Rent is too damn high. It’s keeping interest rates elevated, too

• March 13, 2024

Some analysts note that inflation rates are boosted by just a couple of factors, especially shelter prices.

In short, the rent is too damn high — and it’s keeping inflation and interest rates elevated alongside it. Some analysts think that it’s going to stay that way for a while.

Rent has increased significantly over the past year. And despite the Federal Reserve’s best efforts to bring it down, it isn’t budging as quickly as expected.

Shelter costs — which make up about 30% of CPI — are one of the biggest drivers of services inflation and one of the biggest costs and most essential items for Americans.

Over the past year, about two-thirds of the increase in core CPI came from shelter alone, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, in a recent note.

Bank of America analysts say “shelter inflation has been a big focal point for the market.” And they expect that to persist this year “and think that services inflation moderation is likely to be slower than the market expects.”

Optimism and pessimism

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a January press conference that an ease in shelter prices is imminent.

“We think that’s coming, and we know it’s coming,” he said. “It’s just a question of when and how big it’ll be.”

An eventual shift to lower rents is in “everyone’s forecasts,” said Powell.

Well, not everyone.

Some economists aren’t expecting a drop anytime soon. “We remain confident that [rent prices] will flatline in 2024, rather than fall,” Capital Economics analyst Thomas Ryan wrote in a recent note.

Rent isn’t like other consumer goods, said Ritti Singh, an organizer with Housing Justice for All. “Once it goes up, it stays up.”

Greedflation

Landlords across the country, said Singh, have been using inflation as an excuse to raise rents exorbitantly without real cause.

Many landlords were forced to raise rents to cover increases in mortgage costs or repair costs, but the majority of localities don’t have laws that regulate how much they can increase rents in a single year. Zillow economists have found that current asking rate rents are up 29.9% since the beginning of the pandemic.

Singh believes that the Fed alone won’t be able to effectively drive down rental inflation. There needs to be local legislation to regulate what landlords can raise rents by as well, she said.

Weird data

Some economists say that CPI data is skewed and can paint a false picture of how high inflation currently is.

The CPI tracks rents that renters pay, but the majority of shelter costs in the index come from something called owners’ equivalent rent. Instead of factoring in the cost of purchasing a house, the index attempts to factor in how much rent homeowners would pay if they rented rather than owned their home.

The thing is, homeowners do own their homes. Inflation on hypothetical rent prices for homes they don’t rent isn’t actually being felt. Plus, rent and home prices don’t always move in sync, and so this can create a false equivalency.

The data could also be lagging.

Research by Goldman Sachs and the Dallas Fed finds that actual rent and owners’ equivalent rent lag the rest of CPI by a full year. That means a current deceleration in rent prices won’t be fully factored into inflation data until February 2025.

So even though data shows that rents across the US cooled last month, dropping for the sixth month in a row nationwide, and providing a bit of relief to renters, that won’t show up in CPI data for a while.

2024 economic forecasts

 
Chapman: ‘Very slow growth. No recession’

CS Fullerton: ‘Cracks’ will widen to a mild recession in late 2024

US Realtors: Housing rebound from 2023’s dismal sales

California Realtors: Rising prices, sales in 2024

USC: SoCal rents to rise 2-4% a year through 2025

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​ Orange County Register 

After protests, SoCalGas scales back plans to test hydrogen energy at UC Irvine

• March 13, 2024

Nearly 15 months after protestors chalked “students aren’t lab rats” and similar messages on a UC Irvine sidewalk, Southern California Gas Co. has scaled back and revised plans for a test that would have used hydrogen to replace up to 20% of the natural gas now running through the university’s pipelines.

SoCalGas first asked state regulators in fall of 2022 for permission to use electricity from the state’s grid to make a lower-carbon fuel blend that included hydrogen and to pipe that new blend into university dorms, offices and restaurants. But that plan sparked pushback from student, faculty and environmental groups, and on March 1 the investor-owned utility changed its request, asking for permission to use solar power to make hydrogen that would be tested in a closed system and only at UC Irvine’s Anteater Recreation Center.

The utility also asked to move a portion of the testing to a new location.

Now, if the Public Utilities Commission approves the amended application from SoCalGas, the first hydrogen testing in an open system in California could be centered on homes and businesses in Orange Cove — a small, low-income and largely Latino citrus farming town near Fresno.

The tests are supposed to demonstrate how gas pipelines and the appliances (such as ovens and furnaces) they fuel will hold up once different amounts of hydrogen are introduced to the system.

Displacing any amount of natural gas in our statewide energy portfolio could help with climate change, since burning hydrogen doesn’t emit the same planet-warming carbon dioxide as burning natural gas, which is up to 90% methane. That’s why hydrogen has become a key focus in recent years for some researchers and regulators seeking cleaner substitutes for fossil fuels, with the gas included in decarbonization plans from multiple state and federal agencies.

But hydrogen also can make pipelines get brittle and potentially fail faster than systems carrying natural gas alone. And most appliances in the United States weren’t designed to run on hydrogen blends.

Studies in labs and limited projects in places such as Hawaii, Canada and Europe suggest that as much as 30% hydrogen can be blended into natural gas systems without triggering significant problems, though no such tests have happened yet in California.

Read more: Plan to test hydrogen energy at UC Irvine, other spots, stirs controversy

So if these SoCalGas tests at UC Irvine and Orange Cove — which are being pitched along with similar projects by the state’s three other investor-owned gas utilities — can help establish a safe threshold for hydrogen blending, it could pave the way for a new statewide policy on the future use of hydrogen. That, in turn, could allow utilities to start injecting some level of hydrogen into more than 100,000 miles of natural gas pipelines throughout California by the end of the decade.

“We’re going to need all the tools in the toolbox to get to greenhouse gas neutrality,” said Neil Navin, chief clean fuels officer for SoCalGas.

Many climate and public health advocates strongly oppose this concept. They argue we can already decarbonize buildings by swapping, say, gas-powered water heaters for electric heat pump versions. So, beyond limited uses for hard-to-decarbonize sectors, they call hydrogen a risky and costly distraction that simply lets fossil fuel companies extend demand for their products amid heightened pressure to clean up their acts.

The risk comes because hydrogen leaks more easily than natural gas alone, since it’s smaller and lighter. Hydrogen leaks also are harder to detect. And if hydrogen does leak, prior to being burned as an energy source, it too becomes a greenhouse gas — one that’s also roughly five times more likely than natural gas to ignite.

Costs associated with these tests and transitions can get passed on to residents and other ratepayers. And the price tag for SoCalGas’ planned hydrogen blending tests is now more than six times higher than it was before, with the prior proposal at UC Irvine projected to cost $13 million while the updated project is pegged at $26.8 million in Irvine and $53.6 million in Orange Cove.

For all of these reasons, some students, faculty members and climate advocates still aren’t sold on the scaled-back hydrogen testing plan at UC Irvine.

“Once again this appears to be a project that is completely unnecessary, is dangerous for students and is just designed to make money for the gas company at the expense of ratepayers,” said Ayn Craciun, who oversees Orange County issues for Climate Action Campaign, a coalition of environment and public health groups.

UC Irvine ended up on the front line of this debate because it is home to the National Fuel Cell Research Center, which has been testing hydrogen for years.

The center is led by Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at UCI who has studied hydrogen for 25 years. Brouwer’s team has worked with SoCalGas on other projects. So he said previously that this next test seemed a natural fit after the CPUC asked gas companies back in 2019 to help develop standards for safely injecting hydrogen into the statewide natural gas system.

A three-person committee at UC Irvine, made up of engineering and chemistry professors, reviewed the latest proposal from SoCalGas. They called it “a necessary first step” to establishing a statewide standard for safely blending hydrogen into natural gas pipelines. So the committee recommends that UC Irvine allow the test to move forward if certain safety protocols are in place, including continuous leak monitoring, monthly surveys of the system and installation of remote methane and hydrogen monitoring systems.

Navin said SoCalGas is “committed” to looking at all of those recommendations and to working with the university to move the project forward.

After facing complaints for not notifying the community about the project as it was originally planned, UC Irvine has now launched a website with frequently asked questions and updates. University officials said they’re also forming student and administrative groups to discuss the project before it might go up for final review.

Read more: UCI leaders to SoCalGas: don’t test hydrogen blend in dining areas and freshman dorms

SoCalGas hopes to install an electrolyzer at UC Irvine, a device that would make hydrogen by shooting an electrical current through water and splitting hydrogen atoms from oxygen atoms. That hydrogen would be stored in tanks until being injected into a skid, where it would blend with natural gas. The mix then would be delivered to the recreation center.

Originally, that hydrogen would have been made using an electrical current powered by the state grid. But much of the state grid still relies on fossil fuels, so that project wouldn’t have met many climate group’s definition of “green hydrogen.”

SoCalGas’ new plans call for installing new solar panels at UC Irvine and in Orange Cove, so they could make hydrogen using entirely renewable energy.

The mix at UC Irvine would start at just 5% hydrogen. Under that level, a study out of UC Riverside said there are few concerns about how the pipeline system and appliances fueled by it would perform. But after three months, the blend would be bumped up to 10% hydrogen. And at six months, it would hit 20% and stay there for one year.

If green hydrogen displaced 20% of all natural gas used in California today, Navin said it would be equal to taking more than 1.5 million gas-powered cars off the road.

Open system tests planned in Orange Cove pipelines, which serve nearly 10,000 residents and businesses, would involve much lower amounts of hydrogen. SoCalGas wants to start by mixing in just 0.1% hydrogen, then gradually move up to 5%.

Asked how SoCalGas chose Orange Cove for this project, Navin said work around the clean energy transition often gets “concentrated in urban environments and academic environments.” So he said, “This was an opportunity to work with a smaller community that wanted to engage in the energy transition and look at developing tools like hydrogen blending as a part of the solution for getting to greenhouse gas neutrality.”

Orange Grove city officials didn’t respond to requests for comment by deadline.

More than 96% of Orange Cove’s residents are Latino and nearly half live in poverty, per the latest U.S. Census data. The region surrounding Orange Cove also regularly experiences some of the worst air quality in the nation thanks to dust and emissions from nearby dairy and agricultural farms, trucking routes between warehouses, oil and gas operations, and wildfires that plague the region’s mountains. So while Katherine Ramsey, a senior attorney with Sierra Club, called the original UC Irvine project “an expensive, poorly thought out proposal,” she said, “this new iteration is even worse.”

“It’s unconscionable that SoCalGas now wants to use the residents of a Latino farming community as guinea pigs for this pilot,” Ramsey said. “Hydrogen blending is too nascent to be tested in people’s homes.”

Sara Gersen, an attorney on Earthjustice’s Right To Zero campaign, also raised concerns about risks to Orange Cove residents, who she said “deserve a swift transition to electric appliances that won’t pollute their homes and neighborhoods.” Instead, she said, “SoCalGas’ hydrogen project threatens to increase lung-searing pollution in a community already breathing some of the most polluted air in the country.”

The CPUC will conference with the gas utilities in a meeting May 13 but extended a deadline to weigh in on the test projects until fall of 2025.

In the meantime, anyone can sign up to be notified when the utility commission considers the project. They can also send comments of support, opposition or questions to the commission, to UC Irvine and to SoCalGas.

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​ Orange County Register 

Washington lineman with numerous college offers transfers to Mater Dei

• March 13, 2024

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Offensive tackle Kodi Greene, one of the top high school football prospects in Washington, has enrolled at Mater Dei, the sophomore confirmed.

The 6-foot-6, 290-pound Greene said he started classes at Mater Dei on Tuesday.

Last season, Greene played at Eastside Catholic in Sammamish, Wash. The Crusaders opened with a 20-0 loss against Orange Lutheran and finished with a 9-3 record.

Greene holds more than a dozen scholarship offers, including Michigan, Washington, Oregon and USC.

He has been compared to former Mater Dei offensive tackle Brandon Baker, a senior who signed with Texas.

Mater Dei is seeking to replace Baker (6-5, 295) and tackle DeAndre Carter (6-5, 295), who signed with Auburn.

Greene is the second major sophomore transfer to arrive at Mater Dei in the offseason. Wide receiver Chris Henry Jr., a transfer wide receiver from Ohio, is a sophomore committed to Ohio State.

Chaparral junior quarterback Dash Beierly, a Washington commit, also recently transferred to Mater Dei.

Please send football news to Dan Albano at [email protected] or @ocvarsityguy on X and Instagram

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​ Orange County Register 

Clippers fall to Timberwolves after Kawhi Leonard leaves with back spasms

• March 13, 2024

LOS ANGELES — Losing large double-digit leads has become an unnerving trend in the NBA. Many teams, whether they are top-tier or sit near the bottom of the standings, have seen significant leads evaporate amid a barrage of 3-pointers.

The Clippers have experienced this phenomenon a few times this season, the most recent coming Tuesday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

After leading by as much as 22 points in the first half, the Clippers’ focus gave way, resulting in a 118-100 collapse to the Timberwolves at Crypto.com Arena.

The dropoff seemed to coincide with Kawhi Leonard’s departure. He left the court after playing 12 minutes because of thoracic spasms that made it difficult for the All-Star wing to sit. The two-time NBA Finals MVP dressed and left Crypto.com Arena during the second quarter.

Coach Tyronn Lue said Leonard has been dealing with the spasms for a couple of days, but he decided to try and play.

“It just didn’t loosen up for him,” Lue said.

Leonard wasn’t the only Clippers starter playing in discomfort. James Harden, who has played in all 59 games that he has suited up for, has a sore left shoulder that has hampered his shooting. He made just 4 of 10 shots from the field.

It’s uncertain whether Leonard and Harden will be available for the Clippers’ upcoming two-game trip.

“We’ll see tomorrow how I feel,” Harden said.

Without Leonard and an effective Harden, the Timberwolves encountered little resistance and took advantage of the Clippers’ 18 turnovers.

Minnesota guard Anthony Edwards picked up the scoring in place of Karl-Anthony Towns, who is out with a left meniscus tear. Edwards scored 29 of his game-high 37 points in the second half and Nickeil Alexander-Walker added a season-high 28 points to lead the Timberwolves to their third victory in four games against the Clippers this season.

“He has dog,” Lue said of Edwards. “He don’t care who’s in front of him, he’s going to try. He’s going to attack you and he’s relentless.”

The game was big, not only in terms of the Western Conference standings but as a potential tiebreaker. The loss left the Clippers (41-23) sitting 3½ games behind first-place Oklahoma City Thunder and gave a head-to-head tiebreaker edge to the third-place Timberwolves, who are now three games ahead of the Clippers in the standings.

“We got to get better and understand that all these games mean something,” Lue said. “Not just Minnesota tonight with the tiebreaker, but the other 18 games after this; they all mean something. So, we’ve got to have the right approach, understanding what we want to do on offense, what we want to do on defense and actually execute it.

“That’s got to be our mindset for these last 18, 19 games.”

Especially if Leonard is out for any length of time. The two-time NBA Finals MVP sat out a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday because of left groin soreness and there wasn’t any word about how the back spasms will affect his availability going forward.

Fellow All-Star Paul George said Leonard mentioned his discomfort but still tried to push through it.

“I mean that’s him. I mean if he can go, whatever the case that the narrative people may think, being around him, he’s going to try to push through what he can and tonight was a sign of it,” George said. “But yeah, it just got locked up on him.”

George picked up as much of the slack left by Leonard, scoring 22 points on 5-of-11 shooting and making all 10 of his free-throw attempts. Harden had a quiet 12 points and seven assists, while Norman Powell finished with 12 points.

Meanwhile, the Timberwolves made their move largely after Leonard departed, going on a 20-2 run that nearly erased the work the Clippers did early in building their 22-point lead. Behind Edwards’ long-range shooting, Minnesota pulled to within 59-55 with 51 seconds left in the first half.

“For the most part it’s been the same Achilles heel we’ve been having,” George said. “It’s giving up offensive rebounds. Transition, we were good to start the season off, but we’ve had slippage there. But I think more than anything, we got to give a little bit more effort.”

The Timberwolves struggled from 3-point range for much of the first half. Without Towns, the team’s second-best 3-point shooter, they languished. It wasn’t until the late shooting spree that they managed to find the basket from behind the arc.

They shot 36.4% (12 for 33) from the 3-point range and 51.1% overall (48 for 94). The Clippers shot 47.2% (34 for 72) from the field and 36.7% (11 for 30) from long range.

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That wasn’t the only area where the Timberwolves held an advantage. They outrebounded the Clippers 48-34, scored 22 more points in the paint and had 11 more second-chance points.

“You can go down the list. It was a lot of things that we didn’t do well,” Lue said. “And, I thought they were tougher than us. They played tougher than we did and that’s the result. And, so, we just got to be better.”

The Clippers managed to regroup and hang on for a 63-55 halftime lead, but that lead wasn’t safe, either.

After George buried his second 3-pointer to put the Clippers ahead 66-57, Minnesota went on a 12-0 run to grab the lead at 69-68 with 7:21 left in the third quarter and led 84-78 heading into the fourth quarter.

The Clippers failed to capitalize offensively, coming up empty on their final seven possessions of the quarter, which allowed the Timberwolves to take over and open their own 22-point lead.

​ Orange County Register 

Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner reach quarterfinals at Indian Wells

• March 13, 2024

INDIAN WELLS — Second-ranked Carlos Alcaraz avenged a previous loss to Fabian Marozsan, winning, 6-3, 6-3, on Tuesday to reach the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open as the top remaining seed in the men’s draw.

A day after “lucky loser” Luca Nardi stunned No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the third round at Indian Wells, Alcaraz advanced easily over the Hungarian who ousted him from the Italian Open in May. Marozsan was a qualifier and the No. 135 player in the world when he upset Alcaraz – then on the verge of taking the top spot in the rankings – 6-3, 7-6 (4), in the third round in Rome.

“Honestly, I was nervous before the match. I’m not going to lie,” Alcaraz said. “Playing against someone that beat you. … Today I knew what I had to do.”

Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner beat Ben Shelton, 7-6 (4), 6-1, later Tuesday for his 18th consecutive victory. The third-ranked Italian has won 15 matches in a row to start 2024, claiming titles at Melbourne and Rotterdam. It was the 150th hard-court victory for the 22-year-old Sinner, who became the first player born in the 2000s to reach that milestone.

Sinner had a set point, up 5-4 and 40-30 in the first, before Shelton was saved by a net cord. It then took Sinner another 15 minutes to close out the first set; in the second, he went up 3-0 and coasted to the victory.

Sinner advanced to the quarterfinals to play Jiri Lehecka, a 6-2, 6-4 winner over Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Alcaraz, the defending champion at Indian Wells, dropped the first set in his opening match this year but has lost just 12 games in the other six sets. He will face Alexander Zverev, who rallied after losing the first set to Alex de Minaur and won, 5-7, 6-2, 6-3.

On the women’s side, Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk beat Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 6-4, 6-1, and Anastasia Potapova defeated Jasmine Paolini, 7-5, 0-6, 6-3.

​ Orange County Register 

Ducks can’t keep up with Connor Bedard, Blackhawks in lopsided loss

• March 13, 2024

By TIM CRONIN The Associated Press

CHICAGO — The Ducks saw more than enough of Connor Bedard on Tuesday night.

The 18-year-old Chicago Blackhawks rookie had a goal and four assists to set his single-game high in points, Philipp Kurashev scored twice and had two assists, and the Blackhawks hammered the Ducks, 7-2, on Tuesday night.

Ryan Donato, Seth Jones, MacKenzie Entwistle and Tyler Johnson also scored for Chicago, which has won two straight games for just the second time this season.

Brett Leason scored both goals for the Ducks, who dropped their third straight.

Bedard, the top overall pick in last June’s draft and a leading candidate for NHL Rookie of the Year, got his fifth point when he assisted on Johnson’s power-play goal midway through the third period. Bedard has eight points in two games and 10 in the last four.

“There were a lot of positives,” Bedard said. “It’s funny. I had eight straight games without a goal, then you have a couple big ones and people forget about that. Enjoy, but we’ve got to turn the page.”

The Blackhawks, suddenly resurgent on the power play, scored four times with the man advantage.

“Give them credit,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “It’s a 4-2 game, and they came out the second or third shift of the third period and stripped us of the puck on a forecheck and made it 5-2 (on Entwistle’s goal). Now you’re chasing the game.”

Aside from being involved in a third-period scrap behind his net, Chicago goalie Petr Mrazek had a relatively quiet night, making 27 saves. Ducks goaltender John Gibson made 20 stops before getting into the scrap and getting pulled in favor of Lukas Dostal, who made four saves.

Leason’s short-handed goal opened the scoring midway through the first period, but the Blackhawks evened the score before their power play expired when Donato poked the puck behind Gibson during a goal-mouth scrum.

It took Chicago just 1:34 to tie the game a second time following Leason’s goal early in the second period. Kurashev took Bedard’s pass on a 2-on-1 and beat Gibson from short right wing. Nick Foligno picked up the first of his career-high four assists by starting the play.

“I think they were just good on the forecheck,” Leason said. “We just couldn’t get a lot of pucks out. They were quick to transition off our turnovers.”

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Jones’ pinch deep into Ducks’ territory resulted in the Blackhawks’ second power-play score and a 3-2 lead, with Bedard picking up an assist.

“That’s nice for a change after being on the other side of it,” Foligno said. “We’ve been a work in progress. It’s nice to see us get rewarded for the hard work we’ve put in.”

Chicago made it 4-2 with 28 seconds left in the middle period when Bedard scored his 20th of the season, set up by Kurashev, who collected his 100th NHL point. Bedard is the first Blackhawk to score 20 goals as an 18-year-old since Ed Olczyk did it in 70 games as a rookie in the 1984-85 season.

Forward Andreas Athanasiou returned to the Blackhawks’ lineup after missing 60 games with an injured groin. He set up Entwistle’s goal.

UP NEXT

Ducks at Minnesota on Thursday at 5 p.m. PT

​ Orange County Register 

Santa Margarita baseball knocks off St. John Bosco with Trevor Banning’s grand slam

• March 13, 2024

Trevor Banning (1) of Santa Margarita, connects with the ball for a grand slam home run in a game against St. John Bosco in a Trinity League baseball game at Santa Margarita Catholic High Schoolin Rancho Santa Margarita on Tuesday, March 12, 2024. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA — Junior Trevor Banning hit a go-ahead grand slam in the fifth inning Tuesday to give Santa Margarita a 5-2 win over St. John Bosco in the Trinity League opener at Santa Margarita High.

The Eagles (7-2-1, 1-0) trailed 2-1 in the fifth inning and had the bases loaded with two outs against Braves sophomore pitcher Julian Garcia.

Banning, who was 0 for 2 going into the at-bat, hit the ball well over the right field fence to give the Eagles the lead.

“He’s a very good pitcher and the first pitch he painted a fastball on the corner and I tipped my cap to him,” Banning said of Garcia. “Right when I hit it, I knew it was gone. It was one of the hardest balls I’ve ever hit. I didn’t even feel it off the bat.”

“He’s a very underrated player,” Santa Margarita coach Chris Malec said. “He’s a big time athlete and competitor. A lot of people are going to know his name in the future.”

The loss was the first of the season for St. John Bosco (6-1, 0-1).

Santa Margarita went 14-1 last season and won its first Trinity League championship, and ended a 19-year drought since it was the co-champions of the Serra League in 2004.

The Eagles went on to lose to JSerra in last season’s CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship game, but won the CIF SoCal Regional championship.

“You have to fight for every win you can get in this league,” Malec said. “We are a young group and getting acclimated to the Trinity League with a win is huge for us.”

Both starting pitchers allowed baserunners but showed flashes of excellence on the mound.

Garcia had four strikeouts in five innings for the Braves and at one point retired eight Santa Margarita hitters in a row.

Ole Miss signee Cade Townsend got the win for the Eagles. He allowed two runs over five innings with six strikeouts.

“His fastball was electric and his changeup was the best I’ve seen it all year,” Malec said of Townsend.

Santa Margarita scored first when UCLA signee Logan De Groot drove in Brody Schumaker with a double in the first inning.

Schumaker, the son of Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker, went 2 for 3 with two stolen bases and two runs scored.

St. John Bosco took the lead in the third with a two-run double by Zach Woodson to give the Braves a 2-1 lead.

After Banning’s grand slam, Chris Saucedo pitched two scoreless innings for the Eagles to earn the save. The junior escaped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth inning with a soft groundout.

Owen Tomich went 2 for 3 with a stolen base and a run for St. John Bosco. Aiden Olguin pitched a perfect inning of relief for the Braves.

The two teams play again Wednesday at St. John Bosco and wrap their season series Friday at Santa Margarita. Junior Ethan Russell will start on the mound Wednesday for the Eagles.

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​ Orange County Register 

Trump wins delegates needed to become GOP’s presumptive nominee for third straight election

• March 13, 2024

By JILL COLVIN (Associated Press)

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) — Donald Trump, whose single turbulent term in the White House transformed the Republican Party, tested the resilience of democratic institutions in the U.S. and threatened alliances abroad, will lead the GOP in a third consecutive presidential election after clinching the nomination Tuesday.

With wins in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state, Trump surpassed the 1,215-delegate threshold needed to become the presumptive Republican nominee. He’ll formally accept the nomination at the Republican National Convention in July, by which point he could be in the remarkable position of being both a presidential candidate and convicted felon. Trump has been indicted in four separate criminal investigations and his first trial, which centers on payments made to a porn actress, is set to begin March 25 in New York City.

Trump’s victory in the GOP primary ushers in what will almost certainly be an extraordinarily negative general election campaign that will tug at the nation’s already searing political and cultural divides. He’ll face President Joe Biden in the fall, pitting two deeply unpopular figures against each other in a rematch of the 2020 campaign that few voters say they want to experience again.

Thirty-eight percent of Americans viewed Trump very or somewhat favorably in a February poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs, compared to 41% for Biden.

Trump is attempting to return to the White House after threatening democratic norms in the U.S. He refused to accept his loss to Biden in 2020, spending months grasping at baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud that were roundly rejected by the courts and his own attorney general. His rage during a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, helped rile up a mob of supporters who later violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s win.

Only in the wake of the insurrection, with storefronts in the nation’s capital boarded up and military vehicles parked on streets to prevent further violence, did Trump accept the reality that Biden would become president. He has since called Jan. 6 “a beautiful day” and aligned himself with those have been imprisoned for their actions — many for assaulting police officers — labeling them “hostages” and demanding their release.

Trump has been ambivalent about other basic democratic ideals during his 2024 campaign. He has not committed to accepting the results of this year’s election and, during a December interview on Fox News, suggested he would be a dictator for the first day of a new administration. He has aligned himself with autocratic leaders of other countries, most notably Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

Such alliances are a departure from the longstanding posture of the U.S., which has focused on strengthening democracies abroad. But a Trump election could upend U.S. support for Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. And it could have dramatic implications for NATO.

During his years in the White House, Trump often derided the transatlantic alliance as antiquated and lamented that some countries weren’t spending enough on their own defense. He has maintained that critique this year, causing a stir on both sides of the Atlantic in February when he told a rally crowd that he once warned members that he would not only refuse to defend countries that were “delinquent,” but that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to them.

Legal trouble

Trump becomes the GOP’s standard-bearer at a time of profound legal trouble, raising the personal stakes of an election that could determine whether he faces the prospect of time behind bars. He faces 91 felony charges in cases that span from the New York hush money case to his efforts to overturn the election and his hoarding of classified documents.

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While the New York case is moving forward this month, there’s significant uncertainty about the trajectory of the other, more serious cases, raising the prospect that they may not be decided until after the election.

The Republican Party’s rules for its convention do not address what might happen if the presumptive nominee is convicted of a crime. A conviction wouldn’t bar Trump from continuing to run, though a felon has never been a major party nominee or won the White House.

If he were to win in November, Trump could appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the federal charges he faces, a remarkable possibility that would undermine the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House.

In addition to the criminal cases, Trump owes in excess of $500 million in fines and interest after a judge in New York ruled he had engaged in a scheme to inflate his net worth to obtain favorable financing. He was ordered to pay $355 million, plus interest, in that case — adding to the $88.3 million he already owed writer E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable of defamation and sexual abuse.

Trump, so far, has deftly used the legal cases as a rallying cry, portraying them as a plot hatched by Democrats to keep him out of power. That argument proved powerful among GOP primary voters, with whom Trump remains a deeply popular figure.

He now enters the general election phase of the campaign in a competitive position, with voters frustrated by the current state of the economy after years of sharp inflation, despite robust growth and low unemployment, as well as growing concern about the influx of migrants across the southern border. As he did with success in 2016, Trump is seizing on immigration this year, deploying increasingly heated and inflammatory rhetoric in ways that often animate his supporters.

The 77-year-old Trump is aided by Biden’s perceived weaknesses. The 81-year-old president is broadly unpopular, with deep reservations among voters in both parties about his age and ability to assume the presidency for another four years, though he is not much older than Trump.

Biden is also struggling to replicate the coalition that ushered him into the presidency four years ago as some in his party, particularly younger voters and those on the left, have condemned his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas.

Trump’s headwinds

While those dynamics may play in Trump’s favor, he faces stiff headwinds in winning support beyond his base. A notable chunk of GOP primary voters backed his rivals, including Nikki Haley, who ended her campaign after the Super Tuesday races but has not endorsed Trump. Many of those voters have expressed ambivalence about backing him. He’ll have to change that if he wants to win the states that will likely decide the election, such as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — each of which he lost in 2020.

It remains unclear how Trump’s legal cases will resonate in the general election, particularly among suburban voters, women and independents. Trump’s role in appointing the justices who overturned the constitutional right to an abortion could prove a liability in swing states, where women and independent voters are especially influential. He’s also made a string of racist comments, including an assertion that his criminal indictments boosted his support among Black Americans, that aren’t likely to win over more moderate voters.

Still, Trump’s speedy path to the nomination reflects more than a year of quiet work by his team to encourage states to adopt favorable delegate-selection rules, including pushing for winner-take-all contests that prevent second-place finishers from amassing delegates.

That helped Trump become the presumptive nominee much earlier than in recent presidential elections. Biden didn’t win enough delegates to formally become his party’s leader until June 2020. During his 2016 bid, Trump won the needed delegates by May.

This year, Trump handily dispatched his Republican primary rivals, sweeping the early voting states that typically set the tone for the campaign. The field included a range of prominent Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Mike Pence, who was Trump’s vice president.

At one point, DeSantis was ahead of Trump in early state polls. But he wilted in the national spotlight, failing to live up to sky-high expectations, despite $168 million in campaign and outside spending. DeSantis dropped out of the race after losing Iowa — a state he had staked his campaign on — and endorsed Trump.

In the end, Haley was Trump’s last challenger. She only won the District of Columbia and Vermont before ending her campaign.

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register