PG&E is on track to invest $2.3 billion or more to inspect and repair powerlines, expand weather stations, step up tree-trimming, and implement preemptive power outages. But after decades of slow innovation and deteriorated public trust, will it be enough? As of June, PG&E has only completed 20% of the tree work it intended to do this year, and only 29% of the riskiest powerlines. 

Also, earlier this week an article from the Wall Street Journal caught U.S. District Judge Aslup’s attention. It reported on how the company neglected its lines for years, He ordered the utility to respond to each paragraph of the report by July 31.

Nancy Pelosi labelled a presidential tweet this morning targeting “the Squad” - four recently elected progressive women of color that were elected to the House, including Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaid, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, as “xenophobic comments meant to divide our nation”. It was the latest round in an increasingly public dust up this week between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the recently elected progressive congresswomen. 

The conflict originated from Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column last weekend where a statement made by Pelosi meant to convey that the four congresswomen needed to organize more votes in the House, not simply rely on their social media supporters, turned into a fight over whether she was singling out minority women. This week, Dowd addressed the fracas in a new column arguing that Pelosi and AOC may be trapped in a generational and ideological tangle.

Joe Eskenazi breaks down the politics behind the Board’s rejection of Mayor Breed’s proposed teacher housing charter amendment ballot measure, a proposal that was essentially DOA considering Breed did not have the 6 votes necessary to put a charter amendment on the ballot and progressive supervisors crafted their own competing measure.

Eskenazi posits it was good political maneuvering, essentially the “legislative equivalent of a flaming bag of feces placed on a mark’s doorstep. The mayor invigorated her staunchest supporters while also portraying the board as obstructionist and dysfunctional."  

Supervisors Matt Haney and Hillary Ronen are pushing their ballot measure to create 24/7 mental health services for all San Franciscans until the March primary to give more time to collaborate with the Mayor’s office and other departments, after the measure came under scrutiny for being light on specifics of implementation, such as funding and staffing.

Building inspectors cleared Supervisor Aaron Peskin of allegations made by a “self-described pro-housing YIMBY” that the D3 Supervisor had illegally converted two units into a single family home, where the Peskin has resided since 2002. 

Peskin says the timing of these claims seemed designed to derail his legislation that seeks to prevent homeowners from tearing down their homes entirely, or parts of homes, to build much larger buildings.

A politically active billionaire who has never held elective office jumps into a crowded electoral field, touting his status as a political outsider who uniquely understands the corrupting influence of money and power in politics. The Chronicle compares the rhetoric of Democratic Presidential candidate Tom Steyer to similar past themes echoed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump.