New California law bans federal agents from wearing masks in showdown over immigration raids
CALMatters, NIGEL DUARA: "A series of immigration raids across California in 2025 had one thing in common: Most of the federal agents detaining people wore masks over their faces.
In January, the state of California and its largest county will ban law enforcement officers from covering their faces, with a few exceptions, putting local and state police at odds with masked immigration agents."
Why do California cities, counties pay millions to lobby their own statehouse?
SacBee, ANDREW GRAHAM: "When federal agents arrested Greg Campbell, a prominent Sacramento lobbyist, last month on fraud allegations, his client, the city of Fresno, was quick to cut ties with him.
Within a day of Campbell’s Nov. 14 arrest, Fresno’s mayor announced the end of a $180,000-a-year contract with Campbell Strategy & Advocacy that the firm has held since 2022. The firm’s website, which is no longer active, previously listed the Central Valley city of around 550,000 people as a client, alongside the San Francisco Giants, Amazon and the gambling giant Draft Kings."
How private investors stand to profit from billions in L.A. County sex abuse settlements
LAT, REBECCA ELLIS: "Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.
How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?"
S.F. power outage: City Hall closed Monday as restoration efforts continue
Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI/ANNA BAUMAN: "Pacific Gas and Electric Co. was working Sunday to restore power to roughly 16,000 customers in San Francisco after a series of blackouts on Saturday brought life in many parts of the city to a standstill. The utility said it expected a full restoration for the remaining homes and businesses by 2 p.m. Monday, more than 48 hours after most customers lost electricity.
New outages continued to flare Sunday afternoon and evening, with portions of the Inner Richmond going dark until around 7:15 p.m. A PG&E spokesperson told the Chronicle the outages were “the result of a planned, temporary switching of power to return the local substation to normal operations.” Separate outages also left about 2,300 customers in a large portion of West Oakland in the dark. The cause was being investigated, and the expected restoration time was still being determined, the spokesman said Sunday night."
When disaster strikes, banks step up for California wildfire victims (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, JASON LANE: "California’s wildfire season has become an unfortunate hallmark of modern life—an annual reminder of how quickly communities can be uprooted and how fragile day-to-day stability can be. Each year, families across the state confront the devastation of losing homes, treasured belongings, livelihoods, and any sense of normalcy. The Los Angeles wildfires from January were no exception. Entire neighborhoods were displaced, infrastructure was strained, and thousands of homeowners suddenly faced a terrifying question: How do we keep our homes when everything else has been taken from us?
In the midst of this uncertainty, the banking community stepped forward with decisive action to offer immediate relief and protect homeowners from cascading financial harm. California banks mobilized quickly, offering 90-day mortgage forbearance, waiving late fees, pausing foreclosure proceedings, and taking steps to shield customers from negative credit-score impacts. These measures may appear technical, but for families sifting through ashes—trying to locate rental housing, replace essential items, or simply regroup—such relief can mean the difference between temporary hardship and long-term financial ruin."
CBS News correspondent accuses Bari Weiss of ‘political’ move in pulling ‘60 Minutes’ piece
LAT, STEPHEN BATTAGLIO: "A “60 Minutes” story on the Trump administration’s imprisonment of hundreds of deported Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador was pulled by CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss shortly before it was scheduled to air Sunday night.
The unusual decision drew a sharp rebuke from Sharyn Alfonsi, the correspondent for the piece."
Congress didn’t throw a lifeline on health care. Why you should act now
Sac Bee, CATHIE ANDERSON: "Many consumers who buy their own medical coverage through Covered California have been waiting and watching to see whether Congress will save them from higher 2026 premiums, but the time for waiting is over, said Jessica Altman, who leads the state-based health insurance marketplace.
As The Sacramento Bee reported, the Republican-led House passed a health care plan Wednesday that doesn’t include the expiring enhanced premium tax credits that drew millions of Americans to sign up for health plans on Affordable Care Act marketplaces after they were introduced in 2011."
Aetna to cover IVF treatments for same-sex couples in national settlement
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: "Like many young girls, Mara Berton and June Higginbotham both knew from an early age they wanted families and to become mothers. But as lesbians, they were excluded from accessing the same fertility treatment insurance benefits offered to heterosexual peers.
Instead, like many other same-sex couples, Berton and Higginbotham, who live in Santa Clara County, had to pay $45,000 out of pocket to conceive while heterosexual colleagues with the same insurance plan had many of those costs covered."
Choosing a hospital? See which health facilities in your California city have violated the law
Chronicle, STAFF: "This tool contains all inspection reports for licensed and certified California health care facilities published by the California Department of Public Health from 2022 to November 2025. Search for a hospital, nursing home, clinic or other facility to see recent inspection reports, substantiated regulatory violations and potential references to patient harm. The tool is intended to help patients and families learn about risks as they navigate the health care system."
Remembering Papa: Northern California’s elderly face hidden epidemic of gun suicides
CALMatters, ANA B. IBARRA: "By the early afternoon of her 59th birthday, Kelly Frost had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had lunch with girlfriends near her home in Douglas City — a rural community nestled among the ponderosa pines of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California. But she kept thinking about her “Daddy-o,” Jeffrey Butler, her 81-year-old father. He was not returning her calls.
As she drove home around 4 p.m., she stopped to check in on him. Her dad lived in a two-bedroom cabin just up the road from her place. “I was kind of feeling angry with him because he hadn’t answered all day,” Frost said."
Her dwarfism once scared her away from teaching — now it’s her strength
EdSource, EMMA GALLEGOS: "When Heather Povinelli was in teacher training while in college, there was a moment she believed her dwarfism would thwart her dream of becoming a teacher — a kindergartner grabbed her on the playground.
“I just stayed there frozen. We were eye to eye. I knew I couldn’t push away,” she said. She immediately drove back to campus and switched her degree to sociology."
Trump move to break up atmospheric research center threatens wildfire, storm predictions
CALMatters, RACHEL BECKER: "California officials and researchers across the country are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration’s plans to dismember a global hub for weather, wildfire and climate science: the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, posted Tuesday on the social media platform X that the National Science Foundation will be “breaking up” the science institution, which he called “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”"
After a rocky start, rebuilding in the Palisades and Altadena is gaining momentum
LAT, DOUG SMITH/JACK FLEMMING/COLLEEN SHALBY: "In the race to show progress in rebuilding Palisades and Altadena after this year’s catastrophic fires, Los Angeles city and county both stumbled out of the blocks.
In November, the first home reported rebuilt turned out to be an Altadena ADU conversion of the burned garage of a house that survived the Eaton fire. A few days later, Los Angeles touted its first completion only to face criticism because the house was a builder spec home permitted for demolition and rebuilding before the Palisades fire destroyed it."
Biggest Christmas storm in years set to hit SoCal: A timeline for the week
LAT, RONG-GONG LIN II/TONY BRISCOE: "A Pineapple Express storm could deliver one of Southern California’s stormiest Christmases in recent memory."
READ MORE -- Bay Area storm will bring days of dangerous weather. Here’s a timeline of impacts -- Chronicle, GREG PORTER
Larry Ellison pledges $40 billion personal guarantee for Paramount’s Warner Bros. bid
LAT, MOLLY SCHUETZ: "Paramount Skydance Corp. amended its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., including by offering a personal financial guarantee by Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, as it seeks to beat out a rival bid from Netflix Inc.
Ellison, one of the richest people in the world, agreed to provide an irrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion in equity financing for Paramount’s proposed $108.4 billion offer for Warner Bros., according to a statement Monday. Ellison, whose son David Ellison is chief executive officer of Paramount, agreed not to revoke the Ellison family trust or adversely transfer its assets while the transaction is pending. Paramount’s $30-a-share offer remains unchanged."
Older, richer, more likely to live alone: Here’s how S.F. life has changed since 2019
Chronicle, DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA/HANNA ZAKHARENKO: "Just five years into the 2020s, San Francisco already looks very different than it did the previous decade. The pandemic brought on sudden and dramatic changes that continued to have ripple effects long after stay-at-home orders were lifted. The tech industry rose and fell and rose again, and residents rushed out only to begin trickling back. The streets of the city look dramatically different as downtown has hollowed, even as crime first surged and then plummeted to historic lows.
All of these developments have come with profound changes in who lives here, what we do to get by, and how we spend our time and live our lives."
They wanted speed bumps to fight Sacramento traffic. They got red tape instead
SacBee, ARIANE LANGE: "All this arguing with the city of Sacramento began more than a decade ago because Nora Wilson has always loved sitting on her front porch. That gave her an unbeatable view of drivers speeding down her Tahoe Park street, and that got her angry.
“There’s a lot of pedestrian traffic, there’s a lot of people that are walking their dogs, walking their children, kids playing out in their yards, bicycles,” said Wilson, now 68. “I started to get worried at the amount of traffic that comes through.”"
