The San Francisco Standard: Tech Layoffs: Kaiser Permanente Slashes Jobs Across Bay Area
Kaiser Permanente confirmed that it is cutting more than a hundred IT roles nationwide, a majority of which will impact the health care giant’s Northern California division. A Kaiser spokesperson told The Standard that it “made the difficult but necessary decision to eliminate 115 positions in IT” in November, 65 of which are based in Northern California. According to a WARN notice obtained by The Standard, 12 workers across three Oakland offices, 41 workers in a Pleasanton office, one worker in South San Francisco and one in Walnut Creek were laid off. (Bote, 12/8)

Becker's Hospital Review: New Kaiser Hospital Could Cost Up To $1.5B
Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente's new hospital development in Sacramento, Calif., could cost as much as $1.48 billion, Sacramento Business Journal reported Dec. 11. The project costs 50% more than when the health system first announced the new hospital six years ago. The 310-bed hospital building is expected to cost $924.4 million. When Kaiser assessed the building part of the project in 2018, it projected that it would cost $749.5 million. (Schwartz, 12/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Veterinarian Who Treats The Pets Of Homeless People Wins CNN 2023 Hero Of The Year 
A San Diego County-based veterinarian who volunteers time, money and medication to treat the pets of homeless people was tapped as CNN’s 2023 Hero of the Year. (Figueroa, 12/11)

KQED: Why Some Doctors Are Pushing Hollywood To Depict Death And Dying More Realistically On TV
We’ve seen it so many times: A young, handsome man rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound. A flurry of white coats racing the clock. CPR, the heart zapper, the order for a scalpel. Stat! Then, finally, the flatline. This is Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider’s biggest pet peeve. Where are the TV scripts about the elderly grandmothers dying of heart failure at home? What about an episode on the daughter still grieving her father’s fatal lung cancer 10 years later? (Dembosky, 12/11)

The Washington Post: Police Obtain Pharmacy Records Without A Warrant At CVS, Walgreen, Rite-Aid 
The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy. ... The policy was revealed in a letter sent late Monday to Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.). The members began investigating the practice after the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion. (Harwell, 12/12)

The Hill: Supreme Court Turns Away Challenge To Abortion Clinic Buffer Zones
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to a precedent enabling states to enact laws prohibiting anti-abortion activists from approaching someone entering an abortion clinic. In 2000, the high court ruled that the First Amendment did not prohibit such a law in Colorado. Several of the Supreme Court’s conservatives have publicly cast doubt on the decision’s viability, concerns they again raised in the majority opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion last year. Backed by anti-abortion and religious interests, a Catholic “sidewalk counselor” sought to have the precedent overturned by appealing her challenge to a Westchester County, N.Y., law to the high court. But in a brief order, the justices declined to hear the dispute. (Schonfeld, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Rebuffs Gay 'Conversion Therapy' Case 
A divided Supreme Court on Monday turned down a Christian group’s free-speech challenge to the laws in California and 21 other states that forbid licensed counselors from using “conversion therapy” with children and teenagers. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed dissents, and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he also voted to hear the case. ... When the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California’s first-in-the-nation law in 2014, it ruled the state had broad authority to regulate the practice of medicine and “professional speech” about medical treatments. (Savage, 12/11)

Vox: The Supreme Court Hands Down An Unexpected Victory For LGBTQ People In Tingley V. Ferguson
Do therapists have a right to tell patients to "pray away the gay"? The Court is leaving that question open. (Millhiser, 12/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Federal Judge Upholds California Law Limiting Rifle Purchases By Young Adults Under 21
A San Diego federal judge has upheld a California law that limits people under the age of 21 from buying semi-automatic rifles and other long guns, ruling that similar laws dating back centuries have also limited gun ownership by young adults for safety reasons. “The restrictions embodied in (the challenged law) were enacted because individuals under the age of 21 lack cognitive maturity and are disproportionately prone to violence,” U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz wrote in his ruling, filed Friday. “For the same reasons, the rights of this age group were curtailed during the Founding era, including access to firearms.” (Riggins, 12/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: He Wasn’t Allowed To Own A Gun In California. But He Bought One — And Killed His 10-Year-Old Son
Christy Camara decorated her home for the holidays this month, festooning a slender fir tree with ornaments made by her son, Wyland Gomes. There’s a red-and-green picture with his handprints from preschool. There’s his fourth-grade photo. Her refrigerator is similarly bedecked with Wyland’s artwork and little notes he wrote, some of them about his love for his mom. But Camara, who lives in Oceano (San Luis Obispo County), won’t be celebrating Christmas with her quiet, funny son with the goofy laugh and the love of baseball. The ornaments and other mementos commemorate a life cut short. Wyland died four years ago, shot dead at age 10 by his father, Victor Gomes, who then took his own life.  (Said, 12/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: SDPD Tried To Serve Protection Order On Gunman Before 4S Ranch Shootout That Wounded Officer 
A man killed in a shootout with San Diego police in a 4S Ranch shopping center late Thursday has been identified as a 46-year-old San Diego resident. Sheriff’s officials said Curtis Harris was killed after he pulled a gun and shot at officers in the parking lot of a Ralphs grocery store, injuring a police sergeant. (Kucher, 12/11)

Sacramento Bee: Four-County Sacramento Region Now In COVID Yellow Status
The four counties in California’s capital region have been moved into a COVID-19 status tier that urges those at high risk of getting very sick to wear a high-quality mask or respirator, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, due to recent increases in virus hospitalization numbers. Sacramento, Placer, Yolo and El Dorado counties are now listed in the “yellow” (or medium) status tier based on COVID-19 hospitalization rates from data collected by the CDC through Dec. 2, the most recent data available for counties in California. (Ahumada, 12/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: The Homeless Population Downtown Just Hit A Two-Year Low. The Result Is A Mixed Bag. 
The number of people living outside or in vehicles downtown has plunged to a two-year low as San Diego officials enforce the city’s camping ban and push for new shelters. While police have punished relatively few individuals because of the new rules, the threat of handcuffs appears to have been enough to help drop the unsheltered population in the urban center to around 1,200 as of last month, according to data from the Downtown San Diego Partnership. That’s about 1,000 fewer people than were there six months ago. (Nelson, 12/11)

The Oaklandside: Oakland Seeking Volunteers For Homeless Count In January
Just once every two years, in the dark hours before sunrise, hundreds of volunteers hit the streets of Alameda County, tallying every person they see sleeping outside or in cars.  Inside shelters, others are surveying the people sleeping there, learning more about who lacks permanent housing locally and why. (Orenstein, 12/11)

CalMatters: Hundreds Of L.A. Homeless Evicted Over Agency's Late Rent
Jesus Mares got a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to rental support from one of Los Angeles’ leading homelessness agencies, he had a roof over his head. He had been bouncing between sleeping in his car and hotel rooms. The taxpayer-subsidized room in a South L.A. duplex provided stability until he could get back on his feet, he’d hoped. It went well for a while, he said. Then Mares quickly noticed things were amiss with the nonprofit, known as HOPICS. He went through several case managers who Mares said didn’t come to see him. (Lyons and Kuang, 12/12)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Mayoral Candidate Slams DA For Homeless Suits
Sacramento mayoral candidate Flojaune Cofer is accusing Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho of “criminalizing homelessness” in his ongoing legal action against the city. The September lawsuit, which Ho says is the first of its kind in the nation, alleges the city is allowing encampments to create an ongoing public nuisance. Cofer called the suit a waste of public resources, as all shelter beds are typically full. (Clift, 12/11)

Voice of OC: Less Executives, More Street Staff: Santa Ana Rethinks Homeless Services 
The issue of compensation has dogged public discussions about helping Orange County’s unhoused population on multiple occasions. Increasingly, the focus has centered on nonprofit executives’ salaries – publicly-funded by their contracts with cities and counties – far exceeding that of their on-the-ground outreach staff working most directly toward getting people off the streets. In Santa Ana, the issue has City Council members thinking about how to end this kind of funding cycle entirely. And how to bring those services in-house. (Pho, 12/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: It’s Not Just Fentanyl. How ‘Speedballs’ Are Making S.F.’s Drug Overdose Crisis Even Worse
Chi Minie overdosed on fentanyl for the first time four years ago, at age 32. But the near-death experience didn’t stop him from using — or from taking the even riskier step of escalating to speedballs, packing rocks of crack cocaine into a pipe along with the super-powerful opioid fentanyl. It’s pricier to smoke the mixture, because he has to shell out cash for two drugs instead of just one, he said, but the high is “smoother.” Minie overdosed again in April. Still, whenever he gets a few extra dollars — not an easy thing to do, considering he is homeless — he treats himself to a speedball or a goofball, mixing fentanyl with methamphetamine. (Fagan and Leonard, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: Stiiizy’s Founder Is Landlord To Black Market Dispensaries
The sign on the building said Jerry’s Liquor, but inside, Compton code enforcement inspectors found a cannabis dispensary called Fly High 20 Collective. The discovery of the black market dispensary in 2019 wasn’t unusual in a city plagued with them. But when authorities looked deeper into the property on Rosecrans Avenue, they found something startling: It was owned by Tony Huang, the man behind one of the cannabis industry’s biggest and most successful companies. (Ormseth, 12/12)

Bay Area News Group: New Psychedelic-Like Drugs: All Treatment, No 'Trip'?
At the new UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics, director David Olson is tweaking psychoactive drugs to spur neural growth and rewire the troubled brain without triggering hallucinations or adverse effects. His biotech startup, Delix Therapeutics, has built a portfolio of more than 2,000 non-hallucinogenic compounds. (Krieger, 12/12)

Los Angeles Times: Toxic Chemical Reactions Fuel Crises At L.A. County Landfills 
Hundreds of feet underground, in a long-dormant portion of Chiquita Canyon landfill, tons of garbage have been smoldering for months due to an enigmatic chemical reaction. Although operators of the Castaic landfill say there’s no full-blown fire, temperatures within the dump have climbed to more than 200 degrees, and area residents have complained of a burned garbage odor wafting through the neighborhoods. Meanwhile, 12 miles to the southeast, Sunshine Canyon landfill has suffered water intrusion from torrential storms earlier this year. That seepage has fueled bacteria growth within the Sylmar landfill, giving rise to putrid odors that have nauseated students and staff at a local elementary school. (Briscoe, 12/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Poised To Allow ‘Toilet To Tap’ Projects, In Landmark Water Rule
California water regulators are poised to approve long-awaited rules that will allow local water agencies to convert sewage — such as what drains from toilets and showers — directly into drinking water. The landmark regulations will go before the State Water Resources Control Board for consideration next week. If approved, they would enable projects sometimes dubbed “toilet to tap” to move forward in numerous communities, including Santa Clara County, Los Angeles and San Diego. (Galbraith, 12/11)