Politics
California Gov. Newsom wasn’t first to call for sanctions on Russia. But it was the right move
Gov. Gavin Newsom needs California to hitch different states in piling on Russia for waging battle in opposition to peaceable neighbor Ukraine.
First, the truth that Newsom is following different governors into motion appears unusual. He at all times takes nice satisfaction in being first and incessantly boasts about it.
Second, in firing pictures at a goal as Newsom is asking and different states are already doing, there’s invariably the danger of a ricochet that wounds you.
If we’re damage, too, is it price it? And the way a lot will it injure Russia anyway?
As for not being the primary, so what? It’s not almost as vital or spectacular as Newsom appears to suppose.
What we’re instructed from the beginning in my enterprise is: “Get it first, however first get it proper.” Newsom generally falls quick on the second half.
Regarding the monetary blows being thrown at Russia, it’s prudent to ask whether or not taking a swipe at bully President Vladimir Putin is liable to harm us as a lot or greater than the goal.
We already know that worldwide financial sanctions in opposition to Russia are driving costs up on the fuel pump.
However on this scenario, when Ukrainian ladies and kids are fleeing for his or her lives, boys are being educated in how to withstand the Russian military with Molotov cocktails and grandmothers are wielding AK-47s in opposition to tanks, we’re morally obligated to at the least use our monetary would possibly as a weapon in opposition to the enemies of freedom.
“Russia’s brazen and lawless army assault on Ukraine calls for our assist for the Ukrainian individuals and exacting a direct and extreme price upon the Russian authorities in response to its persevering with aggression,” Newsom wrote to California’s three massive pension programs Monday in asking them to impose sanctions.
“California has a singular and highly effective place of affect given the state’s substantial international funding portfolio.”
Newsom reported that CalPERS — the California Public Staff’ Retirement System — holds roughly $480 billion in belongings. It’s the biggest public pension fund within the nation. The second largest is CalSTRS — the California State Academics’ Retirement System. It holds $320 billion. And the College of California Retirement System has $170 billion.
“This mixed quantity, $970 billion, is equal to 60% of Russia’s whole gross home product final 12 months,” the governor wrote.
That’s almost $1 trillion, however I’m unsure how related it’s.
As of Monday, solely $1.5 billion of it was invested in numerous Russian shares, actual property and personal fairness, Newsom stated.
However on Wednesday, I used to be knowledgeable by Newsom’s state finance division that these pension investments had plummeted in worth by at the least 25% in two days.
So, not like a number of legislators and a few governors, Newsom is advising warning and taking part in it protected. He’s not asking the pension programs to dump their Russian investments — to divest — at costs far beneath what they initially paid.
He’s merely asking that they not pour any extra pension funds into Russian stuff — and restrain from succumbing to the investor’s temptation to purchase low and later promote excessive. Assuming there ever is a Russian excessive once more after how Putin has sabotaged his nation.
“Some consumers will truly see this as a possibility to purchase extra Russian inventory,” says Laura Tyson, a UC Berkeley enterprise professor, Cupboard member within the Clinton White Home and co-chair of Newsom’s Council of Financial Advisors. “They might worth revenue over precept. However it might be very excessive danger.”
“We’re not going to be shopping for,” says California Chief Deputy Finance Director Gayle Miller. “We’re not going to place any extra money into Russia in any respect. That’s what the governor is advising.
“However we’re not saying, ‘Promote what we’ve received at a hearth sale to line the pockets of oligarchs.’”
That may damage the pension funds.
“Their economic system is bleeding and we’re serving to to forestall a transfusion,” says finance division spokesman H.D. Palmer.
So, the governor isn’t suggesting conventional divestment, as some legislators and different governors have.
Legislators — presumably with out pondering very deeply — plan to push a divestment invoice. It could require the pension funds to unload their Russian holdings at a giant loss.
State Controller Betty Yee opposes that concept.
“Unrealistic requires quick divestment won’t divorce us from our fiduciary obligation to guard the retirement revenue safety of California state staff and academics,” she stated in a press release.
“Divestment is one explicit type of sanction,” Tyson says. “The proof over time suggests it’s not a really efficient sanction. It’s extra of an expression in opposition to a rustic. However the financial penalty will not be as efficient as all of the issues we’re doing” on this nation and lots of others.
California had one profitable expertise with divestment within the Eighties, led by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. Torn by South African apartheid and its violence, he joined Democratic Meeting Speaker Willie Brown in enacting divestiture laws that helped carry down the bigoted white regime.
“California is signaling to the federal government of South Africa, and certainly to the world itself, that an ideal and free individuals are not going to fall silent to racism and brutal oppression,” Deukmejian stated in signing the invoice.
Miller was 10 in 1984 when her household left South Africa and settled in Irvine. They have been lively within the anti-apartheid motion.
“My dad and mom sewed gold cash into their coats to get cash overseas,” she remembers. “There was no different method.”
Newsom needs California — dwelling to the world’s fifth-largest economic system — to hitch President Biden and the remainder of the free world in slicing off the circulate of cash to brute Russia.
He wasn’t the primary this time, however he received it proper.
Politics
Appeals court rules Texas has right to build razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration: 'Huge win'
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Texas has the right to build a razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration into the Lone Star State.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the ruling on X, saying President Biden was “wrong to cut our razor wire.”
“We continue adding more razor wire border barrier,” the Republican leader wrote.
Wednesday’s 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clears the way for Texas to pursue a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of trespassing without having to remove the fencing.
TRUMP SAYS MEXICO WILL STOP FLOW OF MIGRANTS AFTER SPEAKING WITH MEXICAN PRESIDENT FOLLOWING TARIFF THREATS
It also reversed a federal judge’s November 2023 refusal to grant a preliminary injunction to Texas as the state resisted federal efforts to remove fencing along the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, Texas.
Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee during the president-elect’s first term, wrote for Wednesday’s majority that Texas was trying only to safeguard its own property, not “regulate” U.S. Border Patrol, and was likely to succeed in its trespass claims.
LIBERAL NANTUCKET REELS FROM MIGRANT CRIME WAVE AS BIDEN SPENDS THANKSGIVING IN RICH FRIEND’S MANSION
Duncan said the federal government waived its sovereign immunity and rejected its concerns that a ruling by Texas would impede the enforcement of immigration law and undermine the government’s relationship with Mexico.
He said the public interest “supports clear protections for property rights from government intrusion and control” and ensuring that federal immigration law enforcement does not “unnecessarily intrude into the rights of countless property owners.”
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling a “huge win for Texas.”
“The Biden Administration has been enjoined from damaging, destroying, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s border fencing,” Paxton wrote in a post on X. “We sued immediately when the federal government was observed destroying fences to let illegal aliens enter, and we’ve fought every step of the way for Texas sovereignty and security.”
The White House has been locked in legal battles with Texas and other states that have tried to deter illegal immigration.
In May, the full 5th Circuit heard arguments in a separate case between Texas and the White House over whether the state can keep a 1,000-foot floating barrier on the Rio Grande.
The appeals court is also reviewing a judge’s order blocking a Texas law that would allow state officials to arrest, prosecute and order the removal of people in the country illegally.
Politics
Rep. Katie Porter obtains temporary restraining order against ex-boyfriend on harassment allegations
U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) secured a temporary restraining order Tuesday against a former boyfriend, saying in dozens of pages of court filings that he had bombarded her, as well as her family and colleagues, with hundreds of messages that she described as “persistent abuse and harassment.”
Porter, 50, alleged in a filing with Orange County Superior Court that her ex-boyfriend Julian Willis, 55, was contacting her and her family with such frequency that she had a “significant fear” for her “personal safety and emotional well-being.”
Judge Stephen T. Hicklin signed a restraining order Tuesday barring Willis from communicating with Porter and her children until a mid-December court hearing. He also barred Willis from communicating about Porter with her current and former colleagues.
In the court filing, Porter said that Willis had been hospitalized twice since late 2022 on involuntary psychiatric holds and had a history of abusing prescription painkillers and other drugs.
She said in a statement to The Times that Willis’ mental health and struggles with addiction seemed to have gotten worse since she asked him in August to move out of her Irvine home. She said she sought the court order after his threats to her family and colleagues “escalated in both their frequency and intensity.”
“I sincerely hope he gets the help he needs,” Porter said.
Willis declined to comment. He will have an opportunity to file a legal response to the temporary restraining order and challenge Porter’s allegations.
Porter is leaving the House of Representatives in January after losing in California’s U.S. Senate primary in March. She has been discussed as a front-runner in the 2026 governor’s race in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out, but has not said whether she will launch a campaign.
The 53-page court filing, first reported by Politico, included 22 pages of emails, text messages and other communications among Porter, family members and colleagues who had received messages from Willis, as well as messages that Willis sent to Porter’s attorney and to her political mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
The filing also included messages between herself and Willis’ siblings as they discussed trying to help him during his psychiatric holds and while he was staying in a sober-living facility.
Porter said that since she ordered Willis to move out, he had sent her more than 1,000 text messages and emails, including texting her 82 times in one 24-hour period in September, and 55 times on Nov. 12 before she blocked his number.
Porter said in the filing that her ex-boyfriend had “already contacted at least three reporters to disseminate false and damaging information” about her and her children, which she said “poses a serious risk to [her] career and personal reputation.”
The filing includes an email that Porter said Willis sent to her attorney late Monday, in which Willis said he had visited Porter’s son at college in Iowa and told him that he would “bring the hammer down on Katie and smash her and her life into a million pieces.”
Another screenshot shows Willis telling Porter’s attorney that he would file a complaint about Porter, who has children ages 12 and 16, with child protective services.
One of Porter’s congressional staff members received a text message from Willis saying he would “punish the f—” out of him if he did not agree to “cooperate” with a New York Times reporter and Willis’ attorneys, according to a screenshot included in the court document.
Willis previously made the news in 2021, when he was arrested after a fight that broke out at a Porter town hall at a park in Irvine.
Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.
Politics
Homan taking death threats against him ‘more seriously’ after Trump officials targeted with violent threats
Incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan reacted to news of death threats against Trump nominees on Wednesday and said he now takes the death threats he has previously received seriously.
“I have not taken this serious up to this point,” Homan told Fox News anchor Gillian Turner on “The Story” on Wednesday, referring to previous death threats made against him and his family.
“Now that I know what’s happened in the last 24 hours. I will take it a little more serious. But look, I’ve been dealing with this. When I was the ICE director in the first administration, I had numerous death threats. I had a security detail with me all the time. Even after I retired, death threats continued and even after I retired as the ICE Director. I had U.S. Marshals protection for a long time to protect me and my family.”
Homan explained that what “doesn’t help” the situation is the “negative press” around Trump.
HARRIS NEVER LED TRUMP, INTERNAL POLLS SHOWED — BUT DNC OFFICIALS WERE KEPT IN THE DARK
“I’m not in the cabinet, but, you know, I’ve read numerous hit pieces. I mean, you know, I’m a racist and, you know, I’m the father of family separation, all this other stuff. So the hate media doesn’t help at all because there are some nuts out there. They’ll take advantage. So that doesn’t help.”
Homan’s comments come shortly after Fox News Digital first reported that nearly a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees and other appointees tapped for the incoming administration were targeted Tuesday night with “violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” prompting a “swift” law enforcement response.
ARMED FELON ARRESTED FOR THREATENING TO KILL TRUMP ATTENDED RALLY WEEKS AFTER BUTLER ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
The “attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’” according to Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” she told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “In response, law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action.”
Sources told Fox News Digital that John Ratcliffe, the nominee to be CIA director, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the nominee for UN ambassador, were among those targeted. Brooke Rollins, who Trump has tapped to be secretary of agriculture, and Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to be EPA administrator, separately revealed they were also targeted.
Threats were also made against Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former Trump attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz’s family.
Homan told Fox News that he is “not going to be intimidated by these people” and “I’m not going to let them silence me.”
“What I’ve learned today I’ll start taking a little more serious.”
Homan added that he believes “we need to have a strong response once we find out is behind all this.”
“It’s illegal to threaten someone’s life. And we need to follow through with that.”
The threats on Tuesday night came mere months after Trump survived two assassination attempts.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report
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