Good morning. It’s Friday, Feb. 28.
- San Francisco police storm open-air drug market.
- California Republican becomes key voice for fire aid.
- And ICE agents arrest Coachella lawmaker’s husband.
Please note: The newsletter will be off on Monday. Back in your inbox on Tuesday.
Statewide
1.
The deadline set by the Trump administration for schools and colleges to eliminate diversity programs or lose federal funding arrives today. In California, where such initiatives are pervasive, the response has been the equivalent of a shoulder shrug. “Our mission has not changed and neither have our values,” UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said recently. Noelle Ellerson Ng, a legislative advocate for school superintendents, urged administrators to “take a breath.” “Just because Trump ordered it,” she said, “doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.” CalMatters | L.A. Times
2.
A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to retract directives that prompted mass firings of probationary workers across the government, saying the memos were “illegal.” The Office of Personnel Management “does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency,” said U.S. District Judge William Alsup. The ruling amounted to the one of the biggest roadblocks so far to the administration’s effort to slash the federal workforce. Politico | S.F. Chronicle
- The NOAA became the latest agency to face firings, including many California positions, on Thursday. Dr. Levi Cowan, a meteorologist, said the cuts seemed irrational. “This is a blind swing of a sword,” he wrote. S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times
3.
The Guardian on California’s truncated, over-budget, past-deadline bullet train project:
“Californians know their state is a punching bag for Donald Trump’s administration. … But when Trump took aim at the state’s much-delayed high-speed rail project earlier this month, saying it was ‘the worst managed project’ he’d ever seen, some of those leftwingers — and more moderate voters — found themselves in the unusual position of conceding he might have a point.”
Northern California
4.
Nationwide, the average number of days from home listing to contract signing was 38 in January. For the San Jose region, it was a staggeringly quick nine days. In Silicon Valley, where the economy is turbocharged by the artificial intelligence boom and the supply of property listings is severely limited, the housing market ranks as the most competitive in the U.S., an analysis found. Asking prices have become meaningless, as bidding wars erupt for $4 million fixer-uppers, said Tracy Hsu, a Cupertino agent: “When we write an offer, we don’t look at the asking price.” Bloomberg
5.
When Stanford professor Dr. Bryant Lin was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer last year, he estimated that the drug he was given would work for about two years. But instead of pulling back from work, he designed a course called “From Diagnosis to Dialogue: A Doctor’s Real-Time Battle With Cancer.” On the first day of class in September, the room was overflowing, with some students sitting on the floor. “It’s quite an honor for me, honestly,” he said, his voice catching. “The fact that you would want to sign up for my class.” N.Y. Times
6.
A column of police and sheriff’s deputies stormed an open-air drug market late Wednesday, arresting 84 people. Video showed officers surrounding Jefferson Square Park, blocking anyone from leaving. “You’re in the park. Everybody’s under arrest, understand?” one officer said. The next morning, Mayor Daniel Lurie, who was elected on pledges to tackle crime, remarked on the operation: “If you are selling drugs in this city, we are coming after you.” S.F. Chronicle | KQED
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Randy Shaw, author of the newly updated book “The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.” Shaw celebrated the Tenderloin as a place of vibrancy, art, and a rare stock of affordable housing downtown. But he said the neighborhood was betrayed by the former mayor, London Breed, who treated it as a “containment zone” for public drug use and homelessness during the pandemic.
Southern California
8.
Kristin Crowley, the former fire chief of Los Angeles, formally appealed her firing by Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday, setting the stage for the City Council to vote on whether to reverse the action. Two-thirds of the council would need to approve the appeal for Crowley to be reinstated, an outcome seen as unlikely. But the public airing of the mayor’s dispute with Crowley, who enjoys strong support from the firefighters union, could prove politically damaging for Bass, analysts said. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
9.
As Republicans in Congress have sought to use fire disaster aid as a bargaining chip for political concessions from California, the GOP congressman Ken Calvert, of Riverside County, has emerged as a key advocate for funding without strings. “He certainly believes that California and these Los Angeles residents deserve the same federal aid that anyone else in the country deserves,” a spokesperson said. That stance reflects Calvert’s own political reality: After a 2022 redistricting, his once solid-red district added liberal Palm Springs, pushing him to moderate on key issues, Bloomberg reported.
10.
The husband of a Coachella City Council member was arrested by immigration agents in a Walmart parking lot this week as part of what officials called a “targeted enforcement action.” A complaint showed that Isidro Jimenez-Ibanez had multiple convictions, including drug possession and assault, and had re-entered the country after deportation. After the arrest, his wife, Councilmember Yadira Perez, quit her job as a sheriff’s deputy. Mayor Steven Hernandez noted that Coachella is a sanctuary city. “It’s horrible … that families are being torn apart,” he said. Desert Sun | KESQ
11.
Chris Kluwe, the former NFL punter who was arrested after protesting the Huntington Beach City Council’s embrace of the MAGA movement, said he was fired from his job as a freshman football coach on Thursday. Kluwe said he was called into a meeting at Edison High School, where administrators told him he brought negative attention to the school and offered him a chance to resign. He refused. “I’m an American citizen,” he said. “I have First Amendment rights for as long as those last.” LAist
- “If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone.” Kluwe talked about the firing in an Instagram video. 👉 @protect_hb
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Just down the coast from San Francisco is a hidden cove that is so pretty, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it “belongs on a postcard.” Noah Rosenfield published a fantastic drone tour of Pacifica’s Shelter Cove and the vaguely menacing rock formation that looms just off its southern point, pictured above. YouTube
- When the Army Corps of Engineers dumped stored irrigation water from two Tulare County reservoirs last month, it was widely seen as a wasteful political stunt. During a hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Mike Levin asked Lt. General William H. Graham to explain what happened. He claimed ignorance. SJV Water
- See video of the exchange. 👉 YouTube
- In April, 2024, a 15-year-old girl was found dead in a San Francisco driveway. Reeling from a childhood of trauma, Jázmin Pellegrini had been shuttled between 10 different psychiatric facilities for the last two years of her life. In an infuriating investigation, the San Francisco Chronicle traced how California’s for-profit psychiatric hospital system failed a troubled adolescent.
- For Ken Green, a retired Navy dentist who lives in California, watching a mob storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a final straw. He bought his first firearm the following month. The New York Times ran a multimedia feature on “the tipping point” that led America’s newest gun owners to arm themselves.
- A group of Yosemite workers hung an upside-down American flag from the top of El Capitan on Saturday to protest workforce cuts. In a statement, the workers said the firings are devastating even if invisible to many park guests. “Think of it as your public lands on strike,” they said. S.F. Chronicle | SFGATE
- See photos: @ohtombombadil | @yotzin | @elysecphotos
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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