Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Nov. 19.
- Governor gloats as Texas gerrymander is blocked.
- Suisun City debates audacious plan to revive its fortunes.
- And black bears move into wealthy Los Angeles suburbs.
Statewide
1.
A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas’ Republican-friendly redrawing of congressional districts, saying it was designed to blunt the voting power of racial minorities. When Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a countering gerrymander in California, he said it would be triggered only if Texas approved its plan. But the provision was stripped from the final version of the measure, known as Proposition 50. That means unless it’s struck down in court, the boundaries redrawn to favor Democrats will stay in force. “Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said on Tuesday. L.A. Times | Politico
2.
California farmers applied nearly 15 million pounds of “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, to crops between 2018 to 2023, a new review of state records found. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to increased risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers. The chemicals, which are added to pesticides, are routinely found in soil, drinking water, homes, and people’s bodies. Bernadette Del Chiaro, of the Environmental Working Group, noted that safer pesticides are available. “It doesn’t make sense to deliberately be spraying these on California’s food,” she said. The Guardian | Fresno Bee
- See a map of PFAS use across California.
3.
“Set table. Whip cream. Figure out pies. Start fires. Turkey out — 6 or 6:30.”
Joan Didion, the angsty California writer, was big into holiday dinners. On Thanksgiving, she hosted as many as 75 notables at her home, staging the events with almost military discipline. We know this thanks to release of her papers in March, which included typed menus and guest lists and instructions drafted for hired helpers. “It seemed effortless,” her nephew Griffin Dunne said. “She probably applied the same discipline to making a meal as to writing a story.” N.Y. Times
Northern California
4.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
“I’m of the opinion that this is a scam.”
“You think they care about you?”
Suisun City, a town of 30,000 on the edge of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is broke. California Forever, a company backed by a roll call of Silicon Valley billionaires, wants to build a city from scratch on surrounding agricultural land. A proposal for Suisun City to annex California Forever’s land was pitched as a way to help each other solve a problem, reported the N.Y. Times’ Conor Dougherty. The shouting began right away.
5.
When Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Meta’s Superintelligence Lab in June, he named 11 researchers who would help build a machine more powerful than the human brain. All 11 were immigrants, seven of them born in China, the New York Times reported:
“Although many American executives, government officials and pundits have spent months painting China as the enemy of America’s rapid push into A.I., much of the groundbreaking research emerging from the United States is driven by Chinese talent.”
6.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, made an odd pairing with Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who lives off the grid in Kentucky. But as co-sponsors of the Epstein transparency bill, they notched a major victory Tuesday as Congress lined up behind the measure in near-unanimous approval. The success comes as Khanna has been telegraphing higher political ambitions. “Khanna is getting a boost in his embryonic presidential campaign,” said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “He saw an opportunity that others missed.” Mercury News
Southern California
7.
The New York Times Magazine interviewed 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department for a piece on the agency’s unraveling under President Trump. One of them recalled being ordered to find evidence of antisemitism at the University of California:
“The only school, it became clear, where there might be a violation was UCLA. One colleague said, ‘We have to feed something to the wolves.’ … But the D.O.J. demand letter to UCLA asked for $1 billion in damages. We thought, $1 billion? They are making that up out of thin air. There is no way the damages we found added up to anything like that amount.”
8.
When state lawmakers debated a law to allow denser housing near transit stops, some of the fiercest opposition came from Los Angeles. Now that SB 79, as it’s known, has been signed into law, the city is turning to Plan B, Politico Pro reported: “Delay, delay, delay.” The article summarizes a city planning document outlining maneuvers L.A. can take to thwart the law. A version of the word “delay” appears 68 times. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Justin Ray puzzled over how a city so desperate for housing can keep repeating the same mistakes.
9.
Fires, drought, and human encroachment are driving black bears into new territory in Southern California, including the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu. A family of bears there has confronted confused coyotes, shut down streets, and snatched koi from a backyard pond. Some local residents have been delighted by the new residents. Wall Street Journal
10.
Investigators are now looking at the singer D4vd as a suspect in the death of a 15-year-old girl whose body was found in his impounded Tesla on Sept. 8, law enforcement sources told multiple outlets. Celeste Rivas Hernandez was 13 when she vanished from Lake Elsinore in April 2024. The discovery of her remains at a Los Angeles impound lot fueled speculation about her connection to D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, 20. People who socialized with Burke told TMZ they thought the pair was romantically involved. NBC News | KABC
11.
After three decades, O.J. Simpson’s estate agreed to pay the family of Ronald Goldman, whom the football legend was accused of killing along with Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994. But it may not amount to much. In 1997, the Goldmans won a $33 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson. For years, he claimed to not have the money. Now, more than a year after Simpson’s death, the estate’s executor, Malcolm LaVergne, has accepted a claim of $58 million, an amount that far exceeds the estate’s assets. LaVergne said he hoped to round up as much as $1 million. L.A. Times | A.P.
12.
Since the Trump administration initiated its deportation crackdown this summer, agents have raided more than 100 car washes across Southern California, detaining more than 340 workers. The columnist Gustavo Arellano talked to Francisco, the brother of a car wash worker detained by ICE in September. Francisco said his brother paid taxes and took pride in making cars “shine like a mirror.” “It’s an injustice what they did to him,” he said. “They should get people doing bad things, not those who are trying to earn their daily bread.” L.A. Times
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