The firm’s models suggest that the mounting risks of catastrophic flooding will drive Sacramento County — the heart of California’s fourth-largest metro area, at about 2.4 million people — to lose, in the average scenario, 28% of its population by 2055. Increasingly bad air quality, higher insurance costs and demographic shifts could also be drivers of population decline."
Feds’ abrupt cutoff of HIV prevention funds threatens decades of progress, S.F. providers say
Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY: "Leaders in HIV care in San Francisco and across the country say their critical efforts to stop new infections are under attack by a Trump administration that already has cut several key federal programs and now appears to be withholding money meant to go specifically toward prevention.
The bulk of HIV prevention work is supported by federal money, including grants issued through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the CDC’s HIV programs have been gutted this year, and millions in grant money that should have been in the hands of state and local health care providers by now has yet to arrive."
Despite pro-Trump past, trans state champ’s mom gives daughter unwavering support
Chronicle's NOAH FURTADO: "Nereyda Hernandez, the mother of transgender track and field athlete AB Hernandez, 16, who was recently crowned a California state champion in girls triple jump and high jump, told the Chronicle in an exclusive interview that she used to be a supporter of President Donald Trump.
She raised her four daughters, including AB, in the Catholic faith. They regularly attended Sunday service in the small town of Jurupa Valley in Riverside County, which Trump won by a slim margin of 1.26% in the 2024 election."
Transgender track athlete wins gold in California state championships despite Trump threat
LAT, KEVIN RECTOR: "Overcoming intense pressure to quit from President Trump, dozens of local protesters and other prominent critics of transgender athletes in girls’ sports, 16-year-old AB Hernandez bounded past many of her peers to win multiple gold medals at California’s high school track and field championships Saturday.
The transgender junior from Jurupa Valley High School — who competed despite a directive from Trump that she be barred from doing so — won state titles in the girls’ triple jump and the girls’ high jump and took second place in the girls’ long jump."
Could phonics solve California’s reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes
LAT, JENNY GOLD/KATE SEQUEIRA: "To look inside Julie Celestial’s kindergarten classroom in Long Beach is to peer into the future of reading in California.
During a recent lesson, 25 kindergartners gazed at the whiteboard, trying to sound out the word “bee.” They’re learning the long “e” sound, blending words such as “Pete” and “cheek” — words that they’ll soon be able to read in this lesson’s accompanying book."
California governor candidates going anti-Newsom: ‘Never stepped foot in the French Laundry’
Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI: "Nearly all the Democrats running to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom share a common trait: They are defining themselves as the anti-Newsom.
Former state Controller Betty Yee, who grew up working in her family’s San Francisco business, delivered the definitive anti-Newsom money line during the three-day California Democratic Party convention, which ended Sunday, when she said: “I have never stepped foot in the French Laundry, but I grew up in a Chinese laundry that taught me the value of work, of hard work, and it’s a sacrifice that I carry, that my parents made, to be able to, within one generation, see their daughter run for the highest office in California.”
California AG says federal cuts are actually helping legal fight with Trump: ‘They can’t keep up’
Chronicle's SHIRA STEIN: "Democratic attorneys general fighting the Trump administration on an array of policy issues are seizing on the widespread cuts and resignations of federal employees, an effort that may be coming back to bite the White House.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, buoyed by $25 million from a special legislative session, has been hiring new staff — including some of those former federal employees, he told the Chronicle while in Washington, D.C., to hear Supreme Court arguments in a case the state is party to."
Company knew it would lose negligence case in deadly CA fire, court docs show
SacBee's ROSALIO AHUMADA: "Filed court transcripts show an Oregon-based timber company was aware that previous fires in a giant wooden warehouse at one of its facilities would cause them to lose a negligence case after a 2022 fire ripped through a small town in Northern California, killing two women and destroying numerous homes.
The September 2022 Mill Fire started at the Roseburg Forest Products Co. lumber mill in the town of Weed in Siskiyou County. Investigators determined the fire, which spread rapidly to destroy 144 buildings and burn 3,939 acres or 6 square miles, was caused by mill operations at the Roseburg facility, Cal Fire officials announced in a June 16, 2023, news." release."
California prisons increase canine searches on visitors and staff in new anti-drug policy
CALMatters, CAYLA MIHALOVICH: "Anyone entering a California prison — including visitors, staff and attorneys — will be subject to a canine search under a new policy rolling out today across the state.
