Bear Essentials March 13th: Everyone wants a piece
March 13, 2026
Contemporary California’s unique genius is turning obvious solutions into unusable policy. Maybe it’s because everyone always wants in on the action? This week’s lead story explains why the state still can’t build: not for lack of need, or even good intentions, but because Sacramento keeps hamstringing housing reform with carve-outs, mandates and political appeasement until nothing gets built. And because no California fiasco goes unphotobombed by Washington, the Trump administration is barging in too — on fire recovery, leaky offshore oil pipelines and the state’s EV rules —eager to preempt, provoke and generally make things more complicated. All of this and a choice selection of Golden State ephemera to keep you cool as the heat wave approaches.
THE REAL REASON CALIFORNIA CAN’T BUILD — After years of self-reflection bordering on navel-gazing, California’s housing crisis is no longer a mystery. We know we need to build more homes and the legislature has spent years passing laws meant to make that happen. The catch is that Sacramento keeps writing “pro-housing” bills that are proving to be anything but in practice: Local governments sabotage them with delays, carve-outs, and procedural tricks. State lawmakers — eager to build durable coalitions that will facilitate a bill’s passage — load them up with labor mandates, affordability requirements, and other political concessions that come from a good place, but often make projects too expensive to build. The Atlantic’s Rogé Karma digs into the “Everything Bagel” phenomenon first identified by Ezra Klein that has proven to be so vexing, noting that California is not failing to build housing for lack of intent; it’s failing because its governing class cannot stop trying to satisfy every constituency at once. The result is legislation designed to say yes to housing, while quietly preserving the conditions that prevent its construction. As Senator Scott Wiener puts it, “Fifty percent of zero is still zero.” A project that never gets built produces no affordable units, no jobs, and no relief — just another round of hollow self-congratulation.
🤫 Everything you should know
👷 - FEDS’ LA TAKEOVER TANKS — President Trump’s promised federal takeover of Los Angeles wildfire rebuilding has fizzled into what it mostly was from the start: a press release with delusions of grandeur. After vowing to rip permitting power away from local governments, the administration let its own deadline pass without doing much beyond a narrow SBA rule that barely changes anything and, in practice, appears barely used. That matters because the story here is not that Washington stormed in and saved a broken process; it’s that the White House discovered permitting was not the main thing gumming up recovery. Builders say the real obstacles are brutal construction costs, insurance shortfalls and stalled federal aid. “The executive order was useless in my opinion,” noted one forthright contractor. The interesting twist is that the threat itself seems to have jolted actual cooperation between Trump’s team and local officials. So the chest-thumping is over, the takeover is dead, and the real fight is back where it belonged all along: money. — POLITICO
🛢️ - PIPELINE DREAM — The Trump administration has found yet another use for emergency powers: helping revive a spill-prone oil pipeline off Santa Barbara that California has spent years trying to keep offline. In a legal opinion, the Justice Department said Trump could invoke the Defense Production Act to bulldoze state objections and restart Sable Offshore’s project, even though the same pipeline ruptured in 2015 and dumped more than 100,000 gallons of crude onto a nine-mile stretch of the Central Coast. The timing is not subtle. The opinion landed just after war broke out between the United States, Israel, and Iran, with oil markets entering roller-coaster mode and Washington suddenly rediscovering its passion for domestic supply. DOJ says Trump can “pre-empt the California laws currently impeding Sable” from restarting operations. California, unsurprisingly, sees this as a federal smash-and-grab dressed up as national necessity. — NY Times
👨⚖️ - EMIT HAPPENS — Another day, another blow traded between the Trump administration and the state of California. This time, it’s the USDOJ off the top rope, with the Department of Transportation tagging in for the clothesline. On Thursday, the feds sued to stop the state from enforcing its zero-emission vehicle rules, arguing California has effectively built its own national fuel-economy regime and forced carmakers to play along. Washington says that means higher prices, fewer choices, and a legal end-run around federal authority. The administration’s complaint calls California’s rules a “de facto market share quota for electric vehicles” and says they should be “declared unlawful and unenforceable.” AG Pam Bondi, never one to understate, branded the mandate “oppressive” and “expensive.” Also expensive? Litigation. - Courthouse News Service
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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: MUNI DIARIES
Muni Diaries is San Francisco’s public-transit confessional: born as a 2008 blog collecting weird, sweet and occasionally revolting rider stories, then upgraded into live shows and a podcast for commuting lore in the 415. It’s proof that life is 20 percent charm, 30 percent chaos, and 50 percent oversharing on the bus.— Muni Diaries
😵💫 🚗 😵💫 - THE REAL MYSTERY
The Mystery Spot is what happens when a roadside attraction, a physics prank, and a very California commitment to bit-making all marry in a slanted shack near Santa Cruz. You go in, stagger around, pretend gravity has resigned, and leave with the same souvenir as half the state: that bafflingly ubiquitous bumper sticker. This, of course, is the real mystery: Why are so many otherwise sticker-free drivers compelled to slap this one on their ride? Perhaps the sticker endures because Californians have never met a flimsy little shared delusion they didn’t want to make permanent. The Mystery Spot
🏃♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE
- 🚅 The Bay Area considers the unthinkable: Life without BART. NY Times
- 📺 Calling all Mad Men: $19M ad campaign to burnish CA’s image on tap. LA Times
- 👨⚖️ Federal judges in San Diego repeatedly ruling against ICE. San Diego Union-Tribune
- 😳 LA Marathon photo finish is one for the ages. LA Times
- 🏗️ CA Has 40,000 affordable housing units stalled by a single bottleneck. Calmatters
