The Brief

California may have a reputation as a bastion of blue, but there are only so many Democratic voters to go around.

Under Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to gerrymander California’s congressional maps to favor Democrats, no incumbent Democrat would take on more Republican voters than Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach.

Garcia’s new district, rather than stretching north from his home town into liberal Los Angeles County, would instead shift southward to encompass a coastal slice of conservative Orange County — notably, the conservative-leaning cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

Absorbing those GOP voters into the 42nd congressional district is a point of pride for the 47-year-old Peruvian immigrant, a gay progressive whose sharp-tongued condemnations of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk catapulted him into party leadership as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, the chamber’s main investigative arm.

He also serves on the committee’s viral “DOGE” subgroup, where he and a group of fellow young progressives use their speaking time to lob sardonic rhetorical questions that cast the proceedings and the chairwoman, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, as absurd and even laughable.

“Are Bert and Ernie part of an extreme homosexual agenda?” Garcia asked Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service, during a hearing in March as his staffer held up a life-sized image of the beloved muppet duo.

If his party retakes control of the House next year, Garcia would almost certainly ascend to chair the committee, which has vast subpoena powers, and would become the face of congressional Democrats’ resistance to Trump.

But don’t expect Garcia, a former Long Beach mayor and City Council member, to back down from his anti-MAGA bully pulpit just because he would then represent a town whose city council has embraced the moniker “the MAGA-nificent seven.”

“Folks have asked, ‘Hey, you know, you're pretty progressive. Is this gonna impact the way you take on Trump or the oversight committee?’” Garcia told political commentator Katie Phang during a virtual fundraiser for Prop. 50 last month.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

Garcia’s certainty that he’ll win re-election next year, regardless of which maps are used, is precisely the problem with creating noncompetitive districts as Prop. 50 proposes to do, said state Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican former mayor of Huntington Beach.

The city is currently represented by a Democratic congressmember, Rep. Dave Min of Irvine, who succeeded Democrat Katie Porter when she unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate last year. But since the district is currently drawn as a competitive seat, Strickland said, Min must win favor from at least some conservative voters if he wants to stay in office. That wouldn’t be the case for Garcia, should Prop. 50 pass.

Strickland and other local officials in coastal Orange County are skeptical that Garcia — a former Long Beach mayor who said he’s thrilled that his new district would include the entire city — will prioritize their cities’ needs, especially if he doesn’t need their votes to win.

“The problem with Prop. 50 is you have predetermined elections. You already know who your congressman is before election day,” Strickland said. “As a pretty conservative city, both Newport and Huntington will have one of the most liberal members of Congress. And I just don't think that's healthy.”

"We want to govern ourselves"

While Huntington Beach has long asserted its conservative tilt by resisting compliance with state laws they view as too liberal (such as housing construction requirements), the city in recent years has embraced the national culture wars and grabbed headlines for leading a conservative backlash to the state’s ruling Democrats in Sacramento.

Residents last March approved a ban on flying the rainbow LGBTQ Pride flag on city property. They greenlit a controversial ordinance requiring voters to bring ID to vote, which Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber argue violates state election laws. (Oral arguments before an appeals court are scheduled for Oct. 22).

And a simmering battle over sexual content in children’s books and Huntington Beach’s public library came to a head in June.

The city council had previously approved a controversial ordinance establishing a community review board for library books — what critics dubbed a book ban — and also briefly explored privatizing the library, policies they saw as a counterbalance to the state Legislature’s ultraliberal, “woke” laws. But this summer, via special election, voters overwhelmingly supported repealing the review board and limited the city’s ability to outsource library services.

“We really just want home control. We want to govern ourselves,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns. He doesn’t know Garcia personally, but as a former police officer in Long Beach he’s familiar with the former councilmember’s left-leaning politics.

“Hopefully he's open to helping us, but if he comes in and tries to break us, you know, break our community and try to crush our council in some way,” Burns said, speaking of Garcia, “well, we're going to resist. We're not going to get along.”

Garcia argues that the successful repudiation of the library crackdown is evidence that the city council’s right-wing approach doesn’t fully represent residents’ values.

“The vast majority of Huntington Beach are good, hard-working, middle-class folks that want a just future for themselves,” Garcia told CalMatters in an interview. “That's who I'm gonna represent.”

Garcia reiterated that he’s unafraid to speak out, even when he disagrees with decisions made in cities that he represents. Even so, he said he would be proud to represent everyone in his proposed new district and would fight hard to bring federal dollars home to support local projects. He said he would prioritize issues that “everyone cares about,” such as increased affordability, combating climate change and curbing corruption.

Still, Garcia also repeatedly noted that the proposed district would still be solidly Democratic. He effused confidence that he would handily win re-election next year and, he hopes, help Democrats retake control of the House.

Democrats have come under fire for drawing the new maps behind closed doors without input from the public or the independent citizens redistricting commission. But Paul Mitchell, the election data guru and redistricting expert who penned the proposed maps, said that in redrawing Garcia’s district to include coastal Orange County, he and his team hewed closely to proposals that advocacy groups previously presented to the independent commission.

Moving Garcia’s district to Orange County was crucial to shore up support for three vulnerable Democrats — Min along with Representatives Derek Tran and Mike Levin — and creating two newly redrawn districts, currently held by Republican representatives Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa, that Democrats believe they can flip.

“That was a critical piece of the puzzle,” Mitchell said in an interview. “It facilitates everything in Southern California.”

Fellow California Democrats have sung Garcia’s praises for graciously allowing his district to go from one that Vice President Kamala Harris won by more than 32% last November to one in which Democrats only have a 10 percentage point registration advantage.

“Robert Garcia is an incredible team player,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of California’s Democratic congressional delegation, in a written statement. “He’s taking in some historically Republican neighborhoods, but it’s still going to be a Democratic district.”

During the same virtual fundraiser in September, Garcia told viewers that taking on more Republican voters was “the right thing to do” because “our democracy’s at stake.”

“This is not a moment for us to worry about not having competitive seats or about being in Congress for a lifetime,” Garcia said. “This is about winning the majority to protect people and to save our country.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Howl about this for the history books? A wolf was found in L.A. County for the first time in a century on Saturday morning.

“It's the furthest south the gray wolves have been documented since their reintroduction into Yellowstone and Idaho just over 30 years ago,” said Axel Hunnicutt, the state gray wolf coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The wolf, tagged as BEY03F, was spotted in the town of Neenach, near Lancaster, at 6 a.m.

The three-year-old wolf was born in 2023 in Plumas County, north of Lake Tahoe, as part of the first litter of the Beyem Seyo pack.

“ We don't know what happened to her after that,” said Hunnicutt. “ We documented her through genetics when she was born.”

Last May, BEY03F was caught in  Tulare County and fitted with a GPS tracking collar. The department has been monitoring her movements since. Hunnicut estimated that she has traveled more than 500 miles throughout the state.

The end of January marks the start of the breeding season for gray wolves, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. They will typically break from their pack to find a mate, sometimes traveling thousands of miles to establish a new pack.

There are no records of wolves in the San Gabriel or coastal regions, but the likelihood of her finding a mate is not impossible. Researchers were surprised to discover the pack that BEY03F belonged to in Northern California.

 ”No one expected a pack to pop up there,” Hunnicutt said. “And that's because two wolves wandered hundreds of miles, so it's possible that some other wolf is doing the same thing.”

The last gray wolf to make it into the Southern California region was in 2021, when the male wolf, OR93 traveled as far down as Ventura County. His journey was cut short later that year, after he was struck and killed by a vehicle along Interstate 5 in Kern County.

Hunnicut said that’s one of the main challenges for BEY03F in her search for a mate.

“ This morning she’s just east of Pyramid Lake,” said Hunnicutt. “Close to I-5, which is honestly just down the road from where [OR93] was killed on the highway.”

Bad Bunny has fans the world over. One of them apparently is Gov. Gavin Newsom.

On Saturday, Newsom posted on social media proclaiming today, Super Bowl Sunday, as "Bad Bunny Day" in California in a rather tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top tweet written in all caps.

"AS MANY PEOPLE KNOW, I AM A TREMENDOUS LOVER OF 'THE SPANISH'... THAT IS WHY I AM DECLARING TOMORROW IN CALIFORNIA AS 'BAD BUNNY DAY' WHEN BAD BUNNY PERFORMS AT THE BIG GAME IN THE GOLDEN STATE WITH HIS SOOTHING, BEAUTIFUL VOICE, AND HIS VERY NICE LOOKS," reads the message tweeted out through Newsom's office.

For months, the governor's social media team has been adopting the manners and tone of President Trump's signature style.

 "Obviously in this case, the governor is making light of the President's criticisms of  Bad Bunny performing during today's Super Bowl halftime show," said Chris Micheli, an adjunct professor of law at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, as well as the author of a number of textbooks on California state government.

So, is the proclamation for real?

To answer that question, let's take a detour into the state proclamation process.

"The governor has a wide authority on proclamations," said Micheli, who also works as a lobbyist for groups like the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Proclamations generally fall into two categories, he said. One is official actions, such as states of emergency in the case of disasters, to direct resources for relief. The second is proclamations that are ceremonial and commemorative in nature, where the governor may designate a specific day, week or a period of time to recognize a person or an event — like Black History Month or Ronald Reagan Day.

The Bad Bunny Day proclamation, Micheli said, falls in the second category. But, he added, proclamations are signed by the governor and attested by the Secretary of State in written declarations. As such, it's easy to interpret the Bad Bunny Day tweet as done in jest.

Here's what the Governor told LAist

"The Governor declared Bad Bunny Day via tweet. Enjoy!" The governor's office told us in an email seeking confirmation on Sunday.

Micheli said that means the governor would likely follow up with an official written declaration.

Here's the thing with ceremonial proclamations, though. Micheli said they need to be re-upped every year by the governor — they don't automatically renew.

So yes, let's celebrate Bad Bunny Day on this Super Bowl Sunday. Let's hope to do it again next year, and the years after.

Puerto Rican superstar, Bad Bunny, made history at the 2026 Grammy Awards when he became the first artist to win album of the year for a Spanish-language project, with him winning for his album Debí Tirar Más Fotos. In addition to the top prize, Bad Bunny, whose given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, took home the award for the best música urbana album and best global music performance for his song "EoO".

In his acceptance remarks, and not unlike other moments throughout his career, the artist used the spotlight to express his political views.

"Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out," Bad Bunny said during his acceptance speech for best música urbana album. "We're not savages, we're not animals, we're not aliens — we're humans and we are Americans," he added in response to the ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country.

The crowd in Los Angeles, largely met his statements with applause and ovation.

But this Sunday, Bad Bunny will meet a larger and potentially more politically divided audience at the Super Bowl, where he is set to headline this year's halftime show. Since late September when the NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced their invitation to Bad Bunny, many took to social media to voice their indignation at the choice to platform an artist who has only released music in Spanish.

To learn more about Bad Bunny's political history and what we might expect at the Super Bowl, Morning Edition host A Martinez spoke with Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, who chairs the American Studies Department at Wellesley College and the co-author, alongside Vanessa Díaz, of the new book, P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. The two academics are also behind the Bad Bunny Syllabus, an online teaching resource based on Puerto Rican history and Bad Bunny's meteoric rise since 2016.

Below are three takeaways from the conversation.

Students come for Bad Bunny and stay for the history 

Rivera-Rideau teaches "Bad Bunny: Race, Gender, and Empire in Reggaetón" at Wellesley and said the course uses Bad Bunny's work as a hook to get students into the seminar.

"But we really actually spend most of our time talking about Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican history is part of U.S. history," she said. "And Bad Bunny music has consistently made references to this history."

Rivera-Rideau pointed to an example from 2018 when Bad Bunny debuted on a U.S. mainstream English language television show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The artist opened with a critique of the Trump administration's handling of Hurricane Maria, which had devastated his island in 2017.

"After one year of the hurricane, there's still people without electricity in their homes. More than 3,000 people died and Trump is still in denial," Martínez Ocasio said.

Latinos remain "perpetually foreign" to some

Puerto Ricans are born U.S. citizens — but this has not always protected them from being caught in recent ICE operations.

"I think part of that has to do with the kind of racialization of Spanish and the racialization of Latino communities of which Puerto Ricans are a part," she said. "And I think what it indicates is that, to me, Latinos in the United States, many of whom have been here for generations, are often understood to be perpetually foreign as a group of people that just does not belong."

The Party is the Protest 

Rivera-Rideau said if Apple Music's trailer for the Super Bowl halftime show — which features Bad Bunny dancing with a group representing a smattering of ages, faces and abilities — is any indication of what audiences can expect on Sunday's stage, the theme might be joy in the face of a difficult moment for immigrants and Latinos in the U.S.

"One of the things we talk about in our book is that Bad Bunny is part of resistance, he does engage in protests but it's often through joy," she said. "We have a chapter in our book called 'The Party is the Protest' and I actually feel like that's what I expect at the Superbowl, a party and a protest.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Super Bowl, to someone who a) grew up in the UK, and b) doesn’t really get football, is a strange experience.

Of course, I’m talking American football, not English football, by the way. If England gets into the World Cup quarter final you might find me at 7 a.m. in a pub in Santa Monica drinking a nice cup of tea and cheering the TV.

The Super Bowl is a national cultural event, and there’s so much excitement running up to it, yet when it happens, the thing that everyone is fixated on is the thing you’re least interested in. As in, the football — the men with padded shoulders who pile into a heap. I mean, I get the ones in the middle are doing something, but the ones at the edges are just for show, right?

All the running and the throwing and the tackling … well that just gets in the way of all the entertainment.

OK, OK, I’m kidding. I do get excited when a halfback grabs the ball and starts up the field, elbowing people out of the way, but even that can get a bit wearing when it happens over and over again. Just let the guy get to where he wants to go already!

And that’s where the Super Bowl is ideal. It comes with ready prepared breaks in the action, so there’s no chance to get bored. There’s the commercials. Over the years, some of them have been so great, like that one with the kid and the Force, and that Eminem Detroit one.

Some, not so much. That’s where I do my armchair critiquing. “Well I hoped they paid him a whole boatload of money for that one, his credibility’s down the toilet,” or, “Oh come on, ad agency, for a million dollars per millisecond, that’s all you can come up with?”

But it’s the hope, the desire, that this moment you’ll be blown out of your chair. Wait, that sounds a lot like watching football. Hmm.

Then there’s the half time show, which I always watch. “Call me when it starts!” I yell at my family as I walk out to do some very important laundry folding. As the music begins, I rush back in. Lady Gaga, Beyonce and now … Bad Bunny. As I watch pure perfection, I keep telling myself, they’re doing it live, in front of a billion people. They are not missing a damn note. Or step. Except that left shark. Hell, even the Weeknd won me over eventually.

And then there’s the last quarter. I make sure I watch that. It’s the psychodrama of it all. The looks on the coach’s faces as they chew their gum, serious, determined. The fans, holding their breath. The commentators asking Tom Brady what it was like when he was doing it. And then.. the whistle blows. And one half of the stadium is ecstatic, giddy with delight, while the other half stares into the abyss. It's a Shakespearean tragedy come to life. For all the commercials and the music, this really is the can’t miss part, which brings me back year after year. Go Patriots! Go Seahawks! Let the game begin.