Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Oct. 23.
- USC admitted rich kids as athletes in hopes of gifts.
- Orange County supervisor to plead guilty to corruption.
- And legendary Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela dies.
Statewide
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is planning to create a natural disaster fund that could be tapped in the event that Donald Trump wins the White House and refuses to provide federal aid. Trump has repeatedly threatened to withhold disaster relief from those who cross him, including last month when he said of Newsom, “If we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems.” Newsom said Trump should be taken at his word. “It’s literal,” he said. “And I don’t think it, I know it, because it’s exactly what happened when he was president and I was governor.” Politico
2.
Since time immemorial, multitudes of birds have surged up and down the route through California’s Central Valley known as the Pacific Flyway. But their numbers have plummeted since agriculture and development destroyed roughly 95% of the valley’s wetlands. In 2014, conservationists embarked on a bold new strategy to bring them back: paying farms to create “pop-up” wetlands by flooding their fields between the fall and spring. It’s been remarkably successful. High Country News
3.
At the Manzanar War Relocation Center, the Owens Valley concentration camp where Japanese Americans were held during World War II, baseball provided a rare source of normalcy. Internees built fields, sewed uniforms, and formed dozens of teams. While Manzanar was preserved as a historical site, the fields faded into the dust — until now. Over the past year, Dan Kwong, a Santa Monica artist whose mother was held at Manzanar, has led an effort to rebuild the main baseball diamond. “I often imagine my late mother,” he said. “How happy she would be if she knew what I was doing.” LAist
Northern California
4.
While a rising prosecutor in the Bay Area, Kamala Harris moved through San Francisco high society, courting connections to its financial and social elite. Gossip columnists took note, describing her in 1998 as “stylish, slender, successful, and very social.” She dated Willie Brown, then speaker of the Assembly, and cultivated friendships with Laurene Powell Jobs, the wife of Steve Jobs, and the North Face founder Susie Tompkins Buell. The New York Times wrote about the relationships that helped fuel Harris’ political ascendancy.
5.
Outside the only abortion clinic in Redding, patients are swarmed by protesters who tell them they are sinners. The doctors arrive from hundreds of miles away because nobody closer will do the job. Redding is conservative and proud, explained Patrick Jones, a county supervisor. “We believe in God here, and we have the highest percentage per capita of CCW (concealed gun permits) holders in the state,” he said. “It’s a good county. I don’t think we have the authority to stop their operations at those clinics, but I wish we did.” S.F. Chronicle
6.
Nearly 60 years after it opened, the utopian Sea Ranch Lodge was given a thorough overhaul, weaving in a mix of midcentury and contemporary touches. The 17 guest rooms retain their distinctive architectural geometry and feel decidedly of their era, wrote the San Francisco Standard. They also open up to “views of the wild, tempestuous landscape [that] remain as breathtaking as ever.”
Southern California
7.
Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican-born Dodgers pitcher who became a baseball hero in Southern California, died on Tuesday. He was 63. No cause of death was given. The phenomenon known as “Fernandomania” took hold during the 1981 season, when Valenzuela won the National League Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year honors while helping the Dodgers win the World Series. After 17 seasons, Valenzuela served as a Spanish-language broadcaster for the Dodgers. He stepped away before the start of the playoffs to “focus on his health,” the team said. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
- The life of Fernando Valenzuela, in pictures. L.A. Times
- “It is the most puzzling, wonderful, rewarding thing I think we’ve seen in baseball in many, many years.” Hear Vin Scully gush after Valenzuela delivered his fifth shutout in 1981. 👉 YouTube
8.
For years, USC quietly admitted children from rich families as walk-on athletes in hopes of currying donations in exchange, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. In some cases, the school was rewarded with multimillion-dollar gifts. In others, fundraisers became enraged when money was not forthcoming. USC had hoped for a $5 million gift after admitting three young members of the wealthy Spanos family as walk-ons despite unremarkable athletic backgrounds. When it never materialized, “administrators reacted as if they had been duped,” the Times wrote.
9.
Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do agreed to plead guilty in a conspiracy to steal millions of dollars meant to feed seniors, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada announced on Tuesday. Out of $9.3 million in Covid relief funds, just 15% went to people in need, Estrada said: “Mr. Do and his co-conspirators stole money from the poor.” Do, 62, gave his resignation along with a statement through his lawyer, expressing “Do’s sincere apology and deep sadness to his family, to his constituents in District One and to his colleagues.” He faces up to five years in prison. LAist
10.
The Los Angeles Times is declining to endorse a candidate for president. The decision went against the wishes of the paper’s liberal editorial board, which was planning to back Vice President Kamala Harris, but came down by decree from the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, sources told Semafor. A spokesperson for the Times declined to discuss his reasoning. Dylan Byers, a longtime media reporter, described the development as “inconsequential to national politics, very consequential to the paper’s internal politics.” Semafor
11.
In August, Michael Mudurian, an 84-year-old Air Force veteran living in San Diego, got a water bill demanding $28,500. It was an obvious error, which he tried to explain to the city’s water agency. “Basically they said ‘You owe it, and you will pay it,'” he recalled. Mudurian reached out to a local TV news broadcaster at the urging of a neighbor. Two days after KGTV contacted the utility, Mudurian’s bill was reduced by roughly $25,000. He also got a call from the agency, he said: “She was talking about, ‘Well, we made a mistake. And, oh, by the way, what are you going to say to the news people?'” KGTV
12.
The tech billionaire Darwin Deason built a version of the Palace of Versailles along the cliffs of La Jolla. It’s now been listed for $108 million, a figure that would more than double the current record for a home sale in San Diego County. The Sandcastle, as it’s known locally, has 10 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a pool with men’s and women’s cabanas. Deason didn’t like California sand, so he created an elevated beach with sand imported from Georgia. Wall Street Journal | Bloomberg
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