Catch Me Up: Daily news roundup for May 20, 2025

This Daily News Roundup for the 24 hours from 4:00 PM Monday 5/19 to 4:00 PM Tuesday 5/20 is based on news articles created by Bay City News reporters and editors. We prompted ChatGPT to analyze the articles produced by our staff and to choose 5 stories to highlight. Then we used ElevenLabs and other tools to help us convert the text into audio based on the voice of Leslie Katz, one of our Bay City News editors. This content was verified by a human editor.

Hello, and welcome to Bay City News for Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Here is a look at some of the top stories from across the region.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts are impacting crucial conservation efforts in Mendocino County, ending the GrizzlyCorps fellowship program. GrizzlyCorps places fellows in 11-month terms to support wildfire prevention and forest restoration in rural communities. The program, which received approximately $1.2 million in AmeriCorps grants, was notified it would be eliminated due to nationwide AmeriCorps funding cuts. This decision will impact 42 GrizzlyCorps members serving in 20 counties, cutting their terms short by three months. Scott Cratty, executive director of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, said the cuts will significantly affect education programs, including one he helped launch for middle school students. In late April, Governor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the defunding of AmeriCorps, arguing the administration lacks the authority to cut funding for a program enacted by Congress decades ago. About two dozen other states have joined the lawsuit.

Shifting our focus to transportation, BART service was significantly impacted early Tuesday morning due to a fire on the train tracks just south of the San Leandro station. The fire, reported around 5 a.m., led to the suspension of service south of the Lake Merritt station, affecting the Blue line, Green line, and Orange line. Alameda-Contra Costa Transit buses and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority are providing mutual aid to commuters in the affected areas. BART officials said the fire damaged critical cables and other train control equipment. Crews are estimating that regular service may not resume until sometime between 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

In San Jose, a city council candidate’s campaign is facing scrutiny after emails obtained by San Jose Spotlight revealed a top PG&E executive helped run the campaign, while a PG&E-funded special interest group independently supported her candidacy. Teresa Alvarado, a regional vice president for PG&E, allegedly ran weekly meetings with volunteers to discuss fundraising, endorsements, and media strategy for San Jose City Council candidate Gabby Chavez-Lopez. Both Alvarado and Chavez-Lopez have denied a direct campaign relationship. Sean McMorris, a political transparency expert with California Common Cause, said the situation raises concerns about the potential for improper coordination, even if plausible deniability exists. A political action committee primarily funded by PG&E donated $30,000 to a separate PAC set up specifically to help Chavez-Lopez.

Moving to positive community news, Alameda County has launched a new Diaper Bank program aimed at helping families and reducing hospital visits. This three-year, five-point-eight-million-dollar initiative will provide monthly access to diapers and baby wipes for families with young children. A collaborative effort between Alameda County Social Services and nonprofits SupplyBank.org and First Five Alameda County, the program will distribute over 15 million diapers and 37 million baby wipes through more than 50 community-based organizations. According to a statement from Supply Bank, a lack of access to diapers leads to approximately 40,000 hospital visits in California annually, with 80 percent being emergency room visits. Studies indicate that one in two families in the U.S. currently struggles to afford diapering supplies.

In crime news from San Jose, the Police Department announced Monday the arrest of two men suspected of attempting to sexually traffic two teenage girls. Police were called to a motel on the 4100 block of Monterey Road on April 10, 2025, after a report of a battery. Investigators said two men drove two 16-year-old girls to the motel, where one man allegedly told the girls they were going to work for him and “make them money.” When one of the girls attempted to flee, the man allegedly punched her. A special victims unit took over the case, identifying Peter Supnet, age 28, and Edwin Dickerson the Third, age 27, as suspects. Both men have been booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of crimes related to human trafficking of minors.

Finally, in a story with implications for privacy and technology, Bay Area cities have received requests for residents’ emails from a Mountain View-based company, GovernmentGPT, which aims to use the correspondence to train an artificial intelligence tool. According to San Jose Spotlight, the company filed Public Records Act requests with cities including San Jose, Santa Clara, Mountain View, and Milpitas, seeking emails sent by residents to city officials between 2020 and 2023. GovernmentGPT’s stated goal is to create an AI that can summarize public comments and streamline municipal operations. However, AI experts and city officials have raised concerns about privacy, consent, and ethics, particularly regarding the potential for misuse of this data and the lack of existing regulations for such AI applications.

And those are some of the top stories we’re following. Thank you for joining us for Bay City News.