Good morning. It’s Friday, Jan. 31.
- The farmers who love President Trump’s water orders.
- Immigrant communities “in hiding” over raid fears.
- And FireAid benefit concert brings the love for L.A.
Statewide
1.

President Trump cast his recent water orders as a response to Los Angeles’ wildfires. The real target, wrote Bloomberg, appears to be the typically Republican farmers in the Central Valley who stand to benefit from his order to pump more water from the California Delta. “It’s a game changer,” said William Bourdeau, executive vice president at Harris Farms, a grower of almonds and pistachios. He hosted a fundraiser for now-Vice President JD Vance last summer at his company’s resort. “He was very receptive,” Bourdeau said of Vance. Bloomberg
2.
Artificial intelligence appears to be bringing nuclear power back from the dead. Technology companies are so desperate for ways to power energy-hogging technology that some state lawmakers are pushing to suspend a moratorium on new plants or extend the life of Diablo Canyon, the last nuclear plant in California. Maureen Zawalick, an executive with Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates the plant, demurred when asked if she expects Diablo Canyon to stay open: “But we will be ready, is what I say. And we’re planning to be.” CalMatters
3.
Fear of immigration raids has become so widespread that people are avoiding schools, businesses, and churches, the New York Times reported:
“At the Park Plaza Barber Shop in Los Angeles, there was only one customer at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday. Ordinarily, most or all 10 chairs would be occupied, with more patrons waiting, said the owner, José Anguino. But in a neighborhood flush with immigrants, many were lying low, he said. ‘Everyone is terrified, and they don’t want to spend money because they don’t know what could be coming,’ said Mr. Anguino, who has owned the business for three decades.”
4.
The population of monarch butterflies that migrate to coastal California trees every winter has plummeted again, according to figures from an annual count released on Thursday. Xerces Society recorded just 9,119 of the iconic orange butterflies at more than 250 surveyed sites this season. In the 1980s, they numbered in the millions. The National Wildlife Federation said the species has a 98% to 99% probability of extinction within 60 years. KQED | SGATE
Northern California
5.
Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors this week invited a “chemtrails” activist, Dane Wigington, to make a presentation on the conspiracy theory that malign forces are secretly spraying chemicals from airplanes to murky, nefarious ends. There’s no evidence to support the theory, but it has attracted a sizable following in Shasta County. The board also voted to extend the work of an “elections commission” that critics say is nothing more than a forum for election denialism. Record Searchlight
6.

The Oakland Zoo is caring for three mountain lion cubs that were found hiding under a vehicle in the Bay Area’s Portola Valley after their mother was fatally hit by a car. They are believed to be about three months old and are “thin but relatively healthy,” zoo officials said. They are also very adorable. The veterinarians named them Fern, Thistle, and Spruce. KRON | CBS News Bay Area
- See video of the cubs getting checkups. 👉 @oaklandzoo
Southern California
7.

Los Angeles’ fire disaster has left neighborhoods brimming with toxic chemicals and harmful substances, owing in part to an estimated 1,000 fire-damaged, lithium-ion car batteries — perhaps the most ever damaged by a wildfire. Yet two weeks after the blazes, residents are often returning to their properties without protective gear. “It’s exactly what happened with the Twin Towers,” said Jane Williams, a pollution prevention advocate. “This is the disaster after the disaster. Tens of thousands of people will go back to their properties, and most of them will not wear masks.” L.A. Times
8.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with the UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain about California’s wildfire future. Some people believe, Swain said, that we can conquer the danger by strengthening our firefighting forces. That may be true up to a point. But Los Angeles, where record dryness combined with ferocious winds, demonstrated the limits of what we can do, Swain said: “It’s hard to conceive of conditions like this if you’ve never personally experienced them. They are so extreme that there is a genuine limit on the physics of extinguishing combustion.”
9.

“This is California and we are all in this together!”
The FireAid benefit concert had a lot of people feeling the love for Los Angeles on Thursday as musicians played their biggest hits in a lineup so extensive that it was held in two separate arenas — the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome.
A few highlight video clips:
- Gracie Abrams, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, sang “I Love You, I’m Sorry.”
- Stevie Nicks sang “Landslide.”
- Dr. Dre made a surprise appearance and busted out “Still D.R.E.”
- Rod Stewart performed “Maggie May.”
- Earth, Wind and Fire did their classic “September.”
- Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, together for the first time in nearly a decade, sang “Teach Your Children.”
10.
Jim Newton, a veteran Los Angeles journalist who spent 25 years at the Los Angeles Times, wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review about the increasingly outspoken owner of his former paper, Patrick Soon-Shiong.
“It is, to state the obvious, impossible to imagine [former Times owners] Harrison Gray Otis or Harry Chandler, whatever the depths of their interests or the drive each possessed for riches and influence, behaving as childishly as Soon-Shiong has during these fires. The city is struggling. His staff is performing nobly. He’s shrieking and posting false claims on X.”
11.

Millions of years ago, a sliver of land tore away from the western edge of North America to open up the Gulf of California, whose waters flooded as far north as what is now Palm Springs. The ancestral Colorado River, meanwhile, carved gorges as large as the Grand Canyon en route to the gulf, where it formed a vast delta. Over time, the sea withdrew, and the region transitioned into the desert landscape we know today.
It’s this marine history that makes places like the Carrizo Badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park one of California’s most wondrous geological areas. It’s remote, so hardly anyone goes there. But those who do encounter a labyrinth of canyons and hills so dense with ancient oyster and clam shells that it’s easy to imagine yourself standing on the bottom of an ocean. Regulars recommend a hike to the colorful Elephant Knees butte, pictured above. DesertUSA | American Southwest
In case you missed it
12.

Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep come equipped with spongy pads on the bottoms of their hooves — nature’s equivalent to the grippy rubber of a climbing shoe. The adaptation, along with powerful muscles and a low center of gravity, allows them to glide along steep rocky terrain in the high Sierra. Yosemite National Park released a video with some fantastic shots of the animals in motion. 👉 YouTube (~9 mins)
- People posted some pretty images of snow-covered Southern California after a recent storm. A sampling:
- The quaint mountain town of Julian.
- Snowy scenes in Joshua Tree National Park.
- A mother eagle protecting her eggs in Big Bear Valley.
- The whitened San Gabriel Mountains.
- Authors and poets have described the experience of seeing an ancient redwood as perspective-shifting, confronting us with our smallness. It’s relatively easy to find redwoods in the Bay Area. “But one must really seek out old-growth for that walk back into the well of time,” wrote Bay Nature. The magazine offered seven recommendations.
- Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor recently returned to the rubble of their burned Altadena home to see what was salvageable. But McShea harbored a secret hope: to find an engagement ring he bought just before the wildfire. He found it. Already on his knee, he proposed on the spot. KABC.
- Zeke Lunder, a veteran wildfire and fuels-management expert, used historic fire maps to show how parts of Malibu have burned nine times in 90 years. “Crazy,” he said of wanting to rebuild there. “It’s crazy.” YouTube (~2 mins)
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
Make a one-time contribution to the California Sun.
Give a subscription as a gift.
Get a California Sun mug, T-shirt, phone case, hat, or hoodie.
Forward this email to a friend.
Click here to stop delivery, and here to update your billing information. To change your email address please email me: mike@californiasun.co. (Note: Unsubscribing here does not cancel payments. To do that click here.)
The California Sun, PO Box 6868, Los Osos, CA 93412
Wake up to must-read news from around the Golden State delivered to your inbox each morning.