Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 6/4/2025

By AVA News Service on June 4, 2025

GUSTY northerly winds will continue to diminish each day through the week, but remain robust with steep elevated seas over the coastal waters. Hot and dry weather will continue each day this week as a ridge remains parked offshore Northwest California. Hotter weather is expected this weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 44F under clear skies (at 5am) but the fog is just to the south of us so...... I'll go with more clear than fog & see what happens? Our rest of week forecast has more clear than fog in it but we all know how quickly that can change.

FARM BUREAU TO UKIAH & SUPERVISORS: ABANDON THE ANNEXATION

June 3, 2025

To: Ukiah City Council and Staff:

Mendocino County Farm Bureau is opposed to the City of Ukiah’s Annexation plan. The proposed plan would endanger farmland through urban sprawl, increase conflict between urban residents and agricultural producers carrying out farming operations, lead to higher taxes, and destroy the rural character of the Ukiah Valley.

There has been insufficient effort to prioritize the preservation of farmland or to protect the property rights currently held by existing agricultural operations and rural residents. Many land use entitlements and activities that are allowed in non-incorporated areas, such as open air burning, raising livestock, use of firearms, drilling of wells, etc., are prohibited or carry substantial restrictions in the City.

Rural residents love living in the country and do not want to see their community become urbanized.

The annexation process lacks transparency. MCFB has been engaging with City staff since December, bringing forward issues and concerns expressed by our members, most of which have not been adequately addressed. We have not seen an analysis of the tax implications for newly annexed properties or what the increase in obligations would be.

By and large, we are being inundated with messages through social media and the City of Ukiah website singing the praises of annexation, but we are not convinced.

We doubt the City of Ukiah’s ability to provide services at the same level or better than the County currently does in the proposed annexed areas.

If approved, this annexation would siphon away significant tax revenue from the County which is already facing budgetary shortfalls and looking at making deep cuts.

While the responsibility for providing services in newly annexed areas would shift from the County to the City and result in a level of cost savings for the County, we believe the loss in County tax revenues would be greater than the savings. The resulting net loss will strain County departments, hindering their functions and provision of services.

Rural residents living in unincorporated areas far from Ukiah’s sphere of influence would suffer most from this decline in the County’s ability to provide services.

For these reasons, MCFB opposes the City of Ukiah’s Annexation plans and insists they be abandoned.

Estelle Clifton, President

Mendocino County Farm Bureau

June 3, 2025

To: Board of Supervisors and Staff:

Mendocino County

501 Low Gap Road

Ukiah, CA 95482

The Mendocino County Farm Bureau (MCFB) is a non-governmental, non-profit, voluntary membership, advocacy group whose purpose is to protect and promote agricultural interests throughout the county and to find solutions to the problems facing agricultural businesses and the rural community. MCFB is submitting comments on the City of Ukiah’s proposal for annexation and reorganization.

Mendocino County Farm Bureau is opposed to the City of Ukiah’s Annexation plan. We have serious reservations regarding the scope and scale of the annexation plan and deep concern regarding the negative fiscal implications this would have for County finances.

Mendocino County Farm Bureau’s stated mission is to protect and promote agricultural interests in our county and to preserve our rural character. Such a rapid expansion of the City of Ukiah would endanger farmland through urban sprawl that would lead to an increase in conflicts between agricultural producers conducting everyday farming activities and neighboring urban residents. Rural residential residents would see the rights and entitlements they currently enjoy being eroded, their taxes increasing, and the rural character of our community destroyed.

The County is experiencing serious financial hardships and structural deficits. It is struggling to finance and provide many of the core services, such as law enforcement and road maintenance, that residents look to the County to provide.

If the City of Ukiah’s annexation plan is approved, it would have extremely negative consequences for the County’s budget to the detriment of its ability to provide services. Rural residents in unincorporated areas would see a profound decline in County services and quality of life would decline as a result.

Even for the residents that would be annexed or live near the City of Ukiah, it is unlikely that annexation would be beneficial. We have serious doubts that the City of Ukiah’s is able to provide at minimum the same level of service that the County currently delivers, much less provide better.

MCFB is requesting that the County conduct an in-depth analysis on the potential economic and operational impacts on County departments, services, and longterm liabilities if the proposed annexation is approved.

We believe that when the Master Tax Sharing Agreement was approved in June 2024, the potential annexation plans presented by the City of Ukiah were different from what is being proposed today, and that the City of Ukiah is operating in bad faith.

We request that the County insist that the City of Ukiah abandon their annexation plans, and if they will not, that the County rescind the Master Tax Sharing Agreement. We look to your leadership in protecting the vested interests of the rural residents and agricultural operations of Mendocino County by opposing the City of Ukiah’s annexation plans.

Estelle Clifton, President

Mendocino County Farm Bureau

ZOMBIE-BASED BUDGETING

by Mark Scaramella

Mendocino taxpayers hoping for some assurance that Mendo’s Board of Supervisors is managing their money properly with a realistic budget for next fiscal year (July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026) will be sorely disappointed by some of the opening remarks at Tuesday morning’s budget discussion.

CEO Darcy Antle’s crack “fiscal team” lead by Acting Deputy CEO Tony Rakes and Deputy CEO Sara Pierce have assembled a proposed budget which magically assumes, among other things, that over $6 million will “saved” by leaving 6% of already trimmed down general fund departmental staffs vacant for the entire year, or some equivalent reduction in the workforce.

As we pointed out months ago when this preposterous idea was first proposed, the numbers don’t work, and if they did, the Supervisors wouldn’t be able to keep that many positions vacant, and even if they try, it will create unnecessary tension and competition between departments, not to mention lowering the already low morale among line employees. When it was first proposed, the staff called it a “soft hiring freeze,” that soon changed to a “hard freeze.” But Supervisor Maureen Mulheren thought that sounded kinda harsh, so they renamed it as the “Strategic Hiring Process,” and lately it has become the “Strategic Hiring Plan.” Whatever they call it, it won’t work.

It seems that it has belatedly dawned on at least some members of the Board that this assumption is problematic, if not just plain dumb. But at this late date in the budget cycle, having wrung as much one-time money as they can from miscellaneous funds here and there and deferring stuff that has already been deferred before, they have no time to pursue more practical budget balancing methods such as office hour reductions, work week reductions, delayed raises, reductions in top-heavy management positions and hours, or revenue enhancements.

Supervisor Ted Williams: “If the retention rate is 99%, how do we expect to save 6% on natural attrition over the year? It seems that those two claims are mutually exclusive.”

Cherrie Johnson (Human Resources Director): “That will tie into our strategic hiring plan and as positions become vacant, they should not be filled. I guess. Yes.”

Williams: “But if our retention rate is 99%, how do we get to 6% over the course of the year? I am not doubting this information but I am just putting together what the budget team is saying with this information and the two cannot coexist.”

Johnson: “The retention rate is fluctuating and constantly moving depending on pay period. This would… This was at a given moment in time that this rate took place. Again, at any given time, that number is shifting based on the vacancies and hiring.”

Williams: “Does the HR team believe that on average it might be about 6%? This is maybe not 99 now but over the year, it will only be 90?”

CEO Darcy Antle: “On the prior slide, it stated that our vacancy rate was at 12% when we run it, for… our numbers… the budget… which you’ll hear about later, that was for a defined period which is closer to 10% countywide.”

Williams: “That rate is the current vacancy rate, right? That doesn’t give us any savings. We would need to hit that 6% target on natural attrition savings under the hiring freeze. You would need the current vacancy rate plus a retention rate of well under 99%. I am not putting together how your arithmetic should work.”

Antle: “Some of our departments still budget for, for filled positions, they are— Some budget it to fill them for the entire 12 months, some budget to fill them for six months. So we really have to work with the departments throughout the year. Some departments may have higher turnover rates than other departments. Such as the Board of Supervisors. The Board of Supervisors is probably not going to have any turnover and is not going to have a savings in that area. [Nervous laughter.] Some other departments may be higher, so it is going to require constant monitoring between the fiscal team, the Auditor-Controller, and the HR folks.”

Supervisor John Haschak: “The Strategic Hiring Plan and, you know, that $6 million that we are projecting at… So that is going to be on the board to hold that line because that’s what we’re counting on and whether it’s a conservative number or kind of a wild guess number, we don’t know yet but when the rubber meets the road and people start saying, hey, we are not going to hire that position and it makes its way through the policy and comes to the board, you know, we don’t know what the savings are going to be And so it’s – I guess I’m just saying for the board, it’s our responsibility to try to maintain that $6 million savings.”

CEO Antle: “I appreciate that comment because it is. We’ve been fluctuating back-and-forth on this in the past. So we really need the board to think about what’s your major priorities. It can’t be everything. We won’t be able to do everything. So that’s going to – you will hear today from the departments what we need. But again we have got to start holding the line and we have to set those priorities of what really needs to happen, so I appreciate those comments.”

Supervisor Williams: “I think the potential savings from the hiring freeze and natural attrition is overstated. I think it’s good in theory. We have to do it. It’s the right approach. But what happens when the Sheriff comes to one of us and says we lost a resident deputy, we are going to rehire, right? We’re not going to leave that vacant. What happens when the Tax Collector says, I have a key position that’s vacant. We need taxes to be collected. We need those audits to happen on the specified timeframe. And in the Assessor’s office, we are talking about keeping up on properties. I am questioning where this natural attrition will occur that will not trigger refilling a position. I think it’s good in theory. But when you start looking at the details of which positions, they are all critical. They could all have an argument that we need to replace them and not leave them vacant. Am I the only one that’s feeling this?”

Haschak: “No. We are saying that we agree. We are going to have to hold ourselves accountable just like when we did those voluntary separation plans, right? It was a handshake in essence. We had what? 20 or 30 people apply for it? But the actual savings were only $338,000 because those weren’t in those general fund places. So we are going to have to see when these numbers come through what we’re going to find and where we are going to get the savings and, you know, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Williams: “We agree.”

District Attorney David Eyster was the first department head to object to the cuts he was asked to accept.

Eyster rambled on at great length about his budget, provoked, apparently, by a quote last April from Supervisor Ted Williams in which Williams said that there’s money to be taken from the DA’s budget because the DA has under-run his budget over the last six years. Eyster, of course, pointedly disputed that and said he’s been very close to being on budget for the last six years and didn’t appreciate the implication that he was not “a good steward” of the public’s money. As far as we know, Eyster has been a pretty good manager of his overall budget. And it’s true that the DA helped iron out the Proposition 172 sales tax allocation to include local fire departments. And he prosecutes some of his own cases. His latest budget filibuster — mostly arguments he makes every year, budget shortfall or not — would not have been particularly noteworthy this year either — until he reached his concluding sentence. Referring to his complaint about Supervisor Williams’s incorrect budget statement, Eyster complained, “It’s very hard to be an elected official and you watch decisions being made on misinformation.”

Chamise Cubbison would certainly agree.

A NEW (JANUARY, 2025) VIDEO SUMMARY OF THE BARI BOMBING CASE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsI592K4B8

ED NOTE: Pretty good overview of the case despite a few minor errors and one major error: I did not create the website sweeneydidit, although I think it's obvious he did it. I've also always understood that Sweeney was never seriously investigated by the FBI.

WATER WORRIES RISE AS LEADERS PLAN FOR LIFE AFTER THE POTTER VALLEY PROJECT

by Monica Huetl

On May 29, the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPC) convened an All Boards meeting at the Ukiah Conference Center, uniting representatives from local water agencies and governments to discuss the region’s water future after Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) exits the Potter Valley Project (PVP). Participating entities included the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, Ukiah City Council, and board members from the Redwood Valley County Water District, Potter Valley Irrigation District, and the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District.

PG&E is moving ahead with plans to surrender its license for the PVP and remove the Scott and Cape Horn Dams, which have long diverted Eel River water to the Russian River via a tunnel. The utility cites financial losses, seismic risk, and outdated infrastructure as reasons for the decommissioning. …

https://mendofever.com/2025/06/03/water-worries-rise-as-leaders-plan-for-life-after-the-potter-valley-project/

A COMMUNITY LOSS

We are profoundly saddened to share the loss of cellist Joel Cohen, who performed with the Ukiah Symphony Orchestra for many years. Our orchestra musicians who shared the stage with Joel, and our Board, are shaken by the sudden passing of our colleague. Our hearts and prayers go out to Joel's loved ones. May his memory be a blessing.

Joel was a Grammy nominated cellist with a passion for unique, genre-bending music. After his early musical training in the San Francisco Bay area, his studies took him to the University of Western Ontario, and then to Holland. Returning to the Bay area, he served as co-principal cellist with the Oakland Symphony.

Joel lived in Vienna where he was a principal cellist of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, also performing with the Vienna Radio Symphony, the Wiener Kammeroper, the Wiener Akademie (on period instruments), and others. He toured extensively throughout Europe and Asia with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and the Johann Strauss Festival Orchestra of Vienna.

After his move to Mendocino County in 2007, Joel began playing with the Ukiah Symphony, adding much beauty to our cello section, and was also a soloist with our orchestra. He also performed with the Santa Rosa Symphony, among other orchestras in Northern California, and was an avid chamber musician in Mendocino County and beyond. Joel was a dedicated cello teacher and a wonderful musician. He will be deeply missed by all who performed alongside him.

Ukiah Symphony Orchestra

SAVE GUALALA

Please help Right Now to reverse a major change to the Gualala Streetscape Plan that would eliminate landscaping, leaving just a sea of concrete and asphalt downtown. PLEASE write a short email to the county like the one below saying you want the landscaping restored.

Your Voice Matters!! The County will make a final decision on June 26, 2025. Be sure to include the application number, and please send a copy to Save Gualala so we can track them. Here’s a sample email:

“CDP_2024-0040 I live, work, and shop in the Gualala area and want the County and Caltrans to restore landscaping to the Streetscape project now to avoid any further delays in this much-needed project. Landscaping is required in our Coastal Plan, and it’s critical for both aesthetic and economic reasons. “

Please include your name and town (Gualala, TSR, Anchor Bay, Pt. Arena, etc.)

Please send your email Right Now to:

[email protected]

cc: [email protected]

Background: Save Gualala wants this project built the way the community approved it – no more changes or delays. The low-maintenance, low-profile natural landscaping (like in the Caltrans drawing below) is vital to the future of Gualala, which depends heavily on attracting visitors to support our restaurants, hotels, and retail stores.

Without landscaping, most motorists will simply drive through Gualala to other destinations. It could remain that way for the next half-century or more. Of course, the landscaping will also make the town more attractive for all of us. We simply want the County to follow requirements in our Town Plan, which is also our Coastal Plan.

The county already maintains county roads around Gualala, but is refusing add the 0.4-mile stretch of Hwy. 1 downtown. This natural landscaping grows naturally in Gualala and requires almost no maintenance.

The 2002 Gualala Town Plan aimed to make Hwy 1 “a scenic element of the Gualala townscape” with native landscaping, sidewalks, separated bike lanes and traffic lanes that better reflect our natural surroundings. It will also include several crosswalks and safety lights. The Gualala Community approved a plan to do that in May 2023.

Please send your email now!

And Thank You for helping to Save Gualala!

REEL MENDO

by Terry Sites

The Mendocino Film Festival hit its 18th anniversary this year, films were screened in both Mendocino Village and Fort Bragg between May 29th and June 1st. The program tells us that this festival “celebrates the art of storytelling through independent film.” Offerings include music, art, social justice and the environment. Visitors are invited to “Come for the movies and stay for the view.” And what a view it is!

Standing at the top of the hill in Mendocino Village and looking out to the waves pounding as the main drag drops over a cliff is probably the most beautiful downtown vista anywhere in the United States. There is a chance to rub elbows with real live filmmakers and even ask them questions about their art. There are parties, great restaurants, music and much merriment. For film buffs it is a three-day slice of heaven on earth. For locals it’s a lively time that boosts business and charges the atmosphere with energy.

There is a chance to see many short films that are not readily available elsewhere. The short film programs fell into four categories this year; “Funny or Die,” showcasing humor that comes with an edge; “Making a Difference,” highlighting heroes who are changing the world for the better; “Reel Mendo” a collection of shorts by Mendocino filmmakers; and “Women Who Dare,” action-packed and bursting with stories of dare-devilry.

I attended “Reel Mendo” an annual pilgrimage for me as I find there is always something new and fascinating to learn from Mendocino filmmakers.

“Shelf Life” — a lighthearted horror film showing one woman’s terrifying encounter with take-out noodles gone bad. A noodle monster creeps from the confines of her refrigerator down the hall and climbs into bed with her. He looks a lot like a cotton work glove covered with spaghetti with two beady marbles for eyes. Even though it’s all for fun, we get the heebie jeebies watching “noodle hand” stealthily slither up her bedspread toward her sleeping head. Spoiler alert: a garbage disposal looms large in resolving her dilemma.

“Art and Healing in Mendocino” took us on a visit with many Mendocino artists who discuss their work with interviewer Sandy Ritter. The Mendocino Art Center is prominent. All the artists are of advanced years highlighting the general graying of Mendocino County. The “youthquake” that brought so many back-to-the-landers to Mendocino County when they were young has ironically turned into an “agingquake.”

“The Crimes of ‘Big Mike’ Nolan” is a very fast paced and humorous run through of the life and times of real historical figure Mike Nolan who was know for his illegal transport of alcohol. Arrested numerous times his irrepressible perseverance as a bootlegger is very amusing in retrospect.

In “High Country Murder” two sisters raised on a Potter Valley ranch come home to investigate the unresolved murder of rancher Richard Drewry in Bell Springs in Humboldt County just over the Mendocino County border. Footage reveals that many people apparently know who did the killing and why but no one is willing to step forward. It is a chilling picture of a culture of silence not uncommon in the Emerald Triangle where many murders go unsolved in that area.

“Father Time and the Maiden” uses the statue on top of the church in downtown Mendocino as a starting place for an experimental student film that was shot in one afternoon and “edited on camera,” according to the filmmaker. An impressionistic live maiden with the same long braid as the statue maiden wanders through a hazy Mendocino montage.

“Art and Architecture” features Anderson Valley Vintner Allan Green of Greenwood Ridge Winery as he takes us on a tour of his striking mid-twentieth century modern home on Greenwood Ridge in Philo. Allan’s father, architect Aaron Green, an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the home, which was built by local contractor Mark Boudoures.

“More Than One” is a lyrical look at mushroom growing on the Mendocino Coast. Close-up looks at growing mycelium inside tree stumps illustrates the process of mushroom development that helps a forest decompose dead wood.

“Tune of Love” follows three teen-agers as they grapple with love, unrequited and otherwise.

“The Bird Rescue Center” is a documentary that follows workers and the birds they rescue at the Santa Rosa Bird Rescue Center, “people who give wildlife a second chance.”

“The Girl in Kelp” inserts simple but lively and extremely effective line animation into shots of the beautiful Mendocino Coast. The storyline tells of a girl who loses her lover and a wise woman who advises her on how to reunite with him. The price of reunion is high but love compels her. Draping herself in kelp she consigns herself to the frigid waves leaving only a pile of clothing behind.

“A Return to Movement” shows us a “vertical dance” inspired by the largest dam removal project in history, the Klamath River dams in northern California. Two women tethered to the under girders of a high bridge dance and gyrate in thin air and pushing off bridge stanchions. It’s a dizzying ride.

The entire program lasted 114 minutes total and took viewers through many different worlds. Following the program filmmakers spoke briefly and answered questions from the audience. It was a stimulating way to finish out the Festival, which began to fold its chairs and tents at the conclusion of the program.

SHERIFF MATT KENDALL

“Even though Newsom remains marginally popular with California voters and is likely to be a top tier candidate for the White House in 2028.”

Newsom has refused to meet with law enforcement leaders and continually pushed against what our public wants to see. His battle against Prop 36 was a clear indication how his mind works. His plan to drain state prison populations and give the funds to NGOs was simply buying votes. Ultimately what did it do for our state?

His refusal to hear anything from law enforcement leaders including District Attorneys was, and still is, a recipe for disaster. What on earth does he know about enforcing the law? It’s like a stock broker trying to fly a jumbo jet and refusing to listen to the pilots — nothing good is coming from that. The real question is, have we gotten better in California? I don’t think we have.

If we want to drain the incarcerated populations it starts with creating an environment of education, accountability and opportunity. Killing jobs through legislation causes poverty and a reliance on the government that isn’t healthy for anyone, not those paying into the system of government assistance, and not good for the folks living on government.

I see our legislators creating laws which turn the law abiding into criminals while other laws come forward to release serious criminals on to the streets. Perhaps the real mental health issues need to be dealt with in Sacramento, then we can move out from there. Just my 2 cents.

FIRE SAFE POINT ARENA JUNE MEETING, etc.

First:

United Policyholders held a webinar on homeowners insurance - how to keep it, what to do if you get a non-renewal notice, home hardening ideas, insurance discounts for home hardening…

Here is the link to watch the video: https://uphelp.org/events/2025-ca-r2p-webinar/

It is very informative; well worth your time. Be proactive.

Know before you need to know. Encourage your neighbors to get educated too. Host a bbq with your neighbors. Share information.

Second:

June 2025 Meeting

Wednesday, June 4

4:45 - 5:45 pm

Coast Community Library, downtown Point Arena

No Radio Check-In this month

(our repeater is getting an adjustment)

Agenda

CERT training possibilities
Cargo container shelf installation timing.
Fire Safe Point Arena participation in PRIDE in the park
Fire Safe Point Arena participation in Fourth of July at the Cove and in the parade
Fire Safe Point Arena participation in Fish Fest
Fuel reduction tree removal and the coastal commission
Report on United Policyholders insurance webinar
Any other items members would like to discuss

Third:

The radio class was fabulous. We're going to be talking to folks from north of Westport to Gualala to Ukiah to Laytonville. We have some people considering getting their ham radio license. Get your radios! Meet up at the monthly meetings and/or join in on a radio class.

Let us know if you're interested in participating in a radio class. We'll set up another one when we get a few folks interested.

Jennifer Smallwood, [email protected]

ALBION HEADLANDS FOR SALE (Frank Hartzell)

https://mendocinocoast.news/entire-84-acre-albion-headlands-for-sale-16-multimillion-dollar-houses-or-preserve-attend-a-monday-june-9-public-meeting-to-discuss/

TOM WODETZKI

Community Meeting June 9, 2025

Hello neighbor.

Since the 84-acre south Albion Headlands property came up for sale recently, there’s lots of citizen interest in seeing that it ends up as coastal public access and not as part-time vacation homes for wealthy outsiders. Fortunately, the Mendocino Land Trust has put in offers to buy it (tho they would still have to raise $6+million), and its director wrote me "We would be happy to meet in Albion to give interested residents an update.”

So I’ve booked the Whitesboro Grange on Navarro Ridge Road for a public meeting Monday, June 9th, 5:30-7pm, where we can ask questions of the realtor marketing the property, Justin Nadeau, and two Mendocino Land Trust staffers, Conrad Kramer and Emily Griffin, and then discuss if and how we might want to influence in whose hands this property ends up and how it will be used.

Here’s a link to the realtor’s 3-min drone video of the property: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uIYNhYyMGw

All are invited. If you’re interested join us and spread the word about this meeting: Monday, June 9th, 5:30-7pm at the Whitesboro Grange.

Thank you.

LOBA POETRY SERIES

Monthly Poet Features & Open Mic

Join Ukiah Branch Library staff as we host poetry events in person on the third Saturdays of each month at 3 p.m. This free event is open to both teens and adults. All are invited to share poems in any form or style or just listen to others. On June 21, 2025, we welcome Connie Post.

Connie Post served as the first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Comstock Review, Cutthroat Magazine River Styx, 2 River, The American Journal of Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, SlipStream, Pedestal Magazine, Mom Egg Review, and Verse Daily. Her awards include the Crab Creek Review Award, Liakoura Award, The Prick of the Spindle Poetry Contest, and the Caesura Award. Her work has appeared in over fifteen anthologies. She has been short-listed for the Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, The Muriel Craft Bailey Awards, the I-70 Review Gary Gildner Award, and the Sweet Lit Poetry Awards.

Connie has three full length collections and three chapbooks. Her first book Floodwater won the Lyrebird Award (Glass Lyre Press, 2014) and her second full length Prime Meridian was also published by Glass Lyre Press. Her two 2023 collections include Between Twilight (New York Quarterly Books) and Broken Metronome (Glass Lyre Press). Between Twilight was a finalist for the Best Book Awards and the International Book Awards. Broken Metronome has earned six awards, including winner for a poetry chapbook in the American Fiction Awards, and was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards.

Please contact the Ukiah Branch Library at 707-463-4490 or [email protected] for more information.

MENDOCINO COUNTY LIBRARY ANNOUNCES DISCONTINUATION OF HOOPLA AND OTHER ONLINE SERVICES

Due to current and upcoming financial obligations, the Mendocino County Library has made the difficult decision to discontinue some online services including Hoopla, Kanopy, Pronunciator, ProCitizen, GrantFinder, and Kovels. We understand that this news will come as a disappointment to many who have enjoyed these digital services.

This decision follows a careful review of the Library's digital resources and the impact on patron needs versus budget constraints. Although expenses continue to increase, sales tax revenue is projected to decrease. Measure O provides a sales tax revenue of one-quarter cent (0.25%) with 60% of the revenue for operating expenses and 40% set aside for capital investments. The 60% for operating investments is a small increase over the previous Measure A funds of one-eighth percent (0.125%).

"Please know that this decision was not made lightly. It was deemed necessary to ensure that the Library continues to be a good steward of taxpayer funds and can maintain other essential services and resources for our community,” said Mellisa Hannum, County Librarian.

Patrons will no longer have access to digital content of the following services as of these dates:

Hoopla digital - July 1, 2025
Kanopy - July 1, 2025
Pronunciator & ProCitizen - November 27, 2025
GrantFinder - November 10, 2025

We encourage patrons to use the services that will continue to be provided including Libby, the Palace Project, and other digital resources. We appreciate your understanding and continued support. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us.

For more information, please view www.mendolibrary.org or contact the Mendocino County Library at (707) 234-2873.

GRACE HUDSON 1889; The Sun House, Ukiah; and Grace Carpenter Hudson in her Studio (Ron Parker)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, June 3, 2025

DANIELLE DAVIS, 32, Eureka/Ukiah. Paraphernalia, false ID, probation revocation.

LYNN DERRICK, 66, Albion. DUI, leaving scene of accident with property damage.

HUMBERTO GONZALES-MORENO, 22, Ukiah. Battery against school employee, unlawful acts committed in building or grounds of schools.

SERJIO GONZALEZ, 48, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, parole violation.

TIMOTHY KLICK, 27, Willits. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm-not registered owner, paraphernalia.

NATHAN MARRUFO, 50, Stewart’s Point/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ALEX MORA-WHITEHURST, 38, Ukiah. Tear gas, paraphernalia, parole violation.

DENA MORRIS, 63, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

DAMON REICHARDT, 49, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, public nuisance.

MARIO SEIBEL, 43, Willits. Cruelty to child/endangerment.

A BELOVED SLICE of Sonoma County history is making its anticipated return this summer. Pick’s Roadside, formerly Pick's Drive-In, the iconic property that has held its place on Cloverdale's Boulevard since 1923, is on the brink of a revitalization. Thanks to the passion and dedication of local Amber Lanier, alongside the expertise of Anidel Hospitality, this historic establishment is being restored to its former glory.

For nearly a century, Pick's has been a cornerstone of the Cloverdale community, drawing visitors from near and far to enjoy its classic drive-in atmosphere and unbeatable burgers, shakes and fries. Now Pick’s, one of the oldest drive-ins in the county, is set to make a comeback that keeps all the nostalgia intact.

"I am the 5th generation of my family to live in Sonoma County. My grandmother used to come here as a little girl in 1923 when it first opened as Reed and Bell's Root Beer stand." says Lanier. "We're putting a lot of love and care into the space and making sure that the heart and soul of Pick's remains at the core of everything we do."

Thanks to the partnership with Anidel Hospitality, who focus on the restoration of historic properties, this project is a delicate balance of preserving the drive-in's vintage charm while introducing thoughtful updates that will enhance the guest experience.

Set to open this summer, the revamped Pick's Roadside promises to be more than just a place to grab a burger. It will be a destination where community, nostalgia and great food come together. "Pick's has always been more than just a restaurant. It's a gathering spot, a piece of history, and a place that has shaped the memories of so many in Cloverdale." says Lanier. "We're excited to invite both new guests and longtime fans to experience the best of Pick's with a renewed energy and fresh perspective."

As the summer months draw closer, anticipation is building for Pick's Roadside's grand reopening. Cloverdale locals and visitors alike can look forward to indulging in timeless faire served with a healthy dose of local pride.

Stay tuned for more updates and a closer look at the refreshed Pick's as we prepare to open a new chapter in this historic drive-in's story.

THE DEVINE DIFFERENCE

Warmest spiritual greetings Jivan Muktas,

Please accept these verses from the Bhagavad Gita, in which the difference is defined between the Divine and the Demonic, and secondly, the role of the Avatar, which is to destroy the Demonic and return this world to righteousness.

At this time, I am ready to leave the homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. and go where I need to go and do what I need to do. The monthly Social Security disbursement of $488 came in last night, so there is $2,696.41 in the Chase checking account. There is also about $125 in the wallet. Physical/mental health is good. Let us unite and be guided by the Divine Absolute!

Here is my contact information:

Craig Louis Stehr

Adam's Place Homeless Shelter

2210 Adams Place NE #1

Washington, D.C. 20018

Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317

Email: [email protected]

MILLIONS OF CALIFORNIANS AT RISK OF LOSING MEDI-CAL COVERAGE

by Lynn La

Last week the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives advanced a budget package gutting Medicaid spending by $700 billion in order to help offset the cost of extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy.

In addition to California potentially losing as much as $20 billion a year and 217,000 jobs because of this, millions of low-income Californians on Medi-Cal — the state’s version of Medicaid — could lose coverage due to the bill’s proposed proof-of-work-hours requirement.

As CalMatters’ Ana B. Ibarra explains, about 15 million Californians are on Medi-Cal, and roughly 29% of Medi-Cal recipients can’t work because of caregiving responsibilities, school, a disability or other exemption. The bill would require certain adults to report work hours, which could lead to, by some estimates, between 1.2 million and 3.5 million Californians losing coverage. …

(CalMatters.org)

FARMWORKER YOUTH STEP UP TO DEFEND THEIR PARENTS

by David Bacon (words and photos)

In Santa Maria, California, where 80 percent of the resident farm workforce is undocumented, deportation threats are a daily reality. Growers, and the Trump administration, are focused on hiring temporary, H-2A guest workers, which means there are fewer jobs, too.

Santa Maria's city center, with its gritty mix of old Western-wear stores and chain mall outlets, is the place where the valley's farmworker marches always start or end. A grassy knoll in a small park, at the intersection of Broadway and Main, provides a natural stage for people to talk to a crowd stretching into the parking lot and streets beyond.

This March 30, the day before Cesar Chavez's birthday, a high school student, Cesar Vasquez, walked up the rise, surrounded by other young protesters, all from farmworker families. He turned to face the several hundred marchers who'd paused there, and began reciting a stream of consciousness poem, fierce gestures punctuating his emotion-filled words. The noisy crowd before him grew silent.…

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/05/farmworker-youth-step-up-to-defend.html

CALIFORNIA CANNABIS MARKET POSTS BIGGEST SALES DROP IN LEGALIZATION HISTORY

by Lester Black

California’s struggling legal cannabis market is shrinking faster than ever, according to new tax data released Tuesday.

Taxable sales at California’s legal cannabis stores amounted to $1.088 billion in the first quarter of 2025, the lowest figure in five years and an 11% drop in sales compared to the same quarter a year earlier, according to an SFGATE analysis of tax data. That’s the largest such drop in the history of legal cannabis sales in California.

Tamma Adamek, a spokesperson for the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, did not dispute SFGATE’s analysis of the drop. However, she said comparing the latest figures to earlier reported taxable sales is like comparing “apples to oranges” because the tax figures are constantly being updated as more cannabis stores file their tax reports.

“We know that the gap will shrink,” Adamek said, without providing an estimate for how much the agency expects the reported sales to change.

Experts have been warning for years that California’s legal market is in dire straits, as legal operators face extraordinarily high regulatory fees, taxes and competition from the unlicensed market. Legalization has also increased competition within the legal market, which has dropped wholesale prices, reduced profit margins and made it harder for businesses to survive.

Illegal cannabis stores are still rampant in California, where customers can purchase tax-free marijuana and operators can run their businesses without paying the state’s expensive fees. The licensed market supplied only 38% of the cannabis consumed in California in 2024, according to an analysis published earlier this year by the Department of Cannabis Control.

The DCC-commissioned report pushed back on the idea that “the licensed market is failing or shrinking,” blaming the years of declining sales on falling prices and saying that the market itself “is continuing to grow” because the volume of retail sales and production is increasing.

Hirsh Jain, a cannabis consultant based in Los Angeles, said in a text message to SFGATE that the legal market “is getting worse” and that the DCC’s argument that the market is expanding is “becoming more and more laughable.”

“It’s the train wreck that keeps getting worse, but those running the train refuse to admit it,” Jain said.

Thousands of California cannabis companies have already gone out of business, but the market is set to get hit with another challenge on July 1 when the state excise tax rate increases from 15% to 19%, thanks to a law signed three years ago by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom’s administration expects the increased tax rate will further contract the market, according to a March update from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office. Seth Kerstein, an economist with the office, said in an email to SFGATE that the agency expects “the tax hike will reduce total statewide pre-tax sales of cannabis products in the licensed market by 6%.”

San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney proposed a law this year that would block the tax increase. That bill passed the Assembly unanimously Monday, but it still needs to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by Newsom.

(SFGate.com)

GIANTS FALL IN 10 AGAIN as Camilo Doval flops and offense is absent

by Shayna Rubin

San Francisco Giants’ Camilo Doval reacts to giving up game-tying 2-run single to San Diego Padres’ Manny Machado in 9th inning during MLB game at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Friday, June 3, 2025. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)

San Francisco Giants’ closer Camilo Doval came into Tuesday’s game with a 20 2/3-inning scoreless streak, the second-longest active streak in the bigs that, at times over the last month, looked unbreakable and helped him earn back the closer role he lost last year.

Untimely walks, his downfall in 2024, came back to haunt Doval as he searched for his 100th career save against the San Diego Padres. Far out of the strike zone with all his pitches, Doval issued back-to-back walks to load the bases in the top of the ninth inning, setting the stage for Manny Machado’s game-tying, two-run single. It was Doval’s third blown save of the year and thrust the Giants into yet another brutal loss to their division rivals.

For a second straight night, the Giants went into extra innings and the Padres were able to score the ghost runner, winning 3-2.

“He had an off night with a couple of walks,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We feel great every time he’s in the game. He had quite a run. We shut them down for eight innings and they score two in the ninth.”

Doval’s blown save was yet another instance in which ineffective offense put too much of the burden on the pitching staff. The Giants, scrambling with tweaked lineups on a constant basis, were again unable to score more than two runs and added to their now-16-game streak of scoring four or fewer runs, something this franchise hasn’t done since 1965. It gets uglier from there: Their 32 runs scored are the fewest the Giants have scored over a 16-game span since 1992.

Heliot Ramos continued his heavy lifting for this dragging offense with a two-run home run in the third inning. It was the Giants’ only hit with runners in scoring position and scored Patrick Bailey, who doubled off the right field bricks to lead off against righty starter Ryan Bergert, making his fourth big league appearance.

“We have to be able to score more than that,” Melvin said. “At the time, two-run homer after what we went through last night feels good. (Landen) Roupp is pitching well, but we have to add on more runs like that. We can’t just say ‘leave it up to the pitching and shut them out.’ It’s something that’s been a problem for us for a while now, it’s another game where we don’t score enough runs and put a lot of pressure on the pitching again.”

The Giants’ desperation to scratch runs on the board, or at least keep a rally going, became blatantly clear later that inning. Wilmer Flores singled, keeping the crowd on their feet. Matt Chapman, quietly heating up having gone 10-for-29 during the nine-game road trip, crushed a double to left field.

Flores, one of baseball’s slowest runners, booked it around the bases from first and got the enthusiastic go-ahead from third base coach Matt Williams to score. Perhaps a faster runner would have made it an easy score, but the relay from left fielder Tyler Wade to Machado to home was in time to get Flores by inches. The play was so close — Flores appeared to get a finger on base before the tag — that the Giants challenged the call, which was upheld.

“I thought it was a good send,” Melvin said. “We need to try to score a run there the way we’ve been swinging the bat with runners in scoring position. He looked safe on the replay, but it was a close play. I don’t blame him for sending him.”

Roupp has had a turnaround since his last start against the Padres on April 30, when he gave up four runs over 4 1/3 innings in San Diego. Since then, he’s thrown more changeups and cutters into a pitch mix that heavily involves his back-breaking curveball and sinker. Tuesday, he threw 6 ⅓ shutout innings against a Padres lineup that’s scuffled for weeks, similar to the Giants, while extending a stellar May in which he put together a 1.73 ERA into June.

“Just want to keep building off of it,” Roupp said. “The changeup and cutter are a big part of the success. Just mixing it up.”

Roupp went to his changeup more than usual, throwing it 32 times for eight swings-and-misses. It crushed his career-high 18 changeups thrown in a game against the Washington Nationals on the road and was key in getting through the lefty-heavy Padres lineup with little stress. He had five strikeouts and allowed four hits and two walks.

“The game plan was not to throw as many heaters — whether that’s the curveball or changeup — the curveball didn’t feel great the first couple of innings then felt better as the game went along,” Roupp said. “I knew coming in it was going to be a lot of soft stuff.”

(sfchronicle.com)

EVEN SF GIANTS BROADCASTERS ARE UPSET AT THE OFFENSE: 'MASSIVELY FRUSTRATING'

by Alex Simon

It’s pretty hard to win a baseball game if you don’t score a run, no matter how hard the San Francisco Giants have tried.

The worst offensive stretch in nearly a half-century of Giants baseball hit a new low Monday night when San Francisco lost 1-0 in 10 innings to the Padres. It was the first 1-0 loss for the Giants in … two days, after falling by the same score to the miserable Marlins on Saturday.

With the measly offensive effort, the Giants have now scored four or fewer runs in 15 straight games, the longest such stretch since Aug. 1-14, 1976. It’s tied for the second-longest anemic stretch in franchise history, as the Giants have twice gone 19 straight games with scoring four or less runs (in 1965 in SF and in 1902 back in New York).

It’s not like the Giants were lacking for chances. They had the bases loaded and no one out in the second inning, bases loaded with two outs in the seventh, a runner on second with no outs in the eighth and a leadoff single in the ninth. They found a way to strand 13 runners on base. Monday was also the second time the Giants have had a game go scoreless into extra innings in this run, with the May 17 game against the A’s that kicked off this dismal stretch being the other.

What’s particularly aggravating is the Giants are hitting the ball hard in recent games, but it seems like it is going either directly at defenders — like the final two outs in the 10th on Monday, when the tying run was on third — or hit balls deep but into the vast open spaces of Oracle Park, giving outfielders a chance to track the fly balls down. Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper acknowledged the struggles are borderline nauseating for the fan base.

“I was thinking, ‘This might be the morning where I don’t feel well. This might be the morning where I throw up and say I can’t make it today,’” Kuiper said Tuesday to start his weekly appearance on KNBR’s “Murph and Markus” morning show. “I’m here because I’m responsible, but the point is, I don’t have an answer to any of this. … It’s massively frustrating. And look, I see it in the faces of hitters.”

A former big leaguer himself, Kuiper can empathize with the Giants hitters at the moment. He said that in times like this, “coffee’s not tasting great, breakfast is not tasting great, the drive home isn’t tasting great and going to the grocery store could be a little tough.”

The most remarkable part about this putrid stretch for the Giants might be that scoring just 30 runs in these 15 games hasn’t tanked the season. Thanks to an incredibly strong effort from San Francisco’s pitchers, who haven’t allowed four or more runs in the last 10 games, the Giants are 7-8 in these 15 games and still hovering several games above .500. If their bats could wake up even slightly, it could be a strong summer for the black and orange.

A MISSOURI TOWN WAS SOLIDLY BEHIND TRUMP. THEN CAROL WAS…

by Jack Healy

The first sign of trouble came early this month when Carol didn’t show up for her shift at John’s Waffle and Pancake House.

She was as reliable as the sun rising over rice and melon fields in her adopted hometown, Kennett, Mo., a conservative farming hub of 10,000 people in the state’s southeastern boot heel, where “Missouri” becomes “Missour-uh.”

In the 20 years since she arrived from Hong Kong, she had built a life and family in Kennett, working two waitressing jobs and cleaning houses on the side. She began every morning at the bustling diner, serving pecan waffles, hugging customers and reading leftover newspapers to improve her English.

“Everyone knows Carol,” said Lisa Dry, a Kennett city councilwoman.

That all ended on April 30, when federal immigration officials summoned Carol, 45, whose legal name is Ming Li Hui, to their office in St. Louis, a three-hour drive from Kennett. Her partner, a Guatemalan immigrant, had voiced suspicion about the sudden call. But “I didn’t want to run,” Ms. Hui said in a jailhouse phone interview. “I just wanted to do the right thing.”

She was arrested and jailed to await deportation.

Ms. Hui’s detention has forced a rural Missouri county to face the fallout of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, which was supported in theory by many residents in this Trump-loving corner of an increasingly red America.

Employees in the kitchen of John’s Waffle House where “Bring Carol Home” T-shirts.

John’s Waffle and Pancake House in Kennett, where Ms. Hui worked, held a “Carol Day” fund-raiser that brought in nearly $20,000. “This lady has the biggest heart in the whole world,” the owner said of Ms. Hui.

Ms. Hui’s arrest has forced a rural Missouri county where President Trump won 80 percent of the vote to face the reality of an immigration crackdown.

Many are now asking how you can support Carol and also Mr. Trump.

“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, a friend of Ms. Hui from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

She paused. “This is Carol.”

Adam Squires, a onetime candidate for mayor of Kennett, saw it differently. He did not bear any ill will for Ms. Hui, he said, but he voted for Mr. Trump, as did 80 percent of voters in Dunklin County, and he was glad to see the deportation campaign reach home.

“They vote for Trump, and then they get mad because the stuff starts happening,” he said of his neighbors. “We’ve got to get rid of all the illegals. This is just a start.”

Ms. Hui said the call she received from immigration authorities ordered her to appear in St. Louis without any explanation. At the office, she said, an immigration officer called her into a secure area and initially told her the authorities would help her get a passport. Then she was told that she was being detained for overstaying a tourist visa that had expired long ago, and that she would be deported.

Now, as Ms. Hui bounces from county jail to county jail, her name has popped up on prayer lists at local churches in Kennett. Her absence was felt, residents said, when she was not in the baseball stands to watch her younger son pitch, nor at the eighth-grade graduation to see her older son receive an agricultural science award.

Ms. Cowart was her religious sponsor when Ms. Hui converted to Catholicism earlier this year, learning the Gospels from her Chinese Bible. She became a regular at Sunday morning Mass, as was her partner and their three American-born children: a daughter, 7, and two sons, 12 and 14.

Ms. Hui was keenly interested in early Christian martyrs, Ms. Cowart said: “She’d smile and say, God will take care of us.”

According to the government, Ms. Hui does not have a blameless past. In court records, the government said she arrived in the United States from Hong Kong in February 2004, and paid an American citizen $2,000 to enter into a sham marriage with her sometime around 2005. She had hoped the marriage would allow her to get permanent resident status and permit her to travel to Hong Kong to see her dying grandmother and return to the United States afterward, according to court records.

Her lawyer, Raymond Bolourtchi, said Ms. Hui was young and desperate in those days, and she acknowledged that her actions were wrong. “Not a day goes by that she doesn’t feel remorse,” he said.

Ms. Hui was never criminally charged for the fake marriage, which ended in divorce in 2009. Court papers indicate that she has no criminal record.

Nonetheless, she was working, which people who enter as tourists are generally not allowed to do, and her tourist visa had lapsed. Her status in the country became a matter of dispute.

Many people in Kennett expressed outrage that a hardworking mother had spent the past month jailed by immigration authorities.

Supporters described her as an ideal addition to a rural town where the population is declining and the only hospital has closed.

“She’s exactly the sort of person you’d want to come to the country,” said Chuck Earnest, a farmer. “I don’t know how this fits into the deportation problem with Trump.”

“I can’t believe they’re doing this to her,” said Celena Horton, a waitress at a Missouri steakhouse who swapped big tips with Ms. Hui.

Celena Horton, a waitress at a local steak house, said she and Ms. Hui would give each other huge tips when they ate at one another’s restaurants. Ms. Horton said she loved almost everything that Mr. Trump was doing in his second term. Ms. Hui is the reason for the almost.

“I can’t believe they’re doing this to her,” Ms. Horton said.

The sentiment reflects a stirring unease nationally over Mr. Trump’s handling of immigration, his most potent political issue. Though most Americans in a recent New York Times/Siena College survey said they still supported deporting undocumented immigrants, a majority of respondents disapproved of how Mr. Trump was carrying out his immigration policies.

In Kennett, some residents said they had implored state and national Republican lawmakers representing the area to intervene to stop Ms. Hui’s deportation, but had gotten mostly cursory responses. Kennett’s own leaders have not officially weighed in.

Ms. Hui’s church organized a prayer vigil for her and meal deliveries for her family. Her bosses at the waffle house held a “Carol Day” fund-raiser that brought in nearly $20,000. Petitions to bring Ms. Hui home, which have been signed by hundreds of local residents, now sit on every table, next to the jelly packets and ketchup.

“This lady has the biggest heart in the whole world,” said Liridona Ramadani, whose family runs John’s Waffle and Pancake House. “Democrat, Republican, everybody was there for Carol” on “Carol Day,” she said.

Well, not everybody.

St. Cecilia Catholic Church, where Ms. Hui worshiped, has stood by her with a prayer vigil and meal deliveries for her family.

When an article about her detention was posted by The Delta Dunklin Democrat, the local newspaper, it was deluged with 400 reader comments. Most of them expressing sympathy, but not all.

“If you’re here illegally, expect to be removed,” said one. “This is the consequence of being in a nation with laws,” said another. One commenter simply wrote “Bye.”

The online debate got so nasty that the owners of the waffle house implored people to keep their political comments to themselves.

From jail, Ms. Hui expressed surprise that her arrest had galvanized so many people in Kennett.

Only a few people in town speak Cantonese, she said, so when she settled there she started to go by the English name she had chosen for herself as a girl back in Hong Kong, when it was still under British rule.

She started a family with her partner, who also works at restaurants around town. (He declined to comment for this article, and his immigration status is not clear.) Ms. Hui bought a house in Kennett, and her front yard is decorated with “Student of the Month” signs.

She made an application for asylum in 2009, saying that her mother in Hong Kong had beaten her and threatened her because Ms. Hui was a girl, and that she was afraid to return, according to court records.

Her claim was denied in 2012, and an immigration judge ordered her deported. Despite multiple legal setbacks, though, she managed to stay in the United States by getting temporary government permissions known as orders of supervision, according to her lawyer, Mr. Bolourtchi.

Ms. Hui’s most recent order of supervision was valid through August 2025, records show. But on the day that Ms. Hui was arrested, she was told that the order was being terminated, Mr. Bolourtchi said.

ICE officials did not respond to a request for comment about Ms. Hui’s case.

Ms. Hui said she had been blindsided by her arrest, which was one of many the Trump administration has been carrying out at mandatory immigration check-ins.

Kennett, where the singer Sheryl Crow was born, has a new local celebrity: Carol, a beloved immigrant who is awaiting deportation.

She said she spends her days shuffling between her bunk and meals, and waiting for chances to video chat with her children. She frets over how she would ever see them again if she is deported to Hong Kong. Her lawyer recently filed a legal motion to reopen Ms. Hui’s immigration case.

Ms. Hui said that being separated from her family was the hardest part. Her 14-year-old son was upset that she missed his middle-school graduation. Her daughter told her that one of her school friends offered to adopt Ms. Hui, so she could stay in the country.

During one call, her children tried to cheer up Ms. Hui by telling her about “Carol Day.” She said she was stunned to learn about the outpouring of support.

“I didn’t know they loved me,” she said.

YES, YOU DID.

To the Editor:

In the story of a mother living and working and building a family in the United States for 20 years who was detained by federal immigration officials, one of her well-meaning neighbors protested: “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms.”

Well, yes, you did.

Charlie Haviland

Franklin, Michigan

“THEORY IS TAUGHT so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.”

– Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

MATT TAIBBI:

Basically every Western country apart from the United States now has some version of formal state censorship, with the EU’s Digital Services Act, Germany’s NetzDG and Britain’s Online Safety Act being some of the worst examples. The setup is nearly always the same, with private companies forced to abide by recommendations of state-sanctioned checkers or face crippling penalties. All of the American-owned platforms are subject to those laws. Criminal penalties for social media posts are also no longer uncommon anywhere but here.

As for here: the U.S. was (and may still be) doing exactly the same thing as Europe, but informally, with “recommendations” coming from the White House, DHS, FBI, CDC and more. If this administration is willing to deport people over speech, I’d be shocked if they aren’t at least considering using the mechanisms that were found in the Twitter Files. But by all means, feel free to not be concerned about it.

LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT

Elon Musk Calls Trump Policy Bill a ‘Disgusting Abomination’

After Muscling Their Bill Through the House, Some Republicans Have Regrets

Higher Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum Imports Go Into Effect

Trump Rescinds Biden Policy Requiring Hospitals to Provide Emergency Abortions

U.S. May Strip Harvey Milk’s Name From Navy Vessel

Amid Rising Heat, Hajj Becomes Test of Endurance for Pilgrims and Saudi Arabia

A Giant Plume of Saharan Dust Is Headed to Florida

ENDING THE WORLD TO OWN TRUMP

In a segment titled, “Ukraine burns Putin, but also schools Trump with surprise drone attack,” MSNBC hosts Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow chatted giddily after a paradigm-shifting operation by Volodymyr Zelensky that left the world on the edge of nuclear exchange. Rachel first plugged Wallace’s new podcast, The Best People, then they bantered about Wallace’s husband, then moved on to Ukraine’s “audacious” Sunday drone attacks, said to have destroyed a third of Russia’s “strategic carriers” in an operation widely dubbed “Russia’s Pearl Harbor.”

“I feel like you’re, you’re one of my friends who understands how my brain works on this sort of thing,” Rachel asked, beaming. “Like, it is an incredible war story about Ukraine’s capability and their resilience and their creativity and the way they have just done this, you know, like David versus Goliath… But it also does have international strategic implications for every country in the world… In Russia’s position, in terms of thinking about its own defenses, thinking about its own nuclear deterrence…”

A network scriptwriter once told me the purpose of every TV news segment was to end on the note, “Isn’t that weird?” That’s how Rachel framed this moment: “Ukraine just pulled off this incredible David and Goliath story, but it also has strategic implications in terms of nuclear deterrence — isn’t that weird?”

It was, agreed Wallace, who managed a few moments of smileless narration as she offered a grave observation. “The idea that Ukraine will not score massive victories in this war, and do massive damage to Russia that will also have implications to our national security, was probably an erroneous assumption,” she said. But yes, in general, the situation is “bat bleep crazy,” because:

Trump is moving the country away from what the people want it to be. And when you look at what Ukraine did it, it didn’t just score a massive military victory. It displayed technological competence that is the envy of the world this morning. So it’s, it’s not just that we’re on the wrong side. It’s not just that we’re flying blind, it’s that we may have missed out on an unbelievable technological breakthrough that we, heaven forbid might need someday…

For almost ten years we’ve had a consensus mechanism that evaluates all things this way: if it’s bad for Trump, it’s good for the world. It started with being “disappointed” to learn Robert Mueller didn’t find Russian agents in the White House and progressed to “told you so” tales of 400,000 deaths proving Trump wrong about Covid. Now we have the best political Schadenfreude story ever: Nuclear showdown proves Trump’s incompetence. Or, as Walter Kirn put it, ending the world to own Trump.

The Maddow segment was one of a pile of ebullient “Peace Averted!” responses to Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” which in any normal era would be covered first as an unprecedented escalation of nuclear tension. Officially now, politicians and media have gone mad, so focused on Trump that they no longer see or acknowledge danger to you, me, and the rest of the world beyond. The headlines alone are mind-boggling.

(Matt Taibbi)

MUSK DERIDES TRUMP’S BILL, saying it will ‘massively increase the already gigantic’ deficit.

Elon Musk lashed out on Tuesday against the far-reaching Republican bill intended to enact President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, posting on X that it was a “disgusting abomination” and telling House members who voted for it: “You know you did wrong.”

The tech billionaire’s criticism of the bill, one of Mr. Trump’s top priorities, was another indication of a widening rift between Mr. Musk and the president. Mr. Musk — who has left his governmental role leading the Department of Government Efficiency — largely presented a united front with the Trump administration until recently.

Amid his attacks on House Republicans over their sweeping domestic policy agenda bill, Elon Musk ominously warned on social media that Americans would “fire all politicians who betrayed the American people” in next year’s midterm elections.

Musk, the world’s richest person, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to back Republicans in last year’s elections, but recently said he planned on “a lot less” spending in the next cycle. But Musk’s deep pockets and previous spending have made some Republicans fearful that he might back primary challengers.

(Michael Gold, NY Times)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Watching starving people shot trying to get food, watching children, babies and whole families blown up, over and over, is extremely painful for anyone who has empathy. Seeing this makes me ashamed to call myself a human. I don't blame Jewish Americans. I love my Jewish friends. I blame the state of Israel, I blame Hamas and I blame the Trump and the Biden administrations for supplying weapons and political cover to Israel and treating the Palestinians as lesser humans. And I also blame the American media for failing to publish detailed, personal accounts of the Palestinian who were senselessly killed. All those who remain silent are complicit.

NEVER AGAIN?

by Gary Fields

It is now imperative to acknowledge what people of conscience the world over know to be true: The State of Israel is operating a Death Camp for the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. By forcibly confining the Palestinians of Gaza within impassable bounds, while at the same time slaughtering and starving them within this confined space, the State of Israel has made a mockery of the slogan, “Never Again.”

In broad outline, Gaza is similar to the camps of the Shoah where Jews were mercilessly confined and murdered. In the case of Gaza, however, Palestinians have replaced Jews as victims of slaughter, starvation and eradication, and the State of Israel, in turn, has evolved into the keeper of the Camp.

What also differentiates the death camp that is Gaza from the camps of the Holocaust, is that during the latter, camps were decentralized with six primary camps utilized for the horrendous mass killing of Jews, the most famous being Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. Gaza, by contrast, is a single confined space and killing field.

Finally, the other difference of note is that during the Shoah Jews were killed in the camps primarily with poison gas, while the Palestinians of the Gaza camp are being liquidated by unceasing bombing and shelling along with the deliberate starvation of the population and the destruction and withholding of all necessities for bare life.

The record of this murderous conduct by Israel has been visible to the entire world as Israel’s leaders and public figures have publicized their aims openly.

From the time of Israeli President, Issac Herzog saying on October 14, 2023: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s not true;” to the present-day acknowledgment of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, that “Gaza will be totally destroyed,” there exist countless admissions of this exterminationist discourse coming from Israel leaders and the public posted on social media.

At the same time, Israeli soldiers on the front lines of the killing have posted their exploits openly for the entire world to witness on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms in such broad numbers that even the Israeli military has warned them not to continue this practice.

The record of Israel in this murderous mayhem is indeed grim. The Israeli military has bombed and shelled Gaza daily and unceasingly for the last 19 months, save for brief moments of ceasefire, and has killed, by official statistics over 54,000 Gazans, although reputable estimates such as that of the Lancet put the total killed closer to 200,000. In this onslaught, it has killed close to 20,000 children, a number unmatched by any conflict in this century. By contrast, the war in Ukraine to date has witnessed the deaths of 682 children. If children are the future, Israel is clearly seeking to eliminate that future.

Alongside this killing spree, Israel has obliterated all infrastructure enabling Palestinians of Gaza simply to exist. It has bombed and destroyed 92% of Gaza’s housing stock. It has targeted Gaza’s entire health sector destroying or incapacitating all 36 of Gaza’s hospitals. Israel has bombed every single bakery in the territory and has obliterated the one desalination plant providing the only internal source of drinking water within the Camp to the people of Gaza. For 90 days since March, Israel did not allow a single truckload of food, water or basic necessities including medicines to enter the territory. Only in the last 4-5 days has Israel allowed a controversial but pathetically inadequate number of trucks with food and water into Gaza for the 2.2 million people there. In effect, the State of Israel with its military campaign, has created conditions in Gaza for mass extermination.

Israel insists that what it has inflicted on the Palestinians of Gaza is due to Hamas and that Palestinian fatalities are the collateral damage resulting from Hamas hiding among civilians. “Our war is with Hamas,” is the mantra repeated over and over by Israel’s political and military establishment. In truth, the war waged by Israel seeks to eradicate the Palestinians of Gaza, and Hamas, it appears, is the collateral damage.

In its 84-page submission before the International Court of Justice charging Israel with Genocide in Gaza, South Africa used nine of those pages to document statements of genocidal intent made by Israeli politicians, military figures and media personalities in just four months since October, 2023. Since that time, candidly open genocidal incitement by key figures in Israel society has only intensified.

Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who for most of the last eighteen months denied that Israel was engaged in acts of genocide, recently described Israel’s onslaught in Gaza as a war of annihilation: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination,” he admitted, “indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal and criminal killing of civilians.”+++

In a well-known book about the protest movement against the Vietnam War, Todd Gitlin reprised a famous slogan from the anti-war movement in titling his classic, The Whole World is Watching. Today, in the 19th month of Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the people of Gaza, the entire world knows exactly what it is witnessing.

(Gary Fields is a Professor in the Department of Communication at UCSD and the author of Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror. He lives in San Diego.)

IN GAZA NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

by Selma Dabbagh

‘Can you believe this has been going on for six hundred days?’ one of my fellow panellists asked the audience at Reference Point on Saturday, 24 May. We’d just watched Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell’s documentary Gaza, filmed between 2014 and 2018. The surgeon Khaled Dawas said: ‘The opening music gets me every time.’ The hospital where he has worked in Gaza was recently bombed. Aser el Saqqa, whose family’s cultural centre in a restored Ottoman palace was destroyed, said it would have been good if the film had shown more of the ancient souks, the Omari Mosque, St Porphyrius Church, the rich history of Gaza going back to the Canaanites.

Malak Mattar’s monumental 2024 black-and-white painting inspired by Guernica is entitled No Words ( … for Gaza). A photographer told me he has aerial images taken in May 2023, October 2023 and May 2025 which say it all. On Sunday, 25 May, I went to see Bashar Murkus’s Milk performed by Khashabi Theatre at the Southbank Centre and wept throughout. A performance told in milk, blood, movement: some things are incommunicable through words. But words are all that some of us have.

‘It is important that you write,’ my friend Dr Atef Alshaer told me earlier in the month, at the launch for Ghada Karmi’s new book, Murjana, a novel set in ninth-century Baghdad. ‘All my life, I have worked on Palestine and it has only got worse,’ she said. ‘I wanted to write about something else, for my own mental health.’

The specifics of the cruelty in recent weeks have shocked Atef: the social media posts by Israeli soldiers joking ‘It’s a boy!’ against photographs of blue smoke billowing out of a newly bombed Gaza building; the Israeli army calling a man in Gaza and telling him either to stay where he is and be killed with the hundred or so people around him or to walk up to the bank of a sand and be killed alone. ‘What did he do?’ I asked. ‘He walked away from the group and they killed him alone,’ Atef shrugged: that much should have been obvious. ‘It’s been a terrible few days,’ he wrote in a later email. ‘Too many innocent relatives killed in the last few days. Just awful.’

My friend Marwa moved back to her home in the north of Gaza and travelled south every day to work for a humanitarian organisation. A two-and-a-half hour journey. When I asked her yet again how things were, in late April, she replied:

What I can say Selma … 99 per cent of the people are sleeping hungry … one third of your salary goes to anyone who can give you cash … nothing entering for the basic needs for more two months, no cooking gas … if they could put the oxygen in bottles and not allow us … they will do so.

During the week of 15 May the playwright Ahmed Najjar lost his six-year-old niece, Juri, when the family home was hit by an Israeli airstrike. The playwright Ahmed Massoud lost his brother, Khaled, months ago when he was shot by an Israeli quadcopter as he tried to help others. Khaled lost his leg and bled to death before anyone could reach him. His wife, Ibtisam, and 17-year-old son, Mahmoud, were killed within hours of the strike that killed Juri. Both Najjar and Massoud can only watch and support from afar.

The journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, also based in London, lost his entire family in an airstrike on Deir al-Balah where they sought safety on 22 October 2023. He is the co-founder of We Are Not Numbers, which advocates for Palestinian voices to be heard unfiltered. On 6 May, at the London launch of the bestselling book he edited with Pam Bailey, We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth, he spoke of the catharsis of writing, and the guilt of surviving. ‘Why am I here wearing a suit, sitting here on a London stage?’

On 25 May Alnaouq interviewed Shawan Jabarin, the general director of al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation. ‘By defending the Palestinians, you defend human values,’ Jabarin said. Al-Haq – with the support of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and the Global Legal Action Network – took the UK government to court for continuing to supply arms to Israel, specifically parts for F-35 fighter jets. In September 2024 the UK government suspended thirty arms export licences to Israel, with an exemption for F-35 components that went through third countries. ‘The F-35s probably killed my family,’ Alnaouq said.

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade has found that between October and December 2024 the Labour government approved £127.6 million in military licences to Israel, most of them for targeting equipment, software, military radars and components.

The case, still awaiting judgment, was heard at the High Court between 13 and 16 May. On 15 May, the Spanish premier declared Israel a ‘genocidal state’ that Spain would not do business with. The Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Harris, said on 16 May that he hoped Ireland would no longer be in such a ‘lonely place’ when it came to their position on the EU-Israel trade agreement and condemning the Israeli government’s actions more generally. By the weekend, the BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen, was asking which side of history the UK wishes to find itself on.

On Monday, 19 May, a joint statement by the governments of France, the UK and Canada spoke of taking ‘concrete action’ against the ‘egregious actions’ of the Netanyahu government. On Tuesday, 20 May, the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the House of Commons that ‘we have suspended negotiations with this Israeli government on a new free trade agreement’. Lammy described actions by the Israeli government and its settlers as both ‘abominable’ and ‘extremism’. I was shocked – moved, even. ‘We have come to expect so little,’ the Paris-based writer Karim Kattan said in a BBC World Service interview that I also took part in. The shift in vocabulary felt dramatic, even if the shift in policy has been slight so far.

Scottish newspapers the next day reported on the continuation of RAF surveillance flights over Gaza. On 15 May, a private party at the British Museum had celebrated Israel’s creation in 1948 and UK ministers boasted of the strong military ties between the two countries. Humanitarian aid and international reporters continue to be denied entry into the Gaza Strip and the young, encaged population continues to be bombed, burnt and starved. A week after Lammy’s pronouncements, on 27 May, the UK trade envoy to Israel was writing on X that he was in Israel to ‘promote trade with the UK’.

MPs at Westminster said on 21 May that 14,000 babies would starve in 48 hours if aid was not let through. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that attempts by Palestinian security forces to protect trucks from looters when they entered Gaza resulted in attacks by Israeli quadcopters. Israeli civilians continue to protest at crossing points, disrupting the entry of aid into Gaza and attacking it where possible. According to social media reports coming out of Beit Hanoun, in the north, minutes after aid trucks arrived with meat and vegetables that the residents had not seen for months, Israel dropped evacuation orders, soon followed by bombs, before people had a chance to eat anything.

On 14 May, the eve of Nakba Day, I was at a cinema in Soho watching Forensic Architecture’s reconstruction of Salman Abu Sitta’s experience of the catastrophe in the village of al-Ma’in. He was eleven years old in 1948. The computer-generated video reproduces the school his grandfather built, the homes, the gully, the busy crossroads, the Bedouin tents, the crops. Abu Sitta had been told that people were coming from different places to take his home. He could not understand why. ‘Yes, that’s where I hid,’ Abu Sitta says in the film, pointing to the gully. From there he could see the dark smoke rising from the wool tents as they burned. Seventy-seven years later, Palestinians are still being displaced and burned alive in tents. The Nakba was not a one-off expulsion, but continues. The demonstration in London on 17 May was one of the largest I have known, estimated at half a million by the organisers (twenty thousand by the Metropolitan Police).

On 15 May, Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta (Salman’s nephew) gave the annual Centre for Palestine Studies lecture at SOAS, on the biosphere of genocide. What Israel has created in Gaza is an environment so toxic to human life that the unnaturally high level of deaths (at least 54,000 since October 2023) would continue even if the bombing were to stop immediately and all forms of aid were to be allowed in. Before October 2023, two women per year died in childbirth in Gaza; now the number is at least five per month. There is no water, no sanitation. Rats are everywhere. The environment is filled with carcinogens released by explosives.

Of the 36 hospitals in Gaza, 33 have been destroyed. If you’re malnourished, it takes longer for your wounds to heal. Antibiotics are hard to come by, and the bacteria in many infected wounds are resistant to them. Health workers are more than twice as likely to be killed as other people, and more likely to be tortured if they’re taken into detention. Better to kill yourself before they take you in, one former detainee warned on social media. They treat doctors the worst. The question, Abu Sitta said, is why, if Gazans are dying at such a rate, Israel continues with its bombardment. Referring to Frantz Fanon, he suggested that the purpose of the violence went beyond its direct physical effects, as a performative display of omnipotence.

‘I want to talk to you about the political class,’ the British plastic surgeon Tom Potakar said in a video recorded in the European hospital in Khan Younis before it was bombed. ‘They have no idea how dangerous their words are … Perhaps if they spent not twenty months, not even one month, but just one day here, they would have the courage and the humanity to speak the truth.’

One killing can cut you to shreds, even among so many thousands of others. Eleven-year-old Yaqeen Hammad was killed by Israel on 23 May. She had taken to social media during the genocide to make videos showing, for instance, how to devise contraptions to cook on, despite Israel cutting off the gas. ‘In Gaza, nothing’s impossible,’ she would say, smiling brightly at the camera.

16 Comments

David Stanford June 4, 2025

I agree with (Sherriff) Matt, but GN doesn’t have a chance in hell getting elected to POTUS, he is like Kamala a flip-flopper and a Fake and we see that, so much talk about Israel, Gaza,Hamas but not much about the good ole USA interesting!!

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- George Hollister June 4, 2025
  
  On the other hand, how many said Trump would never be elected? Trump won in presidential races against the two worst main party candidates in US history. Trump comes in at third worst. Can GN win? It depends who he runs against.
  
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  - Mark Donegan June 4, 2025
    
    SoS(Son of Satan)? It has already been pre-Divined. Pretty and talks like a snake. Remind you of anything Biblical? Like, Revelations?
    
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  - Matt Kendall June 4, 2025
    
    Point well taken. With a caveat. In 2023 the legislature decided to run through a law which aligned some elections with the presidential cycle. In essence Sheriff’s and District Attorneys who were elected in 2022 were subjected to the reshuffling of the election dates and instead of a 4 year term we were given a 6 year term which put us on presidential election cycle.
    
    This means all of us sheriffs who lived through his terms will still be in office if he decides to run for president. That likely won’t serve him well as most sheriffs across the state have a long memory.
    
    Anyone who is paying attention have seen the governor seems to be attempting to re-invent himself. This is likely because he is hoping most folks will forget about what has been done in our state. There will likely be 58 County Sheriffs who won’t forget. I know I won’t.
    
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- Bruce McEwen June 4, 2025
  
  I agree with the Sheriff’s remarks because nobody gets it about Prop. 36 —the new version of Prop 47, the disastrous initiative passed back when they turned meth loose as a misdemeanor and all the petty theft crimes that went with it went gonzo and nobody noticed because they were more focused on the salacious testimony Stormy Daniels said about the Orange Ogre! But try and remember how the ACLU was —for once—with the Sheriff’s Association and DAs Office and the local PD and whatnot— but the ad campaign, was funded by Newt Gingrich and the well-known storage business mogul (think of all the storage units meth addiction has necessitated) and it came in over $5 million and the Sheriff’s etc. and ACLU only had about $300 k. So yea Gavin doesn’t get it. He’s better off with Kamala and those DNC people (they don’t get it either). But I remember a lot of cops were disgusted when that passed. And the subsequent farces in court were too absurd to even be funny. For instance, a rich man gave a poor veteran a really nice bicycle, worth several thousand dollars. It was a sweet gift. A drifted stole it and his public defender lawyer argued that well, still, it’s a used bicycle, nobody with any money would pay over $995.00, so the charges wee reduced to misdemeanor, the prep walked and probably thumbs his nose at police officers to this day. One officer said he was taking his family and moving to Alabama. Another said he would move but his wife and kids loved it here. One got fired for not accepting the new conditions… that’s only the very few I knew about way back then. It must make for a hellish desperate scramble trying to keep officers from moving away these days…so I sympathize with the sheriff’s political headaches.
  
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Jim Armstrong June 4, 2025

To go along with some nice humor in today’s Mendo Co Today:

Last week I got a $28 check from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The only explanation was “SC RETRO ELIGIBILTY CHANGE.”
Curiosity led me to about ten phone calls, three unanswered voice mails, conversations with five or six mostly nice VA workers in four different states and being frequently told to hold.
A representative from the Benefits half of the department told me it must have come from the Health half. When I told her I hadn’t had any contact with that half for over ten years, she told me to hold.
Finally, a guy from the Billing Department told me it was a refund for an incorrect prescription co-payment.
In 2004.

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- Chuck Dunbar June 4, 2025
  
  Excellent story, Jim. The vagaries of bureaucracy for sure. Don’t spend it all in one place. Hope all is well.
  
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  - Marco McClean June 4, 2025
    
    Deep rumbly pipe organ voiced bass player and roadhouse blues radioman Les Tarr (RIP, though kept alive by recordings still played on KNYO and Bob Woelfel’s KTDE) once had a boy do some yardwork for him, then when the job was done he gave him ten dollars and said, “Now don’t spend that on cigarets and drugs. Get yourself a good meal and a nice Chinese girl.” I hear that in my head every time I see a $10 bill, and also often when I see a bass guitar. The next time you get a chance to, pick up a bass guitar and feel how big and heavy it is. It changes how you hear music, like seeing a giant electric business sign or a set of stop lights down on the ground for repairs changes how you feel driving through a city. When I was little I went with my grandparents to the factory where they made the sign on the roof of their restaurant. From the street, business signs look like captions on the landscape, but when you’re right up next to them they are as big as a house. Last year I read an article about a homeless woman who built an apartment inside one.
    
    Reply
Craig Stehr June 4, 2025

This is waaaaaaaaay off my usual here, but check out the Ella Fitzgerald special feature in today’s NYT.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/arts/music/ella-fitzgerald-jazz-music.html
Have a good day, everybody. ;-))

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Kimberlin June 4, 2025

“ENDING THE WORLD TO OWN TRUMP” How does knocking out a third of Russian planes designed to deliver nuclear bombs to American soil endanger us? This instead shows that Russia is a paper tiger and a boosted threat for the Military Industrial Complex to keep increasing their share of GDP every year. You need to read the BBC or The Guardian papers to even get an inklinging of what just happened. You certainly won’t find it in the American press.

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- Jurgen Stoll June 4, 2025
  
  From DW a German news source: “German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced “a new form of military-industrial cooperation” with Ukraine. He said Germany will help Kyiv develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any Western-imposed limitations or restrictions. Merz made the statement after a meeting with Ukraine’s president in Berlin.” I haven’t seen this in the American press either. Could be a game changer for Zolinsky after Trump’s attempt to blow up NATO on Putin’s behalf.
  
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Chuck Dunbar June 4, 2025

“NEVER AGAIN?”

Gary Fields writes a grim summary of the brutal war on humanity in Gaza by Israel, perpetrated with high levels of support–munitions – bombs–from the U.S. Shame on Israel, and shame on us. Shame on Biden and Trump, our leaders who could have stopped it. Much too late now.

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Julie Beardsley June 4, 2025

Yes, and and shame on the Republicans who support Trump’s cruel and sick policies – especially de-funding USAID. The fact that people are dying around the world because the world’s richest asshole decided we didn’t need to help poor and sick people, is just nauseating. I can only hope, in the case of Trump, that cholesterol does it’s job, and in the case of Musk, his drug use does the trick (or someone steps up to take one for humanity). I predict a huge blue wave in the next election. And when people who value our American principals take back the reins of governance, I hope they prosecute and jail the people responsible for this carnage.

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- peter boudoures June 4, 2025
  
  That sounds like someone who’s never had to justify a budget or meet a payroll. Easy to preach about spending when you’re not the one paying for it.
  
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  - Julie Beardsley June 5, 2025
    
    Eeuuww! Really? The USA is the wealthiest country in the world, and if you think cutting off HIV meds for children is okay, you’re one sick human being.
    
    Reply
Kirk Vodopals June 4, 2025

RE: Albion Headlands. That video of the headlands sure is grand. You can hear Mr. Nadeau simultaneously selling the 16 legal residential parcels in juxtaposition to the pristine crowning jewel of undisturbed natural beauty.

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Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 6/4/2025

16 Comments

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