Good morning. It’s Friday, Nov. 8.
- Gavin Newsom calls session to “Trump-proof” California.
- More than 130 homes destroyed in Ventura County fire.
- And San Francisco gets the N.Y. Times “36 Hours” treatment.
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Election 2024
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called for a special legislative session to “safeguard California values” as the Democratic-controlled state prepares to renew its adversarial posture toward a Trump White House. The session would focus on funding of up to $100 million for the state’s lawyers to guard against challenges to California polices on civil rights, climate change, and abortion access. “The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.” CalMatters | Politico
2.
As California’s Democratic leaders prepare to battle President-elect Donald Trump, they may do so with shakier public support than in the past. Trump lost California soundly, according to early vote totals — with 40% to Kamala Harris’ 58%. But that margin is an 11-point improvement over his loss to President Biden in 2020, an analysis by the Cook Political Report showed. Among the states, the size of the shift is second only to that of New York. Newsweek
- See a map of California’s partisan swing, by county. 👉 Axios
3.
With Harris’ loss on Tuesday, Newsom now has a direct path to the White House in 2028. He has spent years boosting his profile in the culture wars, raising money for Democratic candidates, and touring the country as a surrogate for President Biden. And with Harris out of the way, he can run free of any political and moral inhibitions. That’s at least the conventional way of looking at it, wrote columnist George Skelton: “But there’s also another way: Newsom’s brand of fiercely anti-Trump liberal politics was rejected by most American voters.” L.A. Times
4.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked post-election politics with Emily Hoeven, a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Hoeven recalled Newsom’s “tone deaf” reaction in September to a survey showing wide public support for Proposition 36, which was hovering around 70% approval in early voting. “He actually said, ‘I don’t recognize the state that I’m living in.’ … I think that that underscored for a lot of folks how out of touch some Democratic politicians are,” Hoeven said.
5.
Fears of President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to deport millions of people have rippled through parts of California, home to an estimated 1.85 million unauthorized immigrants. In Santa Cruz, officials called a meeting Thursday to assure undocumented residents that the city had their back. In San Jose, an aid worker described how a local woman’s 11-year-old son kept hugging her and saying, “I’m a citizen, mom. It’s okay. I will hide you in the closet if I have to.” In San Francisco, lines were shorter than usual at a food bank on Wednesday. People are scared, a coordinator said. KSBW | NBC Bay Area | SF Standard
6.
Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, triumphed in San Francisco’s mayoral race, denying a second term to Mayor London Breed after years of deepening public pessimism about quality of life in the city. Lurie, 47, has never served in government, a fact that he portrayed as a strength that would allow him to shake up City Hall. On Thursday, he promised “a safer and more affordable city for all.” Breed, San Francisco’s first Black female mayor, was embittered. It was “sad,” she told her supporters on election night, “that someone would take their wealth and just basically buy this office.” S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times
7.
On Tuesday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris was widely seen as the future of the Democratic Party. In a little more than 10 weeks, she’ll become a private citizen for the first time in more than two decades, with no concrete plans for her career. Running again in 2028 seems unlikely, given how comfortably Donald Trump bested her, the New York Times wrote. But she has plenty of options, among them running for lower office, joining a lobbying outfit, doing advocacy work, or writing a book.
Statewide
8.
The devastating toll of Ventura County’s Mountain fire came into focus Thursday as officials reported that 132 homes had been reduced to ash. As of late Thursday, the fire was 5% contained and had grown to 32 square miles, engulfing parts of foothill communities around Camarillo and Moorpark. “I don’t feel anything now,” said homeowner Reyna Perez. “Everything lost, everything gone, all my memories, all my life was there.” Forecasts called for winds to die down on Friday. ABC7 | L.A. Times
9.
Microfarms are catching on in Los Angeles.
In front of a bungalow in Leimert Park, rows of basil, sweet potatoes, and mesclun rise from raised gardens while kale, cabbage, arugula, lettuces, eggplants, tatsoi, and collard greens grow in corridors of elevated planters. The small farm feeds 45 nearby families while using a fraction of the water required by a lawn. The project is part of Crop Swap LA, which turns yards into microfarms. It has a wait list of 300 residents. N.Y. Times
10.
“San Francisco is as beautiful as ever, developing more enticing public parks and green spaces, creating entire neighborhoods from whole cloth, and expanding arts institutions — including the new Museum of Contemporary Art, which moved to a significantly larger space downtown in October.”
The New York Times gave San Francisco the “36 Hours” treatment.
11.
Sandhill cranes, giant gangly creatures, seem to dance for no reason. They dance when courting, but they also dance as chicks, when released from pens, and in the middle of a cornfield long past mating time. For nature lovers, who can’t help but identify with what seems like displays of joy, the cranes are the stars of the annual fall migration of birds from Alaska to points south. The travel journalist John Bartell recently visited the wetlands of Lodi, where the cranes are now abounding. ABC10/YouTube
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- There’s a tiny home for sale near the Russian River that includes a perk in its yard some might call priceless — its own fairy ring of redwoods. Yours for $124,900. Sonoma Magazine
- A 2008 proposal to build a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco was supposed to be done in 2020. Sixteen years later, construction crews are working on only a segment of the line that is targeted to open by 2033. An aviation YouTuber took to the skies to see for himself. YouTube (~17 mins)
- Caregivers bilked an elderly San Francisco woman out of more than $4 million, according to a trustee’s investigation. The trustee presented meticulous evidence of what she believed was brazen theft to San Francisco’s police. They answered in August: the case was “declined.” S.F. Chronicle
- In Hope Valley, a natural paradise in the Northern Sierra, there’s a nearly 100-year-old resort nestled along a rolling river in an aspen forest. Newly renovated cabins are designed in Scandinavian style with full kitchens and fireplaces. It’s included in a listicle on “10 cozy cabin” getaways across California. Locale Magazine
- Johanna Turner specializes in camera-trap photography in the mountains around Los Angeles. Getting the right shot can take months, she said. But when it works, the results can be breathtaking. “It’s a connection to another, primal world,” she said. My Modern Met featured 12 of Turner’s wildlife photos.
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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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