Good morning. It’s Thursday, Dec. 7.
- Kevin McCarthy to leave Congress at end of the year.
- California cities fight over Gaza war resolutions.
- And a journey inside Los Angeles’ last porn theater.
Statewide
1.
Kevin McCarthy, a onetime deli counter owner from Bakersfield who rose to House speaker in January only to be deposed months later in a revolt from his right, announced Wednesday that he would retire at the end of December. His early exit caps a spectacular downfall for the Republican after 16 years in Congress, while shrinking his party’s already slim majority. “No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay. N.Y. Times | Washington Post
A sampling of reactions from Republican colleagues:
- Speaker Mike Johnson: McCarthy “served faithfully and sacrificed substantially for the good of our country and our cause.”
- Rep. Liz Cheney: “He’s a pathetic figure in many ways in our history, but I also think it’s important not to minimize the damage that he did.”
- Rep. David Valadao: “[McCarthy] has done everything he possibly could, and worked harder than anyone else here in Congress. And I think he left it all on the field.”
- Rep. Matt Gaetz: “It is revealing that if Kevin McCarthy can’t swing the gavel and be in charge and make the decisions, that he’s not willing to be a team player.”
2.
An estimated 100 Oakland teachers held a pro-Palestinian “teach-in” at dozens of schools on Wednesday, defying district leaders who condemned the proposed curriculum as divisive and one-sided. The Oakland teachers union did not organize the teach-in, but it passed a resolution endorsing it. “This is just the beginning,” said Judy Greenspan, a substitute teacher. “No district has a right to try to muzzle a community or to stop our students from seeing a more rounded picture of what’s going on.” Mercury News | KGO
3.
Other developments connected to the Mideast crisis:
- The biggest fight in California’s liberal cities is over a war half the world away. This week, activists pressured the Eureka City Council to pass a ceasefire resolution; Santa Ana deadlocked over competing war proclamations; the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board became among the most obscure agencies to call for a ceasefire; and San Francisco supervisors heard seven hours of public comment on a ceasefire resolution. Among hundreds of speakers, just one opposed it. See a video compilation of emotional moments from the meeting. 👉 SF Standard
- Gov. Gavin Newsom canceled plans for California’s annual in-person Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Capitol on Tuesday to avoid a politically awkward brush with pro-Palestinian protesters. A.P. | KCRA
Northern California
4.
The plaza steps from San Francisco’s City Hall has been a blight on the city, a marketplace of drug dealing and stolen goods. Over the years, a series of measures to revitalize the beleaguered area have fallen short, including new housing, incentives to lure tech firms, and a ceremonial green space. But an unlikely solution now appears to be working: a humble skatepark. “The remade space bears witness to a core truth of smart urban planning,” wrote urban critic John King. “Build on the underlying attractions of a place, rather than trying to impose solutions from above.” S.F. Chronicle | SFGATE
5.
Nvidia, founded at a Denny’s restaurant in San Jose in 1993, initially sold graphics processing units to video game companies. In 2013, CEO Jensen Huang bet the company’s future on artificial intelligence. Then in May of this year it emerged that ChatGPT had been trained on an Nvidia supercomputer. The company’s stock surged nearly $200 billion in one of the largest one-day gains in value for a U.S. stock, making it more valuable than Walmart and ExxonMobil combined. A Wall Street analyst summed up Huang’s business position: “There’s a war going on out there in A.I., and Nvidia is the only arms dealer.” New Yorker
6.
The wild mushrooms served in Bay Area restaurants come from an unregulated network of freelance foragers and brokers — bearded men in flannels and cargo pants who do cash deals in parking lots. Chefs acknowledge the ambiguous legality of the system but say regulators would be ill-advised to get involved. “The peasants would be revolting,” joked Anthony Paone, head chef at Bull Valley Roadhouse. “It’s so entrenched that it would take some sort of unfortunate or catastrophic event before it’d be on the health department’s radar.” SF Standard
7.
A German shepherd named Luna spent 26 hours stuck high up a tree in El Dorado County before her owner discovered her predicament. Brian Spies worried that a mountain lion grabbed the 10-month-old dog after she disappeared early Sunday. But a friend spotted her a day later, clinging to a branch at least 25 feet up a slanted pine tree. They got her down with an extension ladder. Spies speculated that Luna chased a squirrel “and then realized, ‘I made a ginormous mistake.’” See video. 👉 KCRA
Southern California
8.
The television writer and producer Norman Lear died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Born and raised in Connecticut, Lear moved to Los Angeles with his wife and daughter in 1949 after flying 53 missions during World War II. He sold home furnishings before finding work as a sketch writer for television variety shows. Success followed, culminating in a script Lear wrote for a new show named “All in the Family” that introduced social commentary into the world of television sitcoms. It became the top-rated television show for five years. Lear followed up with hits that included “Maude,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Good Times.” He was 101. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
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9.
A proposed high-speed rail link between Las Vegas and Southern California landed a $3 billion federal grant, an almost unheard-of infusion of federal money for a private project that puts it on track to open by 2027, officials announced on Tuesday. Talked about for decades, the electrified Brightline West is expected to stretch roughly 220 miles through the desert at speeds of up to 200 mph, cutting the normal drive time in half. Washington Post | Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
10.
Protesters on horseback demonstrated outside Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday as lawmakers voted unanimously to ban rodeos throughout the city. The city’s Latino equestrian community has portrayed the crackdown as an attack on their culture. “This goes back to 1845, before the state of California was the state of the union,” Geronimo Bugarin told the council. “It’s our culture, it is in our blood, and it needs to be defended.” The Guardian | L.A. Times
11.
The photographer Sinna Nasseri spent several days on Catalina Island for a reporting project on what conservationists say is the only way to save the island for future generations: kill all the deer. Nearly a century after hunters introduced 18 mule deer to the island off the Southern California coast, some 2,000 of the herbivores are now mowing through native plants, priming the landscape for wildfire and depleting the food supply for other animals. But many residents of Avalon, Catalina’s only city, are fighting the plan, lining the promenade with “Stop the slaughter” posters. N.Y. Times
12.
One year out of USC, reporting fellow Angie Orellana Hernandez showed some mettle for her first big story in the L.A. Times: a profile of Los Angeles’s last porn theater. Venturing into the darkened halls of the Tiki Theater, she met the men who pay $20 for four-hour tickets to see such features as “Tiny & Tight Size Queens 2” and “Stepmom Seductions.” “I always wonder how these places survive,” Mark, a patron who declined to share his last name, told her. As he pondered the theater’s future, his eyes kept darting away. “I’m too distracted by what’s happening on the screen to share any last words,” he said. L.A. Times
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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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