Twenty months after the Eaton Fire, a pickleball WhatsApp group from the Altadena Town & Country Club has become one of the more consequential forces in California utility and insurance policy. The Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN)now speaks for more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades survivors, and its executive director, Joy Chen – a former Los Angeles deputy mayor and Fortune 500 executive recruiter – spent the summer in Sacramento arguing that California does not have a wildfire liability problem so much as a fire causation problem.

In conversation, Felicia Marcus, the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford's Water in the West program and former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, assesses the plan federal officials have just accepted to cut Colorado River use through 2028 which she calls a large band-aid rather than the tourniquet the basin needs. She reflects on 25 years of living beyond the river's means, the compact arithmetic that set the overallocation in motion, and the shift required from two-year interim patches toward a durable post-2026 framework. Drawing on service at the federal, state, and municipal levels, Marcus argues that Washington has abandoned the "800-pound gorilla" role that once produced the Bay-Delta Accord and the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Her prescription rests on financing and inclusion – capital to scale conservation and retrofits, and negotiations that reach past the seven state delegations to local agencies, academics, and tribes.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered her State of the Agency Address at Union Station as she takes over as LA Metro Board Chair for the 2026–2027 fiscal year — her second time holding the gavel. Bass laid out four priorities for the coming year: Metro Safe, Metro Affordable, Metro Reliable, and Metro Ready as the agency prepares for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, pointing to the system's second-largest ridership in the country, more than 300 million boardings last year, and the recent World Cup activations as a successful "dress rehearsal" for the Games.

Ambassador Eric Garcetti, former Mayor of Los Angeles and most recently U.S. Ambassador to India, opened VX2026's second day with an extended metaphor: the postwar international order as a building now beginning to crumble, and the choice facing this generation between remaining tenants and firefighters, or becoming its engineers and architects. In his welcoming remarks, Garcetti makes the case that climate progress in America is happening at the city and state level even as the federal administration asserts otherwise.

Pasadena City Councilmember Rick Cole once was described appropriately by the LA Times as “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers.” A City Planning Commissioner before successfully returning to the City Council after a 29 year hiatus during which he worked on award-winning General Plans for Azusa and Ventura as City Manager in those cities. He also spearheaded the adoption of the most recent Downtown Plan for Santa Monica in 2017.

As California confronts rising demand, wildfire-driven costs, and federal policy uncertainty, VX News spoke with California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild on the state’s entry into a new phase of energy deployment—defined by speed, scale, and resilience.

LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin reflects on the structural challenges shaping the future of the nation’s second-largest school district, discussing the fiscal implications of one-time federal ESSER funding, pressures of labor negotiations in a high-cost region, and the long-term sustainability of a district that now serves roughly 400,000 students—down from nearly 700,000 two decades ago.