All of the must-read news about the Golden State in one place.
Hi, I’m Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times. I survey more than 100 news and social media sites daily, then send you a tightly crafted email with only the most informative and delightful bits.
Each weekday at about 6 a.m., you’ll get an email like this.
Good morning. It’s Thursday, Nov. 6.
- Republicans sue to stop gerrymander on bias grounds.
- A harrowing helicopter rescue on Yosemite’s El Capitan.
- And striking photos from a 1970s L.A. mental hospital.
Election 2025
1.
“This whole process was a sham.”
The California Republican Party sued to halt the redistricting of California’s congressional districts on Wednesday, a day after voters overwhelmingly approved new maps that could flip as many as five House seats for Democrats. The lawsuit argues that the state Legislature violated the Constitution by choosing district boundaries “based on race, specifically to favor Hispanic voters.” Its prospects appeared doubtful. Earlier Republican litigation failed to block the measure from reaching the ballot. N.Y. Times | Politico
2.
Most of California’s nine House Republicans are now in a fight for their political life. Incumbents must decide whether to vie for districts redrawn to favor Democrats or challenge their GOP colleagues in the few Republican-leaning districts that remain. In Southern California, Republican Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim confirmed Wednesday that they would face one another in the newly drawn 40th district. Rob Stutzman, a political strategist, likened the situation to a game of musical chairs. “And a bunch of chairs just got taken away,” he said. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
- See how your district shifted left or right. 👉 L.A. Times
3.
While California Democrats are in a celebratory mood after their ballot romp on Tuesday, election experts warned that the nation’s gerrymandering war amounts to a crisis with few parallels in American history. Democracy itself is threatened, they said. “The wheels are coming off the car right now,” said Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied gerrymandering. “There’s a sense in which the system is rapidly spiraling downward, and there’s no end in sight.” N.Y. Times
- The L.A. Times’ Mark Z. Barabak: “If Proposition 50 plays out as intended, it could make things worse, heightening the country’s polarization and increasing the animosity in Washington that is rotting our government and politics from the inside out.”
Statewide
4.
“There’ll be frustration.”
Federal Aviation Administration announced plans Wednesday to cut 10% of flight traffic at the nation’s 40 busiest airports to ease pressure on air traffic controllers who are working unpaid during the government shutdown. The reductions would begin Friday at airports expected to include the international hubs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Analysts warned about the potential for major disruptions during the Veterans Day weekend. Democrats expressed skepticism that the move was motivated solely by safety concerns. S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times
5.
When a climber cracked his arm on Yosemite’s El Capitan on Oct. 20, rescuers had to pull of a one-of-a-kind maneuver to save him. Derek Strittmatter was stranded on a ledge more than 2,000 feet above the valley floor. Unable to approach from directly above, a helicopter hovered about 20 feet from the cliff face. Hanging from a cable below, a rescuer then tossed a rope to Strittmatter’s partner on the ledge who attached it to an anchor, allowing the rescuer to pull himself over. Strittmatter, loopy from pain meds, remembers little of what followed. “The next thing I knew,” he said, “they reeled me up.” S.F. Chronicle
- Watch video of Strittmatter being pulled from the wall. 👉 Facebook
Northern California
6.
The Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen hated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a regulatory body that he once said exists to “terrorize financial institutions.” Those institutions included eight companies seeded by Andreessen’s firm that ended up in the CFPB’s crosshairs. So Andreessen, a longtime Democrat, backed Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, donating more than $5 million to groups supporting his candidacy. It paid off, ProPublica reported: The CFPB was hollowed out, lawsuits were dropped, and virtually all investigations were closed.
7.
The development of artificial intelligence seems to have created two reactions from society, one dismissive and the other enthralled. James Somers, a writer and computer programmer, was initially in the former group. Then he began using AI in his work. His conversion was swift, as he learned to use models to accomplish in an evening what used to take a month. Somers wrote an excellent piece on “thinking” AI and the new world that appears to be dawning. New Yorker
8.
The Golden Gate Bridge is gorgeous from any angle. The photographer Joseph Gulizia captured the picture above from Fort Point, located on the southern side of of the span. The 318-foot steel arch, sometimes called “the bridge within the bridge” was added to the main suspension section of the span to the allow the preservation of the Civil War-era brick fortress nestled below. Visitors to Fort Point get history, along with stunning views of the bay and the underside of what some boosters have called America’s Parthenon.
Southern California
9.
On Oct. 30, the Los Angeles Police Department informed a local news publication that its request for crime data was being denied. Explaining the decision, the department said the information “has the potential to lead to misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic.” David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said he had never heard anything like it: “The problem with that argument is it would violate — it would destroy — the entire public records act.” LAist
10.
A scholarship for Black students at UC San Diego is now available to anyone, regardless of race, after a student and a right-leaning nonprofit sued on discrimination grounds. Lawyers employed a novel strategy, invoking the federal Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was enacted to protect Black Americans in the South. The scholarship, they argued, violated the law’s promise of equal protection. Opponents of the litigation said it flipped the purpose of the law on its head to counter diversity efforts at UC San Diego, where 3% of undergraduates are Black. Washington Post
11.
A $7 billion master-planned community in San Bernardino County is expected to create upward of 15,000 homes over the next two decades. Homes in Silverwood are currently priced from the low $400,000s, less than half of the statewide median. But there’s a catch: Homebuyers must sign a pledge vowing, in short, not to be a jerk. Among the stipulations: “Embrace listening to others, even when we disagree,” and “Seek to exclude words that hurt and divide.” dwell
12.
In 1979, the photographer Merrick Morton won a California state grant to take pictures at a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles. The project was intended to last a few weeks and produce marketing materials that could be used to recruit volunteers to spend time with the patients. But Morton was issued a passkey that allowed him to visit on weekends, when administrators weren’t around. He kept shooting, secretly, for more than a year. PetaPixel published a series of remarkable images from the project.
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