David Thomas (Tom) Ford, a beloved husband, father, grand-father, and great-grand father, paramedic, firefighter, veteran, actor and larger-than-life figure in Ferndale, California, passed away at home on June 16th, 2025, at the age of 77. 

Tom, a Ferndale resident of 58 years, embodied the spirit of community. Born in Vermont, Tom and his family moved from their small farm in Bennington to Southern California when he was 6 years old. After graduating from Garden Grove High School in 1966, Tom hitchhiked across the U.S and into Canada, and eventually returned to the West Coast, joining the family in Ferndale where he helped to refurbish their new home, the historic Shaw House. It was there, shoveling gravel for the new driveway, that he met his wife of 55 years, Lorie Jean Titus. The rest, as they say, was history. 

After a short stint in Alaska serving in the U.S. Air Force in military intelligence, Tom was transferred to Omaha, Nebraska, where he spent his time analyzing photographs from the SR-71 spy plane. It was there that he and Lorie were married. Once discharged, Tom and Lorie returned to Ferndale with the addition of their first born, Greg. A few short years later the Fords grew by one when Sara joined them, completing their small family. 

Tom’s path was not a straight line, but it led straight through Humboldt for his remaining years. He explored his interest in marine biology, attending College of the Redwoods and then Humboldt State University; was a small business owner; worked in the lumber/pulp industry; and ultimately found his passion, working as a paramedic for City Ambulance. Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, Tom made an impact with colleagues and the community alike, making friends that would last a lifetime.

Tom was committed to his community almost as much as his family and found a hundred different ways to serve. With wife Lorie, he opened the Fern Café on main street, a high school hangout and town gathering place. He joined the Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department in 1977 serving as a firefighter on Company 3 and later as an EMT. With their help, he continued his studies, becoming a paramedic. He rose through the ranks from Lieutenant to Captain, Assistant Chief and ultimately Fire Chief. And he didn’t stop there, he joined the Arson Task Force and served on the Ferndale Fire Protection District Board even after retiring from active duty. He served as the department’s EMT-1 program director, CPR instructor, babysitter course coordinator and more, training generations of emergency responders and fellow Ferndalians. 

Tom also joined the community in other ways; he wrote a weekly column for the Ferndale Enterprise “Tom Foolery”, tried his acting chops in multiple musicals at the Ferndale Repertory Theater, he served on the school board, was a part of the museum’s annual event at the Ferndale Cemetery, and he even created the Ferndale Area Rapid Transit (F.A.R.T) and entered it in one of the first Kinetic Sculpture Races, delighting everyone with his humor.

Tom was truly a fixture in Ferndale. He supported the community as a volunteer, walking Russ Park cleaning up downfalls and repairing trails. He was a member of the Ferndale Hooligans, coming together each year to clean up Francis creek and protect the residences along main street. And most notably, he was the one who fearlessly scaled Ferndale’s massive Christmas Tree each winter to string the lights. 

No one that met him forgot him, from his patients who would refer to the “calm of Tom” to his family, friends, fellow firefighters, city ambulance crew, actors and more, Tom was bigger than life and no one will ever take his place. He will be missed by all. 

Tom was preceded in death by his parents, David and Marjorie Jeanette Ford, his sisters Dora and Jane Ford, his sister-in-law Catherine Ford and his niece Renee Ford. He is survived by his wife Lorie Jean (Titus), his son Greg Ford (and wife Dena) and their two daughters Kelli and Jodi. His daughter Sara Cortes (and husband Michael) and their three children Alissa (Sean) and their two children Griffin and Joanna, Ethan (Ashley) and Elena. 

Tom also leaves behind his brother Tim (Sheila) his nieces and nephews, Sharon (Mark) Gary (Debbie) Brian, Emily, Lauren (Mathew) and Jonathan. As well, he will be missed by the extended Titus family. 

Tom was proud of Ferndale, of HIS town, of those he taught and worked with, but no one could be prouder of his family, his wife/children/grandchildren and their commitment to service than Tom/Dad/Papa was. From firefighters, veterans, instructors and medical professionals they have followed his path and are serving their communities just as he served his. 

“A legacy is not leaving something for people. It’s leaving something IN people.”

A memorial will be held for Tom at the Community Church on Main Street in Ferndale at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 28th, 2025, followed by a celebration of life at the Portuguese Hall in Ferndale. 

In lieu of flowers, please consider providing a donation to the Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department or the Ferndale Repertory Theater.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Tom Ford’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

On May 16, 2025, Rita Consuelo Orlandini lost her long battle with cancer. With her passing, we lost a warrior woman who meant so much to so many.

Rita was born on April 29, 1941, in Vallejo, California, to Cecilia Orlandini (Keiser), a city clerk, and Antonio (Tony) Orlandini, the Vallejo Assistant Postmaster and the Northern California Superintendent of U.S. Mail. She grew up with an older sister, Mary, a younger brother, Anthony (Tony), and extended family living in the same neighborhood. She graduated from St. Vincent High School with honors in 1959, receiving a scholarship to Dominican College in San Rafael. With her thick, long, wavy blonde hair, Rita would have been the envy of every influencer today. She sang in several choral groups, and often broke spontaneously into song: sometimes old favorites, other times impromptu verses that bubbled with her joie de vivre. Her indescribable laughter helped form the camaraderie of every group she joined. She graduated from college in 1963 with a degree in American Studies and a teaching credential. 

After graduation, she began her teaching career in San Rafael, CA. It was at that time that she met her first husband at a garden party at the Mare Island Naval Base in Vallejo. Thomas Rossa was a recent graduate of the United States Naval Academy, specializing in nuclear submarines. They married in 1964 and moved to the East Coast, where their daughter Jeannine and son Steve were born. When the marriage ended in 1973, Rita returned to California, where she and the children settled in Humboldt County.

Rita was passionate about sparking and nurturing children’s curiosity about art, music, and nature. Rita co-founded “Centering School,” with Stewart Sundet, an HSU art professor. The school was a small, experiential, art and nature-centered K-6 — decades ahead of its time. Rita was a powerful driving force supporting her students desire to learn; she remained in close contact with most of her fellow teachers and former students and their parents throughout her life. It was while she was teaching at Centering School that she met her second husband, Scott Sway. With Scott, Rita added supporting the Northcoast Environmental Center, rehabilitating wildlife, and outdoor adventures to her already full and vibrant life.

After a decade, Rita took a position with the Humboldt County Office of Education as the leader of their Science Action Mobile (SAM). Rita led a team to design hands-on exhibits and lesson plans on specific science topics such as the oceans, the moon and the human heart. Rita drove a 35-foot trailer to every elementary school, no matter how remote, where she taught classes and led the children through the hands-on activities in SAM. When the SAM program ended, Rita became a science education consultant. Eventually, her second marriage ended. 

Rita was later asked to be part of the California Science Implementation Network, designing new state-wide science curricula with an exciting team of science teachers. It was here that she met Jim Knerl, the love of her life, whom she married in 1992. They relocated to San Francisco, where she earned a master’s degree in science education (in her 50’s!). In 1994, they moved to Humboldt County, where she taught “big ideas” as the 7th grade science teacher at Winship Junior High School in Eureka. Always the innovator, Rita received a grant to involve her students with hands-on native plant restoration, even building a greenhouse for the kids to raise plants.

After retiring from Winship, Rita fulfilled her childhood dream of being a cowgirl with the purchase of her first horse, the second love of her life, her Appaloosa mare, Frannie. With a desire to have Frannie on their property, Rita and Jim moved to Southern Oregon in 2005. During the next 14 years, Rita and Jim became famous for their yearly Oktoberfests: food, music, and dancing with Rita in her dirndl and Jim in his lederhosen. With her usual enthusiasm, Rita joined a book club, a calligraphy club, and several riding groups; took yoga classes; became a certified Master Gardener; and sang with a local choir. She and Jim were also big supporters of the arts.

In 2019, they returned to Humboldt County. Rita stated that she would not join any group, and she stuck to it. This was in part due to her declining health — a third bout of cancer in 2022. Then in just two years, she was struck again. This time it was untreatable. She entered Hospice care while remaining at home. She died at home after many visits from family, friends and former students. 

She is survived by her husband, James Knerl, her children Jeannine Rossa and Steve Rossa (Sabine), her stepdaughter Alison Peltz (Danny), her stepson Joel Knerl, and her grandchildren Zoe, Gregor, Kelsey, River, and Benedikt. She is also survived by her sister, Mary Smart, her brother, Anthony Orlandini (Judy), her Aunt Dixie Paussa, and all of their children and grandchildren. She is also survived by many dear friends from childhood, college, teaching, horse activities, the Rogue Valley years, and of course, the SOPs. She is preceded in death by her parents and many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins.

There will be two celebrations of Rita’s life. The first will occur at the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bayside, California (Humboldt County) on Sunday, July 13th at 2:00 p.m. You are welcome to bring desserts, stories, and music to share. The second will be a requiem mass on Saturday, July 19th at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Grants Pass, Oregon at 11:00 a.m. This will be followed by a light lunch and more sharing of stories and music.

In lieu of cards and flowers, we are asking you to consider donations to Hospice of Humboldt; the Equamore Horse Sanctuary in Ashland, Oregon; Miranda’s Animal Rescue in Fortuna, California; or to some environmental organization you may already support.

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(AUDIO) Brandon Dixon talks Humboldt Crabs on KHUM

Let’s talk Humboldt Crabs baseball with Brandon Dixon!

Dixon, a longtime beat writer and friend o’ the Humboldt Crabs, recently popped by the KHUM studios to discuss all things baseball (terminology, roster spots, road trips, coaching notes, etc.) with Toby in the Morning as we delve into another exciting season with our favorite minor league team.

Dixon tiptoed very close to the edge of professional baseball before an injury sidelined him, but not before he made it to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) College World Series twice. As a pitcher, he brings more to the field than just his writing prowess — he brings deep knowledge of the sport.

The Crabbies are off to a hot start this season, but is it sustainable? Can they make a run at the championship now that they’re part of conference play in the Pacific Empire League? Click “play” on the link up top for Dixon’s take!

Honey bees across the country are under attack from tiny, eight-legged parasitic mites. These mites burrow between the segments of the bees’ adult bodies or invade their larvae and infect them with viruses — deforming their wings and leaving them flightless.

That’s not only problematic for the bees — whose entire colonies can be destroyed by an unchecked mite invasion — but also for California, which relies on the bees for its food production and economy.

Earlier this month the state Assembly overwhelmingly passed a bill that would direct the California Department of Food and Agriculture to establish a health program for managed honey bees. The department would work with beekeepers, farmers, scientists, agricultural commissioners and other stakeholders to provide grants for projects and research that support managed honey bees.

“Without our honey bees, we are at risk of losing jobs and a huge part of our economy,” said Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Stockton Democrat and co-author of the bill author. “This (bill) is integral at maintaining our ability to be self-sustaining and contributing to healthy foods in the U.S. and across the world.”

Another Central Valley lawmaker, Republican Assemblymember Heather Hadwick of Redding, co-authored the bill.

Honey bees and mites

Compared to carpenter bees or bumble bees, honey bees are much more manageable pollinators that build stronger and bigger colonies. They’re essential for pollinating California’s most lucrative crops, including cherries, melons and almonds. California almonds are a multibillion-dollar industry, and the pollination of California almond orchards serves as the largest honey bee migration in the world.

In 2024, California bees also produced 13.3 million pounds of honey — nearly 10% of the country’s supply — valued at $32.8 million.

But beginning in the late 1980s, Varroa mites originally native to Asia began infiltrating bee colonies in the U.S. By the early 2000s, they were “in everyone’s hives,” said Ryan Burris, the president of the California State Beekeepers Association and a third generation beekeeper.

Pesticides and other pest management methods stabilized the bee population over the decades somewhat. But commercial honey bee deaths have been soaring in the U.S. in recent years, and the reason why remains unclear. Between June 2024 and March 2025, beekeepers lost 1.6 million colonies — an average of 62% of their colonies. This nationwide scarcity has also given rise to more beehive thefts.

Besides the mites, honey bees are threatened by pesticides, habitat loss and a lack of food and nutrition. Each hazard presents its own problems, but the mites in particular have vexed beekeepers.

Killing the mites with pesticides is complex: The mites have grown resistant to some chemicals, so beekeepers have to routinely swap out different pesticides while trying to avoid contaminating the bees’ honey with large doses of chemicals. The financial losses due to mites can be staggering, according to Burris.

“There’s a time when you’re treating, treating, treating. You want to give the bees a break but the mites just come back,” Burris said. “They blow up, and all the money you spent trying to save and treat the bees is out the door. It’s totally disheartening because this is our livelihood. A hive can get you almond pollination money; pollination money off of other crops; and honey.”

A health program for bees

The Managed Honeybee Health Program proposed by Ransom and Hadwick would provide grants to help beekeepers and farmers plant more crops for bees to forage on; buy feed; or purchase probiotics to improve the bees’ health, among other things

The program would be funded either through the state, nonstate, federal and private funds or a combination. Funding for the grants would likely range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the low millions, while operating costs, such as staff to manage contracts, would cost in the low hundreds of thousands, according to Carson Knight, a legislative aide for Ransom’s office.

While there is no formal opposition to the proposal, securing the funding could be a tough sell for lawmakers as they grapple with a $12 billion budget shortfall.

The bill is currently before the Senate Agriculture Committee, where it could be considered as early as mid-July. Until then, Burris said he is crossing his fingers that the measure, if signed into law, will help the beekeeping industry.

“Bees are so important,” Burris said. Without the bees, “you can take out three-quarters of your supermarket.”

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Gov. Gavin Newsom is open to giving California public employees a temporary break on his return-to-office mandate.

The union representing about 14,000 state engineers today announced a deal that would delay Newsom’s order that they return to work four days a week for one year. It was supposed to take effect July 1.

The Professional Engineers in California Government disclosed that agreement alongside a new contract that includes some concessions Newsom wanted to trim payroll expenses as he tries to shore up a $12 billion budget deficit.

Workers represented by the union will get a 3% raise next week, but it will be offset by mandatory unpaid time off that would basically negate the pay increase for two years. Additional raises will take effect in 2027. That’s similar to the terms of a deal Newsom made last week with the union representing state prison guards.

“The package includes two pay raises and an immediate halt to the four-day return-to-office order for our members. In this budget environment, those are important achievements,” union executive director Ted Toppin said in a written statement.

Governors often grant similar perks to different labor organizations, and that history suggests many other state workers could get a one-year reprieve from the full return-to-office mandate.

Newsom embraced telework policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and unions negotiated work-from-home stipends for public employees. Many of them felt they were as productive as ever, and they were happy to avoid expensive transportation and parking costs.

Newsom brought public employees back to the office twice a week last year, and ordered a bigger move to four-days-a-week in May.

As of May, about 108,000 state employees worked from home at least one day a week, the state human resources director told lawmakers at a recent hearing.

The engineers union was one of several that contested Newsom’s mandate, including filing a lawsuit against the governor in Sacramento Superior Court. The union agreed to drop the lawsuit in its new agreement with Newsom.

Lawmakers have taken unions’ side, writing a letter earlier this month that urged Newsom to push back the mandate and grilling Newsom’s representatives in May over what they considered to be thin details on what the change would cost and how it would be implemented.

“This is pretty bewildering,” Democratic Assemblyman Matt Haney of San Francisco said at the May hearing. “So is this, is this supposed to go into effect for everyone on July 1st and that everybody would be expected to come back four days on that day?”

Contracts for five more public employee unions are scheduled to expire next week. The largest labor organization in state government, Service Employees International Union Local 1000, announced that it filed a legal challenge over the return to office mandate last week. It represents about 100,000 workers.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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Press release from the City of Fortuna:

The City of Fortuna will once again host a promotional give-away for Exceptional Quality (EQ) Class A compost for beneficial reuse as a soil amendment to your property or place of residence beginning on Monday July 7th and continuing until Thursday July 17th.The Days of the giveaway are Monday through Thursday If supplies remain then appointments can be made to pick compost up by calling (707) 725-1476.

Loading hours will be from 9:00am to 3:00pm each day at our facility located at 180 Dinsmore Drive.  As per the City’s Biosolids Management Plan, the public will be limited to 2½ cubic yards (roughly one full-size pickup truck load) of material per address per year. Small pickup trucks should hold 1½ cubic yards. Everyone will be required to sign a “Hold Harmless” release of liability, when picking up the compost. Drivers must have proper tarps for covering compost while transporting from the facility. Tarps are NOT provided by the City. No pickups with canopies will be loaded by City staff.

Please use the Corporation Yard entrance (2nd gate past the bridge) when picking up the compost. Vehicles entering the Corporation Yard can proceed directly to the loading area by following the signs. If you have any questions, you may call (707) 725-1476.

In 1994, a 26-year-old Alex Padilla, sporting a newly minted engineering degree from MIT, was back at home living with his parents in the San Fernando Valley when that fall’s most heated ballot measure campaign dragged him into a life of politics.

Proposition 187, the Save Our State initiative, would bar undocumented immigrants across California from using public schools, taxpayer-funded social services and non-emergency medical care.

“I had to get involved, so that families like mine, communities like mine, would not continue to be scapegoated or targeted,” Padilla, whose parents emigrated to the United States from Mexico, said in an interview in 2018.

That attitude put him in the political minority at the time. Backed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican who made the campaign a centerpiece of his reelection, Prop. 187 passed with a commanding 58%, including majorities in 51 out of 58 counties. That included Padilla’s Los Angeles County, where it won by eight percentage points.

California has changed in the three decades since, a political and cultural transformation that is in many ways personified by Padilla’s career. In just a single generation, the political clout immigrants hold in California has soared. So have the legal protections afforded even to those immigrants who are unauthorized to live here. On the whole, public opinion on immigration policy, border security and the rightful role of immigrants in American life has inverted from 31 years ago. Prop. 187 was voided by a federal judge shortly after its passage, but its effect on California politics endures.

Case in point: Padilla, the reluctant young activist, is now the first Latino U.S. senator to represent California. In that role he has become one of the most visible symbols of the clash of values between the nativism of President Donald Trump’s administration and California’s liberal consensus on immigration. After last week’s jarring altercation, in which Padilla was forcibly removed from a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and briefly handcuffed, elected officials across California lined up to lionize and defend him.

This isn’t Pete Wilson’s California anymore.

Immigration policy a ‘settled issue’ in California

Pollster Mark Baldassare has been chronicling the change for decades. In 1998, he and his colleagues at the Public Policy Institute of California began asking Californians a simple question: Are immigrants a “benefit” or a “burden” to California?

Respondents were evenly split in the first survey. Ever since, a majority — one that has grown with each decade — has come to see immigrants as a boon to our state. In February, when PPIC most recently asked the question, 72% of respondents chose “benefit.” That included 91% of Democrats and 73% of political independents, though only 31% of Republicans.

“This is pretty much a settled issue,” said Baldassarre.

Part of that sweeping change can be explained by the state’s shifting demographics. If the U.S. is the land of immigrants, California is doubly so. More than a quarter of the state’s population was born abroad, and almost half of California’s children were born to an immigrant parent. More than half of California’s immigrants are naturalized U.S. citizens.And California’s immigrant community is diverse: 49% are originally from Latin American countries and 41% from Asia. For the past decade, more immigrants from Asia have entered California than from Latin America.

But California’s changing demographics are only part of the reason immigration politics have seen such a radical shift in such a relatively short period of time, said Adrian Pantoja, a political science and Chicano studies professor at Pitzer College in Claremont.

Graduating students at the Fresno State Chicano/Latino Commencement Celebration in the Save Mart Center in Fresno on May 18, 2024. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

It’s not a law of nature that Latinos and other demographic groups with sizable immigrant populations should favor the Democratic Party. Plenty of Latinos and Asian Americans, for example, hold traditionally conservative opinions — on specific border and immigration-related policies and a host of other issues.

Had the GOP “reached out effectively to Latinos, to Asian American voters — populations that were inclined and trending toward the Republican Party” the state GOP might still be an electoral force, said Pantoja.

Instead, the state party hitched its political future to a ballot measure aimed at penalizing undocumented immigrants and their children — and hasn’t won a statewide race since 2006.Still, as in much of the nation, Latino support for Republicans in the last presidential election ticked up in California. In nine of 12 counties where Latinos are the largest demographic group, support for Trump increased from 4 to 6 percentage points between the last two presidential contests, depending on the county.

The legacy of Proposition 187

Three decades after that great California political rupture, the fruits of Prop. 187 are apparent in who holds power in California.

Padilla is California’s senior U.S. senator. Both chambers of the state Legislature have elected Latino leaders — Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas of Salinas and Senate President Pro Tem-elect Monique Limón of Santa Barbara. In the early 1990s, the count of Latinos in the Legislature bounced around the single digits. Today, there are a combined 42 members in the Democratic and Republican parties’ respective Latino caucuses out of 120 members.

That rise in political power has translated to changes in policy.

In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 54, California’s sanctuary state law that largely bars state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. The bill’s author, Kevin de Leon, also traces his start in politics to Prop. 187.

More recently, the state has expanded Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for low-income Californians and those with disabilities, to all immigrants without legal status. Newsom signed successive expansions into law starting in 2020.

Where Prop. 187 was authored to deprive undocumented immigrants of social services, California’s Medi-Cal expansion was its antithesis.The generational impact of that ballot measure was demonstrated in 2010, when immigrants were mobilized to vote and shift the state further to the left.By then, a quarter of the state’s electorate was Latino, said Thad Kousser, a professor of California politics at UC San Diego.

“Latinos become this voting block that helps deliver the state to Jerry Brown, and then the state becomes Democratic in every single statewide office, in every election” since, he said.That year, Brown defeated billionaire businesswoman Meg Whitman in an acrimonious gubernatorial race, showcasing California as an outlier in the national red wave and ending a run in which Republicans won the governor’s race six times out of the previous eight elections. Democrats lost no congressional seats in California even as the party was routed nationally.By 2016, the respective leaders of the State Assembly and Senate were Latino, a first in California.

First: Hundreds of protesters gathered at Los Angeles City Hall to demonstrate against the “Save Our State” proposition, Prop. 187 on Nov. 7, 1994. Photo by Nick Ut, AP Photo Last: Former California Gov. Pete Wilson addresses members of The Employers Group at Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, on July 18, 1995. During the breakfast meeting, Wilson talked about his views on affirmative action. Photo by Rene Macura, AP Photo

But not all efforts to reverse the conservatism of the 1990s in California have succeeded. In 2020, a ballot measure to largely reverse the state’s ban on using race, ethnicity or gender as factors in public university admissions and government grant-making failed to woo voters. In the state’s population center of Los Angeles County, a majority of Asian voters shot down the proposal while only 55% of Latino voters backed it.And immigrants or their children make up a sizable chunk of the GOP in the state capital. When voters in 2020 elected Redlands Republican Rosilicie Ochoa-Bogh, the child of Mexican immigrants, she became the first GOP Latina state senator in California’s history. Today the Republican Senate caucus has at least three members who are immigrants or whose parents were born abroad, according to their public biographies — 30% of the caucus. Before being elected to the Assembly as a Republican, Tri Ta became the first Vietnamese American to serve as mayor of a U.S. city.

Medi-Cal rollback shifts views

Recent polling shows the latest wave of Medi-Cal expansions may have gone too far even for California’s immigrant-friendly electorate. A majority of Californians — 58% — oppose health coverage for immigrants without permanent legal status, according to PPIC’s June 2025 survey.

Other polls show a majority of likely voters still support health insurance for immigrants.

This mixed picture emerges as California grapples with a third successive fiscal year of multibillion-dollar deficits and sharply increasing Medi-Cal costs. While those data may indicate softening political support for the boldest of California’s policies aimed at helping undocumented immigrants, it doesn’t spell a political realignment, said Kousser.

“California moved so far to the left that there’s almost nowhere to go other than the slight counter-reaction,” he said.

Baldassare of PPIC agreed, saying the Medi-Cal survey results may simply reflect a growing concern about the state’s finances. He noted that Newsom has proposed freezing enrollment.On some other measures affecting immigrants, Democratic lawmakers and Newsom have diverged. Last year the Legislature approved a bill to essentially adopt a novel legal theory to permit public college students without legal authorization in the U.S. to work on their campuses. Newsom vetoed the bill.

Anti-ICE protests: A new Prop. 187 moment?

There is some indication that California’s philosophical support for immigrants is, at least in part, accelerated by Trump. The share of respondents who called immigrants a “benefit” in PPIC’s surveys shot up during the first Trump administration and ebbed during Joe Biden’s stint in the White House. The most recent survey, the first since Trump returned to power, saw another spike.

That has some immigrant rights advocates hoping that the Trump administration’s current sweeping deportation policy will galvanize a new generation of political activists in California.

“Whether it’s post-Prop. 187 or post-9/11 for middle eastern South Asian communities, at some point you realize that you are being endlessly and inhumanely targeted and if you don’t speak up, and if you don’t practice your First Amendment rights, and if you’re not civically engaged, then you’ll be taken advantage of,” said Masih Fouladi, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. “I think those are really the things that brought people together then, and what are bringing people to the streets now.”

He said if he were asked a few months ago whether California elected leaders were shifting to the center on immigration, he’d have said yes. But Trump’s immigration raids in Los Angeles are “allowing elected officials to come out more strongly” against the apprehensions, he said. Christian Arana, vice president of policy at the Latino Community Foundation, was just six years old when Prop. 187 was on the ballot. He has distinct memories of marching with his family, everyone clad in white shirts, surrounded by a wide array of his neighbors chanting delightfully brash slogans about someone named Pete Wilson.

“For six-year-old me, what I understood was that my parents, my neighbors, my community was under attack because some man — in that case the governor of California — was blaming California’s problems on them,” he said. “I wonder how young children are experiencing this moment now.”Fifteen-year-old Nathon Ponce has an answer: He feels vulnerable. The rising high school sophomore at USC Hybrid High College Prep stood with his aunt several hundred feet from law enforcement as they fired projectiles and less-lethal rounds at protesters in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. He wants to see the government create a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants without that status, “instead of pushing them away.”

More broadly, he was there to support his community, which “some people consider a vulnerable group, like Hispanics and low-income working people,” he said. “And I just want to show my support by, like, actually attending a protest.”

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