Good morning. It’s Tuesday, April 8.
- Meteorologists predict a warm spring from here on out.
- Dodgers are celebrated in fraught visit to White House.
- And Palm Springs hangs pro-Canada banners downtown.
Statewide
1.
Many of the more than 80 cancellations of foreign student visas in California over the past week appear to have no connection to pro-Palestinian activism, lawyers said. In some cases, students had legal infractions on their records such as drunk driving or speeding. But the federal authorities gave no explanation for the revocations, leaving it up to students to guess why they were targeted. “This is totally unprecedented,” said Fuji Whittenburg, an immigration lawyer. “I have never seen anything close to this.” N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
- In Silicon Valley, some foreign tech workers on H-1B visas are skipping travel for fear of being locked out the U.S. Mercury News
2.
“Heat lovers can rejoice.”
— National Weather Service San Diego
The first heat wave of 2025 is expected to bake California between Wednesday and Friday, with widespread highs above 70 degrees near the coast and around 100 in the deserts, meteorologists said. The weekend will cool off, but only by a touch, which means concertgoers attending the opening days of the Coachella music festival in Indio could face some brutal temperatures. And that’s just the start. “It certainly looks like the spring is going to be much drier and warmer from here on out,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said on Monday. Weather West | L.A. Times
3.
The landscape photographer Ansel Adams was troubled by the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans under the Alien Enemies Act, the wartime power invoked by President Trump to carry out deportations without due process. In 1943, Adams won rare access to photograph inside the Manzanar concentration camp in the Eastern Sierra, saying later that he hoped to capture the dignity of loyal Americans who fell victim to “the tragic momentum of the times.” His portraits are featured in a new piece by Jon Keegan, an investigative journalist who specializes in unearthing “visually interesting” finds from government archives. Beautiful Public Data
- See the full catalog of Adams’ Manzanar photos.
Northern California
4.
Barbara Lee, the popular former congresswoman, was supposed to be a sure thing in her homecoming bid for Oakland mayor. But polling has shown the race tightening to a statistical tossup between Lee and opponent Loren Taylor ahead of the April 15 special election. John Whitehurst, a political consultant and veteran of Oakland politics, posited that residents are craving a fresh approach to the city’s dysfunction. “Everyone thought [Lee would] be a bench-clearer,” he said. “Not the case — she’s been successfully tagged with the failures of the past.” Politico
- S.F. Chronicle editorial: “Barbara Lee is an icon, but Loren Taylor has the ideas to lead Oakland into the future.”
5.
The best restaurant in the Bay Area is an Oakland soul-food spot called Burdell. That’s according to an ambitious new ranking of the region’s 100 best restaurants by the San Francisco Chronicle:
“When critics from other cities come to town, we delight in watching their eyes roll back in their heads as they crunch their way through Burdell’s cheeky spin on chicken and waffles. When a New Orleans-based food writer declares the barbecue shrimp to be better than back home, our chests puff with pride.”
Southern California
6.
A youth soccer coach was charged on Monday with the murder of a 13-year-old boy whose body was found along a road in Oxnard last week, prosecutors said. Oscar Hernandez, 13, was last seen on March 28 when he left to meet his coach, Mario Garcia-Aquino, 43, to help make soccer jerseys, the boy’s family said. As a search unfolded, investigators learned that Garcia-Aquino was accused in an unrelated 2024 sexual assault of a teenage boy, leading them to believe there could be additional victims. Sources told reporters that Garcia-Aquino was in the U.S. illegally. L.A. Daily News | L.A. Times
7.
Last week, Los Angeles County agreed to pay a staggering $4 billion to settle nearly 7,000 claims of sexual abuse in juvenile facilities since 1959. In an interview with the New York Times, J.C. Wright, 42, a truck driver and father of four in suburban L.A., sobbed as he recalled being accused of lying at age 7:
“I told people. And I told my counselors — MacLaren Hall, the whole second floor, it was nothing but counselors, people who say they’re there to protect you — and you go tell them. And they tell you you’re lying. Or you need attention. I just — wanted them — to stop it.”
8.
The Dodgers visited the White House on Monday to celebrate their 2024 World Series championship, upholding a tradition that has been fraught with political tension during Donald Trump’s presidencies. Trump accepted a gift jersey from Clayton Kershaw, shook the hand of Mookie Betts, and posed for a picture in the Oval Office with Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers’ decision to go ahead with the visit triggered a wave of outrage among many fans in overwhelmingly Democratic Los Angeles. L.A. Times | A.P.
- The Times’ Dylan Hernández: “How pathetic. How spineless. More than anything, how hypocritical.”
9.
The billionaire developer Rick Caruso lost the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral contest to Karen Bass by roughly 10 percentage points despite outspending her by more than 14 to 1. But the January wildfires upended California’s political landscape. Many Republicans and Democrats have suggested that voters may be more receptive to an executive with a successful record of building and development, the New York Times said in a new profile. Caruso, the newspaper added, “appears to be keeping his political options open as he considers a run for mayor or governor.”
10.
Palm Springs this week hung pro-Canada banners along its downtown thoroughfare in a bid for conciliation after President Trump’s bullying of the northern neighbor. The City Council approved the banners, which include Canada’s maple leaf flag in the shape of a heart, after tour operators noticed signs of a drop-off in Canadian travelers. “We’re seeing a lot of things where people are passing right over the United States completely,” one tourism official said. “They’re going right down to Mexico, to the Caribbean.” Palm Springs Post | KESQ
11.
Two U.S. border inspectors in San Diego have been charged with taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to allow vehicles carrying undocumented immigrants to cross the border unchecked, prosecutors said. Investigators said they found text messages that showed Farlis Almonte and Ricardo Rodriguez told human smugglers in Mexico when they were scheduled to work and what lanes they were assigned to, a criminal complaint said. Last year, another San Diego border officer charged with taking bribes was sentenced to 23 years in prison. S.D. Union-Tribune | A.P.
12.
One of the best art shows in Los Angeles right now, according to more than one art writer, is essentially an empty room. “Bruce Nauman: Pasadena Years,” at Marian Goodman Gallery, focuses on the influential artist’s prolific decade from 1969 to 1979 and includes a baffling installation that invites viewers to walk down a narrow corridor. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight narrated what happens next:
“Arriving at the blank gallery wall at the end of a restricted, uneventful walk, one’s immediately puzzled thought is, ‘Why am I here?’ And, after all, that is the question, isn’t it?” L.A. Times | Hyperallergic
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