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Daniel Lurie is San Francisco’s nerdy new mayor — and hype man

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SAN FRANCISCO — When Daniel Lurie received election in November as San Francisco’s new mayor, he knew there have been daunting challenges forward: the dual epidemics of homelessness and habit; a deflated downtown financial system; the final sense amongst locals {that a} malaise had clouded their colourful metropolis.

5 months later — 100 days into Lurie’s tenure — it’s not as if any of these issues have gone away. And but, “I really like my job,” mentioned Lurie, 48, throughout a latest interview in his stately Metropolis Corridor workplace.

“Individuals say, ‘What are the surprises?’ I believe I’m shocked by simply how a lot I really like this job.”

As an inheritor to the Levi Strauss household fortune, Lurie comes from one of many metropolis’s most outstanding households, with roots courting to the Gold Rush. So, it’s no shock he feels a deep connection to his metropolis. However his choice to make use of the mayoral publish to not solely set coverage but in addition boldly hype San Francisco is a part of a broader technique. He needs the nation to see a metropolis on the rise. And possibly much more vital: for San Franciscans to embrace the picture.

“The vibe shift is, I imagine, actual in our metropolis,” he mentioned. “There’s a way of hope and optimism that individuals haven’t seen for a very long time. I’ve lots of people saying, ‘I’m proud to be a San Franciscan for the primary time shortly.’ Now, I’ve at all times been proud. That’s why I ran.”

Lurie, a reasonable Democrat, bested incumbent London Breed and three different Metropolis Corridor veterans by interesting to voters disillusioned with sprawling homelessness and the town’s stalled post-COVID restoration. He got here to the job with no expertise as an elected official. His work life centered on Tipping Level, a Bay Space nonprofit he based in 2005 that has raised greater than $400 million for initiatives targeted on job coaching, housing and early childhood training for low-income households.

Even lots of his supporters anticipated Lurie, together with his starched shirts and monotone voice, to strategy the brand new job as extra of a public coverage nerd than a cheerleader-in-chief. However, for now, he’s successfully embraced each roles. At some point he’s unveiling plans to get robust on public drug use; the following, he’s throughout city throwing the primary pitch on the Giants’ opening day at Oracle Park. He typically makes use of his Instagram to focus on each the intense and extra enjoyable elements of his job.

Lurie is aware of he’s acquired an extended street forward so far as making the modifications he promised voters: dismantling the tent cities; increasing shelter choices; reinvigorating the enterprise sector; making the town decidedly unfriendly to drug sellers. However what rankles him shouldn’t be a lot the scope of the agenda. It’s the paperwork he sees as standing in his manner.

“Within the first few weeks, I’d be strolling on the streets and be like, why is there trash at a bus shelter?,” Lurie mentioned, recounting one such instance. “Nicely, we don’t do trash pickup on Saturdays and Sundays. And I used to be like, folks nonetheless take the bus on Saturdays and Sundays, and we now have vacationers from all around the world coming right here.”

“Now we have to be a 24/7 metropolis, and sometimes we’re a metropolis that’s 9 to five, Monday via Friday,” he mentioned.

Lurie, dad to 2 school-aged youngsters, can also be studying how one can mesh being a 24/7 mayor with a wealthy and supportive household life. He typically references as a task mannequin the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who served as San Francisco’s mayor from 1978-88. Like Feinstein, Lurie needs to be a hands-on mayor, strolling metropolis streets by day, whereas not less than now and again making it dwelling early sufficient to take a seat down together with his household for dinner.

He posits, with a smile, that he may very well have the lightest schedule within the household. His spouse, Becca Prowda, is a high-ranking aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, serving as Newsom’s chief of protocol. His son, 11-year-old Sawyer, performs baseball, soccer and flag soccer. Lurie’s daughter, 14-year-old Taya, just lately carried out within the San Francisco Ballet’s rendition of “Frankenstein.”

“She was the primary individual onstage,” Lurie mentioned with the smile of a really proud dad. “She has a second the place she is dancing onstage with and standing subsequent to Sasha (DeSola),” a principal dancer with the corporate.

Lurie nonetheless takes his children to highschool each morning, he mentioned, and goals to get dwelling by 9 p.m. most nights, whereas reserving Friday and Sunday evenings for household. He spent Passover weekend together with his household in Southern California.

On the marketing campaign path, Lurie mentioned his children’ expertise of San Francisco impressed him to run for mayor, recounting a narrative about strolling with them via the Mission District and encountering a person within the midst of a psychological well being disaster. Lurie pledged to prioritize public security and enhance pathways to remedy for psychological sickness and habit.

Quickly after his Jan. 8 inauguration, Lurie introduced an ordinance that permits the town to extra rapidly open new shelter and remedy packages whereas giving his workplace leeway to pursue non-public funding for these efforts. This month, he introduced a brand new public health policy that prohibits metropolis workers and nonprofits that obtain metropolis funding from handing out sterile syringes and different clear drug provides until they actively work to attach folks with companies.

Lurie has tapped a handful of elite tech and enterprise executives to behave as advisors and assist form insurance policies that may revitalize a downtown hit arduous by the COVID-era shutdowns and the exodus of tech employees who embraced distant work. Among the many folks he’s recruited: Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire philanthropist and widow of Steve Jobs; Ruth Porat, president and chief funding officer of Alphabet and Google; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Larry Baer of the San Francisco Giants; enterprise capitalist Ron Conway; and the executives of DoorDash, Hole, Ripple, Salesforce and Visa.

Their mind energy — and cash — shall be a robust instrument in serving to jolt San Francisco’s downtown again to life, Lurie mentioned.

“I’m going to work with anyone that desires to assist San Francisco get again to its rightful place as the best metropolis on the planet,” he mentioned.

Lurie’s efficiency has drawn accolades from sudden political corners.

“I believe Mayor Lurie is doing improbable,” mentioned state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a Breed ally who expressed pleasure at Lurie’s housing insurance policies and assist for public transit.

“I take pleasure in him personally. I take pleasure in his strategy,” mentioned Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the brand new president of the Board of Supervisors, the town’s highly effective legislative arm, which for years was dominated by ultra-liberals who typically clashed with earlier mayors. The November elections introduced extra centrist members to the 11-member physique who could also be extra inclined to assist Lurie’s centrist agenda.

“He’s keen to actually be taught, and he’s keen to pay attention,” mentioned Supervisor Connie Chan, a progressive. “And it’s not simply symbolic listening. He’s actively listening.”

Even former longtime Supervisor Aaron Peskin, an old-school liberal who misplaced to Lurie in final yr’s mayoral race, mentioned he accepted a latest invitation from Lurie to take a stroll and discuss store. Peskin mentioned he appreciates that the brand new mayor is keen to take heed to totally different opinions.

“San Francisco wanted to have a change, each for nationwide notion and for native notion,” Peskin mentioned.

Loads of unpopular choices loom. Chief amongst them is a gaping finances deficit nearing $1 billion, a quantity that may virtually definitely require sweeping cuts and hard negotiations with the Board of Supervisors and the town’s public labor unions.

Lurie has already gotten pushback from some outstanding neighborhood teams involved that his new insurance policies will ignite a repeat of the nation’s failed battle on medication, in addition to these skeptical of his tight connections with tech leaders.

“We’ve had a pay-to-play ambiance at Metropolis Corridor,” mentioned Julie Pitta, president of the Phoenix Undertaking, a progressive group that tracks tech cash in San Francisco politics. “Does Mayor Lurie assume these folks won’t need one thing in return for the assistance they’re giving him?”

For now not less than, Lurie is taking each the accolades and criticism in stride. He’s already alluded to a reelection marketing campaign, saying it’d take extra time to reestablish his hometown as a metropolis the place each vacationer needs to go to and each enterprise needs to open store.

“I believe we’re off to a robust begin,” Lurie mentioned. “However my expectations are sky-high.”

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Fight intensifies over bill by former Edison executive to gut rooftop solar credits

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A invoice to sharply cut back the power credit given to householders with rooftop photo voltaic panels is pitting union electrical employees and the state’s massive utilities towards individuals who profit from the photo voltaic credit — and one of many first skirmishes happened within the Metropolis of Business on Wednesday.

Waving indicators and blowing whistles, dozens of rooftop photo voltaic house owners protested outdoors the workplace of Assemblymember Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), who proposed Meeting Invoice 942 to slash the credits for individuals who put in the techniques earlier than April 15, 2023.

Jim Matthews, one of many rooftop photo voltaic house owners on the protest, stated he doubts he would have bought the panels if he would have identified the state can be reversing the incentives.

“Stuff like this tears my coronary heart,” stated Matthews, who lives in Hawthorne. “I believe it’s scandalous.”

Calderon labored for Southern California Edison and its guardian firm, Edison Worldwide, for 25 years earlier than she was elected in 2020. Her final place included managing the guardian firm’s political motion committee.

Edison and the state’s two different massive for-profit utilities have long tried to reduce the power credit that incentivized Californians to put money into the photo voltaic panels. The rooftop techniques have lowered the utilities’ gross sales of electrical energy.

“Calderon: For the Individuals or for Edison?” stated one signal waved by protesters outdoors Calderon’s workplace within the Metropolis of Business. “Cease SCE’s Revolving Door in Sacramento,” stated one other.

Two people on a roof and two below move a black panel.

Calderon advised the Occasions she launched the invoice as a result of she had realized that 97% of the individuals in her district had been paying greater electrical payments due to the photo voltaic credit going to the remaining 3% once they despatched the unused electrical energy from their photo voltaic panels to the grid.

“From an fairness standpoint, that’s not truthful,” she stated. “I’d love for everybody to have photo voltaic, however we have to do it in a good and equitable means.”

Calderon stated Edison, Pacific Fuel & Electrical and San Diego Fuel & Electrical have all despatched her letters supporting the invoice.

AB 942 would restrict the power credit offered to those that bought the techniques to 10 years — half the 20-year interval the state had advised rooftop house owners they’d obtain. It could additionally finish the incentives if the home was offered.

Uniting within the effort to oppose the invoice are dozens of environmental teams, together with the Sierra Membership and the Environmental Working Group, which level out that the state has lengthy stated the photo voltaic contracts would final for 20 years.

Additionally attending the protest had been representatives from the California Photo voltaic & Storage Assn., a commerce group that represents corporations promoting the rooftop photo voltaic techniques. The protest was organized by the Solar Rights Alliance, a statewide affiliation of photo voltaic customers.

Jeff Monford, a spokesperson for Edison, stated the corporate despatched Calderon a letter Wednesday backing the invoice. He stated the invoice has “nothing to do with utility earnings. It would lead to financial savings for our prospects.”

The corporate estimates that these prospects who don’t have photo voltaic would save $500 million by 2030 if AB 942 handed, or about 3% of the typical family electrical invoice.

The unions {of electrical} employees who set up and restore tools constructed by Edison and different electrical corporations are lobbying to get the invoice handed.

In an electronic mail, a spokesperson for the California State Assn. of Electrical Employees stated the group “strongly helps” the invoice, which it stated would “alleviate the monetary burden on non-solar ratepayers.”

At a gathering in Sacramento in late March, leaders of the group, which represents 83,000 electrical employees within the state, said a top goal was to reform the rooftop photo voltaic incentives.

“It’s unjust, unreasonable and unsustainable for Californians to proceed shoveling billions of {dollars} yearly to an business when it’s not justified nor truthful to non-solar prospects, notably when the burden falls hardest on low-income prospects,” Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for {the electrical} employees, wrote in a letter to the chair of the Meeting Utilities and Power Committee.

Calderon and {the electrical} employees level to an analysis by the state Public Utilities Fee’s public advocates workplace that stated the credit given to rooftop house owners for the electrical energy they ship to the grid is elevating the electrical payments of consumers who don’t personal the panels by $8.5 billion a yr.

The rooftop photo voltaic business and environmental teams disagree with that evaluation, saying it was flawed.

In a current letter to the Meeting committee, the environmental teams pointed to an evaluation that economist Richard McCann carried out for the rooftop photo voltaic business that discovered that electrical charges had risen because the utilities spent extra on infrastructure. That tools consists of the transmission strains wanted to attach industrial-scale photo voltaic farms to the grid.

Although householders’ photo voltaic panels helped hold demand for electrical energy flat for 20 years, the three utilities’ spending on transmission and distribution infrastructure had risen by 300%, McCann discovered.

“To deal with rising charges, California should deal with what’s actually unsuitable with our power system: uncontrolled utility spending and report utility earnings,” the environmental teams wrote.

In December 2022, the fee voted to chop incentives for anybody putting in the panels after April 15, 2023, by 75% however left the incentives in place for legacy prospects.

AB 942 wouldn’t apply to rooftop photo voltaic prospects who dwell in territory served by the state’s municipal utilities, together with the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy.

A listening to on the invoice is scheduled for April 30.

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Minnesota Man Aditya Harsono Whose Student Visa Was Revoked Talks About Detainment

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Current movies on social media displaying immigration brokers taking individuals into custody unnerved Aditya Harsono, who had himself come to this nation from Indonesia on a pupil visa. However he stated he presumed that the media was most likely exaggerating the extent of the Trump administration’s actions.

His understanding shifted in late March, although, when a supervisor on the hospital the place he was working in western Minnesota summoned him downstairs, and two federal brokers put him in handcuffs.

“All the pieces form of shattered,” stated Mr. Harsono, who discovered that his pupil visa, which had allowed him to earn a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration and to then keep for a yr to work, had been revoked due to a misdemeanor property destruction conviction. Mr. Harsono, who’s married to an American citizen and has utilized for a inexperienced card, has been held in a county jail since and faces deportation.

The individuals affected embody college students concerned in activism over the warfare in Gaza, whom the Trump administration has characterised as disruptive. Some others, together with Mr. Harsono, seem to have misplaced their visas on account of legal convictions, some for comparatively minor offenses.

Few of the scholars being held have spoken publicly about their conditions. However Mr. Harsono, 34, described in telephone interviews from the jail the place he has been held for weeks the shock of his arrest and the way in which that his visa revocation has upended his household. And his spouse, Peyton Harsono, advised of difficulties she now faces caring for their 8-month-old daughter, Adalet, whereas working as a social employee at a drug-treatment heart.

Ms. Harsono, a Minnesota native, stated the household has misplaced medical health insurance that had include Mr. Harsono’s job as a provide chain supervisor on the hospital. As their financial savings dwindle, Ms. Harsono, 24, has been pleading for assistance on a fund-raising web site, calling “the trauma of this separation insufferable.”

The State Division declined to reply to questions on Mr. Harsono’s case. In an announcement, it stated, “The Division of State will proceed to work carefully with the Division of Homeland Safety to implement zero tolerance for aliens in the USA who violate U.S. legal guidelines, threaten public security, or in different conditions the place warranted.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio lately stated the federal government had nullified the visas of scholars concerned in disruptive types of activism, together with acts of vandalism. “Once we determine lunatics like these, we take away their pupil visa,” Mr. Rubio said. “Nobody is entitled to a pupil visa.”

After shifting to the USA in 2015, Mr. Harsono acquired a bachelor’s diploma in environmental science from Southwest Minnesota State College, which he attended with a scholarship funded by the Indonesian authorities. Throughout his years in America, Mr. Harsono stated he pursued a ardour for hip-hop by recording music, learn historical past books and typically took half in peaceable protests over police misconduct.

He enrolled within the faculty’s M.B.A. program in 2022, and met Ms. Harsono within the residential advanced the place they each lived.

She was immediately smitten, she stated, including, “When you realize, you realize.”

In July 2022, Mr. Harsono was charged with destruction of property for drawing graffiti on 4 trailers that belonged to a meals firm.

Repairing the harm value lower than $500, a courtroom doc stated. Mr. Harsono pleaded responsible to misdemeanor destruction of property and agreed to pay $485, which included a fantastic and courtroom charges, data confirmed.

Talking on the telephone from Kandiyohi County Jail, roughly 95 miles west of Minneapolis, Mr. Harsono stated he was remorseful about what he had accomplished. He stated that he liked portray murals and had a lifelong ardour for avenue artwork, and had wrongly presumed that the trailers had been deserted.

The couple married within the fall of 2023. The next yr, they utilized for Mr. Harsono’s inexperienced card and shortly settled right into a routine, juggling the calls for of parenthood and new jobs. Cash was tight. Sleep was scarce. However all the things appeared to be going nicely, they stated, till Mr. Harsono’s arrest on the hospital on March 27.

The State Division revoked Mr. Harsono’s visa on the request of officers on the Division of Homeland Safety, in response to a memo from March 23 signed by John Armstrong, a profession diplomat. The 2022 property harm arrest, the memo stated, confirmed that Mr. Harsono “now poses a risk to U.S. public security.”

Mr. Armstrong wrote that the State Division wouldn’t notify Mr. Harsono concerning the revocation earlier than brokers took him into custody, citing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “operational safety.”

The day after his arrest, the Division of Homeland Safety issued a doc setting in movement deportation proceedings, stating that Mr. Harsono was topic to deportation as a result of he remained in the USA after his visa was revoked a couple of days earlier.

Mr. Harsono stated that the immigration officers who drove him to jail inquired at one level how somebody from Indonesia, an archipelago well-known for its seashores, had wound up in Minnesota, a spot with unforgiving winters. The brokers’ jovial dialog, Mr. Harsono stated, felt starkly at odds along with his temper, which he stated has worsened over the weeks in a jail unit that homes 16 individuals.

“I haven’t had recent air and daylight,” he stated final week.

Throughout his time in custody, Mr. Harsono stated he has mirrored on the explanations he selected to check in the USA. He stated he had regarded it as a rustic that values multiculturalism and freedom of speech.

Mr. Harsono stated he feels that the nation has modified in vital and ominous methods. Even when he had been to finally get a inexperienced card, Mr. Harsono stated he questioned whether or not he would ever really feel protected and at house right here. “America is not a democracy,” he stated.

He stated that he despairs on the thought that, ought to he be deported, he is likely to be barred from visiting the nation his spouse and daughter name house. He has begun to contemplate, he stated, how his spouse and daughter may fare if all of them had been to maneuver to Indonesia.

In solely a matter of weeks, Ms. Harsono stated her husband has missed out on a number of milestones for his or her child daughter. Adalet has begun to take a seat up unassisted, to get round in a rolling child walker and to say the phrase “dada” for the primary time when her father known as from jail.

“She’s gotten a lot greater,” she stated.

Throughout a courtroom listening to on April 10, an immigration choose dominated that Mr. Harsono could possibly be launched on bond, citing his eligibility for a inexperienced card, in response to his lawyer, Sarah Gad. However the authorities blocked his launch whereas it appeals the ruling, so Mr. Harsono stays in custody.

Along with the graffiti arrest, Ms. Gad stated {that a} authorities lawyer talked about in courtroom that Mr. Harsono had been arrested in 2021 throughout an indication towards police violence. Prosecutors dismissed the cost he confronted, a misdemeanor for violating a curfew, the lawyer added.

Ms. Harsono stated she struggles to ponder what would occur if her husband is finally deported. Dwelling with out him feels excruciating. And, having by no means traveled overseas, she stated the considered shifting to Indonesia is unthinkable.

“I’ve hardly ever been out of the state,” she stated. “The farthest I’m going is South Dakota.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed analysis.

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Illinois Senator Dick Durbin retiring, will not run for reelection in 2026 at end of term

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin introduced Wednesday morning he’s retiring and won’t run for reelection in 2026.

The choice of whether or not to run for re-election has not been straightforward. I actually love the job of being a United States Senator.

However in my coronary heart, I do know it’s time to cross the torch.

So, I’m saying at present that I can’t be in search of re-election on the finish of my time period. pic.twitter.com/eiBTPjToFT

— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) April 23, 2025

In a video posted to X, Durbin stated, “I actually love the job of being a United State senator, however in my coronary heart I do know it’s time to cross the torch. So, I’m saying at present I can’t be in search of reelection on the finish of my time period.”

Durbin, who’s 80, expressed his gratitude to the folks of Illinois for electing him to the Senate for longer than anybody else in state historical past, and stated he was honored by the duty bestowed on him.

“Proper now the challenges going through our nation are historic and unprecedented,” he continued. “The threats to our democracy and our lifestyle are very actual, and I can guarantee you, I am going to do all the pieces in my energy to combat for Illinois and the way forward for our nation day-after-day of my remaining time within the Senate.”

Durbin known as his fellow Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth a “trusted pal and efficient chief,” and stated she shall be a “actual asset” to the state and the nation as Illinois’ subsequent senior senator.

Durbin is the senior senator for Illinois. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, filling the seat left vacant by longtime Sen. Paul Simon.

He additionally serves on the Senate Democratic Whip, the second-highest rating place for the celebration within the Senate. He was first elected to this management publish by Senate Democrats in 2005, and has been reelected to it each two years since.

Durbin is the rating member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He additionally serves on the Appropriations Committee and the Agriculture, Vitamin and Forestry Committee.

He launched the Dream Act, which might give undocumented immigrants who got here to the U.S. as youngsters and grew up right here a path to citizenship, in 2001 alongside Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). He was additionally a drive behind the institution of the Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrival Program, or DACA, created by President Barack Obama in 2012.

He additionally championed the First Step Act, which was signed into legislation by President Trump in 2018, a bipartisan prison justice invoice that reformed sentencing legal guidelines and supplied extra alternatives for incarcerated folks to re-enter society upon their launch.

Durbin and his spouse Loretta Schaefer Durbin reside in Springfield, Illinois. He has three youngsters – Paul, Jennifer and Christine, his oldest daughter who died in 2008 from issues from a congenital coronary heart situation.

Sara Tenenbaum

Sara Tenenbaum is the Senior Digital Producer for CBS Information Chicago masking breaking, native and neighborhood information in Chicago. She beforehand labored as a digital producer and senior digital producer for ABC7 Chicago.