Tired of Texas

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Trade wars, map wars, water wars — just another week in the trenches. While West Texas farms are set to pocket truckloads of federal cash for the next decade, many Golden State growers will be turning over couch cushions. Meanwhile, partisan cartographers load fresh ink for mid-cycle gerrymanders, Newsom carves out a new housing agency, and the Central Valley keeps sinking like a bad soufflé. All that, plus a fascinating timelapse of L.A.’s multigenerational sprawl and a grab-bag of news you can use (or at least raise your eyebrows at).

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Let’s get to it…

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ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL TEXAS HANDOUT

Bryce Loewen, who grows peaches, plums and other fruits on a 78-acre farm in the Central Valley of California, isn’t exactly singing the praises of President Trump’s signature legislative victory. He’s not eligible for the programs that were juiced with new funding, and he anticipates losing revenue as a result of the cuts to the food stamp program. “Another thing about this bill that’s so upsetting is it really picks and chooses where that assistance is going,” said Loewen. For those wondering where the new assistance is headed, look no further than western Texas, where 600 farms in Gaines County are projected to receive an additional $258 million in government payments over the next decade. Over the same period, along the coast of California, 1,000 farms in Monterey County will collectively receive just $390,000 in additional payments.

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🤫 Everything you should know

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🖊️ 🗺️ 😬 - MAP MADNESS — As if U.S. elections weren’t fraught enough these days, we’ve now plunged headlong into a redistricting arms race. President Trump, beset by scant popular support for his tax law and growing unease about mass deportations, has called for a number of states to redraw their congressional maps mid-decade in an effort to squeeze more red seats out of the electorate. With Texas leading the way, California, New York and a smattering of smaller states have pledged to respond with their own impromptu partisan gerrymanders. “I don’t think it’s doable,” said Stanford’s Bruce Cain, one of California’s foremost political scientists with deep personal experience in reapportionment battles. “I think there are too many constitutional constraints.” — POLITICO

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🏠 💡 🗃️  - NEW HOUSING AGENCY, WHO DIS? — California’s housing crisis is finally getting its own bureaucratic sandbox: Governor Newsom is carving housing and homelessness out of the state’s awkward “Business, Consumer Services & Housing Agency” and pulling up a new cabinet seat for the chief. The new agency will inherit a spaghetti pile of financing programs scattered across agencies, but it still can’t touch the biggest money buckets parked with the independently elected treasurer. Translation: new letterhead, similar maze. For now, developers will still trek between offices while costs balloon, and the ‘one-application’ holy grail remains a PowerPoint slide on our wish-list. — CalMatters

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🚰 🚿 😳  - GROUNDWATER GEARS GRINDING — California’s water system is the stuff of legend. If you need proof, try to imagine any other piece of basic infrastructure underpinning the 1974 noir masterpiece “Chinatown.” Our wet stuff is piped and pumped throughout an intricate lacework of aqueducts, reservoirs and canals, subject to a Byzantine set of rules and rights that serve as fodder for some of the state’s hottest debates. Amid the sturm und drang, one thing remains constant: California keeps gulping from its underground aquifers like there’s no last call. A sobering new report from ProPublica contains eye-popping statistics and visions of a brutal future that pairs coastal flooding with a mass exodus of farms from an increasingly arid Central Valley. The collapse is disturbingly literal: GRACE satellite data shows that the Central Valley’s ground surface is nearly 30 vertical feet lower than it was in the first part of the 20th century thanks to its depleted underground waterways. — ProPublica

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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: THE CALIFORNIAN CENTURY

How did we miss a BBC podcast series hosted by Stanley Tucci about the history of California? We’re going to blame the pandemic; those were crazy times! Luckily, it’s not too late to dive into the delightful “Californian Century” podcast from BBC Radio 4. Running 11 episodes through February and March of 2020, Tucci imagines the story of modern California as a movie screenplay, tracing the dramatic history of the state from Hollywood to Silicon Valley. — The Californian Century

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⏳ 🌆 🐙  - THE GROWTH OF LA IN 36 SECONDS

Exactly 100 years ago, Aldous Huxley mused that Los Angeles was “nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.” One could imagine what he might say if confronted by today’s SoCal megopolis. The Marron Institute of Urban Management at NYU produced a fascinating timelapse map depicting the first 123 years of LA’s growth, from a nondescript speck on the coastal plain to a sprawling purple monstrosity with tentacles unfurling in every direction. — YouTube

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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1. ✂️ The Trump administration is cutting funds to U.C.L.A. NY Times
2. 💯 Columnist pens refreshing self-critique: “I was wrong about Fresno mayor.” Fresno Bee
3. 🌊 Tsunami wave causes $1M in damage to Crescent City harbor. SFGate
4. 🔌 PG&E monthly bills have ‘stabilized’ and will drop lower, utility says. SiliconValley.com

🐺 AC/DC and Scarlett Johansson deployed against CA wolves. Wall Street Journal