CAlif 3
MERRI OK
=code hung 2
officially a target EG GAS PRICES IRAN WAR 3 3 26
corp ~ CA regs b/c tougher, and mkt tends to make nat'l std
SEE BLUE STATE CITIES
SEE SUE TRUMP LAWSUIT
eternal fox target, esp SF Bay Area
TRUMP TARGET KNEEJERK
glyphosate
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bunch of climate nuisance lawsuits incl
imperial beach, poor, sea level rise 3 sides GUK [ also tj sewage?]
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bonta sue 100x
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RWW --> MOJO
ON n Monday, federal authorities announced the arrest in California of at least 11 people, and charges against 28, alleging they registered to vote as noncitizens. Months of fears around the presence of federal agents at the polls and the use of armed immigration enforcement to affect national elections appear to be coming to fruition, despite the Trump administration’s inability to field meaningful evidence for claims of voter fraud or substantial voting by noncitizens.
The initiative, dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote,” comes in the lead-up to the midterm elections, where the Trump administration is making good on threats to weaponize the Justice Department and other federal entities in its favor over claims of supposed voter fraud. On Tuesday, the federal government sent election officials in Los Angeles County an unverified list of 20,000 people it claims are “likely noncitizens” registered to vote in California. As the New York Post first reported Monday, federal agents used the list to make the more than two dozen targeted arrests on the basis of its voter fraud allegations.
The Justice Department said in its Monday press release that federal law enforcement arrested “11 foreign nationals” against whom it will level criminal charges, including that they “fraudulently registered to vote in U.S. elections, electoral contests in which most of them cast illegal and fraudulently obtained ballots.”
The 11 arrestees are among 28 people the department officially charged—and all are from its list of 20,000 targets in the election. The press release claims that every person targeted is a legal permanent resident of the US but not a citizen.
“Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. “California must verify the citizenship of those more than 20,000 registrants before mail-in ballots are counted.”
According to Reuters, federal authorities gave election officials 48 hours to review the list and withhold ballots or face legal action. The officials rejected the demand, and the Justice Department sued for a court order to prevent California from counting ballots from the 20,000 people on its list. The Trump administration has since threatened local officials who process those ballots with criminal investigation and prosecution.
“Noncitizen voting in a federal election is a federal crime, and knowingly facilitating such conduct is equally unlawful,” McCotter wrote in a letter to county officials and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that was obtained by the Associated Press. “If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.”
“Protecting American elections from criminal interference remains a top priority,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X, in reference to the New York Post report. “We will use every legal resource to hold those who violate our election laws accountable and defend every American citizen’s constitutional right to vote."
THE Trump administration’s operation in California, along with its long history of voter suppression—which my colleagues at Mother Jones have reported on at length—will not have an impact confined to California, or to the people on the Justice Department list. The voting public’s fear of subsequent actions, based on further unverified claims, cannot be separated from ICE’s track record of raiding first and asking questions later, a practice that has yielded the detention of hundreds of US citizens, repeatedly involving serious physical harm.
Even if the federal government sticks to its claim that it will not station federal agents at polling places, it is taking actions with indistinguishable, potentially further-reaching effects—in an election in which millions of ballots are already being cast.
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ro 10 20 26 billionaires up to 261? after tax proposed?
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// nevada fail
an 10 26
President Donald Trump’s grandiose claims of voter fraud are falling apart under the weight of his own Justice Department’s figures.
The president’s administration is being asked to account for its broad allegations of fraud in California after the DOJ put forward charges on only 34 ballots said to be illegal from the nearly 94 million that have been cast in the state since 2020.
On Monday, federal prosecutors made public a statewide probe into noncitizen voting and out charges against 28 lawful permanent residents. The San Francisco Chronicle reports 23 of them are alleged to have put in 34 ballots between them in elections going back to 2020.
Put another way, that is 0.00004 percent of what was put to the vote in California’s eight statewide contests over the period, hardly the sort of numbers to back up the administration’s claims of rampant illegal voting.
The department has been at odds with the state over this. In July, the Department of Homeland Security released a preliminary review saying it had found over 190,000 possible noncitizens registered to vote in California.
By October, the figure was down to about 20,000, and the Justice Department filed suit when state officials would not comply with federal requests to root out suspected noncitizens and keep their votes off the tally.
And yet the criminal cases unsealed on Monday were limited to fewer than three dozen questionable ballots in the whole state.
The 28 defendants are U.S. residents but not citizens, so they are barred from federal elections; they face charges of false statements on naturalization papers and fraudulent registration.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter says the prosecutions make good on the administration’s demands, pointing to the 28 on the government’s list of suspects. “California refused to look at that list,” he said in a statement from the Justice Department.
Election experts are having none of it. Rick Hasen of UCLA’s election law program sees the case as a “drop in the bucket” compared to the 23 million voters on the California roll.
Hasen also pointed out that some of those charged never actually cast a ballot despite the illegal registration. The figures do nothing to prove every name on the administration’s list is a legitimate voter, but they do illustrate how few cases federal prosecutors have mustered in light of earlier estimates.
McCotter concedes some on the suspect list may in the end be shown to be American citizens, and Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to deride that as the administration goes after access to registration records.
Federal judges have already turned down the administration’s bid for the full voter rolls on privacy and legal grounds.
For their part, California officials say the records are kept in order and will have none of Trump’s contention that the state’s elections are rife with fraud.
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an 10 26
President Donald Trump's first assistant U.S. attorney keeps getting caught in lies, according to one keen observer.
National security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed to a recent tweet from Bill Essayli listing details about the case against California and Los Angeles County over a conspiracy theory about mail ballots. According to the federal government, 20,000 of the people who got ballots were "likely noncitizens."
The administration has been caught in this fight before. In Nevada, the administration used this same system and claimed that as many as 15,903 noncitizens might be on the state’s voter rolls. The state demanded evidence, and Homeland Security whittled the list down to 185 names, claiming it had "manually" verified they were noncitizens.
Nevada officials then checked the 185 names against state records and concluded every one was a U.S. citizen.
In a letter to DHS, Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote: “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” adding that the federal government had “provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”
Now California must use the same system and face the same allegations. So, the parties asked the judge to block the federal government's demand.
The Justice Department argued that California must segregate those ballots until their citizenship status can be verified, and Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the state of refusing to comply with federal law.
Essayli falsely claimed on X, "Make no mistake: California has no interest in protecting the integrity of its elections. We presented the evidence. Their answers: "It's not widespread fraud." "It's too late we already mailed the ballots." "It's already illegal to vote illegally." "We can't trust your evidence." A law that isn't enforced is meaningless. Today we are asking a court to require California to follow the law and not count ballots cast by noncitizens," he claimed.
Wheeler said that in this case, Essayli was "outright lying here."
She cited, "The same untested garbage that has been shown to be fraudulent in other states. He is confessing to a conspiracy to deprive naturalized citizens, like Harmeet Dhillon, of their right to vote," Wheeler bashed.
Indeed, Essayli's claims still have not been independently verified and resemble a system that failed in Nevada.
His problem is that the lawsuit itself describes the people as “likely noncitizens,” not confirmed noncitizens. California officials say the federal government has not explained the basis for the suspicion or provided enough identifying information to verify the list.
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YIKES OFFSHORE OIL AN 9 26
President Donald Trump has made numerous moves criticized as "power grabs" throughout his second term in the White House, but in a new piece for The Hill, a former Republican sounded the alarm about one that has potentially flown under the radar.
Christine Todd Whitman previously served as the first female governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, before joining the administration of George W. Bush as head of the Environmental Protection Agency until 2003. As of 2022, however, she has departed the Republican Party to head up the Forward Party, an attempt to launch a centrist third party, alongside former Democratic candidate Andrew Yang.
On Sunday, Whitman published a new op-ed for The Hill in which she professed to be "extremely concerned" about Trump's efforts to manipulate the Coastal Zone Management Act in order "to impose a federal takeover of California’s coast." She praised the law, signed by Richard Nixon, for establishing a system of "state-federal partnership" in managing ocean and lake coastlines that helps states "advance their own priorities in federal decision making," rather than allowing decisions to be made via "presidential fiat."
"Under the guise of expanding offshore oil drilling and space launches, along with the establishment of seabed mining, this effort is supported by some of my Republican friends," Whitman wrote. "But political pendulums inevitably swing, and this short-sighted initiative creates a dangerous power grab for future presidents of any political stripe to exploit. It began when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to reopen the routine evaluation of California’s coastal management program done, but not finalized, under the Biden administration. Lutnick’s order, citing economic factors and favoring select industries, signals this duplicative review is rigged."
Whitman added that "California has successfully worked alongside 10 presidents" in managing its coastlines under this law, and over the decades has "expanded access to its coast, preserved coastal parkland and wildlife, and ensured local governments have a voice in the approval of federal projects, including subsea fiber optic cables, offshore oil and gas production, and military training exercises." Under this newly ordered review, the state now stands to lose all of that progress.
"Over nearly 50 years, California has reviewed more than 3,700 federal actions impacting its coast and, in 96 percent of cases, either negotiated improvements or approved projects as submitted," Whitman explained. "Clearly, the state-federal partnership has worked.... This formula for success falls apart if Washington can supplant California’s priorities with its own, especially if the Trump administration’s rush for new offshore drilling results in oil spills. We’ve seen time and again that such spills close fisheries, beaches and harbors, and transform vibrant coastal communities into ghost towns overnight."
Whitman also noted that California's coastal management systems are widely regarded as the best in the nation. If Trump were to successfully wreck them, "then like dominos, other states will easily follow, destroying one of our best examples of federalist governance."
"This should alarm every American," Whitman concluded. "Our love of the ocean is universal, so the right to manage the coast should remain equal under the law for all coastal states. Instead we see the administration play favorites, demonstrated by the abandonment of its oil drilling plans off the Atlantic coast after significant opposition from the region’s Republican leaders. As the old saying goes, Washington doesn’t have a monopoly on wisdom. Hopefully, we won’t have to relearn this lesson the hard way."
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trump allies warn California leaders they could go to prison...
https://sacramento.newsreview.com › News
By Wendy Fry and Jeanne Kuang for CalMatters
California's southern border, long ‘ground zero' in the fight between federal and local officials over immigration policy, is now at the center of renewed controversy over how far local leaders can go to protect people from deportation.
After San Diego County took steps earlier this month to strengthen safeguards for undocumented residents, an organization led by President-elect Donald Trump's adviser Stephen Miller sent a letter warning that elected leaders and employees of “sanctuary” jurisdictions could be “criminally liable” if they impede federal immigration enforcement.
In the Dec. 23 letter, America First Legal Foundation wrote: “We have identified San Diego County as a sanctuary jurisdiction that is violating federal law.”
The conservative legal nonprofit that day announced that it had identified 249 elected officials in sanctuary jurisdictions who it said could face “legal consequences” over immigration policies. The California Attorney General's office and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were sent similar letters.
The letter also suggests sanctuary city officials could be civilly liable under federal anti-racketeering laws.
With Trump pledging to carry out the “largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history,” San Diego's board of supervisors enacted a policy on Dec. 12 prohibiting local law enforcement from communicating with immigration authorities about undocumented people in local jails without a judicial warrant.
San Diego's newly enacted ordinance goes a step further than California's existing state “sanctuary” law, which only limits cooperation between local law enforcement and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The law prevents jailers from notifying ICE about non-citizen inmates who are about to be released from local criminal custody unless they committed one of about 800 serious crimes. State prison officials regularly communicate with ICE about people in their custody, including U.S. citizens, public records show.
San Diego County's action faced immediate pushback, with the county's top law enforcement official, Sheriff Kelly Martinez, saying she would not follow the new policy and would continue allowing immigration authorities access to the jail inmates.
American First Legal Foundation sent its letter to the chair of San Diego County's Board of Supervisors, Nora Vargas, who stepped down from her position on Friday citing security concerns just weeks after being elected to a second term.
“Federal law is clear: aliens unlawfully present in the United States are subject to removal from the country, and it is a crime to conceal, harbor, or shield them. It is also a crime to prevent federal officials from enforcing immigration law,” states the letter, dated three days after the resignation.
Vargas, who was born in Tijuana, has long championed rights for asylum seekers and immigrants. She was the first immigrant and Latina to serve on San Diego's board of supervisors. She was elected to the board in 2020, flipping the seat from Republican to Democrat for the first time in decades.
Vargas said the new board policy was developed through “rigorous legal review and stands in full compliance with federal, state and local laws.”
“This nation's foundation was built on the strength and contributions of immigrants,” she posted on social media. “Now it's time to turn our focus to honoring the humanity of those who help make this country the beacon of hope it continues to be.”
Spokespersons for Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to inquiries about whether the administration plans to prosecute local officials in sanctuary cities. Trump has named Miller to be his deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor.
California preparing legal battles with Trump administration
State officials have asked the Legislature, in a special session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, for $25 million for legal fights with the incoming administration on issues including immigration.
“This is a scare tactic, plain and simple,” read a statement from the Attorney General Rob Bonta's office, in response to the America First letter. “While we are unable to comment on the specifics of the letter, we want to be clear: SB 54 was upheld by the courts during the first Trump administration, and it prevents the use of state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement with certain narrow exceptions. SB 54 does nothing, however, to block federal agencies from conducting immigration enforcement themselves. California will continue to comply with all applicable state and federal laws, and we expect all local law enforcement agencies to do the same.”
Democratic state Senate leader Mike McGuire, of Healdsburg, in response to the letters called the incoming administration's proposed immigration policies “draconian” and damaging to California's economy.
“The previous Trump administration came at California before on a variety of legal fronts and the majority of the time, lost,” said McGuire, whose office did not receive a letter. “Mark my word, we'll be prepared again.”
The state is home to several major cities with policies limiting cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities. Proponents say such policies make immigrants less fearful of deportation when reporting crimes to or cooperating with the police. Los Angeles adopted a sanctuary city ordinance in November, fast-tracking the policy after Trump's election.
Asked for comment on the America First letter, Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, called it “wrong on public safety and wrong on the law.”
“Sanctuary policies are against the law, make a mockery of America's democratic principles, and demonstrate a shocking disrespect for our Constitution and our citizens. The officials in charge of sanctuary jurisdictions have no excuse and must be held accountable,” read a statement from James Rogers, a senior counsel with America First Legal.
Trump targeted California sanctuary cities before
The state's own sanctuary law, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, curbs local sheriffs' transfers of detainees to federal immigration custody and also prohibits police from asking people about their immigration status. That law, Senate Bill 54, contains an exception for state prisons, which regularly transfer ex-inmates who have completed their sentences to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.
Trump advisers, including Miller, have been considering using federal pressure, such as withholding federal funds, against jurisdictions that won't cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The last Trump administration tried to get the California sanctuary law overturned in federal court, but the Supreme Court in 2020 declined to hear its petition. And in 2018, Trump's Department of Homeland Security floated criminal charges against politicians of cities that enact sanctuary policies. It did not file charges.
“So-called ‘sanctuary' jurisdictions that forbid compliance with federal immigration law and cooperation with the officials who enforce it are, therefore, breaking the law. Moreover, sanctuary jurisdictions are strictly prohibited from requiring their employees to violate federal immigration law,” the America First letter states.
But Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, said the letter's reasoning that sanctuary policies amount to “harboring” or concealing federal fugitives is flawed.
“Not inquiring about someone's status is not harboring. Neither is declining to share such information,” Arulanantham said in a text message Friday. “I'm not aware of any criminal protections based on such conduct, and the letter fails to cite any.”
To carry out his plan to deport more people than any other president, Trump will need the cooperation of local officials. Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit that provides legal training and does pro-immigrant policy work in California and Texas, estimates 70 to 75% of ICE arrests in the interior of the U.S. are handoffs from another law enforcement agency, such as local jails or state or federal prisons. Since 2019, California's state prison system has delivered more than 5,700 formerly incarcerated immigrants to ICE, federal data shows.
San Diego was the epicenter of a surge of unauthorized crossings earlier this year, straining local resources. In April, 37,370 people crossed between ports of entry in the San Diego sector, with the majority surrendering to Border Patrol to claim asylum. This made it the top spot for crossings in the country for a few weeks in 2024, according to federal data. The number of unauthorized crossings dropped sharply after the Biden administration implemented new asylum restrictions in June.
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9 16 TOP FUNDER 2026 FUCKERY
OFFICIAL TOP FUNDERS. Valid only for September 2025 (25-0007A1) ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Petition circulation paid for by Reform California with Carl DeMaio – Ballot Measure Committee Committee Major Funding From: No $50,000 contributors Latest Official Top Funders: VoterIDTopFunders.org (25-0007A1) ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Under current law, when registering to vote, individuals must state under penalty of perjury that they are United States citizens and provide information to verify their identity (e.g., birthdate, driver’s license or Social Security number). This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that: voters present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by mail; the State provide voter identification cards on request; and elections officials annually report percentage of each county’s voters whose citizenship they have verified. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: One-time state and local government costs in the tens of millions of dollars to prepare for implementation of the measure. Increased annual state and local government costs potentially ranging in the tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars to fulfill new requirements related to elections administration.
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new rep The New Republic
For an uncomfortably long time on Monday, two lawmakers shouted at one another about climate change in a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing about the Trump administration’s proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. One was EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The other was 83-year-old Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut. The spat did what Zeldin seemingly hoped it would: generate a viral moment for his boss and his boss’s base. It also helpfully distracted attention away from the ostensible purpose of the hearing: to discuss why Zeldin and the Trump administration want to cut in half the budget of the agency charged with protecting the country’s air and water.
It makes sense that Zeldin was eager to evade substantive questions about an EPA tenure spent giving generous giveaways to polluters, dismantling independent research, and hemorrhaging staff. He also didn’t talk too much about the White House’s plan to slash the EPA’s budget down to just $4.2 billion. Zeldin’s record, that is, has already earned the ire of Make American Healthy Again activists. This is an especially volatile week to court more of it. The Supreme Court and Congress are both hearing arguments this week about glyphosate—the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, produced by the German chemicals giant Bayer AG. Several scientific studies have linked glyphosate to cancer, and it’s accordingly one of the MAHA movement’s least favorite substances.
No doubt Zeldin would rather be seen going toe-to-toe with an octogenarian than being confronted with the fact that his agency got a personal thank-you from Bayer for its work on glyphosate. Unfortunately for Zeldin, that confrontation was captured on camera too.
It would be easy for that to get lost in the news this week, or even in the flurry of glyphosate-related news. The Supreme Court is hearing oral argument in a case that could grant Bayer blanket immunity from being sued over glyphosate, and let the company off the hook for tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of lawsuits that claim Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The House is also due to take up this year’s Farm Bill, which currently includes a provision that would likewise bar states and courts from penalizing or holding “liable any entity for failing to comply with requirements that would require labeling or packaging that is in addition to or different from the labeling or packaging approved by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
:{:{Glyphosate has become an understandable cause célèbre for MAHA, and its advocates are rallying in Washington this week. For months now, they’ve been railing against Zeldin and other Republicans for awarding top positions and regulatory concessions to some of the country’s biggest polluters. At the end of March, some three dozen MAHA leaders sent a tensely worded letter to Zeldin chastising the EPA for continuing to “approve, expand, and normalize chemical exposures that directly undermine that goal, driven by the chemical industry lobbyists who occupy senior leadership positions at the agency.”}:
The group went on to state several specific demands to enact a “real MAHA agenda” at the EPA, largely focused on controlling harmful pesticides and microplastics. Even if MAHA’s beliefs and electoral potency remain up for debate, Republicans are certainly responsive to their concerns. This week’s dispute over glyphosate could spark the biggest showdown yet in an emerging MAGA-MAHA split.}:
The Trump administration has enthusiastically supported Bayer’s case not just for legal immunity but to produce and distribute even more glyphosate and phosphorous—two Bayer-made products. Trump signed an executive order in February invoking the Korean War–era Defense Production Act to deem their manufacturing “critical to the national defense.” The order also protects companies that make glyphosate and phosphorus from lawsuits related to materials or products produced in accordance with the act, i.e., glyphosate and phosphorous. Trump’s Justice Department has enthusiastically supported Bayer in its case before the Supreme Court—and received a crucial assist from Zeldin’s EPA.
Asked about this issue on Tuesday afternoon, Zeldin was considerably more subdued than he was when bickering with DeLauro. In her line of questioning, toward the end of the hearing, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drilled Zeldin over his agency’s communications with Bayer.
“Administrator Zeldin,” she asked, “have you ever participated in a meeting with Bayer where you discussed the legal or litigation issues that the company was facing?” Zeldin stated that he had only had a “brief meet and greet, and that topic did not come up.”
Again, Ocasio-Cortez asked whether the EPA had discussed the issue with Bayer. Zeldin doubled down. “I’m telling you 100 percent absolutely. Maybe there was some brainstorming that was done beforehand of potential topics, but that topic was not brought up.”
:{:{She then presented an internal EPA email from last June, obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity via the Freedom of Information Act. The email shows Zeldin’s senior adviser for agriculture and rural affairs—Henry Turner Bridgforth—discussing his conversation with Bayer in advance of the company’s June 17 meeting with senior agency officials. “After talking with Bayer’s team,” Bridgforth tells some of Zeldin’s top aides, including EPA general counsel Sean Donahue, “they are going to bring up some legal/judicial issues.”}:
Among the list of “Discussion Topics” included in Bridgforth’s subsequent memo was “Glyphosate: Bayer will want an update on EPA reg review, as well as give some updates of their own.” Another discussion item is “Supreme Court Action: Bayer will give an update to the Administrator on where they stand in litigation and labeling options.” The final discussion included in the memo is “Thanks: Bayer will provide a small thanks for updating the glyphosate web page and work on MAHA.”}:
The Center for Biological Diversity noted back in March, the EPA only updated its glyphosate web page once during that time, in May 2025. The change reflected the agency’s decision to withdraw its 2022 letter stating that California could require language on pesticide labels for products containing glyphosate—warning of cancer risk—so long as those labels also stated that the EPA did not agree with that conclusion. The Biden administration’s stance revised a Trump 1.0-era crackdown targeting California’s decision to label glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” in line with the findings of the World Health Organization’s International Agency on the Research for Cancer, or IARC.
:{:{As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out while questioning Zeldin, Bayer’s argument to the Supreme Court relies heavily on the fact that—because these sorts of state-level warnings are now prohibited—the federal government’s assessment that Roundup is safe should insulate it from lawsuits over its failure to disclose that product’s cancer risk.}:
Essentially, Bayer is arguing that glyphosate is legally safe because the EPA said it was in 2020. And because disclosures about those risks no longer exist, Bayer argues that it can’t be sued for having failed to disclose cancer risks under state laws nullified by the EPA. Trump’s solicitor general filed a brief last December supporting Bayer’s position that federal law preempts states from adding warnings on pesticide labels beyond those established by the EPA. The solicitor general filed another in March further stating its support for that position. That second brief is supported by EPA general counsel Sean Donahue, who Bridgforth requested to attend the meeting with Bayer.}:
In response to Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning, Zeldin stumbled over a few words about an ongoing EPA assessment of glyphosate before being asked to respond in writing. The EPA has until October 1 to complete its review of glyphosate, which theoretically could conclude that it causes cancer. By that time, as Bayer is certainly aware, Congress already may have passed the Farm Bill’s protections for glyphosate and SCOTUS may have decided to grant Bayer blanket legal immunity.
If gripes about glyphosate were coming just from environmentalists (or cancer patients), then Zeldin might have an easier time brushing them off. But Republicans seem genuinely alarmed by the prospect that the MAHA base that was on their side when it came to vaccines could turn against the party’s deregulatory agenda. MAHA leaders’ letter to Zeldin from March spelled out several demands, largely focused on controlling harmful pesticides and microplastics: conducting an emergency review of pesticides banned elsewhere, closing loopholes for pesticides registration, shutting the “revolving door” between the EPA and polluting industries, protecting people from microplastics in drinking water, and enacting “a moratorium on permitting for new plastic production facilities and expansions of existing facilities.”
To meet these demands would undoubtedly enrage petrochemical companies and lobbyists that have been loyal Republican donors. In the 2024 election cycle, nearly 70 percent of campaign contributions from the American Chemistry Council, an industry lobby group, went to Republicans. Counting only contributions to political action committees, or PACs, that cycle, the split is even more dramatic: 77 percent of the ACC’s PAC donations went to Republican-aligned PACs.
This tension has yielded some awkward posturing from Zeldin and other officials eager to keep both MAHA and polluters happy. The EPA, for instance, recently broadcast plans to allegedly “unmake” plastic waste by supporting questionable technology known as “advanced recycling,” which uses chemicals to break down certain types of plastics. Typically, that happens through a process called pyrolysis. Petrochemical producers and lobby groups have advertised these expensive, polluting methods as preferable alternatives to policies that might actually force them to limit the production of plastics—a vanishingly small percentage of which (less than 10 percent) has ever been recycled. As ProPublica has reported, no more than 10 percent of plastics produced using pyrolysis are actually recycled.
Such oil-intensive processes have been found to release carcinogens, such as benzene and dioxins, into the atmosphere. Advanced recycling facilities have traditionally been regulated as incinerators under the Clean Air Act. Undergirding the EPA’s promotion of advanced recycling is a change long pushed by the American Chemistry Council that would instead regulate advanced recycling facilities as “manufacturing.” The change would mean that those facilities would have to account for fewer pollutants. And as the Natural Resources Defense Council’s John Walke told ABC News, the process by which the EPA is going about this could amount to an “immediate deregulation” of these facilities, “leaving a gap where no federal emissions standards would apply.”
Earlier this month, Zeldin and Kennedy announced “landmark, coordinated actions to address microplastics contamination.” In reality, they placed microplastics on a list of substances (the Contaminate Candidate List) that might eventually be considered contaminants, and then might at some point be regulated. Often, however, substances that end up on this list are never regulated. “This is the first step in a process that almost always leads to not regulating,” Suzanne Novak—a senior attorney and director of drinking water advocacy at Earthjustice—told Inside Climate News.
The alliance between MAHA types and the GOP has always been strange. Why did MAHA think its priorities could be defended by a party that has never exactly been shy about its loyalty to the corporate polluters? Whether or not MAHA supporters break up with the party—and whether or not those votes actually end up mattering—Lee Zeldin’s EPA has given them plenty to be angry about.
Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—and How We Fight Back and co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. Kate is also a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and serves in Dissent’s editorial board.
Read More:
Climate, Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency, MAHA, Glyphosate, Supreme Court
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OFFICIAL TOP FUNDERS. Valid only for December 2025 RESTRICTS POLITICAL SPENDING BY HEALTH CARE UNIONS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Petition circulation paid for by Californians for Health Care Workers’ Right to Vote, sponsored by California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems Committee major funding from: California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems Latest Official Top Funders: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballotmeasures/initiative-and-referendum-status/official-top-funders OFFICIAL TITLE AND SUMMARY (SAME AS ON PETITION) The Attorney General of California has prepared the following circulating title and summary of the chief purpose and points of the proposed measure: (25-0021A1.) RESTRICTS POLITICAL SPENDING BY HEALTH CARE UNIONS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Prohibits certain large health care unions from political spending over specified amounts regarding state or local ballot measures without following certain member consent requirements. Requires these unions to provide members annual notice describing prior-year political spending. Requirements apply only to unions, not employers. Imposes monetary penalties on unions as follows: (1) for violations of member consent requirements, the amount spent in violation of the requirements; and (2) for violations of member notice requirements, $1,000 per member (e.g., a $50,000,000 penalty if union does not provide notice to 50,000 members). Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Increased annual state costs, potentially in the range of millions of dollars, with some costs paid for by penalties created by the measure.
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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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AN 2 26
WSJ warns Trump’s billionaire tax cut is hurting the US economy
The Wall Street Journalhas a history of loving tax cuts, but in a new report, they're warning that President Donald Trump's billionaire tax cuts are hurting the U.S. economy.
As recently as Dec. 31, the Journal was singing the praisesof the nine states in which people would pay less in taxes. A little over a month later, Carol Ryan wrote that when billionaires don't pay their taxes, "look at who picks up the tab."
"Wealth concentration is affecting the wider economy," the report said, and it "shows why the issue isn’t going away."
California is proposing a wealth tax, which WSJ is concerned about, but only because for many rich households, their money is tied to the stock market.
"This could mean the entire economy pays a steep price in the next market correction," the report said.
"California has the highest concentration of billionaires in the U.S. with 255 individuals, or slightly more than a fifth of the country’s billionaire population," the report said, citing the wealth-intelligence firm Altrata.
A proposal for a ballot measure in November would levy an amount "calculated based on whichever is the higher of a billionaire’s voting interest or economic interest in a company." It would be a one-time levy on the wealth of any California resident worth over $1 billion. The solution is an idea to fix the Medicaid shortfall left by the GOP's significant cuts to the program in the "One Big Beautiful Bill" measure passed last year.
The right-wing Tax Foundation claims it will hurt tech leaders.
The ultrarich could simply leave California if they're unhappy, which is what Elon Musk did when he moved SpaceX and Tesla to Texas. However, Musk claims he did it because he was angry over gender identity laws. The ballot measure must still collect signatures before it can be up for a vote.
The Journal noted that Google co-founder Sergey Brin left California for Florida and Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He also moved several LLCs to Nevada.
Far-right Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel suggested he might do the same.
The Journal claims that such threats from billionaires might be enough to convince California voters not to tax the ultrawealthy.
The Investment Migration Council wrote on its websitethat "tax avoidance is the main reason actor Yul Brynner, entrepreneur Eduardo Saverin and inventor Earl Tupper abandoned U.S. citizenship."
One of the biggest arguments Democrats made in 2022 was for adding more workers to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to focus on tax evasion by the wealthiest Americans, which costs the U.S. approximately $150 billion each year, CNBC reported.
The Journal expects that billionaire tax evasion will likely become a more significant issue as the U.S. economy continues to slump and the wealth gap grows.
Since 1990, the WSJ has reported that the top 0.1 percent of wage earners now hold a much larger share of U.S. wealth. In the past 26 years, it has grown 14.4 percent for them.
"Meanwhile, the bottom half of American households have lost ground. Their 2.5 percent cut of the country’s wealth has slipped from 3.5 percent in 1990," the report said.
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SEE NEWSOM PROP 50 ~ TEXAS GERRY TRUMP
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MMA
January 21, 2026, edition of Fox News'Jesse Watters Primetime
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Tonight, we have declared officially victory in the battle of Somaliland. JD's going to make it official tomorrow and plant his flag in Minnesota. ICE has conquered the pirate ship. In year one of the Golden Age, 10,000 illegals sucked out of Minneapolis, 3,000 cuffed in the last six weeks alone.
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The pirate ship sank and it's time to leave the lawyers behind in Minnesota. Let them sniff out the rest of the Somali fraud. Now, it's about shifting manpower out west. Time for Tom Homan to hit the golden state. California, they work with ICE, allegedly, that's according to Gavin Newsom. Prove us wrong.
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AN 1 26
One federal judge recently struck down a move by President Donald Trump's administration to compel states to hand over sensitive data on registered voters, and criticized it as "unprecedented and illegal."
In a Thursday ruling, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter (an appointee of former President Bill Clinton) granted a motion by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to dismiss a lawsuit from the Trump administration over California's voter list. The administration had sued in an effort to sift through a list of more than 20 million voters in the most populous state in the U.S., aiming to find reasons to remove people it deemed ineligible to cast ballots.
The New York Times reported that the administration had aimed to obtain highly sensitive personal information, like Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers. According to the Times, officials in California and elsewhere have argued that handing over that information to the administration "would have a chilling effect on elections."
"The foundation upon which American democracy has been built is the right to vote. Brave Americans have given their lives for more than two hundred years to protect this right. Now it seems the Executive Branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots," Carter wrote in the decision.
"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California’s unredacted voting rolls," he continued. "... The issue presented to this court is animated by a well-established principle, long recognized by the Supreme Court: the right to vote is 'a fundamental political right, because [it is] preservative of all rights.' ... The government's request is unprecedented and illegal."
Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney pointed out in a post to X that Carter is the same federal judge "who said in 2022 that Trump had likely committed crimes in his quest to subvert the 2020 election." In that 2022 ruling, Carter remarked that it was "more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021," preceding the first-ever federal indictment of a former U.S. president.
Click here to read Carter's full ruling in its entirety.
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OFFICIAL TOP FUNDERS. Valid only for January 2026 MODIFIES ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW FOR CERTAIN PROJECTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. OFFICIAL TITLE AND SUMMARY (SAME AS ON PETITION) The Attorney General of California has prepared the following circulating title and summary of the chief purpose and points of the proposed measure: (25-0023A1.) MODIFIES ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW FOR CERTAIN PROJECTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Amends California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to expedite environmental review of specified project categories (including most housing, transportation, water, health, and clean energy projects). For these types of projects, this measure: • sets deadlines for public agencies to complete environmental review and take required actions for project; • allows expedited review of project’s environmental impacts, limiting public agencies’ current obligation to consider a range of feasible project alternatives to reduce environmental impacts; and • limits court review of project approvals by establishing deadlines for filing and resolving lawsuits and limiting evidence court may consider and relief it can order. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: State and local government implementation costs in the tens of millions of dollars annually for the first several years. Over the long term, the annual net fiscal effects are uncertain, but state and local governments likely would experience net savings due to reduced administrative and legal workload. Net fiscal effects on state trial courts ranging from annual savings of up to the tens of millions of dollars to annual costs of up to the low tens of millions of dollars. (25-0023A1.) Petition circulation paid for by Committee to Build an Affordable California, Sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce Committee major funding from: Edison International & Affiliated Entities California Building Industry Association California Chamber of Commerce Latest Official Top Funders: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballotmeasures/initiative-and-referendum-status/official-top-funders/
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CA Gubernatorial Candidate Chad Bianco Claims 'Our Government Was Formed Only For A Christian Nation'
01/14/2026
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Chad Bianco, who currently serves as sheriff of Riverside County, California, is among the leading Republican candidates running for governor. Bianco is also a Christian nationalist, which was on full display during a recent appearance he made on the His Glory TV network.
"It's been beat into us that there has to be a separation of church and state," Bianco said. "There is, but it's backwards: The government cannot be involved in your church. The government can't tell you you can't go to church. They can't tell you you can't pray. They can't tell you what church you have to go to. That was the founding of our country. The founding of our country was them coming here with Protestant Christian values that formed our country so they could practice freely their religion."
"[That] how they developed the Constitution," he continued. "In all their founding paperwork, it said the government shall stay out of religion. It also said that our government was formed only for a Christian nation. Without Christian values, our form of government will not work. That means that our Christian values absolutely must be in our government."
"Tyrannical government cannot oppress the churches, but our values are supposed to be in our government," Bianco asserted. "You should be electing people that have your values. Not your political party; it's your values. Vote on your values and this country would be basically how it was 200 years ago, 250 years ago now this year. We can turn this around easily if we would all just get out and vote."
Video URL
Bianco's assertion that "all the founding paperwork" declared that "our government was formed only for a Christian nation" is patently false, which is quite obvious given that the Constitution itself explicitly declared that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
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AN 12 25
Back in 2019 — the year after he defeated Republican Steve Poizner in the race for California insurance commissioner — Democrat Ricardo Lara drew criticism when it was discovered that he was soliciting money from people he was regulating.
Lara, in response to the controversy, vowed, "I must hold myself to a higher standard. I can and will do better."
Now, in late 2025, Lara is facing another controversy. The Los Angeles Times' Paige St. John, in an article published on December 4, reports that the former California state senator is "under two new investigations for potential campaign finance and ethics violations" and is "accused by consumer advocates of cozying up to those he regulates."
"Lara has asked companies to make donations to favored charities, including those that have business before his agency, according to a Times investigation," St. John reports. "The investigation found Lara logged at least 32 trips to 23 countries and territories — spending over 163 days abroad on state time — but consistently failed to disclose who paid for the five-star hotels, premium airline seats and fine dining. California ethics laws mandate that elected officials like Lara disclose reimbursements for such travel to the State Ethics Commission and agency websites."
Lara, according to St. John, "says he followed all state ethics and campaign spending rules." The Los Angeles Times journalist notes, however, that "payment records for two-thirds of Lara's trips are unreported or incomplete."
"The Times filed multiple public records requests for the full records, but the Department of Insurance at first said it didn't have receipts for most of Lara's spending," St. John explains. "In late November, however, the department released 452 pages of airline bookings for Lara made by the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners, the powerful, industry-funded trade organization that creates model regulations for states to enact. The nonprofit association paid for Lara's first- and business-class travel expenses, including a $11,626 ticket to Singapore for a 2024 conference on Asian insurance issues. A $11,730 reservation to Nepal in January of this year was canceled after the L.A. fires."
The Times reporter continues, "State employees accompanying Lara on foreign trips flew economy, for a fraction of the cost as their boss, state expense records show. Those include a state-paid $2163 ticket to Tokyo in 2023 for a senior department official, while the NAIC put Lara in a $9517 premium seat."
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AN 10 25
Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris warned The Nation that blue states may have to resort to a ‘tax strike’ to stop being the MAGA regime’s ‘second tier’ Americans.
“Since his election, Trump has … treated blue states not as equals … but rather like defeated vassals who must pay tribute to their new emperor in the form of policy capitulations and abrogations of their constitutional rights,” said Faris, adding that Trump’s explicit mandate to make blue states suffer “is the gravest threat to the constitutional union since the Civil War.”
“Last week, Trump escalated this campaign of autocratic intimidation by screaming on his fourth-tier microblogging website that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be imprisoned,” Faris said. “His corrupt henchman — er, ‘immigration czar’ — Tom Homan has distributed threats of arrest on cable news like he’s tossing paper towels to hurricane victims, against everyone from New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to California Governor Gavin Newsom.”
Meanwhile, Faris said Trump and his “Cabinet goons can count on the reliably servile U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to do whatever the administration asks.”
Faris said Trump is also using ICE to disproportionately target blue states and Democratic-run cities, with CNN reporting that Trump’s troops deliberately marching up and down Latino-majority streets is “killing business” and shutting down whole sections of Chicago.
“Citizens in blue states feel like they are living under a constant state of military siege, rhetorical harassment and punitive partisan budgetary cuts because that is in fact what is happening. And it is not sustainable for another three years,” said Faris. “The compact between the states is not magical or self-executing or ordained by divine providence to ensure that it can’t be undone by ruthless MAGA tyrants. It has fallen violently apart once before.”
Faris said blue state officials are already mulling a tax strike.
“In 2024, California and New York alone combined to send nearly $1.2 trillion in income and other taxes to the federal government, making up close to a quarter of all revenue. The reliance of many small, rural Republican-leaning states on federal funding is well known,” Faris said. “… By themselves, the states that voted for Kamala Harris — leaving aside the consensus battleground states — represent half of all federal tax revenue.”
The gamble, said Faris, is that Trump’s own diminished IRS would not be able to summon the resources or personnel to verify and punish citizens participating in a strike, even though Faris said Trump appears more than willing to muster some form of federal force to discourage a protest from taking “root on its own.”
Another option, said Faris, could be a national general strike with infuriated federal workers walking off their jobs and bringing society “to a screeching halt.”
“If workers in just the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs went out at once (they would need to resign, take time out under the Family and Medical Leave Act, or find some other workaround to avoid prohibitions on striking), and if they were joined by, say, public school teachers, the country would be snarled in an almost unimaginably chaotic crisis within 24 hours.”
Read the Nation report at this link.
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an 10 25
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10/01/2025
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- Ché Ahn says that he is running for governor to be "a father for California."
- Tony Perkins claims that "corporate America has blood on its hands" for having donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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AN 9 25 GRIST
Seventeen years ago, Californians bet on a grand vision of the future. They narrowly approved a $10 billion bond issue to build a high-speed rail line that would zip between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. This technological marvel would slash emissions, revitalize the state’s Central Valley, and, with some financial help from the feds and private sector, provide the fast, efficient, and convenient travel Asia and Europe have long enjoyed.
State officials promised to deliver this transit utopia by 2020. Instead, costs have more thandoubled, little track has been laid, and service isn’t expected to begin before 2030 — and only between Bakersfield and Merced, two cities far from the line’s ultimate destinations.
It’s little wonder the project finds itself in a precarious financial position, fighting political headwinds, and deemed a boondoggle by everyone from federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. “In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” they wrote, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high speed rail.”
The reasons for this vary with who’s being asked, but people with expertise often cite three fundamental missteps: creating a new agency to lead the effort, failing to secure adequate funding from the start, and choosing a route through California’s agricultural heartland. The state’s strict environmental review process hasn’t helped, either.
Such struggles are not unique to the Golden State, where support for the project remains strong. Although the private sector venture Brightline has seen some success, publicly funded high-speed rail efforts in Texas, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and beyond have stalled. Regulatory complexity, a political environment that favors cars and highways, and constant funding challenges stymie America’s aspirations even as other countries have spent big on tens of thousands of miles of track. Governor Gavin Newsom promises to see the nation’s most ambitious rail project through despite recently losing all federal support, but its troubled path underscores the systemic challenges of building big in America.
California has always been a car-crazy place, and by the early 1990s, transportation studies made clear that its highways would not keep pace with the growth to come. Policymakers saw an answer in bullet trains. The Legislature established the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 1996 and gave it the tough job of planning, designing, building, and running the system.
Some consider that a mistake because the agency lacked experience managing so big a project and navigating complex bureaucracy. Even some rail supporters concede it would have been better to let the authority provide oversight and leave the heavy lifting to the state Department of Transportation, or CalTrans. “It’s building a lot of overpasses and right-of-way, which Caltrans does all the time,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the University of California, Berkeley climate program in its Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment.
Without that experience, the authority’s 10 employees relied heavily on consultants like engineering firm WSP, running up expenses. “We paid WSP and their predecessor more than $800 million in consulting fees,” said Lou Thompson. He chaired the High Speed Rail Peer Review Group, established in 2008 to provide project oversight, from 2012 until 2024. The authority has in recent years eased its reliance on consultants, who reportedly have gone from 70 percent of its workforce to 45 percent over the past seven years.
Once the High-Speed Rail Authority set up shop, work proceeded in fits and starts. Even as it considered routes and started the myriad bureaucratic tasks the project required, political interest waxed and waned with the state’s fiscal health. Skeptics lamented the cost and questioned whether bullet trains would attract enough riders to be worthwhile. But rail advocates, environmentalists, unions, and others kept pushing forward and in 2008 convinced voters to approve Proposition 1A, securing $10 billion to finance construction.
It was never going to be enough — at the time, the cost was pegged at $45 billion, a figure that did not account for inflation — and funding has been a challenge from the start.
Still, the Obama administration saw an opportunity to show that the economy was bouncing back from the Great Recession. The federal American Reinvestment Recovery Act provided $3.5 billion to help get things started. The authority, which had already mapped a route through the Central Valley, soon began grading land, moving utilities, and taking other steps toward construction of the first leg, a 119-mile stretch from Bakersfield to Madera.
Things chugged along until 2013, when a state judge blocked the use of Prop 1A funds, ruling that some of the work did not meet the rules for bond expenditures. With federal support contingent upon the state’s cash, the federal grants had to be renegotiated — before they expired in 2017. “We were literally sitting there saying, ‘Well, if we don’t start going, we could lose $700 or $800 million of the federal money,” said Dan Richard, who was the High-Speed Rail Authority’s board chair from 2011 until 2019. That prompted the agency to do something no one wanted to do: Move forward without having acquired all of the necessary land. So it did.
Then President Donald Trump took office. He seemed interested in what California was attempting to build, having lamented that China and Japan “have fast trains all over the place” while the U.S. relies upon “obsolete technology.” His opinion soured when Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019 and the two sparred over the president’s policies. Trump later canceled nearly $1 billion in federal funds for the rail project.
The Biden administration restored it and provided another $3.1 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The infusion was to help build a station in Fresno and acquire trains for testing. Even with the windfall California remained at least $7 billion short of what it needed for the first short run through the Valley. The situation grew worse in July when Trump rescinded the entire amount after the Federal Railroad Administration said it saw no way of covering that shortfall and no path to completion by 2033.
Newsom said the move “reeks of politics” and the state is suing. But the impact goes beyond California by establishing a precedent to cancel projects at will. “How do you go to your voters and say, ‘Put up the money. We expect 50 percent federal share,’ without knowing that the next administration could turn around and say, ‘I don’t like that project,’” Richard said.
The High-Speed Rail Authority initially planned to rely upon state, federal, and private sector funding in equal measure, but California has provided 75 percent of the $14.6 billion spent so far. The authority wrote in a letter to the Railroad Administration that Newsom’s plan to allocate $1 billion, pulled from the state’s cap-and-trade program, toward the project each year for 20 years will be enough to finish the Central Valley segment. The governor also recently signed a bill requiring the authority to update its estimate on the funding gap for that leg of the journey.
With California seemingly on its own, Thompson said the project needs an income stream approaching $5 billion per year to build everything. That is one reason the authority in June asked the private sector and financial institutions to weigh in on the chance of public-private partnerships. Its CEO Ian Choudri private investors have shown “extreme interest.” VID]
Thompson isn’t buying it. “My opinion is that that is hot air,” he said. The way he sees it, no one’s going to invest until they can see that there is demand for the rail line.
One of the reasons Brightline is held up as an example of how to bring high-speed rail to the United States is its strategy includes building on public land. Part of its 235-mile line between Miami and Orlando stands on land owned by Florida East Coast Railway. The company’s planned run between Las Vegas and L.A. will largely follow Interstate 15.
California could have done the same and built along I-5, which bisects the Central Valley, but chose to go through major population centers 20 to 50 miles to the east. That pivotal decision increased the project’s cost and complexity. Following the freeway would have been straighter and flatter, without the elevated track, tunnels, and other infrastructure needed to traverse cities. The route also turned a state effort into a regional development project beset by local politics.
The High-Speed Rail Authority had good intentions, however. It hopes that bringing rail to places like Merced and Bakersfield might entice Silicon Valley and Los Angeles firms to open offices in the Central Valley, which would be a 90-minute ride from their headquarters. It also would boost local economies left behind by the state’s boom — and it has, to some extent. The project has added 11,000 construction jobs to the region. But that exacted its own toll.
“Those economic benefits have been really substantial, so that sort of worked, but it came at potentially the cost of not being able to build the system at all, because by starting it in the Central Valley they’ve basically blown all the money there,” said Elkind of the UC Berkeley Climate Program. Should the state once again ask voters for money, it would have had a stronger case if initial construction had occurred in major population centers, he said.
The route also created additional hurdles as the project navigated California’s environmental oversight rules. Going through several cities and all that farmland increased the number of stakeholders who had to be consulted, ballooning the environmental review process.
To be fair, the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, has long protected the state’s rich biodiversity. But some rail proponents argue it has been used to stymie progress. High-Speed Rail Authority data shows it has spent more than $765 million on environmental review. Lawsuits stemming from CEQA can be particularly expensive. “If you have a $100 billion project, and let’s say that interest rates are 3% a year, every year’s delay costs you $3 billion,” Thompson said. “A $50,000 lawsuit can delay you for a year, and so there’s an enormous pressure on you to try to bargain your way out of these kinds of situations.”
California recently loosened CEQA requirements for the rail system’s maintenance facilities and stations, a move Newsom cheered. “These are very targeted exemptions that will help cut red tape and deliver on California’s vision of high-speed rail without compromising environmental protections,” gubernatorial spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor wrote in an email.
Whether that reform has an impact remains to be seen, because most of the environmental review is already completed. And regulation was never the project’s biggest problem. “It just seems like the easy, obvious answer,” said Hana Creger, associate director of climate equity at The Greenlining Institute. “But I think these things are a lot more complex.”
Given all of this, it can be easy to lose sight of what progress has been made. The authority is quick to note that 463 miles of the 494-mile system has cleared the environmental review process and is “construction ready.” It also boasts of having laid 70 miles of guideway — meaning track, elevated structures, or other riding surface — and erected 57 structures. All told, the project has created more than 15,500 jobs since its inception.
Despite the challenges, Newsom remains steadfast in his determination to see Californians one day riding the trains they were promised so many years ago. 
,” he said in May. “That’s our commitment.” That will surely resonate with his constituents; recent polling shows 62 percent of voters believe the state should continue financing the project, though opinions split sharply along partisan lines. Still, experts caution that support isn’t enough. Tangible progress and credible funding streams are essential to maintain momentum.
The High-Speed Rail Authority seems to understand this and is pressing ahead to connect Bakersfield to either Merced or Gilroy. There’s a lot to do before crews start laying track, but the goal is to finish that run by 2032 and the authority recently opened the bidding process to begin installing track next year. Looking further ahead, its latest plan, released late last month, calls for extending the line south to Palmdale by 2038, putting it within 80 miles of San Francisco and 40 miles of L.A. at a cost of $87 billion. “While challenges remain, so too does the potential to deliver a modern transportation system worthy of the state’s ambitions — one that reflects the scale, complexity, and promise of California itself,” Choudri wrote in the plan. “Let’s go build it.”
Assuming the project retains its $4 billion federal grants, the project has $29 billion available, with an additional $15 billion from Newsom’s proposal, according to the CHSRA. Thompson said the governor’s proposal, which would set aside $1 billion every year for the project, should keep it alive for the next four years. Beyond that, it will need an infusion of cash, likely from voters but possibly from a future presidential administration. “I think the path forward is that they could show some first segment success and then go back to the voters,” Elkind said. “You just got to get through this first era here, and get something built that they can show to the voters.”
Ultimately, California’s high-speed rail is more than a train line; it is a test of the nation’s ability to deliver transformative infrastructure. Its path forward remains uncertain, but every mile of track laid could lead to a turning point — not just for the state, but for the broader goal of building the kind of transportation network other countries take for granted.
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/billions-spent-miles-to-go-the-story-of-californias-failure-to-build-high-speed-rail/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
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big-oil-spent-over-18-million-in-first-half-of-2025-to-shake-down-california-and-evade-accountabilityhttps://www.apenaction.org/2025/08/04/big-oil-spent-over-18-million-in-first-half-of-2025-to-shake-down-california-and-evade-accountability/
Sacramento, CA — The oil industry is orchestrating a full-scale shakedown of California.
In the first half of 2025, the oil industry and its lobbying arm spent over $18 million to kill key climate legislation, protect its profits, and block efforts to hold it accountable — all while communities suffer from rising costs, pollution, and the accelerating impacts of climate change. The over $18 million figure puts the oil industry on pace for its second highest lobbying and influence spend of all time in California, trailing only behind last year’s final total of $38 million and well ahead of the previous record of $26.2 million in 2017.
Influence spending disclosure reports for the second quarter released for the August 1 deadline show that the industry’s spending binge includes multimillion-dollar misinformation campaigns designed to blame climate policies for high prices — when it’s really Big Oil’s own actions that are driving up costs. From gouging consumers at the pump to suddenly shutting down refineries and squeezing supply, fossil fuel corporations are manipulating the scarcity they created to lobby for further bailouts in the form of deregulation, subsidies, and unlimited oil drilling.
Top 6 lobbying and influence spenders (Jan – June 2025):
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'Make chickens miserable again': Trump's California feud taken to 'ridiculous new level'
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CALLED CA GARBAGE // MSG PR FLOATING ISLAND
trump mentioned? LA mayor (and newsome?) to troops who booed w/o prompt? call N attn seeker
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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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calif sue on tariffs 4 17 25 on military poss c 6 25
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an 1 25
'Not good': Trump proposes 'getting rid of' FEMA and conditioning California aid on voter ID
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an pro publ on insurance costs 2 25
How climate change could upend the American Dream - Alternet.org
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// sharpiegate?
an 225
Trump recently ordered the release of massive amounts of water from two California dams, and now local farmers are scrambling to preserve precious freshwater resources needed for dry summer months.
The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — acting on Trump's orders — released water from the Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and the Schafer Dam at Lake Success, which are both in Tulare County in the San Joaquin Valley. Whereas water was originally flowing from the Terminus Dam at 57 cubic feet per second (cfs), it's now reportedly flowing at more than 1,500 cfs. The flow from Lake Success went from 105 cfas to 990 cfs as of Friday morning.
In a post to his official X account, Trump tweeted a "photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California," writing: "Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons." He suggested that the water release would help officials in the Golden State fight wildfires in Southern California.
READ MORE:'Help people instead of score political points': Trump feud with Newsom hits boiling point
"Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!" he tweeted. "I only wish they listened to me six years ago – There would have been no fire!
In response to an inquiry from the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Gene Pawlik confirmed that the release of water from the dams was done "to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires." He added that the water release was "consistent with the direction" of Trump's January 24 executive order announcing "emergency measures to provide water resources in California."
However, water managers in Tulare County told Bakersfield, California-based news site SJV Water — which covers water issues in the San Joaquin Valley – that there are multiple physical and legal barriers that prevent the valley's water from getting to Southern California. SJV Water reported that the water would have to be "pumped at great expense" across the valley to the California Aqueduct, where it would still need to travel hundreds of miles to make it to the Los Angeles area.
“Every drop belongs to someone,” Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez told SJV Water. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”
READ MORE:'Not good': Trump proposes 'getting rid of' FEMA and conditioning California aid on voter ID
The two dams are considered important reservoirs of water for farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, which is known for its "Citrus Belt" that produced more than four million tons of citrus fruits — particularly Mandarin, Navel and Valencia oranges, along with grapefruits and lemons — in the 2020-2021 season alone. Tulare County water manager Dan Vink said the release of water from the dams could make irrigation difficult.
"A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent," Vink said. "This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions."
Climate scientist Peter Gleick — who specializes in water issues — lamented on Bluesky that water resources farmers had been "relying on" were effectively "thrown away" by the Trump administration all for the sale of "a photo op & a bragging media post."
"This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting," Gleick wrote. "It is now lost."
READ MORE:Why CA farmers who backed Trump are 'reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction'
Click here to read the Los Angeles Times' article (subscription required) and click here to read SJV Water's full report.
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MMA
CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checks Trump’s claims that CA water policy exacerbated LA fires
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Allison Fisher
Published 01/24/25
On January 20, as part of his day one executive orders, President Donald Trump directed several U.S. agencies to restart a policy from his first term that reroutes water from Northern California to Southern California. The order ties Trump’s policy to the devastating fires in California that are so far responsible for 28 deaths and more than $250 billion in damages, effectively canonizing the false right-wing media claim that current California water policy impeded efforts to contain the LA fires.
Right-wing media wildfire misinformation underpins Trump’s executive order on California water policy
At the outset of the LA fires, the most costly in California history, Trump blamed “federal and state protections for California’s endangered delta smelt fish. He falsely claimed that those regulations led to inadequate water availability for firefighting efforts.”
As The New York Times explained at the time:
> Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a California research organization that focuses on water, said Mr. Trump was spouting “complete nonsense.”
“There’s no link between California’s water policies and efforts to protect endangered species and water availability for firefighters,” Mr. Gleick said. “They’re completely unrelated."
He noted that Southern California reservoir levels, including ones that feed Los Angeles, are above normal for this time of year. “There’s no water shortage,” he said. “The real issue is that urban water systems are not built or designed to fight massive, urban wildfires.”
Despite this and other fact-checks confirming Trump’s claims are inaccurate, right-wing media elevated this misinformation while firefighters raced to suppress the fires. As firefighters continue their battle to contain the blazes, Trump and right-wing media have continued to spread this falsehood, undeterred by the facts.
During Trump’s first sit-down interview since his swearing in, the president and Fox host Sean Hannity continued to push falsehoods about the LA fires, saying they were caused by poor forest management and lack of water due to California’s water policies. During the interview, Hannity asked Trump whether aid to the state would “be contingent on them practicing the science of forestry.” In response Trump said, “I don't think we should give California anything until they let water flow down.”
Video
Citation
From the January 22, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Most recently, Trump repeated the false claims while visiting North Carolina (and hours before visiting California):
But much more importantly, in California, just to revert to it for a second, millions of gallons of water are waiting to be poured down through, already, the halfpipes that are already built. … And about 20 years ago they turned off the water. And it is the water that comes from the Pacific Northwest, some of it comes out of Canada. And it flows there and it probably has flowed there for a million years and they turned it off and they route it out to the Pacific. And in the meantime, you don't have water in the hydrants, you don’t have water in the sprinkler systems. … Everyone is trying to figure out, “Why aren't they turning it back” — they say it’s the delta smelt, it’s a fish. But I find that hard to believe.
Moments after Trump’s comments, which aired live on Fox News and CNN, CNN’s Daniel Dale fact-checked the claim that water policy played a role in the LA fires:
The fact is that whatever happened in Los Angeles has nothing to do with a little fish in Northern California, like President Trump keeps saying. He keeps saying or suggesting that there was insufficient water in Los Angeles. You know, those dry hydrants we heard about in Pacific Palisades because the state didn't send enough water down from Northern California to L.A., instead was doing environmental protection like protecting the delta smelt. I've talked to a bunch of experts in California water policy. Complicated stuff. But on this subject, it's not complicated. Those two things have nothing to do with each other. If you look at California water data, it's available online. You'll see that there is no shortage of water in the Los Angeles area.
Trump’s January 22 interview with Hannity and his visit to California on January 24 came just days after the president signed an executive order that directs U.S. agencies to restart work “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.” The order reads: “The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply and sound vegetation management practices in order to provide water desperately needed there, and why this plan must immediately be reimplemented.”
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rumor chic on inaug, quashed?
an 1 25
Trump repeatedly promised mass deportations during his 2024 campaign, even vowing to end birthright citizenship despite the fact that it is in the U.S. Consitution's 14th Amendment. And on Monday night, January 20 — after returning to the White House — President Trump issued an executive order against birthright citizenship, underscoring his deportations promise.
Many legal experts, however, are saying that carrying out the amount of mass deportations Trump has promised is much easier said than done.
CalMatters conducted a comprehensive survey of sheriffs in California, asking all 58 sheriffs in the state about immigration enforcement under Trump's second presidency.
READ MORE: Trump Inauguration dubbed 'a coronation of our country's descent into oligarchy'
According to reporters Tomas Apodaca and Nigel Duara, Trump's promises "could put California's 58 elected sheriffs in the hot seat because of their responsibility to manage local jails."
Sheriffs in Los Angeles, Napa, Orange, Madera, San Bernadino and Mendocino Counties told CalMatters they will "comply with state law," while Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said he will "cooperate with ICE." And the sheriffs of Kern and Butte Counties responded, "Unclear."
"CalMatters reached out to the sheriffs by e-mail and website contact forms," Apodaca and Nigel Duara explain. "When those weren't available, we called the contact number on their website. Two county sheriffs' offices — Monterey and San Mateo — did not return calls seeking comment."
The CalMatters reporters add, "For months, Trump allies have signaled that they'd focus initial immigration enforcement on undocumented people who have committed crimes. This month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would empower immigration agencies to deport people arrested on suspicion of burglary, theft and shoplifting. The bill is expected to pass the Senate."
READ MORE:'Operation Aurora': Denver suburb on edge as Trump takes office
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zuck moves content team to texas// musk?
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gov n no magic spigot; CA sends 5x what we get from feds
gop moc? said ca dems refused aid to red NC and fla?! on fox?
1 25 mma
01/14/25
January 14, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Are we just going to keep destroying western civilization and then paying to rebuild it over and over again? No. There has to be strings attached to this money because we're not going to go bankrupt because California's stupid. They have lost $24 billion on the homeless, $50 billion on COVID jobless claims. They lost, what, $23 billion on a train that doesn't even go anywhere. So they completely fail every leadership test in California from natural disasters to COVID to the riots and we can't let it happen again.
01/14/25
https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/fox-news-newt-gingrich-attacks-democrats-not-using-goats-prevent-california-wildfires
Fox News' Jeanine Pirro questions whether or not California deserves federal disaster relief money
01/13/25
https://www.mediamatters.org/five/fox-news-jeanine-pirro-questions-whether-or-not-california-deserves-federal-disaster-relief)
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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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ca is officially a devil term/ verb // nancy pelosi, SF
trunp calls her bitch 11 24
no lnx twit vid
'So we’re legislating nothing': Texas Democrat stumps GOP sponsor of anti-'tyrannical government' bill
Brandon Gage
May 07, 2023
Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson [AA] (D-Houston) stumped State Representative Carrie Isaac (R-Dripping Springs) during last Thursday's debate over a proposal that Isaac sponsored to supposedly shield Texans from California's "tyrannical government."
Chron explained on Friday that "House Bill 3137 stops a municipality from instituting regulations surrounding the transfer, possession, wearing, carrying, ownership, storage, transportation, licensing, or registration of firearms, air guns, knives, ammunition, or firearm-related gun supplies or accessories. At the same time, the bill prohibits local governments from requiring gun owners to get liability insurance for damages resulting from negligent or willful acts involving firearms."
The outlet also noted that "according to a February report by Reuters, the San Jose bill passed in January 2022 with an ordinance requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance to cover negligence or accidents from using firearms. The San Jose bill also requires gun owners to pay a yearly fee to gun violence prevention organizations the city manager picks. Due to pending litigation, the bill hasn't been enforced in the city yet."
READ MORE: 'Now it’s God’s fault': Texas Republican slammed for claiming 'the almighty' controls shootings
Bit by bit, Johnson poked holes in Isaac's assertions.
"What does your bill specifically do?" Johnson asked Isaac.
"It will not allow municipalities to require insurance on firearms," Isaac replied.
"So otherwise, other words, does your bill prohibit mayors, city councils, and county commissioners from legally governing themselves when it comes to guns?" Johnson wondered.
READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene blames Texas mall shooting on 'mental illness' and 'evil forces'
"They do not have this right," Isaac declared.
"They don't have the right to do what?" Johnson followed up.
"To infringe upon our second amendment," Isaac said.
"Who — you mean again, cities, mayors," Johnson clarified.
"Correct," Isaac confirmed.
"Do mayors, city councils, and county commissioners have a right to pass laws that protect the citizens of their community?" Johnson posited.
"As long as it doesn't infringe on our constitutional rights," Isaac responded as her comrades began surrounding her.
"The constitutional right to do what?" Johnson pressed.
"To protect ourselves with our Second Amendment," Isaac proclaimed.
"From what?" Johnson continued.
"From a tyrannical government," Isaac reiterated.
"A tyrannical government. Which government currently is being tyrannical?" Johnson asked.
"Say that again, I'm sorry," Isaac requested.
"Which government is currently being tyrannical?" Johnson repeated.
Isaac struggled to provide a coherent answer.
"Yeah. It would prevent any tyrannical gun, any tyrannical," she said amid whispers from her colleagues.
"Is there a municipality currently that this law is in place?" Johnson asked.
"That's not what this is about," a male voice grumbles.
"Yes, actually there is," Isaac stated.
"Where?" asked Johnson.
"San Jose, California," Isaac said.
"Oh, I, I didn't know we were California. I'm asking in Texas..." Johnson quipped.
"I'm sorry, say that again," Isaac requested again.
"Is there a city in Texas?" Johnson asked more forcefully.
At this point, Isaac was being fed answers.
"Answer every question. Keep saying what you want us say," Isaac was told.
"Um, no, there is not, and that's the, and this still will prevent that from happening here in Texas," Isaac insisted.
"So then that means we're legislating nothing?" Johnson pointed out.
"We're preventing it from happening here in Texas," Isaac shot back.
"So it hasn't happened yet," Johnson said.
"That's correct," Isaac agreed.
"So, again, we're legislating nothing," Johnson added.
"Don't California my Texas," Isaac snapped.
"Are we legislating nothing?" Johnson asked one last time, albeit in vain. "So we're legislating nothing."
Watch below or at this link.
READ MORE: 'Uvalde would like a word': Texas Republican scolded for blaming Friday’s mass shooting on 'the migrants'
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// context?
an 12 24
Water stayed at the forefront of news about conservation, health and money in New Mexico this year, and pressure is growing for increased support from the Roundhouse in the January legislative session.
As the world keeps heating up due to human burning and extraction of fossil fuels, New Mexico faces the dual anxiety of too much water at times, and too little at others.
While unprecedented levels of federal money was made available for water projects during the Biden administration – from drought projects to drinking water concerns — advocacy groups say costs for addressing long-neglected contamination issues across the nation are “grossly underestimated.”
Flash floods poised to continue in disaster areas through monsoon season
Source New Mexico covered nearly 100 stories about water in 2024, ranging from U.S. Supreme Court casesto introducing the state’s new water czar to deadly flooding following wildfires and storms.
Here’s some stories you might have missed, and a look forward at what’s coming around the bend.
Rivers and streams
The relationship between chronic drought and deadly, devastating floods remains, as fires consumed forest and homes around Ruidoso, followed by walls of water and mud sloughing off the mountains during monsoon season.
Burn scars around the state faced flooding this summer, washing out homes and flooding houses, but also spaces like schooling.
Student enrollment in Ruidoso school district remains steady despite post-wildfire flood danger
Climate disaster continued into election season, closing polling sites, after flooding swept through Chaves County, killing two people and devastating areas around the river.
While winter weather early with heavy wet snow downing power lines and raising flood concerns in the aftermelt, New Mexico remains in drought, with loaded dice for a drier, warmer wintercoming.
Wildlife advocates reached a deal with the federal government over the to end a lawsuit over the tiny, silvery minnow, but humans and continued habitat loss from a drying Rio Grande continue to imperil its survival.
Feds, irrigation district say keep your wheels off of the silvery minnow
The New Mexico attorney general escalated stream access lawsuits, asking judges to penalize landowners fencing off streams along the Pecos basin for not acting sooner. A judge still hasn’t ruled on that case.
The federal picture
Many of the effects on New Mexico’s waters stemmed from Washington.
The nation’s highest court struck a blow to Texas, New Mexico and Colorado’s proposed plan to end a decade-long, costly lawsuit over Rio Grande water. Instead, the court sided with the federal government and ordered the case to continue. The high court appointed a new special master, who heard from the parties and sent them back to the negotiating table. If no agreement is reached, the plan is to head back to trial.
That’s not all. New Mexico agency and water conservationists remained concerned from the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA. The decision removed pollution protections for many intermittent waters – and endangered an estimated 93% of New Mexico streams and wetlands. The decision drove further protections of 250 miles of streams.
Congress has yet to act on $3.7 billion in a historic bid to settle lawsuits and manage tribal water rights in New Mexico, despite calls from the New Mexico delegation for leadership to act.
New Mexico received a federal grant to examine how “forever chemicals” have affected drinking water systems across the state, even as it starts blood testing residents around areas with impacted groundwater.
Water is for drinking, too
It’s been nearly a year since state officials released findings that Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, which provides drinking water for more than 19,000 residents in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, had been sending them water with “high levels of arsenic.” It also had multiple safety deficiencies. In a media release on Dec. 16, the utility said it has addressed nearly all of state inspectors’ concerns from last year, and has had three quarters without an arsenic violation according to state tests.
In November, attorneys filed a lawsuitagainst the utility company and the local government entities that run it, alleging their actions violated residents’ civil rights. Earlier this year the utility got both a new director and a new board, but only after a delay resulting in a blame game between officials after a failure to file documents with the state.
The troubles at the utility sparked state officials to take a closer look at drinking water systems across the state and may result in future fines for dozens of utilities that provided no answer or insufficient plans to address issues.
Scientist says there’s legacy plutonium contamination in Los Alamos
Money and water
One thread Source NM will follow in 2025 is how New Mexico spends its money when it comes to its most precious resource.
While oil and gas revenues have kept money flowing for the state government’s operations, water conservation nonprofits and the executive branch are asking state lawmakers to turn the tap on in 2025 for water investment.
The state has asked a judge to award money and compel the military to clean up “forever chemicals” which have contaminated water beneath bases in the state.
Las Vegas finally received its first installment of federal funding to fix its water systems after they were damaged during the 2022 wildfire season.
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com.
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an 12 24
Once a red state, California has been heavily Democratic since the 1990s. Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly lost the 2024 election to President-elect Donald Trump, but she carried California by 20 percent (according to the Associated Press).
Yet some Californians in the agricultural industry backed Trump because of his promise to lift water restrictions.
In an article published the day after Christmas, Politico's Camille von Kaenel reports that California farmers "could soon enjoy bumper crops" but are "reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction": Trump " also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state's agricultural workforce."
READ MORE: Musk supporters outraged after he backs importing 'super talented engineers'
Chris Reardon, vice president of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau Federation, told Politico, "To say it would have an impact on California would be an understatement. We just don't know yet."
Von Kaenel notes that Trump's incoming second administration is "likely to undo a Biden-era rule that increased labor protections for temporary farmworkers under the H2-A visa."
Antonio De Loera, communications director for the United Farm Workers, told Politico, "Anything that happens needs to first do right by the workforce that is here, the current workforce that has been feeding us for decades."
De Loera continued, "We will not allow that workforce to be discarded and replaced by expansion of an exploitative gap worker program…. The main thing we're doing across the organization is trying to just reassure workers and empower workers, so that they're not scared by this rhetoric into accepting working conditions that are dangerous."
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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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an 9 23 no lnx
Billionaires envision a new utopian city to replace what they ruined
Sonali Kolhatkar and Independent Media InstituteSeptember 02, 2023
Silicon Valley’s wealthy elites have been secretly buying up land in one of California’s poorest counties to build a new city from the ground up. Who will stop them?
What do billionaires do with all their money? Maybe they buy off a Supreme Court justice. Maybe they get their kicks from diving to the extreme depths of an ocean in a tiny metal capsule. Maybe they start a space company to fly into outer space for fun.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Or, perhaps they fantasize about building a brand-new California city from scratch, one with more housing than San Francisco and more walkability than Los Angeles. The billionaires have money to burn. And so, they pool together a few drops of their obscene wealth into realizing this wild fantasy.
It’s true. The New York Times, in a series of reports in late August 2023, revealed that a small group of white male billionaires—a “who’s who of Silicon Valley”—has been secretly buying up thousands of acres of rural land in northern California’s Solano County since 2017 to build a city from the ground up.
The idea originated with a young Czech-born billionaire and former Goldman Sachs trader named Jan Sramek. When he was only 22 years old, a profile in New York Magazine quoted Sramek as having adopted libertarian writer Ayn Rand’s credo: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” That sentiment forms the throughline of his long-term Utopian plan to build his new, perfect city.
At 36, Sramek has succeeded in charming fellow billionaires into investing in a company that has been the face of his mysterious project. Flannery Associates LLC is now the largest landowner in Solano County. What he and his rich friends want is to transform the Bay Area’s poorest county into a bustling, cultured, walkable metropolis, running on green energy and self-driving cars, with thousands of well-paid jobs. And they apparently think they know how to do it.
For years, local residents of Solano County wondered who was buying up parcels of land. News outlets speculated that the Chinese government was behind the purchases that circled Travis Air Force Base.
Even elected officials became concerned, with Ronald Kott, the mayor of nearby city Rio Vista, telling the press, “Nobody can figure out who they are… Whatever they’re doing—this looks like a very long-term play.” California congressional Representative John Garamendi, whose district encompasses Solano County, wanted to know, “Who are these people?” More importantly, “Where did they get the money where they could pay five to ten times the normal value that others would pay for this farmland?”
In retrospect, it’s not surprising that aside from government entities, the only ones with the money and audacity to embark on such a project are elite billionaires. They have a slick new website labeled California Forever, complete with attractive renderings of an idyllic city and platitudes about “good paying local jobs,” “homes of different sizes and price points,” and “walkable neighborhoods,” all built from a “consensus-minded plan.”
Now that the secret is out, what will we do about it? The billionaires are deluded in thinking they have the know-how, foresight, and intelligence to build a new city. But perhaps we as a society are equally deluded in believing that billionaires are smart enough to deserve the preposterous wealth they have accumulated.
Take Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist billionaire and one of Flannery’s investors. In a rambling, off-the-cuff essay in April 2020, Andreessen attempted to make the case that the only answer to society’s problems is to “build.” Build what? Anything! Everything!
Andreessen wanted to build more universities, more K-12 schools, and more highly automated factories. He wanted supersonic aircraft and millions of delivery drones. And if they weren’t being built, he wanted society to “force the incumbents to build these things.” To him, “building is how we reboot the American dream.”
In his essay, Andreessen laid down a challenge, ostensibly to governments: “Demonstrate that the public sector can build better hospitals, better schools, better transportation, better cities, better housing.”
Andreessen doesn’t understand why we as a society don’t want the same things that he does. “The problem,” he wrote, “is desire,” or the lack thereof. “We need to want these things.” How frustrating to be an idealistic billionaire and not have one’s desire to build masses of random things on a whim be shared by the rest of society!
Another Flannery investor and venture capitalist billionaire, Michael Moritz,has been more honest—at least to fellow investors—that it’s not about idealism as much as it is about profits. He wrote a 2017 note pitching the idea of building the fantasy California city in which, as the New York Times paraphrased, “[t]he financial gains [from the project] could be huge.” In Moritz’s own words, “If the plans materialize anywhere close to what is being contemplated, this should be a spectacular investment.” Unsurprisingly, billionaires, even in their wildest, most idealistic-sounding dreams, want to always ensure they can reap financial rewards.
Solano County, in addition to being the Bay Area’s poorest, is home to the region’s largest Black population by percentage and also has the highest unemployment rate. In other words, it is ripe for capitalist exploitation.
On the surface, it seems as though California’s real-world problems are cramping the billionaires’ style and all they want to do is realize a Utopian vision. But in truth, the billionaires are thesource of much of the state’s problems.
As their net worth has soared, billionaires have put upward pressure on the cost of living in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose, and Mountain View. According to the 2023 Silicon Valley Index,“the San Francisco Bay Area is home to the greatest concentration of billionaires in the world.” The report also points out that Silicon Valley has the nation’s largest wealth gap, and, specifically, “the top 0.001 percent of Silicon Valley’s households [are] holding more wealth than the nearly 500,000 households in the bottom 50 percent.”
Rising housing prices, increased homelessness, traffic gridlock, and a generally higher cost of living are all the result of massive wealth differences—an inequality so deeply unnatural that it inevitably perverts the ability of cities to cope and skews the ability of ordinary people to survive and thrive.
The billionaires are steeped in so much hubris and so little wisdom that they don’t see beyond their own noses. Their answer to the problems they have created is to start from scratch and pour billions into a fantasy project whose details are so murky they won’t even share them with democratically elected representatives, and whose manifestation will likely replicate the same mess it is claiming to fix.
If their project fails, all they will lose is a few of their many billions.
What will the rest of us lose? Land, homes, resources, environmental regulations, tax revenues, and other perhaps things we cannot even foresee.
We need to have a good answer to the challenge that Sramek, Andreessen, Moritz, and their ilk have posed to the rest of us: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
Will we stop them?
AUTHOR BIO:
Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.
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assume he means violent AA crime and homeless? drugs?
mma 6 23
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): San Francisco is on the verge of becoming a failed state. San Francisco's like a rogue nation. The city can't manage its institutions and protect its own people. The only reason the tech people haven't been run out of town is because everything is done over computers. Everything brick and mortar is hightailing it out of there. Jesse Watters Primetimeis this close to declaring martial law in San Francisco. Bring in the National Guard, bring in FEMA, save the city before it's too late. We need a San Francisco rescue plan because San Francisco is coming to a city near you. And just like we should've shut down the virus in Wuhan, we need to do the same thing in San Francisco.
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6 23 bonta wins rent law
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https://www.rawstory.com/2661271716/
wildfires CA
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21? RAGA, did not sell in 2-3 states where legal
ca gov newsom 54m$
https://www.alternet.org/abortion-2659565246/
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an me 2 23
The official Twitter account for the Republican Party is being trolled for a flawed tweet that was shared on Monday, February 6.
According to SFGate, the tweet featured an image of an aerial view of farmland that included the caption, "Wait until the coastal elites find out that this is where their food comes from!"
The news outlet highlighted the main issue which the tweet, which was meant to be a political jab at high-earning Democrats.
"The tweet was clearly meant to be a jab at hypothetical wealthy Democrats who look down on rural farmers, despite the fact that those farmers produce a majority of the nation's food," the outlet reported. "There's only one problem with the tweet: The land in the picture appears to be in California, the home of many so-called 'coastal elites.' Moreover, it appears to be an area that elected a Democratic congressman."
Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.), the lawmaker who represents the area featured in the image, quickly slammed the tweet and pointed out the main issue with it. Retweeting the image, he tossed the party's caption back at them tweeting, "Wait until the @GOP find out this is my district."
It didn't take long for Twitter users to chime in with critical remarks. Historian Kevin Kruse tweeted, "All you had to do was find a picture of farmland in the Midwest and you somehow screwed that up. Amazing."
Clara Jones, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones magazine also offered blistering remarks tweeting, "Bow down to CA's food production. With 4% of nation's farms, we produce 13% of all ag products, 1/3 of all veggies, 2/3 of nation's fruit and nuts, 81% of wine..."
READ MORE: 'Groomers,' Paul Pelosi and so much more: The most unhinged GOP conspiracy theories of 2022
Since the post remained despite the barrage of critical responses it received, the news outlet speculates that it likely will not be removed.
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tom d
https://www.alternet.org/life-in-a-destabilized-california/
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Climate change: Democratic Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, Lena Gonzales of Long Beach andHenry Stern from Calabasas introduced, or rather reintroduced, a package of bills.
Wiener put forward SB 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act — a bill that failed last year to require corporations with more than $1 billion in revenue that operate in California to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. He said the bill would make corporations “a heck of a lot more interested in buying clean energy.”
- Wiener: “It gives large corporations two options: disclose your emissions publicly or stop doing business in California — and they won’t choose the latter.”
Gonzalez introduced SB 252, a proposal that was also blocked last year and that seeks to force the state’s public pension funds to divest from fossil fuels. Stern introduced SB 261, another measure that also failed last year. It requires companies that earn more than $500 million in revenue to prepare climate-related financial risk reports.
The climate efforts come in the midst of negotiations to cover a projected $22.5 billion budget deficit. Newsom has proposed cutting $6 billion from the $54 billion, five-year climate package he pushed through last year.
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Press Democrat: New state senate bill would force CalPERS, CalSTRS to divest from major fossil fuel holdings
February 17, 2022
By MARY CALLAHAN
California’s two powerful public employee pension funds would be required to withdraw their investments from fossil fuel companies to help fight climate change under a state Senate bill introduced Thursday.
Authored by Sen. Lena A. Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and co-sponsored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the legislation would give the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System until July 2027 to divest a combined $9.9 billion from the Carbon Underground 200 — a list of companies considered to have the greatest potential for future emissions from their coal, oil and gas reserves.
The bill also would prohibit any new investments in those companies....
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wildfire plus rain = mud slide
mma 1 23
bomb cyclone and mult atmos rivers!
- beginning on New Year’s Eve, heavy rains resulting from two distinct weather events have inundated parts of California, breaching a levee, causing flooding and power outages, and yielding multiplefatalities. Climate scientist Daniel Swain explained that the warmer atmosphere resulting from climate change means these weather systems can hold exponentially more precipitation.
According to The Washington Post,“While storms like this do periodically occur, heavy precipitation rates are made more likely by the effects of human-induced climate change, which is warming the atmosphere.”
However, a review of coverage by national TV news from December 31 through January 4 of the first atmospheric river that hit California and the second atmospheric river, whichtriggereda “bomb cyclone,” found that with one exception, cable news networks — CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC — and national broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — failed to link these events to our warming climate.
TV News failed to explain how climate change is making precipitation events, like those that have flooded parts of California, more severe and more frequent
Print and online news sources have contextualized the extreme weather events devastating California:
- Axios noted in its report of the storms pummeling California that “climate change is adding even more moisture to atmospheric rivers, enabling them to dump higher rain and snow totals.”
- The New York Times published a January 3 article titled “How Climate Change Is Shaping California's Winter Storms” which specifically addressed the role of a warming climate in the severity of the storms.
- NBCNews.com included research by The Center for Western Weather and Extremes, which warned about the future of storms if climate change continues unabated, noting, “Flooding damage from atmospheric rivers in the West could double or triple by the end of the century.”
- The Associated Press led with climate change in its January 4 article on the storms beginning the report: “In a world getting used to extreme weather, 2023 is starting out more bonkers than ever and meteorologists are saying it’s natural weather weirdness with a bit of help from human-caused climate change.”
But TV news largely failed to explain how climate change is fueling these storms.
Of the 60 segments aired by national TV news networks from December 31 through January 4, 2023, only 1 mentioned climate change.
Cable news — CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC — aired a total of 33 combined segments on the California rain. CNN covered the storms the most, with 24 segments, followed by Fox News with 8 and MSNBC with a single segment. CNN was the only network to air a segment linking climate change to the storms impacting California.
In an exchange between CNN anchor Kate Bolduan and San Francisco Mayor London Breed on the January 4 edition of At This Hour,the two discussed the ongoing impacts of climate change on California, including its historic drought and worsening wildfires, and concluded that preparation for the climate crisis is not a future exercise but an imperative for a crisis that is unfolding now. [cnn vid]
- national broadcast news ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 27 segments on California storms during the same time period. None of ABC’s 11 segments, NBC’s 9, or CBS’ 7 segments mentioned climate change.
- #### TV News must stop relegating climate-fueled extreme events to a season – they are now happening year-round
Extreme weather has become a year-round phenomenon not limited to the heat and megastorms that usually peak over a few months of the year. In 2022, wildfires torched Texas, months before peak U.S. wildfire summer season, destructive unseasonable tornadoes caused chaos in New Orleans and across parts of Texas, and an ice shelf the size of Rome collapsed in Antarctica after temperatures reached 70 degrees above normal in March. Even the hurricane that leveled Florida hit later in the season than storms of that magnitude usually do.
These supercharged winter storms should also be presented as an impact of our increasingly warming planet. However, climate coverage is still concentrated around the summer and fall months that have traditionally constituted peak extreme weather season, with events outside of this period often left isolated instead of covered as part of the broader landscape of global climate events. The scope of how climate change impacts weather events is expanding, and TV news coverage needs to expand with it.
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morano control BS?
Fox News is returning to its pro-COVID-19 stance by attacking Los Angeles, California, for considering an indoor mask mandate as infections in the county skyrocket. The right-wing propaganda channel, which has long spewed pandemic-related misinformation, is again lying about the efficacy of masks for slowing the spread of the disease.
The Los Angeles Times reported that LA County’s case rate “has been increasing since late October and is now triple what it was in the autumn low,” and is currently 188 weekly cases per 100,000 residents, with a case rate of 100 or more being considered high. The LA Times also reported that the county is suffering about 60 deaths from COVID-19 each week. According to City News Service, the county’s COVID-19 hospitalization rate already exceeds one of the two thresholds that County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said would trigger a universal indoor masking mandate.
Fox’s response to this news is to return to its history of killing its viewers by spreading medical misinformation that has contributed to the staggering national COVID-19 death toll exceeding 1 million people. In particular, Fox has spread lies about the usefulness of face masks in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Some Fox personalities have bizarrely claimed that wearing masks makes people crazy, while others simply told lies about their effectiveness. Fox as a whole worked very hard to incorporate masking into their deranged culture war, even though at least one Fox prime time host early in the pandemic repeatedly gushed about their potential in keeping people safe. (Fox also for a time required staffers to wear masks at the workplace.) Besides attacking face masks during a respiratory disease pandemic, Fox has also urged its viewers to distrust public health officials.
And with the possibility of a mask mandate coming back to LA, Fox personalities reacted with incredulity, pretending that masking is ineffective and attacking the county public health director as “power hungry.”
- Fox & Friends First co-host Todd Piro asked, “Have we learned no lessons from the … failure of masks?” He added, “These people, Barbara Ferrer, that you saw there, the entireestablishmentthat is pushing more masking, more lockdowns, they are power hungry. And they refuse to acknowledge that COVID is something we cannot prevent at this point, but something we have to deal with.”
- Fox & Friends co-host:{ Brian Kilmeade said: “Masks don’t work. … What is wrong with these people?”}:
- Later in the program, Kilmeade portrayed a masking mandate as intentional sabotage on people’s lives and children’s schooling, saying: “The problem is too many people enjoying their lives going back to normal. Let's try to screw them up again.”
- Fox’s America’s Newsroom interviewed **Fox contributor Caitlyn Jenner for her inexpert opinion on the efficacy of face masks. During the interview, Jenner said: “I don’t think they work very well.” She later added: “I think our public health director is kind of like a little mini [NIAID Director Dr. Anthony] Fauci, wanting the control that they have.”
- Fox Business host Steve Hilton claimed that masks “make practically no differencein the preventing of the transmission of this virus,” then ranted: “Can you believe we're back here again, yet again? You have these lunatics, these bureaucrats, totally unaccountable – Barbara Ferrer, the half a million dollar a year woman who runs public health in Los Angeles – not a medical doctor, parading these totally bogus metrics, right, about cases and whatever. How does she know what the cases are? People are testing on their own at home privately. It's not reported. It's complete BS. The whole thing is total BS, and I hope nobody pays any attention to it at all.”
- On Twitter, Hilton also urged LA residents to “rise up and say enough is enough.”
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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.
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5 yr ext of nuke diablo cyn tho on 2 faults
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shill oversight 9 22 trashes CA?
...wsj 2019
New York and California, meanwhile, are moving ahead with plans to close two nuclear plants. In the Empire State, Westchester County’s Indian Point will close in 2021 and, on the West Coast, San Luis Obispo’s Diablo Canyon will go offline in 2025. California is already set to miss its 2030 target of a 40% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels. If Diablo Canyon closes and half of its output is replaced by natural gas, there’s no way they’ll get there.
[[https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/california-moves-accelerate-100-new-zero-emission-vehicle-sales-2035
The California Air Resources Board today approved the trailblazing Advanced Clean Cars II rule that sets California on a path to rapidly growing the zero-emission car, pickup truck and SUV market and deliver cleaner air and massive reductions in climate-warming pollution.
The rule establishes a year-by-year roadmap so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The regulation realizes and codifies the light-duty vehicle goals set out in Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-79-20. ]]
{{{ 2021 Wednesday, February 24.
Two reports cast doubt
California is unlikely to meet its ambitious climate goals, two reports released Tuesday show.
The first, from California State Auditor Elaine Howle, doesn’t mince words: “The state will fall short of meeting the 2030 goal” of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels “unless emissions reductions occur at a faster pace.” The audit, which found that transportation emissions have actually increased since 2013, rebuked the California Air Resources Board for overstating the impact of its emissions-reduction programs — including rebates that encourage Californians to buy clean vehicles, CalMatters’ Rachel Becker reports.
- Howle: The air board “generally does not know how often many of its incentive payments influence consumers to purchase a cleaner (lower-emission) vehicle than they otherwise would have purchased.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in September ordered the air board to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, wants to direct $1.5 billion toward constructing electric charging and hydrogen fueling stations and subsidizing purchases of zero-emissions cars. The rebates would be paid with money from the state’s carbon trading program, which Howle characterized as “unpredictable.” Officials are currently reevaluating whether the program should form the cornerstone of California’s climate policy.
The second Tuesday report, from the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and nonprofit think tank Next 10, found that Californians are paying two to three times more for electricity than it costs utilities to provide — which could push customers to use appliances powered by fossil fuels instead. And rates are expected to keep growing steadily for the next decade, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
- The report: “This massive gap … creates incentives that … discourage electricity consumption, even though greater electrification will reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”
The news comes as Newsom is scheduled to deliver today the keynote speech at a policy summit called Driving California Forward, dedicated to discussing “forward-thinking solutions to achieving California’s ambitious climate goals and zero-emission vehicle targets.”}}}:
It is notable that while three natural-gas plants are being built to succeed Indian Point, local opposition to the construction of solar and wind farms has kept them from being built at anywhere near the rate necessary to replace the nuclear facility’s output.
We’ve been here before. Environmentalists promised that solar and wind would replace output from California’s San Onofre Generating Station, which closed in 2013, and the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant, which shut down the following year. Instead, they were replaced mostly by natural gas, and emissions rose in both states. At the rate Vermont is building new wind farms, it would take 474 years to match the electricity generation it lost from closing Vermont Yankee.
The problem isn’t only that nuclear plants generate far more electricity. It’s that solar and wind generate it only sporadically, which means they must be backed up by other sources of power 100% of the time. There is great hype about batteries, and using dams as pumped storage. But those solutions remain extremely expensive, which is why whenever nuclear plants close anywhere in the world, they are usually replaced by coal or natural-gas plants—not solar, not wind and not batteries.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The governors of California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania can take actions to keep their nuclear plants operating. Governors in those states have in recent years urged more action out of Washington to address climate change. They’ll have far more credibility and influence if they first take action in their home states.
Mr. Hansen is a climate scientist and head of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program at Earth Institute Columbia University. Mr. Shellenberger is president of Environmental Progress.
Appeared in the April 5, 2019, print edition as 'The Climate Needs Nuclear Power'.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/climate-fueled-heat-wave-stresses-californias-electric-grid-right-wing-media-are
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/california-multiple-bills-climate-change/
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https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/01/supreme-court-california-disclosure-law-donors-497554
no lnx
Supreme Court nixes California disclosure law in blow to dark-money opponents
The high court ruled a state law requiring not-for-profit organizations that raise money in California to disclose their donors violated the donors' First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court has ordered California to stop collecting the names and addresses of top donors to charities, siding with a nonprofit group with links to billionaire Charles Koch.
The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, backed by political megadonors Charles Koch and the late David Koch, brought one of the suits. | David Zalubowski, File/AP Photo
By JOSH GERSTEIN and ZACH MONTELLARO
07/01/2021
The Supreme Court dealt a blow Thursday to efforts to rein in so-called dark money political groups, issuing a ruling striking down California’s policy of demanding donor lists from nonprofit organizations.
The high court split 6-3 along ideological lines in its decision on a pair of cases challenging that California requirement, which forced non-profits raising money in California to give the state copies of federal tax forms containing donor information.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, ruled that California’s “blanket demand” for that information “is facially unconstitutional.”
“When it comes to the freedom of association, the protections of the First Amendment are triggered not only by actual restrictions on an individual’s ability to join with others to further shared goals. The risk of a chilling effect on association is enough,” Roberts wrote for the court.
The ruling could have a political impact, complicating donor-disclosure requirements for groups that often pour large sums into elections but stop just short of the “express advocacy” for or against candidates that triggers stricter rules on revealing the sources of donations.
The court ruled that the California mandate for groups to turn over donor information to the state, even if kept confidential, was overly broad.
“The point is that a reasonable assessment of the burdens imposed by disclosure should begin with an understanding of the extent to which the burdens are unnecessary, and that requires narrow tailoring,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts’ ruling did not address the federal government’s authority to require the filing of donor information with the Internal Revenue Service. Most charities are still required to file lists of donors giving over $5,000 in a given year, but in 2018 the IRS dropped the requirement for some politically-oriented groups.
The justices’ ruling Thursday addressed lawsuits filed by two politically active, conservative nonprofit organizations in 2015. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation,backed by political megadonors Charles Koch and the late David Koch, brought one of the suits. The other was filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan-based legal organization active on behalf of Catholic causes that was bankrolled by Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza.
Both organizations argued that California rules requiring filing of donor lists with state officials violate the First Amendment by discouraging individuals from giving and by exposing them to threats and harassment.
In 2016, AFP persuaded a federal judge in Los Angeles to issue a permanent injunction against the requirement. The judge said the state rarely used the information, but often disclosed it accidentally with charities’ public tax filings.
However, two years later, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously reversed that ruling,holding that the state had a legitimate need for the data and that the Koch-founded group had not shown a significant burden on donors.
It’s unclear how the Supreme Court’s conclusions will impact similar donor-disclosure requirements at the federal level. The Internal Revenue Service has generally done a better job of keeping filings it receives confidential.
Part of Roberts’ opinion does, however, open the door to challenges to other disclosure requirements: “While exacting scrutiny does not require that disclosure regimes be the least restrictive means of achieving their ends, it does require that they be narrowly tailored to the government’s asserted interest,” he wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent and joined by the two other liberal-leaning justices, did however predict that the decision would open the floodgates to weakening disclosure requirements.
“Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye,” she wrote. “Regulated entities who wish to avoid their obligations can do so by vaguely waving toward First Amendment ‘privacy concerns.’”
The high court rulings could have a broader impact on efforts by Democrats to broaden and increase disclosure requirements, particularly for groups that run ads that mention federal candidates while stopping short of explicitly endorsing or opposing them.
The For the People Act, congressional Democrats’ massive campaign and ethics reform legislation that is stalled in the Senate amid Democratic infighting and a successful Republican filibuster last week, also contains provisions that would remake campaign finance disclosure law if enacted.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stands with Sens. Raphael Warnock and Amy Klobuchar while speaking with reporters before a vote on the For the People Act.
CONGRESS
[Senate Republicans block Dems’ sweeping elections reform bill
BY MARIANNE LEVINE AND ZACH MONTELLARO]
Amid the hundreds of pages of the bill is a long-fought-over proposal that would dramatically expand which organizations are required to disclose donors and expenditures if they spend a nominal amount on communications that broadly mention federal candidates.
Republicans are now broadly opposed to such measures, a turnabout from two decades ago when prominent GOP leaders backed robust disclosure rules as an alternative to attempts to restrict donations to campaigns and outside groups.
“Republicans are in favor of disclosure,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a 2000 interview. “Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?”
McConnell has said that soon after those comments — and the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act despite his opposition in 2002 — he concluded that such rules for groups that don’t engage in express advocacy violate the First Amendment. In the AFP case decided Thursday, he filed an amicus brief saying donor-disclosure requirements should face the “strictest scrutiny” when reviewed in court.
While AFP and the Thomas More Law Center unsurprisingly garnered support for their legal challenges from other conservative organizations, several liberal groups and First Amendment advocates also urged the Supreme Court to rule in favor of donor privacy in the cases.
The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the LGBTQ rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and others argued that the justices should hold that California’s failure to keep the donor information confidential violated the conservative groups’ rights.
However, the liberal organizations’ brief — which drew significant interest from conservative justices at oral arguments — pushed the court toward a narrow decision that would not upset disclosure requirements for political campaigns or address the rights of regulators with a better track record for confidentiality to gather donor information.
FILED UNDER: CAMPAIGN FINANCE, CALIFORNIA, U.S. SUPREME COURT,}}:
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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-23/how-biden-administration-climate-target-compares-with-california
LAT How Biden’s new U.S. climate target compares with those of California and world
California has looked to renewable energy, including from wind farms such as this one in the Tehachapi Mountains, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
BY TONY BARBOZA STAFF WRITER
APRIL 23, 2021
For years, California has been more ambitious than the United States in fighting climate change. But now that President Biden has proposed slashing the nation’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030, the roles seem to have flipped.
The administration’s new U.S. climate goal is slightly more aggressive than California’s, according to two independent analyses, and is one of the most ambitious emissions targets in the world.
But it’s unclear yet whether the administration’s pledge will require California to do more to cut its pollution, in part because of differences in how the state and federal government track emissions, researchers and state officials said.
The target to reduce U.S. emissions 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030 is among the “most ambitious 2030 commitments when it comes to economy-wide emission reductions below historical levels,” according to an analysis by the research firm Rhodium Group.
Those ambitions fall behind only the United Kingdom, and are similar to what the European Union has pledged to reduce from 2005 levels, according to the analysis. The Biden administration’s target goes well beyond the commitments of Canada, Japan, Iceland, Norway and Australia..
In comparison, “California’s target of 40% below 1990 levels translates into about 47% below 2005 levels by 2030,” said Kate Larsen, who authored the Rhodium Group analysis.
Jason Barbose, a senior policy manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists, came to similar conclusions. He said Biden’s proposed nationwide target “is somewhat more ambitious than California’s emissions limit,” which seeks a 40% cut below 1990 levels by 2030.
If California were to match the Biden administration’s goal to cut pollution at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030, it “would be roughly equivalent” to a 44% reduction over 1990 levels. That’s 4% greater than California’s existing target.
State air quality officials said California’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 equates to about 260 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, compared with 241.5 million metric tons if the state had a target of cutting emissions 50% below 2005 levels.
[Wildfire smoke now causes up to half the fine-particle pollution in Western U.S., study finds
Jan. 13, 2021]
However, it’s hard to say whether the Biden administration’s new climate target would actually require the state to make steeper or swifter emissions cuts, state officials said.
Differences in how the state and federal government account for emissions mean “you cannot do an apples-to-apples comparison,” said Dave Clegern, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.
California’s target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 covers only emissions from fossil energy and industry, while the federal government accounts for additional sectors including land use, forests and farmland.
It’s also hard to tell whether Biden’s goal would require California to do more because it’s a broad nationwide target and does not have state-specific contributions.
“There is a lot of opportunity for cheap greenhouse gas reductions outside of California,” Clegern said. “So, without knowing if the Biden administration will want to give states their own levels of contribution to achieving the … target, we cannot say at this time if that means more would be required of California.”
[California enlists surveillance satellites to sniff out greenhouse gas ‘super-emitters’
April 15, 2021
Larsen, of Rhodium Group, agreed that it’s too early to say if the new Biden administration target would require California to cut more pollution than it was already planning to do.
She said it “would make no specific demands on states to do more. It’s a nationwide goal with policies yet to be determined.”
Barbose, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said California’s 2030 climate goal was already weaker than other jurisdictions, including Massachusetts, the European Union and the United Kingdom.
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“California’s goals are not keeping up with the rest of the world and, quite frankly, are not keeping up with the science,” Barbose said. “By any reasonable calculation California (and the United States) has already blown through our share of the global carbon budget — the carbon we can emit and keep global temps below critical thresholds — and therefore we should commit to cutting emissions as quickly as possible.”
Times staff writer Anna Phillips contributed to this report.
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an the conv 10 22
no lnx vid?
Supreme Court to hear arguments challenging a California law requiring humane animal treatment
David Favre and The Conversation October 04, 2022
Should Californians be able to require higher welfare standards for farm animals that are raised in other states if products from those animals are to be sold in California? The U.S. Supreme Court will confront that question when it hears oral argument in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross on Oct. 11, 2022.
Pork producers are challenging a law that California voters adopted in 2018 via ballot initiative with over 63% approval. It set new conditions for raising hogs, veal calves and egg-laying chickens, whose meat or eggs are sold in California. The state represents about 15% of the U.S. pork market.
At most commercial hog farms, pregnant sows are kept in “gestation crates” that measure 2 feet by 7 feet – enough room for the animals to sit, stand and lie down, but not enough to turn around. California’s law requires that each sow must have at least 24 square feet of floor space – nearly double the amount that most now get. It does not require farmers to raise free-range pigs, just to provide more square feet when they keep hogs in buildings.
Pork farmers say gestation crates keep pregnant sows from fighting, but animal welfare advocates call the devices inhumane.
The National Pork Producers Council argues that this requirement imposes heavy compliance costs on farmers across the U.S., since large hog farms may house thousands of sows and that it restricts interstate commerce. The Constitution’s commerce clause delegates authority to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. In a series of cases over the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has made clear that it will strike down any state law that seeks to control commerce in another state or give preference to in-state commerce.
Farmers and animal welfare advocates understand that if California wins, states with the most progressive animal welfare policies – primarily West Coast and Northeast states – will be able to effectively set national standards for the well-being of many agricultural animals, including chickens, dairy and cattle. Conceivably, California might also be able to require basic conditions for human labor, such as minimum wage standards, associated with products sold in California.
Nine other states have already adopted laws requiring pork producers to phase out gestation crates. Massachusetts’s law would also apply to retail sales of pork raised elsewhere, like California’s, but its enforcement is on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in the California case.
States control farm animal welfare
The main federal law that regulates living conditions for animals is the Animal Welfare Act, which was signed into law in 1966. Among other things, it requires the Department of Agriculture to adopt humane regulations for the keeping of animals that are exhibited in zoos and circuses or sold as pets. However, farm animals are explicitly exempted from the definition of “animal.”
While the federal government is mute on farm animal welfare, each state clearly has the power to regulate this issue within its borders. For example, in recent years, nine states have outlawed housing egg-laying chickens in “battery cages” that have been the industry standard for decades. These wire enclosures are so small that the birds cannot spread their wings.
Since many states still permit battery cages, egg-laying chickens’ quality of life depends on the state in which they reside.
Shelves lined with small wire cages, each holding multiple chickens.
Chickens in battery cages on an Iowa poultry farm.
It is also clear that the state of California has no power to adopt laws that are binding on the farmers of other states. This case falls between those two points – here’s how:
California’s market power
The California law says that if producers want to sell pork in California, they must raise pigs under conditions that comply with the state’s regulations. Farmers do not have to meet these standards unless they want to sell in California. The same requirement is applied to producers located in California and those based elsewhere, so the law does not directly discriminate between states in a way that would constitute a clear commerce clause violation.
Producers of eggs and veal who sell in California are on track to implement new space requirements for their animals under the law. In my view, however, much of the pork industry appears to be in denial. Instead of working out how to comply, the National Pork Producers Council wants the courts to set the California law aside.
Even as this case moves forward, however, major producers including Hormel and Tyson have said they will be able to comply with the California standard. Niman Ranch, a network of family farmers and ranchers who raise livestock humanely and sustainably, has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting California.
Admittedly, pork farmers have invested millions of dollars in their existing facilities, and the system efficiently produces huge quantities of cheap pork. But Californians have taken the position that this output comes at an ethically unacceptable cost to animals in the system.
Weighing ethics against compliance costs
In considering this case, the Supreme Court will confront two questions. First, does California’s requirement constitute a burden on interstate commerce? A U.S. District Court in California held that the answer was no, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling.
There is no magical formula for what constitutes a burden on interstate commerce, so it is impossible to know in advance what the Supreme Court will say about this point of the case. The present court has not addressed this issue.
If the court should decide that the California law does restrict interstate commerce, it then must consider whether the measure meets the “Pike test,” which was set forth in the 1970 ruling Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc.. In this case, the court held that a state law that “regulates even-handedly” must be upheld unless the burden that the law imposes on interstate commerce “is clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.” Put another way, is Californians’ social interest in better welfare for pigs substantially outweighed by the economic cost to producers?
In another 2010 ruling, United States v. Stevens, the court acknowledged that “the prohibition of animal cruelty itself has a long history in American law, starting with the early settlement of the Colonies.” However, the court concluded that depictions of animal cruelty – the plaintiff had been convicted for producing and distributing dogfighting videos – qualified as protected speech under the First Amendment and that this protection outweighed society’s interest in promoting animal welfare.
This video from the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that conducts research, training and consumer education on organic agriculture, compares raising pigs on pasture to the large-scale confined model that dominates the pork industry.
Is a national standard in the cards?
Many animal welfare questions involve striking this kind of balance between ethical positions and economic consequences in a political context. It is like mixing oil and water, which makes predictions difficult.
The biggest unknown is what views the newest Supreme Court justices will bring to this case. Only four current justices – John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor – were members of the court when it ruled on the Stevens case in 2010. Will today’s court support California’s right to regulate products sold within its borders, or meat corporations’ economic arguments? How many justices will see farm animal welfare as an important public concern?
I expect that the court will uphold the California law – and that if this happens, within five years livestock producers will be proposing national legislation setting uniform welfare standards for farm animals. It is impossible to predict now whether a national law would improve animal welfare or adopt existing poor welfare practices.The Conversation
David Favre, Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law, Michigan State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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DEEP thermal MIT plasma 90 days to go 6 mi?! bolt onto 8500 coal turbines?! sequester --> limestone --> cement
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-22-2022/
yikes another kind of bad buffer: Peltzman Effect / risk compensation
The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation Author(s): Sam Peltzman Source: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Aug., 1975), pp. 677-726. Sam Peltzman criticises the quality of his own analysis here. (seat blts? --> graham air bag BS? --> risk asses?
I kinda forgot about this until
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-22-2022/ nordhaus fraction of % gdp 2100 now 14%/yr much earlier, he got nobel; state CA fla pick up when mkt bails, perfect design to go over cliff?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkpBizCFYo apr 2022 commonwealth
Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present
https://www.harvard.com/book/fire_and_flood/
Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.
Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag further still; and, perhaps most important, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how devilishly effective moneyed climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism’s response has been sadly predictable.
Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industryas one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California,among other regions, are now seeing what many call “climate redlining.” The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and how.
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https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/02/california-reparations-report-demands-tree-planting-in-black-neighborhoods-for-shade-equity/
no lnx
via gmail alert
SOCIETY NEWS
California Reparations Report Demands Tree Planting in ‘Black Neighborhoods’ for ‘Shade Equity’
Gabe Kaminsky / June 02, 2022
"Climate change is certain to exacerbate existing, historically-codified disparities that track existing housing-related harms experienced by African Americans,” a report greenlit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom says. Pictured: Newsom speaks during a news conference with New Zealand's prime minister May 27, 2022, in San Francisco. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
A report on alleged systemic racism released Wednesday and greenlit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for the planting of trees statewide “to create shade equity” and reduce “heat islands in black neighborhoods.”
The 500-page report was released after Newsom, a Democrat, signed legislation in 2020 forming a nine-member task force to “inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations.” It describes tree demolishing in black neighborhoods for highway construction and says climate change makes these areas hotter.
“Nationally, formerly redlined areas consistently show hotter temperatures than other areas,” the report states. “Therefore, climate change is certain to exacerbate existing, historically-codified disparities that track existing housing-related harms experienced by African Americans.”
The report is billed as the first of its kind by a state government to examine slavery and “the compounding harms that the United States and Californian governments have inflicted upon African Americans,” according to a press release. The California Reparations Task Force issued the document to the state Legislature, and a final report will then be issued prior to July 2023.
“In particular, so-called [TTUMPISM, SO CALLED JUDGE] ‘heat islands,’ which will worsen due to climate change, exist where built-up urban areas have few trees, vegetation or parks that serve to dissipate or reflect heat, and instead have pavement and building materials that absorb and retain it,” the report also notes.
While the report accurately notes that cities are indeed hotter due to “heat islands,” it uses this fact to claim that black people are disproportionately impacted by heat, former Republican aide Marc Morano, who runs the website Climate Depot, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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“Adding tree cover to cities will most likely [WEASEL?] have a negligible impact on the urban heat of the cities,” said Morano. “These solutions appear to be nothing more than just ‘virtue signally’ racial grievance claims. These types of reports are generated to justify bureaucratic jobs and massive bloated budgets for ‘equity’ programs.”
Morano also said that the climate debate has “descended into cultural absurdity” and called the idea of “shade equity” the latest in a round of “racially charged climate claims and identity politics” in the left-leaning movement.
The report further claims “modern efforts to add green space” in black neighborhoods “involve racist narratives.” It argues that the city of Los Angeles intentionally limited tree growth in areas with more black people due to police officers expressing concern that trees “could serve as places to hide drugs or weapons.”
California’s Reparations Task Force did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now
Gabe Kaminsky is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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mo fo
https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/clean-air-pollution/436968/california39s-new-climate-era-sb-350-and-beyond
united States: California's New Climate Era: SB 350 And Beyond
22 October 2015
by Christopher J. Carr, Megan Jenningsand Lala Wu
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Two out of three ain't bad.
Climate change policy advocates may find themselves quoting Meat Loaf with the enactment of Senate Bill (SB) 350, which California's Legislature passed last month and which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on October 7. SB 350, also called the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015, requires an increase in California's Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 50 percent and a doubling of building energy efficiency, both by 2030. The Legislature dropped from the bill a third component, which would have mandated the powerful California to Air Resources Board (CARB) to cut petroleum use from transportation in half by 2030, after months of intense opposition from the oil industry.
Although the failure of the petroleum piece marked a (rare) setback for the Governor's energy and climate change agenda, SB 350 nonetheless continues California's leadership in the field. The enactment of SB 350, coming on the heels of President Obama's Clean Power Plan roll out, and a month before international climate talks start in Paris at the end of November, reflects a dynamic state, national, and international energy regulatory ecosystem that businesses in California and beyond must navigate as they seek to seize the opportunities and mitigate the risks presented by a new era of climate regulation.
This alert examines the results of the recently concluded California legislative session, and what it means for energy policy in California.
SB 350: RENEWABLES AND EFFICIENCY
Introduced by Senate President pro tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, SB 350 advances greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction through two measures, that help to implement Governor Brown's Executive Order on climate policy issued in April.
First, the law increases the RPS goal from 33 percent renewables by 2020 to 50 percent by 2030. Although renewables projects are already coming online quickly in California, this mandate still provides a welcome boost to renewable energy developers, including solar and wind developers.
Second, the law requires the California Energy Commission (CEC) to establish annual targets todouble energy efficiency in buildings by 2030. To achieve this goal, the CEC will likely implement a series of incentives and other educational policies targeted at property owners. The law also requires the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to direct electric utilities to establish annual efficiency targets and implement demand-reduction measures to achieve this goal.
The failure of the third set of provisions that would have mandated reductions in petroleum use in the transportation sector should be viewed in the context of an ongoing battle regarding the strength and reach of CARB. In the fight for SB 350, supporters of the bill faced off with not only petroleum industry backers, but also legislators uncomfortable granting more authority to the already-powerful CARB to implement measures they believed would inevitably lead to higher fuel costs that would disproportionately impact low-income communities and constituents.
Although CARB was not given the statutory authority to set policies to reduce transportation-related emissions by 50 percent by 2030, it still wields a tremendous amount of power over GHG-reduction policies. For example, CARB recently voted to restore its low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which was originally approved in 2009 but, until recently, had been entangled in litigation. The LCFS requires a more modest 10 percent reduction in transportation fuel emissions by 2020, pursuant to AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. By raising the standards for traditional fuels, the program is intended to encourage the use of biofuels and electric vehicles.
SB 32: REDUCTIONS-IN-WAITING
Environmentalists had high hopes for SB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2015, but its progress stalled in the last days of the legislative session. It would have built upon the historic passage of AB 32 in 2006, the landmark law that facilitated the establishment of the state's cap-and-trade program. SB 32 would deepen and extend AB 32's goals, requiring a 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions below 1990 levels by 2030, and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. Both bills were introduced by outgoing State Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), a climate policy veteran who may yet see SB 32's passage, because it was converted to a two-year bill (meaning that it can be considered again in January of next year).
SB 286: THE QUIET DIRECT ACCESS REVOLUTION
Although not accompanied by the same fanfare as SB 32 and SB 350, SB 286 would play an important role in moving California toward meeting its climate goals. Sponsored by State Senator Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), the bill would allow large power consumers to purchase 100 percent renewable energy directly from producers, sidestepping investor-owned utilities (IOUs) such as PG&E. This expansion of direct access by up to 8,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) would be welcomed by many large power purchasers, including tech companies, hospitals, and universities seeking to deepen their sustainability commitments by using only electricity generated by renewable sources. Expanding direct access will boost demand for solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources, as well as spur innovation and competition among producers.
Unsurprisingly, this measure faces opposition from IOUs, who stand to lose business from large customers, and who have raised concerns about grid reliability and the ability to balance the supply and demand of electricity in the state. If more end users purchase electricity directly from renewable sources, this will make the grid more complex, and make maintaining a balanced grid more challenging. As the energy infrastructure continues to evolve, it will be important for the CPUC and the Legislature to keep up with these changes.
CALIFORNIA'S INFLUENCE OUTSIDE THE STATE . . . AND CHALLENGES WITHIN
Despite the elimination of the petroleum provision, Governor Brown's signing of SB 350 demonstrates yet again that California is on the leading edge of climate policy in the U.S. (along with Hawaii, which recently mandated a transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045). Other states are sure to follow, especially where mandates and incentives are needed to shift the market and spur demand. However, renewables are also growing in some states due to a number of non-regulatory factors. For example, Texas is enjoying a solar development boom without major state mandates or incentives because of the falling cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, the state's ongoing investment in transmission line infrastructure, and the ability of the solar industry to complement the state's already strong wind industry.
Texas' investment in transmission stands in contrast to California's grid, which is outdated and overburdened. Especially with the increased RPS, it will take major investments of capital and political will to update the transmission system so that California is ready to handle the new renewables that quickly will be coming online.
Another key to meeting the state's climate goals will be reform of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Renewable energy project opponents have wielded CEQA as an effective tool for creating expensive delays and, in some cases, blocking projects entirely. Similarly, state and federal endangered species laws can also pose traps for the unwary. While the goals of these laws are laudable, the laws themselves are in great need of reform so they can no longer be used by renewable energy project opponents to make development infeasible. In the meantime, renewable energy developers need to carefully evaluate and understand CEQA and species risks during every stage of the project.
REGIONAL INNOVATION DRIVING CHANGE
While California faces serious challenges to readying its infrastructure to meet its new climate goals, it also benefits from robust energy and technology sectors that are rapidly developing decarbonization technology, especially in Silicon Valley. Companies large and small are focusing on developing and taking to market a broad range of new products and services that are not only improving existing renewable generation such as wind and solar, but also enhancing energy efficiency and conservation (especially at the retail customer level) and addressing transmission and grid reliability challenges.
California needs to continue its "all of the above"approach to meet its ambitious GHG-reduction goals. While the legislative and regulatory paths to achieving those goals are sure to remain bumpy, it is equally certain that California's innovation economy will continue to drive the state forward.
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no lnx
wASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - California's attorney general announced on Thursday he issued a subpoena to ExxonMobil (XOM.N) for information on its role in causing the global plastic waste crisis.
The subpoena is part of a broader investigation led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries' role in "causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis."
"For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis. The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled," Bonta said in a statement.
The investigation will resemble ones launched by several state attorneys general into the role that fossil fuel companies played in causing and exacerbating climate change, which focused on what the industry knew decades ago and how companies misled the public about their role.
In this investigation, the attorney general will focus on the "half-century campaign of deception and the ongoing harm caused to the State of California" by companies that produce plastics, a petroleum-based product, and how they perpetuate "myths around recycling". Exxon is the first company to receive a subpoena, but officials said they will also target other companies in the industry.
A spokesperson for Exxon was not immediately available to comment.
Matthew Kastner, a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, which represents the plastics and petrochemical industry, said in response to the investigation that "America’s plastic makers are committed to a more sustainable future and have proposed comprehensive and bold actions at the state, federal, and international levels."
More than 90% of plastic waste globally ends up in landfills or is incinerated, according to a landmark study in Science Advances. The U.S. recycling rate has never gone higher than 9%, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
There is growing momentum to tamp down plastic production as a way to address plastic waste. The UN in February outlined the blueprint of a future treaty that could seek restrictions on production. read more
Bonta said that the petrochemical industry has been aware for decades that recycling was infeasible at scale, even as plastic production skyrocketed and has pushed back against state, local and national efforts to issue plastic bans and other measures.
The industry has promoted "advanced recycling" - a method of burning plastic to convert it into fuel or other products - as a solution to the plastic waste crisis but a Reuters investigation showed that the leading projects have had little to no success.
Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, said the investigation is significant.
"Companies like Exxon have been instrumental in persuading the public we can recycle our way out of the plastic crisis even when evidence suggestions they know it is not the case," he said, adding that states bear the brunt of costs associated with plastic waste cleanup.
California has passed several bills in the last few years aimed at curbing plastic waste and attempting to crack down on deceptive recycling claims.
Last December, the California Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling asked Bonta to crack down on what it claims is illegal labeling that is undermining the state’s efforts to tackle plastic pollution. read more
Reporting by Valerie Volcovici Editing by Diane Craft
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https://www.pomolandback.com/ michael hunter chiar
Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF, also known as "the Jackson") is a 48,652 acre Public Forest in Mendocino County, CA managed by Cal Fire. Under the Guise of Developing “Sustainable Forest Management” Policy and Practices, it is subjected to routine logging and land degradation.
kpfa 4/15/22 coyote band heya heya logging
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an 4 22
The historic drought plaguing California and other Western states is showing no signs of letting up. Record high temperatures and erratic precipitation patterns have put millions of Americans at risk of running out of fresh water, and the longer that elected leaders stall on curbing the nation's dependence on fossil fuels, the risks to lives and livelihoods increase dramatically with each passing year.
The data is alarming, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist at the Central Sierra Snow Lab's station center at the University of California Berkeley, wrote in Monday's New York Times.
'This past week, I joined teams of other scientists gathering the most important measurements of the Sierra Nevada snowpack from over 265 sites throughout the state. Typically, this measurement marks the transition from snow accumulation season to the melt season and contains the most snow of any measurement throughout the year," Schwartz said in his editorial. "The 2022 results, however, confirmed what those of us monitoring the state’s drought had feared: California’s snowpack is now at 39 percent of its average, or 23 percent lower than at the same point last year. This signals a deepening of the drought — already the worst in the western United States in 1,200 years — and another potentially catastrophic fire season for much of the West."
Normally, Schwartz said, droughts are defined by prolonged periods without rain or snow. But the current situation is different, he noted, because of the impact of human-caused climate change.
"As more frequent and large wildfires and extended dry periods batter the land, our most important tools for managing water are becoming less and less accurate. At the same time, our reliance on these models to try to make the most of the little water we have is becoming more and more problematic," he pointed out.
Those ballooning discrepancies mean that residents of affected regions lack the necessary means to adequately prepare.
"Droughts may last for several years or even over a decade with varying degrees of severity. During these types of extended droughts, soil can become so dry that it soaks up all new water, which reduces runoff to streams and reservoirs. Soil can also become so dry that the surface becomes hard and repels water, which can cause rainwater to pour off the land quickly and cause flooding. This means we no longer can rely on relatively short periods of rain or snow to completely relieve drought conditions the way we did with past droughts," wrote Schwartz.
"Many storms with near record-breaking amounts of rain or snow would be required in a single year to make a significant dent in drought conditions," he continued. "October was the second snowiest and December was the snowiest month on record at the snow lab since 1970 thanks to two atmospheric rivers that hit California. But the exceptionally dry November and January to March periods have left us with another year of below-average snowpack, rain and runoff conditions."
As the planet becomes ever warmer, "this type of feast-or-famine winter with big storms and long, severe dry periods is expected to increase," Schwartz added, noting that "as a result, we’ll need multiple above-average rain and snow years to make up the difference rather than consecutive large events in a single year."
But chronically dry conditions are only half of the equation. Wildfires – which have escalated in frequency, intensity, and size – also have profound effects on the relationship between water and soil.
Those infernos, Schwartz explained, "cause distinct changes in the way that snow melts and that water, including rain, runs off the landscape. The loss of forest canopy from fires can result in greater wind speeds and temperatures, which increase evaporation and decrease the amount of snow water reaching reservoirs."
Fire 'also alters soil properties and can create flash flooding during intense periods of rain. These landscape changes, feast-or-famine precipitation patterns and increased demand on the water supply are making water management in the West a precarious and difficult task," he stressed.
Consequently, the "simplistic" models employed by government agencies "such as the National Weather Service’s Office of Hydrologic Development, the Army Corps of Engineers and the California Department of Water Resources" are perilously outdated and insufficient for tackling today's growing regional weather crises, Schwartz said. "Land surfaces, snowmelt patterns and the climate have all changed since many of these models were developed, which means they’re missing crucial pieces of today’s water puzzle. What’s prevented updates to the models for decades is shrinking funding for science and engineering."
This means that bracing for water shortages will be extremely challenging, calling into question the future habitability of large areas of the United States.
"We are looking down the barrel of a loaded gun with our water resources in the West," warned Schwartz. "Rather than investing in body armor, we’ve been hoping that the trigger won’t be pulled. The current water monitoring and modeling strategies aren’t sufficient to support the increasing number of people that need water. I’m worried about the next week, month, year, and about new problems that we’ll inevitably face as climate change continues and water becomes more unpredictable."
Schwartz then called upon lawmakers to "invest in updating our water models rather than maintaining the status quo and hoping for the best. Large-scale investment in the agencies that maintain and develop these models is paramount to preparing for the future of water in the West."
Like water, time is a precious resource that is quickly diminishing.
"Better water models ultimately mean more accurate management of water, and that will lead to greater water security and availability for the millions of people who now depend on the changing water supply. It is an investment in our future and, further, an investment in our continued ability to inhabit the water-scarce regions in the West," Schwartz concluded. "It’s the only way to ensure that we’re prepared when the trigger is pulled."
Read Schwartz's full editorial here (subscription required).
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devil terms: nancy pelosi, ca, SF
mashey 2012 heartland bs:
all negative:
2,160 EPA(except OK during Bush administration when fending off CA)
1,476 activis (-t or –m, as in environmental, anti-smoking; some are OK)
1,474 California
880 alarm: 556 alarmist, 94 alarmism, 51 alarming 405 IRS-3E 10
761 renewable
719 environmentalist (except “free-market” or “common-sense” ones)
599 ethanol406
470IPCC
352 Gore (Al) also appears in cartoons, such as Z.2006.07-14....
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api hit on ca gavin:
energy citizen of okla
pulled? no links several graphs 2020?
https://energycitizens.org/driving-the-wrong-direction-in-california/
wayback
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Driving The Wrong Direction In California
Four observations about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order requiring that by 2035 all new cars sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles – as well as his push for halting fracking in the state:
- 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.
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https://redgreenandblue.org/2022/02/04/cant-nice-things-western-states-petroleum-association-spent-17-5-million-lobbying-ca-officials-past-3-years/
Why we can’t have nice things: Western States Petroleum Association spent $17.5 million lobbying CA officials over past 3 years
Published on February 4th, 2022
TAGGED: BIG OIL, CALIFORNIA, DRILL BABY DRILL, LOBBYING, WPA
The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento, has spent over $17.5 million lobbying the California Legislature and other state officials over the past three years.
In 2021, WSPA spent $4,397,004 lobbying legislators and state officials to serve Big Oil’s agenda, according to data filed with California Secretary of State’s Office.
The association spent $957,137 on lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2021. The money went to an array of in-house lobbyists and outside lobbying firms, topped by Ramball Environ in Philadelphia that received $116,981 in the fourth quarter and $366,864 in 2021.
In 2021, WSPA lobbied on the following legislation and ongoing processes, giving you an idea of the vast array of processes that WSPA was involved in influencing:
SB 342; LEGISLATURE – CARBON NEUTRALITY, CALIFORNIA CLIMATE GOALS, GENERAL EDUCATION ONOFFSHORE OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION, EDUCATION ON UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM ISSUES, CARBON CAPTURE, UTILISATION AND STORAGE, OFFSHORE PRODUCTION; DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION – CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY, OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION POLICY, – PUBLIC HEALTH RULEMAKING, HEALTH AND SAFETY INITIATIVE, CARBON CAPTURE, UTILISATION AND STORAGE, SETBACKS, UNDERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL; GOVERNOR’S OFFICE – CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY, OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION POLICY, – CARBON CAPTURE, UTILISATION AND STORAGE, SETBACKS, OFFSHORE PRODUCTION; STATE WATER RESOURCE CONTROL BOARD – PERAND POLYFLUOROALKYL SUBSTANCES; CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD – AB 32 IMPLEMENTATION,CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY,OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION POLICY, SCOPING PLAN, LOW CARBON FUEL STANDARD, CARBON NEUTRALITY; CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL – HAZARDOUS WASTE REPORTING FRAMEWORK; CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY ANDHEALTH – PERMISSIBLE EXPOSURE LIMITS;CALIFORNIA PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION – R. 18-12-005,R. 20-01-007,R. 20-05-002,R. 21-06-017; OFFICE OF STATE FIRE MARSHAL – PIPELINE FEE INCREASE
WSPA spent a total of $8.8 million in 2019 and $4,267,181 in 2020 on lobbying California legislators and officials as thousands of oil and gas drilling permits were approved by CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency: www.citywatchla.com/…
In 2020, even a weak bill recommending health and safety setbacks around oil and gas failed to get through the oil industry-friendly California Legislature.
Then in 2021, another stronger bill, SB 467, failed to pass throughout the legislature because of heavy oil industry lobbying of legislators, including those who had received big campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. The bill would have banned fracking by 2023 eliminating fracking and instituting mandatory health and safety zones between oil and gas extraction and places where Californians live, work, and study.
However, the inordinate influence by Big Oil on California politicians and regulators is most dramatically evidenced by the approval of thousands of new and reworked oil and gas well permits by CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, since Newsom took office in January 2019.
On the same day the LA City Council voted to ban oil and gas wells in city limits, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance reported that Governor Newsom has approved 10,212 oil drilling permits since he assumed office in 2019. The total is nearly identical to the number of permits Governor Jerry Brown approved in his first three years.
The good news is that permits issued fell from the number issued in 2020,according to the latest analysis by FracTracker Alliance of permits approved through December 31, 2021, and posted by Consumer Watchdog at www.Newsomwellwatch.org.
“Nevertheless, Newsom’s number is nipping on the heels of Brown’s 10,268 permits dispensed in his first three years in office. Brown ultimately approved 31,545 wells during his eight years in office,” the groups revealed....
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On February 17, Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) introduced a bill in the California Legislature that would mandate that California’s public pension funds stop investing in fossil fuel companies. SB1173, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, would require these state pension funds to make no new investments in fossil fuel companies and to divest existing fossil fuel investments […]
Dan Bacher February 21st
California State Senator Lena Gonzalez introduces fossil fuel divestment bill
On February 17, Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) introduced a bill in the California Legislature that would mandate that California’s public pension funds stop investing in fossil fuel companies. SB1173, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, would require these state pension funds to make no new investments in fossil fuel companies and to divest existing fossil fuel investments […]
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest non-federal pension funds in the country, have over $9 billion invested in fossil fuel companies and related energy sector industries. CalSTRS has about $469 billion in assets, while CalPERS has $327 billion in assets.
A recent report estimates that out of these funds CalPERS invests $5.5 billion in fossil fuel companies and CalSTRS invests $3.4 billion.
For decades, predominately black and brown, low income communities have suffered from the harmful health effects of living in communities surrounded by oil and gas wells in California, a state that styles itself as a “green” and “progressive” leader but still does not have setbacks from oil and gas wells like other states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and even Texas do.
For Nalleli Cobo of Los Angeles, the need for divestment from fossil fuel companies is very personal. When the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) met publicly with advocates of fossil fuel divestment at a virtual Sustainability Symposium onFebruary 9, Cobo shared her experience growing up near an oil well.
“My health declined,” she testified. “I started getting body spasms so severe I couldn’t move. My mom would have to carry me from one place to another. At the age of 19, I was diagnosed with stage 2 cancer.”
“It’s important that teachers’ money doesn’t go to killing kids, it doesn’t go to damaging their organs or their health; it goes to protecting them and guaranteeing a beautiful life for them,” Cobo said.
Likewise, Lizbeth Ibarra, a 17 year old climate activist who grew up near the Chevron refinery in Richmond, asked CalSTRS, “How much more does my community have to suffer, how much does my future have to be in question for you to decide that your moral responsibility is to pull support from those causing the suffering?”
“Do teachers know that you’re investing their money in supporting destructive projects, from Line 3 to the East Africa crude oil pipeline?” she stated.
Accompanying the introduction of the bill, Gonzalez held a press conference Thursday that featured Miriam Eide, Coordinating Director, Fossil Free California; Carlos Davidson, Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University and California Faculty Association member; Raven Fonseca Jensen, Member,Youth vs Apocalypse;
Senator Gonzalez, who as a mother of three and a resident of a district where residents suffer from exposure to toxics, knows first hand about the impacts of fossil fuel corporations on frontline communities.
“Investing billions in the fossil fuel companies that are polluting our environment while at the same time trying to meet ambitious emissions reduction goals is contradictory and incongruous,” she said. “SB 1173 will ensure we remain true to our values and honor our commitment as a State to protecting the environment and the health and future of all Californians, including historically disadvantaged communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by the hazardous pollutants released into our communities by these companies.”
In response to my question about how divestment bill proponents will overcome the grip that the oil industry lobby has on the Legislature, she said the Legislature passed a similar bill in 2015 requiring CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest from coal companies.
She also noted that an estimated 1,500 institutions with over $39 trillion in assets have already committed to divestment, including the University of California, the California State University, the State and City of New York, the State of Maine, the Vatican, and the province of Quebec.
“I think the political appetite is out there now for this bill,” she said.
Miriam Eide, Coordinating Director atFossil Free California, said after eight years of CalSTRS and CalPERS ignoring the calls of students, teachers, and state workers to divest their pensions, her group is “grateful to Senator Gonzalez for leading the way in today’s legislative push for pension divestment.”
“Divestment is the right thing to do for climate change and is a smart financial move for our pensions,” echoed Carlos Davidson, CFA Peace & Justice Committee member and retired San Francisco State professor. “We have to stop pretending that fossil fuel companies are good corporate citizens. Their own scientists knew their product was causing climate change, but the companies kept it secret.”
”CFA wields a powerful credential in California, and we can best serve our principles of social and racial justice by taking a lead in climate justice for future generations of students, families and communities,” said Davidson, who helped organize the campaign for CFA to vote for CALPERS divestment last year.
Another CFA member, Anne Luna-Gordinier, a sociology professor at Sacramento State who is of Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry, emphasized SB 1173 is urgently needed now, since “we are facing an existential crisis.”
She cited a recent scientific journal article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01290-z) revealing that the drought in the Western states that started in 2000 represents the driest two decades in 1200 years, in addition to citing a NOAA report stating that coastal areas in the U.S. will see frequent flooding due to climate change.
Finally, Anaya Sayal, a member of Youth Vs Apocalypse, also urged support for SB 1173.
“Divestment is essential to the wellbeing of the large community of people of color being affected by fossil fuel investments, along with the entirety of the planet, which is being greatly harmed,” stated Sayal. “Fossil fuels are heavily contributing to the climate crisis, placing future generations in a horrible situation, even though the current generation could make great strides towards solving this issue so the burden does not completely fall on them.”
Background: Big Oil’s Grip on Sacramento
The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the largest and most powerful corporate lobbying group in Sacramento, has spent over $17.5 million alone lobbying the California Legislature and other state officials over the past three years.
In 2021, WSPA spent $4,397,004 lobbying legislators and state officials to serve Big Oil’s agenda, according to data filed with California Secretary of State’s Office.
The association spent $957,137 on lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2021. The money went to an array of in-house lobbyists and outside lobbying firms, topped by Ramball Environ in Philadelphiathat received $116,981 in the fourth quarter and $366,864 in 2021.
WSPA spent a total of $8.8 million in 2019 and $4,267,181 in 2020 on lobbying California legislators and officials as thousands of oil and gas drilling permits were approved by CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency: www.citywatchla.com/…
In 2020, even a weak bill recommending health and safety setbacks around oil and gas failed to get through the oil industry-friendly California Legislature.
Then in 2021, another stronger bill, SB 467, failed to pass throughout the legislature because of heavy oil industry lobbying of legislators, including those who had received big campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. The bill would have banned fracking by 2023 eliminating fracking and instituting mandatory health and safety zones between oil and gas extraction and places where Californians live, work, and study.
The inordinate influence by Big Oil on California politicians and regulators is most dramatically evidenced by the approval of thousands of new and reworked onshore oil and gas well permits by CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, since Newsom took office in January 2019.
On the same day the LA City Council voted to ban oil and gas wells in city limits, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance reported at www.NewsomWellWatch.org that Governor Newsom has approved 10,212 oil drilling permits since he assumed office in 2019. The total is nearly identical to the number of permits Governor Jerry Brown approved in his first three years.
Lobbying is just one of the seven methods that Big Oil uses in California to exercise inordinate influence over California regulators. WSPA and Big Oil wield their power in 7 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups; (5) working in collaboration with media; (6) creating alliances with labor unions; and (7) contributing to non profit organizations.
In one glaring example of oil and gas industry officials serving on regulatory panels, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create “marine protected areas” in Southern California from 2009 to 2012, as well as serving on the task forces to create “marine protected areas” on the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast from 2004 to 2012.
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ca mfg end-around ar 15 busted?
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2 22 bill for biden covid mandate here
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sv350 921
senator Nancy Skinner's SB 27, which was signed into law by Newsom this week, will require agencies to design a framework/strategy to support carbon sequestration on natural and working lands, and a registry of projects.
Governor Newsom signed 24 environmental bills this week, including several of our priorities. While we can celebrate a few wins, we must also urge him to finish the job.
Senator Josh Becker's SB 596, signed on Thursday, is the first bill in the nation to directly target greenhouse gas emissions from cement, which is responsible for 7 precent of all global emissions. It's also the first provision in California law requiring any sector to achieve net-zero emissions.
While we were also excited to see SB 47 (Limón) become law so that idle and deserted wells are cleaned up, two complementary bills remain unsigned — AB 896 (Bennett) and SB 84 (Hurtado), critical components to ensure that remediation is paid for by the well owners.
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The stakes of the California recall election of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom couldn't be higher. Voting, either by mail or in person, ends Tuesday, and if Newsom is recalled, the bluest state in the country will not just have a Republican governor, but Larry Elder, a right-wing talk radio host who is a loon even by the standards of the party that elected Donald Trump.
If Elder wins, he threatens California's fragile recovery from the pandemic, since, like most Republicans these days, he's running interference for the virus. Plus, he would have the power to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is literally 88 years old, if she were to leave office — and one name that's being floated is Elder's protege and white nationalist former Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
In a normal circumstance, someone like Elder — he suggested Women's March participants are too ugly to rape and argued that it's the descendants of slave owners and not slaves that deserve reparations — would never have a chance of winning the governorship of a deep blue state like California. Unable to win in a free and fair election, however, Republicans in the state have turned to dirty tricks and shenanigans. The entire Republican strategy is built around suppressing voter turnout through confusing and demoralizing the public. The recall ballots are confusing, and may lead voters to not understand that voting yes on recalling Newsom automatically means voting yes on his replacement being a Republican. Republicans are also counting on pandemic-induced disillusionment to keep Democratic voters from bothering to mail in ballots at all.
In other words, the California recall is a microcosm of what has become the GOP's national strategy.
Republicans have given up entirely on the basic premise of democracy. They no longer think that politicians should try to appeal to a majority of citizens to win power. Instead, their focus is entirely on finding ways to circumvent public will and gain power anyway. In some states, this manifests as gerrymandering, outright voter suppression and even a new slate of laws meant to allow Republican officials to simply vacate the results of elections they don't like. In California, it's about forcing an off-year election in the most confusing way possible, hoping to hoodwink voters into accidentally giving themselves a Republican governor.
Regardless of the state-specific method, what holds all of this together is a widespread rejection within the Republican Party of the right of the people to choose their own leaders. Republicans feel entitled to rule, no matter what, and therefore feel entitled to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. The technical legality of the California recall election doesn't change this reality. The spirit of the whole enterprise is driven by a willingness of Republicans to find some backhanded way to force a governor on the state that they know very well the majority of Californians do not want.
Ultimately, it comes down to the increasingly rigid Republican belief that most Americans are not legitimate citizens and therefore have no right to vote Republicans are bound to respect. This belief manifests most commonly in the Big Lie, which is metastasizing beyond Trump's false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to "fraud". Already, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians are prepping their followers for the possibility that Newsom survives the recall with an updated version of the Big Lie, claiming the election is "rigged" and that Newsom will only win through "voter fraud."
No real evidence of actual fraud that could swing an election is ever produced with these relentless Big Lie claims, but then again, it doesn't need to be.
"Voter fraud" is not really a literal belief among Republicans, but more a code phrase to convey the larger belief that most legal voters shouldn't have the right to vote at all. To call these legal voters "frauds" is to contest the legitimacy of their citizenship. It functions in the same way as conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate did, as a way for conservatives to signal to each other a belief that the first Black president is not a "real" American. With the Big Lie, the group of people who conservatives refuse to admit are legitimate citizens has grown to encompass pretty much anyone who votes for the Democrats.
This notion that most Americans aren't "real" Americans and therefore are "fraud" voters has become a majority belief among Republican voters. A recent CNN poll, which found that 6 in 10 Republican voters said that affirming the Big Lie — which again, is code for the belief that Democratic votes are inherently illegitimate — is an important part of being a Republican. We see this in the support for the January 6 insurrection that has been quietly solidifying among the GOP base. It all goes back to a belief that if Republicans can't win a fair election, they should be able to cheat their way into power — or, if that fails, use violent force.
As Igor Derysh reported last week for Salon, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing down a similarly sleazy power grab by Republicans in Michigan. Republicans in the state legislature are trying to pass an anti-voting bill to keep those voters they see as illegitimate — particularly urban residents and Black voters — from casting ballots. To get around Whitmer's veto, they're using the same tactic that California Republicans used to force a recall, exploiting an ill-advised loophole that allows a shockingly small number of petitioners to force the issue. In this case, it's not a recall, but even worse, the ability simply overrule the decision of a duly elected governor. Democrats in the state are accusing Republicans of using a "playbook of losing, lying, and attempting to cheat their way into office."
It's not just a fair accusation, but such an obvious observation that it's verging on banal. It's the playbook that fueled Trump's failed coup and is currently fueling Elder's attempt to seize the California governor's office through the back door. Elections are increasingly not going to be contests of two candidates trying to appeal to voters, but a Democratic candidate appealing to voters while a Republican candidate tries to find some way to get around that pesky "democracy" problem. Newsom will probably survive this recall effort, but the country is going to have a much harder time surviving the relentless GOP assault on democracy.
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