Politics
California lawmakers reject proposal to curb well-drilling where nearby wells could run dry
Over the past several years, California’s water managers have seen a pattern emerge in farming areas of the Central Valley: Even as declining groundwater levels have left thousands of residents with dry wells and caused the ground to sink, counties have continued granting permits for agricultural landowners to drill new wells and pump even more water.
A bill that was sponsored by the California Department of Water Resources sought to address these problems by prohibiting new high-capacity wells within a quarter-mile of a drinking water well or in areas where the land has been sinking because of overpumping.
Despite support from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, the measure was narrowly rejected in the Senate last week after encountering opposition from the agriculture industry, business groups, local governments and water agencies.
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The opposing organizations — which included the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Farm Bureau Federation and more than 30 other groups representing growers and water suppliers — said the bill was “too restrictive and may impede ways to achieve groundwater sustainability.”
Kristopher Anderson, a legislative advocate for the Assn. of California Water Agencies, told a Senate committee that the legislation would impose unworkable mandates and be “a blanket one-size-fits-all moratorium on approval of new wells that will harm local economies while failing to address these issues.”
After a brief debate, members of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee rejected the bill in a 5-4 vote.
Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura), who introduced the bill, said it was intended to address a significant loophole in California’s groundwater law. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, passed in 2014, created local agencies tasked with developing plans for curbing overpumping in many areas of the state, but left counties in charge of issuing permits for new wells.
That has led to a situation where there are “more straws going in while they’re trying to regulate the current straws,” he said.
In some rural communities, farmworkers and other residents have seen their wells run dry soon after growers drilled new wells to irrigate crops on nearby fields.
“Too many counties have been unwilling to protect the most vulnerable people’s wells because they don’t want to take on the most powerful people, who want to keep putting high-capacity wells in,” Bennett said. “We’ve been trying to get people to do something about it, and they refuse. It is the state’s responsibility to finally say, enough is enough.”
Parts of California have some of the fastest groundwater depletion rates in the world, and matters worsened during the last drought.
Scientists have also found that crops’ water demands are growing in the San Joaquin Valley because of rising temperatures driven by climate change, which is worsening the long-term water deficit.
In parts of the valley, falling water levels have caused the ground to sink at rates of more than half a foot per year. Land subsidence has required costly repairs of levees, canals and other infrastructure, with public agencies footing the bill.
“The counties that are approving the most high-capacity wells are the ones that have the most land subsidence in California,” Bennett said, referring to counties such as Tulare, Fresno and Kern. “It just does not make sense that we keep putting more — hundreds of new high-capacity wells — in areas that have significant land subsidence.”
Bennett has introduced similar legislation three times. He said the bill’s defeat this year means that “the status quo will reign,” allowing the drilling of more wells while land subsidence continues and water levels drop.
“A lot of families, particularly in the Central Valley, will have their wells go dry because we refused to take action,” he said.
The legislation was designed to bring permanent requirements similar to a 2022 temporary drought order issued by Newsom, which required counties and cities to secure verification from a local groundwater agency that permitting a new well wouldn’t be “inconsistent” with local plans. The order also called for agencies to issue a permit only after determining that additional pumping would not likely interfere with nearby wells or cause subsidence that would damage infrastructure.
In a recent report analyzing the effects of Newsom’s executive order, the Department of Water Resources said local agencies “took many approaches to gather relevant information on whether the issuance of a well permit could potentially interfere with nearby wells or contribute to land subsidence.”
But the report also concluded that the continued issuing of well permits in vulnerable areas, where other wells are at risk and the land has been sinking, indicate that in many respects the executive order “failed to achieve its goal.”
The report said residents in parts of Fresno, Madera and Tulare counties told state officials they’re concerned the drilling of more agricultural wells is putting their drinking water at risk, and that pumping for farms “has been prioritized over domestic well users.”
Drawing on the goals of the governor’s order, state officials decided to sponsor legislation that would give firm direction to local agencies.
The bill was supported by leaders of advocacy groups such as the Community Water Center and Clean Water Action, who argued in a letter that as the situation stands, local agencies responsible for managing groundwater have no power to stop new wells from being drilled, resulting in an “unregulated race to the bottom.”
Those who spoke in favor of the bill during the Senate hearing included Paul Gosselin, the Department of Water Resources’ deputy director of sustainable water management. He pointed out that more than 3,000 domestic wells have run dry throughout California since 2020, according to reports submitted to the state.
“Over the years, those rates of subsidence and dry wells,” he said, have been “ramping up to new historic levels.”
He noted that during flooding last year, the state was forced to spend millions of dollars raising the levee that protects the city of Corcoran because the ground has sunk dramatically.
“It’s not a hypothetical problem we have. It’s a real-world problem facing people,” Gosselin told the senators.
Gosselin called it a “drought resiliency bill” intended to complement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. That law required local agencies in many areas to develop groundwater plans and curb overpumping by 2040.
There were several exemptions in the bill, such as allowing for the drilling of a replacement well, and easing the prohibition on drilling within a quarter-mile of a domestic well if there is a local ordinance aimed at preventing new wells from interfering with existing wells.
But that wasn’t enough to convince opponents. Fresno County supervisors called the bill an “attempt to fundamentally redirect groundwater management” from the original intent of the state’s law. A group of local agency managers called the California Groundwater Coalition said the proposal would add “burdensome requirements.”
Gosselin said the debate over the legislation brought a “good exchange of ideas.”
“The votes weren’t there to keep the bill going,” he said. “We’re hoping the dialogue and the issues that we raised in the legislation will continue.”
The Department of Water Resources is continuing to pursue other related efforts, including working with local agencies on drought plans and preparing a document outlining “best management practices” for curbing subsidence, he said.
Gosselin said state officials will continue to work with counties and local groundwater sustainability agencies to improve decisions on issuing permits for new wells to “hopefully avoid this continued cycle of increasing dry wells during drought periods.”
Experts shared differing opinions about the legislation.
“I think it’s critically important,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability. Without this type of legislative change, he said, “it allows the continued drilling of deep wells that pump a tremendous amount of water.”
“So in addition to sustainability being at risk, we’ll see more and more shallower wells go dry,” Famiglietti said.
Behind the opposition to the bill, Famiglietti said there seems to be a “concerted effort” to drill more wells and delay restrictions. He called the opposition by the agriculture industry shortsighted.
“The state cannot achieve its sustainability goals without leadership from the agricultural industry,” he said. “We want food sustainability, and we need that water to grow food for generations to come.”
A pair of agricultural groups, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the California Climate and Agriculture Network, supported the bill.
Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, interim director of the University of California’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said some sort of policy intervention is needed, but “this type of ‘one size fits all’ approach usually hurts small farms, who have fewer resources to adapt to new policies and go through additional regulatory hurdles.”
If a well goes dry on a small farm, under the bill that farm would be treated the same as a large corporation or a hedge fund when trying to replace the well, she said.
Dahlquist-Willard said she hopes if similar legislation is proposed again, it will include protections for small farms.
Politics
Omar’s disclosures erased millions, leaving her with potential negative net worth. She won’t explain why.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., refused to address her revised financial disclosures that could imply she has a negative net worth after the progressive lawmaker dramatically reducing the reported value of assets tied to her husband’s business ventures.
“Can you tell us if your husband still has the consulting business and the wine business?” Fox News Digital asked Omar.
The congresswoman stayed silent as she was repeatedly questioned, after previously telling Fox News Digital that the original filing — showing Omar’s reported assets reducing by as much as $29.9 million — was inaccurate and “incomplete” information.
ILHAN OMAR’S OFFICE SAYS SHE’S ‘NOT A MILLIONAIRE’ AFTER $30M FILING REVISED DOWN TO UNDER $100K: REPORT
US Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, speaks during a press conference with family members of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh as members of Congress call for US investigations into Israel’s actions and reintroduce the Justice for Shireen Act, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, May 18, 2023. The Al Jazeera journalist, who was a dual US citizen, was killed on May 11, 2022. The Israeli army later admitted one of its soldiers likely shot the reporter. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The controversy surrounding Omar’s finances began when a 2024 financial report estimated that Omar and her husband possessed between $6 million and $30 million in assets, all while the Minnesota fraud scandal within the Somali community was beginning to come to fruition.
A more recent 2025 financial disclosure report shows Omar’s revised value of shared assets between her and husband to sit at a maximum of $125,000 — a multi-million-dollar drop from the year prior. The lower estimate of their assets, $20,000, compared to the low and high debt estimates, $30,000 and $100,000, would imply the Minnesota Democrat could have a negative net worth.
Both her and her husband have separate debts, each ranging somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 — from her own student loans and her husband’s credit card debt, according to the disclosures.
WATCH: OMAR SILENT WHEN CONFRONTED ON ALLEGED TIES TO MASSIVE MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
RICHFIELD, MN – AUGUST 08: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (C) campaigns with her husband Tim Mynett (R) at the Richfield Farmers Market on August 8, 2020 in Richfield, Minnesota. Omar is hoping to retain her seat as the representative for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in next week’s primary election. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The biggest change in the documents involved Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett. His reported ownership interests in both his winery and venture capital advisory firm, which were previously valued in the millions of dollars, are listed with no value now.
In Omar’s 2024 financial disclosure records, Mynett’s share in his winery was valued between $1 million and $5 million, and his share at the venture capital advisory firm was valued between $5 million and $25 million. Now, his equity interests are both listed at $0.
Omar’s office previously told Fox News Digital that Mynett has partners in both businesses and said the earlier disclosure mistakenly reflected the businesses’ total equity rather than his ownership interest. The office also said the original filing listed assets without accounting for liabilities.
VANCE REFERS TIM WALZ, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DOJ FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER STATE’S ALLEGED FRAUD
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has publicly voiced his interest in the Ethics Committee opening an investigation into Omar’s personal finances after the 2025 financial reports came out showing the possibility of a $29 million drop in her net worth.
Vice President JD Vance also has previously said the U.S. Department of Justice will be opening a probe into her alleged fraud as part of the administration’s anti-fraud taskforce that he spearheads, though no formal investigations have been shared with the public at this time.
Omar has been reluctant to answer Fox News Digital’s questions about her financial fallout and potential probes to be opened against her.
The Minnesota lawmaker similarly dodged answering any of Fox News Digital’s questions just last month about the revised disclosures.
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“There’s also the possibility that it might rain on this sunny day,” Omar replied without responding directly to the content of the question.
Fox News Digital’s Robert Schmad contributed to this report.
As a student years ago, I dove deep into the history of the Red-hunting McCarthy era and became familiar with the actor who emerged second only to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy as the villain of that insidious time: his shameless, conniving young lawyer, Roy Cohn. Never would I have imagined that a future president would count Cohn as a mentor and role model.
Then came Donald Trump.
Now, in Cohn-inflected McCarthyesque style, President Trump is channeling his tutor yet again, baselessly labeling his political enemies — all Democrats — as communists as he looks ahead to the fall’s midterm elections. Once more Trump shows that his catchphrase “Make America great again” means regressing, this time to Trump’s formative 1950s and the McCarthy era that sadly helped define it.
In recent speeches, including on the Fourth of July, Trump’s utterances of “communist” or “communism” reached double digits each time. (As that implies, the president didn’t set aside his divisive rhetoric even for the nation’s 250th birthday.)
“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” Trump said late on the Fourth on the National Mall.
Trump couples his commie-baiting with a dash of his trademark xenophobia. “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including by newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said at Mount Rushmore a day earlier. (He’s got it backward, of course: Immigrants come here for the American way of life and promise of success.)
Here’s the irony: Trump’s actions in his second term make him look more like the commie. He’s projecting again.
Now that Trump is exploiting a few victories lately by left-wing democratic socialists in Democratic primaries to paint the entire party as communists, it’s time to review the record — his record.
A hallmark of communism is government ownership of companies and control of the economy, at the expense of private property and free markets. In just over a year, Trump has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy shares for the government in a growing list of private companies — U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse and more — citing national security. The companies don’t always welcome their new stakeholder; at a minimum, they rightly fear it for the demands the government could make about prices and production.
“It’s what Putin did,” the estranged Republicans at the Lincoln Project posted online Monday. “Trump is the closest we’ve ever come to communism.”
“What began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control,” free-market economist Veronique de Rugy wrote in The Times last October of Trump’s actions. “The power to ‘partner’ with business is the power to control it.”
Comrade Trump’s first big government grab, and a model for those to come, was in June last year, when he wrested a permanent “golden share” in U.S. Steel in return for approving its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. The company’s charter was revised to give the U.S. president extraordinary veto power over nearly a dozen corporate activities, including closing or relocating plants, supply-chain decisions, even pricing.
“We have a golden share, which I control,” Trump told reporters at the time, in words I never thought I’d hear from a president of the party once associated with free markets.
Just last week, Trump boasted to CNBC how he’d extracted a 10% stake in beleaguered chip giant Intel last August, after first demanding that its chief executive resign. “Intel came in. They had a problem. I said, ‘I can solve your problem, but I want 10% of the company.’ … Somebody said that’s not very American. I said, ‘No, I think it is very American, actually.’ And I’ve done that with other deals.”
And so he has.
The Pentagon is now the largest stockholder in struggling MP Materials, a large rare-earth mine in California, and guarantees a 10-year price floor for its output that stunned competitors. The administration has since taken shares in other rare-earth companies. The Commerce Department took an option for an 8% stake in Westinghouse, to spur construction of nuclear reactors, and has the right to 20% if the government decides the company should go public. The government takes a 15% cut of Nvidia’s and Advanced Micro Devices’ AI chip sales to China.
As much as anything he does, Trump’s direct intervention in private enterprise invites the question “What if Biden/Harris/Obama did that?” The answer, of course: Trump and Republicans would cry “Communist!”
Trump’s actions are the sort Americans generally have only seen during economic emergencies or major wars, and then rarely. I covered the frenzied and ultimately successful response to the near-collapse of the global financial system and the U.S. auto, insurance and housing industries. Behind the scenes in the Obama White House (and George W. Bush’s at the outset) was constant, angst-filled debate about any actions smacking of government takeovers and a determination that interventions be temporary, unlike Trump’s schemes. (For all the still-lingering unpopularity of the banking bailout, the Treasury — the taxpayers — got all the money back and then some, and exited the business.)
Trump’s economic big-footing isn’t the only way in which he resembles the commies Americans know best, and whom he so admires: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un. There are also the images of himself everywhere, monuments planned, drearily long and self-adulating speeches and interference in the nation’s cultural, educational and legal spheres and — worst of all — in elections.
At Rushmore, Trump closed with a demand that Congress pass his so-called SAVE America Act to restrict voting. “We do that and we’re not going to lose an election for 100 years,” he said, speaking of course about Republicans.
One-party rule through central government election finagling? Now that’s a communist.
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Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger, a Rockland Democrat, former nurse and former mayor, is drawing sudden national attention after saying now-former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner encouraged her to consider taking his place on the ballot in the Maine Senate race.
While Geiger has not been named the replacement nominee, her name entered the Maine Senate scramble after she told local outlet WMTW that Platner called her Monday night, praised her as a “fighter” and asked whether he could put her name forward. Platner’s campaign told the outlet he had not made an endorsement decision but confirmed he encouraged Geiger to consider running if he stepped aside.
After Geiger said Platner called her about potentially putting her name forward, Geiger posted Tuesday she would not “throw Graham under the bus,” while also saying she would not “slander or accuse” Jenny Racicot, the woman who accused Platner of rape, “of anything more than telling the truth as she experienced it.”
By Wednesday, local outlets were reporting that Geiger said Platner had encouraged her to consider running if he withdrew. Platner, who suspended his campaign Wednesday night, has denied the claim.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IF PLATNER DROPS OUT? HERE’S WHO COULD REPLACE HIM ON THE BALLOT AND HOW IT COULD WORK
Graham Platner Maine State Rep. Valli Geiger (Maine State Legislature/Getty Images)
“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me. For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” Platner said in a video posted to social media.
Geiger is a third-term Democratic state representative from Rockland, according to her legislative biography, representing a coastal House district in Maine that includes Rockland, Criehaven Township, Matinicus Isle Plantation, the Muscle Ridge Islands, North Haven and part of Owls Head. Her biography says she serves on the Labor Committee and the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee.
Before entering the state legislature, Geiger served six years on the Rockland City Council, including one year as mayor and four years on the Rockland Comprehensive Planning Commission, three of them as chair.
Her biography says she holds a master’s degree in sustainable design and built her own passive-solar, net-zero-energy house. It also describes her as a former nurse at Pen Bay Medical Center who later worked as a health policy analyst and health administrator, including as director of the Healthreach Hospice program and clinical director for Federally Qualified Health Centers around Maine.
The Maine State Capitol May 18, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
PLATNER CAMPAIGN PUTTING ‘THUMB ON SCALE’ TO INFLUENCE POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT, MAINE DEM ALLEGES
Geiger’s connection to Platner predates the latest replacement speculation. Local reporting has described her as a close Platner supporter, and WMTW reported she previously stood with him and credited him with helping secure funding for rape kit tracking in Maine.
In her Facebook post responding to Racicot’s allegation, Geiger wrote that Racicot’s story “seems credible” but added that “none of us knows the truth nor will we ever.” She also described Platner as “a man becoming a better man” and said she had hoped he would lead the political movement his campaign had built and will not “throw Graham under the bus.”
In the post, Geiger also praised Platner’s “passion for economic populism” and said she had granted him “an enormous amount of grace” for his behavior during what she described as his “dark years” after multiple deployments.
Dr. Nirav D. Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks during a news conference about COVID-19 at Maine Emergency Management Agency in Augusta. (Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
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The Maine state representative is not the only Democrat whose name has surfaced as Maine Democrats prepare for the possibility that Platner exits the race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Several Democrats have expressed interest or are considering bids, including former gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah.
Under Maine law, the Maine Democratic Party can replace him on the general election ballot by selecting a new nominee through its party process, with the replacement required to be chosen by July 27.
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
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