Good morning. It’s Friday, April 4.
- Kamala Harris: “I’m not here to say, ‘I told you so.'”
- Berkeley faculty targeted over Israel-Hamas petitions.
- And a five-day road trip through redwood country.
Statewide
1.
On Thursday, the Trump administration gave K-12 schools in California and across the nation a deadline of 10 days to comply with an order to end diversity efforts or lose all federal funding. Analysts estimate that California schools receive around $16 billion a year in federal funding, including money for meals and students with disabilities. The new memo demanded that leaders sign a document attesting that they have eliminated all DEI programming. “Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights. L.A. Times
2.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance at a national conference of Black women in Dana Point on Thursday, leading attendees to leap to their feet. During an eight-minute speech, she assured the group that she would stay in politics: “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. Harris also made her most pointed public remarks since losing to Donald Trump in November. “I’m not here to say, ‘I told you so,'” she said with a smile. The crowd roared. “I swore I wasn’t going to say that.” L.A. Times
- See Harris’ “I told you so” moment. 👉 YouTube
3.
Northern California’s wolf population has grown so stable that wildlife officials are planning to relax protections for the predator. Ranchers have complained bitterly about wolves killing livestock. “We’re not anti-wolf,” said Kirk Wilbur, of the California Cattlemen’s Association. “We are pro-livestock.” Under the proposed change, ranchers would still be barred from using lethal force, but they could fire rubber bullets. The state’s wolf population has swelled to as many as 70 individuals since a lone male crossed from Oregon in 2011, making him the first wild wolf in California in nearly a century. Mercury News
4.
For this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with film critic Alissa Wilkinson about her new book, “We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine,” which examines the Sacramento author’s relationship with Hollywood. Didion was an unabashed movie fan. But she regretted how the industry’s mythmaking seeped too far into our social and political lives. According to Didion, Wilkinson said, “we expect the make-believe to tell us how to live the reality. And she just doesn’t see that as a positive development.”
Northern California
5.
A man who expressed a “grudge against pharmacies” entered a Madera Walgreens Monday night and fatally shot a clerk who was unknown to him, the authorities said. When police arrived, they found Narciso Fernandez, 30, reloading a gun in the parking lot as people hid inside the store. It was “clear to us that he intended to continue to shoot at people,” Lt. Josiah Arnold said. The victim, Erick Velazquez, 34, was a married father of two young children who had worked at Walgreens for eight years. KFSN | NBC News
6.
The Trump administration ordered UC Berkeley to turn over information on hundreds of professors who signed one of two open letters regarding the Israel-Hamas war. The subpoena demands the names, positions, phone numbers, and other details of more than 800 faculty members. Some signatories were shocked to learn they were targeted since the letters denounced antisemitism, the object of President Trump’s campus crackdown. “It sends a chill down my spine,” said Dr. John Swartzberg. Mercury News | KQED
7.
When word got out last month that a group called the Association of Monterey Bay Conservatives was planning to host six pardoned Jan. 6 rioters at a Monterey County golf club, the backlash was fierce. Bombarded with phone calls, the club canceled the booking, saying it was unaware of the program. The group turned to another venue, which also canceled. A third booked venue pulled out on Thursday, the day of the scheduled event, saying “traitorous” insurrectionists were unwelcome. Ticket holders were told to gather in a parking lot to get instructions on a secret fourth location. KSBW
8.
A nonprofit in Berkeley called AI Futures is trying to predict what the world will look like as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly powerful. The project’s leader, Daniel Kokotajlo, a former OpenAI researcher, said that A.I.s will become fully autonomous agents that are better than humans at everything “by the end of 2027 or so.” A reporter asked what might happen if the next few years don’t go well. “Maybe the sky would be filled with pollution, and the people would be dead?” he said nonchalantly. “Something like that.” N.Y. Times
9.
Extreme woodland beauty.
Pristine isolated beaches.
And ethereal inland waterways.
The travel guide Wildsam recommended a fantastic five-day road trip through Northern California’s redwood country that wends from San Francisco to Crescent City.
Southern California
10.
A BBC reporter was invited to witness the death of a San Diego man under California’s assisted dying law. Wayne Hawkins, 80, married his wife, Stella, in 1973. They raised a family among the redwoods of Humboldt County. He worked as a landscape architect, she as a teacher. Diagnosed with heart failure, he suffered terrible pain. When he said he was ready to die, Stella, 78, said she understood. On the appointed morning, a bird sang outside their home. Hawkins swallowed a pink liquid and held Stella’s hand. He took some deep breaths. The family reminisced about hiking holidays. Then, about 30 minutes after ingestion, he was gone. BBC
11.
On January 26, rain fell on Altadena. It had been nine months since the last rain and three weeks since the fires. A pair of filmmakers used 35mm film to capture the rain falling gently on the neighborhood’s ashy ruins in an oddly moving short film. They likened it to tears. L.A. Times
- Nearly three months after the Los Angeles fires, investigators discovered the 30th victim in Altadena. L.A. Times | A.P.
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Spring wildflower prognosticators have warned Californians not to get their hopes up this year. Yet beauty abounds, especially across amply soaked landscapes to the north. See recent dazzling scenes from:
- Pine Flat Lake in the Sierra foothills
- the Sutter Buttes in the Sacramento Valley
- Moore Creek Park in Napa County
- North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve near Oroville
- In Irvine, just one landlord owns roughly 75% of all apartments — along with every shopping center, a golf course, and the community newspaper. Bloomberg Businessweek did a deep dive on Donald Bren, the secretive billionaire who operates his empire “like a one-man homeowners association.”
- The Atlantic’s David Frum argued against relief for American farmers hurt by the global trade war: “If a farm family voted for Trump, believing that his policies were good, it seems strange that they would then demand that they, and only they, should be spared the full consequences of those policies.”
- Oakland’s Alysa Liu became the first American woman to win the figure skating world championship in 19 years last Friday night. Watch her spellbinding free skate routine. 👉 YouTube
- The Spanish skateboard company Yow embedded a filmmaker with six skaters on an RV trip across California in search of “the most legendary spots.” The result is a sort of mashup of Wes Anderson and “The Endless Summer.” YouTube
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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