Good morning. It’s Monday, Feb. 10.
- Major atmospheric river on track to hit California.
- Cities debate Trump’s deportation campaign.
- And Compton takes center stage at the Super Bowl.
Statewide
1.
Meteorologists on Sunday expressed alarm over models showing a powerful atmospheric river on track to sweep across the West Coast this week. Forecasts called for light showers early in the week followed by the main event — packing heavy rain, mountain snow, and strong winds — between Wednesday and Friday. Ryan Kittell, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Southern California burn areas could see significant debris flows. “People should prepare for really the worst-case scenario,” he said. L.A. Times | SFGATE | Accuweather
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After recent storms, the Eastern Sierra is looking gorgeous in winter white. Below are a few scenes captured by photographer Samantha Lindberg in the Mammoth Lakes area on Friday.
2.
The national debate over President Trump’s immigration crackdown has filtered down to local governments in California, where officials have been wrestling over whether and how to take a stand. A snapshot from the last week:
- In Clovis, Mayor Diane Pearce urged the City Council declare the community in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley a “non-sanctuary city.” They declined. Pearce took to Facebook, where she portrayed the issue as a struggle against criminality. “We have to protect ourselves,” she wrote. Fresno Bee | KSEE
- San Clemente’s City Council rejected one proposal to join a lawsuit against California’s sanctuary state law. But they advanced another to increase video surveillance along the shore to help thwart what the mayor called an “invasion by sea.” O.C. Register | KTLA
- San Francisco and Santa Clara counties are leading a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s threats to penalize local jurisdictions that decline to aid its deportation efforts. The lawsuit, filed Friday, highlights the 10th Amendment, which protects states’ rights. KQED | Politico
3.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a “large scale” immigration enforcement action in the Los Angeles area before the end of the month, according to leaked documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. A federal official told the Times that agents were being enlisted from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration to assist. “They needed more bodies,” the person said. After the article was published Friday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested the leak had come from the FBI. “The FBI is so corrupt,” she wrote on X. L.A. Times
4.
Another of the young engineers helping carry out Elon Musk’s blitzkrieg on the federal government workforce has come under scrutiny for his posts on X. In recent months, Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old who grew up in Orange County and graduated from UC Berkeley, amplified posts by a British ethnonationalist and the self-described misogynist Andrew Tate. He also called for pardoning Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, and shared a post by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes denigrating interracial adoption. Reuters | Forbes
- Rep. Ro Khanna asked Vice President JD Vance whether the Musk lieutenant who wrote “normalize Indian hate,” Marko Elez, would have to apologize before being rehired. The question was not well received. The Hill
5.
Khanna, pictured above, has known Musk for more than a decade. The Silicon Valley Democrat has been among the few Democrats to occasionally defend the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX as Musk became a Trump loyalist. Musk wrote a laudatory blurb for Khanna’s first book and would refer to him as “a sensible moderate.” Khanna told an Atlantic reporter he now wonders if was naive:
“‘We need to make sure that Elon Musk has an allegiance to the Constitution,’ Khanna told me. Do you think he does? I asked him. ‘No, I don’t,’ Khanna replied. ‘That’s why we need to push back on him.'”
Northern California
6.
Maximilian Snyder, an accused killer linked to a cult-like group of vegan rationalists in the Bay Area, dictated a 1,500-word letter over a jail phone urging his rationalist idol, Eliezer Yudkowsky, to embrace veganism. “Those are my little brothers and sisters and siblings,” said Snyder, 22, referring to animals. The authorities have linked six violent deaths to the group known as the Zizians. Yudkowsky said he would not read the letter for the same reason he refused to read the manuscript of the Unabomber. “Audience should not be a reward for crime,” he said. S.F. Chronicle
7.
The lifestyle medication company Hims & Hers Health has built a business on male anxieties. Since its founding in San Francisco in 2017, it has accumulated more than 2 million regular customers and achieved a market capitalization of $9 billion. Now it’s betting on a new message, which the company showcased in a Super Bowl ad: “the system” has been rigged to keep you unhealthy. “Hims has done well selling its own recipes for masculine energy; now it figures it can do even better pushing remedies to help you take back control from the elites and make you feel great again,” The Atlantic wrote.
8.
Margery Hop Wong was 12 years old when she last saw her big brother in 1943. He was 19 and left their home in Sebastopol to fight in World War II. She knew he had died, but not how or where. “On Friday, Ms. Wong, now 94, sat in the front pew of a mortuary just south of her home in San Francisco, her brother’s remains in a casket draped in an American flag. Younger generations of the Hop family and military veterans filled the rows behind her as a singer led the group in ‘Amazing Grace,'” the New York Times wrote.
Southern California
9.
After the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood burned down, displaced kids were welcomed onto the campuses in neighboring districts. Good will abounded. But tensions have begun to surface. The school communities come from “different worlds,” explained one parent from a host school: “Not to judge anybody, but it’s just the behavior of, ‘I can park where I want. I can use whichever entrance I want.’ Like, no, you got to follow the rules. Anytime I’m a guest … I make sure I’m as humble and respectful and grateful as possible.” KCRW
10.
Amid the scenes of near-complete devastation in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, some buildings were improbably left standing. Whether by design or accident, they had structural advantages that helped them survive. Some were built with noncombustible materials. In other cases, homeowners had cleared vegetation. The Washington Post investigated “what the homes that survived the L.A. fires reveal.”
11.
Other wildfire developments:
- People reacted angrily upon learning that Los Angeles’ chief wildfire recovery officer, Steve Soboroff, was to be paid $500,000 for 90 days of work. So Mayor Karen Bass backtracked. Now he’ll be paid nothing. L.A. Times | KABC
- In 2017, wildfires burned hundreds of homes in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. Yet today a visitor would not know the neighborhood was recently a ruin. It could be a model for Altadena and Pacific Palisades, wrote The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf.
- President Trump’s federal hiring freeze has halted onboarding of federal firefighting crews. “It’s going to be really bad, really quick,” a federal hand crew captain said. CNN | N.Y. Times
12.
Compton took center stage at the Super Bowl on Sunday, as native son Kendrick Lamar delivered an electrifying halftime performance that included a Crip-walking Serena Williams, another Compton hero. Lamar — the first solo rapper to ever headline the coveted slot — teased the crowd, pretending he wasn’t going to perform his monster hit “Not Like Us,” a diss track that has drawn legal fire from its target, Drake. When he finally did, Lamar elided the most incendiary line, which the crowd gleefully filled in, calling Drake’s crew “certified pedophiles.” Deadline | N.Y. Times
- Watch the performance. 👉 YouTube (~13 mins)
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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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