Rob Bonta picked for state attorney general
JOHN HOWARD, Capitol Weekly: "Rob Bonta, the first Filipino American to serve in the California Legislature, was appointed state attorney general on Wednesday, filling the vacancy created by Xavier Becerra, who left to join President Joe Biden’s administration.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the appointment in a news release. ““Rob represents what makes California great – our desire to take on righteous fights and reverse systematic injustices,” Newsom said.
Bonta, 48, if confirmed by the Legislature, will be the first Asian American to hold the attorney general’s job, considered the most important statewide office in California after the governor.
READ MORE on Rob Bonta: Newsom names Rob Bonta as AG, lifting Filipino leader after attacks on Asian Americans -- LARA KORTE, SacBee; Asian American leaders look to AG Bonta to lead on fighting hate crimes -- DUSTIN GARDNER, Chronicle; What California is saying about Newsom's AG pick, Rob Bonta -- LARA KORTEm SacBee; AG Rob Bonta, California's newest top cop, has a tense history with police unions and the bail industry -- SacBee, HANNAH WILEY
In Rob Bonta, Newsom picks an attorney general who embodies American dream, new California
GEORGE SKELTON, LA Times: "Rob Bonta is another American dream story: Born in the Philippines and brought up by parents who helped César Chávez and Dolores Huerta unionize farmworkers.
Bonta’s mother, Cynthia, immigrated to California by slow boat in the 1960s. His father, Warren, grew up in Ventura County and became a voting-rights organizer for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama. Mom and dad were missionaries in the Philippines when Rob was born.
They brought Bonta to California when he was 2 months old and moved to a little trailer near Keene, a town in the Tehachapi Mountains, adjacent to the United Farm Workers headquarters. His parents’ job was to organize Latino and Filipino farmworkers."
Endangered California condor to return to NorCal for first time in 100 years
The Chronicle's TARA DUGGAN: "The endangered California condor, which almost became extinct in the 1970s, will be returned to Northern California for the first time in 100 years, in a project headed up by the Yurok tribe.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it plans to establish “a nonessential experimental population” of California condors in far Northern California, Oregon and northwestern Nevada under the Endangered Species Act. That action will allow conservationists to release several birds into Redwood National Park (Del Norte County) as soon as this fall.
“Certainly within a year we hope to have birds in the sky,” said Tiana Williams-Claussen, director of the wildlife department of the Yurok tribe, who has been working since 2008 to bring back an animal that has special significance to the tribe. “We’re just one part of the larger California condor restoration program.”"
$1K-a-month guaranteed income program coming to Marin County
Sac Bee's MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "Marin County will become the second Bay Area community experimenting with a guaranteed income program designed to improve the fortunes of lower-income residents.
The Marin program will provide $1,000 monthly grants to 125 low wage-earning women of color who are raising at least one child in Marin County. It is being run not by the county but by the non-profit Marin Community Foundation. However, the Marin County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $400,000 to the program. The foundation will contribute $3 million as well as operating and evaluating the two-year program.
The Oakland and Marin County programs, which offer unrestricted monthly cash payments, follow on the success of a Stockton program that was one of the nation’s first.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced Tuesday that the city would launch one of the nation’s largest guaranteed income programs — giving $500 a month to 600 low-income families — this spring or summer. The Oakland program will last 18 months. The Stockton program, which provided $500 every month to 125 people for 24 months, was widely considered a success."
Elon Musk, six California billionaires on list of top 'Pandemic Profiteers'
The Chronicle's RYAN KOST: "Six California billionaires made a list of the 10 biggest “Pandemic Profiteers,” according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, which teamed up with the Americans for Tax Fairness to “track the wealth growth of America’s billionaires over the last year.”
Even as millions lost their jobs — nearly 30 million by some estimates — and huge swathes of the economy remained closed during long stretches of the pandemic, the nation’s 657 billionaires saw their own wealth grow by 44.6% — or $1.3 trillion in all.
Bom Kim, the founder of Coupang, which the report describes as the “Amazon of South Korea” saw the largest percentage increase in his wealth (670%), while Elon Musk saw the greatest growth in “absolute wealth” during the pandemic. His fortune grew by a whopping 559% or $137.5 billion."
California's COVID numbers are low. But hot spots are emerging in other parts of the country
The Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY: "More than two months past the peak of the deadly winter surge, coronavirus cases are still dropping in California even as the state unfurls from an extended lockdown, but the picture is starting to look grim again in other parts of the United States.
Daily cases are stubbornly holding in the 50,000 range nationwide, remaining higher than the lull between surges last fall. Cases are trending up in more than half of all states. And several hot spots have emerged in pockets around the country, fueled by the spread of a more infectious variant of the virus and people tossing aside their masks and abandoning social distancing protocols.
“I continue to be worried about the latest data, and the apparent stall we are seeing in the trajectory of the pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a White House briefing on Wednesday. She noted that the seven-day average for new cases is up this week from last, and hospitalizations and deaths are flat after a long period of declines."
This is what happens when ICE asks Google for your user info
LA Times's JOHANA BHUIYAN: "You’re scrolling through your Gmail inbox and see an email with a strange subject line: A string of numbers followed by “Notification from Google.”
It may seem like a phishing scam or an update to Gmail’s terms of service. But it could be the only chance you’ll have to stop Google from sharing your personal information with authorities.
Tech companies, which have treasure troves of personal information, have become natural targets for law enforcement and government requests. The industry’s biggest names, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, receive data requests — from subpoenas to National Security Letters — to assist in, among other efforts, criminal and non-criminal investigations as well as lawsuits."
Not necessary to offer voter registration in certain offices, state appeals court says
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "California has one of the nation’s highest voter-registration rates, but disability-rights advocates say the state is violating a legal duty to register voters in offices serving disabled students and the elderly, who have less access than others to motor-voter sign-ups. A state appeals court disagrees.
While the populations served by those offices are less likely than others to apply for drivers’ licenses, which would entitle them to immediate voter registration, they are not the types of public agencies required by law to have their own registration sites, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said Tuesday.
Federal law requires states to establish voter-registration centers in offices that provide either “public assistance” or “state-funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to persons with disabilities.”"
Harris tapped by Biden to lead border migration effort
The Chronicle's TAL KOPAN: "Vice President Kamala Harris will take the lead for the Biden administration on border and migration issues, the president said Wednesday, giving her a high-profile role on a controversial issue.
It’s the first clear assignment for Harris since taking her job alongside President Biden, one that fits her expertise but also puts her in the center of a brewing political storm.
Biden announced Harris’ role coordinating diplomacy and border control efforts with Central America and Mexico in a meeting with his immigration officials at the White House. He pointed to Harris’ experience as California’s attorney general working on human rights and combating organized crime, saying there was “nobody who is better qualified” for the job."
COVID-19 turned a tiny start-up into a testing giant. But can its results be trusted?
LA Times's LAURENCE DARMIENTO/MELODY PETERSEN: "It was a one-two punch that could damage an established company, much less a year-old start-up.
In January, the Food and Drug Administration cautioned that COVID-19 tests made by Curative might inform patients they were free of the virus when they weren’t.
A so-called false negative that would allow infected people to unwittingly spread the deadly illness."
Lowell High's racial demographics to change next year, after dropping merit-based admissions
The Chronicle's EMMA TALLEY: "San Francisco’s elite Lowell High School is likely to see a shift in its racial and ethnic makeup after it suspended merit-based admission for next school year, according to new district data.
The data — which shows which students were accepted to Lowell’s ninth-grade class — are complicated by the fact that the school admitted nearly 200 fewer students than previous years because of over-enrollment in the past. Still, overall, the Hispanic and Black students were a larger share of the accepted class than the previous year, while the share of white and Asian American students fell.
The share of Hispanic students grew 10 percentage points and Black students by 2.9 percentage points."
US appeals court says no, it's not OK to carry guns in public w/o a license
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "States can prohibit people from openly carrying guns in public, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, adding a voice to a heated issue that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon address.
In a 7-4 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a Hawaii law that bans residents from openly carrying firearms without a license, which is issued only to those who can show they need the weapons to protect life or property. Police and members of the armed forces are exempt.
California bans openly carrying firearms in most of the state. Sheriffs can issue licenses to carry concealed weapons but they are virtually unavailable in the state’s most populous counties."
