The Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban. Here’s what happens now
LAT's ANDREA CHANG: "The Supreme Court has paved the way for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. on Sunday.
The high court on Friday upheld a new law that requires the social media app’s Chinese owner to sell off TikTok’s U.S. business or face a nationwide ban."
READ MORE -- Supreme Court upholds law that could force TikTok to shut down in U.S. -- LAT's DAVID G. SAVAGE; Millions of Californians use TikTok. What happens if the popular app is banned? -- Sacramento Bee's HANNAH POUKISH, CAMILA PEDROSA
Inside L.A.’s desperate battle for water as the Palisades fire exploded
LAT's MATT HAMILTON, IAN JAMES: "As wildfire tore through the canyons of Pacific Palisades, firefighters waged a desperate battle to save homes and lives.
Seventeen miles east in downtown L.A., dozens of officials huddled around computers over a long conference room table in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s emergency operations center. Screens beamed in the system’s water pressure from remote sensors stationed across the city."
State regulators approve Edison’s wildfire prevention plan despite concerns
LAT's MELODY PETERSEN: "The California Public Utilities Commission approved Southern California Edison’s wildfire mitigation plan Thursday, rejecting calls to delay action until more is known about what ignited the devastating Eaton fire.
Investigators are now looking into whether Edison’s equipment sparked the Eaton fire, which has killed at least 17 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures. The company’s transmission equipment may have also sparked the smaller Hurst fire, investigators say."
The Chronicle's MEGAN FAN MUNCE: "Months before the Los Angeles wildfires sparked, State Farm’s California arm was already in trouble, it told state regulators.
Its policyholder surplus — the cash it has on hand to pay out claims — had dropped from more than $4 billion in 2016 down to just $1.3 billion as of the end of 2023. It reported a net loss of $880 million in 2023. Company leaders, and regulators in its parent company’s home state of Illinois, were worried that California’s largest home insurer could be on the road toward insolvency."
Private firefighters are increasingly popular with insurers. But do they pose a risk?
CALMatters' FELICIA MELLO: "Robert MacKenzie is an assistant fire chief — but not the kind who works for your local fire department. As the Palisades Fire bore down on Southern California last week, the private fire crew he oversees headed out to help defend homes for their customers: insurance companies that offer wildfire protection to wealthy homeowners and others with the coverage built into their policies.
Working with lists of high-risk properties provided by insurers, the team from Capstone Fire and Safety Management aims to arrive at houses before a fire does, then make changes to the structure that will give it the best chance of survival. If a fire is getting close, they’ll smear a fire-protective gel on the side of the home, then get out."
Some residents allowed to return to devastated Pacific Palisades, Altadena neighborhoods
LAT's HANNAH FRY, SANDRA MCDONALD, ANDREA CHANG: "With fire containment improving and winds dying down, some residents are being allowed back into neighborhoods devastated by the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Officials estimate that the fires have destroyed more than 12,000 structures, including many homes, making them two of the most destructive — and deadliest — wildfires in California history. More than 8,600 firefighters are working the fires, with the focus over the next several days on constructing containment lines and extinguishing hot spots to prevent the fires from spreading."
READ MORE -- Lessons from the burn zone: Why some homes survived the L.A. wildfires -- LAT's ALEX WIGGLESWORTH, JOSEPH SERNA; ‘Is this real?’: Three generations of Altadena family lose homes in Eaton fire -- LAT's NATHAN SOLIS
‘It all ended in a second’: Thousands of low-income and immigrant workers lost jobs in LA fires
CALMatters' ALEJANDRA REYES-VELARDE, JEANNE KUANG: "When Hermelinda Guadarrama and her daughter went to work to clean Netflix Hollywood’s offices last week, they had no idea that it might be their last day.
An hour after they started, their employer told them to go home as the Sunset Fire ignited. A couple days earlier, Guadarrama’s other daughter, who cleans Netflix’s offices in Burbank, was sent home because of power outages."
READ MORE -- LA will need workers to clean up after fires. It can be a dangerous job -- CALMatters' ALEJANDRA REYES-VELARDE, JEANNE KUANG
Types of bill amendments in the California Legislature
CHRIS MICHELI in Capitol Weekly: "In the California Legislature, there are several types of amendments that can be made to measures, including bills, resolutions and constitutional amendments. To begin, an amendment is defined by Legislative Counsel as an alteration to a bill, motion, resolution, or clause by adding, changing, substituting, or omitting language.
In order to adopt an amendment to any measure, that amendment must be submitted to Legislative Counsel for drafting. Essentially, there are three ways to make amendments to measures: author’s amendments, committee amendments, and floor amendments."
Gavin Newsom has grown California’s government to record size. Now he, too, is selling ‘efficiency’
CALMatters' ALEXEI KOSEFF: "It’s not only Washington, D.C., where “efficiency” has become the buzzword du jour.
With California facing an uncertain fiscal future, Gov. Gavin Newsom made his own pitch for a leaner state government last week as he previewed his annual budget proposal. Touting billions of dollars in savings from eliminating empty positions and scaling back spending on everything from travel to printing, the Democratic governor compared his efforts to the Department of Government Efficiency, the incoming Trump administration’s push to slash costs across the federal government."
Aguiar-Curry embraces leadership of Legislative Women’s Caucus
Capitol Weekly's LISA RENNER: "Cecilia Aguiar-Curry’s rise to Assembly Majority Leader and chair of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus comes at a historic moment for the state.
A record 58 women are serving in the state’s 120 seats. “It’s a great time to work on legislation that reflects women’s experience,” said Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters). “It’s really exciting.”"
Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao criminally indicted two months after recall
The Chronicle's MEGAN CASSIDY, SARAH RAVANI: "Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury after an FBI corruption investigation that centered on City Hall and a powerful family that operates the city’s curbside recycling program, a source familiar with the matter told the Chronicle.
Federal officials said Thursday they planned to announce the results of a “major law enforcement action” Friday morning, but did not provide details. Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI declined to comment and said they couldn’t confirm the indictment."
Surprise immigration raid on California farmworkers sets off panic throughout state
The Chronicle's KO LYN CHEANG, JESSICA FLORES: "Farmworker communities across California, including in the Bay Area, are on high alert after a U.S. Border Patrol immigration raid in Kern County last week led to at least 78 arrests.
The three-day operation in and around Bakersfield from Jan. 7-9 was called “Operation Return to Sender” and appeared to target undocumented farmworkers who are in peak citrus picking season. More than half of California farmworkers are undocumented, according to an estimate based on 2010 to 2018 data in a 2022 report by the Public Policy Institute of California."
Community college bachelor’s degrees stall for years amid Cal State objections
EdSource's MICHAEL BURKE: "Rudy Garcia was excited when he learned that his local community college, Moorpark in Ventura County, planned to offer a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity and network operations.
A father of four and the only source of income for his family, Garcia believed getting the degree would help him advance in his career in IT support. He had come to realize that more senior jobs typically required a bachelor’s degree."
Bay Area weather shifting gears after unusually warm temperatures
The Chronicle's GREG PORTER: "January has been unusually sunny across the Bay Area, but a shift in the weather is expected Saturday and Sunday. The return of the marine layer will bring increased cloud cover and cooler temperatures, with highs struggling to reach 60 degrees in most areas.
However, the weekend forecast remains unclear due to uncertainty of the position and strength of an upper-level low-pressure system off the California coast. This uncertainty has implications for both the Bay Area’s weather and the Santa Ana wind forecast in Southern California."
California courts are underfunded, leading to delays in cases, chief justice says
Sacramento Bee's SHARON BERNSTEIN: "California’s court system faces an ongoing budget crunch that has contributed to a shortage of judges and slowed the progress of cases, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court said Wednesday.
The state judiciary’s budget of about $5 billion was cut by $97 million amid belt-tightening last year, and while Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial budget proposal aims to replace about half of that in 2025, the money is not yet assured, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero told reporters at a briefing Wednesday at the court’s Earl Warren Building in San Francisco."
He solved most of his department’s cold cases in his spare time. Now he’s off to fight fires
The Chronicle's SCOTT OSTLER: "In Sunnyvale over the last nine years, police cold cases never really went cold. Unsolved sexual assaults and murders simmered on a back burner until such time as justice could be served, piping hot.
So it was late last week, when officers from the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety, the FBI and five other law-enforcement agencies knocked on the doors of Vicente Aguilera-Chavez and Agustin Sandoval — the former in East Palo Alto and the latter in Escalon — and arrested them for a 2017 shooting outside a Sunnyvale nightclub, where one of two victims died."
S.F. to unveil its most ambitious bicycle plan in years, targeting hundreds of routes for upgrades
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN: "Transportation officials in San Francisco have drafted a plan to link up to a tenth of the city’s streets into a sprawling maze of bike lanes — part of an effort to coax people out of their cars over the next two decades.
But, in a city where nearly any attempt at bike lane expansion inflames community debate, the task could be difficult."