The Bay

When ICE raided Northern California cities in February, they arrested more people than they expected. But you wouldn't have known that from the Trump administration's outcry after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced the raids ahead of time. How ICE and Trump spun a false narrative about the Oakland mayor and the raids to drum up support for their base. Read the full story and the emails. Guest: M...

The Golden State Warriors have not always been the golden team. Oakland fans have supported the Warriors through decades of losing seasons and rode the high toward three NBA Championships. Now as the team plans to move across the bay to The City, some people in The Town feel left behind. Guest: Lukas Brekke-Miesner, writer for the 38Notes blog and associate director of Oakland Kids First Learn mor...

Huedell Freeman was hauling 47 pounds of marijuana from a farm in Mendocino County to a medical dispensary in Los Angeles when two Rohnert Park police officers pulled him over. They took his weed, gave him a citation and let him go. Freeman was never charged with a crime, nor was his marijuana ever returned. Today, an investigation into the suspicious allegations of pot and cash seizures on Highwa...

Flavored tobacco gets booted out of San Francisco. On Tuesday, voters passed Proposition E with 69 percent of the vote, making the city the first in the nation to pass such a comprehensive ordinance banning all flavored tobacco products from every store shelves. This isn’t the first time San Francisco garnered a major win against the tobacco industry. In fact, a ballot measure back in 1983 says a...

#TBT on The Bay: Sixty percent of voters decided to remove Aaron Persky from his judgeship in Santa Clara County. He's the judge who handed a six-month sentence to former Stanford athlete Brock Turner after Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman in 2015. On an earlier episode of The Bay, we asked an expert: What are the consequences of recalling a judge because of an unpo...

Hang out with The Bay team as we wait for results from the June 5 primary. It’s time to eat newsroom pizza and hit the refresh button over and over on all our browser tabs. For updated results, find full coverage at kqed.org/elections. Guests: Guy Marzorati, KQED politics reporter and newsroom elections czar; Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor; Alex Emslie, KQED criminal justice reporter; Ryan...

The three top candidates running for mayor in San Francisco will have the chance to be the city's "first" in some way. But does a candidate's identity sway people's votes? And how does a voter's identity play a role at the polls? We ask these questions to voters and more. Guest: Corey Cook, Dean of the School of Public Service at Boise State University, and former professor of political science at...

Many of the Bay Area's largest fire agencies are failing to inspect apartment buildings and schools. An analysis by the Bay Area News Group looked at fire inspection records over an eight-year span and found nearly one quarter of the apartment buildings reviewed weren't inspected in 2017. State law requires inspections every year. Guest: Thomas Peele, investigative reporter with the Bay Area News...

Billboards adorned with giant pot leaves line Bay Area freeways. This can make it hard for parents to ignore that awkward coming of age conversation about drugs. Our health editor, who's also a parent, says drug education is radically different from when she grew up. Guest: Carrie Feibel, KQED health editor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Antioch has waited decades for a BART station. The city has seen a population boom led by the Bay Area's housing crisis, which has pushed people farther and farther out. Last weekend, BART officially began train service to Antioch. We talk to residents about how it feel. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, reporter and co-host of KQED's American Suburb podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...

If you’re voting in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley or San Leandro ... you get three votes! Kind of. Today, we explain how ranked-choice voting works, why some people like it, why some people hate it, and how politicians can win even if they come in second. June 5 is Primary Election Day. Guest: Scott Shafer, Senior Editor for Politics and Government Desk for KQED Learn more about your ad choices...

Two deaths by police. Zero charges. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said Thursday that his hands are tied and he won't be prosecuting the officers who killed two men of color in high-profile cases. But he calls the shootings of Mario Woods in 2015 and Luis Gongora in 2016 “unnecessary” and “disturbing.” So why can’t he prosecute? Guest: Alex Emslie, KQED criminal justice reporter Lea...

District 15 isn’t your normal district. At a forum in Berkeley, East Bay candidates for State Assembly are asked to do something they almost never do on the campaign trail: validate their opponent's point of view. Guest: Guy Marzorati, KQED Politics and Government reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We jump into a stranger's car on the Bay Bridge in the "casual carpool lane" to talk about raising bridge tolls. Our carpool driver and rider join in on a discussion about Regional Measure 3, which voters will decide in the June 5 primary election that could increase tolls on seven state bridges in the Bay Area. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

The costs of processing crime in San Francisco has left the city’s convicted criminals with millions of dollars in unpaid debt. Many people can’t afford to pay the extra administrative fees that accompany the criminal court fines. The Board of Supervisors will vote today on whether to waive unpaid debt that's owed to the city and cancel future administrative fees to help low income people with ree...

Calle 24. Japantown. The Leather District. These are all neighborhoods in San Francisco that the city has formally recognized as cultural districts. Not so much for tourism as an attempt to save them from gentrification. But will it work? Guest: Chloe Veltman, arts and culture reporter for KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oakland has lost a battle with coal. A judge ruled Tuesday to uphold a contract that lets a developer ship coal through an Oakland port. Developer Phil Tagami had sued the city after the council had voted to ban the shipment of coal. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

San Francisco supervisors were not happy with answers they got on Monday from the company accused of falsifying soil data at Hunters Point. In recent weeks, we learned two pleaded guilty to faking reports, and there is suspicion about whether the parcel where people now live is safe. Today, an update on how San Francisco supervisors are pressing the Navy, the EPA and the clean-up contractor to ret...

Oakland’s Lake Merritt is supposed to be a public space for everyone. But it doesn't feel that way when white residents complain about the way black residents use the park. So how did people respond when a white woman recently called the cops on two black men grilling? They threw a party at the lake. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED race and equity reporter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

For a housing starved San Francisco, Hunters Point might look like a developers dreamland. The area has large plots of land, a waterfront and beautiful vistas. But the land has been making headlines lately with news of pollution, botched tests and radioactive waste. The latest is that the newly developed residential area called "Parcel A" may be more dangerous than previously thought. And resident...

There are few women in tech. There are even fewer women of color in tech, which can be isolating. At a women's mixer in Mountain View for Google partners, two black women connect over their career experiences. They've seen how corporate culture gets in the way of workforce diversity strategies. Guest: Tonya Mosley, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief for KQED Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

Judge Aaron Persky is facing a recall election in June after sentencing a former Stanford student-athlete Brock Turner to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious and intoxicated woman back in 2015. The Santa Clara County Superior Court judge has remained mostly quiet. But on Tuesday the Judge Persky called a news conference at a private peninsula residence. Today, what are the co...

Thousands of University of California union employees are on strike this week amid failed contract negotiations. Among them are gardeners, janitors, nurses aides and food service workers who say the Bay Area's expensive costs demand higher wages. Today, how a UC Berkeley gardener making $23 an hour gets along. Guest: Ivan Casanova, gardener for the University of California at Berkeley and Vanessa...

San Francisco named the Julius Kahn Playground located in the Presidio after the congressman who represented the city in the early 1900s. But his racist past as the politician who disparaged immigrants and advocated for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 has San Francisco supervisors interested in renaming the park. We revisit the country's anti-Chinese past and hear how those racist laws oppressed...

Chinatown is one of the few San Francisco neighborhoods where lower income residents can still afford to make rent. The tenants living in one Single Room Occupancy - where rooms are 80 square feet - are the latest to sue their landlords over what they say are attempts to push them out, including fines for hanging laundry out of windows to dry. Guest: Jessamyn Edra, staff attorney with Advancing Ju...