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Tag: Legislation

  • Alaska governor vetoes bill requiring insurance cover a year of birth control at a time

    Alaska governor vetoes bill requiring insurance cover a year of birth control at a time

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    JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have forced insurance companies to cover up to a year’s supply of birth control at a time, a measure that supporters said was especially important in providing access in rural areas.

    In an emailed statement, Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner said the Republican governor vetoed the bill because “contraceptives are widely available, and compelling insurance companies to provide mandatory coverage for a year is bad policy.”

    The measure overwhelmingly passed the state Legislature this year: 29-11 in the Republican-controlled House and 16-3 in the Senate, which has bipartisan leadership. It was not opposed by insurance companies, supporters noted.

    “Governor Dunleavy’s veto of HB 17, after eight years of tireless effort, overwhelming community support, and positive collaboration with the insurance companies, is deeply disappointing,” said Democratic Rep. Ashley Carrick, the bill’s sponsor. “There is simply no justifiable reason to veto a bill that would ensure every person in Alaska, no matter where they live, has access to essential medication, like birth control.”

    Supporters of the bill said the veto would keep barriers in place that make it difficult to access birth control in much of the state, including villages only accessible by plane, and for Alaska patients on Medicaid, which limits the supply of birth control pills to one month at a time.

    “Those who live outside of our urban centers — either year-round or seasonally — deserve the same access to birth control as those who live near a pharmacy,” Rose O’Hara-Jolley, Alaska state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said in a news release.

    Supporters also said improving access to birth control would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

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  • California lawmakers approve legislation to ban deepfakes, protect workers and regulate AI

    California lawmakers approve legislation to ban deepfakes, protect workers and regulate AI

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers approved a host of proposals this week aiming to regulate the artificial intelligence industry, combat deepfakes and protect workers from exploitation by the rapidly evolving technology.

    The California Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, is voting on hundreds of bills during its final week of the session to send to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Their deadline is Saturday.

    The Democratic governor has until Sept. 30 to sign the proposals, veto them or let them become law without his signature. Newsom signaled in July he will sign a proposal to crack down on election deepfakes but has not weighed in other legislation.

    He warned earlier this summer that overregulation could hurt the homegrown industry. In recent years, he often has cited the state’s budget troubles when rejecting legislation that he would otherwise support.

    Here is a look at some of the AI bills lawmakers approved this year.

    Citing concerns over how AI tools are increasingly being used to trick voters and generate deepfake pornography of minors, California lawmakers approved several bills this week to crack down on the practice.

    Lawmakers approved legislation to ban deepfakes related to elections and require large social media platforms to remove the deceptive material 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. Campaigns also would be required to publicly disclose if they’re running ads with materials altered by AI.

    A pair of proposals would make it illegal to use AI tools to create images and videos of child sexual abuse. Current law does not allow district attorneys to go after people who possess or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse images if they cannot prove the materials are depicting a real person.

    Tech companies and social media platforms would be required to provide AI detection tools to users under another proposal.

    California could become the first state in the nation to set sweeping safety measures on large AI models.

    The legislation sent by lawmakers to the governor’s desk requires developers to start disclosing what data they use to train their models. The efforts aim to shed more light into how AI models work and prevent future catastrophic disasters.

    Another measure would require the state to set safety protocols preventing risks and algorithmic discrimination before agencies could enter any contract involving AI models used to define decisions.

    Inspired by the months-long Hollywood actors strike last year, lawmakers approved a proposal to protect workers, including voice actors and audiobook performers, from being replaced by their AI-generated clones. The measure mirrors language in the contract the SAG-AFTRA made with studios last December.

    State and local agencies would be banned from using AI to replace workers at call centers under one of the proposals.

    California also may create penalties for digitally cloning dead people without consent of their estates.

    As corporations increasingly weave AI into Americans’ daily lives, state lawmakers also passed several bills to increase AI literacy.

    One proposal would require a state working group to consider incorporating AI skills into math, science, history and social science curriculums. Another would develop guideline on how schools could use AI in the classrooms.

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  • Trump wants to make the GOP a ‘leader’ on IVF. Republicans’ actions make that a tough sell

    Trump wants to make the GOP a ‘leader’ on IVF. Republicans’ actions make that a tough sell

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    Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vow to promote in vitro fertilization by forcing health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments is at odds with the actions of much of his own party.Related video above: Former President Donald Trump holds town hall in battleground state of WisconsinYet his surprising announcement Thursday reveals the former president’s realization that GOP stances on abortion and reproductive rights could be huge liabilities for his chances of returning to the White House. Trump has quickly tried to reframe the narrative around those issues after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race.Even before he made his coverage proposal, Trump had been promoting the idea that the Republican Party is a “leader” on IVF. That characterization is rejected by Democrats, who have seized on the common but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.It’s not just political partisans.”Republicans are not leaders on IVF,” said Katie Watson, a medical ethics professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Some of them have posed a threat to IVF, and they’re currently trying to figure out how to be anti-abortion and pro-IVF, and there are internal inconsistencies and struggles there. It appears that the Republicans are careening to remedy the political damage that resulted from their own choices.”Trump’s proposal, which he announced without providing details, illustrates how reproductive rights have become central in this year’s presidential race. It’s also the latest example of the former president attempting to appear moderate on the issue, despite repeatedly boasting about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.Even as the Republican Party has attempted to create a national narrative that it’s receptive of in vitro fertilization, many Republicans have been left grappling with the innate tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.The messaging efforts also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.Ahead of the Republican National Convention in July, the Republican Party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all American citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF but does not explain how the party plans to do so while also encouraging fetal personhood laws that would render the treatment illegal.In May, the Texas Republican Party’s platform committee narrowly rejected a proposal to classify embryos created through IVF as “human beings” and designate their destruction as “homicide.” A bill aimed at expanding IVF access, meanwhile, sailed through in California on Thursday, despite opposition from nearly all Republican lawmakers.Video below: A conversation with Elizabeth Carr, the first person born via IVF in the USSen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois who shared her own IVF journey on the Senate floor and co-sponsored a bill to protect the treatment, slammed Republicans for saying they support IVF in campaigning but not backing that up with their votes.She added that Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump “paved the way” for the fall of Roe v. Wade and the impact on reproductive rights, including access to IVF.”Republicans publicly claiming to be in support of IVF is absurd,” she told the AP.The issue burst onto the national political landscape in February after the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court granted frozen embryos the legal rights of children. That decision forced clinics in Alabama to pause their IVF treatments, devastating patients struggling to be parents. Soon after, and facing a national backlash, Alabama’s Republican governor signed legislation shielding doctors from legal liability so IVF procedures could continue.In the weeks after the Alabama ruling, congressional Republicans scrambled to address IVF. Many rushed to create a unified message of support despite histories of voting in favor of fetal personhood laws and arguing that life begins at conception, the same concept that upheld the Alabama decision.”The reality is you cannot protect IVF and champion fetal personhood — they are fundamentally incompatible — and the American people won’t be fooled by another one of Donald Trump’s lies,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the Right to IVF bill, told The Associated Press.Republican Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz introduced a bill this year to prohibit states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban the procedure. But that came after Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have made IVF a federal right. All Republicans except Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure.”It’s not easy for a Republican lawmaker to say they’re for IVF and actually mean it in a straightforward, tangible way without angering a lot of constituents,” said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.An AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that more than 6 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting access to IVF, including more than half of Republicans, and only about 1 in 10 are opposed. But many anti-abortion groups and some lawmakers oppose the treatment, including several members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who have objected to expanding IVF access for veterans.At least 23 bills aiming to establish fetal personhood have been introduced in 13 states so far this legislative session, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. This type of legislation, all proposed by Republican lawmakers, is based on the idea that life begins at fertilization and could imperil fertility treatments that involve the storage, transportation and destruction of embryos.Still, many GOP lawmakers have been vocal in their support for IVF. The issue is personal for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who shared his daughter’s IVF experience. But even though Johnson said he fully supports IVF, he was not completely sold on Trump’s proposal due to its possible price tag. Other Republican lawmakers who responded publicly after Trump’s announcement expressed similar concerns. “I would need to see cost estimates, impacts on insurance rates, etc., before making any decisions or commitments to support any proposal,” Johnson said.Republican lawmakers have historically opposed federal funding to cover health care, including by repeatedly attempting to undo the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, and may be unlikely to support similar plans, including for IVF.Lack of health insurance coverage for fertility treatments has been a major barrier for those wanting to start or continue treatments. While coverage has been expanding in recent years, less than half of employers with 500 or more workers in the U.S. offered IVF coverage in 2023, according to the benefits consultant Mercer.Republican Rep. Michelle Steel of California faced criticism for supporting a GOP bill aiming to grant constitutional protection to embryos at “the moment of fertilization” after she publicly shared her own experience with IVF. Steel rescinded her co-sponsorship of the measure in March, two days after winning her primary, declaring she does not support federal restrictions on IVF.In a statement to the AP, she said Congress “must pass policies to support and expand access to IVF treatments.”Such flip-flopping from Republicans only provides fodder for Democrats, who say Trump and his party can’t be trusted to protect reproductive rights.Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, warned voters to “watch what they do, not what they say.” ___Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

    CHICAGO —

    Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s vow to promote in vitro fertilization by forcing health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the treatments is at odds with the actions of much of his own party.

    Related video above: Former President Donald Trump holds town hall in battleground state of Wisconsin

    Yet his surprising announcement Thursday reveals the former president’s realization that GOP stances on abortion and reproductive rights could be huge liabilities for his chances of returning to the White House. Trump has quickly tried to reframe the narrative around those issues after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race.

    Even before he made his coverage proposal, Trump had been promoting the idea that the Republican Party is a “leader” on IVF. That characterization is rejected by Democrats, who have seized on the common but expensive fertility treatment as another dimension of reproductive rights threatened by Republicans and a second Trump presidency.

    It’s not just political partisans.

    “Republicans are not leaders on IVF,” said Katie Watson, a medical ethics professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Some of them have posed a threat to IVF, and they’re currently trying to figure out how to be anti-abortion and pro-IVF, and there are internal inconsistencies and struggles there. It appears that the Republicans are careening to remedy the political damage that resulted from their own choices.”

    Trump’s proposal, which he announced without providing details, illustrates how reproductive rights have become central in this year’s presidential race. It’s also the latest example of the former president attempting to appear moderate on the issue, despite repeatedly boasting about appointing the three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

    Even as the Republican Party has attempted to create a national narrative that it’s receptive of in vitro fertilization, many Republicans have been left grappling with the innate tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.

    The messaging efforts also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.

    Ahead of the Republican National Convention in July, the Republican Party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all American citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF but does not explain how the party plans to do so while also encouraging fetal personhood laws that would render the treatment illegal.

    In May, the Texas Republican Party’s platform committee narrowly rejected a proposal to classify embryos created through IVF as “human beings” and designate their destruction as “homicide.” A bill aimed at expanding IVF access, meanwhile, sailed through in California on Thursday, despite opposition from nearly all Republican lawmakers.

    Video below: A conversation with Elizabeth Carr, the first person born via IVF in the US

    Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois who shared her own IVF journey on the Senate floor and co-sponsored a bill to protect the treatment, slammed Republicans for saying they support IVF in campaigning but not backing that up with their votes.

    She added that Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump “paved the way” for the fall of Roe v. Wade and the impact on reproductive rights, including access to IVF.

    “Republicans publicly claiming to be in support of IVF is absurd,” she told the AP.

    The issue burst onto the national political landscape in February after the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court granted frozen embryos the legal rights of children. That decision forced clinics in Alabama to pause their IVF treatments, devastating patients struggling to be parents. Soon after, and facing a national backlash, Alabama’s Republican governor signed legislation shielding doctors from legal liability so IVF procedures could continue.

    In the weeks after the Alabama ruling, congressional Republicans scrambled to address IVF. Many rushed to create a unified message of support despite histories of voting in favor of fetal personhood laws and arguing that life begins at conception, the same concept that upheld the Alabama decision.

    “The reality is you cannot protect IVF and champion fetal personhood — they are fundamentally incompatible — and the American people won’t be fooled by another one of Donald Trump’s lies,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat and co-sponsor of the Right to IVF bill, told The Associated Press.

    Republican Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz introduced a bill this year to prohibit states from receiving Medicaid funding if they ban the procedure. But that came after Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would have made IVF a federal right. All Republicans except Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted against the measure.

    “It’s not easy for a Republican lawmaker to say they’re for IVF and actually mean it in a straightforward, tangible way without angering a lot of constituents,” said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

    An AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that more than 6 in 10 U.S. adults support protecting access to IVF, including more than half of Republicans, and only about 1 in 10 are opposed. But many anti-abortion groups and some lawmakers oppose the treatment, including several members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who have objected to expanding IVF access for veterans.

    At least 23 bills aiming to establish fetal personhood have been introduced in 13 states so far this legislative session, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

    This type of legislation, all proposed by Republican lawmakers, is based on the idea that life begins at fertilization and could imperil fertility treatments that involve the storage, transportation and destruction of embryos.

    Still, many GOP lawmakers have been vocal in their support for IVF. The issue is personal for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who shared his daughter’s IVF experience. But even though Johnson said he fully supports IVF, he was not completely sold on Trump’s proposal due to its possible price tag. Other Republican lawmakers who responded publicly after Trump’s announcement expressed similar concerns.

    “I would need to see cost estimates, impacts on insurance rates, etc., before making any decisions or commitments to support any proposal,” Johnson said.

    Republican lawmakers have historically opposed federal funding to cover health care, including by repeatedly attempting to undo the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, and may be unlikely to support similar plans, including for IVF.

    Lack of health insurance coverage for fertility treatments has been a major barrier for those wanting to start or continue treatments. While coverage has been expanding in recent years, less than half of employers with 500 or more workers in the U.S. offered IVF coverage in 2023, according to the benefits consultant Mercer.

    Republican Rep. Michelle Steel of California faced criticism for supporting a GOP bill aiming to grant constitutional protection to embryos at “the moment of fertilization” after she publicly shared her own experience with IVF. Steel rescinded her co-sponsorship of the measure in March, two days after winning her primary, declaring she does not support federal restrictions on IVF.

    In a statement to the AP, she said Congress “must pass policies to support and expand access to IVF treatments.”

    Such flip-flopping from Republicans only provides fodder for Democrats, who say Trump and his party can’t be trusted to protect reproductive rights.

    Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, warned voters to “watch what they do, not what they say.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Should California create new safety rules for AI? The debate dividing lawmakers and tech

    Should California create new safety rules for AI? The debate dividing lawmakers and tech

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    One of the biggest debates California lawmakers face in their final week of the legislative session is whether to put new safety rules in place for companies developing artificial intelligence.SB 1047 would require California companies that are spending at least $100 million developing AI models to do safety testing to prevent major risks or harms. Experts have warned without guardrails, the models could eventually help bad actors create a biological weapon or carry out cyber-attacks to shut down the electric grid or melt down the banking system. “While the exact timing of these threats is uncertain, some of these threats could materialize in as little as a year,” Dan Hendrycks, an AI researcher, told reporters in a virtual news conference on Monday. “Product safety testing is a standard for many industries including manufacturers of cars, airplanes, prescription drugs and nuclear power plants.” The bill has frustrated some in the industry who worry the regulation could slow down the growing industry’s progress. That includes the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI. The company has warned if the bill passes, it may be forced to move operations out of California. “I understand this is hardball politics, I’m used to that,” said State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who wrote the proposal. “Anytime we try to pass laws in the public interest, industry will threaten to move.” The issue has divided Democrats. A group of California members in the U.S. House of Representatives, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month, urging him to reject the bill if it lands on his desk. “In short, we are very concerned about the effect this legislation could have on the innovation economy of California without any clear benefit for the public,” the group wrote. “High tech innovation is the economic engine that drives California’s prosperity.””Congress has been paralyzed when it comes to technology policy,” Wiener told reporters in response, noting Congress has not passed major tech regulations since the 1990s aside from the TikTok ban. “I don’t say this to bash Congress, but Congress has proven it’s not capable of passing strong technology policy.”Republican state lawmakers are also divided over the measure. Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, told KCRA 3 he plans on voting for the bill. “How do you create public trust when the guys who are controlling it are stonewalling regulation?” he said. But others have said they have issues with the bill.”There are some things government has a role to play in regulating and managing,” said Assemblyman Josh Hoover, R-Folsom. “But my concerns with this piece of legislation is that it just goes too far in that direction before we know what we’re dealing with.”The issue has also divided the tech industry overall. Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun said in part in a post on X, “regulating would have apocalyptic consequences on the AI ecosystem.” Elon Musk on Monday night threw his support behind the bill. “This is a tough call and will make some people upset, but, all things considered, I think California should probably pass the SB 1047 AI safety bill,” he posted on X. “For over 20 years, I have been an advocate for AI regulation, just as we regulate any product/technology that is a potential risk to the public.”Gov. Gavin Newsom has not publicly stated his position on the bill. “We dominate in this space, and I want to continue to dominate in this space, I don’t want to cede in this space to other states or other countries,” he said at an AI Summit he convened in May. “If we over-regulate, if we over-indulge, if we chase a shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position. But at the same time, we have an obligation to lead.”Lawmakers in the State Assembly are expected to vote on the bill later this week. If approved, the vote would need to go back to the Senate for approval of the changes made to the bill while it was in the Assembly. Lawmakers have until Saturday at midnight to pass new laws for the year. The governor has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto them.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    One of the biggest debates California lawmakers face in their final week of the legislative session is whether to put new safety rules in place for companies developing artificial intelligence.

    SB 1047 would require California companies that are spending at least $100 million developing AI models to do safety testing to prevent major risks or harms. Experts have warned without guardrails, the models could eventually help bad actors create a biological weapon or carry out cyber-attacks to shut down the electric grid or melt down the banking system.

    “While the exact timing of these threats is uncertain, some of these threats could materialize in as little as a year,” Dan Hendrycks, an AI researcher, told reporters in a virtual news conference on Monday. “Product safety testing is a standard for many industries including manufacturers of cars, airplanes, prescription drugs and nuclear power plants.”

    The bill has frustrated some in the industry who worry the regulation could slow down the growing industry’s progress. That includes the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI. The company has warned if the bill passes, it may be forced to move operations out of California.

    “I understand this is hardball politics, I’m used to that,” said State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who wrote the proposal. “Anytime we try to pass laws in the public interest, industry will threaten to move.”

    The issue has divided Democrats. A group of California members in the U.S. House of Representatives, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month, urging him to reject the bill if it lands on his desk.

    “In short, we are very concerned about the effect this legislation could have on the innovation economy of California without any clear benefit for the public,” the group wrote. “High tech innovation is the economic engine that drives California’s prosperity.”

    “Congress has been paralyzed when it comes to technology policy,” Wiener told reporters in response, noting Congress has not passed major tech regulations since the 1990s aside from the TikTok ban. “I don’t say this to bash Congress, but Congress has proven it’s not capable of passing strong technology policy.”

    Republican state lawmakers are also divided over the measure.

    Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, told KCRA 3 he plans on voting for the bill. “How do you create public trust when the guys who are controlling it are stonewalling regulation?” he said.

    But others have said they have issues with the bill.

    “There are some things government has a role to play in regulating and managing,” said Assemblyman Josh Hoover, R-Folsom. “But my concerns with this piece of legislation is that it just goes too far in that direction before we know what we’re dealing with.”

    The issue has also divided the tech industry overall.

    Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, Yann LeCun said in part in a post on X, “regulating [research and development] would have apocalyptic consequences on the AI ecosystem.”

    Elon Musk on Monday night threw his support behind the bill.

    “This is a tough call and will make some people upset, but, all things considered, I think California should probably pass the SB 1047 AI safety bill,” he posted on X. “For over 20 years, I have been an advocate for AI regulation, just as we regulate any product/technology that is a potential risk to the public.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom has not publicly stated his position on the bill.

    “We dominate in this space, and I want to continue to dominate in this space, I don’t want to cede in this space to other states or other countries,” he said at an AI Summit he convened in May. “If we over-regulate, if we over-indulge, if we chase a shiny object, we could put ourselves in a perilous position. But at the same time, we have an obligation to lead.”

    Lawmakers in the State Assembly are expected to vote on the bill later this week. If approved, the vote would need to go back to the Senate for approval of the changes made to the bill while it was in the Assembly. Lawmakers have until Saturday at midnight to pass new laws for the year. The governor has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto them.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter

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  • ‘We were expendable’: Downwinders from world’s 1st atomic test are on a mission to tell their story

    ‘We were expendable’: Downwinders from world’s 1st atomic test are on a mission to tell their story

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    LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — It was the summer of 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people as waves of destructive energy obliterated two cites. It was a decisive move that helped bring about the end of World War II, but survivors and the generations that followed were left to grapple with sickness from radiation exposure.

    At the time, U.S. President Harry Truman called it “the greatest scientific gamble in history,” saying the rain of ruin from the air would usher in a new concept of force and power. What he didn’t mention was that the federal government had already tested this new force on U.S. soil.

    Just weeks earlier in southern New Mexico, the early morning sky erupted with an incredible flash of light. Windows rattled hundreds of miles away and a trail of fallout stretched to the East Coast.

    Ash from the Trinity Test rained down for days. Children played in it, thinking it was snow. It covered fresh laundry that was hanging out to dry. It contaminated crops, singed livestock and found its way into cisterns used for drinking water.

    The story of New Mexico’s downwinders — the survivors of the world’s first atomic blast and those who helped mine the uranium needed for the nation’s arsenal — is little known. But that’s changing as the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” racks up awards from film festivals across the United States.

    It’s now screening in the northern New Mexico community of Los Alamos as part of the Oppenheimer Film Festival. It marks a rare chance for the once secret city that has long celebrated the scientific discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer — the father of the atomic bomb — to contemplate another more painful piece of the nation’s nuclear legacy.

    The film, directed and produced by Lois Lipman, highlights the displacement of Hispanic ranching families when the Manhattan Project took over the Pajarito Plateau in the early 1940s, the lives forever altered in the Tularosa Basin where the bomb was detonated and the Native American miners who were never warned about the health risks of working in the uranium industry.

    Their heart-wrenching stories woven together with the testimony of professors and doctors spurred tears in Los Alamos, as they have in Austin, Texas, Annapolis, Maryland, and every other city where the film has been screened.

    Andi Kron, a long-time Los Alamos resident, was in awe of the cinematography but also horrified as she learned more.

    “Just unbelievable,” she said, noting that even people who have been involved in studying different aspects of the Trinity Test decades later remain unaware of the downwinders’ plight.

    Lipman and others hope to distribute the documentary more widely as part of an awareness campaign as downwinders push for the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to be reauthorized and expanded to include more people who have been exposed by nuclear weapons work carried out by the federal government.

    Over the past 10 years, Lipman has followed Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium co-founder Tina Cordova as she has appeared before Congress, held countless town halls and shared meals and prayers with community members.

    Lipman expressed her frustrations during the premiere in Los Alamos, noting that despite testimony about the injustices that followed the Trinity Test, the federal government has yet to acknowledge its failures in recognizing the damage that was done nearly 80 years ago.

    As the film notes, there were about a half-million people — mostly Hispanics and Native Americans — living within a 150-mile (241.4-kilometer) radius of the blast. The area was neither remote nor unpopulated, despite government claims that no lived there and no one was harmed.

    In the film, Cordova — a cancer survivor herself — tells community members that they will not be martyrs anymore. Her family is among many from Tularosa and Carrizozo who have had mothers, fathers, siblings and children die from cancer.

    “They counted on us to be unsophisticated, uneducated and unable to speak up for ourselves. We’re not those people any more,” Cordova said. “I’m not that person. You’re not those people.”

    The U.S. Senate passed a bill earlier this year that would finally recognize downwinders in New Mexico and in several other states where nuclear defense work has resulted in contamination and exposure. However, the bipartisan measure stalled in the U.S. House over concerns by some Republican lawmakers about cost.

    Cordova and others turned out Wednesday in Las Cruces to demonstrate as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson visited New Mexico to campaign for Republican congressional candidate Yvette Herrell. The downwinders have vowed to make it a campaign issue in the must-win district as well as in the dozens of other Republican districts around the U.S. that would benefit from an expansion of RECA.

    At the film festival, Cordova told the audience that people for too long have been living separate lives, a poignant statement particularly for Los Alamos where science can sometimes be compartmentalized as experts work on solving specific aspects of bigger problems.

    “There are no boundaries. We are not separate people. We all live in this state together and I would like to think that because of that we consider each other to be neighbors, friends, we’re relatives with some of you,” she said, thanking them for being there to hear another side of the story.

    “We should be standing together for what is right,” she said, prompting applause.

    The audience included workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, county officials and a state senator.

    Bernice Gutierrez was born in Carrizozo several days before the bomb was detonated. She had no words to describe how important she believes it is for the people in Los Alamos to learn about the downwinders.

    “I think a lot of people were surprised,” she said after the first screening. “They don’t know the history.”

    The Trinity Site was on a short list for possible locations for testing the bomb. The others included two sites in California, one in Texas and another in Colorado. The flat, arid nature of the White Sands Missile Range won out, with scientists initially thinking that predictable winds would limit the spread of radiation.

    That ended up not being the case as erratic weather often accompanies New Mexico’s summer rainy season. Aside from shifting winds, rain the night after meant fresh fallout likely found its way into the rainwater that was captured by residents’ cisterns, according to a 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also noted that another path of exposure involved dairy cows and goats, which residents depended on for sustenance.

    New modeling used by a team of researchers led by Princeton University showed in 2023 that nuclear explosions carried out in New Mexico and Nevada between 1945 and 1962 led to widespread radioactive contamination. The team reported that the world’s first atomic detonation made a significant contribution to exposure in New Mexico and eventually reached 46 states, as well as Canada and Mexico.

    Cordova said the federal government didn’t warn residents before or after the detonation and continued for decades to minimize it because “we didn’t matter, we were expendable.”

    “There’s no excuse for it,” she said.

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  • Missourians Sue to Block Sports Betting Measure from November Ballot

    Missourians Sue to Block Sports Betting Measure from November Ballot

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    Two Missouri citizens are suing to remove a proposed constitutional amendment legalizing sports betting on the state’s 5 November ballot. Political consultants Blake Lawrence and Jacqueline Wood have accused Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft of incorrectly conducting the certification procedure whether the petition had met the necessary criteria for inclusion on the ballot.

    The Measure May Not Have Amassed Enough Votes

    Local news outlet The St. Louis Post Dispatch revealed that the suit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court, claims Ashcroft used the new boundaries for congressional districts, created after the 2020 Census, to determine where petition signers lived but then used the old boundaries to calculate the number of signatures necessary in various districts.

    According to the complaint, had the correct procedure been followed, the 1st Congressional District of St. Louis and the 5th Congressional District of Kansas City in Missouri would have missed the threshold of required signatures to forward this new amendment. The lawsuit further asserts that most signatures verified within the congressional districts were legally invalid, further affecting the proposal’s eligibility.

    The threshold for a petition to make the ballot in Missouri requires signatures from 8% of the legal voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts following the most recent gubernatorial election. The lawsuit accuses Ashcroft of not using a uniform statewide figure to calculate the signature requirements. Instead, he used varying thresholds based on previous district boundaries.

    Legalized Wagering Could Bring Significant Benefits

    The proposed amendment would set a sports-betting tax rate of 10% and allow Missouri’s professional sports franchises and the state’s 13 casinos to operate their retail and online sports-betting platforms. Proponents say the move would generate millions of dollars for the state and would merely legalize something many residents already do, either illegally or via out-of-state operators.

    Team mascots for the Royals, Blues, and Cardinals helped deliver the boxes with the signatures, highlighting sports teams’ robust support for legalized sports betting. Bill DeWitt III, president of the St. Louis Cardinals and a key backer of the sports betting amendment, called the lawsuit’s merit into question, noting that the petition had received significant support from all across the state.

    The lawsuit has been assigned to Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker, who will issue a verdict on whether the sports betting measure will remain on the ballot or be struck down. This case may have sweeping implications for Missouri’s gaming landscape and the broader debate around the legalization of sports betting in the state.

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    Deyan Dimitrov

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  • Google agreed to pay millions for California news. Journalists call it a bad deal

    Google agreed to pay millions for California news. Journalists call it a bad deal

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Google will soon give California millions of dollars to help pay for local journalism jobs in a first-in-the-nation deal, but journalists and other media industry experts are calling it a disappointing agreement that mostly benefits the tech giant.

    The agreement, which was hashed out behind closed doors and announced this week, will direct tens of millions of public and private dollars to keep local news organizations afloat. Critics say it’s a textbook political maneuver by tech giants to avoid a fee under what could have been groundbreaking legislation. California lawmakers agreed to kill a bill requiring tech to support news outlets they profit from in exchange for Google’s financial commitment.

    By shelving the bill, the state effectively gave up on an avenue that could have required Google and social media platforms to make ongoing payments to publishers for linking news content, said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. California also left behind a much bigger amount of funding that could have been secured under the legislation, he said.

    “Google got off easy,” Pickard said.

    Google said the deal will help both journalism and the artificial intelligence sector in California.

    “This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer for Google’s parent company Alphabet, said in a statement.

    State governments across the U.S. have been working to help boost struggling news organizations. The U.S. newspaper industry has been in a long decline, with traditional business models collapsing and advertising revenues drying up in the digital era.

    As news organizations move from primarily print to mostly digital, they have increasingly relied on Google and Facebook to distribute its content. While publishers saw their advertising revenues nosedive significantly in the last few decades, Google’s search engine has become the hub of a digital advertisement empire that generates more than $200 billion annually.

    The Los Angeles Times was losing up to $40 million a year, the newspaper’s owner said in justifying a layoff of more than 100 people earlier this year.

    More than 2,500 newspapers have closed since 2005, and about 200 counties across the U.S. do not have any local news outlets, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

    California and New Mexico are funding local news fellowship programs. New York this year became the first state to offer a tax credit program for news outlets to hire and retain journalists. Illinois is considering a bill similar to the one that died in California.

    Here’s a closer look into the deal California made with Google this week:

    The deal, totaling $250 million, will provide money to two efforts: funding for journalism initiatives and a new AI research program. The agreement only guarantees funding for a period of five years.

    Roughly $110 million will come from Google and $70 million from the state budget to boost journalism jobs. The fund will be managed by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Google will also kick in $70 million to fund the AI research program, which would build tools to help solve “real world problems,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who brokered the deal.

    The deal is not a tax, which is a stark departure from a bill Wicks authored that would have imposed a “link tax” requiring companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies for linking to their content. The bill was modelled after a policy passed in Canada that requires Google to pay roughly $74 million per year to fund journalism.

    Tech companies spent the last two years fighting Wicks’ bill, launching expensive opposition campaigns and running ads attacking the legislation. Google threatened in April to temporarily block news websites from some California users’ search results. The bill had continued to advance with bipartisan support — until this week.

    Wicks told The Associated Press on Thursday that she saw no path forward for her bill and that the funding secured through the deal “is better than zero.”

    “This represents politics is the art of the possible,” she said.

    Industry experts see the deal as a playbook move Google has used across the world to avoid regulations.

    “Google cannot exit from news because they need it,” said Anya Schiffrin, a Columbia University professor who studies global media and co-authors a working paper on how much Google and Meta owes to news publishers. “So what they are doing is using a whole lot of different tactics to kill bills that will require them to compensate publishers fairly.”

    She estimates that Google owes $1.4 billion per year to California publishers.

    The Media Guild of the West, a union representing journalists in Southern California, Arizona and Texas, said journalists were locked out of the conversation. The union was a champion of Wicks’ bill but wasn’t included in the negotiations with Google.

    “The future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals,” a letter by the union sent to lawmakers reads. “The Legislature embarked on an effort to regulate monopolies and failed terribly. Now we question whether the state has done more harm than good.”

    The agreement results in a much smaller amount of funding compared to what Google gives to newsrooms in Canada and goes against the goal to rebalance Google’s dominance over local news organizations, according to a letter from the union to Wicks earlier this week.

    Others also questioned why the deal included funding to build new AI tools. They see it as another way for tech companies to eventual replace them. Wicks’ original bill doesn’t include AI provisions.

    The deal has the support of some journalism groups, including California News Publishers Association, Local Independent Online News Publishers and California Black Media.

    The agreement is scheduled to take effect next year, starting with $100 million to kickstart the efforts.

    Wicks said details of the agreement are still being ironed out. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to include the journalism funding in his January budget, Wicks said, but concerns from other Democratic leaders could throw a wrench in the plan.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct that, as well as Southern California and Texas, the Media Guild of the West represents journalists in Arizona, not Nevada.

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  • South Carolina considers its energy future through state Senate committee

    South Carolina considers its energy future through state Senate committee

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    COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Senate on Thursday started its homework assignment of coming up with a comprehensive bill to guide energy policy in a rapidly growing state and amid a quickly changing power- generation world.

    The Special Committee on South Carolina’s Energy Future plans several meetings through October. On Thursday, the committee heard from the leaders of the state’s three major utilities. Future meetings will bring in regular ratepayers, environmentalists, business leaders and experts on the latest technology to make electricity,

    The Senate took this task upon itself. They put the brakes a massive 80-plus page energy overhaul bill that passed the House in March in less than six weeks, and the bill died at the end of the session.

    Many senators said the process earlier this year was rushed. They remembered the last time they trusted an overhaul bill backed by utilities.

    State-owned Santee Cooper and private South Carolina Electric & Gas used those rules passed 15 years ago to put ratepayers on the hook for billions of dollars spent on two new nuclear reactors that never generated a watt of power before construction was abandoned because of rising costs.

    But those dire memories are being mixed with dire predictions of a state running out of power.

    Unusually cold weather on Christmas Eve 2022 along with problems at a generating facility nearly led to rolling blackouts in South Carolina. Demand from advanced manufacturing and data centers is rising. If electric cars grow in popularity, more power is needed. And a state that added 1.3 million people since 2000 has a lot more air conditioners, washing machines and charges for devices, the utility leaders said.

    Senators stopped Duke Energy’s president in South Carolina, Mike Callahan, in middle of his presentation after he told them his utility’s most recent predictions for growth in electricity usage over the rest of this decade were eight times more than they were just two years ago.

    “Growth is here, and much more is coming. We need clear energy policy to plan for that growth,” Callahan said,

    The utility leaders told senators their companies need to know what kind of sources of power — natural gas, solar, nuclear, wind or others — the state wants to emphasize. They would like to have a stable rules from regulators on how they operate.

    “A quick no is a lot better to us than a long-term maybe,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

    Another complicating factor are federal rules that may require utilities to shut down power plants that use coal before there are replacements with different sources online, Staton said.

    Others aren’t so sure the state needs a rapid increase in power generation. Environmentalists have suggested the 2022 problems that led to blackouts were made worse because power plants were nowhere near capacity and better cooperation in the grid would allow electricity to get to where its needed easier.

    Those less bullish on the overhaul also are urging the state not to lock in on one source of power over another because technology could leave South Carolina with too much power generation in inefficient ways.

    There will likely be plenty of discussion of data centers that use a lot of electricity without the number of jobs, property taxes or other benefits a manufacturer provides.

    Staton estimated about 70% of Santee Cooper’s increased demand is from data centers.

    “We clearly need them. I don’t want to go back in time,” committee chairman Republican Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said. “What I’m trying to get at is a better understanding, a better handle on how much of the projected growth is based on data centers or on everything else.”

    Massey has been hard on Dominion Energy, which bought South Carolina Electric & Gas after the abandoned nuclear project at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station. But Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said it is important that all options, including a new nuclear plant, remain on the table.

    “Everybody thinks if we build anything that we’re going to absolutely repeat what we did with V.C. Summer” Kissam said. “Well, I promise you, that ain’t gonna happen. OK? I’ll pack up and leave.”

    Massey’s goal is to have a bill ready by the time the 2025 session starts in January.

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  • Illinois bans corporal punishment in all schools

    Illinois bans corporal punishment in all schools

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    SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — This school year, Illinois will become just the fifth state in the nation to prohibit corporal punishment in all schools.

    Legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month bans physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools implemented 30 years ago.

    When the ban takes effect in January, Illinois will join New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland and New York in prohibiting paddling, spanking or hitting in every school.

    State Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat, was inspired to take up the issue after an updated call by the American Association of Pediatrics to end the practice, which it says can increase behavioral or mental health problems and impair cognitive development. The association found that it’s disproportionately administered to Black males and students with disabilities.

    “It was an easy thing to do. I don’t want a child, whether they are in private school or public school, to have a situation in which corporal punishment is being used,” Croke said.

    Croke was also disturbed by the Cassville School District in southwest Missouri. After dropping corporal punishment in 2001, it reinstated it two years ago as an opt-in for parents. Croke wanted to send a clear message that “it never was going to be OK to inflict harm or pain on a child.”

    Much of the world agrees.

    The World Health Organization has decreed the practice “a violation of children’s rights to respect for physical integrity and human dignity.” In 1990, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established an obligation to “prohibit all corporal punishment of children.”

    The U.S. was the convention’s lone holdout. Americans seemingly take a pragmatic view of the practice, said Sarah A. Font, associate professor of sociology and public policy at Penn State University.

    “Even though research pretty consistently shows that corporal punishment doesn’t improve kids’ behavior in the long run — and it might have some negative consequences — people don’t want to believe that,” Font said. “People kind of rely on their own experience of, ‘Well, I experienced corporal punishment. I turned out fine.’ They disregard the larger body of evidence.”

    U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, last year introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, to ban corporal punishment in any school receiving federal funds. It was assigned to a Senate committee for a public hearing in May 2023 but has seen no further action.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has also rejected constitutional claims against the practice. When junior high pupils in Dade County, Florida, filed a lawsuit challenging physical discipline, the court ruled in 1977 that Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment was reserved for people convicted of crimes; it did not apply to classroom discipline.

    Today, 17 states technically allow corporal punishment in all schools, although four prohibit its use on students with disabilities. North Carolina state law doesn’t preclude it but every school district in the state blocked its use in 2018. Illinois lawmakers in 1994 stopped the practice in public schools.

    Among states that have completely outlawed it, New Jersey took the unusual step of barring corporal punishment in all schools in 1867. Iowa eliminated it in private schools in 1989. Maryland and New York stopped private school use in 2023.

    Private school advocates, who vehemently oppose state intervention, did not oppose the new law.

    Schools in the Catholic Conference of Illinois do not use corporal punishment, executive director Bob Gilligan said.

    “It’s an anachronistic practice,” he said.

    Ralph Rivera, who represents the Illinois Coalition of Nonpublic Schools, said he’s unaware of any member school that uses the practice. While the group usually opposes state meddling in its classrooms, Rivera said, objecting to a corporal punishment ban on principle is a tough sell.

    “Even if they don’t do it, they told us to stay out of it, because it doesn’t look good when you say, ‘No, we want to be able to spank children,’” Rivera said.

    The law does not apply to home schools. Home-schooled students are subject to the same rules during school hours as those they face after school.

    For student athletes, discipline or correction on the football field or the volleyball court would have to go beyond the pale to qualify as corporal punishment, Croke explained during floor debate on the measure last spring.

    “We talked in committee about a situation in which maybe a coach said, ‘Run laps,’” Croke said. “I do not believe this would apply by any means because when we tell a kid to run laps, the goal is not necessarily to inflict pain.”

    Legislative debate, nonetheless, included Republican concern that imposing the requirement on private schools could facilitate rules affecting, for instance, curriculum or religious teachings.

    Croke, whose school-age child attends Catholic school, said her intent was not to open the door to state regulation of private education but rather to “keep kids out of harm’s way.”

    “There’s a red line there, that hitting kids should never be allowed,” Croke said.

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  • This controversial California AI bill was amended to quell Silicon Valley fears. Here’s what changed

    This controversial California AI bill was amended to quell Silicon Valley fears. Here’s what changed

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    A controversial bill that seeks to protect Californians from artificial intelligence-driven catastrophes has caused uproar in the tech industry. This week, the legislation passed a key committee but with amendments to make it more palatable to Silicon Valley.

    SB 1047, from state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), is set to go to the state Assembly floor later this month. If it passes the Legislature, Gov. Gavin Newsom will have to decide whether to sign or veto the groundbreaking legislation.

    The bill’s backers say it will create guardrails to prevent rapidly advancing AI models from causing disastrous incidents, such as shutting down the power grid without warning. They worry that the technology is developing faster than its human creators can control.

    Lawmakers aim to incentive developers to handle the technology responsibly and empower the state’s attorney general to impose penalties in the event of imminent threat or harm. The legislation also requires developers to be able to turn off the AI models they control directly if things go awry.

    But some tech companies, such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms, and politicians including influential U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), say the bill would stifle innovation. Some critics say it focuses on apocalyptic, far-off scenarios, rather than the more immediate concerns such as privacy and misinformation, though there are other bills that address these matters.

    SB 1047 is one of roughly 50 AI-related bills that have been brought up in the state Legislature, as worries have grown about the technology’s effects on jobs, disinformation and public safety. As politicians work to create new laws to put guardrails on the fast-growing industry, some companies and talent are suing AI companies in hopes that courts can set ground rules.

    Wiener, who represents San Francisco — the home of AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic — has been in the middle of the debate.

    On Thursday, he made significant changes to his bill that some believe weaken the legislation while making it more likely for the Assembly to pass.

    The amendments removed a perjury penalty from the bill and changed the legal standard for developers regarding the safety of their advanced AI models.

    Additionally, a plan to create a new government entity, which would have been called the Frontier Model Division, is no longer in the works. Under the original text, the bill would have required developers to submit their safety measures to the newly created division. In the new version, developers would submit those safety measures to the attorney general.

    “I do think some of those changes might make it more likely to pass,” said Christian Grose, a USC political science and public policy professor.

    Some tech players support the bill, including the Center for AI Safety and Geoffrey Hinton, who is considered a “godfather of AI.” Others, though, worry that it could damage a booming California industry.

    Eight California House members — Khanna, Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), Scott Peters (D-San Diego), Tony Cárdenas (D-Pacoima), Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove), Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-San Pedro) and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) — wrote a letter to Newsom on Thursday encouraging him to veto the bill if it passes the state Assembly.

    “[Wiener] really is cross pressured in San Francisco between people who are experts in this area, who have been telling him and others in California that AI can be dangerous if we don’t regulate it and then those whose paychecks, their cutting edge research, is from AI,” Grose said. “This could be a real flash point for him, both pro and con, for his career.”

    Some tech giants say they are open to regulation but disagree with Wiener’s approach.

    “We are aligned with the way (Wiener) describes the bill and the goals that he has, but we remain concerned about the impact of the bill on AI innovation, particularly in California, and particularly on open source innovation,” Kevin McKinley, Meta’s state policy manager, said in a meeting with L.A. Times editorial board members last week.

    Meta is one of the companies with a collection of open source AI models called Llama, which allows developers to build on top of it for their own products. Meta released Llama 3 in April and there have already been 20 million downloads, the tech giant said.

    Meta declined to discuss the new amendments. Last week, McKinley said SB 1047 is “actually a really hard bill to red line and fix.”

    A spokesperson for Newsom said his office does not typically comment on pending legislation.

    “The Governor will evaluate this bill on its merits should it reach his desk,” spokesperson Izzy Gardon wrote in an email.

    San Francisco AI startup Anthropic, which is known for its AI assistant Claude, signaled it could support the bill if it was amended. In a July 23 letter to Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Anthropic’s state and local policy lead Hank Dempsey proposed changes including shifting the bill to focus on holding companies responsible for causing catastrophes rather than pre-harm enforcement.

    Wiener said the amendments took Anthropic’s concerns into account.

    “We can advance both innovation and safety,” Wiener said in a statement. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

    It is unclear whether the amendments will change Anthropic’s position on the bill. On Thursday, Anthropic said in a statement that it would review the new “bill language as it becomes available.”

    Russell Wald, deputy director at Stanford University’s HAI, which aims to advance AI research and policy, said he still opposes the bill.

    “Recent amendments appear to be more about optics than substance,” Wald said in a statement. “It looks less controversial to appease a couple of leading AI companies but does little to address real concerns from academic institutions and open-source communities.”

    It is a fine balance for lawmakers that are trying to weigh concerns about AI while also supporting the state’s tech sector.

    “What a lot of us are trying to do is figure out a regulatory environment that allows for some of those guardrails to exist while not stifling innovation and the economic growth that comes with AI,” Wicks said after Thursday’s committee meeting.

    Times staff writer Anabel Sosa contributed to this report.

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    Wendy Lee

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  • Minnesota Supreme Court upholds law restoring right to vote to people with felony convictions

    Minnesota Supreme Court upholds law restoring right to vote to people with felony convictions

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    The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a 2023 state law that restores voting rights for felons once they have completed their prison sentences.

    The new law was popular with Democrats in the state, including Gov. Tim Walz, who signed it and who is Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the presidential race. The timing of the decision is important because early voting for next week’s primary election is already underway. Voting for the Nov. 5 general election begins Sept. 20.

    The court rejected a challenge from the conservative Minnesota Voters Alliance. A lower court judge had previously thrown out the group’s lawsuit after deciding it lacked the legal standing to sue and failed to prove that the Legislature overstepped its authority when it voted to expand voting rights for people who were formerly incarcerated for a felony. The high court agreed.

    Before the new law, felons had to complete their probation before they could regain their eligibility to vote. An estimated 55,000 people with felony records gained the right to vote as a result.

    Minnesota Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison had been pushing for the change since he was in the Legislature.

    “Democracy is not guaranteed — it is earned by protecting and expanding it,” Ellison said in a statement. “I’m proud restore the vote is definitively the law of the land today more than 20 years after I first proposed it as a state legislator. I encourage all Minnesotans who are eligible to vote to do so and to take full part in our democracy.”

    Minnesota was among more than a dozen states that considered restoring voting rights for felons in recent years. Advocates for the change argued that disenfranchising them disproportionately affects people of color because of biases in the legal system. An estimated 55,000 Minnesota residents regained the right to vote because of the change.

    Nebraska officials went the other way and decided last month that residents with felony convictions could still be denied voting rights despite a law passed this year to immediately restore the voting rights of people who have finished serving their felony convictions. That decision by Nebraska’s attorney general and secretary of state, both of whom are Republicans, has been challenged in a lawsuit.

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  • Utah’s near-total abortion ban to remain blocked until lower court assesses its constitutionality

    Utah’s near-total abortion ban to remain blocked until lower court assesses its constitutionality

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    SALT LAKE CITY — A near-total abortion ban will remain on hold in Utah after the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the law should remain blocked until a lower court can assess its constitutionality.

    With the decision, abortion remains legal up to 18 weeks under another state law that has served as a fallback as abortion rights have been thrown into limbo.

    The panel wrote in its opinion that Planned Parenthood Association of Utah had legal standing to challenge the state’s abortion trigger law, and that a lower court acted within its purview when it initially blocked the ban.

    Their ruling only affects whether the restrictions remain on pause amid further legal proceedings and does not decide the final outcome of abortion policy in the state. The case will now be sent back to a lower court to determine whether the law is constitutional.

    The trigger law that remains on hold would prohibit abortions except in cases when the mother’s life is at risk or there is a fatal fetal abnormality. A separate state law passed this year also would allow abortions up to 15 weeks of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest.

    Utah lawmakers passed the trigger law — one of the most restrictive in the nation — in 2020 to automatically ban most abortions should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. When Roe fell in June 2022, abortion rights advocates in Utah immediately challenged the law, and a district court judge put it on hold a few days later.

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision, most Republican-led states have implemented abortion bans or heavy restrictions. Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Four more have bans that kick in after about six weeks of pregnancy — before many women realize they’re pregnant. Besides Utah’s, the only other ban currently on hold due to a court order is in neighboring Wyoming.

    When the U.S. Supreme Court determined there was no right to abortion in the federal Constitution, a key legal question became whether state constitutions have provisions that protect abortion access. State constitutions differ, and state courts have come to different conclusions. In April, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an abortion ban adopted in 1864 could be enforced — but lawmakers quickly repealed it.

    Abortion figures to be a major issue in November’s elections, with abortion-related ballot measures going before voters in at least six states. In the seven statewide measures held since Roe was overturned, voters have sided with abortion rights advocates each time.

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  • Senate passes bill to protect kids online, make tech companies accountable for harmful content

    Senate passes bill to protect kids online, make tech companies accountable for harmful content

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    WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation Tuesday that is designed to protect children from dangerous online content, pushing forward with what would be the first major effort by Congress in decades to hold tech companies more accountable for the harm that they cause.

    The bill, which passed 91-3, has been pushed by parents of children who died by suicide after online bullying or have otherwise been harmed by online content. It would force companies to take reasonable steps to prevent harm on online platforms frequently used by minors, requiring them to exercise “duty of care” and ensure that they generally default to the safest settings possible.

    The House has not yet acted on the bill, but Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said he is “committed to working to find consensus.” Supporters are hoping that the strong Senate vote will push the House to act before the end of the congressional session in January.

    The legislation is about allowing children, teens and parents “to take back control of their lives online,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who wrote the bill with Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. He said that the message to big tech companies is that “we no longer trust you to make decisions for us.”

    The bill would be the first major tech regulation package to move in years, and it could potentially pave the way for other bills that would strengthen online privacy laws or set parameters for the growing use of artificial intelligence, among others. While there has long been bipartisan support for the idea that the biggest technology companies should face more government scrutiny, there has been little consensus on how it should be done. Congress passed legislation earlier this year that would force China-based social media company TikTok to sell or face a ban, but that law only targets one company.

    “This is a good first step, but we have more to go,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

    If the child safety bill becomes law, companies would be required to mitigate harm to children, including bullying and violence, the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and advertisements for illegal products such as narcotics, tobacco or alcohol.

    To do that, social media platforms would have to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. They would also be required to limit other users from communicating with children and limit features that “increase, sustain, or extend the use” of the platform — such as autoplay for videos or platform rewards.

    The idea, Blumenthal and Blackburn say, is for the platforms to be “safe by design.”

    “The message we are sending to big tech is that kids are not your product,” Blackburn said at a news conference as the Senate passed the bill. “Kids are not your profit source. And we are going to protect them in the virtual space.”

    Several tech companies, including Microsoft, X and Snap, have supported the legislation. But NetChoice, a a tech industry group that represents X and Snap, along with Google, TikTok and Meta Platforms, called it unconstitutional.

    Carl Szabo, a vice president and counsel for the group, said in a statement that the law’s “cybersecurity, censorship, and constitutional risks remain unaddressed.” He did not elaborate.

    Blumenthal and Blackburn have said they worked to find a balance between forcing companies to become more responsible for what children see online while also ensuring that Congress does not go too far in regulating what individuals post — an effort to head off potential legal challenges and win over lawmakers who worry that regulation could impose on freedom of expression.

    In addition to First Amendment concerns, some critics have said the legislation could harm kids who wouldn’t be able to access information on LGBTQ+ issues or reproductive rights — although the bill has been revised to address many of those criticisms, and major LGBTQ+ groups have decided to support the proposed legislation.

    The bill also includes an update to child privacy laws that prohibit online companies from collecting personal information from users under 13, raising that age to 17. It would also ban targeted advertising to teenagers and allow teens or guardians to delete a minor’s personal information.

    Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, sponsored the original legislation in 1998 — the last time Congress passed a child online safety law — and worked with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana on the update. Markey said that the online space “has come a long way” since the first bill and new tools are needed for parents as teens have struggled with mental health.

    As their bill stalled for several months, Blumenthal and Blackburn worked closely with the parents of children who have been harmed by social media — either by cyberbullying or social media challenges, extortion attempts, eating disorders, drug deals or other potential dangers. At an emotional news conference last week, the parents said they were pleased that the Senate is finally moving ahead with the legislation.

    Maurine Molak, the mother of a 16-year-old who died by suicide after “months of relentless and threatening cyberbullying,” said she believes the bill can save lives. She urged every senator to vote for it.

    “Anyone who believes that children’s well-being and safety should come before big tech’s greed ought to put their mark on this historic legislation,” Molak said.

    ___

    Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

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  • NYC mayor issues emergency order suspending parts of new solitary confinement law

    NYC mayor issues emergency order suspending parts of new solitary confinement law

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    New York City’s mayor issued an emergency order Saturday suspending parts of a new law intended to ban solitary confinement in local jails a day before it was to take effect, citing concerns for the safety of staff and detainees.

    Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency and signed an order that suspended parts of the law that set a four-hour time limit on holding prisoners who pose safety concerns in “de-escalation confinement” and limit the use of restraints on prisoners while they are transported to courts or within jails.

    The four-hour limit could only be exceeded only in “exceptional circumstances.” In those circumstances, prisoners would be released from de-escalation confinement “as soon as practicable” and when they no longer pose an imminent risk of serious injury to themselves or others, according to the mayor’s order.

    Adams also suspended a part of the law that prohibited jail officials from placing a prisoner in longer-term “restrictive housing” for more than a total of 60 days in any 12-month period. His order says jail officials must review a prisoner’s placement in restrictive housing every 15 days.

    “It is of the utmost importance to protect the health and safety of all persons in the custody of the Department of Correction and of all officers and persons who work in the City of New York jails and who transport persons in custody to court and other facilities, and the public,” Adams wrote in his state of emergency declaration.

    Adams had vetoed the City Council’s approval of the bill, but the council overrode the veto in January.

    City Council leaders did not immediately return messages seeking comment Saturday.

    But council spokesperson Shirley Limongi issued a statement sharply criticizing Adams.

    “Each day Mayor Adams’ Administration shows how little respect it has for the laws and democracy, it sets more hypocritical double standards for complying with the law that leave New Yorkers worse off. In this case, our city and everyone in its dysfunctional and dangerous jail system, including staff, are left less safe. The reality is that the law already included broad safety exemptions that make this ‘emergency order’ unnecessary and another example of Mayor Adams overusing executive orders without justification,” the statement said.

    The bill had been introduced by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who argued solitary confinement amounts to torture for those subjected to lengthy hours in isolation in small jail cells.

    Williams and other supporters of the new law, including prominent members of New York’s congressional delegation, have pointed to research showing solitary confinement, even only for a few days, increases the likelihood an inmate will die by suicide, violence or overdose. It also leads to acute anxiety, depression, psychosis and other impairments that may reduce an inmate’s ability to reintegrate into society when they are released, they said.

    Adams has insisted there has been no solitary confinement in jails since it was eliminated in 2019. He said solitary confinement is defined as “22 hours or more per day in a locked cell and without meaningful human contact.” He said de-escalation confinement and longer-term restrictive housing are needed to keep violent prisoners from harming other prisoners and staff.

    Jail officials, the guards’ union and a federal monitor appointed to evaluate operations at city jails objected to parts of the new law, also citing safety concerns.

    The law places a four-hour limit on isolating inmates who pose an immediate risk of violence to others or themselves in de-escalation units. Only those involved in violent incidents could be placed in longer-term restrictive housing, and they would need to be allowed out of their cells for 14 hours each day and get access to the same programming available to other inmates.

    Adams’ state of emergency declaration will remain in effect for up to 30 days or until it is rescinded, whichever is earlier, with 30-day extensions possible. The order suspending parts of the new law will be in effect for five days unless terminated or modified earlier.

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  • Judge rejects effort by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to get records from Catholic church

    Judge rejects effort by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson to get records from Catholic church

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    SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington state judge said Friday that Attorney General Bob Ferguson is not entitled to enforce a subpoena seeking decades of records from the Seattle Archdiocese, despite his assertion that the records are needed to learn whether the Catholic church used charitable trust funds to cover up sexual abuse by priests.

    Judge Michael Scott sided with the archdiocese, which argued that under the state’s law governing charitable trusts, Ferguson did not have authority to enforce the subpoena. The law contains an exemption designed to ensure the state does not meddle in religious practices.

    Nevertheless, Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne said in a written statement after Friday’s decision that the church is willing to provide the state with relevant records and collaborate with Ferguson on the investigation “in a lawful manner.”

    “Sexual abuse in the Church is a heart-wrenching part of our history, and I am deeply sorry for the pain caused to victim survivors, their families and all Catholics,” Etienne said. “We remain focused on the need for healing and proper governance in these matters. … Because we are committed to preventing abuse, promoting transparency and continuously improving our processes, my offer to collaborate with the attorney general still stands.”

    Ferguson, himself a Catholic, said his office would appeal. The state argued that the exemption in the law does protect religious practices — but that using charitable trust money to conceal or facilitate sex abuse was not a religious practice.

    “Our fight for survivors of clergy abuse is not over,” Ferguson said in a news release. “Washingtonians deserve a full public accounting of the Church’s involvement in and responsibility for the child sexual abuse crisis.”

    Ferguson filed the case in May, saying the church was stonewalling its investigation by refusing to comply with the subpoena.

    At the time, the archdiocese called his allegations a surprise, saying it welcomed the investigation and shares the state’s goals — “preventing abuse and helping victim survivors on their path to healing and peace.”

    Church officials said the records sought by the state were excessive and irrelevant — including every receipt going back to 1940, in an archdiocese with more than 170 pastoral locations and 72 schools.

    Some 23 states have conducted investigations of the Catholic church, and so far at least nine have issued reports detailing their findings. In some cases, those findings have gone far beyond what church officials had voluntarily disclosed.

    For example, the six Catholic dioceses in Illinois had reported publicly that there had been 103 clerics and religious brothers credibly accused of child sex abuse. But in a scathing report last year, the Illinois attorney general’s office said it had uncovered detailed information on 451 who had sexually abused at least 1,997 children.

    Similarly, Maryland last year reported staggering evidence of just how widespread the abuse was: More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability. In 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury found that more than 300 Catholic clerics had abused more than 1,000 children in that state over the prior 70 years.

    The Seattle Archdiocese has published a list of 83 clerics it says were credibly accused, and it says that beginning in the 1980s it was one of the first in the nation to begin adopting policies to address and prevent sexual abuse by priests. Sexual abuse by church personnel peaked in 1975, and there have been no reports since 2007, the archdiocese said.

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  • How to keep guns off Bourbon Street? Designate a police station as a school

    How to keep guns off Bourbon Street? Designate a police station as a school

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    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A police station in New Orleans’ French Quarter will be designated a vocational technical school in a move that will instantly outlaw gun possession in the surrounding area — including a stretch of bar-lined Bourbon Street — as a new Louisiana law eliminating the need for concealed carry firearm permits takes effect.

    Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick announced the measure at a Monday news conference at the 8th District police station on the Quarter’s Royal Street. However, the move may face legal challenges. The state attorney general raised doubts about the plan.

    State law forbids carrying concealed weapons within 1,000 feet (305 meters) of such a facility, Kirkpatrick said. That radius from the station will cover a large section of the Quarter, including several blocks of Bourbon Street.

    Kirkpatrick said the station includes a classroom and is used for training. She described the station as a “satellite” of the city’s police academy.

    “I wouldn’t call it a work-around,” District Attorney Jason Williams told reporters gathered in the lobby of the two-story, 19th century building. “It’s using laws that have always been on the books to deal with a real and current threat to public safety.”

    Designating the 8th District station a school is just one way of giving police officers more leeway to stop and search people suspected of illegally carrying a weapon in the Quarter, Kirkpatrick said.

    She also listed other facets of state law that could allow the arrest of someone carrying a weapon in the tourist district. They include bans on carrying a gun in a bar or by anyone with a blood alcohol level of .05%. That’s less than the .08% considered proof of intoxication in drunk-driving cases.

    State lawmakers earlier this year passed legislation to make Louisiana one of the latest states to do away with a permit requirement for carrying a concealed handgun. Past efforts to do so were vetoed by former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. But the new Republican governor, Jeff Landry, supported and signed the new law.

    Twenty-eight other states have similar laws, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

    Lawmakers rejected repeated pleas from police and city officials to exempt New Orleans entirely or to carve out the French Quarter and other areas well-known for alcohol-fueled revelry. Their refusal set city officials to work finding ways to deal with a possible proliferation of guns in high-traffic areas, said City Council President Helena Moreno.

    “Ultimately what we realized was, ‘You know what? What we need is a school,’” Moreno said.

    Late Monday, Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill issued an emailed statement critical of the plan.

    “I’m working hard to help keep New Orleans safe, but the City cannot avoid state law by unilaterally designating police stations ‘vo-tech locations’ — that’s just not how our community college and vocational-technical system is set up,” Murrill said.

    Murrill also criticized city officials’ announcement that the law, which takes effect Thursday, won’t be enforced in New Orleans until Aug. 1, when an existing city firearms ordinance expires. “As to the delay, state law preempts municipal ordinances which conflict so the ordinance yields to state law,” Murrill said.

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  • European Union says X’s blue checks are deceptive

    European Union says X’s blue checks are deceptive

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    LONDON — The European Union said Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk’s X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, the first charges against a tech company since the bloc’s new social media regulations took effect.

    The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act.

    The rulebook, also known as the DSA, is a sweeping set of regulations that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting their European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

    Regulators took aim at X’s blue checks, saying they constitute “dark patterns” that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.

    Before Musk’s acquisition, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts. After Musk bought the site in 2022, it started issuing them to anyone who paid $8 per month for one.

    “Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified” status’ it negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with,” the commission said.

    An email request for comment to X resulted in an automated response that said “Busy now, please check back later.” Its main spokesman reportedly left the company in June.

    “Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement. “Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA.”

    The commission also charged X with failing to comply with ad transparency rules. Under the DSA platforms must publish a database of all digital advertisements that they’ve carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience.

    But X’s ad database isn’t “searchable and reliable” and has “design features and access barriers” that make it “unfit for its transparency purpose,” the commission said. The database’s design in particular hinders researchers from looking into “emerging risks” from online ads, it said.

    The company also falls short when it comes to giving researchers access to public data, the commission said. The DSA imposes the provisions so that researchers can scrutinize how platforms work and how online risks evolve.

    But researchers can’t independently access data by scraping it from the site, while the process to request access from the company through an interface “appears to dissuade researchers” from carrying out their projects or gives them no choice but to pay high fees, it said.

    X now has a chance to respond to the accusations and make changes to comply, which would be legally binding. If the commission isn’t satisfied, it can levy penalties worth up to 6% of the company’s annual global revenue and order it to fix the problem.

    The findings are only a part of the investigation. Regulators are still looking into whether X is failing to do enough to curb the spread of illegal content — such as hate speech or incitement of terrorism — and the effectiveness of measures to combat “ information manipulation,” especially through its crowd-sourced Community Notes fact-checking feature.

    TikTok, e-commerce site AliExpress and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms are also facing ongoing DSA investigations.

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  • State passes bill encouraging school districts to ban students’ phone use during day

    State passes bill encouraging school districts to ban students’ phone use during day

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    HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to encourage school districts to start a pilot program that effectively bans students’ use of cellphones during the school day in an effort to improve their mental health and academic performance.

    The bill, which passed 45-5, would authorize grants to school districts to buy locking bags after the district creates a policy requiring students to leave their phones in such bags for the whole school day. It now goes to the state House for consideration.

    The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Ryan Aument of Lancaster, said he hopes that limits on phone use will result in improvements in students’ mental health and academic performance.

    “Kids spend so much time on social media and using their smartphones that it’s taking a toll on them mentally, emotionally and academically. Smartphone restrictions have proved successful in reversing these trends,” Aument said.

    Under the bill, the policy must provide exemptions for students who have a documented medical condition that requires them to use a cellphone. Participating school districts must track changes over two school years in student mental health, bullying, violence and academic performance.

    Grants would be awarded by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and separate legislation would be required to set grant amounts and devote money to the purpose.

    Most schools already have rules regulating student phone use. But a growing number of state officials have begun endorsing school cellphone bans, and such legislation is emerging in other states.

    Last year, Florida became the first state to crack down, passing a law requiring public schools to ban student cellphone use during class time and block access to social media on district Wi-Fi networks. Some districts went further and banned phones for the entire school day.

    California allows school districts to limit or ban the use of smartphones by students while at school, and the Los Angeles Unified School District board voted last month for the district to develop such a policy.

    The Pennsylvania bill’s passage in the state Senate comes two weeks after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms and their effects on young people.

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  • Californians won’t pay more than one month’s rent for security deposits under new law

    Californians won’t pay more than one month’s rent for security deposits under new law

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    The days of needing to save two to three months’ worth of rent for a security deposit are largely over in California.

    Legislation took effect Monday that limits a security deposit on a rental property to no more than one month’s rent for all but the smallest landlords. The law, passed as Assembly Bill 12, was authored by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco).

    “Massive security deposits can create insurmountable barriers to housing affordability and accessibility for millions of Californians,” said Haney, who chairs the California Legislature’s Renters Caucus, in a statement.

    Previously, owners could charge two months of rent for unfurnished property and three months for furnished.

    The median rent in Los Angeles is $2,795, according to Zillow, an online real estate marketplace.

    An exception in the bill was carved out for landlords who own two or fewer properties that collectively have no more than four rental units.

    The bill was written in December 2022, passed by the Assembly and Senate last fall and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October.

    Along the way, it earned support from the Los Angeles County Board of Trustees.

    Supervisor Lindsey Horvath noted in May 2023 that she was unable to move into a rental a couple of years earlier because she was asked to pay “nearly a half a year’s rent upfront.”

    “As someone with a well-paying job, making more than the median income of the county, it was difficult for me to rent a new apartment because of the substantial deposits that were required,” she said.

    But the legislation raises concerns among some in the real estate industry.

    Sharon Oh-Kubisch, a partner at Irvine-based Kahana Feld, which practices real estate law, noted two potential drawbacks to the legislation.

    While she supports the bill’s aim of alleviating high costs of renting, financial burdens are being flipped to landlords, she said.

    She noted that security deposits are intended to cover damages when a tenant moves out. Lower deposits mean landlords are more likely to have to sue clients who cause considerable damage.

    “A landlord can demand damages at the back end, but then they’re more than likely going to have to sue and hire counsel to get that money,” Oh-Kubisch said.

    Additionally, she said that reducing security deposits may work against tenants who have less than perfect credit or lack a strong history of renting.

    Higher security deposits allowed landlords to be more flexible, Oh-Kubisch said. With those “safeguards” gone, she expects landlords to be “more precise and heighten scrutiny for tenants.”

    Still, others say the legislation will benefit those who have the most trouble finding housing.

    Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, said in a statement that the law will help vulnerable communities.

    “In California’s high-cost rental market, expensive security deposits are often imposed on immigrants and people of color, effectively limiting access to safe and affordable housing,” he said. “By capping high security deposits, AB-12 advances a measure of equity.”

    Catherine A. Rodman, director and supervising attorney of San Diego-based Affordable Housing Advocates, a tenants rights legal group, said the news received mixed reviews among her mainly working-class clients.

    “I know that it’s been a big relief to many throughout the state, but at least here in the San Diego area, it’s not a big issue,” Rodman said.

    Zillow lists the median rent in San Diego at $3,095.

    She said “soaring rents” have already led most area landlords to require no more than one month’s rent as a security deposit.

    “I’ve been here for 40 years, and I’ve only encountered security deposit gouging on a few occasions,” Rodman said. “Our issue is rent.”

    Rodman said she didn’t want to “pooh-pooh” the legislation but hoped it was part of a broader vision to make housing affordable for larger swaths of the state.

    “I’m sure it helps, but we need to address the cost to rent, because that’s really the big roadblock,” she said.

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  • The Supreme Court casts doubt on Florida and Texas laws to regulate social media platforms

    The Supreme Court casts doubt on Florida and Texas laws to regulate social media platforms

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday kept on hold efforts by Texas and Florida to limit how Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube and other social media platforms regulate content posted by their users in a ruling that strongly defended the platforms’ free speech rights.

    Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the platforms, like newspapers, deserve protection from governments’ intrusion in determining what to include or exclude from their space. “The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world,” Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five justices. All nine justices agreed on the overall outcome.

    The justices returned the cases to lower courts for further review in broad challenges from trade associations for the companies.

    While the details vary, both laws aimed to address long-standing conservative complaints that the social media companies were liberal-leaning and censored users based on their viewpoints, especially on the political right. The cases are among several this term in which the justices are wrestling with standards for free speech in the digital age.

    The Florida and Texas laws were signed by Republican governors in the months following decisions by Facebook and Twitter, now X, to cut then-President Donald Trump off over his posts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

    Trade associations representing the companies sued in federal court, claiming that the laws violated the platforms’ speech rights. One federal appeals court struck down Florida’s statute, while another upheld the Texas law. But both were on hold pending the outcome at the Supreme Court.

    While the cases are complicated, said First Amendment expert and Notre Dame Law School professor Richard W. Garnett, the justices were clear on two things:

    “First, the First Amendment protects what we choose to say, but also what we choose not to say, support, or endorse. That is, the freedom of speech includes editorial judgment. This is true whether the speaker is a lone individual or a large media company,” he said. “Second, the government is not permitted to regulate speakers simply to produce what the government thinks would be a better, or more diverse, marketplace of ideas. What’s on offer in that marketplace is, in the end, up to us.”

    In a statement when he signed the Florida measure into law, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it would be “protection against the Silicon Valley elites.”

    When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas law, he said it was needed to protect free speech in what he termed the new public square. Social media platforms “are a place for healthy public debate where information should be able to flow freely — but there is a dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas,” Abbott said. “That is wrong, and we will not allow it in Texas.”

    But much has changed since then. Elon Musk purchased Twitter and, besides changing its name, eliminated teams focused on content moderation, welcomed back many users previously banned for hate speech and used the site to spread conspiracy theories.

    President Joe Biden’s administration sided with the challengers, though it cautioned the court to seek a narrow ruling that maintained governments’ ability to impose regulations to ensure competition, preserve data privacy and protect consumer interests. Lawyers for Trump filed a brief in the Florida case that had urged the Supreme Court to uphold the state law.

    Free speech advocates hailed the ruling as a victory.

    “The court’s recognition that the government cannot control social media in an effort to impose its own vision of what online speech should look like is crucial to protecting all of our right to speak our minds and access information on the internet,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “The court’s recognition that the government cannot control social media in an effort to impose its own vision of what online speech should look like is crucial to protecting all of our right to speak our minds and access information on the internet.”

    Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the nonprofit media advocacy group Free Press said that while the decision “rests on procedural grounds, Justice Kagan’s comprehensive opinion for the Court explains in very clear terms why the Florida and Texas laws will have a tough time ever passing First Amendment muster. That’s a very good thing.”

    But it’s a “bumpy win,” noted Gus Hurwitz, academic director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He said the justices were “clearly frustrated” that the case came to them as a facial challenge — where the plaintiff argues that the law is unconstitutional — vacating both cases and sending them back to be “more fully developed.”

    “Five of the justices sign on to the direct statement that ‘Texas does not like the way those platforms are selecting and moderating content, and wants them to create a different expressive product, communicating different values and priorities. But under the First Amendment, that is a preference Texas may not impose,” Hurwitz said. “It is hard to see how this doesn’t dictate the ultimate resolution of the case, and clearly foreshadows a rocky road ahead for these statutes if Texas and Florida continue to press forward with them.”

    The cases are among several the justices have grappled with over the past year involving social media platforms, including one decided last week in which the court threw out a lawsuit from Louisiana, Missouri and other parties accusing federal officials of pressuring social media companies to silence conservative points of view.

    During arguments in February, the justices seemed inclined to prevent the laws from taking effect. Several justices suggested then that they viewed the platforms as akin to newspapers that have broad free-speech protections, rather than like telephone companies, known as common carriers, that are susceptible to broader regulation.

    But two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, appeared more ready to embrace the states’ arguments. Thomas raised the idea that the companies are seeking constitutional protection for “censoring other speech.” Alito also equated the platforms’ content moderation to censorship.

    The justices also worried about too broad a ruling that might affect businesses that are not the primary targets of the laws, including e-commerce sites like Uber and Etsy and email and messaging services.

    ___

    AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story.

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

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