Catch Me Up: Daily news roundup for May 23, 2025

This Daily News Roundup for the 24 hours from 4:00 PM Thursday 5/22 to 4:00 PM Friday 5/23 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 Friday, May 23rd, 2025. Here is a look at some of the top stories from across the region.

A federal judge in Oakland has expanded an injunction protecting the immigration status of international students, making it apply nationwide. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White’s initial order covered about two dozen international students, but his new ruling extends relief to all similarly situated students across the United States. This decision comes as nationwide injunctions have been a point of contention with the Trump administration. Judge White stated that without the injunction, the government would likely “abruptly re-terminate SEVIS records without notice,” referring to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. The dispute involves students whose F-1 visas were at risk after a government matching process flagged thousands of names, leading to SEVIS record terminations. The judge noted that the government’s policy “uniformly wreaked havoc” on international students.

Shifting our focus to local safety, firefighters in Oakland conducted a dramatic rescue of a father and his baby from the top floor of a burning apartment building Thursday night. The blaze, which erupted around eight-ten p.m. in a three-story building on the three-thousand block of Capp Street in East Oakland, prompted a swift response. One person was injured in the incident, and a total of twenty people, along with two dogs, were displaced. Fire officials reported that a firefighter quickly grabbed a ladder to bring the father and child to safety, preventing further injury or smoke exposure. The fire was contained to one apartment within about thirty minutes, though other units sustained water and smoke damage. The Red Cross is assisting those displaced. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

Meanwhile, a fast-moving brush fire in eastern Alameda County, known as the Midway Fire, is now seventy-five percent contained. Cal Fire reported Thursday evening that the two hundred sixty-two acre blaze jumped Interstate Highway five-eighty near Tracy. One hundred fifty personnel battled the fire, which started shortly before three p.m. near Patterson Pass and Midway roads. The fire led to major delays on the Altamont Pass, with both directions of Interstate five-eighty temporarily shut down. One lane in each direction has since reopened between Interstate two-oh-five and Patterson Pass Road. No injuries have been reported, though four commercial structures were threatened by the flames. Dry conditions and gusty winds contributed to the fire’s rapid spread. The cause remains under investigation.

In other regional news, Google is reducing its contribution to a fund aimed at supporting California’s local news outlets. The company will now pay ten million dollars, five million less than its original commitment of fifteen million dollars to the California Civic Media Fund. This reduction follows Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to cut the state’s own contribution from thirty million to ten million dollars, a move driven by California’s twelve-billion-dollar budget deficit. The new fund, which will be administered by the California State Library, aims to sustain and enhance community news coverage. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who helped establish the program, emphasized that sustaining local journalism requires collaboration from government, philanthropy, and the tech sector. This funding marks a significant decrease from the original plan, which envisioned one hundred twenty-five million dollars over five years from both the state and Google.

San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency has made permanent a pilot program allowing taxi riders to compare taxi prices with other ride-hailing options. The “taxi upfront fare” program, which had been in place for two years, has significantly boosted earnings for participating taxi drivers, showing a roughly twenty-five percent increase in monthly income. The program also led to a sharp rise in new taxi driver applications, with about three hundred new drivers hired during the pilot period – five times the previous annual average. SFMTA officials say the initiative has helped taxis become more competitive and has improved service in outer neighborhoods historically underserved by the taxi industry. Taxi-hailing services like Arro, Flywheel, and YoTaxi San Francisco, as well as third-party apps such as Uber and Lyft, allow users to see and select taxi options.

Finally, in San Mateo County, the Board of Supervisors has released findings from a months-long independent investigation into complaints filed by Sheriff Christina Corpus against County Executive Mike Callagy. Sheriff Corpus had accused Callagy of abuse of power, inappropriate comments, sexual discrimination, and bullying tactics. However, the investigation, conducted by Oppenheimer Investigations Group, determined that all of Sheriff Corpus’s allegations were unsubstantiated, effectively clearing Callagy of misconduct. The report noted that while Sheriff Corpus refused an oral interview, providing only written responses, it did not find evidence to support her claims of interference in her department’s operations or bias based on her gender or race. County officials say the matter is now closed. Meanwhile, Callagy has filed a ten-and-a-half million dollar defamation complaint against Sheriff Corpus and her former chief of staff, arguing the accusations were made to harm his reputation.

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