Politics
Wildfire victims decry state law protecting utilities from cost of disasters they cause
A year after the Eaton fire, survivors and the state’s electric utilities are clashing over whether state law should continue to protect the companies from the cost of disastrous wildfires they ignite.
Southern California Edison says that with the help of those state laws it expects to pay little or even none of the damage costs of the Eaton fire, which its equipment is suspected of sparking.
But in recent filings to state officials, fire victims and consumer advocates say the law has gone too far and made the utilities’ unaccountable for their mistakes, leading to even more fires.
“What do you think will happen if you constantly protect perpetrators of fires,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
At the same time, Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit electric companies are lobbying state officials for even more protection from the cost of future fires to reassure their investors.
If government investigators find Edison’s equipment ignited the Eaton fire, at least seven of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires would have been caused by the three utilities’ equipment.
The debate over how far the state should go to protect the electric companies from the cost of utility-sparked wildfires is playing out in Sacramento at the California Earthquake Authority. The authority is managing a broad study, ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom, aimed at determining how to better protect Californians from catastrophic wildfires.
Chen said she was concerned by a meeting this month that she and another survivor had been invited to by authority officials and consultants they had hired to work on the study.
She said a primary focus of the discussion was how to shield utilities and their shareholders from the damages of future fires, rather than on the costs to survivors and other Californians “living with the consequences of utility-caused fires.”
Chen later sent authority officials an email pointing to a Times story that detailed how four of five top executives at Edison International were paid higher bonuses the year before the Eaton fire even as the number of fires sparked by the utility’s equipment soared.
“The predictable outcome of continuing to protect shareholders and executives from the consequences of their own negligence is not theoretical. It is observable. More catastrophic fires,” she wrote.
“The Eaton Fire was the predictable outcome of this moral hazard,” she added.
An authority spokesman said Chen and other wildfire victims’ perspectives were “invaluable” to officials as they complete the study that is due April 1.
He said the authority had made “no foregone conclusions” of what the report will say.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told the Times last month that he disagreed strongly with claims that state law had gone too far in protecting utilities.
“The law keeps us very accountable,” Pizarro said. He added that the laws were needed to shield utilities from bankruptcy, which could drive electric bills higher.
In December, Edison and the two other utilities told authority officials in a filing that they and their shareholders shouldn’t have to pay any more into the state wildfire fund, which was created to pay for the damages of utility-caused fires.
So far, electric customers and utility shareholders have split the cost of the fund.
The companies said that making their shareholders contribute more to the fund “undermines investor confidence in California utilities.”
They proposed that officials instead find a new way to help pay for catastrophic fires, possibly using state income taxes, which require the wealthy to pay a higher share.
“Instead of relying on an increase in utility bills to cover extreme catastrophic losses, something that disproportionately impacts lower-income Californians, this system could share costs more equitably across society,” the three companies wrote.
While the investigation into the cause of the Eaton fire has not yet been released, Edison has said a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line no longer in service was briefly re-energized and sparked the fire.
Edison last used that transmission line in Eaton Canyon more than fifty years ago. Utility executives said they kept it up because they believed it would be used in the future.
Utilities and state regulators have long known that old, unused lines posed fire risks. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to a dormant transmission line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric.
The electric companies’ legal protections from utility-sparked fires date back to 2019 when Gov. Newsom led an effort to pass a measure known as AB 1054.
Then, PG&E was in bankruptcy because of costs it faced from a series of wildfires, including the 2018 Camp fire. That blaze, caused by a decades-old transmission line, destroyed most of the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.
Under the 2019 law, a utility is automatically deemed to have acted prudently if its equipment starts a wildfire. Then, all fire damages, except for $1 billion dollars covered by customer-paid insurance, are covered by the state wildfire fund.
The law allows outside parties to provide evidence that the utility didn’t act prudently before the fire, but even in that event, the utility’s financial responsibility for damages is capped.
Edison has told its investors that it believes it acted prudently before the Eaton fire and will have the damage costs fully covered.
The company says the maximum it may have to pay under the law if it is found to be imprudent is $4 billion. Damages for the Eaton fire have been estimated to be as high as $45 billion.
Pizarro said the possibility of Edison paying as much as $4 billion shows that state law is working to keep utilities accountable.
“If we were imprudent and we end up getting penalized by $4 billion for the Eaton fire, that’s going to be a very painful day for this company — not only the pain of being told that we were imprudent, but also the financial toll of a penalty of that size,” he said.
Chen’s group is not alone in urging the state to change the laws protecting utilities from wildfire costs.
William Abrams of the Utility Wildfire Survivor Coalition detailed in a filing how the present laws had been shaped by the utilities and “a small circle of well-resourced legal and financial actors.”
AB 1054 had weakened safety regulations, he said, while leaving wildfire survivors across California “under-compensated and struggling to rebuild.”
He proposed that the companies be required to use shareholder money and suspend their dividends to pay for fire damages.
Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told state officials that Edison is expected to have damages of the Eaton fire covered despite questions of why it did not remove the “ghost line” in Eaton Canyon and failed to shut down its transmission lines, despite the high winds on the night of the fire.
“We recommend establishing a negligence standard,” Balber said, “for when utilities’ shareholders need to pay.”
Among the consultants the authority has hired to help write the study is Rand, the Santa Monica-based research group; and Aon, a consulting firm.
Both Rand and Aon have been paid by Edison for other work. Most recently, Edison hired Rand to review some of the data and methods it used to determine how much to offer Eaton fire victims in its voluntary compensation program.
Chen said hiring Edison’s consultants to help prepare the study created a conflict of interest.
The authority spokesman said officials were confident that their “open and inclusive study process” will protect its integrity.
Aon did not return a request for comment.
“Our clients have no influence over our findings,” said Leah Polk, a Rand spokesperson. “We follow the evidence and maintain strict standards to ensure our work remains objective and unbiased.”
Chen said she was not convinced. “You have the fox guarding the hen house,” she said.
Politics
Trump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
President Donald Trump mocked the Islamic Revolutionary Guard on Sunday morning for staking claim to a Strait of Hormuz “blockade” the U.S. military had already put in place.
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.
“In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’”
Trump declared Saturday’s IRGC fire was “a total violation” of the ceasefire.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” his post began.
“Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations.”
Trump remains hopeful about diplomacy, but is not ruling out a return to force, where he once warned about ending “civilation” in Iran as they know it.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump’s stern warning continued.
“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.
Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.
And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.
By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.
Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.
Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.
The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.
“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.
People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”
“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.
So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.
“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”
Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.
The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.
Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.
“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”
The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.
“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”
Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”
Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.
Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”
A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.
“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.
“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
-
Augusta, GA5 minutes agoWhat is the cheapest city in Georgia to live with a roomate?
-
Washington, D.C11 minutes ago12th Honor Flight Tallahassee returns home from successful trip to Washington D.C.
-
Cleveland, OH17 minutes agoSupercross: Results From Cleveland, OH
-
Austin, TX23 minutes agoHow Texas’ road, bridge conditions compare to other states
-
Alabama29 minutes agoAlabama edge to pattern his game after 2-time Super Bowl Champ
-
Alaska35 minutes agoAlaska Senate committee advances draft capital budget, boosting funds for school maintenance
-
Arizona41 minutes agoPerson accused of making terroristic threats to medical facility in northern Arizona
-
Arkansas47 minutes agoCentral Arkansas council hands out 300 free produce bags at Saline County fresh market