Good morning. It’s Friday, June 30.
- California’s reparations panel delivers its final report.
- Yosemite traffic is so bad visitors are turning back.
- And homelessness spikes once again in Los Angeles.
Please note: The newsletter will pause on July 3 and 4. Back in your inbox Wednesday.
Statewide
1.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action on Thursday won’t directly affect the University of California or California State University systems, which were already barred from the practice under a 1996 voter initiative that targeted public campuses. But more than 80 private institutions in California that had been free to consider race in admissions will now have to find other ways to reach their diversity goals. UCLA, where Black and Latino enrollment has now fully rebounded, looked to share what it learned. In short, it takes major investments of resources and time. L.A. Times | EdSource | NBC News
- The ruling left the door open to consider race in an applicant’s lived experience. College officials predicted that would lead to greater emphasis on the personal essay. N.Y. Times
2.
After two years of deliberations, California’s reparations task force delivered its 1,075-page final report to state lawmakers on Thursday. “Anyone who says that we are colorblind, that we have solved the problem of anti-Black animus and racism, I challenge you to read this document,” said Lisa Holder, a task force member. The panel’s work now faces an uncertain fate as Democrats face pressure to deliver on their support for reparations in a state where public support for them is at best mixed. A.P. | L.A. Times | Politico
- “Where is the Chinese community?” A challenge for reparations advocates: selling it to Latinos and Asians. Washington Post
- See the full report. 👉 CA.gov
3.
Traffic to get into Yosemite Valley has grown so congested that some visitors are being forced to turn back. Summer is typically busy at California’s most popular national park, but this year is extreme, locals say. Last Sunday, all parking across the valley was full by 9:30 a.m. “I’ve been out here for 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Elizabeth Barton, the operator of a tour company in the Yosemite gateway town of Groveland. SFGATE | S.F. Chronicle
4.
The boom and screech of fireworks in California cities around July Fourth can fray people’s nerves — but for pets it’s downright terrifying. The holiday is one of the biggest days on the calendar for animal shelters, which handle a surge of runaways. It’s also has led to a heartwarming annual tradition: soothing sessions in which volunteers skip the fireworks to sit with frightened shelter animals. Celeste Ingrid, volunteer program coordinator at Sacramento’s Bradshaw Animal Shelter, told the California Sun the events have become so popular that they have had to limit volunteers. “Some really great people come out,” she said. The sessions also pose a sort of happy hazard for volunteers, she noted. Some fall in love with their charges and end up bringing them home.
Northern California
5.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he is doubling the state’s police force in San Francisco as part of a crackdown on fentanyl dealers, bringing the total number of CHP officers in the city to as many as 20. “We have a lot of existing laws on the books. I’d like to see us start to enforce the damn existing laws,” Newsom said. In May alone, 63 people died from fentanyl overdoses in San Francisco. S.F. Chronicle | L.A. Times
6.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Andy Dolich, co-author of the new book “Goodbye Oakland: Winning, Wanderlust, and a Sports Town’s Fight for Survival.” Dolich wrestled with the logic of the Oakland Athletics’ decision to leave the Bay Area — the nation’s sixth-largest market — for Las Vegas — the 40th largest. “As we all know the color of the fluid that flows through the veins of business in sports is green,” he said. “This one is sort of hard to add up because it makes no financial sense.”
7.
Two hours up the coast from San Francisco is a tiny hamlet that seems to combine everything wonderful about the wild Northern California coast. Clinging to the cliffs at the mouth of the Russia River, Jenner is surrounded by a lagoon, isolated beaches, outrageous sea stacks, and a redwood forest. When you’ve worked up an appetite, there’s a restaurant on the water called River’s End that the columnist Carl Nolte once described as “one of those rare places where the food matches the view” — seen above. SonomaCounty.com
Southern California
8.
Homelessness has surged 10% in Los Angeles since 2022, according to official data released on Thursday. The tally, conducted in January, projected that roughly 46,260 people were now living in cars, on the street, or in shelters — about 80% more than there were in 2015. That’s despite billions of dollars spent to stem the crisis. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass expressed frustration on Thursday. “Frankly, with all that we’re doing now, I’m worried that next year the count might be even larger,” she said. L.A. Daily News | A.P.
9.
When migrants were bussed from the Texas-Mexico border to Los Angeles this month, activists and local politicians excoriated Gov. Greg Abbott. But he had a collaborator: Sister Norma Pimentel, a prominent migrant aid worker. The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen was overwhelmed by migrants, Pimentel said, so when she got an offer for free buses, she took it. “There were people that wanted to go — it’s not like I wanted to send them on those buses,” Pimentel said. Then parties on both sides of the aisle turned the bus into a political spectacle, she said. L.A. Times
10.
Cindy Birdsong, a former Supreme and Motown royalty, was kept isolated by a friend inside a Los Angeles apartment, Birdsong’s family says. In a court case seeking conservatorship over her affairs, family members say Birdsong, 83, became totally incapacitated after several strokes and had to be rescued from Rochelle Lander, a person they say exerted undue influence over the former singer’s care and finances while blocking access to friends and family. Lander has argued that she was the only person willing to help Birdsong. N.Y. Times
11.
The Jonathan Majors domestic abuse story took some turns.
- Sources told the N.Y. Times that New York police determined the woman who accused the California actor of assault last March attacked Majors herself and that there was enough evidence to arrest her. Majors’ lawyer had called the initial case a “witch hunt.” N.Y. Times
- Over the last three months, a reporting team interviewed more than 40 people who know Majors. Many said that he was abusive to two romantic partners. “It was pervasively known that he was [a good actor], and that he also would terrorize the people that he had dated,” one of sources said. Rolling Stone
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- British journalist Samuel McIlhagga visited Shasta County and interviewed residents convinced that a civil war is coming. “Covid was like this Great Awakening,” said Carlos Zapata, a restaurant owner and member of the Cottonwood militia. Unherd
- The New York journalist Joe Hagan wrote a 9,300-word “profile” of California for Vanity Fair. During a dinner party at Susan Orlean’s modernist home in the Hollywood Hills, conversation turned to home safety. “You know what?” Orlean said. “We were very casual, and then we got robbed in Montecito.”
- “Detours and roadblocks bedeck its shores. Chemicals, manure and diesel pollute it. Palm trees and power poles poke from its surface. Day brings dragonflies. Dusk brings mosquitoes.” The N.Y. Times published a dispatch from Tulare Lake that includes some fantastic photos.
- Driving through Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon in 1975, the photographer Hugh Holland spotted a skateboarder catching air along a drainage ditch. He was hooked. For the next three years, Holland chronicled the young outsiders of the 1970s as they invented a new sport in Southern California. Blind magazine | Vice
- In Texas, homelessness has fallen 28% since 2012. In California, it’s up 43%. That’s despite the fact that Texas funds their homelessness programs with about $800 per homeless person, while California spends $10,790. What’s going on? Reporter Marisa Kendall noted that Texas builds a lot more houses. CalMatters
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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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