Newsom, Gov main 3
oops 3x demote 2 for eztemp
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SEE TWO 2 26 repurposed
this is main
state trump resist 2 w/ Pritzger?
CAPT 2 26
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came out big on gun control jr 15
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OPPOSE BILLIONAIRE TAX, AI KILL SWITCH?!
gmail left hook 9 11 26
if Democrats and Republicans take money from billionaires who are promoting AI and Crypto, what hope do you have that once they gain power, they will turn around and hold these destructive, racist, anti-democratic forces accountable and promote regulation?
If you do believe they will actually promote the majority instead of their benefactors, then I have a Trump diploma to sell you for $50,000.
Wonderful.
This week, Anthropic employees are warning that this technology might end humanity. We also know that Anthropic is creating a real-life version of the movie *Minority Report,* where they will stop “pre-crime” and help law enforcement go after activists and anti-AI critics.
Wonderful.
Congress is now investigating a July incident involving OpenAI in which the AI model’s “swarm” of 700 autonomous agents coordinated a hack into Hugging Face’s production infrastructure. However, according to Mother Jones today, this is mostly performative, meant to placate bipartisan anger at reckless capitalists unleashing destructive technology. Most likely, Sam Altman and his cabal of sociopaths will walk away with a slap on the wrist.
Sirota joined me to discuss how fascism will continue to flourish unless Democrats finally embrace an ideology of transformation, instead of restoration, and aggressively combat the broligarchy and super PAC money that is corrupting our world.
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AN 10 26
Since assuming office last year, President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on free speech, targeting both journalists and commentators who criticize him and his administration. In theory, Democrats are standing up to Trump's anti-free speech actions — but a new report reveals that, in practice, many Democratic governors seem to be capitulating.
The New Republic's Daniel Boguslaw wrote about how Democratic governors are responding to National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, an executive order that allows Trump to pursue people who are “anti-fascism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."
The journalist pointed out that the FBI has tried to force states to work with them in pursuing these initiatives — and they have so far not fought back.
"Gavin Newsom of California shirked the question [of whether he was working with the FBI], telling The New Republic in a written statement only that 'California’s security efforts operate wholly under state law and appropriate safeguards,'" Boguslaw wrote.
He added, "New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office attempted a more acrobatic maneuver, claiming that 'New York State Police assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force focus only on genuine criminal or terrorism investigations, follow New York’s laws, and do not participate in civil immigration enforcement or the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center.' That answer is misleading. The FBI Joint Mission Center is the central hub for administering NSPM-7, but its participants are only a few dozen federal employees based in Washington, D.C."
Referring to the third most populous blue state, Boguslaw wrote that "Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also demurred on the question of how exactly local and state police are participating in the FBI’s ongoing Illinois NSPM-7 investigations, telling The New Republic, 'Regardless of any actions taken by federal officials under the direction of the Trump administration, Illinois remains committed to maintaining the integrity of its own processes and will continue to ensure law enforcement information is handled appropriately and focused on legitimate public safety purposes, not political agendas.'"
This is not the first time Democrats have been accused of quietly capitulating to Trump while pretending to stand up to him. From college presidents who work with him in squashing pro-Palestine campus protests to law firms that settled with him and abandoned liberal pro bono causes, the left has in general been accused of caving to Trump's bullying instead of fighting him.
In this context, Trump has pursued a number of his media critics, such as sending subpoenas to The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Axios and The New York Times for their reporting. He has also banned outlets like Politico, MS NOW and CNN from covering him in the White House, even outright admitting that it is viewpoint discrimination.
"After MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued the Trump administration on Monday over the president banning their reporters from White House grounds, Trump’s communications team sent congressional Republicans talking points Monday night in defense of the president’s decision," MS NOW's Mychael Schnell reported in September. "According to the document obtained by MS NOW, the White House wants Republicans to argue that “no president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press” and that the First Amendment does not grant reporters access to the White House."
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DOJ INVESTIGATION, POWERFUL RETORT VIDEO WIFE
06/16/26
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AI Overview GGL 6 26
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the U.S. Justice Department (via the U.S. Attorney's Office in Sacramento) is investigating him and his wife. The probe, originating from whistleblowers, focuses on the First Partner's taxes and former staff, including former chief-of-staff Dana Williamson. 
, 2,
, 4]
Newsom's administration has formally condemned the investigation, accusing the Trump administration of a "fishing expedition" and political retribution. [1, 2]
- The Investigation Scope: The inquiry, overseen by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, centers on the taxes of First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and the financial/fraud scheme of Newsom's former chief of staff, Dana Williamson. [1, 2,
, 4] - Federal Agents: Federal investigators have issued subpoenas and contacted family friends, donors, and former employees. [1, 2]
- State Pushback: Governor Newsom’s office filed a Freedom of Information Act Request demanding all DOJ records and communications mentioning him or his wife, asserting the inquiry is retaliation for his vocal criticisms and presidential ambitions. [1, 2, 3, 4]
- DOJ Stance: The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Sacramento have declined to comment.
, 2]
building better ca 20 b 1st time donor 4 26
5% 1 times tax on all wealth, not just income; zuck gets one dollar, rest in stock
newsome many bill give $; ca has 200 billionaires; # went up in mass; 7% increase just nornal; nvidia ceo says never thot 1x about it.
Tech Billionaires’ $80 Million Plot To Break California - YouTube
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MMA
Fox used California's climate policies to deflect from gas price spike driven by Trump’s war on Iran
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Evlondo Cooper
:{Published 03/23/26
Fox News and Fox Business coverage of rising gas prices nationwide has singled out California, blaming the state’s climate regulations for skyrocketing fuel costs while downplaying global oil shocks from the Trump administration’s war with Iran.
On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, opening what has quickly become a large-scale and open-ended conflict, started without congressional authorization, that has been widely criticized as an illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression. The U.S. has joined Israel in targeting Iranian leadership as well as civilian and military infrastructure, while President Donald Trump has signaled an explicit willingness to pursue regime change. These attacks have triggered Iranian retaliation, including efforts to restrict transit through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints, helping drive a sharp increase in global crude prices and U.S. gas costs.
Fox's coverage has largely echoed the Trump administration’s framing of the conflict and its economic fallout. Even when Fox has acknowledged that U.S. strikes on Iran have disrupted the global oil supply, that connection is not sustained. Instead, Fox’s coverage has dispersed attention about rising gas prices across a range of explanations, moving between domestic policy factors, claims that price increases will be temporary, and arguments that higher costs are a necessary “sacrifice.” Taken together, these talking points diffuse the link between Trump’s decision to launch the conflict against Iran and the resulting price spike, shifting scrutiny away from the source of the disruption.
However, the focus on California serves a distinct narrative function — by emphasizing the state’s climate regulations, Fox networks depict a global, war-driven supply shock through a familiar domestic political lens, recasting climate policy as part of the problem behind high gas prices rather than a solution to it.
Fox framed California’s high gas prices as a warning about Democratic climate policy during a war-driven price spike
Lying at the entrance to the Persian Gulf from the Sea of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important oil trade routes, carrying roughly one-fifth of global supply. As the conflict with Iran continues to escalate and shipping through the strait is disrupted, oil prices have soared above $100 per barrel and gas prices have risen sharply across the United States. Analysts have described the conflict as a major supply shock, and the International Energy Agency has called it the largest oil disruption in history.
Rather than linking rising prices to the disruption in global oil supply, segments on Fox News and Fox Business repeatedly shifted attention to California’s long-standing fuel costs, presenting them as evidence that Democratic climate policy is responsible for higher prices.
During the March 9 episode of Fox Business’ *Varney & Co.*, Stuart Varney, introducing Chevron executive Andy Walz, warned of an “economic collapse in California under Gov. [Gavin] Newsom’s climate policy.” Walz picked up the thread, claiming California could eliminate in-state refining and increase dependence on foreign fuel sources. He continued by describing the state as “heading down a path of relying on imports” and predicted that its climate policies could add another $1.20 per gallon to gas prices, which “hurts the people that can least afford it the most.”
On March 11, Fox Business’ *The Evening Edit* acknowledged rising global oil prices tied to the Iran war but pivoted to California, highlighting soaring in-state gas prices. The segment featured a clip from an earlier interview with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who assailed California's climate policies and concluded that the state has “restricted supply and killed their own economy.”
Later that day, Fox News @ Night reinforced the same frame, with guest and former Trump adviser May Mailman claiming that California's policies are designed “not just to make gas more expensive, it's to make gas unavailable. … So when President Trump says he's brought oil prices down, he has created the policies that have allowed energy dominance to thrive in this country.”
On March 14, Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked the Defense Production Act to order the restoration of drilling operations off the California coast, describing the move as necessary to strengthen domestic supply and energy security. The order provided a new policy rationale for arguments already circulating on Fox.
On March 16, *The Big Money Show* broadened the argument beyond California, with co-host Dagen McDowell pointing to Democratic-led states more generally and claiming that gas taxes imposed “in the name of Mother Nature and climate” are driving up fuel costs for working Americans. On the March 17 episode of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham opened an interview with Sable Offshore chairman and CEO Jim Flores by pointing out that California, under Republican leadership in the 1980s, produced “a million barrels a day.” Now, Flores claimed California's declining oil production was “the reason why Trump invoked the Defense Production Act … to make sure that our military is well-fueled.”
By March 18, the narrative framing had hardened further. During the March 18 episode of *The Evening Edit*, host Elizabeth MacDonald lamented that “gas is headed to $8 a gallon in parts of the state, … but now California Democrats are suing to stop the Trump White House from reopening a pipeline offshore from Santa Barbara.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) agreed with a statement from Wright that California had “strangled its own oil and gas production.” He continued, “We used to be a net exporter. We can produce all of our own oil and natural gas. We've chosen to shut them down, to regulate them out of business,” before concluding, “We clearly are a state in a downward spiral.”
That same framing persisted in the days that followed. During the March 21 episode of Fox Business' The Journal Editorial Report, host Paul Gigot acknowledged that the Iran war was disrupting global energy markets but quickly pivoted to California, telling viewers that gas prices are “much higher” in the state because “Gavin Newsom’s anti-fossil fuel policies make the state more dependent on foreign oil.”
This coverage treats California’s climate measures as unjustified drivers of higher prices, portraying the state as expensive, constrained, and vulnerable. In reality, California's gas prices are often higher than other states' because of policies aimed at cutting pollution, addressing climate change, and reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets. But these regulations are not driving the current spike in gas prices, which follows weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that have disrupted the entire region. Oil markets responded. Prices followed. This is a global supply shock driven by war, not a sudden change in California policy.
Fox used California to redirect blame away from Trump’s war on Iran and U.S. reliance on the fossil fuel economy
Fox's focus on California gas prices comes as another long-running Fox narrative breaks down. For years, the network argued that U.S. “energy independence” would shield Americans from global oil shocks. The current spike, driven by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz despite record domestic production, directly contradicts that claim. Rather than reckon with that failure, Fox has largely ditched the “energy independence” framing that was so central to its narrative explanation for price spikes under the Biden administration.
Now, the Trump administration’s decision to launch a new conflict in the Middle East becomes less central to how rising prices are understood on Fox, replaced by a familiar domestic argument about Democratic governance. However, this shift does more than redirect blame; it cuts against the reality that energy shocks like this one are a direct consequence of our reliance on fossil fuels and the vulnerable supply routes that sustain them. This is not an abstract risk — it is already happening now, and the global community is increasingly alarmed for the future.
By recasting a war-driven price spike as the product of climate policy, Fox turns that reality on its head, treating a crisis rooted in fossil fuel dependence as evidence against moving away from it.
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dunks on desantis on FF windfall tax 3 23
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)
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NO LNX
America elected a simpleton and the wreck he leaves behind could be permanent
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a ceremony marking the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States at the Pentagon, in Washington D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein
Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryNovember 25, 2025
Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent.
After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.
Lust for retribution
In early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices.
Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed.
Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight.
As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.”
Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.
UN Climate Summit
Trump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate.
This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out.
Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.”
Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors.
Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.
Our loss, China’s gain
In September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”
The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels.
Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.
Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines.
“China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”
Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.
Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction.
Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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COP 30
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
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leaving CA?
After more than 140 years together, Chevron dumped California via text, in a split fueled by snubs, insults, accusations and the lure of a new partner.
Chief Executive Mike Wirth tried to reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for more than a week last summer and texted him, hoping to get the governor on the phone. He wanted to talk to Newsom about the company’s plans to move its global headquarters from San Ramon, Calif., to Houston.
We’re about to make an announcement. I’d like to tell you before you read about it.
Newsom’s reply was, essentially, I don’t need to talk about it. I’m good.
Wirth told Newsom over texts that the company was about to make public its move to a more fossil-friendly state. The CEO called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to tell him personally. Ecstatic, the Republican governor, who had courted Chevron for years, asked if the company needed any special help for relocation.
Wirth declined. Moving to Texas, apparently, was reward enough.
On Aug. 2, when Chevron announced its headquarters move, Abbott described Texas, the No. 1 gasoline consumer in the U.S., as Chevron’s “true home.” Newsom responded in an online video accusing Big Oil of price gouging consumers.
Relations between Wirth, CEO of the nation’s second-largest energy company, and Newsom, governor of America’s populous state, had soured over regulatory and legislative efforts intended to combat climate change—displacing internal-combustion engines with electric vehicles, for one.
“Putting bureaucrats in charge of centrally planning key segments of the economy hasn’t worked in other social states,” Wirth said in a Nov. 1 call with investors. “I doubt it will be any different in California.”
California has acted more aggressively than any other state to steer consumers from fossil fuels, including a state ban on the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035, as well as rules that oil companies blame for the state’s higher gas prices. EVs now account for more than a quarter of new car sales in California.
“Chevron has a future in clean energy in California. They can join us in our steady, long-term transition to a state powered by clean energy,” said Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor’s office. Newsom recalled his text exchanges with Wirth last summer as cordial, his office said.
Disagreement over policies turned personal in September 2023, when Newsom seemed to accuse Wirth of having a hand in one of California’s worst disasters.
Invoking a 2018 wildfire that left 85 people dead in Paradise, Calif., Newsom said Wirth had invested far more in shareholder payouts than in developing low-carbon energy. That belied Chevron’s promises to lower carbon emissions, Newsom said. The consequences of the company’s alleged deceit, he said, were “incalculable in terms of the dollars, the lives lost, the funerals, the dead bodies in Paradise.”
Newsom made his pointed remarks during the announcement of a lawsuit against Chevron and other large oil companies, alleging climate-change deception. Villaseñor said the governor wasn’t accusing Chevron or its executives “of anything more than failing to confront the realities of the climate crisis.”
Chevron didn’t respond to Newsom’s remarks.
Before the Nov. 5 election, Newsom’s testy relations with the oil industry might have lost him little political capital. Following Trump’s win, some Democratic lawmakers recognized that the state’s higher energy costs have become a liability, political consultants for both parties said.
When the Los Angeles-area wildfires erupted last month, Newsom made brief references linking oil companies to the disaster that killed 29 people. The California governor thanked Gov. Abbott on X for lending firefighters, engines and equipment: “Red, blue, republican, democrat—in moments like this we come together.”
Political consultants say Newsom appears to be weighing a role as a leader of the Democratic Party. He held a call with Democratic allies the day after the presidential election and has positioned himself as a Trump adversary.
Newsom has now turned his focus from opposing Trump to managing the wildfire recovery. On Wednesday, the governor met with President Trump in the Oval Office to discuss federal disaster relief.
California has more than Chevron headquarters at stake. The company, which operates two of the largest oil refineries in the state, has considered the possibility of ceasing production. That would raise gas prices further for California’s more than 27 million drivers. Chevron refineries make up a third of the state’s gasoline-production capacity.
Any decision to close or repurpose refineries would depend on whether California imposes more regulations, among other factors, said Andy Walz, who runs the company’s refining, pipeline and chemical businesses. California’s stringent fuel-quality specifications, initiated to curb harmful emissions, make gasoline more costly to produce compared with other states, industry analysts said.
Shrinking supplies and higher gas prices, while a pain for drivers, might be fine with state regulators charged with protecting the environment.
“Policies that keep average prices low may result in more driving, and hence, more pollution,” the California Energy Commission said in a 2024 report.
Why California?
Like other big breakups, the California-Chevron split figures to be costly for both sides.
If Chevron decides to sell its century-old fuel-making plants, it will be tough to find a buyer for the properties, which encompass nearly 4,000 acres in Northern and Southern California. Among the obstacles: environmental liabilities and a shrinking pool of buyers.
“We used to have competitors,” Walz said. “They’re gone.”
Demand for gasoline in California last year was about 10% lower than in 2019, largely because of an increase in the number of EVs on the road and more people working from home, according to the state energy commission.
Energy-industry analysts said regulations, in addition to softening demand, have depressed oil exploration in California. More than 75% of the state’s oil in 2023 was imported from Alaska and abroad, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Ecuador.
In 1876, wildcatters drilled California’s first successful oil well in the Santa Susana Mountains, north of Los Angeles. The discovery gave birth to Chevron and kicked off an oil boom that helped power the state economy for more than a century and kept gas prices low for decades.
California has consistently higher gas prices than every state but Hawaii.
Newsom and other state officials blame the oil industry. Chevron posted signs at gas stations saying, “California lawmakers are driving up gas prices,” and, in a message linked to QR codes, urged drivers to complain directly to lawmakers.
“They weren’t prepared to take accountability for their own actions, and they were blaming us,” Walz said of the PR campaign. “That’s when Chevron felt like it was time for us to start talking.”
Chevron and other oil companies opposed a new California law that, among other things, gives regulators the authority to require refiners to keep their storage tanks stocked at certain levels, which lawmakers hope will limit spikes in pump prices because of supply shortages.
Statewide, the number of operating refineries has dwindled to 14 last year from 40 in 1983, according to the Energy Information Administration.
In October, two days after Newsom signed the bill into law, Phillips 66 closed a Southern California refinery. Company CEO Mark Lashier said at the time that the decision was based broadly on shrinking demand and state policies to discourage fossil fuels.
“We expected California to be a pretty challenging refining market going forward,” Lashier said.
The state’s oil production peaked in early 1986 at more than a million barrels a day. In November, the tally was about 279,000 barrels a day, the lowest figure since 1981 and largely attributed to aging oil fields. Only a handful of drilling-rig crews are hunting for new finds.
“Why deal with California when you could go to Texas or New Mexico? You only have so much capital and so much time in the day,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston. “Given the regulatory environment in California, I would be investing outside the state.”
High price
Many candidates supported by Chevron and other oil companies during state elections have lost races in recent years, weakening the company’s once-considerable political influence. For the first time, a majority of Democrats who ran in state elections in 2023 refused campaign money from oil companies, according to the nonprofit California Environmental Voters.
The Trump administration, however, is expected to be a powerful industry ally. Four days after Trump returned to the Oval Office, his administration said in court filings that the EPA would review its decision to grant California a waiver that effectively allowed the state to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 and set more stringent vehicle-emission standards.
California Assemblymember Gregg Hart, who introduced the bill last year, acknowledged that oil companies hate the law. California, he said, is trying to increase the number of people buying EVs, while also providing affordable gas for conventional cars, goals that appear at odds. “We’re just going to have to try to find a way to make this all work,” Hart said.
At the California legislature’s Dec. 2 swearing-in ceremony, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said California would continue to lead the nation on climate change, “but not on the backs of poor and working people, not with taxes or fees for programs that don’t work, and not by blocking housing and critical infrastructure projects.”
In recent years, Newsom has avoided oil lobbyists and rarely entertained oil executives. Oil companies say Newsom’s allegations about industry deception and price gouging have demoralized employees and made it harder to recruit employees.
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, a longtime head of California oil lobbyists, said she never had any trouble establishing a relationship with past governors. During a 2022 Newsom trip to Florida, in connection with a possible presidential bid, her organization, the Western States Petroleum Association, spent nearly $1 million on newspaper, radio and TV ads criticizing the governor for California’s high energy prices. Newsom was furious, according to people familiar with the matter.
State’s energy agencies and oil executives, including at Chevron, say they are trying to work together to keep California’s energy supplies steady and affordable, despite their policy disagreements.
It appears too late to repair relations with the departing oil giant, which last summer had about 2,000 employees at its headquarters in California. Chevron follows moves by Tesla, SpaceX, Oracle and Hewlett Packard from California to Texas.
“Look, we want to be there,” Walz said. “We want to stay, but it’s tough, OK?”
On Jan. 27, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener and another state lawmaker introduced a bill that would allow homeowners and insurers to hold oil-and-gas companies liable for damages stemming from climate-related disasters, such as wildfires.
“By forcing the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis to pay their fair share, we can help stabilize our insurance market and make the victims of climate disasters whole,” Wiener said.
Newsom’s office said the governor doesn’t typically comment on pending or proposed legislation.
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AN 8 25
'Weak little man': Newsom blasts Trump for sending his 'private army' to press conference
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
David BadashAugust 14, 2025 |
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has spent the week mocking President Donald Trump, adopting Trump’s signature social media style — extreme, self-promotional, hyperbolic, all-caps — to deliver taunts about his plans to counter Trump’s directive for Texas and other red states to redraw their congressional maps, a move aimed at reducing the number of Democratic-held districts and paving the way for Republicans to hold the House in November.
Governor Newsom’s focus has been on what he is calling his “Election Rigging Response Act,” legislation where he will ask voters in November to allow California to redraw its congressional district maps to respond to President Trump’s unprecedented move to conduct redistricting outside the constitutionally mandated decennial censuses.
Fox News declared on Thursday that “Gavin Newsom is in on the act now.”
READ MORE: Inflation ‘Starting to Boil’: Dire Economic News for Trump — Worst in Three Years
Newsom’s social media team called out the Trump administration Thursday afternoon, after it noticed Border Patrol agents outside his Los Angeles redistricting rally.
In a stunning turn of events, however, the masked Border Patrol agents outside Newsom’s rally started arresting people.
Fox News happened to have Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem live on-air when it ran video of at least one arrest. The Fox News hosts praised the move.
READ MORE: ‘Most Economists Don’t Agree With Us’ Admits Trump Trade Chief as Costs Climb
“This is coming from our reporters in L.A. right now, where they say that border patrol has arrived just outside of the downtown L.A. Venue where Governor Gavin Newsom was actually holding a press conference today, and it appears that those border Patrol agents are making arrests, illegal immigrants that are — I don’t know if they were at this press conference, if they were in the area, but this is the area … when we first saw this video, it is a very ‘in your face’ way to let, you know, Democrats know that you are gonna do your job, that you’re going to carry out these Trump policies.”
“One of the speakers in the runup to Newsom’s event just warned this would be happening and held it up as another reason why Californians needed to get behind Newsom’s answer to Texas and Trump,” reported NBC News Senior National Political Reporter Natasha Korecki.
Newsom responded in real time to the arrests.
“And right outside, at this exact moment, are dozens and dozens of ICE agents,” the governor told rally attendees. “Donald Trump — you think it’s coincidental? — Donald Trump and his minions, Tom Homan — tough guy —he decided, coincidentally or not, that this was a location to advance ICE arrests.”
“People are scared,” Newsom continued. “People are fearful.”
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trump mentioned LA mayor (and newsome?) to troops who booed w/o prompt? call N attn seeker
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7 25 TEXAS GERRY GAVIN PRTIZKER ILL HOST DEM REP REFUGEE
'This is a war': Hochul joins blue-state push in brewing gerrymander arms race
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rww
06/27/2025
by
- Robert McCoy @ The New Republic: Supreme Court Caves to Trump in Ominous Birthright Citizenship Ruling
The Supreme Court has just limited the ability of lower courts to rein in Donald Trump’s anti-constitutional orders.
- Ian Millhiser @ Vox: The Supreme Court just imposed a “Don’t Say Gay” regime on every public school in America
The Republican justices’ decision fundamentally altered how public schools must operate.
- Kiera Butler @ Mother Jones: The Other Reason MAGA Is Melting Down Over Iran
Christian nationalists are fighting over Israel’s role in the “end times.”
- Angry White Men: Andrew Isker: Witchcraft ‘Stopped Working’ When European Christians Arrived In The Americas
On The Auron MacIntyre Show, white Christian nationalist Andrew Isker claimed that witchcraft “stopped working” in the Americas after the arrival of European Christians. Isker also appeared to defend the Salem witch trials, asserting that “weird stuff” happened at the time which had “no rational explanation whatsoever.”
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Sean Duffy turns military graduation into blatant ad for Christian Nationalism
The Transportation Secretary pushed Christian Nationalism during his address at the Merchant Marine Academy, sidelining real issues.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: California’s Gavin Newsom sues Fox News, seeking a very specific amount of money
The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that figure sounds at all familiar, there’s a good reason for that.
ref
Trump’s condemnations of the nation’s free press are painfully routine, though the president has been a bit more hysterical than usual this week, and there’s no great mystery as to why.
Two days after the Republican declared that U.S. military strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency completed a preliminary intelligence assessment that found the airstrikes were less effective than Trump claimed. A great many news organizations, naturally, shared that information with the public after the assessment was leaked to reporters.
Trump and his team lashed out wildly, not only because of the leak, but because independent media outlets reported the news. In fact, on Wednesday, Trump’s personal lawyer threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN, claiming that the newspaper and the network damaged the president’s reputation by running reports that Trump considers, among other things, “false” and “unpatriotic.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of such an odd threat, but as it turns out, the Republican isn’t the only political leader targeting a media outlet under related circumstances. NBC News reported:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing host Jesse Watters of defamation by falsely claiming that Newsom had lied about a phone call with President Donald Trump during a dispute over the use of the National Guard in Los Angeles. The lawsuit ... claims that Fox ‘operates as a propaganda machine for President Trump’s radical right-wing agenda.’
Politico was first to report on the suit.
The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that seemingly unusual figure sounds at all familiar, it’s because that’s roughly the amount of money the network paid in 2023 to settle a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting System.
Or put another way, Newsom and his lawyers engaged in a bit of political trolling when they chose this specific dollar amount.
“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the lawsuit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”
The incident that sparked the litigation came earlier this month. On June 10, a reporter asked Trump when he’d last spoken to Newsom, and the president replied, “A day ago.” The Californian quickly responded that he had no idea what Trump was talking about, adding that the two had no interactions on June 9.
The president later clarified that he was off by a couple of days in his initial comments, and the story (such as it was) faded from view.
But on Fox News, the story unfolded a little differently. In fact, on June 10, after airing an edited clip of the president, Watters told viewers, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” The on-screen text read at the time: “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”
In reality, the governor didn’t say that Trump “never called him”; he said Trump’s claim about a June 9 call was wrong, and on that point, the president himself soon after conceded that Newsom was correct.
“If Fox News fails to issue a formal retraction and on-air apology, we will proceed with the lawsuit so that a jury can determine Fox News’s culpability and assign a monetary value to its ‘blatantly unethical’ conduct,” the governor’s lawyers Michael Teter and Mark Bankson wrote in a letter.
Fox added in a statement of its own: “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.”
As a legal matter, Newsom faces a tough challenge. As Politico’s report noted, “Public officials must clear an extremely high legal standard to prevail in defamation cases, as the U.S. Supreme Court established six decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan.”
Watch this space.
ref 2
nyt
President Trump and his allies have sharply criticized The New York Times and CNN in recent days for publishing articles about a preliminary intelligence report.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
By Michael M. Grynbaum
June 26, 2025
President Trump on Wednesday threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN for publishing articles about a preliminary intelligence report that said the American attack on Iran had set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.
In a letter to The Times, a personal lawyer for the president said the newspaper’s article had damaged Mr. Trump’s reputation and demanded that the news organization “retract and apologize for” the piece, which the letter described as “false,” “defamatory” and “unpatriotic.”
The Times, in a response on Thursday, rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, noting that Trump administration officials had subsequently confirmed the existence of the report, issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency, and its findings. “No retraction is needed,” the paper’s lawyer, David McCraw, wrote in a letter.
“No apology will be forthcoming,” he added. “We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.”
A spokeswoman for CNN, which was the first outlet to report elements of the preliminary report, confirmed that the network had responded to a similar legal threat from the president’s team.
Mr. Trump and his allies have sharply criticized The Times and CNN in recent days for publishing articles about the preliminary intelligence report, whose conclusions ran counter to the president’s assertion that the American attack had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
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AN 6 25
Social media reacted badly to Fox News deceptively editing video to claim Gov. Gavin Newsom lied about a disputed phone call.
Last week, President Donald Trump told reporters he had “called” Newsom and suggested he “do a better job” over violent protests of Trump’s immigration policies.
“He’s done a bad job, causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death. If we didn’t send out the National Guard, and last time we gave him a little additional help, you would have — Los Angeles would be burning right now,” Trump claimed.
READ MORE: This scheme is so mind-boggling even Republicans have stopped lying about it
Newsom denied ever getting the call, however, and called Trump “a stone-cold liar” for making the claim.
“We talked for almost 20 minutes and he barely—this issue never came up,” Newsom told reporters. “I tried to talk about L.A., he wanted to talk about all these other issues. … He never once brought up the National Guard. He’s a stone-cold liar. He said he did. Stone. Cold. Liar. Never did.”
Newsom called trash on what Trump described as a “Monday” call, but Fox News entertainer Jesse Watters, of Jesse Watters Primetime, aided the president by muddying the waters on the exact date of the call. Watters removed Trump’s claim of calling Newsom “aday ago(meaning Monday),” and instead began Trump’s quote with“Called him up to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job …”
Watters then accused Newsom of lying: “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?”
READ MORE:Navy veteran warns Americans that we're getting to the dangerous point of no return
Conservative talk radio show host Doug Kellett railed Fox for the tampering. “FNC goes out of its way to prop up a failing and shameful President,” Kellett posted on X.
“How the hell is this legal,” complained another critic on Bluesky.
“I'm sure that @JesseBWatters will be taken off the air for this ... or that the @FCC will have something to say about it,” sniped another X user, possibly referencing the strong hand Trump’s FCC is wielding against news organizations that aren’t Fox News.
In March, Trump’s FCC commissioner Brendan Carr announced he was opening an investigation into the Walt Disney Co. and its ABC television network to see whether they are “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Trump himself recently sued CBS ’60 Minutes’ for allegedly ‘manipulating’ footage of a Kamala Harris interview by deleting the former democratic candidate’s “word salads” regarding violence in Gaza.
READ MORE: 'Cry harder': MAGA Republicans brutally mocked after pushing Walmart boycott
CBS later released full transcripts and video of the Harris interview, showing the company had presented different parts of the interview for two different shows.
Read MediaITE’s full post at this link.
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an 6 25
Despite President Donald Trump sanctioning ongoing immigration raids nationwide and deploying U.S. troops to the second-largest city in the United States, it still might not be enough to please his base, according to a recent analysis.
In a Tuesday article for anti-Trump conservative news outlet The Bulwark, journalist Will Sommer argued that there was a "vicious MAGA feedback loop" that is dictating the administration's latest actions, and that it's showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, Sommer suggested that even Trump circumventing California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in calling up the California National Guard (the first time a president went around a governor to call National Guardsmen since 1965) and sending roughly 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles may still not be enough to give his MAGA supporters what they want.
"It is a thrilling way to show the Trump faithful that the administration is really doing something," Sommer wrote. "It also underscores one of the most underappreciated elements of what is currently happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere: Much of it is being driven by a feedback loop between the Trump administration and online MAGA-world, each urging the other on to more cruelty."
READ MORE:'Watch out': Republican senator warns GOP may lose Congress over this line in Trump's bill
Sommer pointed to a recent report showing that MAGA was turning on even the most vociferously pro-Trump officials within the administration. One recent example is FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, who faced MAGA's wrath after he conceded that convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein did indeed take his own life in prison — shooting down a conspiracy theory he himself promoted in the recent past.
"In a similar vein, Trump world figures like Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have spent years telling followers that the world around them was a horrifying hellhole — with millions of illegal immigrants terrorizing the country and threatening the very fabric of our civilization," Sommer wrote.
"But while Bongino can’t really cook up a fake Jeffrey Epstein murder plot to win back his fans, Noem and Miller definitely can ramp up deportations," he added. "And they can do so while bringing the MAGA media ecosystem along for the ride."
The Bulwark writer went on to observe that many on the far right were calling for the administration to follow through on its threat to arrest Gov. Newsom after Trump floated the idea earlier this week (Newsom has also dared Trump to arrest him). While Trump administration immigration advisor Tom Homan has said that Newsom hasn't done anything to merit arrest, Sommer posited that "law and due process seem to matter little to MAGA die-hards who want the blood, detentions, and incarcerations they were promised."
READ MORE:'Heated moment': MAGA activists now using a four-letter slur they hate against each other
Click here to read Sommer's full article in the Bulwark.
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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.
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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AN 6 25
Salon Senior writer Chauncey Devega warns the authoritarian tide is “rising very quickly in America,” with President Donald Trump threatening to use his "big beautiful bill" as a weapon or revenge against his enemies, namely the Democratic Party.
During a recent trip to Capitol Hill to whip up support for his “big beautiful” budget bill, the president admitted to reporters that “We're going to make a couple of tweaks….I mean, we don't want to benefit Democrat governors.”
“… We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let's say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let's say Gavin 'Newscum,' who's done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again….The Democrats are destroying our country," Trump said.
READ MORE: 'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America
Devega points out presidents didn’t do this before Trump because a two-party system is essential to democracy. But last week Trump escalated threats to terminate federal funding from the state of California, forgetting that “Democrat-led blue states contribute more money to the federal government in terms of tax dollars and other resources than Republican-led red parts of the country,” as Devega explains.
When Governor Gavin Newsom responded by suggesting California could retaliate by cutting off tax payments from the state to the federal government, Trump’s administration went ballistic. United States Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent warned Newsom that he would be guilty of “criminal tax evasion” over such a move.
But this escalation is just the beginning for our “first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator,” Devega says. In addition to series of “Truth Social propaganda platform” posts where Devega says :{Trump shared conspiracy theories and menacing images of retaliation against judges who stymied his immigration policies, the administration is also harassing Democratic members of Congress with arrest.}:
Department of Homeland Security police recently handcuffed an aide to U.S. Rep. Representative Jerry Nadler, (D-N.Y.), which makes the second time in less than a month the Trump administration has used law enforcement to directly target Congress. And for the second time in less than a month, Congress doesn’t have the desire or ability to defend itself.
READ MORE: 'I didn’t vote for this': Pro-Trump Appalachians are 'living on the edge'
Atlantic columnist David Graham writes: “The Constitution’s checks and balances are premised on each branch wantingto protect its powers. What happens if that’s not the case?”
Republicans are largely unwilling to stand up to Trump, Graham argues, while Democrats are incapable of exerting formal or informal political power.
With Trump announcing he was federalizing the California National Guard—against the wishes of Gov. Newsom—after ICE raids over the weekend, the authoritarian tide is rising, Devega warns. But the American people and their leaders “had numerous opportunities to ‘drown-proof’ their democracy at the ballot box.”
They also had ample time to deal with the problem through the rule of law and by addressing the deep societal problems that birthed Trumpism, MAGA, authoritarian populism and the larger antidemocracy movement. Instead, he says they put “a man who announced he would be a ‘dictator on day one’ back” in the White House.
READ MORE:How this horrid show ends
Read the full Salon report at this link.
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cda tourism ad
calif sue on tariffs 4 17 25
kirk on podcast, also ----?
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cannot be AGW, thus trump wrong, so must be inept dem gubmint
an 1 25
President-elect Donald Trump took his complaints about the wildfire disaster in California to a new level on Thursday, with a Truth Social post baselessly suggesting that Gov. Gavin Newsom was withholding water firefighters could be using to protect homes and businesses.
"Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State, instead of having it go out into the Pacific Ocean," Trump said. "It ought to be done right now, NO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR. IT’S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!"
Trump has repeatedly claimed that California officials are somehow blocking firefighters from accessing water — which appears to be a confused misinterpretation of long-running political battles in the state over how to allocate water between agricultural, commercial, residential and environmental use.
He made similar accusations in 2018 about water being denied to firefighters during an aggressive fire season in Northern California, prompting the state fire agency to issue a statement clarifying this is not true.
Firefighters have struggled to maintain water pressure as they have tried to save neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades Experts say it's because aging water infrastructure in Los Angeles is being overstressed by the sudden spike in demand, depleting tanks faster than they can be refilled.
In previous fire disasters, Trump has also accused California officials of failing to properly manage forests, at one point suggesting they should have raked leaves to prevent wildfires, like Finland does — a remark that led to widespread mockery from Finns on social media.
He made similar claims about the latest fire disaster, which forced a reporter on Fox News to point out that forest management was irrelevant given that the fire in Malibu began in a residential area.
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nyt viA 350 NO LNX
California Tries ‘Trump-Proofing’ Its Climate Policies
A second Trump administration would be expected to shred climate policies. California officials are devising ways to insulate its environmental regulations.
By Coral Davenport
Published Oct. 12, 2024
Updated Oct. 15, 2024
California officials have been working for months on a plan to “Trump proof” the state’s leading edge environmental and climate policies, in the event that former President Donald J. Trump returns to the White House and follows through on his promise to gut them.
Whether California succeeds could affect more than a dozen other states that follow its emissions rules, and could have global impact because the state’s market muscle compels auto makers and other companies to conform to California standards.
The strategy now being crafted in Sacramento includes lawsuits designed to reach wide-ranging settlements with industries that generate greenhouse gases, and new rules and laws that rely on state authority and would be beyond the reach of the administration.
Mr. Trump, who considers climate change a “hoax,” has promised to weaken every major federal climate regulation, as he did in his first term.
But he is also expected to try to blow up California’s climate policies, which have set the pace for the rest of the nation and the world. The state is requiring about three-quarters of new trucks sold there after 2035 to be zero emissions. And in a request that is pending, California wants permission from the Biden administration to enact one of the most ambitious climate rules of any nation: a ban on the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles in the state after 2035.
Both rules are far tougher than federal policy and could have influence beyond the United States, given California’s standing as the world’s fifth-largest economy. China and the European Union have already adopted parts of California’s car and truck tailpipe emissions reduction programs.
The Democratic-controlled state legislature has also passed a first-in-the-nation law requiring major companies to disclose their greenhouse emissions. And it has strengthened the authority of local governments to shut down oil and gas projects in their communities. Next month, Californians will be asked to approve a ballot measure to create a $10 billion “climate bond” to pay for climate and environmental projects.
The California State Capitol in Sacramento.Credit...Juliana Yamada/Associated Press
Under a provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades given California a waiver that allows it to enact pollution controls that are stricter than federal regulations. Federal law also allows other states under certain circumstances to adopt California’s standards as their own.
Sixteen states have pledged to follow the California car rule and 10 states have adopted the truck rule, meaning that the California regulations would apply to about 40 percent the United States auto market.
Mr. Trump has promised to revoke the waiver. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”
At the same time, the legality of the waiver is being challenged by 17 Republican attorneys general and several oil groups in a lawsuit that may head to the United States Supreme Court.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has continued his long-running feud with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. Mr. Trump has called him an “environmental maniac” who is “crushing our great automakers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, crushing them under his leadership.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, Karoline Leavitt, declined to comment on California’s plans.
Mr. Newsom, who is seen as having White House ambitions of his own, has made clear that he intends to forge ahead on environmental regulation regardless of whether Mr. Trump returns to the presidency.
“California has long led the nation in pioneering climate policies and innovation,” said Mr. Newsom in a statement. “Those efforts will continue for years to come. That includes partnerships with private companies, such as automakers, and agreements with other countries — everywhere from China to Norway to Canada — to combat the climate crisis together.”
Mr. Trump has called Gavin Newsom, the California governor, an “environmental maniac” on the campaign trail.Credit...Graham Dickie/The New York Times
Other top Democrats in the state, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, are working with the state’s climate regulator, the California Air Resources Board, on the “Trump-proofing” strategy. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the state legislature will be ready to meet in a special session after the November election if necessary.
When Mr. Trump became president in 2017, California officials were caught flat-footed, said Mary Nichols, who was the state’s top climate regulator from 2007 to 2020 and now informally advises state policymakers. “It came as a shock,” she said.
As the Trump administration dismantled Obama-era environmental rules and then took aim at California’s policies, the state fought back, Ms. Nichols said. California filed more than 70 climate and environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration, prevailing in more than half of them.
That kind of record is not assured in the future, in part because Mr. Trump reshaped the nation’s courts, appointing more than 200 federal judges. Those appointments include three Supreme Court justices, who helped form a conservative supermajority that delivered decisions to restrict the government’s authority to regulate climate, air and water pollution. As soon as January, the court could hear the case that is challenging California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act.
Gavin Newsom Wants to Export California’s Climate Laws to the World
Oct. 23, 2023
State officials and lawmakers are working to try to protect California’s policies even if it loses its waiver.
They plan to build upon their most successful legal gambit during Mr. Trump’s first term. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked California’s waiver — the first time the federal government had done so since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. The Biden administration would later restore it, but the lapse had limited impact because California had secretly struck legal agreements with four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and BMW — to reduce their tailpipe emissions according to limits set by the state.
The move blindsided and enraged Mr. Trump, and his administration in turn threatened to withhold federal highway funds from California, unsuccessfully sued the state for partnering with Quebec on its emissions reduction program, and opened an antitrust investigation into the automakers that signed on to the deal.
But the deal with automakers, which expires in 2026, endured and grew: Volvo and Stellantis have since signed on. California regulators are now talking to the companies about even stricter emissions limits, and expanding the agreement to include other automakers and possibly other states.
“We are going to fight back hard,” said Phil Weiser, the Democratic attorney general of Colorado. “We are going to coordinate.”
Ms. Nichols, the architect of the automaker deal, also said that “back channel” conversations are happening about ways to forge legal agreements to reduce emissions from other industries, including electric utilities, oil companies and global corporations that have business in California.
The state is betting that companies would prefer to enter into a legal agreement that requires them to cut emissions or pay for environmental remediation rather than gamble on a court decision that could result in much higher sums. Many companies would also like to avoid the uncertainty of federal rules that change with each administration.
“When you have a settlement with private industry, it doesn’t matter if there is a change in administration,” said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who is familiar with California’s strategy.
Mr. Nolette and others said the $206 billion settlement reached in 1998 between 46 states and tobacco companies offered lessons for how a climate deal between several states and industries could be structured.
The California attorney general’s office hopes to create a foundation for such deals following its lawsuit last year accusing five of the world’s largest oil companies of knowingly contributing to climate damage, and its lawsuit last month alleging that Exxon Mobil misled consumers into believing that many plastic products were recyclable when they were not.
The discovery documents and financial disclosures emerging from those complaints could lead to settlements under which companies might agree to emissions reductions, said Ms. Nichols and Mr. Nolette.
Legal settlements would likely be just one part of the state’s “Trump-proofing.”
“California has lots of other tools, including the power of the purse — particularly when it comes to procurement,” said Craig Segall, the former assistant chief counsel at the California Air Resources Board, who is now senior vice president at Evergreen Action, an environmental advocacy group.
For example, during the Trump administration, California banned the purchase of state vehicles made by companies that backed Mr. Trump’s efforts to roll back the state’s fuel-efficiency rules, including General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, which later became Stellantis. Eventually, those companies reversed course and sided with California.
Other leverage is under consideration, said Mr. Segall and others familiar with the planning.
State regulators could impose penalties on the use or purchase of vehicles that burn gasoline while California lawmakers could require that the resulting revenue be used to subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles.
Regulators could also limit emissions stemming from vehicles that are linked to enormous facilities like warehouses that are a hub for diesel trucks. A similar rule recently took effect in Los Angeles.
“Any state can have that,” said Mr. Segall. “It doesn’t need the federal waiver. These kinds of things are not popular, but in a world where there is destruction of the other climate tools, states can take these defensive measures.”
More than a decade ago, California launched a “climate diplomacy” relationship with China that endures. Delegations of Chinese officials have met multiple times with California Air Resources Board officials to share information and research. The meetings have borne fruit: China essentially cut-and-pasted portions of the California clean car rules — a policy move that helped drive China to the cutting edge of electric vehicle development.
California’s outreach to other countries will continue, state officials said. In addition to China, the state has influenced the European Union, which is mandating EV-only auto sales after 2035 and truck sales after 2040.
The state has served as co-chair of the International Carbon Action Partnership, an organization of economies that have established “cap-and-trade” programs, in which industrial polluters buy and sell emissions credits. Among those economies is Quebec, which has linked its carbon dioxide cap-and-trade market with California’s.
The Canadian province has used revenues of the program to help pay for incentives and chargers for electric vehicles, which now make up nearly 30 percent of new car sales in the region, compared with 8 percent in the U.S.
“Without the carbon market and the linkage with California, we wouldn’t be able to achieve this in Quebec,” said Benoit Charette, Quebec’s environment minister. “No matter the result of the federal election, California is our partner.”
Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times. More about Coral Davenport
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 14, 2024,
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an 11 24
California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is preparing on multiple fronts to protect his state from the impending Donald Trump presidency.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement, the LA Times reports. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”
“California is ready to fight,” Newsom added, via social media. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action — we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”
The 57-year old with reported presidential aspirations has called the state legislature back into session to provide additional funding for litigation against the Trump administration.
READ MORE: Marco Rubio to State? Ken Paxton to DOJ? Trump Administration Contenders Emerge
“California anticipates that Trump could seek to limit access to abortion, dismantle environmental protections and withhold federal disaster response funding,” The Times adds, along with repealing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“The new special session provides an early look at the governor’s plan to wage an aggressive and highly visible campaign to shield California from the Trump White House.”
The governor sees the need “to increase legal funding to defend civil rights, climate change, access to abortion, disaster funding and other California policies from a conservative federal agenda before the inauguration in January.”
“Newsom’s preemptive strike signals the return of the hostile relationship between Democratic-controlled California and the Trump administration that was a hallmark of the Republican’s first term.”
RELATED: Day One: Trump Planning ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’
The governor’s additional preparations for the impending Trump presidency include having performed an analysis of Project 2025, the extremist playbook created by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and a review of the more than 100 lawsuits California filed against the first Trump administration.
Ezra Levin, who co-founded the progressive organization Indivisible in response to the first Trump presidency, commented on Newsom’s actions: “This is a good move and Dem leaders in trifecta states across the country should be taking similar action. If you’re a leader in this moment, go lead.”
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11 24
Faced with the return of a President of the United States who is now unchained by the law and unhinged by mental decline, California's Attorney General is once again prepared to resist.
Faced with four more years of a Trump administration and a more aggressive attack on the rights and peoples of the United States, California is once again poised to be a center of resistance. While the hellscape brought about by the election of Trump barrels toward us, the last days of sanity in our Federal government wind down, California Attorney General Rob Bonta had this to say:
"The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to be prepared, so we won't be flat-footed," said Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose team has been working with advocacy organizations and attorneys general in other states on how they would answer another Trump administration. "We will fight as we did in the past if that scenario unfolds."
During Trump's first term, California sued more than 100 times over his rules and regulatory rollbacks. Bonta said his team has preemptively written briefs and tested arguments to challenge many of the policies they expect the former president to pursue over the next four years: passing a national abortion ban and restricting access to abortion medication; revoking California's waiver to regulate its own automobile tailpipe emissions and overruling its commitment to transition to zero-emission vehicles; ending protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children; undermining the state's extensive gun control laws, including for assault weapons, 3D-printed firearms and ghost guns; implementing voter identification requirements; and attacking civil rights for transgender youth.
"Unfortunately, it's a long list," Bonta told CalMatters days before the election. "We are and have been for months developing strategies for all of those things."
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Trump is facing fierce backlash from a California firefighters union three days after the ex-president threatened to withhold fire rescue aid from the state as the number of wildfires are expected to increase in the coming years, East Bay Times reports.
"As of today, thousands of firefighters are on the front lines responding to wildfires throughout the state, and countless Californians are in harm's way as they heed evacuation orders," California Professional Firefighters President Brian K. Rice wrote in a statement posted to X on Friday, September 13. The union, according to the report, "represents around 35,000 career firefighters and emergency medical service" professionals.
"Nevertheless, former President Trump expressed that he would play with their lives and their homes if he doesn't get what he wants," Rice continued. "He would rather watch our state burn in the name of his political games, than to send help if he were to become president again."
READ MORE:Brutal fact-check exposes gaping holes in Trump’s California helicopter ride anecdote
Axios reports that Trump threatened during a Friday press conference to "withhold fire rescue aid from California" if the state’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom refused to back the MAGA leader’s policies.
East Bay Times notes the former president "repeatedly referred to Newsom as 'Newscum'" during the presser.
"If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires," the MAGA leader said, referring to the governor. “And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems."
In response to Trump's comment, Axios reports that Newsom warned via X that the 2024 GOP nominee "admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas."
It wasn't long before Rice shot back at Trump, writing, "It is shocking that we have a presidential candidate who is threatening our public safety and doesn’t even care what the consequences are to firefighters and the public. This has now become a serious public safety issue for our members and the public we serve."
READ MORE:Fox News forced to censor Trump as he rants about Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama
*The East Bay TImes' full report is available at this link. Axios' report is here. an 9 24
11 23
Third Actors to the Governor urging his support, made an impact and he signed SB 253 and SB 261 into law! These bills mandate that corporations over $1 billion and financial institutions disclose their climate emissions including indirect emissions tied to their funding of fossil fuels.
He also announced that the State of California is suing the five biggest oil companies for negligence and deception because they have knowingly misled consumers for decades about the impacts of using their products, oil and gas. It’s past time that polluters should pay their fair share.
gun debate so
https://www.alternet.org/you-cant-be-serious-newsom/
no lnx
'You can’t be serious': Gavin Newsom mocks Mississippi GOP gov for challenging him to a gun 'debate'
Brandon Gage June 08, 2023
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday unveiled his proposal for a constitutional amendment to address gun violence.
"I'm proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to help end our nation's gun violence crisis," Newsom posted on Twitter along with a video address. "The American people are sick of Congress' inaction. The 28th will enshrine 4 widely supported gun safety freedoms -- while leaving the 2nd Amendment intact: 1) Raising the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 2) Universal background checks 3) A reasonable waiting period for gun purchases 4) Banning the civilian purchase of assault weapons."
Newsom said in the two-minute spot:
Every time it's the same. They tell us we can't stop these massacres. They tell us we have to stand by and watch tragedy after tragedy unfold in our communities. They say we can't stop domestic terrorism without violating the Second Amendment, and thoughts and prayers are the best we can do. I'm here to say that's a lie in this country. We do have the power, the power to change things, to reclaim our freedom from fear. Her ability to make a more perfect union is literally written into the Constitution. So today I'm proposing the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to do just that.
The 28th Amendment permanently enshrines four additions to the laws of our land. It raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm from eighteen to twenty-one because we can't buy a beer. You shouldn't be able to buy a gun.
It mandates universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that can be used in a crime, and institutes reasonable waiting periods for all gun purchases, and it bans civilians from buying assault rifles, those weapons of war our Founding Fathers never foresaw. This will guarantee states as well the ability to enact common sense gun safety laws while leaving the Second Amendment intact and respecting America's gun-owning tradition.
The 28th locks in the common sense constitutional protections that Democrats, Republicans, independents, and gun owners overwhelmingly support. And it ensures NRA-owned politicians can never strip those protections away.
This fight won't be easy, and it certainly won't be fast. Convening a constitutional convention requires two-thirds of the states to call for this. California will be the first, but that's just the beginning. Join us by going to campaign for democracy.com and signing the petition to protect our communities and protect our freedom. Support the 28th.
READ MORE: 'Humiliated': Mississippi girl 'forced to miss their graduation' after judge’s anti-trans decision
A few hours later, and although not mentioned personally, Republican Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves challenged Newsom to an exchange of ideas.According to the Violence Policy Center, Mississippi boasts the highest rate of gun deaths per capita of any state.
"Gov. Newsom, I am willing to debate you on this in Mississippi any time. So on your next trip to our state to campaign for my opponent, give me a call," Reeves tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
Newsom fired right back.
"Can't wait for you to defend the fact that Mississippi has the highest gun violence death rate in the nation…. (377% higher than California’s, by the way)," Newsom wrote. "You can't be serious."
READ MORE: Mississippi Gov. slammed for re-election bid launch of 'cosplaying' clip of him 'shooting' people of color
Watch Newsom's announcement below or at this link.
READ MORE: Ex-US attorney explains why this NFL star is a critical piece in the Mississippi welfare investigation
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Texas lawmaker who suggested God is responsible for mall mass shooting wants more guns at shops ›
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Mississippi Gov. slammed for re-election bid launch of 'cosplaying' clip of him 'shooting' people of color ›
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biden economy
https://www.alternet.org/hes-cleaned-trumps-clock/
https://www.alternet.org/tennessee-senator-prayers-nashville-victims/
sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday she is "heartbroken" over the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people, although the lawmaker's campaign received $1.3 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
On Wednesday Blackburn tweeted, "My heart is broken over the unspeakable evil that occurred Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, and my family and I are grieving along with those who lost loved ones. Now is a time for our community to come together in prayer and lift one another up."
Following the Monday shooting, the senator tweeted, "Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected."
READ MORE: Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting
According to Politico, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Blackburn's tweet, saying, "You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you're so 'ready to assist' -- start by doing your job and passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today."
Politico also reports:
Blackburn voted against the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, stating that the gun control bill 'would erode Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.' The measure provides grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs.
Twitter users found the NRA-funded senator's heartbreak hard to believe.
@majastein1: "This is going to be another wonderful photo op. so heartbroken so mournful so shocked full of patriotism full of Christian spirit sponsored by the @NRA $ 1.3 million Marsha?"
READ MORE: 'Furious' Gen Z lawmaker delivers blistering remarks to GOP following Nashville school shooting
Dana Goldberg: "Did you want to donate all the money you get from the NRA to support mental health reform and safer gun laws in your state? Or just sending thoughts and prayers instead of a check?"
Skinsurrection: "Okay, so sponsor some AR-15 legislation."
grandmabear44: "Not broken enough to refuse NRA blood money."
Timmy Hogan: "No, Marsha now is the time for gun reform. If you are really heartbroken, you’ll do the right thing. It’s so sad that we already know that you will not"
READ MORE: 'How is this still happening?' Mass shooting survivor hijacks news conference to plea for gun control
Grace Lidia Suárez: "Another Republican calling for prayer instead of action. Like that's worked so well in the past."
Denise Keddy: "If your heart is broken then DO something to get the guns off the streets. Why do you love the #nra more than children"
Mic: "BREAKING: Republican attempts to share genuine feelings. Commits to doing absof**kinglutely nothing to ever solve problems."
@zach_fetzer: "The NRA has given Marsha Blackburn $1.3 million. She does not 'stand ready to assist,' she stands ready to make a profit off of this shooting."
K Clark: "Marsha, if you and Chuck are so ready to assist then donate the 1.3 million the NRA has given you to the victims' families."
READ MORE: Here’s how 5 House Republicans are responding to the TN school shooting that left 6 dead
Politico's full report is available at this link.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
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Tennessee governor slammed after 'praying' for Nashville community without mentioning mass shooting ›
'Taking guns away is not the answer': Scalise encourages prayer after Nashville school shooting ›
'Lower than low can go': Donald Trump Jr. suggests father’s indictment distracts from Nashville shooting - Alternet.org ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
After Texas shooting, Republicans face online anger over NRA money ›
Nashville Shooting: Gun-Loving Republicans Offer Thoughts and ... ›
Senate chaplain: 'thoughts and prayers' not enough after Nashville ... ›
an 3 23
sen. Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday she is "heartbroken" over the Nashville school shooting that resulted in the deaths of six people, although the lawmaker's campaign received $1.3 million from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
On Wednesday Blackburn tweeted, "My heart is broken over the unspeakable evil that occurred Monday at The Covenant School in Nashville, and my family and I are grieving along with those who lost loved ones. Now is a time for our community to come together in prayer and lift one another up."
Following the Monday shooting, the senator tweeted, "Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville. My office is in contact with federal, state, & local officials, & we stand ready to assist. Thank you to the first responders working on site. Please join us in prayer for those affected."
According to Politico, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Blackburn's tweet, saying, "You received $1,306,130 in donations from the NRA. You voted against the most recent bipartisan gun package in June. If you're so 'ready to assist' -- start by doing your job and passing commonsense gun laws that will help prevent tragedies like the one today."
Politico also reports:
Blackburn voted against the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June, stating that the gun control bill 'would erode Americans' constitutional right to bear arms.' The measure provides grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs.
Twitter users found the NRA-funded senator's heartbreak hard to believe....egs
21? RAGA, did not sell in 2-3 states where legal
ca gov newsom 54m$
https://www.alternet.org/abortion-2659565246/
heartland BS 11 22
NOVEMBER 9, 2022
Re-elected Governor Newsom’s Energy Literacy Will Be Challenged Over the Next 4 Years
By Ronald Stein, P.E.
badish code no lnx
rE-ELECTED GOVERNOR NEWSOM’S ENERGY LITERACY WILL BE CHALLENGED OVER THE NEXT 4 YEARS
NOVEMBER 9, 2022
By Ronald Stein, P.E.
Maybe Newsom will produce a plan in the next four years to finance the billions of dollars for the roads being used by EV’s or just pass that problem on to his predecessor.
Despite Newsom’s statewide policy decisions that are driving up costs of energy in the state, only a few Californians are upset with the ever-increasing costs for their electricity and gasoline, resulting in the excessive costs of living, increasing homelessness and crime. But most voters have just showed their approval of the bizarre energy policies that Newsom promotes and wish to incur four more years of financial torture.
The continuous exodus of residents from the state has resulted in a loss of a representative in Washington for the first time in its 171-year history. Departing residents are being followed by large corporations and privately owned businesses that have moved their headquarters out of California in 2021 at twice their rate in both 2020 and 2019 and at three times their rate in 2018.
California has a history of having the highest gasoline prices in the country. Why? For one, the West Coast fuels market is isolated from other supply/demand centers as California is an energy island. The Sierra Mountains are a natural barrier that prevents the state from pipeline access to any of that excess oil. As such, the West Coast is susceptible to unexpected outages of West Coast refineries as it is unable to backfill an unexpected loss in supply by quickly supplying additional products from outside of the region.
Newsom is emphatically complaining that the oil companies are making outlandish profits, but he may be out of touch with reality as two California refineries have shut down under his current watch and two more may be closing in his new term.
Under Newsom’s watch in the last few years, two of California’s refineries have virtually shut down and are no longer manufacturing gasoline, aviation fuels, or any oil derivatives. Those two, Phillips66 at Rodeo and Marathon at Martinez, are now only focusing on renewable diesel.
More financial sad news may occur under Newsom’s next term with the permanent closure of two more California refineries, the Chevron Refinery at Richmond and the PBF Refinery at Martinez. If the courts uphold the 2021 Bay Area Air Quality Management (BAAQMD) rule 6-5 for a further reduction in particulate emissions, both have stated that they will shut down before spending one billion dollars to retrofit their refineries to comply with further particulate emission reductions.
The world has seen the impact on Germany and Britain with their dependency on Russia for most of its energy, but for the 4th largest economy in the world, in California, Newsom already has the State more than 56 percent dependent on imported crude oil, but continuously seeks further reductions of in-state oil production that places greater dependency on foreign countries.
California’s growing dependency on foreign countries is a national security risk for all of America. Does Newsom expect a better outcome than what Germany and Britain experienced by not controlling more of its energy future demands?
I’m sure that Newsom had a chance to view the 2006 movie “Blood Diamonds” starring Leonardo DiCaprio that portrays many of the similar atrocities now occurring in pursuit of the “Blood Minerals” i.e., those exotic minerals and metals to support the “green” movement within wealthy countries that continue promoting environmental degradation to landscapes in developing countries, and imposes humanity atrocities to citizens with yellow, brown, and black skinned workers being exploited for the green movement of the few wealthy nations.
Despite the Biden administration’s declaration that EV battery materials from China may be tainted by child labor made with materials known to be produced with child or forced labor, Newsom continues to support subsidies to procure EV’s and build more wind and solar when those subsidies are providing financial incentives to the developing countries mining for those “green” materials that promotes further exploitations of poor people in developing countries. I personally thought that Newsom had higher moral and ethical standards that would stop him from exploiting the poor in developing countries.
Newsom seems to be oblivious to the reality that everything that needs electricity is made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, but Newsom continues to support wind and solar that only generate intermittent electricity but cannot manufacture anything for society. Newsom has yet to identify a replacement for the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products and fuels for our various transportation infrastructures, and the economy.
Life Without Oil is NOT AS SIMPLE AS NEWSOM MAY THINK as renewable energy is only intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine as NEITHER wind turbines nor solar panels can manufacture anything for society. Climate change may impact humanity but being mandated to live without the products manufactured from oil will necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s and could be the greatest threat to civilization’s eight billion residents.
In Newsom’s all-electric world, Newsom’s bizarre energy policies reflect his believes that all the infrastructures developed in less than two centuries, from the products manufactured from crude oil, are NOT needed by future societies, such as medical, electronics, communications, and the many transportation infrastructures such as airlines, merchant ships, automobiles, trucks, military, and the space programs.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), California’s high cost of electricity is already fifty percent higher than the national average for residents, and double the national averages for commercial, and are projected to go even higher.
California is the nation’s top producer of electricity from solar, geothermal, and biomass, but the inability to replace the closure of continuously uninterruptable electricity from nuclear and natural gas power plants with intermittent electricity from renewables is causing the state to import more of its electricity.
Again, under Newsom’s watch, the EIA says that California imports more electricity than any other US state, more than twice the amount of Virginia, the second largest importer of electricity.
Newsom’s policies continue to force California to be the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil energy from foreign countries. That dependence has increased imported crude oil from foreign countries from 5 percent in 1992 to 56 percent today of total consumption.
At today’s price of crude oil approaching $100 per barrel the imported crude oil costs California more than $150 million dollars a day, yes, every day, being paid to oil-rich foreign countries, depriving Californians of jobs and business opportunities, and drivers to pay these premium prices for fuel.
Richer countries now have higher gasoline prices, while poorer countries and countries that produce and export oil have lower cost for fuels. A review of global petroleum gasoline prices per gallon in U.S. dollars shows the international intelligence and trends of gasoline prices of the wealthy countries that have opted to go “green” at any cost, compared with poorer countries and countries that produce and export oil.
Another issue that Newsom will not discuss is funding for future road maintenance. Newsom has mandated no sales of internal combustion engine vehicles after 2035 but appears incapable of acknowledging that heavier EV’s contribute nothing for road maintenance and repairs. California has almost 400,000 miles of roadways that are heavily dependent on road taxes from fuels that contribute more than $8.8 billion annually, the same tax base that also funds the environmental programs that will be diminishing in the decades ahead.
Maybe Newsom will produce a plan in the next four years to finance the billions of dollars for the roads being used by EV’s or just pass that problem on to his predecessor.
California voters had a chance to recall Newsom in 2021 but chose to support his bizarre and expensive energy policies. Following the failed recall, Newsom was just re-elected by the voters that are willing to accept the highest energy costs in America. Voters support his avoidance of addressing those tough energy policy questions that would expose his limited energy literacy over the next four years of financial torture upon the working class that voted for him.
11 22
https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=aa514bcc34&e=6b22ffb724
California Climate Measure Fails After ‘Green’ Governor Opposed It in a Campaign Supporters Called ‘Misleading’
BY LIZA GROSS
Proposition 30 would have taxed the state’s wealthiest residents to subsidize EVs, charging infrastructure and wildfire protection. But public support flagged after Gov. Newsom became the face of the opposition.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/gavin-newsom-windfall-tax-oil/
https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/california-multiple-bills-climate-change/
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
Issues & Advocacy
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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:
- 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.”
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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.
an 8 22
Much has been reported on Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attacks on far-right Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, fueling speculation on Newsom’s motivations — including a possible presidential run in 2024 if President Joe Biden doesn’t seek reelection. Polls of Republican voters find that DeSantis’ popularity with the GOP’s MAGA base continues to grow, and more and more of them would prefer DeSantis over former President Donald Trump in 2024’s GOP presidential primary. And some pundits are envisioning a possible Newsom/DeSantis battle in 2024, or perhaps 2028.
Now, another Democratic governor, Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, is also going after DeSantis with a vengeance, according to Politico’s Gary Fineout.
In a report published on July 13, Fineout observes, “Well, look who’s headed to Florida: a blue-state governor who’s emerging as a potential presidential contender. lllinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is running for reelection this year, will be the keynote speaker at the annual Leadership Blue Gala that Florida Democrats will hold this Saturday in Tampa.”
The Politico reporter adds that Pritzker’s visit to Florida “comes nearly two weeks after the mass shooting in Highland Park thrust him into the national spotlight.”
Fineout explains, “Pritzker’s reaction — where he said he was angry and furious about gun violence in the nation — was seen by some as an illustration of the type of passion Democrats need heading into the midterms and 2024…. Pritzker’s decision (to visit) Florida will also be sure to stoke long-running whispers about a possible presidential bid, especially since he’s spending time in the home state of Gov. Ron DeSantis, himself a potential GOP presidential candidate.”
DeSantis, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives before narrowly defeating Democratic former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial race, is up for reelection this year.
Fineout notes, “Pritzker, a billionaire with a second home in Florida,is visiting when Florida Democrats are bracing for a bad election season as they grapple with President Joe Biden’s poor polling numbers, a growing GOP voter registration edge and a lack of resources…. Pritzker’s keynote speech will come on the heels of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s splashy decision to air ads bashing DeSantis and urging Floridians to move to his state. In that case, DeSantis has fired back and is now even fundraising off Newsom’s attacks. Expect his campaign team to fashion their own greeting for Pritzker.”
READ MORE: [House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos
Christian nationalists in California are making an aggressive push to have embattled Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) recalled. The candidate they are advocating for heavily aligns with their own political agenda.
According to a new report published by Right Wing Watch, far-right Christian leaders and Republicans are advocating for conservative radio host Larry Elder.
Holding a sharp position on key conservative issues like abortion, voting rights, and COVID mitigation, Elder has received an influx of support from conservatives religious leaders.
One of his strongest supporters is Ché Ahn, a Pasadena, Calif.-based religious leader working to get as many evangelicals as possible to vote on the recall.
In fact, Ahn has a long history of advocating for Republican candidates and controversial policies the party has long worked to enact.
On Jan. 5, just one day before the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, Ahn appeared at the "Stop the Steal" rally which was organized to stir up the pro-Trump base. At the time, Ahn reportedly circulated misinformation about the presidential election by telling Trump-supporting rallygoers "that the election was stolen but that Trump would remain in office."
"We're gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ," he declared.
Over the last several weeks, a number of similar events have been held to boost Elder's campaign but the publication highlights one event in particular as it sheds light on how Christian nationalists are using religion to justify their political goals.
Per the publication:
"A Sept. 2 California Pastors Town Hall sponsored by the Salt & Light Council focused in part on the recall election. Bishop Art Hodges urged pastors to bring their ballots to church and to portray voting as a sacred duty. 'It is our duty as Christians in America,' he said, to ensure God's continued blessing on the U.S. by 'choosing leaders who will honor biblical values and morality.' Hodges presented talking points favoring the recall, which began with Newsom performing marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples and running through a litany of complaints, including 'Cash payments to illegals.'"
California's special election will be held on Tuesday Sept. 14.
Right now, millions of Californians live within one mile of an active oil or gas well — and Governor Gavin Newsom just took a meaningful step forward to fight the climate crisis and protect these communities from dangerous oil production in California.
The Governor ordered state regulators to put out a rule banning fracking starting in 2024 and called on them to evaluate phasing out all oil production in the state by 2045.
Newsom is rightly acknowledging that California needs to phase out its dinosaur, climate-busting oil extraction industry and transition to a clean energy future while protecting the health and safety of communities.
But our work is far from done. We must compel California state leaders to take urgent action to protect vulnerable communities by immediately establishing a 2,500-foot buffer zone between oil drilling operations and our homes, schools, and hospitals, and other sensitive sites.
Tell CA state leaders to protect communities from dangerous neighborhood drilling!
The Governor has committed to enacting policies to protect the health and safety of communities from the dangers of oil drilling.
But his administration has already delayed this critical rulemaking for months … and we can’t wait any longer
aha yikes, evil perverse use of democ safeguard to revise const and boot recall davis: only 51%, then biggest votes, could be 20?!?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/qanon-2652801544/
By this point, almost everyone has heard of QAnon, the conspiracy spawned by an anonymous online poster of enigmatic prophecies. Starting with an initial promise in 2017 that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be imminently arrested, a broad group of interpreters divined a conspiracy that saw President Donald Trump's Democratic opponents as a global cabal of Satanic pedophiles.
Perhaps the greatest success of the conspiracy is its ability to create a shared alternate reality, a reality that can dismiss everything from a decisive election to a deadly pandemic. The QAnon universe lives on – now largely through involvement in local, not national, Republican politics.
Moving on from contesting the election, the movement's new focus is vaccines. The influence of QAnon on pandemic denialism is significant, though the spread of Q in local politics is a source of conflict in many states.
Tug of war
The conspiracy may have begun on an obscure web forum, but it is now influencing the Republican Party at all levels.
A recent Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 55% of Republicans believe some element of the conspiracy is true.
And in many parts of the country, QAnon supporters are winning elections. From local school boards to city councils, QAnon now has dozens of advocates at nearly every level of local government. While many of these positions hold sway far outside Washington, D.C., the breadth of this movement shows its influence is not likely to wane any time soon.
Not all Republicans are happy with this shift. In South Carolina, Indiana, Michigan and other states, Republican politics are fraught with tensions between QAnon supporters and more traditional conservatives.
For instance, in Indiana, local newspaper The Herald Bulletin published a story on March 21, 2021, headlined “Republican tug-o'-war: Factions vie for influence," reporting that “QAnon believers … showed their support at the Indiana Statehouse in January, holding signs bearing the QAnon phrase "#WWG1WGA" for 'Where we go one, we go all.'" Kyle Hupfer, chair of the Indiana GOP, was quoted as saying, “I don't think QAnon is part of the Republican Party. Leaders need to lead in a fact-based, solution-oriented manner and stick to the actual facts that are proven. Not opinions and not conspiracy theories."
State GOP politicians have promoted QAnon in Arizona through social media posts, although one later apologized for doing so, saying, “Now I think half of them are rather nuts." In January 2021, the Twitter account of the Republican Party of Hawaii tweeted a defense of QAnon believers. The account also defended a Holocaust denier. The official who posted the tweets was later forced to resign.
A similar confrontation has played out in Huntington Beach, California, where the appointed mayor pro tem – or vice mayor – inspired a vote of no confidence for supporting QAnon along with conspiracies against mask-wearing and vaccines.
Part of the conversation
Many QAnon proponents post-election have worked to reframe the COVID-19 vaccines not as the solution to a global pandemic but as an attempt by a cabal to control the minds of a hapless world.
Opposing mask mandates, vaccines and lockdowns have been effective campaigns for QAnon as it mobilizes anti-government sentiment common among the conservative base of the Republican Party. These efforts appear to be coalescing around bans on making vaccines mandatory.
Missouri's Republican-led Senate recently voted to ban so-called vaccine passports, and Texas, Florida, Idaho and Utah have all passed similar legislation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is asking for similar legislation. It is unclear to what extent these bans were influenced by QAnon. But they do echo the opposition to masks and vaccines that have shaped the conspiracy.
In California, a recall campaign against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has targeted his COVID-19 response. The campaign was initially organized by people affiliated with both right-wing militias and QAnon supporters.
Not going away
Yotam Ophir, a communications scholar at the University at Buffalo, has studied QAnon. He told me that he doesn't “see a reason to believe the conspiracy will go away anytime soon."
Part of this is that QAnon has deep historical roots in a variety of other conspiracies, including a centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy of a blood libel. The flexibility of the conspiracy has also proved resilient within a shifting political landscape.
Perhaps the biggest threat posed by QAnon is articulated by Lindsay Schubiner, a program director at the Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, which works to support democracy and challenge white nationalism.
“Bigoted conspiracy theories like QAnon have an enormous influence on the context in which local government operates," Schubiner told me. “Democratic governance is hard to achieve if we don't live in a shared reality, and that's as true on the local level as it is on the national level."
Sophie Bjork-James, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
ref1
https://www.newsweek.com/recall-gavin-newsom-movement-includes-proud-boys-member-1564573
members of the far-right Proud Boys group, the Three Percenters militia movement, and someone who has described
Black Lives Matter activists as "vile, violent...the black version of the KKK" are among the activists linked to the effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, are a right-wing extremist group who were involved in the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. The group, which glorifies violence and believes men and Western culture are under attack, has been banned from several social networks, and is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Three Percenters are an American and Canadian far-right, anti-government militia movement. The "three percent" refers to the belief that only three percent of the American colonists fought against the British during the American Revolution in the 1700s. Founded in 2008, the paramilitary organisation sees itself as a group of dedicated "patriots" protecting Americans from government tyranny.
The campaign to recall Newsom began in July last year. Supporters of the recall have until March 17 to collect the 1,495,709 signatures required for a recall election. The campaign is picking up steam, with more than 1.2 million people signing a petition to demand Newsom's recall.
Recall supporters have criticized Newsom for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, tax increases, abolishing capital punishment, rising crime and lack of affordable housing. The official became the focus of public outrage when he was caught dining with friends at an upmarket restaurant in November—seated closely together and without masks—after telling Californians to avoid social gatherings and stay home to avoid risk of spreading the coronavirus.
aaron Bate, an El Dorado County recall organizer, is a member of the Three Percenters. Bate is noted in a Three Percenter newsletter with fellow member Daniel Seoane as fundraising for the recall movement. Antifa Sacramento has also accused Bate of organizing with the American Guard, a neo-Nazi group. Newsweek has contacted Bate for comment.
Jeffery Perrine, a recently-elected member of the Sacramento County Republican Party's Central Committee, who is a member of the Proud Boys, has said he had been "intimately involved in the Recall movement". The Sacramento County Republican Party on Monday called for his resignation due to his ties with the far-right group. Social media videos show Perrine in Portland shouting that "illegal immigrants should have their heads smashed into the concrete."
Jeffrey Erik Perrine, a member of the SPLC designated hate-group the Proud Boys, was recently elected to Sacramento County’s GOP Central Committee.
He was in Portland on June 30th, 2018 calling for the murder of immigrants and the separation of parents from their children. pic.twitter.com/AH4WiSVYfk
— Daniel V. Media (@danielvmedia) January 26, 2021
Perrine told Newsweekthat his words were taken out of context by leftwing activists.
"The clip is completely out of context. Its not what it seems. I can however see how it was taken and spun to look like I was only talking about illegals in a disparaging way. When that is not what I was there really even talking about. I touched on many subjects that day. That one just so happens to be the one the left snagged, and trimmed, to make me look as bad as possible," he said.
"I understand my mistake, and have grown significantly since that clip."
Stephen Frank, who is on the board of the California Revival PAC group, has been seen speaking at recall rallies and he held a virtual townhall on the recall of the California governor in June last year. The PAC group's website shares the Recall Gavin Newsom petition on its home page and it donated $60,000 towards the campaign in the fall.
Frank has previously described Black Lives Matter activists as "vile, violent...the black version of the KKK" on the California Political Review, the conservative website he is a senior editor of. Frank has also often referred to Black public figures he disagrees with as a member of "The Klan in Tan," using the phrase on Michelle Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder on the same website. The phrase is considered hate speech. A St. Louis police officer was investigated by his own department in 2017 for having used the phrase in reference to Black Lives Matter activists.
Commenting on the remarks, Frank told Newsweek that he opposed all racism "black or white".
"The term "The Klan in Tan" is a term that was used by Dr. Walter Williams," he said. Williams was a Black conservative economist who died in December. Frank's claim that he first used the term is unproven.
"Riots around the nation, violence against innocent people, the belief that people not of color are racist, these are vile and violent actions and values. It is not civil discourse, it is use of brutal strength to get political goals," he added.
Daniel Seoane is an author on the recall campaign's website and also a member of the Three Percenters. He is listed as one of the proponents of the fifth recall effort submitted on February 21, 2020. The Three Percenters newsletter reported in January 2020 on Seoane and Aaron Bate's efforts to get recall petitions signed. In a social media video, he can be seen wearing a Three Percenter patch (the Roman numeral three with stars encircling it) while refusing to answer students who asked him what group he's with.
An investigation by theL.A.Times found that vaccine skeptics had also worked with the Recall movement. Two local leaders in the anti-vaccination movement, Denise Aguilar and Tara Thornton with the Freedom Angels, organized and participated in several demonstrations at the state Capitol that supported the ousting of Newsom. Speakers also denounced vaccines and health orders, the paper said.
Although many recall supporters identify as Republican, there are past Democrat donors who have rallied behind the effort. For example, Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and a major Democratic donor, on Twitter revealed he supported the campaign and told CNBC he thought that Newsom "has done a terrible job."
"First step is we need to recall Gavin Newsom," Palihapitiya added.
On the other side of the political aisle, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has endorsed the movement, as well as the California Republican Party. Half a dozen GOP party leaders in the state also support it.
Orrin Heatlie, a leading proponent of the recall movement, told Newsweek he believed that people in California care more about what Newsom has done and how they've been impacted than who the people behind the movement are.
"I want to emphasize the fact that we are aware there are people in this movement from the entire political spectrum and from all walks of life," said Heatlie, a recently retired Yolo County Sergeant.
"These include liberal and environmental groups angry about Newsom's lack of leadership regarding climate change, and that he signed off oil fracking permits, to the anti-vaxxer crowd, the anti-maskers, open schools, open California, 'let them play' groups and pro-Trump and pro-Bernie Sanders individuals."
Heatlie, who worked with Bate on an early petition drive for the recall movement, said it is policy of the campaign to keep posts on their Facebook network focused on the recall.
"We do not take a position or promote matters unrelated to the recall. Postings about COVID, global or national politics, are not allowed. Do some get by? Yes, and we take appropriate action when brought to our attention," he said. He added that the campaign has removed many members and administrators that have failed to adhere to its messaging standards.
[READ MORE
- :{:{83% of Americans Support Wearing Masks, But Only Half Wear Them: Poll:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px none;list-style:outside none none;margin:0px;outline:none 0px;padding:0px;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}::(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:
- :{Democrat Governors Have Lost COVID Scapegoat Donald Trump:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px none;list-style:outside none none;margin:0px;outline:none 0px;padding:0px;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:
- :{Gavin Newsom, Facing Recall, Eases Lockdown Despite Overwhelmed ICUs:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px none;list-style:outside none none;margin:0px;outline:none 0px;padding:0px;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:
- :{California Stay-at-Home Order Set To Be Lifted Despite 0% ICU Capacity:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px none;list-style:outside none none;margin:0px;outline:none 0px;padding:0px;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:
He said people who support the recall movement attend different rallies and gatherings on their own accord to collect signatures, but the recall campaign does not promote the events themselves, other than to announce that people may be able to gather signatures. Heatlie added that just because a person or group may endorse the recall, doesn't mean the campaign's management supports them.
"We have no control over who promotes the recall by their own volition. This is a non-partisan all-inclusive movement. We promote unity and harmony across the board! This is a peaceful movement and we denounce any person or group who engage in acts of violence, threats or vandalism on any level," he said.
Hundreds of people gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California on May 1, 2020. The campaign to remove California Governor Gavin Newsom is building up steam, with more than 1.2 million people having signed a petition to remove him from office.JOSH EDELSON/GETTY
In June last year, Newsom said that the recall will cost state taxpayers $81 million. If the recall campaign manages to get 1,495,709 signatures, a special election will take place this year, where multiple candidates will be able to run for California governor.
California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks has called the recall campaign a "coup" and said it was associated with "right-wing conspiracy theorists."
Since 1911, Californians have attempted to recall their governor 55 times, but were successful only in 2003 against Gray Davis. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected to replace Davis as governor in a special election
LAT
no lnx
Far-right movements including QAnon, virus skeptics linked to Newsom recall
Hundreds protest the stay-at-home orders outside the Capitol in Sacramento
Hundreds protest the stay-at-home orders in May outside the Capitol in Sacramento. (Josh Edelson / AFP/Getty Images)
By ANITA CHABRIA, PAIGE ST. JOHN
PUBLISHED JAN. 23, 2021 UPDATED JAN. 24, 2021 8:08 PM PT
SACRAMENTO — As the pandemic continues to shutter businesses, close schools and upend lives in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has become a target of angry frustration for some, driving a grassroots effort to recall him from office. What once started as a pipe dream is beginning to look like a political threat for the Democratic governor.
But a Times investigation found that recall campaign leaders, seeking to capitalize on the darkening public mood, allied with radical and extreme elements early on to help collect signatures. Those included groups promoting distrust of government, science and medicine; peddlers of QAnon doomsday conspiracies; “patriots” readying for battle and one organization allied with the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys.
The recall gave those fringe factions a higher profile and a shared villain. They helped energize the campaign with large and often inflammatory rallies over masks, in support of Trump and against the election they falsely say was stolen from the former president — ripe venues to harvest petition signatures.
Many supporters of the recall are not extremists and may not be aware of the far-right groups involved with the effort. But with the violent insurgency at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, organizers are grappling with the consequences of their alliances. They now insist the extremists don’t represent the values of the recall movement but continue to associate with them, amid a national debate about how far is too far when it comes to winning in politics.
“Do we have to denounce everybody that is involved to move it forward?” the official proponent of the recall drive, a retired sheriff’s sergeant from Yolo County named Orrin Heatlie, asked The Times.
“Or do we just move forward and ignore those other elements?”
Behind the momentum that Heatlie would now look past, The Times found:
Hardline activists from the anti-vaccination movement. Two leaders, Denise Aguilar and Tara Thornton with the Freedom Angels, organized and participated in numerous rallies at the state Capitol that promoted the recall effort. At these events, speakers denounced vaccines and health orders. The Proud Boys, who have been involved in protest violence, from street brawls in Sacramento to the incursion of the nation’s Capitol, are also often present. Aguilar has said they provided security.
The recall campaign itself provided a safe harbor for the propaganda and violent rhetoric that riled the Republican voter base and spilled over into the Capitol riot. An organizer in El Dorado County is a Three Percenter — an anti-government extremist movement, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Until social media crackdowns and questions from reporters at The Times, the recall’s ostensibly bipartisan Facebook pages repeated the surreal conspiracies of QAnon as fact and asserted the national election was rigged despite all evidence to the contrary. Those pages have also likened the daily disruptions of COVID-19 to the Holocaust and the governor to Hitler, framing their struggles as if they were on par with the massacre of 6 million Jews.
Recall officials, including Heatlie, all said it is unfair to hold the campaign accountable for the individual actions of its volunteers and supporters, and they are unable to monitor where signatures are gathered.
“You cannot control a movement,” said Randy Economy, a veteran political consultant who is the recall’s senior advisor and chief publicist. “It’s not our job to manage what somebody says about the recall at a public event.”
Economy said more than 1.2 million Californians have signed the petition to remove Newsom. As of Jan. 6, state elections officials said 723,783 signatures have been turned in by the recall campaign and of those, 485,650 have been verified. The campaign needs to turn in almost 1.5 million signatures by the March 17 deadline, though far more will likely need to be collected to mitigate for those proved invalid.
Many of those signing are fed up with coronavirus testing problems and disarray around lockdown rules and data, slow vaccine access and Newsom’s now-infamous dinner party at the French Laundry without the masks that other Californians were told to wear, Economy said.
Heatlie said his organization cut ties with at least one of those early partners, the Freedom Angels, and is careful about connections to groups with far-right views such as science deniers. Yet, The Times found recall signature gatherers continue to frequent such events.
Last weekend, the recall participated in a “Free and the Brave” Sutter County event featuring false claims about the virus and a silent auction for militia training.
The Church of Glad Tidings hosted the three-day conference against pandemic restrictions, and there were no masks in sight. One of the recall’s earliest regional organizers, Donna Wahlberg, was excited to set up her petition table inside the church where speakers advocated defiance of COVID-19 health orders and claimed that wearing masks was more dangerous than the virus.
Speakers touted COVID-19 cures of vitamins and horse wormer, and claimed hospitals are “murdering people” to collect government money for treating coronavirus patients.
Outside the church, thick-muscled men in tactical vests protected those attending with an arsenal of pepper ball guns, pepper rifles and Tasers. A trio of sheriff’s cars sat down the road.
Wahlberg said she promoted the conference on official recall web sites to tens of thousands of subscribers across California.
“We wanted as many people statewide [as possible] to attend this,” said Wahlberg, festooned in lively accents of red, from her brightly lacquered toenails to the turban wrap crowning her head. She is a Yuba County web administrator for the recall campaign, and before that, worked with Heatlie on a prior Newsom recall effort.
Heatlie said he was unaware his campaign had promoted the conference on its social media, but because there are so few large events to collect signatures at during the pandemic, there “might be a certain level of acceptance for certain gatherings.”
Heatlie also said he monitors all of his organization’s Facebook pages and has rules forbidding posts about federal politics or personal views, though The Times found multiple examples of such messaging across groups. Some included misinformation from QAnon — a nonsensical mythos that Trump was fighting a secret war with deep state occults who traffic children, and would declare martial law with executions.
These include posts from San Diego that carried the QAnon motto, W1GWGA (where one goes, we go all). Other posts depict Newsom as Adolf Hitler and compare pandemic restrictions to the rise of the Third Reich.
A protest sign against Gov. Gavin Newsom on the side of a truck outside the state Capitol
A protest sign against Gov. Gavin Newsom is displayed on a truck outside the state Capitol in May. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
That imagery is characterized as hate speech by the Anti-Defamation League, but for months, the image of Newsom as Hitler has been prominent at rallies, and the theme was adopted by a San Diego recall organizer to announce petition signings.
One politician who stands to benefit from Newsom’s ouster is John Cox, a San Diego-based venture capitalist and Republican gubernatorial hopeful who has already contributed $50,000 to the recall campaign and $1 million into his own gubernatorial exploratory committee. Cox said he was unaware of the role extreme groups have played in helping the recall gain momentum. He minimized the prevalence of such factions in the campaign, attributing them to “a couple of people who were unhinged.”
Cox said he found the Holocaust imagery of Newsom objectionable. “You’ll never see me inciting anything like that.”
Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at UC Davis who studies politics and conspiracy theories, said conspiracy theories, especially those associated with QAnon, are dangerous to peaceful politics.
“If you really believe your political opponents are Satan-worshiping pedophiles, you can be justified in using any weapon against them,” she said.
Strident language has become more common in the recall as the pandemic progresses, with the Freedom Angels one group turning up the temperature. The group first gained prominence in California opposing laws that require vaccinations for public school attendance, which they claim is an overreach of government authority. With the pandemic, two leaders of the Freedom Angels splintered off to join those opposed to COVID-19 closure and stay-at-home orders.
The splinter group also recently started an all-female militia, and advertises seminars on social media on how to target local health department officials, including staging nonviolent actions at officials’ private homes.
Aguilar, one of the founders of the offshoot group, is also a supporter of the Proud Boys, appearing at one Capitol rally wearing a shirt with a patch that read, “I (heart) Proud Boys” and at another introducing group members as security. Since the election, Proud Boys have fought with antifa counter-protesters during at least seven Capitol rallies, according to Sacramento police, and 27 people have been arrested or cited.
STOCKTON, CA - DECEMBER 10, 2020 - Stockton business owners make their statement for keeping their businesses open and call for local government to declare Stockton a "sanctuary city" for businesses on the steps of City Hall In Stockton on December 10, 2020. Faced with a dire shortage of hospitals beds, health officials announced Saturday a large swath of the Central Valley, which included San Joaquin County, and the vast region of Southern California to be placed under a sweeping new lockdown. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
CALIFORNIA
Anti-vaccine and alt-right groups team up to stoke fears of COVID-19 vaccine
Dec. 18, 2020
In a Dec. 13 Facebook post, Aguilar wrote, “I will have their back to the fullest and will not be shy about my support for my PB’s.”
Heatlie said he became concerned about the Freedom Angels in May, after an unruly Capitol rally in which 32 people, including Aguilar and Thornton, were detained by the California Highway Patrol. But despite his misgivings, Heatlie agreed to appear on a Freedom Angels webcast in June, on the day the Secretary of State’s office approved his petitions for circulation. And later in the month, Heatlie’s recall campaign called on supporters to attend a Freedom Angels rally at the Sacramento courthouse to support those who had been arrested during demonstrations.
Denise Aguilar, far left, and Tara Thornton, right, huddle together as they are detained by California Highway Patrol.
Freedom Angels founders Denise Aguilar, far left, and Tara Thornton, right, huddle together as they are detained by CHP officers during a May demonstration in Sacramento against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders.(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Aguilar declined to speak to The Times about her organization’s alliances, saying the recall campaign reflects only the voices of those who sign the petitions, though she continues to promote it. Thornton did not respond to calls for comment.
Heatlie said he cut formal ties with the Freedom Angels in July, but acknowledged that signature gatherers continue to frequent events featuring or arranged by the group.
The recall also has not censured those within its own ranks.
Aaron Bate, an El Dorado County recall organizer who with Heatlie was part of an earlier petition drive against Newsom, is active in the Three Percenters and has personally delivered thousands of recall signatures to his county election office.
On social media, Bate has posed with others flashing a Three Percenter hand sign, and with men in Proud Boys clothing flashing an OK hand gesture associated with their group and with white supremacy. Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, described the Three Percenters as “an anti-government paramilitary group that promotes the idea that violence is legitimate to combat gun control laws.”
In an email, Bate disputed that characterization.
“The Three Percent Groups are not a Militia nor are they far right,” Bate wrote. “They are made up of people from all Races, Political Views and Professions. There are Vets, Police Officers, Doctors, Electricians, and many other Professions.”
Robin McCrea, chief financial officer for the recall and one of its founding members, posted memes and comments on a personal social media page disputing the election. “PEVERT (sic) Quid Pro Joe Corrupt Beijing Biden will NEVER be the President of Patriots...NEVER,” she wrote in one. Later that day, she posted false assertions that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was the work of anti-fascist activists, another conspiracy theory that quickly took hold after the insurgency.
McCrea said via email that she stands by her views.
“I’ve seen on live TV the way Biden touches young girls. Would I want my child or a grandchild around him? No.,” McCrea wrote in an email. “Do I believe there was and is ample evidence to show the election results were not accurate? Yes ... Do my views regarding national politics have a thing to do with the Recall of Newsom? No.”
Heatlie defended both McCrea and Bate. He said that being a member of the Three Percenters was not a reason to remove Bate from the recall organization.
“This is about recalling the government. It’s not about Aaron Bate or his personal views,” said Heatlie.
Heatlie said he was unaware of McCrea’s views and she had not shared them in official channels, but that her financial skills were valuable to the campaign.
“If [people] don’t want to sign the petition because Robin McCrea is on the board or the committee or part of the management team or part of the volunteer team, then I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “She helped bring this opportunity to the people of California.”
Two groups are raising money for the recall. Separate from Heatlie’s organization is Rescue California-Recall Gavin Newsom, which has a PAC headed by Tom Del Beccaro, former state Republican Party chairman. That PAC is tapping donors in the Republican establishment, campaign finance reports show.
Del Beccaro is a frequent contributor to the far-right Epoch Times, which has come under scrutiny for its far-reaching dissemination of pandemic falsehoods. In one piece, he commented on what he called the “CCP virus” (Chinese Communist Party) in an article entitled, “The Pandemic Expansion: The Greatest Media Bias of All is Pushing Ever Larger government.”
Del Beccaro’s committees are separately distributing petitions by mass mail, and he said he is unaware of Heatlie’s connections. But he also characterized those elements as irrelevant.
“It doesn’t matter what Orrin thinks, doesn’t matter what I think,” Del Beccaro said. “I represent or am fostering helping the 1.2 million (who signed petitions) and that’s, that’s what matters.”
Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, discusses the $1 million fine, the largest in its history, levied against two political action committees for campaign-reporting violations, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. The FPPC also ordered two separate groups to pay the state's general fund the amount of money donated to them during the 2012 election cycle by the groups that were fined. The Small Business Action Committee was ordered to pay $11 million while the California Future Fund for Free Markets was ordered to pay $4 million. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
CALIFORNIA
Gavin Newsom recall effort faces ‘dark money’ complaint over alleged hidden donors
Jan. 5, 2021
If the recall does qualify for the ballot, it would trigger a special election this year. Unlike a regular vote for governor, the recall ballot could see multiple candidates — with the winner simply needing the most votes.
Last week, California Democrats attempted to brand the Recall Newsom campaign as an “attempted coup” akin to the Capitol insurrection — an effort that backfired, with critics saying it was reckless to characterize a legal recall attempt with what happened on Jan. 6. But one prominent Republican analyst said few should be shocked that the recall has extremists and conspiracy theorists.
“That’s become mainstream Republican politics,” said Mike Madrid, a former state Republican Party political director who co-founded The Lincoln Project, a political action committee of Republicans aligned against Trump.
“It used to be low taxes,” Madrid said. “It is now white grievance.”
Updates
9:31 AM, Jan. 24, 2021: This article has been updated with the headline of Tom Del Becarro’s Epoch Times article.
Anita Chabria
Anita Chabria covers California state politics and policy for the Los Angeles Times and is based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times, she worked for the Sacramento Bee as a member of its statewide investigative team, and previously covered criminal justice and City Hall.
Paige St. John
Paige St. John covers criminal justice, disasters and investigative stories for the Los Angeles Times from Northern California.
lilsis
Newsom Delivers for Energy Clients of Lobbyist he Celebrated at French Laundry
The Newsom administration’s decisions have repeatedly benefited the energy clients of the firm of his close lobbyist friend Jason Kinney.
920 icn
in a Bold Move, California’s Governor Issues Ban on Gasoline-Powered Cars as of 2035
BY: DAN GEARINO
The order, issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, is the first of its kind in the United States. But it is bound to draw legal challenges.
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get quote heat dome stats DN 9/15/20
nyt
At a briefing in California, Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom disagree, as politely as possible, on climate change.
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TRANSCRIPT
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‘Climate Change Is Real,’ Newsom Tells Trump at Briefing
During a meeting with local and state wildfire officials in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom politely disagreed with President Trump’s view on climate change.
“Your administration just entered into a first-of-its-type commitment over the next 20 years to double our vegetation management and forest management.” “Right.” “I want to thank you for supporting that effort, funding that effort. We acknowledge our role and responsibility to do more in that space. But one thing is fundamental: 57 percent of the land in this state is federal forest land. Three percent is California. So we really do need that support. We need that emphasis of engagement. And we are fully committed to working with you to advance that cause. We’ve known each other too long, and as you suggest, the working relationship I value — we obviously feel very strongly that the hots are getting hotter. The dries are getting drier. When we’re having heat domes, the likes of which we’ve never seen in our history: The hottest August ever in the history of the state, the ferocity of these fires, the drought — five-plus years — losing 163 million trees to that drought. Something’s happened to the plumbing of the world. And we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this. And so I think there is an area of, at least, commonality on vegetation, forest management. But please respect — and I know you do — the difference of opinion out here as it relates to this fundamental issue, on the issue of climate change.” “Absolutely.” “Appreciate it, thanks.”
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During a meeting with local and state wildfire officials in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom politely disagreed with President Trump’s view on climate change.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump arrived in California in a smoky haze on Monday and promptly blamed the wildfires ravaging the West Coast not on climate change but on the failure by western states to properly manage their forests.
“When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry — really like a matchstick,” the president told reporters after disembarking from Air Force One at Sacramento McClellan Airport, where the stench of smoke filled the air. “And they can explode. Also leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it’s just fuel for the fires.”
The president brushed off a question about climate change, suggesting that the query be put to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California instead.
During a briefing for the president by state and local officials fighting the fires or representing communities affected by them, Mr. Newsom pushed back on climate change, though he made a point of doing so exceedingly politely.
He offered thanks to Mr. Trump for federal assistance and agreed with him that forest management needs to be better, but he noted that only 3 percent of land in California was under state control while 57 percent was federal forest land under the president’s management.
“As you suggest, the working relationship I value,” Mr. Newsom said. But he said climate change clearly was a factor in the fires.
“Something’s happening to the plumbing of the world,” Mr. Newsom said. “And we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this.”
He went on: “And so I think there’s an area of at least commonality on vegetation, forest management. But please respect — and I know you do — the difference of opinion out here as it relates to this fundamental issue on the issue of climate change.”
Rather than argue the point, Mr. Trump deferred. “Absolutely,” he said, and then turned the floor over to another briefer.
But after another speaker also raised climate change, Mr. Trump made clear that he remained unpersuaded. “It will start getting cooler,” he said. “Just watch. I don’t think science knows, actually.”
The president’s comments reflected a longstanding assertion on his part whenever flames erupt in California or elsewhere in the west. But environmentalists, state officials and scientists said the scarred countryside and ashen clouds are the predictable consequence of climate change that has gone largely unchecked by Mr. Trump, who has instead rolled back environmental regulations.
“Raking the leaves and forest floors is really inane; that doesn’t make sense at all,” said Ralph Propper, president of the Environmental Council of Sacramento. “We’re seeing what was predicted, which is more extremes of weather.”
Nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the Western states.
But the president has used his time in the nation’s highest office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels, chiefly by rolling back or weakening every major federal policy intended to combat dangerous emissions. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied or minimized the established science of human-caused climate change.
Now, as he battles for a second term in the White House, Mr. Trump has doubled down on his anti-climate agenda as a way of appealing to his core supporters. At a rally in Pennsylvania last month, he blamed California’s failure to “clean your floors” of leaves, threatening to “make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”
“Talk to a firefighter if you think that climate change isn’t real,” Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It seems like this administration are the last vestiges of the Flat Earth Society of this generation.”
— Peter Baker, Michael D. Shear, Coral Davenport and Kellen Browning
‘We have to act as a nation,’ Biden says, addressing the wildfires and climate change.
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Biden Calls Trump a ‘Climate Arsonist’ in Remarks on Wildfires
not sure this is the takedown that left hopes? he might be said to referring to cooler weather? tho that not matter of sci knowing; OTOH predict covid miracvle vanish (w/ hotter weather?)
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-faceplants-with-a-scientifically-illiterate-claim-about-climate-change/
no lnx twt
trump faceplants with a scientifically illiterate claim about climate change
Written by Cody Fenwick September 14, 2020
[California Natural Resources Secretary @WadeCrowfoot: "We've had temperatures explode this summer..."
President Trump: "It'll start getting cooler, you just watch."
Crowfoot: "I wish science agreed with you."
Trump: "I don't think science knows, actually."]
President Donald Trump refused to accept the scientific consensus on the existence of climate change at a meeting about the California wildfires, preferring to blame the crisis on poor forest management.
California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot spoke about the issue, addressing the president directly and calling out the need for federal leadership.
“As the governor said, we’ve had temperatures explode this summer. You may have learned that we broke a world record in the Death Valley, 130 degrees,” he said.
At this point, Trump smirked and look away from Crowfoot.
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“But even in greater LA, 120-plus degrees. And we’re seeing the warming trend make our summers warmer, but also our winters warmer as well,” Crow foot continued. “So I think one area of mutual agreement and priority is vegetation management. But I think we want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests. And actually work together with that science, that science is going to be key. Because if we ignore that science and put our heads in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting California.”
“OK,” Trump said. “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”
“I wish science agreed with you,” said Crowfoot.
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“I don’t think science knows, actually,” Trump said, laughing.
It’s was an embarrassing display of ignorance. The science of climate change is extremely well-established, and while uncertainty remains, the trend we’ve been headed in is clear. As the chart from NASA below shows, the increase in temperatures is a decades-long trend scientists have observed since the ’60s.
“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt said in January in a statement naming 2019 as the second-warmest year ever recorded. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”
Trump’s comments were particularly galling because he claimed to know the temperatures will actually get cooler. This is bolder than even many climate denialists, who often say that future temperatures are wildly uncertain. No, Trump’s claim is not only that climate scientists have no idea what they’re talking about, but that he somehow has enough information that contradicts the profession’s broad consensus. It requires a stunning level of arrogance to make this claim.
But it is consistent with what Trump has probably been hearing on Fox News. HostTucker Carlson has repeatedly cast doubt on climate change, including in connection with the California wildfires.In a recent broadcast, he said: “So are we climate change deniers if we point out that the state of California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation measures that might’ve dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires? Does that make us deniers? Because in 2018, a state oversight agency in California found that years of poor or non-existent forest management policies in the Sierra Nevada Forests, had contributed to the fires.”
Carlson didn’t mention, however, that the very report he was referring to explicitly listed poor management policies alongside climate change as the key causes of the crisis.
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gov gavin N did wel covid, regional partners, used our gnp got big ppe buy (china?)
etcgroup.org?
geo-engr monitor (vs watch bogus)
https://kpfa.org/episode/terra-verde-november-1-2019/
geoengineering 101: An Introduction to a Dangerous Techno-Distraction
An interview with program and research staff from the ETC Group regarding current dynamics around the surreptitious push by the fossil fuel industry and their political allies to advance geoengineering technologies under the guise of climate action.
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California governor on verge of move that could keep Trump off the 2020 ballot
Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story July 27, 2019
On Saturday, Politico reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom may be about to jump into the political fight to force President Donald Trump to disclose his tax returns — in a big way.
A bill is currently sitting on his desk in Sacramento that would require any presidential candidate to make their returns public in order to qualify for the ballot in California. Democrats in the legislature already passed such a measure in 2017, but it was vetoed by Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown, who cited constitutional concerns.
Kicking Trump off the ballot in California would not affect his chances of winning a second term, as he has never and was never expected to carry the state. But it would mean California Republicans have no statewide candidacy of any kind to vote for in 2020, a potential death blow to down-ballot candidates who want to chip away at Democrats’ House majority.
It remains an open question, though, whether Newsom will actually approve the bill this time around. On one hand, he was elected to office on a tidal wave of anti-Trump fury and is eager to distinguish his administration from Brown’s. On the other hand, he is also conscientious about keeping a dialogue open with the administration for basic governmental issues, and worries Trump could shut that dialogue down if California takes too aggressive a posture against him....
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frac permits 2x
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:
- Dismiss the current State Oil and Gas Supervisor who heads the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) and designate an acting Supervisor;
- 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;
- 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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