Good morning. It’s Thursday, May 9.
- Washington Post imagines Big Sur without Highway 1.
- The unlikely political rise of Nicole Shanahan.
- And California’s wine industry faces serious trouble.
Statewide
1.
During a congressional hearing on antisemitism Wednesday, Republican leaders largely failed to land damaging blows against the leaders of three politically liberal school districts from New York, Maryland, and Berkeley, reports said. Each witness acknowledged a rise in antisemitism, but Berkeley Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel denied that it had become pervasive. “We take action to teach, correct, and redirect our students,” she said. But privacy laws prevent the district from publicizing its actions, she added. “As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true.” N.Y. Times | S.F. Chronicle
- Jewish students being asked what their number is. Pro-Hamas videos in class. Talk of killing Jews in hallways. Watch California Rep. Kevin Kiley question Ford Morthel about antisemitism reports from Berkeley schools. 👉 YouTube
- A Sacramento high school journalism adviser was suspended after the student newspaper printed a list of “favorite” overheard comments on campus. It included “Hitler’s got some good ideas.” Sacramento Bee
2.
USC’s academic senate voted on Wednesday to censure the university’s president, Carol Folt, over her handling of events around commencement. The vote carried no legal force, but it registered the anger of faculty members over the administration’s decision to rescind the speaking slot of valedictorian Asna Tabassum and cancel the main-stage commencement. “The administration’s actions have been a tragedy of errors, all of them unforced,” said Howard Rodman, a professor in the film school. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
- Faculty groups at UC San Diego, UCLA, and Cal Poly Humboldt have gone further: They demanded their university leaders step down. KPBS | Daily Bruin | Lumberjack
3.
The latest round of landslides along Big Sur’s Highway 1 is projected to cost more than $100 million to fix. For decades, California followed the pattern of knocking down the obstacles along the iconic roadway as they come. But decades of erosion is making interventions increasingly onerous. The Washington Post broached an unthinkable option: “Giving up on maintaining a continuous 656-mile stretch of blacktop from Orange County to Mendocino County, and letting parts of Highway 1 become dead ends.”
4.
On June 5, 2023, Lt. Buddy Hirayama assumed command of a small jail in Tulare County. That day, an inmate died from a fentanyl overdose, the latest instance of a fatality crisis at the jail that left a record eight inmates dead in 2022, four by suicide. The experience rattled Hirayama, who made it his mission to stop them. Among other changes, he staggered the system of checks on inmates considered at risk, making the visits by deputies unpredictable. By Hirayama’s count, jail staff have prevented five suicides since he took over. No inmate has died in seven months. CalMatters
Northern California
5.
When, in 2015, Google co-founder Sergey Brin began dating Nicole Shanahan, who was 12 years his junior and fresh out of law school, some members of his inner circle assumed it was a fling. Their marriage lasted four years, slingshotting her to Silicon Valley stardom and leaving her with a pile of divorce money. “Other than the fact that she has a bunch of money, I don’t know why anyone would vote for her to run anything,” a person who knows her said. “And I don’t just mean vice president.” The Daily Beast wrote about Shanahan’s unlikely political rise.
6.
For 25 years, California’s wine industry boomed. Then around 2022, it began a dramatic decline caused in part by less wine drinking among Millennials and Gen Zers. Wine industry leaders say this year could be the breaking point for many struggling businesses connected to the state’s $55 billion industry. “An extinction-level event has not come to pass — yet. But regardless of the winery survival rate, it’s become clear in 2024 that the nature of the California wine industry has fundamentally changed,” the S.F. Chronicle reported.
7.
When Mint Butterfield, the teenage child of the billionaire co-founder of Slack, went missing for a week in San Francisco last month, the story captivated the media. But some 1,463 people have gone missing in San Francisco in the last decade, many of whose stories may never be told. Eamon Ryan, 31, was last seen in San Francisco in 2020. He played college football before injuring his knee and becoming addicted to opioids. His father, Ed Ryan, who lives in Florida, has come to the Tenderloin four times to search for him. “We’re not wealthy,” he said. “So it’s not news.” SF Standard
8.
Apple faced a boisterous backlash Wednesday after it debuted a new ad that shows an industrial press crushing a piano, a film camera, a turntable, and other cherished creative tools — then offers its iPad as a substitute. Washington Post | The Atlantic
A sampling of reactions:
- Actor Hugh Grant: “The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley.”
- Filmmaker Ed Solomon: “’Who needs human life and everything that makes it worth living? Dive into this digital simulacrum and give us your soul. Sincerely, Apple.’”
- Novelist Hari Kunzru: “Crushing the symbols of human creativity to produce a homogenized branded slab is pretty much where the tech industry is at in 2024”
Southern California
9.
Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the fruit and nut tycoons, are pushing an audacious proposal to convert 1,800 acres of their own almond groves in Kern County into a mega-warehouse complex. The project would include construction of a new highway and rail terminal. “If all goes according to plan, Shafter would be transformed from a small town, population 20,162, into an international trade hub; and Kern County — a region that long has prized what’s extracted from the ground — would become ground zero for the growing global goods movement,” the L.A. Times wrote.
10.
In 1995, Shashikant Jogani and his brother hammered out a business deal at his home in Glendale. But nothing was written down. “They are my brothers and I trust them,” Jogani later recalled telling his lawyer, defending the deal that also included investments from three other brothers. Nearly 30 years later, a Los Angeles jury weighed bitter accusations of betrayal between the brothers in a case to determine whether and how to divide up a real estate fortune worth billions. Reporter Noah Goldberg wrote a gripping account of “L.A.’s greatest family feud.” L.A. Times
11.
Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, agreed to plead guilty to two felony charges related to his theft of millions of dollars from the Dodgers star to cover gambling debts, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. The charges, bank and tax fraud, carry a maximum combined sentence of up to 33 years in prison. Mizuhara, a 39-year-old native of Japan who lives in Newport Beach, will also be required to pay nearly $17 million in restitution to Ohtani. ESPN | A.P.
12.
Ed Ruscha, the great American Pop and Conceptual artist, is perhaps best known for his visual representations of 1960s Americana, including his photographic collages of Los Angeles. In “Ed Ruscha / Now Then,” a retrospective on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Oct. 6, the work getting the most attention is one you can smell before you see. The “Chocolate Room” is a gallery covered in hundreds of sheets of paper screen-printed with chocolate paste. Art critic Christopher Knight called it “enticing and sickly, indulgent and off-putting, decidedly lovely and vaguely gross.” L.A. Times | Alta
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