California
Kamala’s California problem
In the final days of the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump never missed a chance to tie his opponent to California. It was a critique that required no elaboration—though true to form, Trump didn’t shy away from providing an overheated one. At his Madison Square Garden rally in October, he proclaimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was a “radical-left lunatic” who “destroyed California.”
Breathless rhetoric notwithstanding, it is a problem for national Democratic ambitions that California—the state most associated with the party’s rule—is now synonymous with the top issue of the election: the rising cost of living.
For the first time in recent memory, housing costs emerged as a major presidential election issue. (Experts agree that it’s the last major driver of inflation.) And while Harris promised to oversee the construction of 3 million homes over her term, that wasn’t enough to shake the California stigma.
As of 2024, California has the most expensive housing of any continental U.S. state, with a median home price that is more than eight times the state median household income. (A healthy ratio is considered between three to five times the state median income. The ratio in Texas is four.) As a result, working- and middle-class Californians have virtually no path to homeownership.
Locked out of homeownership, half of California renters spend at least a third of their income—for many, up to 50 percent—on rent. And they’re the lucky ones: Nearly 200,000 Californians and counting are homeless.
On some level, rank-and-file Democrats understand that the state is a problem. Ask a progressive in swing states like North Carolina or Wisconsin what she thinks about California, and she will likely try to change the topic of conversation. (Could you imagine a conservative having the same reluctance about Texas?)
Where millions of Americans—myself included—once knew California as a place where friends and family went off and claimed their slice of the dream, the Golden State is today better known as the source of embittered migrants making cash offers on homes.
Over the past 25 years, hundreds of thousands of people have voted with their feet and left the state. Sluggish population growth over the 2010s led California to lose a congressional seat after the 2020 reapportionment. (On net, red states picked up three seats in that election.) Amid declining immigration, the state has started losing population for the first time in history.
In 2022 alone, an estimated 102,000 Californians moved to Texas. They weren’t fleeing the perfect weather or the high-paying jobs—by and large, they were pushed out by the cost of living.
Occasionally, California’s progressive NIMBYs celebrate this unhappy exodus as a way of flipping other Mountain West states blue. Yet this year, Nevada voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. Even before the election, the polls acknowledged that Arizona was a lost cause for the Democrats.
It turns out that forcing people to abandon their home state in search of an affordable home doesn’t exactly engender party loyalty. Indeed, it may be having the opposite effect: Surveys out of states like Texas suggest that new arrivals from California might actually be more conservative than the locals.
Of course, Kamala Harris isn’t the reason California has a housing crisis. Democrats aren’t even solely to blame—the zoning that has made it illegal to build housing in California has been backed by NIMBYs of the right and left, and it was Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan who signed the state’s infamous environmental review act into law.
But the state has been under Democratic supermajority control since 2011. Outside of the unusual case of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican who backed Harris for president, they have effectively run the state since 1999. The undecided voter might be forgiven for wondering why this issue has only gotten worse under a quarter century of Democratic governance.
Immediately after the election, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom—who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions—called for a special session to address how California will respond to anticipated attacks on reproductive rights, immigrants, and the state’s climate policies by the Trump administration. The proclamation makes no mention whatsoever of the cost-of-living issues that likely handed the election to Trump.
There is a small but growing cadre of pro-housing Democratic state legislators who have taken up the cause of cutting through the red tape and getting California building again. And they’ve had some successes: Since 2017, the state has legalized granny flats, abolished parking mandates, and streamlined permitting. But all too often, reform efforts have been stymied by members of their own party.
It’s too late for Kamala Harris. But the next Democratic nominee for president had better hope those reformers are successful.
California
Northern California county reports measles outbreak with 8 cases
Public health officials say they’ve identified a total of eight measles cases in Shasta County as contact tracing continues.
The cases are linked to one first identified Jan. 30, with Shasta County Health and Human Services officials saying all seven new cases involve close contacts of that person.
Officials noted that the new patients all isolated before they became possibly contagious.
“Our public health teams want to thank the individuals affected, those who were exposed, and our community as a whole for working closely with our staff and following public health guidance. Your quick action and support have helped us manage this outbreak and continue protecting our community,” said Shasta County Public Health Director Katie Cassidy in a statement.
California has seen a total of 17 confirmed measles cases in 2026, with Napa County recently seeing its first case in nearly 15 years.
Across the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control reports a total of 733 confirmed measles cases in 20 states so far in 2026. Along with the more than 2,400 measles cases in 2025, the U.S. is reportedly poised to lose its “measles-free” classification from the Pan American Health Organization.
Contact tracing is still underway in Shasta County for people who may have been in the following areas and times:
-Ninja Coalition, 900 Dana Drive on January 23 from 2:30 to 5:20 p.m.
-An informal, outdoor capture the flag sport event at Highland Neighborhood Park, 555 Mill Valley Parkway, Redding, on January 23 from noon to 4 p.m.
-Osaka Sushi, 1340 Churn Creek Rd., on January 23 from 6:30 to 10 p.m.
-A gym basketball game at the former CrossPointe Community Church, 2960 Hartnell Ave., Redding on January 24 from 1:45 to 5 p.m.
-Costco, 4805 Bechelli Lane, Redding, on January 24 from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
-Churn Creek HealthCare clinic, 3184 Churn Creek Road, Redding, on January 28 from 1:45 to 5 p.m.
California
Judge blocks California mask ban for federal agents
Trump on immigration: ‘We can use a little bit of a softer touch’
In an interview with NBC News, President Donald Trump said his administration “can use a little bit of a softer touch” when it comes to immigration.
A federal judge has blocked California from enforcing a new law that would ban federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings.
The Department of Justice sued to strike down the ban in November after it was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. In a ruling on Feb. 9, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder preliminarily struck down the law and upheld another California law that requires federal officers to display their identification while performing their official duties.
The Trump administration hailed the ruling as a win, with Attorney General Pam Bondi calling it a “key court victory.” The DOJ argued in the lawsuit that immigration agents “face a real threat of criminal liability from state officials who have made clear their intent to target federal officers and disrupt federal law enforcement activities, including federal immigration enforcement.”
“These federal agents are harassed, doxxed, obstructed, and attacked on a regular basis just for doing their jobs. We have no tolerance for it,” Bondi said in her statement on Feb. 9.
Newsom also counted the ruling to uphold the identification law as “a clear win for the rule of law,” and said “no badge and no name mean no accountability.”
In the ruling, Snyder said that the federal government would likely prove the mask ban to be unconstitutional because it treated state officers differently than federal officers; the law included local law enforcement officers and federal officers but not state officers.
The ruling comes as political tension is heightened over President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement actions in primarily Democratic-led states and cities. Weeks of protests have spread nationally after federal officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, where the administration recently announced the departure of hundreds of immigration enforcement personnel. In videos and photos, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents are routinely seen wearing face coverings while conducting operations, making arrests and clashing with protesters.
Los Angeles has also been a target for enhanced immigration enforcement, which sparked protests that at times turned violent last summer.
Scott Wiener, the state senator who introduced the mask ban, said in a statement that he will introduce new legislation to include state officers, and said the ruling demonstrates that California has the right to block officers from covering their faces if state officers are included.
“Today’s federal court ruling is a huge win: The Court ruled that California has the power to protect our community by banning officers, including federal agents, from wearing masks and thus inflicting terror and shielding themselves from accountability,” Wiener, a Democrat whose area of representation includes San Francisco, said.
“ICE and Border Patrol are covering their faces to maximize their terror campaign and to insulate themselves from accountability. We won’t let them get away with it,” Wiener said.
Contributing: Reuters
California
After US Judge Blocks California’s ICE Mask Ban, Scott Wiener Says He Will Make It Enforceable | KQED
He continued: “People do not want masked law enforcement in their communities, people want to be able to see who is patrolling their communities, people understand that if ICE and any other law enforcement wear ski masks, that creates an atmosphere of impunity and terror, and prevents accountability.”
But it’s not clear if Newsom would sign such a bill. In response to the ruling, his press office wrote on social media, “Mr. Wiener rejected our proposed fixes to his bill — language that was later included in the identification bill the court upheld today. He chose a different approach, and today the court found his approach unlawful.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the ruling on X, calling it “ANOTHER key court victory.”
“Following our arguments, a district court in California BLOCKED the enforcement of a law that would have banned federal agents from wearing masks to protect their identities,” Bondi wrote. “We will continue fighting and winning in court for President Trump’s law-and-order agenda.”
In court on Monday, Snyder dismissed several arguments the Trump administration has made to justify why agents should be allowed to mask.
She noted that there are no federal laws or regulations that require federal law enforcement officers to wear facial coverings or conceal their identity, and “in fact, some federal laws and regulations require visible identification in certain circumstances.”
Historically, she noted, federal officers have not been masked.
Snyder also found that the federal government “has not met its burden to show that enforcement of the challenged provisions … would interfere with or take control of federal law enforcement operations,” — comparing them to traffic laws that dictate how a federal officer may drive on state roads.
And she rejected the argument that bills will put officers at risk of attacks and physical harm, noting that the potential harms cited in court — including doxing, threats and assault — are all crimes themselves.
“A rule that prohibits law enforcement officers from wearing masks or requires them to have visible identification does not facilitate or enable criminals to harm law enforcement officers,” she wrote. To the contrary, she added later, the “presence of masked and unidentifiable individuals, including law enforcement, is more likely to heighten the sense of insecurity for all.”
And in a clear rebuke to statements made by Vice President JD Vance and others after the Minneapolis shootings, Snyder noted that, “The law is clear that federal officers do not have absolute immunity from state prosecution.”
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