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AC Transit implemented the second phase of a 25-cent fare adjustment Wednesday. Riders will now pay $2.75 for local single-ride fares using Clipper or contactless payment and $3 with cash, increased from $2.50 and $2.75, respectively. 

The completion of the adjustment marks the first time the transit district has increased fares since 2019. The first phase of the fare adjustment took place in July 2025 and saw the local adult cash fare increase from $2.50 to $2.75, as well as the Transbay cash fare increase from $6 to $6.50. 

While AC Transit could potentially cut $53 million from its operating budget if the passage of a transportation sales tax fails in November, the fare hikes are unrelated. According to AC Transit’s spokesperson Robert Lyles, the adjustments were approved before the COVID-19 pandemic, but their implementation was paused to ease the financial burden on riders.

Harshita “Khushi” Nair, a legal studies student and rising senior at UC Berkeley, passed away in June at age 21. 

Nair was from Fremont and graduated from Washington High School. She studied at Ohlone College before transferring to UC Berkeley. She was an active member of the ASUC Office of the President, serving as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice intern. She was also a member of the Undergraduate Women in Law club. 

Esha Sharma, a friend of Nair, first met her during the spring semester in Hindi 100B, where the two got to know each other through conversations in Hindi.

A study released by UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education found a correlation between the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and an increased share of A grades for classes with take-home assignments at a selective public university in Texas. However, Berkeleytime data collected by The Daily Californian found no equivalent trends at UC Berkeley.

Between 2019 and spring 2026, A’s at UC Berkeley consistently stayed between 30% and 35%, with a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic likely due to increased pass/no pass courses.

The study, authored by Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher and director of the Student Experience in the Research University Consortium at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, analyzed 500,000 grades from 2018-25 and found that the share of A grades increased by 13 percentage points at the Texas university.

UC Berkeley School of Law professor John Yoo, best known for authoring the “torture memos,” will advise a Department of Justice investigation into an alleged yearslong conspiracy against President Donald Trump.

Yoo will assist prosecutors in Florida looking into whether former intelligence and law enforcement officials who scrutinized Trump illegally conspired against him.

Yoo led the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel under former President George W. Bush and helped author memos used to justify torture against terrorism suspects, which the DOJ later rescinded. He has since remained an advocate for expansive presidential power.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved California’s state budget for the fiscal year 2026-27, which approves $355 billion in spending, despite the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s May projection of a $16.9 billion deficit. The budget protects UC funding but cuts healthcare coverage and funding for some student financial aid programs as Newsom aims to balance state finances.

The cuts reduce funding for the Middle Class Scholarship, aimed at low- to middle-income UC and CSU students. While it previously covered up to 35% of eligible students’ remaining cost of attendance after other aid, it will cover only 17.5% of the remaining cost of attendance for the 2026-27 school year under the new plan. This is expected to reduce the cost of the program from $1.1 billion to $531 million.

The budget designates a total of approximately $5.4 billion in funding, honoring Newsom’s 2022 compact with the UC and CSU systems to annually increase their funding by 5% over the span of five years.

A number of proposed amendments to Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance could appear on the ballot this fall if approved by the Berkeley City Council today. The amendments are mostly aimed at expanding tenant protections. 

The proposed changes, authored by Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra, represent minor updates to the ordinance, which underwent more significant expansion after Measure BB passed in 2024. They result from a collaborative process between the Rent Board and City Council members. 

A significant change in the proposed amendments sets a 10% limit on annual rent increases, tying the limit to state law. Currently, the state limit does not apply to Berkeley landlords because Berkeley’s generally stricter rent code supersedes state law. The limit applies regardless of “banked” rent increases, which accrue when property owners do not charge the maximum cost dictated by the Rent Board’s rent ceiling.

A team of UC Berkeley graduates developed an incident-reporting platform for autonomous vehicles, or AVs, after noticing a need for such a channel. 

The first dedicated AV reporting platform, AV Watch, allows both riders and bystanders to report AV incidents ranging from reckless driving to accessibility issues, with the ability to add information such as locations, photos and timestamps. Past incident reports are displayed on a public dashboard along with reports compiled from external sources such as Reddit.

Roughly 20% of UC Berkeley law students are now registered with the campus’s Disabled Students’ Program — a figure that has recently drawn national headlines but that several media outlets have incorrectly overstated. 

Total DSP enrollment has also increased over the last five years — from 4,585 students in the 2021-22 academic year to more than 6,205 in the past spring semester. 

The New York Post, among other outlets, recently published articles claiming that more than 30% of UC Berkeley School of Law students were enrolled in DSP. While not factoring in the spring 2026 increase, according to fall 2025 enrollment data, including programs outside of the J.D., the number is actually around 20%.

UC Berkeley’s unofficial campus mascot and therapy dog Trouper, a beloved Great Pyrenees rescue, died last Thursday at the age of 11.

Trouper had accrued his own fan club, received hundreds of applications to walk him around campus and helped raise thousands for animal welfare. He died peacefully in his sleep last week, as announced in a June 25 Instagram post by u/trouperatcal, the account of the Trouper Fan Club. 

Students, alumni and fans of Trouper have voiced their support in the wake of his passing. Many have shared their stories and fond memories with the loving, fluffy campus celebrity.

As California’s Silicon Valley booms with prosperity and the state’s wealthiest residents grow ever wealthier, UC Berkeley and Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman champions specialized taxation of the ultrarich.

In his new book, “We Need to Tax Billionaires,” Zucman proposed the aptly named “Zucman tax,” an “unavoidable” minimum tax for extremely wealthy individuals, equal to 2% of their wealth.

“The idea is that extremely wealthy individuals should have to contribute to society … every year, no matter their individual circumstances,” Zucman said in an email. “In contrast, past wealth taxes in Europe or Latin America largely exempted the billionaires, because they were full of loopholes.”

Capping off a season of austerity deliberations, the city of Berkeley adopted a severe budget Tuesday night, which will cut almost every area of its services to close a $30 million deficit. 

The council unanimously adopted the budget, the final details of which were ironed out at the end of the night, and which came out of a compromise between conflicting visions of key details of the city’s finances. 

“This work is not complete tonight,” said District 5 Councilmember Shoshana O’Keefe. “This work, what we’re doing right now tonight, this is the best thing to do right now, but this work is not done.”

Pride has always been a protest. But in the face of state-sanctioned discrimination against trans and queer people, some superficial 21st-century acts of “solidarity” look different this year: Fewer companies have adorned their storefronts with rainbow flags, and San Francisco’s baseball players are in open opposition to LGBTQ+ representation. The bright colors of corporate “rainbow-washing,” however disingenuous, have faded to a dull hue. But are we nostalgic for the visibility of corporate pride?

In this year’s Pride issue, we welcome the opportunity to reflect on what matters most when we celebrate queerness. Not corporate recognition for profit or empty messages of support, but community with one another in the spaces we build.

Those spaces include everyone and every feeling — grief and joy alike — and extend beyond these four weeks. This June, our columnists and reporters seek to situate Pride in something just as integral as protest: love.

A new data report from Berkeley’s Homeless Response Team shows an increase in successful placement in shelters for participants who are unhoused, citing an increase in shelter capacity brought online this year in collaboration with Alameda County.

However, the report also warned that with the fiscal cliffs shelters are facing, in combination with the city’s general budget deficit, the current rate of placements may not be sustainable and could result in a decline in successful outcomes.

The Homeless Response Team is run by the city and aims to help place residents who are unhoused in shelters and permanent housing. The HRT also cleans and closes encampments that pose health risks.

A lawsuit from 18 former Cal swimmers alleging former women’s head coach Teri McKeever verbally and psychologically abused them was granted a second life after a California court of appeal ruled last week that the statute of limitations did not bar their claims. 

The suit, Touhey v. Regents of the University of California, alleges that the university failed to protect them from McKeever’s abuse despite numerous complaints from swimmers and family members to administration throughout nearly all of McKeever’s 30-year tenure as coach. 

“Given how much Coach McKeever was promoted within the swimming community and the constant reminders of Cal’s Olympic heritage, Plaintiffs felt that enduring her abuse was the price they paid to be on an elite team,” the original complaint alleges. “Plaintiffs began to believe that they (were) subjected to degrading treatment because they were not living up to the Cal standards of excellence.”

The U.S. Department of Education will be offloading responsibility for student civil rights enforcement and disability programs to other federal agencies. The department has shrunk drastically over the last year, and advocates worry this could upend how disability is treated and further stall discrimination investigations for students. 

Much of the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates civil rights violations and protects students from discrimination, will shift to the Department of Justice. The responsibilities of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services will largely move to the Department of Health and Human Services. OSERS administers funding for special education programs and guarantees equal rights for students with disabilities. 

While the details of the interagency agreement are vague, director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy Catherine E. Lhamon said the shifts are sure to slow down civil rights claims.

The University Council – American Federation of Teachers aims to prioritize academic freedom, job security and new guidelines on technology in the classroom in its ongoing contract negotiations with the UC system.

A new contract would govern the approximately 5,314 Unit 18 teaching faculty members, which includes lecturers that UC-AFT represents throughout the UC system. The union met with UC administration most recently June 4 and is set to continue bargaining June 30.

“The University of California and the UC-AFT union began bargaining in March, and negotiations have progressed regularly,” said UCOP spokesperson Heather Hansen in an email. “UC is working toward a fair and sustainable agreement that supports quality instruction, advances the University’s academic mission, and helps students succeed.”

Faculty advocating for the reinstatement of SAT and ACT requirements are criticizing the timeline produced by the UC system’s Academic Senate to revisit its standardized testing policies, saying the process is moving too slowly.

The UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools approved a roadmap June 5 outlining its plan to research potential changes to admissions policy. The committee formed two work groups: One will study the efficacy of standardized testing in first-year admissions, and the other will look at the UC’s “A-G” course requirement for California first-year applicants.

If approved by the UC Board of Regents, changes would affect fall 2028 applicants at the earliest, one year later than called for in a petition signed by more than 1,500 UC STEM faculty.

According to Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, Min Zin was detained June 3 in the city of Kunming in Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar. Lin confirmed that the Chinese government had informed the U.S. consulate general in Guangzhou of Min Zin’s arrest.

UCPD arrested a camp staffer on suspicion of a child sexual assault that took place in a residence hall at UC Berkeley on June 13. 

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office officially lists the charges against the suspect as sodomy with a person under 18, first-degree burglary and lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14. The suspect is a 27-year-old male originally from Vallejo, California, and has been booked in the Santa Rita Jail. 

Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore wrote in an email statement that the camp was not run by UC Berkeley and that UCPD’s investigation into the situation remains ongoing.