said the conference is “bigger than one dinner at the White House.” Moore predicted “this is going to be a very productive three days for the governors.”

“Here’s a Republican and Democrat governor from different states that literally agree on probably 80% of the things. And the things we disagree on we can have honest conversations on,” Stitt said while sitting beside Moore.

Tensions over the guest list for White House events underscored the uncertainty surrounding the week. During the back-and-forth, Trump feuded with Stitt and said Moore and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis were not invited because they “are not worthy of being there.”

Whether the bipartisan tone struck Wednesday evening can endure through the week — and beyond — remains an open question.

“We can have disagreements. In business, I always want people around me arguing with me and pushing me because that’s where the best ideas come from,” said Stitt. “We need to all have these exchange of ideas.”

Cappelletti and Sloan write for the Associated Press.

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.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed former Rep. Katie Porter, her protege and former Harvard Law School student, for California governor on Thursday.

“From the moment Katie set foot in my consumer law class, I knew that she would be a warrior for working families,” Warren said in a statement, citing Porter’s work on the foreclosure crisis as well as her questioning of corporate leaders and members of the Trump administration while wielding a white board in hearings when she represented an Orange County district in Congress.

“No one will stand up to Trump with more grit and determination than Katie,” Warren said. “But just as importantly, she will champion the kind of bold, progressive vision that California workers and families deserve.”

The endorsement comes on the cusp of the California Democratic Party’s convention in San Francisco this weekend, at a time that there is no true front-runner in the crowded race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Porter was initially viewed as having a potential edge in the race, but her prospects dimmed after videos emerged in October of the UC Irvine law professor scolding a reporter and swearing at an aide. She expressed remorse for her behavior.

Warren and Porter, who met more than two decades ago, have a long-standing relationship, to the point that the senator is the namesake of one of Porter’s children.

Porter endorsed Warren during the 2020 presidential campaign, which caused consternation among some California Democrats since then-Sen. Kamala Harris, who as state attorney general appointed Porter in 2012 to oversee a $25-billion mortgage settlement with the nation’s top banks, was also running for the White House.

Porter pointed to their shared values, such as fighting to protect consumer protection in Congress, as she responded to Warren’s endorsement.

“Senator Warren and I fought together in Congress to hold Big Banks and giant corporations that cheat the American people accountable,” Porter said. “From the classroom to the Capitol, we have made … fighting for working families our lifework. I’ll be a governor who is unbought, undeterred, and unwilling to continue the special interest status quo that has left too many Californians behind.”

Populist Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday formally kicked off the campaign to place a billionaires tax on the November ballot, framing the proposal as something larger than a debate about economic and tax policy as he appeared at a storied Los Angeles venue.

“The billionaire class no longer sees itself as part of American society. They see themselves as something separate and apart, like the oligarchs,” he told about 2,000 people at the Wiltern. The independent senator from Vermont compared them to kings, queens and czars of yore who believed they had a divine right to rule.

These billionaires “have created huge businesses with revolutionary technologies like AI and robotics that are literally transforming the face of the Earth,” he said, “and they are saying to you and to everybody in America, who the hell do you think you are telling us what we — the ruling elite, the millionaires, the billionaires, the richest people on Earth — who do you think you are telling us what we can do or not?”

California voters can show the billionaires “that we are still living in a democratic society where the people have some power,” Sanders said.

The senator is promoting a labor union’s proposal to impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California billionaires and trusts to backfill federal healthcare funding cuts by the Trump administration. Supporters of the contentious effort began gathering voter signatures to place the measure on the November ballot earlier this year. Sanders previously endorsed the proposal on social media and in public statements, and said he would seek to create a national version of the wealth tax.

But Wednesday’s event, a rally that lasted more than two hours and featured a lengthy performance by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, was framed as the formal launch of the campaign.

“Some people are free to choose between five-star restaurants, while others choose which dumpster will provide their next meal,” Morello said. “Some are free to choose between penthouse suites, while others are free to choose in which gutter to lay their heads.”

The guitarist’s comments came amid a set that included Rage’s protest song “Killing in the Name” and Bruce Springsteen’s social justice ballad “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

“The people who’ve changed the world in progressive, radical or even revolutionary ways,” Morello said, “did not have any more money, power, courage, intelligence or creativity than anyone here tonight.”

Milling about outside the Wiltern, a historic Art Deco venue, were workers being paid $10 per signature they gathered to help qualify the proposal for the November ballot. Inside, attendees heard from labor leaders, healthcare workers and others whose lives are being affected by federal funding cuts to healthcare.

Lisandro Preza said he was speaking not only only as a leader of Unite Here Local 11, which represents more than 32,000 hospitality workers, but also as someone who has AIDS and recently lost his medical coverage.

“For me, this fight is very personal. Without my health coverage, the thought of going to the emergency room is terrifying,” he said. “That injection I rely on costs nearly $10,000 a month. That shot keeps my disease under control. Without it, my health, my life, are at risk, and I’m not alone. Millions of Americans are facing the same after massive federal healthcare cuts are putting our hospitals on the brink of collapse.”

Sanders, who punctuated his remarks with historic statistics about wealth in the United States and anecdotes about billionaires’ purchases of multiple yachts and planes, tied the impending healthcare cuts to broader problems of growing income and wealth inequality; the consolidation of corporate ownership, including over media outlets; the decline in workers’ wages despite increased productivity; and the threats to the job market of artificial intelligence and automation. He said all these issues were grounded in the greed of the nation’s wealthiest residents.

“For these people, enough is never enough,” he said. “They are dedicated to accumulating more and more wealth and power … no matter how many low-income and working-class people will die because they no longer have health insurance.”

“Shame! Shame!” the audience screamed.

In addition to the wealth tax event, Sanders also plans to use his time in California to meet with tech leaders and speak on Friday at Stanford University about the effects of artificial intelligence and automation on American workers alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont).

Millions of California voters deeply support the Vermont senator, who won the state’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary over Joe Biden by eight points, and narrowly lost the 2016 Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton.

Sanders were the first presidential candidate Elle Parker, 30, ever cast a ballot for in a presidential election.

“He’s inspired me,” said the podcaster, who lives in East Hollywood. “I just love the way he uses his words to inspire us all.”

Supporters proposed the wealth tax to make up for the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that Trump signed last year. The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, rural hospitals could shutter, and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.

But the tax proposal is controversial, creating a notable schism among the state’s Democrats because of concerns that it will prompt an exodus of the state’s wealthy, who are the major source of revenue that buttresses California’s volatile budget.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is among the Democrats who oppose it, as is San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is among the dozen candidates running to replace the termed-out governor.

Mahan argued that the proposal had already hurt the state’s finances by driving economic investment and tax revenue out of California to tax-friendly environs.

“We need ideas that are sound, not just political proposals that sound good,” he said. “The answer is to close the federal tax loopholes the ultra-wealthy use to escape paying their fair share and invest those funds in paying down our debt, rebuilding our infrastructure, and protecting our most vulnerable families from skyrocketing healthcare premiums. The only winners in this proposal are the workers and taxpayers of Florida and Texas, who will take our jobs and benefit from the capital and tax revenue California is losing.”

A group affiliated with the governor plans to run digital ads opposing the proposal featuring Newsom along with other politicians on both sides of the aisle, as first reported by the New York Times.

The proposal has received more expected and unified backlash from the state’s conservatives and business leaders, who have launched ballot measures that could nullify part if not all of the proposed wealth tax. This is dependent on which, if any, of the measures qualify for the ballot — the number of votes each receives in November compared to the labor effort.

Silicon Valley billionaires, notably PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks — both major Trump supporters — announced they had already decamped California because of the effort.

Rob Lapsley, president of California Business Round Table, added that if the wealth tax is approved, it would destroy the state’s innovation economy, destabilize tax revenue and ultimately result in all Californians paying higher taxes.

“Let’s be clear — this $100-billion tax increase isn’t just a swipe at California’s most successful entrepreneurs; it’s a tax no one can afford because it weakens the entire economic ecosystem that supports jobs, investment, wages, and public services for everyday Californians,” he said. “When high earners leave, the cost doesn’t vanish — it lands on everyone through fewer jobs, less investment, and a weaker tax base — a recipe for new and higher taxes for everyone.”

Where are the statesmen when the state is under siege by the current head of state?

I’ve been mulling that question, hardly for the first time, but on three occasions just in the last few days.

On Monday, the federal holiday celebrating George Washington’s birth, former President George W. Bush posted an essay on the first U.S. president as part of a civic project commemorating the nation’s 250th year. Simply by hailing Washington for traits that Donald Trump utterly lacks — humility, integrity, dignity, self-restraint, willingness to forfeit power — the piece was widely read as a sneak attack on the current president. Bush never named Trump. He thus maintained his years-long, stupefying silence about the man who’s trashed him, his family, his party, his legacy PEPFAR program and, most of all, his country.

As Jonathan V. Last wrote for the right-of-center, anti-Trump Bulwark, if Bush’s words were a veiled attack on Trump, “the veil is so powerful that even light can’t escape it.”

Bush’s essay came two days after former President Obama finally responded to Trump’s week-old racist post that caricatured the first Black president and his wife as apes, thereby mainlining into the body politic one of the most toxic tropes against Black Americans. Asked about it in a podcast interview, Obama was, as usual, too cool. He called Trump’s behavior “deeply troubling” and said “there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

But, like Bush, he never named Trump. And it’s not even clear that Obama was referring to him. Certainly Trump never was one of those who, as Obama put it, “used to feel … some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

Then there was the third trigger for my musings about America’s M.I.A. statesmen.

On Friday — ahead of the holiday honoring Washington, who as the first president and military commander established the indispensable tradition of a nonpartisan military — Trump yet again violated Washington’s precedent. At Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, he essentially pushed uniformed young troops to violate the military codes enshrining Washington’s legacy of nonpartisanship. Trump treated them like props at a MAGA rally, lauding Republican candidates and officeholders on hand, mocking past presidents and urging the troops to vote Republican in November.

“You have to vote for us,” the commander in chief ordered them.

This is unprecedented, except by Trump himself. In October, he prodded sailors at Norfolk, Va., to boo “Barack Hussein Obama.” In September, he told commanders summoned from around the world that the fight is here at home, a “war from within” American cities. In June, also at Ft. Bragg, Trump damned Democrats and sold MAGA merch, over Army objections.

There’s a darn good reason for the wall that Washington built between the military and civilian government. As the Army Field Manual instructs troops: “Nonpartisanship assures the public that our Army will always serve the Constitution and our people loyally and responsively.” Not just Republicans, and not just Trump.

But as multiple officers told the website Military.com, “holding troops to account when goaded by the president, who is ultimately the boss, would be impossible.” Commanders themselves are mute because, after all, Trump is the commander in chief. They’ve watched as one Pentagon purge has followed another, starting with Trump firing the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top military officer. He chose instead an officer who, he often claims, once donned a MAGA cap and said, “I love you, sir. … I’ll kill for you, sir.”

It’s understandable that active-duty officers don’t make a stand. But what about America’s roughly 7,500 retired generals and admirals? As veteran ML Cavanaugh wrote in the Los Angeles Times after Trump’s Ft. Bragg performance last year, “The military profession’s nonpartisan ethic is at a breaking point.” Sure, individuals have spoken out. But as the military knows better than anyone, there’s strength in numbers.

It’s past time for a large, united front of veteran commanders to challenge Trump. Why wait for him to make good on his talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at the polls in this midterm election year, based on trumped-up conspiracies about Democrats’ fraud?

You know who could give the veteran and active commanders some political cover? The former commanders in chief.

Even more conspicuous than the brass by their silence and virtual invisibility in the face of Trump’s assaults — on the rule of law, civil rights, elections, foreign alliances and America’s global reputation — are the nation’s four living former presidents: Democrats Joe Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton, and Republican Bush.

It’s past time for the not-so-fab four to come together to publicly demand that Trump honor the oath of office that each man took, and to school the electorate on the many ways in which he’s dishonoring it — including by continuing to justify his refusal to peacefully transfer power in 2021. But each man is so observant of the norm that former presidents should not publicly criticize the incumbent one — again, a precedent from George Washington — that they self-muzzle.

This is Americans’ quandary in these Trump times: Presidents and high-ranking veterans who could speak truth to power are so constrained by their devotion to norms and traditions that they won’t confront a president who’s daily shattering the norms, traditions and laws that form the foundation of this democratic nation.

“This is the master alarm flashing for our democracy,” Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and veteran, said last week of Trump’s targeting of him and other critics.

That takes us back to my original question: Where are the statesmen to answer that alarm?

Answer: They’re following ordinary rules despite these extraordinary times. And they must stop.

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Microsoft founder Bill Gates has cancelled his keynote speech at India’s flagship AI summit just hours before he was due to take the stage on Thursday.

Gates, who has faced renewed scrutiny over his past ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, withdrew to “ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities”, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.

The five-day India AI Impact Summit 2026 was meant to showcase India’s ambitions in the booming sector, with the country expecting to attract more than $200bn in investment over the next two years.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had billed the summit as an opportunity for India to shape the future of AI, drawing high-profile attendees, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Instead, it has been dogged by controversy, from Gates’s abrupt exit to an incident in which an Indian university tried to pass off a Chinese-made robotic dog as its own innovation.

So, what exactly went wrong at India’s flagship AI gathering and why has it drawn such intense scrutiny?

Why Gates’s appearance became an issue

Bill Gates was due to deliver a short but high-profile speech highlighting the opportunities and risks posed by artificial intelligence.

However, in recent weeks, several opposition figures and commentators in Indian media weighed in after emails featuring his name were released in the Epstein files in late January, questioning whether his presence was appropriate.

Despite the discussion, all appeared to be proceeding as planned earlier in the week. On Tuesday, the Gates Foundation’s India office posted on X that Gates would attend the summit and “deliver his keynote as scheduled”.

Then, on Thursday, hours before the scheduled speech, it released a statement saying that “After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities, Mr Gates will not be delivering his keynote address.”

It added that Ankur Vora, president of the Gates Foundation’s Africa and India offices, would deliver the speech instead.

What are the alleged links between Epstein and Gates?

Bill Gates was named in documents related to Epstein released in January by the US Department of Justice.

In a draft email included among the documents, Epstein alleged Gates had engaged in extramarital affairs and sought his help in procuring drugs “to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls”.

It was unclear whether Epstein actually sent the email, and Gates denies any wrongdoing.

The Gates Foundation, in a statement to The New York Times, called the allegations “absolutely absurd and completely false”.

What has India’s government said?

Very little.

Despite criticism and calls from opposition figures to explain the invitation to Gates, the Indian government has not directly addressed the controversy that culminated in Gates’s withdrawal.

While unnamed government sources told local media he would not attend the summit, officials stopped short of explaining why.

Asked about Gates’s participation, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw declined to give a clear answer to reporters, while Modi made no reference to the issue in his public remarks.

Why are the Epstein files a sensitive subject for India?

The controversy surrounding Gates’s planned participation comes close on the heels of a series of disclosures in the Epstein files that have forced the Modi government on the backfoot.

In one email to an unidentified individual he referred to only as “Jabor Y”, Epstein referred to Modi’s historic visit – the first by an Indian prime minister – to Israel in July 2017.

Epstein wrote: “The Indian Prime minister modi took advice. and danced and sang in israel for the benefit of the US president. they had met a few weeks ago.. IT WORKED. !”

Modi’s visit to Israel – and his subsequent embrace of the Benjamin Netanyahu government, with military, intelligence and other ties strengthened over the past decade – had already drawn criticism from the opposition Congress party and others, who have accused him of reversing decades of Indian support for the Palestinian cause. India was the first non-Arab nation to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974, and did not establish full diplomatic relations with Israel until 1992.

But the Epstein email turbocharged the opposition criticism of Modi’s Israel policy – with questions now also asked about whether it was influenced by Washington.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs dismissed the Epstein email in an unusually sharply worded statement.

“Beyond the fact of the prime minister’s official visit to Israel in July 2017, the rest of the allusions in the email are little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

But the Epstein cloud continues to hover over India.

The files also show that India’s current oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, exchanged dozens of emails with Epstein after he joined Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.

In many of them, Puti appears to be taking Epstein’s help in getting US investors, such as LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, to visit India. In others, he appears to suggest that he had a fairly comfortable personal relationship with Epstein.

“Please let me know when you are back from your exotic island,” Puri wrote in December 2014, for instance, asking to set up a meeting in which Puri could give Epstein some books to “excite an interest in India”.

Puri, in a new conference, has claimed that he only met Epstein “three or four times”, but the Congress party has argued that the emails suggest a much closer relationship.

Gates’s work in India

The Gates Foundation has long been a key partner in India’s public health and development sectors, backing major vaccination drives, disease prevention campaigns and sanitation programmes.

At the same time, he has had vocal critics, including environmental activist Vandana Shiva, who has argued that Gates’s brand of “philanthro-imperialism” uses wealth to control global food systems.

Gates also faced heavy criticism after a 2024 podcast in which he said India was “a kind of laboratory to try things … that then, when you prove them out in India, you can take to other places” when discussing development programmes and the foundation’s work there.

‘Orion’ the robodog and other controversies

Beyond the fallout over Bill Gates’s cancelled keynote, the AI Impact Summit has faced several controversies.

One incident involved a robotic dog named “Orion”, which Galgotias University, based in the New Delhi suburban town of Greater Noida, presented as its own innovation.

Online users quickly identified the machine as a commercially available Chinese-made model, prompting organisers to ask the institution to vacate its stall.

The event also drew criticism on its opening day after facing logistical issues, including long queues and confusion over entry procedures, according to local media.

On Wednesday, large crowds were seen walking for miles after police cordoned off roads for VIP access.

Dhananjay Yadav, the CEO of a company exhibiting high-tech wearables, made headlines after he reported on social media that devices had been stolen from the company’s stand.

The Times of India later reported that two maintenance workers at the event had been arrested for allegedly stealing the wearables.

United States President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on European goods, made a bid to take over Greenland and demanded Europe foot the bill for its own defence. European leaders now fear the era of US-led security protections may be over. They’re accelerating efforts to reduce their military and economic dependence on the US.

At the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted his nation is not walking away from its allies. But few in the room were convinced. Instead, leader after leader took to the podium with the same message: Europe must stand on its own.

WASHINGTON — At Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the country, detainees go without medicine for serious health conditions, endure miscarriages while shackled and are dying in record numbers, a group of U.S. senators said.

In a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE senior official Todd Lyons, 22 Democratic lawmakers alleged that a “dramatic” surge in deaths in federal immigration custody is a “clear byproduct” of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and rapid expansion of detention.

“Each death in ICE custody is a tragedy and, based on the evidence available from agency records, 911 calls, and medical experts, many could have been prevented if not for this Administration’s decisions,” the senators wrote. The letter, released Tuesday, was led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and signed by California Sen. Alex Padilla.

At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, they asserted. That’s triple the previous year’s total and more deaths than were recorded during the entire Biden administration. ICE has reported seven deaths so far this year, as well as seven in December alone.

In the letter, the senators demanded detailed information about the agency’s death investigations, medical standards and oversight procedures.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to the allegations but has repeatedly defended its detention standards. In a statement, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” adding that detainees receive medical, dental and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arrival, full health assessments within 14 days and access to 24-hour emergency care.

The lawmakers’ warning comes amid mounting allegations that detention facility staff have withheld critical medication, delayed emergency responses and failed to provide adequate mental health care.

The agency came under flak recently after a Texas medical examiner ruled the January death of a Cuban immigrant a homicide after witnesses said they saw guards choking him to death.

In Calexico, Calif., Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, died after more than a month in detention, records show; the Honduran national’s family alleged that he repeatedly reported worsening stomach and chest pain but received only pain medication.

The recent rise in deaths coincides with a dramatic expansion of the detention system. Funding for ICE roughly tripled after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The agency has used the funds to increase detention capacity, holding more than 67,000 people nationwide after reaching a historic high of approximately 73,000, many of whom have no criminal history, the letter says.

Last week, the Trump administration announced $38.3 billion in partnerships with private prison corporations, including GEO Group and CoreCivic, to further scale up detention space. One planned facility near Phoenix will cost $70 million and span the equivalent of seven football fields, according to the lawmakers. ICE has also reopened facilities that were previously shuttered over chronic staffing shortages and medical concerns.

Concerns about conditions have extended to California. Last month, Padilla and Sen. Adam Schiff toured a for-profit detention center in California City after reports of unsafe facilities, inadequate medical care and limited access to attorneys.

“It’s the tragic result of a system failing to meet the most basic duty of care,” Padilla said in a statement, citing reports of mold in food, unclean drinking water and barriers to medical care.

A federal judge recently ordered the administration to provide adequate healthcare and improved access to counsel at the facility, concluding that detainees were likely to “suffer irreparable harm” without court intervention.

In their letter, the senators argued that the rapid growth of the detention system has outpaced oversight and accountability. They cited internal audits documenting violations of detention standards, allegations that ICE failed to pay third-party medical providers for months and analyses of 911 calls from large facilities showing repeated cardiac events, seizures and suicide attempts.

“Rather than accepting responsibility for deaths in government custody and providing detailed facts about the circumstances of each death,” the senators wrote, “the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to smear deceased individuals’ reputations by emphasizing details about their immigration status and their alleged wrongdoing.”

As detention capacity continues to expand, the climbing death tallies underscore the extent to which the Trump administration has overhauled the immigration detention system, and Democrats say the results are fraught.

The opposition party has grown more unified after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minnesota, which coincided with reports of record high detention deaths in December.

Discord culminated in a partial government shutdown that began Friday when Senate Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to reform at the agency.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney is investigating whether Southern California Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in last year’s devastating Eaton wildfire, which killed 19 people and left thousands of families homeless, the company said Wednesday.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts during an afternoon conference call that the company was cooperating with the District Attorney’s office. He said he didn’t know the magnitude of the investigation.

The company said in its annual 10-K report, which was released Wednesday, that it “could be subject to material fines, penalties, or restitution” if the investigation “determined that it failed to comply with applicable laws and regulations.”

“SCE is not aware of any basis for felony liability with regards to the Eaton Fire,” the report said. “Any fines and penalties incurred in connection with the Eaton Fire will not be recoverable from insurance, from the Wildfire Fund, or through electric rates.”

The District Attorney’s office declined to comment.

The investigation into the fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory of the fire’s cause is that a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized and sparked the fire.

Edison executives have said they didn’t remove the line because they believed it would be used in the future.

Company executives knew idle transmission lines could spark wildfires. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to a transmission line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric that was no longer in service.

The Times reported in December how Edison fell behind in maintenance of its transmission system before the fire.

Despite the dangerous Santa Ana wind conditions on Jan. 7, 2025, Edison decided not to shut down the transmission lines running through Eaton Canyon. Pizarro has said the winds that night didn’t meet the company’s threshold at the time for turning off the lines.

Pizarro told investors on the call Wednesday that he continued to believe that the company had acted as a “reasonable utility operator” before the deadly fire.

Under state law, if a utility is determined to have acted reasonably it can be reimbursed for all or most of the damages of the fire by a state wildfire fund.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said Iran would be “wise” to make a deal, as the United States surges further military assets to the Middle East.

Her statement came as part of a series of veiled threats from officials under US President Donald Trump, a day after US and Iranian representatives held a second round of indirect talks this month.

The two sides appeared to offer differing accounts of the talks. Iranian officials said both parties had agreed on “guiding principles”, but US Vice President JD Vance said Iran had yet to respond to all of Washington’s “red lines”.

During a news conference on Wednesday, Leavitt articulated the Trump administration’s position that Iran needs to accede to US demands.

“Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump and with his administration,” she told reporters.

Trump, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military action in response to its crackdown on protests last month, also referenced a possible escalation in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday.

The post warned Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom against a deal agreed to last year that would see London cede control of the Chagos Islands, strategically located in the centre of the Indian Ocean.

The deal nevertheless allows the UK and US to continue to lease and operate a joint airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

“Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” Trump wrote.

“An attack that would potentially be made on the United Kingdom, as well as other friendly Countries.”

Meanwhile, speaking from the sidelines of an International Energy Agency (IAE) meeting in Paris, France, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned that Washington would deter Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons “one way or the other”.

“They’ve been very clear about what they would do with nuclear weapons. It’s entirely unacceptable,” Wright said.

Military buildup

The threats come as the US appears to be surging more military assets to the Middle East, raising the spectre of escalation.

As of Wednesday, the Pentagon had one aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, nine destroyers and three littoral combat ships in the region, with an anonymous US official telling the AFP news agency more were on the way.

That includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, which is en route from the Atlantic Ocean.

The US has also sent a large fleet of aircraft to the Middle East, according to open-source intelligence accounts on X and flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

That deployment appears to include F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, F-15 and F-16 warplanes, and the KC-135 aerial refuelling aircraft that are needed to sustain their operations, according to the trackers.

The US had previously surged aircraft and naval vessels to the region ahead of strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in June of last year, which came at the end of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

Iran does ‘not want war’

For his part, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday that the country did “not want war” but would not give in to US demands.

“From the day I took office, I have believed that war must be set aside. But if they are going to try to impose their will on us, humiliate us and demand that we bow our heads at any cost, should we accept that?” he asked.

Pezeshkian spoke shortly after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched exercises on Monday in the Strait of Hormuz, in a show of military might.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has previously warned that any new US strikes would lead to wider regional escalation.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday that its top diplomat Abbas Araghchi had spoken by phone with the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi.

Grossi “stressed the Islamic Republic of Iran’s focus on drafting an initial and coherent framework to advance future talks” on its nuclear programme, according to the statement.

Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which saw Iran curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, during his first term in 2018. In the years since, he has imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign that includes new sanctions.

Efforts to strike a new nuclear deal have repeatedly stalled since Trump’s first term.

Tehran has called for the latest round of talks to focus solely on its nuclear programme, which it maintains is used only for civilian purposes. It has also indicated it is willing to make concessions in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Washington has pushed for wider demands that are considered non-starters for Iran, including limits on its ballistic missile programme, although its demands during the latest round of talks were not immediately clear.