Good morning. It’s Tuesday, June 25.
- Oakland mayor delivers defiant speech after raid.
- Mideast conflict fractures UCSF medical center.
- And officials plan to remove Highway 99 landmark.
Statewide
1.
While California’s cannabis industry has lagged, falling behind even Michigan in unit sales, one county has thrived against the odds: Santa Barbara. The coastal enclave embraced recreational pot early in hopes of an economic boost, transforming it into the state’s undisputed cannabis capital. A new report showed that Santa Barbara County’s industry produced about 10 million pounds of cannabis in 2023, accounting for roughly 40% of all cannabis grown in California and six times the output of the Emerald Triangle — the state’s traditional heartland of marijuana cultivation. The total haul: $329 million. SFGATE
2.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s family is leaving suburban Sacramento to move back to Marin County, where both he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, grew up. Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, told Politico the decision was made “to ensure continuity in their children’s education.” The move will allow the eldest of their four children to start high school at The Branson School, a $60,000-a-year academy in Ross that Siebel Newsom attended. Politico
3.
About 10 new wildfires erupted along the wooded Sierra foothills Monday after lightning storms rolled through the area, according to fire officials. The largest blaze, the Apache fire, spread rapidly Monday night in Butte County about 25 miles from Paradise, the mountain town burned in the 2018 Camp fire. By early Tuesday, it had grown to more than a square mile, destroying three structures and inching dangerously close to Palermo, home to around 5,000 people. Action News Now | KCRA
- See live fire map. 👉 Cal Fire
4.
Caltrans is planning to remove the “Palm and the Pine” — a historic pair of trees in the Highway 99 median in Madera County said to signify the meeting point of the state’s northern and southern halves — as part of a freeway widening project, officials said. This isn’t the first time the trees have faced the axe. A road improvement project in the 1980s that called for removing the trees prompted a public outcry. The trees stayed. Perhaps cognizant of that history, officials pledged to add a marker that features 15 palms and 15 pines to the side of the highway. Sacramento Bee | San Joaquin Valley Sun
Northern California
5.
After four days of silence, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao delivered an emotional speech Monday during which she proclaimed her innocence and implied that an FBI raid on her home was the work of powerful forces seeking to drive her from office. Thao, 38, a daughter of Hmong refugees who once lived in a car, linked the law enforcement action to “billionaires from San Francisco and from Piedmont” and said it “wouldn’t have gone down the way it did if I was rich, if I had gone to elite private schools or if I had come from money.” She didn’t take questions. Mercury News | A.P.
- Watch Thao’s speech. 👉 YouTube
- Tony Brass, one of Thao’s lawyers, said Monday that he would no longer represent the mayor. “When I heard the content of the press conference, it became clear to me that the mayor and I had very different approaches or different philosophies about how to proceed,” he said. CBS News Bay Area
6.
The Hilton Hotel near the Oakland airport announced Monday that it would shut down in August after 56 years in business. Spokespeople for the hotel declined to discuss the reasons. The stretch of Hegenberger Road where the 19-acre hotel is located is among the most crime-ridden parts of Oakland. In the last year, closures along the corridor have included a Subway, two Starbucks stores, a Denny’s, Black Bear Diner, and the city’s only In-N-Out Burger. S.F. Chronicle | KTVU
7.
In December, a task force of hospital doctors at UC San Francisco discussed whether to issue a statement calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Avromi Kanal, a professor whose grandfather was branded by the Nazis, said he worried a cease-fire would embolden Hamas. Later, a colleague wrote in a Substack post that Kanal’s comment was an “expression of anti-Arab hate” that led other doctors feel unsafe.
Reporter Heather Knight shared the anecdote above in a piece on the fractured medical community at UCSF, where doctors’ chants of “long live intifada!” have echoed through patients’ rooms. N.Y. Times
8.
Nvidia’s stock explosion has made many of the Santa Clara chipmaker’s employees much richer. An unnamed engineer in his late 20s talked about what the experience has been like in New York Magazine. A few quotes:
- “Once a month, I’ve been taking my girlfriend to a nice restaurant — one Michelin star, not the three Michelin stars. I just don’t get the value prop, you know?”
- “It can be annoying when people hear I work there — they ask when I joined and try to guess how rich I am.”
- “I don’t really work that hard either, like 30, 35 hours a week.”
● ●
Photos: “A peek inside San Francisco’s AI boom.” Washington Post
9.
The mola mola, or ocean sunfish, has been described as all head. A voracious jelly eater, the awkward creature is the heaviest bony fish in the world, weighing as much as 2 tons and stretching as long as 10 feet. They spend most of their time deep underwater, but they can commonly be found surfacing in Monterey Bay to sunbathe, baffling tourists who struggle to discern what exactly they are looking at. Bay Nature included the mola mola in an illustrated guide to six natural wonders to watch for in the Bay Area this summer.
- See video of a paddle boarder’s encounter with a massive mola mola off Laguna Beach. 👉 @richgermanlb
Southern California
10.
Santa Ana City Council put a measure on the November ballot that would ask whether noncitizen residents of the city, “including those who are taxpayers and parents,” should be allowed to participate in municipal elections. Critics challenged the inclusion of those seven words in court, saying they were clearly added to bias voters: who would deny taxpayers and parents the right to vote? A judge agreed, ordering the city to strike the clause. Last week, the council voted to defy the court: the language will stay as written, they said. Politico
11.
Local hoodlums are behaving like they own Giant Rock, one of the world’s largest freestanding boulders at the end of a bumpy road in the Mojave Desert. Unsanctioned parties and graffiti have become common. A couple weeks ago, someone fired a gun and called a group cleaning up trash at the rock hippies, recalled Karyl Newman, an artist from Yucca Valley. In another incident, kids yelled at them to go back to Los Angeles. “They were like, ‘This is our rock. You don’t need to be here.’” Newman said. L.A. Times
12.
Vista = “View”
Linda Vista = “Beautiful View”
Chula Vista = “Pretty View”
A San Diego realtor named Belen Garcia Luna posted a pair of fun TikTok videos translating city names across the region from Spanish to English. Part 1 | Part 2
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