Good morning. It’s Monday, June 30.
- Catholic bishops oppose immigration crackdown.
- Donors are ambivalent about a Kamala Harris bid.
- And Long Beach has country’s second-best airport.
Statewide
1.
Leading Catholic prelates, outraged by ICE raids at Home Depots and carwashes, are rallying opposition to President Trump’s immigration agenda. In East Los Angeles, Father Brendan Busse rushed to the scene of an ICE arrest. Later, standing in front of a federal building, he told a crowd: “The men and women who are inside this building tonight are part of our sacred family.” In San Diego, Bishop Michael M. Pham went to a courthouse to support migrants waiting for hearings. “There’s a kind of moral clarity in moments like this,” he said. N.Y. Times
2.
CalMatters investigated what happens after a Los Angeles immigration raid:
On June 8, Mauricio Oropeza was waiting at a bus stop when men in jeans and baseball caps stepped out of a vehicle. He ran. But the men pinned Oropeza to the ground and loaded him into a vehicle. “As they drove away, the agents spotted two Latino men walking on the sidewalk. Oropeza said they got on their radio, said ‘two more,’ and then another vehicle peeled off to pursue them.“
3.
More on the immigration crackdown:
- Among those taken by suspected immigration agents in recent days: a mother walking with her children in Pasadena, a father of five shopping at a Home Depot in Burbank, a longtime ice cream vendor in Culver City, and at least one employee of a Los Angeles car wash who was chased down after making a run for it.
- At their next meeting, Los Angeles County supervisors are planning to ask the county’s attorney to explore a legal counterattack to “prevent federal law enforcement personnel from engaging in any unconstitutional or unlawful immigration enforcement.” L.A. Times
- Two largely Latino cities, Cudahy and Bell Gardens, canceled their Independence Day festivities, citing ICE raids. Also canceled or postponed: a downtown L.A. block party, summer movies in Rowland Heights, and a July Fourth party in East L.A. Los Angeles Magazine | NBC Los Angeles
4.
Kamala Harris has been ramping up her outreach to major donors as she ponders a run for California governor. “No one is incredibly pumped,” said one fundraiser. Another California Democrat who gave six figures to Harris’ presidential bid said he remained “furious” at the Biden White House for creating a pathway to Donald Trump’s electoral victory. “Kamala just reminds you we are in this complete shit storm,” the donor said. Politico
5.
Last week, Assembly Democrats hazed a Republican assemblyman by repeatedly interrupting his remarks to wish Democrats in the room a happy birthday. Columnist Mark Z. Barabak had thoughts:
“It was petty. It was stupid. And it bespoke the arrogance of a super-majority party too used to having its way and bulldozing Sacramento’s greatly outnumbered Republicans. … Democrats don’t have to love their fellow lawmakers. They don’t even have to like them. But at the very least, Republicans elected to serve in Sacramento should be treated with respect.” L.A. Times
6.
On the Republican Party’s sprawling domestic policy bill:
- New estimates by the Congressional Budget Office found that 11.8 million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2034 if the bill becomes law. Gov. Gavin Newsom said as many as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose their coverage under Medicaid. A group of 16 House Republicans led by Central Valley Republican Rep. David Valadao warned that they would oppose a final bill that threatens Medicaid. L.A. Times | The Hill
- Wind and solar companies were bracing for Congress to end federal subsidies. But Senate Republicans went further, quietly adding a new tax on future projects. “This is how you kill an industry,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of the nonpartisan trade group E2. Wall Street Journal | N.Y. Times
Northern California
7.
In a recent interview, Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO, revealed that artificial intelligence is now handling as much as half of the work at his cloud computing company, which is the largest employer in San Francisco. A tech optimist, Benioff portrayed the development as liberating, saying human workers could now “move on to do higher value work.” But given that Salesforce has cut 1,000 positions this year, wrote reporter Rachel Swan, “Benioff’s remark stung.” S.F. Chronicle
8.
OpenAI responded in an internal memo after Meta poached four senior researchers from the company. Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, said the San Francisco company would be “recalibrating” its compensation. “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something. Please trust that we haven’t been sitting idly by,” he said. Critics of OpenAI’s use of copyrighted materials found that rich. “The irony,” wrote Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained, a nonprofit pushing for fair practices in AI training. WIRED | TechCrunch
9.
Reporters analyzed land-use data to find the places in the Bay Area that have undergone the most dramatic change over the decade ending in 2023. Among them is Dublin, pictured above, where the population surged a whopping 58%. See the before-and-after satellite imagery. 👉 S.F. Chronicle
10.
Down an unassuming alley in San Francisco’s Mission District, there’s a dime-sized portal to other worlds. Peephole Cinema, the brainchild of artist Laurie O’Brien, plays short silent films — all day and night — for any audience of one inclined to crouch down and peer inside. Why? “To make the neighborhood magical,” O’Brien told the California Sun. The cinema had been on hiatus since the pandemic, but resumed this month with an animated short by artist Tala Rae Schlossberg. PeepholeCinema.com | Atlas Obscura
Southern California
11.
Los Angeles consumes less water today than it did 35 years ago — and that’s not just per person. In 1990, when L.A. had 3.4 million people, the city’s annual consumption was about 680,000 acre-feet of water. With nearly 4 million residents today, the city consumes 454,000 acre-feet per year. How did this happen? “The answer speaks to a general truth about progress, which, in big, messy democracies, tends to occur not all at once but in incremental, often unsexy ways, mostly out of the news cycle,” wrote architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. N.Y. Times
12.
At Long Beach Airport, the historic art deco terminal includes a restored Work Projects Administration mosaic made up of more than 1.5 million tiles. Passengers sip wine near a fire pit in an outdoor courtyard lined with palm trees. For those reasons and more, the Washington Post put Long Beach Airport, pictured above, at No. 2 in a new ranking of America’s 50 best airports. Also included in the top 25: John Wayne Airport, Hollywood Burbank Airport, San Francisco International Airport, and Sonoma County Airport.
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