Good morning. It’s Monday, June 2.
- Trans athlete collects wins at state championship.
- Police officer is killed in Baldwin Park shootout.
- And jacaranda trees burst into bloom in Los Angeles.
Statewide
1.
AB Hernandez, the trans athlete at the center of a political firestorm pitting California against the White House, won the girls’ high jump and triple jump at the state’s high school track and field championships in Clovis on Saturday. In the triple jump, Hernandez, 16, leapt nearly 2 feet farther than the next girl’s jump, but the runner-up shared the gold under last-minute rules designed to blunt criticism over fairness. During some of Hernandez’s jumps, someone could be heard chanting: “No boys in girls’ sports!” An aircraft carried a banner with the same message. ESPN | N.Y. Times
2.
Kamala Harris skipped California’s Democratic Convention in Anaheim over the weekend. Her absence loomed over the gathering of party delegates, many of whom greeted the thought of her running for governor with ambivalence and “weary sighs.” “We haven’t really heard from her on California issues since Trump’s inauguration,” said Madison Zimmerman, a delegate from Shasta County. “I feel like California isn’t a consolation prize.” N.Y. Times | Politico
3.
The Department of Homeland Security’s list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” vanished from the web after a backlash from Republican lawmakers whose localities were included. According to the agency headed by Kristi Noem, the MAGA stronghold of Huntington Beach along with the deep-red counties of the Central Valley and North State are sanctuary jurisdictions guilty of “shamefully obstructing” federal immigration law. Asked about the pushback on Sunday, Noem bristled. “They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify,” she said. “They are giving sanctuary to criminals.” Reuters | Wall Street Journal
4.
Sacramento County prosecutors announced on Friday that they would not file DUI charges against a state senator whom police accused of intoxication after a blood test showed she had no drugs or alcohol in her system. From the start, State Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, 37, strenuously asserted that she was not impaired, saying police “accosted” and detained her for hours after a May 19 vehicle crash. “This ordeal was entirely unnecessary,” she said on Friday. An apology was not expected to be forthcoming. CalMatters | Sacramento Bee
5.
“While some might see Rite Aid (which acquired Thrifty Drug Stores in 1996) as a place to pick up a prescription or purchase cold medicine, for me, the drugstore has only ever meant ice cream.”
Rite Aid plans to close hundreds of stores after filing for bankruptcy for a second time on May 5. Some people are just sad about the possible end of Thrifty ice cream counters, a brand founded in Hollywood in 1940. L.A. Times
Northern California
6.
San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza, a block from City Hall, was a hub for drug addicts and homeless people. Then a new skate park breathed life into the site, quieting the chaos. It wasn’t a cure-all for San Francisco’s ills, the New York Times wrote: “What the transformation of U.N. Plaza does show, however, is that attempts at urban revival can go a long way for relatively little money when they attract a natural constituency of users. Obvious as that may sound, it’s the opposite of how planners in San Francisco and elsewhere have historically operated.”
7.
A powerful eruption on the sun delivered an aurora borealis to the Western U.S. over the weekend, painting the night sky in parts of Northern California in shades of neon pink, orange, and magenta. Scientists said the show could last through Monday.
- Photographer Jake Edwards captured the view above from Lake Almanor in the northern Sierra around midnight Saturday. See more pictures. 👉 @scenescapery
- On the same night, photographer Alexander Glavtchev captured a colorful timelapse from Sonoma County. 👉 KRON
8.
If you ever wanted to enjoy a BLT in the company of more than 300 severed animal heads, look no further. Foster’s Bighorn, located in the California Delta town of Rio Vista, was founded in 1931 by Bill Foster, a wild-game hunter who chose as his decor the stuffed heads of animals he killed, including an elephant, giraffe, walrus, lion, hippo, and snow leopard. Some first-time patrons are said to react with revulsion. “It’s not for everybody,” Foster’s current owner, Chris Wakeman, told one writer. Atlas Obscura | SFGATE
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The photographer Thomas Hawk went to Foster’s for a look.
Southern California
9.
Police responding to a report of a person firing a rifle in a city just east of Los Angeles were met by a hail of bullets late Saturday, leaving one officer dead and another injured, law enforcement officials said. The gunman, who was taken into custody, also fatally shot a man found dead at the scene in Baldwin Park, officials said. The slain officer, 35-year-old Samuel Riveros, was described as a “true Angeleno” who loved snowboarding and the Dodgers. Police Chief Robert López fought back tears during a news conference. “It’s extremely tragic to have to deal with this,” he said. L.A. Times | San Gabriel Valley Tribune
10.
ICE detained several workers during a raid on a San Diego restaurant on Friday that spiraled into a tense standoff with an angry crowd that surrounded agents and yelled profanities at them. At one point, the officers used what appeared to be flashbang smoke grenades to disperse a crowd blocking their vehicles. In a statement on Saturday, the restaurant, Buona Forchetta, called the operation “nothing short of traumatic.” KPBS | S.D. Union-Tribune
- Sean Elo-Rivera, a San Diego City Council member, labeled ICE “terrorists” in a post on Instagram on Friday. Critics accused him of inciting violence. Newsweek
11.
“That person will absolutely become the most powerful person in Southern California.”
Last year, Los Angeles County voters decided to create a new office to oversee their government. That means that soon, the most powerful politician in the region of nearly 10 million people will not be the mayor or a county supervisor. It will be an elected chief executive. Some have dubbed the role the “mayor of L.A. County.” Politico | L.A. Times
12.
Jacaranda season is here, when the charismatic South American trees burst into flaming purple along boulevards and parks from San Diego to Santa Barbara. The L.A. Times once called jacarandas “as much a trademark of this region as the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C.” They are hard to miss. But if you want to bask in the densest collections, the journalist Matt Stiles created an interactive map showing where Los Angeles’ more than 30,000 jacarandas are blooming. Jacarandamap.com | LAist
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