Following two wet winters that boosted California’s water supplies, Gov. Gavin Newsom has officially lifted a drought emergency declaration in 19 counties that are home to 70% of the state’s population.

The decision will roll back certain drought-related state authorities in counties including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange and Riverside, among others.

At the same time, Newsom decided to keep the drought state of emergency in effect in 39 counties where state officials say significant effects of the severe 2020-22 drought have persisted, including depleted groundwater supplies and threats to native fish.

These 39 counties include regions across the Central Valley and in the watersheds of the Scott, Shasta and Klamath rivers, among other areas.

Newsom referred to this week’s extreme heat wave as he explained why his administration is retaining certain drought authorities in parts of the state.

“As this week’s weather makes clear, California and the West experience extreme weather swings that exacerbate our water challenges and make it more important than ever that we build a climate-resilient water system,” Newsom said. “This targeted action is responsive to current conditions while continuing the tools and support for work underway to help future-proof water supplies in the most impacted communities.”

State officials said Newsom’s order responds to the improved conditions in parts of the state while continuing efforts to support drought recovery. They said where certain drought measures remain in place, they will help the state address continued impacts to local water supplies.

“We continue to help local communities recover from drought conditions,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary. “In some cases, the powers that we have under these orders are quite helpful to support local communities recovering.”

The measures that will remain in place in 39 counties include suspending environmental requirements for certain groundwater recharge projects, giving the state natural resources secretary the authority to suspend environmental requirements for conservation projects and allowing the Office of Emergency Services to continue providing disaster assistance funding. State agencies will also continue to have the authority to adopt emergency regulations to require minimum flows in the Klamath River and Clear Lake watersheds to protect salmon and other fish.

“We know that our water extremes are getting more extreme. Our dry periods are becoming drier. Our wetter periods are becoming wetter,” Crowfoot said. “So business as usual is no longer an option. That is in part why we’re maintaining some of these provisions, to enable us to move more quickly to allow communities to recover from these impacts, but also to prepare for what will be worsening droughts and floods over time.”

California suffered through the state’s driest three-year period on record from 2020 through 2022.

Newsom declared a statewide drought emergency in October 2021 and called for Californians to voluntarily reduce water use 15%.

The drought ended dramatically in early 2023 as one of the wettest winters on record unleashed flooding and blanketed the Sierra Nevada in heavy snow.

In March 2023, following that series of storms, Newsom rolled back some of the most stringent drought measures, including an order that had required urban suppliers to activate conservation plans for a shortage of 20%.

The termination of the drought emergency in 19 counties ended provisions that had enabled emergency conservation measures, suspended restrictions on water diversions during storms for groundwater recharge, and suspended requirements of state contracting laws, among other things.

In addition to lifting the drought measures, the governor rescinded provisions of prior executive orders that were aimed at recovery efforts following the flooding in 2023.

During the last two wet years, the governor’s drought executive order effectively became a “drought-flood” executive order, enabling expanded efforts to capture floodwaters and address damage, said Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources. She said it’s now the drought provisions that have a “long tail” and are still needed in parts of the state.

“Even if there isn’t a hydrologic drought, we still have the supply challenges,” Nemeth said.

In the coming decades, climate change is projected to shrink the amount of water California can deliver in an average year. The Newsom administration’s long-term water plans call for California to prepare for an estimated 10% decrease in the state’s water supply by 2040.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor website, about 41% of the state is currently classified as being abnormally dry or in a moderate drought. The unusually dry regions include large portions of Northern California and the southeastern corner of the state.

“We have full reservoirs. That’s a really good thing. But we also have dry conditions on the horizon. We’ve had really high temperatures this summer that are kind of reminiscent of the summer of 2020,” at the beginning of the last drought, Nemeth said. “So at the onset of yet another year that may provide a degree of extremes, we know we continue to have these counties that we consider to be kind of drought hot spots still because of supply problems, and we’re ready to address those issues as they arise.”

FLASHBACK: While defending then-Sen. Kamala Harris against criticism from then-President Donald Trump, Sen. Sherrod Brown told CNN that Trump voters are “supporting a racist for president.”

“Well I think it works,” Brown told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when asked about Trump calling Harris “horrible” and “nasty.”

“It’s the reason that the 35 percent of Americans that support President Trump love President Trump, because he plays to the anger and fear and resentment and often to racism of not all but some of his supporters,” Brown continued. “But keep in mind, his supporters are, whether they’re – while I’ve not called all of them racist, I understand that they are supporting a racist for President, but it works for them. It just drives more and more of the public away from him. And that’s why so much of the public has just had it with Trump, including some that voted for him.” 

Brown’s 2020 comment followed a comment in 2019 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he also called Trump racist.

‘PREGNANT PERSONS’: OHIO SEN SHERROD BROWN SCRUBBED ‘WOMEN’ FROM BILL ON PREGNANCY

“We have a president who’s a racist,” Brown said. “He built his political career knowing what he was doing, questioning the legitimacy and the birthplace of the president of the United States. I know early there have been all kinds of news reports about what he did early in his career with housing.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, National Republican Senatorial Committee Spokesperson Philip Letsou said, “It’s no secret that Sherrod Brown hates Donald Trump and his supporters, it’s why he regularly insults Trump voters and voted to impeach Trump twice.”

“But now that he needs their votes, Brown is trying to cover up his anti-Trump radicalism with misleading ads. Everyone can see through Shameless Sherrod’s desperate ploy.”

‘MISSING’ SIGNS AT DNC CALL OUT DEMOCRAT IN KEY SENATE RACE WHO SKIPPED CONVENTION WITH DISPUTED EXCUSE

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is seen during senate votes in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Brown, who is involved in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country against GOP challenger Bernie Moreno in a state that Trump won by 8 points in 2020, also introduced a resolution tying the immigration system in the United States to “structural racism.”

“Whereas examples of structural racism include…that members of the Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino communities are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems and face a higher risk of contracting COVID–19 within prison populations and detention centers due to the over-incarceration of members of those communities,” Brown wrote in the resolution earlier this year.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, right, greets Ohio Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Fox News Digital asked the Brown campaign whether the Ohio senator stands by his 2020 comment on Trump’s alleged racism.

“Sherrod fights for all Ohioans – whether you’re a steelworker in Cleveland or a teacher in Cincinnati or a veteran in Chillicothe,” a Brown campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

“While Sherrod always does the right thing for Ohioans, Bernie Moreno only looks out for himself and stole his workers’ overtime pay, shredded key evidence a judge ordered him to keep, and sold the Chinese-made Buick Envision, which hurt Ohio autoworkers.”

The race between Moreno and Brown is expected to be a close one as Republicans view it as one of their strongest opportunities to take back control of the Senate in November.

The Cook Political report ranks the race as a “toss up.”

When it comes to the price of bacon, Donald Trump is absolutely right: It’s too damn high. What he doesn’t tell you when he brings this up on the campaign trail — which is a lot — is that the sharp increase was headed our way while he was in the White House.

In 2018, 61% of California voters passed Proposition 12, which required the space for breeding pigs and their piglets to be increased to a new standard — which only 4% of pork suppliers met at the time. Essentially the industry had to choose between spending money to meet the new requirements or risking losing the nation’s most populous state as a customer.

The industry challenged the constitutionality of the new law. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in California’s favor, and the law took full effect a bit over a year ago. Two of the justices in favor were selected by Trump.

“While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote.

California’s law is not the only factor that has made bacon more expensive. There’s also Trump’s initial handling of the pandemic.

On Feb. 7, 2020, after speaking with the president of China, Trump was interviewed by journalist Bob Woodward. On the recording the former president said: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch — you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air. That’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your — even your strenuous flu.”

Yet on Feb. 10, he told the country “a lot of people think that goes away in April.”

By “that” he meant COVID-19.

On March 30, he doubled down: “Stay calm. It will go away.”

He later told Woodward: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

This wishful thinking was not an effective containment strategy.

In April 2020, Tyson and Smithfield — two of the largest meat processors in the country — were forced to shut down plants because their employees were getting sick.

As late as Aug. 31 that year, Trump was still telling the country: “It’s going to go away.” (Update from four years later: It hasn’t gone away.)

But in 2020, thousands of people were dying daily, the supply chain was at a standstill and tens of thousands of pigs were being euthanized because of the plant closures. When do you ever see big businesses just eat a loss of revenue? We know it’s usually passed on to the customer, unless competition is keeping prices reasonable. When Proposition 12 passed in 2018, 70% of the market was controlled by four hog processing companies.

And so like clockwork, in January 2021 the average cost for a pound of bacon was $5.83, and by October it was $7.31. Consumers noticed. In trying to reach voters struggling to make ends meet, Trump has focused on the cost of bacon as the anecdote to use when attacking Biden’s economic policies. He couldn’t have chosen a worse example to make his case: The price of a BLT was destined to jump around now regardless of whether Trump or President Biden were in office. And it was Trump’s own handling of the pandemic that exacerbated the issues surrounding the cost of bacon.

In April 2020, House Democrats introduced the Price Gouging Prevention Act to try to stop corporate America from taking advantage of the pandemic to raise profits, but Trump was still telling the country “this is going to go away.” The bill went nowhere, because of Republican opposition. Even though Senate Democrats — including then-Sen. Kamala Harris — sponsored a companion bill to match the House initiative.

We saw the same script with gas prices. In 2022, House Democrats passed a gas price gouging bill. Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t get on board to solve the problem facing consumers; they wanted to ensure that Trump could campaign by complaining about gas prices.

So much for “America first,” right?

It’s quite telling that Trump felt misleading voters about the pandemic was a better campaign strategy than winning voters over by leading us through it. During her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris warned the nation that Trump is not a serious man but that reelecting him would have serious consequences. His rhetoric around the price of bacon is the perfect illustration.

In March 2020, Trump himself issued an executive order intended to prevent price gouging. Today he characterizes Harris’ call for a national price gouging ban as “communist,” even though 37 states — including ones that voted for him in 2016 and 2020 — already have similar bans. Trump likes to complain about current-day America as if he’s a fresh face with a new vision, but he does have a record we can refer to. In January 2017, bacon was $5.18 a pound. That September, while Trump was issuing “Citizenship Day” proclamations, the price of bacon reached a then-record $6.36, and surprisingly, he didn’t fault the White House.

That’s because pointing out the cost of bacon wouldn’t have been a good look for him then. When you look at the facts today, they don’t look good for him now either.

@LZGranderson