Politics
Facing reelection, Newsom touts the ‘California way’ and teases gas tax rebate
Gov. Gavin Newsom forged the state as a beacon of democracy in a turbulent world in his annual tackle to lawmakers Tuesday, contrasting the “California means” by means of its embrace of variety and ingenious options with the politics of division and rising “authoritarian impulses” in America.
However as he embarks on a marketing campaign for reelection, Newsom additionally promised a tax rebate for Californians as excessive gasoline costs weigh on the minds of voters and his Republican critics. Newsom blamed “geopolitical uncertainty,” referencing the conflict in Ukraine, for the growing value of gasoline.
“I believe all of us no less than right here can agree that individuals have at all times appeared to California for inspiration,” Newsom mentioned. “Now, within the midst of a lot turmoil with stacking stresses and dramatic social and financial change, California is doing what we’ve finished for generations, lighting out [for] the territory forward of the remaining, increasing the horizon of what’s doable.”
It’s a Capitol custom for the governor to ship a State of the State speech outlining his agenda to lawmakers from each homes and political events within the Meeting chamber. However for the second yr in a row, Newsom bucked conference and selected a distinct location for the annual tackle, which some have advised has turn out to be an irrelevant artifact from one other period.
Talking from a 21-story glass tower and state constructing blocks from the legislative chambers to an viewers of greater than 100, Newsom mentioned little about his imaginative and prescient for the ultimate yr of his first time period. As an alternative he selected to emphasise local weather change insurance policies, COVID-19 response and the state’s prospering financial system, a preview of the case he’ll make to voters in his marketing campaign for a second time period main as much as the November election.
The strategy felt much like that of his State of the State speech final yr, when Newsom spoke to a principally empty Dodger Stadium and famous the the toll of COVID-19 on California as he touted his administration’s response to the coronavirus. That tackle foreshadowed a pandemic argument his political workforce seized on to defeat the recall greater than six months later.
“Our lockdowns, distressing as they have been, saved lives,” Newsom mentioned Tuesday. “Our masks mandates saved lives. Your decisions saved lives. California skilled far decrease COVID dying charges than some other massive state. Fewer than Texas, Ohio. Fewer than Florida — 35% fewer, to be precise.”
Although California’s sweeping COVID-19 restrictions brought about an uproar in conservative areas and concern amongst many within the enterprise neighborhood, the financial toll hasn’t been as extreme because the impression felt in different massive states.
California’s financial system contracted lower than these of different states through the pandemic and skilled the fastest-growing gross home product within the first three quarters of 2021, mentioned Jerry Nickelsburg, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast and a professor of economics.
“Our GDP development has persistently outpaced not solely the remainder of the nation, however most different massive, Western democracies,” Newsom mentioned.
Although Newsom mentioned California stands out as a result of it doesn’t depart employees behind as its companies develop, fewer jobs can be found now for low-wage employees in retail and hospitality than earlier than the pandemic, Nickelsburg mentioned.
“California lags in restoration of jobs misplaced in comparison with another states, which provides California the next unemployment fee, and that’s as a result of the roles that have been misplaced have been within the sectors which have a preponderance of human contact essential to ship the companies,” Nickelsburg mentioned.
The decline in jobs is due partly to a drop in international vacationers and shifts within the office as fewer California employees frequent eating places throughout and after the workday.
“So, these two issues imply that in leisure and hospitality and retail, California is a bit slower to get better employment, and these are low-income sectors,” he mentioned. “That’s hurting the individuals who in all probability are least in a position to handle it.”
On the identical time, Nickelsburg mentioned, many employees are in search of different employment as a result of dangers for in-person retail and hospitality jobs have elevated and wages haven’t.
Below Newsom’s management, California expanded assist for employees and households through the pandemic by means of insurance policies that present lease reduction, supply COVID-19-related paid sick depart and established a now-expired moratorium on evictions.
The governor’s January price range proposal additionally included a name to broaden Medi-Cal to cowl all income-eligible residents no matter immigration standing. He additionally proposed to pause the gasoline tax improve and constructed on that Tuesday when he mentioned he would introduce a tax rebate for Californians to handle rising gasoline costs.
The price to transportation initiatives, nonetheless, could possibly be excessive. A report final month by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Workplace concluded {that a} 1-cent drop within the state’s portion of the gasoline tax would cut back transportation revenues by as a lot as $175 million.
Meeting Republican chief James Gallagher of Yuba Metropolis criticized the shortage of specifics round Newsom’s promise of a rebate.
“There’s plenty of packages that get introduced by this governor, however not plenty of particulars,” he mentioned.
Regardless of efforts to spice up the security internet for California’s poorest residents, the problem of homelessness additionally stays prime of thoughts to voters in cities who see the results on their streets and sidewalks daily.
Earlier than Newsom delivered his speech, Republican lawmakers released a video rebutting his anticipated tackle and calling the state’s homelessness disaster “an appalling failure of management.”
“The scenario has solely gotten worse,” Assemblywoman Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Newhall) mentioned within the video. “The failure of the governor on this challenge is evident — not simply within the rising encampments, however within the tidal wave of crime that’s washing over our communities.”
The GOP is seizing on considerations over homelessness and crime, points that polls present stay key vulnerabilities for the Democratic governor with voters unhappy together with his dealing with of each points. Newsom raised expectations about his potential to cut back homelessness together with his State of the State speech in 2020, when he declared that homelessness could possibly be solved and referred to as it “our calling.”
On Tuesday, Newsom famous his administration’s work to supply non permanent and everlasting shelter to 58,000 unhoused Californians for the reason that pandemic started however added that “all of us acknowledge we now have extra to do.”
Newsom launched the broad outlines of a brand new plan final week that would drive these affected by untreated psychiatric issues and drug habit into “CARE Courtroom,” a program during which counties should develop a plan to ship housing and clinically prescribed therapy and drugs to eligible candidates.
Newsom additionally continued his effort to refocus the political debate over crime on gun violence in his speech Tuesday.
“Our strategy is to be neither detached to the realities of the current day nor revert to the heavy-handed insurance policies which have marked the failures of the previous,” Newsom mentioned. “We’re funding native regulation enforcement and prosecutors to research and clear up extra crime. We’re bolstering the lawyer basic’s workplace, prosecuting organized theft rings, and getting unlawful weapons off our streets.”
The crux of Newsom’s case for “the California means” centered on local weather change, the work on which he mentioned “California has no friends.”
Newsom has made good on his marketing campaign guarantees to be a nationwide chief on environmental points and local weather change, calling for all new automobiles bought within the state to have zero carbon emissions by 2035. He additionally took a step towards requiring well being and security buffer zones round oil and gasoline wells.
However some environmentalists wished to listen to extra from the Democratic governor on local weather points.
R.L. Miller, former chair of the California Democratic Occasion Environmental Caucus, mentioned advocates for rooftop photo voltaic have been ready for Newsom to take a place on a proposal by the California Public Utilities Fee to rewrite the state’s rooftop photo voltaic incentive program, which might improve prices for householders.
“He missed this chance to say something about rooftop photo voltaic,” Miller mentioned. “And the longer he places this off, the extra offended we’re.”
Meeting Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) mentioned Newsom’s agenda seems to align with lots of the concepts legislators will deal with within the coming months.
“I believe he undoubtedly hit all the problems that persons are involved about and that we have to sort out this yr,” he mentioned.
Occasions employees author John Myers contributed to this report.
For such a tiny fish, the snail darter has haunted Tennessee. It was the endangered species that swam its way to the Supreme Court in a vitriolic battle during the 1970s that temporarily blocked the construction of a dam.
On Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.
“There is, technically, no snail darter,” said Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum.
Dr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues report in the journal Current Biology that the snail darter, Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered.
Dr. Near contends that early researchers “squinted their eyes a bit” when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville.
“I feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the ‘conservation species concept,’ where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,” Dr. Near said.
The T.V.A. began building the Tellico Dam in 1967. Environmentalists, lawyers, farmers and the Cherokee, whose archaeological sites faced flooding, were eager to halt the project. In August 1973, they stumbled upon a solution.
David Etnier, a dam opponent and a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, went snorkeling with students in the Little Tennessee River at Coytee Spring, not far from Tellico. There, they found a fish on the river bottom that Dr. Etnier said he had never seen before, and he named it the snail darter.
The fish became a “David” to pit against “Goliath” — because if it were to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the dam’s construction would be blocked.
“Here’s a little fish that might save your farm,” Dr. Etnier told a local farmer, according to the book “The Snail Darter and the Dam,” by Zygmunt Plater, an emeritus law professor at Boston College.
Elected officials were eager to finish the dam, and grew increasingly frustrated.
“This two-inch fish, which surely kept the lowest profile of all God’s creatures until a few years ago, has been the bane of my existence and the nemesis of what I fondly hoped would be my golden years,” Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., of Tennessee said about the snail darter in 1979.
That year, Representative John Duncan Sr., a Tennessee Republican, also described the snail darter as a “worthless, unsightly, minute, inedible minnow.”
After the Supreme Court upheld the protection of the snail darter, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act. The dam began operating in 1979.
Jeffrey Simmons, an author of the study who formerly worked as a biologist at the T.V.A., discovered what appeared to be snail darters in 2015 on the border of Alabama and Mississippi, far from the Tellico Dam.
“Holy crap, do you know what this is?” Mr. Simmons said to a colleague in the creek that day.
Mr. Simmons knew it shouldn’t be there if it were truly a snail darter.
Ava Ghezelayagh, now at the University of Chicago, and colleagues conducted analysis of the fish’s DNA and compared snail darter physical traits with other fish. That led to confirmation that it was a match with the stargazing darter.
Dr. Plater, who also argued successfully for the fish in the Supreme Court case, took issue with the Yale study. He said the approach favored by Dr. Near and colleagues makes them genetic “lumpers” instead of “splitters,” meaning they reduce species instead of making more. He believes the findings also lean too heavily on genetics.
“Whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act,” Dr. Plater said of Dr. Near.
Dr. Near said being described as a “lumper” was a pejorative in his world, and he added that most of the research he and colleagues had performed had resulted in speciation splits, including a 2022 study.
“The work strengthens the Endangered Species Act, because it shows how science can be revised with additional information and newer perspectives,” he said. “The methods we use in this study are leading to the discovery of scores of new species, many of which are more endangered.”
Decades after the Tellico Dam battle, the fish formerly known as the snail darter is thriving. It left the endangered species list in 2020.
“This is still a success story,” Mr. Simmons said. “Its listing under the Endangered Species Act worked, regardless of what you call this fish.”
While Mr. Duncan died in 1988, his son, former Representative John J. Duncan Jr., known as Jimmy, said his father would have felt vindicated.
“He felt the project should have never been stopped by that little snail darter,” he said.
Politics
Federal courts will not make criminal referrals to DOJ over separate ethics complaints against Justice Thomas
Separate ethics complaints filed by members of Congress and an advocacy group against Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson will not be referred to the Justice Department, federal court officials announced.
The U.S. Judicial Conference said Thomas has agreed to follow updated guidelines on listing free private travel and gifts from friends, following previous reporting on undisclosed hospitality.
For her part, Jackson has amended her financial disclosures following complaints about her husband’s consulting income as a physician.
Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), along with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), had asked for an investigation by the judiciary itself into undisclosed hospitality provided to Thomas by billionaire friend Harland Crow. ProPublica reported on several instances of private travel and lodging over the years.
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Judge Robert Conrad, who heads the judicial conference policymaking body, said in letters to the lawmakers that Thomas had filed amended financial disclosures “that address several issues identified in your letter.”
Additionally, Conrad said that it was not clear whether the judiciary itself could make criminal referrals against a sitting Supreme Court member.
“Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly. But no such express directive appears in this provision,” Conrad said.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen during sunset. (Aaron Schwartz/SIPA USA)
Conrad noted that Whitehouse and Wyden had separately asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to name a special counsel to investigate then-former President Donald Trump. Garland has not acted yet on that request.
Whitehouse, in a statement, criticized the Judicial Conference’s decision.
“By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations,” said Whitehouse.
The complaint filed against Jackson came from Citizens for Renewing America, led by Russ Vought, who was nominated by President-elect Trump to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Questions over ethics, including unreported private travel by some justices, have led the court to adopt its first code of ethics last year.
United States Supreme Court (front row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pose for their official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. ((Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images))
However, compliance is left to each of the nine justices, leading to concerns the court is not taking its own ethics enforcement standards seriously.
A two-year investigation by Senate Democrats released last week found additional luxury travel by Justice Thomas in 2021 was not noted on his annual financial disclosure form.
Fix the Court, a group which advocates for greater judicial transparency, urged Congress to act.
“The Conference’s letters further underscore the need for Congress to create a new and transparent mechanism to investigate the justices for ethics violations since the Conference is unwilling to act upon the one method we had presumed existed to do that,” said Executive Director Gabe Roth.
Politics
Newsom aims to limit unhealthy food in California, getting ahead of Trump administration and RFK Jr.
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Friday attempting to limit access to ultra-processed foods, a directive he cast as a continuation of California’s “nation leading” nutrition and health standards.
“The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said in a statement. “California has been a leader for years in creating healthy and delicious school meals, and removing harmful ingredients and chemicals from food. We’re going to work with the industry, consumers and experts to crack down on ultra-processed foods, and create a healthier future for every Californian.”
The order directs state agencies to develop recommendations to limit the health harms of ultra-processed foods and calls for proposals to reduce the purchase of candy, soda and other unhealthy foods made with synthetic dyes or additives by recipients of government food benefits.
The move comes weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office for his second term, with iconoclastic former environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, but he has been a vocal critic of ultra-processed foods and promised to radically overhaul the country’s food system. Food dyes, pasteurized milk and seed oils are among the common items he has criticized, sometimes making health claims that are not backed up by science.
Though Newsom didn’t mention Kennedy, the Democratic governor of California is planting a preemptive flag around the issue and signaling his refusal to concede the terrain to the incoming Trump administration. His executive order included a long list of steps the state has taken to improve nutrition.
Processed foods are foods altered from their natural form, like frozen vegetables, whereas ultra — or highly —processed foods are foods that have been significantly altered from their natural state, like packaged chips or soft drinks. Ultra-processed foods make up the vast majority of the U.S. food supply, research shows.
The Golden State has indeed been a national leader in banning food additives, with Newsom signing a 2023 bill that made California the first state in the nation to prohibit four additives found in popular cereal, soda, candy and drinks.
The California Food Safety Act was colloquially referred to as the “Skittles ban” before its passage because an earlier version of the bill also targeted titanium dioxide, which is used to color Skittles and several other popular candies. But the final law was amended to remove reference to the substance, solely banning brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben and red dye No. 3.
Last year, Newsom signed a separate bill into law that bars snack foods containing a number of synthetic food dyes from California public schools. That law will prevent popular snack foods like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from being stocked in school vending machines or cafeterias when it goes into effect on Dec. 31, 2027.
Laws to protect students from sugary drinks go back decades: In 2009 California banned all K-12 schools from offering soda.
The governor’s order cites the link between “ultra-processed foods” and cancer, obesity, diabetes and other health problems. The order says the U.S. allows more than 10,000 chemicals in food, color additives, or ingredients, compared to 300 that are allowed in the European Union.
Newsom is requiring the California Department of Public Health to provide recommendations by April 1 to limit the harms associated with ultra-processed foods and food ingredients that pose a health risk, which may include warning labels. He tasked the Californa Department of Social Services to issue recommendations to reduce the purchase by California food-stamp users of soda, candy, other ultra-processed foods, or foods made with synthetic food dye or additives on the same timeline.
Among several health directives, his order also requires state agencies to identify areas to increase standards for healthy school meals and to investigate the negative health consequences of food dyes.
Ultra-processed foods will likely be at the forefront of the national discourse in the coming weeks as Kennedy prepares for his Senate confirmation hearing.
Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, has promoted a number of false health claims and fringe conspiracy theories. But his positions against food additives have also brought support from unlikely bedfellows who have criticized other parts of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
“Yes, there are some things that he supports that we would agree with, but they feel more like the stopped clock that’s right twice a day,” Dr. Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in an earlier interview with The Times — citing food additives as one example.
Lurie characterized Kennedy’s potential appointment more broadly as a dangerous choice because of his inability “to discern the difference between good and bad science.”
The Food and Drug Administration — the agency perhaps most publicly in Kennedy’s crosshairs — could be significantly impacted by his leadership if he is confirmed by the Senate.
The agency, which falls under the the Department of Health and Human Services, has a massive purview, regulating about 77% of the U.S. food supply and overseeing the safety of nearly $4 trillion worth of food, tobacco and medical products, according to federal data.
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