California Policy and Politics Friday

D.A. backs resentencing Menendez brothers, paving possible path to freedom -- Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón will ask a judge to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez, two brothers serving life terms for killing their parents, a move that could pave the way for their release. Salvador Hernandez, Richard Winton and James Queally in the Los Angeles Times$ Lindsey Holden Politico Ben Brasch, María Luisa Paúl and Daniel Wu in the Washington Post$ Tim Arango and Matt Stevens in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Gasoline price-hike issue: California Republicans in U.S. House demand delay in state board vote -- All 12 California Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have sent a letter to the California Air Resources Board demanding it delays a Nov. 8 vote on policies that will increase the price of gasoline. Russ Mitchell in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

California’s plan to overhaul a key climate program — raising the cost of gas — ignites debate -- California plans to overhaul one of its cornerstone climate programs — a decision that could push gasoline prices higher in a state where residents already pay the most at the pump. Alejandro Lazo CalMatters -- 10/25/24

L.A. faces pre-Olympics security test with World Series and mega lineup of sports events -- A confluence of sporting events on Friday — a Lakers game, USC football, and the East L.A. Classic in addition to the Dodgers hosting the Yankees — will have the police department working overtime. Libor Jany, Connor Sheets and Dakota Smith in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

In the heart of Black Los Angeles, the future of Latino political power emerges -- An Assembly election in South L.A. captures the shifting dynamics of ethnic political power in California. One candidate is biracial and pledges to build bridges between Black and Latino voters. Alexei Koseff CalMatters -- 10/25/24

Democrats in tight California House races back anti-crime measure opposed by Newsom -- The debate over Proposition 36 has fractured California Democrats, with Gov. Gavin Newsom strongly opposing the November ballot measure and the mayors of San Diego, San Francisco and San José supporting it. Anabel Sosa in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Aaron Peskin gains in S.F. mayor’s race, delighting progressives — and alarming familiar foes -- In the Chronicle’s third and final survey of the mayor’s race published this week, he grew his share of first-choice votes by six points, coming in third place behind Breed and Lurie, who led when all of voters’ ranked-choice preferences were accounted for. And Peskin is betting that his momentum will continue to grow. J.D. Morris in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Kamala Harris declines again to weigh in on Prop 36, saying she hasn’t yet voted -- Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Thursday that she hasn’t voted yet and declined to take a position on Proposition 36, saying she hasn’t yet read through the entire ballot. Sophia Bollag, Shira Stein in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Will Prop 36 mean more deportations? -- But not everyone is enthusiastic about Prop 36. Attorneys who represent Californians in federal immigration court are warning that the measure could lead to more deportations, including of refugees and green card holders. Wendy Fry CalMatters -- 10/25/24

Rep. Eric Swalwell threatens to sue Alameda DA Pamela Price -- An East Bay congressman has threatened to sue Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price unless she retracts what he described as “malicious” and defamatory statements. Rachel Swan in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Nursery owned by Central Valley congressman has history of safety violations -- Safety regulators cited Duarte Nursery eight times and issued $22,220‬ in fines during Duarte’s tenure as president. Laura J. Nelson in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

California’s Yes Man: Meet the Democratic lawmaker who has never said ‘no’ to a bill -- Assemblymember Mike Fong is the only California lawmaker who has never voted “no” on a piece of legislation. Ryan Sabalow CalMatters -- 10/25/24

Skelton: Garvey had better luck against the Yankees in 1981 than he will in the November election -- Steve Garvey vividly remembers the final out of the 1981 World Series when the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees. He calls it the highlight of his All-Star baseball career. George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Walters: Election will test power of Californians’ backlash against crime -- Occasionally — perhaps once a generation — California experiences a sharp change in its political climate, upsetting whatever is considered the current norm. Dan Walters CalMatters -- 10/25/24

Israel

L.A. teachers union supports blocking U.S. sale of about $20 billion in weaponry to Israel -- The rationale for the resolution includes the high toll of civilian Palestinian casualties and the loss of education opportunities. Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Workplace

S.F. clerk strike brings courts to a halt. These are their demands -- Roughly 200 San Francisco Superior Court clerks went on strike Thursday, picketing in front of the Hall of Justice to call attention to what they said were stalled contract negotiations and their demands for better staffing and training. Megan Cassidy in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Negotiations between farmworkers and Wonderful Co. can continue, appellate court rules -- In the latest update in a dispute over a campaign to unionize workers at a powerful Kern County agricultural company, a California appellate court has ruled that negotiations can continue between the state’s largest farmworker union and Wonderful Co. Melissa Gomez and Rebecca Plevin in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

6 ex-BART workers get over $1 million each after jury said they were denied COVID vaccine exemptions -- The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District must pay $7.8 million to six former employees after a jury found the agency discriminated against the workers who sought religious exemptions to the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Nora Mishanec, Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Former ‘Jeopardy!’ staffers file discrimination, retaliation complaints against Sony -- Former “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” staffers have filed employment discrimination, harassment and retaliation complaints against Sony Pictures Entertainment after the Culver City-based company allegedly laid off workers who spoke out against toxic working conditions. Christi Carras in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Will teens save the movies? Here’s what a surprising new study says about youth and Hollywood -- Good news for theaters still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and other industry disruptions: A new UCLA study has found that teenagers’ favorite thing to do is going to the movies. Christi Carras in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Wildfire

This data shows just how much faster California wildfires are getting — and why that’s so dangerous -- California wildfires are getting faster. A study published Thursday, led by University of Colorado, UC Merced and UCLA scientists, finds a nearly fourfold increase in wildfire growth rates in California over the past two decades. Anthony Edwards in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Water

Is a new plan for delivering Delta water worse than Trump’s rules? Environmentalists say yes. -- Growers support a federal and state proposal for operating California’s massive systems that send river water south. But it could harm more salmon and other endangered fish. Alastair Bland CalMatters -- 10/25/24

Bird Flu

Emails reveal struggle for public health officials to track bird flu outbreak -- Bird flu cases have more than doubled in the country within a few weeks, but researchers can’t determine why the spike is happening because surveillance for human infections has been patchy for seven months. Amy Maxmen in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Housing

Eastern Sierra housing crunch: With all this open land, why are so many workers living in vans? -- In this big, beckoning land full of wide-open spaces, there’s almost nowhere for working people to live. More than 90 percent of the land is owned by government agencies that have little interest in making housing available for the flocks of tourists or the workers who serve them. Jack Dolan, Brian van der Brug in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Tesla self drive

Elon Musk: Tesla is testing self-driving taxis in the Bay Area -- Elon Musk claimed on an earnings call that Tesla is already testing a self-driving taxi service in the Bay Area — with employees as riders. Chase DiFeliciantonio in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Education

S.F. school board candidates focus on avoiding state takeover -- The next school board will arguably face one of the most difficult periods in the district’s recent history with massive budget cuts needed to avert insolvency and an overhaul of the student assignment system pending along with a new payroll system to replace a bug-riddled $40 million platform. Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/25/24

Street

L.A. judge frees ex-DEA agent accused of road rage, domestic violence and having grenades -- In the past two years, a former federal agent has been accused of pointing a gun at a co-worker, “strangling” his estranged wife and trying to run a motorist off the road on the 405 Freeway. James Queally in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Residents vow to fight back after ‘Pillowcase Rapist’ is ordered released in their community -- Red signs dot Pearblossom Highway, marking part of the route sexual predator Christopher Hubbart probably will take when he moves into the Antelope Valley in the near future. Andrew J. Campa in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Top of the ticket

Harris, Trump and Allies Spend Over a Half-Billion Dollars in 16 Days -- Donald Trump has now raised $1 billion since announcing his run for president. And he has Elon Musk’s $119 million. But Kamala Harris has a huge cash advantage. Theodore Schleifer in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Harris and Trump Deadlocked to the End, Final Times/Siena National Poll Finds -- The electorate has rarely seemed so evenly divided. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll found Harris and Trump tied 48 to 48. Adam Nagourney and Ruth Igielnik in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

How Trump talks: Abrupt shifts, profane insults, confusing sentences -- The Republican presidential nominee calls it “the weave” and a sign of a brilliant mind, but his remarks at recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic and coarse. Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey in the Washington Post$ -- 10/25/24

Elon Musk’s Secret Conversations With Vladimir Putin -- Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions. Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold and Sam Schechner in the Wall Street Journal$ -- 10/25/24

Trump alumni warn he could deploy troops against Americans -- In running to retake the White House, Trump has named his unfulfilled demands to deploy the military against civil unrest as one of his top regrets — and one he aims not to repeat. His allies have laid plans for him to do so by invoking emergency authority under the Insurrection Act of 1807. Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Dan Lamothe in the Washington Post$ -- 10/25/24

Trump compares undocumented migrants to trash at insult-fueled rallies -- The Republican presidential nominee compared the United States to “a garbage can for the world” because of illegal border crossings. Meryl Kornfield and Marisa Iati in the Washington Post$ -- 10/25/24

The Group at the Center of Trump’s Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of -- America First Policy Institute didn’t even exist four years ago. But it is poised to be more influential than Project 2025. Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Former model says Trump groped her years ago in ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein -- Stacey Williams first surfaced claims on Facebook and in a documentary before adding more detail in a call with Harris supporters; Trump denied the allegation. Beth Reinhard, Alice Crites and Aaron Schaffer in the Washington Post$ -- 10/25/24

Obama Hopes His Star Power Can Rub Off on Harris -- With raucous rallies, freewheeling podcasts and rapping Eminem lyrics, the former president is making an all-out push on behalf of the vice president. Catherine Lucey and John McCormick in the Wall Street Journal$ Nicholas Nehamas in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Trump Flirts With the Ultimate Tax Cut: No Income Taxes at All -- The former president has repeatedly praised a period in American history when there was no income tax, and the country relied on tariffs to fund the government. Andrew Duehren in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Tucker Carlson Tells Crowd Trump Will Give Country a ‘Spanking’ -- The former Fox News host used a bizarre extended metaphor at a rally in Georgia where Donald J. Trump spoke. Maggie Astor in the New York Times$ -- 10/25/24

Also

Arellano: What L.A. can learn from this year’s Dodgers -- As an Orange County lifer with a somewhat objective vantage point on L.A., I’ve seen that nothing seems to unite the city in happiness like a winning Dodgers squad. Gustavo Arellano in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

It’s Major League Baseball’s Dream World Series—and It Only Cost $650 Million -- The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers are the most prestigious and popular franchises in the sport. They also hold an enormous financial advantage over their rivals. Jared Diamond in the Wall Street Journal$ -- 10/25/24

He crashed the Iron Curtain, lived his dream, and even in hard times, it was ‘a beautiful struggle’ -- Steve Hideg was nearly broke when I met him in 2017, and wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep covering the rent on his humble little East Hollywood apartment. But I’d never encountered a more upbeat guy. Steve Lopez, Francine Orr in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 10/25/24

Poop statue appears on the National Mall to ‘honor’ Jan. 6 rioters -- Protest takes many forms in D.C. On Thursday, it arrived in the shape of a giant poop on a desk in direct view of the U.S. Capitol. Welcome to America, version 2024, where number two officially enters the political discourse. Joe Heim in the Washington Post$ -- 10/25/24