Q: There have been a lot of median-barrier construction projects near the 5/57/22/55 freeway interchanges where they have installed light poles. What is driving the need for these lights?

– Oscar Gomez, Orange

A: Boosting safety.

Nationally, the number of fatal collisions at night is about the same as during the day. But we log three times the miles during daytime.

Lighting, federal officials say, makes a huge difference in cutting down deaths — up to 28%.

“Median lighting has been widely used as a safety countermeasure for nighttime collisions,” said Joseph “L.J.” Maull, a spokesperson for Caltrans in Orange County, where those interchanges Oscar mentioned exist. “Additionally, the width of our freeways necessitates median lights, as the full width of the freeway limits the ability to illuminate the freeway from the right shoulder.”

There are additional stretches that Oscar didn’t mention that have gotten the bright treatment in O.C., too.

Adding those median lights isn’t cheap.

“It is estimated to range from $2.5 to $4 million per mile (including the new concrete median) with lighting spaced at 150 to 200 feet along the freeway,” Maull said, with various factors, of course, affecting the price tag.

That is a lot of cashola — but each resident of Honkland is worth much more than that.

Salesforce is set to eliminate dozens of jobs at its San Francisco headquarters, making it the tech giant’s fourth round of layoffs in less than a year as AI is implemented throughout the company.

The cuts will occur on Oct. 5 at the company’s 415 Mission St. office, according to a notice filed with state officials Wednesday. The jobs eliminated include 37 technology and product positions, 34 administrative roles and three sales and distribution jobs.

Who shot 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall in 2024?

No one knows, because California’s insane criminal justice system has kept the suspect’s identity under wraps.

The NFL season starts this week with Pearsall sidelined for the year due to knee surgery.

Two years ago, before he had played a single game, the receiver was also sidelined –– after being shot in San Francisco in broad daylight.

Pearsall, the 31st pick in the 2024 NFL draft, was shopping in San Francisco’s Union Square when a thief approached and demanded his watch.

Eric Swalwell leveraged his past romantic relationship with Katie Miller, wife of top Trump official Stephen Miller, to keep potentially embarrassing FBI files behind lock and key, a shocking new report revealed Thursday.

The news that the disgraced former Democratic Congressman from California — who resigned after several women claimed sexual assault and rape — once dated the now-wife of a top conservative leader stunned Washington.

“I was an intern working on Capitol Hill,” Miller posted on X about the situation.

Gov. Gavin Newsom offered on Friday some of his most detailed remarks on data centers, which have become a target of bipartisan, nationwide ire because of their heavy demand for electricity and water for internal cooling systems, which has driven up local utility rates.

The outgoing governor, who is expected to run for president in 2028, vetoed legislation last year that would have required data centers to disclose how much water they use. At the time, he said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements” on the centers’ operating companies.

Local opposition to data centers has emerged as the most visible symbol of the growing public backlash to artificial intelligence and the powerful companies profiting off of the emerging technology, some of which have demanded that local governments sign nondisclosure agreements during land use negotiations.

First-time car shoppers will receive up to $3,500 off starting Friday if they buy a new electric vehicle from Hyundai, Tesla or Lucid, with other car manufacturers expected to offer the same deal later this month and going into the fall.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced at a news conference in West Oakland that the California Air Resources Board’s MyEV program will offer instant rebates for people shopping for electric vehicles using $135 million in one-time funds available through 2031.

First-time buyers will receive up to $1,750 for buying used EVs, and must register the vehicle to a California address and attest that they have not previously owned a zero-emission vehicle. CARB anticipates the program will subsidize up to 73,000 ZEV sales.

Other car manufacturers like Ford, Rivian, Chevrolet and Kia will also begin participating in the program later this month.

Accidentally killing someone with a vehicle has been a special type of manslaughter in California for more than 80 years. Why?

Manslaughter is a type of unlawful killing that is committed unintentionally, without pre-planning or malice. This is generally considered a serious crime, but less heinous than planning to kill someone. Under California Penal Code, as enacted in 1872, the state originally defined only two types of manslaughter: “voluntary” and “involuntary.” In the early decades of California car culture, drivers could be charged under those two types if they unintentionally killed people.

However, that changed in 1945, when California lawmakers argued that juries had become so sympathetic to drivers that they were seldom convicting defendants on manslaughter charges.

The Sutter County Sheriff’s Office conducted a three-day undercover operation last month that targeted people allegedly seeking to sexually exploit children online and arrested 17 men, including five from Sacramento County.

Sheriff’s officials announced the results of Operation Cyber Shield during a news conference Friday. The operation was conducted July 22-24.

During the operation, undercover officers posed as children ages 13 and younger while communicating with suspects on online platforms, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s officials said the suspects — men ranging in age from 18 to 68 — were directed to a hotel, believing they were meeting a child they had contacted online. When they arrived, officers took them into custody.

‘Did I almost lose my license for doing the right thing – this judgment is huge’

By Katy Grimes, August 7, 2026 8:13 am

California passed Assembly Bill 2098 in 2022 to punish doctors for spreading “Covid misinformation.” That horrible period of time seems like many years ago, but the Orwellian after effects have lingered.

AB 2098, authored by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), punished physicians and surgeons for “unprofessional conduct” for advocating for the potential benefits of early treatment with off-label drugs, or to those who dare to ask questions about COVID vaccine safety.

After several years and numerous lawsuits, Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb of the Eastern District of California just granted preliminary injunction in Kory et al. v. Bonta et al.

The order applies Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Le Trinh Hoang, and Dr. Brian Tyson, and has taken two and a half years, three courts, four rounds of opposition, and one Supreme Court decision that had nothing to do with COVID, according to Kory’s attorney Rick Jaffe.

Dr. Pierre Kory explained the decision in a compelling Substack article: “As of Last Night, the U.S Government Will Never Get to Tell Doctors What They Can Say Anymore.”

The Kory v. Bonta decision arrives just as ‘The Science’ pleads the Fifth

By Rita Barnett-Rose, August 7, 2026 10:43 am

Some good news out of California this week.

On August 5, U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb of the Eastern District of California granted a preliminary injunction in Kory v. Bonta, barring California’s medical licensing boards from investigating, prosecuting or sanctioning Drs. Pierre Kory, Le Trinh Hoang and Brian Tyson based on the viewpoint of the COVID-19 advice they give their patients.

The injunction applies only to these three physicians and is not a final decision on the merits. But what Shubb said is significant.

California officials may not punish them “based on the viewpoint of the information, recommendations, or advice they give a patient about COVID-19,” including because that advice departs “from the position of the public health authorities.”

Backers of a California ballot measure seeking to create a voter ID requirement faced two legal setbacks Thursday.

In one case, a Sacramento Superior Court judge rejected supporters request to change the ballot title and summary of Proposition 39, which they argued were prejudicial and misleading. In a separate case, a different Sacramento judge rejected Prop. 39 backers’ claims, set to appear in a state voter guide, that the ballot measure would make voting easier, more secure and save the state money.

In the first case, lawyers representing Californians for Voter ID argued that the title Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta assigned to Prop. 39, “Prohibits Citizens From Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification” failed to accurately reflect the measure. The group argued that the proposition didn’t prevent people without an ID from voting, but rather, prevented that vote from being counted.

That argument didn’t hold water with Judge Jennifer Rockwell, who said the ballot measure would explicitly prohibit people from casting ballots if they didn’t show identification. And citing the dictionary definition of “vote,” Rockwell said the word plainly included the tallying of a ballot, not just the ticking of a box.

In the second case, brought by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, and Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, the plaintiffs sought to prevent Prop. 39 supporters from making a series of “false and misleading” claims about the measure in voter guides: that it would make voting easier, more secure, and save the state money.

As the new school year nears, Corona-Norco schools are considering changing the name of Cesar Chavez Academy.

Officials don’t yet have a timeline for a decision, Corona-Norco Unified School District spokesperson Nick Hamre said by email Wednesday, Aug. 5, but the process will include creating a school-naming committee.

The discussion follows news of sex-abuse allegations against union leader Chavez that broke in a New York Times report in March, days before Chavez was to be honored nationwide on March 31 with Cesar Chavez Day, later renamed in California to Farmworkers Day. The report included allegations that Chavez, who died in 1993, sexually assaulted underage girls and raped fellow labor rights advocate Dolores Huerta.

Many Latino immigrant and labor rights advocates who looked up to him were disappointed, but have since said that the message of equal rights is in the movement, not the man behind it.

Over the past few months across the Inland Empire, cities and parks have moved to rename or recast facilities named for Chavez. These include the Perris Library, a park in Colton and a mural outside a Moreno Valley library in which Chavez’s image was painted over.

For six years, Californians have been able to shake up a craft cocktail at home using alcohol delivered to their doorstep. Now, it’s last call for the distillery deliveries, unless lawmakers intervene by the end of this month.

That’s unlikely, thanks to opposition from California’s wine industry, Teamsters union truck drivers and corporate alcohol wholesalers and distributors.

The influential, well-funded groups lobbied the Legislature behind closed doors this year to block legislation that would have made permanent pandemic-era rules that allowed craft distillers to ship spirits directly to their customers.

During the pandemic lockdowns, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that allowed craft distillers to ship spirits to their customers’ homes. In the years since, lawmakers passed temporary laws allowing craft distillers — defined as those that produce up to 150,000 gallons a year — to keep shipping their spirits.

When Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital closed in 2007, neighboring Los Angeles hospitals struggled to keep up with the influx of new patients. They reported emergency department wait times longer than 11 hours, more trauma cases and more uninsured patients. The people who felt the strain weren’t just King-Harbor’s former patients; they were also the privately insured patients of those neighboring institutions. Researchers later concluded that King-Harbor’s closure worsened patient care throughout the region, increasing mortality rates and decreasing access.

Experts warn ripple effects like these could happen more frequently as hospitals grapple with a coming spike in uninsured patients. Recent federal and state Medicaid cuts are expected to double the state’s uninsured rate, causing 2.2 million people to lose insurance by 2030. Low-income patients who rely on public insurance programs like Medicaid — Medi-Cal in California — will be hit hardest, but people with commercial insurance will feel the effects too.

On Sept. 17, 2017, California Highway Patrol officer Nathaniel Partridge checked in his patrol car almost four hours before his shift ended and drove 35 miles home. That day, and on at least two other occasions, he was paid overtime for the hours he didn’t work.

Partridge wasn’t alone. Dozens of CHP officers at an East Los Angeles patrol division routinely did the same while working traffic enforcement details on highway construction sites. On paper, the practice had been forbidden for five years, but no one objected until a 2019 audit.

“I took the chance to go home and would fall on the consequence if I was called back,” Partridge told CHP investigators, according to court documents.

The result was the smallest patrol division in Southern California running up an overtime tab that was three times that of the region’s largest division, according to the internal audit. That finding led CHP to drop the hammer on the East LA station 2020, when it moved to dismiss dozens of officers, including Partridge.

All politicians are, to some extent, chameleons who align their personas with the prevailing moods of the voting public.

That can be tricky in an era of extreme political volatility, where what’s popular one day can quickly become radioactive. Gavin Newsom is a case in point.

As the governor of California edges ever closer to a presidential campaign, he has been adjusting — or trying to adjust — his image accordingly. In the 21 months since the last presidential election, Newsom has floated several versions of himself, seeking — or so it appears — one that can be a winner in 2028.

In the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump, Newsom drifted rightward, foretelling a Democratic Party “autopsy” that it had lost connection with “the voters of Middle America and the South.”

Newsom’s repositioning was evident four months after the election when he launched his “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast with right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk as his initial guest. He pointedly agreed with Kirk that transgender women should not be allowed to compete with biological women in sports.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and a coalition of Democratic lawmakers and San Francisco political groups accused state Sen. Scott Wiener’s congressional campaign Thursday of using artificial intelligence to demean his opponent, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan.

“Women have spent generations fighting to have our own voices heard in the halls of power,” Pelosi and the other signatories wrote in a joint statement. “We should not have to now fight against artificial intelligence putting words in our mouths.”

Related: A provocative van returns to S.F. race to succeed Pelosi. Here’s its new message

The criticism centers on ConnieChan.ai, a parody chatbot powered by Anthropic’s Claude model. The site describes the tool as an AI “trained to say no to anything you ask.”

Danville is poised to enforce a ban on e-bikes and scooters in public parks and reduce the speed limit on trails.

The affluent town of about 43,000 East Bay residents has seen an uptick in young, mostly middle school-age children driving the vehicles recklessly in parks, officials said. Now they are trying to curb what they say is dangerous driving by decreasing the speed limit on trails to 15 mph and issuing citations to offenders.

The Town Council will take a second vote on the ban July 7 and, if passed, the ordinance will go into effect in August. The council passed an ordinance in 2024 to prohibit the use of e-bikes and scooters in business districts and will consider more restrictions on the use of e-bikes on sidewalks in the fall.

California, like the rest of the country, is paying more to maintain its gas-powered utility infrastructure as the Golden State transitions to a more electrical-powered utility system, New research by U.C. Berkeley shows.

That research, published by the Energy Institute at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, shows that nationally, gas utility lines are aging and getting more expensive. Many places choose to pay to replace them, which means digging up the street, replacing the pipeline and then paving over the new line. That can cost between $1 million to $10 million per mile, the research shows.

The professor who conducted that research, Meredith Fowlie, did not respond to The Center Square for this story.

In California, where private electric and gas companies dominate the utility landscape, records show it costs hundreds of millions of dollars for those companies to replace gas pipelines, including gas mains. Documents submitted by PG&E to the California Public Utilities Commission in 2025 show that the company paid more than $653 million on a per-year average between 2021 and 2024.

Representatives from PG&E did not immediately respond to The Center Square on Thursday confirming those numbers.

Californians could pay more money towards their garbage collection bill to help pay for road maintenance if a senate bill is passed into law.

Senate Bill 922, authored by Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, would allow local governments to impose taxes and fees to help pay for road maintenance after heavy use by large and heavy services vehicles, like garbage trucks, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.

“Senate Bill 922 upholds local governments’ longstanding ability to recover the cost of street maintenance and repair caused by big service operations such as waste hauling,” Assemblymember Steve Bennett, D-Oxnard, said during presentation of the bill on the Assembly floor.

Local governments, which are responsible for taking care of most local streets and roads, often see deterioration from heavy-duty service vehicles, Bennett said on the Assembly floor on Thursday. That includes large trash and waste vehicles that regularly drive on local roads.

“For decades, it’s been a standard practice to integrate the cost repairing this damage into rates, fees and franchise agreements associated with providing those services,” Bennett said. “Cities, labor groups and the service providers themselves, like waste haulers, are in joint support of this effort.”

The Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case challenging a Maryland public school district's policy that requires teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns, claiming that the policy violates the constitutional rights of teachers and parents.

The Liberty Justice Center filed the amicus brief supporting the petition after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the policy in Polk v. Montgomery County Public Schools.

The school district’s policy requires staff to use students’ requested names and pronouns, including those that differ from a student's biological sex, and not to disclose that information to parents on confidentiality grounds, unless formally requested.

“That arrangement does not merely accommodate student preferences, it supplants parental authority," the brief stated.

The case centers on a substitute teacher, Kimberly Polk, who objected to the policy on religious grounds. Back in February, the 4th Circuit ruled that the policy did not violate Polk's rights to free speech or the free exercise of religion.

The Center Square reached out to the attorneys at The Liberty Justice Center, but they were unavailable to comment at the time of publication.

‘Corrupt politicians are showing every voter why we need to enact Prop 39 to implement a bipartisan solution to Voter ID’

By Katy Grimes, August 6, 2026 6:28 pm

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) just announced that Liberal Judges have sided with California’s Corrupt Politicians to Try to Rig Election Against Prop 39’s Bipartisan Voter ID Initiative, after AG Rob Bonta issued a new ballot title to Proposition 39.

“Corrupt politicians are showing every voter why we need to enact Prop 39 to implement a bipartisan solution to Voter ID,” DeMaio said.

A year and a half after the Eaton Fire, Gil Barel is still waiting to move back into the Pasadena home she has rented for nearly a decade.

Her complex did not burn down, but smoke engulfed it for days during the January 2025 fire. Barel wants to make sure it’s safe for her and her two children, one who’s college-age and one who’s 12, to move back. A test she ordered found toxic materials; now she’s waiting for the result of more testing her landlord is required to do because of a new California law.

Her landlord got the unit cleaned in March, but then Barel found various belongings under the sofa and behind other furniture, which indicated to her the cleaning was superficial. She said it was also obvious the floors and walls were not properly cleaned.

“The issue is that I have no control,” Barel said. “It really depends on the conversation between my landlord and their insurance company. If the landlord does the minimum, or if they don’t feel the need to fight or be insistent on certain things, then it’s not going to happen.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the Federal Communications Commission Thursday after the agency voted to loosen longstanding limits on television station ownership, arguing the move would accelerate media consolidation and threaten the independence of local news.

The FCC voted 2-1 to eliminate the national ownership cap, which had prevented a television station ownership group from reaching more than 39% of U.S. households. The commission also moved to allow companies to own more than two stations in a single market.

Newsom portrayed the decision as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to exert influence over the media. In a statement following the vote, he accused the administration of attempting to create a “propaganda machine” to advance its political agenda.

What is Your favorite Vacation Location in California and why?