California’s first-in-the-nation AI safety law includes whistleblower protections, but late concessions narrowed them sharply, limiting coverage to select safety staff and requiring serious harm or extreme risk before employees are protected, leaving many potential insiders vulnerable to retaliation.
Yearly Archives: 2025
Posted inArts & Culture, Community, Housing
Art Brings Filipinos’ Fight for Affordable Housing to New Audiences
An organization that Filipinos started 25 years ago to advocate for affordable housing in San Francisco is using art to share its message across wider circles.
Posted inNews
At Ingleside’s Oldest Chinese Restaurant, a ‘United Nations’ of Customers
Wang Wah is the oldest Chinese American restaurant in Ingleside, according to business records. When it opened in 1985, under the name Golden China, it was the only Chinese restaurant on a commercial corridor largely made up of African American-owned shops, bars and restaurants. Over the decades, the area has transformed as longtime residents moved out, and new ones moved in.
Posted inHealth, Housing
Treasure Island, a ‘Health Care Desert,’ Gains a Clinic on Wheels
Treasure Island has no permanent medical service, nor does the city plan to establish any. One service agency deployed a medical van to bridge the gap.
Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Health, Law & Justice, LGBTQ+
Health Experts Brace for Return of Conversion Therapy for LGBTQ+ Youth
Doctors and mental health experts across the country are warning of dire consequences as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case that could overturn a Colorado ban on conversion therapy for minors, a practice long tied to psychological harm and elevated suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Homelessness, Housing
HUD Scrambles Homelessness Funding Twice in One Month, Throwing Local Service Providers Into Uncertainty
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has abruptly rescinded a plan to overhaul how it funds local programs serving the homeless, leaving cities unsure how or when billions of federal homelessness dollars will be disbursed.
Posted inHealth
San Francisco Halts Plan to Displace Dozens of Care Facility Residents With Severe Mental Illness
San Francisco health officials have reversed a controversial plan to uproot 82 long-term residents with severe mental illness from two units at a hospital-based care center. All occupants in one unit will remain in place, while those in another have been promised protections.
Posted inEnvironment, Exposed, Health
City Sat on Plutonium Findings, Then Faulted Navy Over Delay
San Francisco health and redevelopment officials waited nearly a month to alert the community about a suspected plutonium detection at the Hunters Point Shipyard, even as they criticized the U.S. Navy for keeping the discovery under wraps.
Posted inHealth, Hepatitis B: A ‘Silent Killer’
As Trump Allies Undercut Child Vaccination for Hepatitis B, Patient Advocates Warn Chronic Disease Will Spread
A vote by a Trump administration advisory panel to eliminate decades-old guidelines recommending the routine vaccination of newborns for hepatitis B could release a new wave of chronic infections, say local experts in disease management.
Posted inHomelessness, Social Services
As Trump Disrupts Homelessness Funding, Providers Hope City Can Prop Up Housing Programs
Nonprofit service providers and San Francisco officials are seeking funding approaches to blunt federal shifts that they worry could force many formerly homeless residents of subsidized supportive housing back onto the streets.