August 2017 Essential Politics archives

A state Assemblywoman has shelved her bill to make “stealthing,” or tampering with a condom during sex, a form of rape under California law, saying it did not have enough support to win approval this year.

In a statement, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) said she would commit to educating lawmakers on the issue and holding ongoing discussions to file a similar proposal next legislative session.

“I, and others, believe stealthing is a violation of informed consent, and sex without consent in California is rape,” said Garcia, who last year helped expand the legal definition of rape in the state.

The latest version of the bill would have made it a crime of felony sexual battery to remove or tamper with a condom during sex. It also went further, making it a felony to lie about being on birth control or another form of contraception other than a condom.

“Some of the amendments I was asked to make are simply inconsistent with my beliefs on this issue,” she said in her statement. “I don’t want the matter to die a legislative death, so I’ve opted to postpone hearings this year to address the concerns raised.”

A section of the 5 Freeway in the northeast San Fernando Valley will be named after rock ’n’ roll icon Ritchie Valens, who grew up in the area and had a stellar career before he died in a plane crash.

Valens, whose hits included “La Bamba,” “Come On, Let’s Go” and “Donna,” will have his name put up on signs along a stretch of the interstate between the 170 and 118 freeways that will be named the Ritchie Valens Memorial Highway.

The state Legislature gave final approval to the honor last week, and Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima), who authored the proposal, said Thursday that private funds are being raised, as required by state law, to pay for the signs.

“His music inspired and influenced a generation of Chicano artists in our community and throughout the world,” Bocanegra said. “It’s only fitting to name this segment of the I-5 after a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer who grew up right here in Pacoima.”

The honor was appreciated by the late star’s sister Connie Valens, who said in a statement released by the legislator’s office that the singer was “not only a rock ’n’ roll pioneer, but a role model for artists and youth all over the world.”

Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled on Thursday his plan for spending cap-and-trade revenue, prioritizing cleaner vehicles and improving air quality.

Roughly $1.5 billion, all generated by the sale of permits required to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is available to be spent by the governor and lawmakers.

Brown wants the biggest chunk of the money, $607.5 million, to be used on financial incentives for cleaner cars, trucks, buses and farm vehicles.

Reducing pollution from transportation has been a stiff challenge for the state. Lawmakers have already proposed using even more cash than outlined in the governor’s proposal to help replace diesel engines.

The governor also suggested spending $350 million to improve air quality in polluted communities. The money would help implement Assembly Bill 617, a companion measure to Assembly Bill 398, which extended the cap-and-trade program until 2030.

Some of the money would help pay for monitoring criteria air pollutants and toxic contaminants, and more would be available to support plans devised by local regulators to reduce air pollution.

Another significant sum would be used to help take care of the state’s forests, including $200 million for fire prevention.

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Gov. Jerry Brown is collecting more stamps on his passport this year.

After a trip to China in June, he’s jetting to Russia next week, his office announced. Brown will speak to international government and business leaders about the need to combat climate change at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Brown said the forum on trade “isn’t just an occasion to promote investment, it’s an opportunity to strengthen our commitment to decarbonizing the economy.”

The governor is scheduled to arrive in Russia on Tuesday and return to California on Friday. On his way to the conference, he’s planning to stop in Alaska to meet with scientists and researchers studying climate change.

This won’t be Brown’s last international trip this year. He’s also attending the next United Nations conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany, in November.

(Mina Corpuz / Los Angeles Times )

Supervised drug injection centers where users would be able to receive addiction treatment could be coming to California.

Legislation authored by Assemblyman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) would allow eight counties — Alameda, Fresno, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Mendocino, San Francisco, San Joaquin and Santa Cruz — to pilot supervised drug injection centers by 2022.

The bill, which has passed the Assembly, is awaiting a vote in the state Senate.

“Let’s get needles out of the playground,” Eggman said at a Thursday press conference at the Capitol. “Let’s save some peoples’ lives and get people into treatment.”

There are no supervised injection centers in the U.S. Two safe-injection sites have been proposed in Washington state’s King County, and opponents have qualified a ballot initiative to allow voters to determine whether the centers should be banned. A handful of cities in Washington have already moved to ban safe-injection sites.

Senate Republicans have expressed concerns that Eggman’s bill would create “government-run drug dens” that support activity that violates federal law.

A coalition of Los Angeles-area law enforcement agencies including the California Narcotic Officers Assn., Peace Officers Assn. of Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles Police Protective League also opposes the legislation.

There were 2,375 opioid-related overdose deaths statewide in 2013, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

“When we have an epidemic such as this ... It is time to do something different than we’ve been doing,” Eggman said.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

On the day that changed his life, Gregory Cheadle almost stayed in bed.

He was tired — he traveled a lot in his long-shot bid for Congress — but asked himself: How often does a candidate for president come to the far reaches of Northern California? And why pass up a crowd and the chance to hand out more fliers?

So Cheadle roused himself that June 2016 morning and secured a spot up close when Donald Trump swooped in for a rally at Redding’s municipal airport.

It was hot, the atmosphere was loose and Trump’s patter seeming more stand-up comedy than campaign spiel. He went into one of those sidelong digressions, about protesters and an African American — “great fan, great guy” — in the audience.

“Look at my African American over here!” he exclaimed. “Are you the greatest?”

Cheadle and those around him laughed; it was a hoot.

But many who saw that moment were not amused. They were angry and outraged. “My African American,” Trump said, as if Cheadle were his slave, and they turned their anger and outrage on Cheadle when he failed to respond in kind.

However, today Cheadle says he was unfairly portrayed and criticizes Trump’s promise to help the African American community as empty rhetoric.

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Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) address a large crowd at California State University Dominguez Hills in Carson, Calif.

(Christian K. Lee / Los Angeles Times)

A proposal to fast-track a new arena in Inglewood for the Los Angeles Clippers remains on the table at the Capitol, said the state senator who represents the city.

“If it’s needed, we’re definitely going to introduce it,” said Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena).

In recent years, state lawmakers have passed bills helping possible arenas and football stadiums up and down California. The measures have aimed, for the most part, to provide relief from potential lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act by speeding up court-decision deadlines or halting a judge’s ability to block construction, even if it found the project’s environmental review didn’t adequately study traffic problems or had other flaws.

Bradford has yet to formally propose a measure, but said his goal was to provide similar benefits to the planned Clippers arena. Currently, such projects can apply for speedier court review without special legislation. Bradford said he was weighing whether that process gave enough assistance to the Clippers.

“This is a major opportunity for the city of Inglewood, a city that has been written off for many years,” he said.

Bradford has until Sept. 12 to introduce the bill for passage before the Legislature adjourns for the year on Sept. 15.

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence might want to talk with Orange County Rep. Dana Rohrabacher about his meeting this month with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

CNN reported Thursday that two sources confirmed that the committee members are deciding if they will call on Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) to testify as part of its ongoing investigation into Russian attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and what the Trump campaign might have known. It’s one of several congressional investigations into the issue.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times last week, Rohrabacher said that during his meeting with Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, the fugitive “emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved” in the theft of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. The emails were published by WikiLeaks and put Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on the defensive for much of the campaign. The belief of the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies is that Russia played a role in stealing and leaking the emails.

Rohrabacher said on Sean Hannity’s radio show earlier this week that a “rendezvous” is being set up with President Trump so the congressman can tell him more about what he learned from Assange.

Rohrabacher’s spokesman, Ken Grubbs, said “he’s not yet been contacted by the Senate Intel Committee, but will be happy to talk with them after he’s talked with President Trump.”

The House Democratic campaign arm jumped at the CNN report, with spokesman Tyler Law saying in a statement that Rohrabacher “has no business chairing the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees Russia.” They called on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) to strip his colleague of his subcommittee post.

Democrats are hoping to oust Rohrabacher and Royce in 2018.

Royce has given Rohrabacher, and his at-times-outside-of-the-Republican-mainstream views toward Russia, a lot of leeway over the years. He has stepped in occasionally, including halting a planned hearing over the Russia sanctions that led the country to ban adoptions to the United States, and squashing Rohrabacher’s plans to visit Russia last spring as the House and Senate investigations heated up.

Rohrabacher’s interest in improving relations with Russia has been long-known in Congress, and the Republican has previously told The Times that he sees his continued role leading the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats as proof his colleagues don’t demean his view.

“I have no complaints that my colleagues have in any way shut me out of consideration of what I’m saying or belittled me for taking a position that is clearly not the position of the vast majority of the establishment of our country,” he said in a February interview. “If they wanted to be unfair to me, all they would have to say is, ‘Well, we don’t like your point of view and this is an important job, you’re not going to be the chairman anymore,’ and that’s not happened.”

(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Driving into a group of protesters could be considered domestic terrorism in California.

A measure by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) would consider the act an infringement on free speech and assembly.

Although it is already illegal to use a vehicle as a weapon, Lara said attacks against peaceful protesters need to be treated differently.

“California needs to be strong in defense of our constitutional rights and say there is no margin for error in a car vs. protester attack,” he said in a statement. “Unless we act now these kinds of attacks could become more common.”

The change is in response to the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va. She was killed this month when a man drove his car into a group of counter-protesters demonstrating against white supremacy.

In the last year in other countries there have been a number of terrorist attacks using vehicles.

Anyone who uses a motor vehicle to kill or injure a group expressing a political position could face two to four years in state prison, according to the California bill.

If someone dies or is seriously injured, the driver could face life in prison without the possibility of parole or 25 years to life in state jail.

People who drive away from violence “in reasonable fear” and officers who use a motor vehicle “in a safe and reasonable manner” to direct crowds and respond to emergencies are exempt from charges under the proposal.

Lara’s bill is a late entrant in the legislative debate, quickly cobbled together two weeks before the year’s session ends.

Legislators in Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Texas have introduced similar bills.

Sen. Kamala Harris will co-sponsor a Medicare-for-all plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she told Californians at a town hall in Oakland on Wednesday.

The freshman Democratic senator from California has previously said she supports the concept of universal healthcare, but this is the first time she has explicitly said she would join Sanders when he files the bill. The House version of the measure, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), has 117 sponsors, including 27 California Democratic House members.

The idea of single-payer healthcare has grown in popularity among Democrats since the 2016 election, with some members of the so-called Sanders wing of the party urging Democrats to use support for it as a litmus test in 2018.

Such a program is unlikely to become law while Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

Sanders quickly jumped to thank Harris on Twitter on Wednesday.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) speaking at a rally outside the Capitol for parks spending.

(Liam Dillon / Los Angeles Times)

Top lawmakers promised Wednesday to put a bond measure on the 2018 statewide ballot to fund parks and water improvements.

“More parks is not just a wish, it’s not just a dream, it’s not just an ideal, it is a real need,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said at a rally outside the Capitol. “We see that all over the state.”

Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said they’re negotiating details of a measure that, if approved by voters next year, would spend billions to build and maintain parks and water infrastructure. Gov. Jerry Brown also has agreed to support a water and parks bond.

Among the issues left to be worked out is how much the bond would raise. Earlier this week, Brown, Rendon and De León announced their support for a $4-billion bond to fund the construction of low-income housing and provide home loans for California veterans.

De León said spending on housing would be greater than water and parks.

“The housing bond, given the real need that’s out there, will be supreme,” De León said.

Two groups outside the Legislature also have pitched ballot initiatives for 2018 to fund water and parks improvements. Those measures, one backed principally by the Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund and similar groups and the other by other environmental and agriculture interests, would each authorize more than $7 billion in spending.

De León said negotiations involved trying to mollify those outside interests so they would abandon their efforts.

“We don’t want several ballot initiatives working at odds with each other, confusing the voters,” he said.

The Trump administration is expected to ask Congress for billions of dollars to address the disaster caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas. But after congressional Republicans’ extremely public fight over an aid package for 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, attention is turning to GOP members who voted against it.

Eight Republicans currently in the California congressional delegation were among the 179 Republicans and one Democrat who voted against that bill.

Most of their offices did not return emails asking how the congressmen plan to vote on an expected, but not yet public, Harvey aid package.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s spokesman, Ken Grubbs, said the Costa Mesa congressman’s vote would depend on what’s in the bill, including whether there is funding for non-emergency projects.

“He doesn’t want any boondoggly poison pills,” he said.

It took Congress more than 60 days to approve the $50.5-billion relief package to help Sandy’s victims rebuild in 2013. Republicans who voted against the bill said they opposed it because it was filled with unrelated, non-emergency projects. Others wanted the Sandy relief offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

At the time, Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove said that “a tragedy like Hurricane Sandy shouldn’t be used for a grab-bag of spending.”

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik took a look Monday at the more than 20 members of the Texas congressional delegation who, along with their U.S. senators, voted against the Sandy relief bill, and whether East Coast Republicans might punish Texans in retaliation. (Some members from the areas affected by Sandy have hinted they don’t plan to do so.)

Here’s the breakdown of how the California Republicans who are still in Congress voted on Sandy relief:

• Rep. Doug LaMalfa of Richvale: No
• Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove: No
• Rep. Paul Cook of Yucca Valley: No
• Rep. Jeff Denham of Turlock: Yes
• Rep. David Valadao of Hanford: Yes
• Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare: Did not vote
• House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield: Yes
• Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton: No
• Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona: No
• Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa: No
• Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista: No
• Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine: No

Republican Reps. Steve Knight of Palmdale and Mimi Walters of Irvine were not yet elected to Congress when the vote was taken.

Several of the Republicans who voted against the Sandy bill represent areas Democrats are targeting in the 2018 election.

All the California Democrats who voted on the Sandy bill voted in favor of the aid. Reps. Jackie Speier of Hillsborough and Grace Napolitano of Norwalk did not vote.

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Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that California’s next governor must do more than simply build upon Gov. Jerry Brown’s legacy because of the massive economic transformation and uncertainty the state will face in coming years.

“There are certain trend lines that are not yet headlines that to me require a different kind of engagement,” Newsom said, pointing to demographic changes, worker skills shortages, debt and workers being displaced by automation. “Short-term-ism has got to be replaced with some long-term thinking on these issues. And the governor’s just been brilliant at solvency and triage and getting the state back on its feet, but the next governor, I think, is going to really need to lean in on these deeper, bigger issues.”

Newsom made the remarks in an interview with the Times after addressing a breakfast gathering of the Orange County Forum, which hosts conversations about public policy issues. During his speech, Newsom said the state and the nation are at critical points in their history because of the impending economic changes.

“Something big is happening here,” he said. “We’re at a hinge moment.”

Newsom said he is focusing on the threat of automation, which he said will replace millions of jobs for fast-food workers, cashiers and truck drivers. Newsom said the next governor must be prepared to confront what this means for the state’s workforce and education system, likely during another recession.

“This isn’t a time to be timid. I’m not running for governor to play in the margins. I have no interest in doing a little bit more, a little bit less,” he said. “What we need is leadership, not stewardship.”

Assembly Republicans unveil their proposal on local tax elections on Wednesday.

(Mina Corpuz / Los Angeles Times )

Assembly Republicans said Wednesday they will introduce a constitutional amendment that would close what they call a potential loophole making it easier to enact local tax measures.

The announcement comes on the heels of a California Supreme Court ruling on Monday that local ballot initiatives imposing new taxes for specific purposes may need only a simple majority of voters to approve.

The new proposal would prevent influential interest groups from using initiatives to pass “pet projects and programs,” Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) said at a state Capitol news conference.

The effort would change the California Constitution to make clear that a supermajority of voters must approve any local tax increase that’s placed on the ballot by citizen groups.

Under California’s landmark tax law, Proposition 13, local taxes for specific needs are subject to approval by two-thirds of voters. A second ballot measure in 1996, Proposition 218, expanded voter approval to nearly all local taxes.

Mayes hopes the amendment, which must be placed on the ballot by the Legislature, will go before voters next June.

Keeping the supermajority requirement on local tax measures protects taxpayers, said Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-San Ramon), by forcing tax proponents to build a much broader consensus of voters.

“That two-thirds threshold that is so critical is difficult to reach,” she said. “But it works.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, center, stands with mayors of other large California cities and state lawmakers outside the Capitol

(Liam Dillon / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and mayors from other large cities in the state urged state lawmakers Wednesday morning to pass major legislation to address California’s housing problems.

“For us, the biggest problem we all face is our housing crisis,” Garcetti said at a news conference outside the Capitol. “Too many people can’t afford the housing that they’re in. And too many people aren’t in housing at all.”

Gov. Jerry Brown and top lawmakers are trying to finalize a package of legislation to increase funding to build low-income housing and ease local regulations on home building. Legislators could vote on a series of bills as early as this week, and face a Sept. 15 deadline before they depart for the year.

But among the major measures in play, Senate Bill 2, which would add a $75 fee on mortgage refinances and many other real estate transactions to fund low-income housing, is the most uncertain. It remains a few votes short of passage in the Assembly.

“That’s the one that we’re really going to have to go in there and lobby hard for,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said.

Garcetti said the group of mayors, which included Steinberg, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, planned to meet Wednesday with Brown and other lawmakers to push for the housing bills.

Concerned about low voter participation in local elections, state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada-Flintridge) proposed Wednesday that the order of future ballots be flipped so that local contests would be first and presidential or gubernatorial races would be last.

The state recently mandated that most cities and school districts hold their elections during statewide and national election dates.

Portantino said that in the November election, many people voted for president because that contest was it at the top of the ballot and state offices and ballot measures came next. Only some make it through the end of the long ballot, where there are elections for city councils and school boards.

“I think more people would be apt to go down through the ballot with the president at the end,” Portantino said. “There is a drop off of people who vote for president and then close the books.”

The senator said the idea was suggested to him by Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian, who ran for a Glendale Assembly seat in 2016 and lost to fellow Democrat Laura Friedman. The seat previously was held by former Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Democrat who termed out.

“Given this new state mandate, it is the right thing to do to feature our local offices and local civic issues first,” Kassakhian said in a statement.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is seen at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

The leader of California’s state Senate on Wednesday sharply criticized a call from Sen. Dianne Feinstein for “patience” with President Trump, suggesting it was tantamount to being “complicit” in his behavior.

The comments by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) offer a glimpse into the vastly different approaches by two leading California Democrats to Trump’s first few months in office.

“It is the responsibility of Congress to hold him accountable — especially Democrats, not be complicit in his reckless behavior,” de León said in a written statement, first reported by San Francisco’s KQED public radio.

Feinstein, who spoke Tuesday night at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, was booed by the crowd after saying she still thinks he can be a “good president.” She went on to suggest a pause before passing judgment in the wake of how Trump will have to handle Hurricane Harvey

“This is his first big American emergency. I think we have to have some patience. I do,” she said.

The reply from de León, who is termed out of office next year and is rumored as a future candidate for governor or U.S. Senate, raised a litany of issues on which Democrats disagree with the president, including the environment and the possible deportation of young immigrants without legal residency status.

State Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles)

(David Butow / For The Times)

“I don’t think children who breathe dirty air can afford patience,” he said. “The LGBT worker or woman losing their rights by the day or the black student who could be assaulted on the street, they can’t afford patience. DREAMers who are unsure of their fate in this country can’t afford patience. Even a Trump voter who is still out of work can’t afford to be patient.”

De León also said that “this president has not shown any capacity to learn and proven he is not fit for office.”

After news reports of her comments at the event, Feinstein issued a statement Wednesday seeking to clarify her stance.

“The duty of the American president is to bring people together, not cater to one segment of a political base; to solve problems, not campaign constantly,” Feinstein said. “While I’m under no illusion that it’s likely to happen and will continue to oppose his policies, I want President Trump to change for the good of the country.”

(Mina Corpuz / Los Angeles Times)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday said now more than ever President Trump should work to unite and heal the country.

“The one thing he needs to do, in my view, is bring this nation together, and he hasn’t done that,” Feinstein said at a Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco.

Feinstein, a Democrat, talked about her support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for people brought to the country illegally as children. She called on Trump, who is considering rescinding the program, to allow these immigrants to stay.

“These young people so want to be Americans, and they want to work and be part of this country,” she said.

She also offered a moment of silence for victims of Tropical Storm Harvey.

The crowd showed its political leanings when asking her about efforts in Congress to impeach Trump.

The senator said the president is likely to be in office for the next few years, adding that she hopes he will learn and change.

Several audience members booed and shouted, “No!”

Feinstein had her own critics at the scene.

Members of Indivisible SF demonstrated outside the theater as they objected to the fact Feinstein had not hosted a town hall during the August congressional recess. Christine Wei, a spokeswoman for the grass-roots group, complained that anyone wanting to ask the senator a question at this forum would have needed to pay $40 to $65 for a ticket.

Instead, Feinstein fielded questions from the audience read to her by Ellen Tauscher, a former congresswoman who represented the Central Valley and served as an undersecretary in the Obama administration. Most of the attendees were members of the Commonwealth Club.

In response to the deadly rally in Charlottesville this month, the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday approved two resolutions urging state and local law enforcement agencies to treat violent acts by white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups as terrorist attacks.

Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), chairwoman of the committee and author of the resolutions, has also amended a bill to expand the penal code related to hate crimes. If approved, protections under current state hate crime laws would extend to anyone acting in defense or support of those already covered, including minorities, the disabled and members of the LGBTQ community.

Before the committee on Tuesday, Skinner urged support for the legislation, saying state prosecutors and officers should be allowed to use terrorism and anti-hate crime laws to fully investigate and pursue charges against white nationalist and neo-Nazi hate groups.

The resolutions were unanimously approved with 7-0 votes. But following a weekend of protests in the Bay Area, including several violent clashes in Berkley instigated by members of the leftist group Antifa, one committee member questioned whether the list was too narrow.

Sen. Joel Anderson (R-Alpine), who asked to be added as a co-author, said his staff had suggestions for additional groups that should considered “given what was happening on college campuses.”

“The whole point is hate is hate,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where it originates, it is all wrong.”

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said he had been critical of suppression of free speech in Berkeley in the past. But while the language in the resolutions could be massaged, he said, their message shouldn’t be diluted.

“When we talk about neo-Nazis and white supremacy, it goes beyond suppressing of free speech,” he said. “These are unique evils that deserve to be specifically called out.”

Emergency room nurse Sue Zwahlen is joining the race to try to unseat Central Valley Republican Rep. Jeff Denham.

Zwahlen, a 63-year-old Democrat, has been elected twice to the Modesto City Schools Board of Education.

“I’m a homegrown candidate; I have a lot of experience in bringing people together to solve problems, especially when it comes to healthcare and education,” she said.

Zwahlen was born in Modesto and attended nursing school at the Samuel Merritt Hospital School of Nursing in Oakland. She’s been an emergency room nurse for more than 40 years. She is the second nurse who has signed up to run against Denham.

“We need someone, I believe, with my experience and knowledge and intimate experience with patients and the challenges they face every day,” she said.

All of California’s Republican members voted for the House GOP healthcare plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats are using the vote as a campaign issue.

Democrats have repeatedly targeted the 10th Congressional District, where Denham won reelection in 2016 by less than 5 percentage points. At least 10 people have filed to challenge him in 2018.

Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) said he hasn’t made up his mind on SB 2.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

State Democrats remain short of the votes they need to pass a key part of the package of legislation aimed at addressing California’s housing crisis.

Three Democrats in the Assembly told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday afternoon they remained undecided on Senate Bill 2, a measure that would add a $75 fee on many real estate transactions to fund low-income housing development.

SB 2 requires a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Assembly to pass. Assuming no support comes from Republican lawmakers, Assembly Democrats can’t afford to lose any members of their caucus.

“I’m still looking at it,” said Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance). “My concern is that it looks and smells like a tax.”

The bill’s author, Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) pushed through changes to the measure Tuesday morning to give cities and counties more direct control over the money generated by the fee in an effort to gain enough support.

Democratic Assemblyman Tom Daly of Anaheim said he was still reading through the amendments and hadn’t made up his mind.

After Democratic lawmakers gathered for lunch Tuesday, Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin of Thousand Oaks exited with Assemblyman David Chiu of San Francisco. Chiu, who leads the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, was talking through the housing bills with her.

“I’m considering it still,” Irwin told The Times of SB 2.

SB 2 passed the state Senate on a party-line vote with the entire supermajority of Democrats voting yes.

Legislative leaders are aiming for a vote on a full package of housing bills, which include a bond measure on the 2018 ballot and legislation to ease local development regulations, as early as Friday.

Sept. 1, 1:30 p.m., This post was corrected to reflect that Democrats can’t afford to lose any members on this vote. An earlier version incorrectly said they could lose one member.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

A new statewide poll shows widespread voter opposition to a California law that allows counties to close polling places and instead rely on absentee ballots and a limited number of multipurpose election centers.

Sixty-one percent of voters said they didn’t like the idea of switching to a system of “voter centers” and all-mail ballots, according to the poll released on Tuesday by UC Davis’ California Civic Engagement Project.

“Voters are not initially receptive to vote centers,” said Mindy Romero, the project’s founder, during a presentation in Sacramento.

There are 14 counties eligible to use the new rules in 2018, with all other California counties being able to join them and move away from neighborhood polling places two years later in 2020. So far, only a handful have agreed to the change.

Supporters have said the law simply builds on the trend toward voting by mail, while also allowing voters more access to a variety of election-related services -- including election day registration -- at locations conveniently placed throughout communities.

But the poll found substantial skepticism across a number of subgroups of voters, both by ethnicity and age. Eight in 10 of the voters surveyed said they typically travel 10 minutes or less to their polling place, a distance that could grow in the counties that switch to vote centers.

Romero said the poll’s findings show the importance of explaining the sweeping change in the counties that choose to change procedures under the new law, hopefully minimizing the risk that voters might be discouraged from casting ballots in 2018 and beyond.

“This is the most significant voting change we’ve seen in our state,” she said. “Education and outreach is going to be absolutely key.”

It was healthcare that inspired Riverbank small business owner Virginia Madueño to become the newest person to challenge Republican Rep. Jeff Denham in California’s Central Valley.

Madueño, 52, said she decided to run when Denham voted for the GOP bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act in May after initially saying he’d vote against it.

“That’s when it became personal for me,” she said.

After previously toying with the idea of running, she attended a local healthcare town hall and realized “not only did I have a story to share but I had a cause, if you will. I could relate.”

The Democrat said that before the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, she struggled to find health insurance because of a preexisting condition stemming from a case of bacterial meningitis when she was an infant.

Born to Mexican immigrant farmworkers in Modesto, Madueño has a communications degree from Cal State Stanislaus. She said she can relate to the heavily agricultural community and its concerns about immigration policy.

“My family has gone through the whole immigration process. There was a time when immigration worked incredibly well, and it’s not working right now,” she said.

Madueño runs Imagen LLC, a communications firm she established in 2001. She served on the Riverbank City Council from 2005 to 2012, including a stint as mayor from 2009 to 2012. Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the Commission on Boating and Waterways in 2013. She ran unsuccessfully for the state Assembly in 2016.

Madueño plans to hold 10 town halls in the district over the next few months.

“I don’t believe that I have all of the answers, but I think that by learning more from the community … I’m going to be able to actually articulate and carry that voice forward,” she said.

At least 10 people have filed to run in 2018 against Denham, who won reelection by less than 5 percentage points in 2016 after Democrats sought to tie him to now-President Trump.

With negotiations heading down to the wire on California’s so-called “sanctuary state” legislation, more than a dozen faith leaders poured into Gov. Jerry Brown’s office Tuesday to show their support for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

In what they called “an act of civil disobedience,” members of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity peacefully occupied the space and held a prayer service. The group read Scriptures, sang songs and told stories of parishioners who they said were living in fear under the Trump administration’s expanded deportation orders.

“Gov. Brown, join our service,” said Sarah Lee, an organizer with Interfaith Movement. “We are here to stand with you in courage.”

Several California Highway Patrol troopers and staffers at first scrambled to respond, but the group brought along a police liaison, and no one intervened.

People without an appointment were not allowed into the governor’s office. Some who did have a meeting scheduled were asked to wait outside.

Group leaders said they held the service in an attempt to meet with Brown and urge him not to amend SB 54. The legislation, introduced by Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), is the centerpiece proposal in a legislative package filed by Democrats to protect immigrants under increased immigration enforcement actions. It would prohibit police and sheriff’s agencies from using resources to enforce federal immigration laws.

But it has raised loud opposition from Republican lawmakers and many sheriffs, who say they have been in discussions with Brown in hopes of amending the bill. A different group of faith leaders met with Brown in his office last week.

Among those present was Leslie Takahashi, the daughter of a Japanese internment camp survivor and a lead minister with the Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church in Walnut Creek.

She said she and other church leaders have been working for years to make California a place of sanctuary for immigrants without legal status. She called the legislation crucial at a time when the president has pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and is threatening to end a federal program that provides temporary immigration relief to children illegally brought into the country.

“What we see going on is an effort to reduce the effectiveness and the statement that we are trying to make,” Takahashi said of the push to amend the legislation.

2:15 p.m. This article was updated with comments from immigrant advocates.

This article was originally published at 1:30 p.m.

A cadre of Democratic state senators are pushing to spend nearly $1 billion over the next year to replace diesel trucks, buses and other vehicles with cleaner versions.

A chunk of the money would come from California’s cap-and-trade program, which lawmakers agreed to extend last month. The program requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, and the state can use the revenue on initiatives that further reduce emissions.

“You are looking definitely at California’s future,” Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) said at a Tuesday news conference as nine trucks and buses, some powered only by electricity, lined up behind him outside the Capitol.

The proposal builds on an idea outlined by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) earlier this month.

The senators described diesel exhaust as a public health crisis in congested areas of California, especially highway corridors near international ports.

Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) held a canister holding pollution equivalent to 80 miles of exhaust from an 18-wheeler.

“It’s time to ditch diesel,” she said.

The senators aren’t the only ones with their eye on cap-and-trade funding. Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) wants to use some of the money to expand incentives for drivers to buy electric cars.

U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), left, and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) endorsed Antonio Villaraigosa’s gubernatorial bid on Tuesday, arguing that his record of fighting for equal rights over the four decades she has known him demonstrates he would be the best candidate in the 2018 race to lead all Californians.

“What a governor he will be,” Bass said. “Antonio is working to lift up this state so everyone everywhere has equal opportunities. So good jobs are not just for people in Silicon Valley or Silicon Beach, but for everyone. So good schools are not just in wealthy neighborhoods, but for everyone, everywhere. So we are not a wealthy coast and a struggling inland, but one California [where] every single one of us has a chance to learn and earn.”

Bass is the third former Assembly speaker to endorse Villaraigosa, who also held that post before he was elected mayor of Los Angeles. The current speaker, Anthony Rendon, has backed Treasurer John Chiang for governor.

Bass is also among the most prominent African Americans to endorse in the race. Black voters make up about 6.5% of the state’s population, according to the 2015 U.S. Census Bureau estimate. That’s far less than the fast-growing populations of Latino and Asian American voters. But black voters have historically been a powerful force in Democratic politics. Villaraigosa’s support in the African American community is among the reasons he won the 2005 mayor’s race four years after losing.

“He has built bridges with the African American community for decades,” Bass said, pointing to Villaraigosa’s work on education, criminal justice reform and inequity. “Go to church with him and see the support that he has, the recognition that he has, the affection that people feel.”

Bass and Villaraigosa appeared together at Los Angeles Trade Technical College, where they emphasized the nation’s need for more skilled workers with higher education degrees, as well as training in fields such as nursing and welding. It’s personal for the pair, who both attended community colleges before transferring to four-year universities.

“I know what education can do to change the lives of people,” Villaraigosa said, noting that he was raised in a home where domestic violence and alcoholism were present and that he had disciplinary issues in high school before teachers and his mother helped him find his way.

They spoke in front of several students who were brought to the country illegally when they were children. President Trump is considering whether to phase out Obama-era protections for younger undocumented immigrants.

“I want to make absolutely clear that here in California, we’re going to mark our own path. We’re going to stand up for the immigrants and the poor,” Villaraigosa said, pledging to try to use the courts to block Trump if he rolls back the protections in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego)

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Cities and counties will have more control over money designed to help the state combat its housing affordability crisis under amendments to key legislation unveiled Tuesday.

SB 2 from state Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) would charge a $75 fee on mortgage refinances and other real estate transactions and funnel the money to housing subsides. The fee, which would raise roughly $250 million a year, wouldn’t be charged on home or commercial property sales.

Under the changes made to the bill Tuesday, local governments will receive half the money in the first year to update blueprints that guide neighborhood development to speed up community planning. The state Department of Housing and Community Development would receive the remainder to fund homeless housing efforts. In later years, the state would award most of the dollars to cities and counties to finance the construction of low-income housing development.

The changes are designed to address concerns from some skeptical Democrats in the Assembly about raising fees on homeowners. The measure requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to pass and is considered the most fragile of the main bills in a package of legislation aimed at addressing the state’s housing problems.

At a news conference Monday before the amendments were released, Atkins said she had not yet secured enough support for her bill but was working on changes. The state’s housing problems, she said, required lawmakers to act now.

“If we don’t get started in a serious way with each and every one of these pieces of legislation, we will have more than a crisis on our hands,” Atkins said. “We will have a humanitarian crisis of proportions you have never seen.”

Changes to other bills in the housing package also were released Tuesday morning. They were memorialized in a deal announced Monday evening between Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders to support a $4-billion bond on the 2018 ballot to fund low-income housing projects and subsidize home loans for veterans. There also were minor changes to a bill designed to ease local regulations on home building.

Lawmakers could take up all the housing bills as soon as Friday. But Brown and top lawmakers have not announced they’ve reached an agreement on an entire package, nor that they’ve secured the votes for it to pass.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

For decades in California, local tax increases to finance school, transit, road and other specific improvements have needed to clear a high bar: a two-thirds super-majority of voters.

But a California Supreme Court ruling on Monday has led some to argue that’s changed, making tax hikes easier to pass. The court decided that local tax proposals from citizen groups put on the ballot via initiative should be treated differently than those pitched by local elected officials. By that logic, the two-thirds threshold may no longer apply to tax initiatives, which now could possibly pass with a simple majority.

No consensus has emerged yet, however, on if the ruling is that far-reaching. The attorney who won the case said the voter threshold for tax increases has not changed.

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(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday offered support for Assemblyman Chad Mayes, who recently lost his Republican leadership post because of his support for the cap-and-trade climate change program championed by Democrats.

Schwarzenegger, a longtime proponent of such efforts to fight climate change, used FaceTime to call in and laud Mayes at a Sacramento fundraiser, according to a source familiar with the former governor’s remarks.

He “really pumped him up,” said the person, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Schwarzenegger’s remarks. The former governor “said [Mayes] is the type of Republican California needs.”

The moment was notable, but not surprising.

Mayes was forced to announce last week that he was stepping aside as the Assembly minority leader after weeks of tumult prompted by his support for an extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2030. The program, which requires oil refineries, power plants and other facilities to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases, had been slated to expire in 2020.

Mayes was one of eight GOP legislators who voted for the legislation, but his support drew particular scorn from conservative activists because of his role in party leadership.

They argued that Mayes was betraying their values and providing cover for Democrats in swing districts who voted against the measure. Mayes countered that his vote was recognition of the concerns of the state’s voters.

When Schwarzenegger was governor, he passed the foundation for the state’s cap-and-trade program with only one GOP vote. That bill is among the reasons his party shunned him before he left office in 2011.

In the aftermath of the July cap-and-trade vote, Schwarzenegger offered his immediate support to Mayes, tweeting that the assemblyman was “following in the footsteps of great Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.”

Mayes thanked the former governor for his friendship and called him a “change agent” who “paved the way for others seeking to make our world a better place to live.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, the L.A.-area congressman who bucked Democratic Party leadership to file articles of impeachment against President Trump based on allegations of obstruction of justice, met Monday with the Los Angeles Times editorial board and members of the newsroom. The Porter Ranch resident talked about his reasons for formally pushing impeachment, the country’s divisions, and why California Democrats don’t work more with the state’s Republican leaders. Here are portions of the discussion, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the interview in full above.

Sherman thinks people are leery of impeachment, but filing for it has an effect

The actual filing of articles tangibilitizes what so many other people are saying and even Republicans are warning. … It’s funny, the word impeachment. I’ve had all these people come up to me in my district and thank me for everything I was doing and not mention the word impeachment. It’s a word that people stay away from and I analogize it to abortion. When I go out there I support Planned Parenthood, you don’t want to mention the particular word.

If it had any beneficial effects short-term, it was to get people in the White House to say, “Mr. President, you’ve got to clean up your act a bit.” … I can only imagine what Trump would do if he thought there was absolutely no risk of impeachment but firing [Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert] Mueller is the first thing he would do.

Is tangibilitize a word?

Jerry Brown invented it.

Is Sherman concerned most people haven’t jumped onto the impeachment train with him? Nope

Somebody actually had to say the word and produce the articles. I’m kind of surprised that it’s me, but I felt it was time to go forward.

He doesn’t think much of talk about using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump for incompetence

To me that is much more insulting of Trump and maybe even his supporters than to say, “Look, he violated obstruction of justice statutes.” To say he violated one statute … is considerably less insulting than to say he falls below [a] competency standard.

If Democrats get trapped in an effort to make Trump a one-term president, Sherman says it won’t be the impeachment effort’s fault, it’ll be the party’s message

For Brad Sherman to file articles of impeachment, [that] sends that message out with 20 decibels. If Nancy Pelosi were to do it that would be 100 decibels. That’s why I haven’t gone to Nancy and said, ‘You need to do this.’ ...

We’re going to need a more specific economic plan. … We haven’t fleshed it out enough. … The thing is that it’s not news that a political party is in favor of better jobs, better wages and a better future for Americans. My guess is Republicans are in favor of that, too, or at least say so.

Sherman thinks relationships in Congress are better and more honest ‘in a way’

Republicans can talk to me. … If I had a press conference to tell you what Ed Royce [Republican of Fullerton] told me in the gym, you wouldn’t believe it and you’d certainly believe his denial … or was it Dana Rohrabacher [Republican of Costa Mesa]?” They’re loyal to their issues, they’re embarrassed by their president.

Trump could be more boring to hold onto his unenthusiastic voters, Sherman suggests

His future’s in his hands. … He can barely meet the low bar of: “Can you give a speech showing sympathy to people in Texas without saying that Ted Cruz’s father was part of the Kennedy assassination?” … Pick the most boring president in the last 100 years. If he could just meet that standard. If he could rise to the level of Calvin Coolidge, could be [Warren] Harding, whatever.

Trump’s divisiveness is encouraging extremes, which Sherman calls ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

Thank God he didn’t put out a message on Mother’s Day because there would have been pressure on me to come out against Mother’s Day. … If Trump takes a position, then you must take an equally extreme and opposite position. He’s for Mother’s Day, you must be against Mother’s Day. He’s for a wall, you have to be for unlimited immigration from all places.

He says the relationship between California Democrats and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also a Californian, is not that productive

The politics are that you get elected for being loyal to your ideology rather than being loyal to your state. … You’d think we’d get together and fight for California and we do a little bit, and I think a little less than other states.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders agreed late Monday to a $4-billion bond aimed at the 2018 ballot that would fund low-income housing developments and subsidize home loans for California veterans.

“The bond agreement we have reached provides badly needed funding to help Californians, including our veterans, find safe, affordable housing,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said in a statement announcing the deal.

The decision comes as the Legislature considers a package of legislation designed to address the state’s spiraling housing affordability crisis. The bond measure, Senate Bill 3, is one of three key bills designed to increase state spending on low-income housing and ease local restrictions on home building.

SB 3 originally would have authorized $3 billion to support construction of new homes for low-income residents. Changes to the bill announced Monday evening added $1 billion for homeownership subsides for veterans through a program that would otherwise run out of money next year.

Monday’s decision is another step toward an agreement between the governor and lawmakers on a final housing deal. Senate Bill 2, which would add a $75 fee on mortgage refinancing and other real estate transactions to fund low-income home building, has been eyed skeptically by some Democrats in the Assembly. Changes to that measure are also expected.

Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) are also negotiating a 2018 bond measure to fund improvements to water and parks infrastructure.

SB 2 and 3 and a water and parks bond all need two-thirds supermajority approval in both houses of the Legislature. The deadline for all bills to pass this year is Sept. 15.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

A Superior Court judge has struck down a new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown that would have allowed cities, counties and the state to provide public financing of political campaigns, ruling that it violates a ban on that use of taxpayer dollars established nearly 30 years ago, officials said Monday.

Judge Timothy M. Frawley in Sacramento ruled that the financing law, which was signed last September, “directly contradicts” Proposition 73, an initiative approved by voters in 1988 that bans use of public money for campaigns.

The judge ruled the new law did not “further the purpose” of Proposition 73, which is the only means in which the Legislature can amend a law passed by the voters.

“We are very pleased with the decision,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which filed the lawsuit against Brown.

“It’s a misuse of taxpayer dollars when taxpayer dollars are limited,” Coupal added. “And you are in a situation where the government is picking winners and losers, because how do you decide who gets it [money] and who doesn’t?”

Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who wrote the legislation, said he will urge the state Attorney General to appeal the decision. “The judge’s ruling is a disappointing setback to communities that rightfully want to reduce the influence of special interest money in campaigns,” Allen said in a statement.

5:21 pm: Story updated to include comment from Sen. Allen.

(Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)

More than six years of state Capitol wrangling over how to improve disclosure of big donors in California political campaigns comes down to a crucial vote this week.

And in many ways, the effort to shine a brighter light on money in politics is really a fight over the fine print.

The basic elements of the “California Disclose Act” have been kicking around Sacramento since 2012. In short, it seeks to ensure that voters have more information about donors who increasingly use a series of bland-sounding political committees and groups to remove any fingerprints from the cash they’re spending.

Read More

Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of President Trump’s first allies in Congress, described the president in profane terms to a group of Republicans on Friday, but also touted Trump as their champion.

“He’s just like he is on TV,” Hunter (R-Alpine) told the group. “He’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”

Hunter’s salty assessment was recounted by four people who were present when the congressman spoke at a Riverside County Young Republicans meeting in a Murrieta sports bar. Three spoke on the record with attribution, while one source spoke on the condition of anonymity. Others who were there made posts about Hunter’s comments on social media as well.

Hunter’s chief of staff did not respond to emails for comment.

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Members of the California Nurses Assn. and supporters rally at the Capitol for a single-payer health plan June 28.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

A bill to establish single-payer healthcare screeched to an abrupt halt earlier this summer — but that hasn’t blunted its continuing influence on California politics.

Calls for a sea change in the state’s healthcare system have proved remarkably durable, even after Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) shelved a measure in June that would have made the state responsible for paying all of its residents’ medical costs.

A recently filed ballot initiative, budding campaigns against sitting lawmakers — including a recall effort against Rendon — and new plans for legislators to wrestle with how to achieve universal healthcare have taken shape in recent weeks, and the conversation is poised to take on national heft as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) prepares to introduce a “Medicare for all” measure in the fall.

It all sets the stage for a combustible coming election year, in which questions about the viability of single payer will be posed to gubernatorial candidates, incumbent lawmakers and new entrants to politics galvanized by the healthcare debate.

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California lawmakers have sought to shed light on the StingRay, a powerful surveillance device that imitates the function of a cell tower and captures the signals of nearby phones, allowing law enforcement officers to sweep through hundreds of messages, conversations and call logs.

A 2015 state law now requires law enforcement agencies to seek permission at public meetings to buy the devices, and post rules for their use online.

But a Los Angeles Times review of records from 20 of the state’s largest police and sheriff’s departments, plus the Alameda County district attorney’s office, found that California still does not have a clear picture of which agencies are using the device, how wide a net the surveillance tools cast or what kind of data they gather.

Read More

Rapper, actor and activist Common last week made the rounds in Sacramento, meeting with lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown, in an effort to promote bills meant to continue the reversal of tough-on-crime policies in California.

As part of the weeklong push by criminal justice reform groups, Common attended several events, had one-on-one meetings with political leaders and performed on the Capitol mall grounds during a free concert that brought together poets, activists and other music artists, including J.Cole, Goapele and Los Rakas.

At the center of attention were several juvenile justice bills meant to extend protections for minors entangled in criminal charges — and a legislative package that would have overhauled the way courts award offenders bail while their cases are pending.

It’s hard to say if Common swayed minds.

One of those bail bills stalled in the Assembly in June, and Brown put the other on hold through fall, a move that opponents applauded, while supporters hailed the governor’s commitment to the issue.

In a statement Friday, Brown pledged to continue working on the bail legislation with its authors and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who last year appointed the Pretrial Detention Reform Work Group to study the effects of California’s bail system.

Fresno County Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew Janz put the Russia investigation front and center at a backyard barbecue Sunday as he made his case for running against Rep. Devin Nunes.

Janz took Nunes to task for his role in the investigation, spending a good portion of his remarks giving a play-by-play of the complex story of Nunes’ involvement.

Nunes, a Republican from Tulare, has over $3 million in the bank and was reelected last year with nearly 68% of the vote. Nonetheless, the reliably Republican seat has drawn the attention of national Democrats, who are hoping voters will be put off by a House ethics investigation into whether Nunes mishandled classified information as part of the Russia election meddling investigation.

Nunes has been sticking his head in the sand and not speaking to constituents since he stepped aside from the investigation in April, Janz said.

“He wants all of us to forget sort of what happened over the last six months,” Janz said. “If we educate the voters of the district, we’re going to have pretty good results next year.”

Two other Democrats have announced plans to run against Nunes.

Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine wasn’t there, but a picture of his face pasted on a cardboard cutout of President Trump’s body was.

More than 150 people gathered at Cuyamaca College in El Cajon on Saturday for an event billed by liberal activist groups as an “empty chair” town hall when Hunter didn’t respond to their invite.

The event featured a mock trial of Hunter on allegations that he misused campaign funds, as well as speeches about healthcare, climate change and immigration.

Nancy Roy, 66, of Ramona said she wasn’t really expecting Hunter to be there, but she was hopeful.

“I was disappointed that our representative was not there,” Roy said. “It’s very disappointing that someone who is supposed to represent our community never shows up, is not accessible, doesn’t answer phone calls or emails.”

“Empty chair” town halls have become a frequent tactic of liberal groups looking to unseat congressional Republicans. Hunter had several other public appearances during the August recess, but not a town hall. His last town hall was in March. Hunter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday’s event.

The ongoing FBI investigation into Hunter’s campaign spending came up repeatedly throughout the afternoon, including the now-infamous expenditure to fly the Hunter family rabbit on a plane. (Before the event began, a man in a rabbit costume collected donations to help pay for the space.)

One of the speakers, attorney Judi Sanzo, discussed the details of the investigation, including the recently reported FBI raid of Hunter’s treasurer’s office. She said the investigation has made Hunter “irrelevant, even if he hasn’t become indicted yet.”

Hunter has repaid $62,000 to his campaign and his attorney has said the congressman is cooperating with the investigation.

Despite winning his suburban San Diego seat by nearly 27 percentage points in November, Hunter is one of the California Republicans whom Democrats are hoping to topple in 2018. He’s drawn more than half a dozen opponents so far, including two Republicans. At least two of his challengers were at Saturday’s event.

Though the event was pitched as a town hall, those who attended didn’t get to ask the speakers questions.

La Mesa resident Jennifer Bergovoy, 61, said she wasn’t very politically engaged before the 2016 election and she was hoping to hear more about Democrats’ plans for the 50th District.

“I wanted to hear what the Democrats had to say, what their position is on issues. We all know why we are against Hunter so I really wasn’t here to hear more about that, but I did get an earful of that,” she said.

Santa Barbara voters on Saturday got a one-stop-shop town hall with a well-stocked Democratic lineup: State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra was joined by freshman U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson and Assemblywoman Monique Limón.

The forum at Santa Barbara City College auditorium was free of the protesters and drama that have marked many town halls this year.

One attendee asked the panelists where they stood on universal healthcare legislation — a question pointedly aimed at Limón.

The first-term legislator took some heat from activists this summer for supporting Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s move to shelve a bill that would have established a single-payer healthcare system.

“We understand — I understand — this is a pressing issue. This matters. It is important,” she said. “We are committed to move forward as a state to identify what our pathway is.”

Carbajal, too, moved delicately around the question of expanding access to healthcare, which has caused rancor among some Democrats and has already become a sensitive issue as the 2018 midterm elections approach.

Carbajal said that it was worth working to achieve “healthcare for all someday” but the priority for the Democratic minority in Congress is to prevent the repeal of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

“I am committed to, from an aspirational stand point, someday getting there but I think we first and foremost need to fight for the gains that we made for the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “The fight to save our healthcare gains is not over.”

National Republicans have said unseating Carbajal is among their goals for the 2018 midterm elections.

Carbajal defeated Republican Justin Fareed by 6 percentage points last year after an expensive race for the open Central Coast seat vacated by former Rep. Lois Capps.

Fareed recently filed papers to run again in 2018 and Carbajal isn’t taking any chances: he has more than $867,000 in the bank for 2018.

Becerra also had some sharp words for President Trump, saying that while he respected the institution of the presidency, “Donald Trump has not earned my respect.”

He specifically slammed Trump for pardoning former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted in July of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order to stop racially profiling Latinos.

“It is hard for me to respect a man like that,” he said.

Republicans in the state Assembly chose a new leader this week, but it’s unclear whether their vote will end the rancor of the last few weeks or reopen old wounds about GOP relevance in a state where its ranks have consistently thinned.

On this week’s California Politics Podcast, we look at the broader political takeaway from the decision to oust Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley). And on the Democratic side of the aisle, old battles also resurfaced with news that the Assembly speaker wants a fresh look at ideas on universal healthcare in California.

We also review the California Supreme Court’s ruling that keeps in place — but modifies — a voter mandate to speed up prisoner executions. And we discuss the prominent role California’s congressional Democrats seem to be playing in efforts to stir the pot for President Trump’s removal from office.

I’m joined by Times staff writer Melanie Mason and Marisa Lagos of KQED News.

Decriminalizing the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms, also known as psilocybin, could be placed on the 2018 ballot.

(Peter DeJong / Associated Press)

California voters could decide whether the state should decriminalize the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms by adults in 2018. A ballot measure was filed Friday with the state Attorney General’s office.

The measure would exempt adults 21 and older from penalties of possessing, selling, transporting, or cultivating psilocybins.

At least 365,880 valid signatures are needed to place the measure on the 2018 statewide ballot.

Kevin Saunders, a mayoral candidate in the town of Marina, near Monterey, is behind the push.

Saunders said using mushrooms helped him stop using heroin 15 years ago.

“I think we’re seeing something that could literally heal our brothers and sisters,” he said. “We’re talking about real cutting-edge stuff.”

Saunders said he hopes voters will be mature and have a serious, robust conversation about the use of mushrooms.

“It’s a natural progression from marijuana legalization,” he said. “I think that we are having an opportunity to lead the discussion.”

Californians voted to legalize recreational marijuana use in November through Proposition 64.

Psilocybin is considered a Schedule I drug by the California Controlled Substances Act and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

These drugs have no accepted medical use and a high potential for dependence and abuse, according to the DEA. Heroin, LSD, and marijuana are in the same category.

Two 2016 studies found a dosage of psilocybin helped ease anxiety and depression for some cancer patients.

Assemblyman Brian Dahle (R-Bieber), center, was elected Thursday as Assembly Republican leader.

(Hung T. Vu / For The Times)

With the turmoil over the cap-and-trade debate behind him, newly elected Assembly Republican leader Brian Dahle said Friday he is looking ahead to the 2018 elections and his party’s efforts to end the Assembly’s Democratic supermajority.

The passage of controversial gas tax increases has already led to one recall campaign against a Democrat, and Dahle believes it will help Republican candidates running against Democratic incumbents who voted for the tax hikes.

“I know when I go to the gas pump it hurts,” Dahle said. “So I am assuming for everybody else who is going to the pump, it’s going to hurt. If we can communicate that story I think it will be to our advantage.”

Republicans will probably have to win two seats from Democrats to end the Assembly supermajority in 2018, a difficult challenge, but one Dahle said is a realistic goal. He noted that Republicans did it in 2014, when they won three seats back.

“It can happen,” he said. “I will be raising resources to help tell the story of my colleagues, to save our existing seats and expand our caucus.”

Dahle was elected minority leader by the Assembly Republican Caucus on Thursday to replace Chad Mayes, who drew the ire of many Republicans for voting to extend the state’s landmark climate change program, known as cap and trade, which requires polluters to buy carbon emission credits to pay for programs to mitigate climate change.

(Gary Cornado / Los Angeles Times )

California Gov. Jerry Brown urged President Trump on Friday to keep a federal deportation protection program for people brought to the country illegally as children.

“To uproot these young people from the only country they have known as home is to turn our back on the future,” Brown wrote in the letter. “It is cruel and it runs counter to the ideals this country was founded on.”

Trump is considering whether to end the five year old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that has allowed some people brought to the country illegally to stay.

About a quarter of the more than 750,000 people in the DACA program live in California, a fact Brown noted in the letter.

Trump has sent mixed messages on whether he would continue the program since the Republican took office in January. But Republican attorneys general for Texas and nine other states have given the Trump administration an early September deadline to end the program or be sued.

Brown also urged the president to work with Congress to pass the DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill that would provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients.

Facebook security chief Alex Stamos says the social media network has massively expanded its team to target the threats of cyberwarfare that trickle down from countries like Russia and China.

But it is increasingly focused on the subtle ways in which attackers can manipulate digital propaganda and misinformation to affect the outcome of elections around the world — a new risk that requires little or no traditional expertise on information security.

“We talk about the U.S. and Russia a lot, but the truth is there is lots of places in the world where the same kind of activity is being seen on a smaller scale,” he said this week in San Francisco during the Enigma Interviews, a series of cybersecurity conversations hosted by the Advanced Computing Systems Association, or USENIX.

In emerging democracies where violence often erupts after elections, he said, the manipulation of media can contribute to a death toll.

Since the election of President Trump in November, Facebook, Google and Twitter have found themselves under fire from critics who say they helped peddle the fake news that some media experts believe influenced American voters. As a special prosecutor’s investigation continues into Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence experts have testified that the spread of false information, through social media trolls, was among the tools Russian President Vladimir Putin used to sway ballot box results.

Facebook since has published a white paper on its effort to spot fake accounts and aberrations in content, and devoted $1 million in funding for defensive research. It also is the founding sponsor of the Defending Digital Democracy Project.

The initiative, hosted at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, is led by former managers for the presidential campaigns of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Mitt Romney, both targets of foreign hackers.

The bipartisan project aims to bring together political operatives and cyber and national security leaders to develop strategies, threat-response tactics and “practical playbooks” to improve the cybersecurity of campaigns and elections agencies.

“Our goal is for these groups to assist each other and share information directly to build greater resiliency into our elections,” Stamos said.

With potentially hundreds of activists from other states coming to California for rallies and protests, a state lawmaker called Friday on federal officials to reject proposals that would allow people with concealed weapon permits in other states to bring their weapons to the Golden State.

State Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) introduced a resolution in the state Legislature in response to two measures in Congress that he said would allow out-of-state gun owners with concealed carry permits to bring their weapons into California and ignore this state’s tougher permit laws.

He said he was alarmed by news footage of the violence at the Unite the Right rally earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists openly carried firearms, including assault rifles.

“I’m not willing to throw away the progress we have made on gun safety or put our communities at risk because some backward politician in D.C. thinks they know what’s better for California than we do,” Santiago said in a statement. “Californians expect that the gun control laws that they have supported and instituted in the name of public health and safety will hold -- regardless of who is carrying that gun or where he or she is from.”

The congressional measures will not be acted on before a pair of Bay Area rallies this weekend which authorities fear could be marred by violence between white nationalists and counter-protesters.

The National Park Service permit for that rally prohibits those in attendance from possessing guns, explosives and “weapons of any kind.”

Santiago’s resolution, which may be voted on next week, was supported Friday by Wendy Wheatcroft, a leader of the California chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America who said the National Rifle Assn. was behind the proposals.

“Rather than create a national standard for who can carry guns in public across our country, the NRA’s longtime top policy priority would override each state’s standards, and force states like California to accept the concealed carry permitting standards of every other state, no matter how weak, or even nonexistent, another state’s standards may be,” Wheatcroft said.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday stalled an ambitious bill that sought to overhaul how courts award criminal defendants bail while their cases are pending, saying he and the authors of the legislation will continue negotiations through the fall and revisit the issue early next year.

“I believe that inequities exist in California’s bail system, and I look forward to working this fall on ways to reform the system in a cost-effective and fair manner, considering public safety as well as the rights of the accused,” Brown said in a statement.

The announcement came after days of rallies and heavy lobbying efforts by supporters of the bill, including a free concert by music artist and activist Common in Sacramento. Behind the scenes, bail agencies and lobbyists for prosecutors and law enforcement associations were raising concerns about its cost and the strain on resources it could place on its agencies.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) combined forces in December to unveil the California Bail Reform Act of 2017, as calls for action and legal challenges have spurred momentum for bail reform nationwide. The pair of identical bills would eliminate the use of bail fee systems and require counties to establish their own pretrial services agencies.

But Bonta’s proposal hit a hurdle in the Assembly in June over concerns about its costs and implementation.

In his announcement Friday, Brown said he would be working on the legislation with Bonta, Hertzberg and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who last year appointed the Pretrial Detention Reform Work Group to study the issue.

“I look forward to sharing these recommendations with the Governor and Legislature as we work together to improve our bail system,” Cantil-Sakauye said in a statement.

Hertzberg and Bonta said they welcomed working further on the issue, saying the additional time will give them an opportunity to study the bail markets and work with members from all three branches of government.

Hertzberg said bail reform is “imminent” and that he is considering holding legislative hearings and filing legislation to regulate the bail insurance agencies in the coming weeks.

Criminal justice reform advocates and civil rights lawyers applauded the governor’s commitment to the issue. Opponents lauded his move to continue the negotiations through the fall.

Groups on all sides of the debate — including bail agents, police and prosecutors and criminal justice reform advocates — have all expressed concerns over the disparities in the state’s current bail system. But while Senate Bill 10 opponents say they will continue to lead the charge to preserve surety bail, its supporters want to eliminate or limit its use as much as possible.

“For years, California’s bail system has failed to achieve its intended purpose of promoting public safety and court appearance, instead leading to the unjust detention of countless Californians who simply could not afford to buy their freedom,” Zachary Norris, executive director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, said in a statement.

2:24 p.m.: This article was updated to include additional comments from Hertzberg and opponents and supporters of the legislation.

11:31 a.m.: This article was updated to include a statement from Hertzberg.

This article was originally published at 11:13 a.m.

Assemblyman Brian Dahle (R-Bieber), center, explains how thinning crowded trees will keep the forest healthy as logger Lonnie Blunt looks on. Dahle was elected Thursday as Assembly Republican leader.

(Hung T. Vu / For The Times)

Six weeks after helping Democrats revamp California’s landmark climate change policy and facing a torrent of anger from conservative critics, the Republican leader of the state Assembly agreed Thursday to step down and allow a rural Northern California lawmaker to lead the GOP’s fractured caucus.

The shuffle, which saw Chad Mayes replaced by Assemblyman Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) as leader, comes as the California Republican Party’s numbers continue to shrink among registered voters and in elected office. Republicans make up just over a quarter of the state’s total voters, while Democrats in the last election won supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature.

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In Foresthill, Calif., Rep. Tom McClintock stands in front of the high school motto, which refers to the school’s Wildfires mascot but calls to mind Democrat Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

(Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times)

(Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), who has faced rowdy protesters and sharp barbs at town halls this year, received a kinder if not exactly warm response in a remote town in the Sierra foothills Thursday evening.

Most of the hostility from the crowd inside the Foresthill High School gym focused on McClintock’s support for President Trump.

The congressman faced multiple questions on Trump’s controversial comments about the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 12, prompting McClintock to disavow the hate groups and defend the president.

“There’s no such thing as a fine person who marches with the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis,” McClintock said, a clear repudiation of Trump’s assertion that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

McClintock received a round of applause, but that quickly turned to boos when he added: “And the president made that pretty clear.”

A five-term House member who represents the 4th Congressional District, McClintock has earned a reputation as an anti-tax conservative who is a strong supporter of gun rights and Trump’s effort to build a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Unlike many Republican House members from California, McClintock hasn’t shied away from holding town halls.

The hundreds sitting in the gym bleachers in tiny Foresthill included members of the liberal activist group Indivisible of Auburn, as well as conservative tea party activists and advocates for cleaving California’s northern section into a new state.

“I’ve always been a big supporter of Tom,” said Leah Cavanaugh, 75, a retired schoolteacher and tea party member from Foresthill. “People have been so rude to him at his other town halls. That’s not right.”

At a raucous town hall in Roseville in February, police escorted McClintock out of a packed theater as participants grew testy amid a debate about the future of the Affordable Care Act, with hundreds of protesters chanting, “Vote him out.”

On Thursday night, McClintock also took criticism for supporting the president amid an inquiry into whether his presidential campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election, a matter being investigated by Department of Justice special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

“This has been used as one of the excuses for Hillary Clinton’s defeat,” McClintock responded, triggering a round of catcalls. The congressman defended the president, saying there’s no evidence of wrongdoing so far.

Still, he reminded the crowd that he supported appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling after Trump fired former FBI Director James B. Comey, and said evidence could persuade him to consider whether congressional action against Trump is warranted.

While one man at the town hall encouraged McClintock to push to punish “sanctuary cities” such as Los Angeles and San Francisco that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, another asked McClintock for immigration help.

Tomas Evangelista, 27, of Auburn, who said he was 2 years old when his mother brought him into the county illegally, asked McClintock to support legislation to protect “Dreamers,” people brought into the county illegally as children who can currently seek deportation protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Two of McClintock’s California GOP colleagues on Thursday urged Trump, who hasn’t made a decision on the future of the program, to preserve it.

But McClintock said, “Not now ... not until the border is secure. Not until the border wall is completed.”

McClintock’s district stretches from Lake Tahoe down to Yosemite along the spine of the Sierra and includes the towns of Roseville, Auburn and mountain towns east of Fresno.

McClintock, in response to several questions about land use, reminded the crowd that he’s been a longtime supporter of increasing access to federal lands for recreation and timber harvesting, and believes that restrictive national forestry policy has increased the danger of deadly wildfires in the region.

McClintock’s district is considered to be mostly Republican, but he’s being challenged in 2018 by a handful of Democrats including Regina Bateson, a former U.S. State Department foreign service officer and assistant professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After the town hall, Bateson, who recently moved back to her hometown of Roseville, stood outside the gym doors hanging campaign fliers.

FOR THE RECORD

The headline on this post misspelled the first name of Rep. Nanette Barragán.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

A lawsuit filed in a California appeals court on Thursday alleges the ballots of as many as 45,000 voters weren’t counted in November because of the state’s flawed rules for verifying the signatures of those who vote by mail.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California on behalf of a Sonoma County voter who said his ballot wasn’t counted after his signature on the ballot envelope was deemed to not match the one that elections officials had on file.

“People should not be denied their right to vote because a government official doesn’t like their penmanship, but that’s exactly what is happening in California,” said Michael Risher, an ACLU staff attorney, in a written statement.

The legal action comes as a number of counties have been given permission under a new state law to close neighborhood polling places in 2018 and instead send all voters a ballot in the mail.

State election law requires county officials to reject a ballot if the signatures aren’t believed to be a match. But, the lawsuit said, existing law “does not prescribe how elections officials should make this determination or require officials to have training in handwriting identification or comparison.”

A spokesman for Secretary of State Alex Padilla said that 99.3% of absentee ballots in the state were accepted and counted in the November 2016 election. Padilla has sponsored legislation pending in Sacramento to help voters who forget to sign the ballot envelope.

But that change wouldn’t solve the allegations contained in the lawsuit, given that existing law forbids the counting of a ballot if an elections official thinks the signatures “do not compare.”

The lawsuit says that the plaintiff, Peter La Follette, would have worked to resolve the signature mismatch had he been notified by Sonoma County elections officials before the final vote tally was certified.

In October, a Florida judge ordered changes to that state’s rules regarding signature checking on absentee ballots.

Customers buy products at a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco.

(Haven Daley / Associated Press)

Just months before shops can begin selling marijuana for recreational use, state lawmakers on Thursday sent the governor a bill aimed at preventing the drug from being marketed to minors.

The measure approved by the state Senate prohibits packaging and labeling of marijuana products that show “pot edibles” such as cookies and candy bars. The bill by Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Chico) also bars packaging that mimics the name or packaging of non-marijuana candies, snacks and drinks.

“Studies have shown the dangers that accidental marijuana ingestion poses to young children,” Nielsen said in a statement. “This measure will prevent marijuana from being packaged to attract children.”

The state will begin issuing licenses to grow and sell marijuana for recreational use on Jan. 2, a change approved last November by California voters.

The bill was supported by law enforcement officials, including Placer County Sheriff Devon Bell.

“This law will reduce any ambiguity in current child safety measures in relation to marijuana,” Bell said.

University of California President Janet Napolitano

(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)

The University of California president’s office has failed to keep a proposed new payroll system on budget and on schedule, and original estimates of its cost savings are unlikely to be realized, a state audit concluded Thursday.

The Office of the President originally estimated in 2011 that the UCPath payroll system would be implemented by 2014, cost $306 million and save the university $753 million, mostly from staff reductions.

But current estimates put the cost at $504 million and it won’t be done until 2019. University officials now estimate it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more to operate, so the projected savings won’t happen, California State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday.

UC President Janet Napolitano said the complex project began before she became head of the system but has improved over time.

The audit made recommendations to improve the cost of the project, and Napolitano responded that “the recommendations are helpful and constructive, and align with our proactive efforts to continually improve UC’s operations, policies and transparency to the Legislature and the public at large.”

Thursday’s audit is the third this year that has been critical of Napolitano’s office. One audit accused the president’s office of failing to properly report the existence of tens of millions of dollars in uncommitted funds and of approving excessive salaries and perks for university managers.

As she did in that stinging audit earlier this year, Howle on Thursday accused the president’s office of leaving the UC Board of Regents in the dark on the problems.

In 2014, the payroll project’s director told the regents that the estimate for the project was $220 million, but internal records from a month earlier showed the project would cost $345 million, the audit found.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a second version of new rules governing California recall elections, one passed hours earlier by Democrats seeking to stop the removal of an Orange County state senator.

The bill, introduced in the Legislature just three days ago, would impose new waiting periods before a special recall election is held. Democrats insist the change is needed so voters who sign a recall petition have time to remove their names from the list if they change their minds.

But the law would also apply to the current effort at a recall election for state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), whom Republicans hope to remove from office after his springtime vote for a $52-billion transportation plan. That law will raise gas taxes and vehicle fees. The additional time for signature tallies and fiscal analysis of election costs would likely delay any special election in the Newman effort until 2018.

“I’m real frustrated by the gamesmanship,” said state Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) during Thursday’s Senate debate on the bill. On the verification of election costs, Moorlach said, “Some of this stuff could be done in three hours.”

State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton)

(Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)

Democrats repeated their criticism of the GOP-funded effort to gather signatures in Newman’s district, claiming voters were told they were signing petitions to repeal the new gas taxes.

“Let’s protect that democratic right of the person who learns they’ve been deceived,” said state Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel).

Brown signed the first effort to change the recall election rules in June, but that legislation was initially blocked by a state appeals court. Opponents of Newman have already turned in more than enough signatures to force a recall election. Absent the law signed by the governor on Thursday, that election could have been held as soon as the end of October.

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Reps. Jeff Denham and David Valadao joined four other Republicans Thursday to urge President Trump to leave in place deportation protections for some people who were brought to the country illegally as children.

Trump’s mixed messages on whether he would continue the 5-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has been a source of consternation since the Republican took office in January.

California is home to an estimated one-third of the 750,000 people who were granted work permits under the program. Republican attorneys general for Texas and nine other states have given the Trump administration an early September deadline to end the program or be sued.

In a letter to Trump, the representatives encouraged the president to focus on deporting criminals and to allow the program to continue until Congress can find a permanent legislative solution for the people who qualify for the program.

Denham of Turlock and Valadao of Hanford each represent agricultural districts in the Central Valley with large Latino populations, and each face potentially tough battles with Democrats in 2018.

“We have violent criminals preying on our communities, and our resources should be going toward their deportation instead of being directed toward the young men and women protected through DACA, who are working toward a better future,” Denham said in a statement.

Nearly two months after shelving a single-payer healthcare measure earlier this summer — stirring activists’ rage and a fledgling recall effort against him — Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) announced plans Thursday to hold hearings to discuss universal healthcare in California.

The hearings, which will be held during the legislative interim that begins after Sept. 15, mark an attempt to redirect the energy around healthcare overhaul from a single bill, SB 562, to a broader conversation about ways to expand healthcare coverage in the state.

“A lot of the vocabulary, a lot of the nomenclature, is confusing to a lot of people,” Rendon told reporters Thursday. “There’s a lot of different variants, a lot of different models of single payer, for example.”

The hearings will be chaired by Democratic Assembly members Jim Wood of Healdsburg and Joaquin Arambula of Fresno.

Rendon did not explicitly say whether the hearings are meant to result in a bill that could establish universal healthcare in the state.

“This is an attempt to have an honest discussion,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had at all anything close to approaching an honest discussion about single payer, however we define that, about SB 562.”

Rendon has been harshly critical of the measure, by state Sens. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), which passed the Senate in June but did not spell out how to pay for such a sweeping change to the healthcare system, in which the state would cover the medical expenses of all residents.

But by blocking the measure once it reached the Assembly, Rendon unleashed a wave of pushback from single-payer supporters, including the California Nurses Assn., the bill’s sponsor. With rallies at the Capitol and an incipient effort to recall the Assembly speaker, SB 562 supporters have continued to press for the bill to advance in the current legislative year.

The nurses union made clear Thursday they were not satisfied with Rendon’s call for hearings, instead urging the speaker to let their bill move forward.

“Nurses have serious concerns that the decision to avoid an actual single payer bill with a select committee is an effort to promote insurance industry alternatives to single payer that will do little to address the substantial shortfall that exists for patients in the present system,” said Bonnie Castillo, the group’s associate executive director.

Rendon said his embrace of hearings on universal coverage shouldn’t be seen as yielding to his detractors.

“A lot of the people who have been critical of me — they want single payer and single payer only,” Rendon said. “I don’t think I’m necessarily covering my ... as much as I’m trying to be thoughtful about this.”

Lara, in a statement, said he was “glad the Assembly is joining the conversation about universal healthcare that started in the Senate this year” with his bill.

“The conversations I have had with my friend Speaker Anthony Rendon show he is committed to healthcare for all, and the Select Committee is a tangible product of that commitment,” Lara said. “Having more legislators involved in hearing the healthcare stories of Californians will move this important debate forward. We also need to hear the direct experience of other nations including Japan, Australia, Canada and Germany with universal healthcare.”

UPDATE 2:41 p.m.: This post was updated to include reaction from the California Nurses Assn.

This post was originally published at 11:45 a.m.

California could become the first state to support a censure of President Trump for his response to violence at a protest over a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Va.

Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, a Richmond Democrat, introduced a measure that would support efforts by some in Congress to formally disapprove of the president’s response and urge other state legislatures to support it.

Thurmond said Trump’s response “failed California” and wants the president to apologize for what he says was racist and bigoted behavior.

Days after the Aug. 12 rally and the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer, Trump said there was blame on “many sides” for the violence that culminated when a “Unite the Right” rallier ran over counter-protesters with a car.

Trump later denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, but maintained that “both sides” were to blame.

Equivocating neo-Nazis and white supremacists who attended the rally with counter-protesters does not represent California or the moral leadership citizens want from Trump, Thurmond said.

“In legitimizing groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis whose only association is with terror, hate, and death, the President has emboldened those who seek to divide us and inject fear into our communities,” Thurmond said in a statement.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a resolution for a congressional censure Friday.

A congressional censure does not remove a president from office, and they are rare. The last president to be censured was Andrew Jackson in 1834.

Chad Mayes

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Assembly Republicans announced new leadership on Thursday morning after weeks of tumult stemming from support from some caucus members for California’s climate change policies.

Assembyman Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley told lawmakers during a floor session that he will step down as caucus leader and that Assemblyman Brian Dahle of Bieber will succeed him before the end of the legislative session next month.

Mayes has been trying to fend off challenges to his leadership after he supported extending the state’s cap-and-trade program. He survived a vote on Monday, and another vote had been set for next Tuesday.

However, Republicans caucused Thursday morning before the announcement.

“You’re going to see a transition . . . to another leader who a lot of people respect,” said Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside.

Dahle is one of four members of the caucus who have sought to replace Mayes at various points after July’s cap-and-trade vote.

UPDATES

10 a.m. This article was updated with information about the Republicans’ Thursday meeting.

9:42 a.m. This article was updated to reflect comments made on the Assembly floor.

9:15 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about Assemblyman Chad Mayes.

This article was originally published at 8:51 a.m.

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Senate and Assembly members play in the Capitol Cup on Wednesday in Sacramento.

(Mina Corpuz / Los Angeles Times )

Democratic lawmakers defeated their Republican colleagues, 3-1, in the first Capitol Cup soccer match Wednesday night in Sacramento.

Proceeds from the hourlong game went to Saint John’s Program for Real Change. The nonprofit provides mothers housing, job training and other services to help them escape poverty, homelessness or abuse.

The game raised more than $35,000 for the nonprofit, said Greg Hayes, a lobbyist who helped organize the event.

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) said the match helped lawmakers build relationships and morale that would carry through to the end of the legislative session.

“It’s no secret that legislation is tough to do, but I think this helps us to set up good relationships and work on good things that are good for California,” he said.

No one scored in the first half, but the game kicked up in the second half when Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) scored the first goal. Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) answered minutes later with a goal.

Rep. Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) scored the second goal with an assist from Sen. Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park).

Bonta scored the team’s third goal minutes before the game ended.

Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes now has four colleagues vying for his post.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The number of candidates vying to unseat Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley as Assembly Republican leader doubled to four on Wednesday.

Assemblymen Brian Dahle of Bieber, in Lassen County, and Vince Fong of Bakersfield said they will contend along with previously announced competitors Melissa Melendez of Lake Elsinore and Jay Obernolte of Big Bear Lake.

The 25-member Assembly Republican Caucus has scheduled a vote for Tuesday in which one of the challengers will have to win a majority 13 votes to become the new leader.

Mayes has been under fire from other Republicans for voting last month with the Democrats on an extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program to combat climate change, which requires companies to buy permits to pollute. State party officials have called for Mayes to step down, but he has refused.

At a meeting Monday, only 10 caucus members voted to remove Mayes as leader, and he said afterward he has the votes to hold on to the post. He defended his vote on cap and trade, saying his party needs to adapt to reverse a decline in its power in Sacramento.

Clippers center DeAndre Jordan.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Supporters of a plan to build a new area in Inglewood for the Los Angeles Clippers are hoping for a last-minute deal in the state Legislature to make the project easier to build.

The backers want California to ease regulations under its premier law governing development for the project, according to a preliminary draft of the proposal obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Clippers say the proposed legislation would be similar to measures passed in recent years to benefit a variety of stadium and arena plans. No bill has been formally introduced.

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Immigrant rights advocates on Wednesday urged Gov. Jerry Brown not to change state legislation that would expand laws to keep local and state law enforcement agencies from arresting, questioning and holding immigrants for federal agents.

As part of lobbying efforts on immigration and bail reform legislation, eight members with PICO California, a faith-based policy advocacy organization, said they met with Brown to discuss the need for so-called “sanctuary state” legislation.

Senate Bill 54, which was introduced by Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), is the centerpiece proposal in a legislative package filed by Democrats to protect immigrants under Trump’s expanded deportation orders. It would prohibit police and sheriff agencies from using resources to enforce federal immigration laws.

But it has raised loud opposition from Republican lawmakers and many sheriffs, who say they have been in discussions with Brown in hopes of amending the bill.

Some organizers said they left the meeting with Brown “cautiously optimistic” that the governor would take the lead on immigration as he has done with climate change and criminal justice policy.

“We told the governor that the whole country is looking to California, to his leadership,” said Joseph Tomás McKellar, co-director of PICO California. “We are in a new unprecedented moment in attacks on our communities, and it requires a new boldness, a new courage on [his] part.’”

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month, Brown expressed reservations about signing the bill. He said it needed further changes, but has declined to comment on how he’d like to see the legislation amended.

Immigrant rights advocates gathered in the Capitol basement Wednesday at a rally dubbed the “People’s Hearing,” where they expressed their concerns that Brown would bend too far to the address complaints from sheriff and police department officials opposed to the bill.

Several said the proposed amendments to the sanctuary state bill align too closely with state laws already in place that they believe don’t do enough to protect immigrants in the current national climate. The changes would eliminate most of the provisions limiting communication and the transfer of immigrant detainees between local and federal law enforcement agencies.

The Rev. Brendan Bussee, an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Catholic Church in Los Angeles and a PICO member who met with Brown, said the governor could be moving in the wrong direction as trust between communities and law enforcement continues to decline under the Trump administration.

“I am living with a community that is feeling much more fear and insecurity than ever before,” he said.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Felons in state prison would be allowed to vote in California elections under a ballot measure proposed Wednesday by a group representing prisoners, their families and supporters.

The constitutional amendment was filed on Wednesday by Initiate Justice, an Oakland-based group that seeks criminal justice system changes for inmates, including the group’s 2,500 members behind bars. The group has 1,000 supporters on the outside, according to founder and executive director Taina Vargas-Edmond.

“They [prisoners] don’t lose their citizenship when they become arrested,” Vargas-Edmond said. “I don’t believe they should lose their access to their democracy.”

The group needs 585,407 valid voter signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot, a difficult task for a largely grass-roots effort.

The proposal comes less than a year after the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown approved a law that allows felons serving sentences in county jails to vote in California elections, as part of an effort to speed their transition back into society.

California Rep. Jackie Speier is continuing to point to President Trump’s comments on North Korea and the violence in Charlottesville, Va., as evidence he’s unfit and should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment.

“There’s actually a growing mountain of evidence that the president has been very erratic, has shown a mental instability,” Speier, a Bay Area Democrat, told CNN on Tuesday evening. “There has been a lot of people behind the scenes talking about his instability, in Congress, for some time now.”

The section of the 25th Amendment in the Constitution that Speier cited has never been used. It allows the vice president and president’s Cabinet to inform Congress that a president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and should be removed. A two-thirds vote from Congress would be needed to confirm the Cabinet’s judgment if the president does not agree with the Cabinet’s recommendation.

CNN’s Jim Sciutto questioned Speier on whether Trump’s behavior rises to the level of mental instability.

“It’s really in the court of the vice president and the majority of those members of the Cabinet to make that determination at this point, whether that incapacity is preventing him from doing his job,” Speier responded.

Speier is a member of the House Select intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election and what the Trump campaign may have known about it.

Speier has been talking about using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump since at least February, when she told CNN that it is “there to provide a backstop” and that the president was not acing presidential.

Last week, she tweeted it was “time to invoke” the amendment.

Many Democrats have questioned the president’s fitness to serve, but few besides Speier have mentioned the 25th Amendment as an option for removing him from office.

Several members of Congress have talked openly about impeachment, which is another way for Congress to try to remove the president.

Rep. Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks actually filed articles of impeachment against Democratic leaders’ wishes, saying Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice.

But Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank told CNN on Sunday it is too early to start talking about the 25th Amendment as an option.

“We’re still far from concluding that that’s the case, even though we find, many of us, his conduct anathema,” Schiff said. “I don’t think we’re at a point of thinking about the 25th Amendment.”

Speier was not immediately available for comment.

Former California Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is taking on Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) over his healthcare vote in an ad for her super PAC aimed at electing Democrats.

The online ad, titled “Darrell-iction,” aimed at people in Issa’s district, began running Wednesday. It is the first in the super PAC’s campaign targeting House Republicans who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. All 14 Republicans in California’s delegation voted for the GOP effort to repeal the healthcare law in May.

The ad shows a bobblehead doll of Issa on the dashboard of a car driven by an actor with reddish blonde hair who appears to be portraying President Trump. A bobblehead of Trump appears on the dashboard halfway through.

Issa narrowly won reelection in November over Democrat Doug Applegate, and a majority of voters in his district picked Hillary Clinton for president. He is considered one of the more vulnerable incumbents in Congress, and Democrats have sought to play up his support for the Trump administration.

The ad ends with the car locking and the alarm system saying “Step away from the congressman” — a reference to Issa’s famous voice recording for the Viper car alarm system, in which he says “Please step away from the car.” Sales of the system helped make him the richest man in Congress.

Boxer, who served in the Senate for 24 years, founded the super PAC after retiring in January. Issa’s first bid for higher public office was when he sought the GOP nomination to take on Boxer for the Senate in 1998.

Orange County GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has long been an unapologetic supporter of improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, and it’s a fact Democrats are hoping to seize on in 2018.

On Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a website detailing the ties between the 15-term Republican and various current and former Russian lobbyists.

The website, presented as a bulletin board, features the pinned-up faces of Rohrabacher, and the likes of Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin, who are at the center of a controversy over a meeting with President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. Both figures met with Rohrabacher during a 2016 trip to Moscow, according to a Politico report. Rohrabacher has called the accusations a “nothing burger.”

In a tongue-in-cheek move, the committee is advertising the new site with Google ads in English and Russian.

The site also highlights links between the congressman and Chuck C. Johnson, a far-right blogger who helped arrange a recent meeting between Rohrabacher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It also points out his connection to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In an email, Rohrabacher spokesman Ken Grubbs said the DCCC “has joined the conspiracy theory carnival,” likening the group to “conspiracy theorists of Red Scare days, when guilt-by-association was the preferred mode of analysis.”

The site is the first such effort in California this cycle, and is in line with the DCCC’s approach as it continues to target Republican-held seats in California as part of a larger attempt to regain control of the House. With ten months to go until the California primary and dozens of Democratic challengers stepping up to run, the group has been singularly focused on attacking incumbents as it waits to see how the races shake out.

UPDATE:

10:23 a.m.: This post was updated with a response from Rohrabacher’s spokesman.

This article was originally published at 12:01 a.m.

California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye on Tuesday said federal immigration officers have continued to detain immigrants at courthouses across the country “in full force” since January, reversing years of work by judges to ensure equal access to justice.

“This is a national concern and deserves more attention in some respects because we are seeing people not come into court, not reporting to court, not reporting for services, not coming to testify,” Cantil-Sakauye said in a public discussion with state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) at the Capitol.

The event, hosted by the National Assn. of Women Judges, came as immigrant rights advocates and lawyers are ramping up their lobbying efforts in California this week in support of bills that would increase legal counsel and protections for immigrants. The measures were introduced by Democrats in an effort to counter President Trump’s expanded immigration enforcement actions.

One of those bills, sent to Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday, would prohibit law enforcement officers from detaining crime victims or witnesses on immigration violations. The most far-reaching proposal still pending would prevent police and sheriffs from detaining, questioning or arresting immigrants without serious or violent offenses in their criminal histories.

Cantil-Sakauye, a former prosecutor who owes her appointments to a series of Republican governors, is one of the few judges speaking out against immigration arrests at courthouses.

At the Capitol on Tuesday, she said there was no data on how many or how often immigrants have been detained or need of legal services. But she pointed to calls made to her office, anecdotes reported by her judicial officers and heated discussions on immigration enforcement at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania.

The conference was attended by all 50 U.S. state chief justices.

“Courts like Nebraska, Ohio and New Jersey and Connecticut and Massachusetts were all experiencing similar kinds of crises to those in our courts,” Cantil-Sakauye said.

At courthouses where probation offices fall under their control, she said, federal immigration agents were demanding to see the daily list of probationers due to appear “to check all the foreign-sounding names.” Agents at one courthouse were said to have picked up domestic violence victims requesting restraining orders against their abusers.

“This is happening without people talking and reporting,” Cantil-Sakauye said. “No one wants to give names.”