A new California law barring licensed gun holders from carrying their firearms in many public places has once again been blocked — meaning it cannot be enforced — as legal challenges proceed in federal court.
The law bars concealed-carry permit holders and those with open-carry permits in more rural parts of the state from carrying their firearms into spaces that California lawmakers deemed “sensitive.”
The prohibited places include anywhere that sells and serves liquor; on public transportation and in many parking lots; at public gatherings, special events, parks, playgrounds, stadiums, arenas, casinos, medical facilities, religious and financial institutions; and in any other private commercial spaces where the owners have not explicitly posted a sign allowing guns.
Challengers to the law argue the list is so long that it essentially precludes them from leaving their homes with their weapons and makes their permits worthless — and diminishes their ability to defend themselves in public, a right that they say is guaranteed under the 2nd Amendment. (People without permits, who are not party to the lawsuit, generally cannot carry firearms anywhere in public in California.)
However, on Saturday, another 9th Circuit appellate panel issued its own order reversing the administrative panel and restoring the lower court’s judgment while the proceedings continue.
The latest order, issued by a court clerk without the names of the judges listed, puts the state law on ice once more as the case proceeds. The 9th Circuit appellate panel will be considering the state’s appeal, including during arguments in April.
A spokesperson in the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom called the latest decision “dangerous” in a statement, saying it “puts the lives of Californians on the line.”
“We won’t stop working to defend our decades of progress on gun safety in our state,” the spokesperson said.
Chuck Michel, an attorney for the gun holders suing the state over the law, applauded the ruling and said it preserves “the status quo” for responsible gun owners.
“Had this new law taken effect, it would reverse decades of allowing vetted and licensed [concealed-carry weapon] holders (but not the general public) to carry in places where the need for self-defense can be most acute,” Michel wrote in a statement.
“So the politicians’ ploy to get around the 2nd Amendment has been stopped for now,” he said. “Now we will focus on stopping it for good.”
The legal battle is one of many playing out in courts across the country in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen in 2022.
In Bruen, the high court held that strict limits on concealed-carry permits in states such as New York and California amounted to unconstitutional restraints on people’s 2nd Amendment right to self-defense.
The court also held that gun laws that aren’t deeply rooted in American history, or analogous to some historical law, are generally unconstitutional. Some gun laws — like those that have traditionally barred guns in sensitive places such as schools and courtrooms — remained valid, the court noted.
Last year, California lawmakers passed SB 2 in response to the Bruen decision and several mass shootings, including in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park. Lawmakers argued that the bill, sponsored by state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank), was permissible under the Bruen decision because it simply extended the list of places deemed sensitive under California law.
Gun holders sued in response, and won a victory on Dec. 20 when U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an injunction.
Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote that SB 2’s “coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.” He said SB 2 clearly clashed with the Bruen decision, and an injunction blocking it was warranted because the gun holders were likely to win their case against the state and would suffer “irreparable harm” if they weren’t allowed to carry their firearms in the meantime.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office appealed and asked for a stay to allow the state’s law to go into effect while the court case continued. An administrative panel of the 9th Circuit granted that stay, but now, with Saturday’s order, the law is once more blocked while the case proceeds.
On Jan. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the caseof Californian George Sheetz, who applied for a permit to put a manufactured house on his land in El Dorado County and got hit with a $23,420 traffic mitigation fee. Objecting to the lack of any connection between the dollar amount and his family’s actual impact on traffic in the area, Sheetz paid the fee but turned to the legal system. Sheetz vs. County of El Dorado, California, addresses just a small piece of the state’s housing crisis. Nonetheless, it will matter for millions of people unable to find affordable homes here and in many other states.
When “impact fees” are unmoored from the increased costs a city or county will incur because of a new house or development, the fees can do more than present someone with an unfair bill — they can also reduce housing construction. In a country where a shortage of homes has led to sky-high prices, this matters more than you might think.
Developers should pay their fair share, of course. If construction fees fail to cover the costs of the increased public services required by new development, elected officials and voters turn to other means to cover or avoid those costs. They may impose growth restrictions or other exclusionary zoning policies to block the building of new homes rather than accept projects that lead to higher taxes or degraded services.
We see pervasive evidence of this happening when localities adopt rules such as single-family zoning, minimum lot-size requirements and aesthetic requirements that ensure that only expensive housing, which generates higher property taxes, can be built.
Properly set impact fees offer a way for development to pay its way, and they reduce political pressure against necessary growth. Local studies have found that appropriately set fees are associated with increased construction in suburban areas.
But when fees are set at arbitrarily high levels, they disincentivize new home building and add to the country’s housing affordability challenges, causing strain for renters and new home buyers.
In 2013, the Supreme Court held that all permit fees must have an essential connection to the actual impact of a development on city or county services, and a roughly proportional price tag. This sensibly reduces the risk that fees will choke off development.
In some states, such as Florida, jurisprudence goes even further, requiring that fees fund only infrastructure that serves the specific developments they were levied on. Not coincidentally, Florida has seen its population grow more than twice as fast as the country as a whole, reflecting its openness to new homes and relatively fair prices compared with much of the rest of the country.
But in other states, including California, Maryland, Washington and Arizona, courts have carved out an exception to the Supreme Court’s proportionality principle, allowing higher fees if they are set by legislation. Sheetz’s case will test whether that exception is constitutional.
Part of the rationale for the carve-out is that voters have a remedy against excessive assessments at the ballot box. In theory, they can vote out the lawmakers who are responsible.
However, any claim that voters can and will actually do this is dubious. Housing developers are a small share of any electorate. Future home buyers or renters — those who need municipalities to incentivize, not discourage, home building — may not even vote or live in the jurisdiction when the fees are determined. On the other hand, the people who do vote are likely to be those who already own homes nearby, and they tend to resist growth: Their property increases in value if high fees keep the housing supply low.
The housing affordability crisis is real. Californians in particular should understand the simple calculus of supply and demand that is exacerbating homelessness and causing seven cities (or metro areas) in the state to rank among the 10 most expensive in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report. When and where state courts allow local politicians to cater to their wealthiest constituents, charge exorbitant impact fees and otherwise keep out new homes, the situation won’t improve.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on the El Dorado County fees in the first half of 2024. The legal case that all impact fees, no matter who sets them, should be subject to the same conditions is strong. And during a nationwide housing crisis, the economic case against state and local practices that worsen housing affordability and impede needed housing production is even stronger.
Charles Gardner is an attorney and research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily Hamiltonis a director of Mercatus’ Urbanity Project.
Although recent storms have thrashed the California coastline and boosted reservoir levels, the downpours have so far failed to deposit significant snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which experts say is in the grips of a severe, early season “snow drought.”
December’s powerful storms delivered super-sized waves and record-setting rainfall in California, but most of it fell in coastal areas, and almost none in the interior part of the state that is home to the Sierra, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA.
“In some cases there is literally no measurable snow on the ground at all,” Swain said during a briefing Tuesday. “What this means is that right now, as of today, snowpack is at or below all-time record-low numbers for the beginning of January, and I know that’s pretty alarming.”
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While there is still time for snowpack conditions to improve, the potential for a meager snow season is worrying. For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a third of the state’s supply of water. Sparse snowpack can also lead to drier, more fire-prone forests.
On Tuesday, state officials conducted their first snow survey of the season at Phillips Station, near South Lake Tahoe, where the ground was a patchy mixture of grass and powder. The monthly surveys in winter and spring are key to forecasting how the state’s resources will be allocated each year.
Snowpack at the location measured 7.5 inches, with a snow water content of 3 inches, said Sean de Guzman, manager of the California Department of Water Resources’ snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit. That amounts to just 30% of average for the date, and 12% of the average for April 1, when snowpack is typically at its deepest.
“The January snow survey is always our first big reveal of snow conditions for the year,” de Guzman said. “Last year on this date, we were standing on almost 5 feet of snow — so vastly different than what we are standing on here today.”
Officials walk through snowless patches while measuring the snowpack during the first media snow survey of the 2024 season at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. Statewide the snowpack is 25 percent of average, but significant snow is in the next seven day forecast for the Sierras.
(Fred Greaves/California Department of Water Resources)
Electronic readings from 130 stations across California indicate the snow water content statewide is just 2.5 inches, or 25% of average for the date, compared with 185% at the same time last year.
“While we are glad the recent storms brought a small boost to the snowpack, the dry fall and below average conditions today shows how fast water conditions can change,” de Guzman said.
Low precipitation and warm temperatures are causing snow drought conditions throughout the West, not just in the Sierra Nevada, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System. Other regions include the Northern Rockies and parts of the Lower Colorado River Basin and Rio Grand River Basin.
“Snow drought conditions will continue to evolve throughout the winter,” the NIDIS said on its website. “Early in the season, snow drought recovery can happen quickly. Recovery from snow drought in late winter and early spring, when snowpack is typically near peak, can be more difficult.”
Unlike a typical drought, which refers to a total lack of moisture, a snow drought refers to a deficit in the expected amount of snow, Swain said.
“You may actually see average to above-average precipitation and have average to above-average soil moisture, but have a abysmally low snowpack,” he said. “And that is potentially what we’re headed for this winter in some parts of California and the Southwest.”
Part of the challenge is that much of the state’s recent precipitation has fallen as rain instead of snow — a product of warmer conditions driven by El Niño and human-caused climate change. El Niño, a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific, arrived in June and is associated with hotter temperatures worldwide.
“We have seen a number of storms that probably would have been cooler — and been snowfall — that have been rainfall,” said Andrew Schwartz, director of UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab at Donner Pass, where snowfall currently measures 32% of average.
Sean de Guzman, right, Manager of the California Department of Water Resources Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit, and Anthony Burdock, Water Resources Engineer in Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecast Unit, measure snowpack during the first media snow survey of the 2024 season at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada.
(Andrew Nixon / California Department of Water Resources)
Data dating back to 1978 show notable trends in that regard, Schwartz said, with snowfall declining and rainfall increasing in every month except for February.
“This really shows us that our snow season is getting shorter,” he said. “We’re going to have to plan for shorter periods of snowpack, and the complications that may bring with our management of water resources.”
Indeed, portions of the state’s water infrastructure were designed for the slow trickle of snowmelt, not the rapid deluge of rain, according to state climatologist Mike Anderson. A more mixed regime will require new strategies and technology, such as forecast-informed reservoir operations and aerial mapping tools to better prepare for runoff, manage water releases from dams and “help the state adapt as we move into a warmer world,” he said.
There is good news, however. The recent storms helped replenish major reservoirs, which stand at 116% of average levels for the date, according to state data. California’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, are at 69% and 68% capacity, respectively.
What’s more, an incoming storm sequence is expected to bring a much colder conditions to California over the next 10 days, including several storms capable of dropping 6 to 12 inches of snow in the mountains, Swain said. That could move the state out of record-low territory by mid-January, although snowpack will likely still remain well below average.
“I don’t necessarily think this is going to be a good snow year — in fact it might end up being a pretty bad snow year — even if Central and Southern California do end up seeing above average precipitation overall this winter, which remains a distinct possibility, because it’s likely to be warm most of the time,” he said.
But there is still a long way to go. California’s water year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, with the majority of the state’s precipitation typically falling in January, February and March.
“We’re only about one-third of the way through the ‘big three’ months, and a lot can change,” said Anderson, the state climatologist.
Anderson noted that El Niño is only one of several factors that can drive conditions in California, including sub-seasonal climate patterns that can play a role in the types and temperatures of storms that hit the state.
De Guzman, of DWR, said the snow survey results “show that it’s really still too early to determine what kind of year we’ll have in terms of wet or dry, and there can be so many things that happen with our storm systems between now and April, when we should see our peak snowpack.”
He noted that state officials are simultaneously preparing for either extreme wet or extreme dry conditions, including shoring up flood infrastructure and coordinating with emergency response partners in hopes of avoiding a repeat of last year, which saw devastating flooding, levee breaches, road damage and fatalities driven by more than 30 atmospheric rivers.
“California saw firsthand last year how historic drought conditions can quickly give way to unprecedented, dangerous flooding,” read a statement from DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “Although El Niño does not guarantee an above average water year, California is preparing for the possibility of more extreme storms while increasing our climate resilience for the next drought.”
Seasonal outlooks from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration still favor warmer-than-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation in California through at least March, de Guzman said, noting “we still have a lot of season left.”
A new California law barring licensed gun holders from carrying their firearms into an array of public places took effect Monday despite an ongoing legal challenge to its legitimacy.
A federal district judge last month rejected major portions of the law as unconstitutional and issued an injunction blocking it from taking effect while gun holders challenge it in court. But a federal appeals court put a temporary hold on that injunction Saturday.
Whether the law will ultimately survive the court challenge and remain in place in the long run remains uncertain — but for now the state’s licensed gun holders must abide by it.
The law, known as Senate Bill 2, precludes licensed gun carriers from having their firearms at public gatherings and special events, in parks and playgrounds, in stadiums, arenas and casinos, in medical facilities, religious institutions and financial institutions, on public transportation and in many parking areas, among other spaces.
It also stops them from carrying their firearms anywhere that liquor is sold and consumed and in any other private commercial spaces where the owners have not explicitly posted a sign to the contrary.
The law applies to concealed-carry permit holders in major metropolitan centers such as Los Angeles. But it also affects open-carry permit holders in rural, less populated parts of the state.
State leaders and advocates for greater gun control say the restrictions are just common sense and only apply to “sensitive places” where guns have no business being. Many gun holders, including the plaintiffs in the case, allege the law is so onerous — the list of restricted spaces so long — that it essentially makes it impossible for them to carry their firearms outside their homes.
The law was passed by the California Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year in response to several mass shootings, including in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park, and a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 that reined in gun control measures nationally.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen held that strict limits on concealed carry permits in states like New York and California amounted to unconstitutional restraints on people’s right to self-defense, and that gun laws that aren’t deeply rooted in American history, or analogous to some historical law, are generally unconstitutional.
It also said that certain laws, including those that bar guns in sensitive places such as court rooms and schools, remained valid.
In response, California and other liberal states scrambled to devise new gun laws that comported with Bruen enough to survive new legal challenges. State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank) introduced SB 2 as a means of extending the list of “sensitive places” under California law. Gun holders sued in protest.
On Dec. 20, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney sided with the gun holders, writing that the law’s “coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”
Rather than a clever workaround to Bruen, Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the new law clearly clashed with it. He said an injunction blocking it was warranted because those suing the state were likely to win their case and would suffer “irreparable harm” if they weren’t allowed to carry their firearms in the meantime.
But on Dec. 22, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed an emergency motion asking the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to halt or “stay” Carney’s decision pending an appeal.
“A stay is necessary to allow the State to enforce the enjoined provisions of this statute, which the Legislature has determined will reduce gun violence in certain sensitive locations involving the exercise of other constitutional rights or that draw particularly vulnerable populations, like children,” Bonta’s office wrote.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit — comprised of judges Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Jay S. Bybee and Andrew D. Hurwitz — granted Bonta’s request, but noted the stay was administrative only and held no sway over another, forthcoming decision from the appellate court on the merits of the issue.
Rawlinson was appointed by President Clinton, Bybee by President George W. Bush, and Hurwitz by President Obama.
Newsom issued a statement praising the appellate panel’s temporary order and calling Carney’s ruling in the lower court “dangerous.”
“Californians overwhelmingly support efforts to ensure that places like hospitals, libraries and children’s playgrounds remain safe and free from guns,” Newsom said.
Chuck Michel, an attorney for the gun holders in the case, said Monday that he will be asking the appellate court for an expedited decision on the merits. He said he believes that decision will again block the new state law as an illegitimate “ruse” to get around Bruen.
He said every day the law is in effect harms his permit-holding clients.
“The people who have these licenses have them for a reason,” he said. “Some of them are in direct threat, and now they are limited in their ability to protect themselves and their families.”
While California lawmakers feel pressure to address concerns about crime, the murky and sometimes contradictory evidence of an increase in lawlessness has put legislators in a bind.
Recent studies show that retail theft has increased in some of California’s big cities — with shoplifting rates jumping nearly 50% in San Francisco since 2019 — while some rural and suburban areas of the state have seen a drop in those crimes.
Adding to the confusion, the National Retail Federation retracted a claim in an April report that said organized retail crime was responsible for $94.5 billion in missing merchandise nationwide in 2021. In reality, that number was discovered to be much lower.
Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who sits on a recently formed special committee to address retail theft, said the inconsistent information makes it difficult to assess the issue as lawmakers prepare to reconvene in January and draft proposed laws to combat the rash of highly publicized thefts.
“I am concerned the way social media is not fully representing the extent of the incidences of crime we are experiencing or the root cause of that crime,” Bonta said.
Some California prosecutors and business leaders blame the state’s “toothless” laws against nonviolent retail theft, saying the problem has grown worse because of the lack of serious consequences for offenders.
They want to see changes made to the decade-old ballot measure, known as Proposition 47, that classified as misdemeanors certain drug possession offenses and nonviolent property crimes that do not exceed $950 in value.
But civil rights advocates are skeptical about returning to a tough-on-crime approach.
“I think it’s difficult. The reality is public safety issues are easy issues to get quickly driven by hyperbole and fear,” said Lenore Anderson, co-founder and president of Alliance for Safety and Justice and co-author of Proposition 47. “That’s part of the reason we’ve struggled as a state.”
There have already been two hearings this monthto address this issue in Sacramento, one held by the bipartisan retail theft committee and the other by the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency that was asked by the Legislature to examine these issues. Some lawmakers expressed frustration about how to move forward without clear data.
“For people in my district, the one bill people know is Prop. 47. But there is a lot of misinformation around that,” said Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth), a member of the newly convened 11-member committee, which met for the first time in December to address these issues.
The criminal penalty for nonviolent retail theft that does not exceed $950 of merchandise is typically up to six months of jail time and no state prison time, but opponents assert that few serve their full sentences and some don’t show up to court. Critics also say that the measure doesn’t target repeat offenders.
Since 2019, shoplifting in San Mateo and San Francisco counties has increased 53% and 43%, respectively, the highest out of California’s 15 largest counties, according to Magnus Lofstrom, a policy director at the Public Policy Institute of California who detailed his report at a hearing this month before the Assembly Select Committee on Retail Theft.
A 2018 report from the PPIC found that recidivism rates decreased after Proposition 47 and that violent crime did not increase as a result of the measure.
But one leading organization of state prosecutors says that has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic distress caused by job losses and government shutdowns.
Social media posts and news coverage showing brazen shoplifters smashing windows and grabbing whatever items they can have fueled fears that the more lax punishments under Proposition 47 opened the door to more crime.
Rachel Michelin, the president of California’s Retail Assn. and a panelist at a hearing last week, supports revising Proposition 47 in a November ballot measure, saying “it’s not about putting people in jail.”
“Our goal is to stop people from stealing [and] to deter the behavior,” she said. “Right now, the perception is you can go into a store, pack your bag up with stuff and there won’t be a consequence.”
Jeff Kreshek, a senior vice president at Federal Realty Investment Trust, which he said owns 102 shopping centers nationally and across California, said the problem is more pervasive and pronounced in the Golden State “than any other place we have property.”
But when asked to provide data by lawmakers at last week’s hearing, he came up empty-handed.
“I asked 15 retailers for data [before this] and they couldn’t provide it. I realize it makes your job harder,” he told the committee. “My data is stores closing, retailers not being able to hire. Consumers telling us they don’t feel safe going out.”
Many speculate that data collection on these crimes is so scattered because not every incident is being reported and there are inconsistencies in how police agencies categorize the incidents.
Lynn Melillo, who sits on the board of the California Grocers Assn., said at the hearing held by the Little Hoover Commission this month that their “biggest” spending goes to security guards.
“It feels like there [are no consequences],” she said. “We feel we stand alone because we do call the police […] they’re not always responsive.”
Several lawmakers on the committee agreed that these crimes could be prevented once there are restrictions on selling stolen goods online.
A bill from Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) addressed this issue and went into effect this year. The law requires online marketplaces to request certain tax, payment and contact information from high-volume third-party sellers to limit the sale of stolen goods. It also authorizes the attorney general to penalize any sellers or platforms that violate the bill’s requirements.
The newly appointed Labor and Employment Committee chair, Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), said there “are still loopholes” in that law that need to be addressed.
“[That] is an area I really want to work on,” she said.
Kreshek of Federal Realty said regulating the sale of goods on platforms such as Amazon and Facebook Marketplace is “no small task.”
“But is that a part of a solution? Absolutely,” he said. “You need to take away the vehicle through which merchandise is sold. If you don’t make it harder to sell, you don’t resolve the problem.”
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber is resisting pressure from within the Democratic party to remove Donald Trump from the March statewide primary ballot due to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — arguing that, unlike the former Republican president, she feels obligated to follow the law.
Weber said she finds Trump’s “behavior and his actions, not just as a former president, but as a citizen of the United States, to be abhorrent and disturbing and an attack on democracy.”
“But at the same time, if I believe in this democracy that is there, I have to basically continue to abide by the rule of law, and for me not to do that, then I am no better than Trump,” Weber told The Times on Friday. “And I must be better than Trump.”
Weber said attorneys in her office have been working for months with the California attorney general’s office and lawyers for local cities and counties to determine whether there was any legal ground to remove Trump from the March 5 primary ballot due to his role in the Capitol insurrection after his loss in the 2020 presidential election. She said the California Constitution does not give her clear authority to take action and leaves the decision to the courts.
Weber was put in the hot seat after Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis sent her a letter Dec. 20 imploring her, the state elections chief, to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.” The letter drew mixed opinions among Democrats.
Weber responded a few days later, stating her commitment to place the sanctity of the electoral process over “partisan politics.”
“I’m not sure why the lieutenant governor says, ‘Use every means possible,’ because we have been doing that,” Weber said Friday. “I haven’t shared that information with her, because she hasn’t asked me.”
Trump critics have filed legal actions to force the secretary of state to remove him from the ballot, but none have succeeded, Weber said. Her office is closely monitoring any potential action from the U.S. Supreme Court.
This isn’t the first time Democrats have tried to keep Trump off the ballot in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 2019 law to require candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to appear on the presidential primary ballot, a requirement that was shot down by the California Supreme Court.
Newsom agrees with Weber
In a rare rebuke of the lieutenant governor, Newsom criticized the assertion that Trump should be removed from the ballot.
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy, but in California, we defeat candidates we don’t like at the polls,” Newsom said last week. “Everything else is a political distraction.”
Kounalakis is running to succeed Newsom in California’s 2026 gubernatorial election, and her letter to Weber was largely seen as a way to score political points among Democratic voters.
“In my conversations with some political consultants in recent days, there’s unanimous agreement that sending the letter was heavy-handed and unlikely to provide her with any significant political benefit,” said Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist.
Sragow said “long-standing political rules of engagement” suggest that such matters need to be adjudicated in the courts, and blatant efforts to intervene can come off as tone-deaf.
A bad precedent
Weber made the case that public trust in the voting process is more crucial than ever, and she wants to set “the correct precedent for future action.”
“If you do the loosey-goosey kind of interpretation and implementation, then you open us up as a state and a nation for all of us being vulnerable simply because we have an opinion and a point of view,” Weber said.
Close to a third of Republicans say they have a little or no confidence that votes in the Republican presidential primary and caucuses will be counted correctly, according to a recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That follows years of false claims by Trump that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by President Biden.
Weber said that barring Trump from California’s ballot could be perceived as purely political and embolden his base, and feeds his effort to undermine Democratic institutions.
“I’m very conscious of that it’s not about me, and I know what I would do, but when I’m gone, what would somebody else do? And what could they do?” Weber said. “I don’t want to open a door that is too ugly and that puts everybody at risk,” she said.
‘Complex legal issues’
While Kounalakis said “the Constitution is clear” on the issue, it’s not so simple.
Kounalakis and other state Democrats who support removing Trump from the race point to his role in provoking the Capitol riot and a section of the Constitution that bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection.”
For some Trump critics, Weber’s approach was viewed as too passive, while others applauded her for allowing the traditional route to take its course.
The decision ultimately will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which appears destined to review decisions in other states on Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. The high court will have to decide if Trump is eligible under a clause in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that prohibits officials from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
It’s unclear if the amendment applies to presidential candidates and if Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection meets that constitutional threshold.
“It is not going to be for the main election official in Colorado or California to decide. It is a straightforward question about the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court is going to have to decide for the whole country,” Chemerinsky said.
It’s a decision that the constitutional law expert hopes is made quickly, as the November election looms.
“I think the longer it goes, the worse it is for the country,” he said.
What other states are doing
Lawsuits seeking to remove Trump from the ballot have been filed in dozens of states, with mixed results.
Supreme courts in Michigan and Minnesota, however, are allowing Trump to stay on the ballot, at least in the March primary, and are leaving the door open for challenges in the November general election.
States are working with a patchwork of procedural laws to navigate the issue, and not all have equal weight in the matter, said Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School.
In deep-blue California, where Biden won 64% of the vote against Trump in 2020, it may not be worth the “political thicket” for state officials to intervene, Levinson said.
“What Weber is aware of is the fact that to bar [Trump] would be viewed as democracy-limiting or anti-democratic,” she said. “Some would argue that, politically, the benefit here is very small, because we know what the outcome will be in California.”
Times Staff Writer Jeong Park contributed to this report.
Bakersfield Republican Assemblymember Vince Fong can run in a Central Valley congressional race to replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), a Sacramento County judge ruled Thursday.
The decision by Judge Shelleyanne W.L. Chang overrules the office of the Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, which in mid-December denied Fong’s bid to appear on the March 5 primary ballot. Fong sued Weber shortly after her office’s ruling.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the voters of the 20th Congressional District, who will now have the opportunity to select the candidate of their choice in the March 5th election,” Fong said in a statement.
Weber’s office had said Fong could not run for two offices at the same time. Before Fong filed to run in McCarthy’s district, he had submitted paperwork for his reelection bid for his current Assembly seat.
In her ruling, Chang wrote that allowing Fong to run for both offices “somewhat defies common sense” and might also confuse voters.
State law says no person may run for “more than one office at the same election,” but Chang said that does not disqualify Fong.
Fong argued that the law has not been applicable since 2010, when California voters changed the state’s primary system, scrapping party nominations for a setup that lets the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of their party affiliation.
Chang agreed with Fong, saying the state law applies only to someone going through California’s old primary system of party nominations.
Chang’s ruling is understandable, said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School. Given how the state law was written and not updated, she said, the judge may have been “left without any choice.”
“Typically judges prefer the route that allows a candidate to stay on the ballot,” Levinson said, noting criticism that kicking someone off could interfere with the democratic process.
Chang’s ruling is another twist to the election to replace McCarthy, who will leave Congress on Dec. 31, months after he was ousted from House Speaker position. Gov. Gavin Newsom will call a separate special election after McCarthy’s official resignation to temporarily fill the 20th District seat until January 2025.
Fong, McCarthy’s former staff member, has been considered the front-runner in the race. Fong quickly secured McCarthy’s endorsement after he entered the race.
Other candidates include Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux; David Giglio, a self-described “America First” candidate who has been critical of McCarthy; Matt Stoll, a former fighter pilot who operates a landscaping business and has run for Congress twice before; and Kyle Kirkland, the owner of Fresno’s only card room.
The most prominent Democrat in the race is Bakersfield teacher Marisa Wood, who raised more than $1 million in her unsuccessful run against McCarthy in 2022.
California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson in a statement said the ruling puts “an end to Democrats’ political games.”
“The Sacramento Democrat machine tried and failed to interfere in a district that heavily favors Republicans,” she said in the statement.
Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles) in a statement called the ruling “a gross interpretation of the law,” saying her office plans to introduce a bill “that will clear up this mess.”
“There is too much at stake and there is no time for GOP shenanigans,” she said in the statement.
Weber’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether it plans to appeal the ruling.
Times staff reporter Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.
Ahead of statewide minimum wage increases for fast-food workers, hundreds of California Pizza Hut franchises announced cuts in their delivery services, laying off more than 1,100 drivers, according to federal and state filings.
The Pizza Hut locations, run by two different franchise operators, reported the change to their business models for restaurants from Orange to Stanislaus counties, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications filed to the California Employment Development Department.
The layoffs of more than 1,100 delivery drivers are expected to go into effect as soon as February, just weeks before the state’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers is set to go into effect.
The pay increase is the result of Assembly Bill 1228, which applies to California workers employed by any fast-food chain that has more than 60 locations in the United States. California’s minimum wage is currently $15.50 for all workers. Statewide, the increase is estimated to affect more than 500,000 workers. The legislation also created a council of representatives of workers and employers to partner with state agencies to recommend minimum standards for work hours and other working conditions. Restaurant owners opposed the legislation, arguing they couldn’t bear the increased costs without raising prices for their customers.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the new wage requirements were a factor in the move, but the notifications said the companies “made a business decision to eliminate first party delivery services and as a result the elimination of all delivery driver positions.”
Officials with the two Pizza Hut operators, PacPizza affiliates and Southern California Pizza Company, did not immediately respond to questions from The Times. The PacPizza operators include Southern PacPizza, CalPac Pizza II and Cal PacPizza.
The restaurants affected include those in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Sacramento, Tulare and Kern, among others.
The parent company of Pizza Hut, in a statement to Business Insider, said it was “aware of the recent changes to delivery services at certain franchise restaurants in California.”
“Our franchisees independently own and operate their restaurants in accordance with local market dynamics and comply with all federal, state, and local regulations while continuing to provide quality service and food to our customers via carryout and delivery,” according to the statement.
Many leading California Democrats have been clamoring to jettison Donald Trump from the state’s election ballot, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it clear he is against the move.
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom said, “but in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”
Newsom’s terse statement on Friday runs counter to the position taken by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and nine state lawmakers, who have pushed to remove the former president from the California ballot. The campaign gained momentum this week when the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump ineligible for spurring on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Political opinions on Trump’s eligibility ultimately are expected to be of little consequence on a novel question of the law that will almost certainly have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the high court agrees to take the case, election law experts said its decision would probably affect primary and general election ballots across the country.
“I think Newsom is showing that — in a state dominated by Democrats, who might easily succumb to their partisan interests — he is being the grown-up in the room,” said Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College and sharp critic of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. “We have institutions, the courts, to answer these questions. And political meddling in elections does not lead to stability for our democratic institutions.”
Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the Colorado court, with the justices probably loath to give the appearance that they are “throwing the 2024 presidential election or putting their thumb on the scale in the 2024 presidential election.”
Levinson said that that does not mean the Colorado high court’s decision was unreasonable, given the 14th Amendment’s provision that individuals could be deemed ineligible for office if, as an “officer of the United States,” they engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or aided its enemies.
As a strict legal question, Levinson said, “if you give aid or comfort to those who engage in insurrection, then you are not eligible for the ballot in my view.”
Trump’s disqualification from the Colorado ballot would not necessarily block him from returning to the presidency. He lost the state by 13 percentage points in 2020 and could find a path to 270 electoral votes without the state’s 10 electoral votes. He also won the presidency in 2016 without California’s huge electoral trove, which now stands at 54.
But the campaign to remove Trump from the ballot is continuing in many other states, provoking charges from the candidate and other Republicans that Democrats are trying to rig the 2024 election.
In the swing state of Michigan, which Trump carried in 2016 and lost in 2020, some voters have sued to keep Trump off the ballot.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, is considering arguments from both sides as to Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot.
California has picked Democrats for president in eight consecutive elections since it went for Republican George H.W. Bush in 1988. Trump trails badly in early California polling for the 2024 presidential contest.
But several of the state’s top Democrats have said that Trump should be disqualified from the March primary ballot.
Kounalakis, a Democrat who is running for governor in 2026, wrote to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who oversees elections, asking her “to explore every legal option” to keep the former president off the March 5 ballot.
“This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of democracy,” Kounalakis wrote, citing the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision.
Assemblyman Evan Low, who represents the Silicon Valley, heads a group of nine Democratic legislators who asked state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to drop Trump from the ballot. They say the action would force the courts to determine the former president’s eligibility.
“No one is above the law,” Low said in an interview this week, “and the courts should enforce the Constitution. Period. Full stop.”
Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State Los Angeles, viewed Newsom’s stand for keeping Trump on the ballot as the governor’s latest gambit to differentiate himself from California’s liberal orthodoxy.
“I think that, at least in part, this is a way to distance himself from the left a little bit and to move a little bit toward the political middle,” said Regalado. “We don’t expect him to be challenging Biden. But at the same time, we expect him to be a candidate soon for national office.”
A new California law that would bar licensed gun holders from carrying their firearms into an array of public places will not go into full effect on Jan. 1 as scheduled, after a federal judge blocked major parts of it as unconstitutional Wednesday.
The law, Senate Bill 2, was part of a slate of new gun control measures passed this year by California Democrats in response to two things: a sweeping U.S. Supreme Court ruling that reined in gun control measures nationally last year, and several high-profile mass shootings in the state earlier this year — including in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park.
In his decision to block the law Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote that the law’s “coverage is sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed the bill into law and has called for tougher gun restrictions in the state and at the national level, immediately swung back with his own statement in defense of the measure.
“Defying common sense, this ruling outrageously calls California’s data-backed gun safety efforts ‘repugnant,’” Newsom said. “What is repugnant is this ruling, which greenlights the proliferation of guns in our hospitals, libraries, and children’s playgrounds — spaces which should be safe for all.”
The law would have precluded licensed gun carriers from having their guns on public transportation, at public gatherings and special events, in parks and at playgrounds, in stadiums and arenas and casinos, in medical facilities, religious institutions or financial institutions, anywhere where liquor is sold and consumed, in all other private commercial spaces where the owner has not explicitly posted a sign to the contrary, and in many parking areas, among other places.
Democrats had championed the law as a workaround to the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen last year, which held that sweeping restrictions on licensed gun holders to carry their weapons in public were unconstitutional, in part because they stripped those people of their constitutional right to self-defense.
The Bruen decision made certain exceptions, including for bans on guns in certain “sensitive places” that had historically been protected from gun holders — such as in schools and courtrooms. State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank) introduced SB2 as a means of extending the list of “sensitive places” under California law.
The law was to apply to concealed-carry permit holders in major metropolitan centers such as Los Angeles but also to open-carry permit holders in rural, less populated parts of the country.
In his ruling Wednesday, Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the new law went too far — as the “sensitive places” exception cited by the Supreme Court had to do with relatively few, historically restricted places, not most public spaces in society.
He said an injunction against the law taking effect as litigation in the case continues was warranted because those suing the state over the measure are likely to win their case and would suffer “irreparable harm” if they weren’t allowed to carry their firearms in the meantime.
Carney also said that focusing new gun restrictions on people who have permits to carry guns in the state made little sense from his perspective.
“Although the government may have some valid safety concerns, legislation regulating [concealed carry] permitholders — the most responsible of law abiding citizens seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights — seems an odd and misguided place to focus to address those safety concerns,” Carney wrote.
“They have been through a vigorous vetting and training process following their application to carry a concealed handgun,” he wrote. “The challenged SB2 provisions unconstitutionally deprive this group of their constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.”
Carney’s order applies to the “sensitive places” restrictions of SB2 and does not apply to other parts of the new law that have to do with permitting rules.
Chuck Michel, an attorney for the plaintiffs who sued the state to block the measure, praised Carney’s ruling.
“California anti-gun owner politicians refuse to accept the Supreme Court’s mandate from the Bruen case and are trying every creative ploy they can imagine to get around it,” he said in a statement. “This law was an attempt to make permits to carry a firearm to defend yourself or your family useless because permit holders wouldn’t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law.”
Michel said “we are all safer and criminals are deterred when law-abiding citizens can defend themselves.”
Newsom in his statement said California “will keep fighting” for gun control measures because “the lives of our kids depend on it.”
SB2 was passed along heavily partisan lines. Republicans denounced the measure as being in direct conflict with the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen — and ripe for a legal challenge.
The case is now part of a mountain of litigation over California’s gun laws and other gun laws all across the nation in the wake of Bruen. Also under legal threat of being toppled are California’s ban on assault weapons and its ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to delay the implementation of Senate Bill 43, the landmark legislation that expands the criteria by which people can be detained against their wills by police, crisis teams and mental health providers.
The motion to delay, proposed by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, was passed on a 4-1 vote. L.A. County now joins 45 other counties that have formally declared their intention to hold off implementation. Supervisor Janice Hahn cast the lone dissenting vote.
“I know there are people on our streets who are not going to survive and maybe would have a chance if we implemented this sooner to help them get the treatment that they need,” Hahn said to her colleagues.
SB 43 gave counties the option to implement the law either at the start of 2024 or not until Jan. 1, 2026. In her motion, Horvath cited “the immense amount of work” required to implement the law, which adds severe substance use disorder to the longstanding definition of gravely disabled.
“We cannot afford the liability cases and the risk of civil right violations and risk getting this wrong,” Horvath said at the board meeting.
Passed by state legislators in September and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October, SB 43 represents the first major revision of the state’s 1967 conservatorship law, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act.
It is intended to address not only the epidemic of mental illness among homeless populations in the state but also the proliferation of highly addictive drugs, such as fentanyl and methamphetamine, which researchers say exacerbate psychotic disorders.
However, according to the motion, the size of the crisis presents logistical problems for counties responsible for administering involuntary holds that proceed conservatorship hearings. Adding severe substance use disorder to the definition of gravely disabled could lead to a 10% increase of those involuntarily detained, according to the supervisor’s motion.
Los Angeles County joins a majority of counties across the state tapping the brakes on what Newsom considers crucial legislation for transforming California’s behavioral health landscape. Last week, he lambasted those who chose to wait.
“You have a crisis out there,” he said at a news conference. “There is a crisis on the streets, and people are talking about delaying the conservatorship efforts until 2026. We can’t afford to wait. The state has done its job. It’s time for the counties to do their job … with a deeper sense of urgency. They have to recognize that people are dying on their watch. People are literally losing their lives, and we can’t waste another day.”
The supervisors’ decision to delay comes three weeks after the county Department of Mental Health issued a report on the feasibility of implementing SB 43 at the start of the new year. Written in conjunction with the county Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control, the report recommended holding off on implementation.
Among the reasons was the need to increase training to ensure appropriate and consistent understanding of the definition of “grave disability” among those qualified to initiate an involuntary hold and perhaps most crucially, to address a shortage of treatment facilities for those with medical, substance use and mental health treatment needs.
The county currently has no locked facilities for treating substance use disorder.
“Our mental health service system, while larger than it was in the 1960s, is still under-resourced and under-staffed,” according to Horvath’s motion, which references the “disastrous results” of not developing community services following the closure of state psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s. “This board cannot afford to make the same mistakes that our state leaders did decades ago.”
Prior to the vote, Hahn had expressed disappointment with efforts to stall SB 43.
“We have a drug addiction and mental health crisis on our streets, and I want to see a sense of urgency from our county departments,” she said in a statement. “I think we can get this done sooner, and I want to see us try.”
In a letter of support for the motion, the Hospital Assn. of Southern California, representing 170 hospitals in six counties, recommended waiting.
“The current behavioral health system is not prepared to support the influx of new patients meant to be served by this law and our hospital emergency departments are not prepared to hold and care for these patients until we can identify appropriate treatment,” wrote Adena Tessler, a regional vice president with the group. “A rushed implementation of this expanded definition, without proper preparation, is not in the best interest of the very patients it is intended to help.”
San Francisco and San Luis Obispo counties have indicated that they will implement SB 43 at the start of the new year, and last week by a vote of 3 to 2, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors agreed to delay implementation until January 2025, when it will reevaluate its readiness to adapt the new criteria ahead of the 2026 deadline.
But “the expectation is that it will be implemented within a year,” said Luke Bergmann, director of behavioral health services for San Diego County.
While logistical constraints have led to the decision to delay implementation, there is also concern that SB 43 might be challenged in court as an impingement upon civil liberties. Soon after the CARE Act was passed in 2022, three civil rights groups challenged the law in court. Their petition was ultimately dismissed.
Although no lawsuit has been filed against SB 43, Disability Rights California, which opposed the legislation, argued against a hurried roll-out.
“It’s really disheartening to hear the governor criticize counties for exercising an option — deferral — he agreed to in SB 43,” said Deb Roth, a senior legislative advocate. “It seems very short-sighted not to want county-readiness before implementing such major changes.”
Acton, MA – Discovery Museum and Natick-based MathWorks announced today their continued partnership to bring the Museum’s Traveling Science Workshops to classrooms throughout Massachusetts and beyond for the 2023-2024 school year. This is the fourteenth consecutive school year that MathWorks has invested in the school outreach program.
Traveling Science Workshops (TSW) are state curriculum-aligned, small group, in-classroom workshops that use simple, everyday materials and a hands-on approach to allow students to be scientists by exploring, observing, asking questions, and sharing discoveries. Museum educators deliver twenty-three STEM topics—including Sound, Weather & Climate, Physical Changes of Matter, and Force & Motion—to give elementary and middle school students direct experience with how things work in the physical world. It is the only classroom-based program of its kind in Massachusetts.
MathWorks has partnered with Discovery Museum since 2010 to bring TSW to school classrooms, supporting program growth and developing virtual workshops and distance learning resources for teachers. MathWorks also supports community access to the Museum by funding free-access Friday nights and a week of reduced admission pricing in the fall. MathWorks volunteer groups also undertake on-site projects several times each year.
For the 2022-2023 school year—the 30th year of Traveling Science Workshops—Discovery Museum delivered more than 2,600 workshops to more than 51,000 students in their classrooms, a remarkable 28% increase in the number of workshops and a 26% increase in the number of students served from the prior school year. For the first time, demand exceeded staff capacity, and a waiting list had to be created. For the 2023-2024 school year, the Museum has increased its teaching capacity and expects to serve upwards of 54,000 students.
“The impact of delivering STEM explorations into students’ hands at a young age cannot be overstated,” said Kevin Lorenc, director of corporate communications at MathWorks. “Opening young minds to observing and ‘doing’ science in their everyday lives helps students better understand their world and can spark an early interest in a STEM-track education and career path. We’ve partnered with Discovery Museum for 14 years to bring hands-on STEM to students because it matters to them and the communities they will ultimately contribute to.”
“The world that we are passing along to our kids is going to require them to be creative thinkers and problem solvers, yet they build, create, and explore far less than their grandparents or even their parents did,” said CEO Neil Gordon. “Thanks to the ongoing and impactful support of MathWorks, we continue to grow our Traveling Science Workshops program to get science into more kids’ hands, spark their interest in the world around them, and build confidence in their own abilities as problem-solvers.”
About Discovery Museum
Discovery Museum is a hands-on museum that blends science, nature, and play, inspiring families to explore and learn together. The museum and its Discovery Woods accessible outdoor nature playscape and giant treehouse blend the best of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) learning on a beautiful 4.5-acre campus abutting 180 acres of conservation land in Acton, MA, about 20 miles west of Boston. Originally founded in 1982 and expanded to two museums in 1987, the museum reopened in a single, 16,000sf accessible building after a complete renovation and expansion in early 2018. Hands-on, open-ended exhibits developed by professional educators inspire curiosity and exploration, providing a fun and engaging experience for children and adults to discover their world together. Serving families and schools from towns throughout the region, the museum is devoted to informal education that enhances classroom learning. Discovery Museum is committed to accessibility and is a proud recipient of the Massachusetts Commonwealth Award, the only winner in the Access category, and a LEAD® Community Asset Award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Discovery Museum was also recognized in 2023 as a Finalist for the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Medal, the highest honor in the museum field. For more information, please visit discoveryacton.org. Discovery Museum is a community-supported non-profit organization, supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
About MathWorks
MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualization, and numeric computation. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded engineering systems. Engineers and scientists worldwide rely on these products to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development in automotive, aerospace, communications, electronics, industrial automation, and other industries. MATLAB and Simulink are fundamental teaching and research tools in the world’s top universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 6000 people in 34 offices around the world, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, USA. For additional information, visit mathworks.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips swept into office in 2018 after promising not to vote for Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House.
The Gen X Minnesotan reasoned that the San Franciscan had been at the top too long and Democrats needed some fresh blood in House leadership. In the private sector, he argued, people rarely serve for two decades in top posts.
Phillips ultimately backed Pelosi (D-San Francisco) for speaker as part of a deal that saw her leave leadership last year. But in the spring of this year, as another Californian, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, began missing votes, he spoke out again, writing an op-ed arguing that she needed to resign for the good of the country.
Feinstein’s refusal to resign — she died in office on Sep. 29 — did the country a disservice, Phillips told The Times during a visit to California last month.
“Who doesn’t know Congress is dysfunctional, but I did not know how horrifyingly so until I got there,” said Phillips, 54. “I encountered a culture filled with people who had been there for decades, that were so clearly focused more on the preservation of their positions than they were the priorities of the population.”
Now Phillips is taking on 81-year-old President Biden for the Democratic nomination — and making the same argument he made about Feinstein and Pelosi. His longshot run has included several trips to California to appear on shows like Real Time with Bill Maher and court potential donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
Nearly 80% of voters in a September Reuters-Ipsos poll said that Biden is too old to run again. More than half said the same about the 77-year-old Donald Trump.
Dean Phillips steps off his campaign bus at the New Hampshire State House. He filed a declaration of candidacy Oct. 27, 2023, to run in the state’s presidential primary.
(Glen Stubbe / Star Tribune)
Elected Democrats who refused to criticize Feinstein’s fitness to serve — or acknowledge publicly that Biden’s age is a challenge — are no better than Republicans who are unwilling to publicly criticize former President Trump, Phillips argued.
“It is the same disease — the same danger and the same consequence, which is the reduction in faith and government,” he said, noting that Biden is far better than Trump as a leader.
Phillips, who has voted with Biden 100% of the time in the House, has said repeatedly that he’s not in this race to tear down the president. He praised the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Biden’s “extraordinary” support for Israel.
But in his interview with The Times, Phillips was quick to say that Biden didn’t do enough to respond as vice president to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and that the Israel-Hamas war “could have been prevented with more extraordinary intentional peace efforts over the course of his tenure, both as vice president and now president.” He supports an internationally monitored cease-fire once all the hostages held by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip have been released and says a multinational peacekeeping force should be deployed to the region.
He also attacked Biden’s unwillingness to legalize cannabis and the president’s response to “chaos” at the border.
Phillips sees what he’s doing as a “hopeful run” meant to offer a respectful alternative to someone whom he considers a successful president. He believes that by May or June, after enough campaigning, head-to-head polls will show him beating former President Trump and will continue to show Biden losing.
But his attacks on Biden over policy issues, and his recent claim that Biden — like Trump — is a threat to democracy have some political observers questioning whether he plans to run a purely positive campaign. They worry he could end up hurting Biden’s chances in a general election.
Phillips’ effort recalls former Gov. Jerry Brown’s runs for president, where he got in late and never accumulated enough movement support, said Danielle Cendejas, who works for the Strategy Group, a national political consulting firm that advised Phillips’ congressional bids but is not working on his presidential campaign.
“Phillips’ run feels like it’s more of a, ‘Hey, I’m an option’ campaign rather than, ‘I am trying to do something different because the president is not doing what I think should be done,’” she said. “Anytime you run against the White House, you are running on the fact that the president is just not doing a good enough job.”
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If Phillips was running far to Biden’s left, his challenge might galvanize the White House to respond more aggressively, Cendejas says. But so far, the Biden team doesn’t seem too worried. (A spokesperson for Biden’s campaign declined to comment for this article.)
Phillips’ campaign counts Andrew Yang’s former campaign manager Zach Graumann as a senior advisor. Strategist Bradley Tusk, who managed Yang’s 2021 New York mayoral campaign and worked for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said he was surprised that no nationally elected officials or activists had challenged Biden from the left.
The risk for Biden is he “could really underperform in the primaries but not lose them,” Tusk said. “Then Trump picks up a lot more momentum, raises a lot more money and fundraising for Biden gets that much harder.”
The two most urgent challenges Phillips faces are raising enough money to run a competitive campaign and getting on the ballot in as many states as possible. He already won’t be on the ballot in Nevada. He’s angry that he will likely be left off the ballot in Florida.
The Minnesotan, who thinks he’ll make the ballot in 90% of states, will appear on California’s ballot for its March 5 primary, according to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
Phillips and his team believe that a competitive primary is a healthy part of the democratic process. If the polls in May or June show Biden beating Trump “and me losing, I’ll be the first to acknowledge it and wrap it up,” he said.
Snuffing out dissenting voices only hurts the voters, argued Jeff Weaver, a senior advisor to Phillips who had top roles in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
“Our primary system is one of the only feedback loops between people on the ground and the national party,” Weaver told The Times.
“Issues and candidates affect how people vote. There should be a vigorous primary where people get to see their candidates talk about the issues. With there being no debates, the [Democratic] party has worked to stifle that process.”
President Joe Biden arrives at Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, Calif., Friday, Dec. 8, 2023. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., third from left, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, left, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, right, look on.
(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)
Phillips faces a steep financial challenge. In one weekend this month, Biden brought in about $15 million at two fundraisers in Los Angeles. Phillips said he will have trouble raising that kind of money—even as the Minnesotan who got rich running his family’s liquor business and later the Talenti gelato brand, has poured $2 million of own wealth into the campaign.
But Phillips has found some pockets of support.
Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, a college friend of Phillips, has supported his congressional races. Phillips said he has met in recent months with Open AI CEO Sam Altman — a meeting first reported by the news outlet Puck. Phillips told The Times he wasn’t sure if Altman, who gave $200,000 to the Biden reelection bid, had donated to his campaign.
He declined to detail how Altman, whose representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment, had been advising his launch except to say “I found him to be an extraordinarily brilliant and principled and magnificent ideator and convener and community builder, and without getting too much into the details, yes, he’s been supportive.”
Cryptocurrency billionaire Mike Novogratz has shifted his support away from Biden and will host a Phillips fundraiser, CNBC reported this week.
Phillips has held several Southern California fundraisers since launching his campaign at the beginning of November, though his campaign has declined to say how much they’ve raised. Phillips said the events attracted many Biden backers who pined for an alternative.
One was television executive Adam Goodman, who previously served as president of Paramount Pictures’ Motion Picture Group and DreamWorks SKG, and described how his high-school-age daughter heard Phillips speak and felt a connection to him. He’s been impressed by many of Biden’s successes over the last four years but still hosted a 100-person fundraiser for Phillips in his home early last month.
“This is the time when we’re supposed to be listening and auditioning the best people for the job and then ultimately we will get to a convention and the best candidate will go forward at that point,” he said.
Goodman said that politics — like show business — needs fresh perspectives in leadership.
“Show business is really in jeopardy right now,” he said. “The people who are actually really running the businesses who are at the top top top — these are people that have been in authority for 35-plus years. They are not people who necessarily understand the generational shift.”
As the two traded barbs over who was a “lockdown governor,” DeSantis crowed about his state reopening quickly and said: “In fact, the Lancet just did a study: Florida had a lower standardized COVID death rate than California did” when adjusted for how Florida’s population skews older and has higher rates of underlying illness, such as cancer and heart disease.
With that adjustment, Florida ranks as having the 12th-lowest standardized death rate nationally among states, compared to the 14th-highest raw death rate.
Some critics of the tough public health measures implemented in many states in response to the pandemic have seized on that finding as proof that strict practices such as stay-at-home orders, masking, limited vaccine mandates and social distancing weren’t needed to control COVID-19.
But the study’s lead author says that’s the wrong takeaway.
“If [DeSantis] is using the study as an example to support the message that masks, or staying at home, or vaccines did not matter in this pandemic, then that would be using the study inappropriately — because that is not what it shows,” said Thomas J. Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.
“The governor aggressively promoted those behaviors early. And the reality is even when he started to turn away from those behaviors in 2021, Floridians continued to adopt them, and at rates that exceeded the national average,” Bollyky said in an interview.
Through mid-2022, Floridians ranked in the top half of states in vaccine coverage and mask use, and in the top quartile of states for reduced mobility (how often people stayed home compared to pre-pandemic times).
Mobility statistics came from four sources of cellphone GPS data, which was used to calculate daily mobility relative to before the pandemic.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, standing in mask, right, watches as a COVID-19 vaccine dose is administered at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami on Jan. 4, 2021.
(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
In a follow-up analysis written by Bollyky and two co-authors on the website Think Global Health, there are several explanations as to why Florida did comparatively well relative to other states. Among them: The state “adopted early aggressive nursing home policies, testing, and gathering restrictions to slow the spread of the virus — at a higher rate than even most states led by Democratic governors — and promoted vaccination among the elderly.”
“Early on in the pandemic, the governor was quite aggressive trying to reach out to the elderly population about the need to be cautious,” Bollyky said. “And those messages took hold.”
The analysis — which covered the period from the start of the pandemic through the end of July 2022 — found that Florida’s early policies encouraged residents to continue to stay home, get vaccinated and wear masks at a higher rate than most other states, even after health mandates were lifted.
Among the strict steps DeSantis undertook, the analysis said, was isolating COVID patients in nursing homes and banning visitors; closing schools in March 2020 and keeping them shut for the rest of the academic year; and telling residents to avoid gatherings that could turn into super-spreader events.
People wearing masks walk toward Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021. Florida was one of the first states to throw open vaccine eligibility to members of the general public over 65.
(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
“DeSantis was one of only four governors to reopen schools in the fall of 2020, but Florida was still otherwise slower to lift gathering restrictions and bar and restaurant closures than most Republican-led states,” the analysis said.
And DeSantis was an early champion of COVID-19 vaccines for seniors, saying in January 2021, “we want the shots to go in the arms.” That’s at odds with his latest denigration, suggesting Floridians who got the recently updated vaccinations were “guinea pigs” for “shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” despite strong evidence to the contrary from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
News articles in late 2021 noted efforts by some local governments and residents to take precautions, including masking up. Miami-Dade County officials ordered county employees to either get vaccinated or submit to regular testing in response to the Delta wave in mid-2021. Public schools in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties had mask mandates in place through November 2021.
During the first Omicron wave in late 2021, jury trials were paused in Miami-Dade County courts, and some concert promoters canceled events.
Health-cautious behaviors persisted among a number of Floridians even as, between the Delta and initial Omicron surges in 2021, DeSantis moved to prohibit vaccine mandates and strike down mask mandates.
In one notable example of the change in approach, the governor scolded students for wearing face masks during an indoor news conference in early 2022. “You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. And we’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous,” DeSantis told them. Some students took them off, while others kept them on.
In early 2021, DeSantis began emphasizing a “medical freedom” agenda, the analysis noted, with his appointed surgeon general later defying federal recommendations and discouraging COVID-19 vaccinations. The analysis found Florida’s rates of overall vaccinations for schoolchildren fell to a 10-year low, and flu shot uptake for adults fell during the pandemic, even as they rose nationally.
“If these trends persist and extend to other public health measures, the state will be less safe,” the report said.
During last autumn and winter — a period not covered by the Lancet study — COVID-19 booster rates among Florida’s seniors lagged badly. As of late spring, only 31% had received the updated shot, below the national rate of 43%, and California’s rate of 48%.
Complicating any comparison between Florida and California, however, is the multiple number of ways to calculate COVID death rates.
There’s the crude death rate, to which Newsom alluded during the Nov. 30 televised faceoff with DeSantis. He said Florida had a 29% worse per capita death rate compared to California. A spokesperson later said that’s based on statistics from the CDC’s online COVID Data Tracker, which lists 110,208 deaths for California and 81,238 for Florida.
When adjusted for population — 39 million for California and 22 million for Florida, per U.S. Census estimates in mid-2022 — the rates equal 365.2 COVID deaths for every 100,000 Florida residents and 282.4 COVID deaths for every 100,000 California residents.
There are also age-adjusted statistics, which account for the fact that California’s population is relatively younger demographically than Florida’s. According to the CDC, Florida has an age-adjusted rate of 253 deaths per 100,000 residents, nominally higher than California’s 249 deaths per 100,000 residents.
For 2021 — the deadliest calendar year of the pandemic nationally — the agency calculates Florida’s age-adjusted death rate at 111.7 for every 100,000 residents, about 12% worse than California’s.
But then there is the Lancet study’s standardized rate cited by DeSantis, which was adjusted not only for age, but also for how Florida has higher rates of chronic illness. By that metric, Florida had a rate of 313 deaths per 100,000 residents — California’s was 34% worse, at 418 per 100,000 residents.
Some contend that California’s pandemic policy was based in science and saved many lives; others assert Florida did a better job without curtailing rights; and still others say it’s foolhardy to compare the two, given vast differences that politicians and policymakers had no control over.
In some camps, the narrative has become: “Florida did better than you might expect overall, but they did badly on vaccination when the Delta wave came up,” Bollyky said. But even that more nuanced take doesn’t provide a complete picture, he said.
“Our study covered 2½ years. So to say [Florida] did bad for a three-month period of time of that is like saying they didn’t do well in the sixth inning, but did pretty well overall in the game,” Bollyky said. “That’s true, but also doesn’t really get at what the Florida story should be telling people — which is … that [officials] did their work early, and then the population continued to do its work.
“And in some ways, the governor has failed to give himself credit for what he did early — for political reasons, presumably — and failed to give Floridians credit for what they did throughout the pandemic.”
The original Lancet study also rebuts the perception that states that prioritized lives did so by sacrificing the economy and education. Virtually all states — whether led by Republicans or Democrats — instituted health mandates in the first months of the pandemic, Bollyky said. The big divide occurred after the Delta wave hit in summer 2021, when Democratic-leaning states were more likely to impose new pandemic policies.
Notably, the Lancet study did not find any association between a higher or lower state gross domestic product and higher or lower coronavirus infections or deaths.
“With the exception of restaurant closures, none of the policy mandates that we studied — stay-at-home orders, gathering restrictions, school closures, gym or pool closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates — were associated with lower GDP or employment at the state level,” Bollyky said.
In terms of the overall strength of the economy, “there was no choice between public health and the economy to be made. At least that’s not what our data shows,” Bollyky said. “You don’t see some nationwide association between ‘lockdown’ and ‘free’ states and better economies.”
The pandemic coincided with declines in U.S. educational performance, the Lancet study said, but the data analyzed don’t indicate learning losses were systematically associated with primary school closures at the state level.
“California, a state with long school closures during the pandemic, had test score declines similar to or smaller than those in Florida and Maine, states with low rates of school closures,” the study said.
In the face of heavy opposition from environmental groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his administration are pushing forward with a controversial plan to build a 45-mile water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta — a project the governor says is vital to modernizing the state’s aging water system.
State officials released their final environmental analysis of the proposed delta tunnel project on Friday, signaling the start of a process of seeking permits to build the tunnel that would use massive pumps to transfer water from the Sacramento River to cities and farmlands to the south.
Newsom and state water managers say the tunnel would help California adapt to worsening cycles of drought fueled by climate change and capture more water during wet periods. They say it would also help address the risks to infrastructure posed by earthquakes and flooding.
“Climate change is threatening our access to clean drinking water, diminishing future supplies for millions of Californians,” Newsom said in a written statement. “Doing nothing is not an option. After the three driest years on record, we didn’t have the infrastructure to fully take advantage of an exceptionally wet year, which will become more and more critical as our weather whiplashes between extremes.”
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Environmental groups have condemned the plan, saying the tunnel would seriously harm the delta’s deteriorating ecosystem and threaten fish species that are already on the brink. Opponents argue that the funds needed to build the tunnel would be better spent on groundwater recharge efforts, water recycling, and stormwater capture, among other projects.
Debate over the project has been simmering for decades. Former Gov. Jerry Brown sought a two-tunnel proposal, calling the project WaterFix. Newsom has supported a redesigned project with a single tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project.
The plan calls for a concrete tunnel 36 feet wide and running 140 to 170 feet underground, connecting to a new pumping plant that would send water into the California Aqueduct.
Construction costs have previously been estimated at $16 billion, but the state plans to update those cost estimates next year.
California officials say the tunnel’s two proposed intakes on the Sacramento River would allow the system to capture and transport more water during wet periods. State water managers say the current infrastructure makes for missed opportunities when large quantities of stormwater are allowed to flow trough the delta and into the Pacific Ocean during rainy periods, such as last winter.
Tunnel supporters say the project would improve California’s ability to withstand worsening droughts and intense swings between wet and dry periods.
“We really don’t have time to waste in terms of getting all projects moving forward that can secure California in this new hydrologic scenario,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources.
Nemeth said the increase in water availability from the delta would be “pegged to those times when we do have those high flows,” rather than during dry times.
“Ultimately, it really is triggered by intense pulse conditions,” she said.
Officials estimated that if the tunnel had been in place during the torrential storms in January, the state could have captured and moved an additional 228,000 acre-feet of water, enough to supply about 2.3 million people for a year.
“We need to preserve the backbone of our water system,” said Wade Crowfoot, the state’s natural resources secretary.
Crowfoot said without this update, the existing water system is vulnerable to the effects of climate change as well as potential damage from a large earthquake, which could disrupt water deliveries for 27 million Californians. He said a quake could render the system unusable for months or more than a year, which he said would be “the largest catastrophe in any water system in America.”
“To ensure that our conveyance is both climate-resilient and earthquake-resilient, we need to modernize this infrastructure,” he said.
Environmentalists and other critics argue that the state is failing to see the big picture and has based the project on outdated climate science.
“Like its predecessor, the WaterFix Project, the Delta Conveyance Project fails to consider or address the risks from accelerating climate change impacts to Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds and the delta,” said Deirdre Des Jardins, an independent water researcher.
Des Jardins and a coalition of environmental and fishing advocates said in recent written comments that the project faces major uncertainties, “including worsening climate change impacts on water supply and sea level rise, coupled with the need to reduce exports in order to increase freshwater flows through the delta.” They also said the state has failed to consider non-tunnel alternatives.
Newsom’s tunnel proposal, as outlined in the state’s final environmental impact report, is “another failure of state water officials to imagine alternative approaches in a climate-impacted California,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, executive director of the group Restore the Delta.
“The big pipe engineering solutions of the last century are no longer the way forward in California water’s climate-changed reality,” Barrigan-Parilla said. The latest delta tunnel plan, she said, is “out of date for climate change science” and will quickly be obsolete if it’s built.
She suggested the state invest in projects that “reduce reliance on water exports from the delta,” such as underground water storage in farming areas, more stormwater collection and wastewater recycling in cities.
Other environmentalists said the tunnel’s water diversions would deny critical flows to the delta and San Francisco Bay. They warned that would exacerbate recent declines in native fish such as Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, white sturgeon and endangered delta smelt.
“The science clearly demonstrates that fish need increased river flows to survive, but state agencies are ignoring it,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director for San Francisco Baykeeper. “California diverts more than half of the water flowing through Central Valley rivers to serve industrial agriculture and big cities. Because of excessive water diversions, the list of fish native to San Francisco Bay and its watershed that are verging on extinction continues to grow, and our fisheries are increasingly shut down.”
This year, commercial salmon fishing was shut down along the coast because fish populations declined dramatically.
Scott Artis, executive director of the Golden State Salmon Assn., charged that Newsom and his administration “mismanaged our rivers during the drought,” harming the fishing industry, and that the tunnel project “looks like an extinction plan for salmon.”
“Southern California residents will be on the hook to pay for nearly all of this $20-billion boondoggle,” Artis said. “The tunnel could cause Southern California water rates to skyrocket — without delivering much benefit. The core problem is that we’re pumping too much water from the Bay-Delta. We need to divert less.”
John Buse, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the state’s final environmental report “maintains the same skewed analysis by failing to come to terms with the massive harm this tunnel will bring to the delta and its fish.”
Although many environmental groups oppose the tunnel, Newsom’s proposal has found support among some water districts, organized labor and business groups.
Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the 27-member State Water Contractors, said California can no longer afford to delay the project.
“Our climate reality requires that we build and adapt,” Pierre said. “The Delta Conveyance Project represents a golden opportunity to increase the [State Water Project’s] ability to move and store water when it’s wet for use when it’s dry and will allow us to be more flexible in response to the state’s changing hydrological conditions.”
Jennifer Barrera of the California Chamber of Commerce said that improving the state’s “water system and its infrastructure through the Delta Conveyance Project is urgently needed.”
Within 10 days, the state is expected to certify the environmental documents, culminating the review and enabling the Newsom administration to turn to environmental permits. State officials said they expect to complete all permits by 2026, allowing for construction to begin around 2030.
The completion of the environmental review will also lead to discussions among managers of water agencies about whether to contribute financially to the project. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California will review the environmental documents as well as an upcoming analysis of costs and benefits as the district’s board considers “how best to invest our resources in response to the changing climate,” said Adel Hagekhalil, the district’s general manager.
State officials said the project is part of a broader water strategy to respond to a projected 10% loss in average water supplies by 2040 due to hotter conditions.
The state is continuing to invest in other types of projects, including wastewater recycling, stormwater capture and groundwater recharge, as well as improved efficiency and conservation efforts, Crowfoot said.
“But at the same time, we can’t stick our head in the sand about the fact that our backbone water infrastructure remains essential,” Crowfoot said. “We can’t simply shift investments into all those localized sources and expect to maintain water reliability for 40 million people in the fifth-largest economy in the world. We have to do both.”
Times staff writer Hayley Smith contributed to this report.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2022 American Community Survey this week. The survey, which looks at demographic data in five-year increments, introduced several new detailed tables and demographic breakdowns. We looked at some trends in the data.
Nearly 6 million people 65 and older live in California, a figure that is slowly growing. In the last five years, 716,000 people became senior citizens in the state. That number will nearly double by 2030. Los Angeles County is home to roughly a quarter of the senior citizens in the state.
As the cost of living increases, the number of Golden State senior citizens in poverty is also rising, with nearly 14% of Los Angeles County senior citizens living below the poverty line. The national poverty rate declined significantly to 12.5% during the five-year period from 2018-22.
Across the country, housing costs continue to rise. Financial planners advise that no more than 30% of household income be spent on housing costs. The latest data show that is far from the reality for 41% of homeowners with a mortgage in Los Angeles County. For homeowners without a mortgage, roughly 16% are house burdened. It’s also not easy for renters. More than half of renters spend more than 30% of their household income on housing costs.
The data also point to how the pandemic changed the way people work. In Los Angeles County, the number of people working from home tripled from more than 270,000 to 810,000 in just five years. That number tracks with the rest of the state’s pool of people working from home, which tripled from 1 million to more than 3.2 million. For those having to commute into the office daily, the mean travel time to work has stayed the same with most L.A. County residents getting to work in 30 minutes (although most L.A. city residents would laugh at this figure.) The number of unemployed people in the county has gone down by 4% since 2017 with roughly 300,000 without work.
The new American Community Survey includes updated race data. They show the county has grown in its Asian and Latino population. Roughly 1.4 million people identified as Asian in Los Angeles County, up 2.4% from a decade ago. Those who identify as Latino and Hispanic account for nearly half of the population of the county. The county lost 80,000 Black people over the last decade.
You can sense it in the ubiquitous “Help Wanted” posters in artsy shops and restaurants, in the ranks of university students living out of their cars and in the outsize percentage of locals camping on the streets.
This seaside county known for its windswept beauty and easy living is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in home-starved California. Santa Cruz County, home to a beloved surf break and a bohemian University of California campus, also claims the state’s highest rate of homelessness and, by one measure based on local incomes, its least affordable housing.
Leaders in the city of Santa Cruz have responded to this hardship in a land of plenty — and to new state laws demanding construction of more affordable housing — with a plan to build up rather than out.
Many Santa Cruz business owners back the city’s plan for high-rise development, saying the city needs more affordable housing for servers and retail workers.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A downtown long centered on quaint sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue has boomed with new construction in recent years. Shining glass and metal apartment complexes sprout in multiple locations, across a streetscape once dominated by 20th century classics like the Art Deco-inspired Palomar Inn apartments.
And the City Council and planning department envision building even bigger and higher, with high-rise apartments of up to 12 stories in the southern section of downtown that comes closest to the city’s boardwalk and the landmark wooden roller coaster known as the Giant Dipper.
“It’s on everybody’s lips now, this talk about our housing challenge,” said Don Lane, a former mayor and an activist for homeless people. “The old resistance to development is breaking down, at least among a lot of people.”
In recent years, Santa Cruz has approved development of modern multistory housing complexes, part of a broader effort to add housing stock.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Said current Mayor Fred Keeley, a former state assemblyman: “It’s not a question of ‘no growth’ anymore. It’s a question of where are you going to do this. You can spread it all over the city, or you can make the urban core more dense.”
But not everyone in famously tolerant Santa Cruz is going along. The high-rise push has spawned a backlash, exposing sharp divisions over growth and underscoring the complexities, even in a city known for its progressive politics, of trying to keep desirable communities affordable for the teachers, waiters, firefighters and store clerks who provide the bulk of services.
A group originally called Stop the Skyscrapers — now Housing for People — protests that a proposed city “housing element” needlessly clears the way for more apartments than state housing officials demand, while providing too few truly affordable units.
City officials say the plan they hope to finalize in the coming weeks, with its greater height limits, only creates a path for new construction. The intentions of individual property owners and the vicissitudes of the market will continue to make it challenging to build the 3,736 additional units the state has mandated for the city.
“We’ve talked to a lot of people, going door to door, and the feeling is it’s just too much, too fast,” said Frank Barron, a retired county planner and Housing for People co-founder. “The six- and seven-story buildings that they’re building now are already freaking people out. When they hear what [the city is] proposing now could go twice as high, they’re completely aghast.”
Frank Barron is among the activists who say the City Council’s development plans are out of character for the laid-back beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Susan Monheit, a former state water official and another Housing for People co-founder, calls 12-story buildings “completely out of the human scale,” adding: “It’s out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
Housing for People has gathered enough signatures to put a measure on the March 2024 ballot that, if approved, would require a vote of the people for development anywhere in the city that would exceed the zoning restrictions codified in the current general plan, which include a cap of roughly seven or eight stories downtown.
The activists say that they are trying to restore the voices of everyday Santa Cruzans and that city leaders are giving in to out-of-town builders and “developer overreach laws.”
The nascent campaign has generated spirited debate. Opponents contend the slow-growth measure would slam on the brakes, just as the city is overcoming decades of construction inertia. They say Santa Cruz should be a proud outlier in a long string of wealthy coastal cities that have defied the state’s push to add housing and bring down exorbitant home prices and rental costs.
Diana Alfaro, who works for a Santa Cruz development company, said many of the complaints about high-rise construction sound like veiled NIMBYism.
“We always hear, ‘I support affordable housing, but just not next to me. Not here. Not there. Not really anywhere,’ ” said Alfaro, an activist with the national political group YIMBY [Yes In My Back Yard] Action. “Is that really being inclusive?”
Zav Hershfield, a renters’ rights activist, advocates rent control caps and housing developments owned by the state or cooperatives.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The dispute has divided Santa Cruz’s progressive political universe. What does it mean to be a “good liberal” on land-use issues in an era when UC Santa Cruz students commonly triple up in small rooms and Zillow reports a median rent of $3,425 that is higher than San Francisco’s?
Beginning in the 1970s, left-leaning students at the new UC campus helped power a slow-growth movement that limited construction across broad swaths of Santa Cruz County. Over the decades, the need for affordable housing was a recurring discussion. The county was a leader in requiring that builders who put up five units of housing or more set aside 15% of the units at below-market rates.
But Mayor Keeley said local officials gave only a “head nod” to the issue when it came to approving specific projects. “Well, here we are, 30 or 40 years later,” Keeley said, “and these communities are not affordable.”
Santa Cruz County, known for its windswept beauty and easy living, is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in California.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Today, with 265,000 residents, the county is substantially wealthy and white.
An annual survey this year found Santa Cruz County pushed past San Francisco to be the least affordable rental market in the country, given income levels in both places. And many observers say UC Santa Cruz students contend with the toughest housing market of any college town in the state.
State legislators have crafted dozens of laws in recent years to encourage construction of more homes, particularly apartments, across the state. While California has long required local governments to draft “housing elements” to demonstrate their commitment to affordable housing, state officials only recently passed other measures to actually push cities to put the plans into practice.
Under the new regulations, regional government associations draw up a Regional Housing Needs Assessment, designating how many housing units — including affordable ones — should be built during an eight-year cycle. The state Department of Housing and Community Development can reject plans it deems inadequate.
For years 2024 to 2031, Santa Cruz was told it should build at least 3,736 units, on top of its existing 24,036.
For decades, Santa Cruz culture has centered on quaint shops and restaurants along sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Santa Cruz and other cities have been motivated, at least in part, by a heavy “stick”: In cases when cities fail to produce adequate housing plans, the state’s so-called “builder’s remedy” essentially allows developers to propose building whatever they want, provided some of the housing is set aside for low- or middle-income families. In cities like Santa Monica and La Cañada-Flintridge, builders have invoked the builder’s remedy to push ahead with large housing projects, over the objections of city leaders.
The Santa Cruz City Council resolved to avoid losing control of planning decisions. A key part of their plan envisions putting up to 1,800 units in a sleepy downtown neighborhood of automobile businesses, shops and low-rise apartments south of Laurel Street. Initial concepts suggested one block could go as high as 175 feet (roughly 16 stories), but council members later proposed a 12-story height limit, substantially taller than the stately eight-story Palomar, which remains the city’s tallest building.
City planners say focusing growth in the downtown neighborhood makes sense, because bus lines converge there at a transit center and residents can walk to shops and services.
“The demand for housing is not going away,” said Lee Butler, the city’s director of planning and community development, “and this means we will have less development pressure in other areas of the city and county, where it is less sustainable to grow.”
Santa Cruz planning director Lee Butler advocates concentrating new development downtown, rather than building in areas where growth is less sustainable.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A public survey found support for a variety of other proposed improvements to make the downtown more attractive to walkers, bikers and tourists. Among other features, the plan would concentrate new restaurants and shops around the San Lorenzo River Walk; replace the fabric-topped 2,400-seat Kaiser Permanente Arena, which hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors (the G-league affiliate of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors), with a bigger entertainment and sports venue; and better connect downtown with the beach and boardwalk.
Business owners say they favor the housing plan for a couple of reasons: They hope new residents will bring new commerce, and they want some of the affordable apartments to go to their workers, who frequently commute well over an hour from places such as Gilroy and Salinas.
Restaurateur Zach Davis called the high cost of housing “the No. 1 factor” that led to the 2018 closure of Assembly, a popular farm-to-table restaurant he co-owned.
“How do we keep our community intact, if the people who make it all happen, the workers who make Santa Cruz what it is, can’t afford to live here anymore?” Davis asked.
One opponent calls the plan to add high-rises to the city’s picturesque downtown “out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s plan indicates that 859 of the units built over the next eight years will be for “very low income” families. But the term is relative, tied to a community’s median income, which in Santa Cruz is $132,800 for a family of four. Families bringing home between $58,000 and $82,000 would qualify as very low income. Tenants in that bracket would pay $1,800 a month for a three-bedroom apartment in one recently completed complex, built under the city’s requirement that 20% of units be rented for below-market rents.
The people pushing for high-rise development say expanding the housing supply will stem ever-rising rents. Opponents counter that the continued growth of UC Santa Cruz, which hopes to add 8,500 students by 2040, and a new surge of highly paid Silicon Valley “tech bros” looking to put down roots in beachy Santa Cruz would quickly gobble up whatever number of new units are built.
“They say that if you just build more housing, the prices will come down. Which is, of course, not true,” said Gary Patton, a former county supervisor and an original leader in the slow-growth movement. “So we’ll have lots more housing, with lots more traffic, less parking, more neighborhood impacts and more rich people moving into Santa Cruz.”
Leaders on Santa Cruz’s political left say new construction only touches one aspect of the housing crisis. Some of the leaders of Tenant Sanctuary, a renters’ rights group, would like to see Santa Cruz tamp down rents by creating complexes owned by the state or cooperatives and enacting a rent control law capping annual increases.
“No matter what they build, we need housing where the price is not tied to market swings and how much money can be squeezed out of a given area of land,” said Zav Hershfield, a board member for the group.
The up-zoning of downtown parcels has won the support of much of the city’s establishment, including the county Chamber of Commerce, whose chief executive said exorbitant housing prices are excluding blue-collar workers and even some well-paid professionals. “The question is, do you want a lively, vital, economically thriving community?” said Casey Beyer, CEO of the business group. “Or do you want to be a sleepy retirement community?”
The town clock is one of several landmarks in the beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Just days after the anti-high-rise measure qualified for the March ballot, the two sides began bickering over what impact it would have.
Lane, the former mayor, and two affordable housing developers wrote an op-ed for the Lookout Santa Cruz news site that said the ballot measure is crafted so broadly it would apply to all “development projects.” They contend that could trigger the need for citywide votes for projects as modest as raising a fence from 6 feet to 7 feet, adding an ADU to a residential property or building a shelter for the homeless, if the projects exceed current practices in a given neighborhood.
The authors accused ballot measure proponents of faux environmentalism. “If we don’t go up,” they wrote, “we have less housing near jobs — and more people driving longer distances to get to work.”
The ballot measure proponents countered that their critics were misrepresenting facts. They said the measure would not necessitate voter approval for mundane improvements and would come into play in relatively few circumstances, for projects that require amendments to the city’s General Plan.
While not staking out a formal position on the ballot measure, the city’s planning staff has concluded the measure could force citizen votes for relatively modest construction projects.
The two sides also can’t agree on the impact of a second provision of the ballot measure. It would increase from 20% to 25% the percentage of “inclusionary” (below-market-rate) units that developers would have to include in complexes of 30 units or more.
The ballot measure writers say such an increase signals their intent to assure that as much new housing as possible goes to the less affluent. But their opponents say that when cities try to force developers to include too many sub-market apartments, the builders end up walking away.
Santa Cruz’s housing inventory shows that the city has the potential to add as many as 8,364 units in the next eight years, when factoring in proposals such as the downtown high-rises and UC Santa Cruz’s plan to add about 1,200 units of student housing. That’s more than double the number required by the state. But the Department of Housing and Community Development requires this sort of “buffer,” because the reality is that many properties zoned for denser housing won’t get developed during the eight-year cycle.
As with many aspects of the downtown up-zoning, the two sides are at odds over whether incorporating the potential for extra development amounts to judicious planning or developer-friendly overkill.
Joyful, left, and Valerie Christy, right, jam for fun and a few dollars in downtown Santa Cruz.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s voters have rejected housing-related measures three times in recent years. In 2018, they decisively turned down a rent control proposal. Last year, they said no to taxing owners who leave homes in the community sitting empty. But they also rejected a measure that would have blocked a plan to relocate the city’s central library while also building 124 below-market-rate apartment units.
The last time locals got this worked up about their downtown may have been at the start of the new millennium, when the City Council considered cracking down on street performers. That prompted the owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, another local landmark, to print T-shirts and bumper stickers entreating fellow residents to “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.”
Santa Cruzans once again are being asked to consider the look and feel of their downtown and whether its future should be left to the City Council, or voters themselves. The measure provokes myriad questions, including these: Can funky, earnest, compassionate Santa Cruz remain that way, even with high-rise apartments? And, with so little housing for students and working folks, has it already lost its charm?
Federal and state officials have confirmed outbreaks in the last few weeks of a fast-spreading avian influenza strain — commonly known as bird flu — in four new California counties, sparking concerns about the possible agricultural and financial blow of the virus.
The “highly pathogenic” bird flu was confirmed Wednesday at two commercial farms in Stanislaus County, joining recent outbreaks at poultry farms in Fresno, San Benito and Sonoma counties, according to updates from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The strain is easily spread among birds and often fatal for them.
“It is important to note that [the bird flu] is widespread in California and may also be present in other counties that are not listed,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday. “Enhanced biosecurity is critical in the face of ongoing disease outbreaks.”
Surging egg prices earlier this year were blamed on an outbreak of the bird flu that killed millions of hens and left grocers struggling to keep shelves stocked.
California agriculture officials said that in order to protect other flocks from the disease, the farms where outbreaks were reported are being quarantined and their birds euthanized.
After cases were confirmed earlier this week at two Sonoma County poultry farms, officials there declared a state of emergency, calling the outbreak a local disaster.
“We need to promote and protect our local food shed and the agricultural producers who dedicate their livelihoods to producing food for our local populations and beyond,” Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner Andrew Smith said in a statement. “These producers are integral in maintaining and increasing food security in our communities.”
Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt said he is concerned about economic and supply-chain issues that could result from the emergency, noting that south Sonoma County has about “one million farm birds within a five-mile radius” of one of the facilities hit by the outbreak, and that they provide as many as hundreds of thousands of eggs daily.
Rabbitt also said that more than 200 employees work at the two affected Sonoma County facilities, and will be hurt by the losses.
In October, as cases of avian flu increased nationally and the first California outbreak of the season was detected in Merced County, the state veterinarian urged that California bird farmers move their flocks indoors for now.
The Merced County outbreak was confirmed at a commercial turkey farm, home to about 30,000 birds, according to USDA data tracking the virus’ spread.
The most recent outbreaks confirmed in Stanislaus County were at two commercial farms that are raising about 250,000 chickens each. The infected Sonoma County farms were a duck farm with 169,000 birds, and a commercial egg producer with more than 80,000 birds.
The San Benito and Fresno county cases also included commercial duck farms, with 5,000 birds in San Benito and 23,000 in Fresno, according to the USDA data.
State officials did not disclose the names of the companies involved, and USDA data was limited.
Avian infuenza can be found in both wild and domesticated fowl, including chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, ducks and geese, and its typically spread through bird-to-bird contact, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
There have also been confirmed cases in wild birds over the last month in Sacramento and Santa Clara counties, according to the USDA.
Officials noted this spring that continued spread of the virus could soon become a concern for the still-endangered California condor.
Californians can report unusual sick or dead pets or domesticated birds via the state Department of Food and Agriculture Sick Bird Hotline at (866) 922-2473. Any unusual or dead wild birds should be reported to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife online.
First elected to the Assembly in 2016, Fong serves as the vice chair of the budget and transportation committees.
The Republican began his career in politics as a staff member for longtime Bakersfield Rep. Bill Thomas, who served as a chair to the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, where Fong worked on international trade policy. Fong then served as district director for McCarthy, advising the congressman on issues affecting the Central Valley and helping serve constituents.
Fong has been a vocal critic of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push for restricting oil production in California and the administration’s overall energy policies, and has warned that the state’s electricity grid is not capable of supporting the administration’s mandated transition to electric vehicles. Fong also has criticized the spending of state money by Newsom and the California Legislature’s Democratic leadership.
Sen. Shannon Grove, 58, Republican
State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield).
(Associated Press)
Grove, who once described herself as a “gun-carrying, tongue-talking, spirit-filled believer,” served as leader of the California Senate Republicans for two years.
The Bakersfield Republican is a U.S. Army veteran and served six years in the Assembly before her election to the state Senate in 2018. An enthusiastic supporter of Trump before and after he lost the 2020 presidential election, Grove called him “the greatest of all time” and reiterated false claims that President Biden won the election because of voter fraud.
Grove is a staunch defender of the California oil industry, a critical economic force in her Bakersfield-area Senate district. She has opposed mandatory vaccinations for schoolchildren, including the COVID-19 vaccine, and this year successfully pushed through legislation to increase penalties for child sex traffickers.
Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig, 47, Republican
Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig.
(Craig Kohlruss / Fresno Bee/TNS)
Republican Nathan Magsig is a member of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year for the seat occupied by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove).
The former youth pastor who also served as mayor of conservative Clovis was a staunch McCarthy supporter, telling The Times earlier this month: “My focus now is to show my support for him.”
