Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Feb. 25.
- Regulators push more cuts to rooftop solar subsidies.
- Medicaid cuts pose dilemma for Rep. David Valadao.
- And forecast calls for surge of warm weather this week.
Statewide
1.
California regulators are pushing for further cuts to subsidies for homeowners with solar panels, arguing that customers are not paying their share of fixed costs to maintain the power grid. The recommendation comes nearly two years after an earlier reduction in incentives that triggered a precipitous drop-off in solar installations. Industry advocates reacted with outrage to the latest proposed rollback. “How very Trump of the California governor’s office and the [utilities commission],” said Jeanine Cotter, leader of Luminalt Solar Energy Solutions. L.A. Times | S.F. Chronicle
2.
Roughly two-thirds of the residents in Rep. David Valadao’s San Joaquin Valley district depend on Medicaid. That poses a dilemma for Valadao, one of the country’s most politically vulnerable Republicans, as his party looks to advance a budget plan that could cut billions of dollars from the program. In a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson last week, Valadao and seven other House Republicans warned that such cuts would have “serious consequences.” On Monday, a reporter asked Johnson whether he would make any concessions to the lawmakers. “No,” he replied. Sacramento Bee | Politico
- “We’re not billionaires here.” Constituents opposed to Medicaid cuts rallied outside Valadao’s Bakersfield office on Monday. KERO | KBAK
3.
While Congressional Democrats have struggled to respond to President Trump’s first weeks, attorneys general in blue states have emerged as the administration’s most effective foes — with California often taking the lead. The pushback is the product of months of planning by the attorneys general, who have been speaking on a near-daily basis since Trump’s inauguration. In the past month alone, they have filed seven lawsuits. “In all but one of those cases, judges have issued orders restraining the Trump administration from proceeding,” the Washington Post reported.
4.
The beginning of California was less a function of manifest destiny than environmental plunder, the journalist Mark Arax has argued. “That culture of extraction that began in the gold rush has really never ended,” he said. Redwoods were clear-cut; grizzlies and wolves were extirpated; and the marshlands of the Central Valley were replaced by a checkerboard of crop production. Farmers turned to “mining” water from underground, causing the earth to contract like a sponge in a phenomenon that persists to this day. A new analysis showed that between 2015 and 2023, parts of the valley sank by as much as 8 inches per year. NASA Earth Observatory
5.
The rest of this week in California is expected to feel more like May than February. Forecasters said temperatures would surge between 10 and 20 degrees above normal along the California coast between Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, pretty much all of the Bay Area and Central Valley is expected to rise into the 70s, while points south get even hotter. Temperatures along the corridor from Los Angeles to San Diego could flirt with the 90s, the National Weather Service said. L.A. Times | S.F. Chronicle
Correction
The subject line on Monday’s newsletter email misstated the official recently fired by the mayor of Los Angeles. She was the fire chief, not the police chief.
Northern California
6.
At the same time that Meta is getting rid of its fact-checkers, the company is reintroducing bonuses for viral content, essentially incentivizing the behavior of bad actors, a ProPublica investigation found. The news outlet identified 95 Facebook pages that regularly gin up engagement through made-up, often politically divisive headlines. Together, they have nearly 8 million followers. “The systems are designed to amplify the most salacious and inciting content,” said Jeff Allen, a former Meta data scientist. ProPublica
7.
“I need the jail to be ordered for me to have a vegan diet. That’s all. It’s more important than whatever this hearing is.”
The San Francisco Chronicle obtained audio from a court hearing during which Jack LaSota, the alleged leader of the cultlike Zizian movement that has been linked to several killings, was heard for the first time since the group began drawing headlines. She pleaded repeatedly for vegan food. S.F. Chronicle
8.
Days after the Apple CEO Tim Cook met with President Trump, the company trumpeted plans on Monday to spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the U.S. Trump has levied tariffs on China and threatened to impose more in other countries where U.S. tech products are built while urging a renaissance of American manufacturing. Analysts said Apple’s pledge was aimed at earning an exemption from tariffs that could drive up the cost of iPhones made in China. Washington Post | Wall Street Journal
9.
In his new book, “The Lost and the Found,” San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan challenges a stubborn myth about homelessness. It is not “some frivolous lifestyle choice,” he writes:
“If you’re as acutely down-and-out as the Islanders were, you’re on dope or booze and probably both. You’ve shattered through every support system you have — family, friends, counseling and housing programs that you ditched or that tossed you out, and now you have nothing. It’s the definition of the bottom.” New Yorker
- Hear Fagan discuss homelessness on the California Sun Podcast.
10.
Just down the coast from San Francisco is a tiny hidden cove that is so pretty, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it “belongs on a postcard.” Shelter Cove in Pacifica is reached either from a trail to the north or a flowery staircase that is known to be patrolled at times by locals with a questionable grasp of California beach-access law. The photographer Noah Rosenfield published a fantastic drone tour of the cove and the vaguely menacing rock formation that looms just off its southern point, pictured above. YouTube
Southern California
11.
Residents whose homes narrowly escaped the Los Angeles wildfires are experiencing their own sort of grief as they adjust to living amid moonscapes of ash and destruction. “First, they felt relief,” wrote reporter Reis Thebault. “The firestorm had blown through their neighborhoods and leveled entire communities, but somehow — miraculously — their homes still stood. Then, reality set in.” Washington Post
- The New York Times published a feature on the items that fire survivors grabbed from their homes. Don’t miss the final story about 14-year-old Stone Raskin and his father’s prayer book.
12.
Gracey Van Der Mark, a Republican councilwoman in Huntington Beach, questioned the patriotism of anyone opposed to her proposal to install a plaque with an ode to the MAGA movement at the city’s main library. “This is a historical moment,” she said. “And if people do not think America is great and don’t want to make it great again, they’re in the wrong country.” Dan Kalmick, a former councilman, said the MAGA plaque is meant to distract from the city’s problems: “These people are going to ‘own the libs’ into bankruptcy, and it’s absolutely wild.” N.Y. Times
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