Good morning. It’s Thursday, Feb. 6.
- Gavin Newsom spends an hour with Donald Trump.
- Google drops goal to increase diversity hiring.
- And Joan Didion’s diary is about to be published.
Statewide
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom met with President Trump for more than an hour on Wednesday as he sought federal aid for fire victims in Los Angeles. Newsom, who has quieted his criticism of Trump since the November election, is believed to be the first Democratic elected official to meet with Trump in the Oval Office this term. A Newsom spokesman said the leaders had a “very productive” meeting during which the governor “expressed his appreciation for the Trump administration’s collaboration.” N.Y. Times
2.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta, seen as a strong contender for California governor, said on Wednesday that he would not run for the office in 2026. Instead, he plans to seek reelection as the state’s top law enforcement official and back Kamala Harris for governor if she decides to join the race. “I’ve always supported her in everything she’s done” he said. “She would be field-clearing.” In a November poll, 72% of California Democrats would they would be at least “somewhat likely” to vote Harris for governor. Politico | L.A. Times
3.
Four days after the Trump administration needlessly dumped water stored for summer irrigation from two reservoirs on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, water officials in the heavily Republican region met on Tuesday and discussed how to make sure it never happens again. “In the big picture, the amount of water was not huge. It was the process. He has no idea how bad he effed up,” Brian Watte, a member of the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, said of Trump. SJV Water
4.
Seasonal flu in California has surged to levels not seen in years. Test positivity for influenza specimens at state labs recently hit 26%, higher than the peaks of the prior four seasons — and it’s still trending upwards. As of Jan. 25, 484 deaths in California were attributed to influenza this season, according to state data. The cause of the surge is uncertain, but health professionals said a stronger strain, H3N2, may be causing more people to seek medical care. S.F. Chronicle
5.
In 1999, Joan Didion started writing a journal after sessions with her psychiatrist. She recorded thoughts about her work and her struggles with guilt, anxiety, and depression. After the Sacramento author’s death in 2021, her literary trustees found the diary while going through her papers. Though Didion left no instructions about how to handle the writings, Knopf plans to publish them on April 22 as a book titled “Notes to John.” It is expected to stir debate about whether she would have approved of the project. N.Y. Times
Northern California
6.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors this week granted the city’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, extraordinary new powers to tackle the city’s fentanyl and homelessness crises. The ordinance removes bureaucratic obstacles as he moves to add 1,500 new shelter beds, open a 24-hour drop-off crisis center, and create a pop-up police command center. Supervisors portrayed it as an unprecedented transfer of power that reflected a mandate from voters to act aggressively. S.F. Chronicle | S.F. Examiner
7.
Google told its workers on Wednesday that it was abandoning its goal to hire more employees from underrepresented groups, saying it needed to comply with court rulings and President Trump’s executive orders. In 2020, the Mountain View company committed to increasing its share of Black executives by 30% within five years. But Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, laid out a new plan in an email to employees: “In the future we will no longer have aspirational goals.” One worker, speaking anonymously, said the move proves “that it’s just capitalism after all.” Wall Street Journal | Washington Post
8.
Northern California’s storms brought enough rain to lift Lake Berryessa in Napa County 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 Putah Creek on the other side of a dam. CBS Sacramento
- See video. 👉 @napasheriff | @campfletcher
- Forecasters predicted more rain and snow across the state on Thursday and Friday. Accuweather
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Southern California
9.
“When the Eaton fire engulfed Altadena on Jan. 7, Lake Avenue became a dividing line between life and death.”
Residents on the east side of Altadena were warned to evacuate as early as 7:26 p.m. that night. Many fled, and no one died. But another eight hours passed before an alert was sent to the west side, where at least 10 homes were already on fire. By then, many residents had gone to bed, unaware of how dire the situation had become. At least 17 people died. The Wall Street Journal investigated how botched alerts created a fiery death trap.
10.
As the FBI braces for a potential purge of thousands of agents who worked on Jan. 6, 2021, cases, Palm Springs Police Chief Andrew Mills shared a message to anyone who is forced out. “Palm Springs Police Department, CA will hire you in a heart beat!” he wrote. “Your dedication, commitment and integrity speaks loudly. Come, work in a community that supports you. Have some fun for a change.” Desert Sun
11.
The film critic Justin Chang wrote about his obsession with the 2001 classic “Mulholland Drive” and the unfillable void left by death of its director David Lynch:
“I’m sympathetic to the idea, as some have grumbled, that all this canonization is a bit premature, and that the sheer seductiveness of ‘Mulholland Drive’ has made it a little too hip and easy to love: the most basic bitch of Surrealist classics. But I’ve never come close to falling out of love with it. To do so would feel a little like falling out of love with Los Angeles itself.” New Yorker
12.
Palm Springs is recognized as the capital of modernism, the minimalist architectural style that elevates function above form. But its birthplace is on the other end of the Coachella Valley in the city of Indio, historians say. It was there, in 1922, that the Austrian architect Rudolph Schindler built an odd little cabin, pictured above, that borrowed ideas from historic Southwestern adobe structures. In time, the style spread, resulting in the modernist wonderland that is Palm Springs. With Modernism Week set to kick off soon, Palm Springs Life magazine highlighted Schindler’s cabin in a feature on 20 moments that shaped desert modernism.
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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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