Business
Commentary: How the Carolina wildfires are, perversely, good news for California
To address the most important point up front: The wildfires currently spreading across North and South Carolina are tragic.
Thousands of acres have been burned by hundreds of fires since Saturday, taking property and placing livelihoods at risk. There are no reports of fire-driven deaths, as yet, but evacuations have been ordered and emergency declarations made. Firefighters continue to struggle to bring the blazes under control. The causes include unusually dry conditions and wind gusts of up to 40 mph.
That said, the Carolina fires may have a positive result that will be felt coast to coast, and especially in California: They’re likely to quell all that stupid talk about attaching strings to federal wildfire disaster relief.
The moment Texas or Florida or Mississippi experiences a disaster, that idea will vanish.
— Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hi.) on the idea of attaching strings to California disaster aid
That threat has been made by Trump; his disaster czar, Ric Grenell; House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a member of that chamber’s GOP leadership; and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), among many others. Also pitching in are members of the right-wing peanut gallery, such as Fox News mouthpieces Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters.
What they’ve tend to have in common is a focus on California policies that had nothing to do with the fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena but have been long-term targets of conservatives and Republicans.
Grenell called for the California Coastal Commission to be “defunded,” for instance. He didn’t explain what that had to do with the fires, but he called its policies “crazy woke left,” whatever that means. (The commission’s authority to regulate real estate development in the coastal zone, thus angering the developers who are among the GOP’s patrons, may have more to do with Grenell’s complaint.)
The others’ points were equally nonsensical. Trump rehearsed his long-discredited claim that California’s water supply has been wasted to serve the interests of the tiny delta smelt, an innocent bystander. Johnson talked of “our concerns with the governance of the state of California,” which he airily blamed for “complicity … in the scope of disaster.” Donalds said that “if a state is so grossly mismanaged that the initial disaster is not quickly contained, then we have a responsibility to do common-sense things.”
On the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Barrasso asserted that “the policies of the liberal administration” in California “have made these fires worse.”
Before examining the natural disasters that have afflicted these blowhards’ own backyards, it’s proper to note that this isn’t California’s first encounter with political shortsightedness on this majestic scale.
In 1905, a flawed canal cut on the banks of the Colorado River produced a massive flood that threatened to destroy the Imperial Valley, which already was producing crops worth $2 million a year. By the mid-1920s, the valley’s efforts had placed a bill before Congress to pay for a high dam on the Colorado to hold back any further flood threats while providing water for irrigation.
The measure ran into opposition from President Coolidge and his Treasury secretary, the multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who thought private enterprise should take on the task. Across the Southeast, farmers and their elected officials raised further objections. Cotton growers objected to irrigating 1 million acres in the Imperial Valley, corn farmers objected to a million more acres of corn, and wheat growers to a million competing acres of wheat.
But then nature intervened, with a massive flood in 1927 that killed 246 residents of the Mississippi River valley and breached levees along a thousand-mile stretch of the river. Rep. Phil Swing, who had been elected by Imperial Valley voters with the express goal of bringing the dam measure past the goal line, made sure that nobody overlooked the parallels between the 1927 flood and the disaster at home.
Trainloads of New Orleans business and civic leaders came to Washington to plead for relief. “I took on the New Orleans men,” Swing recalled, “putting to them again and again whether they could see any difference between the Mississippi’s flood threat to their people and the Colorado River flood threat to the people of the Imperial Valley.”
Two landmark federal measures were born as a result: the Flood Control Act of 1928, which created a levee construction program costing an unprecedented $300 million, and the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which authorized the construction of a $165-million high dam on the Colorado, eventually to be christened Hoover Dam.
That brings us back to the present day, and the old adage, “What goes around comes around.”
Republican politicians, to be fair, aren’t unanimous about calling for strings to be attached to disaster relief for California. Among the holdouts are many members of the North and South Carolina delegations, in part because the most recent hurricanes to sweep across the region killed 200 people and caused more than $10 billion in damage — and that happened only last September.
“I would ask those folks to put themselves in the same position as people of western North Carolina,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said of colleagues who have raised the prospect of withholding aid to California. “You got to be consistent on disaster supplement, period.” Congress passed a$100-billion disaster relief bill after the hurricanes, no strings attached.
But other Republicans either have blinders on or short memories. Consider Barrasso’s home state, Wyoming. “Billion-dollar natural disasters are up 360% in Wyoming over the last 20 years,” according to a study funded by LendingTree and cited by LaramieLive.com. The state is especially vulnerable to wildfires, including a wind-blown fire in 2020 that scorched 177,000 acres, destroyed 66 properties and threatened Cheyenne’s drinking water with contamination.
Louisiana, Johnson’s home state? Since 2004, it’s been hit by 13 hurricanes as well as floods requiring federal assistance. If Johnson were to stick with his insistence that “governance” were to be a factor in the disbursement of federal assistance, observes Louisiana journalist Greg LaRose, the state might “no longer be entitled to federal assistance after hurricanes because state policy has allowed the fossil fuel industry to carve up its coastal marshes, making south Louisiana more susceptible to storm damage.”
The Census Bureau reported that Louisiana had the highest percentage of residents displaced by natural disasters of any state in 2023 — about 8.3%, compared with the national average of 1.6%.
Every state in the union has received federal disaster aid in recent years. How many of them would like to see political strings attached to the funding?
(Carnegie Endowment)
Florida? it might as well be called the “hurricane state,” with the damage caused by more than 20 hurricanes requiring federal aid since 2004, including last year’s Hurricane Milton, which brought some $1.5 billion in federal assistance in its aftermath.
Louisiana and Florida ranked first and second in the level of direct assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies from 2003 through 2024, according to an aid tracker compiled by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Louisiana received $47 billion and Florida received $28 billion. California was in the middle of the pack, at $7.6 billion. Every single state received some level of federal assistance.
Barrasso, Donalds and Johnson didn’t reply to questions I sent through their congressional offices about their advocacy of attaching strings to assistance.
It isn’t only the cynicism of GOP politicians claiming to know the factors underlying disasters such as the California wildfires; it’s their evident ignorance of what those factors are.
They talk with cocksure confidence about the virtues of clearing forest floors, moving water hundreds of miles to get to the fire zone, to “crazy woke left” coastal policies, and on and on. But they don’t mention the most important factor: global warming, which they would prefer to wish away.
But they must know deep down that they’re spouting partisan claptrap. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), whose home state residents received $660 million in FEMA assistance after the Maui fire of 2023, according to the Carnegie database, knows how asinine, counterproductive and short-lived the idea of conditions on disaster relief will be in the end. “It’s never going to happen,” Schatz told HuffPost. “The moment Texas or Florida or Mississippi experiences a disaster, that idea will vanish.”
For the trendiest tenants in Hollywood office buildings, it’s the latest fad that goes way beyond designer furniture and art: mini studios
To capitalize on the never-ending flow of stars and influencers who come through Los Angeles, a growing number of companies are building bright little corners for content creators to try products and shoot short videos. Athletic apparel maker Puma, Kim Kardashian’s Skims and cheeky cosmetics retailer e.l.f. have spaces specifically designed to give people a place to experience and broadcast about their brands.
Hollywood, which hasn’t historically been home to apparel companies, is now attracting the offices of fashion retailers, says CIM Group, one of the neighborhood’s largest commercial property landlords.
“When we’re touring a space, one of the first items they bring up is, ‘Where can I build a studio?’” said Blake Eckert, who leases CIM offices in L.A.
Their studio offices also serve as marketing centers, with showrooms and meeting spaces where brands can host proprietary events not open to the public.
“For companies where brand visibility is really important, there is a trend of creating spaces that don’t just function as offices,” said real estate broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE, who puts together entertainment property leases and sales.
Puma’s global entertainment marketing team is based in its new Hollywood offices, which works with such musical celebrity partners as Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, Dua Lipa, Skepta and Rosé, said Allyssa Rapp, head of Puma Studio L.A.
Allyssa Rapp, director of entertainment marketing at Puma, is shown in the Puma Studio L.A. The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Hollywood is a central location, she said, for meeting with celebrities, stylists and outside designers, most of whom are based in Los Angeles.
The office is a “creation hub,” she said, where influencers can record Puma’s design prototyping lab supported by libraries of materials and equipment used to create Puma apparel. The company, founded in 1948, is known for its emblematic sneakers such as the Speedcat and its lunging feline logo, and makes athletic wear, accessories and equipment.
Puma’s entertainment marketing team also occupies the office and sometimes uses it for exclusive events.
“We use the space as a showroom, as a social space that transforms from a traditional workplace into more of an experiential space,” Rapp said.
Nontraditional uses include content creation, sit-down dinners, product launches, album listening parties and workshops.
“Inviting people into our space and being able to give them high-touch brand experiences is something tangible and important for them,” she said. “The cultural layer is really important for us.”
The company keeps a closet full of Puma products on hand to give VIP guests. Visits to the studio sanctum are by invitation only, though. There’s no retail portal to the exclusive Hollywood offices.
Puma shoes are on display in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Puma is also positioning its L.A studio as a connection point for major upcoming sporting events coming to Los Angeles, including the World Cup this summer, the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics.
In-office studios don’t need to be big to be impactful, Mihalka said. “These are smaller stages, closer to green screen than a massive soundstage.”
Social media is the key driver of content created by most businesses, which may set up small booth-like stages where influencers can hawk hot products while offering discounts to people watching them perform.
Bigger, elevated stages can accommodate multiple performers for extended discussions in front of small audiences, with towering screens behind them to set the mood or illustrate products.
Among the tricked-out offices, she said, is Skims. The company, which is valued at $5 billion, is based in a glass-and-steel office building near the fabled intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
The fashion retailer declined to comment on the studio uses in its headquarters, but according to architecture firm Odaa, it has open and private offices, meeting rooms, collaboration zones, photo studios, sample libraries, prototype showrooms, an executive lounge and a commissary for 400 people.
Pieces of a shoe sit on a workbench in the Puma Studio L.A.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The brands building studios typically want to find the darkest spot on the premises to put their content creation or podcast spaces, Eckert said, where they can limit outside light and sound. That’s commonly near the center of the office floor, far from windows and close to permanent shear walls that limit sound intrusion.
They also need space for green rooms and restrooms dedicated to the talent.
Spotify recently built a fancy podcast studio in a CIM office building on trendy Sycamore Avenue that is open by invitation-only to video creators in Spotify’s partner program.
“Ambitious shows need spaces that support big ideas,” Bill Simmons, head of talk strategy at Spotify, said in a statement. “These studios give teams room to experiment and keep pushing what’s possible.”
The rolling robots that deliver groceries and hot meals across Los Angeles are getting an upgrade.
Coco Robotics, a UCLA-born startup that’s deployed more than 1,000 bots across the country, unveiled its next-generation machines on Thursday.
The new robots are bigger, tougher and better equipped for autonomy than their predecessors. The company will use them to expand into new markets and increase its presence in Los Angeles, where it makes deliveries through a partnership with DoorDash.
Dubbed Coco 2, the next-gen bots have upgraded cameras and front-facing lidar, a laser-based sensor used in self-driving cars. They will use hardware built by Nvidia, the Santa Clara-based artificial intelligence chip giant.
Coco co-founder and chief executive Zach Rash said Coco 2 will be able to make deliveries even in conditions unsafe for human drivers. The robot is fully submersible in case of flooding and is compatible with special snow tires.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco, opens the top of the new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Early this month, a cute Coco was recorded struggling through flooded roads in L.A.
“She’s doing her best!” said the person recording the video. “She is doing her best, you guys.”
Instagram followers cheered the bot on, with one posting, “Go coco, go,” and others calling for someone to help the robot.
“We want it to have a lot more reliability in the most extreme conditions where it’s either unsafe or uncomfortable for human drivers to be on the road,” Rash said. “Those are the exact times where everyone wants to order.”
The company will ramp up mass production of Coco 2 this summer, Rash said, aiming to produce 1,000 bots each month.
The design is sleek and simple, with a pink-and-white ombré paint job, the company’s name printed in lowercase, and a keypad for loading and unloading the cargo area. The robots have four wheels and a bigger internal compartment for carrying food and goods .
Many of the bots will be used for expansion into new markets across Europe and Asia, but they will also hit the streets in Los Angeles and operate alongside the older Coco bots.
Coco has about 300 bots in Los Angeles already, serving customers from Santa Monica and Venice to Westwood, Mid-City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Koreatown and the USC area.
The new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) drives along the sidewalk at the Coco Robotics headquarters in Venice.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
The company is in discussion with officials in Culver City, Long Beach and Pasadena about bringing autonomous delivery to those communities.
There’s also been demand for the bots in Studio City, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, according to Rash.
“A lot of the markets that we go into have been telling us they can’t hire enough people to do the deliveries and to continue to grow at the pace that customers want,” Rash said. “There’s quite a lot of area in Los Angeles that we can still cover.”
The bots already operate in Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, Finland. Last month, they arrived in Jersey City, N.J.
Late last year, Coco announced a partnership with DashMart, DoorDash’s delivery-only online store. The partnership allows Coco bots to deliver fresh groceries, electronics and household essentials as well as hot prepared meals.
With the release of Coco 2, the company is eyeing faster deliveries using bike lanes and road shoulders as opposed to just sidewalks, in cities where it’s safe to do so. Coco 2 can adapt more quickly to new environments and physical obstacles, the company said.
Zach Rash, co-founder and CEO of Coco.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Coco 2 is designed to operate autonomously, but there will still be human oversight in case the robot runs into trouble, Rash said. Damaged sidewalks or unexpected construction can stop a bot in its tracks.
The need for human supervision has created a new field of jobs for Angelenos.
Though there have been reports of pedestrians bullying the robots by knocking them over or blocking their path, Rash said the community response has been overall positive. The bots are meant to inspire affection.
“One of the design principles on the color and the name and a lot of the branding was to feel warm and friendly to people,” Rash said.
Coco plans to add thousands of bots to its fleet this year. The delivery service got its start as a dorm room project in 2020, when Rash was a student at UCLA. He co-founded the company with fellow student Brad Squicciarini.
The Santa Monica-based company has completed more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its bots have collectively traveled around 1 million miles.
Coco chooses neighborhoods to deploy its bots based on density, prioritizing areas with restaurants clustered together and short delivery distances as well as places where parking is difficult.
The robots can relieve congestion by taking cars and motorbikes off the roads. Rash said there is so much demand for delivery services that the company’s bots are not taking jobs from human drivers.
Instead, Coco can fill gaps in the delivery market while saving merchants money and improving the safety of city streets.
“This vehicle is inherently a lot safer for communities than a car,” Rash said. “We believe our vehicles can operate the highest quality of service and we can do it at the lowest price point.”
President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using technology from San Francisco artificial intelligence company Anthropic, escalating a high-profile clash between the AI startup and the Pentagon over safety.
In a Friday post on the social media site Truth Social, Trump described the company as “radical left” and “woke.”
“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said.
The president’s harsh words mark a major escalation in the ongoing battle between some in the Trump administration and several technology companies over the use of artificial intelligence in defense tech.
Anthropic has been sparring with the Pentagon, which had threatened to end its $200-million contract with the company on Friday if it didn’t loosen restrictions on its AI model so it could be used for more military purposes. Anthropic had been asking for more guarantees that its tech wouldn’t be used for surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.
The tussle could hobble Anthropic’s business with the government. The Trump administration said the company was added to a sweeping national security blacklist, ordering federal agencies to immediately discontinue use of its products and barring any government contractors from maintaining ties with it.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who met with Anthropic’s Chief Executive Dario Amodei this week, criticized the tech company after Trump’s Truth Social post.
“Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon,” he wrote Friday on social media site X.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic announced a two-year agreement with the Department of Defense in July to “prototype frontier AI capabilities that advance U.S. national security.”
The company has an AI chatbot called Claude, but it also built a custom AI system for U.S. national security customers.
On Thursday, Amodei signaled the company wouldn’t cave to the Department of Defense’s demands to loosen safety restrictions on its AI models.
The government has emphasized in negotiations that it wants to use Anthropic’s technology only for legal purposes, and the safeguards Anthropic wants are already covered by the law.
Still, Amodei was worried about Washington’s commitment.
“We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” he said in a blog post. “However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”
Tech workers have backed Anthropic’s stance.
Unions and worker groups representing 700,000 employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft said this week in a joint statement that they’re urging their employers to reject these demands as well if they have additional contracts with the Pentagon.
“Our employers are already complicit in providing their technologies to power mass atrocities and war crimes; capitulating to the Pentagon’s intimidation will only further implicate our labor in violence and repression,” the statement said.
Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. government could benefit its competitors, such as Elon Musk’s xAI or OpenAI.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and one of Anthropic’s biggest competitors, told CNBC in an interview that he trusts Anthropic.
“I think they really do care about safety, and I’ve been happy that they’ve been supporting our war fighters,” he said. “I’m not sure where this is going to go.”
Anthropic has distinguished itself from its rivals by touting its concern about AI safety.
The company, valued at roughly $380 billion, is legally required to balance making money with advancing the company’s public benefit of “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.”
Developers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations use Anthropic’s tools. Its chatbot can generate code, write text and perform other tasks. Anthropic also offers an AI assistant for consumers and makes money from paid subscriptions as well as contracts. Unlike OpenAI, which is testing ads in ChatGPT, Anthropic has pledged not to show ads in its chatbot Claude.
The company has roughly 2,000 employees and has revenue equivalent to about $14 billion a year.
Boy dies after being struck by vehicle in Hawaii Kai | Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Who is running for Illinois governor in 2026? What to know as primary Early Voting sites open
Indiana Pacers Must Manage Two-Way Contract Player Availability Down Stretch
Iowa Boys High School State Basketball Tournament Sets Two Classes
Why Matthew Driscoll continues to say Kansas State is ‘close’
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Mamdani’s response to Trump’s Iran strike sparks conservative backlash: ‘Rooting for the ayatollah’
Activists hail ‘historic’ EU’s decision on accessible abortion
A long-buried recording and the Supreme Court of old (CT+) : Consider This from NPR
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
-
World3 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts4 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Louisiana6 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Denver, CO3 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT