Bay Area braces for immigration crackdown // AI unleashes slop everywhere

Good morning. It’s Thursday, Oct. 23.

Barack Obama plays hidden role in redistricting fight.
Bay Area braces for anticipated immigration crackdown.
And artificial intelligence tools unleash slop everywhere.

Statewide

1.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced plans to set aside $80 million and call up National Guard troops to support food banks in response to anticipated delays in federal food assistance under the government shutdown. More than 5 million Californians are enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. The Guard played a similar role at food banks during the Covid-19 pandemic. “This is serious, this is urgent — and requires immediate action,” Newsom said. A.P. | CalMatters

2.

Former President Obama’s anxieties over President Trump’s second term have led him to play a pronounced role in the redistricting fight playing out in California, the Washington Post reported:

“It has propelled the ex-president into a more political and public-facing role than he once envisioned. With his enduring popularity and the party still struggling to unite behind new leaders after losing the White House and Congress, no other Democrat commands his level of authority or reach.”

3.

A freight train passed through Corcoran. (Citizen of the Planet)

A top executive with the J.G. Boswell Company sent a letter denouncing “misrepresentations and lazy reporting” in a July news article about the farming giant’s plans to pump so much groundwater that the already collapsing town of Corcoran in the San Joaquin Valley would sink another 10 feet. But the plan doesn’t call for 10 feet, Vice President Jeof Wyrick wrote. Just 6 feet. SJV Water

Northern California

4.

“Pity the nation whose leaders are liars.” San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore hung protest banners with lines from a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem. (via City Lights Bookstore)

More than 100 federal agents were en route to a U.S. Coast Guard base in the East Bay on Wednesday ahead of an anticipated immigration crackdown in the Bay Area, reports said. The move was seen as a likely precursor to the deployment of National Guard troops to San Francisco, which President Trump has vowed to make “great again.” In a speech addressed to residents on Wednesday, Mayor Daniel Lurie said Trump’s tactics were designed to incite a backlash. Don’t take the bait, he pleaded. S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times

The San Francisco Standard asked more than 1,000 Bay Area residents about the potential deployment of federal agents in the Bay Area; 82% said they opposed it.

5.

Activists and local government officials across the Bay Area snapped into action on Wednesday with plans to monitor immigration enforcement activity, protect day laborers at work sites, and set up grocery deliveries for people scared to leave home. In San Jose, City Council members unveiled a plan to prohibit federal immigration activity in all city-owned properties, raising physical barriers and locking gates to prevent entry. S.F. Chronicle | San Jose Spotlight

6.

“Trump and his MAGA extremists don’t scare me,” Wiener said on Wednesday. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Nancy Pelosi, who is 85, has not yet announced if she will seek another congressional term in 2026. But Scott Wiener is tired of waiting. The 55-year-old Democratic state lawmaker known for championing housing reform announced on Wednesday that he is running for her San Francisco seat. “We’ll wait to hear her decision, but I’m in the race, period,” he said. Questions over Pelosi’s political future have consumed San Francisco as the Democratic Party, wounded and craving reinvention, faces calls to install a younger generation of leaders. N.Y. Times | S.F. Chronicle

7.

Chess’s international governing body said Wednesday that it is considering disciplinary action against Vladimir Kramnik, the Russian former world champion, for leveling unproven cheating allegations against Bay Area grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky in the year leading up to his death on Sunday. Naroditsky, who was 29, had accused Kramnik of trying to ruin his life. His cause of death has not been made public, but a friend said he was discovered unresponsive at home. Kramnik vehemently denied wrongdoing and said he had faced death threats. Reuters | The Guardian

8.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has said that artificial intelligence will underwrite “a Cambrian explosion” of creativity. In reality, the Atlantic wrote, we are witnessing the sloppification of American life:

“In corporate life, ‘workslop’ abounds in the form of bad emails, slide decks, and lifeless memos; teachers everywhere are drowning in academic slop, to such an extent that some are rewriting their curricula. There’s slop in your Spotify playlists and on TikTok and probably in your group chats. Some of YouTube’s most-subscribed-to channels are full of automated slop. Craft brewers appear to be putting slop-rendered images on their beer cans. There is no realm of life that is unsloppable.”

9.

It’s now become commonplace for AI researchers and executives in Silicon Valley to work 100-hour weeks in a relentless push to outrun their competition. Some are millionaires many times over, yet haven’t had the chance to enjoy their new fortunes. “I see no change in anyone’s lifestyle. No one’s taking a holiday. … People don’t have time for their friends, for their hobbies,” or for the “people they love,” said Madhavi Sewak, a researcher at Google’s DeepMind. “All they do is work.” Wall Street Journal

Southern California

10.

Last Friday, a Vietnamese woman who came to the U.S. as a baby, a Russian asylum seeker fleeing the Ukraine war, and a Mexican woman who had lived in the U.S. for decades waited in a San Diego courthouse, having been summoned by letters from the federal authorities. One by one, they were handcuffed and led into the basement. As the reality of what was happening trickled into a nearby hallway, the daughter of a detainee collapsed to the floor and sobbed. “They didn’t even let us hug,” she said. The Times of San Diego wrote about the new normal at an immigration courthouse.

11.

The authorities on Wednesday identified a big-rig driver involved in a Tuesday crash in San Bernardino County that left three people dead as a 21-year-old Indian national who entered the country illegally. Jashanpreet Singh, 21, was charged with driving under the influence of drugs. Dash camera footage obtained by ABC7 showed the truck plowing into the car in front of it at high speed. The tragedy comes two months after another deadly crash involving an Indian big-rig driver from California set off a partisan clash over immigration policy. ABC7 | CBS News

12.

Los Angeles has one UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Built atop a hill in East Hollywood between 1918 and 1921, the structure was initially conceived as an avant-garde arts complex for the Pennsylvania oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. But almost immediately after it was finished, Barnsdall made plans to give it away, ultimately gifting it to Los Angeles in 1927 as a public art park. Nearly a century later, Dwell magazine published a photo essay on the enduring vibrancy of “Frank Lloyd Wright’s ode to California.”

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