Newsletter: Essential California: Donald Trump and Orange County’s GOP

Good morning. It is Tuesday, March 22. Dungeness crab is headed back onto menus in California. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife lifted the prohibition on fishing south of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line. Here’s what else is happening in the Golden State:

TOP STORIES

New plan

On the eve of a federal court hearing over the future of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook’s phone, federal agents announced they may have found a way to crack into the phone. The feds want time to see if they can get into the phone before battling Apple in court. The tech giant has refused the government’s request to break into the phone, arguing that doing so would compromise the security of their products. Los Angeles Times

Foiling the plot

Could authorities have prevented the Dec. 2 terrorist attack carried out by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife? Understanding individuals’ deepest motivations could be a clue to stopping future attacks. “But [the suspects] are talking to each other face to face, watching videos together face to face. Radicalizing in teeny tiny cliques of people is really difficult to find by surveillance,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago. Los Angeles Times

Future of GOP

The Republican Party in Orange County has spent years reaching out to Latino and Asian American voters, but any gains that have been made there may soon be wiped out thanks to Donald Trump. “How would you feel if someone insults your family and culture in that way and says that everyone who crosses the border are rapists and drug dealers?” said Maribel Marroquin, a 25-year-old Republican college student. Los Angeles Times

DROUGHT AND CLIMATE

Let it snow: A “March Miracle” has turned California into a snowy landscape. Reservoirs are filling back up and the Sierras are packed with snow. Los Angeles Times

Drought buster: But … there’s still a drought. “We see a very checkered history of what California experiences during El Niño,” said Martin Hoerling with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientific American

L.A. AT LARGE

Foster care: It was an emotional scene in Santa Clarita on Monday as social workers with Los Angeles County removed a 6-year-old girl from her longtime foster home. The child is part Choctaw, which means the federal Indian Child Welfare Act applies in her case. After living with her foster family for more than four years, the girl will move to Utah to live with her extended family. Los Angeles Times

New holiday: Los Angeles is moving forward with plans to make Indigenous Peoples Day a legal holiday. ”In approaching this topic … I asked myself, if not me who? And if not now, when?” said L.A. City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell. Los Angeles Times

Alternative energy: The Tijuana River, like the Los Angeles River, is encased in concrete. It’s about to become the new home of a solar farm. What can L.A. learn from this experiment? Los Angeles Times

Metro stop: The Metro Gold Line’s Little Tokyo station is finally open. That means service can finally run from Azusa to East Los Angeles. Curbed LA

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Latinos for Trump: Conservative Latinos are voting for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. “I am not anti-Hispanic at all. What I am is anti-breaking-the-law. People need to understand, illegal is not a race,” said one voter in Lincoln Heights. The New Yorker

Inappropriate behavior? Allegations of sexual misconduct against Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson will be aired tonight on the HBO show “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.” Twenty years ago, a 16-year-old girl alleged that Johnson, then a player with the Phoenix Suns, touched her inappropriately and showered with her. No charges were filed and Johnson denied the allegations. Sacramento Bee

Rally scheduled: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will host a rally today in San Diego. He’s expected to touch on his campaign themes: getting money out of politics, making public colleges tuition-free and fighting climate change. San Diego Union-Tribune

Political passing: A longtime staffer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein has died at age 78. Percy Pinkney met the senator in 1969 when he was a social worker in San Francisco. “Percy represented the best of public service — an unwavering devotion to the people of California and making their lives better,” Feinstein said. Los Angeles Times

CRIME AND COURTS

Drug bust: An airline employee ran away from the security line at LAX on Friday night after agents selected her for a random screening. Inside her bag, which she left behind at the TSA checkpoint, agents found 70 pounds of cocaine, which is worth about $2 million. The woman had not been arrested as of Monday. Los Angeles Times

Bizarre fire: A discarded mirrored-headboard set a Fresno carport ablaze Sunday. “A mirror is pretty much like a big magnifying glass,” said a spokesman with the Fresno Fire Department. The fire did about $15,000 in damage. Los Angeles Times

Into the archives: Feeling nostalgic for the Trial of the Century? Here are 50 photos from O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial. BuzzFeed

BUSINESS

Media mogul: The Orange County Register appears to have won the newspaper war against its longtime rival, the Los Angeles Times. Tribune Publishing, the L.A. Times’ parent company, missed its shot at owning the paper. Instead, Digital First Media scooped up the Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise. “Better to get nuked by Bulgaria instead of Russia, I guess.” OC Weekly

Family ties: The very complicated life of billionaire mogul Sumner Redstone involves business fights, family estrangement and the companionship of two attractive women. Those women were so confident they would inherit millions of dollars and homes after Redstone’s death that they went public last summer. And that’s when everything fell apart. Vanity Fair

#TheFuture: Twitter is now 10 years old. What’s CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey doing to prepare the company for the next decade? “If all goes according to plan, Dorsey, the Steve Jobs emulator, could bring Twitter its iPod moment and make it something with universal appeal.” Bloomberg

Modern love: The wife of billionaire Elon Musk has filed for divorce, again. Talulah Riley and Musk first married in 2010 and divorced in 2012. They remarried 18 months later, but filed for divorce on New Year’s Eve 2014. That petition was withdrawn seven months later. Associated Press

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Library of dead plants: In Berkeley, there’s a library with 2.3 million plant specimens. “Some of the most important classification and genetic-identification work is happening, not with new specimens harvested from the field, but with century-old ones called up from collections.” The Atlantic

Farming the land: Downtown L.A. has a new community garden. It’s in a patch of dirt next to a parking structure. LAist

L.A. art: Alex Israel. Bret Easton Ellis. And billboard art. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

San Francisco will have some clouds and a high of 60. Sacramento will have clouds and sun with a high of 61. Los Angeles will start with low clouds and then have sunshine with a high of 69. Riverside will be sunny and 70. San Diego will be breezy with a high of 66.

AND FINALLY

Today’s California Memory comes from Catherine Foster:

“In the ‘50s, as a kid my family regularly drove from Pasadena to visit grandparents in Oceanside. Here are the landmarks we looked for: A glimpse of the white peak of Disneyland’s Matterhorn. Miles of orange groves. The sharp left turn at the ocean. Lunch at the restaurant with a swordfish on the wall. The grizzled, old, long-haired ‘greeter’ in Laguna. Finally, pulling up at the house at 8th and Nevada (long demolished by the freeway), we’d step out and smell the tangy sea air.”

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

For the record: Yesterday’s newsletter incorrectly listed the year Secretary of State Alex Padilla was born. He was born in 1973.

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad.