Good morning. It’s Thursday, Oct. 15.
- Utilities cut power in anticipation of fire conditions.
- Rob Bonta denounces ultimatum on noncitizen voters.
- And the sandhill cranes return to the Central Valley.
Statewide
1.
“The whole SoCal region should really be on alert.”
Utilities were preparing to possibly cut power to more than 345,000 California homes and businesses between Thursday and Saturday as fire conditions enveloped the state. Forecasters said dry winds would coincide with hot temperatures and low humidity, threatening to turn any spark into a conflagration. The most extreme conditions were expected along a corridor from Los Angeles to the Central Coast, Northern California’s wine country, and the entire Sierra Nevada, which all faced red flag warnings. Fox Weather | A.P. | Bloomberg
- See a map of red flag warnings.
2.
“We’re seeing very few people out in the streets.”
An immigration crackdown has cast a pall of fear across the agricultural communities of the San Joaquin Valley. School attendance is down, fewer workers are showing up to farm sites, and street life has quieted, officials say. There’s also rage. It was on display last Thursday in Kerman, where the city’s mayor angrily confronted ICE agents as they arrested people outside a bakery in a clash captured on video. “I was standing there as a mother, as a daughter of farmworkers,” Maria Pacheco later recalled. “This could have been my abuelito.” L.A. Times | Fresno Bee
3.
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, denounced a demand by the Justice Department to prove the U.S. citizenship of thousands of registered voters or set their ballots aside. During a press conference on Wednesday, Bonta said President Trump was spreading false narratives about voter fraud. “During an election, he now comes forward and purports to suggest that there are ineligible voters on the rolls in California,” he said. Bonta declined to address how the state would respond, but said: “Will we be engaging in conspiracy theories? We will not.” KQED | A.P.
- The Department of Justice sent L.A. officials a list of suspected noncitizen voters on a password-protected thumb drive along with a password written “on a sticky note.” They declined to open it. A.P.
4.
Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman, estimated that he has lost at least 20% of his donor base after coming out in favor of California’s proposed billionaire tax. Billionaires, he argued, have failed to recognize that the tax is actually in their best interest. A one-time 5% fee on total assets is a modest price if it helps blunt the mounting populist rage directed at billionaires, he said, adding: “Mamdani or the next generation want your heads. They are coming with pitchforks.” N.Y. Times Magazine
Northern California
5.
Weeks before election day in the fall of 2022, a candidate for Oakland mayor, Sheng Thao, met with a businessman named Mario Juarez and struck a deal. He would arrange a negative ad campaign against Thao’s political rivals and, if she won, pay her partner $300,000 for a no-show job. In exchange, Thao would steer contracts toward the businessman’s partners. “We may go to jail … but we are $100 million dollars richer,” Juarez later texted. Those are the facts as alleged by prosecutors during the opening arguments of Thao’s corruption trial on Wednesday. N.Y. Times | KQED
6.
After Berkeley High School’s yearbook included a photo of a student holding a sign that read “October 7 was a response, not an attack,” a district investigation found that it was permissible on free-speech grounds. The California Department of Education disagrees. Last week, the state held that the photo created a “discriminatory environment” for Jewish students and ordered the yearbook’s advisers to undergo antisemitism training. It was the fourth time in recent months that the state has faulted the district’s handling of issues related to turmoil in the Middle East. Berkeleyside
7.
Mychal Threets, the Solano County librarian who became a social media star for his infectious videos on the joys of the library, seemed to be riding high. Last year, he was named the new host of “Reading Rainbow,” the classic PBS series. But in August, Threets revealed that he had undergone a five-day psychiatric hold. On Sunday, he shared a troubling video update: “People keep on saying, ‘Mychal, I’m glad to see you’re doing well. I’m glad to see you’re OK,’” he said. “But I’m not doing well.” He went on: “I believe I am running out of time. I don’t know how much time I have left.” L.A. Times
8.
Sandhill crane season has arrived in the Central Valley. Each fall, thousands of the gangly birds with 6-foot wingspans and red-crowned heads gather for the winter in the farm fields, feasting on grains and seeds. Then there is the dancing. Sandhill cranes form pair bonds for life, and they leap, bow, and toss sticks in the air in elaborate courtship displays. The Stockton Record published a nice gallery on the cranes at a reserve near Lodi.
9.
More than a century after the Gold Rush, the naturalist John Olmsted was challenged by friend to “find me a level wilderness trail where I can reach out and touch the wildflowers from my wheelchair.” Olmsted rallied volunteers to repurpose an old hydraulic mining canal near the Sierra’s South Yuba River, completing the nation’s first wheelchair-accessible wilderness trail in 1982. Tragically, a 2020 wildfire did significant damage to the 4.7-mile Independence Trail, limiting its accessible portion to roughly a mile. But just as they did in Olmsted’s day, volunteers have been working to build the trail again. The Trailmaster | The Union
- See a short video with views along the Independence Trail.
Southern California
10.
President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, describes herself as a lawyer, and the president called her “an attorney.” But she hasn’t passed the bar exam in the U.S. Zacharia, who graduated from law school at Pepperdine University, took California’s bar exam, but didn’t pass, a source told the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, a nonpartisan watchdog asked the State Bar of California to open an investigation. “In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery,” the group wrote. “It’s a crime.” A.P. | UPI
11.
A judge on Wednesday sentenced a San Bernardino City Council member to 30 days in jail after she was convicted of surreptitiously recording a conversation with the city’s police chief. The lawmaker, Treasure Ortiz, had accused the police chief of searching a law enforcement database for damaging information about her. But prosecutors focused instead on Ortiz’s effort to incriminate using a recording device without permission. Ortiz is defiant. She says she did nothing wrong and has rejected demands to step down. San Bernardino Sun
12.
On Saturday night, a pair of blinding spotlights appeared to shine down from the mountains near Mt. Whitney in the Eastern Sierra, alarming locals. Cayden Thompson and a friend drove toward the lights to investigate and encountered a technician who warned them to stay back. The lights were so powerful they could be burned, the person told them. But it turned out that were part of an experiment by a California startup with an audacious plan to illuminate the earth at night using giant mirrors in space. S.F. Chronicle
Get your California Sun T-shirts, phone cases, hoodies, hats, and totes!
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.