Good morning. It’s Monday, April 27.
- Shock after Californian accused in D.C. shooting.
- Controversial measures headed to November ballot.
- And San Francisco embraces sea lion named Chonkers.
Statewide
1.
Californians will get a chance to weigh in on voter ID this fall. Election officials announced Friday that a Republican-backed proposal to require photo identification at polling places had gathered enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot. Voter ID measures are broadly popular among the public, despite the exceedingly rare incidence of voter fraud. Even in deep-blue California, 54% of voters said they favor requiring government-issued ID each time one casts a ballot, a 2025 UC Berkeley poll found. CalMatters | L.A. Times
2.
Voters are also expected to get the chance to decide whether to impose a new tax on billionaires. The labor union pushing the measure said on Sunday that it had mustered more than enough signatures to make the November ballot. Polls have shown public support surpassing 50%, but barely. Wall Street Journal | L.A. Times
- “In a treehouse nestled in redwoods north of San Francisco, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood cold and hungry as Sergey Brin, the world’s fourth-richest man, and his wellness-influencer girlfriend told him they were leaving the state.” Bloomberg chronicled how California’s ultrawealthy mobilized vast resources to fight the tax proposal.
3.
A vineyard tycoon from the San Joaquin Valley was fatally gored by an elephant while on a hunting expedition in Gabon on April 17, reports said over the weekend. An avid big game hunter, Ernie Dosio, 75, had amassed an extensive collection of hunting trophies over the years, including elephants and lions. He was hunting yellow-backed duikers, an antelope species, when a small herd of elephants charged toward Dosio’s hunting party, killing him and seriously injuring a guide. N.Y. Times | The Guardian
4.
Eric Swalwell may have left the House in disgrace, but taxpayers are still set to fund his pension. Lawmakers who serve in Congress more than five years are eligible for pensions; Swalwell, who has denied rape accusations, served more than 13. A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill last week that would nullify the benefit for lawmakers convicted of certain crimes. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, one of the lawmakers behind the effort, said it was “baffling” that a lawmaker who commits a crime while in office would still get a taxpayer-funded pension. Washington Post
5.
Two brothers were hiking along a snowy Sierra crest on April 16 when one of them tumbled 500 feet down a slope, landing hard on a granite ledge and breaking multiple bones. His brother climbed down to him, but there was no way they were hiking out together. They were stranded on a tiny outcropping on a steep mountainside at 12,400 feet. Their rescue was “one of the most challenging the helicopter aircrew had ever performed in the High Sierra,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle.
Northern California
6.
At Stanford, investors hang out at campus cafes while venture-capital firms hire upperclassmen as talent scouts. Teenage students are sometimes handed “pre-idea funding” in the six figures before they even have a company in mind. Steve Blank, who teaches a course on start-ups at the school, said students have always dreamed big. With the rise of artificial intelligence and its promise of vast riches, they are now are being groomed to rule the world. Today, Blank told the Atlantic, “Stanford is an incubator with dorms.”
7.
About a month ago, a 2,000-pound Steller sea lion swam up to a floating docks at Pier 39 in San Francisco and decided to stay. People noticed immediately: The giant specimen is about three times the size of his California sea lion dockmates, which are a different species. When he flies out of the water and lands on the dock, it sounds like a tree crashing down. Fans proliferated, and someone on Reddit proposed a name, which stuck. The Wall Street Journal told the story of the giant sea lion known as Chonkers.
8.
Late last year, a photo archivist named David Gallagher was offered a box of old negatives dating back to early 1900s. He was blown away when he saw them. The rare pictures depicted a bygone San Francisco captured by Samuel Crow, a talented photographer who worked for a news bureau for years. “They’re technically excellent,” Gallagher said. “But they capture a casualness and humanity that you very rarely see in posed portraits of that era.” Now the public can see many of the photos, which Gallagher has spent months digitizing. S.F. Chronicle | San Francisco Story
- See more than 500 of the Crow photos. 👉 SFMemory.org
Southern California
9.
The man accused of opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday was a 31-year-old graduate of Caltech from Torrance who worked as a video game designer and a part-time teacher, reports said. Cole Allen had checked into the Washington Hilton, where the journalism gala was taking place, the authorities said. Heavily armed, he barreled through security at a full sprint before being subdued. He never made it into the ballroom. The only person shot was a Secret Service agent who was saved by a bulletproof vest. Washington Post | L.A. Times
- Classmates and acquaintances of Allen reacted with shock:
- “Even for Caltech, he was a little autistic.”
- “Soft-spoken, very polite, a good fellow.”
- “He seemed like a completely average guy.”
- “He didn’t do normal interactions.”
- “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.” Read Allen’s manifesto.
10.
The waters near Southern California beaches are known to be a nursery grounds for juvenile great white sharks. But fully grown adults travel the coast too. The popular marine-life drone photographer Carlos Gauna recently shared incredible video of large great whites cruising past some of the busiest beaches in Los Angeles. “I’m finding more sharks of this size closer to the shore,” he said. But they don’t appear to linger, he added. “The adults are often just passing through.” The Inertia
- Warmer ocean temperatures are expected to produce a “sharky summer,” said Chris Lowe, director of the Long Beach Shark Lab. O.C. Register
11.
Jake Reiner wrote a heart-wrenching essay about what it has been like to lose his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, four months after they were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home:
“We lost more than half of our family that night in the most violent way imaginable. Sure, any loss of a parent is devastating, but nothing compares to losing both of them at the same time and, on top of that, having your brother be at the center of it. It’s almost too impossible to process.”
12.
In Ojai, nestled at the foot of the Topatopa Mountains 15 miles from the sea, the sunsets are pink and the air is fragrant with the smell of citrus. In recent years, the city of 7,500 people has seen an influx of creative people along with new restaurants and hotels. T Magazine collected recommendations from four insiders on where to eat, sleep, shop, and explore in Ojai.
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