Good morning. It’s Friday, Oct. 4.
- Report says Donald Trump inserted politics into fire aid.
- Mark Zuckerberg is now world’s second-richest person.
- And new evidence is reviewed in Menendez murders.
Statewide
1.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump initially refused to approve disaster relief for California after deadly wildfires because of the state’s Democratic leanings, two former White House officials revealed. He relented only after being shown voter data from Orange County, where Republicans had an edge over Democrats, they said. “We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Mark Harvey, who served on the National Security Council. A Trump campaign spokesman denied the story. Politico | S.F. Chronicle
2.
Of the 189 bills that Gov. Gavin Newsom blocked this year, roughly 90% passed the Legislature with enough support to override his vetoes, an analysis found. Among those measures were those designed to reduce drug costs, track homelessness spending, and prevent scams of elderly people. But overrides almost never happen in California. Why? Fear of a governor’s wrath, said political strategist Dan Schnur. In other words, he said: “If you come for the king, you’d best not miss.” CalMatters
3.
One measure that got Newsom’s signature was an exemption to a state ban on service of alcohol after 2 a.m. But the new law applies to just one place: a private club at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. This is why people hate Sacramento, wrote Gustavo Arellano:
“In an era when people on both the left and right rail against politicians beholden to the rich and powerful, a piece of legislation that only benefits a venue owned by billionaire Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is as rank an example of favoritism as you can find in the annals of Sacramento.” L.A. Times
Northern California
4.
Mark Zuckerberg became the world’s second-richest person for the first time on Thursday, surging past Jeff Bezos on the strength of his 13% stake in Meta. Zuckerberg’s net worth has grown almost sixfold in two years to $206.2 billion, putting him about $1.1 billion ahead of Bezos and nearly $50 billion behind Elon Musk. According to Forbes, the world’s five richest people, including Larry Ellison and Bernard Arnault, now have a cumulative fortune of more than $1 trillion. Bloomberg
5.
We should avoid overstating the potential for an American dictator in the mold of Mussolini, wrote Barry C. Lynn. Yet a true threat of tyranny lurks in a difference place:
“It is Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple that today enjoy the power to create and destroy, to censor and punish, to ‘make and unmake’ who they will. It is these corporations that — even as we fear consolidation of power in the public state — have erected a private state over us.” Harper’s Magazine
6.
Redding fly fisherman Mike Mercer said he’s had the good fortune to cast lines all around the world. But no place has measured up to Northern California. “This is still my favorite place in the world,” he said. “I mean if I had to pick one spot to go fish, it’s still here.” The Northern California Fly Fishing Hall of Fame recently announced that Mercer, 65, who has worked at The Fly Shop in Redding since the age of 18, would be its latest inductee. KRCR
- Redding’s tourism bureau produced a nice video profile of Mercer, featuring sweeping views of California’s scenic North State. 👉 YouTube
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Wall Street Journal reporter Zusha Elinson, who wrote recently about the aftermath of the 2023 killing of Banko Brown at a San Francisco Walgreens. Elinson warned against the tendency to make snap judgements about where to place blame. The guard who fired the fatal shot, Michael Anthony, wanted more than anything to follow orders, Elinson said: “He relied on this job. He had grown up poor. And this job was really important to him.”
Southern California
8.
After months of promising to crack down on cities that block housing projects, the Newsom administration on Thursday took its most aggressive action yet against a city over its failure to build. Norwalk, a Los Angeles County suburb that imposed a moratorium on new homeless shelters, was declared out of compliance with state housing laws. The move, in effect, limits the city’s authority over its own land use, allowing developers to build bigger virtually anywhere. A Norwalk official accused the state of “bully tactics.” Politico | LAist
9.
George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney, said Thursday that his office is reviewing new evidence in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The brothers have said they acted after suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The evidence includes a letter written by Erik Menendez before the killings. “I never know when its going to happen and its … driving me crazy,” it reads. “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.” L.A. Times | KABC
10.
The story of how Los Angeles drained the Owens Valley of its water has been told endlessly since the events unfolded in the early 1900s, most enduringly in the film classic “Chinatown.” But Los Angeles was just as thirsty for energy. “The aqueduct power was a catalyst for the city,” said Marty Adams, Los Angeles’ former water and power chief. Over the summer, the photographer Brandon Tauszik traversed the Owens Valley to create a fascinating visual chronicle of the hydropower plants of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Distillations Magazine
11.
Hannah Goldfield in the New Yorker:
“If every city has a culinary punch line, it’s easy to identify Los Angeles’s: Erewhon, the cultish chain of grocery stores, where a half gallon of ‘hyper oxygenated’ water will run you an unconscionable $25.99. It started, in 1966, as a bean-sprouts-and-bulk-bins health-food stall in Boston, the brainchild of Japanese immigrants who evangelized the macrobiotic diet. Since then, it’s moved West and morphed into a slick, high-end wellness behemoth — a constant site of workaday paparazzi photos, a case study in capitalism posing as counterculture.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- For years, someone has been leaving bottles full of urine atop a seemingly random electrical box in Pasadena. The mystery inspired a filmmaker to capture images of the urine depositor with hidden trail cameras. Then the mystery deepened. L.A. Times
- Watch the “PISS SAGA” investigation.
- Laura La Rue, a single 32-year-old mom, bought an old school bus and converted it into a home for her and her 6-month-old daughter in Ojai. It’s nontraditional, she acknowledged: “This is what I wanted — a safe haven where I can have people over and enjoy the bare necessities.” L.A. Times
- Pikas, adorable cousins of rabbits, are among the hardest workers in the mountains of California. The herbivores spend their summers collecting grasses and flowers in giant stacks, drying them in the sun and stashing them in their dens to consume during winter. PBS captured great footage of a pika’s workday in Yosemite.
- Grant Petersen, a bicycle designer in Walnut Creek, has attracted an ardent following for his obsessive attention to comfort. Critics call him a “retro-grouch.” The writer Anna Wiener took a test ride on one of Petersen’s bikes and glimpsed what she called “a new and appealing way to live.” New Yorker
- San Diego, a land of sunshine, fish tacos, and perfect beaches, also hosts a deeply rooted gang culture. See selections from the project by photographer Miguel Valencia: “The Other Side of San Diego.”
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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