Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 21.
- A string of foster child deaths rocks Santa Clara County.
- New BART gates lead to sharp drop in vandalism.
- And critics hail ambitious new LACMA building.
Statewide
1.
Updates from the race for California governor:
- Betty Yee, a former state controller, exited the campaign, leaving six established Democrats and two leading Republicans on the ballot. The state’s Democratic Party chair urged other low-polling candidates to follow Yee’s example. S.F. Chronicle | Sacramento Bee
- Another poll showed Xavier Becerra, the mild-mannered former health and human services secretary, surging in popularity. After Gov. Gavin Newsom, voters may want “someone dependable and trustworthy — even a little dull,” wrote columnist Dan Walters. L.A. Times | CalMatters
- Our Revolution, the progressive group founded by Bernie Sanders, endorsed Tom Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire. Sanders has said billionaires should not exist. The group said it’s important to recognize “how he’s used his wealth and power.” The Intercept
2.
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, accused Amazon of price fixing on Monday. Evidence of the alleged scheme was unsealed as part of a 2022 lawsuit that accuses America’s largest online retailer of violating the state’s antitrust laws. According to the 16-page filing, Amazon repeatedly colluded with other companies to raise the prices of products such as pet treats, khaki pants, and eyedrops. “You don’t see price fixing so explicitly and egregiously in writing like this,” Bonta said. A.P. | N.Y. Times
Northern California
3.
The death of a third foster child in three years in Santa Clara County led to demands for accountability from the child welfare system. On Monday, District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced charges against a teenager accused of raping and killing a 2-year-old foster child. His office is investigating the child services agency for potential criminal liability, he said: “People in the public, and myself as the DA, would like to know who is responsible criminally, civilly, morally, ethically, systemically.” Mercury News | KQED
4.
In Orick, a small town in Humboldt County, the school has five classrooms, four full-time staff — and just nine students. Its annual expenses amount to $118,000 per student. California funds schools based on how many students show up. But small districts get most of their money in grants to protect them from fluctuations in revenue. Carrie Hahnel, an education researcher, asked if every community needs a school: “What if that community barely exists? We guarantee a free public education to every child, but do we guarantee a school in every community?” CalMatters
5.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said on Monday that he would step down in September after nearly 15 years running one of the world’s most influential companies. During his tenure, Apple’s value ballooned more than tenfold to $4 trillion through sales of products such as the Apple Watch and AirPods along with television and music services. Tech writers described Cook’s successor, John Ternus, as an affable mechanical engineer known for deft politicking inside the company. Wall Street Journal | N.Y. Times
6.
Noah Hawley, a screenwriter and author, attended a private retreat hosted by Jeff Bezos in Santa Barbara and has some thoughts on what wealth does to people:
“It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.” The Atlantic
7.
In August, BART completed new gates that made it harder to evade paying fares. Revenue is now projected to rise by $10 million a year. But they also led to another happy outcome: vandalism plummeted. The Atlantic reports: “This is a success story with lessons for all types of public spaces. Call it ‘fare-gate theory’: To protect the shared rooms of communal life, human intervention isn’t always necessary, affordable, or desirable. Instead, physical and technological obstacles — an architecture of good behavior — can keep out bad actors and deter the worst impulses of everyone else.”
Southern California
8.
Los Angeles prosecutors on Monday accused the singer D4vd of repeatedly sexually abusing a teenage girl before murdering her and dismembering her body. Nathan Hochman, the district attorney, said D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, began abusing Celeste Rivas Hernandez in 2023, when she was just 13 and had run away from home. “Physical, forensic, and digital” evidence, he said, would show that the singer killed Hernandez on or around April 23, 2025, after “she threatened to expose his criminal conduct.” Burke pleaded not guilty. L.A. Times | A.P.
- Hernandez’s mother faced criticism after the girl’s disappearance, a family friend said. “But sometimes it’s not us, it’s our kids who slip away from us.” N.Y. Times
9.
The New York Times called it “uplifting, lyrical and pugnacious.”
The Wall Street Journal said it was “a work of furious originality and ambition.”
The Los Angeles Times called it “a living, morphing building that challenges nearly every convention of what a museum should be.”
After 20 years of planning, $724 million, and seemingly endless controversy, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new building, the David Geffen Galleries, opened on Sunday. Designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the structure has been compared to an amoeba curling across Wilshire Boulevard. All of its artworks are spread out in a deliberately nonhierarchical fashion across a single 900-foot-long level of concrete and glass. Opinions have been divided.
- Take a video walkthrough. 👉 Archinect
10.
David Zaslav, the Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive, stands to walk away with payout ranging from $551 million to $887 million if the company’s sale to Paramount Skydance goes through. Institutional Shareholder Services said it “represents one of the highest golden parachute estimates ever observed.” Will the merger be good for Hollywood? “No, not at all,” wrote Sharon Waxman, the editor in chief of The Wrap. “But it’ll be good for Mr. Zaslav.” N.Y. Times
11.
As a director on shows like “Ozark,” “The Americans,” and “True Detective,” Daniel Sackheim won acclaim for his depiction of fictional underworlds. His latest project, a photography monograph called “The City Unseen,” captures the visual tropes of film noir in everyday Los Angeles — the historic buildings, lonely figures, seedy back alleys, and 24-hour diners. See selections from the project. 👉 Deadline | Colossal
12.
Nestled in the San Gabriel Valley, Arcadia is home to scores of wandering wild peafowl, descendants of a small population imported by a 19th-century land baron. Many residents have embraced the birds as whimsical delights. The city seal includes a peacock. To others, they are a pooping, pecking, screeching nightmare. A new short documentary chronicles a city caught in a loop of perpetual tension over its decision to live with certain annoyances for the sake of its peacocks. Watch “Our Neighbors, The Peacocks.”
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