A sweeping climate package // Top 10 campgrounds in the West

Good morning. It’s Friday, Sept. 2.

State legislators approve ambitious climate measures.
Bay Area school district asks families to take in teachers.
And camping app ranks top 10 campgrounds in the West.

Please note: The newsletter will pause for a long weekend. Back in your inbox on Wednesday.

Statewide

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The Route fire sent smoke into the sky in Castaic on Wednesday. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Carbon neutrality by 2045. Limits on drilling. Regulations on storing carbon underground. A record $54 billion in spending.

The flurry of measures approved by California lawmakers this week amounted to the state’s most sweeping and aggressive climate change package ever. Gov. Gavin Newsom said it would cement California’s status as a national leader on climate policy. “The progress we make on the climate crisis this year will be felt for generations,” he said. N.Y. Times | A.P. | S.F. Chronicle

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While California’s prison population is drawn mainly from populous counties, the rate of incarceration is much higher in rural areas, a study found. Tiny Kings County in the San Joaquin Valley has the state’s highest incarceration rate at 666 per 100,000, followed by Shasta, Tehama, and Yuba counties. A reporter asked Robert Bowman, who works with former inmates in Shasta County, what’s going on. He sighed. “It’s a perfect storm of bad,” he said. CalMatters

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Thousands of children were unable to return to school this fall because they did not have their required immunizations. One in eight students between the ages of 4 and 6 needed to catch up on routine vaccines, health officials said. Experts said families fell behind on checkups during the pandemic, but they also cited vaccine hesitancy as a growing problem. EdSource

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From left: the Alabama Hills, Big Sur, and Joshua Tree. (JCA Images; David Zaitz; Taharqa)

A field of massive boulders in the Southern California desert, a 100-foot bluff along the Big Sur coast, and a plunging valley between the Inyo Mountains and Eastern Sierra. A popular camping app analyzed reviews from its community of users for a ranking of the top 10 places to camp in the West. The Dyrt

Northern California

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“We need your help.”

The latest example of how desperate the affordable housing situation is in the Bay Area: A school district asked parents to let teachers move into their homes. Milpitas Unified explained that teachers had left the district because they can’t manage the cost of living in the region on the eastern edge of Silicon Valley. Dozens of families have stepped up, Superintendent Cheryl Jordan said. KTVU | NBC Bay Area

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Miles Bondley, 34. (Butte County Sheriff)

Miles Bondley, an inmate awaiting trial on multiple violent felonies, escaped from the Butte County Jail on Wednesday, officials said. Bondley was in a “high security” yard when he covered the security cameras with wet tissue, then managed to squeeze through a ventilation gap in the roof. The authorities said the escape suggested planning. Chico Enterprise-Record | Sacramento Bee

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In June, a little girl entered her pet goat in a livestock auction in Shasta County. But when she learned that the animals would be slaughtered, she tearfully convinced her mom to leave the fair with the goat, Cedar. Then fair officials demanded it back. The situation escalated to the point where sheriff’s deputies drove 500 miles across six county lines to seize the girl’s goat. The wild story, including a cameo from the Republican candidate for governor, is detailed in a new lawsuit. Record-Searchlight | Sacramento Bee

Southern California

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In 2010, UC Santa Barbara vowed to add housing for about 6,800 students and staff. Twelve years later, it’s about 5,000 units short of that goal. After years of jousting between the county and campus officials over the issue, the Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to sue UC Santa Barbara. “This is not an action we take lightly,” Board Chair Joan Hartmann said. Noozhawk | KEYT

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Eric Weinberg. (Los Angeles Police Department)

Last month, police arrested the “Scrubs” writer-producer Eric Weinberg on 20 charges of sexual assault, including rape. A reporter spoke to two dozen women who said Weinberg approached them in public places — including parking lots, parks, and cafés — around Los Angeles and asked if they wanted to participate in a photoshoot. Many of the sessions, they said, ended in sexual assault. Hollywood Reporter

10.

Banksy’s “Girl on a Swing” in Los Angeles. (Thomas Hawk/CC BY-NC 2.0)

While in town for a movie premiere in 2010, Banksy left Los Angeles a gift: a mural of a girl on a swing on the side of a gritty downtown building. The owners paid $4 million for the structure in 2007. Now they are auctioning it off, Banksy included, to the highest bidder. They think it could fetch $30 million, with the painting accounting for nearly half of that sum. N.Y. Times

11.

On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman chats with the actor and comedian Cheech Marin. A longtime collector of Chicano art, Marin cut the ribbon on the new Riverside museum, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, in June. He talked about how his obsession with Chicano art grew at a time when few others were collecting. “I kind of had the field to myself for a brief period of time,” he said.

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Northern California

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Southern California

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In case you missed it

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