Good morning. It’s Monday, and I’m reading about the weather-predicting groundhogs who have to live in Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow. Onto the five Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

A Missouri man was arrested last week after threatening to bomb a SLO school and as a revenge plot against an elected official in SLO County. It is unclear who the official is or why the man wanted revenge, although he had written that SLO destroyed his life. His plan was to kill at least 400 people, mostly children, and assassinate the official. He had messaged the official and a second person on social media since early December. One message to the second person read: “Bullets are cheap and children are plentiful.”

Chloe Jones / The Tribune

2.

Eyewitnesses reported ICE agents raiding an apartment complex in Paso Robles. Police, however, deny any presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A police spokesperson said the subsequent arrest was both unrelated to documentation status and carried out by a different federal agency. However, witnesses who knew the man who was arrested said he was undocumented. Read more about Cal Poly’s immigrant protections here.

Chloe Shrager / The Tribune

3.

Nancy Pelosi’s phone is ringing off the hook with transgender people who can no longer change their gender identities or names on federal documents. President Donald Trump’s executive order last week declared there were only two federally-recognized genders and banned people from changing their sex marker on federal documents. Someone close to Pelosi said “many, many” transgender people were calling with issues regarding their federal IDs such as social security and passports.

Max Harrison-Caldwell / The San Francisco Standard

4.

Bay Area homicides went down by 20% in its most populous cities in 2024 — reporting its lowest numbers in five years. This aligns with a national post-pandemic decline but still hovers above pre-2019 levels. However, in a few of the Bay’s smaller, poorer cities, murders actually increased last year. While nothing directly explains the gap, those same cities had a much lower solve rate for homicides than those that saw a decline. Oakland remained by far the most murderous, with 81 homicides (down from 120 in 2023).

Danielle Echeverria and David Hernandez / San Francisco Chronicle

5.

A fully loaded van full of cats and dogs drove 12 hours from LA to SLO with smoke pluming behind them during a “very long, tense day.” Then, eager to help LA’s overwhelmed animal shelters after the recent fires, Woods Humane Society made the trip again. Over half of the 14 cats and 18 dogs have been adopted since, with others placed in foster homes. Some of the animals have been in the shelter system for a while and now got their second chance at finding a home.

Kaylin O'Connell / Mustang News