Politics
California food assistance program hits a ‘crisis point’ in keeping up with demand
County workplaces answerable for administering month-to-month meals advantages to low-income Californians are understaffed and overwhelmed, resulting in delays in providers because the state stalls a promised enhance in funding for the CalFresh help program.
Households are experiencing longer wait occasions for help resulting from extended employees vacancies and casework backlogs due to underfunding of administrative prices for the state program, mentioned Kari Beuerman, social providers director for Marin County, the place earnings disparities are stark.
The Marin County program maintains a 16%-to-20% employees emptiness price. In the meantime, functions for CalFresh providers there elevated by 70% between 2017 and 2021.
Counties throughout the state have needed to make trade-offs to fill staffing gaps, Beuerman mentioned, with some opting to shut hotlines devoted to fielding questions on help in order that staff can atone for enrollment and eligibility paperwork.
“We’re one of many counties that’s contemplating our choices to cope with the backlog,” she mentioned. “We’re actually loath to go there, however we’ve got to deal with our [staff] emptiness price, a excessive quantity of functions and simply an incapacity to get all of it accomplished. We’re going to must make some powerful choices.”
As of December, 4.6 million individuals in California — practically 12% of the inhabitants — acquired month-to-month meals advantages from CalFresh, the state’s model of the federal Supplemental Diet Help Program.
Earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to extend the CalFresh price range. However the plan was delayed final yr, and once more within the governor’s price range plan launched in January.
The Newsom administration has acknowledged the necessity to enhance the CalFresh funding system, which has not modified in 20 years, however pointed to pandemic disruptions as cause for the delay.
The federal authorities, which funds meals advantages, provides solely half of the administration prices to pay CalFresh employees and preserve workplaces operating. The remainder is funded by the state and particular person counties.
State funding for operational prices covers solely about 60% of what counties want, based on a legislative evaluation.
Anti-poverty advocates have praised Newsom for increasing public help eligibility to extra Californians, however county staff say they will’t sustain with growing demand.
The governor proposed greater than $35 million in January to increase meals advantages to all Californians older than 55 no matter immigration standing, as immigrants missing documentation don’t qualify for CalFresh. Final yr, Newsom signed a regulation extending CalFresh advantages to eligible faculty college students.
“There have been every kind of coverage modifications which have broadened the eligible inhabitants for these advantages, which is great, however the funding has not saved tempo, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to reply in a well timed method to those requests and have ample staffing,” Beuerman mentioned. “We’re struggling.”
The County Welfare Administrators Assn. of California is asking Newsom to provide an additional $60 million in his price range proposal to handle staffing shortages till state officers sort out their broader objective of overhauling the funding system.
In Fresno County, the place 17% of individuals reside in poverty, there are 310 vacancies within the division, amounting to a emptiness price of about 12%.
Linda Du’Chene, the county’s deputy director for social providers, mentioned staff are pressured to prioritize duties associated to CalFresh circumstances over the state’s Medi-Cal program as a result of federal guidelines require that those that are eligible obtain meals inside 30 days and, in some emergency circumstances, inside three days.
“We don’t have a ample sufficient workforce to divide the packages,” she mentioned. “It could imply delays on the healthcare facet, and that’s actually unlucky. It appears like we’ve got to decide on meals over healthcare, and the purchasers want each. It actually does put the county in a dire place.”
Funding for CalFresh has remained static regardless of important modifications within the state price range over time — the system has not modified because the early 2000s, when the state ended cost-of-living changes because it scrambled to make cuts in gentle of a recession. However the state is now flush with money and has a report price range surplus.
The financial toll of the pandemic sparked a report surge in CalFresh functions. In January 2020, a mean of 4.1 million Californians acquired CalFresh advantages. By June 2020, that quantity rose to 4.8 million.
State funding for counties to manage CalFresh advantages amounted to $804 per family in 2000, and now equals $328 per family, based on Division of Social Companies information.
Whereas counties referred to as for extra funding earlier than the pandemic, the so-called Nice Resignation has compounded the issue as individuals reevaluate in-person workplace jobs, making it tougher to rent and preserve staff.
“Professions like social staff and eligibility staff, it’s very, very anxious work in one of the best of occasions, however throughout the pandemic, these jobs have develop into even tougher,” Beuerman mentioned. “We’ve had problem recruiting and retaining employees.”
The County Welfare Administrators Assn. of California estimates that if the state had offered annual inflation changes to its share of administration funding, counties would have acquired an extra $414 million this yr. Mixed with required federal and county matching funds, that might imply a shortfall of greater than $1 billion, which might cowl the salaries of about 6,400 staff, based on the group.
“There actually is a human toll. Our members are saying, ‘I’m not offering the service I wish to as a result of I don’t have the employees,’” mentioned Cathy Senderling-McDonald, government director of the affiliation. “It’s hit the disaster level.”
Senderling-McDonald mentioned it’s comprehensible that the pandemic delayed plans, however that extra funding now could be essential.
Tyler Woods, an analyst with Newsom’s Division of Finance, mentioned at a legislative listening to final week that the Newsom administration is “open to dialogue” about an extra $60 million to bridge the hole now, and plans to revisit an overhaul of the system post-pandemic.
“We acknowledge that there’s a must reevaluate that present [funding] methodology,” Woods mentioned. “The pandemic restricted our skill to go in and reevaluate that.”
Just minutes after Speaker Mike Johnson could exhale, having put down a short-lived conservative revolt and won re-election to his post on Friday, hard-right lawmakers sent him a letter.
It was not congratulatory.
They had only voted for him, they wrote, “because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors.”
“We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the speaker’s track record over the past 15 months,” lawmakers in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus continued, appending a list of three major complaints about Mr. Johnson and seven policy dictates they demanded he adopt.
Welcome to the 119th Congress.
“I just expect intramural wrestling matches to be kind of the norm,” Representative Mark Amodei, Republican of Nevada, said as he walked off the House floor after Mr. Johnson’s whipsaw election to the speakership.
Ever since he ascended to the top job in the House after many of those same conservatives ousted his predecessor, Mr. Johnson has had one of the hardest jobs in Washington. Now, with total Republican control of government and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s enormous domestic agenda at stake, he is facing his toughest test yet.
Mr. Johnson will be responsible for pushing through Mr. Trump’s economic plans, including one or more huge bills that lawmakers say they want to simultaneously increase the nation’s borrowing limit, extend the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017, cut federal spending, and put in place a wide-ranging immigration crackdown.
At the same time, he will be dealing with a mercurial president who has already displayed his penchant for squashing congressional negotiations and inserting new demands at the 11th hour. And he will do so while trying to corral an unruly group of lawmakers who, despite their reverence for Mr. Trump, have already shown their willingness to buck him on key votes, and who care little about the political fallout of stirring up drama within the party.
Within weeks, Mr. Johnson’s majority will shrink smaller still. He is losing two reliable Republican votes, Representatives Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz of Florida, who are leaving the House to work in the Trump administration, meaning he will only be able to afford a single defection on fraught votes.
On top of all of it are towering expectations about what Mr. Trump can accomplish with a Republican trifecta.
“I never said any of the other things that we’re going to do are going to be easy; they’re actually going to be very hard,” Representative Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, said. “But we have to do it for the American people. The American people expect us to get things accomplished, and I think that’s going be the driving force. Every once in a while, we’re going to take a hard vote.”
Mr. Johnson’s allies like to say never to bet against him, a refrain they reprised after the speaker, a Louisiana Republican, was re-elected after a single, if tortured, ballot on Friday.
But it was clear that the spat on the House floor over Mr. Johnson’s ascension to the speakership was only the opening salvo in a fight brewing over the tax, budget and immigration legislation Republicans were preparing to pass.
Chief among the demands that the House Freedom Caucus issued on Friday was that the bill “not increase federal borrowing” — a move Mr. Trump has called upon House Republicans to approve — “before real spending cuts are agreed to and in place.”
They also complained that Mr. Johnson had failed to promise to ensure that “any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends.”
Such demands will almost certainly set up a bitter fight among House Republicans over how to structure what is supposed to be Mr. Trump’s landmark legislation. Extending the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 is estimated to cost roughly $4 trillion alone. Offsetting those cuts — as well as any immigration measures that Republicans are also clamoring to include — would tee up deep spending cuts that could run into a buzz saw from more moderate Republicans, who are sure to have their say.
Already some mainstream conservatives who just won tough re-election battles in swing districts, preserving the House Republican majority, have vented frustration with their hard-line colleagues.
“It angers the 95 percent of us that 5 percent are doing this thing to Mike Johnson — and to the whole conference; who are they?” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said. “We’re the 95 percent, and these guys act like they’re some House of Lords or something of the conference. And we don’t like that.”
“We have had our fill of these guys,” he added. “Most of us don’t want to work with them, we don’t want to work on their legislation, because it’s all about them.”
That may suit them just fine, but it will only make Mr. Johnson’s job of cobbling together a Republican majority for Mr. Trump’s priorities more difficult.
Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the two Republicans who initially opposed Mr. Johnson for speaker on Friday on the House floor, only to change his vote, told reporters that he felt his message about the tax and budget bill — that it could not end up costing taxpayers money — had been received.
“I think Mike Johnson knows now, that’s not going to be a reality,” Mr. Norman said, adding that he respected how the speaker had handled his concerns.
“He said, ‘Look, if I don’t perform the way I say I’m going to perform, and push the things that you’re saying, put me out,’” Mr. Norman continued. “He said, ‘I never thought I would have this job anyway.’”
Karoun Demirjian and Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.
Politics
'Let's see what happens': Trump picks for deputy Mideast envoy, Estonia ambassador, State Dept. spokesperson
President-elect Donald Trump announced via Truth Social Friday night his picks for Deputy Special Presidential Envoy, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.
Trump’s former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus will serve as Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace, Roman Pipko will serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia, and Tammy Bruce will serve as spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State.
Morgan Ortagus – Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace
In a post Friday afternoon, Trump announced Ortagus will work under Steven Witkoff, a New York real estate tycoon selected for Middle East envoy in November.
“Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump wrote in the post. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.”
Morgan Ortagus was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy. (Fox News)
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He added she will “hopefully” be an asset to Witkoff.
“We seek to bring calm and prosperity to a very troubled region,” Trump wrote. “I expect great results, and soon!”
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President-elect Donald Trump picked former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus to serve as deputy Mideast envoy Friday afternoon. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Ortagus, an active U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer, served as spokesperson at the Department of State from 2019 to 2021, where she was a member of Trump’s Abraham Accords team.
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Previously, she worked at the Department of the Treasury as a financial intelligence analyst and served as Deputy U.S. Treasury Attaché to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 2010 to 2011.
Morgan Ortagus, a former State Department spokesperson, was selected Friday afternoon to serve as deputy Mideast envoy.
She is also the founder of Polaris National Security and the host of “The Morgan Ortagus Show” on Sirius XM.
Roman Pipko – U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia
Pipko, who was born and raised in Estonia, represented U.S. interests in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Russian American Enterprise Fund.
“Roman has represented American companies, negotiating projects in Mongolia, Africa, Russia, Western Europe, and his native Estonia, in cooperation with U.S. Government Agencies, and has worked with Foreign Governments on the enforcement of U.S. sanctions,” Trump wrote. “As a legal immigrant, he has lived the promise of America, and I trust that he will advance American interests in his new role.”
Pipko is a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School.
Tammy Bruce was selected as the next spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Bruce will be joining Marco Rubio, nominee for United States Secretary of State, as State Department spokesperson.
Bruce, a political analyst, received her bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Southern California.
“After being a liberal activist in the 1990s, [she] saw the lies and fraud of the Radical Left, and quickly became one of the strongest Conservative voices on Radio and Television,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “As one of the longest serving News Contributors, Tammy has brought TRUTH to the American People for over two decades. I know she will. bring that same strength of conviction and fearless spirit to her new position as State Department Spokesperson.
WASHINGTON — Friday was the first day of work for California’s nine new House members, and their first order of business involved typical congressional chaos, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) narrowly won reelection to his role after almost losing the first round of voting.
The nine new representatives — all Democrats, including three who flipped Republican seats — cast their votes for Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). But Johnson, who has presided over the chamber since fall 2023, eked out a win.
For the record:
4:31 p.m. Jan. 3, 2025An earlier version of this report said former Rep. Michelle Steel flipped a congressional seat in 2020 held by Rep. Katie Porter. She defeated Rep. Harley Rouda.
As a Democratic stronghold on the West Coast, California is home to a bevy of Democratic leaders in Congress. Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) hold the positions of House Democratic Caucus chair and vice chair, respectively.
The state lost many of its heavyweights in recent years, however — notably Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who stepped down as House speaker to pass the torch of leadership to Jeffries. Although she no longer holds a position of leadership, Pelosi remains a powerful figure among her congressional colleagues. Still recovering from a hip surgery, Pelosi smiled from the House floor Friday as she hugged Jeffries after casting her vote for him as speaker.
Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who served as House speaker before a historic ouster, left Congress in 2023. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein died in 2023. And after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election, California will no longer have a leader in the White House.
Still, as the most populous state in the nation, California enjoys the most representation in the House with 52 delegates — down one after the 2020 census showed a population decline. Nine Californians officially took their oath of office Friday afternoon to join the 119th Congress.
Here are California’s newest representatives:
Rep. Derek Tran (D-Garden Grove): Tran won a razor-thin election against incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, a Republican who held the 45th Congressional District seat in Orange County for two terms. Steel herself flipped the seat in 2020 from Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda.
Rep. David Min (D-Irvine): When Democratic Rep. Katie Porter decided to run for U.S. Senate, Min, then a state senator, ran and won the seat, keeping it under Democratic control.
Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Covina): Cisneros is a familiar name around California politics, having served in a different congressional district previously. He easily glided to victory in his safely Democratic San Gabriel Valley district, succeeding retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale): Friedman, a former Assembly member, is now representing central Los Angeles County, taking over the seat long held by Adam B. Schiff, who handily won California’s open Senate seat.
Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood): Rivas, a former California Assembly member and nonprofit leader, easily won the Democratic 29th Congressional District, representing the San Fernando Valley.
Rep. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce): Whitesides defeated GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, flipping the northeastern Los Angeles County seat from red to blue.
Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced): The race in the Central Valley’s 13th Congressional District was the last election in the country to be called, as Gray flipped the seat from Republican Rep. John Duarte. Gray, a former state lawmaker, pitched himself as a centrist Democrat to win over the Central Valley’s largely agricultural population.
Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José): Liccardo, a former mayor of San José, is representing the Bay Area in Congress.
Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland): Simon is taking over the seat vacated by Rep. Barbara Lee, the longtime Democratic representative who lost the primary race for U.S. Senate.
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