Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/11/2025

Warm | Floodgate For Sale | Blood Drive | Theresia Kobler | Plea Bargain | Ruth & Albert Miller | Manslaughter Plea | Planning Commission | GP Mill | Pad One | Local Events | Yesterday's Catch | Dubious Things | Rotary Donors | Rail System | Still Suffering | Jumbo Solstice | Insurance Costs | Best Rest | No Such | Regulatory Capture | Proven Wrong | Holiday Potluck | Newsom Balking | Comedy Show | Delta Threat | Newsom 2028 | Babe Dunsmuir | Kind Fool | Tide Day | Enemies List | It's Me | Silky Hands | Lead Stories | Very Rich | Trump Card | Tanker Seized | Plain Advice

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GENERALLY DRY WEATHER and above seasonably temperatures through this weekend, especially across the interior. Moderate risk of sneaker waves along NW California beaches today. Wet weather conditions returns early to mid next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F with clear skies this Thursday morning on the coast. Enjoy the lovely weather thru Sunday as next week is looking wet at least 6 days in a row currently. No large amounts, just a steady flow. Sneaker wave alerts are posted along the shore.

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FLOODGATE FOR SALE

Commercial For Sale - 1810 CA-128 Hwy, Navarro, CA 95463 - $890,000 — North Country Real Estate

www.mendocountry.com

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BLOOD DRIVE TUESDAY, December 16, Mendocino Firehouse

The Mendocino Fire Protection District and Volunteer Fire Department will be hosting the 20th annual Bucket Brigade Blood Drive on December 16, 2025 from 1:15 pm to 5:00 pm at the Fire House, 44700 Little Lake Road, Mendocino. The Bucket Brigade is a friendly competition among local fire departments to see which can host the largest blood drive. All donors receive a Bucket Brigade T-shirt as a thank you gift. The Blood Drive will again be run by Vitalant Blood Services, a non-profit that supplies blood to local area hospitals. They encourage donors to make an appointment to minimize wait time. This can be done online at Vitalant.org or by phone: 877-258-4825. Slots are already filling up, so sign up today.

If you book online, fill out the health questionnaire on the day of the appointment — this will save screening time.

Give the gift of life this Holiday Season. Hope to see you there.

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THERESIA MARIE KOBLER

Theresia (Vonarburg) Kobler was born in Ermensee, Switzerland on February 17, 1933 in the house her grandmother had built after the death of her husband. He had been a home builder and after his death, she tried to continue his business, but in those days, no one would patronize a female home builder. She soon had to close the construction business and take up tailoring and sewing. Theresia’s grandmother was a very important figure in her life. When she was very young, the depression had hit the family hard and Theresia’s mother was pregnant again. Her grandmother was lonely. The difficult decision was made to have Theresia go to live with her grandmother. Großmumi was quiet, resourceful, and kind, much like Theresia was herself. Once a week, they would travel to Theresia’s parent’s house in Hochdorf, to spend time with her siblings.

When Theresia was about 18, she moved to the French speaking part of Switzerland and got a job delivering bread on her bicycle every morning. She would tell the story of how she once hit the train tracks, crashed, and spilled her fresh loaves all over the ground. What could she do? She picked them up, dusted them off, and continued her delivery without saying a word.

When she was about 20, she became an au pair in Liverpool, England to a wealthy family with 2 small children. She cared for them for a year, until she had had enough of the children’s parents and moved back to Switzerland to work in her Uncle’s restaurant in Bern. It was there that she met Hans Kobler her future husband. They had many adventures together, riding his motorcycle through Spain and the Swiss Alps. They realized they wanted something more than Europe could offer. Along with their good friends, Cecil and Bernard Steger, they moved to Toronto, Canada, where they quickly became engaged and married in 1957. The four of them were a team, for awhile, working in high end restaurants and hotels in Canada and eventually in California. Theresia and Hans settled for a time in Mill Valley, with their young son, Norman, where they met other Swiss expatriates. The Bamatter family and the Walder family joined the Steger and Kobler families, forming a friend group that became like a family affectionately being referred to as the “Swiss Mafia.”

Hans had a dream of starting a Vineyard and Winery. He knew how good wines should taste. They moved to Anderson Valley in 1972 and bought property with John Dach. They sold that property and bought the old Pinoli property that would become Lazy Creek Vineyards. They then scrimped, saved and worked hard to establish a vineyard and later a winery. They ran Lazy Creek Vineyards until 1998, when Hans wanted to retire. He decided to sell the vineyard against his wife’s wishes. Being rather traditional in some respects, Theresia gave in and the vineyard was sold.

Theresia and Hans went right back to adventuring, sailing a 36 foot sailboat from California to Mexico and back again. Initially, Theresia, told Hans he could sail himself down and she’d meet him there as she got seasick. Fortunately, she was persuaded to go and quickly became the navigator, pushing her comfort level and becoming a stronger person, for it.

Theresia was the best grandmother to her 2 grandsons, Tiernan and Morgan. She was patient, kind and loving to her family. She hosted Christmases and Easters. She baked countless cookies and desserts over the years. She was an amazing cook, sharing her talent with so many people over her lifetime. The Koblers loved sharing food with people dear to them. She is survived by her son Norman, her Daughter in Law Colleen and grandsons Tiernan and Morgan.

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‘BAR FIGHT’ AT FORT BRAGG’S WELCOME INN ENDS IN INFORMAL PROBATION AND COMMUNITY SERVICE

Defendants accept an offer to walk away.

by Elise Cox

It started as a routine evening out at a neighborhood bar. It ended with four friends booked into jail in Ukiah — three of them facing felony charges and lives that suddenly seemed just a thread away from unraveling.

But as the cases wound their way through court, they took an unexpected turn. The one friend arrested on a misdemeanor was never formally charged. The three who faced felonies had their charges reduced. Then the District Attorney offered all three a plea bargain: 50 hours of community service and 12 months of summary probation, on the condition that they would not consume alcohol to excess in public.

It was a Friday in late August when the group gathered for drinks at the Welcome Inn on East Redwood Avenue in Fort Bragg. As closing time approached, the bartender asked them to leave. They did. But as they drifted outside into the night air, something seemed off.

Security footage from the bar shows 25-year-old Shanna Ray Bayless tugging on her boyfriend, 29-year-old Arion Donn Eagle Kelsey, trying to urge him away from the entrance. Inside, a woman — presumably a bartender — called the police. She told dispatch she wanted to report a fight. When the dispatcher pressed for more details, she admitted she didn’t know any: she hadn’t seen a fight herself, she said. The bar’s security guard had asked her to make the call.

Two officers arrived moments later. What happened next is only partly captured on video. Off camera, two separate struggles unfolded as Sergeant Jarod Frank arrested Kelsey while Officer Antoinette Moore arrested Bayless.

Later that night, in the back of the police vehicle, Kelsey told Zander Garay he reacted instinctively when Frank came up behind him. He said he didn’t realize at first who was grabbing him. They fell to the ground. Frank hit his head. He pulled out his Taser and fired it. Kelsey said he apologized once he recognized the sergeant.

Garay wasn’t around for the arrests — he ended up in the paddy wagon because he stepped outside after hearing the commotion. Standing off to the side, he took out his cellphone and began filming the scene.

Officer Moore asked him to hand over the phone. When he refused, officers arrested him, took the phone, and put him in the police vehicle. The district attorney later declined to file charges against him.

Another friend, Jason Fullbright, was also taken into custody. His arrest was captured on video. In the footage, Fullbright is standing and talking to the officers. He appears to comply as they lead him away.

Still, he was arrested on two felonies — resisting arrest and conspiracy to commit a crime — along with a misdemeanor count of drunk and disorderly conduct.

Bayless faced similar charges before both her and Fullbright’s cases were reduced to misdemeanors.

At first, all three wanted to fight the charges. But the plea bargain offered them a chance to get their lives back on track.

They won’t get a chance to tell their stories from that night to a jury. The footage from the police bodycams will never be shown in a courtroom. But once their probation ends, the friends will be able to expunge the misdemeanor convictions from their records. And the memory of a night when everything went wrong may eventually turn into an example how even really bad nights can turn out alright in the end.

(Mendolocal.news)

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RUTH ILENE BLAIR MILLER (1930—2025)

Ruth Ilene Blair Miller was born in Superior, Arizona March 25, 1930.

Following the end of World War II, the Blairs relocated to Ukiah, California, where Ruth graduated from Ukiah High School in 1947. Ruth began her working life as a switchboard operator for Pacific Telephone in Ukiah. Her life changed forever when she married the love of her life, Albert V. Miller, on April 7, 1952, at the submarine base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where Al was stationed with the U.S. Navy Submarine Service. Upon returning to civilian life in 1953, the couple made their home in Ukiah until Al joined the California Highway Patrol in 1958. His career took them to several different cities over the next 28 years including Bakersfield, Ukiah, Upper Lake, Glendale, and Palm Desert.

While she cherished her roles as a wife, mother, and homemaker, Ruth also worked outside the home. She worked a variety of jobs through the years as a secretary and bookkeeper for the Upper Lake Unified School District, an administrative secretary for a Southern California hospital, a staff member in a Dean Witter stock exchange office, and later as front desk personnel for the La Quinta Golf Resort, where she welcomed guests and sometimes politicians and celebrities.

Throughout her life, Ruth found joy in sewing, photography, reading, writing, history, and genealogy interests that reflected her creativity, curiosity, and deep appreciation for family heritage. After retirement, Ruth and Al spent five years in Colorado before returning to Ukiah and Marina, CA. In 2016, they moved to Henderson, Nevada with their son, Kent, and later lived with their granddaughter, Brianne Hidalgo, and her family following Kent’s passing in early 2025. Al (97) and Ruth (95) completed their 73-year earthly journey together. Ruth passed away on November 18, and Al followed her just 12 hours later on November 19, a profound story of lifelong devotion and love.

Ruth was preceded in death by her parents, William Edwin Blair Sr. and Edith M. Tierney Blair; her brother, William “Bill” Edwin Blair Jr.; her sister, Barbara Blair Pittman; her son, Kenton Miller; and many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins. She is survived by her son, Keith E. (Missy) Miller of Denver, CO; her daughter, Kimberlee D. Schloss of Marina, CA; her granddaughters, Brianne E. (Homero) Hidalgo of Henderson and Riley Anne Schloss of Marina; and her great-grandchildren, Vivian Rose Hidalgo and Emerson Rey Hidalgo, both of Henderson.

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ALBERT VARN MILLER (1928—2025)

Albert Varn Miller, born on August 24, 1928 in Los Angeles, California, Albert spent his early years in Ukiah, CA, a place that would shape his life in more ways than one. It was there that he met the love of his life, Ruth, beginning a partnership that would span more than seven decades. Albert and Ruth were married on a submarine base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, while Albert was proudly serving in the U.S. Navy Submarine Service. After completing his service, the couple returned to Ukiah in 1953.

In 1958, Albert began a career with the California Highway Patrol, a position that led their growing family to new experiences across the state, including Upper Lake, Bakersfield, Glendale, and Palm Desert. Following his retirement, Albert and Ruth enjoyed new chapters of life together, living in Colorado, returning briefly to California, and ultimately settling in Henderson, Nevada, with their son Kent. After Kent’s passing from COPD in April 2025, the couple was lovingly cared for in their home by their granddaughter, Brianne Hidalgo, and her family.

Albert was a devoted husband and father who cherished the simple joys of lifehome-cooked meals, woodworking, gardening, and the many special projects he lovingly crafted for Ruth and their children. In one final act of togetherness, Al (97) and Ruth (95) completed their 73-year earthly journey the same way they lived itside by side. Ruth passed away on November 18, and Albert followed her just 12 hours later on November 19. A story of enduring love and commitment.

Albert was preceded in death by his parents, Clarence E. Miller and Cora Evelyn Miller; his brother, Eugene “Gene” Miller; his son, Kent Miller; and many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins. He is survived by his son, Keith E. (Missy) Miller of Denver, CO; his daughter, Kimberlee D. Schloss of Marina, CA; and granddaughters Brianne E. (Homero) Hidalgo of Henderson and Riley Anne Schloss of Marina; and his great-grandchildren, Vivian Rose Hidalgo and Emerson Rey Hidalgo, both of Henderson.

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MANSLAUGHTER PLEA ACCEPTED IN BRUTAL KILLING OF 77-YEAR-OLD BROOKTRAILS RESIDENT

The more than yearlong proceedings into the death of 77-year-old Roberta Ann McNeil-Wood came to a conclusion when the man accused of killing her, Michael Andrew Coleman, accepted a no contest plea to voluntary manslaughter, first-degree burglary, and a weapon enhancement in Mendocino County Superior Court on September 5, 2025.

The agreement, accepted by Judge Victoria Shanahan, dismissed the original murder charge and set a maximum possible prison sentence of 16 years, bringing legal resolution to a case that had unsettled the Brooktrails community.

The no contest plea—treated the same as a guilty plea for sentencing—allows the court to impose full punishment while avoiding a formal admission of guilt. Defendants often select this option when they wish to resolve a case without publicly conceding the factual allegations, particularly when civil liability is possible or when prosecutors hold substantial evidence. For prosecutors, a no contest plea secures a guaranteed felony conviction without the risks of a jury trial.

The case began on June 29, 2024, when deputies responded to a reported disturbance at a residence on Blue Lake Road in Brooktrails. Inside, they found signs of forced entry, broken windows, and blood evidence, along with McNeil-Wood suffering from severe injuries. Despite attempts to save her, the 77-year-old woman died at the scene. Coleman arrived at the home while deputies were on site and was detained. He was arrested soon afterward on suspicion of homicide.

Prosecutors later filed formal charges alleging murder with malice aforethought, first-degree burglary, and an enhancement for personally using a deadly and dangerous weapon, described in court documents as a wooden table leg. The information filing also listed multiple aggravating circumstances, including the level of violence inflicted, the vulnerability of the elderly victim, the alleged planning involved, and Coleman’s history of poor performance on probation. Assistant District Attorney Scott McMenomey prosecuted the case, while public defender Dana Liberatore represented Coleman through repeated hearings, pretrial scheduling, and discovery disputes.

With the plea and sentencing completed, Coleman has begun serving his time in the state prison system. CDCR records show he was admitted on October 24, 2025, and is currently housed at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, a prison that specializes in medical and psychiatric care. He is 42 years old now, and under the terms of his conviction his earliest possible parole date is June 2035, though CDCR cautions that such dates can move depending on credits earned, disciplinary actions, court decisions, or changes in state law. The agency also notes that victims who want to be notified of his eventual release can register through CDCR’s Office of Victim and Survivor Rights and Services.

With sentencing finished, the case now moves into the corrections system, where Coleman’s custody level and any future parole date will be handled under CDCR rules which can sometimes change. Though the legal process has ended, in Brooktrails and Willits, the events of June 2024 are likely to remain part of the community’s conversations long after the paperwork is filed away.

On-Line Comments:

• The guy committed murder & should have been convicted of murder. Accepting this plea deal is a travesty of justice & shows how lazy the DA & his assistants are in our county. 15 years give or take is not long enough for what he did. He should’ve gotten the electric chair. Bring Back The Death Chamber In California!
• Back on the streets in 2035 at age 52 and ready to kill again — what a great system where you can viciously beat someone to death and be given what amounts to a timeout.
• Yep he will be out in 5 years. He beat a 77 year old to death, that was a mother, daughter and sister. Where is the justice? He should never be free.
• Doesn’t seem like justice was served here. Shameful

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OLD MENDOCINO ANIMAL HOSPITAL on Airport Park Blvd

At its next meeting Wednesday, the Ukiah Planning Commission will consider a plan to turn the former home of Mendocino Animal Hospital on Airport Park Boulevard into an Urgent Care facility for human patients.

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FROM THE ARCHIVE: DRAINING THE HEART OF FORT BRAGG

by Crawdad Nelson (July 2002)

At first, American lumbermen were mystified when Chinese laborers gathered the slime-covered gastropods from the cove where schooners moored to load Union Lumber Company products. It was considered another odd quirk of the Oriental mind, a secret of the East. In time, the edibility of abalone, even for God-fearing capitalistic Christians, was scientifically proven.

At the foot of Oak Street, the land slopes easily toward the weedy pond which, for over 130 years, was the mirror at the heart of Fort Bragg’s economic and industrial center. The pond is situated where it was formed by the impounded waters of a small stream, which determined the site of the first mill buildings constructed in Fort Bragg. The stream, compromised perhaps by what it now carries, enters the Pacific in a gem of a cove, with crumbly bluffs of a hundred feet and a small sandy beach. Fresh and salt water mix there, and whatever falls in is absorbed and diluted.

The City of Fort Bragg constructed a series of sewage treatment ponds between the rear door of the mill and the bluffs around the cove. If one has the generosity to excuse the presence of such a necessary function in what seems now an incongruous setting, there is a certain harmony of usage. There is also an unmistakable smell. But the odor, like the mill’s powerhouse’s exhaust plume, falls away to the southeast, easily avoided.

Fort Bragg grew up around that creek and pond, just as the mill morphed from the tiny cluster of pulleys and cleavers into acres of pavement, buildings, buried plumbing and old, hidden refuse.

GP’s recent announcement that this time they really mean it — the mill will be closed by November — surprised nobody. Most employees will be gone long before then. In fact. if one looks at the whole picture, most are already long gone,

Since GP bought the sprawling mill complex and timber lands which had been nurtured and stewarded by generations of the Johnson family, they have systematically liquidated both natural and human resources like a bear going through a honeycomb.

Up the hill from that old pond and mill, the Guest House, a mansion built for the Johnson family. is now a museum lined with artifacts and photographs chronicling the real life which has passed. The walls drip honey. It was the first electrified house on the coast, deriving its power via direct current from the mill’s generators. When the mill shut down, the lights went out.

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My days in the mill began in 1977. I saw trainloads of old growth redwood easing down the grade to the de-barker. In that imposing structure a man with a massive, detailed power hose could roll a ten foot log like a tinkertoy and remove its inches-deep bark as handily as taking off a sweater. The logs were drawn along the old streambed on a system of chains, and delivered to the headrigs. The headrigs could handle anything God ever thought of, with everything being sharpened every four hours and the power supplied ingeniously by the waste. The creek was converted to a steel funnel down which the biggest chain of all clanked in awful progress toward machines which could reportedly destroy anything. All waste, all drainages, all overflow, aimed into one gaping, growling hole.

As those trainloads were delivered, other loads of Big River, Usal, Ten Mile, Glen Blair and Noyo logs were sent north, to Japanese mill ships. The future of Fort Bragg was milled up on the high seas, where the dust and pollution spewed over the albacore grounds.

It is possible that northwest Mendocino County could have survived past the 1969 sale of the company, with enlightened leadership. But what happened there is what happens, in our system: resources are plundered; workers discarded.

The relationship between Charles Russel Johnson and Fort Bragg was probably not strictly business. I recall becoming aware, as a child does, of the world around me, and knowing that it belonged to C.R. Johnson. The river at the bottom of the hill, the noon whistle, the creosoted railroad where it crossed Main Street and made the logging trucks wait. Even the lumber, stacked up in open cars, clattering in front of our eyes and up the rise toward the cemetery and Pudding Creek, then East, was property of C.R. Johnson. It had been that way for generations.

All that land, for miles around all the wild land, may have belonged to the Johnsons, but it was open to the mill and woodsworkers as open space. Hunting and fishing are not exactly recreation the way riding a motorbike or goofing around in a sailboat might be. Not only do these pursuits provide food one can be confident of, but they demand at least some level of dedicated observation, or study of the landscape. The relationship between the landscape, what it provides as sustenance, and how we go about acquiring it — all those details of living off the land — determine what kind of people emerge from a place.

GP is not closing the mill because logs are unavailable. They are doing it to destroy the last vestige of organized labor in the Mendocino County woods. Local logs will be milled by unorganized workers in the Branscomb, Ukiah, and other nearby towns with scab mills.

The mill will not disappear overnight. It will not disappear in one big bite. For all I know, in a year or so, someone else will open a sawmill on the same site and hire non-union workers.

That little stream at the center of town will continue to drain all those deposits of sweat and grime from the deep inner floors. Shithouse Cove will remain gentle as giant swells roll by outside, producing hazardous foam, while divers with privileged access investigate the gently rolling cove for abalone. The iron rings left in the rocks are the only visible memento of the decades of busy wharf activity on the site.

The cove is resilient, productive, hidden away in plain sight, the one place real estate agents are excluded from while forklift operators are allowed. It is anachronistic, given our present system. It obviously cannot last.

The Guest House will probably be the last unchanged building, overlooking the business of dismantling the structure which built not only the mansion but the town. The roundhouse just across the fence is decrepit-looking. Equipment vital long ago is rusting neatly on timbers.

Shithouse Cove, however, will outlast even the Guest House. The presence of open sewage ponds may serve to ward off development, should lumbering be permanently abandoned here. The creek is not much to look at. It sort of oozes down the bluff and over the beach.

There are plentiful abalone in the cove and all along the bluffs between the Noyo Bridge and the Pudding Creek headlands.

The basic cycles of life are all played out here, next to each other and in plain view. Standing at the cliff-edge one can see the encompassing horizon of timbered hills to the east, lands drained by the Noyo and Pudding Creek, and north to the Ten Mile. All that lumber, shipped out by schooner, flatcar, truck, or in the back of someone’s Buick Electra 225. Right up close are the ponds and the mill’s waste, farther off are the restaurants and stores, yet farther the little hillsides and valleys where people live, baking huckleberry pies and getting up in the dark for another day of cutting timber.

The economic life of Fort Bragg is gone. The town’s real meaning is its history. But people do have to keep on eating. They need fish and game and someplace to lie down. GP is behaving according to form, evicting the renters who have found isolated shelters in those hills. To make the last plunder easier, they require that anyone living on their land vacate. They have to drain the last dollar, make sure that anyone who has found a comfortable co-existence uncomfortable.

GP, they tell me in Fort Bragg, is now a dirty word.

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

I call this Pad One because I plan to put a guest cabin here. I had a visitor once who claimed, "This place must resonate for you". It does, because everywhere I look I can remember something from my early years here, both as a child and later as an adolecent.

If I look close I can see the highschool I attended in the distance from this very spot. Farther on, in this same view, is where we drag raced our hot rods.

Looking the opposite direction, myself and a few other truants rolled over a lovely 1955 two door Chevy hard top on a blind cure. It wasn't a death wish, it was the beer, which fell from our floor stash on top of our heads. The cops tossed us flares and rushed on to a "biker riot" in Cloverdale.

Then I went on to bigger things. Yet, I sometimes wonder if the former could somehow be parent to the child.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 10, 2025

BRYAN ANELLI, 64, Laytonville. DUI.

MATTHEW FAUST, 51, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

RAMIRO GONZALES, 24, Ukiah. Post Release Community Supervision violation.

AMANDA GUERRERO, 36, Lincoln/Ukiah. Burglary, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

JASON LONG, 49, Sacramento/Ukiah. Trespassing, controlled substance, probation revocation.

JANET MCLAIN, 55, Carson City/Ukiah. DUI.

JONNIE MIZE, 50, Ukiah. Burglary, ammo possession by prohibited person.

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

MARK NIELSEN, 38, Ukiah. Use of tear gas for other than self-defense.

RICHARD ORTIZ, 40, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

JERROD PALMER, 31, Ukiah. Felon-addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person.

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BILL RICA: Hey, someone else thinks like me! I call the NFL “The Numerous Flag League.” The outcome of almost every game is decided by a couple of bogus or dubious penalties where the refs should have kept their flags in their pockets. Alas, the refrs are paid and rewarded for enforcing the rules (enforcing compliance and showing who is the real Boss). And don't get me started on those woke messages in the end zones and all the rituals which celebrate and promote the Military Industrial Complex — or “Breast Cancer Awareness.” How's that war on Breast Cancer going?

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RON ANSELME: The American Cancer Society is so close Bill, with net assets of $1.3 Billion, and the CEO of their “non-profit” is working so hard, probably even some nights and weekends, for her $1.4 million salary. They are so close, Bill. Can't you spare just a few more dollars? You might put them over the top. The cure is right around the corner.

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COAST ROTARY:

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SMART TRAIN NEEDS MORE TIME TO GROW

Editor,

In a letter published locally Dec. 3, Jeffory Morshead recommended that the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit tracks be “paved over” to be used by buses and trucks. By making that suggestion, I think Morshead aligns with those who disappointedly jettisoned useful rail systems back when cars first came into universal use.

Many have tried to restore continental train travel with little success since then. Additionally, I think Morshead should remember the effective ferry system we had in the Bay Area before ditching it, only to rebuild it at great expense.

SMART is underused now, but so was BART in the East Bay when it started. SMART is convenient and comfortable. What a joy it is to look out at the jammed highway as the train whizzes along.

Let’s not jettison our rail system. Instead, let’s jettison the blinkered and short-sighted attitudes that resulted in destroying so much that was useful.

Elaine C. Johnson

Greenbrae

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PALESTINIAN CHILDREN STILL SUFFERING IN GAZA

Editor:

I enjoyed a bountiful Thanksgiving celebration with food and friendship in abundance. How grateful and fortunate am I. How can I hold onto the feeling of joy when seeing the horrific images coming from Gaza? Children standing in the rain, knee deep in water and crying for help. Parents holding little ones, trying to protect them and pleading for someone to listen and show mercy. The ground their tents were originally pitched on has turned to mud in the unrelenting rain. Their clothes and bedding are soaked, and it is winter there and cold. Surely there is something that can be done. How can they possibly survive in these conditions?

Palestinians have endured such immense suffering for the past two years. Loss of homes, death, disease, hunger, thirst, pain, fear and now this. I feel so helpless. Yes, I have donated a number of times to organizations on the ground there working to relieve the suffering, but what’s being done about this? I see the heartbreaking images but don’t hear of any solutions. It’s so hard to even write about without crying. Spread the word on social media. Their suffering is no longer front-page news.

Joan Mc Auliffe

Santa Rosa

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HOME INSURANCE COSTS ARE UP 150% IN ONE PART OF CALIFORNIA

A $1 increase in premiums is associated with a roughly $100 reduction in property value growth in the riskiest ZIP codes in the U.S.

by Christian Leonard & Sriharsha Devulapalli

Climate change is making insuring homes more risky — and more expensive. And in neighborhoods where that risk is the greatest, higher insurance costs are starting to eat into property values as well.

That’s the finding from a new working paper by professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin, who obtained data showing that the median annual insurance premium among California mortgage-payers was $1,700 in 2024, 28% higher than in 2014, after adjusting for inflation.

But in fire-prone areas, that figure can be much higher. Mariposa County had the highest insurance costs in California last year, at a median of about $3,700. That was more than double the 2014 premium, reflecting the seventh-fastest surge among the U.S. counties in the paper’s data.

The working paper, which hasn’t yet been peer reviewed, indicates that nationally, a $1 increase in premiums is associated with a roughly $100 reduction in property value growth in the riskiest ZIP codes. (The paper’s data is based on a sample of payments made by mortgage-holders to escrow accounts).

Insurers “think that risk is at a higher new normal than they thought maybe 10 years ago,” said Philip Mulder, a professor of insurance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who co-authored the paper. “And they’re going to be setting prices accordingly.”

California’s insurance costs remain fairly modest compared to those of other states, especially when accounting for its high home prices, according to a separate report published Friday by the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Storm-prone states like Texas and Florida have notably higher premiums.

But the Terner Center report also found that rising costs fall hardest on lower-income California homeowners.

For some of those homeowners, living in a fire-prone area is the cost of finding a home they could afford. But now, with premiums expected to rise even further next year, that benefit could erode.

California’s insurance costs have risen amid near-annual waves of devastating wildfires.

Up until this year, state regulations required insurers to base their pricing on historical wildfire loss data. That meant that after the 2017 Tubbs Fire and the 2018 Paradise Fire became part of the data insurers could cite, rates began to climb rapidly for both existing homeowners and buyers. Megan Micco, a Berkeley Realtor with Compass, said she’s now telling potential buyers to budget up to $10,000 a year for premiums for larger properties in the East Bay hills — up from as little as $3,000 previously.

New regulations passed at the beginning of the year now allow insurers to rely on future-looking models to justify rate increases, which experts say could lead to even higher rates. Several major insurers have already applied for rate increases using these models, though none have been approved yet.

“Overall, we need to expect to pay significantly more for hazard insurance going forward due to the realities of climate change,” Micco said.

Insurance woes have already made buying and selling homes harder in fire-prone areas of the Bay Area such as Sonoma County. Median premiums in the county have grown at the fastest rate in the region over the past decade, data from the new working paper shows. That has cut into sales and softened prices, forcing sellers to renovate their homes to be more attractive to insurers, and therefore buyers, said Santa Rosa-based real estate broker Ernest Berghof.

Berghof’s observation somewhat aligns with the findings in the working paper. Report authors Mulder and Benjamin Keys compared changes in mortgage-holders’ insurance payments with shifts in home values among ZIP codes with high disaster risk. They found that among the top 10% of riskiest ZIP codes in the U.S., home prices saw an average of about $44,000 less growth than in similar ZIPs — though prices did still rise.

Not all, or even most, of the extra costs can be attributed to disaster risk. About a third of the rise in average premiums from 2017 to 2024 nationally was due to rising construction costs, the report found. The increase in the cost of covering disaster risk accounted for another 20%. The paper didn’t identify the cause of the rest of the price increase.

The ZIP codes with the highest risk saw the largest relative increases in premiums. It’s in those places, the report found, that rising climate risk drove up reinsurance prices — effectively, insurance for insurers.

Before recent reforms, California regulations barred insurers from passing on the cost of reinsurance to consumers, shielding property owners from some of those effects. But starting in late 2022, many of the state’s biggest insurers announced they would restrict the number of policies they wrote in order to reduce their risk exposure. Some smaller insurers withdrew from the state entirely, saying California’s regulations made doing business in the state too financially risky. Many homeowners have been forced to find much more expensive options.

In an attempt to bring insurers back, California officials are implementing rules allowing insurers to incorporate wildfire predictions in their requests for rate increases. Insurers can now also pass on some of the cost of reinsurance to clients.

Those changes will likely mean insurance will be more available, but also more costly, said David Russell, a professor of insurance at California State University Northridge.

“It’s those risky ZIP codes that are getting crushed,” Russell said.

The burden of higher insurance costs falls most heavily on first-time home buyers. With monthly housing payments already ballooning thanks to high sale prices and mortgage rates, insurance premiums are an additional cost many younger families can’t afford. The Terner Center report found that low-income homeowners are more likely to be uninsured, and generally pay much more of their incomes toward home insurance.

The highest insurance costs are in rural areas like Nevada County, where every home faces wildfire risk. Those counties have seen relatively little housing development this decade, and the homes that are built have to meet high standards for fire protection.

Experts warn that high prices in California’s major metros are continuing to push families toward these rural areas, exposing more households to fire risk — and higher insurance costs.

“Some of the folks living in these places … maybe couldn’t find housing in places with lower risk in San Francisco,” said Zack Subin, who co-authored the Terner Center report. “That comes to the state’s responsibility to continue to change policies to make it possible to build housing in those lower risk (areas).”

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“SOMEWHERE in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her…and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.”

― John Barth

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INSURANCE REGULATION BY INSURANCE COMPANIES

Editor,

Regarding “California is drafting new rules for wildfire smoke cleanup. Are home insurers calling the shots?” The story documents the clear conflicts of interest for several members of the state task force who have worked on behalf of insurance companies.

With climate change, many more of us will be affected by wildfires in the future, so we need to sit up and pay attention now.

I was struck by the quote from the California deputy insurance commissioner and task force chair, Tony Cignarale: “It would be irresponsible of us to just bring in all consumer-oriented hygienists, so to speak.”

How would that be “irresponsible?” The Department of Insurance is supposed to be working for the public, not the insurance industry.

Given what we already know about the chemical composition and persistence in the environment of third-hand cigarette smoke, shouldn’t the department want to have strong public health experts on such a panel?

There is a term for this: regulatory capture. Shameful

Ruth Malone

San Francisco

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“I'M NEVER A RELIABLE NARRATOR, unbiased or objective. I set up ludicrous goals, unreasonably over-romantic objectives, in the hope that by leaving myself open to misadventure, disaster, and the happy accident, good things will happen. I brought a lot of prejudices to the table. I like to remind the reader of that, just as I try to be aware of those prejudices myself because one of my principle pleasures is being proven wrong. I'm not afraid to look like an idiot. That feels good sometimes, to have it demonstrated that: no, it's not like that at all.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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GAVIN NEWSOM COULD HAVE MADE ELECTRICITY MORE AFFORDABLE AND CLIMATE-FRIENDLY, BUT…

by Ellie Cohen

Governor Gavin Newsom stood before global leaders in Brazil recently at COP30, the annual United Nations climate conference, and introduced himself to the world as the new face of U.S. climate ambition.

The scene raised a question back home in California: Why did Newsom recently veto climate solutions that would have made electricity cleaner and more affordable for Californians?

For decades, California has shown the world that states and regions can drive climate and economic progress, even when national governments lag.

Now the world’s fourth-largest economy, our state has paired consistent cuts in emissions with sustained economic growth and set a standard for clean car rules that is copied worldwide. It also built the nation’s first economy-wide “Cap and Invest” program, the cap-and-trade energy credit program recently reformed and extended under Newsom’s watch.

Yet as the climate crisis escalates, even that legacy faces scrutiny. While Newsom was preparing for COP30, his administration was delaying or diluting key domestic reforms and quietly expanding in-state oil and gas drilling.

In Brazil, Newsom urged fellow Democrats to start framing climate as an affordability issue — of course, it is. This rhetoric earned him praise abroad.

But Newsom has balked at several recent opportunities to address climate and cost-of-living challenges together.

Just weeks ago, the governor vetoed three bipartisan bills that would have advanced virtual power plants, which are systems that deliver clean power back to the electrical grid during peak hours by aggregating power from devices many of us already have in our homes — such as smart thermostats, rooftop solar panels, home and electric vehicle batteries and electric heat pumps.

Managing strain on the grid with virtual power plants helps avoid blackouts, reduces reliance on gas powered plants and saves electricity customers money on their utility bills, including those not participating in a virtual power plant program.

One recent study predicted virtual power plants could save Californians up to $13.7 billion on electricity over the next five years. That is the kind of climate-forward and affordability-focused policy that California voters and global climate champions want.

But all three bills were doomed because investor-owned utilities like PG&E continue to work against local-scale electricity solutions like virtual power plants, and they know they can count on Newsom as an ally.

It’s time for Newsom to start treating climate like a winning issue here in California — not just on the international stage in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential race. Investing in solutions like virtual power plants creates jobs, lowers electricity bills and builds resilience to wildfires and floods.

Californians pay twice the national average for electricity and yet still endure frequent planned blackouts. We want solutions that work, protect our families and save money, and we want our governor to champion them.

Newsom is right to emphasize affordability as a pillar of climate progress, creating further contrast between himself and President Donald Trump. That’s good politics and good policy — but it’s also puzzling when his administration vetoes the most cost-effective clean energy solutions available today.

After his time in Brazil, Newsom needs more than rhetoric to cement his legacy as a true climate champion. In his final months as governor, he should advance policies that combat the climate crisis and provide economic relief to hardworking Californians. Here are two ways he can show the world how to tackle climate change while lowering the cost of living.

First, knock down state barriers to local, clean, affordable energy. Newsom must stop deferring to corporate utilities like PG&E and mobilize the state to support rooftop solar, virtual power plants and other clean, decentralized electricity solutions.

Second, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and make corporate polluters pay for climate disasters. California hands billions to the oil and gas industry while communities bear the costs of extreme weather and fossil fuel pollution. Making polluters pay their fair share would help finance the transition to a cleaner economy, improve public health and take the burden off taxpayers.

These solutions can be replicated around the world. And, thanks to Newsom’s strong showing in Brazil, the world will be watching.

(CalMatters.org)

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SACRAMENTO RIVER ADVOCATES REACT TO TRUMP ADMINISTRATION APPROVING PLAN TO EXPORT MORE WATER FROM THE DELTA

by Dan Bacher

The Trump administration just released a controversial plan to divert more Delta water, one that tribes, environmentalists and fishing groups say poses an extreme threat to already imperiled salmon, steelhead and other fish populations.

This plan released by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, or BOR, follows through on a presidential order issued in January aimed at increasing agribusiness water deliveries to the Central Valley. Its details are summed up in a BOR document called Decision for Action 5, which updates the long-term operations of both the federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project, the two main canals that transfer Delta water south. …

https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2025/12/10/sacramento-area-conservationists-react-to-trump-administration-approving-plan-to-export-more-water-from-the-delta/

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THAT GAVIN NEWSOM, the governor of California, might want to run for president someday has been widely believed for a long time. That he would have a chance if he ran for president — that was less widely believed. A liberal white guy from a state the country considers badly governed just didn’t seem like the profile that either the Democratic Party — or the country — was looking for.

Well, things change. If you look at polls of the likely Democratic field now, Newsom leads in many of them. If you look at the Polymarket betting odds on who will be the 2028 Democratic nominee, Newsom is far ahead of anyone else. Jonathan Martin, a senior political columnist at Politico, wrote a piece titled “Admit It. Gavin Newsom Is the 2028 Front-Runner.”

Look, I know it’s all very early to be talking about 2028. But even putting the future aside, Newsom has become, without any doubt, one of the Democratic Party’s leaders at a time when the party is desperately looking for leadership.

— Ezra Klein

(SF Chronicle)

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REMEMBERING BABE RUTH’S 1924 EXHIBITION GAME IN DUNSMUIR, CALIFORNIA

https://www.activenorcal.com/remembering-babe-ruths-1924-exhibition-game-in-dunsmuir-california/

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WHAT KIND OF FOOL

There was a time when we were down and out
There was a place when we were starting over
We let the bough break, we let the heartache in
Who′s sorry now?
There was a world when we were standing still
And for a moment we were separated
And then you found her, you let the stranger in
Who's sorry now, who′s sorry now?

What, what kind of fool tears it apart?
Leaving me pain and sorrow
Losing you now wonderin' why
Where will I be tomorrow?

Forever more that's what we are to be
Without each other
We′ll be remembering when
There was a time when we were down and out (we cried)
There was a place when we were starting over
We let the bough break, we let the heartache in
Who′s sorry now, who's sorry now?

What, what kind of fool (what kind of fool)
Tears it apart? (Tears it apart?)
Leaving me pain and sorrow
Oh, losin′ you now, how can I win?
Where will I be tomorrow?

Was there a moment when I cut you down? (No)
Played around, what have I done? I only apologize
For being as they say, the last to know
It has to show
When someone is in your eyes

What, what kind of fool?
(Tears it apart) tears it apart
Leaving me pain and sorrow
Oh, losing you now
Wonderin' why (wonderin′ why)
Where will I be tomorrow? (Where will I be tomorrow?)

What, what kind of fool (what kind of fool)
Tears it apart (tears it apart)
Leaving me pain and sorrow (leaving me pain and)
Losing you now (losing you now)
How can I win? (How can I win?)
Where will I be tomorrow? (Where will I be tomorrow?)

— Barry Alan Gibb, Albhy Galuten (1980)

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FROM DOXXING TO DOT.GOV: THE WHITE HOUSE HAS SET UP A TAXPAYER FUNDED ENEMIES LIST

by Laura Flanders

Doxing, swatting, bogus FBI calls, stalkers live-streaming outside their homes — it used to be marginal maniacs who saw journalists as targets to be neutralized. Now it’s the President. A government that pardons violent insurrectionists, guts research on farright terror, and redirects agents from tracking neoNazis to hunting immigrants is turning its full weight on the people who dare to report any of it.

The anti-hate beat has never been for the faint of heart. Amanda Moore, who embedded with the far Right in 2020, has faced backlash for her reporting for The Nation, Politico, and The Intercept ever since. She’s seen her address, phone, gym schedule, and family details splashed across extremist sites for half a decade — leading to her sister getting swatted at 4 a.m. over a fake suicide call.

Likewise, in North Carolina, Raw Story reporter Jordan Green saw a young neo-Nazi soldier, whom his reporting had tied to the group Patriot Front, show up at his door during a fake pizza delivery. The soldier snapped Green’s photo, then returned weeks later to film a flash rally of extremists right outside the home where Green lives with his wife and children.

Steven Monacelli in Dallas knows this story too. His work tracking extremism, disinformation, and the influence of dark money in politics has won awards — but it’s also cost him. Last year, someone impersonating the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center sent cops to his door with a bogus wife-beating tip on Thanksgiving.

The work of journalists like these was never easy, but as Moore puts it, the people she met praising “a friendlier Nazi Germany” at those conferences years back, are now embedded in the administration:

“The people who are backlashing against me have changed. It’s no longer a live streamer like Nick Fuentes ranting about me for five minutes straight. It’s the former campaign manager for Trump 2024 calling me and threatening me with a lawsuit.”

And that was before the president launched his own doxxing and swatting operation.

Journalists as “Offenders”

Last week, the White House launched a new page on its website calling out “biased” journalists by name. This week’s “offender of the week” is a Washington Post writer’s story on Pete Hegseth’s double-tap boat strike in the Caribbean. What used to be a neo-Nazi kill list on Telegram is now a taxpayer-funded enemies list.

At the same time, having quietly removed Biden-era research documenting the outsized threat posed by the extreme Right, and not-so quietly diverting funds and agents away from tracking domestic terror threats to ICE intimidation and abduction duty, Attorney General Pam Bondi is now apparently ordering law enforcement to build a list of “domestic terrorism” groups defined not by violent acts, but by ideas: opposition to immigration enforcement, “radical gender ideology,” anticapitalism, “antiChristianity,” and socalled “antiAmerican sentiments.”

That is a dragnet for every journalist exposing border abuses, white nationalist infiltration of the Pentagon, or dark money in Dallas politics — and for the communities they cover: immigrants, LGBTQ people, antifascists, prodemocracy organizers. When the Attorney General tells the FBI to treat domestic dissent as terrorism, every FOIA request, every protest, every byline becomes probable cause. The pizza-fakers and swatters become state enforcers — and earn rewards. According to Ken Klippenstein, who published her leaked memo, Bondi also directs the FBI to establish “a cash reward system” for information.

Corporate Media’s Deadly Quiet

Monied media have ignored the extremism beat for years. They did it again this week. As Klippenstein writes:

“The Justice Department memo I published has elicited outrage across the political spectrum, but hardly any major news outlet can bother to even write about it and how law enforcement is now targeting speech and the basic activities that constitute American civic life. This is an object lesson in everything that’s wrong with corporate media.”

In an atmosphere in which the most powerful man in the world calls reporters who challenge him names, it’s no surprise that some prefer to keep out of the fray. In just the last month, Donald Trump has called half a dozen reporters — all of them women — ugly, stupid, terrible, outrageous and “piggy.” And that’s in public, where he knows his mighty megaphone sends a clear message out to where the violence behind his rhetoric becomes real, fast.

But silence from big media isn’t neutrality; it’s letting impunity spread.

Jordan Green covered a story we’ve reported on extensively on Laura Flanders & Friends: the December 2022 attack on two power stations in Moore County, North Carolina. That sabotage cut off power to tens of thousands of residents for days, in winter, and led to the death of one 87-year-old grandmother who relied on an oxygen machine to breathe. That death was ruled a homicide. Attorney General, now governor, Josh Stein assured us then that the investigation was a top priority — his words — but three years on, no one has been charged and the crime is unsolved.

“It’s a real concern that when FBI agents are diverted to immigration support, or politicized investigations against Trump’s enemies, Right-wing terrorist groups who are planning violence have a sense of impunity,” says Green.

There’s just one problem: impunity requires wrongdoing. In politics and human rights, the word is used when powerful people or institutions break the law or violate rights. In the White House’s “Hall of Shame” era, right-wing terrorists are effectively state agents, and while independent journalists toil on at their own peril, the most powerful media corporations in the country seem to be just fine with that.

(Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on Laura Flanders & Friends, a nationally-syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is the author of several books, as well as a column on CounterPunch.org)

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Obviously the best way to provide social services and safety nets is promote the concentration of wealth in the silky hands of the best looking people who come from families that have a long track record of accumulated wealth. Then since they’re smarter than the riffraff they can make donations to like art museums, and leave tips to their servers. We can only accomplish this populist goal by elimination of the income tax on our top earners, and get the lazy dirty hands crowd to get with the program. 50% of your shit wages, and tariffs on consumer goods may not seem like it will cover the patriotism but there’s so many of you.

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Denied Federal Disaster Aid, a Town in Trump Country Feels Forgotten

U.S. Steps Up Campaign Against Maduro in Seizing Tanker Off Venezuela

Trump Administration Opens Applications for Million-Dollar Visas

Starting With Formaldehyde, Trump Administration Reassesses Chemical Risks

The Fed Cut Rates Again but Deep Divisions Cloud Path Ahead

Louvre Heist Was Filmed Live, but the Guards Weren’t Watching

Fern Michaels, Prolific Author of Romance Novels, Dies at 92

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LET ME TELL YOU about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.

— Fitzgerald

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TRUMP REPORTS THAT THE US HAS SEIZED AN OIL TANKER OFF THE COAST OF VENEZUELA

by Aamer Madhani & Konstantin Toropin

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as tensions mount with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Using U.S. forces to seize an oil tanker is incredibly unusual and marks the Trump administration’s latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The campaign is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House, later adding that "it was seized for a very good reason.”

Trump said “other things are happening,” but did not offer additional details, saying he would speak more about it later. When asked what would happen to the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”

The seizure was led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that the seizure was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day. Locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions, the state-owned oil company sells most of its output at a steep discount to refiners in China.

The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy intermediaries, as sanctions have scared away more established traders. Many are shell companies, registered in jurisdictions known for secrecy. The buyers deploy so-called ghost tankers that hide their location and hand off their valuable cargoes in the middle of the ocean before they reach their final destination.

Maduro did not address the seizure during a speech before a ruling-party organized demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. But he told supporters that the country is “prepared to break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary.”

Maduro, flanked by senior officials, said only the ruling party can “guarantee peace, stability, and the harmonious development of Venezuela, South America and the Caribbean.”

Maduro previously has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

During past negotiations, among the concessions the U.S. has made to Maduro was approval for oil giant Chevron Corp. to resume pumping and exporting Venezuelan oil. The corporation’s activities in the South American country resulted in a financial lifeline for Maduro’s government.

The seizure comes a day after the U.S. military flew a pair of fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country’s airspace. Trump has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered more details.

The Trump administration is facing increasing scrutiny from lawmakers over the boat strike campaign, which has killed at least 87 people in 22 known strikes since early September, including a follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of a boat after the first hit.

Some legal experts and Democrats say that action may have violated the laws governing the use of deadly military force.

Lawmakers are demanding to get unedited video from the strikes, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional leaders Tuesday he was still weighing whether to release it. Hegseth provided a classified briefing for congressional leaders alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday who owned the tanker or what national flag it was sailing under. The Coast Guard referred a request for comment to the White House.

(AP)

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