2025 in California


The year 2025 in California involved the following events.

Incumbents

Events

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

  • August 1 – The Gifford Fire begins.
  • August 2 – The World Dog Surfing Championships are held at Pacifica State Beach.
  • August 6 – Using a fake job offer, ICE lures 16 immigrants to a Westlake, Los Angeles Home Depot parking lot and arrests them. Penske, whose rental truck was used to transport ICE agents to the operation, releases a statement saying Penske guidelines prohibit using the back of their trucks to transport people and requesting DHS refrain from doing so.
  • August 7 – The Canyon Fire begins.
  • August 14 – A man is struck and killed by a car on the highway while fleeing an ICE raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia.
  • August 15 – DHS arrests a tow truck driver in Los Angeles for towing an ICE vehicle as agents arrested a woman from Colombia.
  • August 16 – Two CBP agents fire at a vehicle as it drives away in San Bernardino. No injuries are reported.
  • August 19 – An El Dorado County resident in the Lake Tahoe area tests positive for bubonic plague.
  • August 21 – Grammy-winning musician Lil Nas X is arrested in Los Angeles after being reported for walking on Ventura Boulevard in his underwear. He is later charged with battery on a police officer and resisting arrest.

September

  • September 2 – A federal judge rules Trump's deployment of military troops to Los Angeles was unlawful and bars troops from aiding in immigration arrests.
  • September 3
  • * Jasveen Sangha, a drug dealer known as the "Ketamine Queen", pleads guilty to selling ketamine to actor Matthew Perry, resulting in his death. She is the fifth and final defendant to plead guilty in relation to Perry's death.
  • * California, Oregon, and Washington announce the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance to take over some of the CDC's former functions.
  • September 4 – The University of California, Berkeley gives federal authorities the names of 160 students and faculty named in an antisemitism probe.
  • September 8 – The dismembered body of missing teenager Celeste Rivas is found in the trunk of a Tesla car owned by musician d4vd. Her death is being investigated as a homicide.
  • September 14 – The 77th Primetime Emmy Awards are held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, honoring the best in prime time television programming from June 2024 to May 2025.
  • September 20 – Governor Newsom signs a bill that bans most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during official duties. The law applies to federal law enforcement, though it is unclear how the state would enforce this.
  • September 22 – A 4.3 magnitude earthquake strikes the San Francisco Bay Area, with the center being east-southeast of Berkeley.

October

  • October 2 – A large El Segundo fire|explosion] occurs at a processing unit at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo.
  • October 5 – Newsom's office says the Trump administration is sending 300 members of the California National Guard to Portland, Oregon despite a judge blocking him from sending Oregon National Guard members the day prior.
  • October 6 – A former staffer of LA mayor Karen Bass is sentenced to one year of probation for a fake bomb threat at City Hall in 2024.
  • October 8 - A woman kills her two daughters, 9 and 12, her husband, and then herself in a house in San Francisco's Westwood Highlands neighborhood. Police believe their house foreclosing was one of the motivating factors behind the murders and suicide. The deaths, as of November 2025, are still under investigation by forensics personnel.
  • October 15 – Over 1,000 items are stolen from a storage facility for the Oakland Museum of California.
  • October 18 – The Marine Corps fire live artillery over Interstate 5 from Camp Pendleton. Metal shrapnel from an artillery shell falls and hits a California Highway Patrol car.
  • October 21 – An ICE agent shoots a man in the elbow during a traffic stop in Los Angeles. The bullet ricochets and hits a deputy U.S. Marshal.
  • October 22 – The U.S. Coast Guard begins providing a base of operations for CBP agents in Alameda.
  • October 23
  • * Coast Guard officers fired 50 rounds at a U-Haul truck that attempted to slowly back into officers whom were posted at a dead-end street by the Coast Guard Base in Alameda. The driver and a bystander are injured.
  • * Trump announces he will not deploy troops to San Francisco following a conversation with Mayor Daniel Lurie.
  • October 27 – KitKat, a bodega cat in the Mission District of San Francisco, is struck and killed by a self-driving Waymo car.
  • October 30 – ICE agents shoot a man in the shoulder during a traffic stop for a different man in Ontario. DHS claims the man, a U.S. citizen, attempted to intervene in the stop and tried to hit agents with his car.

November

December

  • December 5 – The city of San Diego agrees to pay $30 million to the family of Konoa Wilson, who was killed by a San Diego Police officer in January. The settlement is believed to be the largest for a police killing in U.S. history, surpassing the $27 million paid to George Floyd's family in 2021.
  • December 14 – Director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer are stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home. Their son Nick Reiner is arrested and charged with murder.
  • December 19 – A tow truck driver who was charged with stealing an ICE vehicle by towing it in August is found not guilty.
  • December 20 – A power outage leaves about 130,000 San Francisco residents without power. More information:.
  • December 31 – Trump says he is dropping his push to deploy National Guard troops in Los Angeles, as well as Chicago and Portland.