Good morning. It’s Friday, June 12.
- A growing coalition of unions opposes billionaire tax.
- Video shows Pasadena cop accidentally shooting colleague.
- And golf club ousts Phil Mickelson over alleged misconduct.
Statewide
1.
Facing a late-June deadline to cut a deal that would avert a ballot fight, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his allies are mounting an extraordinary pressure campaign to persuade a health care union, SEIU-UHW, to pull its proposed billionaire wealth tax. In recent days, unions representing construction workers, carpenters, police officers, and teachers have broken with SEIU-UHW to oppose the measure. “[SEIU-UHW President] Dave Regan is seeing very plainly what he’ll be up against if he goes through with this,” said one consultant. Politico
2.
The University of California climatologist Daniel Swain talks to CBS, NBC, the Weather Channel, and the Washington Post — pretty much constantly. He also publishes his own blog, Weather West. During the 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles, Swain said he gave as many as 12 media interviews a day. When he wasn’t talking to journalists, he was talking to his YouTube followers. The Atlantic profiled the man who has become “about as omnipresent as a weather guy can be in people’s lives.”
3.
This wasn’t Tom Steyer’s first campaign. Before running for California governor, the hedge-fund billionaire mounted a bid for president in 2020, which was similarly self-funded and won him zero delegates. All told, Steyer has spent an astounding $558 million on his aspirations for elected office. The columnist Michelle Cottle called it waste. “After hitting it big in the private sector, many of America’s superrich delude themselves into thinking that they are masters of the universe destined to dominate in every arena,” she wrote. N.Y. Times
4.
President Trump added a twist to his latest election-fraud conspiracy theory to explain how Steve Hilton, a Republican running for governor, advanced in California’s primary, while Spencer Pratt, a Republican who ran for Los Angeles mayor, did not. In short, his tirades about fraud cowed California officials into abandoning an effort to rig the vote against Hilton, Trump asserted. “I went on such a tear that they approved it immediately,” he told Fox News of Hilton’s victory. “It’s such a rigged deal.” CNN
- Hilton, for his part, has called California elections an “absolute farce” while stopping short of alleging fraud. “We’ve seen nothing,” he said this week. L.A. Times
Northern California
5.
A warehouse fire in Tracy on Thursday afternoon was so massive that its smoke could be seen in satellite imagery spreading more than 60 miles to the Central Coast. The blaze at the 1-million-square-foot Medline medical supply distribution warehouse sent enormous plumes of black smoke into the sky and embers downwind that ignited several smaller fires. Fire officials said it could take four days to extinguish the inferno. The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately clear. Stockton Record | S.F. Chronicle
- See video of the warehouse fire.
Southern California
6.
Los Angeles County’s district attorney, Nathan Hochman, said he believes as many as four in five claims in a $4 billion sex abuse settlement, the largest in U.S. history, may be fake. An Oct. 2 investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that some plaintiffs in the case alleging sexual abuse at juvenile halls had been recruited with cash. Hochman is now asking a judge to pause payments while his office conducts a sprawling inquiry of plaintiffs, lawyers and therapists behind the claims. L.A. Times
7.
Nearly 10 months after a Pasadena police officer shot and wounded a colleague in the shoulder, the authorities on Wednesday released dashcam video of the incident, which was described as “horseplay” gone awry. It shows one officer draw his handgun and point it directly at another officer in an approaching cruiser. He reholsters. Then the dashcam jolts as the officer in the patrol car fires through the window, striking the first officer in the shoulder. Pasadena’s police chief called the episode “regrettable.” L.A. Times | KABC
8.
The Trump administration on Thursday said it is pulling federal funds from Los Angeles County’s embattled homelessness agency, known as LAHSA, accusing it of misspending millions of dollars and failing to properly account for its spending. Scott Turner, the housing secretary, said the federal government would not fund the “homeless industrial complex.” LAHSA has faced criticism even from the county’s Democratic leadership. Still, the agency warned that a funding clawback could force thousands of people back onto the streets. N.Y. Times | CalMatters
9.
The golfer Phil Mickelson, a six-time major champion, was kicked out of his club near his home in San Diego after a female employee accused him of nonconsensual and inappropriate physical contact earlier this year, Golf Digest reported on Thursday. Multiple sources told the publication that the incident occurred before he was to play a round at the Farms Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe. After the woman alerted club officials, they confronted Mickelson mid-round and ordered him to leave. Mickelson, who is married, said in a statement, “Any misunderstanding has been cleared up.”
10.
Before he was comedy royalty, Steve Martin worked at a magic shop in Disneyland. One summer evening in 1962, he crossed paths with the celebrated photographer Diane Arbus. She was there to capture what she described as “wonderful pseudo places” at the park, absent of people. Nearly 65 years later, Martin wrote in The Atlantic about the nostalgia of Arbus’ pictures, including that of Sleeping Beauty’s castle: “There is no evidence of mockery in the photo, and if there is, certainly the glowing white swan gliding on the moat’s black water doesn’t know it.”
11.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with David Beard, author of the new book, “All Summer Long: Conversations with The Beach Boys from Surfin’ to SMiLE.” The Beach Boys, Beard argued, single-handedly created a postcard vision of California as a sunny paradise on the Pacific that stirred the world’s imagination. “Think about that,” he said. “You’ve got the Gold Rush, and then all of a sudden in 1963, you’ve got ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.'”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Santa Barbara’s hypnotically curvy Whale House has been a source of fascination since its construction in the 1970s. Its latest stewards, a New Age-y millennial couple, bought the home in 2023 with vague plans to create an “otherwordly retreat in the magical hills.” Dwell was invited to visit and got some great pictures.
- A red-and-white pole-looking structure that rises along I-5 in Kettleman City has become an unlikely tourist attraction. Reviewers on Google Maps, tongue firmly in cheek, claim to have traveled from all over the world to behold “Poleee.” Yet no one seems to know what it is. ABC10’s John Bartell got to the bottom of the mystery.
- One of the largest swells in years began rolling into the Southern California coast on Tuesday. At the storied Wedge break in Newport Beach, spectators packed the shore as dozens of surfers chased glory on sets of waves that rose up to 20 feet. O.C. Register | KTLA
- A videographer got some heart-pounding footage.
- For one week every summer since 1949, dozens of Gold Rush enthusiasts pile into a covered wagon train and ride from the eastern side of Lake Tahoe to Placerville. Dressed in cowboy hats, victorian dresses, and denim pants, the group creates a curious spectacle clip-clopping along Highway 50. Stocktonia got some fantastic pictures.
- In 2024, a young software engineer arrived in Sonoma County with renderings of a village that she wanted to build along a bend of the Russian River. Esmeralda, as she named it, would be a place “where kids run free and people gather for intellectual talks, music and plays.” The San Francisco Chronicle spoke to locals energized by the dream of a new utopia.
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