All of the must-read news about the Golden State in one place.
Hi, I’m Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times. I survey more than 100 news and social media sites daily, then send you a tightly crafted email with only the most informative and delightful bits.
Each weekday at about 6 a.m., you’ll get an email like this.
Good morning. It’s Thursday, May 14.
- Video shows animal abuse at Central Valley ranch.
- Bay Area police chief is accused of hit-and-run.
- And Spencer Pratt admits he never lived in trailer.
Statewide
1.
The Trump administration will withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California, Vice President JD Vance announced on Wednesday as he accused the state of failing to root out fraud in the public health insurance program. “The state of California has not taken fraud very seriously,” he said. California leaders pushed back angrily, with some calling the move political. “Let’s be real, this isn’t about fraud — it’s about punishing a state that didn’t vote for him,” said Sen. Alex Padilla. “Political retribution plain and simple.” N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
2.
“It’s abuse. Period.”
In February, animal rights activists flew a drone over a calf ranch in the Central Valley and filmed workers kicking a calf in the face, yanking another’s tail, and pulling a third by the nose with pliers. In one video, two workers used a hot iron to burn off the budding horns of a calf, causing it to abruptly go limp, presumably in pain. The video, released publicly by Direct Action Everywhere this week, led to at least one firing but little action from the authorities, activists said. L.A. Times | Modesto Bee
Northern California
3.
“I just got hit by a police officer.”
A Bay Area police chief was placed on leave Wednesday after prosecutors charged her with a hit-and-run. On May 19 of last year, Daffani Ryan said she was driving home from a Giants game when an unmarked Jeep with police lights swerved into her lane, clipping her driver’s side mirror. It sounded “like a shotgun,” she told KGO. The Jeep sped off, but Ryan’s husband caught the license plate, which led to Angela Averiett, San Leandro’s police chief. Averiett denied the allegations. “I want to be clear,” she said. “I did not knowingly leave the scene of a collision.” KGO | S.F. Chronicle
4.
The data-center boom is creating a headache in a mountain refuge of Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Utility customers on the California side of Lake Tahoe have seen their energy bills surge roughly 77% since 2022 as energy-hungry data centers over the border in the Nevada gobble up supply. The squeeze could worsen: The local utility’s longtime power supplier in Nevada said it would stop serving the area in 2027. While the Nevada supplier said the change was long planned, it has also noted that data centers are driving “unprecedented” demand. Bloomberg
5.
Cisco reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue on Wednesday: $15.8 billion, up 12% from a year earlier. On the same day, the San Jose tech conglomerate announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs. The layoffs reflected a broader trend across Silicon Valley, as companies trim their workforces and shift investment toward artificial intelligence. Tech firms have let go more than 85,000 employees so far this year, a 33% increase over the same period in 2025, according to data cited by the Wall Street Journal. S.F. Chronicle
6.
Silicon Valley’s congressman, Ro Khanna, spent years cheering on the tech industry. Now he’s talking about reining in artificial intelligence and taxing billionaires. Bloomberg reports:
“Two things have happened in the aftermath of Khanna’s decision to throw his weight behind the wealth tax. First, it’s become axiomatic among some of the region’s loudest donors that Khanna’s political career in Northern California is effectively over. Second, professional politics-knowers now see Khanna as a viable presidential candidate.”
7.
If you’re going to rob a bank and your hair is bright blue, a head covering would be advisable. A Santa Rosa woman learned this the hard way on Tuesday. According to police, 32-year-old Jane Hollingworth robbed a Chase Bank branch by handing a threatening note to a bank teller. Police got a very helpful description from bank personnel: the suspect not only shared the hair color of Marge Simpson, she was wearing a red, leopard-print jacket. Hollingworth was picked up within roughly an hour, police said. KTVU
8.
Tiny Eureka, on the North Coast, claims to have more Victorians per capita than any other place in California. Among the most charming is the Pink Lady, built out of redwood by a lumber baron as a gift for his wife in 1889. As the home changed hands over the years, it served as a restaurant, an art gallery, an antique shop, and business offices. Today, The Pinc, as it’s now called, is a boutique hotel. This week, the owners began repainting the home, swapping its muted rosy color for a vivid hot pink — and some locals are aghast. Lost Coast Outpost has the pictures.
Southern California
9.
Spencer Pratt, the former reality television star running for Los Angeles mayor, collected more than 25 million views for his April 29 ad that portrayed his rivals as mansion-dwelling elites while he lived in a trailer on the lot of his burned Pacific Palisades home. In a TMZ report on Wednesday, Pratt acknowledged that he never lived in the trailer and has been staying instead at the Hotel Bel-Air, where rooms start at $1,500 a night. Pratt said of the trailer, “I have never told anyone I lived there.” In the campaign ad, he said: “This is where I live.”
- Jessica Grose: “Unfortunately, we have to take Spencer Pratt seriously as a politician.” N.Y. Times
10.
Stephen Cloobeck, a real estate developer and one-time California gubernatorial candidate, was arrested in Los Angeles on Tuesday on suspicion of intimidating victims in a case against his fiancée, a former Playboy model accused of wooing wealthy men and stealing from them. According to the complaint, Cloobeck, 64, sought to dissuade, “by force or threat,” three of Adva Lavie’s victims from testifying against her. Cloobeck’s lawyer denied the charges. N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
11.
Long Beach recently erected a permanent, head-high fence around its downtown library, blocking off an outdoor terrace where homeless people had frequently loitered, piled belongings, and sought shade. The library has struggled for years with the disorder of the streets spilling through its doors; it closed temporarily in 2022 after staff were attacked by people experiencing mental health issues. Even so, critics are calling the fence a bleak symbol of the city’s failure to mitigate its swelling homelessness problem. Long Beach Post
California archive
12.
Several hundred feet beneath the surface of Lake Berryessa in Napa County lie the foundations of what was once a thriving little farming town. The residents of Monticello raised cattle and grew alfalfa, grain, grapes, pears, and walnuts. They gathered to celebrate the town’s last Memorial Day 70 years ago this month, in 1956, before the valley was flooded the following year to slake the thirst of a growing state. Some would later deem the act futile as California simply grew thirstier.
Dorothea Lange, the photographer known for evocative pictures of the Great Depression, chronicled Monticello’s final year, publishing 30 images in the fall 1960 edition of the journal Aperture under the headline “Death of a Valley.” Now UC Santa Cruz has digitized and made public all of the Monticello images taken by Lange and fellow photographer Pirkle Jones — more than 3,200 in all. PetaPixel | UC Santa Cruz
See a selection below and tour the full archive here.
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