Good morning. It’s Tuesday, May 3.
• | California to seek constitutional amendment on abortion. |
• | State population fell for second straight year in 2021. |
• | And how a terrible mistake cut a promising young life short. |
Statewide
1
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court late Monday.
Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“We are going to fight like hell.”
Reacting to news that the Supreme Court appeared poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders late Monday proposed an amendment that would put permanent protections for abortion access in the California Constitution. If approved by supermajorities in both legislative chambers, it would go before voters on Nov. 8. The right to an abortion is already guaranteed in California under personal privacy protections, but lawmakers said they wanted to build a “firewall” around reproductive rights. “Women will remain protected here,” they said. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times (gift article)
Other developments:
• | A research group analyzed how a reversal of Roe would affect the number of out-of-state women whose nearest abortion provider would be in California: It would rise from 46,000 to 1.4 million. Guttmacher Institute |
• | CalMatters: “How California created the nation’s easiest abortion access — and why it’s poised to go further.” |
• | “Every American should read this essay.” In 2019, the Berkeley writer Caitlin Flanagan concluded abortion is an unwinnable argument as she explored the strongest arguments advanced by either side. The Atlantic |
2
California is still shrinking. Officials said Monday that the state’s population in 2021 fell by 0.3% to a total of 39,185,605 people. The first two years of the pandemic, 2020 and 2021, are the only years on record that California has experienced a population decline, a shift attributed to slowing birthrates and immigration along with rising deaths and out-migration. Eric McGhee, an analyst, cited another big factor: “It says something about how hard it is for people to afford living here.” A.P. | S.F. Chronicle
3
The N.Y. Times added another entry to the growing list of stories on the deteriorating mental acuity of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 88:
“One Democratic lawmaker who had an extended encounter with Ms. Feinstein in February said in an interview that the experience was akin to acting as a caregiver for a person in need of constant assistance. The lawmaker recalled having to reintroduce themself to the senator multiple times, helping her locate her purse repeatedly and answering the same set of basic, small-talk questions over and over again.”
4
GPS directions are known to be unreliable in California’s sprawling national parks, misdirecting motorists down dead-end roads or to unintended locations. It’s so bad in some cases that exasperated parks officials have posted warning signs. The photographer Sebastiaan de With captured a particularly eerie example in Yosemite National Park. 👇
Sebastiaan de With
Northern California
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Hunter Lewis was an avid outdoorsman.
Courtesy of Corey Lewis
Hunter Lewis, 21, grew up chasing adventure along the wild North Coast. After college, he planned to marry his girlfriend, Kinsley, an effervescent redhead, and have redheaded kids. He was certain he was going to be an astronaut. For two years, he planned an epic treasure hunt for his friends and family, unveiling it at Christmas. Then he disappeared. Here’s the heartbreaking story of a promising young man who made a terrible mistake. 👉 Rolling Stone
6
In 2020, San Francisco tried a novel approach to cleaning up the Tenderloin, a neighborhood rife with drug dealing and drug use. It sought to ban repeat drug-dealing suspects from entering the neighborhood. On Monday, that effort was shot down. Stay-away orders are permissible in narrow cases, an appeals court ruled. But the city’s proposal was so broad that it would violate the constitutional right to travel. S.F. Chronicle | A.P.
7
Jony Ive and Tim Cook at an Apple event in Cupertino in 2018.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Jony Ive, the former Apple design chief who helped give the world candy-colored computers, left the company as Tim Cook took charge. In Ive’s absence, Cook has made Apple better known for TV shows and a credit card than for introducing the kind of revolutionary new devices that once defined it. This excerpt adapted from the new book “After Steve” tells how “the technocrats triumphed at Apple.” 👉 N.Y. Times (gift article)
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“The bull kelp forests off Northern California are sometimes spoken of as the redwoods of the sea. And like the redwoods, these forests are in danger,” wrote David Helvarg of Blue Frontier, an ocean conservation group. “Using satellite imagery, scientists estimate that 95% of these bull kelp forests have vanished in less than a decade.” N.Y. Times
Southern California
9
During a 2015 camping trip, a group of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies held down another deputy because he had made an “unauthorized change” to a deputy gang tattoo on his ankle, according to a report that cited unnamed sources. They tried burning the tattoo, then one deputy fired a gun into the man’s leg, leaving a gruesome wound that was captured in a photograph, the report said. At the time of the shooting, the authorities blamed it on an accidental discharge. Knock LA
10
A mountain lion clambered on a border fence near Naco, Arizona.
Arizona Game and Fish
The U.S.-Mexico border wall extends 450 miles, cutting through mountaintops and across the foothills and valleys. While it hasn’t stopped humans from crossing into the U.S., it’s wreaked havoc on animals, including jaguars, ocelots, and desert bighorn sheep, as they search for water, shelter, and mates. The filmmaker Daniel Lombroso explored the unintentional consequences of the wall in the documentary short “American Scar.” New Yorker/YouTube (~13:30 mins)
11
The gay-dating app Grindr shared the precise movements of millions of users with brokers that made the data available for sale since at least 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the data didn’t include personal information like names, it was detailed enough to offer clues about people’s identities. Last year, a Catholic publication bought Grindr data that outed a priest, the report said. Grindr, headquartered in West Hollywood, said it had ended the practice. Engadget | Los Angeles Magazine
California archive
12
“Well, there he is, Jetman, flying into the stadium, no wires, no tricks, just as you see it. … What a beginning!”
With the Olympics set to return to Los Angeles in 2028, organizers will be hard-pressed to top one of the most memorable moments from the opening of the 1984 Summer Games, when a man flew a jetpack into Los Angeles Coliseum. The pilot was Bill Suitor, a rocketeer at Bell Aircraft, which had developed the hydrogen peroxide-powered “rocket belt” for the Army. His flight fueled imaginations of a future when we would all be flying around. But gravity, it turns out, makes it extremely hard to lift a person more than a few seconds at a time. Still, dreamers in Silicon Valley and beyond haven’t stopped trying. Washington Post
See Suitor’s flight. 👉 YouTube
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