Contributed

A former minor league baseball player has been convicted of beating to death three people, including his father, with a bat at the family's Southern California home. Brandon Martin, 27, was found guilty of first-degree murder Thursday for the 2015 killings in Corona.

There is an old political quip attributed to former California U.S. Senator Hayakawa. To paraphrase, if a man were drowning 50 feet offshore, a Democrat would throw him 100 feet of rope. A Republican would throw him 25 feet of rope and yell, “I’ll meet you half way.” In both cases, the man drowns.

Governor Gavin Newsom today announced plans to immediately direct $62 million in one-time funds from the State’s Disaster Response Emergency Operations Account to counties around the state to continue providing housing to current Project Roomkey participants. After consultation with the Legislature, the Administration is making these available immediately to local governments with Project Roomkey sites so that clients living in motel or hotel rooms under this life-saving program will not be forced to return to street homelessness while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact California.

When a whole community has become immersed in a moral crisis, what’s actually gone wrong becomes difficult to recognize with any clarity. The threat of Donald Trump (even now, one week after the election) and of what now deservedly can be called Trumpism has never been primarily about policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a long list of unprecedented challenges, including the way it has caused food insecurity to rise. Food insecurity is defined as the lack of access to enough nutritionally adequate foods to live an active and healthy life.