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Once a Great City Has Been Occupied

It could be the end of the line for the "train to nowhere." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has released a scathing report exposing what he said is the unfeasibility of California's long-troubled high-speed rail project — and is threatening to pull the plug on a plan that already has the federal government on the hook for $6.9 billion while Californians are underwriting an additional $9 billion. Duffy said that the federal government is moving to terminate around $4 billion it has currently obligated to the project unless the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) can prove it is tenable. He blasted...

The Trump administration announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, a state program that provides monthly cash benefits to aged, blind, and disabled non-citizens who are ineligible for Social Security benefits due to their immigration status.The investigation began in Los Angeles, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles field office issuing a Title 8 subpoena to California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release. According to the department, the subpoena requests all records from the Los Angeles County Department of Public...

A new poll out of deep-blue California is sending a clear message: voters want their state to work with President Donald Trump, not against him. Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and his Democrat allies waging constant political war with the Trump administration, the public appears exhausted over the partisan grandstanding. Instead, many Californians are signaling they’d rather see cooperation than endless resistance, even if it means setting aside the left’s obsession with opposing Trump at every turn. According to a poll conducted by the University of California, Berkeley professor Jack Citrin, together with Politico, Californians are more interested in fighting...

SACRAMENTO, California — A progressive Democratic lawmaker is seeking a simple but jarring remedy of last resort for California’s college students navigating the state’s housing crisis: Let them sleep in their cars. While roughly half a dozen state legislative proposals this year seek to fund student or faculty housing or loosen building regulations, the benefits would come far too late for current students struggling to stay afloat. With one in four California community college students experiencing homelessness in the past year, Democrats — who have a supermajority in the statehouse — face increasing pressure to deliver on affordability issues. Assemblymember...

The Pacific Palisades fire burned more than 6,800 structures, both homes and businesses. Clearly, the rebuilding process is going to take a while for many families even if insurance covers the losses. What should not take a long time are permits for people who lost everything to get started. Indeed, Mayor Karen Bass vowed to streamline the process and made a big show when the first permit was issued.The first permit was issued March 5, less than two months after the Palisades fire destroyed or seriously damaged more than 6,000 homes in Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas.“We want this to...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) secretly paid for his own monument inside San Francisco’s City Hall, according to a book released Tuesday. Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All, written by Susan Crabtree and Jedd McFatter, alleges that Newsom arranged for a bronze bust of himself to be sculpted inside City Hall to commemorate his term as mayor, using funds he controlled. Newsom then allegedly feigned ignorance of the identity of the private donors who funded the bust, as well as some uncertainty about its design. Other mayors have...

Military leaders at the highest levels of the California National Guard pledged loyalty to the LGBT community during an official ceremony led by the general whom Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) later appointed to lead the force in 2022. One attendee told the Washington Free Beacon that members felt pressured to appear at the ceremony, which felt "culty." . . A former senior leader of the California National Guard told the Free Beacon the ceremony was the brainchild of Major General Matthew Beevers, who at the time served as deputy head of the guard and was pictured onstage during the event....

Gavin Newsom just appeared on CNN and explained that people ‘can’t rebuild the same.’ Newsom suggests that there is a new reality due to the ‘science’ and climate change, and that all of that has to be taken into account as people rebuild. In other words, Adam Carolla was right. Newsom and other authorities in California may be handing out building permits, but it’s pretty clear that there will still be red tape and new rules for rebuilding. Watch:

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will be launching an investigation into the high cost of California High Speed Rail (CAHSR), fulfilling a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) promise made late last year. Originally estimated to cost $33 billion in 2008 with a San Francisco to Los Angeles line set to open by 2028, the California high speed rail system has since ballooned to costing $128 billion, to $135 billion, with an estimated partial completion being set somewhere in the 2030’s. Last year in March, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHRSA) confirmed that the system still needed...

Here’s the California home insurance debacle made simple: No more bargains. Property owners are keenly aware of the state’s numerous risks to their property, most notably wildfires. But they might be surprised to learn that California home insurance policies are among the nation’s cheapest. How often do we say “low” regarding any Golden State housing cost? Such thriftiness translated to California essentially asking insurers to take a high-risk gamble with low rewards. Would you make this bet? Insurers knew it was a losing gamble, so they increased their odds of success by removing the highest-risk customers. That’s why so many...

The largest remaining tenant in San Francisco's largest mall just called it quits. Bloomingdale's which is owned by Macy's announce it will be closing its doors in March.The store, which occupies 330,000 square feet in the beleaguered San Francisco Centre, is slated to close at the end of March. Bloomingdale’s is by far the mall’s largest remaining tenant, and it is closing the brand’s second-biggest store after its New York flagship...Bloomingdale’s, which opened in 2006 in the former Westfield mall, is the second anchor tenant to bail on the 1.5 million-square-foot property at Fifth and Market streets. Nordstrom’s flagship store...

A once quietly prosperous city in California's bay area has been gripped by a crime wave. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program has named the city of Vallejo, just 30 miles outside San Francisco, as having one of the highest crime rates in the state. The problem has become so bad that frustrated residents have started a petition pleading with Governor Gavin Newsom to increase the police presence in the area. 'As a resident of Vallejo, I am deeply concerned about the safety of my community. Vallejo is currently experiencing an alarming increase in crime rates,' Paula Conley, 55, wrote...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claims that her $17.5 million cut to the LA Fire Department budget did not impact the department’s ability to prevent or fight fires. But the LA Fire Chief told CNN that “the $17 million budget cut… did absolutely negatively impact” the Department’s ability to respond to the fires...

The California governor is using state of emergency powers to make unsolicited offers to buy people's property illegal.Wildfires continue raging across southern California, so far killing more than two dozen people, displacing untold numbers of residents, and causing billions of dollars in damage. Gov. Gavin Newsom is contending with the fires as well as criticism over the state's preparedness. This week, Newsom took aim at the real villain of the story: opportunistic real estate investors. On January 7, Newsom issued a state of emergency as fires spread in Los Angeles County. On Tuesday, Newsom signed Executive Order N-7-25, prohibiting...

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In an ember storm, every opening in a house is a portal to hell. A vent without a screen, a crack in the siding, a missing roof tile—each is an opportunity for a spark to smolder. A gutter full of dry leaves is a cradle for an inferno. Think of a rosebush against a bedroom window: fire food. The roses burn first, melting the vinyl seal around the window. The glass pane falls. A shoal of embers enter the house like a school...

California residents have long been struggling with insurance companies that no longer want to protect their homes, and thousands of policies — including around 1,600 in the now-devastated Pacific Palisades neighborhood — were dropped in the months leading up to this week’s wildfires. Out of the approximately 8,900 occupied housing units in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades, nearly 80 percent are owner-occupied, according to 2022 U.S. Census data obtained by Point2Homes. State Farm dropped a staggering 1,600 home insurance policies in the neighborhood in July, equivalent to about 18 percent of the owner-occupied homes, California Department of Insurance (CDI) spokesman Michael...

(KTXL) — Many Californians can look back at their time growing up and remember spending hours after school bogged down in homework, but one lawmaker hopes to change that for the next generation. When the bell rings and the school day is over, for students like Sofia Johnson, the day is nowhere near over. The sixth-grader blames that on hours spent doing homework. “Homework is exhausting. It’s overwhelming,” Johnson said. “It’s depressing that my whole day from when I wake up to when I go to bed is taken up doing school work.” That’s why Johnson’s mother, assemblymember Pilar Schiavo...

The Golden City is losing its shine. Housing prices in San Francisco have plunged to pre-pandemic levels amid widespread layoffs in the tech sector, SFGATE reports. Despite still being one of the more expensive metropolitan areas in the US, prices for condominiums and co-ops in the city were down 14.7% from May 2022 and now average $986,000. Those prices have not been seen since 2015, according to Zillow data analyzed by Wolf Street. According to the outlet, condo prices doubled between 2012 and 2022, but have now declined by 30% in the past two years. The Millennium Tower, notorious for...

As Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the second half of his final term, healthcare stands out as his most ambitious but glaringly incomplete initiative for California residents.The issue will probably define his national profile for better or worse, and the incoming Trump administration brings a new wrinkle.SACRAMENTO — Nearly six years after he took office vowing to be California’s “healthcare governor,” Democrat Gavin Newsom has steered tens of billions in public funding to safety net services for the state’s neediest residents while engineering rules to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all Californians. More than a million California residents living...