Good morning. It’s Thursday, Sept. 24.
- Monterey County votes to get rid of its Flock cameras.
- Nithya Raman takes a big lead in L.A. mayoral race.
- And unsolicited trail sculptures trigger a backlash.
Statewide
1.
The political action committee established to oppose California’s proposed billionaire tax has raised a staggering $91 million in the last seven weeks alone. All told, Building a Better California has collected $229 million since its launch in February. Unsurprisingly, the donors tend be extremely rich. Twenty individuals have given $1 million or more to the PAC. By comparison, last year’s ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional map had only four such donors. S.F. Chronicle
- Support for the tax appears to be waning. Just 45% of Californians said they would back the measure in a new Politico poll, down from 50% in February.
2.
The artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out is on track to cost an estimated $10.3 trillion by 2032, according to a new analysis from the Brookings Institution. That’s greater than the spending for America’s canals, railroads, and electrical grid combined. The Wall Street Journal published some illuminating graphs on what is shaping up to be the biggest economic bet in U.S. history.
- OpenAI was involved in yet more rogue AI incidents, researchers said on Wednesday. One case involved the infiltration of a government website in Australia, the first known AI breach into government systems. N.Y. Times
Northern California
3.
Monterey County became the latest California jurisdiction to rebel against its Flock Safety system on Wednesday after residents denounced the license plate readers as an invasion of privacy. County supervisors voted to remove the region’s 63 cameras over the objections of law enforcement. Berkley Brannon, a deputy district attorney, warned of dire consequences. “There’s going to be victims who don’t get justice,” he said, “and there’s going to be more victims.” KSBW | Monterey Herald
4.
Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco on Wednesday called for the federal government to release a California state lawmaker’s staffer who was taken into ICE custody at an airport in Las Vegas on Sept. 17. It was a rare challenge from Lurie, who has studiously avoided conflict with the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security has shown little regard for appeals to compassion. “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” the agency said. S.F. Chronicle | SFist
5.
Miranda’s Rescue, the Humboldt County “no-kill” animal shelter where a mass dog grave was found, is taking in dogs again after county regulators lifted a permit suspension, saying code violations were resolved. Investigators found the carcasses of more 120 dogs on Miranda’s Fortuna property in June. They believe that Shannon Miranda, the rescue’s director, killed the animals in a scheme to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from shelters that left animals in his care. As yet, no charges have been filed. Lost Coast Outpost
- Dana Heuschkel, a former Miranda’s worker, said she was stunned by the number of dogs the rescue took in. When she asked about fate of individual dogs, her boss would sometimes answer by running his thumb across his throat, she said. S.F. Chronicle
6.
In 2018, Phil Levin and his wife bought a seven-unit compound with a courtyard and a communal kitchen in Oakland for them and their closest friends. Over the next eight years, the commune known as Radish housed as many as 20 adults and a giant gaggle of children. “When we started Radish, our sort of view was like, oh, we’re a little weird, our friends are a little weird. We’re building something very unique just for us,” Levin said. “What we basically learned over the course of Radish is like, there’s a pretty universal desire to live this way.” N.Y. Times
7.
In the early 1970s, Ken Light, then a 24-year-old underground news photographer, set out to document the daily life of West Oakland, a place of dilapidated Victorians, butterfly collars, and Black pride. For more than 50 years, the photos were all but forgotten after Light struggled to generate interest. “I hate to say it,” he told KQED recently, “but one publisher said, ‘Who cares about Black people?’” Audiences are now finally getting a look at the work in a new book, “Soul City: Oakland U.S.A.,” and an exhibition at UC Berkeley’s North Gate Hall. East Bay Yesterday
Southern California
8.
Nithya Raman, the Los Angeles councilmember aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, has opened up a double-digit lead over incumbent Karen Bass in the race for L.A. mayor, a new poll found. Raman is now backed by 39% of voters to Bass’s 28%, the survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found. Young Angelenos have fueled Raman’s rise, with 66% of voters between ages 18 to 29 backing her bid compared to just 4% who support for Bass. L.A. Times | CBS News
9.
Eight Navy personnel on board the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during a record-long deployment that included supporting combat operations against Iran, according to a letter from the acting Navy secretary. “What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as ‘fake news’ turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said on Wednesday. The Lincoln, which is based in San Diego, was deployed in November 2025 and is currently en route back to California. CNN | Wall Street Journal
10.
Getting things built in Los Angeles is so formidable that people make a good living working as so-called permit expediters. Tanner “The Planner” Blackman is among them. He recounted a recent odyssey obtaining permission for a builder to remove dirt from a project site that required him bringing the issue all the way to the City Council. “This whole stupid thing, we had to do this fire drill, get a bunch of extra billable hours for people like me,” he said. “In a perfect world, my job would not need to exist.” CalMatters
11.
For years, residents near the Tijuana River in Southern California have complained that the vapors emanating from the polluted waterway are so foul that they cause headaches, nausea, and labored breathing. For the first time, a federal health agency on Wednesday confirmed that the amount of hydrogen sulfide in the air surrounding the river is harmful to health. “For two years, the answer was, ‘it’s just a smell.’ Today the answer is, ‘it’s a public health hazard,’ said Supervisor Paloma Aguirre. “That’s the difference between being dismissed and being believed.” S.D. Union-Tribune | KPBS
12.
Warren Sherich Jr., a 74-year-old math teacher in Southern California’s Antelope Valley, is a bit of a goofball. In an effort to spread whimsy, he has for years placed little clay figurines, which he calls dogus from the planet Doguanda, in the oudoors. In his telling, feedback on the trail had been entirely positive. Then an online backlash broke out over the many dogus Sherich placed along the Southern California section of the Pacific Crest Trail. Backpacker magazine dove into the debate over whether art belongs in nature.
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