Gov. Newsom signs bill to ban school district ‘forced outings’ of transgender students
ANDREW SHEELER and JENEVIEVE HATCH, SacBee: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed Assembly Bill 1955, the bill to prohibit school districts from requiring staff to notify parents if a child requests to be addressed by a different name or pronouns or to access a bathroom or school activities for a sex other than what appears on their birth certificate. The signature came as tensions over the subject have reached an all-time high.
Things hit a boiling point as the Assembly sent the bill to the governor late last month, when Democratic lawmaker Corey Jackson had to be restrained from physically confronting Republican Assemblyman Bill Essayli, who spoke in opposition to the measure."
READ MORE about Newsom's action: Newsom signs bill banning schools from notifying parents about student gender identity, LA Times' MACKENZIE MAYS; California bans school districts from outing trans kids, BLAKE JONES and ERIC HE, Politico.
Wife of Trump running mate J.D. Vance resigns from her S.F. law firm job
SF Chronicle's JORDAN PARKER: "Usha Vance, the wife of J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s newly announced running mate, left her job at prominent San Francisco law firm Munger, Tolles and Olson, the law firm said Monday.
“Usha has informed us she has decided to leave the firm,” a spokesperson for the firm told the Chronicle in a statement. “Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career.”
Multiple security failures allowed would-be assassin to get clear shot at Trump
NATHAN SOLIS, RICHARD WINTON, NOAH GOLDBERG AND SUMMER LEE, LA Times: "A string of security failures led to a gunman being able to fire multiple shots at former President Trump, killing a retired fire chief and wounding two others at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., according to law enforcement sources.
Although armed security personnel responded swiftly, rushing a bloodied Trump off the stage after Saturday’s assassination attempt, questions about security flaws are mounting."
Rising COVID clashes with carefree California summer as cases jump, precautions fade
RONG-GONG LIN II LA Times: "COVID is continuing to rise this summer, and its spread is being aided by people who are still going to work or traveling while sick.
“Certainly, people are trying to get back to whatever life was like before the pandemic,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “We’re in a different place than we were before. ... However, good common sense shouldn’t go out the window.”
Stem cell agency says meet the new boss, same as the old boss
DAVID JENSEN, Capitol Weekly: "Jonathan Thomas, the man just named as the new CEO of the $12 billion California stem cell agency, could borrow an old line from Mark Twain. Reports of his “demise” were greatly exaggerated.
Seventeen months ago, Thomas said goodbye to the $12 billion California stem cell agency after serving for more than a decade as chair of its governing board. During that period, he saw two CEOs depart from the program, one of the largest regenerative medicine funding efforts in the world. But just last week, the 35-member governing board that Thomas once chaired named him as its latest CEO and president."
OPINION: J.D. Vance’s book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was a con job. Don’t let it slide
LORRAINE BERRY, LA Times: "The selection of J.D. Vance on Monday as Donald Trump’s running mate is a direct result of the political media’s failure to understand class in America. For his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance was venerated by many journalists and book critics as a powerful voice representing long-overlooked Americans. But he’s no working-class hero.
Vance portrayed this group — 35% of Americans, by the way — as tragic victims of alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness and their own self-destructive moral failings. Journalists ran with that, bringing their own stereotypes to depict the working class as angry, uneducated white men driven by economic insecurity and racist nostalgia to support Trump’s retrogressive campaign."
Buyer of luxury home on S.F’s Lombard Street claims they bought a ‘$27 million lemon’
J.K. DINEEN, SF Chronicle: "Troon Pacific, the luxury home developer already on the hook to pay $48.1 million to defrauded investors, has been slapped with a new lawsuit accusing the company of failing to disclose significant construction defects to the buyers of a $27 million home on Russian Hill.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, claims that the homebuyer, 950 Lombard LLC, “was misled into buying a $27 million lemon” that was riddled with defects that include issues with “the interior walls, ceilings, floors, roof(s), foundation, and plumbing/sewer/septic systems, or any other structural components of the building.”
Sacramento State rolls out faculty ‘cluster hire’ to meet Latino student needs. Is it enough?
EMMA HALL and MAThEW MIRANDA, SacBee: "To better serve its student body and reflect campus demographics, Sacramento State is implementing a cluster hire of 17 faculty members with an expertise in working with Latino students, school officials said.
These instructors will start teaching in fall 2025. The planned hires follow criticism and concerns that the university is not fully addressing Latino student needs. Like many campuses across California, Sacramento State has struggled to match its Latino student population with teaching and leadership positions."
Newsom signs law requiring stronger sexual harassment policies at CSU
COLLEEN SHALBY, LA Times: "The California State University system will be required to establish clear policies and guidelines for how sexual harassment cases are investigated and tracked under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday.
The new law obligates the 23-campus network to implement recommendations from a 2023 state audit that examined how officials investigated and tracked complaints at the nation’s largest public four-year university system following outcry over the failure to properly handle sexual misconduct cases across multiple campuses."
Can a ballot initiative transform Richmond from a refinery town?
WILL McCARTHY, Politico: "Sacramento Democrats may have abandoned plans to have the state’s biggest fossil fuel producers pay for their environmental and health impacts, but voters in the bayside city of Richmond, California, will still have the chance to do so this November.
An initiative placed on the Richmond ballot last month would tax the Chevron refinery, one of the largest in the state, $1 for each barrel of oil processed within city limits. While other local governments have attempted to make polluting industries pay more for the right to operate in their communities, boosters of the Richmond proposal say it offers a chance to transform a city defined by industry into something new."
S.F. drug overdose deaths fell to nearly 2-year low in June, offering glimmer of hope
CATHERINE HO, SF Chronicle: "In what could be a glimmer of hope in San Francisco’s intractable fentanyl crisis, the number of people who died from accidental drug overdoses fell in June to 48 — the lowest monthly number in nearly two years, according to preliminary figures released Monday from the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The last time the death count dropped below 50 was in July 2022, when 43 people died from overdoses. Most months, that number is in the 50s or 60s."