Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Donald Trump’s broad imposition of tariffs on imported goods.

“President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy, driving up prices and threatening jobs,” Newsom said in a statement.

The tariffs could have all of those negative impacts, but California’s economy was already sluggish.

As Gabe Petek, the Legislature’s budget analyst, said in a January response to Newsom’s state revenue forecast, “These gains are not tied to improvements in the state’s broader economy, which has been lackluster, with elevated unemployment, a stagnant job market outside of government and healthcare, and sluggish consumer spending.”

California has more than a million unemployed workers and its unemployment rate is tied for second-highest among the states.

Key Industries Facing Headwinds

“Jobs growth remains concentrated in government and government supported health care and social services while other private industries in total continue to shed jobs,” according to the Center for Jobs and the Economy, an arm of the California Business Roundtable trade group.

Virtually every major segment of California’s economy has been facing stiff headwinds in recent years, but the only one enjoying political notice has been Southern California’s film industry, which is seeing other states and nations lure production away with lower costs and subsidies.

“Those business decisions have considerable consequences for the industry’s thousands of middle-class workers: the camera operators, set decorators and lighting technicians who make movies and television happen,” the New York Times reported.

Newsom and the Legislature are planning a major increase in state subsidies to keep production in California, but it may be too little and too late.

Tech Sector Troubles

Meanwhile, “The substantial loss of technology jobs in the Bay Area so far this year is a huge shock to the Bay Area economy and labor market,” Scott Anderson, chief economist with BMO Capital Markets, recently told the East Bay Times. “The technology job loss trend has been in place for some time now, but the deterioration in the first two months of the year is concerning.”

Tariffs could hit Southern California’s most important economic driver — the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and the warehouse complexes in the region’s interior — especially hard. But this sector was already facing rising costs that undercut its competitiveness.

The Goods Movement Alliance, a coalition of business groups, is backing Newsom’s challenge to tariffs, but also cites the state’s policies, industrial electricity rates twice the national average and high gasoline and diesel fuel prices as negative factors, as well as new pollution controls on ships and anti-warehousing legislation.

California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry, including its famous winemaking sector, is also shrinking, largely due to uncertain water supplies, labor shortages and the same high costs for electricity and fuel that the logistics industry faces.

The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that, “even in the best-case scenario, some 500,000 acres may need to be fallowed in the San Joaquin Valley” due to restrictions on pumping irrigation water from underground aquifers.

Government Sector Also Strained

Finally, even though government has been California’s foremost employment driver — including government-financed medical services — in recent years, it is also facing bleak times. The state budget is mired in what fiscal experts call a “structural deficit” and virtually every major city, some counties and large school districts are in the same pickle. Los Angeles and San Francisco are particularly plagued after several years of of overspending and their leaders, such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, are warning that layoffs may be inevitable.

Trump’s tariffs might make things worse, but California’s economic woes predate Trump. Much of it was self-inflicted.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.Overwhelmingly Californians rate the intertwined issues of housing supply, living costs and homelessness as the state’s most pressing issues, as a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California confirms.

The terrible trio, as one might term it, also draws constant verbal acknowledgement from the state’s politicians, from Gov. Gavin Newsom down, and he and legislators have enacted dozens, perhaps hundreds, of measures to address it.

Nevertheless there’s little evidence that their efforts have had material impact. Either the three situations are beyond the capacity of politics to address — a distinct possibility — or the political efforts to date have not been vigorous enough.

California’s Housing Struggles

Why, one must wonder, is California plagued while residents of other states enjoy lower housing and living costs and experience much lower rates of homelessness? Shouldn’t our political and civic leaders be examining what these other states are doing right, or are they so afflicted with self-righteous hubris that they cannot entertain such a thought?

A new and very detailed study of housing policies in the nation’s 250 largest metropolitan areas confirms that California is an outlier when it comes to increasing housing supply and moderating its costs.

Lessons From Pro-Growth Metros

Titled “BUILD HOMES, EXPAND OPPORTUNITY,” the report is a product of the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University.

“America’s fastest-growing cities offer lessons on how America can address its housing affordability crisis,” the report declares. “Based on our analysis of the 250 largest metropolitan areas and a deep dive into 25 large metros in the Sun Belt and Mountain states, places scoring best for pro-growth housing and land-use policies are mostly large Sun Belt metros from the Carolinas through Texas to Utah.”

The metros doing the best job of meeting their housing demands, the report says, have policies that make it easy for developers to build. That includes allowing higher-density housing in “substantial fractions of every city,” reducing minimum lot sizes, allowing residential construction in commercial areas, reducing or eliminating parking requirements and embracing innovative technologies such as modular construction and 3D printing.

In addition to adopting specific housing policies that spur development, the report continues, metros that are meeting demand also pursue complementary policies, such as having enough educational and medical services, allowing  “fine-grained mixing of land uses and human activities in as many places as possible,” allowing “dynamic changes in land use rather than trying to freeze neighborhoods,” and providing amenities such as “walkability, revitalized live-work-play downtowns” and “great parks and trails.”

Where California Falls Short

So, one might ask, which metro areas are hitting all the right buttons and which are not, as determined in the study?

The 25 top pro-housing metros are all either in the Sun Belt — particularly Texas, California’s arch-rival — or in the mountain states such as Utah and Idaho. No. 1 is Charlotte, NC. and No. 2 is Austin, the Texas capital which is becoming a powerful competitor with California’s Silicon Valley.

Not surprisingly, California metros are heavily represented on the list of the nation’s 25 “most restrictive” metros. While Honolulu is the least accommodating, Oxnard is No. 2.

Nine of the 25 are in California. They include, in order after Oxnard, San Jose, San Diego, Riverside-San Bernardino, San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton.

It would be tempting to dismiss the Bush Institute’s report as biased because it comes from Texas, but it contains a wealth of detail and explains how the data were evaluated.

A better response from California politicians would be to read the report and determine what more California could do to make the state housing-friendly. The state’s current path on housing, other living costs and homelessness is going in the wrong direction.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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When California became a state in 1850, it had fewer than 100,000 residents and 27 sparsely populated counties. Several were larger in land area than some states.

However, its population was exploding with Gold Rush immigrants and almost immediately they began pressing the Legislature to create new counties so they could more easily access services such as filing mining claims.

Over the next 57 years, 27 counties became 58 counties — one of which, Glenn County, was carved out of Colusa County in 1891 and named for my cousin, Hugh Glenn, the state’s largest farmer until his murder in 1883. All or parts of 12 new counties were formed by dividing up immense Mariposa County. The 58th, Imperial, was formed in 1907 from the eastern portion of San Diego County.

During the late 19th century and well into the 20th, California counties had a few relatively simple functions, such as rural law enforcement, road maintenance and maintaining property records. However, during the latter part of the 20th century, federal and state governments created an array of health and welfare programs and California opted to have counties manage them, rather than the state itself or cities, as some other states did.

Counties’ Evolving Roles

Counties became bifurcated as both agents of the state and providers of local services, and those roles were often in conflict because the former was inescapably mandated while the latter was more important to local voters and taxpayers.

The creation of more than 400 incorporated cities in the 1900s also complicated local governance. Cities diverted streams of property and sales tax revenues from counties and also tended to have concentrations of social ills — poverty, crime, drug addiction and homelessness — that county-managed health and welfare programs were supposed to address.

Thus, California’s counties and cities, particularly in highly urbanized regions, have often evolved into adversaries rather than partners in dealing with issues of high public and media visibility.

What happened last week in California’s most populous county and its largest city, both named Los Angeles, exemplifies the intergovernmental tensions. The catalyst, of course, is homelessness, which sits atop Californians’ list of issues.

LA City vs. County Feud

Read More: With Measure A, Los Angeles voters embrace a bigger response to homelessness

The state has spent more than $20 billion in recent years to deal with homelessness but the ranks of the unhoused have continued to climb and now approach 200,000, by far the largest population of any state both quantitatively and relatively. Gov. Gavin Newsom regularly accuses local governments of dragging their feet on creating effective programs to deal with it.

In Los Angeles, city and county officials have squabbled for decades over responsibility, and in the 1980s the city even sued the county. Thirty-two years ago, they agreed to form a joint agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, but the infighting never stopped. In recent years, it has become more intense.

For the last five years, federal Judge David O. Carter has presided over a lawsuit filed by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, demanding to know how the authority has spent homelessness funds. Carter has excoriated the agency for a lack of action and a lack of transparency, and it has also gone through two scathing audits.

Last week, the five-member Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to pull out of the joint agency and create its own department to deal with homelessness, spurning pleas from city officials, including Mayor Karen Bass. City and county officials are also squaring off over newly amended legislation, Senate Bill 16, that would require counties to provide more money to cities for homeless shelters.

Statewide Reform Needed

Homelessness is just one of the many issues that poison relations between city and county officials. The rational response would be a statewide reconfiguration of the responsibilities that recognizes 21st-century realities and reduces the friction.

It’s not likely to happen, so the rivalry will continue to fester.

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Were we able to transport ourselves back in time 50 years and into California’s Capitol, we would find a governor seeking and enjoying massive attention by national political media as he eyes some greater office. We’d also find a Legislature dealing with conflicts among influential interests with heavy financial impacts.

In other words, the Capitol’s dynamics in 1975 were pretty much what they are today.

The resemblance even extends to specific issues. For instance, then-Gov. Jerry Brown was touting a “peripheral canal” in 1975 to carry water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Gavin Newsom was seven years old then, but now as governor is waging the same campaign for a tunnel to do the same thing and is facing the same opposition.

Other conflicts that confronted Brown and legislators a half-century ago can be found again among the hundreds of bills introduced so far in the 2025 legislative session.

Related Story: Lobbyists Are a Growth Industry in Politically Complex California

Medical Malpractice Battles

On Tuesday, for instance, the Senate Judiciary Committee took up Senate Bill 29, a measure that would extend indefinitely the ability of survivors of people who died as a result of medical malpractice to sue for “pain, suffering, or disfigurement.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legislature provided a temporary window for such suits because the court system was in pandemic-induced turmoil.

Insurers and other opponents of the measure contend that it violates a 2022 compromise on the limits of malpractice damages, a deal that seemingly ended a 47-year-long political battle that began when Brown signed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act in 1975.

A half-century ago, doctors and other health care providers were also skirmishing over “scope of practice,” the body of state law that defines in great detail which medical professionals can perform which procedures on which parts of the human body.

The hardest-fought battle pitted orthopedic surgeons against podiatrists over the legal right to perform ankle surgery, and it raged for years until the latter prevailed. Ever since, there have been similar conflicts too numerous to list, such as psychologists vs. psychiatrists over the right to prescribe drugs, optometrists vs. opticians over eye treatment — and even veterinarians vs. dog groomers over who could legally brush a dog’s teeth.

The current version of this perennial turf battle is Assembly Bill 876, which would allow nurse anesthetists to provide their services more independently — the latest in a years-long string of legislative efforts by nurses to bolster the scope of their practices.

Related Story: Reflecting on 50 Years of Writing About California’s Politics — and Still Counting

Workers’ Comp Cycles

Soon after becoming governor, Brown pledged to reform workers’ compensation, the system that provides income and medical care to those with work-related illnesses and injuries. That effort failed, but as one of the last acts of his first governorship, Brown signed a bill to increase payments to such workers by about $3 billion a year, angering employers who must provide coverage.

That touched off a predictable cycle in which a majority of the workers’ compensation interest groups would work out some sort of systemic overhaul once each decade and get it enacted over objections of groups left out of the negotiations.

The last such instance occurred in 2012 when Brown, once again governor, negotiated and signed legislation to raise benefits again, but impose new rules on eligibility and medical care to save enough money to pay for the benefits.

The Capitol is overdue for another workers’ compensation deal and a newly introduced measure, Senate Bill 555, could be the vehicle. It would increase benefits to workers with partial but permanent disabilities, which have been capped at $1,256 a month for the last decade.

The bill would provide automatic cost of living increases and is certain to draw fire from employers — another chapter in what has been one of the Capitol’s longest running high-dollar conflicts.

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Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot” centers on two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who hope, in vain, that the arrival of a mysterious man named Godot will bring meaning to their otherwise miserable lives.

It’s considered to be a perfect example of Europe’s post-World War fascination with what was termed the “theater of the absurd.” That’s why it leaps to mind when one considers the dynamics of the ever-growing cadre of Democratic candidates for governor in 2026.

Waiting Game for Democrats

As their numbers expand, they are waiting for former Vice President Kamala Harris to tell the world whether she will try to keep her political career alive by seeking the governorship.

Harris is apparently willing, ala Godot, to keep them waiting. Politico has reported that a month ago, at a pre-Oscars party, she told supporters that she won’t declare her intentions until late summer.

The uncertainty about her intentions affects what other hopefuls can do in the interim, such as raising campaign money. The big Democratic spenders, such as unions, the entertainment industry and Silicon Valley, are also waiting, leery about making commitments to other candidates until Harris decides.

It’s also evident that the lesser candidates, those little known and lacking deep-pocket support, such as former state Senate leader Toni Atkins, state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee, would probably drop out if Harris runs.

But how about those who, in the absence of Harris, would be credible aspirants, such as Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congressmember Katie Porter and, most recently, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra?

Kounalakis and Porter have dropped hints that they would defer to Harris, but Villaraigosa has indicated he would still run and Becerra, in announcing his candidacy this week, declared he’s in it to stay.

Related Story: Xavier Becerra Enters 2026 California Governor’s Race

Primary Dynamics

The state’s top-two primary system plays a significant role in how the field eventually forms. Although polls indicate that Harris would be the frontrunner in the June primary, another Democrat could hope to finish second and thereby qualify for a runoff in November in which Republican and independent voters could be decisive.

However, a crowded Democratic field that would fragment Democratic primary voters would also increase the likelihood that a Republican, such as Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, would finish second.

That situation, as past elections have shown, gives the Democratic nominee a huge advantage to win the governorship, given the state’s lopsided Democratic voter registration.

We saw that scenario last year when Congressman Adam Schiff indirectly helped Republican Steve Garvey finish second in the primary duel for a U.S. Senate seat, freezing out Katie Porter. It could happen to her again next year, were she to remain in the gubernatorial race and the Harris campaign emulates Schiff’s tactic to help Bianco or some other Republican finish second.

Voter Mood and Potential Challenges

A runoff between Harris and another Democrat could be a test of her campaign ability in the wake of stumbling badly in her 2019 bid for the presidency and again last year after being tapped by Democratic leaders to take on Donald Trump after they forced Joe Biden out of a re-election bid.

California’s voters have been in a restive mood of late, concerned about ever-rising living costs, especially for housing, the state’s seemingly intractable homelessness crisis and crime. Last year’s passage of Proposition 36, a measure to crack down on criminals, despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders, is one indication of voters’ sour mood.

A Democratic candidate who exploits that angst and appeals to Republican and independent voters could mount a serious campaign against Harris — should she decide to run.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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As fate would have it, the very destructive and deadly wildfires that swept through Los Angeles neighborhoods this year erupted as its city officials were struggling to close a large gap in their budget.

By Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

At the time, the city’s deficit was estimated to be $600 million, but this month it was updated to nearly $1 billion.

LA’s Growing Structural Deficit

It would be tempting to attribute the larger shortfall to the fires, and they undoubtedly are a factor. But City Controller Kenneth Mejia has repeatedly warned Mayor Karen Bass and city council members that the city was overspending vis-à-vis revenues, creating a growing structural deficit.

From his first warnings in 2023, Mejia consistently warned city officials and the public about “financial trouble including less-than-expected revenues, increased liability payouts, and increased payroll costs and the effects this has had on the city’s budget, departments, and services,” his office said in a news release last week.

In a letter to Bass and other officials, Mejia noted that years of overspending revenues had drained much of the city’s reserves, leaving it ill-prepared to cope with such volatile factors as fire-related effects on revenues and spending and President Donald Trump’s “radical policies on tariffs, federal spending cuts and immigration.”

“Given the city’s ongoing structural deficit and new challenges, there will be a temptation to make more optimistic assumptions in the upcoming budget,” Mejia said in his letter. “Certainly we hope the actual performance will be greater than our estimates. Given all the uncertainties facing our city, it will be more prudent not to count on positive potential overcoming adverse realities.”

Related Story: $165 Billion Revenue Error Continues to Haunt California’s Budget

Similarities to State Budget Deficits

Los Angeles’ background of fiscal imprudence bears a remarkable resemblance to the state budget’s chronic deficits — overly optimistic revenue projections leading to unsustainable levels of spending — and it should be kept in mind as LA politicians try to get a bailout from the state.

This week the city’s legislative delegation formally asked the Legislature’s budget committees for a $1.89 billion appropriation “to address the City of Los Angeles’ urgent disaster recovery efforts following the devastating fires this past January, which displaced thousands, destroyed businesses and damaged critical infrastructure.”

Clearly the request — which must have originated in City Hall — uses the fires as a smokescreen to rationalize a bailout for a deficit that is fundamentally the result of years-long fiscal malpractice.

Related Story: Costly Health Care Expansion Worsens California’s Chronic Budget Deficit

The Slippery Slope of Bailouts

Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators will feel tremendous pressure to give Los Angeles what it wants, but doing so would be a step onto the proverbial slippery slope.

Los Angeles, unfortunately, is not the only city or local government feeling the fiscal pinch for roughly the same reasons. During and after the COVID-19 pandemic public spending soared, in large measure using many billions of dollars in federal disaster aid.

And when Uncle Sam closed his wallet, local governments were stuck with higher salaries and other spending increases they had lodged in their budgets. San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and many other cities are facing severe deficits, along with many school districts.

Should Newsom et al bail out Los Angeles, these other local entities will demand similar largesse from a state budget already hemorrhaging red ink and that faces the likelihood of deficits at least through the remainder of Newsom’s governorship and probably longer.

“Our short-term focus on year-to-year balance neglects the need for a multi-year transition to service models that allow the city to live within its means,” Mejia tells other city officials in this month’s letter. “We have consistently recommended specific budgetary reforms that are even more urgently needed in the face of the manifold challenges confronting us.”

It’s good advice and is similar in tone to the cautions Newsom and legislators have received from their budget advisors — and often ignored.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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California’s governors and legislators have a number of irritating habits, such as using sneaky tactics to pass legislation with little or no public notice, or exempting themselves from the rules that govern others.

However, the topper is their tendency to enact sweeping programs or policy decrees that promise positive benefits without fully weighing the risks.

The state’s bullet train project is a case in point. Blithe promises made to voters about costs and completion dates proved to be wildly inaccurate. Nearly two decades after a bond issue was approved, the project is a zombie, neither dead nor fully alive.

The annual budget process exemplifies the syndrome, as recent history underscores. A huge mistake in revenue projections three years ago led to a surge of spending that cannot be covered, resulting in chronic deficits.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature crowed about extending Medi-Cal health care coverage to virtually everyone in the state, including undocumented immigrants now ineligible for federally financed benefits.

Costs of the expansion were estimated at $6.4 billion but the real costs are nearly twice as high. Newsom had to borrow $3.4 billion to cover the extra costs, then asked the Legislature for another $2.8 billion for a $6.2 billion total. Thus an already imbalanced budget is in a much deeper hole.

Another example of ignoring negative consequences has surfaced recently: legislation that Newsom signed in 2019 to greatly expand the ability of childhood sexual assault victims to sue decades after the abuse occurred.

Among other things, Assembly Bill 218 expanded potential liability — previously limited to churches and other private entities — to public agencies, such as schools, juvenile detention facilities and child care centers.

Representatives of those agencies told legislators prior to AB 218’s passage that they could be hammered by very costly allegations that they could not counter because of the passage of time. Six years later, thousands of suits have been filed against school districts, cities and counties and the potential for many billions of dollars in payments is hitting home.

“Many claims are in various stages of litigation; thus, it is impossible to project the extent of total liability, whether claimants will prevail, or what the dollar value of any final award of damages or settlement agreement may be,” the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state agency that monitors school finances, said in a January report. “Even with missing details, we can conclude that the fiscal impact is and will continue to be significant and will affect programs and services.”

Los Angeles County alone has 7,000 pending claims under AB 218. In a Supreme Court filing, its lawyers said “If all those cases were to proceed to verdict, the estimated liability could be in the tens of billions of dollars and bankrupt the county. Even if the county agrees to settle the cases en masse, projected liability is in the billions of dollars.”

And then there is Assembly Bill 306, which is moving through the Legislature at warp speed.

The measure, touted as making it easier for victims of recent wildfires in Los Angeles to rebuild their homes, would prohibit local governments from altering their building codes for six years.

However, the freeze would apply to every corner of the state, not just communities affected by the fires, and therefore could undermine the state’s efforts to ramp up housing construction. One aspect of that drive has been compelling local communities with very restrictive building codes to make them more construction-friendly.

So far, Newsom and legislators have brushed aside warnings about that unintended consequence in their zeal to placate burned-out homeowners, particularly the wealthy and influential residents of Pacific Palisades.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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It’s likely that most Californians have never heard of the Levering Act, passed by the California Legislature in 1950, but it symbolized the state’s political orientation in the post-World War II era.

By Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

As the Cold War flared, anti-communist furor was sweeping the nation, most dramatically in Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy’s crusade to weed out what he said were sympathizers with and agents for the Soviet Union that had infiltrated the federal government and other institutions.

Named for the state legislator who carried it, Harold Levering, the law required all state employees to take a loyalty oath that disavowed left-wing political beliefs and was aimed specifically at University of California faculty members. In fact, 31 tenured UC professors refused to sign the required loyalty oaths and were fired.

By and by, the law was challenged in court as an unconstitutional abridgement of public employees’ rights — which, of course it was. The California State Teachers Association condemned it, rightfully, as “a political test for employment.”

UC’s Shift Towards Diversity Requirements

For many years afterward, the UC Board of Regents declared that “no political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee.” However, in recent years, citing a “commitment to diversity and excellence,” UC officials have told faculty recruiters that, as one directive put it, they must take “pro-active steps to seek out candidates committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

To enforce that policy, UC began requiring applicants for faculty employment and promotion to submit “diversity statements.”

At UC Davis, for instance, tenure-track faculty applicants were told they should demonstrate “an accomplished track record … of teaching, research or service activities addressing the needs of African-American, Latino, Chicano, Hispanic and Native American students or communities” and their statements must “indicate awareness” of those communities and “the negative consequences of underutilization” and “provide a clearly articulated vision” of how their work at UC-Davis would advance diversity policies.

UC officials said the requirement would help underrepresented ethnic and racial groups achieve parity, but critics labeled it an obvious political litmus test that would compel applicants to conform to a political policy whether they agreed with it or not.

Controversy Surrounding Diversity Statements

In effect, in the name of diversity UC was prohibiting diversity of thought by demanding an oath of loyalty to a designated left-leaning political policy just as the Levering Act had demanded fealty to a right-leaning political policy.

What’s questionable is not DEI, but rather UC’s insistence on requiring a signed document supporting the concept, which is truly a violation of free speech and academic freedom.

There’s nothing to prevent UC from, in its employment interviews, learning about an applicant’s history of inclusion, but that’s not a document like a loyalty oath. Moreover, reasonable people can disagree whether DEI policies are the appropriate pathway to equity or if they generate resentment that impedes equity.

This debate over UC’s rigid policy has raged for years inside the system and outside, particularly in academic journals.

Enter Donald Trump, who has declared war on “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies in academic, governmental and corporate institutions and threatened a loss of federal funds to those who maintain DEI programs.

This week, UC abandoned its diversity statement requirement.

“The requirement to submit a diversity statement may lead applicants to focus on an aspect of their candidacy that is outside their expertise or prior experience,” Katherine S. Newman, UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, told campus provosts in a letter.

“The regents stated that our values and commitment to our mission have not changed,” the letter continued. “We can continue to effectively serve our communities from a variety of life experiences, backgrounds, and points of view without requiring diversity statements.”

UC can and should pursue diversity in its faculty hires, not only in race or gender but also in intellectual leanings. However, ill-disguised political loyalty tests are as loathsome today as they were 75 years ago when the Levering Act was passed.

It’s beyond ironic that it took Donald Trump, who in many ways emulates Joe McCarthy’s witchhunts, to undo something that UC should never have done in the first place.

About the Author

Dan Walters is one of the most decorated and widely syndicated columnists in California history, authoring a column four times a week that offers his view and analysis of the state’s political, economic, social, and demographic trends. 

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

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Let’s assume that there’s a theoretical problem that needs to be addressed with a plan of action. Logically, such a plan would define the problem, declare what goals must be reached, list actions to reach the goals and, most importantly, identify the necessary logistical and financial tools required.

By Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

Humankind’s many armed conflicts have proven that plans lacking all of those elements often fail.

The allied invasion to end Nazi domination of Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, is a spectacular example of a meticulously detailed action plan that worked brilliantly. Conversely, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union ultimately failed because its planners underestimated the opposition and failed to account for how the German army could be supplied, particularly during the harsh Russian winter.

California’s most stubborn crisis, one that looms large in the minds of taxpayers and voters, is the state’s worst-in-the-nation level of homelessness. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators have spent many billions of dollars on homelessness, but the number of unhoused Californians has continued to rise, approaching 200,000 in the latest count.

Newsom’s Homelessness Action Plan

His administration’s latest effort, unveiled this month, is the “Action Plan for Preventing and Ending Homelessness in California 2025–2027.” It was drafted by his Interagency Council on Homelessness, which a year ago was excoriated by the state auditor’s office for failing to consistently track and evaluate the state’s homelessness spending and “ensure accountability and results.”

The auditor’s report undercut Newsom’s strenuous efforts to defend his record on homelessness and shift blame for failure to local governments which, he said, hadn’t spent state appropriations wisely.

In an introduction, Newsom hails the new action plan as “not just a report of our investments, but a directive for continued accountability and action towards specific quantifiable goals.”

Is it?

While the plan’s 100-plus pages lay out — with great repetition — lofty goals for housing the unhoused and expanding social and medical services to prevent more people from slipping into homelessness, it fails to credibly specify how they will be achieved.

One of its stated goals is to “permit more than 1.5 million homes, with no less than 710,000 of those meeting the needs of low- and very low-income households.” To achieve that in three years, the rate of housing construction would have to increase five-fold, which is not only physically impossible but would require something like $1 trillion in investments from public or private sources.

The housing and social and medical services the plan says are needed to effectively end homelessness would cost countless billions of dollars, but the plan doesn’t put price tags on its goals or actions to achieve them. Nor does it lay out how any of the money would be raised when the state faces chronic multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

A day after the plan was released on March 12, the California State Association of Counties issued a lengthy white paper that didn’t mention it specifically but nevertheless cited “critical flaws in our current broken system” and called for “smart policy solutions to address them.”

The paper lamented that “no single entity is explicitly responsible for ensuring individuals experiencing homelessness receive shelter, mental health care, or transitional housing.” It also appeared to criticize Newsom, although not by name, for refusing to provide a dedicated stream of state aid to finance long-term homelessness efforts. Providing only annual grants, it said, “creates uncertainty, making it difficult for local governments to plan and sustain effective programs.”

Unfortunately, homelessness is not an isolated case of launching big projects without fully developed plans. The haphazard and sometimes failed attempts to incorporate digital information into state government services is one, and the much troubled bullet train project is another.

About the Author

Dan Walters is one of the most decorated and widely syndicated columnists in California history, authoring a column four times a week that offers his view and analysis of the state’s political, economic, social, and demographic trends.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Newsom’s New CA Homelessness Plan Leaves Out Some Important Details appeared first on GV Wire.

So what game is Gavin Newsom playing?

Ever since Democrats lost the White House to Donald Trump four months ago, California’s governor has been retooling his political image, shifting from advocating left-leaning policies, such as single-payer health care, to supporting quasi-conservative causes, such as suppressing street crime and cleaning up homeless encampments.

By Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

Newsom’s slow drift to the right became a jolt last week when, on the first segment of his new podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” he declared opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports.

“I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that,” he told Charlie Kirk, a right-wing provocateur and Newsom’s first podcast guest. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair. I’m not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.”

Newsom cited his two daughters, his wife’s background as a college athlete and his own baseball career at Stanford as shaping his position, saying “I revere sports. And so the issue of fairness is completely legit.”

Related Story: Newsom Breaks From Democratic Stance on Transgender Sports

Backlash from LGBTQ Advocates

Not surprisingly, Newsom’s startling statement drew fire from advocates for LGBTQ rights who had long counted the governor as a supporter, dating from 2004 when, as mayor of San Francisco, he defied state law to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“We are profoundly disappointed and angered by Governor Newsom’s comments about transgender youth and their ability to participate in sports,” Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, said in a statement. “Transgender kids — like all kids — deserve the chance to play sports alongside their teammates and learn important values like leadership, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Transgender young people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Despite the outrage of Hoang and other advocates, Newsom’s newly voiced position places him in the national political mainstream. In January a New York Times/ Ipsos poll found that almost 80% of Americans oppose allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports and that included more than two-thirds of Democrats.

Political Maneuvering

Something else Newsom said on the topic was a sharp dig at Kamala Harris, his sometime ally and sometime rival, for failing to counter a Donald Trump commercial that showed Harris endorsing sex-change operations for transgender prison inmates.

The ad has been widely hailed as the Trump campaign’s most effective assault on Harris, and Newsom termed it “a great ad” that Harris’ campaign neglected to answer.

During his political career in California, which has spanned half of his life, Newsom has often said and done things that attract national media attention, beginning with his decree supporting gay marriage as mayor. His remarks on transgender sports were only the latest of such zingers.

If he really believes that transgender women should be banned from women’s sports, he would publicly support the recently introduced legislation to repeal a 2013 law that allows such participation. If he doesn’t back his words with action, we’ll know it’s just a political ploy.

Related Story: Newsom Condemned by Fresno County Democrats Over Transgender Remarks

Newsom’s End Game

So what’s Newsom’s end game?

National political media assume that Newsom will finish the remaining 22 months of his governorship and then launch, officially or otherwise, a campaign for president. Trump apparently cannot run for another term in 2028, although he may try to circumvent the Constitution’s two-term limit. And at the moment, the Democrats don’t have any other standout potential candidates.

Therefore if Newsom does intend to pursue the presidency in 2028, or otherwise remain in the political spotlight, aligning himself with popular sentiment on such a hot-button issue is a smart tactical move.

Likewise, creating a personal podcast and inviting such obvious foils as Charlie Kirk would be a way to maintain national media exposure, the prerequisite for anyone who seeks the White House.

About the Author

Dan Walters is one of the most decorated and widely syndicated columnists in California history, authoring a column four times a week that offers his view and analysis of the state’s political, economic, social, and demographic trends.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Newsom Tacks Right to Oppose Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports appeared first on GV Wire.