Good morning. It’s Tuesday, October 20.
- Confusion and resentment after voter fraud arrests.
- Silicon Valley is now Republican in the public mind.
- And vigilantes paint crosswalks across Los Angeles.
Statewide
1.
Justice Department officials on Monday announced that 28 green card holders in California had been charged with illegally registering or voting in federal elections. At a news conference, department officials portrayed the suspects, which amount to about one out of every million voters in California, as evidence of “state-facilitated voter fraud” that could alter election outcomes. The raid came as prosecutors seek to block California from counting the ballots of 20,000 people they have identified as “likely noncitizens.” L.A. Times | CalMatters
2.
Jennifer Gaudette, a political science professor at UC Riverside, told the Sacramento Bee that noncitizen voting, while exceedingly rare, typically results from confusion on the part of the immigrant. On Monday, reporters interviewed several people ensnared in the Justice Department’s crackdown.
- Ana Domínguez, 60, a native of El Salvador, wiped tears recounting her arrest. She never voted, but was accused of registering, which she said could not recall having done. “I never, ever in my entire life … thought this would ever happen to me,” she said. L.A. Times
- Kamlesh Shah, 68, an immigrant from India, said he thought his new Real ID driver’s license might entitle him to vote. He went to a polling place to ask an election worker, who gave him the OK, he said. KCRA
- David Shapiro, a 41-year-old from the country of Georgia, was charged with illegally voting, which he denied. “How could I even be voting?” he said. “I’m not even a citizen.” Mercury News
3.
After Yosemite National Park caught fire last month, aggressive firefighting was immediately necessary to protect the small community of Wawona. But as the flames spread into the mountains, away from homes, the fight did not let up. This year, the Trump administration ordered federal firefighters to pursue “full suppression” on every wildfire, rejecting the conventional wisdom that allowing fires to run their course can sometimes be beneficial. Five days into the Yosemite blaze, two pilots died when their helicopter crashed. “For what?” one fire official asked. “There’s nothing out there.” The Atlantic
4.
“Put them down with the gas.”
In August 2024, Chowchilla women’s prison carried out a search for contraband dubbed Operation Breakdown. As officers moved from cell to cell, roughly 160 inmates were corralled for hours inside the dining hall. The air was hot and the mood tense. Around noon, an inmate had a seizure. An alarm sounded. About two dozens officers filed into the hall, raised tear gas canisters, and sprayed the prisoners. Investigations, firings, and a lawsuit settlement of $1.9 million followed. KQED investigated the pattern of abuse at California’s largest women’s prison.
5.
In July 2021, Baljit Singh let his big rig drift over a median in Kern County and killed a 26-year-old motorcyclist. The DMV declined to revoke his driving privileges. Eleven months later, Singh slammed into the back of an SUV, killing a mother. “That accident never should have happened,” said her husband, Loren Chow, choking back tears. “I would have had my partner still. … Jenny would have seen Dylan and Tyler graduate from high school. She would have seen so much if only the DMV had done what any person in his right mind would have done, which is to suspend the license.” CalMatters
6.
As moneyed interests increasingly spend whatever it takes to get an initiative on California’s ballot, an industry of petition circulators is cashing in. In the first half of this year, ballot-measure campaigns spent $126.5 million on circulating petitions, paying as much as $15 a signature. Dederek Huff, who sold party drugs on the Las Vegas Strip, said he came to San Francisco when word spread about campaigns paying big money. He made $43,000 in three months, he said. “This is better than drug money.” N.Y. Times
Northern California
7.
Silicon Valley, which since its founding was seen as a bastion of social liberalism, has now definitively turned Republican in the eyes of the American public. A new Politico poll found that a plurality of voters assume most tech leaders are Republican, including Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and even Dario Amodei, who has only donated to Democrats. A plurality also believe tech is the biggest financial backer of the Republican Party. “The image of Silicon Valley as a liberal industry has all but gone,” said pollster Seb Wride.
8.
“No trail on my ancestor’s bones.”
Plans to transform an abandoned rail corridor into a recreation trail through forests and canyons for 307 miles from the San Francisco Bay Area to Humboldt Bay has been a dream of outdoor lovers for decades. But as the Great Redwood Trail comes closer to reality, a Northern California tribe is now fighting to reroute its path. The Wailaki people say the trail approved by the state would allow people to walk over graves without their consent. L.A. Times
9.
The attorney for an elderly couple accused of fatally shooting their son-in-law, New York Times executive Jonathan McKinsey, suggested a motive for the bloodshed on Monday: McKinsey had threatened to kill his mother-in-law, he said. Shili Chen and Shouyong Zhang, both 77, pleaded not guilty on Monday. At the time of the shooting on Sept. 26, McKinsey and his wife were embroiled in a bitter divorce that included mutual allegations of abuse. In court filings, McKinsey, who was transgender, accused his mother-in-law of using homophobic slurs against him. S.F. Chronicle | KRON
10.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, the Saudi national accused of bugging a restricted OpenAI conference room, had booked one-way plane tickets from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia for himself, his wife, and their three-month-old son before his Oct. 9 arrest, prosecutors said on Monday. The departure date: Oct. 12. During a court hearing, Alfozan’s lawyers submitted a letter showing that the Saudi government was prepared to pay his bail, an offer the judge called “problematic.” He ordered Alfozan held without bail. Wall Street Journal | A.P.
Southern California
11.
An ICE encounter in Long Beach became volatile on Saturday after masked immigration agents took a man to the ground and tased him, attracting a crowd of residents who screamed expletives and blocked federal vehicles with garbage bins. Video of the standoff was shared widely. The man, Ricardo Gonzalez, a former city employee, said he is a U.S. citizen. He was let go. Local lawmakers said the incident appeared to be the latest example of what critics say is the Trump administration’s reliance on racial profiling to carry out mass deportations. Long Beach Post | L.A. Times
12.
A band of lawbreakers is roving around Los Angeles painting unauthorized crosswalks at dangerous intersections. On a recent Sunday, about 40 of them, armed with paint rollers and donned in bright yellow construction vests, went to work on an intersection in Hyde Park, where a 16-year-old boy had been killed by a hit-and-run driver days earlier. They call themselves People’s Vision Zero. Their leader, UCLA law student Jonathan Hale, was arrested in the act last year. But he sees the work as necessary, he said: “We can’t wait any longer.” L.A. Times
Get your California Sun T-shirts, phone cases, hoodies, hats, and totes!
The California Sun, PO Box 6868, Los Osos, CA 93412
Wake up to must-read news from around the Golden State delivered to your inbox each morning.