Bad Democrat

Los Angeles County announced this morning that they are suing State Farm Insurance (State Farm) for troubling peoples’ fire insurance claims from the Eaton and Palisades fires.

From the LA County Supervisor’s site:

The lawsuit follows County Counsel’s investigation of State Farm’s alleged violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law relating to delays, underpayments, and denials of wildfire claims from its policyholders impacted by the 2025 wildfires. The lawsuit alleges that State Farm subjected policyholders to:

• False advertising inducing them to purchase and rely on State Farm insurance;
• Unreasonable delays in investigation and processing of claims;
• Systematic underpayments of claims even where the rightful amount of the claim was clear;
• Frequent and improper reassignment of individual claim adjusters;
• Systematic barriers to policyholders’ ability to contact and communicate with adjusters;
• Refusal to provide due compensation for Additional Living Expenses (ALE);
• Misrepresentations during the claims process to discourage pursuit of claims; and
• Illegal suppression of smoke damage claims.

“Wildfire survivors have already endured unimaginable loss; they should not have to fight their insurance company simply to receive the benefits they paid for and counted on,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “These delays, underpayments, and denials have real consequences. They keep families from rebuilding, prolong displacement, and ultimately slow the recovery of entire communities. That is why Los Angeles County is taking action to stand up for survivors and hold State Farm accountable.”

From Google’s AI Review: A federal judge lifted an administrative stay on August 18, 2026, clearing the path for the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 5,000 Ethiopian non-citizens.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to end Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 people from Haiti and 6,000 from Syria.

Homeland Security officials argued that TPS was always meant to be temporary, criticizing past extensions by previous administrations as political maneuvers.

Administration officials claimed that certain nations have improved or that recipients should seek other legal pathways, though critics point to severe ongoing violence and Level 4 travel advisories for Haiti.

From The Guardian: A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.

In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.

The grand jury report, dated 28 January 2026, states that in 2024, the Hope Florida Foundation received $10m from a Medicaid settlement between the state and Centene, a contractor for the government health insurance program for low-income Americans and children.

Please note that the Medicaid settlement was not supposed to go to the Hope Florida Foundation. DeSantis administration sent it there.

The report goes on to say that after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was “quickly funneled” from there into two political action committees, and that the money was then reportedly used to lobby against a ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana in Florida, and was sent to the Republican party of Florida.

From The NY Times: Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms.

Ctd…In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. 

Meta agreed to limit the time teens can spend on Facebook and Instagram to 2 hours a day and to block the teens from accessing the app and website between 10 pm and 6 am.

They also decided to stop a number of things they had for those kids to do.

From Google’s AI Overview: The landmark federal Meta trial is currently underway in Oakland, California, where 29 states accuse the tech giant of intentionally designing Instagram and Facebook to addict children and teenagers. Amid testimony from top executives, Meta and state attorneys general are reportedly discussing a mid-trial settlement to resolve the massive case. [1, 2, 3]

I went on a Chesapeake-Norfolk-Virginia Beach North Carolina news site called WAVY.com and this headline…

Virginia Beach: VB crews respond to sinking boat near Lesser Bridge

Norfolk: Manager: Wells Theater soaked twice in three days

Newport News: Masego joins MM Vice Mayor for back-to-school event

Beware of news sites that do this. There is a reason certain things belong on the side and not the mains. Or whatever it is about that..

From NPR Journalism: WASHINGTON — Federal agents seized electronic devices from former Rep. Eric Swalwell and searched his Washington home as part of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the ex-Democratic congressman from California, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Swalwell’s devices were seized at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and agents executed a search warrant at his home a day later, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The FDA just upgraded the recall of Publix frozen blueberries to the highest human health risk, according to CBS News and ABC. Publix announced on July 29th a recall of the brand GreenWise’s frozen blueberries and frozen mixed berries due to E. Coli contamination in 8 states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Twelve people linked to the outbreak have been reported in two states. No deaths have been reported.

On Monday, it was announced that Google will be buying Spirit Airlines’ data to feed its AI models. From KCRA: That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information, as well as human resources information on its employees.

Spirit Airlines ceased operations in May after declaring bankruptcy, and has been selling off its remaining assets.

The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to the court filing, but it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

“We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models,” a spokesperson for Google said in a statement.

It made me wonder, is there something about Spirit Airlines customers that would be useful for AI answers or responses or something like that?