This week: Congress passed a housing bill so bipartisan we had to read it twice, the Colorado River continues its transformation into the Colorado Creek, the Supreme Court hands cities a bigger enforcement stick on encampments, and AI finally comes for the people who built it. Plus: robotaxis invade San Diego, Canada is still mad at our wine, and Northern California's wolves have discovered that beef is what's for dinner. Onward!

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THE LEAD: WAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Score this a win for building more homes. AB 1751, the NCC-sponsored bill to fast-track approvals for new townhomes, cleared the Senate Housing Committee this week. The procedural drama involved a requirement that developers using the fast track pay workers at least $28 an hour, which co-author Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) agreed to strip out after the State Building and Construction Trades Council argued that the floor could complicate existing prevailing-wage standards. Committee chair Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) made that change his condition for approval and pledged to keep working toward a wage compromise that all sides can live with. Worth watching, and a conversation we're glad to be part of — but not the headline. The upshot is that California is one step closer to clearing the way for the kind of missing-middle housing the state has spent decades failing to build. The next test comes next week in Sen. María Elena Durazo's Local Government Committee, where the focus shifts to the bill's approach to local land-use authority. One hurdle down…

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🤫 Everything you should know

🏘️ BOND. HOUSING BOND. — Sacramento did a rare thing this week: it agreed on something, and the something was building. Gov. Newsom and legislative leaders struck a deal Monday to put an ~$11 billion housing bond before voters in November — roughly $10 billion for rental and homeownership programs and $1.25 billion for veterans. The significance isn't the dollar figure (California has voted for housing money before). It's that the state's political class has finally internalized what the NCC has argued until we’ve become hoarse: the housing crisis is pure arithmetic. You cannot mandate, subsidize, or sue your way out of a shortage you refuse to build out of. A bond is a down payment on supply — useful only if the homes it funds aren't then strangled in the same procedural kelp that got us here. Pass the money; then clear the path! - ABC10

💧 WHEAT THE SYSTEM — California’s San Joaquin Valley is about to discover that “sustainable” groundwater management has a very unsubtle translation: less water, less farmland. A new PPIC report says the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act could push up to 900,000 irrigated acres — roughly 20% of the valley’s irrigated land — out of full production. But the authors argue mass fallowing is the blunt instrument in the shed: it cuts pumping while leaving irritating dust, heat, pests, lost income and square miles of bare dirt. As the report puts it, “fallowing reduces groundwater demand, it does so at a cost.” The alternative: “SGMA-ready” crops such as winter wheat, barley, oats and triticale, grown with limited irrigation, early planting and early forage harvest. These crops can generate revenue, reduce nuisance impacts and preserve recharge potential without blowing up groundwater goals. — PPIC

⛺ NO SHORTAGE OF HOMELESSNESS BILLS — California lawmakers are racing toward session’s end with a slate of homelessness bills that follows a familiar Sacramento playbook when the problem at hand is tough: demand plans, collect data, and expand ambitions without adding much new money. Assemblymember Matt Haney is reviving a sober-housing bill Gov. Newsom vetoed last year. “A lot of people who are on the street right now… would prefer drug-free housing options,” Haney said. Other bills would force the state to calculate the cost of ending homelessness, create a prevention strategy, and make more cities report homelessness data, though several measures arrive with zero new funding, a salient detail. AB 2122 would stop bench warrants for missed court dates tied to infractions, while AB 647 lets Los Angeles and Alameda cities scrap low-value RVs. CalMatters has a full rundown. — CalMatters

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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: Queens of the Mines

Created by local California historian and author Andrea Anderson, Queens of the Mines unearths the wild, audacious, and often scandalous stories of the 19th-century women, sex workers, entrepreneurs, and rebels who actually built the subculture of the California Gold Country. It’s a rollicking adventure that puts a refreshing new spin on timeworn tales. — Queens of the Mines

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🤑 — 101 IN 101: WHY PEOPLE LEAVE CALIFORNIA

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In UC Berkeley’s 101 in 101 video series, California Policy Lab co-Executive Director Evan White explains why the Golden State’s cost-of-living math is nudging residents toward the exits. The exodus isn’t massive, but cheaper housing in Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is making California’s paradise routine look brutally overpriced. Keep the link on your phone for whenever visitors from the midwest ask you why anyone would ever leave California. - UC Berkeley

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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🏘️ S.F.'s "very poor track record" comes due — The Chronicle traces the city's recurring rent spikes straight back to its own planning failures. The call is coming from inside the permitting office. — SF Chronicle 

🌬️ Gone with the Wind — California has filed notice that it intends to sue the Trump administration's Interior Department within 60 days over its move to kill Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project off the Central Coast the state is counting on for future clean power. — Associated Press

💸 A Snap Decision to Wipe the Slate — Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and model Miranda Kerr erased $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 Californians through the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, with San Diego County residents benefiting most. — LA Times

🔬 Washington Tightens the Tap — A proposed OMB rule would centralize federal grantmaking and hand political appointees more say over who gets funded, spelling fresh uncertainty for California's research universities and labs that depend on a steady flow of federal science dollars. — National Law Review‍

⚖️ Sue-Per Cookies — Some 3,000 California businesses — HVAC shops, solar installers, mom-and-pops — have been hit with CIPA lawsuits over routine website analytics, as a cottage industry of attorneys uses a Nixon-era anti-wiretapping statute to mass-produce demand letters while Sacramento debates whether SB 690 should finally call off the shakedown. — CapRadio