Good morning. It’s Tuesday, July 22.
- The stunning popularity of San Francisco’s mayor.
- Peacock heist rocks hotel on the California Delta.
- And the incredible work of San Diego’s Toupee Queen.
Statewide
1.
The Pentagon said on Monday that it is withdrawing the roughly 700 Marines it deployed to Los Angeles after rowdy anti-ICE protests in the second week of June. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the military presence, which has involved standing guard outside two federal buildings and accompanying ICE agents on raids, “sent a clear message: lawlessness will not be tolerated.” The deployment was the first of its kind without a governor’s consent in 60 years. It was “a joke from Day 1,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
- Roughly 2,000 National Guard troops remain in Los Angeles. They are said to be bored. L.A. Times
2.
More on the deportation crackdown:
- In the 1960s, as politicians blamed migrants for taking jobs and draining public aid, Congress cut off the pathway for farmworkers from Mexico to cross the border. They were convinced that unemployed Americans would fill the jobs. “They did not. The fields of unpicked produce began rotting,” wrote the Washington Post.
- While the Trump administration insists there will be “no amnesty” for workers in country illegally, Republican lawmakers are quietly advocating on behalf of migrants in their own districts. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, of California’s rural far north, said “having people be able to work” is a major concern for his colleagues. NOTUS
- California on Monday joined a coalition of states in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for barring undocumented immigrants from federal programs such as Head Start, a preschool program for low-income children. California’s attorney general called the restrictions “cruel, but unfortunately unsurprising.” L.A. Times
3.
As California’s wildfire season intensifies, the nation’s largest wildland firefighting force has been hobbled by the departure of roughly 5,000 employees, or 15% of its workforce, more than a dozen active and retired U.S. Forest Service employees said. In some cases, firefighters have been shifted to administrative jobs to plug gaps left by job losses, answering phones and cleaning toilets, one fire duty officer said. Another crew leader said her team ran short of supplies and went hungry for several days after support staff quit. Reuters
Northern California
4.
Six months into the tenure of Mayor Daniel Lurie, San Franciscans are remarkably happy with the job he is doing. According to a new poll, 73% of residents approve of his performance. That’s a complete reversal from a year earlier, when 71% of residents disapproved of the job former Mayor London Breed was doing. The poll result appeared to vindicate an approach that has distinguished Lurie from other California leaders: he’s barely said a word about national politics, focusing instead on local issues. S.F. Chronicle
5.
In 2018, a sick parakeet was found on a fire escape in San Francisco and transported to the parrot rescue group Mickaboo. Seven years later, the parakeet now known as Billy is still in the hospital, with no plans for release. His bills have cost more than $80,000. San Franciscans love their colorful wild parrots. But Mickaboo’s roughly 600 volunteers have grown bitterly divided over whether the group is taking their care of the birds too far. A faction of former volunteers has asked the California Department of Justice to get involved. S.F. Chronicle
6.
For at least a generation, colorful peacocks have wandered the grounds of the historic Ryde Hotel on the banks of the California Delta. But over recent days, workers began to notice fewer of them. By Sunday, only four of the birds usually numbering in the dozens could be found on the hotel grounds. One guest reported seeing two men shoving a peacock into a cage and loading it into a truck on Saturday. “The entire staff is pretty devastated,” said David Nielsen, the hotel’s general manager. Police are investigating the missing peacocks as a felony theft. KCRA | L.A. Times
7.
OpenAI’s chatbot convinced a 30-year-old man on the autism spectrum that he had achieved the ability to bend time. In May, after Jacob Irwin ended up hospitalized for manic episodes, his mother read through his chat logs in search of answers. There were hundreds of pages.
“She basically said I was acting crazy all day talking to ‘myself,’” Irwin wrote of his mother at one point.
ChatGPT assured him: “She thought you were spiraling. You were ascending.” Wall Street Journal
8.
John Myers spent most of his adult life teaching law, including a decade at UC Law San Francisco. He was a karate instructor in his 50s and a race car driver in his 60s. Now 78, he recently began his latest job: police officer. Believed to be California’s oldest police recruit ever, Myers was hired to work the overnight shift at the University of the Pacific. “This is the last thing on my bucket list,” he told KCRA.
9.
Meet Trevor Mustafa, world beard champion and pride of Sacramento.
At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in Pittsburgh this month, the 44-year-old took top honors in the “Full Beard Natural — 20-30 cm” category. Mustafa recalled how, early in his beard journey, the man in the mirror looked scary. Then he started getting compliments. People told him he could become a champion. Still, he didn’t expect to hear his name called in Pittsburgh, he said. “I’m still kind of in shock.” Sacramento Bee
Southern California
10.
The three L.A. County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad technicians killed in an explosion last Friday had X-rayed grenades found in a Santa Monica apartment a day earlier and thought they were inert, law enforcement sources said. The lawmen cut into the ordnance as part of a training exercise, triggering a powerful explosion, a source said. Investigators on Monday were trying to determine how the grenades ended up in a garage storage unit in the first place. KTLA | L.A. Times
11.
“We don’t have a script for this.”
Mary, a mother of two in Santa Ana, had schizophrenia. Then suddenly she didn’t. After decades of inhabiting a world of imagined listening devices, hidden cameras, and body doubles, her symptoms lifted after taking drugs that dampen immune activity to treat a cancer diagnosis. The New Yorker told the incredible story of one family reckoning with the strange reality of life for the newly sane.
12.
Emily Cheney, a 25-year-old hairdresser in downtown San Diego, is single-handedly destigmatizing the word toupee. Others have tried rebranding toupees as hair systems. Cheney goes by the moniker the Toupee Queen on TikTok and Instagram, where 1.4 million people follow her posts. Her customers, most of whom are men in their late 20s, have another name for her: miracle worker. N.Y. Times
- See one of Cheney’s transformations.
Correction
An earlier version of this newsletter misstated how many peacocks remained on the grounds of a California Delta hotel following a heist of the birds. Only four could be found, not all but four from a group usually numbering in the dozens.
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.