Good morning. It’s Friday, May 10.
- State adopts one of nation’s highest fixed utility fees.
- Protester checkpoints stirred fear among Jews at UCLA.
- And gentle gun lessons for Los Angeles liberals.
Statewide
1.
California regulators voted on Thursday to impose one of the country’s highest monthly fixed utility fees, a fiercely contested change that supporters said would make electricity bills fairer by spreading out the costs of maintaining the grid. Most customers of PG&E, SDG&E, and Southern California Edison will pay $24.15 a month, while the price of electricity drops by 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Consumer advocates denounced the plan, saying it would saddle millions of working families with higher bills. CalMatters | L.A. Times
- San Francisco Chronicle editorial: “Why California’s plan to let PG&E charge you a fixed monthly fee is as flawed as it sounds.”
2.
On April 1, a state law lifted the minimum wage for about half a million fast-food workers in California to $20 an hour. In 2026, health-care workers will be the beneficiaries of another sector-specific minimum wage hike, this time $25 an hour. Workers in industries still paying the state’s $16-an-hour minimum are now raising an obvious question: What about us? Saru Jayaraman, a wage activist, led a rally outside the Capitol in Sacramento last week. “Clearly the Legislature understands that some workers deserve $20, so they must understand that everybody deserves $20,” she said. L.A. Times
3.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Robert McNally, author of the new book “Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples and the American Wilderness.” McNally acknowledges a sort of “saintliness” in Muir, but argues that it overshadowed a belief popularized by the great conservationist that Native people did not belong in wild places. “It’s very easy to forget,” McNally said, “that all of the western national parks were actually originally Indigenous homelands.”
Northern California
4.
Over the last decade, a nonprofit hospital on the outskirts of Fresno made more than $1 billion in profit and reported no spending on subsidized health care. In March, a report on soaring executive pay at Valley Children’s Hospital drew outrage across the San Joaquin Valley. Now a new analysis has found that the vast majority of the charitable giving by Valley Children’s, an obligation of nonprofit hospitals, has been funneled to its own medical group. “It seems very, very unusual,” a health policy researcher said. Fresnoland
5.
Oakland voted formally on Thursday to change the name of its airport to San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, defying San Francisco leaders who have sued to block the change on trademark grounds. Shortly after the vote, Oakland announced a countersuit seeking a “declaratory judgment” that SFO’s trademark does not extend to the use of “San Francisco Bay.” Legal experts have said both sides have a point: Trademark law generally prevents registering geographic features, but it also protects against the potential for customer confusion. S.F. Examiner | S.F. Chronicle
6.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday threatened legal action against Half Moon Bay for holding up a proposed affordable housing project a year after a mass shooting exposed the squalid living conditions of farmworkers. “The delay is egregious and jeopardizes the well-being of Californians,” Newsom said. Half Moon Bay Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said the governor’s remarks were unhelpful. “He needs to understand that this is a process that we have to follow,” he said. KQED | L.A. Times
7.
San Bruno Mountain, pictured above, has been described as an island of nature in a sea of civilization. For many motorists headed to and from San Francisco, the mountain is an obstacle to be circumnavigated. But it represents the last remaining vestige of what the San Francisco Peninsula looked like before European contact: an oasis humming with rare manzanitas and endangered butterflies. A trail along San Bruno’s spine offers huge open views of the entire Bay Area. Bay Nature | SFGATE
Southern California
8.
In the days leading up to the April 30 melee at UCLA, pro-Palestinian activists had set up checkpoints on campus that blocked the movement of supporters of Israel. “Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement,” explained activist Sabrina Ellis, 21. “It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.” Some Jewish students showed up at the campus Hillel in tears. “They were genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get access as protesters asked them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or looked at their necklace,” said Daniel Gold, the executive director of Hillel at UCLA. L.A. Times
9.
A couple reported missing on Mount Whitney on Tuesday has been found dead, authorities said. Andrew Niziol, 28, a resident of South Lake Tahoe, and Patty Bolan, 29, who recently finished a physics doctorate at UC Davis, became separated from a third friend while descending after reaching the 14,500-foot summit. The friend, Ethan Michael Cannaert, said he waited more than an hour at a meetup spot, but was forced by freezing conditions to move on. A rescuer described Niziol and Bolan as “fall victims.” Sacramento Bee | L.A. Times
- In an Instagram post last week, Niziol shared a photo of him and Bolan on Mount Shasta. “I’ve finally surrounded myself with people to share these types of experiences with and I couldn’t be more thankful,” he wrote.
10.
On April 25, the organizer of the upcoming Huntington Beach Longboard Pro posted a video in response to a transgender woman’s bid to compete in the women’s division. “If you are born a female, you enter into the women’s,” Todd Messick said. “If you are born a male, you enter into the men’s.” A fierce debate followed. Then on Tuesday the California Coastal Commission stepped in, ordering Messick to allow the surfer, Sasha Jane Lowerson of Australia, to compete as a woman or find himself in violation of the “equality and environmental justice” provisions of the Coastal Act. BBC | Inertia
11.
The number of California gun owners has grown by more than a million since 2018. Many of those first-time firearm owners are liberals who have spent their lives loathing and fearing guns. So where do they go for guidance? L.A. Progressive Shooters, where founder Tom Nguyen, a martial-arts practitioner who wears his hair in braids, explains that gun ownership does not have to define your personality. “Being peaceful,” he said, “is not the same as being helpless, or harmless.” L.A. Times
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Sicco Rood, a photographer and environmental researcher, set off on an audacious canoeing adventure around the Salton Sea in December. He returned with a new perspective: “People have been saying the place is dead … but that’s not what I saw at all,” he said. LAist
- A Monrovia homeowner captured video of a family of bears as they took a stroll through his backyard Monday afternoon. It included two little cubs who watched curiously as their mother took a dip in the pool. NBC Los Angeles | @rickymartinez87
- Cameron Gordon, 30, drove to Los Angeles from Texas in 2018 to attend a songwriting convention. He decided to stay, embracing a well-trodden path of strivers with big dreams and little money. To survive, he bought an ambulance, the Los Angeles Times reported.
- The latest round of landslides along Big Sur’s Highway 1 is projected to cost more than $100 million to fix. The Washington Post broached an unthinkable option: “Giving up on maintaining a continuous 656-mile stretch of blacktop from Orange County to Mendocino County, and letting parts of Highway 1 become dead ends.”
- O.C. Register photographer Jeff Gritchen shared before-and-after photos of Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino Mountains, which is now higher than it’s been in 13 years. @jgritchenphoto
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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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