Good morning. It’s Thursday, May 28.
- Gavin Newsom vows 100% tax on Trump fund payouts.
- Surging San Francisco rents far outpace other cities.
- And a Death Valley opera house is sinking into the earth.
Statewide
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that California would impose a 100% tax on any funds residents receive from President Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which critics have described as an example of presidential corruption unparalleled in modern times. The largest pool of applicants for payouts is expected to be Trump supporters prosecuted for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which includes a number of Californians. Newsom said the state would be within its rights to take every penny: “It’s an action we look forward to taking.” Politico | L.A. Times
2.
“I felt like I wasn’t learning.”
California’s community college system serves more than 2.2 million students, making it the nation’s largest system of higher education. But you wouldn’t know it walking around its campuses. Some 40% of the system’s courses are now online, roughly double what it was before the pandemic and a far higher rate than that of the state’s four-year universities. Proponents say remote learning widens access. It also leads to lack of engagement, impersonal lectures, and questionable mastery of the material. CalMatters
3.
More than 600 UC faculty members signed an open letter urging university leaders to reinstate standardized testing requirements, saying their abandonment has led to “severe” educational deficits among STEM students. Instructors must now reteach middle-school math, they wrote. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy; without it, success in university-level STEM becomes structurally unattainable.” UC leaders ended SAT and ACT requirements in 2020 after a contentious debate that saw critics condemn the exams as racist. L.A. Times
4.
Less than a week before the June 2 primary, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Wednesday that bars law enforcement officers from taking ballots or otherwise interfering in California elections. The measure came after Chad Bianco, Riverside County’s sheriff and a Republican candidate for governor, seized ballots in response to activist claims of election fraud. Newsom said the law was a response to a president who “doesn’t believe in free and fair elections.” A Republican state lawmaker predicted it would be struck down as unconstitutional. A.P. | N.Y. Times
5.
California state workers have tried everything to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to return to the office this summer after the pandemic ushered in a habit of working remotely. Their latest gambit: demanding an environmental study under CEQA, California’s signature environmental law. On Wednesday, a union representing state attorneys informed state departments that they are required by law to complete a report on the carbon dioxide impacts of the return-to-office order. Fail to do so and they will ask a judge to block the mandate, the union said. Sacramento Bee
6.
In 1967, a ballerina named Marta Becket wandered over to an abandoned social hall in Death Valley after she and her husband were waylaid by a flat tire during a camping trip. “The building seemed to be saying, ‘Take me, do something with me,’” she later wrote. Becket rented the hall, fixed it up, and named it the Amargosa Opera House. For generations, it became a cultural institution unlike anywhere else in California. Now it is sinking into the earth, reports High Country News: “Without significant repairs, the Opera House and Hotel face closure, or worse, the buildings physically collapsing.”
- From the California Sun archive: “The dancer in the desert.”
7.
You should take a train ride.
In Santa Cruz, a century-old steam engine departs from the beach and plunges into the redwood forested mountains. The three-hour ride traverses a tunnel, trestle bridges, the San Lorenzo River Gorge, and Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park before arriving at Roaring Camp in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains. On summer weekends, festivals are commonly held for arriving passengers. A typical lineup: bluegrass, brews, and barbecue.
- Afar included Roaring Camp Railroad in a roundup of California’s seven most scenic train rides.
Correction
Wednesday’s newsletter misattributed a legal brief submitted in opposition to Florida’s lawsuit against western states over commercial trucking driver’s licenses. It was written by Washington state officials, not the Supreme Court.
Northern California
8.
A new wave of wealth from the artificial intelligence industry is driving fierce competition for housing in San Francisco. Rents have spiked 22% in a year, by far the largest growth of any U.S. city. The median rent for a one-bedroom has now crossed $4,000 for the first time ever. The median home sale price is similarly astronomical, hitting a record $2.15 million. The strength of the real estate market, however, has not been matched by job growth, suggesting deepening inequality. Bloomberg
- Even some well-compensated tech workers are debating whether to relocate. KQED
9.
San Francisco’s school district has tacked an extra week onto the school year to make up for days lost to a teachers’ strike. The challenge is convincing kids to give up a week of their summer. School officials had expressed misgivings about potentially disrupting families’ summer plans but ultimately made the decision that would protect the district’s budget; state regulators penalize districts for falling short on school days. Principals are anticipating widespread absences among both students and teachers. Gazetteer SF
10.
“This isn’t a lucky streak.”
The Justice Department on Wednesday charged a Google software engineer with insider trading on Polymarket, alleging that he made $1.2 million based on confidential business information. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, placed a number of bets on Google’s most-searched person of 2025 after accessing Google’s “nonpublic Year in Search data,” prosecutors said. “Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did.” Critics of prediction market sites say they are all but designed to reward insider trading. NPR | Washington Post
Southern California
11.
Matthew Perry’s assistant was sentenced to more than three years in prison on Wednesday after he admitted to injecting the ketamine that killed the “Friends” star. Prosecutors said Kenneth Iwamasa, 61, knew of Perry’s addiction struggles yet supplied 51 vials of ketamine to the actor in the weeks leading up his death. Iwamasa’s lawyer, Alan Eisner, said his client “worshipped” Perry. But the judge, Sherilyn Peace Garnett, cut off Eisner when he said Iwamasa “was unable to say no” to the actor. “Unwilling,” Garnett said. “Not unable. He could have said no.” A.P. | L.A. Times
12.
Willy Staley wrote about an AI video that depicts Spencer Pratt as a Batman figure who rescues a postapocalyptic Los Angeles from its Democratic captors:
“The fear with so-called deep fakes was that they could be used to make it seem as if a public figure had done something unsavory that they had not: a romantic tryst, a racist remark, the sort of scandal that might — in another era — end a career. What we didn’t expect was the dumber future that seems to have arrived: Now anyone can produce slick fan fiction about public figures, paper over reality with pop culture ephemera and convince themselves and others that they’ve arrived at some hidden truth.” N.Y Times Magazine
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