The future arrives this week carrying a pink slip. Sacramento is trying to cushion AI’s job wreckage while the grid sputters, Huntington Beach gets the bill for its housing defiance, and the governor balances the budget atop a tech-stock trampoline. Elsewhere: wildfire warnings, CEQA fights, the storied history of blue jeans, and California’s most recent volcanic eruption, because who doesn’t love a volcano story?

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THE LEAD: SACRAMENTO VS. THE ROBOTS

California, having perfected the art of inventing the future and then exporting the resulting manufacturing jobs to Texas, has introduced a new wrinkle into its time-tested model. This week, Gov. Newsom signed what's billed as the country's first executive order aimed at softening AI's blow to jobs, directing state agencies to explore enhanced severance, subsidized employment, retraining, stock compensation and worker-ownership models. The universe obliged the moment, dropping a spate of tech layoffs that landed with the subtlety of a grand piano dropped off of a third-floor balcony. Meta began laying off 8,000 workers, Intuit culled hundreds of jobs in San Diego, LinkedIn announced fresh cuts, and Bay Area tech layoffs blew past 5,000 for the year. The LA Times even found a hiking group for laid-off tech workers that rapidly grew from three people to 600 — because nothing says “innovation economy” like networking on a trail after your badge stops working. Newsom called for “a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. economy,” floating universal basic capital and wage replacement. The instinct — recognizing that AI displacement is real, fast, and politically radioactive — is correct. The risk, as always in California, is that the executive order becomes the policy instead of producing one. Add in OpenAI's recent white paper proposing four-day workweeks and automation taxes, and a curious counter-signal from Strada showing senior talent leaders expect AI to increase entry-level hiring 2.7-to-1, and the picture is less “robots are taking over” than “nobody has any idea what's coming, and California is on a compressed shot clock to figure it out.”

CALMATTERS, SF CHRONICLE, POLITICO

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🤫 Everything you should know

⚡ WE’LL TAKE THE GRID. HOLD THE GRID. — Ask any Californian if they want a cleaner, more reliable power grid and you will get the same answer: obviously, yes, please, and could we have it now? Ask where the 140-mile transmission line should go, and the consensus evaporates faster than the Sierra snowpack. SDG&E's proposed 500-kilovolt route through Anza-Borrego — the state's largest park, beloved for its silence and its stars — landed this week to the predictable chorus: essential infrastructure, says CAISO; ruinous intrusion, says everyone who has ever pitched a tent there. They are both right, which is what makes this hard. While we argue, PG&E had to shut off 46,000 customers as the first real wind of the season blew through. The grid we have is already failing on schedule. The grid we want is stuck in environmental review. And in Berkeley, where home sellers must now earn credits for installing heat-pump clothes dryers, the climate transition has been politely outsourced to laundry rooms. — San Diego Union Tribune | SF Chronicle | Mercury News

🏘️ SURF CITY EATS THE CHECK — Huntington Beach spent years treating California’s housing element law like optional beach reading. The state courts have now suggested otherwise, with a bill attached. Starting June 1, Surf City must pay $160,000, plus $50,000 every month “until the city cures the violation,” with the money going to help other California cities comply with housing law — a pointed little civic allowance for the adults in the room. Attorney General Rob Bonta called it a “costly lesson,” which is polite legalese for: congratulations, you made an example of yourself. The ruling is a major test of California’s housing accountability push, and the result is hard to miss: state mandates are no longer decorative, courts are willing to enforce them, and cities that refuse to plan for housing can now expect invoices instead of indulgence. The message is blunt: build, or start budgeting for your own stubbornness. — Voice of OC

💰 - MAY REVISE MAGIC TRICK — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May Revise performs the neat Sacramento magic trick of making California’s structural deficit disappear through July 2028 — at least on paper, where all good budget miracles begin. The engine is an AI-fueled capital gains boom, giving lawmakers enough surprise revenue to delay the uglier cuts that were recently stalking the General Fund. The plan also puts $300 million toward cushioning the end of enhanced ACA subsidies and, more concretely, waives impact fees for affordable housing projects that co-apply for state funds — an actual pro-supply housing move, not just another ribbon-cutting in PowerPoint form. But “structural” is doing heroic work here. A budget balanced on capital gains from a single volatile boom is less fiscal reform than a champagne toast on a trapdoor. Legislators should humbly take the win, check their worst budgetary impulses, and remember: when NASDAQ sneezes, Sacramento checks its pulse. — CA Governor’s Office

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👴🏽 📜 ⌛ — THIS WEEK IN CALIFORNIA HISTORY

Image by ChatGPT

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May 19, 1873 — Double Denim-ite

Levi Strauss and Reno tailor Jacob Davis lock down a patent for putting metal rivets in the pockets of denim work pants—giving birth to the “waist overalls” we now call blue jeans. Designed to survive the grueling labor of California's mines and ranches, blue jeans went from utilitarian gear to global uniform, which is very California: invent something practical, accidentally conquer the planet, then pretend it was all part of the brand strategy.

May 20, 1944 — Goof Troop Origins
Disney’s Mickey’s Revue introduced a scruffy, cackling audience member named Dippy Dawg, later rebranded as Goofy — proof that even cartoon dogs can benefit from strategic repositioning. Burbank was already building the machinery of global pop culture while Northern California was still several decades away from digitizing commerce…and everything else. Before Silicon Valley scaled disruption, Southern California scaled childhood itself. Terrifyingly efficient, really.

May 21, 1952 — The Cold War Gets a Spreadsheet
IBM announced the Model 701, its first electronic computer, built to help aircraft manufacturers, military labs, and defense contractors chew through calculations too tedious for humans and too expensive to get wrong. Before Silicon Valley became a petting zoo of hoodies, pitch decks, and kombucha taps, California tech was vacuum tubes, federal money, and Cold War anxiety with a power cord.

May 22, 1915 — Lassen Makes a Point

Lassen Peak erupted with theatrical force, hurling ash 200 miles and giving Shasta County an unsolicited redesign. It was a useful memo from the planet: California may adore permits, subdivisions, and master plans, but the landscape remains the senior partner in this partnership. We can pave, zone, irrigate, and subdivide all we want. Every so often, the earth clears its throat and reminds us all who actually holds the deed.

May 23, 1976 — The Judgment of Paris

‍In a blind tasting in France, upstart California wines shocked the global elite by beating out the finest French vintages in both the Chardonnay and Cabernet categories. The modern Napa Valley wine industry — now a multi-billion-dollar economic engine — was born. Turns out, California’s combination of ideal sunshine and rule-breaking agricultural science could beat centuries of European tradition.

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NEW NCC POLL IN THE NEWS

The Orange County Register reported on our most recent statewide poll. Free to OC Register subscribers:

“What do Californian’s care about this election cycle? New poll breaks it all down.”

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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1. 🏢 A Wall Street Journal investigation finds LA's 2022 “mansion tax” has dramatically chilled apartment construction — one developer walked from an 8-story, 100-unit project, leaving the lot with “eight derelict apartments, a few small businesses, and a vacant palm-reading shop.” - WSJ
   
   
2. 🏠 When people identify reasons why it takes so long to build anything in California, CEQA, the state's landmark environmental review law, is typically high on the list. Come November, voters will likely be asked whether they want to significantly streamline the law's requirements. - Reason
   
   
3. 👨‍⚖️When Rob Daly, the owner of Petaluma’s Avid Coffee, received an unsolicited email in August 2024 from a defense attorney seeking to represent him — the offer attached in PDF form, no less — he figured it had to be a joke. Several weeks later, the lawsuit arrived. “This is a well-oiled scam,” remarked another targeted business owner. - Press Democrat
   
   
4. 🔥 California fire chiefs are calling three early-season wildfires already burning across Southern California a "wake-up call" for what promises to be a brutal summer, with more than 17,000 under evacuation orders. - East Bay Times
   
   
5. 🧑‍🎓 California is seeing record-high college graduation rates, but a staggering cost of living and broken transfer pathways are still leaving too many students behind. PPIC weighs in on how the next governor must modernize an outdated system to protect student success and keep California’s workforce competitive. - PPIC

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