Newsletter: Essential California: A top-secret desert assembly plant ramps up to build the B-21 bomber

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It is Saturday, Nov. 11 — Veterans Day. Here’s what you don’t want to miss this weekend:

TOP STORIES

Out in the desert: A once-empty parking lot at Northrop Grumman Corp.’s top-secret aircraft plant in Palmdale is now jammed with cars that pour in during the predawn hours. More than a thousand new employees are working for the time being in rows of temporary trailers, a dozen tan-colored tents and a vast assembly hangar at the desert site near the edge of urban Los Angeles County. It is here that Northrop is building the Air Force’s new B-21 bomber, a stealthy, bat-winged jet designed to slip behind any adversary’s air defense system and deliver devastating airstrikes for decades to come. Los Angeles Times

Taking stock a year later: A year after his election, President Trump remains wildly unpopular in California, and the state’s voters are split over whether members of Congress should work with him when possible, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll has found. The percentage of voters favoring cooperation overall — 47% — dropped somewhat when it came to Trump’s immigration policies, which the state’s Democratic officeholders have fought with legislation and lawsuits. Los Angeles Times

Plus: Most California voters would scrap the higher gas tax and vehicle fees recently approved by the Legislature to provide money to repair the state’s roads and bridges and improve mass transit, according to the poll. Los Angeles Times

UCLA basketball’s problems in China: The young American athletes took a detour to the Chinese lakeside town of Hangzhou on their way to play basketball. Now, in a bizarre situation that has entangled some of college sports’ most promising players, three may not be able to leave it. Los Angeles Times

Out in Santa Monica: A Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board member has been casting votes that benefited construction management and financial advisory companies without disclosing that her husband does business with those firms, school board records as well as sworn testimony show. Los Angeles Times

Remembering the veterans: Tens of thousands of former members of the armed services will spend Veterans Day homeless — living on the streets or in vehicles or in shelters. Nowhere is the number of homeless vets larger than in Los Angeles County, where there are about 4,800 by the latest count, a 57% increase over last year. Los Angeles Times

AROUND CALIFORNIA

Investigation ends: The Los Angeles Police Department has ended its investigation into actor Corey Feldman’s allegations of sexual abuse and will not seek charges. A statement issued by the LAPD on Thursday said the occurrence Feldman reported was too old to be prosecuted. Los Angeles Times

A camp is cleared: Roughly 150 homeless people who have set up camp in the past year along a quiet trail overlooking the Santa Ana River in Fountain Valley feel they’ve found safety and camaraderie there. However, beginning Friday morning, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department began evicting them. Los Angeles Times

Rohrabacher in the news: “Investigators for Special Counsel Robert Mueller are questioning witnesses about an alleged September 2016 meeting between Mike Flynn, who later briefly served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a staunch advocate of policies that would help Russia.” NBC News

More on Ratner: Ellen Page says director Brett Ratner crudely outed her as gay at a meet and greet for the cast and crew of “X-Men: The Last Stand” when she was 18 years old. She also says making a Woody Allen movie is the biggest regret of her career in an industry where inappropriate sexual behavior is “ubiquitous.” Los Angeles Times

Big investigation: “The U.S. military helped fuel labor abuse at America’s largest ports by relying on trucking companies to move goods even after they violated labor laws and were found to have cheated drivers out of fair pay.” USA Today

Elections: You’ve heard the phrase “all politics is local”? California Republicans had better hope so. Given the blue wave of Democratic victories that swept the East Coast, some say it’s inevitable that association with President Trump will take a toll on the state GOP’s already slim prospects for many wins in 2018. CalMatters

What went wrong? In the aftermath of deadly fires that swept through Mendocino County last month, officials are trying to explain why air raid sirens remained silent. Nine people died in the Oct. 9 fire in Redwood Valley, where it took more than an hour for the sheriff’s department to begin evacuation alerts. Both Redwood Valley and nearby Potter Valley have air raid sirens but they were not used warn residents. Los Angeles Times

New big building alert:As workers complete the plaza outside and prepare the upper floors for the future tenants of the Salesforce Tower, the building’s effect on San Francisco’s physical and social landscape already is profound. San Francisco Chronicle

Coming soon: Recreational marijuana is now legal for adults in California, which could bring a massive boom in drug sales and advertising when stores can begin selling the drug without a prescription in January. But it’s bringing a new challenge, too. NPR

THIS WEEK’S MOST POPULAR STORIES IN ESSENTIAL CALIFORNIA

1. Who’s next? High anxiety in Hollywood. Los Angeles Times

2. Kevin Spacey’s behavior on the set of “House of Cards” reportedly wasn’t a secret. Buzzfeed

3. A KTVU reporter was robbed of her purse in a Costco parking lot. San Francisco Chronicle

4. Spacey’s unprecedented fall from grace tests a stunned Hollywood. Los Angeles Times

5. East Coast Republicans pushed back against Trump’s tax plan. Why didn’t California’s GOP? Los Angeles Times

ICYMI, HERE ARE THIS WEEK’S GREAT READS

Amazing story: Highway 1 was buried under a massive landslide. Months later, engineers battle Mother Nature to fix it. Ever since May, when a near-vertical slope of mountain collapsed at a place called Mud Creek, teams of geologists and engineers have clawed over rocks and boulders, through brush and chaparral, to come up with a plan for reconnecting this severed artery.The rebuilt highway, they decided, would lie on top of the slide, and the California Department of Transportation, manager of the $40-million project, hopes to see traffic flowing by the end of next summer. Los Angeles Times

Manson fanatics: Read here about one writer’s on-again off-again fascination with the Manson killings and the cultural phenomenon it spawned. The Believer

History lesson: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Los Angeles bomb scare and the shadows of history and tragedy. Boom California

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad.