Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 2.
- Governor backtracks on return-to-office mandate.
- Redding evangelist becomes a MAGA superstar.
- And a divisive $720 million gallery debuts in Los Angeles.
Statewide
1.
In 2020, lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act sought to block roughly 48,000 approved housing units across California. On Tuesday, a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to weaken the law, developers were in a celebratory mood. Mark Rhoades, a planning and development consultant based in Berkeley, said apartment buildings and condominiums would rise in downtowns across the state. “This is going to change completely the face of how we get housing built,” he said. Wall Street Journal | N.Y. Times
- Over the past decade, median home prices have risen more sharply in Phoenix and Atlanta than they have in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “Eventually, no matter where you are, the forces of NIMBYism catch up to you,” wrote The Atlantic.
2.
The Trump administration said it was withholding nearly $7 billion in education funds appropriated by Congress — including more than $800 million meant for California — offering little explanation. The money, which was supposed to be released on Tuesday, pays for after-school programs, language instruction, and other services. School leaders said the harm would be immediate. “The administration is punishing children for the sole reason that states refuse to cater to Trump’s political ideology,” said Tony Thurmond, the California schools superintendent. KQED | CalMatters
3.
In April, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered nearly 100,000 state workers who began clocking in remotely during the pandemic to come back to the office. When his deadline arrived on Tuesday, however, only a handful of the workers were required to return. That’s because unions won concessions from Newsom to delay their return another year until July 2026. Downtown Sacramento businesses that hoped to see more foot traffic were crestfallen. “It kind of shows who runs the government,” said John Vignocchi, a developer. “Certainly not Newsom.” Sacramento Bee | CBS News
4.
“They feel unwanted.”
“There’s a level of terror I haven’t seen before.”
“What’s happening right now feels humanistically different.”
A reporter talked to therapists who treat immigrant patients in Los Angeles and other cities. They said some clients are saying they wish they could fall asleep and never wake up. Younger patients are asking why people hate immigrants so much. New Yorker
5.
NASA shared a satellite image of Owens Lake, the Eastern Sierra lake that was desiccated a century ago to fill faucets 200 miles miles away in Los Angeles. The swindle left behind a salt flat the size of San Francisco that became the country’s largest single source of dust pollution. Strategies including vegetation planting and gravel cover now keep the dust storms at bay. Yet Owens Lake remains far from its former glory. Once a watery world of 100 square miles teeming with wildlife, it is now a largely dry playa of exposed salt crusts and streaks of blood-red bacteria. See the high-resolution image. 👉 NASA Earth Observatory
Northern California
6.
In February, a historic pact was announced to remove two aging dams along the North Coast’s Eel River. But a coalition of opponents — including farmers who rely on diverted river water and residents along a lake held back by one of the doomed dams — has not given up. “I’m hoping that the government’s tentacles will step in,” said Guinness McFadden, a rancher. “I’m hoping that someone there will have common sense and see how many people will be affected.” The Press Democrat wrote about the promise and peril of what would be California’s next major dam removal effort.
7.
Sean Feucht, a Christian evangelist based in Redding, has become a MAGA superstar. A former worship leader at the faith-healing Bethel church, he is “maybe the most effective evangelical figure on the far right,” said Matthew D. Taylor, a Christian scholar. On tours of the country, Feucht brings a message of Christian nationalism to the masses: “Yeah, we want God in control of government,” he said in front of the Wisconsin statehouse in 2023. “We want God writing the laws of the land.” The Atlantic profiled “the Christian rocker at the center of MAGA.”
8.
“That was quite intense.”
A local news helicopter’s camera was rolling when a burning fireworks warehouse exploded in rural Yolo County Tuesday evening, sending a giant fireball into the sky. Residents in the town of Esparto, roughly 40 miles northwest of Sacramento, reported feeling their homes shake. The cause of the fire was under investigation. Law enforcement officials declined to say whether anyone had been hurt or killed. KCRA | CBS News
9.
The Fresno authorities on Tuesday arrested a man accused of five cold-case rapes after DNA linked him to the attacks, officials said. Using DNA evidence from the crimes, genealogical investigators first tracked down a distant relative of the suspect, who was later identified as Cesar Flores, 55. None of the victims, attacked between 2016 and 2021, were known to Flores, said Police Chief Mindy Casto. “This is one of the days that you live for,” she said of the arrest. FOX26 | Fresno Bee
10.
In the late 1960s, Nacio Jan Brown was a photographer living in Berkeley in search of a project. While hanging out on Telegraph Avenue one day, the idea came to him: This, right here. At the time, the thoroughfare was at peak hippiedom, swarming with shaggy, barefooted young people in beads and bell bottoms. Brown’s photos, published in the volume “Rag Theater: The 2400 Block of Telegraph Avenue 1969-1973,” became a classic of street photography. Flashbak revisited the project.
- See more images from “Rag Theater.”
Southern California
11.
Hidden behind a foothill on the northwest edge of Los Angeles County is the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, one of America’s largest repositories of municipal waste. Nearby residents say the stench alternates between something akin to rotten eggs and a mysterious chemical sweetness. But it’s not just the smell that haunts them. Though they can’t be sure of the cause, residents have stories of cancers, autoimmune disorders, and heart problems that seemed to come out of nowhere. Bloomberg wrote about “America’s hot garbage problem.”
12.
After a construction project of five years and $720 million, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art invited journalists to tour its massive new gallery for the first time. The plans for the Brutalist structure had engendered strong reactions. One architect compared it to a freeway overpass; another described it as an “amoebic pancake.” After attending the reception last Thursday, critic Christopher Knight was struck by the copiousness of a single building material. “Chances are you’ve never seen so much concrete in one place,” he wrote. L.A. Times | The Guardian
- See photos of the new gallery. 👉 dezeen
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