Hikers Can Walk Among Grazing Cattle At New Coastal National Monument

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, August 22, 2025…

• A stunning national monument just opened to the public in Santa Cruz County. President Obama designated nearly 6,000 acres along the central coast before leaving office. It’s called Cotoni-Coast Dairies. Its opening was delayed due to the pandemic, neighbors’ fears over traffic, and figuring out how to keep a herd of nearly 100 cows that graze there away from hikers and bikers.
• California voters will decide this November whether to redraw the state’s congressional lines to help Democrats pick up seats in the House of Representatives. 
• The California parole board has denied parole for Erik Menendez, one of the brothers convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.

Central Coast National Monument Uses Technology To Keep Herding Cows Safe

Cotoni-Coast Dairies opened this month in Santa Cruz County. The new national monument extends from the steep slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the marine coastal terraces overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

President Obama designated nearly 6,000 acres along the central coast before leaving office. But its opening was delayed due to the pandemic, neighbors’ fears over traffic, and figuring out how to keep a herd of nearly 100 cows that graze there away from hikers and bikers.

Part of Zachary Ormsby’s mandate is for the the Bureau of Land Management to preserve the history of the area. “We’re legally obligated to conserve, protect and restore the values that are associated with this property, ranching being one of those things,” he said. But also to keep the cows off the trails and out of restoration areas, without miles of ugly and expensive fencing. And that’s why each cow is wearing a two pound black collar with a small solar panel.

These collars are the latest bovine smart device, from a company called Halter. The collar system sends the cows’ coordinates to a GPS satellite, which beams it back to an app on a phone in a rancher’s pocket. The rancher draws boundaries around where they want the cow to go. When a cow goes the wrong way, the collar beeps.

California Lawmakers Pass Redistricting Plan. Now It Heads To Voters

A dramatic plan to reshape California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats will appear before voters this November, after state lawmakers voted Thursday to place the redistricting proposal on the ballot. The votes in the state Assembly and Senate capped a frenetic week of debate on the map, as lawmakers faced a deadline to call the special election on the proposal, which will appear as Proposition 50.

The Nov. 4 vote is now set to be the marquee event in a nationwide showdown between Democratic and Republican states over political district lines that could help determine control of Congress in 2026. “When all things are equal, when we’re all playing by the same set of rules, there’s no question that the Republican Party will be the minority party in the House of Representatives next year,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a signing ceremony late Thursday.

The Assembly approved the measure going before voters, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 8, on a 57-20 vote. Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, who is running for Congress in a competitive Central Valley seat, was the only Democrat to vote against the plan. Two other Democrats, Dawn Addis of Morro Bay and Alex Lee of San José, did not vote.

In the Senate, the redistricting measure was placed on the ballot on a 30-8 party-line vote. Republicans in both houses assailed the plan as a reckless escalation of partisan warfare. “You move forward fighting fire with fire, what happens? You burn it all down,” Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher said. “And in this case, it affects our most fundamental American principle: representation.”

The November election will cost in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to a legislative staff analysis. In 2021, the state allocated nearly $280 million to counties and the Secretary of State’s office to run a special election on the recall of Newsom.

Erik Menendez Denied Shot At Freedom By California Parole Board

A California state board Thursday denied parole for Erik Menendez, who has been in prison for more than three decades for the 1989 shotgun slayings of his parents in their Beverly Hills home. A separate parole hearing for older brother Lyle Menendez, 57, is set for Friday.

The decision was a devastating blow to Menendez, 54, who along with supporters has mounted a campaign for freedom for himself and his brother over the past couple of years. After their arrests, the brothers maintained the killings were motivated by years of sexual abuse by their father, a wealthy businessman and former music executive. Prosecutors argued the brothers’ motivation was greed because they stood to inherit their father’s multi-million dollar estate.

While explaining the reasons behind the denial, Board of Parole Hearings Commissioner Robert Barton talked about the murders, and said the fatal shooting of the Menendez’s mother showed him to be “devoid of human compassion” at the time. The commissioner also noted some of Menendez’s other actions later, including serious violations of prison rules — like getting caught with a cellphone. “While we give great weight to youth offender factors, your continued willingness to commit crimes and violate prison rules,” weighed against Menendez, Barton said.