The layoffs, set to take effect July 15, mark the first phase of a broader plan to reduce up to 20% of the company’s factory workforce under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan."
California gas prices expected to jump in July: Here’s why and how it will hit your pocketbook
LAT, KAREN GARCIA: "Bad news if you are planning a road trip this summer.
Prices at the pump in California will likely jump in July, the result of a state sales tax hike and stricter rules on refineries to encourage them to create lower-carbon fuels. The combined increases could boost gas prices by nearly 70 cents, although industry experts and state officials disagree on how steep the price increase may be."
Formerly incarcerated Californians find success with help of re-entry programs
SacBee, CATHIE ANDERSON: "Locked in a prison cell during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tone Alcantara made an unlikely discovery about himself: He was a nerd.
It wasn’t a label his former teachers at Rosemont High School would’ve used. One vice principal, he recalled, practically celebrated in 2008 when he told Alcantara he had to leave the school."
Don’t let AB 931 close doors to justice for immigrants
Capitol Weekly, LAHAINA ARANETA: "– In recent weeks, Los Angeles witnessed mass protests in response to sweeping federal workplace raids. As ICE deployed National Guard troops and Marines in a show of force, our city responded with courage—standing up for immigrant families and rejecting fear-based intimidation. With nearly one million undocumented people in L.A., we cannot afford policies that deepen trauma or isolate entire communities. Communities in cities like Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, and Oakland also took to the streets, showing that this fight for dignity is statewide.
Yet at the same time, a less visible threat is brewing in Sacramento: Section 2 of Assembly Bill 931. Introduced by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, this legislation would prohibit California attorneys from partnering with any out-of-state legal providers—regardless of their ethics, oversight, or proven success in helping clients. In a moment when immigrants in Los Angeles and across California are under direct attack, this provision will leave many with nowhere to turn."
A second state worker union secures delay to Gavin Newsom’s return-to-office order
SacBee, WILLIAM MELHADO: "A second cohort of state workers can continue working from home, after Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a deal with the state attorneys union to delay his return-to-office order until July 2026, a labor group announced Wednesday.
The concession was part of a tentative agreement the California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment reached with the state. It included many of the same proposals secured by the state engineers union, notably pushing back the deadline for public employees to begin working from offices four days a week."
Congress is fighting over this tax deduction. Here’s how it affects Californians
CALMatters, LEVI SUMAGAYSAY: "A provision in the Republicans’ tax and spending bill will help determine a limit on what high-income Californians can deduct on their taxes, but Congress disagrees on how much.
After the passage of the 2017 tax bill during President Donald Trump’s first term, California taxpayers who itemize deductions saw their ability to deduct their full state and local income taxes and property taxes go away — to help the federal government pay for corporate tax cuts. The new cap that was established, $10,000, expires at the end of this year."
Newsom and Legislature tangle with construction unions over minimum wage
CALMatters, BEN CHRISTOPHER: "California lawmakers are on the cusp of striking a last-minute deal to tie one of the year’s most ambitious and controversial housing bills to a new set of minimum wages for housing construction workers — a proposal that has thrown a wrench into budget negotiations just days before the deadline.
The new legislative language, buried in a sprawling budget bill put into print on Tuesday, represents a grand political bargain between pro-development advocates and the state’s carpenters union. Supporters say the new arrangement could reshape the way that future California housing legislation is written and negotiated."
Judge rules California FAIR Plan used illegal policy for fire claims
SacBee, STEPHEN HOBBS: "A Los Angeles County judge on Tuesday said the California FAIR Plan — considered the state’s home insurance of last resort — unlawfully limited coverage for smoke damage claims in its policy.
That decision was prompted by a lawsuit filed in 2021 by a man whose home, about 100 miles east of Sacramento, burned in a fire.
In landmark decision, judge rules California FAIR Plan’s smoke-damage policy is illegal
Chronicle, LAURENCIO DARMIENTO: "In a landmark decision, a Los Angeles judge has ruled that California’s home insurer of last resort is violating state law by how it treats smoke damage claims — a policy that homeowners have long complained shortchanges them, including, most recently, victims of the Jan. 7 firestorms.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stuart Rice on Tuesday said that the California FAIR Plan Assn.’s policy violates the insurance code because it provides less coverage than what is required by the state’s Standard Form Fire Insurance Policy, which provides coverage for all “loss by fire” damage without making any distinction for smoke damage."
Exclusive: Nearly one-third of National Guard drug enforcement team were pulled to go to L.A.
Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "Nearly a third of the California National Guard troops who had been doing drug enforcement work have been pulled away as part of President Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles.
Of the 447 Guard members on the Counterdrug T
ask Force, 142 have been pulled off of the assignment as part of the Los Angeles deployment, according to data from the California National Guard."
California doesn’t have enough court reporters. Their unions are fighting substitutes
CALMatters, RYAN SABALOW: "Ashley Paschen believed she had a strong case as she sought a restraining order against her ex-husband.
She alleges she had proof he hurt her, and she had “nanny camera” footage that she alleges showed him beating her stepson. But a San Diego County court commissioner refused to admit the video footage as evidence and ruled that her abuse claims weren’t credible."
Measles on the rise in California: More cases so far this year than all of 2024
LAT, RONG-GONG LIN II: "California has already reported more measles cases this year than in all of 2024, a worrisome development that comes as the nation is suffering its largest outbreak of the super-infectious disease in decades.
The extent of the national outbreak has rocketed measles from a back-of-mind issue — one rarely, if ever, encountered by a whole generation of Americans — to a pressing public health concern."
UCSF Health to lay off 200 workers, citing ‘serious financial challenges’
Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "UCSF Health will eliminate approximately 200 positions across its network, officials said Wednesday, citing “serious financial challenges” and the need to safeguard long-term patient care.
The layoffs, which represent about 1% of the organization’s workforce, span part-time and full-time roles, with roughly half of the affected full-time employees holding management positions, UCSF Health said in a statement to the Chronicle."
57 people died in May in San Francisco from accidental overdoses
Chronicle, CHRISTIAN LEONARD and YOOHYU JUNG: "Overdose deaths in San Francisco dropped in 2024 after reaching a record high the previous year. But fatal overdoses are still much more common than they were before the pandemic, and tackling the crisis will prove a major test of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s leadership.
In recent years, the epidemic has been driven largely by the proliferation of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. In 2021, then-San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared an official state of emergency in the Tenderloin neighborhood. And the Board of Supervisors has backed Lurie’s proposals to expedite some of the processes meant to address the crisis."
California colleges spend millions to catch plagiarism and AI. Is the faulty tech worth it?
CALMatters, TARA GARCIA MATHEWSON: "It has been more than two years since the release of ChatGPT created widespread dismay over generative AI’s threat to academic integrity. Why would students write anything themselves, instructors wondered, if a chatbot could do it for them? Indeed, many students have taken the bait, if not to write entire essays, then certainly to draft an outline, refine their ideas or clean up their writing before submitting it.
And as faculty members grapple with what this means for grading, tech companies have proved yet again that there’s money to be made from panic. Turnitin, a longtime leader in the plagiarism-detection market, released a new tool within six months of ChatGPT’s debut to identify AI-generated writing in students’ assignments. In 2025 alone, records show the California State University system collectively paid an extra $163,000 for it, pushing total spending this year to over $1.1 million. Most of these campuses have licensed Turnitin’s plagiarism detector since 2014."
Intel to cut 107 Silicon Valley jobs and shut automotive unit as global layoffs begin
Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Intel, the Silicon Valley-based semiconductor giant, announced Tuesday it will cut 107 jobs across four facilities in Santa Clara as part of a sweeping global downsizing effort.
The layoffs, set to take effect July 15, mark the first phase of a broader plan to reduce up to 20% of the company’s factory workforce under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan."