Daily Business Report: Friday, October 31, 2025
Legal Advocacy Stops a Racially Exclusionary Scholarship at UC San Diego
By Wenyuan Wu | California Globe
In the case of a joint legal challenge to halt the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund, a 42-year-old program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the wheels of justice turned quickly.
Almost immediately after our lawsuit Californians for Equal Rights v. UC San Diego, et al. was filed in July, the defendants reached out, offering to settle. Specifically, they proposed replacing the scholarship with a race-neutral alternative named the Lennon Goins Alumni Scholarship Fund (GASF). As it stands at the inception, GASF awards UCSD students based on individual needs, merit and community service. We accepted the settlement and on October 20th, the case was dismissed, after the San Diego Foundation announced the new scholarship.
Thanks to our excellent legal counsel from the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented us free of charge, we were able to help eliminate a decades-long practice of racial spoils in less than three months. This victory also serves as a cornerstone for testing a legal theory arguing for equal protecting partly based on a provision of an anti-Ku Klux Klan (KKK) law against public-private collusion. Advocating for equality with the anti-KKK law, once intended to challenge rampant white supremacy in post-Civil-War American south, is ironically fitting, since the self-righteous race hustlers have replaced Klansmen to perpetuate racial divisions in America today.
City flagged San Carlos intersection as dangerous, then denied safety improvements for it before child’s death
By Calista Stocker | Times of San Diego
A year before a car crash killed 11-year-old Andrew Olsen on his walk to school with his two siblings, a city analysis determined the San Carlos intersection had “fatal crash characteristics.”
That same year, in 2024, city officials deemed the intersection ineligible for four-way stop signs or crosswalks, based on criteria used to evaluate where safety improvements are necessary.
Colin Parent, CEO and general counsel of nonprofit advocacy group Circulate San Diego, said the determination calls into question the utility of the city’s criteria.
How the California FAIR Plan Turned into a Great Pumpkin Nightmare
By Marie Alvarado-Gil | California Globe
The Great Pumpkin’s annual ascent from the sincerest patch is always a spectacle—but the 2025 vintage comes with a non-festive twist: a 35.8% spike in “ride” fares, leaving homeowners clutching their candy bags and wailing, “I got a rock!” (And no, Linus, faith alone won’t cover the up-charge.)
As the leaves turn and jack-o’-lanterns flicker across California, October isn’t just about tricks, treats, and Snoopy doing his World War I flying ace impression. For rural families—especially in my Senate District 4—it’s when the line between “what happened” and “right now” gets blurrier than Charlie Brown’s ghost costume with the asymmetrical cut eyeholes.
Old promises we thought were set in stone pop up like Lucy pulling the football away again, only this time it’s your insurance bill.
