Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 8.
- California Democrats call for President Trump’s ouster.
- ICE officers shoot man during stop in San Joaquin Valley.
- And waterfall viewing season arrives in Yosemite Valley.
Statewide
1.
On President Trump’s threat to destroy Iran:
- More 70 Democratic lawmakers in Congress called for the president’s removal from office on Tuesday after he warned, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Among them were California Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Robert Garcia, Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu, Zoe Lofgren, and others. No Republican lawmaker in California had issued a public statement as of Tuesday afternoon. CBS News | N.Y. Times
- A few weeks ago the Iranian diaspora was dancing in the streets of Los Angeles after military strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On Tuesday, the mood was somber. “You’re talking about a civilization that’s existed for more than 5,000 years, and you’re going to bomb it out of existence?” said Adrin Nazarian, a Los Angeles city councilman, adding, “You can’t keep up with him — it’s a threat a minute.” N.Y. Times
2.
For weeks, allegations have swirled online that Rep. Eric Swalwell engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior with young women while serving in Congress. Cheyenne Hunt, who leads a group called Gen-Z for Change, said she is working with multiple “credible women” who have made claims against the Democratic candidate for governor. Swalwell addressed the accusations Tuesday:
“This false, outrageous rumor is being spread 27 days before an election begins by flailing opponents who have sadly teamed up with MAGA conspiracy theorists because they know Eric Swalwell is the frontrunner in this race,” said Micah Beasley, a spokesperson. Politico | L.A. Times
3.
Last summer, the Trump administration declared that there would be “no amnesty” for undocumented farmworkers as it seeks to make the heavily immigrant labor force “100% American.” This week, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board shared a sobering statistic in a piece that noted crops are wasting in fields for lack of workers: “Farmers received applications from U.S. workers for only 182 of 415,000 positions advertised in the last fiscal year.” That’s 0.04%.
4.
Latinos have made up a major part of the Border Patrol force for decades. Yet when the agents who killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis were identified as Latinos, some people seemed shocked that they would join the deportation push. Academics have treated the phenomenon as a puzzle, proposing that Latino border agents are driven by self-hatred or moral indifference. “A simpler explanation,” argued The Atlantic’s Geraldo L. Cadava, “is that Latinos who join ICE believe in the enforcement of immigration laws and that they are protecting, not antagonizing, their communities.”
5.
More than 100 million years ago, two tectonic plates collided, pushing a great block of the earth’s crust upward. The Sierra Nevada was born. Later, as the world cooled around 3 million years ago, glaciers began expanding and retreating across the range like a tide, sculpting lakes and wide valleys. Today, the culmination of all that work, many say, finds its most exquisite expression in the springtime of Yosemite Valley, when snowmelt-driven waterfalls tumble thousands of feet from soaring granite walls. The time to visit is now, the San Francisco Chronicle reports: After an exceptionally warm March, the waterfall viewing window is likely to be shortened this year.
Northern California
6.
ICE officers fired at a man during a vehicle stop in Patterson, just outside Modesto, on Tuesday, leaving him in critical condition, the authorities said. Todd M. Lyons, the ICE director, said agents were trying to arrest Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, whom he described as a gang member wanted in El Salvador. Hernandez “weaponized his vehicle,” prompting officers to open fire, Lyons said. Michael Leininger, a policing analyst, said bystander video of the shooting contradicts the official account. “I saw no attempt for him to hit the officer,” he said. NBC Bay Area | KCRA
- An attorney for Hernandez said his client is not a gang member: “He is a family man engaged to a U.S. citizen with a 2-year-old U.S. citizen daughter who was on his way to work in the Bay Area.” Modesto Bee
7.
Anthropic said on Tuesday that it created a new artificial intelligence model that it is too powerful to be released to the public. Instead, the San Francisco company is making the model, named Claude Mythos Preview, available to a consortium of technology companies to test its implications for cybersecurity and America’s national security. Logan Graham, an Anthropic executive, called the model, “the starting point for what we think will be an industry change point, or reckoning, with what needs to happen now.” N.Y. Times | Bloomberg
- Thomas L. Friedman: “If this tool falls into the hands of bad actors, they could hack pretty much every major software system in the world, including all those made by the companies in the consortium. This is not a publicity stunt.”
8.
Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco supervisor who checked herself into a hospital over what her office called “an acute personal health crisis,” asked on Tuesday to be excused from her duties through June 30. Fielder has already been absent from board and committee meetings since mid-March. The nature of her condition remained unclear. In a statement last week, Fielder’s office said mental health issues are stigmatized and asked the press “to give her the privacy and space necessary for healing.” S.F. Chronicle | SFist
9.
“You’ll need the provided gloves for the Singapore-style crab, which arrives with a ritualistic circle of bread rolls surrounding a carapace. Lift it to reveal a glossy treasure trove of legs and claws saturated in savory-sweet, lip-stingingly spicy sauce.”
The San Francisco Chronicle released its annual ranking of the top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area. A Cantonese spot, Four Kings, took top honors.
Southern California
10.
A massive fire engulfed the 1.2-million-square-foot warehouse of a paper company early Tuesday in Ontario, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, and a worker was accused of setting the blaze. The authorities arrested Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, on two felony arson charges. No motive was disclosed. Roughly 175 firefighters fought for more than 12 hours to extinguish the fire, which was fueled by paper products such as Kleenex and Huggies, but the building was a total loss, officials said. No one was hurt. L.A. Times | KABC
- See video of the inferno. 👉 Reddit
11.
Imperial County supervisors on Tuesday cleared the way for what would be the state’s largest data center. In recent months, residents under the banner of Not in My Backyard Imperial have circulated a petition, spoken out at meetings, and rallied in the streets to block the proposed structure on largely environmental grounds. Others have been persuaded by the promise of jobs and economic development in one of California’s poorest regions. Tempers ran so high on Tuesday that armed sheriff’s deputies removed at least three people from the meeting. KPBS | inewsource
12.
Robert Keenan, passed over for promotions repeatedly in his 24 years at the Justice Department, was still handling low-level cases typically reserved for first-year prosecutors. Then his fortunes flipped with the agency’s political turn under President Trump. While more than 3,400 attorneys fled the department, Keenan, 60, embraced the new focus with gusto, parachuting into cases around the country. The Southern California lawyer is now “a go-to guy at Trump’s DOJ,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Correction
An earlier version of this newsletter misattributed a quote reported in a New York Times article about reaction to President Trump’s Iran threats in West Los Angeles. It was said by Adrin Nazarian, a Los Angeles city councilman, not Sharon S. Nazarian, a philanthropist and political scientist.
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