Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 1.
- California vows to fight President Trump on mail voting.
- Group aims to turn former Bay Area racetrack into park.
- And a photographer documents what’s left of hippie utopias.
Statewide
1.
Rehashing false claims about cheating in U.S. elections, President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that seeks federal control of mail voting. His order directs the U.S. Postal Service to send ballots only to voters who appear on a national list of citizens to be compiled by his administration. Elections experts noted that the Constitution gives states oversight of elections. California leaders vowed to fight the order, which they said appeared designed to subvert the midterms as Trump’s party faces substantial losses. L.A. Times | Washington Post
2.
A new UC Berkeley study sought to quantify the financial consequences of leaving California. You may lose the beaches, hiking, cuisine, and culture. But the analysis of millions of California exiters between 2016 and 2025 found that moving to states such as Nevada, Arizona, or Texas saved them, on average, almost $700 in monthly housing costs. They also became 48% more likely to own a home. Dowell Myers, a demographer, said people are simply being priced out of the state. “It’s a really sad story.” L.A. Times
- Los Angeles County has lost more than 300,000 people since 2020. “Affordability remains the clearest driver,” wrote Los Angeles magazine.
3.
On Tuesday, March 31, a state holiday named Cesar Chavez Day up until just last week, communities across California marked the renamed “Farmworkers Day.” Latino leaders and farmworkers reacted with sorrow to the revelations of sexual abuse by Chavez, but many have also welcomed the renaming as an overdue correction. “I see it more as California making right by honoring the farmworkers as the ones who should have been honored all along,” said Roberto D. Hernández, a Chicano studies professor. S.D. Union-Tribune | N.Y. Times
Northern California
4.
Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento mother who had been living in the U.S. for 27 years before being deported to Mexico in February, returned to California on Monday after a judge found her deportation unlawful. Estrada Juarez, 42, entered the U.S. when she was 15 and was a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She was arrested during a routine green card appointment. “This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life,” she said. “I followed the rules. I trusted the system. And for that, I was ripped away from my daughter.” Sacramento Bee | Washington Post
5.
Golden Gate Fields, the last major horse track in Northern California before closing in 2023, is poised to be transformed into a vast waterfront public park under a deal announced Tuesday. The Trust for Public Land agreed to buy the 161-acre property along San Francisco Bay for $175 million. “When your great-great grandchildren look back they are going to say our great-grandparents really did a great thing by saving this,” said Robert Cheasty, executive director of Citizens for East Shore Parks. Berkeleyside | Mercury News
6.
The Bay Area city of Milpitas is offering all of its roughly 80,000 residents free wireless doorbells equipped with cameras to help police collect video evidence. Evelyn Chua, a city councilmember, said the initiative was designed to curb crime. “This door camera initiative is about strengthening crime prevention right where it matters most — at home,” she said. Civil liberties groups have warned that the mass proliferation of doorbell cameras represent a growing threat to personal privacy. The Guardian | The Milpitas Beat
7.
A tribal group in the Sacramento Valley announced a deal Tuesday to lease its land for an artificial intelligence infrastructure project. The voracious energy demands of the AI movement have sparked a land grab across the country for data centers. The latest agreement marks a rare AI partnership involving an Indigenous group, the Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians, with the prospect of revenue sharing and jobs for tribal members. Bloomberg
8.
In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of young idealists left cities for the Northern California wilderness in search of lives of deeper meaning. The back-to-land movement faded, but many of their unconventional dwellings still stand. A photographer and writer spent five years traveling the back roads of Mendocino and Humboldt counties collecting images and oral histories of the aging pioneers and their teetering structures. Aperture published photos from their forthcoming book “Handmade Utopia.”
9.
In recent years, many billionaires have grown cold, or even outright hostile, to philanthropy. Writing in the New York Times, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, said he finds that bizarre:
“I give my money to organizations that help veterans and military families — people like my dad and others who served. I fund a public service campaign to help people avoid online scams because those really tick me off. I support independent, trustworthy journalism, the kind that holds leaders on both sides accountable and protects our democracy. I also donate to pigeon protection groups, because I like pigeons.”
10.
There’s an alpine forest just north of Lake Tahoe where the birds alight in your hand. Chickadee Ridge offers gorgeous views. But most people make the roughly 2-mile roundtrip hike to imagine themselves as Snow White in a place where black-capped chickadees have grown accustomed to eating seeds from the outstretched hands of hikers. ABC10’s John Bartell brought his camera crew along for a visit.
- “Should we be feeding the birds?” SFGATE’s Julie Brown Davis said Chickadee Ridge is indeed magical, but it has a dark side.
Southern California
11.
“Hollywood studios are making significantly fewer movies and television shows than they did just a few years ago. The ones they do make are increasingly being shot in other countries and states that offer more generous tax subsidies. The result: a 30% drop in employment from a late-2022 peak for actors, carpenters, costumers and the hundreds of other professions that make movies and TV shows, according to Labor Department data.”
The Wall Street Journal charted the collapse of Hollywood’s job market.
12.
“The rice is fluffy, the black beans are soft. The chicken is super tender and sometimes a little charred. And they give you a huge helping of the best tortilla chips ever — they’re almost translucent because of the oil they were fried in.”
The New York Times Style Magazine asked chefs and artists in Los Angeles to recommend their favorite burrito spots.
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