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In California | A SPOTLIGHT ON ALL THINGS GOLDEN STATE | Thursday, April 1 | | |
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| In California brings you top Golden State stories and commentary from across the USA TODAY Network and beyond. Get it free, straight to your inbox. I'm Julie Makinen, California editor for the USA Today Network, bringing you Thursday's key headlines. |
L.A. to Vegas or Phoenix via Amtrak? |
 | | Amtrak's proposed new services and enhanced services. | | Amtrak | |
| Everyone knows Joe Biden loves trains. And that may be good for Californians who like trains too. If approved by Congress, Biden's proposed $2 trillion American Jobs Plan would provide $80 billion to Amtrak to cover its backlog of repairs, modernize existing rails and connect new city pairs — including Las Vegas and Los Angeles. |
| On Tuesday, Amtrak released a map that shows where it could expand service if the rail service gets the funding. The map shows expanded services from San Diego to San Luis Obispo and new service between Los Angeles and Phoenix, a trip currently not served by Amtrak. |
| New service would also be added to Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio. |
9-year-old among victims of mass shooting in Orange |
 | | Police officers had trouble getting into a building where four people, including a child, were killed in a shooting in Orange, Calif. | | Patrick T. Fallon, AFP via Getty Images | |
| Horrific details are emerging about Wednesday's shooting in Orange County that left four dead, including a 9-year-old boy. It was the third time in less than three weeks the country has been rocked by a mass shooting. |
| Police say the suspect knew his victims and locked gated entryways into the office suite in Orange before opening fire. The boy was found dead in the arms of a woman believed to be his mother, officials said. She is in critical condition. |
| The Orange Police Department started getting calls about a shooting around 5:30 p.m. local time. Officers were at the scene within two minutes but found that both entrances to a gated courtyard entryway had been locked with a bicycle cable lock, Lt. Jen Amat said at a news conference Thursday, adding that while the locks prevented officers from quickly entering the building, they continued to hear gunshots. From outside the gate, officers opened fire on the suspect. Amat said bolt cutters, which were brought by the sergeant who responded minutes later, were used to break through the locks. |
| Police identified the suspect as Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, 44. He knew each of the victims. "It appears all of the adults were connected either by business or personal relationships," Amat said. "This was not a random act of violence." |
Beloved surfer memorialized at Rincon Point |
 | | Friends, supporters and local surfers gathered at Rincon Beach on Wednesday to honor Ojai resident Gerry Gilhool, who died after a surfing accident off Rincon Point on March 6. | | ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR | |
| When Gerald "Gerry" Gilhool Jr., 51, died in a surfing accident last month, it made international news through social media posts by the folk-rock band Dawes. Gilhool was previously the group's tour manager. Actress and singer Mandy Moore is married to Dawes' frontman, Taylor Goldsmith. |
| On Wednesday, Moore, Goldsmith and their six-week-old baby gathered at Rincon Point to memorialize Gilhool. |
| By late morning, fresh white flower petals dotted the dirt path to the beach at Rincon Point. People stepped around the petals on their way down the narrow passage. Some wore wetsuits and carried a surfboard under one arm. At the bottom of the trail, a young man with his wetsuit pulled down to his waist held up a simple necklace as he spoke to a woman. The necklace had a story. |
| The woman, Alexandra "Ali" Johnes, 44, was Gilhool's partner. The bare-chested man, George Yueh, 32, had been one of two surfers who came to her door in Ojai with news of the incident. |
| Gilhool had been riding a wave on a Saturday afternoon when he fell and hit his head on the shallow bottom. The Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office determined his cause of death was drowning following blunt force head trauma. |
Meet Orrin Heatlie, the ex-cop leading the push to recall Newsom |
 | | Orrin Heatlie, the main organizer for the Recall of California Gov. Newsom campaign, poses with his service dog Bailey after recording a radio program at the KABC radio station in Culver City, Calif., Saturday, March 27, 2021. | | Damian Dovarganes, AP | |
| Orrin Heatlie was recovering from a back procedure and browsing social media in 2019 when he found a video of California Gov. Gavin Newsom instructing immigrants in the country illegally not to open their doors to law enforcement unless officers had a warrant. |
| The 52-year-old retired county sheriff's sergeant was incensed, believing the Democrat's message was an insult to his profession. It was an unsurprising reaction for a Republican who built a 25-year career in law enforcement. |
| What Heatlie did next would eventually slingshot the political neophyte to the center of California's political world: He started researching a recall campaign. Twenty-one months later, 2.1 million signatures have been gathered and it's now a near certainty that Californians will choose later this year whether to remove Newsom from office. |
| Heatlie said his police background gave him the organizational skills to pull off what would be only the second recall election for a governor in state history. Read the full AP profile of the man leading the recall. |
School board recall effort moves ahead in San Francisco |
 | | The San Francisco School Board has voted to rename 44 school sites new names with no connection to slavery, oppression, racism or similar criteria, including Abraham Lincoln High School. | | Jeff Chiu, AP | |
| The recall effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom isn't the only recall drive afoot in the Golden State. Supporters of an effort to recall three San Francisco school board members said Thursday they will start gathering signatures after their recall petition was OK'd, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. |
| The team now has 160 days to gather approximately 50,000 valid signatures for each of the three members to place it on the ballot. |
| The recall targets board President Gabriela López and Commissioners Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga. The recall's organizers — parents Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj —have criticized the board over recent controversial decisions, including the slow reopening of schools, the renaming of 44 district schools and the decision to transition Lowell High School to mostly lottery admissions from one based on grades and test scores. |
| Collins has faced blowback from racist anti-Asian tweets she posted in 2016, which were unearthed by the recall effort. In the tweets, Collins uses a racial slur and said Asian Americans had used "white supremacist thinking to assimilate and 'get ahead.'" |
Vaccines open up to anyone 50 and up. But 20% of Californians may be hardcore skeptics. |
 | | Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's Health and Human Services secretary, gives a vaccination card to California Gov. Gavin Newsom at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles Thursday, April 1, 2021. Gov. Newsom was vaccinated with the new one-dose COVID-19 vaccine by Johnson & Johnson. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) | | Damian Dovarganes, AP | |
| Gov. Gavin Newsom's team appears to be marking the beginning of the end of what has been a particularly thorny political challenge for the administration: How to make sure the millions of Californians eager to get a vaccine are able to get one. The L.A. Times reports 30% of Californians have gotten at least one shot. |
| Now it's on to the next challenge: How to vaccinate the millions of Californians who aren't quite so eager. |
| CalMatters reports that a survey released on Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 14% of adult respondents said they would "definitely not get the vaccine." Another 7% said they "probably" wouldn't. That suggests that one in five Californians will need, at the very least, some extra convincing. |
| With new more virulent and lethal mutations of the novel coronavirus now rippling through the unvaccinated population, public health experts say convincing those "vaccine-hesitant" holdouts is an urgent concern — not just for the unvaccinated, but for everyone. |
| As of Thursday, all Californians 50 and older are now eligible to get the COVID vaccine. Newsom, 53, received his "one and done" Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine Thursday in Los Angeles, bantering as he pulled up the short sleeve of his T-shirt to expose his upper arm. He joked that he brought his own doctor, Dr. Mark Ghaly — the state's Health and Human Services secretary. |
| "Nothing to be nervous about," Ghaly said before poking the governor with a needle. |
| In California is a roundup of news from across USA Today network newsrooms. Also contributing: L.A. Times, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, CalMatters. |
Julie Makinen is California editor for the USA Today Network. Follow her on Twitter at @Julie_Makinen |
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