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Devastating wildfires linked to climate change have lately become somewhat normal in the American West and beyond. In that sense, the Maui fires are nothing new. The ones on Maui this week are destructive in part because of the island’s isolation, fragile supply chains and dependence on tourism. The winds driving the fires, driven themselves in part by a hurricane passing hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean, were expected to ease on Thursday. Phone service was down in some parts of the island’s west coast, including Hawaii’s former royal capital, Lahaina, where fire has been ripping through weathered wooden storefronts.

Persons: ”, Burgess Harrison, “ Organizations: Fire, U.S . Coast Guard, Hawaii Department of Health Locations: Maui, American, Maui and Minnesota, Minnesota, Hawaii, Lahaina

☆ Lahaina, Devastated Town on Maui, Is a Trove of Hawaiian History
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Shawn Hubler | More About Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For many visitors, the town of Lahaina is a place to go for tropical beaches. Its heritage museum, in a landmark courthouse, houses artifacts from before the rest of the world knew Hawaii existed. Its oldest building, the Baldwin Home, was occupied by the 19th-century physician who saved Maui from an epidemic of smallpox. “We had no preparation, no warning, nothing,” said Theo Morrison, the executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, which manages more than a dozen historic sites in the town. She left Maui a day before the fires had broken out on Tuesday night, bound for Europe on family business, she said.

Persons: Baldwin, ”, Theo Morrison, Morrison Organizations: Lahaina Restoration Foundation Locations: Lahaina, Hawaii, Maui, East Coast, Europe

☆ Feinstein Briefly Hospitalized After a Fall at Home in San Francisco
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Shawn Hubler | More About Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California was hospitalized on Tuesday afternoon after a fall at her home in San Francisco and returned to her residence after an examination showed no serious injuries, her spokesman said. Senator Feinstein, 90, tripped over a chair in her kitchen around 1 p.m., according to her office. She was admitted briefly to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center “as a precaution,” Adam Russell, her spokesman, said on Wednesday. He added that she remained there for an hour or two until doctors determined that her scans were clear. TMZ first reported that Ms. Feinstein had suffered a fall.

Persons: Dianne Feinstein, California, Feinstein, ” Adam Russell, Russell, ” Organizations: University of California, San Francisco Medical, Capitol, TMZ Locations: San Francisco

On the western side of Maui, some residents fled by swimming into the ocean, where they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, Maui County officials said. Others escaped by car, driving past flames in the shadow of the West Maui Mountains. Two evacuation shelters closed because of the encroaching fire, and people inside were sent to new locations, Maui County officials said. The 911 emergency call service in West Maui was down early on Wednesday, and people were told to call the local police department directly instead, Maui County officials said. In Maui County, there were more 12,600 electricity customers without power on Wednesday, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.

Persons: Hurricane Dora, Richard T, Bissen, Brian Schatz, Dora, —, Sylvia Luke, Hawaii’s Organizations: U.S . Coast Guard, Weather Service, Maui Counties, National Guard Locations: Maui, Maui County, West Maui, Hawaii, Lahaina, ”

Raised in affluence, Senator Feinstein has long been among the wealthiest members of Congress. Among the backdrops to the fight over Mr. Blum’s estate, however, are questions about the extent of his fortune, as well as the out-of-pocket cost of home health care that Senator Feinstein has received since her bout with shingles earlier this year. During his lifetime, Mr. Blum, Senator Feinstein’s third husband and a private equity magnate, was often referred to in public accounts as a billionaire. However, people familiar with the family’s finances dispute that characterization and say that Mr. Blum’s wealth was less than some heirs had expected. Mr. Blum’s friends said that the pandemic cut deeply into his investments, particularly his extensive holdings in hotels.

Persons: ”, Jerry Roberts, Dianne Feinstein, Feinstein, Blum, Feinstein’s, Blum’s Organizations: Senate Locations: San Francisco neighborhood, Pacific Heights, Aspen, Colo, Hawaii, Kauai, Washington ,

London Breed sailed to victory as the mayor of San Francisco. Times were good; the pandemic had yet to happen. If homelessness and crime worried San Franciscans, few of them blamed her. Now San Francisco is reeling, its downtown plagued by fentanyl markets and tent camps, its employers straining to repopulate office buildings with a decidedly more remote labor force. More than 70 percent of voters have told pollsters that the city is on the wrong track, and some 66 percent disapprove of the mayor’s job performance.

Persons: London Breed, pollsters, Breed, Ahsha, Daniel Lurie, Levi Strauss Organizations: London, Times, San Francisco, Supervisors, San Locations: San Francisco, Francisco

☆ Without Hollywood, What Happens to Los Angeles?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Shawn Hubler | More About Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Los Angeles County has 88 cities. And a nine-letter sign that, for much of the world, defines the entire region: HOLLYWOOD. Los Angeles has long been regarded as the global “company town” for show business, and as a rare actors’ strike upended the signature industry this week, the potential for cascading economic impacts across Southern California has emerged as a critical local issue. But economists disagree on just how extensively the simultaneous actors’ and writers’ strikes will be felt. Yet Hollywood pervades Los Angeles life in ways as big as a movie backdrop or as small as a street detour on some awards night.

Persons: ’ Organizations: Hollywood Locations: Angeles County, HOLLYWOOD, Los Angeles, Southern California, Southern

A dozen hilltop homes in one of the most affluent areas of coastal Los Angeles County were collapsing into a canyon on Monday after a landslide over the weekend forced the evacuation of a neighborhood in the community of Rolling Hills Estates. California’s disastrously wet winter may be to blame for saturating the underlying soils in the neighborhood, a hazard that in the past few months has threatened other idyllic perches in the state. After crews found cracks and other damage to homes on the block, authorities said, residents were given 20 minutes to pack up and leave. Behind yellow caution tape, utility crews inspected power, cable and gas lines. Periodically, a sickening crash and rumble of something cracking or falling would disrupt the quiet of the neighborhood.

Organizations: Rolling Hills Estates . Local, Palos Locations: Los Angeles County, Rolling

☆ California Leaders Seek Federal Inquiry of Florida for Migrants Trips
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Shawn Hubler | More About Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Greg Abbott of Texas, Republicans who have claimed responsibility for sending migrants to Democratic-led states, said the individuals volunteered to travel elsewhere. Democratic leaders, including Mr. Bonta and Mr. Newsom, have in return denounced the relocations as a partisan and callous political stunt. Mr. DeSantis did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the call for a federal investigation. A spokesman for Mr. Newsom said that Mr. Garland’s office had not yet replied to Thursday’s request. Last month, the Florida program paid for two planeloads of Latin American migrants to fly to Sacramento, prompting civil and criminal investigations by the California Justice Department.

Persons: Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott of, Biden’s, Bonta, Newsom, DeSantis, Abbott Organizations: Gov, Republicans, Democratic, Republican, California Justice Department, Mr Locations: Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, California, Idaho, Texas, Sacramento

At the behemoth ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, operations were disrupted for weeks until West Coast dockworkers reached a tentative contract deal in mid-June. Across the city, schools shut down for three days this spring when bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers walked out. Now, the union representing some 15,000 hotel workers in Los Angeles is threatening to strike this Fourth of July weekend, just as the summer tourism season ramps up. And more than 160,000 actors are poised to shut down Hollywood productions if they cannot reach a new contract deal later this month. “We’re calling it the ‘hot labor summer,’” said Lorena Gonzalez, the chief officer of the California Labor Federation, which represents more than 2.1 million union members statewide.

Persons: dockworkers, ’ ”, Lorena Gonzalez, we’re Organizations: West, Unions, California Labor Federation Locations: Southern California, America, Los Angeles, Long, California

☆ A Vast Lake Has Captivated California Where Farms Stood a Year Ago
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-25 | by ( Shawn Hubler | Mark Abramson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

It sounds like the sea and approaches the size of Lake Tahoe. Its wind-driven waves are unexpectedly silky and warm. Tulare Lake seems to go on forever on the immense brown and green flat of California’s Central Valley, shimmering like a great blue mirage. Three months have passed since the lake, which dates to the Ice Age, re-emerged in the basin that once held the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River. Dammed dry by humans, it has periodically attempted a comeback, though rarely with the force seen after this winter’s storms.

Locations: Lake Tahoe, Tulare, Central, Mississippi

From the start, the plan had been to push boundaries — to go where no one had gone before, as Richard Stockton Rush III liked to say. One partner was experienced in start-ups and passionate about “making humanity a multiplanet species.” The other, Mr. Rush, was an aerospace engineer and investor with a family fortune. Rush founded OceanGate Expeditions, the company whose submersible is presumed to have imploded during an expedition to the Titanic, killing Mr. The founders’ goal for OceanGate, Mr. Sohnlein said, was to make deep-sea voyaging as accessible to wealthy tourists and researchers as entrepreneurs like Elon Musk had made space travel.

Persons: Richard Stockton Rush III, Rush, ” Guillermo Sohnlein, ’, Sohnlein, Elon Musk, ”, “ Organizations: OceanGate Expeditions, OceanGate, Elon, SpaceX

☆ DeSantis Raises Cash in California and Pokes at Governor
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-19 | by ( Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Gavin Newsom of California weeks after sending two planeloads of migrants to California’s capital. The $3,300-a-plate fund-raiser, hosted by a Republican real estate developer at a suburban country club in Sacramento, was closed to the press, and Mr. DeSantis did not make a public statement. Florida officials acknowledged this month that the state had orchestrated the abrupt relocation of some three dozen Latin American asylum seekers from Texas to Sacramento. Mr. DeSantis, who for months has been moving migrants, mostly from Texas, into Democratic-run towns and cities, has said the initiative is intended to equalize the burden of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Mr. Newsom suggested the moves were tantamount to “kidnapping” and denounced them as callous political stunts, noting that California, too, shares a stretch of the Mexican border.

Persons: Ron DeSantis, Gavin Newsom, DeSantis, Newsom, ” Organizations: Republican, Gov, Democratic, Biden Locations: Florida, California, Sacramento, Texas, Mexican

☆ Opinion | Soon We Won’t Have Enough Kids to Fill Our Schools. That’s a Problem.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Jessica Grose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The number of school-age children in America is declining. And declining university enrollment based on a lower school-age population — which has been described as a “demographic cliff” — is something that some colleges are already grappling with. K-12 public school systems around the country are facing a similar demographic reality. As The Times’s Shawn Hubler reported in May, “All together America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020,” according to a survey from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Even in states like Arizona, where there’s been overall population growth in recent years, enrollment has remained below prepandemic numbers, and rural schools in the state have been struggling for several years.

Persons: Shawn Hubler, “, Thomas Dee, ”, there’s Organizations: American Enterprise Institute, Stanford’s Graduate School of Education Locations: America, Chicago, Michigan, Philadelphia , New York City, Seattle, Boston, United States, Florida’s Orange County, Orlando, Pinellas County, Tampa, Arizona

☆ Florida Confirms Arranging Migrant Flights to California
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Nicholas Nehamas | Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After days of silence, officials in Florida confirmed on Tuesday that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis had orchestrated two recent charter flights that carried groups of migrants from New Mexico to Sacramento. The flights had generated an immediate outcry from leaders in California, who promised to initiate criminal and civil investigations, saying that the migrants had been deceived into boarding the planes. On Twitter, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, suggested that “kidnapping charges” were warranted against those responsible for the flights, on Monday and last Friday. “Through verbal and written consent, these volunteers indicated they wanted to go to California,” Ms. Collins wrote.

Persons: Ron DeSantis, DeSantis, Gavin Newsom, Alecia Collins, Ms, Collins, “, ” Organizations: Gov, Republican, Twitter, Florida Division, Emergency Management, Catholic Charities Locations: Florida, New Mexico, Sacramento, California

☆ Second Plane Carrying Migrants Arrives in Sacramento
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Shawn Hubler | Nicholas Nehamas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

A group of Latin American migrants aboard a chartered private plane landed at a small airport in Sacramento on Monday, the second such planeload in three days to arrive in California’s capital city from an airfield in New Mexico. One of the migrants, David Mata, 28, said he had arrived in the United States from Venezuela roughly two weeks ago looking for work. Mr. Mata said he did not know who had orchestrated his trip to Sacramento, but said that whoever did had paid for it in its entirety. Another group of migrants arrived on Friday at a different Sacramento airport aboard the same private plane. Gavin Newsom of California and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, who are both Democrats, have said they believed Gov.

Persons: David Mata, Mata, Florida —, Gavin Newsom, Rob Bonta, Ron DeSantis, DeSantis Organizations: Sacramento Executive Airport, California’s Department of Justice, Florida Division, Emergency Management, Vertol Systems Company, California Department of Justice, Gov, Republican Locations: Sacramento, California’s, New Mexico, Venezuela, United States, California, Florida, San Antonio, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

Sixteen migrants from Venezuela and Colombia were abruptly flown on a private chartered jet to California and dropped off outside a Catholic church building in Sacramento on Friday, state officials said, prompting an investigation into whether they were transported from outside a Texas migrant center under false pretenses. While it remained unclear on Sunday who had approached the group of migrants outside El Paso and orchestrated their flight from New Mexico to California, the episode mirrored an aggressive tactic used by hard-line Republican governors to protest President Biden’s immigration policies by dispatching dozens of migrants to Democratic-led states and cities with little warning or explanation. Many of the migrants told a nonprofit organization they had no idea they were going to California. That was the same company used for transport in the fall when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida directed two planeloads of South American migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, a Democratic-leaning Massachusetts island.

Persons: Rob Bonta, Ron DeSantis Organizations: Democratic, Florida Division, Emergency Management, Vertol Systems Company Inc, Gov Locations: Venezuela, Colombia, California, Sacramento, Texas, El Paso, New Mexico, Florida, San Antonio, Massachusetts

Al Sharpton was among those who helped put the issue of reparations on the Democratic political agenda during the party’s 2020 primary. “I think once we get the mainstream America to say — whether they said reluctantly, belatedly or whatever — ‘Yes, we owe,’ then you can have a better discussion on how we pay,” Mr. Sharpton said. The Supreme Court is expected to ban race-conscious college admissions in a decision this spring. The legal argument from conservative critics of reparations is that government payments based on race violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Some legal scholars have said that using direct lineage has a better chance of withstanding court challenges.

☆ Recent College Student Arrested in Three Stabbings in California Town
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

He was a third-year, biological sciences student at U.C. It is unclear whether Mr. Dominguez knew any of the three victims, Chief Pytel said. Colloquially known as “the Compassion Guy,” Mr. Breaux had been stabbed “many, many times,” Chief Pytel said in a City Council meeting this week. Two days after that first attack, Karim Abou Najm, 20, a student majoring in computer science at U.C. Davis, was killed on a bike path after an altercation in a neighborhood park at 9:14 p.m. on Saturday.

☆ California College Town Rocked by Stabbings That Remain a Mystery
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Shawn Hubler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A placid Northern California college town has been rocked by a series of stabbings in which two people have been killed and a third critically wounded in less than a week. Two days later, a University of California, Davis student was stabbed to death in a different park. The latest attack occurred on Monday night, severely injuring a woman sleeping in a homeless encampment near railroad tracks just east of downtown. In a 911 call shortly before midnight, the woman told dispatchers that she had been stabbed through the wall of her tent. The authorities are seeking a thin, curly haired young man, between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall, wearing a dark sweatshirt and black Adidas pants.

The Supreme Court temporarily halted court orders that would have impacted the availability of an abortion drug. A Supreme Court decision Friday to keep available — for now — the widely used abortion pill mifepristone was met with relief from one side of the debate, disappointment from the other and a vow from both to keep fighting. Maura Healey of Massachusetts called the court’s decision a “victory” for abortion patients and providers. While statements of muted celebration poured in from elected Democrats and groups supporting abortion rights, comment from Republicans and anti-abortion groups was noticeably sparser. Attorney General Andrew Bailey of Missouri, who opposes abortion, said through a spokesman that the decision was a disappointment.

Two of his revenge picks to knock off House Republicans who voted to impeach him lost critical general election races in Michigan and Washington. To Mr. Trump, none of that had any bearing on his desire to return to power. “A perfect call.” Absconding with classified documents from the White House? “I think the question is who is the current leader of the Republican Party. In light of what unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, that felt more like the wishful thinking of a born optimist than the judgment of a seasoned student of Mr. Trump.

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