Good morning. It’s Thursday, July 25. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Plans for a new California city are halted. Can trust be rebuilt?

A billionaires-backed plan to build a city from scratch in rural Solano County had been slated to go before the region’s voters in November.

But on Monday, county leaders and the initiative’s architect announced an agreement to pull it from the ballot.

The group, called California Forever, says it will now go through the usual multiyear process for would-be developments, which involves applying for necessary rezoning, conducting an environmental impact report and reaching a development agreement with the county.

The county and aspiring developers framed the decision as a chance to pause and reset after years of secrecy and mistrust. But critics say the tech billionaires’ vision is an ill-conceived plan that would do more harm than good.

First, a refresher

We first brought you the mysterious story of California Forever in August when a secretive limited liability company that spent about $800 million to purchase more than 52,000 acres in Solano County was revealed to be an ambitious project by Silicon Valley elites.

Proponents of the project used a limited liability company to buy up land from farmers in a vast swath of the county, stretching from Rio Vista, pictured, to the west, without telling anyone why.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)

Their pitch: Build a new California city fueled by clean energy and filled with affordable housing and good-paying jobs. The plan is the brainchild of Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, who framed it as vital to boost California’s dismal housing supply and keep the state competitive as jobs and renewable energy move elsewhere.

Investors in the project include billionaire investor Michael Moritz, Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Once they were outed, the group changed its approach, initially dubbing its plan California Forever (with renderings that appeared to have been hastily created with artificial intelligence) before rebranding to the East Solano Plan. The group began gathering signatures to get a ballot measure before local voters in November that would change zoning rules, bypassing the typical process.

An artist’s rendering of a neighborhood in a proposed city in Solano County.

(Sitelab Urban Studio)

Going that route “was a mistake,” Mitch Mashburn, chair of the Solano County Board of Supervisors, wrote in the joint statement. “This politicized the entire project, made it difficult for us and our staff to work with them, and forced everyone in our community to take sides.”

The group’s lack of transparency and accusations of heavy-handed tactics rubbed many politicians and residents the wrong way. They also sued farmers in federal court, which further incensed residents and elected leaders.

Speaking during a Tuesday meeting, Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown said that California Forever “operated in bad faith” and that she “will never trust anything that they bring forward.”

“Go somewhere else,” Brown said. “There’s 57 other counties. They might want you and your money.”

Critics say the plan is the wrong approach

Local opposition to the project has been swift and vocal, with some noting it breaks the prime rule of real estate: location, location, location. Critics point to the lack of road infrastructure, access to water and public transit.

“It is a huge waste of private and public resources to develop a new city in this location,” said Sadie Wilson, director of planning and research at Greenbelt Alliance. The nonprofit advocates for climate resiliency in Bay Area counties and is part of the Solano Together Coalition.

An aerial rendering of where the planned community by California Forever would fit into Solano County.

(California Forever)

Members have been focused on getting accurate information to voters about the East Solano Plan, Wilson told me, but are also cultivating an “alternative vision” for prosperity in the region that doesn’t rely on billionaires.

Wilson said the plan “flies in the face” of both climate resiliency and housing goals, which would be better served by strategically expanding housing in existing cities. Building the schools, roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure to accommodate the more than 500,000 people California Forever hopes would live in its new city would cost a lot — both in dollars and emissions.

The county commissioned a consultant’s report for the project, which found that creating the necessary infrastructure would cost tens of billions and generate well over 2 billion new vehicle miles traveled (the state meanwhile is working to reduce how much Californians drive).

What’s next?

In that joint statement, Sramek said his group will work with the county “to build a shared vision” and plans to “bring the full package back for approval in 2026.”

“We want to show that it’s possible to move faster in California,” he wrote in a statement.

“But we recognize now that it’s possible to reorder these steps without impacting our ambitious timeline.”

Mashburn acknowledged Sramek for his understanding and optimism, but also issued him a challenge:

California Forever’s decision to pull the ballot measure was “a major win” for the coalition, Wilson told me.

“They just backed out of this initiative because they knew they weren’t going to win,” she said, adding that she hopes the group will be more transparent about their endgame if they’re serious about mending things with county leaders and residents.

“It’s hard to come back from that lack of trust and that deception,” she said. But “this is certainly not over.”

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(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; Photos via AP Photo)

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Today’s great reads

Chris Kraus for Image.

(Arielle Bobb-Willis / For The Times)

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For your downtime

Andrew Chaves, director of operations at Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens in Long Beach, stands next to a preformed pond that he and his wife, Amanda, dug into the ground.

(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)

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Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Ryan Fonseca, reporter
Defne Karabatur, fellow
Andrew Campa, Sunday reporter
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor and Saturday reporter
Christian Orozco, assistant editor
Stephanie Chavez, deputy metro editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

The Los Angeles Zoo is making strides in saving the California condor, America’s largest flying bird, from extinction.  

The zoo capped off its 2024 condor breeding season with a record-breaking 17 chicks hatched, breaking the record of 15 set in 1997.  

The large bird has a wingspan of nine-and-a-half feet, stands around three feet, and weighs between 17 to 25 pounds. Like vultures and other scavengers, condors feed on carcasses of large animals including deer, cattle, and marine mammals such as whales and seals. 

According to the L.A. Zoo, the condors’ high mortality rate is mostly due to lead poisoning from eating lead bullet fragments or shot pellets found in animal carcasses. In recent years, the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has become another growing threat to the species’ survival. 

In 1983, there were only 22 California condors remaining on the planet. This was when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission decided to create a captive breeding program for the species, which the L.A. Zoo entered as a founding partner. 

“The L.A. Zoo has been an integral partner in the recovery of the iconic California condor since the inception of the program in the 1980s when the species was at the brink of extinction,” Denise M. Verret, Los Angeles Zoo CEO/Zoo Director said. 

In 2017, the L.A. Zoo pioneered a new breeding technique where animal care staff placed two condor chicks with a surrogate condor to raise the chicks.  

This year, the L.A. Zoo’s condor team implemented another first for the program, allowing three chicks to be raised at the same time by a female. This method also prevents human involvement, which leads to better survival rates for the birds once released in the wild.  

All the chicks bred at the L.A. Zoo are candidates for release into the wild.  

As of December 2023, there are 561 California condors in the world, of which 344 are living in the wild, according to the L.A. Zoo.  

While California condors are not on exhibit at the zoo, guests can participate in Condor Spotting, held daily (except Tuesdays) from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m. Guests can also see Hope, a non-releasable California condor, at the Angela Collier World of Birds Show 12:00 p.m., daily, except Tuesday, weather permitting. 

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 24. I’m Gustavo Arellano, a metro columnist, which means I’m allowed to have opinions like:

Newspapers are cool.

But before I begin my rant, here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Whither the news industry in California?

Since I was a teen, I’ve lapped up newspapers.

I used to steal the sports section from the rolled-up newspapers on the driveways of homes on the way to Sycamore Junior High in Anaheim. When I realized there was more to life than just the Angels and Dodgers, I’d jump a fence every Sunday morning to buy copies of the Orange County Register and L.A. Times from news boxes in my neighboring apartment complex. Once I got a job my senior year of high school, I subscribed to those two papers along with the New York Times.

I went into journalism straight out of college despite earning a film studies degree — I’ve never regretted it. But as the years went on, I ended my print subscriptions because I could read for free on the internet most of what I used to pay for.

It’s people like me who launched the proverbial Little Boy that destroyed too many journalism outlets to count.

But the Fat Man remains companies like Craigslist, Google and Facebook, which eradicated the traditional business model of news organizations — advertising. This one-two punch has led to mass layoffs, shutdowns and a society where misinformation reigns.

Two bills currently in the California Legislature, Assembly Bill 886 and Senate Bill 1327, seek to confront this digital dystopia.

The former would require social media giants such as Facebook and search engines like Google to pay news outlets for using their content; the latter would use the revenue gathered from a proposed tax on user data gathered by Big Tech to gift news groups a tax credit for every full-time journalist they employ. The California News Publisher Assn., of which The Times is a member, supports AB 886, arguing it could give the state’s dying news industry — and local news — a lifeline.

(Tech companies vehemently oppose the bills, arguing it’s unfair to target them when the news industry hasn’t kept up with modernity and readers have more options to get their news than ever before.)

These bills aren’t merely a desperate money grab by the lamestream press, folks.

A limping media ecosystem affects society in many ways — few of them good.

Times reporters investigated the decline of local news and what it actually means. Here’s what we found:

• More big businesses control the narrative. The largest news source in Richmond, Calif., is owned by the Bay Area town’s largest business: Chevron. That means in a city where pollution concerns are real from the company’s refinery, its digital rag doesn’t say a damn thing, Jessica Garrison reported.
• News that serves disenfranchised communities is ignored. Santa Ana is one of the most-Latino big cities in the United States. Twenty years ago, dozens of local semanarios (weekly papers) and all sorts of sports, entertainment and lifestyle magazines covered the goings-on of the city. Today, just two publications focused on entertainment fluff remain. I looked at how important issues affecting residents now get ignored.
• Tech companies are intent on winning. Australia and Canada passed bills similar to what California legislators have proposed. Some money went to publishers, but tech bros created chaos by blocking news from their platforms, national correspondent Jenny Jarvie reported.
• AI is only making things worse. AI chatbots might openly lift local journalists’ work and either pass it off as their own or mischaracterize it. “The average consumer that just wants to go check [out a restaurant], they’re probably not going to read [our article] anymore,” L.A. Taco editor Javier Cabral told Wendy Lee on AI’s effects on his scrappy indie site.
• Even news nonprofits — long seen as a foolproof solution — are having a rough time of it: The Long Beach Post had eclipsed the 127-year-old Press-Telegram in readership and gravitas but now finds itself in tatters after nearly three-quarters of its reporters resigned over editorial and business disputes with management. Those defectors now have their own publication, the Long Beach Watchdog, James Rainey reported.
• There are fewer reporters to hold power accountable. The people paid to objectively find out what people in power are trying to hide from you … we’re losing jobs like the Halos are losing fans, Ashley Ahn showed.

I thank you, gentle reader, for reading this newsletter, offer you a virtual high-five if you subscribe to Essential California, and gift you a digital gold star if you are a Times subscriber. And if you read this without paying us? We pardon you — and ask you to subscribe. Hey, $1 for four months is a deal anyone can afford, amirite?

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(Kayla Wolf / Associated Press)

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• Just last week, another toddler died of a fentanyl overdose. DCFS had trusted his mom’s friend to keep him safe

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Today’s great reads

A plate of tacos is displayed at the Industrial Downtown Night Market.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

How L.A. reached peak taco. To understand how Los Angeles became the world’s most taco-diverse city, let’s start with the taco truck.

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For your downtime

Tacos at Bandito Taqueria.

(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

And finally … from our archives

On this day in history, the Supreme Court voted 8 to 0 that President Nixon had to turn over transcripts of the Watergate tapes to Special Counsel Leon Jaworski.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team.

Ryan Fonseca, reporter
Defne Karabatur, fellow
Andrew Campa, Sunday reporter
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor and Saturday reporter
Christian Orozco, assistant editor
Stephanie Chavez, deputy metro editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.