Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 30.
- One of California’s most audacious water heists ever.
- The campus with America’s most entrenched protest.
- And a publicist who keeps Taylor Swift in the stratosphere.
Statewide
1.
Prosecutors accused a local official in the San Joaquin Valley of using a secret pipe to steal vast amounts of water in one of the most audacious water heists in California history. From 1992 to 2015, Dennis Falaschi, then general manager at the Panoche Water District, diverted enough water to fill a modest reservoir from a canal connected to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — all while paying himself exorbitantly and lavishing perks on his employees, officials said. Still, some farmers who benefited think of him as their Robin Hood. L.A. Times
2.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that California will start selling its own opioid overdose medicine, known as Narcan, at a discount rate using the state’s prescription drug label, CalRx. Under the deal, California will get naloxone from the generic drug maker Amneal Pharmaceuticals for $24 per pack, or about 40% cheaper than the market rate. The deal advances Newsom’s push to bring down costs for prescription drugs, including insulin, by providing generic variants. Bloomberg | A.P.
- It’s not just humans overdosing in San Francisco. Drug users say their dogs are getting exposed to fentanyl. S.F. Chronicle
3.
A review of studies on the diet of California grizzly bears challenges pretty much everything we thought we knew about the animal driven to extinction in the early 1900s. Portrayed in settler accounts as aggressive and bloodthirsty, the bears were primarily herbivores before European contact, getting just 10% of their diet from land animals, researchers found. “Eliminating the bear and the vast majority of California’s Indigenous people can be seen as parts of the same concerted effort to replace one landscape — and one set of stories — with another,” wrote the Washington Post.
4.
On Monday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he had qualified to appear on the California ballot as the presidential nominee of the American Independent Party, the staunchly conservative party of George Wallace in 1968. In his announcement video, Kennedy said the party had moved beyond its association with the notorious segregationist and former Alabama governor: “It’s been reborn as a party that represents not bigotry and hatred, but rather compassion and unity and idealism and common sense.” Sacramento Bee | The Hill
- Former politics reporter John Myers recalled that Kennedy’s father stared down Wallace in a famous meeting on April 25, 1963. Time magazine
Campus protests
5.
Cal Poly Humboldt has now closed its campus through the end of the semester even as students remain barricaded inside administrative building in a weeklong antiwar protest. Since fighting off an early attempt by police to enter the building, the activists have tagged walls with messages including “Time 2 Free Gaza” and “Pigs Not Allowed.” Inside the office of the president, they painted “Blood On Your Hands” across a wall hanging. Reporting from Arcata, the N.Y. Times declared: “A small campus in the redwoods has the nation’s most entrenched protest.”
- In an expression of solidarity, Humboldt’s University Senate passed a resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. Lost Coast Outpost
6.
When USC announced the cancellation of its “main stage” commencement, it promised that more than two dozen satellite graduation ceremonies for individual colleges would proceed as planned. But on Sunday, two high-profile speakers scheduled to address graduates said they would boycott the event and called on others to join them. “To speak at USC in this moment would betray not only our own values, but USC’s too,” novelist C Pam Zhang and UCLA professor and author Safiya U. Noble wrote in an open letter. L.A. Times | Literary Hub
7.
Other developments:
- Sonoma State, Sacramento State, San Francisco State, Occidental College, and the UC’s in Santa Barbara, Riverside, and Irvine became the latest campuses to be occupied by pro-Palestinian encampments. As of Monday, the protest camps numbered at least 13 across the state. See where they stand. 👉 S.F. Chronicle
- Some of the tensest scenes have unfolded at UCLA as rival groups scuffled and self-appointed guards blocked students, journalists, and firefighters from entering a pro-Palestinian encampment. Dozens of UCLA faculty members walked out of class Monday in solidarity with protesters. The Wrap | KTLA
- The University of California reaffirmed that it would not divest from companies doing business with Israel: “A boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.” L.A. Times
Northern California
8.
On a recent Sunday, San Franciscans gathered to celebrate the opening of a toilet. In 2022, plans for the toilet set off a furor when reports revealed the projected price tag: $1.7 million. With the press and public watching, the city found a way to get it done for a far more reasonable $200,000. That set off another round of frustration: If San Francisco can install toilets for $200,000, why doesn’t it do so more often? The columnist Ezra Klein conducted “a close examination of the most infamous toilet in America.” N.Y. Times
9.
A blue cheese made by Climax Foods in Berkeley was poised to win a prestigious Good Food Award on Monday. But the winner, decided by blind testing, was controversial: The Berkeley company’s cheese is plant-based, containing no dairy, but instead a blend of pumpkin seeds, lima beans, coconut fat, and other ingredients. It still came as a shock when, a week before the awards ceremony, the Good Food Foundation abruptly yanked the cheese from the list of finalists. Recriminations have been flying. Washington Post | AgFunderNews
10.
☝️ A Victorian home with a Tetris-like paint job in a historic San Francisco neighborhood is dividing opinion online. Images posted to social media have drawn some harsh criticism, including comments such as “yuck,” “hideous,” and “I don’t get it.” But the naysayers appeared to be significantly outnumbered by fans. Reporter Amanda Ulrich talked to the artist, who defended his effort to respect the architecture. California Sun
Southern California
11.
San Diego’s One America News network on Monday retracted a story claiming that it was former Donald Trump fixer Michael Cohen, not Trump, who had an affair with the porn star Stormy Daniels, whose claims of a sexual relationship with Trump are key to his criminal trial. OAN issued an apology to Cohen “for any harm the publication may have caused him.” The retraction came after Cohen hired a defamation lawyer and while the network manages the legal fallout from its aggressive dissemination of election-fraud conspiracy theories. N.Y. Times | Washington Post
12.
Tree Paine is the publicist for Taylor Swift, which makes her one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. A 52-year-old from Orange County, Paine has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right, trailing Swift at glamorous events. She’s earned her keep with a remarkable stunt: presenting Swift — arguably the world’s most famous woman and a billionaire with a private jet — as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. Wall Street Journal
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