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Military bases to housing and parks? A look at two bases.
Trump defunds high-speed rail, but California lawmakers persist
Should California have its own diplomatic corps?
ICE STRIKES IN CALIFORNIA
ICE agents with assault rifles toss flash-bangs in trendy San Diego neighborhood. Community fights back
Ruben Vives, LA Times
The incidents occurred Friday when heavily armed ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents executed search warrants at Buona Forchetta and Enoteca Buona Forchetta in South Park, a serene and tree-lined neighborhood with popular restaurants, according to immigration and city officials.
It marks one of the more dramatic shows of force by federal immigration officials in California as the Trump administration vowed mass deportations of those in this country illegally. Last week, officials announced a raid at an L.A.-area underground nightclub that ended with the arrest of 36 Chinese and Taiwanese citizens suspected of being in the country illegally. In April, an estimated two dozen day laborers were detained in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection action outside of a Home Depot in Pomona.
California Democrats push to block ICE from schools, hospitals and shelters
Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters
The Democratic-dominated Legislature can’t block federal agents from entering places where someone has allowed them to be. They also can’t stop ICE from going where officers have the legal authority to be, such as immigration courthouses. But the bills the state Senate passed Monday push local officials to limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to require agents to get a warrant to enter.
One bill would bar immigration agents from entering “nonpublic” parts of schools without a warrant. Another would do the same in hospitals, and prohibit health care providers from sharing patients’ immigration status with federal authorities unless they have a warrant. Another would limit immigration agents from accessing homeless or domestic violence shelters.
Other bills limit information sharing. One would require California health departments, when issuing birth certificates, to shield the parents’ countries of birth from the publicly viewable portion of the document. Another would require cities and counties that license street vendors — a business dominated by immigrants — from sharing information about licensees with federal authorities.
The lawmakers’ proposals sailed through the Legislature so far, and passed the Senate this week with near-unanimous support from Democrats. They now head to the Assembly..
ICE arrests 15 people, including 3-year-old child, in San Francisco, advocates say
Jessica Flores, SF Chronicle
The detainees are residents of San Francisco and Contra Costa and San Mateo counties, advocates said.
People with pending immigration cases typically have to check in with ICE officials at least once a year as they make their way through a backlogged court system. There have been reports of arrests at routine check-ins throughout the country.
The arrests at the ICE field office occurred on the same day that ICE reportedly detained an unknown number of people outside a supermarket in South San Jose. Last week, ICE arrested four men following their appearances in San Francisco Immigration Court last Tuesday, according to advocates. Immigrants were arrested at Concord Immigration Court as well, the advocates said.
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WHILE FIRE DEFENSES NEGLECTED
‘Where’s the federal government?’ Newsom calls on Trump administration to fund more wildfire prevention
Kurtis Alexander, SF Chronicle
In California, nearly 60% of forest lands are managed by the federal government. The state, by contrast, manages just 3% of forests, though it oversees a lot of the work on private timberlands.
On Friday, the governor announced $72 million of funding for a slew of large-scale forest resiliency projects, primarily tree-thinning and prescribed burns. All of the projects qualify for an expedited environmental review process initiated by Newsom in March for fire safety work. Already, 13 projects have moved forward with accelerated approvals.
“California is ‘raking the forests’ at a faster pace than ever before,” Newsom said in a statement Friday, referencing the fire-prevention tactic that President Donald Trump has urged for California. “Where’s the federal government?”
Gutting AmeriCorps weakens California’s response when the next emergency strikes
Ending the corps program is not just shortsighted, it’s dangerous.
Lauren Levitt, CalMatters
At a time when wildfires, floods and climate-driven disasters are only becoming more frequent, we need competent and experienced disaster response professionals. They don’t magically appear. They have to get their start somewhere. Programs like this are how we grow the next generation of emergency responders, crisis managers and community resilience leaders.
The argument you may hear is that national service is too expensive, but that’s not the case with AmeriCorps. For modest stipends, people can serve their communities and gain valuable career experience for a fraction of what outsourcing those services would cost. Emergency response members provide support through fires, floods, pandemics and earthquakes, helping fill gaps no one else can or will.
We’re not waste, fraud or abuse. We’re vital components of the communities we serve.
RESISTANCE
California AG says federal cuts are actually helping legal fight with Trump: ‘They can’t keep up’
Shira Stein, SF Chronicle
“Their own strategy of ‘flood the zone’ — and the confusion and chaos and shock and awe — has almost this boomerang effect, where we’ve responded and the ball’s back in their court now and they can’t keep up,” Bonta said. “This speed and this volume has repercussions on their ability to defend themselves.”
More than half the attorneys at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, led by San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon, have left, the Wall Street Journal reported. And in some cases, Bonta said, U.S. attorneys — district prosecutors — have appeared on the Trump administration’s behalf instead of lawyers from the main Justice Department.
The volume of cases is “double the speed, double the pace,” compared to the first Trump administration, Bonta said. At the current rate, “we will hit the number of total cases of Trump 1.0 by the (2026) midterms.”
“We’re doing everything faster and with more volume in a broader variety of cases, more nuance, more issues,” he said. “So we’re just more proficient at it … including working together and filing more quickly, being more responsive to the actions.”
LOOKING FOR HOUSING IN DIFFERENT PLACES
The final mission for a California military base: become housing
Todd Woody, Bloomberg News
Nearly two decades after the US Navy decommissioned the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California, the sprawling site more resembles the set of a post-apocalyptic movie than the residential community it’s slated to become. Before ground is broken on a single new home, bunkers, pipelines and other military infrastructure must be removed, and electricity, water and other utilities will have to be extended to an area a third the size of Manhattan. Efforts to secure a master developer for the project are dragging, though, and for now the former base is being used as a testing ground for self-driving electric vehicles and to train law enforcement personnel.
The convoluted quest to repurpose the Concord Naval Weapons Station underscores the challenges of redeveloping a vast but contaminated military facility, as well as the unique opportunity. The city of Concord’s plans for the 4,972-acre base call for more than 12,000 homes along with businesses, schools and sporting facilities to be built adjacent to existing mass transit. More than half the base will become a 2,543-acre park, which will preserve habitat for endangered animals and connect people and wildlife to a network of regional preserves. The base essentially offers a once-in-a generation chance to significantly expand housing stock in a region suffering a severe home shortage, while also minimizing climate impacts from suburban sprawl.
The naval weapons station has remained off-limits to the public for nearly 80 years and the Navy retains ownership until the city executes a viable deal with a developer. In 2019, though, the Navy transferred 2,216 acres of the site to the East Bay Regional Park District, which is in the process of transforming the parcel into parklands.
How long can the military defend Camp Pendleton?
Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square
The military’s defenders will ridicule this suggestion, but here’s the reality on the ground, soldier: Camp Pendleton may be too wonderful for the Marines to hold it forever.
It’s the largest coastal open space between Santa Barbara and the Mexican border. At 200 square miles, it covers more ground than the sprawling city of San Jose and is four times larger than San Francisco. Its beauty is legendary: Major General Graves Erskine, the base commander after World War II, called it “the finest post in the world.”
But Pendleton’s future hasn’t received much public attention, even though it touches contested Congressional districts at the front lines of this fall’s political wars. This may be because Pendleton’s charms remain mostly hidden.
Many Californians think of Pendleton as merely the 17 miles of coast it occupies along Interstate 5 between L.A. and San Diego, but that’s only a fraction of a vast compound running 10 miles inland, nearly to Riverside County. The property offers scenery so diverse—mountains, canyons, bluffs, mesas, estuaries, coastal plains, beaches, lakes, a bison preserve, and a free-flowing river—that it can feel like a militarized microcosm of California itself.
Op-Ed: California doesn’t have a zoning crisis. It has an oligarchy problem
David Greenwald, Vanguard News Group
But what if that’s not the whole story? What if, as antitrust attorney Basel Musharbash argues in a deeply researched and devastating exposé for BIG, the real obstacle to affordable housing isn’t the planning department—it’s the consolidation of economic power by a handful of national homebuilders and Wall Street investors who have quietly seized control of America’s housing supply chain?
Our major builders are the same conglomerates operating in Texas. Our housing markets have likewise been infiltrated by private equity firms and REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) who snatch up single-family homes and convert them to rentals. And our small builders—those who might innovate, compete, or build affordably—are squeezed out of the capital markets entirely.
Even in a place like Davis, a progressive university town often caricatured as a bastion of NIMBY resistance, this analysis holds surprising relevance.
Restoring that vision will require more than tweaking zoning codes or streamlining approvals. It will require confronting the entrenched economic power that now controls who gets to build, where, and for whom.
In practical terms, that means rebuilding community finance systems so that local builders can access credit. It means regulating or even banning institutional ownership of single-family homes. It means enforcing antitrust laws against predatory consolidation in the construction sector. And yes, it means zoning reform—not because deregulation alone will save us, but because our current rules often favor those best able to navigate or game them.
For California, and for cities like Davis, the takeaway is urgent: the housing crisis cannot be solved by focusing solely on local rules while ignoring the national consolidation of economic power.
The zoning story, according to this view, is not false, but it is incomplete—and dangerously so.
As Musharbash’s meticulous reporting shows, we must broaden our lens. This is not a tale of parochialism or liberal overreach. It is a story of monopoly, finance, and the systematic destruction of the American Dream.
Did you know:
76% of Californians 76% of respondent want to double the maximum size of the Rainy Day Fund, to reduce California’s dependence on the federal government during a major natural disaster or economic downturn.
AUTONOMY TALK
Subnational diplomacy in California: Economic cooperation or security risk?
Madelynn McLaughlin, RealClear Politics & Yahoo News
Per Brigham McCown, a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on American Energy Security at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank: "While California’s activities may not directly undermine an administrations agenda in a legal sense, its actions can complicate Americas diplomatic posture, especially when unity is vital to facing strategic challenges," McCown said.
McCown explained that not only has China learned how to manipulate politicians, but it also has a long history of discreetly "exploiting internal divisions" among Americans. "Californians should be cautious not to become unwitting instruments in Chinas propaganda efforts," he warned.
McCown also touched on the tariff lawsuit, which has been ruled in favor of California, though an appeals court paused the decision, allowing the tariffs to remain in effect. He explained that the case is particularly relevant as it dictates the boundaries of state and federal authority.
Not every scholar sees a problem. Kal Raustiala, the director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations and a professor of comparative and international law at UCLA Law School, believes that subnational diplomacy is vital for California’s flourishing.
What if Alberta really did vote to separate?
Stewart Prest, The Conversation
In the wake of the near miss that was the 1995 referendum — when those wanting to remain in Canada defeated those who voted to separate with the narrowest of margins — Jean Chretien’s Liberal government took rapid steps to respond.
Plan A focused on actions aimed at addressing Québec’s grievances, not unlike Carney’s quest for a national consensus to build an additional pipeline.
Another course of action, known as Plan B, defined the path to secession.
Brexit provides an example of just how painful that process can be. After voting to leave the European Union, the U.K. found itself bogged down in a difficult negotiation process that continues to this day.
CLIMATE NEWS
Were cuts in rooftop solar payments legal? California Supreme Court hears arguments
Malena Carollo, CalMatters
Environmental and consumer advocacy groups are seeking to reverse a 2022 decision by state regulators to slash by around 75% the rates paid to compensate customers with solar installations for the excess energy they generate. The move, intended to shield non-solar customers from unfair cost burdens, sent solar hookups plummeting.
Three environmental groups bringing the case — the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect our Communities Foundation, and the Environmental Working Group — argue that the California Public Utilities Commission didn’t properly consider benefits to customers and disadvantaged communities when it changed the program. The commission argued the policy strikes a balance between affordability for all customers and encouraging renewable energy choices.
The current program has had a meaningful effect on the state’s rooftop solar sector. Industry groups anticipated about 17,000 job losses the first year. State data showed 82% fewer solar customers requesting connections in 2023 than the year prior. And recent industry reports show new rooftop solar installations have gone down by as much as 45% since April 2023.
The decline in solar panel installations may make it harder for the state to achieve its mandated goal of using 100% carbon-free energy by 2045; solar is expected to account for more than half of that.
“If lawmakers are serious about controlling energy costs, they should address the real problem: runaway utility spending,” Brad Heavner, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association, said in a statement. “Instead they seem more interested in protecting utility profits and blaming solar users.”
Trump’s high-speed rail attacks are boosting Democratic support
Alex Nieves, Politico
President Donald Trump is about to snatch $4 billion away from California’s high-speed rail project — and all that’s doing is reinforcing Democrats’ iron-willed support for the beleaguered venture.
Rather than being a death knell for a project that’s years behind schedule and has a price tag that’s ballooned from $33 billion to as much as $128 billion, Trump’s attacks are fortifying state Democrats who hold the purse strings to its largest funding source — the state’s emissions trading program for greenhouse gases.
“We’ve seen this coming and we’re going to do everything we can to prevent it,” said Senate Budget Committee Chair Scott Wiener. “Regardless of what happens here, we’re committed to making this project a reality.”
ICYMI: ON OUR WEBSITE
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