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Opinion: Newsom’s second term is assured. So is little state progress, unless he changes his ways.

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Opinion: Newsom’s second term is assured. So is little state progress, unless he changes his ways.


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To nobody’s shock, Gov. Gavin Newsom dominated Tuesday’s early election outcomes, touchdown him in a runoff in November towards little-known, calmly funded Republican candidate Brian Dahle, a state senator from rural Northern California. The previous San Francisco mayor is nicely on his approach to being the most recent incumbent California governor to simply win re-election. However not like the final two, Newsom doesn’t have a signature accomplishment in workplace. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger simply held onto the seat in 2006 after working with Democratic lawmakers to attain the most efficient session of the Legislature in years — most memorably enacting the state’s landmark International Warming Options Act. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown additionally simply received one other time period in 2014 after a bravura show of robust fiscal administration that obliterated the trope that California was “ungovernable.”

Against this, regardless of report income and heavy Democratic majorities in Sacramento, Newsom has made little to no progress on key, high-profile state points. He governs as an incrementalist with out a broad, daring imaginative and prescient of how the Golden State ought to reply to its issues. This should change.

On housing and the intertwined concern of homelessness, Newsom has by no means come near assembly the targets he set out in 2018 of including 500,000 new housing models a yr. Regardless of sweeping new legal guidelines that make it far simpler so as to add properties on present single-family tons, California doesn’t even construct a 3rd that many models. In the meantime, the price of shelter retains hitting new report highs, impoverishing middle-income households. And regardless of unprecedented infusions of billions of {dollars} in new state funds to homelessness applications, issues are getting worse in most cities, together with in San Diego.

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So what can a governor do? Change the fundamentals of the talk. Make daring adjustments to permit for the straightforward conversion of empty malls and workplace buildings into housing, recognizing that each on-line buying and the variety of those that work at home are solely going to extend. Use tax incentives to get builders to construct big dormitory-style residential buildings with shared bogs and kitchens. Embrace factory-built properties that may go up for a fraction of the standard price. However above all, don’t deal with “course of” victories — new legal guidelines and regulatory adjustments — as precise victories. Demand outcomes.

On schooling, Newsom retains breaking information on how a lot funding his budgets present Ok-12 lecture rooms. However simply as many schooling consultants have stated for years, college high quality shouldn’t be solely a perform of faculty spending. The persistent achievement hole leaving many Black and Latino college students behind acquired even worse when lecture rooms closed throughout the pandemic. But as an alternative of turning to what has labored in various, extremely populated liberal states like Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — fastidiously measuring scholar and trainer efficiency and creating rigorous greatest practices — California has made it even tougher to make use of such instruments. The state should measure how it’s spending that cash.

On water, with the governor’s name to cut back water consumption going largely unheeded, the local weather emergency has made it needed for state leaders to think about taking the momentous step of placing limits on use by farms, which eat 4 occasions as a lot of the state’s out there water as cities (40 p.c versus 10 p.c). Agriculture is now solely about 2 p.c of the state’s economic system. In a historic drought like this, prudent limits on water use for closely exported crops like alfalfa and almonds make sense. Many different reforms to restrict the losing of water and so as to add reservoirs make sense. However none can present the aid within the quick time period that will come from a brand new method to agriculture.

Newsom was elected in 2018 speaking about massive, furry audacious targets. It’s time for achievements. He defends his report with a vigor that belies how tough life is for a lot of Californians. But when he needs to go down in historical past, he should change his cautious methods and stroll the stroll in addition to speak the speak.





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San Diego, CA

Village at Pacific Highlands Ranch adds Tesla charging stations

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Village at Pacific Highlands Ranch adds Tesla charging stations


The Village at Pacific Highlands Ranch is now home to a new Tesla “supercharger” electric vehicle charging station. Located on the top floor of the parking deck, near Jersey Mike’s and UC San Diego Health, 12 superchargers will be available 24/7.

According to Tesla’s website, a car can be recharged up to 200 miles in 15 minutes—enough time to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks, pick up a burrito at El Pueblo or fit in a Trader Joe’s run at the center.

The new supercharging station at 6030 Village Way is one of the largest in the area— Torrey Hills Shopping Center on Carmel Mountain Road has 24 charging stations and the 4S Ranch Target on Camino Del Sur has 16 in its parking lot.



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San Diego, CA

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy discusses further NATO support with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk

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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy discusses further NATO support with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk


WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that he expects the upcoming NATO summit to provide specific steps to strengthen his country’s air defenses against Russia, hours after a Russian missile attack killed at least 31 people and wounded 154 others in various locations, including a children’s hospital in Kyiv.

Zelenskyy met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw to discuss further support for Ukraine from NATO, as well as signing a bilateral cooperation and defense document.

“We would like to see greater resolve in our partners and hear resolute responses to these attacks,” Zelenskyy told a joint news conference, stressing that Ukraine will take its own retaliatory steps.

“I can see a possibility for our partners to use their air defense systems in a way to hit .. the missiles that are carrying out attacks on our country,” Zelenskyy said.

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Zelenskyy stopped in Warsaw en route to a NATO summit, which begins Tuesday in Washington, marking the Western defense alliance’s 75th anniversary. Leaders are expected to discuss ways of providing reliable long-term security aid and military training for Ukraine more than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

At the start of the news conference with Tusk, Zelenskyy asked those gathered to observe a moment of silence for the victims of Monday’s airstrikes.

Tusk offered every available form of help for the children evacuated from the bombed hospital.

The two leaders signed a cooperation and defense agreement that spells out Poland’s continued support for Ukraine in defense, especially air defense, energy security for Ukraine, and Poland’s participation in reconstruction.

A legion of Ukrainian volunteers currently abroad will be trained in Poland with the aim of joining the defense effort on Ukraine’s soil, Zelenskyy said.

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Poland will be represented at the NATO summit by President Andrzej Duda, who was scheduled to meet with Zelenskyy later Monday. Poland is among the staunchest supporters of Ukraine and has offered around $4 billion in military equipment, training and other items for defense. It is also offering humanitarian, political and economic support.

An initiative likely to be endorsed at the three-day summit is NATO taking more responsibility for coordinating training, and military and financial assistance for Ukraine’s forces, instead of the U.S. Europeans also are talking about giving Ukrainians a greater presence within NATO bodies, though there’s no consensus yet on Ukraine joining the alliance.

Tusk said that Poland will “continue to advocate among our allies that this path for Ukraine to reach the EU and NATO membership should be as fast as possible.”



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San Diego, CA

National abortion ban splits the Trump campaign and Republican activists writing the party platform

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National abortion ban splits the Trump campaign and Republican activists writing the party platform


DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republicans may remove a vow to ban abortion from their party platform for the first time in 40 years at the behest of former President Donald Trump, who has refused to support such a ban even as he takes credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The platform is a statement of first principles traditionally written by party activists. Trump’s campaign wants the group drafting this year’s platform to produce a shorter document without statements favored by many conservatives but potentially unpopular with the broader electorate.

The platform committee begins its meeting Monday, a week before the start of the Republican National Convention where Trump is scheduled to accept his third straight nomination for president.

Trump has faced months of Democratic criticism over abortion as President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has highlighted that Trump nominated half of the Supreme Court majority that struck down the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. But among the vocal abortion opponents on the platform committee, some say the aspiration of a federal ban on abortion after a certain stage in pregnancy must remain a party principle, even if it’s not an immediately attainable policy or one that necessarily helps the Trump campaign in November.

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“I see that as problematic. We still need these principles clearly stated. Some of these battles are not over,” said Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman, a platform committee member who supported Trump’s winning Iowa caucus campaign in January and also supports a federal limit on abortion.

While the abortion statement is likely to be the most contested provision in the platform, there may also be disputes over Trump’s preference for tariffs and his isolationist approach to foreign policy and U.S. involvement in global conflicts, particularly in helping Ukraine as it battles Russia.

Conservative activists who are accustomed to having a seat at the table fumed over what they said was a secretive process for selecting committee members and the meeting taking place behind closed doors.

“For 40 years, the Republican Party and the GOP platform have massively benefitted from an open and transparent process,” said Tim Chapman, the incoming president of Advancing American Freedom, a foundation headed by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump’s campaign has sought to reshape the Republican National Committee into a campaign vessel. It signaled in a memo last month from senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles that “textbook-long platforms … are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents.”

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Trump ally Russ Vought is serving as the policy director of the Republican Party’s platform writing committee while also leading the effort to draft the 180-day agenda for Project 2025, a sweeping proposal for remaking government that Trump said Friday he knew nothing about despite having several former aides involved.

Still, Trump’s campaign said it was unclear what would make the final document at the convention in Milwaukee while suggesting it would reflect Trump’s positions.

“Is the desire to make the platform concise and reflect the president and his policies? Yes,” Danielle Alvarez, a Trump spokeswoman, said in reference to the memo. “Until we convene, we don’t know where we’ll end up.”

Trump had supported federal legislation in 2018 that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, though the measure fell short of the necessary support in the Senate.

However, after the 2022 midterm elections, Trump blamed Republicans who held strict anti-abortion positions for the party’s failure to secure a larger House majority. He has since been critical of the most stringent abortion bans in individual states.

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An AP-NORC poll conducted in June 2023 found that about two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The poll also found that 6 in 10 Americans think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

Biden’s campaign has criticized Republicans for making the platform committee meetings in Milwaukee closed to the news media and reminded voters of Trump’s onetime support for a 20-week abortion ban.

Tamara Scott, who is one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members and also a platform committee member, said Trump could campaign on the position he holds and also embrace the platform to reflect a longer-term goal of a federal limit.

“It’s our vision. It’s our foundational principles. It’s who we are as a party,” Scott said. “I agree a platform must be clear and concise but it must convey our core principles.”

To several on the committee, that means maintaining support for an “amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth,” the passage first included in 1984.

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Trump was urged to keep that language in the platform, according to a letter signed by leaders of groups opposed to abortion, including Ralph Reed, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder and chairman; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List.

That passage, once removed, would be difficult to restore in future platforms, Dannenfelser said.

“The conversation about the platform is about the future. It’s about presidential campaigns 10 years from now, and Senate campaigns and House campaigns, Republican campaigns everywhere,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s not just about this election. And that’s why it matters.”

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux contributed from Washington.

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