Muted mics, high expectations: What to know about the Trump-Harris presidential debate
The Chronicle's SHIRA STEIN: "Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off at their first debate Tuesday evening, a chance for her to prove her campaign success thus far hasn’t been a fluke, and a chance for him to tie her to the current administration’s policies.
The ABC News-hosted debate will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia at 6 p.m. PST and will last 90 minutes. There won’t be an audience, and it comes at a key time for both campaigns."
READ MORE -- Trump and Harris gear up for first presidential debate of 2024. Here’s how to watch -- Sacramento Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN, SARAH LINN; Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump: What to watch for in the presidential debate -- Sacramento Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN; Column: Debate night is here: What to expect when you’ve learned to expect the worst -- LAT's ANITA CHABRIA
The next-generation foreign policy of Kamala Harris
LAT's TRACY WILKINSON: "Vice President Kamala Harris spent nearly four years working alongside a U.S. president for whom foreign policy is a passion bordering on political religion — one rooted in Cold War memories and a largely unchallenged U.S. global dominance.
Harris brings her own distinct worldview to the job of global leader — a next-generation outlook shaped instead by her life as a woman of color coming of age post-Cold War, a daughter of immigrants and someone who spent a career in law enforcement in California, the most diverse and progressive state in the U.S."
Proposition 35 explained: What California’s health tax ballot measure is asking you
Sacramento Bee's NICOLE NIXON: "California’s Proposition 35 is a battle over how state lawmakers can spend billions in health care dollars.
It would make permanent a tax on health insurance plans, a charge that also allows the state to draw down billions in federal funds by taxing Medi-Cal plans at a much higher rate than private insurance plans. The state levy is essentially a tax on the federal government."
Catharine Baker and the New UC Student and Policy Center (PODCAST)
Capitol Weekly's STAFF: "Former California State Assemblymember and current Fair Political Practices Commissioner Catharine Baker has been appointed director of the newly opened University of California Student and Policy Center, UC’s hub in Sacramento, located just steps from the state capitol. Baker will lead public programming and outreach, aimed at introducing UC students and faculty into the capitol community – and vice versa. The Center will present speakers, debates, and briefings on state policy issues; in recent months, the center has hosted conversations with California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis and Senate pro Tem Toni Atkins as part of its 2024 California Leaders Speaker Series. Baker joined us to talk about her goals and priorities for her new position. Plus – a DOOZY of a “Worst Week in California Politics!”"
Sorry Gen Xers and millennials. You’re facing drastic Social Security cuts, report says
Sacramento Bee's ANDREW SHEELER: "Via David Lightman...
Look out, millennials and Generation X folks — your Social Security benefits are headed down if something isn’t done to shore up the system."
‘I won’t let them drink the water’: The California towns where clean drinking water is out of reach
CALMatters's RACHEL BECKER: "In a major milestone, state regulators announced in July that nearly a million more Californians now have safe drinking water than five years ago.
But across the state, the problem remains severe: More than 735,000 people are still served by the nearly 400 water systems that fail to meet state requirements for safe and reliable drinking water. Latino farm communities struggling with poverty and pollution are especially hard-hit."
A bad wildfire season sparked California’s home insurance crisis. What could another one do?
The Chronicle's MEGAN FAN MUNCE: "California’s wildfire season has kicked off to an explosive start, with more acres burned so far this year than in the past two years combined and over 1,100 structures destroyed.
It’s far less than the more than 18,000 homes, businesses and barns burned and the 85 people killed in 2018’s Camp Fire, but enough to raise concerns about what another bad wildfire season could do to the state’s already-in-crisis insurance market."
Budget cuts begin to surface at California State University
EdSource's AMY DIPIERRO: "Faculty, staff and students at four campuses in the Cal State system said they’re starting to feel the impact of belt-tightening in the early weeks of the 2024-25 school year, saying this fall has brought heavier workloads, larger class sizes and fewer course options.
University officials at select campuses acknowledged plans to reduce costs this school year. They said they’ve opened additional course sections where there’s demand and remain committed to supporting students so that they’re on track to graduate, even as they reel in budgets to match shrinking student enrollment on some campuses."
Students, professor sue UC Santa Cruz after being banned from campus following protests
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "The legal battle over pro-Palestinian protests at University of California campuses escalated Monday in a lawsuit by two UC Santa Cruz students and a professor who said they were among more than 110 demonstrators summarily banished from campus by police in May, with no explanation or opportunity to defend themselves.
The protest took place on the night of May 30 near the entrance to campus, with demonstrators calling for an end to UC investments in companies supplying weapons to Israel. According to the lawsuit, more than 100 officers in riot gear descended on the encampment, used clubs to confine the protesters in a tight circle, zip-tied them in handcuffs for hours and arrested more than 110 people on suspicion of misdemeanor charges of disruption."
Human activity now fuels two-thirds of global methane emissions, report finds
LAT's HAYLEY SMITH: "The world is moving in a perilous direction when it comes to planet-warming methane emissions, which are soaring to record highs driven largely by human activity, new research warns.
Although many people associate methane with cow burps and melting permafrost, a paper published this week in the journal Earth System Science Data found that global methane emissions over the last five years have risen faster than ever — and at least two-thirds of those emissions are now coming from human sources."
Getting offshore wind right means investing in science (OP-ED)
DR. ARNE JACOBSON, DR. BEN RUTTENBERG in Capitol Weekly: "With a recent vote by the California Public Utilities Commission to authorize purchase of up to 7.6 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, California is increasingly committed to a plan to pursue renewable energy offshore. The success of this endeavor hinges on a robust scientific understanding of the technology’s potential impacts. While research on similar technologies points to minimal or mitigatable impacts, we will not know the full effects until turbines are in the water.
Science, when done properly, can be a powerful platform for communities to come together in shared understanding, fostering informed discussion and decision-making. It can help address misinformation, which is already circulating in communities where offshore wind energy is planned, underscoring the urgency of accurate and trusted information. Well-executed scientific research can help predict what effects offshore wind developments may have on marine species and ecosystems, and, importantly, provide a roadmap for monitoring and mitigation to better understand and minimize these effects."
This California national park is ‘chill Yosemite,’ an outdoor wonderland without crowds
LAT's JACLYN COSGROVE: "Just five hours north of Los Angeles sits a national park that should be on your outdoor bucket list.
It features a valley carved millions of years ago by glaciers, hulking mountains made of granite and other rock, countless waterfalls, massive ancient trees and a cool, clear river."
Pacific air shifts Bay Area weather to cooler, cloudier conditions
The Chronicle's GREG PORTER: "The ridge of high pressure that fueled California’s recent scorching heat is breaking down, allowing cooler, moisture-laden air from the Pacific to influence Bay Area weather. The shift means a jacket could be needed Tuesday.
Cloud cover will blanket much of the region Tuesday morning, extending into the interior valleys of the North, East and South Bays. This will help keep temperatures from rising too quickly, especially in the cooler spots of the North Bay, where morning lows will dip into the 40s."
3 hurt as Airport fire explodes to more than 8,500 acres in Orange County, forcing evacuations
LAT's HANNAH FRY, ASHLEY AHN: "Firefighters Tuesday were battling a fast-moving brush fire in Orange County that injured three people and prompted evacuations in Trabuco Canyon.
The blaze, dubbed the Airport fire, started about 1:30 p.m. Monday along the 32200 block of Trabuco Creek Road near a field in Trabuco Canyon for remote-controlled airplanes. At least 8,510 acres have burned, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection."
As Park Fire nears containment, a community of artists mourn the loss of a muse
The Chronicle's LINDA LIU: "Bay Area dance artist Dana Lawton drove up to Cohasset to prepare for an artists’ retreat just hours before a wildfire began to consume the area’s nearly half-million acres.
Cohasset, a community atop a ridge north of Chico (Butte County), is home to about 400 residents and the site of a 26-year-old annual dance and yoga retreat hosted by Lawton and Jessica Adams, both dancer-educators. It took place on a 26.5-acre property owned by Adams’ mother that featured hand-built huts, lavender fields and manzanita trees they danced with. As she evacuated in her car with co-worker Jennifer Kulbeck, Lawton watched the area become engulfed in flames."
Philanthropists invest $15 million in L.A. County local news
LAT's JENNY JARVIE: "With local news struggling to survive, a collective of Los Angeles media executives and philanthropists launched an ambitious nonprofit group Tuesday to bolster L.A. County’s local news ecosystem, support small independent media and build public trust in media.
The new organization, Los Angeles Local News Initiative, has raised almost $15 million to provide underserved county residents with free access to neighborhood, regional and state news that will help them be more engaged in their communities and hold officials accountable."
Los Angeles should hike hotel and airport workers’ pay, report says
LAT's SUHAUNA HUSSAIN: "A proposal by City Council members to raise the minimum wages of workers at large hotels and Los Angeles International Airport in the run-up to the 2028 Summer Olympics has received a boost from a new city report.
The report, released Thursday by the city’s chief legislative analyst, Sharon Tso, concludes that the proposed gradual pay increase to $30 an hour by the time L.A. hosts the Olympic Games would improve pay inequity issues and help the regional economy. An outside consultant, Berkeley Economic Advising and Research, conducted the study."
Governor Newsom: make home a safe space for all youth (OP-ED)
LEVI NUNEZ in Capitol Weekly: "Home is where we are supposed to feel our most safe. It’s supposed to be the place where we can truly be ourselves, where we can relax and not care about the pressures of the outside world. As a former foster youth who is also transgender, finding a home where I felt safe was a struggle for most of my life. Governor Newsom has a chance to ensure that youth who are transitioning out of foster care have the safety of a home where they can be themselves by signing a bill headed to his desk, AB 2802 by Assemblymember Brian Maienschein (D-San Diego).
California’s programs to help older foster youth and young adults, called Transitional Housing Placement (THP) Programs, were set up with outdated, binary rules in mind. Men must live with men and women must live with women. Such inflexibility goes against the programs’ goal as a secure housing setting where people transitioning out of the child welfare system can learn to live independently and practice self-sufficiency. Our society doesn’t operate under that binary anymore, and neither should our laws."
CalMatters sues LA homeless authority to obtain secret shelter records
CALMatters's LAUREN HEPLER: "A string of sexual assaults in Los Angeles shelters. A brutal murder in a motel transformed into emergency pandemic housing. Rats, roaches and garbage piling up in supposed safe havens.
What else is happening inside homeless shelters in California’s biggest city?"
Exclusive: California’s homeless population grew again this year, especially in these counties
CALMatters's MARISA KENDALL: "New data shows nearly 186,000 people now live on the streets and in homeless shelters in California, proving the crisis continues to grow despite increasing state and local efforts to stem the tide.
That’s according to an exclusive CalMatters analysis of the latest results of the point-in-time count, a federally mandated census that requires counties to tally their unhoused residents over the course of one night or early morning in January."
LAT's LIAM DILLON: "For nearly four decades, Patricia Payan has lived in a leased version of the suburban ideal in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home on Sheffield Avenue in El Sereno.
Payan rents the house from the state of California, one of hundreds publicly owned in the community because of a freeway that was planned but never built. Living there for so long, Payan made countless memories and personal touches at the property. Her son and daughter had their birthday parties in the same backyard where her grandchildren now do. She redid the floors in the kitchen herself and paid for her own gardener."
S.F. proposal poised to spread rent control in city. But the choice is up to California voters
The Chronicle's LAURA WAXMANN: "For the third time in six years, California voters will decide whether the state should continue prohibiting cities and counties from expanding rent control. If they vote “yes” in November, San Francisco could be ready to extend the privilege to many of the city’s renters.
An ordinance slated for introduction by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin on Tuesday proposes to strengthen the city’s current rent control ordinance, which caps annual rental increases for residential units at buildings constructed before 1979. The change would include multi-family properties that received their certificates of occupancy between June 13, 1979 and Nov. 5, 2024."
Fans call her San Francisco’s coyote whisperer. Why is the city at war with her?
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN: "The crowd was standing-room only at San Francisco’s Park Library, where a self-taught naturalist, Janet Kessler, dimmed the lights and flicked on a slide projector.
A screen filled with dazzling close-ups of urban coyotes — those rangy canines that lurk in parks, backyards and school playgrounds — suddenly rendered beautiful. Audience members “ooohed” as Kessler discussed the animals for more than an hour, holding the room in her thrall on a hot Saturday afternoon in August. At one point she played audio of a howling pack, and people seemed delighted by the shrill song."
Spotty redactions and public records reveal names of deputies in case against DA advisor
LAT's KERI BLAKINGER, EMILY ELENA DUGDALE: "One deputy was convicted of driving drunk with a loaded gun in the car. Another was suspended for failing to promptly report an on-duty traffic accident. An experienced detective was accused of lying on his job application. And a commander was demoted to captain for turning a blind eye to a cheating scandal in a popular law enforcement relay race.
For five months, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has fought to keep secret the names of eight Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies at the center of the case against Diana Teran, a top district attorney’s office advisor accused of misusing confidential personnel records as part of an effort to track cops with disciplinary histories. She is now facing six felony charges under what legal experts say is a “novel” use of the state’s hacking statute."