Newsom and family in quarantine after COVID-19 exposure
The Chronicle's KATE GALBRAITH: "Gov. Gavin Newsom and his family are in quarantine after three of Newsom’s four children were exposed to a person from the California Highway Patrol who later tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Late Friday evening, @JenSiebelNewsom and I learned that 3 of our children had been exposed to an officer from the California Highway Patrol who had tested positive for COVID-19,” Newsom tweeted Sunday.
Newsom spokesperson Jesse Melgar said that Newsom and Siebel Newsom “had no direct interaction with the officer. The family were all tested today and are all negative for COVID-19. However, consistent with local guidance, the family has begun to quarantine."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: Daily California coronavirus cases triple as pandemic dramatically worsens -- LA Times's RONG-GONG LIN II; SF expected to join coronavirus purple tier 'this week'; move would trigger curfew -- The Chronicle's JK DINEEN
What does California have to lose if undocumented immigrants are excluded from the census?
Sac Bee's KIM BOJORQUEZ: "If The U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of President Donald Trump’s memorandum to remove unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 census count, California stands to lose some political power.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments Nov. 30 on the Trump administration’s July memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from congressional apportionment, used to calculate the number of congressional seats each state gets.
Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said the state is home to an estimated two million undocumented immigrants. If they aren’t included in the census formula, the state could lose congressional representation."
Killings in LA spike dramatically, leaving families shattered and communities reeling
LA Times's KEVIN RECTOR/NICOLE SANTA CRUZ: "Beneath a highway overpass in South Los Angeles on Saturday night, a detective clicked his flashlight on and off as he carefully placed a yellow evidence marker in the middle of the street and then another closer to the curb, near the pooled blood of a 17-year-old boy.
A big dog barked behind a nearby fence as another detective recounted for his colleague how the teenager had been riding a bicycle when he was gunned down. The boy died en route to a hospital.
His death and three other fatal shootings in L.A. from Saturday into Sunday morning — of a 50-year-old homeless man, a 20-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman — pushed Los Angeles, in an already historic year, to a bloody benchmark not seen in a decade: 300 homicides."
Column: Whom should Newsom choose as Kamala Harris’ successor? Himself, Willie Brown says
LAT's GEORGE SKELTON, Column: "Maybe Gov. Gavin Newsom should just choose himself to replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the U.S. Senate.
That’s the thinking of Willie Brown, a fellow former San Francisco mayor and Democratic elder statesman. It’s not a bad idea.
I mean, how much fun is it to be California’s governor these days?"
CW Podcast: Craig Tucker on Klamath dam agreement
CW Staff: "Last week, Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Kate Brown of Oregon, leaders of the Yurok and Karuk Tribes and billionaire investor Warren Buffett issued a joint announcement that four dams on the Klamath River will be removed.
The agreement follows decades of often-tense negotiations between the tribes, state and local governments and the dams’ owner, PacifiCorp, a massive power utility that serves roughly 600,000 customers in California and Oregon.
While the Yurok and Karuk tribes have protested the dams for a century, back to back catastrophes in the early 2000s set the stage for restoration of the river. In 2001, officials shut off water supplies to farmers in the Klamath Basin to keep the river flowing following a devastating drought; the next year, over 60,000 adult salmon died in the lower Klamath, the largest salmon kill in western U.S. history."
Divided Washington will test House Speaker Pelosi's prowess
The Chronicle's TAL KOPAN: "Next year could put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reputation as a master legislator to the greatest test of her career, with Washington poised to enter one of its most sharply divided periods in a generation.
The San Francisco Democrat will be presiding over the narrowest House majority in her career as speaker. With a few races left to be officially called, Democrats are likely to have only a handful of seats more than the 218 needed for a majority.
Pelosi is likely to be one-third of a triumvirate of battle-hardened legislators occupying the main power centers of Washington. It’s a dynamic that could result in one of the more productive stretches in recent years — or prove that political dysfunction has become inescapable."
SF study could bring US closer to fast, reliable coronavirus tests that report results in minutes
The Chronicle's CATHERINE HO: "A small study by San Francisco researchers could bring the U.S. a step closer to having reliable and fast coronavirus diagnostic tests that generate results in minutes, instead of hours or days.
The study found that a new, rapid antigen test performed almost as well as state-of-the-art tests, commonly referred to as PCR tests, at detecting positives among people who had high levels of the virus and were thus likely infectious. And the results come back to users much quicker, which could improve the coronavirus testing landscape.
The analysis was based on nasal specimens collected in September from 878 people at the 16th Street Mission BART Station in San Francisco’s Mission District."
READ MORE related to Testing/Vaccines: Bay Area sees racial shift in coronavirus: Positive tests down for Latinos, up for Whites -- The Chronicle's TATIANA SANCHEZ/CATHERINE HO/ERIN ALLDAY
California NAACP leader to step down amid conflict-of-interest allegations
Sac Bee's ALEXANDRA YOON-HENDRICKS/MARCUS SMITH: "The longtime leader of California’s NAACP will step down next month, which comes after the towering figure once again faced conflict-of-interest allegations involving her political consulting company’s work in this year’s election cycle.
Alice Huffman, who has held the position for nearly 20 years, will end her tenure Dec. 1, cited health issues in a resignation letter to the executive board of the California Hawaii State Conference of the NAACP, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Murmurs from non-profit organizations have alluded to another reason in which Huffman, 84, has decided to step down."
More than 800 cases potentially tainted by fired SF lab worker, DA says
The Chronicle's MEGAN CASSIDY: "More than 800 resolved criminal prosecutions may have been impacted by a former lab analyst allegedly caught with an evidence bag of methamphetamine in August, according to a list released Friday by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
The cases, which include prosecutions for DUIs, rapes and murders spanning more than a decade, may now require a second look to ensure they aren’t tainted — a task likely to cost the city nearly a half-million dollars.
The announcement comes nearly three months after Justin Volk, then a forensic lab analyst with the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office, was arrested in Utah after reportedly driving with an evidence bag of meth and various pills. Volk was later charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute."
LA County restaurant owners fear they won't survive another shutdown
LA Times's STAFF: "For Jacob Shaw and other restaurant owners in Los Angeles, the holiday season was going to be a welcome boost to business.
And even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted in-person dining to outdoor seating, there was hope that the next few weeks would help recoup some of the massive losses they’ve experienced.
Then coronavirus cases started surging, prompting L.A. County officials to announce that starting Wednesday night, restaurants and other eateries must once again stop in-person dining outdoors and instead provide only takeout and delivery."
State officials: Prison inmates and loved ones can soon connect by video
Sac Bee's MOLLY BURKE: "The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Friday that state prisons will soon offer video visits after the suspension of in-person visitation since March 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The program to virtually connect incarcerated people with friends and family will launch by Thanksgiving weekend for five prisons and become available statewide by the end of the year.
Eligible inmates will be allowed a free 30-minute video visit every 30 days beginning Nov. 28 for San Quentin State Prison, California Institution for Men, Mule Creek State Prison, Valley State Prison and Central California Women’s Facility."
Man beaten by Vallejo police settles with city for 750K
The Chronicle's OTIS R TAYLOR JR: "Handyman Carl Edwards was welding the fence at the side of his Tennessee Street building when a Vallejo police officer approached him.
Seconds later, Edwards was bleeding — tackled to the ground, choked and punched repeatedly in the head. Blood gushed from his busted nose, pooling on the concrete as the officer wrapped his arm around Edwards’ neck in a carotid restraint, a pressure maneuver designed to cause unconsciousness.
A second officer tried the same hold, a video from an officer’s body camera shows. Yet another punched and kneed Edwards as he lay on his stomach. The ruckus brought people streaming from Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, on the corner, to watch."
Biden expected to nominate Blinken as Secretary of State
AP's MATTHEW LEE: "President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate Antony Blinken as secretary of state, according to multiple people familiar with the Biden team's planning.
Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and has close ties with Biden. If nominated and confirmed, he would be a leading force in the incoming administration’s bid to reframe the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world after four years in which President Donald Trump questioned longtime alliances.
In nominating Blinken, Biden would sidestep potentially thorny issues that could have affected Senate confirmation for two other candidates on his short list to be America’s top diplomat: Susan Rice and Sen. Chris Coons."
Trump team making false argument about his 2016 transition
AP's JONATHAN LEMIRE: "It’s not just President-elect Joe Biden’s transition that’s under a microscope.
President Donald Trump and his allies are harking back to his own transition four years ago to make a false argument that his own presidency was denied a fair chance for a clean launch. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out the case from the White House podium last week and the same idea has been floated by Trump’s personal lawyer and his former director of national intelligence.
The comparisons are part of a broader attempt by Trump and his team to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s election and his right to an orderly transition by unspooling mistruths about both this election season and Trump’s treatment four years ago."
