The waters of southern California historically warm every few years. But the marine heatwave that started last fall wasn’t caused by tropical currents. Photograph: Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Researchers warn the high-pressure conditions could disrupt marine life and ecosystems if it continues
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The waters of southern California historically warm every few years as tropical currents make their way north, a phenomenon known as El Niño. But the marine heatwave that started last fall wasn’t caused by tropical currents. Instead, a high-pressure atmospheric system – think of calm, sunny days – has perched above southern California, warming both air and sea above historic levels. The same phenomenon has helped fuel a ferocious California heatwave on land.
The extended ocean warming has drawn comparisons to “the Blob”, a three-year marine heatwave caused by similar prolonged high-pressure conditions a decade ago that devastated marine life. The next few weeks are likely to determine whether this marine heatwave fizzles out or evolves into something more Blob-like, scientists say.
“The biggest concern is how the year plays out,” Andrew Leising, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. “We could be looking at much larger impacts next fall and winter, if it stays warm and then it’s followed by a strong El Niño.”
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Prolonged ocean heat has a devastating impact on phytoplankton and can cause harmful algal blooms. Those changes can wreak havoc on many forms of marine life, from sea lions and dolphins, to shore birds and halibut. The Blob years led to one of the worst Dungeness crab seasons in recent history, said Melissa Carter, a researcher at the UC-San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Such heatwaves are becoming more common and lasting longer, partly because of the slow warming of the oceans driven by the climate crisis, and partly because of atmospheric changes that scientists are still struggling to understand.
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Ed Milband and Gavin Newsom at the signing event in London. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London
Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.
“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”
In an intervention that is likely to be clocked by British government officials wary of potential new landmines in the UK’s relationship with the White House, Trump went on to say it was “inappropriate” for Newsom to strike such agreements and “inappropriate for them [the UK] to be dealing with him”.
Newsom, one of the loudest domestic opponents of the US president on issues ranging from ICE deportation raids to the climate crisis, signed a memorandum of understanding in London with the UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband.
Their agreement is aimed at deepening existing cooperation between the UK and California and creates a new framework to scale up clean energy technologies and enhance ties between businesses and researchers in Britain and the US state, which is in effect the world’s fourth largest global economy.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on August 21, 2025 in Sacramento, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.”
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting scheme when it refused to take up an emergency request by the California Republican Party to override an appeals court ruling that greenlit a newly redrawn congressional map in their state.
The court’s decision came two months after it cleared the way for Texas to adopt a new map drawn up by state Republicans, which analysts have projected could net the GOP as many as five additional seats in the US House of Representatives.
California’s initiative to redraw its map came as a direct rebuke to the Texas GOP, which pushed through its mid-decade partisan gerrymander at Trump’s insistence. As drawn, the new California map is expected to balance out the redrawn Texas map by netting Democrats in the House five additional seats of their own.
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who led the charge to redraw his state’s map, took a victory lap after the Supreme Court decision.
“Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas,” Newsom wrote in a social media post. “He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.”
Attorney Norm Eisen, executive chairman of Democracy Defenders Fund, hailed the court’s decision as a “huge, gigantic, enormous win” that will counter “Trump’s attempt to steal congressional seats.”
Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina, has been hit with major pushback from Democrat-controlled states.
In addition to California, Democrats in Virginia and Maryland are also working on redrawing their congressional maps to counter Trump’s efforts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
However, Trump and his allies have signaled that aggressive gerrymandering won’t be the only trick they’ll play to hold onto power in the 2026 midterms.
Right-wing podcaster and political strategist Steve Bannonclaimed on Tuesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers will “surround” polling places in November, and Trump on Monday called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and take away states’ power to conduct their own elections.
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Protesters hold signs during an anti-ICE protest outside of San Francisco City Hall on October 23, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“Maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them,” quipped one writer.
After threatening for days to deploy troops to San Francisco, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would pull back for the moment, apparently after some of his billionaire “friends” in the city called him and asked him not to.
“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “But friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress.”
Trump said he “spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around. I told [Lurie], I think he is making a mistake, because we can do it much faster, and remove the criminals that the Law does not permit him to remove. I told him, ’It’s an easier process if we do it, faster, stronger, and safer but, let’s see how you do?‘”
In a separate post, Lurie affirmed that he had spoken with Trump. He said he told the president that “San Francisco is on the rise,” and that a military occupation would “hinder our recovery.”
Although Trump is walking back his troop threat, for now, US Customs and Border Protection agents still arrived in the Bay Area on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants.
The Associated Pressreported that “police used at least one flash-bang grenade to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance” of Coast Guard Island in Alameda, where the CBP agents will be based.
In addition to threatening San Francisco in recent days, Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois—where a judge has halted the deployment.
Like virtually all of the cities where Trump has either surged or threatened to surge federalized troops, San Francisco has no crime wave to “turn around.” In fact, crime has been falling precipitously in the city. Homicides dropped by 35% during 2024 and hit a 60-year low this year, contradicting Trump’s assertions that the city is a “mess” and that people there lived in constant fear of being “mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted, or shot.”
Lurie said he agreed to help Trump go to war on this imaginary crime wave, and said he would welcome “would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and US attorney.”
Trump said he was persuaded to hold off on the surge of troops after he was called by two Silicon Valley billionaires, Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang, whom he called “great people.”
Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, was a longtime Democrat who quickly morphed into an outspoken Trump supporter after his victory in 2024. He was also an initial champion of Trump’s proposal to send troops to San Francisco, but later backed off and even apologized after facing criticism from local officials and former political allies.
Huang, the CEO of the computer tech company Nvidia, meanwhile, cut an unprecedented deal with Trump in August that allowed the company to sell computer chips in China if it handed 15% of the revenue from those sales to the federal government, which was described as a “shakedown” by one financial columnist.
Trump said that these two and some unspecified “others” called him, “saying that the future of San Francisco is great” and that “they want to give [Lurie’s efforts] a ’shot.‘”
“Therefore,” Trump said, “we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”
Hafiz Rashid, a writer for the New Republic, quipped that “maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them.”
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People hold signs as they rally outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building to support immigrant and activist Guillermo Medina Reyes before a deportation hearing on July 15, 2025, in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Accusing the president of sending in agents to cause “anxiety,” so he can then deploy the National Guard, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”
President Donald Trump’s assault on immigrants in Democrat-led cities continued Wednesday with confirmation from the US Coast Guard that its base in Alameda, California is preparing to host 100 federal agents—whose looming arrival is seen as “a likely precursor” to the Republican deploying National Guard troops to San Francisco.
The San Francisco Chronicle initially reported that agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—an agency in the US Department of Homeland Security—were headed to the Bay Area, citing a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A spokesperson from the Coast Guard, also part of DHS, then confirmed that the base would serve as a “place of operations.”
“This support of DHS agencies continues the Coast Guard’s operations to control, secure, and defend US borders and maritime approaches,” the spokesperson said in a statement to multiple local media outlets. “Through a whole-of-government approach, we are leveraging our unique authorities and capabilities to detect, deter, and interdict illegal aliens, narco-terrorists, and individuals intent on terrorism or other hostile activity before they reach our border.”
As KQEDpointed out Wednesday, the region has already seen increased immigration enforcement in recent months:
Since May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP officials have been escalating operations throughout the Bay Area, moving to have undocumented immigrants’ asylum cases dismissed and arresting them outside of courtrooms and ICE field offices.
More than 2,000 people were arrested in San Francisco’s “Area of Responsibility” between January and July 2025, according to Mission Local.
The reporting on the federal agents due to start arriving in the Bay Area on Thursday followed various threats from Trump to send National Guard soldiers into San Francisco, as he has with Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago, Illinois. The president and Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee have also collaborated to deploy National Guard troops in Memphis.
A federal judge has blocked the National Guard deployment in Illinois—where ICE’s Operation Midway Blitz is ongoing—but the Trump administration has appealed to the US Supreme Court. Citing two unnamed officials,CBS News‘ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported on social media Wednesday that Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino, who has led immigration raids in Chicago and Los Angeles, “is expected to be involved in the operation” in the Bay Area.
Elected officials across California have condemned the deployment of federal agents and Trump’s threats to send National Guard troops. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom—a likely 2028 presidential candidate—declared in a Wednesday video on social media that “this is right out of the dictator’s handbook.”
Newsom accused Trump of sending in masked immigration agents to cause “anxiety,” so he can then justify deploying the National Guard. As the governor put it, “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”
BREAKING: Donald Trump is sending federal agents to San Francisco.
Democratic San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said Wednesday that “our communities have already endured the painful impact of aggressive immigration enforcement. At the same time, we continue to see escalated operations across the country, with military personnel on the ground in cities like Chicago and Portland.”
“For the last 10 months, we have been taking steps to prepare for this kind of escalation here in San Francisco,” he continued. “Just a few minutes ago, I signed an executive directive that will build on these preparations, strengthen the city’s support for our immigrant communities, and ensure our departments are coordinated ahead of any federal deployment.”
“Immigrants are the small business owners, essential workers, community leaders, and neighbors who make San Francisco a place that we are proud to call home. They fuel our economy—contributing nearly $275 billion in output and $23 billion in annual tax revenue across California,” he added. “San Francisco will never stand by as our neighbors are targeted, and neither will I.”
Meanwhile, in Alameda, where the base is located, the city said in a Wednesday statement that “the Alameda Police Department (APD) is not a part of this operation, and APD does not enforce federal immigration laws or related civil warrants.”
The city also shared various resources and stressed its commitment “to the values of dignity, inclusivity, and respect for all individuals, regardless of ethnic or national origin, gender, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or immigration status.”
San Francisco won’t cower to a president who uses our troops for political retribution.
It’s time to do right by our troops and by Californians. Call off the National Guard. pic.twitter.com/rqqEmzvw2V
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a former speaker of the House of Representatives, said Tuesday that “San Francisco does not want or need Donald Trump’s chaos. Our city takes great pride in the steps we’ve taken to significantly increase public safety and reduce crime—without the interference of a president just seeking headlines.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta this week threatened to sue over any deployment of the National Guard, as did San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu—who on Monday urged the US Supreme Court “to uphold the bedrock legal principle that domestic law enforcement is not the military’s job.”
“San Francisco has seen historic drops in crime,” Chiu said, “and our local law enforcement are more than capable of keeping our city safe while upholding First Amendment rights.”
The administration’s attacks on First Amendment rights have extended far beyond immigrants and protesters of the president’s anti-migrant agenda; Trump and his officials have also targeted journalists and media companies, comedians, law firms, federal workers, anti-fascists, and anyone expressing views deemed “anti-Christianity,” “anti-capitalism,” or “hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
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