VP Kamala Harris, in San Jose, on abortion rights: “This is a fight that is fundamental”
BANG*Mercury News, GABRIEL GRESCHLER: "Vice President Kamala Harris whipped up support among Democrats fighting for access to abortion in her home state on Monday, lambasting former President Donald Trump and his Republican Party for eroding reproductive rights across the country.
In remarks at San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Plaza, the nation’s first woman vice president described the fight for abortion as “fundamentally about freedom,” and urged voters to focus on the issue as the Nov. 5 general election nears."
How will Trump fare in the California primary? Here’s what the polls show
The Chronicle, CHRISTIAN LEONARD: "Even in deep-blue California, Republicans back Donald Trump.
The former president has consistently polled above the other candidates for the Republican nomination, though he’s garnered slightly more support in California. About 71% of Republican voters nationally said they’d vote for Trump in the March 5 primary election, according to poll averages calculated by news and data site FiveThirtyEight on Saturday. That’s a bit less than the 74% of California Republicans who said they’d back him."
‘A fundamentally huge blunder.’ California Secretary of State under fire for ballot error
Sacramento Bee, ANDREW SHEELER: "In a statement issued last Friday, the California Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged a mistake that led to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Christina Pascucci receiving a “No Ballot Designation” identifier on both the March 5 primary ballot and the accompanying voter guide.
Pascucci, a former Los Angeles TV news journalist, should have received the designation “Local Television Journalist,” according to a statement from Secretary Shirley Weber’s office."
Candidates are vying to be the next mayor of Sacramento. Who’s funding the top four?
Sacramento Bee, THERESA CLIFT: "Ballots will start to arrive in Sacramento mailboxes next week, including four contenders for mayor.
New documents give voters a glimpse into who’s funding their campaigns."
California's groundwater decline is 'scary' — but one area bucks the trend
The Chronicle, JOSEPH HOWLETT: "Californians are all-too-familiar with the hold water has on us. It keeps us alive and our farmland fertile, but its scarcity has plagued the state since long before climate change brought on longer droughts and sweltering days.
In a study published January 24 in the journal Nature, scientists produced the first global record of groundwater evolution over the last half-century. They found that water stores across the world are evaporating faster and faster, and that California is a global hotspot for groundwater decline."
California lawmakers, raising fears of political violence, want to shield their properties
CALMatters, ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Citing safety threats, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would keep the property they own and other personal information from annual financial disclosures off the internet.
The measure, Assembly Bill 1170, would shift to an electronic filing system for the statement of economic interest, known as Form 700, that elected officials and some public employees in California are required to complete each year."
A fire burning deep inside an L.A. County landfill is raising new alarms over toxic air
LAT, TONY BRISCOE: "Vapor hisses from surface fissures. Bubbling ponds of effluent form “rivers of odorous waste.” And at times, steaming hot liquid bursts into the air like a geyser.
As operators struggle to contain a smoldering fire and pressure buildup deep within Chiquita Canyon Landfill, air quality regulators are raising alarms over the potential health risks posed by the toxic fumes escaping the Castaic facility."
California banned a slur from geographic place names. Fresno County won’t let go.
LAT, MELISSA GOMEZ: "For years, Native American residents in Fresno County have campaigned to remove the word “squaw” from the name of an unincorporated town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
The word, many Native Americans say, has been used as a slur and insult against Native women, part of a broader perpetuation of violence against them. In 2022, organizers scored a victory when the U.S. Department of the Interior, which sought to remove the “S-word” from federal lands, re-designated the town as Yokuts Valley for federal use. That same year, the California Legislature passed a measure that required the term be stripped from place names and geographic landmarks statewide by 2025."
Gavin Newsom raised millions for his mental health ballot measure. His opponents have $1,000
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG, JEREMIA KIMELMAN: "Gov. Gavin Newsom has amassed more than $14.2 million in a campaign war chest for his hallmark mental health initiative, which will appear on the March 5 primary ballot, a sum that eclipses the resources of the measure’s opponents.
He’s drawing from longtime allies in health care, unions and tribes to fund the campaign for Proposition 1, which would issue $6.4 billion in bonds to pay for housing and treatment facilities while also redistributing money raised for mental health services through a tax on high earners."
Health Secretary Becerra defends CDC’s COVID isolation guidance that California shortened
BANG*Mercury News, JOHN WOOLFOLK: "U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra defended federal COVID isolation guidelines Monday that California earlier this month announced it was deviating from to shorten the amount of time people who test positive should stay home — a change that so far hasn’t led to a new spike in cases.
California officials earlier this month shortened the recommended isolation period following a positive COVID-19 test from five days to one — 24 hours without fever."
‘Every loss truly traumatizes me,’ Sotomayor says at UC Berkeley of life in SCOTUS minority
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "Speaking at UC Berkeley, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was asked Monday how she copes with the steady stream of rulings by the court’s conservative majority, usually over the dissents of Sotomayor and her two liberal colleagues.
“Every loss truly traumatizes me” but “I get up the next morning,” she replied, to applause from the audience of 1,300 students. “Change never happens on its own,” the 69-year-old justice said, reminding her listeners of civil rights warriors like Thurgood Marshall, the court’s first Black justice, and John Lewis, whose skull was fractured by state troopers at a 1965 march in Selma, Ala."
As LAUSD enrollment plunges, only one school is overcrowded. Proposed fixes panic parents
LAT, HOWARD BLUME: "In the deep northwest reach of Los Angeles Unified, tucked among foothills carpeted with newish subdivisions, Porter Ranch Community School has a rare problem. At a time of declining public school enrollment in L.A. and throughout the state, this campus is overcrowded — the only one in the nation’s second-largest school district that is full and turning away families.
Angry parents of the combined elementary and middle school worry that one proposed solution would break up a community they cherish and also one that they dearly paid for — through home prices they believe are boosted by the lure of its neighborhood school. One plan that was under consideration in recent months calls for lopping off the middle school, grades 6, 7 and 8, and sending those students to an under-enrolled high school nearby."
Vocational training programs for special education students teach work, life skills
EDSOURCE, LASHERICA THOMPSON: "As guests check out of El Capitan Hotel in downtown Merced, a group of students wearing Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) shirts or lanyards enter recently vacated rooms to strip the beds, empty the trash bins and vacuum.
For more than a year, students like Alondra Fierros, who always has a smile on her face, have separated and washed the hotel’s dirty sheets and other linens while Jayden Flores has neatly folded the clean hotel towels into stacks of eight without looking up from the task."
Former trailblazing Richmond mayor dies
The Chronicle, JORDAN PARKER: "Irma Anderson, Richmond’s first Black female mayor, has died.
Her death was announced Monday night on social media by Contra Costa County Supervisor John Goia, who called Anderson a “friend.”"
California gave fast food workers a seat at the table. What comes next?
CALMatters, JEANNE KUANG: "Before California’s fast food workers get a minimum wage hike to $20 an hour in April, the state will grant them another historic avenue to advance their interests.
A first-in-the-nation fast food council will offer workers and labor advocates a way to set industry working conditions, hammering out rules directly across the table from franchise owners and representatives of restaurant chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King."
Do you want to sell your house? In historically Black Leimert Park, the question triggers fear and anger
LAT, ANDREW KHOURI: "The phone calls came weekly, from people Gwendolyn Jones didn’t know, asking for something she doesn’t want to give.
Frustrated, the 74-year-old Leimert Park resident stopped answering calls from unknown numbers on her cellphone and late last year canceled her home phone, not wanting another conversation with a stranger asking if she’ll sell the house she’s lived in since 2008."
California DMV statewide system outage knocks out driver’s license processing
The Chronicle, ROLAND LI: "A statewide California Department of Motor Vehicles system outage knocked out driver’s license processing on Monday.
The outage began shortly before noon and was ongoing as of 2 p.m., a DMV spokesperson confirmed. Other services including vehicle registration and online transactions were still available."
Boeing Max 9s start flying again, but critics question safety after door panel blowout
LAT, KIERA FELDMAN: "This weekend Alaska Airlines and United Airlines resumed flying some of their Boeing Max 9 planes, all of which were grounded after a door panel on a Max 9 blew out in midair Jan. 5.
Although airlines, regulators and Boeing maintain that the planes are safe after a federally approved inspection and maintenance process, critics argue that serious questions remain about the long-troubled Maxes. The Max 8 had two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people."
Reports of death for S.F.’s storied rock ’n’ roll hotel are ‘exaggerated,’ but changes could come
The Chronicle, J.K. DINEEN: "The property it sits on may be for sale, but the Tenderloin’s legendary Phoenix Hotel is not likely going anywhere — at least, not any time soon.
Last week, the brokerage Newmark Group released marketing material for the hotel at 601 Eddy St., a nearly 38,000-square-foot midcentury motor lodge known for its oval swimming pool and rock ’n’ roll aesthetic that has drawn the likes of Kurt Cobain and David Bowie."
