‘Doubling down on stupid’: Newsom slams Senate waiver vote, Trump

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California officials moved quickly to start another legal battle against President Donald Trump’s administration after the U.S. Senate voted Thursday to revoke federal waivers that allowed the state to phase-out gas powered cars and combat air pollution.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said they plan to file a lawsuit on the grounds that Congress’ use of the Congressional Review Act to rescind the waivers is illegal. The law allows Congress to overturn actions of federal agencies, under specific circumstances, without a supermajority vote. California secured the waivers last year from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden. 

• Bonta: “California has received approximately 100 waivers since waivers have been given and the CRA has never been applied to any of those waivers before. … This is a workaround for Trump to punish California for defying his efforts to bring us backward.”

While Bonta emphasized that Trump’s actions aimed to obstruct California’s authority to enforce its own state laws, Newsom focused on how revoking the waivers threatened California’s public health and the country’s electric vehicle industry. Saying that the administration was “doubling down on stupid,” the governor argued that this would further enable China’s dominance over the electric vehicle market.

• Newsom: “Big day for Big Oil. … Big day for China. Terrible day for your kids, terrible day for air quality, terrible day for innovation and entrepreneurship.” 

As the state readies itself for its 23rd lawsuit against Trump since his second term, more California laws may be under threat from the administration and GOP members in Congress, including dozens of existing and proposed laws regulating artificial intelligence and laws that benefit immigrants lacking permanent legal status.

For more on the Senate vote and the waivers, check out CalMatters’ story from Alejandro Lazo and Alejandra Reyes-Velarde.

Can a 36-word warning about making a false complaint against a police officer be a violation of free speech? The city of Los Angeles argues that it does, as its case against the union representing Los Angeles Police Department officers lands before the state’s Supreme Court.

As CalMatters’ Nigel Duara explains, when filing a complaint against an LAPD officer, complainants are shown this warning on the form, in bold and in all caps:

 “IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO MAKE A COMPLAINT THAT YOU KNOW TO BE FALSE. IF YOU MAKE A COMPLAINT AGAINST AN OFFICER KNOWING THAT IT IS FALSE, YOU CAN BE PROSECUTED ON A MISDEMEANOR CHARGE.”

The city of L.A. wants to strike that language, arguing that the warning discourages people from filing complaints and curbs their rights protected under the First Amendment. But the Los Angeles Police Protective League union says the warning is constitutionally sound, and it’s necessary to prevent false complaints that could disrupt an officer’s career.

The California high court is expected to issue a ruling sometime this year.

Read more here.

A week after Gov. Newsom revealed his plans to reduce the amount of money the state is expected to provide to help fund local news outlets, Google said it too will cut some of the support it had previously agreed to pay, writes CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang.

The tech giant said it will now pay $10 million in its first year contributing to California’s local news fund, rather than the $15 million it initially pledged less than a year ago. The company agreed to only put money into the fund as a match to state dollars, and it got the green light to do so after Newsom proposed to reduce the state’s first-year contribution from $30 million to $10 million. 

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a market cap of more than $2 trillion. Ten million dollars is 0.0005% of $2 trillion. There are three bench players on the Los Angeles Lakers who earned more than $10 million last season. 

Together, California and Google have shrunk their commitment to assist the state’s struggling news industry from $45 million to $20 million. So far, no newsroom has received money from the fund.

The money is part of a compromise lawmakers made with Google last year: In exchange for the Legislature pulling bills that would have forced tech companies to pay outlets for their content, Google and the state would put millions of dollars into a fund over five years to support California journalism. 

Read more here.

With more than two-thirds of college students experiencing food insecurity in the state, five California campuses are tackling the issue in ways that go beyond typical food pantries. Find out what they’re doing from Amy Elisabeth Moore of CalMatters’ College Journalism Network.