Billing herself as an "actual moderate" to contrast with the three other main candidates running for San Francisco's seat in the US House of Representatives, former Republican Trump appointee to the Presidio Trust Marie Hurabiell seems to think she has a shot in November.

Let's just say that trying to cast Scott Wiener as anything but moderate in a San Francisco election — particularly one in which he has already been forced to reverse his stance on whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza — seems like an error from the outside. But Marie Hurabiell has declared her candidacy for Pelosi's congressional seat, throwing her hat in a race that has so far been a three-way one.

"San Franciscans deserve a Congressperson who represents their values — not the extreme, progressive agenda that has failed our beautiful city,” says Hurabiell in a statement. "I’ve done a lot to fight back against radicalism in San Francisco, promoting commonsense policies and leaders. Now, I’m ready to do the same in Washington."

And Huriabell is cast as a "Lurie ally" in the SF Standard, where she gave an exclusive interview on her announcement day, calling herself the "actual moderate" in the race. "I looked around and realized that there was no other viable moderate getting into the race," she says. "I have decided that it’s the right thing to do.”

Is it telling that the conservative New York Post, which now has a California arm, also jumped on the news? They also characterize the other three candidates, Wiener, SF Supervisor Connie Chan, and tech founder Saikat Chakrabarti as "a field of progressives," when we all know that by San Francisco standards, Wiener has been a moderate through and through.

I'd also question this statement: "The three current candidates in the race are essentially fighting for the same group of voters, and the rest of San Franciscans feel left out," Hurabiell tells the Standard. "People are begging for an actual moderate, an actual adult in the room to come forward."

Some may recall that Hurabiell unsuccessfully ran for the SF Community College Board in 2022, pulling in just 6.6% of the vote. As KQED reported at the time, she was quickly called out for a tweet in which she went full MAGA about critical race theory, or CRT, tweeting, rather confusingly, "CRT was a tactic used by Hitler and the KKK." That probably didn't do her any favors — and it still won't as she runs for a much higher office than Community College Board.

Hurabiell became a Democrat that year as she chose to run in that election, and previously she was a Trump appointee to the Presidio Trust. Since then, she founded the political advocacy group ConnectedSF, and helped in the campaign to recall DA Chesa Boudin.

Another mark against her in largely liberal San Francisco: As recently as 2025, as KRON4 notes, she tweeted "Trans women are NOT women."

Good luck, Ms. Hurabiell. You'll probably get a few Pac Heights Republicans to light some cash on fire in your honor.

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi used an event Monday about Covered California open enrollment to sound alarms over the number of Californians who may lose their healthcare due to Trump's Big Beautiful Bill.

Eight Senate Democrats rolled over and a temporary spending bill is making its way to the House today, where it will likely pass. And what's missing from the bill was the Democrats' central demand in this shutdown, which was the extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits so that millions of Americans don't see their premiums skyrocket.

A leading force behind getting the ACA passed 15 years ago was Nancy Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House at the time. And Pelosi attended an event Monday at Book Passage in San Francisco, promoting the open enrollment period for Covered California — the state's healthcare marketplace established under the ACA.

Around 1.7 million California residents could see their premiums double following massive cuts to the Obama-era subsidies under the ACA, with those subsidies expiring on December 31. Open enrollment under Covered California began on November 1 and runs through January 31 — but assuming the tax credits expire, state residents are urged to sign up by December 31 to lock in current premiums for 2026.

"While Donald Trump and Republicans are inflicting a painful shutdown on the American people because they refuse to protect America’s health care, California is taking action to ensure working families have access to coverage," Pelosi said in a statement. "If Congress doesn’t extend the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits immediately, hundreds of thousands of families in California will lose their health care, and 1.7 million families will see their costs skyrocket. We must continue to fight for a responsible, bipartisan path forward that reopens the government and keeps health care affordable for the American people."

Around 40,000 San Franciscans rely on Covered California for their healthcare plans. And it's estimated that around California, an average increase in premium costs of 97% in 2026 will leave around 400,000 residents priced out of the marketplace.

"It covers folks up to a higher income level than Medi-Cal. But for many of those folks, health care is still otherwise unaffordable," says Daniel Tsai, SF's director of public health, speaking to ABC 7.

Pelosi added, speaking to ABC 7, "It is a remarkable thing that [the Republicans] would take half a trillion out of Medicare, millions of people out of Medicaid, and not renew the subsidies. Why? To give a tax break to the richest people in America."

When asked about her legacy, vis a vis the 15-year-old ACA, Pelosi tells the station, "Not so fast on the legacy... I have another year."

Related: Nancy Pelosi Says She'll Retire After 2026

Top image: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during a prayer rally on the ninth day of a federal government shutdown in the courtyard of St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill on October 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. The federal government remains shut down for the ninth consecutive day after Congress and the White House failed to negotiate a deal on extending pandemic-era health care funding. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The many, many troubling things that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk said in the public spotlight during his brief career are being trotted out online in the immediate aftermath of his horrific assassination, including comments he made about the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.

We are going to be hearing a lot from Trump and the Republicans in the coming days about how violent the American Left is, no matter what we end up learning about the person who shot Charlie Kirk. And while Kirk is being praised on the right for his unapologetic views and mode of unabashed free expression, we can't discount how he himself dismissed an act of politically motivated violence just a couple of years ago, and downplayed the role that conservative rhetoric played in it.

The double standard being invoked here, which strikes everyone on the left as gross and unfair, is going to continue to feel gross and unfair, while the media and Democratic politicians remain careful not to promote or accept political violence of any kind.

While expressing one's opinions, no matter how repulsive, should not be something that gets someone killed, neither should being married to someone in the political spotlight, because of their spouse's opinions and positions.

That was the case with Mark Hortman, the husband of Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman. Both were killed in June in an act of political violence allegedly committed by someone on the right, who also targeted another Democratic lawmaker and his wife.

As ABC News and others have noted, President Donald Trump pointedly ignored those very recent acts of politically motivated violence in his remarks Wednesday night about Kirk's killing. Trump only mentioned the attempt on his own life last summer in Butler, Pennsylvania (the motives for which remain unclear), the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December, and "attacks on ICE agents," saying "radical Left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives."

And as KRON4 notes today, Charlie Kirk was notably insensitive and grotesque in his comments about the violent attack that could have killed Paul Pelosi in his own home three years ago.

In the aftermath of that event, on his podcast The Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk asked, "Why is the Republican Party, why is the conservative movement to blame for gay, schizophrenic nudists that are hemp jewelry-makers breaking into somebody’s home, or maybe not breaking into somebody’s home?"

Kirk was promulgating a debunked internet rumor that Pelosi was harmed during a gay tryst gone wrong, and referring to the fact that the perpetrator, David DePape, was associated with a loose nudist collective in the Bay Area through his relationship to longtime nudist activist Gypsy Taub.

Whether DePape suffers from mental illness has been a topic of discussion by Taub and by his attorneys during his state and federal trials. But it did not prevent him from being sentenced to life in prison in state court, and to 30 years in federal prison in the federal trial. But before he had even gone to trial, DePape gave a jailhouse interview in which he put out a statement calling himself a patriot, saying his message to America was "You're welcome," and saying his only regret was "I'm so sorry I didn't get more of them... I should have come better prepared."

DePape had a "hit list" of multiple individuals, including the actor Tom Hanks and Governor Gavin Newsom, and he had intended to find Nancy Pelosi in her bed and to break her kneecaps if she didn't admit to "lying" about some sort of liberal conspiracy.

Kirk continued his comments, which came just days after the 2022 attack, saying of DePape, "And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out… Bail him out and then go ask him some questions."

Kirk went on to complain that other criminals committing similar offenses in Chicago and San Francisco get let out on bail immediately, but not "when you come after the Pelosis."

You may want to disagree with him, but New York Times columnist Ezra Klein asserts today that Kirk was "practicing politics in the right way" by going to college campuses and engaging people in debate. The quality of those debates, and the talent Kirk had for shouting down disagreement with misinformation and incendiary fiction that he called "facts" notwithstanding.

Still, Klein makes an important point:

Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. The same is true for Shapiro, for Hoffman, for Hortman, for Thompson, for Trump, for Pelosi, for Whitmer. We are all safe, or none of us are.

Related: Right-Wing Firebrand Charlie Kirk Fatally Shot During Utah College Speaking Event

Top image: Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah, shortly before he was fatally shot. (Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)

Charlie Kirk, one of the rising stars in conservative circles who made an appearance just a few months ago at San Francisco State and appeared on Governor Gavin Newsom's podcast, was shot and killed Wednesday while on stage in Utah.

The shooting happened at 12:10 pm local time, during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, and a gunman reportedly took aim from a building about 200 yards away. Kirk, 31, was speaking on stage before an audience of students, who all scattered in fear after Kirk was struck in the neck by a bullet — which was captured on video by witnesses.

One eyewitness, Raydon Dechene, spoke to CBS News and said that when the shot rang out, Kirk had, ironically, been speaking with an audience member about the transgender shooting suspect in the Minneapolis school shooting last month. She said there was a single pop, and Kirk suddenly had blood gushing from his neck — she guessed his carotid artery had been struck.

As the New York Times reports, as of 2 pm Pacific Time, no arrests have been made, and a search is on for the gunman. A gray-haired man who was seen detained by security guards at the scene in early images was later released, but that did not stop many from sharing the image and even attempting to identify him on social media.

Like Kirk did when he made an appearance at SF State in May, he appeared with tents branded with "American Comeback," where he encourages students to debate him and "Prove Me Wrong" on any number of political topics. (At the SF State appearance, a punk band set up across the street and tried to drown Kirk out with their music.)

As the Associated Press reports, Kirk's appearance at Utah Valley University had been opposed by a number of students on campus, with a petition to cancel the event signed by over 1,000 people.

Kirk has been particularly vocal on a number of culture-war touchpoints, as he was on Newsom's podcast in March, where he was the governor's first podcast guest. The two discussed the "unfairness" of trans athletes in school sports, something that Newsom said he agreed with Kirk about.

Immediately after the shooting, Newsom tweeted, "The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form."

President Trump, who has reportedly ordered that flags be lowered to half-mast for Kirk, posted on Truth Social, "The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us."

Shortly following news of his death, a quote from Kirk in which he said that gun deaths around the country were "unfortunately" worth it in order to preserve the Second Amendment, has gone viral on Reddit and elsewhere.

Kirk co-fouded Turning Point USA at age 18, in 2012, in Chicago, and made a career of proselytizing for conservative causes on college campuses. During Trump's 2016 campaign, Kirk served as an aide to Donald Trump Jr., and both President Trump and his so have spoken at Turning Point conferences, as the AP reports.

Dechene, the eyewitness who spoke to CBS, said that the mood at the event was positive, and people had been chanting "USA" when Kirk came on stage. She also noted that there did not seem to be any security at all for the event.

Top image: Charlie Kirk debates with students at The Cambridge Union on May 19, 2025 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. (Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)

A US District Court ruling this week strips every Planned Parenthood location in the state of California of all federal funding, which amounts to about $300 million statewide, though that loss could still be overturned in a future ruling.

Reproductive health services provider Planned Parenthood was already reeling from a late June Supreme Court decision that allowed states to withhold Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood. Then Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed a week later, and one provision in that legislation banned Medicaid reimbursements for any nonprofit health clinics that also provided abortions.

So the Planned Parenthood Federation of America sued the federal government (or specifically, the Health and Human Services Department), arguing the cuts were unconstitutional, and would result in the spread of STDs and cancer. But CalMatters reports that in a Monday preliminary ruling, US District Court Judge Indira Talwani issued an order that cost Planned Parenthood California its entire $300 million in federal funding, albeit in a preliminary order that could be reversed.  

“The harsh reality is, the Planned Parenthood defund will be felt in every corner of the state and will disproportionately impact people who have low incomes, rely on Medicaid programs, or have no other options for health care,” Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California president and chief executive Jodi Hicks said in a statement to CalMatters.

Though the Associated Press describes the decision as a “partial victory” for Planned Parenthood.  In the AP’s words, the ruling preserves funding for any Planned Parenthood clinics that “don’t provide abortion care or didn’t meet a threshold of at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.”

But that doesn’t save the funding for any California Planned Parenthood clinics, all of which do provide abortion services. The Health and Human Services Department has indicated they will appeal the decision because it preserves funding for some Planned Parenthood clinics, and they want to see Planned Parenthood receiving zero federal dollars.

Though meanwhile, Judge Talwani wrote in her decision that Planned Parenthood’s original lawsuit arguments have a “substantial likelihood of success” in her court, and all of these funding cuts could end up eventually being reversed.

“The court has not yet ruled on whether it will grant preliminary injunctive relief to other members,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement after the ruling. “We remain hopeful that the court will grant this relief. There will be nothing short of a public health crisis if Planned Parenthood members are allowed to be ‘defunded.’”

Related: Supreme Court Allows States to Withhold Medicaid Funds From Planned Parenthood [SFist]

Image: SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 26: A sign is posted in front of a Planned Parenthood health center on June 26, 2025 in San Rafael, California. A Supreme Court ruling will allow states to cut Medicaid funds to reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood, which will disqualify Medicaid patients from obtaining health care services from Planned Parenthood providers if the funding has been cut by the state. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Our graceless Vice President JD Vance will be headed back to the Bay Area, which he once called home in his own venture capital days, for a fundraiser in Atherton on Friday.

The event, as NBC Bay Area alerts us, is at the home of venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, co-host of that All-In podcast that went all in for Trump — and another co-host, David Sacks, hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home in Pacific Heights last spring, as you may recall, for which Palihapitiya also served as co-host. So, the whole gang will probably be there, minus Trump, who's still in the Middle East.

Trump won the election, so this is apparently a fundraiser for the Republican party? Or for Vance's future political ambitions? Or for that third term that Trump will probably continue to threaten us with.

The Atherton event at Palihapitiya's house on Friday is apparently a high-dollar affair, with just 30 guests.

Republican donor Peter Thiel could be in the mix as well — Vance worked as a principal at Thiel’s investment firm Mithril Capital in 2016 and 2017, before publishing Hillbilly Elegy and relocating to his home state of Ohio to run for the Senate.

The closeness of Vance to Silicon Valley's elites is a little odd, and he has detractors in the Valley as well. Vance has been a vocal supporter of breaking up Google/Alphabet, for instance, and one has to wonder if Zuckerberg will pop over to kiss the ring as his company faces a government antitrust lawsuit.

Be on the lookout for Air Force Two!

Top image: U.S. Vice President JD Vance listens during 44th annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol on May 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. During the program. with family members in attendance, the National Fraternal Order of Police held the memorial service to honor 232 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2024. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

In the first what are sure to many, many middle-finger gestures in the direction of San Francisco and California generally, wrathful Republicans high on Trump's secret sauce are trying to take back $200 million that was granted to the Presidio, which is federal park land, to address the deferred maintenance needs of its buildings.

Republicans in Congress now need to make a show of how they plan to pay for the absurd and impractical things Donald Trump has been promising his supporters, including the mass deportation of immigrants. And now the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee has compiled a 50-page wish list of new taxes, tariffs, and funding cuts they want to make — with a view toward not impacting the deficit too much, which will anger hardline budget-hawk House members.

As the New York Times reports, the list includes a litany of longtime Republican priorities, like cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and imposing a work requirement on able-bodied Medicaid recipients. They also want to roll back climate initiatives launched under the Biden Administration, including tax credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act, saying they could recoup $800 billion that way.

They also want to start taxing non-profit hospitals by eliminating their non-profit status, which is estimated to bring in $260 billion over 10 years. And they want to eliminate Head of Household status for unmarried taxpayers who have children, taking away that tax savings for middle-class Americans in order pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The list includes plenty of things that will cost the government money, like extending Trump's 2017 tax cut, and ending the estate tax for the wealthy ($370 billion in costs over 10 years). In a nod to one campaign promise that was made by both Harris and Trump, they suggest eliminating the tax on tips — though many critics have point out this could lead to abuse, like via the definition of "tips."

But buried in this barage of attacks on Democrat-championed programs and various things that benefit the poor and elderly, most of which are being measured in the billions or trillions of dollars, is one line item that is just a blatant fuck you to San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi. They want to claw back $200 million that was promised two years ago to the Presidio Trust as part of the Inflation Reduction Act to address the needs of the park's aging infrastructure.

As the Chronicle reports, the Presidio has previously estimated its deferred maintenance needs around $500 million, so this federal grant only covers a portion of the total need. And as Presidio Trust CEO Jean Fraser said at the time of the grant, "We have a lot of very old stuff. If we had to rely on our own [funding] resources, systems would fail before we could get to them."

Pelosi announced the funding in 2023, saying, "This critical federal funding will ensure the Presidio’s spectacular front window to the Bay is maintained by renewing and replacing aged utilities and their infrastructure... [and it] will preserve the beauty and accessibility of the Presidio — now and into the future."

Now, the House Ways and Means Committee document states, how the funding was granted "was not consistent with standard agency practices for selecting priority deferred maintenance projects." If this makes it into the final package of cuts and spending that Republicans want to get passed through reconciliation, via their very slim majorities in the House and Senate, the transfer of funds to the Presidio — which apparently hasn't happened in the last year and a half — will be canceled.

Oh, and by the way, Trump's border wall is back in play on the list too. The Homeland Committee says it wants around $25 billion to construct 734 miles of 33-foot-high concrete fencing, in addition to replacing legacy fencing. That $200 million from the Presidio funding will sure help with that.

Photo via Presidio.gov

California's 13th Congressional District has flipped from Republican to Democrat, and with that race settled, we now know that the Republicans yet again hold the slimmest of majorities in the House — 220 seats to Democrats' 215.

Democrat Adam Gray has won the seat by a mere 187 votes at last count, and the Associated Press projected Tuesday that he will win. He beats incumbent Republican John Duarte, following a similarly tight race two years ago in which Duarte prevailed by just 564 votes, as KCRA reports.

Duarte conceded to Gray on Tuesday, as the Turlock Journal reported, with Duarte telling the paper, "I'm a citizen legislator, and I didn't plan on being in Congress forever."

California's 13th District is in the Central Valley and encompasses all of Merced County, as well as most of Madera County, and parts of Stanislaus, San Joaquin, and Fresno counties. The district is 66% Hispanic, with around 784,000 people, and  its current composition is fairly new — the 13th District used to be the one led by Barbara Lee that included Oakland, but it was moved to the Central Valley in 2022 amid redistricting.

With the departures of Matt Gaetz (bye!), Mike Waltz, and Elise Stefanik, the latter two of whom are set to join Trump's cabinet, and special elections to fill their seats months away, the Republican-led House will likely have some bruising fights ahead getting any votes passed until then, and even after those seats are filled.

As ABC News notes, with 217 seats, votes taken when anyone is absent due to illness or any other reason could fall in Democrats' favor. And even if every single congressperson shows up for a given vote, a single Republican member could gum the works and threaten to vote with Democrats, creating a 216-216 tie. Or if even two Republicans abstain, the nays will have it.

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is of course trying to spin this positively, telling ABC, "Well, just like we do every day here, we've developed an expertise in that. We know how to work with a small majority. That's our custom now. So, yes — do the math. We can, we have nothing to spare. But all of our members know that we talked about that today, as we do constantly, that this is a team effort that we've got to all row in the same direction."

There are also a couple of elderly members on the Democratic side who missed votes last year, and that could happen again, as ABC News notes, giving Republicans a bit more wiggle room until those special elections occur.

Gray, for his part, struck a tone of unity on Tuesday. The Merced native told the Turlock Journal, "As divided as people suggest the country is, I think we all have a lot more in common than we’re given credit for. People do want change, but the change they want is for Congress to get back to solving problems. … They don’t want people yelling and screaming at each other. That’s not the kind of leadership people want. They want a government that works for them."

Well, prepare for some yelling and screaming, Adam, because this Congress is going to be seated in during a no-doubt unhinged second Trump administration, and with a barely-there Republican majority that could be thwarted if Marjorie Taylor Greene wakes up in a bad mood that day. Good luck.

Photo from Adam Gray for Congress via Turlock Journal

A small cabal of proud Republicans in San Francisco gathered Tuesday night at American Bites, a restaurant in North Beach that last year hosted a bizarre and hateful anti-trans dinner event.

The SF Republican Party had their Election Night watch party Tuesday at American Bites, a restaurant in North Beach where you can get a burger with a side of transphobia. As the Chronicle reports, while much of the city was plunged into despair watching the election returns, feeling the deep foreboding of what a second Trump presidency could mean for our country and the world, the scene at American Bites was the opposite of all that.

SF Republican Party chair John Dennis organized the event, and called the evening "thrilling," speaking to the Chronicle.

"We really have a bright future now," Dennis said, without irony.

And, reportedly, when things turned solidly in Trump's direction later in the evening, the scene at American Bites was jubillant.

The Chronicle notes the strange detail that one of those Trump fans in attendance, wearing a pink "Proud Piece of Garbage" t-shirt, was Sophia DeAnda, a military veteran who uses they/them pronouns and is unbothered by Trump's virulently anti-trans rhetoric, saying, "I want any politician that will lower taxes."

Back in May 2023, the restaurant played host to another event organized by the San Francisco Republican Party, which featured speakers from Moms for Liberty, a group whose primary goal is to keep schools from telling children that LGBTQ people exist.

Chronicle columnist and former restaurant critic Soleil Ho, who identifies as non-binary, attended the event and wrote about it, noting that "nuance... clearly wasn't on the menu."

"If you are a man in the Democrat Party, your highest-value men are the ones who wear dresses," said Dennis at the event, adding, "We appreciate masculine clothes for our men."

One of the speakers at the event suggested that the end-goal of those promoting "transgenderism" is "Trans humanism, pedophilia … destroying the family, our culture and our society [and] Marxism." Someone also got up and told horror stories about botched gender reassignment surgeries, making people audibly gag and wretch.

American Bites suffered a slew of one-star reviews on Yelp after that piece was published, but their Yelp page appears to have recovered — with a number of positive four- and five-star reviews that seem to have appeared in May and June of 2023.

And, it appears, it's still a safe space for Trump fans, and the favored gathering spot of the SF GOP.

At the time, managing partner Mike Saremy told Eater that when he agreed to host the Republican event, he "had no idea it was going to be anti-trans and all these outrageous remarks made."

But, it seems, it didn't deter them from inviting the Republicans back.

Previously: North Beach Restaurant American Bites Facing Backlash After Hosting Virulent Anti-Trans Event

Photo via Yelp

Yes, the three-story-tall inflatable Trump chicken has been dusted off and will be re-inflated Thursday in San Francisco, wearing a black-and-white prison uniform, in an act of protest of Trump appearing in SF to collect some money from some Silicon Valley billionaires who have lost the thread of reality.

Local writer Danelle Morton didn't think she'd ever have to haul out her 33-foot-tall Trump-as-chicken balloon again when she laid it to rest in a mock funeral in 2021. But haul it out she will today, and the sublimely hideous balloon will take a sail on the Bay to protest the fundraising event tonight at the home of amoral billionaire David Sacks.

The lookalike balloon was a $450 purchase Morton made off the internet in 2017, originally manufactured in China around the time of Trump's inauguration and Lunar New Year celebrations that year (it was the Year of the Rooster, and a Chinese balloon maker seized on the similarities with an existing rooster balloon they had). She later added a black-and-white-striped prison shirt — for a 2018 cruise across the Bay to Alcatraz, six years before Trump was actually convicted of 34 felonies.

It sounds like the balloon will be hoisted via boat once more, as Morton tells Bay City News.

"I think the point of sailing the chicken has to be made, right?" Morton says. "I mean, it’d be so much better if we’re doing it while the man was actually standing there, but even if we don’t, I feel like just getting it done is a victory."

The Trump chicken made numerous appearances in the early days of Trump's presidency, and inspired others in other cities to purchase and parade similar balloons. As Morton told the Vallejo Times-Herald in 2017, "Instead of being full of rage, I chose the other tool of politics: Ridicule and humor."

She added, "To have this big, bloated, pasty white chicken and these hands… to have that as our symbol is a way of us taking back some kind of control."

Of course we now the mock funeral for the protest balloon in 2021 was premature, though at the time Morton said she was storing away the balloon in a "mausoleum" rather than destroying it because that seemed more appropriate.

"There was a time when joyful mockery of Donald Trump was appropriate," Morton told the Chronicle at the time. "Not anymore. Not after the takeover of the U.S. Capitol in January. That was one of the scariest moments in history."

She also, poignantly, referred to the former president as "just a bad lounge act, wandering around his country club and showing up uninvited at strangers’ weddings to complain about election fraud." She added, I hope that’s the last of him."

Now, a group of millionaires and billionaires who either don't remember or don't care that Trump tried to destroy the country for his own ego three short years ago are gathering in Pacific Heights to pay $50,000 per person to greet the man, and help fund his attempt to return to the White House. Why? Because they are rich and trying to protect their riches, and anything else they say about it is gaslighting.

The fundraiser is being co-hosted by Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline Sacks, and Sacks's co-host on the "All-In" podcast, Chamath Palihapitiya.

Previously: Invites Go Out For Trump Fundraiser In San Francisco, Hosted By David Sacks

Photo via Danelle Morton

In an eery sign suggesting that Trumpists and fomenters of civil war are everywhere among us, waiting for a signal to show themselves and rise up, a flag that was flown by January 6th insurrectionists, and recently by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (or his wife) made an appearance this week atop a building in San Francisco's Jackson Square.

There's not a lot of info about who was behind the raising of the flag at 708-710 Montgomery Street, otherwise known as the Canessa Printing Co. building. The Chronicle reports that it appeared on the flagpole atop the building, which is also home to French bakery cafe Maison Nico, on Thursday afternoon, and when the Chronicle took notice of it and inquired, the flag was removed early Friday morning.

A Google Street View image of the building shows an Italian flag flying on its flagpole in March 2022.

The flag is the "Appeal to Heaven" flag featuring an image of a pine tree, a relic of the Revolutionary War that has been coopted by the Christian right and by right-wing "Stop the Steal" activists. It was one of several previously obscure flags that made appearances during the January 6th riots. The flag has come to represent "a theological vision of what the United States should be and how it should be governed," as religion scholar Matthew Taylor tells the New York Times.

Highly problematically for Justice Alito, it appears to have flown all last summer outside his beach house on Long Beach Island in New Jersey. The Times reported on this days after a separate report on an upside-down American flag that was flown over multiple days on a pole outside the Alitos' Virginia home during the week of President Biden's 2021 inauguration, during a time when the Supreme Court was considering an appeal by Trump regarding the election.

Alito subsequently told the Times he had "no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag" upside-down, and laid blame on his wife, Martha-Ann Alito. Mrs. Alito reportedly also had a previous dispute with a neighbor on their block of an anti-Trump sign that neighbor had displayed on their lawn.

The revelation about the "Appeal to Heaven" flag further cements that the Alito household — driven either by the justice himself, his wife, or both of them — is firmly politically aligned with Christian right members of the "Stop the Steal" movement. And any notion that Alito remains an impartial jurist is pretty much out the window — though that is no surprise to anyone who has followed his career on the court, or read any of his dissents or majority opinions. His opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson that overturned Roe v. Wade, for instance, was rife with references to the religious bases of society and historic norms regarding the practice of abortion.

Per the Chronicle's report, Maison Nico owner Andrea Delaroque was shocked to learn of the flag atop the building, and she may have been influential in getting it replaced with a tricolor French flag. A gallery on the second floor of the building, the nonprofit Canessa Gallery, may be linked to the building's ownership — and the Chronicle notes that the principal officer of the nonprofit is one Zach Stewart. Stewart could not be reached for comment, but an employee who answered the door at Stewart's nearby residence told the paper that he had helped take the Pine Tree flag down at 7 am that morning.

Was this some kind of callback to the Alito story? A "Bat Signal" of sorts to other, likeminded revolutionaries or Christians?

In an uncomfortable coincidence, the Canessa building sits directly next door to the Foster Gwin Gallery, which was the site of that infamous video from January 2023 that showed gallery owner Collier Gwin turning a hose on a homeless woman who was loitering outside.

This is not the first time the "Appeal to Heaven" flag has flown in San Francisco. Repeat longshot candidate for mayor Ellen Lee Zhou tweeted a video of someone holding the flag in UN Plaza in August 2023. She tweeted to her supporters in December that there would be a gathering every Sunday morning at 8 am in UN Plaza to call for an "appeal to heaven... to end homelessness and drug dealers in San Francisco." One such gathering is shown in video below from April 20 of this year.

Another Twitter user, making reference to "all The Democrats angry at Justice Alito," posted this undated video of an "Appeal to Heaven" flag flying in City Hall Plaza. This photo from March 2018 also shows the flag outside City Hall.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who is running for mayor in November, tells the Chronicle that if the flag appearing on Montgomery Street wasn't just a prank, "I would roll my eyes and keep walking."

Top image: A reportedly vintage Appeal to Heaven flag for sale on Etsy.

The wealthy conservatives of the Bay Area who remain insane and greedy enough to want Trump back in the White House will get to gather at the Pacific Heights lair of one of Trump's biggest local champions, David Sacks in early June.

The invites have gone out for a June 6 fundraising event at the home of Sacks and his wife, clothing brand Saint Haven CEO Jacqueline Sacks. The couple are listed on the invite as "All-In co-hosts" along with Sri Lankan-born investor Chamath Palihapitiya. (David Sacks and Palihapitiya co-host the All-In podcast, along with another Elon Musk crony, Jason Calacanis.)

We've known for a few weeks now that Sacks was hosting a Trump fundraiser, but now we get some specifics. It's on June 6 with the time to be revealed upon RSVP, and the price to attend is $50,000, or $500,000 per couple if you would like to be on the "host committee."

Trump himself will reportedly be in attendance for the reception and dinner in Pacific Heights.

Sacks has been a supporter of various conservative candidates, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and he was one of the biggest financial backers of the campaigns to recall former SF District Attorney Chesa Boudin, to recall three members of the SF school board, and to recall Gavin Newsom.

You can watch Sacks here on Tucker Carlson's former Fox News show celebrating the Boudin recall the day after it happened.

He penned an op-ed in October 2022 railing against the "woke-neocon alliance" that was in support of giving weapons to Ukraine in its war against Russia. And he launched his own podcast platform Callin in 2021, which features, as the New Republic puts it, "post-left, contrarian, or otherwise reactionary libertarian types such as Jesse Singal, Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Briahna Joy Gray, and Matt Taibbi."

Sacks falls in the category of tech wealthy who have aligned themselves with Trump and other conservatives because they agree wholeheartedly that liberal politics have destroyed California, San Francisco specifically, and American cities in general. "In the eyes of rich techies who have seen their beloved metropolis fall into decay, vast inequality, and social misery, the state [of California] is dead," Jacob Silverman writes in the New Republic. "Their disappointment and alienation has melded with traditional Republican disgust toward liberal cities (and their non-white residents) to paint a picture of irredeemable urban squalor."

The last Trump fundraiser in San Francisco was in July 2019, and that was co-hosted by socialite and philanthropist Dede Wilsey. Trump himself didn't show up, but he did show up for a fundraiser a couple months later in Portola Valley, where protesters inflated a giant Baby Trump balloon.

Related: President Biden Returns to Bay Area Thursday for (Of Course) Fundraisers

Photo: Michael Vadon/Wikimedia

Facing less-than-outstanding poll numbers in the November election and being hammered by her opponents on crime, Mayor London Breed campaigned Thursday for a Republican-authored effort to redo the state’s Prop 47 sentencing law.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed has three major opponents in this November’s mayoral election, all of them claiming they’d be tougher on crime than her. And Breed’s campaign is very sensitive to the crime issue, as evidenced by their massive overreaction to a local rapper’s diss track about her crime record, a tune which would have gone largely unnoticed had Breed supporters not thrown tantrums about it.

Facing terrible polling numbers, Breed is eager to burnish her ‘tough on crime' credentials. And on Thursday, she spoke at a campaign event for a ballot measure to overhaul Prop 47, California’s often-maligned 2014 law that makes property crimes under $950 a misdemeanor instead of a felony. But the odd thing here, as the Chronicle points out, is that this ballot measure campaign for the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” is being run by Republicans.

“In San Francisco, we are making progress on property crimes, but the challenges we are facing related to fentanyl and organized retail theft require real change to our state laws,” Breed said at Thursday’s event, according to a release. “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act will make targeted but impactful changes to our laws around fentanyl and help us tackle the chronic retail theft that hurts our retailers, our workers, and our cities.”

The ballot measure’s campaign chair is Greg Totten, the Republican CEO of the California District Attorneys Association. Its biggest supporter holding elective office is House Rep Kevin Kiley, a Republican from eastern California who unsuccessfully tried to overturn Prop 47 in 2022 when he was still in the state Assembly.

In fairness, the measure also has the support of Democratic mayors Matt Mahan (San Jose), and Todd Gloria (San Diego).

If this measure passed, it would allow prosecutors to bring felony charges on suspects with two prior theft convictions, regardless of the value of the stolen items. It would also allow judges to send convicted drug dealers to state prison instead of county jail, and would allow for more murder charges against fentanyl dealers in cases of fatal overdoses.

But this measure is not even guaranteed to be on your November ballot. The campaign needs half a million signatures by April 23 (they claimed this week they have 214,000 currently). As the Chronicle points out, “The campaign’s top donors are Walmart, Target, Macy’s and a powerful California prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.”

Related: State Lawmakers Once Again Going After Prop 47 Amidst Retail Theft Blowback [SFist]

Image: @LondonBreed via Twitter

In a charged address at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim Friday, Donald Trump made headlines with a mix of familiar attacks and grievances, as well as a concerning call for violent retribution against criminals.

Some of the topics of the complaints in Trump’s wandering 90-minute speech: crime, forests, homelessness, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, electric vehicles, and, of course, alleged election fraud, according to the Chronicle.

He reportedly called retail thieves “Marxist monsters unleashing mayhem in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” and said he send “every asset” he could to “shoot” them — apparently drawing applause from the 1,500-person crowd. Going off-script, he said, "If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store," emphasizing his call for violent punishment.

Trump also wants to “wet” forest floors to prevent wildfires, per the Chronicle. But then he said that rich people in Beverly Hills smell bad because they're denied water, as KCRA reported.

Going after California's Democratic leadership, Trump blamed them for issues such as homelessness, high taxes, and inequality. He reportedly accused the state of being a "dumping ground" for prisoners, terrorists, and mental patients, pledging to "reverse the decline of America."

Naturally, Trump has no shot of winning the state, but California is set up to play a pivotal role in the Super Tuesday primaries, so the state's GOP support is valuable — he currently leads the primary race among likely Republican voters, according to a recent poll, per the LA Times.

Also in attendance at the convention were other Republican contenders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who expressed support for law enforcement without advocating violence, according to the Chronicle. But Trump’s legal challenges still loom as he faces felony charges in four criminal cases.

While he was in Southern California on Friday, he went to a gun store and may have bought a handgun, as the Washington Post reported. A staffer reportedly posted a picture of him with a gun, and federal prosecutors are questioning if that counts as a violation of the gag order imposed on him amid his criminal trials because the image could be construed as a public threat.

“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the court filing says, per WaPo. “It would be a separate federal crime, and thus a violation of the defendant’s conditions of release, for him to purchase a gun while this felony indictment is pending.”

Feature image of former U.S. President Donald Trump greeting fans during the California GOP convention on September 29, 2023 in Los Angeles, California, via David McNew/Getty Images.

While the rumblings shall grow louder in the coming days about Governor Gavin Newsom's potential pick to appoint to Dianne Feinstein's now vacant seat in the Senate, one thing seems certain: Republicans are going to use this vacancy to their advantage however they can.

Wipe away those tears, Mitch McConnell. The Senate Minority Leader spoke this morning on the Senate floor about his close friend Dianne Feinstein, and he recalled wistfully the "many dinners" he and his wife Elaine had shared with "Dianne and Dick." Now, McConnell and his cohort will have another chance to obstruct democracy by potentially blocking Democrats from filling Feinstein's tie-breaking seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Earlier this year, McConnell and the top Republican on the committee, Sen. Lindsay Graham, refused to let a temporary replacement be put in Feinstein's committee seat during her extended absence due to a shingles infection.

"Senate Republicans will not take part in sidelining a temporarily absent colleague off a committee just so Democrats can force through their very worst nominees," McConnell said at the time, referring to judicial nominations that were being blocked by tie votes.

And Graham said at the time that the issue was just "about four or five judges they can’t get out of the committee… They want to replace Dianne Feinstein’s seat for the judges."

Pessimists on the Democratic side assume that McConnell — who remains Villain #1 after his willful obstruction of Merrick Garland's nomation to the Supreme Court following the death of Antonin Scalia — will find more dirty ways to obstruct the Democratic majority on the committee, and keep liberals off the federal bench.

As one commenter on X put it today, "Pres. Biden’s ability to confirm federal judges will be severely curtailed. An RBG-level disaster."

This possibility of Republican obstruction was raised whenever a call was made for Feinstein to resign and retire. "If she does resign and the governor, I guess me, appoints someone, we may not get another federal judge out of the Judiciary Committee," said Newsom just a few months back.

Now, though, as the Chronicle reports, Republicans' tone has changed in the wake of a death of such a prominent colleague.

When asked about seating a committee replacement this morning, Graham said, "Whatever the rules are, that’s what I’ll do."

And another Republican on the committee, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, said Friday, "I think it’s the prerogative of the Democratic leader to put who he wants on the Judiciary Committee, so I don’t think that’s an issue. I don’t think it should be handled any differently than filling any other vacancy. The problem was there wasn’t a true vacancy before."

That is heartening, but we'll have to see it to believe it.

In the short term, Feinstein's absence is unlikely to matter for Senate votes on spending bills.

Related: Dianne Feinstein, Lioness of the Senate and Onetime SF Mayor, Dies at Age 90

Top image: U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) arrives at a news briefing after a weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on September 27, 2023 in Washington, DC. Senate GOPs held their weekly luncheon to discuss the Republican agenda. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)