Here’s how Biden will spend time in the Bay Area this week
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "President Biden, fresh from the first rally of his re-election campaign, will combine politics and policy work on a Bay Area visit this week, raising campaign cash and stopping Monday at a wetlands preservation site in Palo Alto to highlight his climate change and environmental efforts.
Biden, who held his kickoff re-election rally Saturday in Philadelphia, will be in Silicon Valley to announce more than $600 million in funding for projects intended to adapt to climate change and shield the power grid from extreme weather, according to a White House official. His itinerary includes a stop at the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center in Palo Alto at one of the San Francisco Bay’s larger marshland preserves."
Biden set to announce $600 million in climate projects during a visit to Palo Alto
BANG*Mercury News, WILL MCCARTHY: "President Joe Biden is set to announce a $600 million investment in projects aimed at combatting climate change during a visit to Palo Alto on Monday.
State, local, and environmental justice leaders will join the president in touring the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center and Preserve, a coastal wetland in Palo Alto that plays a key role in protecting shoreline communities. Biden is expected to highlight the wetland to emphasize the urgency of climate action in coastal communities across the nation."
McCarthy visit to Orange County highlights GOP focus on immigration and crime
LA Times, SEEMA MEHTA, HANNAH FRY: "A camouflage-clad mannequin sat on a table where Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with officials about recent home invasions in Orange County.
The prop was meant to draw attention to claims that Chileans entering the United States through a loophole in the immigration system are donning specialized suits that resemble foliage, hiding near homes and breaking in — typically from a second-story balcony — before making off with cash, jewelry and other high-value goods."
Some South L.A. residents call for embattled City Councilman Curren Price to step down
LA Times, REBECCA ELLIS: "With the fate of yet another Los Angeles City council member up in the air after criminal corruption charges, a group of his constituents said they are clear on the path forward: Curren Price should resign.
In front of the gates of Price’s district office in South Los Angeles, a small crowd of about a dozen rallied Saturday to demand the council veteran step down. They said they had already felt sold out by Price, whom they accused of favoring developers over his constituents during his three terms in office. Felony charges this week alleging Price had a financial stake in development projects he voted on had cemented that belief, they said."
Charges against Price draw outrage, sadness and sense of ‘Black loss’ in South L.A.
LA Times, MATT HAMILTON, AKIYA DILLON, BRENNON DIXSON: "Curren Price was sworn in for his third term on Los Angeles City Council last fall with a promise to mend rifts.
After leaked recordings had exposed Latino council members plotting to consolidate power in a conversation laced with anti-Black tropes, Price was a counterpoint — a veteran Black leader who had forged unity in his majority Latino district."
A quick look at limits on bill introductions
Capitol Weekly, CHRIS MICHELI: "About a quarter of this country’s legislatures, including California, limits the number of bill introductions by their elected officials. According to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), tens of thousands of bills are introduced annually in state legislatures in the United States. California accounts for about 2,500 of those bills each year.
Why are elected legislators limited in the number of bill introductions in a handful of states? According to NCSL, “Supporters believe introduction limits help reduce the number of bills entering the legislative process and allow more time to process substantive legislation. Others disagree and say these limits restrict members’ rights to propose bills and carry out their legislative responsibilities.”"
L.A. Latinos welcome 42 migrants bused from Texas as ‘brothers and sisters’
LA Times, MARIANA DURAN: "A month and a half ago, Miguel Ángel got off a bus in Los Angeles. He had been detained in an immigration center since January, after Border Patrol officers caught him and the four other people he was traveling with in the Sonoran Desert.
When Miguel Ángel was released from the center in late April, he said he was moved around various cities in Arizona and Central California, before he was given a bus ticket for L.A."
‘All we received was abandonment’: Migrants sent to Sacramento by DeSantis speak out
LA Times, MACKENZIE MAYS: "They saw themselves in the video that Florida officials offered up as proof of their consent to travel to California, but they said it’s not what it seemed.
They were happy, yes. That part was true."
What Florida officials asked migrants to sign before boarding Sacramento flights
Sacramento Bee, MATHEW MIRANDA: "Details have emerged about the release form that Florida state officials and a contractor gave to migrants to sign before boarding a pair of flights to Sacramento earlier this month, raising new questions about what the Latin American passengers were told before getting on a plane.
A release form given to each of the 36 migrants who were flown from El Paso, Texas, to the capital region was shared with The Sacramento Bee during an interview Friday with some of the migrants, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal and threats."
Column: State Farm is right. California can’t keep building housing in high-risk places (OP-ED)
LA Times, ERIKA D. SMITH, ANITA CHABRIA: "Back in January, on a dark night of pelting rain, Erica Lopez Bedolla had only minutes to evacuate her family from the impoverished Central Valley town of Planada after a levee broke.
“It was so quick,” she told our Times colleague Jessica Garrison, recalling the speed with which the water rushed into her town and then her home, destroying almost everything and displacing hundreds. But after a few months, Bedolla already felt as if the rest of California had “forgotten this happened.”"
All-electric flying taxis? Yes, and they’ll be at SFO by 2026, says United Airlines
The Chronicle, JOEL UMANZOR: "United Airlines is partnering with an electric aircraft company with plans to introduce an all-electric air taxi service from San Francisco International for commuters coming to and from the airport starting in 2026.
The Florida-based company, Eve Air Mobility, announced Wednesday that both companies will be working with local and state officials as well as infrastructure, energy and technology providers to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is in place to introduce electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft flights."
Will Newsom’s Delta tunnel plan hold up the budget?
CALMatters, LYNN LA: "As legislative leaders continue to negotiate a budget deal with Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the start of the fiscal year on July 1, expansive “trailer bills” proposed by the governor — essentially riders to the spending plan that provide an expedited path to changing policy — are the biggest remaining holdup to an agreement.
A package of measures advanced by Newsom to streamline the permitting process for infrastructure projects has proved particularly contentious, with lawmakers increasingly speaking out publicly about their discomfort with rushing through the proposal, which was unveiled just last month, in the budget."
A highly ambitious plan to restore California's underwater forests has begun
The Chronicle, TARA DUGGAN: "The recovery of Northern California’s once-great kelp forest may come down to dropping bricks to the bottom of the ocean.
Earlier this month, Bay Area researchers did just that: They made baby kelp grow on twine in a lab, then wrapped the twine around clay bricks and deposited them into Drakes Bay, a part of Point Reyes National Seashore that was once dense with the golden, towering strands of seaweed."
Baja rattled by 6.4 magnitude earthquake, 3rd to hit West Coast in 24 hours
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "Three earthquakes shook the West Coast within 24 hours this weekend, the largest a 6.4 magnitude temblor that struck off of Baja California, preceded by two smaller ones off Northern California.
The largest rumbled Sunday afternoon underwater off the coast of Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja Peninsula, according to the U.S.Geological Survey. Mexican officials were not aware of any damages, the country’s defense agency said on Twitter."
A Bay Area bald eagle couple adopted two baby red-tailed hawks. Here’s what happened next
The Chronicle, TARA DUGGAN: "A pair of bald eagles have shocked and delighted bird watchers in the South Bay since late May ever since they adopted — or kidnapped — two baby red-tailed hawks and raised them alongside their own biological eaglet.
One of the baby hawks didn’t survive the ordeal, but the other appears healthy and ready to leave the nest any time now, according to Doug Gillard, a semiprofessional bird photographer in Gilroy who caught the first baby hawk abduction on camera and will not disclose the birds’ location other than that it’s in Santa Clara County."
Anti-LGBT protesters mar Pride Night in L.A. before Giants-Dodgers game
The Chronicle, SUSAN SLUSSER: "Pride Night with the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers playing at Dodger Stadium turned into something else entirely for the fans trying to get in to see the game, as they found the main gates to the parking lot closed because of a large protest.
The reason for the protest? Well, depending on who you spoke to, it was either because the Dodgers honored the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for their charity work, because it was Pride Night, or both."
Why ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ will be California’s next abortion battleground
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: "In California, less than two-thirds of counties have an abortion clinic. But nearly 80% have at least one “crisis pregnancy center,” according to a database compiled by CalMatters.
Abortion rights advocates and lawmakers have long accused these centers — also known as anti-abortion centers — of coercing vulnerable people into remaining pregnant by misleading them about abortion procedures and contraceptive methods. In rural areas with acute primary care shortages, “crisis pregnancy centers” outnumber abortion clinics 11 to 2, a CalMatters analysis shows."
Why arts education matters: A conversation with Jessica Mele
EdSorce, KAREN D'SOUZA: "By day, Jessica Mele is a mild-mannered program officer in the performing arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation specializing in arts education. By night, she’s a sketch comedy maven best known as a founding member of Chardonnay, a cheeky San Francisco-based troupe. She’s also a writer/performer working on a solo show about the drama of motherhood, “Eat the Mama.”
A lifelong arts advocate, from serving as executive director at San Francisco’s Performing Arts Workshop to being part of the national advisory council of the Teaching Artists Guild, Mele recently made time to chat about the inequities in arts education in California, where research shows only 11% of schools offer access to a comprehensive arts education, and how Proposition 28, the groundbreaking Arts and Music in Schools initiative which launches this fall, may be a game-changer for creativity in learning."
As thousands of students graduate from Stanford, tennis legend John McEnroe asks them to question what winning really means
BANG*Mercury News, ELISSA MIOLENE: "John McEnroe’s career has been marked by nearly unfathomable success.
The tennis legend has won 155 combined titles throughout his nearly 30-year career, more than any man in tennis history. But on Sunday morning, McEnroe’s message to 5,158 Stanford graduates was that life is not just about the successes – and that winning is about far more than the final tally."
Temecula Valley school board fires superintendent Jodi McClay as protests erupt outside
EdSource, MALLIKA SESHADRI: "Behind closed doors, the Temecula Valley school board voted 3-1 to fire the district’s superintendent Jodi McClay Tuesday and hire former Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Velez to fill in as interim.
While the board met in a closed session at Temecula Valley High School, dozens of parents, teachers and students protested the district’s decision to ban the “Social Studies Alive!” textbook which leaves more than 11,000 students without reading materials for the coming year."
Was gambling the deciding factor in Oakland A’s planned move to Las Vegas?
BANG*Mercury News, SHOMIK MUKHERJEE: "Why are the A’s so eager to ditch Oakland for Las Vegas, a much smaller media market that increasingly is becoming crowded with other professional sports teams?
The team and its representatives would argue that the ambitious $1.5 billion ballpark plan — for which Nevada lawmakers last week committed $380 million in public money — justifies itself because of all the tourism that would be generated by baseball games."
New artificial intelligence: Will Silicon Valley ride again to riches on other people’s products?
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN BARON: "Silicon Valley is poised once again to cash in on other people’s products, making a data grab of unprecedented scale that has already spawned lawsuits and congressional hearings.
Chatbots and other forms of generative artificial intelligence that burst onto the technology scene in recent months are fed vast amounts of material scraped from the internet — books, screenplays, research papers, news stories, photos, art, music, code and more — to produce answers, imagery or sound in response to user prompts."
He hasn’t shined shoes since the pandemic began. Can he still make a living in downtown S.F.?
EdSource, J.K. DINEEN: "On Monday morning, as what remains of downtown’s depleted in-person workforce trickled up from the mouth of the Embarcadero BART Station, Christopher “Olajuwon” Mitchell stood on the brick sidewalk waiting for the arrival of something he had been dreaming about since early in the pandemic: a new shoeshine stand.
The wooden stand, which cost $3,500, arrived in a box truck from a carpenter shop in Larkspur. It was carpeted with a plush leather seat and metal pegs for customers’ feet. Mitchell, in his signature 49ers jersey and Hawaiian bead necklaces, wheeled it to what he hopes will be its new permanent home, near the eastern end of the California Street cable car line."
Wooing conservatives in Trump country, DeSantis stays quiet on rival’s indictment
AP, STEVE PEOPLES: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday condemned Walt Disney World and the U.S. Justice Department — not his chief Republican rival, Donald Trump — as he courted Nevada Republicans deep in the heart of Trump country.
The U.S. “is off the rails,” the Republican governor said. “Insanity is reigning supreme.”"
DeSantis Makes His Next Move In War With Disney
The Street, DANIEL KLINE: "You can call Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a lot of things (and people certainly have) but "subtle" is not one of them. The right-wing firebrand has made his enemies very clear and he's perfectly willing to use his office to strike blows at those enemies.
Those aren't just theoretical threats like the Republican presidential candidate threatening to build a prison near Disney World. That's an impractical suggestion that likely wouldn't really hurt Walt Disney (DIS) - Get Free Report, but DeSantis has made real political moves to pay Disney back for former CEO Bob Chapek taking a public stand against his so-called "Don't Say Gay" legislation."
