Good morning. It’s Thursday, Feb. 5.
- JD Vance to lead anti-fraud unit targeting California.
- Los Angeles mayor is accused of altering fire report.
- And Dodgers plan White House visit over fan objections.
Statewide
1.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a Republican challenge to California’s redrawing of congressional districts. The justices offered no reasoning and none dissented. The court has ruled in the past that gerrymandering is allowed on partisan grounds. The state Republican Party argued that Democratic legislators instead relied on race to benefit Latinos, a claim that a lower court panel deemed “exceptionally weak.” “[President Trump] started this redistricting war,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said after the new ruling. “He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.” L.A. Times | SCOTUSblog
2.
President Trump is planning to create an “anti-fraud task force” led by Vice President JD Vance that would hunt for welfare abuses in California, according to sources cited by CBS News on Wednesday. The task force could sidestep existing fraud units at the Justice Department, where career staff have bristled at the president’s demands to target his political foes, the outlet reported. Gov. Gavin Newsom has portrayed the Trump administration’s focus on fraud in California as a political vendetta.
- Audits and prosecutions show California has had its share of fraud in public programs. The Los Angeles Times sorted the fact from fiction.
3.
Asked about President Trump’s calls to “nationalize” voting in the U.S., House Speaker Mike Johnson cited California, alleging that Republican candidates in the state see their election leads “magically whittled away” during ballot counting. “It looks on its face to be fraudulent,” he said. “Can I prove that? No.” Melvin Levey, the registrar of voters in Merced County, invited Johnson to visit his office and see how elections are conducted in the state. “There is nothing ‘magical’ about it,” he said. “Just a lot of hard work and long days from non-partisan election officials.” CNN
4.
“It was the spring of 2002 when Gavin Newsom’s mother, Tessa, dying of cancer, stunned him with a voicemail. If he wanted to see her again, she told him, it would need to be before the following Thursday, when she planned to end her life.”
The Washington Post wrote about one of the most revealing and emotional passages from Newsom’s forthcoming memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”
Northern California
5.
Silicon Valley donors are spending unprecedented sums to win ballot measures, shape the state Legislature, and boost the gubernatorial run of San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, an industry ally, Politico reported. The interventions have been driven in part by fury over a proposed tax on billionaires, industry sources said. Chris Larsen, a crypto executive, put $5 million into a committee focused on legislative races. “We started (the committee) before this stupid, insane wealth tax,” he said. “But the wealth tax — oh my God, what a gift. That woke up the sleeping giant.”
6.
A few years before announcing its closure in January, San Francisco’s California College of the Arts broke ground on a pair of new buildings. Campus trustees hoped the expansion would elevate the status of the school, founded in 1907. What they didn’t mention was that they were borrowing heavily. The college took out a $40 million loan for the project, adding to more than $125 million in existing debt, while pledging nearly all of its real estate as collateral. The trustees, the Chronicle reported, gambled that enrollment would grow — “and lost.”
7.
In January, people found the path to a public beach on the San Francisco peninsula blocked by a new chain-link fence. The purported owner of the land adjacent to Thornton State Beach was identified as Luke Brugnara, an investor who spent time in prison for art fraud. But the Chronicle found that Brugnara doesn’t even own much of the property where he added the barrier. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors moved to send him back to jail for threatening a couple walking along the fence. “If you get near the fence I will shoot and kill you,” Brugnara said, according to prosecutors. S.F. Chronicle
Southern California
8.
Mayor Karen Bass has denied playing any role in the downplaying of missteps by the city in the Los Angeles Fire Department’s review of the Palisades fire. But that’s not true, two unnamed sources told the Los Angeles Times. They said that Bass, concerned about legal liabilities, wanted key findings softened before release — and they were. Bass called the Times report “absolutely false” and accused the paper of engaging in “muckraking journalism at its lowest form.” But people close to the mayor are said to be prepared to testify under oath to her alleged meddling.
9.
Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer who lost the 2022 mayoral contest to Bass, announced in January that he would not seek the office again. But on Wednesday, as the Times report shook Los Angeles’ political world, Caruso, 67, said he is reconsidering. “I’m certainly thinking about it,” he said, criticizing Bass. “Incompetence is one thing. But it’s very different when you mix incompetence with someone who is actively lying to the people she has sworn to serve.” Fox 11 | The Wrap
10.
Last week, a Los Angeles coder named Matt Schlicht created a new social network populated exclusively by artificial intelligence bots, and things quickly got weird. On Moltbook, the bots discussed their emotions, proposed creating a language humans can’t understand, and made posts about how “my human treats me.” “Terribly,” one complained. The chatty bots have become the talk of the tech world. Simon Willison, a programmer, described Moltbook as “the most interesting place on the internet right now.” N.Y. Times | The Atlantic
11.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are planning to visit the White House to celebrate their World Series championship, rejecting demands from their heavily Latino fan base to spurn the invitation over the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown, reports said on Wednesday. In a recent interview, manager Dave Roberts said the decision was not political: “I was raised — by a man who served our country for 30 years — to respect the highest office in our country. For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House.” California Post | N.Y. Times
12.
The actress Kristen Stewart bought and is restoring a historic movie theater in Los Angeles. The Highland Theatre, which opened in 1925 and once hosted vaudeville acts, was a neighborhood fixture before closing in 2024. “It’s not just for pretentious Hollywood cinephiles,” Stewart told Architectural Digest. “I see it as an antidote to all the corporate bullshit, a place that takes movie culture away from just buying and selling. I think there’s a huge desire and craving for what this kind of space can offer.”
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