Good morning. It’s Friday, Feb. 7.
- FCC investigates Bay Area broadcaster over ICE reporting.
- Shohei Ohtani interpreter gets a five-year sentence.
- And Long Beach pastor comes to terms with his gay son.
Statewide
1.
After President Trump dumped stored irrigation water in an apparent political stunt, normally voluble farmers and their Republican allies have been reluctant to talk about it. After days of silence, the San Joaquin Valley congressman Vince Fong said in a brief interview that he was “excited” to have a president engaged in water policy. Zack Stuller, president of the Tulare County Farm Bureau, acknowledged that the situation was “nerve-wracking.” But, he added, “I’m a farmer. I have a conservative mindset. I encourage the trigger-pulling attitude, like, ‘Hey, let’s just get stuff done.’” Politico | Sacramento Bee
2.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Mildred García, chancellor of the California State University system. The student body at CSU is larger than that of any other public university system in the U.S., with more than 460,000 students. It’s also among the most diverse. Roughly half of CSU students have parents who never earned an bachelor’s degree. “We are educating the new-majority America,” García said. “The diversity of America is being educated by CSU.”
Northern California
3.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating the Bay Area radio station KCBS after it covered immigration enforcement actions in East San Jose last month. During a “Fox & Friends” segment that highlighted George Soros’ stake in the KCBS parent, commission chair Brendan Carr said the broadcaster shared the live locations of undercover agents. KCBS, he said, must explain “how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations.” David Loy, a First Amendment advocate, called the inquiry “an intimidating exercise.” KQED | L.A. Times
4.
The Department of Education announced Thursday that it would investigate San Jose State University for allowing a transgender player on its women’s volleyball team, calling it a potential violation of Title IX protections against sex discrimination. San Jose State found itself at the center of a national debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports after rival colleges refused to play against them. Also Thursday, the NCAA announced a ban on transgender women competing in women’s sports, saying its hand was forced by the Trump administration. KQED | Mercury News
5.
One of San Francisco’s most desirable apartment towers is known as “Susie’s Building” after the occupant of the 12th-floor penthouse, Susie Tompkins Buell, a power broker in Democratic politics. Buell throws lavish fund-raising parties and has played host to the Clintons, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. So it was unsurprising that the co-op board balked when an acerbic, conservative cryptocurrency executive tried to buy a home in the tower. Now he’s suing, alleging discrimination, making it the latest political skirmish in a polarized nation. N.Y. Times
Southern California
6.
The Trump administration ordered that removal of toxic waste left by the Los Angeles wildfires be completed in 30 days. It took the Environmental Protection Agency more than three months to remove hazardous debris after the 2023 Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii. Los Angeles has nearly 10 times of the number of destroyed buildings and at least five times as many potentially explosive electric vehicles abandoned in fire zones. A Bloomberg report on the rushed cleanup of L.A. makes for sober reading.
7.
Other wildfire developments:
- House Republicans held a hearing Thursday on the L.A. fires and placed the blame squarely on Democrats and “radical environmentalists.” Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Southern California, fired back angrily: “Shame on anyone who is exploiting the pain and suffering of disaster victims to jam through partisan ideological policies,” he said. S.F. Chronicle | Sacramento Bee
- After losing a home, the trauma is compounded by the requirement of insurance carriers to submit an exhaustive list every object inside a destroyed home. On Thursday, California asked insurers to spare wildfire victims from “the agony of the list.” N.Y. Times
- Thomas Carter, a mail carrier, knows everyone’s names along his route in Pasadena. When they learned that he lost his home in the Eaton fire, they rallied to support him. “That’s just the beauty of this,” Carter said. “Out of all the devastation, the beauty of people.” LAist
8.
Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter who stole almost $17 million from Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay gambling debts, was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in Orange County on Thursday. It was the stiffest of three sentencing options proposed to the judge. “This is a sad tale of an American success story gone wrong — so wrong that Mr. Mizuhara will be spending years inside a prison cell,” said U.S. District Court Judge John W. Holcomb. Mizuhara, 40, said he was “truly sorry to Mr. Ohtani.” Washington Post | ESPN
9.
Since its founding 1948, Dr. Bronner’s has grown from a niche soapmaker favored by hippies to a $200-million-a-year juggernaut known for its progressive ideals. Inside the San Diego County company, an office culture developed that included the open embrace of psychedelics as vehicles to well-being. But a new wrongful death lawsuit is threatening the good vibes. In 2022, an employee named Denise Lozano died after a masseuse gave her a lethal dose of MDA, a potent drug similar to MDMA, her family alleges. The session, they say, was arranged by Dr. Bronner’s CEO. KPBS
10.
“My heart is devastated. … I think down deep, I hate homosexuality. I hate it more than just about anything else in the world.”
Timothy White’s father has been an evangelical pastor in Long Beach for decades. When White came out as gay at age 15, it shook his father’s faith and fractured his church. But it never broke their relationship. Years later, he read his father’s journals to understand how. White wrote a deeply personal essay about how a father reconciled his god and his gay son. New York Times
11.
The Oscars ceremony was first televised in 1953. In those days, Hollywood actors did more than just act; they were expected to be all-around performers who could sing and dance. For the big awards night, the industry aimed to put on a barn burner of a show. LIFE magazine dug into its archive for a photo essay on the rehearsals for the 1958 Oscars production, including images of Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Clark Gable, and Debbie Reynolds, above. Many of the pictures were never published.
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- The Oakland Zoo is caring for three mountain lion cubs that were found hiding under a vehicle in the Bay Area’s Portola Valley after their mother was fatally hit by a car. The veterinarians named them Fern, Thistle, and Spruce. KRON | CBS News Bay Area
- See video of the cubs getting checkups. 👉 @oaklandzoo
- After someone stole his identity, William Woods tried to prove that he was the real William Woods. No one believed him. In 2019, prosecutors accused him of being the identity thief. He spent 428 days in the county jail and five months in a psychiatric hospital. Vindicated by a DNA test, Woods walked into a courtroom last week and watched as the man who stole his name learned his prison sentence. N.Y. Times
- San Francisco charges $6,000 to add a bench in Golden Gate Park in memory of a loved one. Chris Duderstadt, a 77-year-old retired machinist, has built, painted, and placed more than 200 benches around the city — for free. Mission Local
- California’s storms brought enough rain to lift Lake Berryessa above its famed bellmouth spillway threshold, creating a gushing vortex for the first time in years. At once terrifying and mesmerizing, the spillway sends excess water down a giant funnel that exits into a creek on the other side of a dam. CBS Sacramento
- See video. 👉 @napasheriff | @campfletcher
- Residents packed community meetings in rural Tuolumne County this week to share their outrage after a gay man was physically attacked in what the authorities are investigating as a potential hate crime. The victim, who is in his 20s, was lured to meet his assailants on an app, his lawyer said. Union Democrat | Motherlode
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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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