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 Friday, Feb. 13.
- California adds new protections for mountain lions.
- Alarm bells grow louder over artificial intelligence.
- And Trump administration targets Apple on news bias.
Please note: The newsletter will pause for Presidents Day. Back on Tuesday.
Statewide
1.
California wildlife regulators voted Thursday to designate six mountain lion populations from the Santa Cruz Mountains to Southern California as threatened species. In some areas, where habitat fragmentation has led to inbreeding, the cougars face local extinction within decades, said Tiffany Yap, a conservation scientist. “Particularly in the Santa Anas and the Santa Monicas, we have records and data that show a mountain lion is mating with his daughter and then his granddaughter,” she said. “It’s horrible.” S.F. Chronicle | L.A. Times
2.
A federal judge on Thursday blocked a Trump administration plan to claw back roughly $600 million in public health funds from California and three other states led by Democrats. The Department of Health and Human Services had moved to cancel grants on the grounds that they “do not reflect agency priorities.” In reality, ruled Judge Manish S. Shah, the cuts were “based on arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales.” California has prevailed in the vast majority of the more than 50 lawsuits it has brought against the administration since January 2025. N.Y. Times
3.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Scott Eden, the author of “A Killing in Cannabis.” The New York Times called the book “an exhilarating, deeply reported true-crime murder mystery and love story that moves like a Netflix thriller.” Tech bros, Eden said, “thought they would be able to dominate this industry that had heretofore been controlled by outlaws and hippie do-gooders.” For one entrepreneur, his gamble ended with him being shot execution-style on his own property, hands bound.
Northern California
4.
Alarm bells about the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence rang especially loud this week. Anthropic researcher Mrinank Sharma said he was quitting his job to write poetry. “The world,” he warned, “is in peril.” Hieu Pham, an OpenAI researcher, wrote: “I finally feel the existential threat that AI is posing.” And entrepreneur Matt Shumer published a viral essay about how the newest AI models have developed something that feels “like judgment. Like taste.” He added: “We’re past the point where this is an interesting dinner conversation about the future. The future is already here.” Axios | SFGATE
- An AI video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt had creatives predicting job doom. “I hate to say it,” wrote screenwriter Rhett Reese. “It’s likely over for us.” Hollywood Reporter
5.
The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday warned Apple that it may be violating laws against deceptive business practices because of liberal bias in its news app. In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the FTC chairman, Andrew Ferguson, claimed the authority to “protect consumers from material misrepresentations and omissions,” urging Cook to “take corrective action swiftly.” First Amendment advocates dismissed the threat as farcical. That doesn’t mean Cook, who has taken pains to appease the president, won’t comply out of fear of retribution, some noted. Washington Post | A.P.
- NiemanLab: “Is Fox News required to air ‘Jacobin Tonight’ after Hannity?”
6.
Police in Clovis, a suburb of Fresno, said they would seek charges of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” against adults who attended a walkout by students to protest ICE on Tuesday. “These actions are unacceptable,” the department said. “Adults who contribute to or promote truancy place minors at risk and interfere with their education.” Near-daily walkouts by Fresno area students since late January have drawn pushback from the school district, which has lamented the disruption of classroom study. Fresno Bee | KFSN
7.
During a San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing on Thursday, PG&E’s CEO, Sumeet Singh, testified that Mayor Daniel Lurie directed the utility to prioritize restoring power to the War Memorial Opera House during a massive blackout in December. At the time, Lurie’s teenage daughter was scheduled to perform in the starring role of “The Nutcracker” at the venue. Singh later walked back his comments, and Lurie denied making any such request. S.F. Standard | S.F. Chronicle
8.
For more than 60 years, a colorful 32-foot tall totem pole has stood along the highway in the Siskiyou County city of Weed, enchanting passing motorists and serving as a town landmark. On Tuesday night, a big rig smashed into the pole, sending it crashing to the ground in the parking lot of a grocery store. It was unclear whether the sculpture, hand-carved from redwood cut in the Santa Cruz Mountains, could be restored. CBS News | KRON
Southern California
9.
A judge ended the deportation case against Narciso Barranco, an Orange County landscaper and father of three U.S. Marines, whose arrest on video became a rallying point against President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The decision paves the way for Barranco, who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, to seek legal permanent residency. In June, agents pinned Barranco to the ground outside an IHOP where he was working and pummeled him. The Department of Homeland Security claimed he had raised his weed whacker. The agency said it would appeal the ruling. N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
10.
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, announced a rare civil rights investigation into the response to the Eaton fire in the historically Black community of west Altadena. Reporting in the Los Angeles Times revealed that evacuation orders were issued in Altadena’s east side three hours earlier than in the city’s west side. Of 19 people killed in the fire, 18 were residents of west Altadena. “We don’t know what this investigation will reveal,” Bonta said. “We should never be afraid to ask hard questions.” L.A. Times | Courthouse News
11.
As the country grapples with a housing shortage, Irvine’s model has gained new appeal, wrote the New York Times’ Conor Dougherty. In the 1960s, the city of roughly 300,000 people was built on Orange County farmland from scratch by the Irvine Company:
“The company planned most of Irvine’s parks, streets and structures, and it continues to own a majority of the city’s apartments, shopping centers and offices — even a local newspaper. Almost no place in America is more completely a company town.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- At Pelican Bay, a supermax state prison in Crescent City, hundreds of inmates were kept in solitary confinement. For years, they would spend roughly 23 hours a day alone in 8-by-10-foot cells. A powerful photo essay explored how the inmates remain haunted by their isolation long after being freed. Marshall Project
- Over the past six months, a diver in Laguna Beach has struck up what he can only describe as a friendship with a white harbor seal. Rusty Hunter said he’s had about 10 encounters with the seal, known as Waffles, and each time the marine mammal has become more playful. O.C. Register
- See video of the seal interactions.
- Remarkably, in the U.S., anyone can start a surrogacy agency. In the past decade, wealthy foreigners have been lured by this permissive environment to enlist American women as surrogates. The New Yorker told the disturbing story of “the babies kept in a mysterious Los Angeles mansion.”
- Many out-of-towners in San Francisco for the Super Bowl were surprised to discover that the poster child of urban decay on right-wing media is actually nice. “What we thought we were walking into here was, uh, a dump. It’s not at all,” the ESPN host Pat McAfee told his audience. N.Y. Times | KGO | S.F. Standard
- Alysa Liu, a 20-year-old UCLA student who was born in Clovis, won gold on Sunday as part of the figure skating team event. For some viewers, Liu’s “alt style” — bleached hair and a mouth piercing — has elevated her profile almost as much as her consecutive triple jumps. N.Y. Times
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