Newsletter: Essential California Week in Review: Disney sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It is Saturday, April 29.

Here’s a look at the top stories of the last week

Disney sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over a Florida district. Disney and DeSantis have been battling over the company’s self-governing powers in the area of the state that includes Walt Disney World Resort.

• Everything to know about the Disney and DeSantis feud.
• How strong is Disney’s 1st Amendment case against Ron DeSantis?
• The current conflict is the latest to reveal underlying tensions that have existed between Disney and religious conservatives for decades as it has embraced the LGBTQ community.
• Republican Ron DeSantis would not have to resign as Florida governor to run for president under a bill approved by GOP-dominated state Legislature.

California’s downtowns were emptied by COVID: San Francisco still reeling but San Diego rebounds. California’s downtowns have had varying levels of success in rebounding from pandemic shutdowns — while San Diego has almost fully recovered, San Francisco is concerned about a potential “doom loop.”

Cool temps to follow a warm weekend in California, likely to minimize snowmelt and flooding. Forecasters say the heat won’t last long in California and that the cooler temperatures on the horizon could help minimize any drastic flooding from rapid snowmelt.

• With temperatures rising in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged support Tuesday for Central Valley communities facing historic snowmelt and flooding.

Antioch Police Department mired in racism allegations — first in text messages, now in a brutality lawsuit. On the heels of sordid revelations about police behavior, the city of Antioch and its Police Department have been named as defendants in a lawsuit alleging police brutality and racial discrimination.

A jury awards Riverside woman $2.3 billion in a sex abuse lawsuit that had involved the Mormon church. A Riverside woman was awarded $2.28 billion Tuesday by a Riverside Superior Court jury after she was sexually abused by her stepfather for years, her attorneys announced.

California’s first large wildfire of the season burns 200 acres. The Nob fire, the first large wildfire of the season in California, started shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday and had spread to 200 acres as of Thursday morning, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

To live and die in downtown Los Angeles.: Drug addicts, homelessness and hawks. Life in downtown L.A. is a roulette wheel of homelessness, wealth, film shoots, murals and the promise and burden of an unfinished city.

The week in photos

The Nob fire burns near Lytle Creek in the San Bernardino National Forest on Wednesday afternoon.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

See the photos behind this week’s biggest stories: Santa Monica employed a sexual predator for decades; an Alabama doctor pledges care for the uninsured, those needing post-miscarriage treatment and transgender patients; and California’s first wildfire of the season burns in the San Bernardino Mountains.

California air regulators approve landmark zero-emission rules for trucks and locomotives. In a marathon two-day hearing, the California Air Resources Board voted on new regulations designed to limit pollution from locomotives and cargo trucks.

Public tirades and recall threats as Shasta County roils from the decision to dump voting machines. After voting to dump Dominion Voting Systems earlier this year, Shasta County officials are grappling with the complex logistics of actually hand-counting ballots in a county of 200,000 people.

A California bill would boost teacher salaries by 50% over seven years. State Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi has introduced a bill that would boost teacher and school staff salaries by 50% in the coming years, in an effort to close statewide staffing shortages.

New $15-million UCLA scholarship to help 700 students avoid burdensome loans. UCLA is unveiling a new initiative to help students afford college without loans, seeded with a $15-million gift from Bruins alumnus and real estate investor Peter Merlone.

An all-electric hospital should open in Irvine by 2025. UCI Medical Center Irvine-Newport, which broke ground in 2021, should be fully operational by 2025. The advanced care center at the campus could open as soon as next spring.

LAPD officer photo scandal: Judge rejects city motion, gives victory to a journalist. A judge won’t issue a temporary restraining order against a reporter and an activist group that released LAPD officers’ photos.

Anthony Avalos’ mother and her boyfriend were sentenced to life for the murder of a 10-year-old. Heather Barron and her boyfriend, Kareem Leiva, were sentenced to life in prison without parole for the torture and murder of her son, Anthony Avalos.

Patients trying to hang on to Medi-Cal face long waits for help. As the federal government has rolled back rules that helped people hang on to Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic, health providers fear the fallout could be disastrous for patients.

He threatened to kill his son. He was still able to purchase a gun. Now, a bereaved mother asks how. Her ex-husband was legally banned from buying a gun in California. But he did, and killed their child. How?

Riverside sheriff’s ‘embarrassing’ sting goes wrong and leaves 60 pounds of meth with a trafficker. Deputies in Riverside tasked with getting drugs off the street accidentally unleashed the meth into the community when a sting operation went sideways.

ICYMI, here are this week’s great reads

This 4.0 student needed $4,000 to attend his dream UC school. Then Times readers stepped in. Jonathan Cornejo, a Los Angeles high school senior and son of a single immigrant mother, got into his dream University of California campus but couldn’t afford to go. Then strangers stepped up.

Millions of Californians are willing to donate organs, but relatively few do. Here’s why. About half the U.S. population, including 18 million Californians, are registered organ donors. But whether you can actually donate organs depends on how you die, among other limiting factors.

L.A.’s water lifeline faces unprecedented flood threat. The battle to prevent calamity. Work crews are scrambling to shore up flood defense along the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Dating in L.A. is exhausting, so I asked a chatbot to flirt for me. Things got weird fast. Snack’s new AI feature lets chatbots handle the initial getting-to-know-you conversations with potential suitors. It’s as strange as it sounds.

Today’s week-in-review newsletter was curated by Elvia Limón. Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.