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Recently, as the political battle over congressional redistricting brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users were shown a curious series of ads.

The ads, from a straightforward-looking news site called the California Courier, often felt a lot like campaign commercials, linking to articles hammering Democrats in the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. Few punched in the other direction, toward Republicans. One said, “California Democrats just rewrote their gerrymandering plan so voters will see their partisan map on the ballot this November.” Another called Proposition 50, which passed in November, “a scheme critics say is meant to undermine voter-approved protections and entrench one party rule in California.”

A reader who clicked through to the Courier’s website would find stories that largely align with a conservative view of the news, like a video of a child “riding a scooter through San Fran’s drug-ravaged streets,” or an anonymous piece that cites “confidential sources” cautioning against a “left-wing educator” running for a position with an Orange County school district.

What a reader would not find is any disclosure of the Courier’s ownership or funding, including what appear to be ties to a network of conservative organizations in California that, according to one researcher, scaled up a series of right-leaning news sites in three other states just ahead of the 2024 election.

The Courier has money to spend. According to a review of the ad library maintained by Facebook’s owner, Meta, the outlet has spent more than $80,000 since 2021 promoting its stories on social issues and politics, potentially reaching tens of thousands of users on the platform each week.

Critics say the California outlet is part of a growing, nationwide ecosystem of innocuous-looking, cheaply produced news publications that publish and advertise biased articles in an attempt to surreptitiously influence elections. They worry the practice could mislead voters and corrode trust in nonpartisan news providers.

“I think we are in an era where people are consuming so much content online without knowing the source of it,” said Max Read, who has studied the network apparently behind the Courier at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that works to counter political polarization. “And for well-funded organizations to contribute to that by disguising what they’re doing online just helps exacerbate that problem of people not trusting what they come across.”

At a glance, the Courier does not necessarily look right-leaning. A handful of stories seem like straight news echoing press releases, such as one announcing new affordable housing units. But even those that seem relatively neutral may have a right-leaning spin, like one describing speeding fines tied to income as a potential “woke penalty loophole.”

The outlet also shares a name with a 67-year-old California-based publication serving the Armenian diaspora. One of that Courier’s founders won acclaim from his peers for his tenure as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school.

When the Markup and CalMatters contacted the publisher of the Armenian Courier, he said he was unaware of the other site. He told a reporter he was opening it for the first time.

“I’m definitely not conservative,” said Harut Sassounian, who owns the Courier, where his regular editorials appear online and formerly in print. “The two publications have nothing in common. Neither politically nor ethnically nor anything like that.”

Although it lacks the pedigree of the Armenian publication, the right-leaning Courier has shown it is well-immersed in today’s social media. A video it made suggesting Newsom flip-flopped in his view of President Biden’s mental acuity generated thousands of reactions.

The publication also shares some of the murky citation practices of contemporary social media. Almost all of the stories on the site are unattributed, or simply attributed to “the California Courier.”

A few, however, include author names. One of the named writers describes himself on social media as a “content creator” for the Lincoln Media Foundation, a conservative group, and links to Courier articles. Another shares a name with a Republican strategist based in Orange County, and a third lists a resume with conservative organizations in a short bio.

The Lincoln Media Foundation is tied to the Lincoln Club, a group based in Orange County that bills itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.” The club funnels anonymously donated money to conservative candidates and causes.

The Lincoln Media Foundation’s Facebook page recently said it was “proud to present” a new documentary purporting to reveal “the untold truth about the Pacific Palisades fire,” the natural disaster that tore through the state last year and increased political pressure on Newsom.

One hour later, the Courier’s Facebook page promoted it as well, not mentioning the Lincoln Media Foundation but describing the documentary as “much anticipated.”

Neither the Lincoln Club, Lincoln Media, the California Courier or the Courier writers responded to multiple requests for comment about the origins of the site, either through email phone, or social media messages.

That silence, and the lack of information about ownership on the Courier’s website, come despite the outlet’s chief goal, as outlined on its Facebook page.

“California Courier offers statewide and local news,” the page’s description reads. “Our mission is transparency.”

The Lincoln Club has previously been linked to “local” websites around the country, spreading stories with a distinctly conservative tint.

In 2024, Read’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks disinformation and extremism online, found a handful of such sites that noted deep in their privacy policies that they were projects from Lincoln Media. Those outlets had names like the Angeleno and the Keystone Courier, and stretched from California to Pennsylvania, although a resulting report didn’t name the Courier.

Many of the sites used Facebook and other social media tools to press a conservative agenda, the report found. Meta has rules against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” but it’s not clear whether Lincoln Media’s websites would cross that line.

‘Pink slime’ news

Researchers have taken to calling sites like those operated by Lincoln Media “pink slime” news, a name coined after a meat-industry additive. These sites don’t produce outright false news, like others, but they do not meet basic journalistic standards. That often means low-quality content and failing to disclose associations with outside organizations.

The sites generally aren’t designed to generate revenue, but to sway public opinion. The majority, according to researchers, lean toward a conservative agenda, and if the site’s stories gain traction on social media, they can travel widely. “If they place an ad well or if they just get the right pickup from the right influencer, these things don’t really have a limit on how far they can go,” Read said.

While it’s not clear how many sites the Lincoln Club might fund, it isn’t the only group that has used the strategy.

In 2020, the New York Times reported on Metric Media, a group that created nearly 1,300 sites around the country with names like Maine Business Daily and the Ann Arbor Times. At a glance, these could pass for simple local news operations. But the Times report found they took money from public relations firms and Republican operatives to produce stories beneficial to those groups, a massive journalistic red flag.

Ethical or not, the strategy can be effective for lending credibility to a particular viewpoint. Kevin DeLuca, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who has researched pink slime websites, conducted an experiment that showed subjects both real unbiased news sites and others produced by Metric Media.

Some subjects in the study were given a tip sheet that asked them to examine the sites closely, looking at whether they included information like credible mission pages and other details. But even with the tip sheet, the study subjects said in interviews that they didn’t strongly prefer the truly local over the manufactured sites.

DeLuca says these sites are now in place around the United States, and news consumers have little idea when they’re running into them. The problem may only get worse with the spread of generative AI, since that technology further reduces the cost of creating such sites.

Researchers who study these sites say it’s never been easier to produce them. Local news, for one, has faced a years-long financial crisis that’s wiped many once-robust operations off the map.

While it can’t be said whether any one publication uses AI-generated content, the wide availability of tools like ChatGPT, capable of producing at least a semblance of a passable news story, have also made it easier to build up such sites.

“It’s going to make these pink slime sites even harder for people to know that what they’re reading is not from a human source and not really local investigative journalism.” DeLuca said.

Sassounian, for his part, doesn’t think there’s any risk the two California Couriers would ever be confused with each other. He took over the paper in the 1980s, and his columns, which he describes as “hard-hitting editorials that defend the rights of the Armenian people worldwide,” have been translated into languages around the world.

“It’s not pleasant to have our name used by someone else,” Sassounian said. “I prefer that they don’t, but I don’t know what I can do about it.”

Colin Lecher writes for CalMatters.

Jan. 7 (UPI) — The Trump administration announced Wednesday it created new dietary guidelines and created a new food pyramid.

“Under President Trump’s leadership common sense, scientific integrity and accountability have been restored to federal food and health policy,” a fact sheet from the Department of Health and Human Services announced. “For decades, the Dietary Guidelines favored corporate interests over common sense, science-driven advice to improve the health of Americans. That ends today.”

The new guidelines focus on high-quality protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables and whole grains, the fact sheet said. It calls for people to avoid highly processed foods and refined carbohydrates.

“The Dietary Guidelines are the foundation to dozens of federal feeding programs, and today marks the first step in making sure school meals, military and veteran meals, and other child and adult nutrition programs promote affordable, whole, healthy, nutrient-dense foods,” the fact sheet said.

The government also released a new website, Realfood.gov.

The American Heart Association said it welcomed the new guidelines on fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The AHA “commends the inclusion of several important science-based recommendations, notably the emphasis on increasing intake of vegetables, fruits and whole grains while limiting consumption of added sugars, refined grains, highly processed foods, saturated fats and sugary drinks,” the AHA said in a statement.

But it took issue with some of the recommendations.

“We are concerned that recommendations regarding salt seasoning and red meat consumption could inadvertently lead consumers to exceed recommended limits for sodium and saturated fats, which are primary drivers of cardiovascular disease. While the guidelines highlight whole-fat dairy, the Heart Association encourages consumption of low-fat and fat-free dairy products, which can be beneficial to heart health,” the statement said.

The new guidance pushes protein at every meal and says to eat as much as twice the recommended daily allowance of 0.08 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. It says to eat 1.2 to 1.6 grams. Proteins can be flavored with “salt, spices, and herbs,” it said.

The guidelines also recommend full-fat dairy, which is different from past recommendations of low-fat or fat-free dairy. Full-fat dairy has saturated fats. The fact sheet calls this “ending the war on healthy fats.”

“Paired with a reduction in highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives, this approach can change the health trajectory of America,” the fact sheet said.

“When [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] impacts nutrition science, it enables special interests to argue the status quo is acceptable because it would violate ‘health equity’ principles to encourage Americans to eat healthier food,” the fact sheet added.

Perry Bamonte, guitarist and keyboardist for the Cure, has died. He was 65.

The band announced on its website on Dec. 26 that Bamonte died “after a short illness at home over Christmas.”

“Quiet, intense, intuitive constant and hugely creative, ‘Teddy’ was a warm hearted and vital part of the Cure story,” the band said.

The London-born Bamonte began touring with the Cure as a guitar tech and assistant in 1984, then joined the band full-time in 1990. He performed over 400 shows with the group and recorded on the albums “Wish,” “Wild Mood Swings,” “Bloodflowers,” “Acoustic Hits” and “The Cure.”

Bamonte parted ways with the Cure after 14 years, later performing with the group Love Amongst Ruin. He returned to the Cure in 2022 for “another 90 shows, some of the best in the band’s history,” the group said, including the Nov. 1, 2024, London show documented on the concert film “The Show of a Lost World.”

As a member of the Cure, Bamonte was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. The band is still scheduled for a run of European festivals and headline shows in 2026.

“Our thoughts and condolences are with all his family,” the group said. “He will be missed.”

Nothing but dirt and dry, brown chaparral rolled beneath skis and snowboards dangling from a chairlift at Big Bear Mountain Resort on Friday, as forlorn adventure seekers joked they should rename the place “Big Bare.”

Unseasonably high temperatures even left the impressive array of high-tech artificial-snow makers below mostly useless, their fans spinning idly in the warm breeze.

“The word I’ve been using is “abysmal,” said Cameron Miniutti, 29, who was riding the lift in a light cotton shirt, with the hot sun glinting off his ski goggles. “This is, for sure, the toughest start [to a season] I’ve seen.”

Similarly bleak panoramas can be found at ski areas across the American West so far this year, but especially in California, where a wet November gave way to one of the driest Decembers in recent memory.

People visit Big Bear Village on Sunday, with no snow in sight.

As of Friday, the state had only 12% of the snow that’s normal for this time of year, and only 3% of what water managers hope for in an average year, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Which is why water managers — and skiers — are hoping for a Christmas miracle as an enormous atmospheric river takes aim at California this week. The soaking rains may threaten coastal cities with flash floods and nightmarish traffic, but they promise sweet relief for snow-starved thrill seekers from Lake Tahoe to the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California.

Mammoth Mountain, the tallest commercial ski resort in California, could get up to 7 feet of snow this week, according to On the Snow, a website that tracks conditions at ski areas.

Resorts on the north end of Lake Tahoe could see up to 5 feet, and even Big Bear could get 3 feet, assuming the temperature stays below freezing, according to the website.

That’s important to everyone, even nonskiers, because roughly a third of the water California relies on each year for drinking, farming and fighting wildfires accumulates as snow in the mountains during the winter and then gradually melts through the spring and summer, when the state can otherwise be bone dry.

Many California ski areas were forced to delay opening this year, and even those that got the lifts spinning have had to confine skiers to only a handful of runs, often on man-made snow.

That has been this case at Big Bear, where a thin strip of artificial snow snakes from the 8,440 top of the Bear Mountain Express chairlift to the base at just over 7,000 feet. While crews worked diligently to rake the fake snow over exposed rocks and patches of bare dirt on Friday, skiers and boarders scraped by like traffic on the 405 Freeway.

“It’s crazy,” Miniutti said, “I mean, I can’t even imagine what this is like on a weekend.”

And the range of abilities of people crammed onto the same run creates its own, unique kind of “obstacle course,” Miniutti said.

You have to concentrate on not crashing into people in front of you — many of whom are absolute beginners, tumbling to the snow for no apparent reason — while praying the very good skiers and snowboarders you can hear racing up behind you will somehow avoid mowing you down.

People ski and snowboard at Big Bear Mountain Resort on man-made snow on Sunday.

“There’s, like, the best snowboarders in the world and people on their first day right next to each other,” Miniutti said.

But under the circumstances, Miniutti had nothing but admiration for the mountain staff for keeping the run open despite the seemingly impossible weather.

“I’m still having a blast,” he said, “it’s absolutely worth coming up.”

Devon James, 24, from Pasadena, felt the same way. He was warm in long sleeves, which he took to wearing after wiping out in short sleeves a week ago and “getting cut up.”

One day lift tickets at Big Bear cost more than $150 this season. At fancier resorts, like Mammoth Mountain, they can easily climb to more than $200 per day. So most serious skiers buy season passes for just under $1,000 that are good at many mountains across the country and around the world.

But that means they feel compelled to get their days in, no matter the conditions.

“I mean, that’s kind of the whole game, right,” James laughed. “I’ve got to get at least eight or nine days to get back to even.”

Skiers and snowboarders navigate bare areas at Big Bear Mountain Resort.

Miniutti, who is originally from Massachusetts, and learned to snowboard on the freezing, icy hills of New England, still prefers the alpine experience on the West Coast.

Even when there are legitimate winter conditions at Big Bear, he loves hopping in his car at the end of the day and driving home to Los Angeles, where it’s seemingly always 70 degrees and sunny.

“I can’t really beat that,” he said, “I’m not complaining.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a new state-run website Tuesday that tracks what his office calls the “criminal cronies” around President Trump — just the latest trolling tactic by the California governor that directly mirrors Trump’s own use of public resources for political score settling.

Newsom pegged the website’s rollout to recent crime statistics, which were released in early November showing falling rates of homicide and assault in California. The governor’s website catalogs what it calls the top 10 criminal convictions that were followed by pardons offered thus far by Trump — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business figures convicted of fraud, drug trafficking and financial crimes. The website calls Trump the “criminal in chief.”

The website features AI-generated portraits of such figues as Rod Blagojevich, the only Illinois governor to be impeached and removed from office; former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking; and Ross Ulbricht, the founder of a dark-web drug marketplace who had been serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The images show the men standing in a lineup with the word “felon” stamped in red ink.

“With crime dropping — again — California is proving what real public safety leadership looks like,” read a statement from Newsom. “Meanwhile in D.C., Trump is a felon who surrounds himself with scammers and drug traffickers. We’re providing the public with a resource putting the facts in one place so Californians, and all Americans, can see who he elevates and who he protects.”

The launch is the latest escalation in Newsom’s increasingly aggressive digital campaign against Trump.

In recent months, the governor and his press office have turned social media into a near-daily forum for mocking and trolling the president by firing off all-caps posts, meme-style graphics and sharply worded rebukes aimed at Trump’s brash rhetoric, criminal record, policy proposals and political allies.

The crime data , which was released Nov. 3 by the Major Cities Chiefs Assn., found homicides across California’s major cities fell 18% year over year, robberies dropped 18% and aggravated assaults declined 9%. The association also found that violent crime decreased in every California city reporting data, with the steepest declines in Oakland, where violent crime fell 25%, and San Francisco, where it fell 21%.

Newsom’s new website highlights Trump’s sweeping use of presidential pardons to grant clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The governor’s office said some of those individuals had prior criminal records and that others went on to be convicted of new crimes after receiving pardons.

The move mirrors tactics Trump and his administration have embraced. Most recently, Trump unveiled a website of “media offenders,” naming journalists and outlets he accuses of bias. Separately, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem has maintained a website highlighting what it calls the “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, framing the page as evidence that the administration is carrying out Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

The state’s website launch comes as Newsom seeks to cast California as a national leader in responsible governance of artificial intelligence.

Earlier Tuesday, the governor announced a slate of initiatives aimed at promoting ethical AI use in state government, including a new advisory council, partnerships with academic and nonprofit groups, and a generative AI assistant for state employees. Among the priorities outlined are strengthening safeguards for children online, countering image-based abuse and improving government operations.

“California is at the forefront of AI technology — and is home to some of the most successful and innovative companies and academic leaders in the world,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not going to sit on the sidelines and let others define the future for us. But we’re going to do it responsibly — making sure we capture the benefits, mitigate the harms, and continue to lead with the values that define this state.”