Good morning. It’s Friday, May 2.
- House votes to overturn state ban on gas cars.
- Sherri Papini breaks silence in new documentary.
- And California sea lion keeps a beat better than humans.
Statewide
1.
House Republicans on Thursday voted to block California from imposing its landmark rule phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. “Trump Republicans are hellbent on making California smoggy again,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. Nearly three dozen Democrats sided with Republicans on the bill, including Santa Ana’s Rep. Lou Correa, who told his hometown newspaper that consumers should be free “to drive whatever vehicle makes sense for them and their pocketbooks.” The legality of the congressional action is uncertain. N.Y. Times | Washington Post
2.
“This body needs a moral compass.”
“How is this a debate?”
“What a sad state of affairs.”
Democratic state lawmakers killed a proposal to make it a felony to buy sex from 16- and 17-year-olds on Thursday in a move that enraged Republicans and defied Gov. Gavin Newsom, who urged approval of what he portrayed as a common-sense measure. The action came after a heated debate that included shouting and literal finger-pointing as Republicans accused Democrats of being soft on sex offenders and Democrats accused critics of playing politics. L.A. Times | A.P. | GV Wire
3.
Lake Shasta, California’s largest reservoir, reached capacity this week for the third straight year — a milestone that hasn’t occurred since 2012. The bounty reflects the state’s unusual string of wet winters in recent years. Shasta is a cornerstone of the federally run Central Valley Project, which irrigates cropland in the San Joaquin Valley. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced this week that it would increase water deliveries to the farming region. S.F. Chronicle | Visalia Times-Delta
- As of Thursday, every major reservoir in the state was near or above its historical average. See the levels.
4.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Laurie Kirby, the founder of FestForums, a music festival industry group. Kirby talked about California’s role as an epicenter of music festivals, crediting the state’s affluence, youth, and weather; the struggles of smaller festivals; and the agony of soaring ticket prices. “It’s a stretch,” she acknowledged. “I look at the ticket prices and myself I’m kind of astonished.”
5.
If Northern California’s lakes are a stage for wildlife, western grebes are the ballet dancers. Common on California lakes during the spring, the grebes perform a curious courting ritual. The male approaches a female and repeatedly dips his head, to which the female responds in kind. Then, all of a sudden, they both explode from the water, kicking furiously, and glide across the surface with their necks arched before plunging below the surface in unison. The photographer Sekar Balasubramanian caught a great show at Calero Lake in San Jose. 👉 YouTube
Northern California
6.
California’s transportation planners used to be skeptical of roundabouts, the circular alternative to stop lights. But they’ve learned to love them. Since the state’s first roundabout, added in Santa Barbara in 1992, nearly 900 more have been installed across California, according to the Roundabouts Database. Last year, Hollister unveiled the state’s first “turbo” roundabout, a variation shaped like a ninja star. This week, Berkeley declared work done on side-by-side roundabouts. A Redditor posted a very cool drone view.
7.
Sherri Papini, the Redding woman who admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016, is back in the headlines after a new Max documentary trailer showed her claiming that she really was victimized. “I was tortured; I was branded; I was chained to a wall,” she says. “All that is true.” Papini pleaded guilty to fraud and lying to the FBI in 2022. “I feel very sad,” she tearfully told the judge then. “Were you kidnapped?” he asked. “No, Your Honor,” she replied. Papini spent nine months in prison and lost custody of her two children. People | Variety
8.
In a newly released podcast, Mark Zuckerberg pitched the potential of AI chatbots as a cure for the loneliness epidemic. “The average American, I think, has fewer than three friends,” the Meta CEO said. “And the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?” The suggestion that chatbots could substitute for real friends was relentlessly panned online. “The average American has 3 eggs, but has demand for 15,” wrote Paul Fairie, a University of Calgary researcher. “So here are 12 photographs of eggs. I am a business man.” SFist | 404 Media
9.
Scientists once thought only humans, some other primates, and parrots could move to a rhythm. In a new study, a Santa Cruz sea lion named Ronan demonstrated that not only could she keep a beat, she could do it better than some humans. Researchers filmed Ronan bobbing her head as a drummer played beats she had never heard before. She outperformed 10 UC Santa Cruz students asked to perform the same task. “I think that it demonstrates conclusively that humans are not the only mammals able to keep a beat,” said Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist. A.P. | N.Y. Times
- See Ronan keep time. 👉 YouTube
10.
At a Berkeley pet store last September, a California king snake hatched with an usual condition: it had two heads. Two-headed reptiles are rare — about one in 100,000 — and seldom survive very long. Store owners expected it to last minutes or days at most. But the snake still is slithering, while developing a budding social media stardom. Store employees named each head: Angel and Zeke. It’s “clumsy but fearless,” said Ezekiel White, a worker. S.F. Chronicle | SFist
Southern California
11.
An international tribunal found that the U.S. Border Patrol tortured and killed a man at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in 2010, according to a ruling published this week. It was the first time that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a party, has made such a finding involving a death at the hands of U.S. law enforcement. The commission found that officers struck, Tasered, and kneeled on Anastasio Hernández Rojas, a father of five, while he was handcuffed. His wife, Maria Puga, said she felt “at peace” after the ruling. “Here is the truth,” she said. Capital & Main | S.D. Union-Tribune
- Rodney Scott, President Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection, was in charge of the San Diego Border Patrol Sector during the Rojas killing. He has been accused of covering it up. L.A. Times
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- The photographers Vishal Subramanyan and Cynthia Cross spent three years chasing the perfect shot of mountain lions in the Bay Area’s Diablo Range. Then in February, one of their motion-sensor camera traps got it. A mother and her three little cubs lingered in front of the camera for about 20 minutes. See a video clip. 👉 @vishalsubramanyan
- Earlier this year, a diver descended 115 feet in the waters off San Diego and encountered the body of a baby gray whale. Weeks later, an underwater photographer went to the location and found only barren seabed. “How does an 18-foot-long, 2,000-pound carcass just disappear?” The New York Times investigated.
- An orange-and-yellow midcentury home at the foot of Mount San Jacinto, an adobe-style desert ranch home in Yucca Valley, and a home with 180-degree views of Joshua Tree National Park. Architectural Digest compiled a list of its “favorite design-minded Palm Springs Airbnbs.”
- Senior citizens with harmonicas have become unlikely stars of the NHL playoffs. The harmonica class from the Koreatown Senior and Community Center in Los Angeles was invited to play the national anthem for Game 1 of the Western Conference series last week. The performance immediately went viral. The seniors were back for Game 5 on Tuesday. ESPN | Washington Post
- “Back by popular demand!” See their performance.
- In California, a place shaped by successive migrations, the European vibes are often strong. Travel + Leisure identified European doppelgängers for eight California cities.
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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