Riverside County Hosts Midnight Adoption Event To Help Clear Overcrowded Shelters

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, July 25, 2025…

• The kennels at the Riverside County animal shelter are packed with dogs and cats. So last week, Riverside County waived adoption fees and stayed open until midnight to help more furry friends find a forever home. 
• Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which is the largest affiliate in the country, is closing five of its clinics in California.
• Comic-Con is taking over San Diego this week. And yeah, it’s got all the usual stuff: celebrities, superheroes, and lots of cosplay. But there’s more to it than just fanfare.

Riverside County Animal Shelter Hosts Midnight Adoption Event 

Riverside County’s Department of Animal Services is inundated with pets that are up for adoption. The department recently reached over 240% capacity for dogs, as more continue to enter the shelter than are leaving through adoption.

To help with the overcrowding, the Western Riverside County/City Animal Shelter held a midnight adoption event last week. Monica Hernandez took advantage of the late hours. At nearly 11 p.m., she was looking for a four-year-old pit bull named Fernanda, who she found online. “She’s on the red list,” Hernandez said. Dogs end up on the red list when they’re scheduled to be euthanized the next day.

“We’re really hoping that by extending hours till midnight, having free adoptions, and encouraging people to foster if they’re not able to adopt, that we’re able to help reduce the overcrowding that we’re seeing,” said Veronica Perez with Riverside County Animal Services.

Perez said the problem of overcrowding gets worse after the 4th of July — when fireworks send scared dogs running for the hills. She said so far, the longer hours are working. On an average day, maybe a dozen pets get adopted or fostered. But when they stay open until midnight, more than 100 dogs have left the shelter.

Medicaid Cuts Impact Planned Parenthood Clinics In California

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the largest affiliate in the country, is closing five of its clinics. The closures will be in South San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Gilroy and Madera. Those health centers have served over 22,000 patients over the last year.

Planned Parenthood’s funding was deeply impacted by the recently signed federal budget package. That’s because it prohibited Medicaid reimbursements to organizations which provide abortion care. Mar Monte Chief of Staff  Andrew Adams tells KALW in just one week, they lost $1.7 million in Medicaid reimbursements. PPMM reports that 80% of their patients are covered by Medicaid — mostly low income individuals and families. Without legal relief, Mar Monte said it will lose $100 million this year — more than half of its annual revenue.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte is also ending services in family medicine, behavioral health and prenatal care.

Comic-Con Has An Educational Element As Well 

When Peter Carlson was in his first year of teaching, he decided to include comics in his classroom’s library. “What I saw was transformational,” he said. “Students who were reluctant to even pick up a book that might be of interest to them would just dive in.” Pretty soon, he said, students were bringing siblings and friends over to the shelves.

“It’s not just like, ‘Oh, they like comics,’” he said. “This is a community and culture of literacy that they’re organically building.” Carlson held a presentation Wednesday for other teachers looking to teach about, with and through comics. The San Diego Central Library is hosting a series of panels for teachers and librarians during Comic-Con weekend.

Susan Kirtley, a professor of English at Portland State University, led the presentation with Carlson. “I think that often people will assume that it’s so much easier to teach a comic when in fact they’re very complicated texts,” she said. “You need to think about what is the image doing, what is the text doing, what are they doing together and apart, and what’s happening between the panels.”