Welfare: As US tightens work rules, California considers loosening them
CALMatters, JEANNE KUNG: "Just as Republicans in Congress are moving to beef up work requirements for people who receive welfare, California lawmakers are moving to do the opposite.
Included in a recent state Assembly budget proposal, and in a bill the Assembly passed on Wednesday, is a plan to remake CalWORKs, the state’s federally funded cash welfare program that requires recipients to work or search for jobs using a list of approved activities.
Under the proposed state changes, recipients would gain greater flexibility to participate in activities such as going to school, domestic violence counseling, addiction treatment or mental health care. The proposal, estimated to cost $100 million, also would lessen financial penalties if recipients violate work rules."
‘Political stunt’: California’s Bonta accuses Florida’s DeSantis of sending immigrants to Sacramento
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "California Attorney General Rob Bonta blamed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday for sending 16 immigrants from Texas to California as a “political stunt.”
Bonta said he’s investigating DeSantis and the state of Florida and is “prepared to bring civil and criminal action if the facts and the law support it.”
DeSantis’ office has not responded to questions about the incident."
California’s digital privacy battle: It’s police vs. civil libertarians, with an abortion twist
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: "On March 1, 2019, 38-year-old Adbadalla Thabet arrived at a Bank of America in the Paramount neighborhood of Los Angeles to deposit cash from a string of gas stations he helped his family manage. As he parked, two other vehicles — one red, one gray — approached from behind. The driver of the gray vehicle shot and killed Thabet while the driver of the red vehicle took his backpack and sped away, court documents show.
Law enforcement suspected the two of following Thabet throughout the morning as he visited the family’s gas stations to collect money. A “reverse search warrant” allowed the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to demand that Google surrender identifying information of every device with a Google account at six locations Thabet visited during a five-hour window. The evidence collected from that warrant was used to prosecute Daniel Meza and Walter Meneses.
Meza pleaded guilty and Meneses pleaded no contest."
LA Times, CONNOR SHEETS, RUBEN VIVES: "More than a dozen migrants from South America who were recently flown on a chartered jet from New Mexico and dropped off in Sacramento were carrying documents indicating that their transportation was arranged by the state of Florida, California’s attorney general said Sunday.
The documents appear to show that the flight was arranged through the Florida Division of Emergency Management and that it was part of the state’s program to relocate migrants, mostly from Texas, to other states, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.
The contractor for the program is Vertol Systems Co., which coordinated similar flights that took dozens of Venezuelan asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts last year, he said."
Column: How California, land of Nixon and Reagan, turned blue and changed American politics
LA Times, MARK Z. BARABAK: "Bill Clinton was busy filling Cabinet positions and shaping his economic agenda when a memo landed from a team of political advisors. Although Clinton was still more than a month away from becoming president, the topic was his reelection nearly four years off.
Marked confidential and spilling over nearly eight pages, the document outlined a strategy considered vital to Clinton’s hopes for a second term: Lock down California and its generous share of electoral votes so his campaign could “concentrate its energy on other, more tightly contested, states.”
In 1992, Arkansas’ five-term governor became the first Democratic presidential candidate in nearly three decades to carry California, the political birthplace of Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Few, if any, considered Clinton’s victory in California the start of a political realignment; he won just 46% of the vote."
YIMBYs love to hate her. Inside one Bay Area mayor’s anti-housing campaign
The Chronicle, JK DINEEN: "Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou is the Siligcon Valley politician the YIMBYs love to hate.
As the pro-housing “yes in my backyard” movement has spread across California, bringing with it an avalanche of state laws making it more and more difficult for neighbors to block residential development, Kou has doubled down on her role as the South Bay’s most pugnacious anti-YIMBY, an outspoken critic of what she feels is Sacramento’s overreach in forcing municipalities to build housing.
She accused the movement of promoting “collectivism” that she said was “reminiscent of the urban planning orthodoxy in the late, great Soviet Union.” On Twitter Kou, a residential real estate broker, said “there’s plenty of housing, you just need a superb Realtor, like me.”"
Here's why hundreds of orange-clad people marched across Golden Gate Bridge
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "Alexander Ibarra, a 12-year-old activist from San Leandro, hasn’t felt safe going to school since 2018, when a teenager opened fire and killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
“I thought I was going to become the next headline,” said Alexander, who started his activism at a young age. On Sunday, he was among hundreds of people marching in blustery wind across the Golden Gate Bridge to protest gun violence.
It’s not only mass shootings at schools that frighten Alexander, who last year helped organize a March for Our Lives rally in Oakland against the gun violence pervading so many communities. “The amount of gun violence that happens daily, not just mass shootings, is way too much for this country. We need to fix the gun violence problems in this country,” he told The Chronicle."
Media literacy would be required for all California students under new bill
EdSource, CAROLYN JONES: "Recognizing fake news, being savvy about social media and resisting cyberbullying would be a required part of California school curriculum under a bill now making its way through the Legislature.
Assembly Bill 873, authored by Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, would direct the state’s Instructional Quality Commission to incorporate media literacy into K-12 curriculum in English language arts, math, science, history and social studies frameworks. Eventually, all students would receive media literacy lessons every year, in every class.
“We need to make sure the next generation has the critical thinking skills and analytic skills to be discerning about what they’re bombarded with online,” Berman said. “My hope is that students talk to their parents about this, too.”"
BANG*Mercury News, ELISSA MIOLENE: " Ifza Khan’s mornings don’t start with the school bell.
Instead, the 11-year-old gets out of bed, walks downstairs and heads to her dining room table, where her mom, Arsala, leads Ifza and her two siblings in the day’s lessons. Some days they join 12 other families for a park meet-up or a field trip to a local museum. On other days, they’ll gather for in-person, à la carte lessons at different locations, which focus on everything from horseback riding to robotics engineering.
For years, the Khans have been among thousands of California families homeschooling their children. But today, they’ve got much more company. Since the year before the pandemic shut down schools, the number of California kids being homeschooled has skyrocketed by 70% — and despite a return to in-person learning, many are not going back."
Taking a pass on college? California apprenticeships offer another path
CALMatters, ANDREA MADISON: "After receiving a high school diploma, securing a stable, well-paying job is often priority number one for recent graduates in California who decide against pursuing higher education.
If you’ve determined that college isn’t the best next step, you are not alone. About 37% of students graduating from the state’s public high schools don’t go on to attend college.
When the CalMatters College Journalism Network put out a call for questions about college in California, we heard from one reader who was weighing their options."
Deal extends L.A. school year, restores 3-week winter break
LA Times, HOWARD BLUME: "A sweeping agreement announced Friday between unions and Los Angeles school officials will result in a longer school year, a return to a three-week winter break and a reboot of controversial acceleration days.
The deal, which will be subject to a ratification vote next week, also includes the resolution of legal issues, some of which could have proved to be important test cases for future labor negotiations.
Under the pact, each of the next two years will be extended by three days of instruction — although teachers’ pay will increase by only one day. The district is accomplishing this by eliminating two required days that teachers formerly had to work when no students were on campus."
Thousands of California families are still homeschooling their children. What’s keeping them from the classroom?
Great white sharks more common off California coast than previously thought, study says
LA Times, CHRISTIAN MARTINEZ: "If you swam off the coast of Santa Barbara or San Diego recently, chances are you had company. You just may not have noticed.
A new study from Cal State Long Beach found that juvenile white sharks are more common at some California beaches than previously thought.
Although the news may conjure up images of Steven Spielberg’s film “Jaws,”"
Directors Guild reaches deal on a new contract with the studios
LA Times, ANOUSHA SAKOUI: "The Directors Guild of America said it has reached a “historic deal” with the major studios on a new three-year film and TV contract.
In a statement, the DGA negotiating committee said that it reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that includes wage increases, a new structure to pay foreign residuals — which had been a key priority for the union — and restrictions on the use of AI."
‘Godzilla next door’: How California developers gained new leverage to build more homes
CALMatters, BEN CHRISTOPHER: "Late last fall, a Southern California developer dropped more than a dozen mammoth building proposals on the city of Santa Monica that were all but designed to get attention.
The numbers behind WS Communities’s salvo of proposals were dizzying: 14 residential highrises with a combined 4,260 units dotting the beachside city, including three buildings reaching 18 stories. All of the towers were bigger, denser and higher than anything permitted under the city’s zoning code
City Councilmember Phil Brock attended a town hall shortly after the announcement and got an earful. A few of the highlights: “Godzilla next door,” “a monster in our midst” and “we’re going to never see the sun again.”"
‘A big blow’: How home prices could be impacted by insurers pulling out of California
The Chronicle, CLAIRE HAO: "Home buyers are likely to encounter rising insurance premiums, with coverage more difficult to find, in the wake of news that State Farm and Allstate have stopped writing new homeowner policies in California.
But the potential impact on home prices is difficult to determine, particularly in fire After encampment clearing at San Jose’s Coyote Creek, only some find shelterAfter encampment clearing at San Jose’s Coyote Creek, only some find shelterAfter encampment clearing at San Jose’s Coyote Creek, only some find shelters prone areas, according to real estate agents in the Santa Cruz mountains and Santa Rosa region, who noted that inventory remains low while demand has stayed high.
“We thought with the increase in interest rates, momentum would slow down,” said Logan Francavilla, a real estate agent with the Santa Rosa-based Prosper Real Estate Team. “But we’re still seeing multiple offers and above-asking prices.”"
After encampment clearing at San Jose’s Coyote Creek, only some find shelter
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "For the first time in 11 years, Angelica Lopez has a safe place to sleep when night falls.
Last month, she moved into a room inside a newly opened homeless shelter near downtown San Jose. With her own bed, three meals a day and a case manager helping her find a job and an apartment, Lopez said she’s finally begun to “wake up from the nightmare” of homelessness.
Just a few weeks ago, none of this seemed possible. Officials had ordered Lopez and hundreds of other homeless people to leave a roughly 4-mile section of Coyote Creek, a grassy floodplain running through central San Jose where many of them had lived for years. At the time, Lopez, 39, told this news organization she feared that she could find herself in harm’s way if forced onto the street.: