Oil industry contributions to Becerra played a big part in @thirdactorg.bsky.social's endorsement of Tom Steyer. In a recent LAT op-ed, @billmckibben.bsky.social also noted Becerra's failure as state attorney general to join attempts to hold the industry accountable for lying about climate change.

The Trump administration has granted more than 180 polluting facilities 2-year pause on compliance with Clean Air Act rules. The administration set up an email address through the EPA where companies simply had to send an email to make their request. Few requests appear to have been denied.

"California, Arizona and Nevada have offered to use about 1.6 million acre-feet less annually over the next two years. But the Trump administration’s plan would allow for mandatory cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet per year in the three states — as much as 40% of their combined allotments." #cawater

Alone on the Mother Road in the dead of winter ...

Crossroads, Texas, north of Dallas, the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2025. I only took the picture to send to friends in California, where we pay a lot more than Lone Star drivers do. Gas Buddy shows the price at the same station today is $3.99/gal. It's fascinating what a little war will do.

Valley Link was supposed to ease brutal commutes across Altamont Pass. Eight years after it was announced, plan has been cut in half and projected costs have doubled. And it's still years away from breaking ground. #sfbayarea #transit

I can hardly wait to take our new bullet train down to Los Angeles!

'They call it stormy Monday, But Tuesday's just as bad. Lord and Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's oh so sad.' Friday, Saturday and Sunday are gnarly on the freeways, too. #transportation #transit

And here's the full story (nearly undiscoverable on KQED's site) of the 1903 journey that may count as the United States' first cross-country road trip: www.kqed.org/liveblog/bay...

After audio of two pilots communicating in cat speak was shared widely online, the FAA said that it was investigating the interaction, and that pilots were banned from “nonessential communication” below a certain altitude.

"There is no widely available public tool comparable to the Wayback Machine, and if it continues to lose access to major news sources, its preservation efforts could erode to the point where early digital records of history become much harder to access, or are even lost altogether. "

Join me for a live virtual office hour on Tue Mar 10 at 3pm PT to discuss potential for a genuinely extreme, and potentially even historic, March heatwave in American Southwest (including CA) later this month. I'll talk dynamics, impacts & implications.

Alexander Butterfield, who disclosed the existence of Nixon’s secret White House taping system, blowing the cover on the Watergate conspiracy and sealing the fate of the only American president to resign from office, dies at 99. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/u...

Curious about the history of the San Francisco Bay Area's now defunct electric streetcar system? Check out this deep dive by @danbrekke.bsky.social, where I try to dispel the conspiracy theory about their demise: www.kqed.org/news/12073762

In the Transbay Tube, no one can hear you scream (the Chronicle revisits a 2010 investigation on why @bart.gov is so damned loud). #transit www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...

"Christy Wegener, the executive director of the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, said that at the current rate, with about 7,000 to 8,000 accounts upgraded per day, it would take over three years to fully transition all accounts to next-generation Clipper."

“Judge Cannon's decision to permanently block the release of this extraordinarily significant report is impossible to square with the First Amendment and the common law"

@bart.gov Train Dispatch Audio BART Lost all Radio Communication with Trains in the Transbay Tube Service Stopped between Embarcadero & West Oakland February 22, 2026, 4:01 PM @danbrekke.bsky.social youtu.be/EDzBiPZth9E

"To be treated worse here, at home, than people who had attacked our unit in a war zone, it’s been hard to understand."

Yeah, they're loud, but maybe...respect? 🙌🏼 "We should celebrate them for being successful... Like, they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them." www.kqed.org/news/1207243... via @kqednews.kqed.org @danbrekke.bsky.social

Police sergeant reported working average of 100 hours a week in 2024, with total compensation north of $800,000 once regular salary and benefits were added in. One question the story doesn’t address: Who in the city administration is responsible for signing off on such an outlandish level of OT?

"Before last week's fatal shooting in Minneapolis, ICE shootings involved moving vehicles at least 19 times & were connected to at least 10 deaths and six injuries. Task forces including ICE agents have shot at least three other US citizens."

'The secrecy has concealed ICE’s transformation into a parallel FBI, a DEA and an independent police force whose mission has crept well past the deportations that media tend to focus on.' #ICE #immigration

“...Most field officers see a clear need for de-escalation. There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger....” Via @kenklippenstein.bsky.social

Two people have been killed in solo scooter crashes in #Berkeley over the last few weeks.

From NOAA's Climate Prediction Center: 'Major pattern change for the West Coast' after rainy period. #wx #cawx

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has something to say about what the franchise calls itself. #OaklandA's

Trump Says the U.S. “Needs” Greenland—Europe Should Take Him at His Word

Here's an excellent explanation of the Postal Service's change in postmark practices and how it will affect the public. 1/2

Impressive: Winds on Christmas morning were violent enough to rip out part of the multi-ton shutter on one of Lick Observatory's telescope domes. Repairs will take months.

The detail that gets me is cutting down trees on neighbors’ properties. The guy sounds like Trump with a chainsaw.

Disgraceful: "PG&E didn't immediately respond to multiple requests about the blackouts. Its first public response was posted to X at 4 p.m.: "We are working with first responders & city officials on an outage affecting 130,000 customers. We will share more information as it becomes available."

Rain will be just one aspect of this active pattern. Wind gusts Sunday will reach the 30-40mph range, not strong enough for any significant or widespread damage. However, gusts Tuesday evening and overnight could easily exceed 50-60mph, leading to tree damage, power outages, and flight delays. 4/6

Precipitation forecast thru Xmas morning via Calif.-Nev. River Forecast Center (www.cnrfc.noaa.gov). Forecast rainfall ranges from 4 to 5 in. in E. Bay valleys up to a foot for parts of the N.Bay. The forecast total for where I am in #Berkeley: 8 in., or more than 1/3 our average annual total. #cawx

One key point is that the initial days of this CA pattern shift will involve a very anomalously warm airmass--and there will be essentially no snow at all even in the higher mountains until Tue/Wed next week. Record low snowpack will persist, or become even lower, in meantime.

In NorCal, a prolonged period of light to moderate (and occasionally heavy, in the mountains) rain will occur over next few days as a very persistent & warm atmospheric river stalls overhead. Snow levels will generally be above 7k-8k feet, so even Sierra passes will see rain.

A woman en route to a UCSF medical center gave birth inside a Waymo robotaxi, marking one of the most unusual incidents yet in San Francisco’s closely watched driverless experiment.

For a transit agency depending on voters to rescue it from a catastrophic budget deficit, #BART disruptions are happening at the worst possible time. #transit

AP finds federal and state authorities in Louisiana are monitoring the online activities of ICE critics. Chilling. apnews.com/article/immi...

In a process completed in September, engineers opened up the massive main cables that support the bridge’s double-deck roadway between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill to check on conditions inside. The results from that exam are due by early next year. From @danbrekke.bsky.social

An interview with @carmitage: "You don't get out of tyranny without things getting rough. We will suffer more if we don't show courage now. That is the deal."

Senator Elissa Slotkin’s response to the president’s deranged threats to political opponents.

This innocuous-looking little cell over #Berkeley just produced .25 inches of rain in less than 15 minutes. #cawx

From a friend: "The Loony Left may criticize me for saying this, but I think white supremacy has a multiculturalism problem."

Firefighters had complained that the ground was still smoking in places and rocks remained hot to the touch when they were ordered to pack up their hoses and leave the area.

This morning's San Ramon #earthquake swarm. A 3.8-magnitude quake kicked off the sequence at 9:38 a.m. PST About 40 more shakes, most between magnitude 1.0 and 2.0, have occurred since. The same area experienced prolonged earthquake swarms in 1990 and 2015.

The "worst of the worst" now targeted by masked "police" now include preschool teachers.

will more than make up for the 2% of LA’s water that comes from Mono Basin streams. Construction is already underway. Board President Richard Katz said that once the recycled water starts flowing, “we won’t need Mono Lake water to meet the supplies in L.A.” www.monolake.org/today/major-...

I'm looking to speak to people who rely on SNAP about what this past week has been like. If that's you, please reach out, or pass along to others. Can be anonymous. Signal: marisakabas.04 Email: [email protected]

"This is the system we’re in, where people have been trained to immediately say, 'If we’re under nuclear attack, we need to respond.' There’s a lot of fog of war. You get, like, 10 minutes to decide. And if you make the wrong decision, the consequences can be catastrophic."