Politics

Opinion: On homelessness, liberal California and the ultraconservative Supreme Court largely agree

Published

1 year ago

November 28, 2024

Opinion: On homelessness, liberal California and the ultraconservative Supreme Court largely agree

What does a small, solidly Republican city in Oregon have in common with California’s largest liberal enclaves? All breathed a sigh of relief this year thanks to the far-right U.S. Supreme Court.

The court’s conservative bloc ruled in favor of the city of Grants Pass, Ore., in June, overturning a key lower court ruling on homelessness and clearing the way for local governments to crack down on sleeping in public spaces regardless of the availability of housing or shelter. California’s response to the ruling has become a vivid reminder of not just the intractability of the homelessness epidemic but also the tension between national liberal politics and local policy in Democratic-dominated states and cities.

Some 186,000 people across California lack consistent shelter. Roughly 84% of the state’s voters believe homelessness is a “very serious” problem, a Quinnipiac University poll found, and Democrats and Republicans were in similarly broad agreement on that assessment, at 81% and 85%, respectively. In that light, it’s not surprising that California officials have wasted no time since Grants Pass in implementing their preferred “solution” to the homelessness problem.

From San Diego to San Francisco, state and local workers began disassembling makeshift shelters and camps and displacing the homeless people living in them. Within days, entire blocks were remade across the state. Residents rallied to social media platforms such as Reddit and Nextdoor to exchange strategies for getting homeless encampments removed from their own neighborhoods.

Other California residents have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling and Democratic officials’ exuberant co-sign as further evidence of the nation’s growing disdain for society’s most marginalized. Reports spread of homeless people being ejected from campsites with little or no warning, their pets taken away and medications lost, among other indignities.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have condemned the Grants Pass ruling. The chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness said it set a “dangerous precedent.” But the precedent set by California Democrats has arguably been far more dangerous.

During the initial waves of the Golden State’s housing crisis, in the late 1970s, Democratic politicians were reluctant to be seen as overtly antagonistic to the state’s homeless people, many of them veterans of the nation’s wars in Vietnam and Korea. But as the homeless population has grown and diversified, officials have faced deepening NIMBY sentiment not just in California’s well-heeled liberal cities but also in Democratic-leaning working-class communities that increasingly experience the highest rates of homelessness and related problems such as loitering and blight. As a result, anti-homeless policies have become more politically appealing despite being painfully at odds with inclusivity and other virtues Democrats signal on the national stage.

Addressing the housing crisis has been a quintessential and enduring social justice cause for Democrats, encompassing themes that tend to unify the party, including health, economic and racial equity. According to one survey, 82% of homeless adults in California reported having experienced a serious mental health condition, and 65% had used illicit drugs at some point. The state’s Black people are disproportionately affected by homelessness: Despite making up only about 5% of California’s total population, they represent roughly 25% of its homeless people. Such statistics helped liberals frame homelessness as a product of Republican policies weakening social services and promoting unchecked capitalism.

But that view has lost support as homelessness has become more dramatic and visible over the last decade. In some of California’s liberal enclaves, homeless encampments have become full-blown tent cities. Scenes of squalor, drug use and petty crime have spawned a subculture of gonzo-style documentary videos racking up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. San Francisco and Los Angeles have the most prominent crises, inviting scrutiny of the latter city’s readiness to host the 2028 Olympics.

Democrats’ conundrum is whether authorities should roust, fine and imprison people residing in public spaces in the interest of answering the broader community’s quality-of-life concerns. Critics have argued that such criminalization is a cruel distraction and that more affordable housing is the only way to meaningfully address the crisis.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and his predecessor, Jerry Brown, devoted billions of dollars to homelessness prevention and affordable housing even as the homeless population generally continued to grow. Newsom was quick to seize on the conservative Supreme Court’s permission to put punishment ahead of housing, warning cities that if they don’t remove encampments, they risk losing state funding. San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who just lost a reelection bid partly because of concerns about homelessness, likewise promised to be “very aggressive” in removing encampments. Never mind that those displaced by the state’s homeless sweeps often end up occupying another nearby space and returning at a later date.

So how did we get here? California’s ruling Democrats have tried to have it all ways, largely cultivating and tolerating deeply bureaucratic housing development standards while amplifying a booming tech industry populated by employees willing to pay top dollar for homes, dramatically boosting prices. And although Newsom and others have heralded emergency housing and other measures to answer the crisis, the total capacity is far short of the unhoused population. That’s partly because new facilities are often rebuffed by cities such as the L.A. suburb of Norwalk, which recently enacted a moratorium on homeless shelters.

Reducing and preventing homelessness, whatever the underlying motivations, is one of the few civic concerns that bind the political parties together in an age of stark polarization. Beyond the obvious moral merits of the cause, it could provide a road map to arrive at bipartisan solutions for other challenges facing the state and country. Unfortunately, the consensus on homelessness is coalescing around a prescription with little chance of long-term success.

Jerel Ezell is an assistant professor of community health sciences at UC Berkeley.

Politics

Trump signs order to protect Venezuela oil revenue held in US accounts

Published

9 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Trump signs order to protect Venezuela oil revenue held in US accounts

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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order blocking U.S. courts from seizing Venezuelan oil revenues held in American Treasury accounts.

The order states that court action against the funds would undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.

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President Donald Trump is pictured signing two executive orders on Sept. 19, 2025, establishing the “Trump Gold Card” and introducing a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas. He signed another executive order recently protecting oil revenue. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Trump signed the order on Friday, the same day that he met with nearly two dozen top oil and gas executives at the White House.

The president said American energy companies will invest $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s “rotting” oil infrastructure and push production to record levels following the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

The U.S. has moved aggressively to take control of Venezuela’s oil future following the collapse of the Maduro regime.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.

You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.

Politics

Column: Some leaders will do anything to cling to positions of power

Published

10 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Column: Some leaders will do anything to cling to positions of power

One of the most important political stories in American history — one that is particularly germane to our current, tumultuous time — unfolded in Los Angeles some 65 years ago.

Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, had just received his party’s nomination for president and in turn he shunned the desires of his most liberal supporters by choosing a conservative out of Texas as his running mate. He did so in large part to address concerns that his faith would somehow usurp his oath to uphold the Constitution. The last time the Democrats nominated a Catholic — New York Gov. Al Smith in 1928 — he lost in a landslide, so folks were more than a little jittery about Kennedy’s chances.

“I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk,” Kennedy told the crowd at the Memorial Coliseum. “But I look at it this way: The Democratic Party has once again placed its confidence in the American people, and in their ability to render a free, fair judgment.”

The most important part of the story is what happened before Kennedy gave that acceptance speech.

While his faith made party leaders nervous, they were downright afraid of the impact a civil rights protest during the Democratic National Convention could have on November’s election. This was 1960. The year began with Black college students challenging segregation with lunch counter sit-ins across the Deep South, and by spring the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had formed. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not the organizer of the protest at the convention, but he planned to be there, guaranteeing media attention. To try to prevent this whole scene, the most powerful Black man in Congress was sent to stop him.

The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was also a warrior for civil rights, but the House representative preferred the legislative approach, where backroom deals were quietly made and his power most concentrated. He and King wanted the same things for Black people. But Powell — who was first elected to Congress in 1944, the same year King enrolled at Morehouse College at the age of 15 — was threatened by the younger man’s growing influence. He was also concerned that his inability to stop the protest at the convention would harm his chance to become chairman of a House committee.

And so Powell — the son of a preacher, and himself a Baptist preacher in Harlem — told King that if he didn’t cancel, Powell would tell journalists a lie that King was having a homosexual affair with his mentor, Bayard Rustin. King stuck to his plan and led a protest — even though such a rumor would not only have harmed King, but also would have undermined the credibility of the entire civil rights movement. Remember, this was 1960. Before the March on Washington, before passage of the Voting Rights Act, before the dismantling of the very Jim Crow laws Powell had vowed to dismantle when first running for office.

That threat, my friends, is the most important part of the story.

It’s not that Powell didn’t want the best for the country. It’s just that he wanted to be seen as the one doing it and was willing to derail the good stemming from the civil rights movement to secure his own place in power. There have always been people willing to make such trade-offs. Sometimes they dress up their intentions with scriptures to make it more palatable; other times they play on our darkest fears. They do not care how many people get hurt in the process, even if it’s the same people they profess to care for.

That was true in Los Angeles in 1960.

That was true in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.

That is true in the streets of America today.

Whether we are talking about an older pastor who is threatened by the growing influence of a younger voice or a president clinging to office after losing an election: To remain king, some men are willing to burn the entire kingdom down.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Politics

Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns

Published

21 hours ago

January 10, 2026

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Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns

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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stopping subsidies on childcare programs in five states, including Minnesota, amid allegations of fraud.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Biden appointee, didn’t rule on the legality of the funding freeze, but said the states had met the legal threshold to maintain the “status quo” on funding for at least two weeks while arguments continue.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns.

The programs include the Child Care and Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, and the Social Services Block Grant, all of which help needy families.

USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

“Families who rely on childcare and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement on Tuesday.

The states, which include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, argued in court filings that the federal government didn’t have the legal right to end the funds and that the new policy is creating “operational chaos” in the states.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his nomination hearing in 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In total, the states said they receive more than $10 billion in federal funding for the programs.

HHS said it had “reason to believe” that the programs were offering funds to people in the country illegally.

‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: SENATE REPUBLICANS PRESS GOV WALZ OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL

The table above shows the five states and their social safety net funding for various programs which are being withheld by the Trump administration over allegations of fraud. (AP Digital Embed)

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.