Politics
Women make up nearly half of the California Legislature, setting a new record in Sacramento

SACRAMENTO — Even in a state known for crafting first-in-the-nation progressive laws and leading on reproductive rights, men have long outnumbered women in the California Legislature.
The Capitol’s male-dominated culture was evident when hundreds of women spoke out about sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement. Then came the shocking image of a masked lawmaker carrying her newborn into the Assembly chambers during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic because she was denied a request to work remotely after giving birth.
It wasn’t until 1989 that a woman wore pants on the Senate floor, after a fed-up lawmaker defied the Capitol dress code on a cold day in Sacramento.
But now gender equality in California’s Capitol is nearer than ever, after voters elected a record number of women to the Legislature. When lawmakers are sworn in on Dec. 2, women will hold 59 of the Legislature’s 120 seats.
“They have an opportunity to exert power in a way that hasn’t been done before,” said Susannah Delano, executive director of Close the Gap California, which works to elect progressive women. “There’s a difference between lip service and good policy that is really vetted by the people who are going to be impacted, and women have a track record of powerful listening and inclusive, responsive solutions.”
The new record, with women holding 49% of legislative seats, marks a vast increase over the last decade. Women’s representation in the California Capitol is up from nearly 31% in 2020 and 25% in 2016, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. In 1980, just 9% of California state lawmakers were women.
For years, California has lagged behind other states — including Nevada, Arizona and Colorado — when it comes to legislative gender equity.
The change in Sacramento was fueled in part by major turnover in the Legislature this year, creating new opportunities for candidates to run without challenging an incumbent. More than a dozen of the newly elected women won seats held by men, many of who were forced out of office by term limits.
It comes after a majority of Californians voted for Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Trump and some are still reeling from the loss of what could have been America’s first female president.
Newcomer Sade Elhawray, a Democrat from South Los Angeles who is replacing termed-out Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, is among the record number of women who will meet for a special legislative session in Sacramento next month to devise new ways to shield the state from Trump’s federal agenda.
She pointed to Trump’s history of sexual misconduct allegations that include a jury finding him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, which Trump has described as a “made-up, fabricated story.”
“Women in the Legislature are really going to be on the front lines as we look to both hold Trump accountable and protect Californians from all the things that might happen. I think we have to suit up,” Elhawray said. “We still suffer from the evils of sexism in such a real way.”
While Democrats are praising the gender gains as a way to further secure liberal priorities such as abortion rights, Republicans are also celebrating.
Suzette Valladares, a former assembly member who is replacing termed out Sen. Scott Wilk (R-Saugus) for the Santa Clarita Valley Senate seat, said working moms like her are well positioned to address Californians’ escalating concerns over the cost of living because they are attuned to family budgets and child care fees.
“When I served in the Assembly, we had a women’s caucus that truly was bipartisan. We made a conscious effort to support each other’s bills,” she said. “I think it’s going to produce some amazing pieces of policy.”
It’s hard to say if the shakeup in the Legislature will produce tangible reforms. California has already passed equal pay laws that do more to close salary gaps between men and women than most states and is home to the most stringent sexual consent requirements.
But some priorities of the Legislative Women’s Caucus have stalled as California faced a multibillion dollar budget deficit, including a bill that would have expanded Medi-Cal coverage of diapers vetoed last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cited cost concerns.
Marva Diaz, a political strategist who mostly represents female candidates, said identity politics remain important to California campaigns despite the drubbing Democrats took nationally in this election, in part due to Trump’s strategy of appealing to young men.
“You recognize that you are different and that you are missing at certain tables. We need more women CEOs. We need more women in the business sector,” Diaz said. “I think that it’s going to take women in the Legislature in order to make that progress.”
The California Legislative Women’s Caucus was formed in 1985 and its founding members include Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, a trailblazing and powerful member of Congress, and Rose Ann Vuich, the first woman elected to the state Senate who was known to ring a bell each time her colleagues in the Capitol addressed members as “gentlemen.”
State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) made history in 2018 when she became the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to serve as the leader of California Senate. She was the first woman to lead both houses of the state Legislature, having also served as speaker of the Assembly.
Now, she’s one of three women who have declared a run for governor in 2026.
Only men have ever served as California governor. Atkins said it is overdue for voters to put a woman in the state’s highest office, and not just for representation purposes.
“I think it matters that there are women in this race. I actually think women govern differently,” Atkins said. “I think we think about the bigger picture.”

Politics
See the Countries Under Trump’s New Travel Ban: List, Map and Charts

President Trump has targeted the citizens of a dozen countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States and restricted travel for those from several more countries.
The restrictions touch more parts of the world and could affect more people than similar travel bans that were introduced during the first Trump administration.
All travelers who are citizens of countries in the first tier will be barred entry, while certain types of visas will be suspended for those countries in the second tier.
Shortly after he first took office in 2017, Mr. Trump tried to bar travelers from seven mostly Muslim-majority countries. Five of those countries are on the new list, plus several more countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as well as Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.
Mr. Trump’s order says the new travel ban does not apply to people with visas who are already in the United States, and it contains a few other exceptions. For example, Afghans eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is for those who helped the U.S. government during the war in Afghanistan, are excepted from the ban.
How many people come to the U.S. from these countries?
Last year, the State Department issued about 170,000 total visas to the 12 countries on the ban list. For most countries, the vast majority of those were nonimmigrant visitor visas for tourism, business or study. But for Afghans, Yemenis and Somalians, most were immigrant visas, typically allocated to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or to skilled workers who are sponsored by their employers.
Visas previously issued to countries now on the travel ban list
Permanent immigrant and temporary nonimmigrant visas issued in 2024
What happened under the previous travel bans?
The introduction of the 2017 travel ban led to immediate chaos and confusion as hundreds of travelers were detained at airports across the country and more than 60,000 visas were provisionally revoked. Federal judges blocked the ban within a week.
Overall, travel from the countries banned in 2017 was relatively low to begin with, though people from Iran and Syria had arrived in the thousands each month. A back-and-forth in the courts delayed implementation, and then the Covid pandemic hit, halting travel globally.
But after January 2021, when President Biden lifted the bans, travel from many of those countries, most notably Iran, more than rebounded.
Travel to the U.S. from countries barred under 2017 travel ban
International visitor arrivals by country of citizenship
Mr. Trump ended up issuing four travel bans in his first term, with each version modifying its predecessor in order to pass legal scrutiny. It was almost a year before any ban actually took effect.
Here is a look back at the evolution of the travel bans under the first Trump administration from 2017 through 2020:
Jan. 27, 2017
First travel ban introduced. Entry into the U.S. is barred for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.
Feb. 3, 2017
A federal judge temporarily blocks the ban in Washington v. Trump.
Mar. 6, 2017
Second travel ban introduced. Iraq is removed from the list. The ban also exempts those with an existing green card or valid visa.
Mar. 15, 2017
Sept. 24, 2017
Third travel ban introduced. Entry is barred for most citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. Iranian nationals with valid student and exchange visitor visas are allowed entry. Several parties sue to block the ban.
Dec. 4, 2017
The Supreme Court allows the third ban to take effect while legal challenges against it continue.
April 10, 2018
Travel restrictions on Chad are removed after the country satisfies the administration’s security concerns.
June 26, 2018
Jan. 31, 2020
Fourth travel ban introduced. Immigrants from Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania are barred from entering the United States, but tourists and others entering on a temporary basis are not.
Jan. 20, 2021
President Biden takes office and immediately revokes all of the Trump travel bans.
Politics
Trump orders Attorney General to investigate Biden's autopen use amid cognitive decline concerns

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President Donald Trump called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead an investigation into whether certain individuals working for former President Joe Biden conspired to deceive the public about his mental state while also exercising his presidential responsibilities by using an autopen.
In a memo on Wednesday, Trump said the president of the U.S. has a tremendous amount of power and responsibility through the signature. Not only can the signature turn words into laws of the land, but it also appoints individuals to some of the highest positions in government, creates or eliminates national policies and allows prisoners to go free.
“In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden’s aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline and assert Article II authority,” Trump wrote. “This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”
He continued, saying Biden had suffered from “serious cognitive decline” for years, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently concluded that Biden should not stand trial, despite clear evidence he broke the law, because of his mental state.
EXCLUSIVE: COMER HAILS DOJ’S BIDEN PROBE AS HOUSE INVESTIGATION HEATS UP
President Trump called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch an investigation into whether former President Biden’s team used an autopen and covered up the former president’s cognitive decline. (Trump: Reuters / Autopen: AP)
“Biden’s cognitive issues and apparent mental decline during his presidency were even ‘worse’ in private, and those closest to him ‘tried to hide it’ from the public,” Trump said. “To do so, Biden’s advisors during his years in office severely restricted his news conferences and media appearances, and they scripted his conversations with lawmakers, government officials, and donors, all to cover up his inability to discharge his duties.”
Still, during the Biden presidency, the White House issued over 1,200 Presidential documents, appointed 235 judges to the federal bench and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in U.S. history, Trump said.
The president wrote about Biden’s decision just two days before Christmas 2024, to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 most dangerous criminals on federal death row, including mass murderers and child killers.
TRUMP SAYS BIDEN DIDN’T FAVOR HIS ADMIN’S LAX BORDER SECURITY POLICY, SUGGESTS AUTOPEN PLAYED A ROLE

A new book describes President Joe Biden’s cabinet meetings as “scripted” and “uncomfortable.” (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Care Can’t Wait Action)
“Although the authority to take these executive actions, along with many others, is constitutionally committed to the President, there are serious doubts as to the decision-making process and even the degree of Biden’s awareness of these actions being taken in his name,” Trump wrote. “The vast majority of Biden’s executive actions were signed using a mechanical signature pen, often called an autopen, as opposed to Biden’s own hand. This was especially true of actions taken during the second half of his Presidency, when his cognitive decline had apparently become even more clear to those working most closely with him.
“Given clear indications that President Biden lacked the capacity to exercise his Presidential authority, if his advisors secretly used the mechanical signature pen to conceal this incapacity, while taking radical executive actions all in his name, that would constitute an unconstitutional wielding of the power of the Presidency, a circumstance that would have implications for the legality and validity of numerous executive actions undertaken in Biden’s name,” he added.
TRUMP HAS NOT DIRECTED ADMIN TO DECLASSIFY BIDEN DOCS ON HEALTH ‘COVER-UP’

President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with U.S. President Joe Biden at Trump’s inauguration in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
The memo goes on to call for an investigation that addresses if certain individuals, who are not named in the document, conspired to deceive the American public about the former president’s mental state and “unconstitutionally” exercised the president’s authority and responsibilities.
Specifically, Trump called on the attorney general’s investigation to look at any activity that purposefully shielded the public from information about Biden’s mental and physical health; any agreements between his aides to falsely deem recorded videos of Biden’s cognitive ability as fake; and any agreements between Biden’s aides to require false, public statements that elevated the president’s capabilities.
The investigation will also look at which policy documents the autopen was used for, including clemency grants, executive orders, and presidential memoranda, as well as who directed Biden’s signature to be affixed to those documents.
Trump said last week that he thinks Biden did not really agree with many of his administration’s lax border security policies, instead suggesting that those surrounding the former president took advantage of his declining faculties and utilized the autopen to pass radical directives pertaining to the border.
House Republicans, led by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, launched an investigation earlier last month aimed at determining whether Biden, who was in declining health during the final months of his presidency, was mentally fit to authorize the use of the autopen. Comer said last week he was “open” to dragging Biden before the House to answer questions about the matter if necessary.
Biden released a statement later Wednesday, deriding Trump’s investigation as a “distraction.”
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said. “This is nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans who are working to push disastrous legislation that would cut essential programs like Medicaid and raise costs on American families, all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations.”
Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
Politics
California broke law in cutting rooftop solar incentives, state Supreme Court is told
The California Public Utilities Commission failed to abide by state law when it slashed financial incentives for residential rooftop solar panels in 2022, environmental groups argued before the California Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The commission’s policy, which took effect in April 2023, cut the value of the credits that panel owners receive for sending power they don’t need to the electric grid by as much as 80%.
In arguments before the court, the environmental groups said the decision has stymied efforts to get homeowners and businesses to install the climate-friendly panels.
The commission violated state law, the groups argued, by not considering all the benefits of the solar panels in its decision and by not ensuring that rooftop solar systems could continue to expand in disadvantaged communities.
More than 2 million solar systems sit on the roofs of homes, businesses and schools in California — more than any other state. Environmentalists say that number must increase if the state is to meet its goal set by a 2018 law of using only carbon-free energy by 2045.
On the other side of the courtroom battle were lawyers from Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, arguing that the commission’s five members, all pointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, had followed the law in making their decision.
In briefs filed before Wednesday’s oral arguments, the government lawyers sided with those from the state’s three big for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Mica Moore, deputy solicitor general, said at the hearing in downtown Los Angeles that the credits given to the rooftop panel owners on their electric bill have become so valuable that they were resulting in “a cost shift” of billions of dollars to those who do not own the panels. This was raising electric bills, she said, especially hurting low-income electric customers.
The credits for the energy sent by the rooftop systems to the grid are valued at the retail rate for electricity, which has risen fast as the commissioners have voted in recent years to approve rate increases the utilities have requested.
The environmental groups and other critics of the commission’s decision have argued that there is no “cost shift.” They say that the commission failed to consider in its calculations the many benefits of the rooftop solar panels, including how they lower the amount of transmission lines and other infrastructure the utilities need to build.
“The cost shift narrative is a red herring,” argued plaintiffs’ attorney Malinda Dickenson, representing the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Working Group and the Protect Our Communities Foundation.
Moore countered by saying the commission doesn’t have to consider all the possible societal or private benefits of the rooftop panels.
For example, even though the rooftop panels could result in conserving land that was otherwise needed for industrial scale solar farms, the government lawyers argued in their brief, the commission was not obligated to consider that value in its calculation of the amount of costs the rooftop panels shift to other customers.
The government lawyers also said the commission had created other programs beyond the electric bill credits to help disadvantaged communities afford the solar systems.
The utilities have long complained that electric bills have been rising because owners of the rooftop solar panels are not paying their fair share of the fixed costs required to maintain the electric grid.
During the oral arguments, the seven justices focused on a legal question of whether a state appeals court erred when it ruled in January 2024 against the environmental groups and said that the court must defer to how the commission interpreted the law because it had more expertise in utility matters.
“This deferential standard of review leaves no basis for faulting the Commission’s work,” the appeals court concluded in its opinion.
The environmental groups argue the appeals court ignored a 1998 law that said the commission’s decisions should be held to the same standard of court review as those by other state agencies.
Moore told the seven justices that the appeals court had made the correct decision to defer to the commission.
Not all justices seemed to agree with that.
“But we’re pretty good about figuring out what the law says,” Associate Justice Carol Corrigan said to Moore during the proceeding. “Why should we defer on that to the commission?”
The justices will weigh the arguments made by both sides and issue a decision in the next 90 days.
The big utilities have for decades tried to reduce the energy credits aimed at incentivizing Californians to invest in the solar panel systems that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The rooftop systems have cut into the utilities’ sale of electricity.
On another front, the state’s three big utilities are now lobbying in Sacramento to reduce credits for Californians who installed their panels before April 15, 2023. The commission’s decision in 2022 left the incentives in place for those panel owners for 20 years after their purchase.
Early this year, Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), a former Southern California Edison executive, introduced a bill that would have ended the program for all solar owners who installed their systems by April 2023 after 10 years. In face of opposition and protests by solar owners, Calderon amended the bill so it would end the program — where credits are valued at the retail electric rate — only for those selling their homes.
Calderon said the bill would save the state’s electric customers $2.5 billion over the next 18 years.
On Monday, Roderick Brewer, an Edison lobbyist, sent an email to Assemblymembers, urging them to vote for the bill known as AB 942. “Save Electricity Customers Billions, Promote Equity,” he urged in the email.
The Assembly voted 46 to 14 to approve the bill on Tuesday night, sending it to the state Senate for consideration.
The timing of the vote surprised opponents of the bill. They expected a vote late this week because of rules that allow more time for bills to be reviewed after they are amended. Calderon amended the bill late Monday.
Nick Miller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, said Calderon had asked for a waiver of the rules so that it could be voted on Tuesday night.
Such waivers, Miller said, are “not uncommon.”
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