Newsom, seeking federal funds for L.A. wildfire recovery, is denied meeting with key Trump officials
LA Times, ANA CEBALLOS and MELODY GUTIEREZ: "Gov. Gavin Newsom kept a low profile as he swung through the nation’s capital this week, holding meetings with a handful of lawmakers Friday on Capitol Hill as he renewed calls for billions in federal recovery aid following the Los Angeles fires.
For a governor who has spent recent weeks in the spotlight — trailed by cameras at the U.N. climate summit in Brazil last month and featured at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday — the muted Washington stop stood out. As he moved between offices on Friday, the halls were quiet, with many lawmakers already en route home for the weekend."
L.A. County will ban masked immigration agents. The feds almost certainly won’t listen
LA Times, REBECCA ELLIS and DAVID ZAHNISER: "This year has given the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors no shortage of opportunities to go head-to-head with the federal government: homeless funding cuts, revoked health grants and the much-decried deployment of National Guard troops into the city, to name a few.
On Tuesday, the county arrived at a new proposal that sets yet another collision course with the Trump administration. This time, the dispute is over masked immigration agents."
Less than six months remain before California’s gubernatorial primary. Meet the candidates
LA Times Staff: "Californians have crossed the sixth-month threshold for the June 2 primary election for governor, with the numbers of candidates continuing to swell to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Times politics desk, led by my colleagues Phil Willon and Seema Mehta, has constructed a list of current declared candidates.
Let’s jump into their work."
In first year in Senate, Schiff pushes legislation, party message and challenges to Trump
LAT, KEVIN RECTOR: "Five months after joining the U.S. Senate, Adam Schiff delivered a floor speech on what he called “the top 10 deals for Donald Trump and the worst deals for the American people.”
Schiff spoke of Trump and his family getting rich off cryptocurrency and cutting new development deals across the Middle East, and of the president accepting a free jet from the Qatari government. Meanwhile, he said, average Americans were losing their healthcare, getting priced out of the housing market and having to “choose between rent or groceries.”"
S.F. has doubled spending on nonprofits since 2019. Is City Hall getting its money’s worth?
Chronicle, JD MORRIS/HANNA ZAKHARENKO: "The amount of public money San Francisco pays to nonprofits has skyrocketed in recent years, roughly doubling since 2019 and taking up an increasing share of the cash-strapped city budget.
City Hall spent $809 million on nonprofits in 2019, a figure that accounted for 6.6% of the San Francisco budget at the time. This year, that number rose to $1.63 billion, or 10.2% of the budget, according to a Chronicle analysis of city data."
‘Fighting back’: S.F. campaign launched to tax corporations with highest-paid CEOs
Chronicle, St. JOHN BARNED-SMITH: "When Kristin Hardy thinks about San Francisco’s looming budget gap, the medical records clerk thinks about services the city will be forced to cut — and the likely impacts on institutions such as S.F. General and Laguna Honda hospitals, which receive significant government funding.
“It would have a drastic, drastic effect,” she said. “It’s scary.”
Online child safety advocates urge California lawmakers to increase protections
LA Times, KATIE KING: "Julianna Arnold wasn’t alarmed when her teen daughter first joined Instagram. Many people her age were using it. And her daughter Coco had a social life and other hobbies, like track and gymnastics, to balance out her time online.
“It was music and dancing videos and it seemed innocent,” said Arnold, who resides in Los Angeles, explaining that she would look over the content Coco watched."
Data centers for AI could nearly triple San Jose’s energy use. Who foots the bill?
CALMatters, ALEJANDRO LAZO: "San Jose, the symbolic capital of Silicon Valley, is now ground zero in California’s battle over how to govern the rise of data centers used to power artificial intelligence.
The county seat of Santa Clara is touting its partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric, claiming the city is “the West Coast’s premier destination for data center development.” The investor-owned utility now estimates it has enough capacity in its planning pipeline to push the city’s electricity use to almost three times its current peak."
Survivors spoke but now the system is silencing them (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, CAROLINE HELDMAN: "For a brief moment, it felt like the world had changed. The #MeToo movement cracked open the silence around power. Harvey Weinstein was led into court. Jeffrey Epstein’s empire collapsed. Studios, networks, and boardrooms scrambled to prove they had learned something. For once, the powerful were made to answer.
But power has a long memory and a short attention span. A few years later, we are watching the same stories replay in reverse. Abusers rebrand as victims of “cancel culture.” The wealthy and connected hire crisis-PR firms, launch podcasts, and turn accountability into content. And while we were distracted by celebrity redemption arcs, the government learned the same trick."
Older adults are slowly abandoning this hobby — but the health payoff is huge
Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: "Most older adults don’t read for pleasure these days, but the simple and affordable hobby can have lots of health benefits, including some surprising ones, say experts in aging and brain health.
Reading is associated with reductions in stress and improved mood. And though the actual science is limited, scientists generally agree that reading can boost brain health by essentially working it like a muscle, keeping it strong and flexible."
California’s cold, gloomy weather masks a developing problem: Almost no rain in 3 weeks
Chronicle, GREG PORTER: "So about the weekend. It ended up much cooler than forecast across the board. This year’s tule fog layer is proving to be exceptionally stubborn, even expanding its coverage over the North Bay and East Bay.
The result was a weekend of high temperatures running 10 to 20 degrees below normal. The miserable stretch of cloudy, cool weather goes on for Sacramento and the Central Valley. Over the past two weeks, Sacramento’s average daily high has been 50 degrees, the coldest late-November/early December stretch since 1972."
Paramount was poised to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. What went wrong?
LA Times, MEG JAMES and STACY PERMAN: "Oracle founder Larry Ellison was on the cusp of conquering Hollywood. Just four months earlier, he had bankrolled his son David’s $8-billion acquisition of the storied Paramount Pictures.
Now the Ellison family had designs on scooping up Warner Bros. Discovery, too, offering to buy the entire company for at least $60 billion. The bold play had suddenly thrust this Silicon Valley titan and his son, David — chief executive of the newly-merged Paramount Skydance — into one of the most powerful positions in the film and TV industry."
Paramount goes hostile in bid for Warner Bros., challenging a $72 billion bid by Netflix
LAT, MICHELLE CHAPMAN: "Paramount has made a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, challenging Netflix, which reached a $72 billion takeover deal with the company just days ago.
Paramount said Monday that it is going straight to Warner Bros. shareholders with a $30 per share cash bid for the entirety of the company including its Global Networks business, asking them to reject the deal with Netflix."
Home sales rarely fall through in the Bay Area — but that’s starting to change
Chronicle, CHRISTIAN LEONARD: "Despite a recent slowdown in the Bay Area housing market, deals fall apart at one of the lowest rates in the nation. But sales are falling much more often than just a few years ago.
About 5% of home sales in the San Francisco metropolitan area fell through in October, according to online real estate brokerage Redfin, which defines the area as San Francisco and San Mateo counties. That was up from 3% last year at the same time, but still the second-lowest rate among the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas in the company’s data, just above the 4% in Nassau County, N.Y."
CA prison staff didn’t stop murder, posted grisly footage online, lawsuit claims
SacBee, WILLIAM HELHADO: "California correctional officers failed to stop the brutal killing of a 36-year-old man in prison and later shared video footage of the man being stabbed to death online, a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the state by the victim’s family this week alleges.
Joseph Mendoza was attacked by two inmates with makeshift knives on April 8 on the floor of a Salinas Valley State Prison facility. For over a minute and a half, Edgar Frayre and Nicolas Young repeatedly stabbed Mendoza in the torso, back and eyes until he was incapacitated, according to video footage of the attack reviewed by The Sacramento Bee."
2 adults killed, 2 children airlifted after crash on El Dorado County highway
SacBee, DANIEL HUNT: "Two adult motorists were killed and their two children seriously injured Sunday afternoon in a single-vehicle crash on Highway 50 in El Dorado County, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The crash occurred around 3:11 p.m. when a Chevrolet pickup traveling eastbound near Kyburz left the roadway and struck a tree on the south side of the highway, CHP Placerville spokesperson Officer Andrew Brown said. The driver and front-seat passenger were pronounced dead at the scene."
This under-the-radar California city has a magical candy shop and 225 Christmas trees
Chronicle, PETER HARTLAUB: "I’ve been in downtown Windsor for fewer than five minutes on an absolutely frigid Sunday morning, and I’m already sold on this trip.
As I ride my bicycle from the train station to an enormous town square, a bundled-up woman in a Windsor Certified Farmers Market polo hands me a coupon stenciled with a cute bike, thanking me for “doing your part to save the environment.”"
First-time marathon runner breaks a CIM record in Sacramento
SacBee, DON SWEENEY and HANNAH RUHOFF: "Thousands of runners raced from Folsom to downtown Sacramento on Sunday for the capital region’s biggest race of the year: the California International Marathon. Of those runners, many were running their first marathon — including the winner of the women’s division.
Molly Born, a 26-year-old Oklahoma State alumna, crossed the finish line with a time of 2 hours, 24 minutes and 9 seconds in her marathon debut, giving her the 2025 USATF Marathon Championship title and setting a new course record for the women, according to marathon organizers."