Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Jan. 28.
- ICE plans enforcement in Santa Clara during Super Bowl.
- President Trump moves to take over wildfire rebuilding.
- And 43 vehicles pile up in thick fog in Bakersfield.
Statewide
1.
Hours after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Apple’s Tim Cook put on a tuxedo and attended a screening of “Melania,” a film about the president’s wife, at the White House, where guests were treated to sugar cookies frosted with the first lady’s name. Cook’s embrace of Trump over the past year, in the form of a $1 million donation and a golden gift, had already aggravated administration critics. His latest White House outing has many now making calls to boycott Apple. The Atlantic | Washington Post
- After days of outrage over his silence, Cook told his workforce on Tuesday that he was “heartbroken” by events in Minneapolis. Bloomberg
2.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that ICE will be conducting enforcement around Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium ahead of the Super Bowl on Feb. 8, under “directive from the president.” Some local officials have bristled at the planned operation. During a county supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Otto Lee, the board president, said no one is above the law: “If anyone comes into our county masked, spreading terror, breaking laws or threatening our residents, they will be arrested by our sheriff deputies and police officers.” San Jose Spotlight | FOX 11
3.
Other dispatches from the immigration crackdown:
- The Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino posted prolifically on X, right up until Monday when the Trump administration revoked his social media accounts. The silencing sent a loud signal, the New York Times reported: “In this administration, there may be no worse fate.”
- On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom released a bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies reminding them to exercise their “full authority” in investigating possible crimes involving federal agents. “Always ensure the protection of the people of this state,” it said. Politico
- Citing “privacy violations,” Meta began blocking users of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads from sharing a website that compiles the names and photos of ICE agents. The site’s founder said he built it to bring accountability in abuses of power. The Wrap
4.
Repeatedly, the California State Auditor has warned state lawmakers about waste, fraud, cost overruns, and other problems in state government. And repeatedly, the lawmakers have ignored them. An analysis by CBS News found that legislators failed to act on three out of every four audit recommendations over the past decade: “These are audits the Legislature asked for. Audits Californians paid for. Audits with recommendations that remain unresolved, while California continues to lose money to potential waste and fraud.”
Northern California
5.
A visit from a wayward cougar unnerved residents in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights before officials were able to corner the animal early Tuesday and subdue it with a tranquilizer. The night before, Lindsey Ann Cummings, a nurse, got the scare of her life when the powerful cat emerged from the shadows outside an apartment building. She dropped her takeout dinner and ducked into a garage. “It was one paw away from my jugular,” she said. While rare, mountain lions are observed every so often in San Francisco, which is not far from the northern edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. S.F. Chronicle | KQED
- See video of the mountain lion.
6.
Slavery. Bioterrorism. Drone armies.
In a 19,000-word essay, Dario Amodei, the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, issued a stark warning about the need to “wake up” to the dangers of the AI revolution:
“If the exponential [progress] continues — which is not certain, but now has a decade-long track record supporting it — then it cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially everything.” Axios | Mashable
7.
In 2024, Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project “to destructively scan all the books in the world,” according to an internal document unsealed in a copyright lawsuit. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this,” the company said. Anthropic acquired and sliced the spines off millions of books before ingesting the text for its chatbot, Claude. Details of the project “show the lengths to which tech firms such as Anthropic, Meta, Google and OpenAI went to obtain colossal troves of data with which to ‘train’ their software,” the Washington Post reported.
8.
Sea lions have established themselves on a pier along the Sacramento waterfront, roughly 100 nautical miles from the ocean. Biologists say the marine mammals have increasingly ventured into the California Delta over the past two decades, especially from winter to early spring, in search of food before returning to the ocean for mating season. In Sacramento, a hearty supply of carp and bass appears to be a draw. Locals have been charmed by the animals and their cries of “Arf! Arf! Arf!” Fox 40/YouTube
Correction
Tuesday’s newsletter misstated where new Airbnb rules are awaiting state approval to take effect in Pacifica. The area is west of Highway 1, not east.
Southern California
9.
President Trump signed an executive order that he said would “preempt” California state and local permitting authorities to speed rebuilding in Los Angeles fire zones. Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in L.A. County since Jan. 7, 2025, the A.P. reported this month. “I want to see if we can take over the city and state and just give the people their permits they want to build,” Trump said. California Democrats called the move a political stunt with no chance of being enacted. “Mr. President, please actually help us. We are begging you,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Release the federal disaster aid you’re withholding.” L.A. Times | Politico
10.
After their home burned down in Altadena, Jessica and Matt Conkle thought that since the property was a total loss, they could collect on the full value of their coverage with State Farm. Instead, they had to negotiate the value of each of their lost possessions. Then they had to do it again, and again. “It was all delays and denials,” Jessica said. “It felt like someone was training these people not to answer our questions.” The Guardian wrote about the widespread struggles of fire victims to get insurers to honor their contracts.
11.
☝️ This is what it looked like in Bakersfield on Tuesday not long after 43 cars collided in a massive pileup along Highway 58. Nine people were taken to hospitals. One motorist told a reporter they did everything right, driving slow and watching the road, but still got rear-ended. The pileup came just two weeks after another one in dense fog left a 61-year-old man dead in Fresno. Fog is to the Central Valley as snow is to other climes. When it rolls in, primarily during winter, schools close, flights are grounded, and traffic accidents spike. KERO | KABC
12.
WD-40 was invented by the Rocket Chemical Company in San Diego in 1953, using a formula that remains unchanged and carefully guarded to this day. Steve Brass, the company’s current CEO, had to wait more than 30 years to be granted access to the San Diego bank vault where a notebook containing the recipe for the lubricant is kept. “Actually getting in there, it was like getting into Fort Knox, quite frankly,” he said. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the “secret society of people who know the formula for WD-40.”
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