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plan for fundamental changes to the high court, including term limits, ethical standards and restrictions on presidential immunity. but first, the massive park fire in northern california rages on. the fire is now the sixth largest wildfire in state history, and officials are warning it could burn for several more weeks. hello, i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us for abc7 news at three. we start with the latest developments on the park fire. it's been growing rapidly since it started near chico last week, and it's prompted the bay area air quality management district to issue an air quality advisory today. the man suspected of starting that fire appearing in court right now, he's accused of pushing a car down a hill while it was on fire. cal fire says the park fire has now grown to over 370,000 acres. that's an area bigger than the city of los angeles, 4200 homes and other buildings are threatened. abc's tim pulliam has more. >> the park fire rapidly

spreading in northern california. dashcam video from this vehicle shows the intensity of the smoke and flames. this massive fire forcing thousands to evacuate. >> in your head. you're like, everybody's going to have something to go home to. >> linda miller forced to flee her home more than three days ago, the park fire burning more than 500mi■!s across five counties, is now larger than the city of los angeles. everyone on alert for shifting winds when flames can jump the fire line. >> we actually now have to move. we have to back up the fire is moving our direction. so i need to keep moving the fire only 12% contained over the last week, the blaze ravaging at least 100 homes and buildings. >> we left everything behind, all of our personal belongings, all of the enclosures, all the supplies this jinky had to evacuate her horse sanctuary, leaving 17 horses behind. >> they are not used to fending for themselves. they get fed every day. they are living in a

20 acre field and it was kind of hard to watch them leave and run. >> more than 4700 firefighters working around the clock, fighting the flames on the ground and in the air. fire crews expected it will take at least a month to completely knock down the park. fire. tim pulliam, abc news, los angeles firefighters are struggling to wrangle another large fire still burning strong after more than two weeks. >> the burrell fire sparked in the sequoia national forest during a lightning storm earlier this month. on friday, it burned through the historic mining town of havilah. crews are still figuring out how many homes have been destroyed. the fire has burned more than 53,000 acres with no containment. dangerous fire weather continues into tomorrow, but the fire may start moving into an area that burned a few years ago. right now, we're tracking dozens of wildfires statewide. you can get those detailed maps with our abc seven california wildfire tracker. it gives you a full picture of the fires and smoke

across the state. it's up for you right now on the front page of abc7 news.com and on the free abc seven news app. the wildfire is charring. parts of california are not just bad for our air quality. a new study released today indicates the fires could also affect our brain health and memory. i talked about it with a representative from the alzheimer's association earlier today. on midday live. how exactly does that work? why does the wildfire smoke affect the brain in that way? that it could increase your probability of dementia? what's happening up there? >> sure. so one of the theories with this wildfire smoke is that because it's produced at higher temperatures and contains greater concentration of toxic chemicals, might be why it has this sort of, you know, more, more dangerous, impact. it also, on average, is smaller in diameter than fine particulate matter from other sources. and so what happens when we breathe

that in? right. anything that we breathe in goes to our lungs. it then gets into our bloodstream. and that's how it can have impact on other parts of our body, including the brain. >> all right. and real quickly, because i don't understand the units of measurement for particulates. and you know, maybe you can put that in terms of exposure to is it one wildfire? is it two wildfires? how many days where it starts to make a bit of an impact? >> yeah, that's a really good question. i certainly wish that i had an easy answer for that. i think that because this was an observational study, it's not quite that easy to understand, but i think it's really about what do we do now, which is, thinking about when you are exposed to this, to the potential air pollution, making sure that you're putting an n95 mask on when it's an air quality day that's above 100, thinking about whether or not you can stay inside when we have those days, because i think that that's the part as they looked over these million plus people of, of data is that we don't

really i think there's more to really uncover here, to really figure out what that exposure really looks like, whether it's sort of one time or whether it's a build up over a number of years. and when it's not really clear now, the show's breathing in wildfire smoke led to a 21% increase in the odds of a dementia diagnosis. >> that's more than any other form of air pollution. research tracked the brain health of more than 1 million people in southern california for ten years, from 2009 to 2019. how do you feel about masking up again? san francisco health officials are urging people to consider wearing masks in certain situations to help slow the current massive summer surge of covid 19. abc seven news reporter gloria rodriguez spoke with a local doctor about the recommendation. >> i think california and the bay area, you know, as an example, was ripe to seeing a lot of transmissions, during the recent period of time, the heat

waves made a lot of people go indoors, also, the, the wildfires, so it's almost like our version of winter when everybody's escaping the heat or wildfires congregated inside a lot of noses and mouths together. >> sf public health posting this alert on x, formerly twitter, saying with covid 19 circulating, please consider wearing a well-fitted mask in crowded indoor spaces. doctor peter chin-hong weighs in. i think that the rationale is that it's just so much covid going around right now that it's with a very transmissible strain that, it's going to be very easy to get it. >> and if you want to lower that risk, carrying a mask around in my pocket like i do and bringing it out when i feel a little bit at risk, is probably not a bad idea. we've seen the highest levels of covid for a long time in the bay area, probably close to 2022 summer levels and higher

than 2023 summer levels. so, a lot of people getting covid, if we were talking about this in 2020, we'll be talking about icu beds. in 2022, we'll be talking about hospital beds this year. there's still hospitalizations that are taking up, but most of the cases are in the outpatient setting. they're in the community. >> and you heard doctor chin-hong, he says the current variant is more transmissible. he says symptoms include the usual sore throat, congestion, runny nose and fever. but he says that newer symptoms are seen. more of are stomach symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting. and he's recommending that those over 65 get the vaccine. now, if they haven't and get the new one in october, by then it's expected to come out. gloria rodriguez, abc seven news. >> in the east bay, hayward police are asking the public to come forward with information about a drive by shooting that killed a 16 year old girl. it

happened yesterday morning, just after 11, near glad tidings church on west tennyson road. police say masked men in cars pulled up to the parking lot of an apartment complex. they believe the people in the cars exchanged gunfire with people at the complex. that's when the girl was shot, along with a 41 year old man who just happened to be walking by. the teen died at the hospital, and the man's injuries are not life threatening. >> we can't stand for this. this is something that we should all be outraged about. and i think that we're going to continue to work with our community partners and our regional partners to make sure that to the extent that we can, that that this doesn't happen again. >> police have not made any arrests, but they have recovered some of the cars involved in the shooting. they don't believe this was a random shooting, though. they're not sure whether the teenage girl was the target. up next, the president's plan to overhaul the supreme court. president biden lays out his vision today, which includes term limits. a legal expert joins us live to talk about how this could change the country's

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fundraising event in palo alto, a reception the washington post and bloomberg report. the event is being hosted by mike belshe. he is the ceo of the crypto company bitgo. president biden today called for a constitutional amendment to affirm that no one, not even presidents, are above the law. he also introduced a plan to reform the supreme court. the main points are term limits for the supreme court. he is

proposing justices be limited to 18 years, with the sitting president appointing a new justice every two years. biden also wants a binding ethics code that would require justices to disclose gifts or recuse themselves. if they or their spouse may have a conflict of interest. these proposals come after evidence of what many consider to be ethical violations by justices clarence thomas and samuel alito on presidential immunity. biden wants to counter the july supreme court ruling that essentially makes future presidents immune from criminal prosecution for official acts. it's very unlikely president biden will be able to get any of these proposals passed because of the makeup and politics of congress right now. joining us live to talk more about biden's supreme court reform plan, uc law, san francisco professor rory little, a recognized authority on constitutional issues. professor little, thanks for your time. >> happy to be here. >> this isn't a surprise. this plan being unveiled right now, right?

>> well, it's not a surprise, but it's unprecedented. we haven't had a proposal from a president like this ever to totally reform the supreme court and uh- overrule a supreme court decision that has made a lot of people unhappy. >> all right, so let's take a closer look at the different aspects to biden's plan. and you can tell me what precipitated it. you know, why he deems it necessary and what the proposal might accomplish. so the first part, no immunity for crimes, a president commits in office. talk about this. obviously a reaction to the supreme court ruling. >> right. so the supreme court held that the president has absolute immunity on certain core acts that he might do, even if they're totally criminal uh- and presumptive immunity for everything that he does officially. uh. that's an unprecedented ruling. you know, 200 and some years ago, we enacted an amendment, the 11th amendment to the constitution, which overruled a supreme court opinion from two years earlier

having to do with immunity. so it's not unprecedented to seek to overrule a supreme court opinion. and that's what this legislation would do. this would become a constitutional amendment, not just a piece of legislation. >> so not unprecedented, not impossible, but very difficult to do. right. what is the threshold you need from congress to get that constitutional amendment? >> yes. very well. first, you have to have congress to propose it. and right now, congress can't agree on anything, i think you need two thirds to ratify it. two thirds of the states uh. so constitutional amendments don't happen overnight, even when they're very popular. so, yeah, it's an unlikely, scenario for this to be adopted immediately, but it's not unprecedented. and it could happen if people get behind it over time. all right. >> let's talk about a few more of the components. term limits for supreme court justices right now, of course, lifetime appointments. so he wants 18 years max. what's the rationale here? >> well, the idea is that

justices serve too long and that lifetime appointments can sway the court dramatically in one direction or another. president trump, for example, had three appointments and totally changed the voting behavior of the current supreme court, this has happened sometimes in the past, but there are some presidents who've never had an appointment during their four year term. so this would regularize the appointment process and say every two years the president asked to nominate a new justice and the most senior justice would then step back, not retire, but step back and not be the active nine justice court. on most cases, this proposal has been floating around for a long time, and it leaves a lot of details to be worked out again, unlikely that it would be enacted by the current congress, but many people think that life tenure has not been a good thing. let me just say, there are instances where we like life tenure because it allows a judge the independence to change their views. so you have republican appointed justices who become

very liberal over their time, over 2 or 3 decades. so life tenure does give an independence that other judges don't have when they're looking at elections or things like that. >> right. so you just pointed out some pros and some cons to this, right? like you said, sometimes they evolve and sometimes in a way that history judges kindly later on. but let me just ask you, i guess, where does the public stand on this? have we seen opinion polls? is this what people want? and as you said before, before in history, we have self-corrected right. there are times when a president appoints three and then it gets very right. or very left, and then it self-corrects is there the sense that something's fundamentally different this time and you won't self-correct? >> well, i don't know. i mean, i think the polls on this are dramatically differentiated between public between the parties. right? i mean, democrats tend to favor it because they don't like the current trump court. uh- republicans are against it. suddenly, you know, in the 1960s, the republicans were the ones proposing that we abolish life tenure because they didn't

like the leftward direction that the warren court took. so politics on this tend to shift over time. i think the american people are kind of divided on the question. the real the real point, i think, is that most people don't know what the issue is at all. most people can't identify a single supreme court justice anymore. so, you know, talk about popular opinion in this area is pretty, pretty hard to even imagine, i suppose. >> i mean, you know, the populist first needs to understand what's going on. but let's talk about the third component, the binding code of conduct that president biden is proposing as well. i guess what prompted this is the problem that there hasn't been a clear code of ethics, and that's led to problems. >> well, there has not been a clear there's been no code of ethics for the supreme court in the past, justices that have had serious financial conflicts of interest have resigned. abe fortas resigned in the 1960s because of a financial conflict that he was discovered to have,

justices alito and thomas have been accused of conflicts and not recused from cases, not let alone resign. the idea here is that there should be some code of basic conflicts that the court will not tolerate. the question is, how do you enforce it constitutionally? justice kagan has proposed that the court do it itself internally, that they adopt their own code. i think a lot of people believe that if the congress tries to impose a code on the supreme court, it might violate the constitutional separation of powers. >> i was just going to ask you about that, right? i mean, are there issues with overreach by one branch over another branch? i mean, some are even saying president biden is overreaching here, right? executive over judicial. that's not what the founding fathers intended. how do you look at all this? >> well, i think you're exactly right that you have to be careful about this. i mean, i think you have to separate these various proposals into their own silos. in a sense. some have more problems than others, i do think that imposing a code of

ethics, it's sort of unfortunate that it's necessary for us to think that we need it. but the fact is, we probably do need it, judges, all other federal judges are bound by a code of ethics. there's an enforcement mechanism. it doesn't happen very often, but it does exist. it has happened occasionally. so why does the supreme court stay out of that, just because they're the supreme court, we'll see whether history will allow it or not. >> all right. we got to go. but i just want to ask you right now, because it seems like public opinion and trust in the supreme court as an institution may be at an all time low. why is that dangerous for us as a society, as a democracy? >> well, the truth is, we need a court. and the constitution says there shall be a supreme court, but we need a court to settle issues where the country is divided on very major legal questions. not everything is a legal question. homelessness is not a legal question. it's a societal question. but we need a

court that can finally decide these things to have that court not be respected by the people endangers the power of its rulings, and we want a court whose, authority is unquestioned if we trust its process right now, the trust of the process is pretty low. >> all right. we'll see what happens here. uc law, san francisco professor rory little, thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> up next, the days of a perfectly manicured lawn may become a thing of the past. why? more people are wild about thei

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(vo) do you fargo? you can, with wells fargo. this new reality and become climate ready. abc news chief meteorologist ginger zee is kicking things off with ways people around the country are altering their lawns to help the planet. >> i don't want to mow it. i don't want to water it. there's

a lot of lawn and i need to get rid of it. >> judy vigilante is ready for a change, and i think it's time to let it go back to nature. she is taking out a big chunk of her lawn and putting native plants in instead. the group planet wild says judy's not alone. they have seen a surge of people wanting to get rid of the traditional lawn and replace it. they call it rewilding. there are between 40 and 60 million acres of lawn across america. >> it's being over watered in a time when we need to be preserving water. people are pouring, you know, pesticides on it. >> rewilding immediately protects our rapidly changing climate. >> we're talking about carbon sequestration right in your own backyard, as well as pulling out toxins from the air filtering and conserving water as well. >> these plants won't need any irrigation once they're established. and i jumped in to help. and then. do you want some of these in here? yes >> these are andropogon, which is big bluestem. so they get

super huge. >> the lawn dug out by hand before planting a lot of worms right here. this is good. >> yeah, that's a great sign to see what this might look like. >> fully grown. we go to jane walters. she started rewilding her yard about four years ago. what's the feeling when you look out over what you've created here? >> it's a sanctuary. something that was so lifeless has become so full of life. >> rewilding can also mean lower water bills and maintenance costs, less flooding during extreme rain and it instantly becomes a sanctuary for pollinators. >> there were no animals there were no birds, there were no insects because now here you have. >> you've created a home. yes for more than just you. >> yes, yes. >> and back at judy's, can you see it? right here. that's a monarch butterfly. and that is a milkweed plant planet. wild says you don't have to rewild your entire yard and rip it up. today, one milkweed added to what your property has, and you can bring back something as

beautiful as a monarch. she's laying eggs. and then that whole process will become a big circle of life. ginger zee abc news, westchester county, new york. >> next, we jump ahead to fall, making sure the joy of halloween reaches kids in the hospital. how disney is helping spread the magic starting today. and remember, abc seven news is streaming 24 over seven. get the abc seven bay area app and join us whenever you want. a happiest halloween with so much to do. just a pinch of pumpkin... a dash of bat... a sprinkle of joy from my witch's hat. potions keep stirring... mix halloween flare. now, add some friendly spirits... that haunt the air.

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find your way to exceptional offers during the summer of audi sales event at your local audi dealer. halloween costume purchased at disneystore.com, disney will donate a costume to the

starlight children's foundation up to 20,000 costumes as part of disney's commitment to children's hospitals and in support of starlight children's foundation, it's important for disney to provide these costumes to children in hospitals across the country. >> it really gives them a moment of halloween joy, when they might not be able to go out in trick or treat. even though it's summer, it's never too early to start your halloween costume planning, so join us at disneystore.com and help us provide costumes to kids and families when they need it most. >> you can head to disneystore.com slash halloween shop to make your purchase and to learn more about this special program, visit starlight. org slash halloween joy disney is the parent company of abc7 san francisco bay, oakland international airport is making it even easier to fly out of the east bay. the airport is offering new on site parking discounts. they include $4 off all reservations in the daily parking lot, and an additional

$2 off per day on weekdays in the economy lot. the new deals kick off this thursday and run through october 31st, ushering in the fall travel season. you can reserve parking spots online at ifly oak. that's okay .com/ park. the new fare gates at san francisco civic center bart station are now operational. they're located near the seventh street entrance on the north side of the concourse level. bart says these next gen gates will cut down on fare evasion, improve safety, and will be easier to maintain work will soon begin to replace the other two sets of gates at the statio. bart plans to install new fare gates systemwide by the end of next year. thanks for joining us today for abc seven news at three. i'll see you right back here at four. world news tonight with david muir starts right now. tonight, the new turn in the race for the white house. also, the developing headline. the steady stabbing spree at a children's dance party. first tonight here in the