Triple-digit heat, new airport transit. Your Sacramento week in review

It was a busy week in the Sacramento region, with major news in politics, homelessness, and transportation. Here’s a quick recap:

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• A high-pressure heat dome is set to build over California, pushing highs between 105 and 110 degrees across the San Joaquin and northern Sacramento valleys through the weekend and into next week, bringing the hottest temperatures of summer so far. Very low humidity paired with the bone dry, hot conditions will elevate wildfire risk across Central and Northern California.

• California has the fifth-highest income threshold for middle-class households in the country, with a 2026 middle-class income range of $66,766 to $200,298. San Jose, Irvine and San Francisco also ranked among the top five U.S. cities with the highest middle-class thresholds, according to SmartAsset.

• Six California House Republicans, including Reps. Kevin Kiley and James Gallagher, sent a letter Friday asking the Trump administration to block California’s new managed care organization tax on health insurers. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the tax into law last month, but it requires federal approval and is estimated to raise costs by about $400 a year for a family of four.

• Sacramento loaned homeless nonprofit Step Up on Second $2.9 million in 2022 to build 100 to 125 units of affordable housing on Fruitridge Road, but construction never started and the lot remains vacant. The city has not enforced the loan’s default provisions, even after Step Up settled a separate $3 million state lawsuit over undelivered Project Homekey housing.

• Sacramento Regional Transit will study a faster route to Sacramento International Airport through Natomas using bus rapid transit rather than light rail, after receiving $700,000 in grants to launch a feasibility study beginning in spring 2027. The agency hopes to start BRT service by 2030 while preserving the long-term goal of a $2 billion Green Line light rail extension.

• Impact Sac, a nonprofit with more than $1.2 million in Sacramento Police Department contracts, collected 783 tickets valued at over $83,000 to the city’s Golden 1 Center luxury suite since 2019 — nearly 300 more than any other nonprofit, according to a Sacramento Bee review of the city’s suite usage. Nicole Clavo, the city official who oversaw Impact Sac’s contracts, attended events in the suite but did not disclose the tickets on her conflict-of-interest filings.