webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Newsom2 Gavin Gov

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2 26 RENAME TW0 --> MAIN

see THREE 2 26 RENAMED TEMP 2ND EZ

see main

ai regs?

X?

TARGET FOX COP 30

BAK 2 26

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aha: note that dem pol ineptitude or corruption become legal?! basis for fascist takeover: USMC in LA [abetted by blk brn ppl POC]

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The E.P.A. Rescinds a Landmark Finding | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Marc Morano, who worked for Rush Limbaugh and played a key role in the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry before he switched to attacking climate ...

no lnx

The E.P.A. Rescinds a Landmark Finding

But it’s not game over for future climate action—and understanding why allows for a more nuanced picture of where the fight actually stands now.

By Bill McKibben

February 20, 2026

It fell to Doug Burgum, once the governor of North Dakota and now the Secretary of the Interior, to offer something resembling a scientific explanation for the Trump Administration’s decision to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” which states that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide pose a risk to the planet’s health. “CO2 was never a pollutant,” Burgum said. “When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2.”

Considering that, in recent weeks, Burgum has also appeared in a cartoon with a lump of coal known as Coalie (“Mine, Baby, Mine!”) on social media, such reasoning is perhaps the best that one can hope for. It’s roughly the equivalent of explaining to a drowning person that you’re not going to throw him a life preserver because water is a building block of life. Carbon dioxide is, in fact, among the most dangerous substances at work on the Earth; as it collects in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, it is rapidly raising the Earth’s temperature, melting its poles, and setting off endless rounds of flood and fire. The latest warning came this past week, from a global team of scientists who noted, in a journal paper, that “we may be approaching a perilous threshold, with rapidly dwindling opportunities to prevent dangerous and unmanageable climate outcomes.” Indeed, recent weeks have produced predictions that a new El Niño is in the offing for later this year and, with it, the near certainty of new and dire temperature records.

Given all that, the decision to terminate the E.P.A.’s finding—which the agency issued in 2009, two years after the Supreme Court ruled, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act—has to rank as one of the signal moments in America’s descent into idiocracy. Literally every major scientific organization in the world, not to mention every other U.S. President since 1988, and even all the largest oil companies, have acknowledged the dangers of greenhouse gases. The decision is of a piece with the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and its efforts to disconnect satellites and monitoring stations—including, in December, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder—that the world has relied on to track changes in the planet’s chemistry and temperature.

The repeal of the finding will face significant legal challenges, but the climate-skeptic industry is convinced that it has won a final battle. “We are pretty close to total victory,” Myron Ebell, a veteran of the movement, who fought climate and conservation initiatives for decades and served in the first Trump Administration, told the Times. Marc Morano, who worked for Rush Limbaugh and played a key role in the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry before he switched to attacking climate-change policy, appears in an E.P.A. news release stating that the Administration’s actions “will make America much safer from any future climate wreckage inflicted by potential presidents like Gavin Newsom or AOC.”

A Times piece on the E.P.A.’s decision ran under a headline ratifying a sense that the Rubicon is now in the rearview mirror of a gas-guzzling S.U.V.: “Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change.” The fear is understandable—the finding has been the linchpin of federal regulations on everything from cars to coal-fired power stations. But it’s not, in fact, game over for future climate action, and understanding why allows for a more nuanced picture of where the climate fight actually stands now.

It was in 1988 that the public debate about climate change began, after the NASA scientist James Hansen testified before Congress and warned of the coming crisis. But, for the next thirty-five years or so, the fact that fossil fuel was relatively cheap and clean energy was relatively expensive constrained the debate. For the most part, environmentalists’ strategies involved somewhat complicated ways to bypass that economic reality. If they couldn’t persuade elected officials to raise the price of fossil fuels through taxes, they could, for instance—and quite legitimately—argue for treating by-products of fossil fuels as dangerous pollutants and begin to limit their use on that basis. The finding, though entirely correct, was also always a work-around, a way of avoiding having to directly confront the overwhelming power of the fossil-fuel industry in our political and economic life.

Then, earlier this decade, it became cheaper to produce energy from the sun and the wind than from coal and gas and oil. Around the world, the surge in clean power is now moving faster than any energy transition in history. Over the course of twenty-one months, greenhouse-gas emissions in China have plateaued and even dropped; perhaps even more significant, coal use has declined recently in India, as solar fields expand, creating a real possibility that it may be the first large nation to pass through rapid economic development without relying mostly on fossil fuel. And new reports indicate that Africa is now the fastest-growing solar market in the world, with solar capacity up fifty-four per cent over the course of the past year.

The Trump Administration can, of course, hinder the development of clean tech in the U.S.—it has shut down under-construction windfarms, restricted the installation of panels on federal lands, and removed already built and paid-for E.V. chargers from federal buildings. That it has done this to appease the fossil-fuel industry, which provided enormous financial support to Republicans in the 2024 elections, is too obvious to be worth denying. But that effort speaks, at least in part, to the industry’s nervousness. It’s even in trouble in Texas, which last year led the U.S. in clean-energy and battery installation, and where, Google announced just this past week, two new data centers it is building will be fuelled by solar power.

So if a President Newsom (in his current role, as governor of California, Newsom just signed a new agreement on climate coöperation with the British government) or a President Ocasio-Cortez were to take office someday, with a goal to rejoin the international climate fight or just to restore the U.S. as a serious manufacturing competitor to China, their first priority would not be a new endangerment finding from the E.P.A. That was the right move back in the day. Now job No. 1 would be getting back to building clean energy. ♦

Bill McKibben is a contributing writer at The New Yorker focussing on climate policy. His books include “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.”

More:

Climate Change

E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency)

Right-wing media miss the mark on explaining wildfire recovery in Los Angeles

The Trump administration has denied Los Angeles $34 billion in disaster relief

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

:{Published 02/11/26

Experts are skeptical about whether federal agencies even have the authority to implement the executive order, and survivors say a lack of access to money to fund construction is more of a barrier to rebuilding than permitting. Meanwhile, DHS has reportedly created a “$17 billion bottleneck” that is impeding federal disaster response, and the administration denied Los Angeles $34 billion in disaster relief.

Right-wing media insisted that climate change had nothing to do with the wildfires, despite the clear connection, and instead blamed forest mismanagement and water policies. In reality, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water policies have no relationship to the LA fires or low water pressure in fire hydrants, debunking another popular narrative on the right, while the conditions driving the fires and their clear connections to climate change were dismissed. PBS News, [_{8/9/21;}_Media Matters, 1/10/25, 1/10/25, 1/15/25]

Hannity, 1/28/26]

MMA //

  1. ### Right-wing media personalities seize on arson charge to falsely deny the role of climate change in Palisades Fire

:{10/10/25

  1. ### Fox News is mostly silent on Trump's ill-advised and dangerous release of water in California after weeks of attacking the state’s water policies

:{02/07/25

  1. ### Trump’s executive order on California water policy canonized right-wing media misinformation about the LA fires

01/24/2

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legal suppression subpoena

He added that another reason he decided to speak out now was a recent LinkedIn post from Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global affairs, describing the company as having “worked to improve” SB 53—a characterization Calvin said felt deeply at odds with his experience over the past few months.

Encode was founded by Sneha Revanur, who launched the organization in 2020 when she was 15 years old. “She is not a full-time employee yet because she’s still in college,” said Sunny Gandhi, Encode’s vice president of political affairs. “It’s terrifying to have a half a trillion dollar company come after you,” Gandhi said.

verge

openAI’s co-founder and longtime president, Greg Brockman, didn’t just make a run-of-the-mill donation to the main pro-Trump super PAC — together, he and his wife Anna’s September 2025 donations equaled the largest of them all, totaling $25 million to “MAGA Inc.,” per a recent filing. The Brockmans’ donations made up nearly one-fourth of the six-month fundraising cycle.

It’s the latest in a string of examples of tech executives cozying up to President Trump’s administration, happening as the administration pushes to aggressively back the AI industry and defang state-level regulations that companies like OpenAI have largely opposed. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brockman’s multimillion-dollar donation isn’t the only example of him spending big, under his own name, on lobbying efforts that have their sights set on dismantling potential AI industry regulation. The pro-AI super PAC “Leading the Future,” of which Brockman is a significant backer, has bought ads targeting New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores — a cosponsor of New York’s RAISE Act, which was watered down at the last minute after coordinated lobbying efforts.

Though news of the Brockmans’ donations first broke earlier this month, it’s seen a resurgence in online discussion after the recent death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, where federal officers have fatally shot two people during an anti-immigrant crackdown. Tech workers from across the industry, including multiple employees at OpenAI, have signed a letter calling for their CEOs to cancel all contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and publicly condemn the department’s actions. “When Trump threatened to send the national guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House,” the petition’s website states. “It worked: Trump backed down. Today we’re calling on our CEOs to pick up the phone again.”

However, since Trump’s inauguration, tech leader after tech leader has donated to his inauguration fund, flocked to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him, or attended White House dinners by his side. In return, they’ve gotten an administration eager to roll back consumer protections and tech regulation. Trump’s AI Action Plan resurrected a failed Republican attempt to bar states from passing AI regulations, to tech leaders’ delight. The new provision states that “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage” and that the government “should not allow AI-related Federal funding to be directed toward states with burdensome AI regulations that waste these funds,” though it should also “not interfere with states’ rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation.” Targets of the moratorium include SB 53, the landmark AI transparency bill California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September despite many tech companies lobbying against it, including OpenAI.

In 2019, Brockman co-wrote a blog post about how hard it is to “change powerful systems … once they’ve been deployed,” and that it’s “important to address AGI’s safety and policy risks before it is created.” Six years later, his posts have shifted in tone, highlighting the importance of “approach[ing] emerging technology with a growth-focused mindset.” In a New Year’s Eve post on X, Brockman wrote that “this year, my wife Anna and I started getting involved politically, including through political contributions, reflecting support for policies that advance American innovation and constructive dialogue between government and the technology sector.” He added that “it’s been great to see the president’s and his administration’s willingness to engage directly with the AI community.”

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AN 12 25

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) spent a significant portion of a recent address criticizing members of his audience for their obeisance to President Donald Trump.

Politico reported Wednesday that the two-term governor — who is presumed to run for the presidency in 2028 — told audience members at the New York Times DealBook Summit that they were complicit in some of the Trump administration's worst abuses. At one point he suggested they should buy the kneepads with Trump's signature he's selling on his website, given their pattern of "groveling to Trump’s needs."

"Some of you may need to buy them in bulk," Newsom added.

The outlet reported that Newsom's segment was sandwiched between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Turning Point CEO Erika Kirk (wife of slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk), and he spent much of it attacking the Trump administration. He specifically called out the administration's deployment of federal agents ahead of the campaign kickoff for the Prop 50 initiative (which was passed in November as a means of countering Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas and elsewhere).

“Some of you are probably fine with it,” Newsom told the audience. “A lot of people figured it out. They know the game, state capitalism, crony capitalism, the great grift. A lot of you are doing extraordinarily well.”

Politico reported that Newsom's speech was met not with boos, but with muted applause. Two people in the audience described the California governor as a younger version of President Joe Biden. Another said he was impressed by Newsom's presentation.

According to the New York Times, the DealBook Summit's attendees typically include "high-level executives, leaders and entrepreneurs from the worlds of financial services, technology, consumer goods, private investment, venture capital, banking, media, public relations, policy, government, academia and more."

Click here to read Politico's report in its entirety.

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MMA

Corporate broadcast news covered this year’s COP30 global climate summit for 2 minutes — cable networks covered it for just over 3 hours

Fox News used COP30 to attack Gavin Newsom and undermine climate science

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 11/26/25

COP30 — which proceeded without an official U.S. delegation — opened on November 6 while the main sessions got underway on November 10 and concluded on November 21.

This year’s conference sought to address numerous issues, creating a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and a landmark declaration on the threat of disinformation in addressing climate change and a newly proposed initiative to reduce deforestation.

As in previous years, the gathering was met with protests by Indigenous and civil society groups calling for stronger climate action. This year, although 2,500 Indigenous people gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the summit, only 14% (360 individuals) received credentials to attend negotiations. (No members were part of Brazil’s official delegation.) By contrast, fossil fuel lobbyists were overrepresented at the COP30 climate negotiations to the chagrin of climate organizers and Indigenous climate activists. In one demonstration on November 14, indigenous groups blocked the entrance to the conference and demanded to speak to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Reporting on the protests by TV news outlets was sparse, while the attendance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was widely covered. CNN and MSNBC discussed how the U.S. is falling behind in the clean energy technology race while China gains ground. Additionally, 22% of segments mentioned Bill Gates’ controversial climate memo to world leaders. Meanwhile, Fox News coverage attacked Newsom and undermined climate science.

Two brief headline reports, one from ABC and one from CBS, focused on the protests at the conference. Much of the broadcast coverage focused on a fire that broke out in one of the convention halls on November 20 — though none of the coverage of the fire offered more details about the climate conference.

:{Video

Citation

From the November 21, 2025, edition of NBC's Today

CNN’s coverage of COP30 featured several experts, including Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the 2015 Paris climate accord negotiations; Margaret Barry, a climate litigation fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University; Kim Cobb, climate scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society; as well as former vice president and climate advocate Al Gore.

A key narrative through CNN’s coverage was the state of the clean energy transition and China’s role in it.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on November 8, Figueres explained some of the progress since the landmark Paris agreement in 2015: “Ten years ago, one in every hundred vehicles that were being sold was electric. Now, we have one in five. We have two times as much investment into renewable energy as we do into fossil fuels. Solar has been deployed 15 times faster than we ever expected 10 years ago, and on and on and on. There are many proof points that there is a new economy rising.”

Amanpour also interviewed Al Gore, who pointed out the cost of the U.S. ceding the clean energy economy to others.

“China is now exporting to other countries more green technology like electric vehicles and windmills and solar,” Gore said. “The value of their green tech exports now far exceeds the exports from the United States to the rest of the world. … We’re seeing this transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and these exciting new technologies that are pollution-free, they create three times as many jobs per dollar spent compared to the old dirty fossil fuels, and that’s where the economic future is.”

Climate scientist Kim Cobb made a similar argument on CNN Newsroom With Fredricka Whitfield*:

“China, of course, [is] transitioning its economy very, very quickly to clean energy sources. About 84% of the demand last year in China for electricity was met by clean energy sources. They are owning EVs, batteries, and solar cells to the tune of 78% of global manufacturing taking place in China for a $2 trillion industry. So right now what we’re looking at is China taking a very bold leadership role and charting its clean energy future. The U.S., in the meantime, swimming very much upstream against the global currents of deployed renewables, which are cheaper than fossil fuels right now.”

While MSNBC covered the climate conference for roughly 13 minutes, its coverage included similar narratives about clean energy. On his November 16 show, host Ali Velshi noted: “Now, in America's absence, China is stepping up as a global leader in climate science. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported last week that China's carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months straight. Part of that is attributable to a record amount of renewable energy expansion in China. In 2024, the country installed 333 gigawatts of solar power capacity — that's more than the rest of the world combined.”

Video Citation}:

From the November 12, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Discussing COP30 earlier in the same segment, Greg Gutfeld declared that the “climate agenda has been fully discredited” and that “the climate computer models have been shown to be corrupt.” He went on to falsely claim, “They are wrong on predicting everything from the temperature increases to the snow or ice melting.”

Laura Ingraham announced that scientists’ warnings on climate change have been “total scams.”

The network also hosted its usual round-up of climate contrarians and skeptics including Marc Morano, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and Victor Davis Hanson, and Fox coverage continued to cite the controversial October 28 climate memo from Bill Gates to global leaders ahead of COP30 to suggest that climate change is no longer considered a crisis requiring immediate action.

Video{Citation

From the November 15, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Journal Editorial Report

“I think what Bill Gates is really saying is something reasonable,” Lomborg agreed. “Talk about how you think about climate — he’s saying sure, it’s a problem, but it’s not the end of the world.”

In reality, 2025 is set to be the “second or third warmest year on record,” the World Meteorological Organization reports. The warmest year overall remains 2024, which was likely “the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.”

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11 12 25

cop30

cop 30

0:00

largest economy in the world every day

0:03

with 2/3 of its energy source from clean

0:06

energy.

0:08

We have over the course of this calendar

0:10

year nine out of 10 days run at a

0:13

portion of the day at 100% 100% clean

0:18

energy. And that's because of our very

0:20

intentional policies that are

0:22

nationleading,

0:24

including our cap and invest program

0:27

that we just extended to 2045.

0:30

So I point that as aspect of contrast to

0:34

what's going on in Washington DC. I

0:36

don't want that to shape your perception

0:38

of my country.

0:41

We also recognize that climate risk is

0:45

also financial risk and increasingly we

0:48

are struggling as a nation with home

0:51

building and access to mortgages because

0:54

of the insurance crisis that has been

0:57

induced and exacerbated because of

0:59

climate change. I say that to reinforce

1:03

the economic imperative to address from

1:06

a cost of living perspective the

1:09

importance of changing the way we

1:10

produce and consume energy. Final point,

1:14

I'm not naive about our biggest

1:17

competitor in the United States of

1:19

America. And I say this not with a

1:21

closed fist, but my eyes wide open.

1:24

As an American,

1:27

I respect and admire what China is doing

1:29

at scale

1:31

as it relates to supply chains and

1:32

manufacturing. In the United States,

1:35

America better wake up to that. Our

1:37

legacy automobile manufacturers better

1:39

wake up to that.

1:42

We This is not about electric power.

1:44

This is about economic power.

1:47

And we in the state of California are

1:49

not going to seed that race to China.

1:53

We're going to compete in that market.

1:56

And I think one of the great

1:57

abdications, final point, is the own

2:00

goal of a president of the United States

2:02

who simply doesn't understand

2:05

how enthusiastic President Xi is today

2:08

that the Trump administration is nowhere

2:10

to be found at COP 30 today.

2:16

Thank you. We'll continue to take a few

2:19

questions from the media. If you're

...

3:23

top 50 AI companies in the world. So,

3:26

we're not naive about the impacts,

3:28

particularly from a consumption

3:29

perspective, not just electricity,

3:31

energy, broadly defined, but also water.

3:34

And I also recognize our responsibility

3:36

to continue our nationleading innovation

3:39

not just in these technologies but in

3:42

new technologies like fusion, new

3:45

technologies like modern nuclear and

3:47

looking at those kinds of investments

3:49

that are happening disproportionately

3:51

the research and development in those

3:53

spaces disproportionately in my home own

3:55

home state. So that's the way we

3:57

approach these things. uh we're not

3:59

naive about the world we're inventing uh

4:02

and not naive about the impacts of that

4:04

world not just in our state but globally

4:06

as well.

4:09

Thank you. We'll take a couple more

4:11

questions. We are a bit short on time.

4:12

We go over to

4:15

Oh, excuse me. Uh the minister of cities

4:17

will have to go back to his meeting and

4:20

uh thanks thanks for joining us today.

4:29

Thank you.

4:32

We go over uh there to the second row,

4:35

please. The lady in white.

4:38

Second row, third, fourth from the left.

4:46

Governor Somini Sanup from the New York

4:48

Times. You have said a couple of times

4:50

that you want to reframe climate action

4:53

as an economic issue. How should

4:56

Democrats in the United States be

4:59

talking about climate change? Because

5:02

when they tried to talk about climate

5:03

change in the last presidential

5:05

election, it was one of the issues among

5:08

others that did not seem to resonate

5:10

with voters.

5:11

Well, that's why I said it's not about

5:13

electric power, it's about economic

5:14

power. I think we have to reframe it as

5:16

a cost of living issue. And we've seen

5:19

the estimates from the New York Times

5:21

among others reported the estimates of

5:24

Donald Trump's attack and assault on Joe

5:27

Biden's policies

5:29

as it relates to his lowcarbon green

5:32

growth initiatives will cost the average

5:36

rateayer 10% more in bills this calendar

5:40

year.

5:42

That's a kitchen table issue. That's a

5:44

cost of living issue. It's about people.

5:47

It's about places. It's about

5:49

lifestyles. It's about traditions. I

5:52

think we have to use different language.

5:53

I've said this before with respect to

5:56

the global audience. The vast majority

5:58

of my audience doesn't know what Celsius

6:00

is. You talk 1.5 degrees Celsius. How

6:04

many what how many more degrees is that

6:06

Fahrenheit? We talk about greenhouse gas

6:08

emissions. Is where are they? Do they

6:10

float in the sky or where do they land?

6:12

We don't understand. We have to use

6:13

better metaphors. We have to change our

6:16

language. We have to talk in terms of

6:18

that people understand a pollution

6:19

benefit. We have to talk in terms that I

6:22

think can unite people uh and not look

6:25

at this in the abstract. And so I think

6:27

we have some work to do as a party uh as

6:30

a nation uh and that progress we're

6:32

trying to make and promote here at COP.

6:36

Thank you. We go over to the gentleman...

sub nat ev stats....

Okay. Then I would like

8:34

to underline that what governor just

8:37

said about creating a new language. I

8:40

really think it's important to talk in a

8:42

way that build trust and I think in the

8:45

case of my city we use we started to

8:48

transform the city due to the industrial

8:50

crisis and today I would say that we

8:53

have a strong support from our citizens

8:56

since they saw the change with a strong

8:58

focus on the green transition create a

9:01

lot of new green jobs. uh we had a very

9:04

problematic situation with problems uh

9:08

due to the industrial crisis and today

9:11

we are one of the fastest uh growing

9:14

cities and we collaborate very very

9:17

close with the business sector and all

9:19

our citizens. So it's also important to

9:22

remember that the trust for local

9:24

leaders, governors, mayers is quite

9:27

often higher than trust on the national

9:30

level. So the language and the trust is

9:33

really so important to be successful. I

9:35

appreciate that, mayor. It's also

9:36

results. We have seven times more green

9:40

energy jobs than we do fossil fuel jobs.

9:42

We've reduced greenhouse gases since

9:44

2000 by 21% and our GDP has grown 81%.

9:50

When I started, we were the sixth

9:51

largest economy in the world. Now we're

9:53

the fourth. Tesla comes from my state

9:55

for a reason. It was our regulatory

9:57

policies and 60 headquartered companies

10:00

in that space are now in California

10:02

because of our regulatory policies. One

10:04

of our biggest exports were number one

10:06

in two-way trade, number one in direct

10:07

foreign investment, more scientists,

10:09

engineers, more Nobel laureates in my

10:11

state than any other state. We dominate

10:13

in R&D, China, Germany, and California

10:16

in that order. Research and development.

10:19

So, it's an economic imperative that's

10:21

producing results, but trust is the coin

GM BAD CALL

ALL COUNTIES HERE, EVEN CHINA NOT US

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an 11 25

This week, Californians voted overwhelmingly for Prop 50, which replaces the Golden State's current U.S. House of Representatives district map with a new one designed to give Democrats an edge in five Republican districts. The California Republican Party (CAGOP) is now suing to stop the new maps from taking effect, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is doubting that the suit will succeed.

According to Politico, the CAGOP sued in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, claiming the new maps Prop 50 puts in place violate the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution on the basis of race, "without cause or basis to justify it." The 14th Amendment contains the Equal Protection Clause, which requires states to provide fair legal treatment to all citizens. The 15th Amendment prohibits states from denying citizens the right to vote (which was ratified after the Civil War).

"While the Constitution entrusts States with designing congressional districts, the Supreme Court has also held that states may not, without a compelling reason backed by evidence that was in fact considered, separate citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race," the complaint read.

After Prop 50 passed, Steve Bannon — who was President Donald Trump's chief White House strategist during his first term — urged the Trump administration to have Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon (who oversees the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division) sue California and win a temporary restraining order, and preventing Prop 50's new maps from going into effect through litigation. However, California Democratic Party leaders remain confident that Prop 50 will survive any court challenges.

On Wednesday, KCRA News political director Ashley Zavala reported that Gov. Newsom's office issued a statement in response to the CAGOP's lawsuit — and included a taunt against both Republicans and Dhillon.

"We haven’t reviewed the lawsuit, but if it’s from the California Republican Party and Harmeet Dhillon’s law firm, it’s going to fail," stated Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards. "Good luck, losers."

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AN 10 25

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NO LNX

Gavin Newsom and the next political uprising

California Governor Gavin Newsom, along with local congressional representatives, state officials and supporters, speaks as he announces the redrawing of California's congressional maps, calling on voters to approve a ballot measure, in response to a similar move in Texas being supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake

John StoehrNovember 03, 2025

Is the No Kings movement the new Tea Party movement?

That’s certainly the opinion of some Never Trump conservatives. In the more than 7 million people who protested against the Trump regime, they see the highest ideals of the Tea Party, chief among them limited government, individual liberty and the sovereignty of the people.

But that’s the thing. Those highest ideals were darkened by the fact that the Tea Party was an artificial construct. It’s sometimes called “astroturf” to distinguish it from a real, organic grassroots movement.

The Tea Party was funded by billionaires, conspicuously by the Koch brothers. It may have had the veneer of high-mindedness, but in truth it aimed to spread fear, hate and lies about the first Black president in order to expand and consolidate the power of those self-same elites.

So no. No Kings is not the new Tea Party if we are talking about the Tea Party in terms of the noblest principles of the American republic.

Because it wasn’t. It was, however, a political movement against elites. In this, No Kings has something in common with the Tea Party.

The key difference, of course, is that No Kings has the potential to reject the legitimacy of elites generally. The Tea Party wanted us to believe that the “elites” were all those wine-and-cheese liberals on the east coast who forced “real Americans” to live under the rule of a secret Muslim and covert Marxist by the name of Barack Obama, who was himself a mere puppet of a global conspiracy against America.

The Tea Party movement was a gigantic shuck and jive – a means of distracting Americans, but especially white Americans who are (um) receptive to such messaging, while actual elites pick their pockets.

While No Kings is mainly focused on Donald Trump, it holds the promise of expanding its scope to include all those elites that the Tea Party was intended to serve. Indeed, the circumstances are changing rapidly. No Kings could evolve into a mass movement against oligarchs, which could turn into a mass movement against billionaires, which could turn into a mass movement against the monopoly control that all those billionaires now have over the institutions of democracy.

And like the Tea Party, No Kings is emerging from an economic emergency. Back then, it was a crisis of collapsing assets, mainly housing, and how that impacted jobs. The crisis now is much, much greater, as inflation and cost of living affect vastly more people than unemployment ever did. It’s so bad that retailers that manage to hold their prices down are being celebrated as champions of the people!

No Kings is already huge. Its recent one-day march was the biggest in American history. Everyone who is not capable of bribing a president is struggling to pay for the necessities of life. Many of those folks are going to be open to a movement that gives them someone to blame. A protest of seven million-plus people could double before you know it.

Donald Trump looked at the Tea Party and found ways to harness its energy. (He chose “birtherism,” because he understood what it was really about.) Ambitious Democrats are surely doing the same regarding No Kings. One of the most ambitious is Gavin Newsom.

In an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Kark, California’s governor said we ought to be standing up for the noblest principles of the American republic. “The founding fathers did not live and die to see us as cowards,” Newsom said. Then he identified the cowards, broadening the scope of the No Kings movement to include “the richest, most powerful people selling their souls and selling out this country.”

He then implied a list: the Republicans in the Congress, Wall Street and the corporate media, elite universities and elite law firms. Missing was the supermajority of the Supreme Court, but Newsom’s message was otherwise clear. Americans should be “disgusted” by the “cowards” who have monopoly control over the institutions of democracy.

Newsom borrowed from the No Kings by saying that the language of liberty is requisite to fighting for it. “It’s a revolution that’s going on in this country and I think you have to start using those words,” he said. “[Trump] is attacking every single institution of independent thinking and he’s succeeding because we’re still playing by the old set of rules.”

“The old set of rules” is hotly debated among liberal folk, but at its root, it refers to a status quo that, by dint of being a status quo, gives certain elites every advantage they could hope for in preventing the Democrats from developing into a fully realized opposition party.

It means continuing to make room for certain elites who (in good faith, let’s say) wish to stop the Democrats from becoming “too extreme,” which really means stopping them from centering the interests of the people. Once these are set aside, Newsom suggests, the Democrats can “fight fire with fire” for the purpose of establishing a new normal.

The language of revolutionary freedom in the context of old rules serving elites is important to understanding what Newsom says in the very next breath – that once order is reestablished, “we will continue to build on the legacy, I would argue, of the former president, who I think was one of the most successful presidents of the last century.”

He meant Joe Biden.

Far too few realized Biden was the bridge between the past and the future that so many Americans want to see in their president. His economic policies in particular were transformational, as they reversed the priorities of previous administrations, including Obama’s.

Biden privileged workers over “job creators.” (He was the first president to cross a picket line.) He oversaw a dramatic increase in hourly wages. (They outpaced inflation for the first time since the 1960s.) Unemployment, especially Black unemployment, had rarely been lower. By the end, inflation was returning to pre-pandemic levels.

For these reasons and more, elites hated Biden.

The hatred was especially sharp among corporate bosses. Biden championed their workers. He regulated their industries. He put the national interest above theirs. Most of all, they hated that Joe Biden threatened to stem the tide of consolidation. Capital will concentrate if left alone. Biden didn’t leave it alone. He knew that the unchecked concentration of money and power spells doom for democracy.

He was right. We know he was right. Look what’s happening now.

And that brings me back to No Kings. It has the potential to clarify history. The conventional wisdom is that Biden, through his hubris, brought himself down, paving the way for Donald Trump’s return.

With enough effort, another story can come to light – that the elites who are now lording it over us, who are now planning to pal around with a criminal president in his new gold-plated “ballroom,” conspired against a truly working-man’s president. Yes, he was old. Perhaps he overstayed his welcome. But no one can dispute the stone-cold fact that elites across the spectrum attacked him virtually from the start.

And from that betrayal of democracy and the common good arose the stirrings of an organic grassroots movement against not only despotic rule but against “the richest, most powerful people selling their souls and selling out this country” – those who made despotism possible.

Newsom didn’t bring up Biden only because he’s still popular with the Democratic base. He did so also because he knows that what the former president did is the foundation on which to build the next chapter of American history as well as the history of the Democratic Party – and whoever the base chooses to be the party’s next leader.

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MMA 7 25

July 15, 2025, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Gavin has transitioned back into a man and we're proud of him. Because before Gavin detransitioned he sounded like this.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

GAVIN NEWSOM (GOV. CA): Black community does not need to change. We need to change.

One thing is clear to me, we have a hierarchy of values in this country that diminishes certain people based on the color of their skin.

(VIDEO ENDS)

(VIDEO BEGINS)

NEWSOM: History, though, must acknowledge the shameful mistakes of our country's past. After all, America was literally built on the backs of Black people.

(VIDEO ENDS)

WATTERS: Newsom is America's first AI politician. His Silicon Valley donors figured out how to make an algorithm to make him electable outside of California. And after undergoing political sex change surgery, Gavin is now a patriotic, anti-lockdown, trans surgery, pronoun, and pro-border governor who loves capitalism, the Second Amendment, and the founders. Would Gavin admit he was wrong about everything if he wasn't running for president?

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california-governor-gavin-newsom-signs-right-to-repair-law

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2X

AN 6 25

President Donald Trump's critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, are deeply troubled by his response to the tense protests that are rocking Downtown L.A. in response to immigration raids being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

Trump ordered 2000 California National Guardian troops to the area, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is talking about sending in 500 U.S. Marines. According to Trump's critics, he is crossing a dangerous line by federalizing National Guard troops — whose deployment to Downtown L.A., they argue, should only be ordered by Newsom if he decides it is necessary.

New York Times national security reporter Helene Cooper discussed the [VID] volatile situation during a expressing fears that things could turn ugly if Trump uses the military against civilians.

READ MORE:'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America

During his first presidency, Cooper noted, traditional conservatives in the White House would push back against his worst ideas—whereas now, he is surrounded by loyalists who encourage him.

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Cooper told "Morning" host Mika Brzezinski, "I'm a little worried this is not heading anywhere good…. President Trump doesn't have (former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman) Mark Milley or (Defense Secretary) Mark Esper or any of the people from his previous administration who sort of acted as the brakes on this. Pete Hegseth…. sort of made up that Marines are on high alert, which is not necessarily a formal thing. He tweeted that on Saturday, (June 7) and then doubled down on Sunday, saying Marines are standing by."

The Times reporter continued, "We know that to put active-duty troops on the streets…. President Trump would have to — most likely have to — invoke the Insurrection Act, which to my knowledge, he has not done yet."

During the interview, Cooper drew a distinction between the "political Pentagon" and Trump loyalists like Hegseth and the "military people and career Pentagon."

READ MORE:Trump's latest move is a danger to all of us

Cooper told Brzezinski, "The Pentagon was sort of scrambling last night to figure out what to do. The last thing they want is active- duty troops taking on protesters on American streets. They fought mightily against that during the George Floyd protests…. There's a very real worry, again, among the career and professional military of this sort of look that we are militarizing the country…. If you get to the point where American troops are being asked or tasked with shooting protesters, you will then see this discomfort manufacture in public."

Cooper noted that Los Angeles is heavily Latino and that the military is also racially diverse.

Cooper told Brzezinski, "Right now, the orders are lawful. Right now, they have not been asked to do anything that I can see that could be interpreted as an unlawful order, but I think things could come to a head pretty quickly. You talk about the demographic demographics of Los Angeles — well, the demographic of the American military is pretty diverse, despite all of Pete Hegseth's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion and DEI and so-called woke policies. You're looking at one of the most, if not the most diverse, institutions that America has. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of conflict there when you start dragging troops who are not prepared to do law enforcement, domestic law enforcement on the streets of America into this."

READ MORE:'It's pathetic': Right-wing red state Republicans are being ripped apart — by football

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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cave to agribiz

WESTERN PLANT HEALTH APPLAUDS VETO OF CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY BILL 2146

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept. 29, 2022 Western Plant Health Applauds Veto of California Assembly Bill 2146 Governor Sticks to Sounds Science in ...

READ MORE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Sept. 29, 2022

Western Plant Health Applauds Veto of California Assembly Bill 2146

Governor Sticks to Sounds Science in Rejecting Measure Promoting Unnecessary Pesticide Regulations that Would Have Put Crops as Risk

SACRAMENTO, CA –  Western Plant Health voiced support for Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of California Assembly Bill 2146, which would have taken pesticide regulations out of the hands of scientists.

“Governor Newsom has demonstrated a highly laudable commitment to trusting science as his guide for making major policy decision,” said Renee Pinel, President & CEO of WPH. “We are pleased that he has again followed sound science and reason in rejecting this proposed law.”

Assembly Bill 2146 sought to adopt restrictions in urban and suburban areas on a class of pesticides known asneonicotinoids, which are used to combat a variety of pests, including mosquitos, bed bugs, fleas, cockroaches and a range of invasive species. Neonicotinoids are also vital for protecting backyard fruit and citrus trees that help provide important nutrition to families around the state....

api hit on ca gavin:

energy citizen of okla

pulled? no links several graphs 2020?

https://energycitizens.org/driving-the-wrong-direction-in-california/

wayback

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Driving The Wrong Direction In California

Four observations about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order requiring that by 2035 all new cars sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles – as well as his push for halting fracking in the state:

  1. The governor’s executive order could seriously impact middle-class Californians

The zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) parked behind the governor during his announcement (one’s an Audi) underscore the point that the new mandate figures to be tough on middle-class Californians. It’s difficult to see how the mandate won’t make life in California – already among the most expensive in the nation – more costly, hurting people least able to afford it. Middle-class Californians should be able to buy a car that fits their budgets – vs. a price range imposed on them.

The governor’s pledge above – “You can still keep your internal combustion engine car” – sounds like a line from another big public policy debate a few years ago.

Western States Petroleum Association President Catherine Reheis-Boyd:

“Big ideas are only better if they are affordable for us all and can be backed by science, data and needed infrastructure. There are many questions about all of those concerns in the Governor’s orders. Dismantling our oil and natural gas industry right now means betting everything on alternative energy resources that we don’t have in place and a supporting infrastructure that’s far from being at the scale we need.”

AFPMPresident and CEO Chet Thompson:

“[P]ursuing this goal would be among the most inefficient, unpopular, and regressive methods to reduce carbon emissions.Forced electrification would deprive consumers of choice for popular vehicles fueled by affordable, reliable, and readily available gasoline and diesel.It also ignores that today’s vehicles are 99 percent cleaner than they were just a few decades ago and continue to get cleaner every year.”

  1. Seriously, a zero-emissions mandate in a state that has struggled to keep the lights on?

The state’s renewable energy mandate, requiring 60% of the state’s electricity must come from renewables by 2030, stepped on a rake last month when rolling blackouts were implanted because demand outpaced available electricity during a hot spell. It would seem to undermine confidence that California can pull off Newsom’s zero-emissions vehicle pledge in just 15 years.

The fact is ZEVs make up a small part of the vehicle market currently, and significant recharging infrastructure will need to be built. California had more than 15 million registered vehicles in 2018. That’s a lot of plug-ins that will be needed. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation’s John Bozzella:

“[N]either mandates nor bans build successful markets. What builds successful markets is widespread stakeholder engagement: a combination of efforts by federal, state, and local governments, as well as automakers, dealers, utilities, hydrogen providers, electric infrastructure providers, builders, and others. Currently, electrified vehicles account for less than 10 percent of new vehicle sales in California. While that is the best in the nation, much more needs to be done to increase consumer demand for Zero Emission Vehicles in order for California to reach its goals. It will require increased infrastructure, incentives, fleet requirements, building codes, and much more.”

  1. There’s rhetoric and there’s reality

California has a history of being good on rhetoric – and not so good on following through, often at great cost and burden to everyday Californians.

Regarding issues with the state’s electricity-from-renewables mandate mentioned above, even Gov. Newsom conceded impacts to state residents, telling reporters last month that millions of Californians had been left in the dark thanks to a significant gap in reliability created by the renewable mandate. Other relevant points:

California has a history of aspirational targets and failed outcomes. Since its inception in 1990, California has been forced to walk back or significantly change parts of its zero emission vehicle mandate no less than seven times as high costs, limited consumer interest and a lack of breakthroughs in battery technology have routinely rendered extremely optimistic goals infeasible.

Overly aspirational mandates have led California residents to pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. The average price of electricity in the state is 16.6 cents per kWh, nearly 60% higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

As the charts below show, California electricity prices are high, even though the average California home uses about half as much energy as an average American household. In the first chart, state electricity prices (blue line) were about 40% higher than the national average in 2019. In the second, you can see the trajectory of the state’s baseline electricity rates – the minimum billing amount for customers.

Add in past issues with taxes, infrastructure and regulation (see here, here and here) and it’s not surprising Gov. Newsom’s new order could generate some skepticism. While past history on goals, aspirations and rhetoric doesn’t mean California will come up short on this order, it certainly is a strong indicator.

  1. State natural gas and oil production is being targeted

The natural gas and oil industry is a key driver of California’s economy – second only to Texas in total industry employment – and its oil production ranked sixth in the nation as of June – 392,000 barrels per day. Newsom’s support for a fracking ban, which requires legislation, would impact both. California Independent Petroleum AssociationCEO Rock Zierman:

“Today’s announcement to curb in-state production of energy will put thousands of workers in the Central Valley, Los Angeles basin, and Central Coast on the state’s overloaded unemployment program, drive up energy costs when consumers can least afford it, and hurt California’s fight to lower global greenhouse gas emissions. … Instead of creating our own local energy, each year California relies more and more upon foreign oil, which isn’t produced with our strong environmental protections nor does it generate desperately needed local and state tax revenue. … At a time when Californians pay more for energy while experiencing manmade ‘green outs’, it doesn’t make sense to hurt consumers, our economy, and our environment by banning California production.”

The whole nation watches California because of its size and the sweep of its economy. Unfortunately, Americans living in other states are seeing one government mandate after another that leave too many Californians behind. It’s hardly a model for the rest of the nation.

About The Author

Mark Green joined API after a career in newspaper journalism, including 16 years as national editorial writer for TheOklahoman in the paper’s Washington bureau. Previously, Mark was a reporter, copy editor and sports editor at an assortment of newspapers. He earned his journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and master’s in journalism and public affairs from American University. He and his wife Pamela have two grown children and six grandchildren.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/exclusive-california-finally-has-a-progressive-government-and-its-a-changing-the-game/

...

[rent control]

Atkins agrees. “Gavin Newsom is willing to sign some bills that Jerry Brown wouldn’t.”

Last year, Brown vetoed legislation requiring university health clinics to offer abortion pills to students, saying that the same service was available off campus. The Assembly passed the same bill again at the end of the session this month; Newsom has vowed to sign it. Brown also vetoed legislation to require that anyone running for president supply five years’ worth of income tax returns, a bill aimed directly at Donald Trump. Newsom signed the same legislation after the Assembly passed it again this summer. (A federal judge has since put the measure on hold pending litigation by the Trump campaign.)

To be sure, Newsom remains independent of the legislature. He went against the Democratic majority when he vetoed SB 1, a measure to protect California’s water supplies from regulatory changes made by the Trump administration, in July, drawing rebuke from his closest ally in the Assembly. Nevertheless, having a more progressive governor clearly widens the realm of possibility for legislators.

It is also worth noting how the situation in California contrasts with places where Republicans have a lock on legislative and executive power. Take Alabama, where Democrats lack enough votes in either the house or the senate to block anything and the compliant nonentities who have inhabited the governor’s mansion since 2011 rubber-stamp whatever legislation Republicans pass. What has the GOP done with all of this power? Aside from a few bills pushing hot-button topics such as abortion, they have accomplished very little. Alabama remains at the bottom of every ranking of states according to economic and social wellbeing, with feeble economic growth compounded by endless budget woes. While California races ahead, Alabama sits still or slides backwards....

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frac permits 2x, at UN climate mtg on media rm b/c subnat not allowed main stage; claimed he had no authority to end frac (tho after scandal fired ppl and temp defacto moratorium?

jason marshall interim head

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-july-15-2019/

8 am 2nd 1/2 doggr head fire newsom (no FF$ vs jerry)

coi stocks chev, exx and shell 100k$

inglewood field biggest near culver city rep daniel lee

dggr under lands commission run by newsome at lt gov?

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https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/gov-newsom-fires-top-oil-regulator-institutes-sweeping-ethics-review-agency-response

Consumer Watchdog today thanked Governor Gavin Newsom for firing the state’s top oil and gas supervisor and instituting an ethics review of the state’s oil well approval and inspection process in response to its recent report of conflicts at the agency and request.

Consumer Watchdog called for action from the Governor Wednesday in this letter. 

Read the full story in USA Today/Dessert Sun here.

“Governor Newsom’s decisive action to get new leadership over oil wells and fracking in California shows he is serious about putting the public’s health and safety over the interests of the oil industry that has dominated the oil well approval process for decades,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “The Governor must demand that the entire leadership of the Department of Conservation and DOGGR be accountable for the conflict ridden agency and dismiss other Governor Brown appointees that allowed the corrupted oil well approval machine to go on for so long.”

In its letter, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker called on the Governor to freeze all new oil and gas well permits until a top-to-bottom ethics review is completed, all conflicted managers in the agency are removed, and the Administration can guarantee regulatory decisions are based on public safety, not pecuniary gain.

“For too long the health of our community has suffered from dirty oil wells at the Inglewood oil field,” said Deborah Weinrauch, a resident of Culver City. “We cannot afford to keep having more drilling and fracking. In order to protect our health we need Governor Newsom to stop issuing new permits.” 

A review of state conflict of interest formsshowed that eight regulators managing the state’s oil and gas well approval and inspection process have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the oil companies they regulate.  One of the regulators is among the top three in command at the State’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR).

Consumer Watchdog and the FracTracker Alliance released data showing a major increase in permits for new oil and gas wells this year under Governor Newsom.  From January 1 to June 3, DOGGR approved 2,365 new oil and gas well permits and 191 fracking permits. The data shows that this year regulators have considerably increased the number of permits granted for drilling new wells (by 35.3%), well reworks (by 28.3%), and hydraulic fracturing (by 103.2%) as compared to the permitting rate during the final year of the Brown administration in 2018. 

Of the 2,365 well permits issued, 1064 or 45% of them benefitted oil companies invested in by DOGGR officials.

Governor Newsom’s Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary directed the head of the Natural Resources agency Wade Crowfoot to take the following actions late Thursday:

  1. Dismiss the current State Oil and Gas Supervisor who heads the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) and designate an acting Supervisor;
  2. Ensure that all employees and contractors of DOGGR who own any oil or gas stocks recuse themselves from all permitting decisions or oversight functions until each impacted employee goes through a conflict review based on the new conflict of interest rules that DOC is formulating;
  3. Continue at full pace the investigation you have already started related to the allegations that employees at DOGGR have holdings in energy companies, which could constitute actual or apparent conflicts of interest, and take the maximum disciplinary action appropriate under law.

“The Governor is taking these actions today because he has learned that since January 2019 well stimulation (fracking) permits have increased without his knowledge. The Governor has long held concerns about fracking and its impacts on Californians and our environment, and knows that ultimately California and our global partners will need to transition away from oil and gas extraction. In the weeks ahead, our office will work with you to find new leadership of DOGGR that share this point of view and can run the division accordingly.”

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https://www.alternet.org/kicking-charter-money-out-unifying-party

The  mood was festive at the annual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Los Angeles. About 600 Democrats gathered in a hotel ballroom on an October evening to begin wrapping up the year. Community activists and party worker-bees mingled with political luminaries to celebrate top volunteers. Anybody with a (D) after their name and $135 for a ticket was welcome at this event in blue, blue California. 

Then Eli Broad crashed the party. He didn’t actually show up, but as usual in Los Angeles, his presence was felt. When his likeness appeared on a video screen displaying sponsors, the place erupted in boos. Then, as if they’d been caught on a hot mic, many attendees gasped at their collective slip of decorum.

By the time L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke, the room was composed. In fact, Garcetti couldn’t have asked for a friendlier reception. But the hometown crowd turned hostile again when former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was announced. He, too, was booed.

The common thread between Broad and Villaraigosa is charter schools.After he was elected mayor of L.A. in 2005, Villaraigosa, who’d run on a pro-labor platform, cut ties with the teachers union and adopted Broad’s agenda of school privatization. Los Angeles has long been a target of the privatizers. As the biggest school district in the country that elects its school board, it’s harder to control for the so-called education reformers, who seek to dismantle the public school system in order to create a marketplace of school choices, shifting billions of dollars in public moneys into private hands.

Villairagosa’s political calculation paid off—at least with the billionaire education reform crowd which has been pouring money into Villaraigosa’s gubernatorial bid.

The Roosevelt Dinner should have been a victory lap for Villairagosa and his allies. Just six months before, they’d successfully taken over the L.A. school board, an effort in which the former mayor had been personally involved. They had spent more money to win the seat held by board president Steve Zimmer than has ever been spent on a school board race in U.S. history.

Backlash builds

But the huge sums of money made people skeptical of the pure-sounding claims of “putting students first.” Signs of a backlash first appeared at the State Democratic Convention last spring. In convention speeches, references to the vast resources of the charter school lobby made it sound like an occupying force. Speakers pointed out that the staggering amount of money to buy charter school proponents control of L.A.’s school board was sounding less and less democratic. It went beyond school boards, too. Last year, the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) was the biggest spender in state legislative races.

The awakening has been a long time coming. Five years have passed since the L.A. County Dems demanded that the deceptively named charter promoters, Democrats for Education Reform, cease and desist from calling themselves Democrats. Since then, Betsy DeVos has finished yanking the Democratic disguise off the charter agenda. On NPR affiliate KCRW in early December, stalwart conservative David Frum lumped charter schools in with “medical savings accounts and everything else in the Republican agenda” that Democrats oppose.

And now, spontaneous outbursts showed Democrats opposing the biggest names in corporate education reform. But the clash between charter schools and Democratic ideals still isn’t obvious to everyone.

Glowing conflict

Perhaps there is no stronger metaphor for Democrats’ conflict about charters than the swag at the state party convention. During caucus meetings and on the floor of the convention, candidates and delegates alike balked at the CCSA’s brazenness in buying electoral influence. But afterhours, many of them waved glowsticks featuring the CCSA logo at the parties throughout the weekend. Maybe they thought no one would notice who bought them.

But the power of charter money is noticeable. At a StateSenate hearing in October about possible charter law reforms, Jackie Goldberg, a retired grand dame of progressive politics and public education in California, seemed to hammer the whole state Democratic caucus for its failure to provide oversight.

“You got two-thirds [majority] for the first time—I never had two-thirds when I was up there—in both houses! You actually can do something about this. And I’m saying to you, it is time to say, Ya basta! Enough is enough…”

If California Democrats are calibrating their relationship with big charter money, the 2018 elections could magnify the issue. Villaraigosa will be the likely recipient of the charter cash.

However, Gavin Newsom, the current lieutenant governor and unquestioned front runner, is doing his best to avoid the topic. Newsom was caught on video telling a friendly crowd that he had no intention of taking a position on the existential battle in public education.

“I'm not interested in a stale and raging debate around which side...you're on. ‘Are you with the charter people or are you anti-charter? Are you with the teachers or are you anti-teacher?’ I've been hearing that damned debate for ten damned years…whether Eli Broad was right or whether the CTA was wrong [sic]. I'm not interested in that debate.”

Previous news reports might help explain Newsom’s reticence to speak up against charters. Some of the original money to launch Newsom’s gubernatorial bid came from the same dark charter figures who schemed with Eli Broad to unsuccessfully defeat Proposition 30, Governor Jerry Brown’s initiative to fund public schools through a tax on millionaires. The schemers included one of Newsom’s early donors, John Scully, who sits with his wife on the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy, the politically powerful charter chain that was the recent subject of an exposé in the New Yorker. The union helped unmask Scully in its 2016 bombshell Hedge Clippers report revealing supporters of the anti-Prop 30 campaign, but it is now apparently unconcerned with Scully’s support for Newsom.

Big money, big opposition

Its anybody-but-Villaraigosa campaign resulted in the union endorsing Newsom, opening the organization to criticism that it isn’t going to help fight big charter power. Half the union delegates pushed for the candidate with a track record of working to pass common sense charter oversight legislation, current State Treasurer John Chiang. But some union delegates said leaders made sure endorsing Chiang was procedurally impossible.

Polls show 30% of the electorate is still undecided among the crowded field for the June, 2018 primary. So why isn’t CTA playing a more active role in shaping the debate about charter money during the course of the election?

The job of making charter money a campaign issue might fall to the teacher activists who led the insurgency for John Chiang at the union’s endorsement meeting. It could also fall to the Berniecrats, who now make up half the California Democratic Party and who strongly oppose the influence of big money. However, their repeated chants of “Single payer now!” at the convention and other public events leave one wondering if they have the capacity or the interest to take on the charter issue. Activist Lauren Steiner who ran the L.A. for Bernie campaign, pushes the issue among the Bernie constituency, though many of them are backing Delaine Eastin.

Given all the signs in the past year that Democrats are down on corporate charter money and Berniecrats’ natural opposition to big money in politics, this could be a unifying issue between the two factions of the party. The implications of that would reach far beyond California.

Karen Wolfe writes about public education

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