Sacramento curfew is 'oppressive,' and activists say they're 'insulted' by the move
Sac bee's ROSALIO AHUMADA: "Two community activists say Sacramento and its mayor are making a mistake by instituting an evening curfew that will only create more methods to criminalize those protesting against police killings and government oppression of black people.
The city of Sacramento will have a curfew Monday night, and city officials called in the National Guard after three days of protests in response to the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
Tanya Faison, the leader of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, said city officials need to be talking to those protesting and learn why they’re marching in the streets. She said city officials need to find solutions that will help stop the ongoing racial oppression by police and others that has so many angry."
READ MORE related to Curfew/Brutality Protests: Actor Jamie Foxx joins SF Mayor Breed, civic leaders in protest after police killing -- The Chronicle's KURTIS ALEXANDER; Several detained for violating curfew in Sacramento as peaceful protest ends at Chavez Plaza -- Sac Bee; Protests spawn vandalism and looting in Oakland, SF and suburbs -- The Chronicle; Police in Oakland, Walnut Creek deploy tear gas on protesters -- The Chronicle's MATTHIAS GAFNI/LIZZIED JOHNSON/MALLORY MOENCH; More looting and arrests amid peaceful protests in LA -- LA Times
Can Operation Warp Speed deliver a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year?
LA Times's MELISSA HEALY: "To capture the speed and audacity of its plan to field a coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration reached into science fiction’s vault for an inspiring moniker: Operation Warp Speed.
The vaccine initiative’s name challenges a mantra penned by an actual science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke: “Science demands patience.”
Patience is essential for those who ply the science of vaccines. But in that field, challenging economic conditions and a forbidding regulatory system converge with the immune system’s complexity and the resilience of microscopic pathogens. Add in drug companies’ preference for big profits and the result is a trash heap of failed and abandoned efforts."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: Coronavirus ignited in Bay Area as early as January -- The Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY/CYNTHIA DIZIKES
LAPD, FBI collecting protest, looting footage as evidence for future arrests
LA Times's KEVIN RECTOR/JAMES QUEALLY: "Police officers have watched from skirmish lines as protesters and others stole from businesses, threw rocks, ignited fires and bashed in streetlights with skateboards.
More than 1,000 were arrested in Los Angeles alone over the weekend, but officials said they have not given up on tracking down others.
The Los Angeles Police Department has been collecting evidence throughout the protests in recent days over the death of George Floyd, mostly in the form of video footage that could be used to identify individuals and bring charges against them in the future."
Here's what California state workers can expect if they're picked for coronavirus assignments
Sac Bee's WES VENTEICHER: "Managers in California state departments have supplied lists of their workers to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for contact tracing assignments.
The assignments involve calling, texting and emailing people who have been in contact with those who have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Below is a document from the departments of Public Health and Human Resources answering common state worker questions about the reassignments."
Newsom sidesteps Trump's call for governors to 'dominate' George Floyd protesters
The Chronicle's ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Gov. Gavin Newsom urged restraint in protests against the Minnesota police killing of George Floyd, sidestepping calls for a crackdown from President Trump even as California mobilized thousands of National Guard troops in anticipation of additional unrest across the state.
Following a weekend of tense demonstrations, Newsom said Monday that there would be accountability for law enforcement officers who have been accused of using excessive force against protesters, as well as for rioters and looters whom he characterized as “hell-bent on creating violence and drowning out the voices of legitimate protests.”
“We want restraint. We want as much expression of respect with law enforcement and protesters as humanly possible,” the governor said during a news conference at a predominantly African American church in south Sacramento. “But we also need peace. And we need to protect small businesses. And we need to protect people that are scared."
Biden to speak on civil unrest, attack Trump for church 'photo op'
LA Times's JANET HOOK: "Joe Biden, set to deliver a major speech on civil unrest and protests across the country, plans to deliver a blunt attack Tuesday on President Trump for being “more interested in serving the passions of his base than the needs of the people in his care.”
The speech, to be delivered in Philadelphia, will criticize Trump for staging a “photo op” in front of a church across the street from the White House on Monday evening after police and National Guard units cleared the way by using force to clear peaceful protesters.
“When peaceful protesters are dispersed by the order of the president from the doorstep of the people’s house, the White House — using tear gas and flash grenades — in order to stage a photo op at a noble church, we can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle,” Biden will say, according to advance excerpts released by his campaign."
California wants to hire more cannabis cops to get a handle on black market cannabis
Sac Bee's ANDREW SHEELER: "California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control is looking to beef up its law enforcement presence.
The bureau in a new state budget request is asking lawmakers to let it build an 87-member police force that would enforce the 2016 law voters passed legalizing recreational cannabis. It’d create the law enforcement branch by absorbing 58 positions from another department, and hiring 29 more cannabis cops.
The department is trying to contain a black market that pervades the state three years after California’s first recreational marijuana stores opened."
NorCal county sags under weight of economic crash
LA Times's JOE MOZINGO: "In the old mining towns that helped birth this state, the bonanzas could be counted on every summer in recent years — not in the extraction of ore, but in tourism, festivals and destination weddings.
Now businesses are hoping just to survive the summer, even as the novel coronavirus itself has left the region largely unscathed.
Residents in many of the state’s rugged northern counties, from the Del Norte coast to here in the Sierra foothills, are largely watching the pandemic unfold from afar, as if it were one more nightmare in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Some feel stuck in a blind spot of public debate, lost between the terrible reality of the worst of the scourge and the noisy extremists who call it a hoax."
READ MORE related to Economy: Starts delayed for some new hires because of pandemic restrictions in SF, other area courts -- The Chronicle's CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO
Oakland students organize protest of George Floyd death, pleading to be heard
EdSource's SYDNEY JOHNSON: "Students in the Bay Area are adding their voices to nationwide protests demanding an end to police brutality.
Thousands of Bay Area youth and adults gathered in Oakland on Monday to march in support of the family of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died last week after a police officer in Minneapolis kneeled on his neck, which has since sparked outrage and protests across the country.
“In the year 2020 as a black woman, I have been shown that this remains a land of no promise,” one student told the crowd before the march began. “As Americans, our national leaders refuse to give us the things that any person should have: equality and justice. Our demands of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have yet to be given to us."
Millions of Californians could lose affordable housing in recession, advocates warn
Sac Bee's KATE IRBY/HANNAH WILEY: "With rent due for another new month in the coronavirus outbreak, affordable housing advocates warn that the new recession could trigger a domino effect wiping out protections for millions of lower-income California tenants.
They worry not only about tenants who will be unable to pay rent because they’ve lost jobs and income.
More tenants — even ones who keep jobs and make rent — could lose their subsidized housing if enough of their neighbors fall behind and a complex goes out of business, allowing new landlords to hike rents to market prices."
SF, Silicon Valley rents plunge amid downturn: 'Never seen anything like it'
The Chronicle's JK DINEEN: "The cost of renting an apartment in the Bay Area plummeted in May, as layoffs and the increased flexibility of working from home drove a double-digit drop in some of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
Rents for a one-bedroom apartment dropped most in the cities richest in high-paying tech jobs, falling 9.2% in San Francisco compared with May of 2019. In Mountain View, home to Google, rents fell 15.9% year over year, while in Apple’s hometown of Cupertino rents dipped 14.3%, according to the rental search engine Zumper. In San Bruno, where YouTube has its offices, rents tumbled 14.9%.
“It’s a dramatic drop in San Francisco and the South Bay,” said Zumper CEO Anthemos Georgiades. “This is real. We have never seen anything like it."
Trump calls for 'law and order,' threatens to deploy troops to major cities
LA Times's NOAH BIERMAN/ELI STOKOLS/CHRIS MEGERIAN: "President Trump, declaring himself a “president of law and order,” threatened Monday to deploy “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers” to American cities, claiming governors and local officials had “failed to take necessary action” to end civil unrest.
“These are not acts of peaceful protest,” Trump declared during a brief speech in the White House Rose Garden, referring to the demonstrations and sometimes violent acts that have broken out in dozens of major cities. “These are acts of domestic terror.”
He called himself an ally of legitimate protesters, blaming violence and looting on “anarchists."