What Coyotes and Zombies Have in Common

Coyote with freshly killed harbor seal pup
at Bolinas Lagoon (Graves/SFGate)

Fourteen (14) months ago we wrote about the discovery that coyotes were responsible for decapitating baby seals on California coasts. Scientists now think they know why:

Going for the brains first might seem unusual, but it’s probably a matter of convenience — and a behavior that’s been observed in other carnivores before, [UCSC PhD student Frankie] Gerraty said. Hyenas on the coast of Namibia have been seen killing seals by crushing their skulls and consuming the brains, and wolves in Alaska and British Columbia have been known to chew off the heads of salmon, potentially to avoid tapeworms and other parasites found in the rest of the fish’s raw flesh.

With coyotes and harbor seals on Northern California beaches, “it’s likely that they’re trying to eat through the head because it’s not only the easiest part of the body to access with the thinnest layer of blubber, but the brain also has the highest nutritional value,” Gerraty explained.

The skull of a harbor seal pup isn't much thicker than an eggshell when they are born, and a coyote can easily crack into it with its teeth in several places, sometimes accessing more of the pup's flesh by tugging on the head with its jaws and holding the carcass down with its front paws, he said.

“The fact that some of the skulls are going missing could be because they can easily carry them back to their dens for their young to consume," he continued. Much of this is happening during peak pupping season for coyotes in the spring.”

Welcome to the Real World

People cite evidence to support an argument, but sometimes the evidence doesn't mean what they think it means.

Headline: Calif. weather expert issues dire warning on Trump's reported mass firings [bold added]

In a post on X Friday, Daniel Swain, a former UCLA climate scientist who now works at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, said the firings are alarming.

“If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA and NWS—[as] appears is now indeed underway, with credible reports of much larger further cuts on the horizon—there will be people who die in extreme weather events and weather-related disasters who would not have otherwise,” he said in the statement...

For example, the National Weather Service issued a “life-threatening, destructive” wind event warning for most of the Los Angeles region days before the destructive and deadly Palisades Fire began on Jan. 7, urging residents to “Stay alert to the forecast and follow instruction from emergency officials.”

Perhaps there were a few people in Palisades who paid attention--but certainly no one in authority to make any difference; Pacific Palisades was destroyed. If no one heeds the warnings, then the personnel that issue them serve little or no purpose.

Indeed, the people who lose their jobs may have integrity and be competent, but hundreds of such good people lose their jobs every day in private industry (Headline today: Two Bay Area tech giants announce huge layoffs at almost exact same moment).

Welcome to the real world, government employees.

Disappointing, But It's Better to Walk Away Now

Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont (Mejia/Chron)

Six months ago we reacted enthusiastically to the prospect of Stanford University expanding into Belmont. Now that project has been cancelled.

After nearly four years of deliberation, Stanford University has decided not to move forward with its plan to purchase the Notre Dame de Namur University campus in Belmont.

In a statement released Tuesday, the university cited several unforeseen factors that influenced its decision, particularly the changing landscape of higher education and financial challenges.

“As we were engaging with the Belmont community and City leaders, we were also exploring possible academic uses for a Stanford Belmont campus,” said Stanford officials. “This process has clarified that identifying and establishing those uses for a potential Belmont campus will take significantly longer than we initially planned.”

Stanford entered into an option purchase agreement in 2021 to acquire the historic 46-acre Catholic university property with plans to create a satellite campus for 2,500 students, faculty and staff.

The proposed site, roughly 13 miles from its main campus in Palo Alto, would have been called Stanford Belmont and was positioned as a short 20-minute drive up Highway 101...The proposed layout included pedestrian paths, bicycle lanes and green spaces aimed at creating a communal atmosphere...

Local leaders in Belmont had hoped the campus could help revitalize the historic property, which has struggled financially in recent years.

The Italianate Ralston Hall Mansion, built in 1867 as the summer home of banker William Ralston, is a state and national landmark that has been closed for years. The building is currently undergoing a renovation project that Notre Dame de Namur University cannot afford to complete.

Belmont Vice Mayor Gina Latimerlo noted in August that the sale would help fund renovations to Ralston Hall and provide community benefits such as improved athletic facilities and infrastructure upgrades.

With Stanford’s plans for the Belmont site now on hold, the future of the property remains uncertain.

The creation of Stanford-Belmont looked like a win-win for both the university and rhe city. The reason for the cancellation--“This process has clarified that identifying and establishing those uses for a potential Belmont campus will take significantly longer than we initially planned”--is typical public relations gobbledy-gook.

These are words that are used because Stanford had to say something about the loss of its deposit and four years of work, but reveal nothing. There's only a slight chance we'll know what really happened, but as someone who makes (small) donations to the University and wants them to use funds wisely, I hope we find out.

Smishing

We ordered a FasTrak "toll tag" (a plastic transponder that charges us for bridge tolls and express-lane fees when passing under a scanner) eight years ago.

As largely housebound retirees who live on the Peninsula, we rarely need the device, as we avoid highway traffic jams during rush hours and go over toll bridges once every 2-3 months,

On our drive to and from Yosemite last weekend we did use the toll tag and I received the text message (shown right) on the same day we left.

It was the first time I had received a text message that asked me to make a FasTrak payment. It had caught me off guard because it coincided with the first FasTrak use of 2025. My travel companion said that the message was a scam that had been going around.

Road toll scams that besieged the Bay Area and and other parts of the country last year have ramped up again, with insistent text messages that demand payment — and sometimes threaten penalties.

A Chronicle reporter received three such missives since December, purportedly for not paying fees to use toll lanes. Other Bay Area drivers have shared screenshots of similar messages on social media, asking about their validity. Some say they are getting hammered multiple times a month, and note the language in these texts has evolved: fewer spelling errors, increasingly detailed instructions, and a more intimidating tone.

“In order to avoid excessive late fees and potential legal action on statements, please pay the fee in time,” one message sent on Jan. 12 said. It provided a website to resolve violations, imitating the real web address for Southern California’s toll authority but stringing a sequence of numbers and letters at the end...

Law enforcement officials have a name for the tactic: “smishing.” The term is a portmanteau of phishing perpetrated through SMS text messages, and describes an aggressive and sophisticated form of social engineering. Bridge and road toll scammers use smishing to cast a wide net, tricking people to pay bogus fines for crossings they didn’t make.

Smishing---a crime that could only exist in a world with SMS text messages and toll tags, which in turn exist because the State government eliminated human toll takers. It's progress, I suppose, but we have to be on our guard more than ever.

Nuances of the Oyster Sauce Market

A sign like "LKK Oyster Sauce - Old" would not seem to be the best way to sell a product...unless one knows the nuances of the oyster sauce market.

Lee Kum Kee has been selling oyster sauce since the 19th century; I remember going with my grandmother to Honolulu's Chinatown in the 1950's and buying a bottle with a picture of the "lady on the boat."

LKK introduced a cheaper, sugary "Panda" brand later in the 20th century, but those of us who grew up with the lady on the bottle much prefer the "old" oyster sauce. Thousands of Asian cooks can't be wrong.

On a Higher Plane

Guillaume Bodinier, The Good Samaritan,
1826 (Wikimedia Commons)

Today's Gospel from the Episcopal lectionary has some relevance to current politics. The applicable verses are Luke 6:32-36:

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

I've listened with half an ear to this passage (and Matthew's version in Matthew 5:46) dozens of times. It's about Jesus telling us to love our enemies, which sounds great in the abstract but which anyone with life experience knows is difficult in reality. But this is Jesus, who is always asking us to do hard things.

Looking past His main command, Jesus makes the point that it's no big deal to love those close to you ("even sinners do the same"), and to be His follower one should love those who are more distant.

But back to politics. Grok summarizes the timeline of the debate between Pope Francis and Vice President Vance over immigration and loving those who are close vs far, drawing on the Catholic concept of ordo amoris:

The debate between Pope Francis and J.D. Vance over the concept of "ordo amoris" (Latin for "order of love") unfolded in early 2025, centered around differing interpretations of this Catholic theological principle in the context of immigration policy. Here’s a timeline based on available information:

Late January 2025 (circa January 30): The debate began when U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, invoked "ordo amoris" during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity. Vance argued that compassion should prioritize one’s family, neighbors, community, and fellow citizens before extending to the rest of the world. He framed this as a traditional Christian concept to defend the Trump administration’s immigration policies, particularly its focus on mass deportations. Following criticism on X from Rory Stewart, a former British parliamentarian who called Vance’s take “less Christian and more pagan tribal,” Vance doubled down on January 30, posting on X: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ … Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away?” This sparked widespread discussion among theologians, Catholic figures, and social media users about the meaning and application of "ordo amoris."

Early February 2025 (circa February 3–4): Vance’s comments gained traction, igniting a theological debate. Some, like Jesuit Father James Martin, criticized Vance for missing the universal call to love in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, while others, such as Michael Sirilla of Franciscan University, praised Vance for summarizing the "order of charity" accurately. The controversy grew as Vance’s remarks were linked to his broader critique of U.S. bishops and their involvement in refugee resettlement, amplifying attention on Catholic social teaching.

February 10, 2025: Pope Francis entered the fray with a letter addressed to U.S. bishops, released on this date. While primarily expressing concern over President Trump’s “program of mass deportations,” the Pope appeared to indirectly rebuke Vance’s interpretation of "ordo amoris." Without naming Vance, Francis wrote: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. … The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” This was widely interpreted as a correction to Vance’s hierarchical view, emphasizing a broader, inclusive love rooted in human dignity rather than a prioritized order based on proximity or nationality.

February 11, 2025: The Pope’s letter was published and reported widely, with outlets like Religion News Service and USA Today framing it as a direct response to Vance. The pontiff’s intervention escalated the debate, drawing attention to the theological and political rift. Vance had not publicly responded to the letter by this date, but the discourse intensified online and in Catholic circles, with commentators like Father Raymond de Souza suggesting the disagreement was more about rhetoric than theology.

February 13–20, 2025: The debate continued to ripple through media and theological discussions. On February 13, Catholic News Agency and National Catholic Register covered the ongoing clash, noting support and criticism for Vance among Catholic thinkers. By February 19, outlets like the Catholic Herald reflected on the broader implications of "ordo amoris," while on February 20, La Croix International published Jesuit theologian Jean-Marie Carrière’s challenge to Vance’s exclusionary rhetoric, advocating an "ordo justitiae" (order of justice) instead. Posts on X during this period, such as from @BurtRigg on February 19, misstated Francis’s position but reflected the public’s engagement with the issue.

The timeline shows a rapid escalation from Vance’s initial remarks in late January to a papal response by mid-February, with the debate evolving from a policy defense into a theological and moral controversy. As of February 25, 2025, no further direct exchanges between Vance and Francis have been reported, but the discussion remains active in Catholic and political spheres.

Quite apart from who is right or wrong, I appreciate how this debate is on a higher plane than the usual sound bite exchange that we see on Twitter or the evening news. I do, however, note that there have been calls for the Vice President to "stay in his lane" and not debate theological matters with the Pope. In response, one of the tenets of the Protestant Reformation was that the individual stands before God, and, contrary to Catholic teaching, no intercession is needed by priest or Pope. Your humble blogger finds much to admire in the Catholic church, but he is not a member.

Yosemite-Adjacent Vacation

(2009 photo)

Our trip to Yosemite National Park in January, 2009, was unplanned yet turned out to be much better than we had a right to expect. The youngster had never been to Yosemite, and we happened to be only an hour away while driving home from another event.

We snagged a room at the Ahwahnee Hotel and extended our stay because of heavy snowfall. Both the hotel and the Valley floor with the famous landmarks were uncrowded, and we wandered to our hearts' content.

After that pleasant experience I have had no compelling desire to return.

On the nature trail

A family member was meeting some friends to see the popular Yosemite "Firefall" this weekend, and on Thursday I offered to accompany him on the 3½-hour drive. He readily agreed, and I bunked with him at the Rush Creek Lodge and Spa, which is outside the Park, 26 miles from the Visitors Center.

While he went to meet his friends, I spent a very pleasant day walking around the Lodge and its nature trails. I dined at the restaurant, which had a limited number of selections that were excellently prepared, and I relaxed with a book.

Sometimes one can have an excellent vacation without planning or having to "do" anything. As for my traveling companion, he got his pictures of Firefall, and we both came away happy.

We Escaped the Vortex This Time

(Baron/Lynx/Chronicle)

Some family members will be heading east to the Sierra mountains today, and we're lucky that California is out of the path of the polar vortex that is hitting much of the country.

The majority of the country will wake to bone-chilling temperatures Thursday, with dozens of temperature records at risk of being broken.

The massive outbreak of cold air is connected to the polar vortex, a lobe of frigid air that has broken away from the North Pole and settled over the middle of the country.

The shot of cold air won’t impact California or the West Coast. In the wake of a weak cold front that passed through Wednesday, a high-pressure ridge has developed near California, shielding the state from the cold air and from a powerful storm system set to drench the Pacific Northwest this weekend.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the Arctic polar vortex

is a band of strong westerly winds that forms in the stratosphere between about 10 and 30 miles above the North Pole every winter. The winds enclose a large pool of extremely cold air. (There is an even stronger polar vortex in the Southern Hemisphere stratosphere in its winter.) The stronger the winds, the more the air inside is isolated from warmer latitudes, and the colder it gets.

A normal, stable polar vortex stays in the stratosphere above the Arctic, which gets extremely cold in the winter while we in the mid-latitudes experience warmer air and moderate winters. The polar vortex isn't always stable, however.

“We did have a sudden stratospheric warming in January,” explained [NOAA's Dr. Amy] Butler. “The polar vortex weakened. It got stretched out of shape and slid southward off the pole. Most of the time when this happens—and it happens on average about every other year in the Arctic—some part of the mid-latitudes will ultimately experience a cold air outbreak."

What causes the polar vortex to get "stretched out of shape" is the $64,000 question, and while some blame their favorite culprit, global warming, Dr. Butler refuses to take the bait: [bold added]

“I don’t think there is any convincing evidence of a long-term trend in the polar vortex. What we see in the record is this very interesting period in the 1990s, when there were no sudden stratospheric warming events observed in the Arctic. In other words, the vortex was strong and stable. But then they started back up again in the late 1990s, and over the next decade there was one almost every year. So there was a window of time in the early 2010s where it seemed like there might be a trend toward weaker, more disrupted or shifted states of the Arctic polar vortex. But it hasn’t continued, and more and more, it’s looking like what seemed to be the beginning of a trend was just natural variability, or maybe just a rebound from the quiet of the 1990s.”

Not only does the data not yet support the global-warming-causes-colder-winter hypothesis, the NOAA goes on to describe how leading climate models give conflicting results:

Some climate model experiments do predict that continued warming will lead to a weakening of the polar vortex...At the same time, other model simulations predict that warming and sea ice loss will lead to a stronger polar vortex.

I've decided to hold onto my internal-combustion-engine vehicles for a few more years; there's always a gas station nearby so I won't freeze to death in my car when another vortex hits, and I can't say the same for EV charging stations.

In the Furtherance of Their Own Goals

(Sarah Stierch via Flickr CC 2.0/SFGate)

The war against CO2 claims another sacrifice: 2,554 acres in the Mojave Desert plus the character of the nearby town of Boron (pop.2000). From SFGate reporter Sam Mauhay-Moore: [bold added]

On a warm October night last fall, I sat near a taxidermied bobcat and a trove of other historical Mojave memorabilia inside Boron’s treasured Twenty Mule Team Museum. A group of locals gathered there to discuss the Aratina Solar Project, which was just starting to make headway less than a mile from the town’s southern boundary.

“They’re just destroying this place,” Jerry Gallegos, longtime Boron resident and co-president of the museum, said at the meeting. “They’re plowing down 3,000 Joshua trees right now, taking chainsaws and cutting them down three at a time.”

Joshua tree in the Mojave (drcooke/Getty/SFGate)

The Aratina Solar Project has a footprint of 2,554 acres, of which 2,317 acres will be covered by solar panels. It "generate(s) up to 530 megawatt-alternating current (MW-AC) of renewable energy, including up to 600 megawatts of energy storage, on privately-owned land in unincorporated Kern County."

Fortunately there is a natural-gas power plant of similar capacity in Kern County that can be used for comparison.

The Elk Hills Power Plant (EHPP) is located on a 12-acre site within the Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, in western Kern County, near the community of Tupman...EHPP is a nominal 550-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle, natural gas-fired, cogeneration power generating plant.

It's well beyond the scope of this post to rehash the traditional natural-gas vs. solar debate (carbon emissions vs. none, power-as-needed vs. intermittent capability). But we can note a vast difference that has not often been mentioned, namely, solar's 4-sq-mile destruction of the Mojave desert vs. less than 1/2 of one percent of that area for natural-gas power.

It would be wrong to declare that environmentalists are guilty of an apparent double standard when they are silent about natural habitats being destroyed in the furtherance of their own goals. They must have a good explanation.

Very Old School

100 y.o. tax preparer Else Rike (Hagerty/WSJ)

The WSJ features nonagenerian and even centenarian tax preparers: [bold added]

After more than 70 years as an independent tax preparer, [100 y.o. Else M.] Rike knows how to pace herself. She aims to finish at least three returns a day in the weeks before April 15.

Unlike other tax preparers, she doesn’t rely on software to guide her choice of deductions and exemptions or to do the sums. Instead, she punches keys on a Sharp desktop calculator, setting a tiny roll of printing paper atwirl, and then uses an electric typewriter to enter the numbers onto Internal Revenue Service forms.

“I’m not that tech-oriented,” she says. “I don’t have the computer figure it out. I do my own figuring.” Ever since childhood, she says, “math was always sort of my thing.”

Rike (pronounced Ricky) does have a computer, but she uses it only to print out forms. She doesn’t use email but does answer her cellphone or landline. To keep up with tax law, she relies heavily on a fat paperback, “U.S. Master Tax Guide.”

Mrs. Rike, like I do, subscribes to the Master Tax Guide. The MTG is sufficient for basic technical needs, and any problems it can't answer probably means the taxpayer needs to hire a specialist (e.g., closely held companies, foreign income, oil and gas) in that particular area. Specialists can be very expensive, and Mrs. Rike's price is right for her retired clientele:

“I don’t charge like others. I kind of try to do it by the hours that I put in or the number of pages of their returns,” she says. Most clients pay between $50 and $150. That includes a set of envelopes for estimated taxes, with the address labels neatly affixed.

At one point, Rike had around 300 customers. Now she has outlived most of them and serves about 80, including the children of former clients. “I don’t do too many difficult ones anymore,” she says. “I do mostly retired people.”

Her customers are loyal, and she enjoys her work. She has found what we are all searching for...life's purpose.

It's Just Offal

The Asian supermarkets in our area are offering a wider variety of offal, i.e., parts of the animal that are not part of the mainstream American diet. (As noted yesterday, even Costco is selling chicken feet.)

99 Ranch has beef aorta, a cut I had never seen, much less eaten, before. I searched for recipes online but found only a couple; Google also helpfully displayed recipes for beef heart, which is quite different from aorta despite their proximity in the animal.

My curiosity is piqued, however. If I ever do see aorta on the menu, I'll give it a try.

If You Pause on the Paws, You'll Probably Miss Out

At Costco every day seems like there's a Presidents' Day sale. This afternoon I saw chicken feet (aka "chicken paws") being sold for $1.99 a pound. I didn't pull the trigger last November when they were $5.49/lb. at 99 Ranch, but $1.99 is awfully tempting and had me web-searching recipes next to the display.

Chicken feet require hours to prepare, so lacking the time to spend in the kitchen I didn't buy any today. I might not get another chance, however, since at that price, likely to be cheaper than their distributors, the local Chinese restaurants may swoop in and clean out the inventory.

Easy for Him to Say

2017: only one man looks joyful. (Vucci/AP/WSJ)

Pope Francis condemns the U.S. "program of mass deportations."

For years [Pope Francis and President Trump] have sparred over immigration, which both have chosen as their signature issue. On Monday Francis wrote a letter to the American Catholic bishops denouncing Mr. Trump’s “mass deportations.” It is extremely rare for a pope to condemn a particular policy of a particular government. Principles are usually made explicit with the application left implicit.

The administration left the response to the papal letter to border czar Tom Homan. “I’ve got harsh words for the pope,” Mr. Homan said. “I say this as a lifelong Catholic. He ought to focus on his work and leave enforcement to us. He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?”

Hardly. There are no controls at the Vatican City State border. No one scales the ninth-century Leonine Walls when the arms of Bernini’s colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square are open to all. Tens of thousands of people walk in and out without presenting any documents each day. Mr. Homan knows that, but there was a rhetorical attack to be made.

Given that mass deportations aren’t yet a reality—and, in any case, may not exceed the number of deportations during previous administrations—there are good reasons that the pope and president ought not take each other’s bait.

The writer, Ontario priest Raymond J. de Souza, goes on to talk about the emerging debate over Catholic public theology between converted Catholic J.D. Vance and the Pope. The immigration dispute is worthy of an extended discussion, harkening back to Catholic politicians' past differences with the Church on abortion and capital punishment.

Returning to the subject of border controls, I have one comment on Father de Souza's assertion, "There are no controls at the Vatican City State border.....Tens of thousands of people walk in and out without presenting any documents each day."

If it is also true that every inch of public space is not subject to video surveillance, facial recognition, etc. to head off trouble, then I will believe in the Vatican's openness. If the U.S. had such tech at the southern border (and fewer outward and visible signs of physical controls), the U.S. would appear more open, too.

After the break is the Pope's February 10th letter to American bishops.

Sense of Foreboding

(Image from UC-Berkeley)

During the summer of 1989 the Bay Area experienced a swarm of small earthquakes that caused little damage. On October 17th the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake struck and, according to Wikipedia, resulted in 63 deaths, 3,757 injuries, and about $6 billion of damage.

Although I've experienced many earthquakes in my 50 years living here, the 1989 experience has taught me to stop what I'm doing after a jolt to see if there's a bigger one coming. Fortunately that didn't happen after a series of shocks along the Hayward fault on Thursday.

It's been 158 years since the Hayward fault's last major temblor, a 6.8, and it's perhaps more "overdue" than the San Andreas fault that produced the great 1906 and 1989 quakes.

The Bay Area has escaped the natural disasters that have occurred in other parts of the State, but I am feeling a sense of foreboding based on nothing more than wondering how long both major faults will continue to be quiet. May we keep our go bags ready and our gas tanks full.

False Flag Operation at City Hall

SF sheriff's letter (Red underline added)

In an obvious false flag operation three men claiming to be part of DOGE invaded SF City Hall and a school district building. [bold added]

Three men wearing MAGA hats, Department of Government Efficiency T-shirts and fake badges stormed several offices inside San Francisco City Hall and a nearby school district building on Friday demanding that workers hand over sensitive documents, sources said...

[Sheriff's spokeswoman Tara] Moriarty said City Hall workers refused the intruders' requests and called sheriff’s deputies, at which time the individuals fled the building. Moriarty said the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t believe that the individuals were actually representatives from DOGE.

Then at about 12:40 p.m., a San Francisco Unified School District worker who works in an administrative building at 135 Van Ness Ave. said that three men matching the description of the City Hall intruders walked inside the former school making similar demands.

The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to media, said that the three men stunned school district workers when they got past security and started walking up and down the hallways “being rowdy” and harassing random people.

The worker said the three men freely walked through the building while videotaping workers on their phones before leaving 10 minutes later. She described them as young guys in their 20s who were intentionally trying to provoke people. One of them had a badge with an expletive on it.

“They came in saying ‘we are DOGE, what are you doing?’ to people,” the employee said. “They told one woman that she’d be fired by Monday. I thought it was strange, but some other people might’ve been afraid.”

It could be a sign of how much the political and media landscape has changed that both San Francisco officials and the Chronicle stated upfront that Elon Musk and DOGE were not responsible.

The attempt was amateurish, the intent to provoke was obvious, and luckily everyone kept their cool. I hope these guys are caught quickly and the book is thrown at them.

Four Lights

There are four lights! (Star Trek reference)

When it came time to replace the 40-watt bulbs in the bathroom, only the white LED product was available at Home Depot. Because having a mixture of lights was not esthetically pleasing, I removed the incandescents and stored them away.

When the leftmost LED burned out this week, I reached for an incandescent. I had forgotten how much a warmer light changes the mood, and I will go back to the old bulbs now that President Trump's EPA will allow them again, along with the older-standard showers, toilets, washing machines and dishwashers.

(We may not have heard the last word about President Trump's action, because the energy-efficient regulations were based on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The Act, in my humble non-lawyerly opinion, does not mandate specific energy criteria for consumer lightbulbs, leaving the details to the Secretary of Energy. Under President Biden consumer incandescents were banned by the Department of Energy, and President Trump's rescinding of the ban is within the latter's authority. Of course, I could be wrong...)

CA Water: Following the Rule Curve

February storms have dispelled concerns over a dry January: [bold added]

So much rain fell in the first week of February that California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, near Redding, rose 22 feet. Shasta Lake is 34 miles long. The watershed at the state’s second-largest, Lake Oroville, in Butte County, has received 24 inches of rain in the past two weeks — five times the historical average — sending the reservoir level up 23 feet from Feb. 1 to Feb. 7.

And now a new atmospheric river storm is forecast to soak the Bay Area and the rest of the state Thursday and Friday...

The rain has been so plentiful that operators of the largest reservoirs have been increasing water releases in recent days to make space for the latest storm.

The outlet valves at Shasta Dam on Tuesday,
Feb. 11 (Merc/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)

At Shasta Lake, federal dam operators have let out 60,000 cubic feet per second since Saturday through the outlet valves at the massive Shasta Dam. That’s 450,000 gallons a second, the equivalent of 40 Olympic swimming pools every minute.

It’s a delicate balancing act, experts say. If reservoirs fill to the top too quickly in big storms, large amounts of water are released down their spillways, causing flooding to homes and communities downstream. In extreme cases, water can overtop dams, causing a risk of failure.

Operators at most large dams in California rely on a manual called a “rule curve” that is set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Evaluating decades of rainfall patterns, it recommends the highest level that each reservoir should be kept at every day, an amount that gradually increases later in the spring as winter storms dissipate.

“You are playing the odds,” [UC-Davis professor Jeff] Mount said. “What you are trying to do is balance the risk of not ending up with enough water in the spring against the risk of having too much in the winter, where you’ll get flooding.”

California is extremely lucky; says Professor Mount, "It’s unusual to get three wet years in a row.”

The men and women who operate our water infrastructure are doing an excellent job managing a complex system that is subject to both physical and manmade (make sure the fish get their share!) constraints.

Although funding was approved by the voters in 2014, it's a pity that, eleven years later, the Progressives who run the State haven't built any water storage to take advantage of the rain (the estimated completion date of the Sites reservoir is 2032).

The GOAT of Scrabble

The term "GOAT" (Greatest Of All Time) originated as a self-description by Muhammad Ali and has since fueled many a sports debate, particularly in professional basketball (LeBron James vs Michael Jordan) and football (Tom Brady vs Joe Montana, until Brady pulled away by amassing a total of seven championships late in his career).

Nigel Richards (Brady/PA/Zuma Press/WSJ)

There is no controversy, however, about the GOAT of Scrabble: [bold added]

Nigel Richards is the reigning world champion of Scrabble in Spanish. Just don’t ask him to order a coffee in Madrid. The 57-year-old New Zealander doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish.

During the deciding match in November’s Spanish World Scrabble Championship in Granada, Spain, Richards racked up triple-word scores with ENRUGASE (“to wrinkle up”) and ENHOTOS (an archaic word for “familiarity”), before clinching victory with TRINIDAD and SABURROSA (an obscure word that describes the coated residue of the tongue).

Not that Richards knew the meaning of any of those words.

One Spanish TV broadcaster called his win the “ultimate humiliation.” The global Scrabble community wasn’t so surprised. Richards had done this before—in French.

When he won that language’s Scrabble world championship in 2015 and again in 2018, he could greet his opponents with bonjour but couldn’t say much else.

What Richards lacks in linguistic ability he more than makes up for with an encyclopedic memory and an unrivaled ability to decode patterns, according to friends and opponents.

“He memorizes words as soon as he reads them once,” said Hector Klie, who has represented the U.S. in Scrabble since 2003 and competes in Spanish. “He doesn’t know whether a word is a verb, noun, adjective or any other grammatical form that would typically help native speakers learn words more easily. For him, all words are equal in his memory, and he doesn’t need to know their meaning.”

Richards is also the undisputed GOAT in English-language Scrabble, having won five world titles. He is currently ranked No. 1 by the World English-language Scrabble Player’s Association.

“We are witnessing someone who could be compared to, or even surpass in intellectual capacity, figures like Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen in chess,” said Klie, the Spanish World Championship runner-up in 2004.

The parallel to Nigel Richards that comes to mind is the large language models (LLMs) that are used in artificial intelligence. LLMs don't "know" anything in a traditional epistemological sense but are able to give the appearance of knowing by examining billions of pieces of information on the internet, recognizing patterns, and regurgitating answers that follow those patterns.

Of course, this means that someday a computer will beat Nigel Richards at Scrabble.

Crossing a Red Line That You Can't See

Beginning January 1st, California has banned parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. The purpose of the "daylighting" law is to make pedestrians more visible to drivers who may not see them crossing because of parked vehicles.

(Illustration from Trumbull/Chronicle)

San Francisco had begun ticketing such closely parked cars although there were no warning signs or curbs painted red. [bold added]

After confronting a stiff outcry from residents and elected leaders, San Francisco’s transportation agency has scrapped plans to ticket motorists who park in unmarked “daylighting” zones near crosswalks, the agency’s director said Monday.

Previously, officials at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency intended to cite any driver who parks within 20 feet of a crosswalk — the safety buffer mandated by California’s new daylighting law — regardless of whether or not the curb is painted red...

While citations for parking in red zones carry a $108 fine, SFMTA had proposed lowering the penalty to $40 if the 20 foot buffer was not marked. Strained by limited resources, transportation staff said it would take years to paint curbs throughout the city, so the reduced fine represented a compromise.

But San Franciscans balked. Kirschbaum said that when she met with members of the public, they brought up the daylighting enforcement plan over and over again. City supervisors echoed their misgivings, saying the $40 tickets were unfair. When Kirschbaum relayed their feedback to new Mayor Daniel Lurie, she said he supported her idea to quash the $40 fines...

SFMTA announced a retreat. Drivers who park at red curbs will still be ticketed; those who park at unmarked gray curbs will not, even if they are within 20 feet of a crosswalk.

Besides nixing the $40 tickets, the agency will also accelerate its process for striping curbs to comply with the daylighting law. Transportation planners are now giving themselves 18 months to coat all the daylight zones in red paint, a far more compressed schedule than the initial projection of four to five years.

Comments:

1) the daylighting law has a lot to commend it. Some pedestrians dash into crosswalks where views are blocked by parked trucks or SUVs.

2) people draw the line at protecting the public if it means taking away their parking space!

3) "Ignorance of the law is no excuse": no one seems to believe that any more with the many thousands of rules and regulations that the average person has to deal with.

That Old-Timey Phrasing

Duccio di Buoninsegna, “The Calling of the Apostles
Peter and Andrew,” 1308-1311 (public domain)

Today's lectionary Gospel from Luke 5:5-11 is the one about the disciples filling their nets with fish: [bold added]

Simon answered,"Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Matthew 4:18-22 omits the fish story:

And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.

I prefer Matthew's version for two reasons:

1) the lesson of the story is not about the miracle catch of fish--which no mortal can emulate--but how Simon, James, and John answered the call to follow Jesus. Do not be distracted by shiny (or scaly) objects.

2) I simply prefer the old-timey phrasing of the King James version. "Fishers of men" is memorable, "catching people" is instantly forgotten.

Elon Musk Defends his Actions at the U.S. Treasury

Elon Musk describes the basic omissions the DOGE team has found in the payments system at Treasury. The procedures and information that are missing are essential to the accounting operations of even small businesses--just ask any bookkeeper who uses Quicken.

But I, for one, am open to hearing a response from someone in the current financial chain-of-command. For example, one explanation that the system actually works is that the account-code information is contained in another payables subsystem that isn't upwardly linked. (I doubt that, frankly, because the DOGE kids are supposedly mapping all the systems and their functions, but they could have missed something.)

Meanwhile, until a plausible reason is provided, the benefit of Elon and his boys continuing their work far far outweighs the risk that a few of them will go rogue and sell Social Security numbers to crooks.

To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

The full text:

To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!

- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.

The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!

Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.

When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!

This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.

Saving California from Itself

In 2012 I expressed skepticism about the just-approved high-speed rail (HSR) project:

But they're going to start in the middle, i.e., the Central Valley, where the labor and land are cheaper and environmental obstacles less restrictive. After the expenditure of an estimated $6 billion, HSR will be operational between Fresno (pop. 350,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 500,000) in 2017...

Just to make clear, your humble observer is not in favor of the HSR project. It's expense ($65 billion in today's dollars and $90+ billion, including inflation ) is only defensible under the wildest pie-in-the-sky scenarios. When one looks at the sad history of California construction overruns in projects like the Bay Bridge extension, San Francisco airport, and BART, it is even more improbable that the final cost will be justified, and it won't matter much whether it was built top-down, bottom-up, or middle-out.

Support pillars in Hanford (Merc photo)

13 years later HSR has played out as foreseen: $billions over budget, decade-long delays, and no guaranteed funding to finish it. Even many of its former supporters agree that HSR is a white elephant, but very few have publicly advocated abandoning it.

This time around (he failed to do so in his first term) President Trump will likely be able to kill the project given the weakened state of his opposition:

“The train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst-managed project I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the worst,” Trump told reporters, asserting that the project is “billions and billions” of dollars over budget.

“We’re going to start a big investigation of that, because I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. The worst overruns that there have ever been in the history of our country.”

...The current estimate for linking San Francisco with Southern California is $107 billion. Officials don’t even know how to fully finance Merced-Bakersfield, much less raise the other $72.4 billion they would need.

By pulling the plug President Trump will be saving California from itself, but I doubt anyone in Sacramento will thank him.

Fear-mongering by DOGE Opponents

When I was a junior auditor in the mid-1970's, I had access to thousands of client employees' personnel and payroll records. The payroll system generated major expenses, and line-by-line examination of gross pay, benefits, tax withholdings, and other deductions (e.g.,union dues, court-ordered child support) was required to prepare the financial statements.

Accounting departments for the most part were cooperative, but if we did encounter difficulties, we kicked the request to the CFO and CEO. For us to do our job efficiently we had to have complete access to personnel records, including the W-4 withholding form that disclosed the employee Social Security number.

Management is ultimately responsible for the financial statements, and independent CPA's opine as to their integrity. Every year thousands of auditors--not only from CPA firms but also from government agencies like the FDIC and state insurance regulators--descend upon businesses and inspect millions of employee records. Although there are thousands of potential leakers, I don't recall any politicians who have expressed concern about privacy issues in our system of financial reporting.

I mention all of the above in order to express my puzzlement at the criticism directed at President Trump's examination of the financial records of the Executive Branch, of which he is the "CEO." Is he not Constitutionally responsible for its operations? And doesn't he have the authority to hire whomever he wants (subject to them being qualified and passing a security check) to do the work? A non-disclosure agreement or similar document should allay privacy concerns.

As a 23-year-old I was a pretty good auditor, but my skills were not in the same league as the young men who are working 24/7 for the Department of Government Efficiency. They have been tasked with analyzing where trillions of dollars go every year:

Gavin Kliger, left, and Ethan Shaotran, right (Merc photo)

Six men aged 19 to 24 — most with strong Bay Area connections — have been identified as associates of the controversial, Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, that has gained unprecedented access to several federal agencies, including the Department of the Treasury...

A Harvard University bio of [Ethan] Shaotran lists two papers he wrote — one on pursuit of human-surpassing AI, another on improvement of self-driving vehicles — and a 111-page book published on Amazon about using AI for stock predictions. The bio identified him as the founder of Energize.AI, a “scheduling assistant for professionals,” and said he has filed patents related to AI computer vision, and logistical systems. Affiliations with the Harvard Mountaineering Club and work as a scuba dive master in Hawaii are also cited in the bio.

Another of the young DOGE crew was reported to be Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn profile touts a position as a full-time “special advisor to the director” in the Office of Personnel Management. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 2020 from UC Berkeley in electrical engineering and computer science, the school said. Kliger worked at Twitter for less than a year in 2019 during college, according to the profile. Between graduating from UC Berkeley and this January, Kliger worked in software engineering for San Francisco tech company Databricks, according to his profile.

A former Eagle Scout with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Kliger enjoyed playing piano and clarinet, along with online speed chess, the profile said.

A Vox reporter on Monday posted on X a screenshot of an email, purportedly informing USAID workers that the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters were closed, and indicating replies should go to a USAID email address that appeared to belong to Kliger.

The second UC Berkeley student is Akash Bobba, who pursued a triple major in electrical engineering, computer science and business administration from 2021 until this January, but has not graduated, according to the school. According to Wired, Bobba interned at Menlo Park social-media giant Meta, and at Palantir, a Denver intelligence and military software company co-founded in Palo Alto by Thiel, an influential conservative Silicon Valley billionaire closely tied to Musk.

Also connected to Thiel is Luke Farritor, said by Wired to have a working email address in the federal General Services Administration, and to have interned at SpaceX. Farritor is a Thiel Fellow, receiving a two-year, $100,000 grant awarded to people under 22 “who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom,” according to the Thiel Foundation.

The fifth young worker identified as working for DOGE is Edward Coristine, who according to Wired “appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University.” The magazine said a copy of his resume shows he spent three months at Neuralink, a Musk-founded company developing brain-computer interface to treat paralysis.

It doesn't trouble me that these brilliant whiz-kids are doing the leg work for Elon Musk, who in turn reports to Donald Trump. These young men will make $millions in tech, if that's what they choose to do with their lives. The danger of any of them selling Social Security numbers, IMHO, is nil, and trumpeting that issue is an obvious attempt to kill or delay their work. Onward, guys, and thank you for your service.

Democrats: You Created Your Own Destructor

President Trump will sign an Executive Order that will keep biological males out of women's sports in schools and colleges.

Trump will sign an order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” Wednesday afternoon, said people familiar with the matter, including a White House official and a member of Congress...

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly what the contents of the order would entail, but one option is for the president to direct the Education Department to interpret federal Title IX rules as barring the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports categories. People on different sides of the issue have anticipated that the department would then base its policies and future regulations around this interpretation, issuing guidance to schools to act accordingly—and investigating alleged violations.

The scope of the order stands to instantly affect any educational institution that receives federal funding—which includes almost every college in the U.S., as well as the majority of K-12 schools. The Title IX provision in the Education Amendments Act of 1972 prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational activities, though the meaning of that has been hotly contested for decades, mostly recently focusing on its application to transgender students.

In the face of such an order likely affecting all but a handful of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 1,100 member schools, the NCAA has indicated that it will move rapidly to change its rules.

“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators in a series of contentious exchanges over the issue during a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”

...There are 27 states that have sweeping restrictions on the participation of transgender girls and women in school sports. There are policies mandating their inclusion in another 14 states, which are estimated by transgender-rights advocates to have a larger population of transgender students.

The point of this post is not to debate the rightness or wrongness of President Trump's men-in-women's-sports Executive Order but to point out the dangers of allowing the Federal Government to have financial sway over society's institutions. Perhaps, if you are a liberal, you quietly cheered when the Federal Government threatened to withhold payments to Catholic hospitals that refused to provide abortions.*

How does it feel now that the Trump Administration is using the power of the purse to bend society to its will? You created your own Destructor.

*Question, answered by Grok: did the Federal government threaten Catholic hospitals if they did not provide abortions?

The situation regarding the federal government and Catholic hospitals providing abortions is complex and has evolved over time. Here's a detailed overview based on the available information:

Legal Background:
Federal law, specifically the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), mandates that hospitals provide necessary stabilizing treatment in emergency situations, which can include abortion if a woman's life or health is at risk. However, this conflicts with the religious directives of Catholic hospitals, which generally prohibit abortion.

Legal Cases:
In 2016, a federal court dismissed an attempt by the ACLU to force a Catholic hospital system to provide abortions, calling the challenge "dubious" and stating that the ACLU lacked standing to sue (Washington Times, 2016).

In 2022, a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. government could not require Christian medical groups, including Catholic hospitals, to perform abortions or gender transition surgeries under the Affordable Care Act, affirming their religious freedom (Reuters, 2022).

Investigations and Warnings:
In 2023, the federal government conducted an investigation where it was found that two hospitals, which included a Catholic facility, violated federal law by refusing to provide an emergency abortion, putting a woman's life in jeopardy (PBS News, 2023). This was a warning to hospitals about the necessity to comply with EMTALA over state abortion laws.

Policies and Practices:
Catholic hospitals operate under the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" set by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which prohibit abortions except in very specific circumstances where the life of the mother is at immediate risk. This often leads to conflicts with federal mandates like EMTALA, where emergency care might necessitate an abortion.

Public and Legal Discourse:
There have been instances where women reported being denied emergency abortions at Catholic hospitals, leading to severe health risks or the need to seek care elsewhere. This has sparked legal battles and discussions about the balance between religious freedom and patient rights to emergency care (ACLU reports, various dates).

In summary, while there have been instances where federal agencies have highlighted that Catholic hospitals must comply with federal emergency care laws, these are not typically framed as direct "threats" but as enforcement of existing laws like EMTALA. The tension arises from the intersection of religious directives and legal obligations, leading to legal disputes rather than explicit threats. However, enforcement actions or investigations by federal agencies can be perceived as pressures or threats to change practices to comply with federal law.

Slip Sliding Away

Palos Verdes Peninsula in LA (Fallon/AFP/SFGate)

Rancho Palos Verdes is a coastal city in Los Angeles, west of Long Beach. The city has a population of 42,000 and is known

for its breathtaking ocean views, luxurious homes, and serene environment, [and] has been named the richest retirement town in the country, boasting a median household income of $166,747.

I became familiar with RPV when I helped an aviation executive put together business plans for a startup (we couldn't persuade enough investors to make a go of it). He loved living there not only for the aforementioned attributes but also because its schools made it an excellent place to raise his kids. Now the community is suffering from a slow-moving natural disaster: [bold added]

According to data captured by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory using airborne radar, a portion of the Palos Verdes Peninsula is slipping towards the Pacific Ocean as much as 4 inches per week.

California has experienced its share of natural disasters in recent years. However, its wealthiest residents have generally avoided feeling the consequences....until the Pacific Palisades fire showed that even they are vulnerable.

Repairing Pacific Palisades, and perhaps Rancho Palos Verdes, will require funds that only the Federal Government can provide, yet the Progressives that run California have passed legislation to "Trump-proof" California. Why poke the bear? The moneyed backers of the current regime can only wonder if it is really interested in protecting their interests.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

I just received Time in the morning mail, and the cover reminds me of an old joke.

The good news is that Jesus is coming back.

The bad news is that he's p****d off.

Donald Trump, as even his followers would agree, is not a paragon of virtue even by human standards, but he does wield enormous power as a President whose own party controls both houses of Congress.

(Mr. Trump's power, however, pales before President Obama's, whose Democratic Party held 257 seats in the House and 58 seats--later rising to 60--in the Senate in 2009.)

As to whether he is truthfully angry, all that matters is that his friends and enemies believe he is, and he makes it work for him.

Priests: Out of Limbo Soon?

Limbo of the Infants: destination of unbaptized infants.
Pope Benedict abandoned the doctrine in 2007.

It is inexcusable that the legal immigration system is so broken that it takes years to process an application. Whatever one's views on immigration, it can't be right or fair to a petitioner, his prospective employer, or his family to keep him in limbo seemingly interminably.

Speaking of limbo ("the border place between heaven and hell where those souls who died without being baptised"), the term's Roman Catholic origins have an ironic contemporary meaning due to the plight of immigrant priests, without whom the American Catholic church would not be able to function.

The Catholic Church in the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient vocations and increasingly relies on immigrants. “We used to send missionaries to other parts of the world,” Bishop Edmund Whalen of New York says. “Now, in a sense, we’re becoming the mission country.” Of the 356 active archdiocesan and extern priests in New York, the bishop says 183 are foreign nationals. The U.S. bishops’ conference recently took stock: With responses from 70% of dioceses and eparchies, it learned that 90% rely on foreign-born religious workers.

Solving the problems specific to Catholic priests is more manageable than fixing the entire immigration system:

Practical relief to the logjam could come in two ways. David Spicer, a lawyer with the U.S. bishops’ conference, says Homeland Security could modify or scrap its regulation—which isn’t mandated by statute—that foreign-born priests have to exit the U.S. for a year once their R-1 visas lapse. The Biden administration informed the conference that it contemplated doing so last fall but failed to follow through. The Trump administration has indicated it may propose a rule in September to offer religious workers more flexibility.

A more durable fix could come through Congress. Sens. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) plan to introduce a bill allowing religious workers with pending green-card applications to stay on their R-1s beyond five years. Both Catholic, the senators learned of the issue as it began to affect priests in their states’ parishes. The senators believe their colleagues would overwhelmingly support the measure, but passing any immigration bill has become difficult. They may try fitting the provision into a larger vehicle, say on border security or appropriations.

Presidential Executive Orders being the exception, change in Washington is never instantaneous. However, resolving this issue appears to have bipartisan agreement. Immigrant priests aren't displacing anyone. Let them in. It is abundantly clear that not enough Americans are willing and able to do the job.