California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Wednesday announced new consumer tools for tenants and landlords to understand how much rent can rise each year under a state rent cap law.
The law, which took effect in 2020, restricts rent increases in buildings more than 15 years old. Under the rules, rent can rise no more than 5% plus local inflation, with an ultimate cap of 10%.
However, until now the state did not provide an online resource that said exactly what the limits were for local areas. As a result, people had to find that information elsewhere or calculate local limits themselves using government inflation figures.
As of Wednesday, landlords and tenants can go to a state website to learn more about county rent limits, as well as eviction protections provided by the rent cap law.
Rent limits for individual counties can be found by scrolling down to the section labeled “Know Your Rights as a California Tenant” and clicking on your preferred language.
It’s unclear whether the state will publish the county limits each year when they change based on inflation data. Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“Information on tenant rights should be accessible, easy to understand, and available to all Californians, and today’s consumer alerts aim to do just that,” Bonta said in a statement.
Under the state law, landlords of buildings older than 15 years in L.A. County can raise their rent no more than 8.8% through July 31, after which a new limit will be set based on inflation.
The state law does not override stricter local rent control laws, such as in the city of Los Angeles. There, if a property falls under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, rent increases are currently capped at 4%, or 6% if the landlord pays for gas and other utilities.
Buildings that fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance are generally properties built on or before Oct. 1, 1978.
Times staff writer Liam Dillon contributed to this report.
As attorneys for the state of California prepared recently to defend in federal court a state law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases, they found themselves in an awkward position.
Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 2022, gun control measures are legitimate only if they are deeply rooted in American “history and tradition” or are sufficiently similar to some other centuries-old law. The state lawyers had conducted a deep dive through hundreds of years of American jurisprudence and identified dozens of historical laws that they felt bolstered the modern law’s legitimacy by showing that the government has long limited access to firearms and ammunition.
But there was a problem: Many of the historical laws they found were virulently racist, restricting access to weaponry for enslaved people, Indigenous Americans and other racial minorities.
In the end, the attorneys in California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office decided to push ahead and cite the laws, but with a major caveat.
Nikki Shrieves, 41, right, during a firearms education course in Norwalk in October 2023. She and her classmates are holding unloaded 9-millimeter Glocks.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
“The Attorney General in no way condones laws that target certain groups on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or other protected characteristic,” they wrote in a footnote to their 2023 filing, “but these laws are part of the history of the Second Amendment and may be relevant to determining the traditions that define its scope, even if they are inconsistent with other constitutional guarantees.”
Last week, U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez rebuked the state for relying on such racist laws in a decision that tossed out California’s ammunition background check law as unconstitutional. Benitez rejected the notion that they might represent a legal tradition to be considered under the high court’s new history standard in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen.
“These fifty laws identified by the Attorney General constitute a long, embarrassing, disgusting, insidious, reprehensible list of examples of government tyranny towards our own people,” Benitez wrote — and such “repugnant historical examples of prejudice and bigotry will not be used to justify the State’s current infringement on the constitutional rights of citizens.”
On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals halted Benitez’s decision from taking effect — keeping the ammunition laws in place — while the state appeals.
In the meantime, the question of whether California and litigants in other gun cases nationwide can invoke old, racist laws remains unsettled, and it’s unclear whether the Supreme Court will allow such laws to inform the “history and tradition” standard moving forward.
In a nation built on chattel slavery and the brutal colonization of Indigenous communities, racist laws are an inescapable part of our legal tradition despite efforts at reform. And that reality is now front and center in cases challenging gun control measures across the country — to the discomfort of nearly everyone involved.
“If we look at ‘history and tradition,’” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who focuses on 2nd Amendment law, “we see a whole bunch of racist gun laws.”
Liberal states such as California and other advocates for gun control are in a quandary. They don’t want to focus attention on old, racist laws that are anathema to their modern commitments to diversity, equality and justice. But doing so may be their last, best chance at upholding background checks and other gun control measures.
Conservative jurists and gun rights advocates have strongly backed the Supreme Court’s originalist view of 2nd Amendment law, which gives modern deference to the intentions of the nation’s founders at the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. They bristle over the fact that many of the laws at the time took for granted the government’s right to place limits on at least some people’s gun rights.
Scholars say the issue highlights the absurdity of the Supreme Court’s position that the legitimacy of any modern gun law should hinge on whether such a regulation might have fit into a centuries-old legal system — especially one so profoundly flawed in other ways. Liberals also scoff at the notion that the authors of the Bill of Rights could have envisioned modern assault rifles.
Winkler said the debate “points out the central problem of 2nd Amendment law today: that the government has to rely on ancient laws that were designed for a very different society.”
“One of the major concerns around gun laws then was keeping Black people powerless in the face of white supremacy,” he said. “Our gun laws today reflect modern concerns, not the concerns of yesterday.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the rejection of such racist laws as historical “analogues” under the Bruen test by conservative judges such as Benitez reflects a troubling double standard. Benitez has otherwise embraced Bruen’s historical lens, including in recent decisions — also under appeal — that struck down California’s bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.
“Judge Benitez looks at history when it supports his position and ignores it (or dismisses it) when it doesn’t,” Chemerinsky wrote in an email to The Times.
“It is absurd to decide what gun regulations should be allowed based on the law of 1791,” he wrote. “But if we are going to do that, we have to accept the awful aspects of the law of 1791.”
Others say the absurdity lies in the suggestion that unconstitutional, racist laws of the past should hold any legal weight today.
Stephen Halbrook, a conservative author who argues against broad restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, said he is “glad this is being called out” in Benitez’s latest opinion.
“This should never have been an argument,” Halbrook said, arguing that past injustices do not justify modern ones when it comes to people’s constitutional rights.
Some Black gun owners also expressed unease at the idea that old, racist gun laws should be revived in discussions about 2nd Amendment limits.
Rick Archer, 57, of Yorba Linda, is a Black former U.S. Marine who now teaches basic gun safety and concealed-carry training courses in Orange County. He said he views many of California’s modern gun laws as racist, if not in their explicit language then in their origins and their enforcement in communities of color.
As one example, he mentioned the Mulford Act, which banned the open carry of loaded weapons without a permit in California, and was rushed into law by state legislators after members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense staged an armed protest at the state Capitol in 1967.
Archer said his white neighbors in Yorba Linda today are “armed to the teeth,” and within their rights to be, while many Black people and other racial minorities in some of the most dangerous cities and neighborhoods in the state are precluded from defending themselves with firearms.
Archer said the state, if it was serious about dismantling racism, would be trying to dismantle its vast system of racist gun laws — not trying to uphold them by citing even more explicitly racist laws of the past.
“We’re supposed to be moving forward, not moving backward,” he said. “If you have to go that far back to justify putting limits on our freedoms — especially if you are going back to racist codes — then this is not the progressive, mixed state that I thought we were in.”
Jake Charles, an associate professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, has studied and written about the issue of old, racist laws being relevant — or not — under Bruen’s “history and tradition” test.
He said he doesn’t believe modern gun laws should be upheld or tossed based on a historical test, but since such a test is required under Bruen, it should at least be honest and applied consistently — regardless of whose modern position on guns it bolsters.
Charles noted that much of the discussion of late has centered on racist laws that excluded enslaved people and other racial minorities from possessing weapons, but there were also racist motivations for many old laws that cemented gun rights for white people. Some early Southern laws, for example, required white men to bring guns to church services as a precaution against slave revolts, he said.
“The expansion of gun rights was often motivated by the same kind of discriminatory rationales that some of the regulations were motivated by,” he said. “They were to enforce white supremacy.”
Charles said racist laws of centuries past should be viewed skeptically by the courts, but not dismissed wholesale. “Whether or not these laws are unconstitutional, they can tell us something about what kind of scope of government power the founding generation would have thought the legislature had” to restrict gun rights or access, he said.
The so-called abstraction approach to gun law precedent has been applied by judges before, including in a pre-Bruen case by then-Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett — who is now a Supreme Court justice, Charles wrote last year in the Stanford Law Review.
Barrett issued a dissenting opinion in the case Kanter v. Barr in which she cited old racist gun laws against enslaved people, Indigenous people and Catholics as clearly unjust, but nonetheless informative — helping to establish a clear tradition of lawmakers restricting access to firearms for people they deemed public threats.
Barrett’s approach, Charles wrote, suggested that old racist laws “can provide hints about earlier generations’ understanding of legislative power divorced from their concrete application to specific groups.”
Charles said the Supreme Court could provide more guidance on the issue in its forthcoming decision in United States vs. Rahimi, where it is considering the constitutionality of laws that prohibit the possession of firearms by people under domestic-violence restraining orders.
However, the court may be limited from tackling the issue in full in the Rahimi case because the U.S. government recently shifted its strategy, dropping references to old, racist laws limiting access to firearms for enslaved people and Indigenous Americans that it had cited in lower courts when it reached the high court.
When Justice Clarence Thomas asked why it did so during oral arguments, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the government had decided that such laws spoke to a different issue than the one in Rahimi — in part because “those categories of people were viewed as being not among the people protected by the Second Amendment” at the time the old laws were enforced.
In other words, enslaved and Indigenous people weren’t considered citizens — or beneficiaries of the 2nd Amendment’s protections. (Benitez cited a similar argument in his recent decision in the ammunition case.)
Charles said the Supreme Court could weigh in further on racist old laws serving as historical analogues in another case called Range vs. Attorney General, which considers whether individuals convicted of felony crimes can be prohibited from possessing firearms.
If it does, Charles said, he will be watching closely to see where Barrett lands — and whether she once again argues for considering old racist laws as relevant history.
On a foggy January morning in his hometown nestled in Northern California wine country, state Sen. Mike McGuire was at an elementary school doing a dance called the “wheelbarrow” and explaining insurance policy to children who were more eager to talk about their 4-H pigs.
The Sonoma County Democrat then rushed off, driving past rolling green hills and dewy vineyards, to have coffee with firefighters who are banking on him to help a region that has been repeatedly devastated by wildfires and often feels overlooked by state leaders.
At the Healdsburg Fire Department, a staffer struggled to get McGuire out the door in time so that he could make it to a Chamber of Commerce event three hours north in Eureka. There, he would partake in a hobby perfectly suited to his sense of urgency and penchant for squeezing as much as he can into the time he has: auctioneering.
New California Senate leader Mike McGuire dances with children at Alexander Valley School in Healdsburg on Jan. 26. (Mackenzie Mays)
“Mike is the Energizer Bunny of California politics. He gets around, he walks the district. It is a hallmark of his approach,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State who taught McGuire there more than 20 years ago. “He believes that hard work and perseverance can offset any challenges he might have.”
Now, McGuire, who was sworn in as the new leader of the California Senate on Monday, will need to harness that energy as he takes on his biggest challenge yet — guiding the Legislature’s upper house as the state grapples with an estimated $38-billion budget deficit. The Senate leader plays a powerful role negotiating the state budget with the governor and the Assembly speaker, making it one of the most influential positions in state government.
At a swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol on Monday, McGuire vowed to “buckle down” and right the budget in the same way that Californians struggling financially are forced to “live within their means” and make sacrifices in their personal spending.
“We know that tough decisions lie ahead,” McGuire said in an emotional speech on the Senate floor that at times drove him to tears. “We are going to protect our progress.”
McGuire was sworn in as he held his squirmy 2-year-old son and stood alongside his wife, a school principal in Healdsburg. Monday’s event played up the small-town hospitality of McGuire’s rural district, with signs that welcomed attendees to “come on in and stay awhile.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Gov. Jerry Brown, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero and past Senate leaders including John Burton attended the ceremony. Many from McGuire’s district were also in attendance, including his eighth-grade math teacher.
Despite the budget woes on the horizon, McGuire painted a picture of a resilient California that leads the nation in several policy areas, including climate change and abortion access, even in bad financial times.
“No matter what you watch on cable news, we are America’s economic engine,” he said Monday.
Time is of the essence. McGuire has until 2026 to make his mark as Senate president pro tem; at that time he will be forced out of the Legislature by term limits.
In 1998, when he was 19 years old, Mike McGuire became the youngest person elected to the school board in Healdsburg, the bucolic Sonoma County town where he grew up. He later became the city’s youngest mayor.
(Josh Edelson / For the Times)
He said to expect the Senate to prioritize counties’ “successful implementation” of CARE Court, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mental health reform plan that could force some people living on the streets to receive treatment.
“No matter if you live in Crescent City, or in downtown L.A., you want the homelessness crisis solved. It’s unacceptable, and the state and our communities must do better,” McGuire said.
But speaking to reporters at the Capitol after Monday’s ceremony, McGuire declined to give details on the plan or signal what is to come otherwise from the Senate this year, saying he still needs to meet with his fellow lawmakers.
Often seen jogging through Capitol corridors to make it to one of several committees he sits on and wearing headphones on the Senate floor so as not to miss a call, McGuire is vowing to pare down his trademark multi-tasking and “laser focus” on issues including affordable housing, fentanyl and retail theft.
His fellow lawmakers from both political parties joked Monday about his stamina, saying they didn’t know he had a desk on the Senate floor because he never sits.
For six months, McGuire has been on the road, traveling to speak with voters beyond his coastal district, which spans seven counties from the Bay Area to the Oregon border. In the month of December alone, he met with climate activists in Sacramento, public transit advocates in San Francisco, business owners in Fresno, wine experts in Sonoma County and homeless advocates in Humboldt County.
“If I have to eat another gas station hot dog, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he joked.
He’s not up for reelection. It’s just what he does.
“He feeds off of this. It’s not a game, it’s authentic,” said James Gore, a Democratic member of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors who plans to run for McGuire’s seat when his time is up in 2026.
California Sen. Mike McGuire hugs a firefighter in Healdsburg, where he lives.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
His breakneck pace started decades ago with a string of record firsts. In 1998, he became the youngest person elected to the Healdsburg School Board at age 19 in the bucolic town where he grew up. Then he became the city’s youngest mayor. He went on to serve on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and by 2014, he was in the state Senate.
McGuire started working in high school at a radio station to help his family make ends meet. He was raised by his mother and grandmother — a hard-nosed prune farmer whom McGuire credits for his career.
“She taught me to be the hardest-working person in the room,” he said of his grandmother. “She told me that there are smarter people than you out in this world and you’ve got to work together.”
But in some ways, McGuire’s appointment comes as a surprise. He represents a rural district in a powerful position long held by senators from major cities. He is a straight white man helping lead a state that is predominantly Latino amid calls for more diversity in Democratic politics.
Former California Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), left, hugs her successor, Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg).
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
“It speaks to his leadership,” said Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), vice chair of the California Latino Legislative Caucus. “Regardless of the identity politics, I really think that he supersedes that with his policies. More than anything, it’s his style of collaboration that is appreciated.”
McGuire nodded to progressive ideals for greater diversity in political representation in his inaugural speech Monday, as both legislative houses — and the governor’s office — are currently led by men.
“Here in the Senate, we look more like the communities we proudly represent,” McGuire said, noting that there are more women and more people of color serving in state office than ever before and vowing to work with minority caucuses to promote their issues.
McGuire gave labor unions credit on Monday, saying that “in California, we go to the mat for the rights of workers.” But in a Democratic supermajority Legislature where unions have a lot of sway, McGuire has not always voted with organized labor. In 2016, he did not support a bill that expanded overtime pay for farmworkers, voicing concerns about the impact on small farmers.
Republicans, too, describe McGuire as a fierce collaborator, negotiator and moderator with no off switch.
“He’s just very hardworking and he’s always on the move. I would say if there was competition for the position, whoever that was wouldn’t have been able to keep up with him in the first place,” Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) said, noting that he “vigorously” disagrees with many of his policy stances.
McGuire, who warns he sounds “hokey” when he talks about loving his work, said “I’m not big on labels” when asked about being considered a moderate on some issues in the liberal California Legislature. “I’m all about action. My only focus is on delivering results,” he said.
As for what happens when his term is over, McGuire has raised more than $800,000 for a campaign for state insurance commissioner in 2026.
Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, holds his son Conner as he is congratulated by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero after being sworn in as Senate President Pro Tempore, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024, at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. McGuire was joined on the dais by his wife, Erika, left, and Calfornia Gov. Gavin Newsom, right.
(Hector Amezcua / Sacramento Bee via Associated Press)
But his supporters back in his hometown of Healdsburg are certain that his aspirations are bigger than that.
McGuire dodged a question about his plans after the state Senate, saying, “It’s not what’s keeping me up at night.”
As someone who seemingly fills every hour of his calendar, two years is “an eternity.”
Back at Alexander Valley School in Healdsburg, McGuire was speedily teaching 10- and 12-year-olds accustomed to wildfires about “home hardening” and public risk insurance models in his auctioneer voice. He demanded a countdown while he packed in his answers to the children’s questions.
“Time me 60 seconds,” he said. “I want to beat the recess bell.”
A large and dangerous storm system continued its push through Southern California on Monday, bringing life-threatening flooding, damaging winds and record rainfall — with no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Rainfall totals were continuing to pile up, including 10.28 inches in the Topanga area, 9.84 inches around Bel-Air and 5.3 inches in downtown Los Angeles — with much more on the way, according to Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
“There’s still a lot of rain to come,” he said. “There’s a lot of rain left.”
The plume of moisture was expected to linger over the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area through Monday night, followed by on-and-off rain Tuesday and possibly even some showers Wednesday, Kittell said.
“It’s definitely declining starting Wednesday,” he said, but “it’s not until after Friday that we get the all-clear.”
The atmospheric river also smashed several daily rainfall records on Sunday. Downtown Los Angeles received 4.1 inches of rain — breaking the record of 2.55 inches set on Feb. 4, 1927. It was the area’s 10th wettest day since records began in 1877. Santa Barbara Airport broke a daily record with 2.39 inches of rain on Sunday, as did Los Angeles International Airport with 1.76 inches, and Long Beach Airport with 1.5 inches.
The storm packed a wallop across the state, including flooding, water rescues and damaging winds in the San Francisco Bay Area and down the Central Coast. More than half a million people remained without power statewide Monday morning.
But all eyes were on Southern California on Monday, where urgent flash flood warnings remained in effect for portions of San Bernardino, Ventura and Los Angeles.
Some of the worst effects were expected Monday and Tuesday in portions of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding” was possible as the storm continued its crawl toward the state’s southern border, the National Weather Service said.
The San Bernardino Mountains could see up to 8 inches of additional rainfall through Tuesday evening, while the mountains of San Diego and Riverside counties could see an additional 4 inches, the NWS said.
“Storms can change quickly, but let me be clear: This storm is a serious weather event,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a news conference Sunday. “This has the potential to be a historic storm — severe winds, thunderstorms, and even brief tornadoes.”
Indeed, many Angelenos awakened Monday to a soggy, muddy mess, including dozens of road closures and delays due to flooding and debris, according to the California Department of Transportation, California Highway Patrol and other agencies.
Multiple vehicles were submerged Monday on Piuma Road near Calabasas, and another vehicle was submerged on Balkins Drive in Agoura Hills, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials. Minor debris flows had occurred in Agoura Hills, including one on Cornell Road and one on Eagletown Street. A 10-foot boulder was reported on northbound Malibu Canyon Road about 2 miles north of Pacific Coast Highway.
Some on-ramps and southbound lanes along the 5 Freeway were closed from Burbank to Los Feliz, as was a portion of State Route 23 near Banning Dam in Thousand Oaks, CalTrans said. State Route 33 was closed in both directions between Ojai and Lockwood Valley Road due to mudslides. A video of the area showed chunks of mud and rocks splayed across the road.
Mud was also flowing across the Hollywood Hills, damaging homes and forcing residents to flee. At least two homes were damaged as debris flowed down Lockridge Road near Fryman Canyon in Studio City on Sunday night, and an additional nine homes were evacuated from the area out of concern about additional soil instability. Firefighters evacuated residents from three homes on Boris Drive in Tarzana due to flowing debris.
In Long Beach, 19 people were rescued Sunday from the rocks of the breakwater after the mast of a 40-foot boat they were on broke in high winds.
Officials urged Angelenos to stay home if possible. Those who must drive were advised to do so with caution, and to avoid deep water.
However, schools remained open in the Los Angeles area Monday, except for Vinedale Preparatory Academy in Sun Valley, which was affected by mandatory evacuation orders, and Topanga Elementary Charter School in Topanga. Both schools were affected by potentially dangerous hillside conditions. Students and staff at both schools were directed to other campuses for the day.
The storm also delivered powerful winds Sunday, including gusts up to 83 mph in the San Gabriel Mountains; 58 mph in Newhall Pass and 45 mph in the western San Fernando Valley.
By Monday, the strong gusts associated with the storm had abated into light southeasterly winds.
But slow, steady rain would continue to pour, Kittell said.
“It’s just a tremendous amount of rain in the last 24 hours,” he added.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to reject California’s plan to curb air pollution in Los Angeles, a consequential move that could result in stiff economic sanctions and federal regulatory oversight of the nation’s smoggiest region.
Despite having the strictest air pollution rules in the nation, Southern California has never complied with federal health standards for ozone, the lung-searing gas commonly called smog. Because of this, state and local air regulators are required to submit plans to the EPA detailing how they intend to reduce pollution and comply with federal standards.
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California air regulators acknowledge that the region still needs to reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides by more than 100 tons per day in order to achieve the 1997 standard for ozone.
However, the South Coast Air Quality Management District proposal calls on the federal government to make most of those cuts — at least 67 tons per day — arguing that some of the largest sources of smog-forming emissions are federally regulated, such as ships, trains and aircraft. Local air quality officials lack the jurisdiction to regulate mobile sources of emissions, and can only control stationary sources, such as industrial facilities.
In a recent draft response, the EPA has proposed rejecting California’s plan, declaring “states do not have authority” under the Clean Air Act or the Constitution to order the federal government to reduce pollution.
In a pointed response, local air officials claimed the EPA was responsible for the damaging health effects of Los Angeles area smog, because it has failed to offer solutions to curb emissions from “sources that they know are beyond our control.”
“U.S. EPA’s draft decision is disheartening,” read a statement from the air district. “South Coast AQMD intends to comment on this new proposal and take all appropriate actions in hopes that this decision does not become final. More importantly, U.S. EPA will need to answer the millions of residents, especially children, who have asthma, lung disease and other illnesses associated with air pollution that continue to suffer.”
The EPA has until July 1 to decide whether to finalize the rejection. If the state and local air regulators fail to submit a plan that the EPA finds acceptable within that time, the federal government could withhold billions of dollars in highway funding, place strict requirements on new permits and even impose a federal plan to curb smog.
The EPA has disapproved of the air district’s plans several times in the past, but the region has managed to avert potential sanctions.
The proposed denial is the latest confrontation between Southern California air regulators and the Biden EPA — two unlikely adversaries who have clashed for nearly two years over how to solve the region’s long-standing issues with smog.
It has also highlighted the complex nature of regulating pollution in the region where at least three entities have authority — the local air district, which oversees smokestack emissions; the California Air Resources Board, which governs in-state vehicles; and the EPA, which handles interstate and international travel.
However, some environmental advocates say the dilemma is a collective failure by every level of government.
Adrian Martinez, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, said the conflict follows years of repeated delays and deadline extensions, when all three environmental agencies were capable of cutting more emissions.
“The plan to meet our clean air standards relied on these faith-based assumptions that we’ll figure out how to reduce the pollution at a later time. And what ended up happening is we never figured it out,” Martinez said.
Historically, Southern California has been plagued by smog, which forms when the region’s persistent sunlight interacts with vehicle exhaust and smokestack emissions. The region’s mountainous terrain confines this toxic haze over the region, rather than allowing it to disperse.
Although there has been significant progress over the last several decades through the development of cleaner vehicle engines and pollution controls for industry, the region’s smog remains the worst in the country.
Since 1997, nitrogen oxides have decreased 70% in the air basin. The majority of those emission reductions are the result of stricter vehicle standards imposed by the state, and locally imposed regulations on industry, according to the South Coast air district.
As emission reductions have stalled and aircraft emissions have risen, the air district has found itself under increasing pressure to force the EPA’s hand. According to estimates, even if Southern California eliminates emissions from all building and industrial sources, it wouldn’t be enough to meet federal standards.
The air district has sued the EPA for violating the Clean Air Act, arguing it was impossible for the region to comply with federal smog standards without massive cuts from federal sources. The move was intended to compel the EPA to adopt new regulatory strategies that would curtail pollution from ports, railyards and airports. The air district later settled the case.
For its part, the Biden administration last year adopted tighter vehicle emission standards, including for heavy-duty trucks, which is expected to reduce smog.
But these federal requirements still pale in comparison to rules in California — the only state that can implement its own vehicle emission standards with federal approval.
“We acknowledge that there are sources of air pollution in South Coast that the air district and CARB do not have the regulatory authority to control,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement. “EPA has made it a very high priority to help reduce mobile source emissions through rulemaking and leveraging unprecedented federal funding … wherever possible.”
The EPA is accepting public comments on its proposed disapproval of the regional smog plan until March 4.
If the EPA finalizes this disapproval, California will have 18 months to obtain the federal agency’s approval for a new plan. By failing to meet that deadline, the federal government would require some newly permitted businesses to reduce twice as many tons of smog-forming as they emit.
Six months later, if the deadline still hasn’t been met, the Federal Highway Administration is required to impose a moratorium on highway funding (with exceptions for mass transit and public safety).
No more than two years after final disapproval, the EPA must enforce a federal implementation plan to achieve federal smog standards.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone viral for shoplifting at Target. Well, sort of.
The governor didn’t actually steal anything. But as he tells it, he did witness someone blatantly walking out of a Sacramento-area store with an armload of stolen stuff, presumably right in front of his own intimidating-looking security detail. And when Newsom asked why no one was taking action, the clerk told him it was the governor’s fault.
Newsom has made it too easy to steal, he said the clerk told him — before realizing who he was and freaking out.
Newsom, who was Christmas shopping with one of his children at the time, said he was outraged. It’s just not true, he said he told the clerk. California has the tenth-toughest laws against retail theft in the nation, he lectured — in a way that must have seemed super weird until she deduced his identity.
“I said: ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ ” Newsom said he asked the clerk.
“She goes, ’Oh, the governor’ ” — he broke off — “swear to God, true story, on my mom’s grave.” He added that the clerk had the temerity to tell him: “The governor lowered the threshold, there’s no accountability. … We don’t stop them because of the governor.”
Newsom told the story this week to a group of mayors from around the state who had gathered on Zoom for a news conference on his mental health initiative, Proposition 1. He and the mayors were chatting among themselves while waiting for San Francisco’s London Breed and San Diego’s Todd Gloria to log on. After relating the anecdote, the governor added that he hoped the two mayors weren’t the only ones not yet signed into the Zoom. “Hopefully, all the reporters weren’t on,” he said.
Too late. The exchange, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) and then picked up by television and print outlets around the state, quickly went viral — catnip in the heated debate about retail theft and Proposition 47, which reduced some thefts and drug offenses to misdemeanors to reduce mass incarceration. Some critics have blamed Proposition 47 for the rise in thefts.
Newsom himself came out last month calling for legislation to crack down on “professional thieves” without amending Proposition 47, noting that one of the wine stores he owns in San Francisco was robbed at least three times in 2021. He pointed out that Texas’ threshold for felony theft is among those that is higher than California’s.
But those points did little to calm the viral story. The chairwoman of the state Republican Party, Jessica Millan Patterson, quickly jumped into the fray, writing on X: “Shout-out to this store clerk for saying to the governor’s face what every Californian has wanted to say: that he and his radical @CA_Dem buddies are to blame for CA’s surging crime. Sadly, Newsom still didn’t seem to take the hint.”
Newsom’s office declined to identify which Target the encounter occurred at, to keep the media from mobbing the store. They did say the encounter took place in the Sacramento area, around Christmastime, while the governor was shopping with one of his children.
The exchange, the governor said, ended with an attempt at a photo-op.
As the governor was explaining how strict California’s retail theft laws actually are, the clerk, he said, “looks at me, twice. She freaks out. She calls everyone over, wants to take photos.”
“I said, no, I’m not taking a photo,” Newsom said. “We’re having a conversation. Where’s your manager? How are you blaming the governor?”
He added: “Why am I spending $380? Everyone can walk the hell right out.”
South Carolina held the first official Democratic presidential primary Saturday. But as the polls closed, President Biden was 2,400 miles away, in Los Angeles, stepping off Air Force One.
Biden’s victory in the Palmetto State was a foregone conclusion, and his campaign invested significant time there leading up to the primary.
So Biden headed west. He and First Lady Jill Biden landed at LAX around 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and were greeted by Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Maxine Waters before the president choppered to the Santa Monica Airport and his wife left separately for an event.
It’s unclear what they did while in Los Angeles. They had no public events, and there were no fundraisers known to be taking place.
Biden had an afternoon campaign meeting at a historic Bel Air estate owned by director George Lucas.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Republicans predictably grumbled about Biden’s decision not to visit South Carolina on Saturday, which they claimed was a slight by the incumbent.
“It just goes to show you how much he cares about actually coming and how serious he’s taking it,” said Abby Zilch, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Republican Party. “He and Kamala have spent the last three months coming down to South Carolina, telling South Carolina Democratic voters how much they’re grateful for their party here and how much South Carolina means to them. Yet he was all the way across the country on the day of the Democrats’ first primary.”
Shortly after Air Force One landed at the Los Angeles International Airport, news broke that Biden had easily won the South Carolina primary.
The state saved his 2020 presidential campaign after he was trounced in Iowa and New Hampshire and finished a distant second in Nevada. An endorsement from Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) and the enthusiastic support of Black voters in the state gave Biden an overwhelming victory and provided momentum heading into the Super Tuesday primaries, which were critical to him becoming the Democratic nominee.
In return, the Democratic National Committee, at Biden’s behest, overhauled the 2024 nominating calendar, officially making South Carolina the first state to hold a primary. The move was ostensibly meant to give a greater voice to diverse voters in the early stages of the race, compared with caucuses and a primary in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire; it was largely viewed as a gift to South Carolina for saving Biden’s 2020 campaign.
The president, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have spent considerable time in South Carolina promoting the Biden campaign.
On Friday, Harris spoke to supporters at South Carolina State University, a historically Black college. After a drumline performed, Harris was introduced by the reigning Miss South Carolina State and touted the administration’s efforts to cancel student loan debt, cap insulin costs and boost the economy.
“President Biden and I are guided by a fundamental belief: We work for you, the American people. And every day, we fight for you,” she said. “Sadly, however, that is not true for everyone. Case in point: Donald Trump. Former President Trump has made clear time and time again: His fight is not for the people. He fights for himself.”
Scott Huffmon, a political science professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., noted the frequency of visits by Democrats and their surrogates, including Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who visited his home county on Friday.
“This is repayment for what South Carolina did for Joe Biden, but on a larger scale, South Carolina is so stunningly important to the national Democratic presidential process that keeping this relationship tight and warm is incredibly important,” Huffmon said.
He added that he doesn’t think most Palmetto State Democrats would have a problem with Biden spending primary night in Los Angeles, given South Carolina’s rightward tilt in the general election. Trump easily carried the state in the 2020 presidential election. The last time a Democrat won there in the general election was 1976, and the candidate was a fellow Southerner, Jimmy Carter.
“He’s paid his fealty. He’s done his bows and curtsies, and now realism sets in. He’s not going to win South Carolina in November,” Huffmon said. “So the repayment of the debt has happened. Now reality sets in.”
Indeed, on Sunday, Biden heads to campaign events in Nevada, which is holding its Democratic primary Tuesday and is pivotal to his reelection bid.
A landmark settlement announced Thursday sets new accountability rules for how California public schools spend $2 billion to help students recover from pandemic learning setbacks: Educators must rely on proven academic strategies and track progress, which will be publicly disclosed — and if parents are not satisfied, they can file complaints.
The agreement brings an end to sweeping litigation that dates to the fall of 2020, when students were learning remotely from home, with campuses closed because of safety concerns. The lawsuit was silent on the merit of school-based COVID-19 safety measures and campus shutdowns. But it argued that students fell behind during online schooling and the state was not doing enough to remedy the harm.
Officials including Gov. Gavin Newsom and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond have repeatedly defended California’s efforts as thoughtful and generous. They pointed to billions of dollars in state aid for computers and COVID safety measures as well as early access to vaccines for teachers and other school workers.
In the settlement, the state admits no wrongdoing. State officials were not immediately available for comment as the settlement was announced.
The agreement comes as a report, released Wednesday, added to the body of research about the depth of harm to students in California and throughout the nation, starting from the pandemic’s outset in about March of 2020. The latest research indicates that recovery is lagging.
Students in seventeen states, including California, remain more than a third of a grade level behind 2019 levels in math. Students in 14 states remain more than a third of a grade level behind in reading. While California’s English language arts scores were high enough to avoid this list, its scores actually got worse from 2022 to 2023, despite students’ being back on campus, stated the report, titled the Education Recovery Scorecard.
Overall, academic recovery in California had “barely begun” as of spring 2023, according to this ongoing research, a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.
Moreover, the academic setbacks were larger in high-poverty districts such as San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Fresno and Long Beach, where achievement fell by more than two-thirds of a grade level in math and more than a third of a grade level in reading, the report said.
“Educational outcomes are more unequal now than in 2019,” said Stanford Professor Sean Reardon. “If California state and local education policymakers don’t act soon and decisively, that inequality is likely to become permanent.”
“No one wants to see poor kids footing the bill for the pandemic, but that is the path California is on,” said Harvard Professor Thomas Kane. “With federal relief dollars drying up, state leaders must ensure the remaining dollars are used for Summer 2024 and for tutoring and after-school next year.”
Thursday’s settlement is part of ongoing efforts to help students recover.
The state funding is not new. These dollars were previously set aside, as part of the 2023-24 budget, for pandemic recovery. School districts have left portions of these funds unspent, taking advantage of a multiyear timeline for making use of the money, said the attorneys who sued the state. The settlement overlays a detailed structure for how this money must be used moving forward — with the intent of reaching more of the students most in need — and with more safeguards.
In addition, there are new rules to hold schools and school districts accountable, including making the spending plans and their results more transparent to parents and the public.
“This settlement has some strong accountability measures that should help ensure students get the resources they need,” said attorney Chelsea Kehrer of Morrison Foerster, which filed the suit in tandem with the public-interest law firm Public Counsel.
The settlement will rely on a process that already exists but remains obscure outside education circles. It’s called the Local Control and Accountability Plan. These plans were part of reforms, led by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, that poured more resources into schools and students with high needs — including Black and Latino students, those from low-income families and students learning English.
Broadly speaking, that’s also the intent of the settlement. Schools must explain how their recovery spending will contribute directly to a positive outcome, such as higher test scores or improved attendance.
Settlement rules also require school districts to use the money to help the most hard-hit or poorly performing schools or student groups.
A new federal report lends support for providing better oversight of school-improvement plans. In its sample, the federal review found that less than half of school-improvement plans had components widely considered necessary to be successful. A good plan is supposed to include an examination of needs, assessing where and how resources are unfairly distributed and identifying proven strategies that will be used to help students.
Because the settlement makes changes to how state money is to be spent, the Legislature‘s approval of the agreement is required.
Under the settlement, the total funding available must reach at least $2 billion statewide. If it doesn’t, the state must devise a plan to make up the difference, which could require action from the Legislature. If the pieces don’t fall into place, the settlement would unwind.
So far, however, advocates are confident that at least $2 billion is available in unspent funds forthe state’s nearly 1,000 school districts.
The money is likely to be available because school systems have tried to stretch out the use of pandemic aid for as long as possible as they sound alarms about upcoming budget problems that could result in reduced services and layoffs. Los Angeles Unified, for example, has tracked the deadlines for each tranche of state and federal pandemic aid, spending the money with the earliest deadlines first.
For a while, so much aid was flowing in that districts were unable to spend it quickly, unable to hire the extra teachers, tutors and mental-health workers who could have helped students. But that surplus period is drawing to a close.
“If they were waiting for a rainy day, they need to be reminded that California’s most disadvantaged students are in the midst of a thunderstorm,” said Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel.
Absent the settlement, this $2 billion still would have been available for pandemic recovery, but with fewer rules on spending, tracking and reporting.
“At least now, there will be visibility and attention, and the uniform complaint procedure added means that anyone, including parents and caregivers, has a process to call out a district not using the resources in a timely or diligent fashion as mandated by the strategic plan,” Rosenbaum said. “So these are resources that were meant to be used as an urgent crisis dictates, and they now will be.”
Schools will have four years to spend the money.
If existing funds are available as expected, the settlement will have little to no effect on the impending state budget negotiations. Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to close an estimated $38-billion deficit that looms over his proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1. Total state revenues are expected to surpass $291 billion.
The original lawsuit focused on harms to students as they were occurring during the period of remote learning.
Angela J., a plaintiff named in the complaint and a parent of three elementary-age children in the Oakland Unified School District, said that her twins, who were in the second grade at the onset of the pandemic, received live instruction with a teacher only twice from the time when schools closed in mid-March 2020 to the end of the school year. The students weren’t assigned packets or other materials to make up for the lost time.
Once in-person learning resumed, the focus of the litigation shifted to the harms that students had suffered and the adequacy of recovery efforts.
The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of students and parents, named as defendants the state, the Department of Education, the state Board of Education and Thurmond.
Community groups that participated in the litigation included the Oakland REACH and L.A.-based Community Coalition.
The California Legislative Black Caucus on Wednesday outlined the first set of reparations for the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the United States, with proposals that include a call for the state to issue a formal apology, to prohibit involuntary servitude in prisons and to return property seized by governments under race-based eminent domain.
The caucus is not yet calling for cash payments in a list of 14 reparations bills it hopes to pass this year that would enact wide-ranging reforms in education, civil rights, criminal justice, health and business.
The package of legislation is based on recommendations issued by California’s Reparations Task Force at the conclusion of a two-year historic process to study the effects of slavery and suggest policy changes to state lawmakers.
Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City), chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, said the apology is the first priority on the list of bills that she hopes will begin the conversation at the Capitol about reparations as she and her colleagues launch a campaign to educate the public about the state’s legacy of racism.
The decision to forgo an immediate call for cash payments comes as Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers struggle to offset a budget shortfall of at least $37.9 billion. Newsom has proposed dipping into the state’s rainy-day reserves, cutting $8.5 billion from climate change initiatives and reducing more than $1.2 billion for housing programs as means to reduce spending to account for lower than expected tax revenue.
“We started realizing with the budget environment we were going to have to do more systemic policy change to address systemic racism versus big budget asks because there just wasn’t the budget for it,” Wilson said. “Our priorities centered around policy changes or creating opportunities.”
Newsom has echoed statements from the task force and Black lawmakers that reparations are about more than cash payments. In a recent interview, he said he finished reading through the task force’s report at the end of the year and his office is working on a detailed 30-page analysis of the recommendations that examines the work the state has already done and what more can be done.
When asked why his budget didn’t include reparations proposals, he said he knew the Black Caucus planned to share its own list of priorities and he didn’t want to get ahead of the group’s process.
“So we wanted to engage them,” Newsom said. “Remember, this was initiated by the Legislature. This is a partnership, and they recognize that there are a lot of things in that report they recommended that we’ve already done and that we’re doing. This gave us time to assess all that. So, it’s been actively worked on.”
Cash payments, in particular, have struggled to earn support among California voters, according to recent opinion polls. Newsom disregarded the idea that reparations could be tough to pass in an election year.
“That’s not been part of my thinking,” Newsom said. “My thinking is just accountability to be honest and responsible and to take seriously the recommendations.”
Wilson described the legislative package as the first phase of a multi-year effort to pass reparations. She said she hopes educating the public about California’s role in slavery and the harm caused by racist policies will help her colleagues and Californians understand the need for the state to atone.
The list of proposed bills the California Legislature Black Caucus wants to pass this year would do the following:
ACA 7 — Amend the California Constitution to permit the state to fund programs for specific groups of people that help to increase life expectancy, improve educational outcomes and lift them out of poverty.
ACA 8 — Amend the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude for incarcerated people.
ACR 135 — Formally recognize and accept the state’s responsibility for the harms and atrocities of state representatives who promoted, facilitated, enforced and permitted slavery.
AB 1815 — Prohibit discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles in all competitive sports within California.
AB 1929 — Offer competitive grants to increase enrollment of African American descendants in STEM-related career technical education.
AB 1975 — Offer medically supportive food and nutritional interventions as permanent Medi-Cal benefits in California.
AB 1986 — End the California prison system’s practice of banning books without oversight and review.
Proposals that the caucus intends to introduce in the next two weeks would seek to:
Offer career education financial aid to redlined communities.
Restore property taken under race-based eminent domain or offer other remedies to the original owner.
Issue a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.
Restrict solitary confinement in correctional detention facilities.
Offer state-funded grants for African American communities to decrease violence.
Require notification to community stakeholders before the closure of a grocery store in an underserved community.
Eliminate barriers to occupational licenses for people with criminal records.
For five years, vendors hawking grilled meats, fresh fruit and used clothes on the streets of unincorporated L.A. County have been stuck in a strange legal gray area: no longer banned, but not yet regulated.
On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors took a major step toward bringing these sellers out of their regulatory limbo, pushing forward a long-awaited ordinance that would set rules for street vending in unincorporated parts of the county.
In 2018, California decriminalized street vending statewide, opening the door for local jurisdictions to create their own laws around who could sell what and where. Since then, at least 16 cities in L.A. County have created their own rules.
“Now the county must do its part,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis, adding she believed the rule change would bring marginalized entrepreneurs, overwhelmingly from Latino and immigrant communities, into the county’s bustling economy.
Under the ordinance, street vendors setting up in unincorporated parts of the county would have to register with the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity, which would enforce the new rules: no blocking the sidewalk, no selling on private property, no excessive littering, to name a few. Vendors could face fines if they don’t comply.
The Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 0 in support of the ordinance, though they will need to take a final vote before it can pass. The ordinance would go into effect six months later.
The supervisors also voted 4 to 0 to move forward on an ordinance from the county’s Department of Public Health that would change how food carts are regulated.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger abstained from both votes.
Barger said she’d heard from business owners who believed the rule change would create an uneven playing field between bricks-and-mortar businesses and street vendors, who she believed would get off relatively easy for violating the rules.
Kelly LoBianco, head of the Department of Economic Opportunity, said the agency would emphasize a “care first” approach to enforcement, meaning the emphasis would be on educating vendors about the new regulations rather than fining them for flouting them.
“I feel that we have not gone far enough,” Barger said. “The penalties don’t meet what we’re requiring for restaurants that can get shut down and lose a day’s business.”
Business owners said they were also concerned about unnavigable streets and trash — problems, they believed, that would not improve unless the county cracked down.
“Without having a rigorous, effective enforcement, nothing’s going to happen,” said Tony DeMarco, a pawnshop owner and president of the Whittier Boulevard Merchants Assn., which opposed the ordinance.
While bricks-and-mortar business owners lamented an uneven playing field, street vendors and their advocates hailed the rules as some of the best they’ve seen since the state decriminalized street vending.
“Our hope is that L.A. County can actually be the model,” said Doug Smith of Inclusive Action, part of a coalition of groups that have advocated for legalization of street vending. “It does not include some of the things we’ve seen that are really intended to keep them out of the system — things like criminal background checks, really high fees or really significant restrictions on locations.”
Smith said, however, that food vendors, in particular, could still face a challenging path to registering with the county as they would need to get a permit from the Department of Public Health, which enforces the state’s retail food code. Food vendors ubiquitous across the county, such as taco stands, have struggled in the past with the agency’s cumbersome rules, and only a small fraction are believed to have the proper permits.
Barbara Ferrer, director of the Public Health Department, emphasized Tuesday that the rule changes under consideration would not apply to “pop-up food stands” — typically larger food operations with big tables and canopies that she said can’t be permitted under state law.
Advocates say some jurisdictions have taken a punitive approach when formalizing rules on street vending. In Fontana, for example, unlicensed sellers could be arrested on misdemeanor charges. The city of Los Angeles, which passed its ordinance in 2018, has been sued over its “no-vending zone” — tourist-friendly areas such as Dodger Stadium and Hollywood Bowl where city officials contend vendors will add to congestion.
Ritu Mahajan Estes of Public Counsel, which represents the vendors suing Los Angeles, said the law firm supports the county’s ordinance, which doesn’t have any significant no-vending zones.
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She said there were some small tweaks she’d like to see: namely nixing the requirements on distancing. Under the draft ordinance, sidewalk vendors cannot be within 500 feet of a day-care nor farmers market.
“It’s not perfect, but it has a lot of good things,” she said.
Other vendors said they worried about how much it could end up costing them to get licensed. The department says it would need to set the registration fee at $604 to offset the regulatory program costs. Officials say they don’t plan to charge the first year and have found funding that will allow them to charge $100 annually through mid-2028.
Many of the vendors warn that a fee of $600 — if it came to fruition years later— would be a death knell to their business.
“Rent is high. Food is high. The cost of living is high,” Alfredo Gomez, a street vendor in East Rancho Dominguez, told the board through an interpreter. “Please, look at the cost, the fees.”
Vice President Kamala Harris brought her abortion rights tour to California on Monday, elevating the issue in a left-leaning state as Democrats nationwide warn that Republicans could enact a federal ban on the procedure if they take control of Congress on election day.
At an event at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose, Harris applauded the state for having some of the nation’s strongest abortion access protections but rallied California voters to remain “vigilant” and to take the issue seriously in congressional races in November.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” said Harris, who has also traveled to Virginia and Wisconsin to rally for reproductive rights ahead of the election. “Let’s understand: None of us can afford to sit back and think, ‘Thank God we’re in California.’”
The vice president’s visit to the liberal Bay Area comes as Democrats hammer the issue in campaigns to flip some of the state’s Republican-held districts in order to gain control of the House of Representatives. With several potential toss-up districts, California is considered pivotal to the Democratic Party’s goal.
Likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has taken credit for and applauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade but has stopped short of endorsing a national abortion ban. Abortion-rights advocates do not trust Trump and fear that the continuance of a Republican-majority House could risk the loss of more reproductive healthcare protections, including access to birth control.
On Monday, Harris portrayed abortion access as a personal freedom that is merely the tip of the iceberg, warning that if empowered, Republicans could also target LGBTQ+ and voting rights. She attempted to cut through deep divisions over the issue based on religious beliefs and focused on policies in red states that do not allow abortion exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do with her body,” Harris said to applause, calling for a majority to be elected to Congress who “simply agree it’s not the government’s right” to prohibit reproductive healthcare.
Democratic California Sens. Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined Harris at Monday’s event, a show of force as Democrats focus on abortion rights in their attempt to hold the White House and win congressional control.
Becerra, who planned to meet with OB-GYN doctors and medical students at the University of California San Francisco following Monday’s event, said that if Democrats regain control of the House and President Biden is reelected, abortion rights nationwide can be restored.
“All I know is that we all gotta be in this one,” Becerra said. “There is nothing we can leave in our pocket.”
Monday’s event, also attended by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, was repeatedly disrupted by protesters calling for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire. Before being escorted out of the building, protesters chanted that Harris was “complicit in genocide”; in attempts to drown them out, her supporters chanted, “Four more years.”
Harris and Biden, running for a second term, have framed the future of abortion as a fundamental freedom at stake in the election.
California voters in 2022 approved a measure that enshrined reproductive rights in the state Constitution; since then, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed laws that solidify the state as a “safe haven” for doctors and patients.
Under California law, law enforcement agencies are prohibited from helping with out-of-state abortion investigations. California has also moved to broaden the types of providers that can perform abortions and opened training to out-of-state doctors living under “hostile” laws.
Abortion rights advocates fear that the continuance of a Republican-majority House could risk the loss of more healthcare protections. Nearly two dozen states have limited abortion access or banned it altogether.
Last week, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California released a “burn book” that targets a dozen congressional candidates, including Reps. John Duarte (R-Modesto) and David Valadao (R-Hanford), for their voting records on abortion legislation.
“The future of abortion is very much going to be determined over the next 12 months, including in California,” Sue Dunlap, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, told The Times in an interview.
Dunlap said she is concerned about voter fatigue on the issue because of California’s long-held abortion rights protections.
“We don’t get there if we don’t win in California,” Dunlap said. “We’re not living in a country or a world where California exists in and of itself. We have to take these threats seriously.”
The demise of Oakland’s only In-N-Out restaurant due to increasing crime could be the last straw for community members — and possibly a blessing in disguise for local leaders who’ve been pleading for help.
This week, In-N-Out announced that the burger joint near Hegenberger Road, a main route to and from the Oakland International Airport, would close its doors in March.
“Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our customers and associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies,” Denny Warnick, chief operating officer for the company, said in a statement.
Some Oakland residents believe the crime problem persists at least in part because of Mayor Sheng Thao.
The group Oakland United to Recall Sheng Thao, led by a former Alameda County Superior Court judge whom Thao removed from the city’s Police Commission in June, has faulted the mayor for not declaring a state of emergency on crime, not replacing the police chief she fired in February, and missing the application deadline last year when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office offered more than $276 million to cities and counties to fight retail thefts.
On Friday, the group published a notice of intent to recall and plans to start collecting signatures in early February for a petition to put a recall on the ballot. The mayor did not respond to the notice by the legal deadline, the group said on X, formerly Twitter, so the recall petition won’t include any response from Thao to the group’s criticisms.
“After missing the deadline to apply for a retail theft grant worth millions of dollars to assist Oakland in battling crime, she has now failed once again to respond to voters as to why she should not be recalled,” Seneca Scott, spokesperson for the group, said on X. “Mayor Thao must realize that there is no defense for the indefensible. The current state of Oakland is deplorable, and she is directly at fault.”
In a statement to The Times, Thao said, “As mayor, I have prioritized this critical gateway to Oakland and surged police presence and employed technology to deter and respond to criminal behavior.”
Thao said the added public safety resources have led to a reduction in property crimes along the Hegenberger corridor.
“However, more is necessary, and I will be working with regional and state leaders to protect this tourist gateway into Oakland,” she said.
Others in the city believe the current situation is largely the result of state or local laws that they believe impede enforcement, such as Proposition 47 from 2014 and Proposition 57 from 2016. In a statement, the Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce said In-N-Out’s decision to close its Oakland outlet is sad, but departures like that are happening more and more in their communities.
“Many businesses small and large in the state are suffering from ongoing crime, and a lot of times the police have their hands tied and can’t do much because of a city ordinance or laws that end up protecting criminals instead of the victims,” the statement said.
The chamber said,”when the city, state leaders and prosecutors do very little to stop crime, this is the end result, businesses close and people start giving up.”
Several In-N-Out restaurants have been relocated over the course of its 75-year history. But the Oakland location will be the first the company has had to close.
“We feel the frequency and severity of the crimes being encountered by our customers and associates leave us no alternative,” Warnick said, despite the location being “busy and profitable.” The company can’t ask its customers or employees “to visit or work in an unsafe environment,” Warnick said.
The move drew headlines across the country, in part because it reinforced the argument by some conservative pundits that the liberal Bay Area is being destroyed by crime. The politics surrounding the closure became so intense, the largest group of In-N-Out aficionados on Facebook decided to ban posts about the Oakland closure, SFGate reported.
In an interview, Oakland City Councilmember Treva Reid conceded that her district is reeling from rampant crime, but said she regrets that this caused the company to close its doors. It wasn’t the first, as many local businesses have had to close their operations.
Reid has been dealing with the problem since she took office in January 2021.
What should be a welcoming economic hub for locals and tourists coming into the city from the airport is instead a place where “you have to look all around you when you’re pumping gas,” Reid said.
The community “lives in the midst of all the disparities that you can imagine [and] we carry the weight of that in this district,” she said.
For the last two years the councilmember has been calling on local, regional and state partners to create a regional interagency public safety task force because the current siloed approach isn’t addressing the problem.
The councilmember’s office has been wrestling with the issue from different angles, including adding more foot patrols, securing a commitment from the California Highway Patrol to dedicate overtime hours to the area, increasing efforts to suppress burglaries, and obtaining $1 million for community safety ambassadors.
Reid said the district saw a 40% reduction in crime, and yet “you’ll hear from businesses that it’s not enough.” The councilmember doesn’t contradict them.
“People are showing up in this corridor like [committing crimes] is their everyday job,” she said. “They’re clocking in and clocking out and wreaking havoc in between.”
In bimonthly meetings, Reid gets about 75 business owners at the table with department leaders, faith leaders, the neighborhood council, the police department and the sheriff’s department to figure out what can be done.
“We are a force multiplier of advocacy, to put a demand on our city and county local leaders to get the resources into this corridor to make it look clean and beautiful … and tackle this crime issue,” she said.
In 2023, auto burglaries in the area dropped 23% from the previous year’s total due in part to additional resources deployed by the Oakland Police Department from July through December.
Against this backdrop, Oakland’s 700-person police department has been operating with a vacuum at the top since last February, when Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong was fired for mishandling police misconduct cases. At the end of 2023, the Oakland Police Commission presented Thao with three potential candidates, and she rejected all of them.
Tim Gardner, co-founder of the online publication Oakland Report, criticized the decision to fire Armstrong, saying Armstrong fostered relationships and trust with the community. Thao, he said, has lost that trust.
He’s appealed to the City Council to establish a task force dedicated to improving public safety, with regular reports to the community to track its progress. The council didn’t bite.
“[Councilmember Reid] was the most engaged and responsive of the council members, all the others kind of wanted to avoid it,” he said. “Because to put together a task force that is dedicated to the safety problem, would kind of be an admission that you have a problem.”
Even though Gardner doesn’t live in Reid’s district, he said residents throughout the city need to hold their local leaders accountable to do more to ensure public safety. He said what affects one district, affects them all.
Reid is trying to create a different kind of task force, a regional one that would be held accountable for the situation in her community. In the short term, she said, many people are reaching out to help.
She said she hopes they’ll stay long after the spotlight cast by In-N-Out’s departure fades.
When the California Housing Finance Agency offered no-interest, no-monthly-payment loans in the spring to help lower-income residents come up with a down-payment and fees to buy their first home, the entire budget of nearly $300 million was gobbled up in only 11 days.
Lawmakers then steered an additional $225 million into the program during the state budget negotiations last year, and CalHFA is aiming to award those funds this spring. But there won’t be a mad dash for cash this time — instead of handing out the loans on a first-come, first-served basis, the state will choose qualified applicants by lottery.
The program has also tightened its requirements, requiring applicants not just to be non-homeowners, but also to have parents who are not currently homeowners. The point is to focus the program more tightly on Californians most in need of the state’s help.
About 2,100 of the loans were granted before the money ran out in April, said Eric Johnson, a CalHFA spokesperson. Since then, home sales have cooled in California as interest rates climbed above 7%.
Limited to covering the down payment and closing costs on a first home, the California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loans max out at $150,000 or 20% of the home’s purchase price, whichever is smaller. They’re treated as second mortgages, but require no payments of any kind until the home is refinanced, resold or its first mortgage is paid off, at which point the state loan must be repaid in full.
What makes the loans unusual — and attractive — is that they don’t accrue interest. Instead, their value rises over time with the value of the home. When a Dream for All loan comes due, the borrower repays the principle plus a percentage of the increase in the home’s value that matches the percentage of the purchase price covered by the loan. If the home doesn’t increase in value, nothing is added to the Dream for All loan.
For example, if the Dream for All loan covered 18% of the purchase price and the borrower sells the home for $100,000 more than they paid for it, the borrower would have to repay the Dream for All loan plus 18% of $100,000, or $18,000. Borrowers with incomes of 80% or less of the county’s median income get an additional break, paying a smaller percentage of the increase in value.
Aspiring homeowners can’t apply for the loans just yet, but they can work with participating lenders on the paperwork required to obtain one. The program will start accepting applications online in April, Johnson said.
Who can obtain a Dream for All loan?
To meet the definition of a first-time, first-generation homeowner, the borrower must not have held a stake in a house in the United States in the last seven years. Also, their parents may not currently hold a stake in a home. If the parents are deceased, they may not have owned a home at the time of their death. The program is also open to any Californian “who has at any time been placed in foster care or institutional care,” CalHFA says in the program manual.
If there is more than one buyer involved, at least one must be a current California resident, and at least one must be a first-generation home buyer. Borrowers must also be U.S. citizens or noncitizens authorized to be in the country, and they must make the home they buy their main residence within 60 days after purchasing it.
The annual income limit for qualified borrowers is 120% of the area median income, which varies from county to county. For example, it’s $155,000 for borrowers in Los Angeles County, $202,000 in Orange County and $195,000 in Ventura County.
How do you apply?
The first step, Johnson said, is to work with a lender that’s participating in the program to obtain a prequalification letter. The lender’s role is to make sure that you’re qualified for the Dream for All program, not necessarily for a loan. Yet before issuing a letter, the lender will check your credit report and debt-to-income ratio to determine how large of a loan you could potentially afford, so your financial health will be a factor.
You can find a list of lenders participating in the Dream for All program at the CalHFA website.
The state will open an online portal in the first week of April for applicants to submit their prequalification letters, Johnson said. One reason to give the public a few months to prepare before applications can be filed, he said, was to allow people time to improve their credit scores or take other steps needed to obtain a prequalification letter.
How will applicants be chosen?
CalHFA will accept prequalification letters for about a month, Johnson said, and they’ll all be treated equally regardless of when they arrive during that period. After reviewing the letters to make sure the applicants are qualified, the agency will hold a lottery to select which borrowers will receive vouchers for the Dream for All loans.
The total budget for the program is enough for about 1,670 loans of $150,000. Johnson said many borrowers will take out smaller amounts, so the program expects to support 1,700 and 2,000 loans.
What happens after you receive a voucher?
Getting approved for a Dream for All loan doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to buy a house. You’ll still have to find one for sale that you can afford, persuade the owner to choose your bid, and then qualify for the mortgage loan from a bank, credit union or other lender.
With a voucher in hand, however, you’ll be able to make a substantial down payment, which translates to lower monthly mortgage payments.
California’s lawsuit against Huntington Beach, which accused the city of defying state efforts to ease the housing crisis, appears to be back on a fast track after the suit was temporarily halted by a Superior Court judge in November.
A three-judge panel at California’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeal instructed a lower court Thursday that Huntington Beach’s status as a charter city did not stop the state from seeking a rapid hearing on its lawsuit. Charter cities adopt a voter-approved set of governing rules that give them more say over local affairs.
The lawsuit, brought by Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Department of Housing and Community Development, alleges that the city violated state law by rejecting a plan to provide enough houses and apartments to meet the region’s expected population growth.
Thursday’s action did not decide the merits of the state’s case against Huntington Beach. Instead, it paves the way for the case to continue on an expedited basis, unless the city can persuade the courts to halt the lawsuit for other reasons.
Although numerous cities have been slow to increase their housing supplies, Huntington Beach has drawn fire repeatedly from state officials because it has pointedly refused to follow state laws that address the housing crisis.
Triggering the latest battle, Huntington Beach’s council voted in March against a proposal to zone for roughly 13,400 additional housing units — the number assigned to the city by the Southern California Assn. of Governments in 2021. Under state law, cities have to revise the housing element of their general plans periodically to comply with a “regional housing needs assessment” done by intergovernmental groups such as SCAG.
The day after state officials filed an early version of its current lawsuit, Huntington Beach sought protection in federal court. In that case, the city claims the state-mandated regional housing needs assessment and its additional housing demands usurp Huntington Beach’s authority as a charter city, in violation of the California Constitution. It also argues that the mandates violate the city’s rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 1st and 14th Amendments, as well as the Commerce Clause.
For the record:
7:50 p.m. Jan. 19, 2024A previous version of this story said a federal judge rejected the state’s lawsuit. The ruling was against the city’s suit.
Huntington Beach persuaded San Diego County Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal in November to put the state’s lawsuit on hold until after the city’s federal lawsuit could be decided. Shortly thereafter, a federal judge rejected the city’s lawsuit, saying the city had no standing to sue. Huntington Beach has since taken its case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Thursday, the state 4th Circuit panel wrote that by state statute, “charter cities are exempt from some requirements of state planning and zoning law,” but “like all other cities, charter cities must adopt general plans with the mandatory elements specified by state law, including a housing element.”
It went on to say that state law gives top priority to lawsuits against a city’s general plan, obligating the court to hold a hearing within 120 days if requested.
In a statement Thursday, Bonta said, “Today the Court of Appeal affirmed that every city will be held to the same standard…. No one, including Huntington Beach, is exempt from following the law. We’ll continue to use every legal tool available to hold those who break state housing laws accountable.”
Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael E. Gates, however, said the appeals court misread state law. “We will continue to challenge any ruling that applies state law to charter cities that do not apply to charter cities,” he said in an interview.
Bacal has set a hearing for Jan. 26 on Bonta’s motion to let the state’s lawsuit proceed. Gates said Bacal “could continue the stay on other bases,” or she could lift the stay and have the two sides start litigating.
Despite the Iowa caucuses taking place 1,700 miles away from California — and the temperature being much colder here — the Golden State, its elected leaders and its policies were a constant target in the lead up to the first presidential nominating contest in the nation Monday.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) could be a “hedge fund maven,” given how much money she has made in the stock market while in office, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Iowans. He accused GOP rival Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, of telling more lies and being “more liberal than Gavin Newsom.” Haley said she is as afraid of a Kamala Harris presidency as she is of another term for former President Trump.
Bashing California, one of the most liberal states in the nation, is a grand tradition in the GOP. But Republican presidential candidates may be targeting the state and its politicians more this cycle because they are a better target than President Biden.
“Biden isn’t as motivating a villain as other Democrats might be. So the Republican candidates are essentially running a negative campaign against California,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.
He pointed to DeSantis’ attack on Haley during a debate last week as proof.
“The very worst thing Ron DeSantis could think of to say about Nikki Haley during the debate was that she might be more liberal than Gavin Newsom,” Schnur added. “For an Iowa Republican — or any Republican for that matter — that’s an absolutely terrifying concept.”
California was once a Republican stronghold, launching the political careers of Presidents Nixon and Reagan. But conservative attacks on the state have ramped up in the decades since Reagan left office.
In 2002, former President George H.W. Bush even apologized for referring to American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh as “some misguided Marin County hot-tubber.” By 2012, California was the most disliked state of any in the nation, according to poll of Americans by Public Policy Polling. About 44% of those surveyed said they viewed the state unfavorably.
Today, GOP fundraising appeals bleat about the state’s residents — especially Hollywood celebrities and tech billionaires — fueling Democratic campaigns, despite the fact that the state also provides an outsize amount of political donations to Republican candidates.
This electoral cycle, DeSantis compared Haley to Newsom, whom he debated in November, at a CNN face-off in Des Moines last week.
DeSantis brought up Pelosi while lamenting the lack of rules on members of Congress while campaigning at Jethro’s BBQ in Ames.
“I just think we have a problem with Congress … they’re almost detached from the people. They live under different rules,” he said, adding that he has not traded stocks since being elected to office and compared himself to Pelosi. “They make a killing in the market … and I don’t think the congressmen should be able to be doing the stock trades. I think we need to reform that.”
Haley raised Harris, the current vice president and former U.S. senator and state attorney general, as she discussed why she believes Trump should not be reelected president.
“Y’all know it, chaos follows him. And we can’t be a country in disarray and have a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos because we won’t survive it,” she told supporters at an event space in Ankeny. “You don’t defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. And the other thing we need to think about: We can never afford a President Kamala Harris.”
California should overhaul its fiscal situation and policies before questioning why Iowa should have such an important role in selecting the nation’s presidential nominees, said former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who has family connections to California and has spent substantial time in the state.
“Maybe you ought to get your housein order. California has got the biggest deficit and California is moving in the wrong direction,” Branstad said in an interview. “California has got so much going for it. It’s a beautiful state, it has got great weather and all that stuff. But now people are leaving because of the tax burden and the hostility and all the regulations.”
No matter the results of the Iowa caucus on Monday night, new polling suggests that Republicans vying for the presidential nomination face the equivalent of a brick wall on Super Tuesday, in the form of former President Trump.
In California, one of 15 states holding Republican primaries on March 5, two-thirds of voters considered likely to take part in the Republican primary said they would cast their ballot for Trump, according to the latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. That’s up from an already dominant 57% in October.
The poll, taken Jan. 4-8, suggests that California conservatives could provide a significant boost to Trump’s efforts to clinch his party’s nomination early in the primary season, despite his relatively light presence in early primary states.
This year’s primary is the first under new “winner-take-all” rules set last summer by the California Republican Party, which allocate all 169 delegates — the most of any state — to a candidate who wins more than 50% of the vote.
California’s delegation accounts for nearly 14% of the delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination.
“It’s now a different ballgame, and it certainly benefits Trump if he can follow through on these numbers,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS poll. “If Trump carries California, he’s a long way toward securing the nomination.”
Previously, Republican presidential candidates received three delegates for each congressional district they won in California, meaning several candidates could make gains in the Golden State.
Trump holds similarly large leads in several other Super Tuesday states, according to recent polls. All told, just over one-third of the delegates to the GOP convention will be settled that day. Trump’s strategists hope to win enough of them to put the nomination out of contention at that point, which would be before any of the four criminal trials he faces are scheduled to begin.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is now Trump’s closest competitor in California, but she is running a distant second place, with support from 11% of likely voters, the new poll found.
Haley backers hope that a strong showing in Iowa coupled with a possible win in New Hampshire later this month could give her enough momentum to truly challenge Trump for the nomination.
The poll suggests why that will be so difficult. She performs best among the relatively small segments of California Republicans who described themselves as politically moderate or liberal and those with a postgraduate education. Among self-described “strongly conservative” voters, who play an outsize role in Republican primaries, 5% back her.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in February of last year was leading Trump in California, is “falling like a stone,” DiCamillo said. DeSantis is now the choice of 8% of the state’s likely Republican voters.
The general election is a different story. The outcome of the race has been clouded by Trump’s legal battles, President Biden’s sinking popularity among younger voters and Latinos, and the presence of third-party and independent candidates, including progressive activist Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The poll suggests that support for Biden in California continues to be tepid, despite the state’s deep-blue politics.
Half of California voters have a favorable view of Biden, while 48% say their view is unfavorable. His job approval among all registered voters — 44% approve and 52% disapprove — hasn’t moved significantly from October, when, for the first time, a majority of Californians disapproved of Biden’s job performance.
“He’s underwater, which is not a great place to be in a blue state,” DiCamillo said.
Biden’s support has eroded more among some voter groups, including Latinos.
Democrats have a 2-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans among Latinos in California, DiCamillo said. But the poll found that just 38% of likely Latino voters in California have a favorable view of Biden. That number falls to 34% among Latinos for whom Spanish is their dominant language, a group that in past elections has tended to be more Democratic than other Latinos.
Biden is also struggling to retain the support of young voters. Just 4 in 10 likely voters younger than 30 have a positive view of Biden, compared with 6 in 10 likely voters older than 75.
“Those are big changes, and they’re typically a very key Democratic constituency,” DiCamillo said.
Asked about a hypothetical five-candidate field that includes West, Kennedy and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the poll found that Biden would hold a 16-point lead over Trump in California, 47%-31%, significantly less than his 30-point victory margin in 2020. The poll found 6% support for Kennedy, 2% for West, and 1% for Stein, while 12% of likely voters remained undecided.
In a head-to-head contest with no third-party candidates, Biden’s lead over Trump would increase to 19 points, 56%-37%, with 7% undecided, the poll found. If Vice President Kamala Harris were the Democratic nominee, she would beat Trump in the state by an almost identical margin, 55%-37%.
Biden would also beat Haley in California, 51%-34%, but with 16% of voters undecided, the poll found.
Younger voters’ and Latinos’ souring on Biden is not unique to California. In some swing states, where the contest is much closer, polls have found Biden trailing Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups.
But the mixed reception for Biden’s job performance is better than how voters in California see Trump: 34% positively, 63% negatively, including 58% whose view of the former president is “strongly unfavorable.”
Kennedy, who is running as an independent, has clocked double-digit support in some polls of swing states. That isn’t the case in California, where he is polling at 6% among likely voters.
Kennedy worked as an environmental lawyer in New York for years, but now lives part-time in Los Angeles with his wife, actor Cheryl Hines. He has played up his California ties since he launched his campaign, recording videos at the Venice Boardwalk and in the Santa Monica Mountains and hosting fundraisers with Westside yoga teachers.
That appeal hasn’t seemed to have worked in California, where his approval rating is 31%, the poll found.
Nearly two-thirds of California Democrats report disliking Kennedy, who spent decades as a Democrat and ran as a Democrat in the presidential primary until he launched his independent bid in October.
“Republicans are much more positive in their views of Kennedy” than Democrats or voters with no party preference, DiCamillo said. “It’s really interesting.”
The poll found that 50% of California Republicans have a strongly favorable or somewhat favorable view of Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense.
Among conservative voters, Kennedy is the second most popular political figure, following Trump, suggesting that he could be an option for disaffected Republicans.
West, who launched an independent bid for the presidency in October, is far less known among California voters than Kennedy. The poll found 15% of likely California voters with a favorable opinion of the progressive activist, while 27% say they see him unfavorably, and 58% don’t have an opinion.
The Berkeley IGS poll was conducted Jan. 4-8 online among a random sample of 8,199 registered voters, including a weighted sub-sample of 4,470 likely primary voters and 1,351 likely Republican primary voters.
The results were weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, so estimates of the margin of error may be imprecise; however, the results have an estimated margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction for the full likely voter sample and 3.5 percentage points for the Republican primary sample.
Supporters say expanding the program to include wine and liquor bottles, which was authorized with the passage of Senate Bill 1013 in 2022, will help augment California’s recycling efforts and divert more waste that otherwise might wind up in a landfill.
“Adding wine and spirits to California’s Beverage Container Recycling Program cuts waste and pollution while providing more material for manufacturers to make new products as part of California’s circular economy,” Rachel Machi Wagoner, director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, said in a statement.
Starting this year, anyone purchasing wine or liquor will be charged an additional 5 cents for bottles less than 24 fluid ounces in volume and 10 cents for larger bottles. Other containers, such as plastic pouches, bags-in-a-box or cartons will be subject to an additional 25-cent charge. Prices in stores will be updated to reflect the increases.
For context, a common size for wine and liquor bottles is 750 ml — or a bit more than 25 fluid ounces.
The additional charges will offset the California Redemption Value paid out when these containers are recycled in the state.
Certain beverage containers made of glass, plastic, aluminum and bi-metal — such as beer bottles, soda cans and water bottles — were already included in the program.
CalRecycle estimates the expansion will lead to an additional 1.1 billion bottles being recycled in the state annually.
“With SB 1013 we can increase the recycling rates of millions of bottles that would otherwise wind up in our landfills or be illegally discarded,” state Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) said in a statement after the bill passed through the California Legislature.
An estimated 491 billion cans and bottles have been recycled in California since 1988 under the Beverage Container Recycling Program, including a record 19.5 billion in 2022, according to CalRecycle.
“One of the great things about glass is that it is 100% infinitely recyclable,” said Nigel Dart, vice president of Gallo Glass Co., in a video released by CalRecycle.
The American experiment with constitutional democracy is in grave peril. If Donald Trump becomes president again, fighting to preserve U.S. constitutional democracy through his second term will require the courage, commitment, and creativity of a broad prodemocracy coalition.
But the problem is not merely Trump. The U.S. Constitution itself contributes to the country’s crisis. As David Frum observed in a recent issue of The Atlantic, “If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote” but rather because our system for selecting the president “has privileged a strategically located minority, led by a lawbreaking president, over the democratic majority.” America must fight the immediate threat, but it must also go beyond that and stop this problem at its core: addressing once and for all the aspects of the Constitution that enable an authoritarian leader to remain within striking distance of the presidency.
The original Constitution was written when democracy meant something radically different than it does today. Over time, Americans have amended the Constitution to make it more democratic, but shortcomings remain. The most significant, in our view, are the hardwired constitutional structures that are inimical to any modern understanding of democracy: the Electoral College, which could put Trump in office without majority support for a second time, and the equal allocation of two seats in the Senate to each state (an arrangement that gives a Wyoming voter 70 times more senatorial clout than a Californian). Reforming those structures would get the country much closer to the one-person, one-vote democratic ideal.
In 1787, few considered the one-person, one-vote principle to be foundational to democratic republican governance. Now it’s axiomatic. In American law, the principle traces its origins to a Supreme Court decision called Reynolds v. Sims, decided almost 60 years ago in an opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren. “Legislators,” the Court noted, “represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.” As Chief Justice Warren explained, once you see voters, not geographic units, as the source of democratic legitimacy, it quickly follows that “a majority of the people of a State could elect a majority of that State’s legislators.”
One person, one vote is a standard principle structuring democratic republics around the world. Contemporary commentators on the left and right espouse it. And yet, none of the three branches of the federal government has its members chosen in a manner consistent with this principle. The president is elected through an Electoral College system that encourages campaigns to ignore most states and that sometimes grants the presidency to a candidate who loses the overall vote, the Senate is grossly malapportioned, and the members of the Supreme Court are determined by those two flawed institutions together.
These antidemocratic structures have an odious historical pedigree. The Electoral College and the composition of the Senate resulted from compromises required to get slave states to agree to the Constitution by overweighting the influence of those states. And they continue to prevent the federal government from functioning effectively, particularly in areas where a coalition of senators representing a minority of the country can systematically block legislation. They also increase the risk of American democracy declining into authoritarianism. As the democracy scholars Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky have pointed out in this publication, “The U.S. Constitution, in its current form,”—meaning with the Senate and the Electoral College—“is enabling the radicalization of the Republican Party and exacerbating America’s democratic crisis.” They argue that these distorted institutions allow “the GOP to pursue extremist strategies that threaten our democracy without suffering devastating electoral consequences.”
Although the Senate and the Electoral College are not all that ails American democracy, they should be the focus of efforts to amend the Constitution. Some important improvements to our democracy (such as court reform) may be accomplished by enacting statutes; other valuable amendment ideas (such as taking money out of politics or enshrining a stronger right to vote) are worth pursuing but could be vulnerable to death by interpretation at the Supreme Court. Reforming the Senate and the Electoral College would change the underlying structures of our democracy. At the same time, because such reforms seek to rewire the basic constitutional machinery, they could not be accomplished by passing ordinary laws or persuading the Supreme Court to adopt better judicial doctrines; the only way to truly fix these structures is to amend the document.
This will not be easy. We are under no illusions about the difficulty of our country re-brokering key elements of the compromises that first created a union, however imperfect, more than 200 years ago. Indeed, one of us works for a democracy organization within which progressives, moderates, and conservatives all committed to fixing some of the core problems of American democracy have yet to reach consensus on these types of reforms.
But debating them openly is what a healthy 21st-century democracy should do, and those who would preempt that debate on the theory that our Constitution is unamendable both do our future a deep disservice and misread our history. The history of constitutional amendment can offer some encouraging—and concretely useful—insights for considering the Constitution’s future. Those insights teach that amending the Constitution is always impossible, except for when it suddenly becomes inevitable.
Why has the U.S. lived with this creaky constitutional architecture for so long? Part of the answer is that a quest to amend the Constitution is viewed as futile, and with good reason: The procedures for passing an amendment, as provided in Article V of the Constitution, set out a daunting path. First, a proposed amendment must win support from two-thirds of the members of both the House and Senate, and it must then be ratified by three-quarters of the states. (In theory, the proposed amendment can also come from a convention established by Congress, if two-thirds of the state legislatures petition for one, before being submitted to the states for ratification, but that process has never been used.) An effort to restructure the Senate faces an additional obstacle: The text of Article V blocks amendments that would deprive any state of its “equal Suffrage in the Senate” without its “consent” (although nothing in the text prohibits amending that provision).
In a sense, amending the Constitution’s antidemocratic structures presents a sort of constitutional catch-22: Because a supermajority in Congress and a supermajority among state legislatures are required to amend the Constitution, a determined political minority can block constitutional change. The conventional wisdom is that Republican politicians have the most to lose from more democratic structures, so they have an incentive and the means to shut down any change. Amendments are thus treated as a nonstarter. One prominent constitutional scholar, in an influential 2006 book lamenting the Constitution’s democratic deficits, referred to the amendment process as an “iron cage” confining the country to a dangerously outdated national charter.
These procedures are overwhelming, but are they truly insurmountable? We might find inspiration in the successful effort, just over 100 years ago, to make the Senate more democratic through Constitutional amendment.
By the turn of the 20th century, the Senate was a mess—a millionaires’ club, filled with people who had no business being there. In the words of one influential journalist of the time, the Senate’s corruption was so profound as to render it a site of “treason.” This was no surprise given the way senators were selected. The Constitution gave state legislatures—not voters—the power to choose senators. But this was a disaster. For one thing, state legislators often couldn’t agree on whom to send to Washington, and many of the resulting deadlocks meant they sent no one. One study found that from 1891 to 1905, “eight state legislatures failed to elect senators and were without full representation from periods of ten months to four years.” The alternative to a deadlock was in many cases a “stampede election,” in which a legislature would vote several dozen times without converging on a winner. As the clock ran out, exhausted and acrimonious legislators would settle on characters with little to recommend them in terms of individual merit or popular standing within their state. The resulting scenes were sometimes reminiscent of a Coen-brothers script. Consider this description of the Missouri legislature’s efforts, in 1905, to appoint a member to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body:
Lest the hour of adjournment should come before an election was secured, an attempt was made to stop the clock upon the wall of the assembly chamber. Democrats tried to prevent its being tampered with; and when certain Republicans brought forward a ladder, it was seized and thrown out of the window. A fist-fight followed, in which many were involved. Desks were torn from the floor and a fusillade of books began. The glass of the clock-front was broken, but the pendulum still persisted in swinging until, in the midst of a yelling mob, one member began throwing ink bottles at the clock, and finally succeeded in breaking the pendulum. On a motion to adjourn, arose the wildest disorder. The presiding officers of both houses mounted the speaker’s desk, and, by shouting and waving their arms, tried to quiet the mob. Finally, they succeeded in securing some semblance of order.
For years, people had proposed amending the U.S. Constitution to fix this mess. By the 1890s, the House of Representatives backed a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of senators. But passing this amendment meant persuading two-thirds of the Senate to renounce the system that had made them senators in the first place, and then persuading three-quarters of the states’ legislatures to surrender an important power that gave them huge political influence in their home state and in Congress. And so, for almost two decades, the Senate itself was the graveyard for efforts to reform the Senate.
And yet, we all know how this story ends: The Constitution changed, and now voters choose their senators directly. The reason for that transformation is the Seventeenth Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1913. How did reformers a century ago pull this off?
They started with hacks and work-arounds. In Oregon, where voters were especially fed up with the Senate’s dysfunction, they enacted a law in 1901 that set up an advisory “election” to choose senators. The election lacked direct legal force, but the idea was to influence the legislators by requiring that the results be read to state lawmakers before they selected a senator. This initial experiment failed miserably: After the first advisory election, the legislators still fought and deadlocked, eventually selecting someone who had received exactly zero votes in the popular “election.”
Undeterred, the voters of Oregon tried again. In 1904, they passed another popular initiative with a more muscular policy to tame its legislature: This time, when state legislators ran for office, they would have to choose between two possible position statements accompanying their name on the ballots. They had to either pledge to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in the (formally nonbinding) election, or else stipulate that they would remain “at liberty to wholly disregard that vote.” This did the trick. From then on, Oregon legislators threw their support behind the popular-vote winner (even when it meant crossing party lines), and over the next several years, enough states adopted this policy that it came to be known as “the Oregon system.”
Alongside those state-centered strategies, advocates looked for ways to increase pressure on the Senate by making inaction seem worse to senators than allowing an amendment to move forward. To do so, they focused on that unused alternative pathway to amending the Constitution that we mentioned earlier. Article V requires Congress to summon a “convention for proposing amendments” if asked to do so by two-thirds of the state legislatures. The prospect of opening the Constitution to potentially sweeping revision through a convention struck many onlookers at the time as a scary proposition. (It still does today.) Beginning in the 1890s, a group of state legislatures that favored direct elections began submitting petitions to Congress seeking an amendment convention. According to one early-20th-century scholar, “Some senators who were opposed to popular election saw in this proposal of a constitutional convention a portent so big that they preferred to submit the specific amendment that was desired rather than incur the risks that might be opened up if such a convention were called.” In other words, many senators concluded that the devil they knew (direct election of senators) was preferable to a potentially open-ended mandate to rethink the constitutional order.
And then in 1912, after four decades of glacial and uncertain progress, the country sprinted toward amendment: Congress sent the proposed Seventeenth Amendment to the states, and a year later, the amendment was ratified. Voters would get to choose their senators.
The Constitution’s process for amendment is intimidating. Devoting time and energy to that process can feel futile, even politically naive. Indeed, the editorial board of The Washington Post once declared that “we may properly regard the Constitution as practically unamendable.”
It made that pronouncement in 1899. Americans would go on to amend the Constitution 12 times over the next several decades. That surge of activity would include—in addition to providing for the democratic election of senators—amendments granting women the right to vote, establishing (and then disestablishing) Prohibition, ending the poll tax, lowering the voting age, and clarifying the rules of presidential succession.
The last time Congress proposed a constitutional amendment that was successfully ratified was in 1971, when Congress sent to the states the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, establishing a universal voting age of 18. More than half of the U.S. population today wasn’t even alive in 1971. What’s become clear in the intervening years is that the current document isn’t up to the job of protecting and promoting a vibrant 21st-century democracy.
In the midst of an ongoing democratic crisis—where a leading presidential candidate speaks openly of acting as a “dictator” and exacting retribution against his political opponents—investing in long-term reform can seem like a fantasy. Failing to do so, however, carries its own risks. Without attending to the architecture of American democracy, the inherent weaknesses at its foundation may, in time, cause it to come tumbling down.
With opening day speeches and other things out of the way, Colorado’s House lawmakers on Wednesday introduced their first 86 bills of the 2024 legislative session.
The first bill usually reflects the majority party’s priorities. This year, the first measure is notable because of its bipartisan bonafides.
Rep. Megan Lukens, a Steamboat Springs Democrat, is teaming up with Republican Rep. Rick Taggart of Grand Junction on the reauthorization of the Rural Jump-Start program under House Bill 24-1001. The tax incentive program, which has been in the statutes since 2016, encourages new businesses to move into rural, economically distressed areas.
In a statement on Wednesday, House Speaker Julie McCluskie of Dillon, who is a rural lawmaker, said the House’s first 10 bills “will create jobs in rural parts of our state and save Coloradans money on housing, health care and prescription drugs.”
“House Democrats will improve wildfire mitigation efforts, increase access to early childhood education, and expand our behavioral health workforce to build a stronger, safer and healthier Colorado,” she said, adding, “We are ready to get to work.”
The first three bills also received bipartisan backing.
Here is a look at a few other bills.
House Bill 1027 creates a sales tax holiday for back-to-school items and a tax exemption for baby and toddler products. Sponsored by Rep. Ty Winter, R-Trinidad, and Sen. Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, the bill has been assigned to the House Finance…
December should have been the most profitable month of the year for Liberty Ducks, a poultry farm in Sonoma County. Instead, the 31-year-old business was suddenly face to face with a possible shutdown.
“There was never going to be a good time for this to hit, but during the holidays was especially hard,” said Jennifer Reichardt of Liberty Ducks. The farm, she said, has been “crippled” by the outbreak.
In December, the farm was one of nine locations in Sonoma County infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu. As a result, poultry farmers in the county have been forced to destroy more than 1 million birds while trying to quarantine their flocks to curb the outbreak.
The outbreak has been ongoing since 2022, but its sudden surge in December has meant restaurants in the winery-rich region are seeing their supplies of poultry dwindle. Experts warn this may only be the beginning of a bird flu spike in California .
“Restaurants are looking for product,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation.
The lingering disease has yet to affect prices or supply across the state as a whole, Mattos said, given the poultry available from other counties and outside the state. But restaurants, stores and wholesalers who prefer to use local sources are seeing their supply dwindle.
“Everyone is looking to see what they can do to prevent it even more,” Mattos said.
Liberty Ducks supplies Bay Area restaurants and more than 200 wholesalers. But because the company’s locations are under quarantine, the farm can’t start new production, Reichardt said.
“Our business will be at a standstill for at least two months until the quarantine is lifted or we find other locations,” she said.
Poultry companies have been feeling the effects of the avian flu since February 2022, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture first detected the virus in commercial and backyard flocks.
Since then, more than 79 million birds across the U.S have been affected in 47 states. In California, the virus has affected 37 commercial and 22 backyard flocks, totaling 5.4 million birds, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Since the outbreak began, the avian pandemic has not gone by unnoticed by consumers either.
Last year, the outbreak helped make egg prices skyrocket across the country. According to the USDA, prices in California for a dozen large eggs jumped to $7.37 in January 2023, up from $2.35 the year before. The USDA said that while demand for eggs was surging in December 2022, the avian flu was cutting the supply; in the last week of that month, there were about 29% fewer eggs than at the beginning of 2022.
A higher incidence of the highly pathogenic avian influenza is common during this time of year because of the migratory patterns of wild birds, which carry the virus as they fly from the Arctic to California, said Dr. Maurice Pitesky, associate professor at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine whose research focuses on the disease.
Unfortunately, the same climate and geography that makes poultry farming popular in some areas is what draws in wild birds like ducks and geese, carrying the flu with them into the state. The virus can pass from one animal to another through saliva, mucus or feces.
“Wildlife can bring this virus into their farms because the virus is so infectious,” Pitesky said.
Farmers have tried to keep their flocks safe through bio-security practices, such requiring clean footwear before workers enter a farm to keep feces from contaminating the area under the shoes, Mattos said. Several big farms also try to reduce risk by prohibiting their workers from owning backyard flocks.
This past month, however, poultry farmers in Northern California have been particularly hit by the virus.
“I’m not sure if it’s a more virulent strain or what,” Mattos said. “The industry expects it to come and show up, we just didn’t expect it to be in big numbers.”
According to the USDA, 11 flocks in California have tested positive for the virus in the past 30 days, affecting more than 3.3 million birds.
In Sonoma County, the effect has been significant.
Nine poultry in sites in southern Sonoma County have been infected with the virus, requiring more than a million birds to be euthanized to prevent further spread, according to the county.
On Dec. 5, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors declared a local emergency because of the disease. Flocks that have been infected have been put in quarantine, and county officials are hoping to curb the spread of the virus.
The flu’s effect in the county and region is still unclear, but officials are concerned that the consequences could ripple through affected farms, workers, restaurants and markets that rely on the farms’ eggs, meat and jobs.
A spokesperson for Sonoma County said officials have not yet done an economic impact study, but are focusing resources on containing the outbreak.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, five California counties — Fresno, Marin, Merced, San Joaquin and Sonoma — have active avian flu infections.
The flu could be especially damaging to businesses like Liberty Ducks that are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After COVID, we were already in such a tight financial space, this really could have been the final blow,” said Reichardt.
She and her brother set up a GoFundMe campaign to keep the business afloat, and have raised more than $184,000 so far.
“The community outreach is not only letting us continue on and help with cash flow, but also mentally gives us such a lift to fight on,” Reichardt said.
Some farms can also apply for federal compensation for the value of lost birds, but Mattos said it is not enough to cover what farmers could have made from their flocks.
For now, farmers and backyard flock owners are being urged to take precautions and keep their birds isolated from exposure.
And depending on this year’s rains, poultry farmers may be seeing just the first effects of the outbreak this year, Pitesky warned.
“If it’s a wet year, unfortunately, [wild birds] will probably stay here until April and May,” he said. “Most likely, they’ll be dealing with this for several more months.”
