Good morning. It’s Tuesday, July 29.
- Appeals court questions legality of immigration raids.
- Life in the Bay Area’s most affordable neighborhood.
- And pranksters offer cart service on BART train.
Statewide
1.
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday sharply questioned a Trump administration lawyer, Yaakov Roth, about the constitutionality of immigration sweeps in Southern California. “It appears that they are randomly selecting Home Depots where people are standing looking for jobs and car washes because they’re car washes,” Judge Marsha S. Berzon said. “Is your argument that it’s OK that it’s happening, or is your argument that it’s not happening?” Roth sidestepped the question. Politico | L.A. Times
2.
“We are hard-working people. We don’t come here to take anyone’s jobs.”
“When we go to the store to get groceries, we have the feeling that someone is following us.”
“We live day to day with this fear.”
The Guardian spoke to more than a half-dozen Spanish-speaking farmworkers in the Salinas Valley about the psychological toll of President Trump’s mass deportation program. The Guardian
3.
Artificial intelligence is already upending the job market for new college graduates. While unemployment rates remained roughly flat for young adults with only high school degrees between 2018 and 2025, it surged for the same cohort with bachelor’s degrees or higher, an analysis found. The trend appears to be more stark at large tech companies. Wall Street Journal
- Aircraft mechanics and massage therapists appear safe; translators and software developers, not so much. Anthropic analyzed how more than 700 professions might fare in the AI age. Look up yours. 👉 Washington Post
4.
Pink legs, midnight black feathers, a red-orange beak, and bright yellow eyes bordered with red. Few birds are as distinctive as the black oystercatcher, a native of the Pacific Coast shoreline. Their almost glowing beaks make them a favorite among nature lovers, but they are not just for show. The color signals vitality to mates and rivals, and their chisel-like strength makes oystercatchers one of the only birds that can pry open large mollusks.
- “Stranger the longer that you look at it.” Here’s a nice video on the charismatic ways of the black oystercatcher. 👉 YouTube (~6 mins)
Northern California
5.
In Richmond’s Atchison Village, homes are arrayed around shared courtyards, where neighbors host barbecues and call each other over to chat. Front yards have fruit trees and rose bushes. Children commonly wander unattended between their homes and a park with a baseball field and a playground. The typical home price: just $211,000. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about life in the Bay Area’s most affordable neighborhood.
- Home sales have stagnated in California, causing some sellers to cut prices and others to back out of the market. Bay Area News Group | CalMatters
6.
Balcony solar took off years ago in Germany, with millions of draped solar panels now helping to power homes. Also known as plug-in solar, the panels cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000 and can plug into an outlet that flows right into the home. But the U.S. has been slow to update the standards and regulations that would allow for similarly wide adoption. In California, where the technology exists in a regulatory gray area, people have started adding them anyway. KQED checked out a homeowner’s new rig in the Berkeley Hills.
7.
Ten Caltrans employees were handed termination notices after a retirement party held on company property featured alcohol and a stripper, a report said. According to one anonymous source, employees were throwing money at the stripper before the July 10 party was broken up by a supervisor who arrived unexpectedly. The agency said in a statement: “Caltrans takes these allegations with the utmost seriousness and is unwavering in holding those involved accountable.” KSBW
8.
A group of pranksters dressed as flight attendants handed out snacks and hand wipes to passengers on a BART train, according to videos shared on social media in recent days. A sign on their cart read “BART air.” Commenters, pretty much universally delighted, pleaded for more of the same. “I love whatever’s wrong with them,” one person wrote.
- See videos. 👉 @jessicagoesgirl | @natali_not_natalie
Southern California
9.
Los Algodones, a city just over the Mexican border along the southeastern corner of California, has the highest per-capita concentration of dentists in the world. In a town of fewer than 6,000 residents, hundreds of dentists have set up shop, catering to Americans who can’t afford U.S. dental care. People arrive to Los Algodones on bicycles, in wheelchairs, and leaning on canes, the New Yorker wrote: “It has no cathedral, shrine, or holy well, yet it draws more than a million pilgrims every year.”
10.
Wallis Annenberg, the publishing heiress who oversaw more than $3 billion in giving to causes including the arts, science, and education, died on at her home in Los Angeles. Annenberg supported projects around the world, but directed much of her giving to Southern California, where the Annenberg Foundation is located. “I’ve never had a problem using the Annenberg name,” she once told Vanity Fair. “That’s who I am, and I’m happy to be that. I’m very proud of it. But I want to be worthy.” Annenberg was 86. N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
11.
Los Angeles’s Vidiots, a holdover from the VHS rental era, is still going strong years after Blockbuster faded into obscurity. It shut down for a few years starting in 2017 but has staged an unlikely comeback as a community hub. Racks still carry some 60,000 DVDs and Blu-rays for rent, organized by director or genre. But customers also come for daily screenings and community events. The store’s director, Maggie Mackay, compared the experience to streaming at home: “Frankly, it’s way more fun,” she said. N.Y. Times
12.
Tesla’s retro-futuristic diner opened in Hollywood last week to lines of eager fans of the electric car company. But the opening, located in a neighborhood where Donald Trump lost by a margin of more than 50 percentage points in 2024, has been predictably contentious. Protesters erected inflatable figures of the Tesla CEO Elon Musk giving a Nazi salute in front of the diner over the weekend. KABC
- Tesla recently logged its seventh straight quarter of declining sales in California. Analysts said Musk’s polarizing embrace of Trumpism was a factor. Reuters | Bloomberg
Correction
An earlier version of this newsletter gave the wrong location for a video store. Vidiots is in Los Angeles, not Santa Monica.
The California Sun, PO Box 6868, Los Osos, CA 93412
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