r/CaliforniaUncensored

A slew of closures have left grocery shoppers in California with fewer affordable options.

Grocery Outlet — a major discount retailer — first announced plans to shut down 36 “financially underperforming stores” locations back in March. The shutters would take place all across the country as part of the company’s “optimization plan.”

The scheme would “improve operational execution, strengthen long-term profitability and increase cash flow generation,” according to a company earnings call.

Residents of a picturesque California coastal town have been dealing with a bizarre string of power outages this summer — and the culprit has feathers.

Wild turkeys are being blamed for repeatedly knocking out electricity in Cambria, where residents and businesses have endured a series of short-lived outages since mid-July.

The interruptions have typically occurred during daylight hours and lasted around an hour, sometimes happening twice in one day or on several consecutive days, according to The Tribune. The disruptions have left residents scrambling to get ready for work, brew their morning coffee and, in some cases, operate medical equipment.

They’re flying the coop.

Classic American fried chicken chain KFC has permanently closed a total of 44 restaurants across California from July 2025 to July 2026, according to a new analysis from search visibility platform Local Falcon. The chain closed 312 restaurants nationwide in the same period, representing a 7.6% loss in the chain’s national footprint.

To discover which locations were inactive, Local Falcon compared the numbers from the chain’s public store locator on its website from July 2025 to July 2026. Each location that produced a 404 error was cross-verified against Google Maps to confirm it was permanently closed.

Los Angeles City Council has voted to allow homeless people set up camps and live in parks after a proposal by DSA councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez.

The City Council voted 10-3 in favor of lifting anti-camping restrictions at more than a dozen parks and public spaces across Hollywood, Silver Lake and surrounding neighborhoods, making it far easier for homeless people to set up tents and live in the parks within his district

The anti-camping rules had previously been in place to prevent encampments from returning after they were already cleared by law enforcement.

Many of California’s most prominent Democratic leaders gathered Tuesday afternoon to rally opposition to a ballot measure that would require voters to show identification at the polls.

The news conference, held at the state’s Democratic Party headquarters, was the latest effort by California elected officials to frame Proposition 39 as a costly and dangerous effort propelled by President Donald Trump.

The proposed ballot measure, which will appear on the November ballot, would mandate voters show a government-issued ID if they vote in person or provide the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when casting ballots by mail.

California generally does not require people to show government-issued ID at the polls, though people must attest they are citizens under penalty of perjury and provide personal information to verify their identity when registering to vote. Multiple nonpartisan studies have shown voter fraud is extremely rare across the country.

The Task Force does not recommend that UC make standardized tests optional for applicants at this time.”

That was the conclusion of a special task force appointed to study in 2020 whether the University of California (UC) should get rid of the SAT and other tests as criteria for admission.

The purpose was blatant, and unconstitutional: To expand the number of black and Latino students at elite public universities, even though Proposition 209 banned the use of race in admissions.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Friday that the Federal Railroad Administration is investing $5.3 billion in rail projects across 23 states, with roughly $2 billion coming from federal funds the Trump administration says it “saved” by canceling unspent funding for California’s high-speed rail project.

The money will help close dangerous railroad crossings, upgrade aging infrastructure and purchase new Amtrak trainsets as the administration touts what it calls a “Golden Age of Rail.”

“It’s simple: Boondoggles are OUT and safety is IN,” Duffy said. “Instead of wasting billions of dollars on Newsom’s failed high-speed rail boondoggle, we are fixing thousands of grade crossings – saving lives and improving communities across America.”

“We’re also making an unprecedented investment in Amtrak because President Trump and I are committed to making passenger rail in America great again,” Duffy added. “Gavin Newsom should take notes–this is how you properly invest hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”

Gavin Newsom celebrated last year when Proposition 50 passed, gerrymandering California’s congressional map to favor Democrats. But the new California map should be struck down by the courts for the same reason the US Supreme Court recently blocked Louisiana’s map: Both were drawn using race, in violation of the US Constitution.

The Supreme Court doomed the Louisiana congressional map in Louisiana v. Callais because legislators in Baton Rouge had been explicit: They wanted to create a congressional seat specifically to elect a black representative to Congress.

Legislators in Sacramento were even more explicit about their racial purpose. Legislator after legislator spoke openly about their goal of creating “black districts” and “Latino-majority districts.” As in Louisiana, they garbled the Voting Rights Act, saying it mandated “voters of color be placed in districts” to elect racial minorities.

The Los Angeles City Council has rescinded camping bans on a dozen locations in Hollywood, Echo Park and Silver Lake at the urging of the area’s council member, who called the bans ineffective in addressing homelessness.

“Displacing our neighbors from block to block, or in many cases from district to district, doesn’t help them find housing,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez in asking his colleagues to remove the camping ban. “In most cases, it makes it much harder for us to help them because they lose their belongings, they get fined, and many times they are arrested. To me, that is a policy that does not work.”

The motion was approved on a 10-3 vote at Tuesday’s council meeting, with Imelda Padilla, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez dissenting. Soto-Martínez said he believed it was the first instance of an encampment ban being rescinded.

Padilla accused Soto-Martínez of engaging in a double standard, asking the council to defer to his wishes in his district while opposing efforts by his colleagues to establish no-encampment zones in their communities.

“Is this a matter of supporting you because this is what you want, or should I just treat you the way you’ve been treating us?” Padilla asked.

California Dreamin’ … of Texas, Florida and Tennessee.

That’s the state of play in 2026.

The home of sun-drenched beaches, Yosemite and Silicon Valley is one of just five states that lost residents in 2025 compared with 2024, per an analysis by the financial technology company SmartAsset.

The study, published this week, found that “California is declining while Texas is rising.”

Scant surprise there. The Golden State is unaffordable, malgoverned and steered by stakeholders like unions, nonprofits and bureaucrats that put their own interests first –– and hand residents the bill.

The steady exodus of those residents should ring alarm bells for California voters.

The status quo is failing.

In the five years since the 2020 Census, California lost about 1.1 million residents, in aggregate, to other states.

Consequences include a brain, skills and jobs drain, diluted power for the state in Congress, and a loss of clout the state has long enjoyed nationally.

A San Francisco high school where students get top grades simply for showing up now has the highest acceptance rate in the state to the prestigious University of California, Berkeley — as critics blame rampant grade inflation and rock-bottom standards for a surge in ill-prepared college students who end up dropping out.

Mission High School had a 45% acceptance rate into the elite university, with 34 out of its 76 applicants gaining admission last fall, far ahead of the state average of 15%, according to data compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Homeless people are outraged after a Northern California city has vowed to close the park they call home after repeated drug use and safety issues.

Sam Brannan Park in Yuba City is scheduled to close Sept. 1 for what city officials describe as much-needed security upgrades, but some residents and frequent visitors are furious about the move.

A well known University of California-Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed admissions standards at the top-flight university — where she says huge portions of her students are failing to keep up with college calculus and she’s forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to students.

“Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics. Office hours that should be spent discussing integrals instead become lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school,” wrote Zvezdelina Stankova, of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard.

Stankova — who rose through the mathematics world to earn a PhD from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria — described the admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”

As deadly firestorms raged in Los Angeles County, carving a path of destruction that displaced families and killed 31 people, bets online were rolling in.

The wagers flowed into Polymarket, a company that bills itself as the largest platform for predicting global events, where it posed frequently asked questions about the Eaton and Palisades fires as they scorched communities. How fast would the blazes grow? How long would it take to contain them? How much would be destroyed?

According to a letter sent from nine senators this month to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction market platforms, Polymarket accepted more than $1.2 million in predictions, or bets, on the January 2025 fires.

“That was fun. Thanks everyone. Until the next time!” one Polymarket user commented on a thread where users could put money on the Palisades fire’s containment date. Others, however, expressed some concerns about the morality of cashing in on the destruction.

A $2-billion high-rise affordable housing complex is set to change the skyline of Warner Center and set a new precedent for assisted senior living in Los Angeles.

Senior housing provider Wellpointe unveiled plans for Viva L.A. at Warner Center, a cluster of four skyscrapers with 3,192 units to rise near the new Los Angeles Rams Village being built in the San Fernando Valley community.

The project has the backing of Mayor Karen Bass and local City Councilmember Bob Blumenfeld, and Wellpointe expects to start construction by the end of next year. Viva is the largest affordable housing project created under Bass’ Executive Directive 1, a 2022 order to speed up the city approval process for 100% affordable developments intended to reduce homelessness.

California’s schools are closing at an alarming rate.

More than 19,000 California students are facing a very different back-to-school season this year after their schools closed amid a yearslong enrollment decline that is putting the squeeze on districts across the state.

California’s public school enrollment fell by 1.3% during the 2025–26 school year, meaning nearly 75,000 fewer students were enrolled. It was the biggest annual drop since 2021–22 according to EdSource.

For school districts, fewer kids mean fewer dollars. California largely ties school funding to attendance, leaving districts scrambling when enrollment shrinks while many of their operating costs stubbornly refuse to budge.

And the decline isn’t exactly a blip.

A billionaire-funded political group gave a $5-million donation to the campaign opposing California’s proposed wealth tax, the first of many expected in the expensive fight over a ballot question dividing the state.

If approved by voters, Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires who were residing in the state at the start of this year to pay primarily for healthcare.

The ballot measure has splintered California Democrats and their allies, who are at odds over which public services would receive a portion of the revenue and Proposition 40’s long-term impact on the state budget.

As the costs of making movies and TV shows continue to soar, California has found itself last on the list of locations for productions looking to cut costs. But despite this pressure, California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, is making it harder for film and TV productions to stay and now he’s even on the verge of chasing Paramount out of the Golden State entirely.

Workers, tens of thousands of them blue-collar, are hardest hit by these political battles. As the industry deteriorates in the state, congressmember and former film producer Laura Friedman says Hollywood is dying and employees feel “beaten down” and left behind by California Democrats who’ve failed to slow the steady decline, according to Politico.

Los Angeles County has already lost more than 42,000 film and TV jobs since 2022. Studios, production companies, and filmmakers continue to escape to other states and even other countries to create their entertainment, Politico noted.

A poll claiming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was leading Councilmember Nithya Raman by a wide margin — and picking up support from most voters who backed Spencer Pratt in the mayoral primary — was bogus, the company behind the poll acknowledged Monday.

The fake poll by Median Strategies showed Bass leading Raman by nearly 12 percentage points ahead of the Nov. 3 mayoral runoff, and said the results were based on a survey of 560 Los Angeles voters between July 30 and Aug. 5. It said it had a 4.1% margin of error.

But Monday, in response to repeated inquiries from The Times, the company said the purported “poll” was nothing of the kind.

“Median Strategies was created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification,” the company said in an email to The Times. “We are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.”

Marin County has long been one of California’s most expensive places to live.

Its coveted coastal views, proximity to the Bay Area’s tech economy and a formidable resistance to new development have created an extremely tight housing market in an already-pricey region.

But there’s another key factor that’s become increasingly important in conversations about housing here and in many other parts of California: the aging population.

“Household sizes are shrinking as kids move out and as spouses die,” said Jenny Silva, executive director of Call Marin Home, a coalition focused on affordable and sustainable housing. “What was a household for four or five people is now a household for one.”

Marin County — where more than a third of residents are 60 or older, a share expected to rise to 40% by 2040 — may just be the most extreme example of how California’s ballooning senior population has created another challenge in the state’s housing crisis. As a large share of the state’s population ages, homes increasingly are accommodating fewer people. Even when new housing is built, it’s not having the outcome many expected because of this “spreading-out effect,” as one housing expert called it.