Politics Desk

In defeating a measure to rescind the 310 area code overlay, telecommunications companies showed they won’t shrink from battle as the state moves to put tighter controls on area code changes, industry leaders said Friday.

The state Assembly early Friday approved a bill, AB 406, that sets additional hurdles in place before area code splits and overlays can be imposed.

But the bill, which had been approved late Thursday by the Senate, was passed only after a provision rescinding the 310 overlay on the Westside and South Bay was removed.

That change was credited to a fierce lobbying effort by telecom companies, and could serve as a preview of what’s to come as lawmakers and utilities regulators consider ways to slow the proliferation of overlays and splits statewide, including a split proposed for the San Fernando Valley.

“I was unable to get for 310 what I had my heart set on, which was the recision of the 310 overlay and 11-digit dialing,” said Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), who wrote AB 406 (which became the vehicle for the legislation formerly known as AB 818).

Knox said a sustained lobbying effort by telephone industry representatives resulted in the removal of the 310 overlay and 11-digit dialing portion from the bill.

Representatives from Pacific Bell, GTE, AT&T;, MediaOne Telecommunications of California, the California Cable Television Assn. and the Cellular Carriers Assn. of California were among the 30 lobbyists arguing that the provision would diminish competition among carriers and consumer choice.

“The intensive lobbying effort should have been anticipated by everyone because the stakes were so high for the industry,” said Dennis H. Mangers, senior vice president of the California Cable Television Assn., a group whose members are seeking a foothold in the telephone business.

Even so, the arm-twisting in Sacramento stands in contrast to the role played by phone companies at public forums on the issue.

At a recent Van Nuys town hall meeting on splits and overlays, for example, no phone company representative spoke publicly–although at least one was in attendance, observing the proceedings.

Telephone company officials said Friday that they have sent representatives to numerous public hearings on the matter, but remained silent to give residents the chance to express their concerns.

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Industry lobbyists said regulatory meetings and legislative sessions are the proper forums for them to state their positions.

In Sacramento, telecom lobbyists argued that rescinding the overlay in West Los Angeles and the South Bay would be unfair because phone companies had already spent millions to compete for local customers in the region, Mangers said. He also said numbers already had been assigned in the new 424 area code overlay.

“We reminded them that it was they who encouraged communications companies to do business in California,” Mangers said. “If they passed the bill containing that provision, they would be cutting off their own policy.”

Cable company MediaOne, for example, spent $600 million to upgrade its facilities to provide digital telephone service, high-speed Internet access and cable television to Los Angeles customers, particularly those in the 310 region, officials said.

“We have definitely been lobbying in Sacramento,” said Theresa L. Cabral, MediaOne’s senior corporate counsel. “Our concern is that we have made that investment and we can’t use it.”

Pac Bell protested the bill because rolling back the 310 area code overlay would hurt customers who need numbers, said Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the company.

Pac Bell and GTE, the two largest phone companies in Los Angeles, are pushing specifically for overlays when area code relief is needed.

With an overlay, new phone lines within a specific area code are given a new area code–even if it is in the same home or building. Additionally, all users in an overlay area must dial the area code–even to a number with the same area code.

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Phone company officials say the overlay is less disruptive than actually creating a new area code through a geographic split, but critics say such splits and overlays would not be needed if regulators did a better job of allocating and conserving phone numbers.

Knox, who has emerged as the leading consumer advocate on the issue, said Friday that he will now take his fight to the PUC, which is scheduled to take up proposals for a 310 overlay and an 818 split on Wednesday.

“It is important for folks to know that the fight is not over,” he said. “The momentum we have built in the Legislature we will now take to the PUC.”

Gov. Gray Davis has not taken a position on AB 406, aides said. But if he does sign the bill, PUC officials will analyze it to determine its role in implementing new area codes and overlays, said Kyle DeVine, a PUC spokeswoman.

“Until we get direction from the commissioners,” she said, “we can’t say what we are going to do.”

The bill, which passed the Senate on a 35-0 vote, was approved in the Assembly on a vote of 79 to 1, with Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), dissenting. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

Reporting from Sacramento — It was an iconic image: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, longtime partners and lesbian activists, embracing after being wed in San Francisco City Hall. The first same-sex couple in the country to receive a marriage license was joined by city officials and advocates choked with emotion — but not the man who set their nuptials in motion, Gavin Newsom.

Instead, the then-San Francisco mayor was purposefully absent, sitting in his office and anxiously awaiting word that the ceremony had been performed before a court could interfere.

Newsom’s decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — just a month into his term — was at once slapdash and choreographed. Almost immediately it spun out of his control. What was meant to be a short-lived act of civil disobedience on Feb. 12, 2004, turned into a 29-day saga during which more than 4,000 couples wed, catapulting Newsom into the national fray.

The move drew rebukes from social conservatives and prominent Democrats, including gay rights icons and Newsom’s political mentors. The fallout rippled into the 2004 presidential election and the successful 2008 campaign for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages in California.

Now, five years since the U.S. Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, Newsom has made his decision a central selling point in his campaign for governor. In one television ad, he appears with Lyon — whose spouse died in 2008 — reminiscing with a photo album.

Would Newsom as governor take the same risks? “I hope so,” he said in an interview this month. “I’m an idealist … I embrace that.”

There was no hint that gay marriage would be anywhere on Newsom’s agenda when he ran for mayor in 2003. A county supervisor since 1997, he was seen as the conservative candidate — for San Francisco, at least.

Nationally, the issue was gaining prominence. A Massachusetts court case was laying the groundwork to force that state to legally recognize same-sex marriage. In his 2004 State of the Union, President George W. Bush lambasted “activist judges” for redefining marriage. He threatened to back a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Newsom, who listened to the address from the House of Representatives gallery as a guest of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), has said that was the moment he knew he had to do something.

Soon after he told his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, who is gay, that he intended to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In a municipal quirk — as mayor of San Francisco, both a city and a county — he had authority to do so.

Kawa said his reaction was stunned silence. He and others among Newsom’s senior staff initially had reservations.

As lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom has had few duties — and he skipped many of them »

“People felt like this could really do him harm,” said Joyce Newstat, then Newsom’s policy director. “This could really hold back his own ability to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish as mayor. It would destroy his political career.”

The hesitation was shared by prominent gay rights activists. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said her first reaction was fear. In a call with Kawa, she said she appreciated Newsom’s support, but noted Bush’s speech. “We just barely won in Massachusetts. These wins are very fragile,” Kendell said she told the chief of staff. She ultimately came around.

In the course of days, the ceremony was carefully orchestrated. The officiant would be Mabel Teng, the assessor-recorder whose core job was to maintain marriage licenses. Newsom would not be present, to avoid accusations of injecting politics into the proceedings. And the first couple would be Martin and Lyon, who at the time had been together more than 50 years.

Newsom and his allies assumed the courts would shut them down immediately. California voters had passed Proposition 22 in 2000, which said only marriages between a man and a woman would be valid in the state.

But the courts declined to intervene for nearly a month. The image of Lyon and Martin soon gave way to the scene of a line of hopeful couples wrapped around San Francisco City Hall, undeterred by protesters.

Gay rights advocates said the pictures of relatable, ebullient couples instantly humanized the debate over marriage equality.

Newsom eventually officiated a handful of marriages, including Kawa’s and Newstat’s respective ceremonies with their partners.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said Newsom was flagrantly ignoring the will of Californians.

“Mayor Newsom lied when he swore to uphold the law,” Randy Thomasson, who runs Save California, a socially conservative group, said in an interview. “When he raised his right hand, it was almost like he was giving one finger, figuratively, to the people.”

High-stakes California governor’s race debate gets testy as personal and political attacks fly »

The California Supreme Court halted the weddings on March 11, and the court later nullified those marriages that had been performed. Newsom was chastised for not following the law as written; one justice said he had “created a mess.”

But by then Newsom had become an unlikely face for marriage equality; news stories from the time emphasized that he was straight and married. Kendell said it was precisely because Newsom did not have a reputation as an outspoken liberal that he was able to make his decision.

“This move by Newsom played against type,” she said. “People did not expect this Irish Catholic, straight … middle-of-the-road moderate to do something so audacious.”

The mayor’s growing national stature as a gay rights warrior irked some who long had worked for the cause.

“I really think he stood on the shoulders of a lot of people who had suffered and died,” said Tom Ammiano, a former supervisor and assemblyman who is gay. “It really wasn’t all about him, but he made it all about him.”

Republicans predictably made Newsom their foe, and Democrats cringed at how his move might energize social conservatives to vote against them in the 2004 presidential election.

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, said Newsom had imperiled the strategy in Massachusetts — to show that allowing same-sex marriage in one state would not be disruptive — before the right was pursued elsewhere.

“It troubled me as an example of the kind of politics that puts the interest of the political actor ahead of the cause,” Frank said.

Newsom now dismisses that criticism as “purely political arguments.”

“If they told me it was the wrong thing to do because it was the wrong thing to do, then I would’ve listened to that argument,” he said. “They never said that. They said it was too much, too soon, too fast. That’s not going to convince me.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a mentor of Newsom’s, said at the time he was partly to blame for John Kerry’s presidential loss. Newsom said the criticism was “heavy,” but he understood the thinking behind it. They repaired their relationship, he said, tongue slightly in cheek, “the old-fashioned way — by never discussing it.”

Now, Feinstein said, she believes “history has proven that Gavin Newsom made the right decision, a very bold decision, which paved the way for marriage equality.”

The California Supreme Court ultimately struck down the state’s gay marriage ban in 2008, prompting a triumphant Newsom to declare that marriage equality would happen “whether you like it or not.” The backers of Proposition 8, which sought to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, capitalized on those comments in a campaign ad.

That ad and Proposition 8’s success once again put Newsom on the defensive for harming the cause he had so forcefully backed. The ban set in place by Proposition 8 remained in effect until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it and, in a separate ruling, found that same-sex couples could marry nationwide.

Newsom said he has no regrets about his decision. But he said he sees the experience now “with a different set of eyes,” with more effort toward “thinking through the intended and the unintended.”

“On such an emotional issue — such a raw issue dividing families, not least my own, down the middle — it’s about what the system can absorb,” Newsom said. “I think about that now differently, absolutely.”

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Hamid Karzai begins another term as Afghanistan’s president with a long to-do list. The Obama administration has made clear to him that he must crack down on corruption, install a team of technocrats to run the country and weed out warlords and narco-traffickers. Those are all important priorities, but there is something else he should be doing as well: acting as a wartime leader.

So far, Karzai has been oddly disengaged from the war raging around him. Rarely if ever does he visit his own troops in the field, go to hospitals to comfort the wounded or honor the dead, as President Obama did so stirringly with his recent middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force Base. Karzai doesn’t even give speeches to rally his people in the effort to defeat the Taliban. When he does speak out, it is usually to bemoan civilian casualties caused by the Western coalition, inadvertently helping to further a Taliban propaganda line. Most of the time, though, he prefers to shelter behind the high walls of his presidential compound in Kabul, where he can focus on backroom deal-making.

That doesn’t mean that Karzai is opposed to the war effort or soft on the Taliban. He must know that if the Taliban ever regains power, he would be one of the first victims dangling from a lamppost. But he has not embraced the war effort in the way that Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill did — even though the war against the Taliban is every bit as important for the future of Afghanistan as the war against the Nazis and Japanese was for the future of Britain and America. He has not been, to put it mildly, a Ramon Magsaysay — the reformist Philippine defense minister and president in the 1950s who worked closely with his American advisor, Edward Lansdale, to defeat the communist Huk insurgents.

Karzai has not even been, to take a lesser and more recent example, a Nouri Maliki. The Iraqi prime minister was also oddly disengaged from the war tearing his country apart when he first took over in 2006. He came into office with no military experience and with deep-seated suspicions of an army that he associated with the Baathist regime. But as he grew more comfortable in his post, he became a formidable if sometimes impetuous frontline commander.

The highlight of his tenure came in 2008, when he personally directed Iraqi troops to clear the Sadrists out of Basra and Sadr City. Those operations were not well prepared, but they proved successful with U.S. help, and as a result, they gave a tremendous boost not only to Iraq’s stability but to Maliki’s own standing. Today, Maliki is the most popular politician in Iraq, and his critics are fretting not that he is too weak, as they were in 2006, but that he is too strong and could run roughshod over Iraq’s nascent democracy.

One factor working in Maliki’s favor was that President George W. Bush took a close personal interest in his success. In video teleconferences and personal meetings, he served as a mentor and supporter, giving Maliki the kind of lessons in leadership that only one embattled head of state can impart to another. Today, by contrast, Obama is holding Karzai at arm’s length. His administration is offering ultimatums, not mentoring, to the Afghan president.

A more productive approach would be for Obama to embrace Karzai and give him some pointers while nudging him in a more reformist direction. One of the top tips he could impart would be how to act as a wartime commander in chief who rallies public opinion behind him. Problem is, Obama himself is struggling with that job — as have most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton and Bush. That’s no surprise because there is little that can prepare anyone for that awesome responsibility. Thus Clinton stumbled over Somalia and gays in the military before finding his footing in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Bush stumbled far worse in Iraq. Early on, he was a hands-off leader, delegating the management of the war to military and civilian subordinates who failed him and the country. Bush finally matured as a leader and earned a shot at redemption in 2006, when he approved the “surge” despite Washington’s conventional wisdom to the contrary. The kind of steeliness he showed in the face of adversity may even help to rescue his historical reputation from the damage done by Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina.

Note that Bush is now unemployed except for the usual post-presidential activities of speech-giving and memoir-writing. Maybe it’s time for Obama to summon his predecessor — as Bush himself summoned his own father and Clinton on several occasions — and ask him to undertake a special mission: Give Karzai some pointers on how to be a leader in wartime. The ultimate success or failure of our war effort could turn on whether Karzai can don that mantle as successfully as he does his trademark chapan cape and karakul hat.

Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court signaled Monday it is not anxious to revisit the abortion controversy in the year ahead, disappointing conservative activists who were cheered by the appointment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

After weeks of debate behind closed doors, a divided court turned down appeals backed by 13 conservative states that sought to defund Planned Parenthood.

The court’s action leaves in place federal court rulings in much of the country that prevent states from denying Medicaid funds to women who go to a Planned Parenthood clinic for healthcare, including medical screenings or birth control. It is already illegal in most cases to use federal money like Medicaid to pay for abortions, but some states wanted to go further, cutting off all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood because the organization offers the procedure using alternative revenue sources.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch, accused their colleagues of allowing a “politically fraught issue” to justify “abdicating our judicial duty.”

The lower courts are divided on the Medicaid funding dispute, making the high court’s refusal to clarify the issue all the more surprising to some.

“We created the confusion. We should clear it up,” Thomas wrote in Gee vs. Planned Parenthood. “So what explains the court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’ ”

The brief order denying the appeals from Louisiana and Kansas suggests Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Kavanaugh were not willing to hear the cases.

The high court’s refusal to hear an appeal petition is not a ruling, and it will not prevent the justices from taking up the issue in the future or ruling against Planned Parenthood eventually.

Kavanaugh’s vote against hearing the case was noteworthy since it was his first abortion-related case, but it does not necessarily reflect how he would rule in future cases. Many legal experts predict Kavanaugh would vote to restrict or overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

For now, however, the chief justice may have preferred to avoid controversies that result in a 5-4 split along ideological lines, particularly in the aftermath of the fierce partisan fight over Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Last month, Roberts objected to President Trump’s criticism of an “Obama judge” and issued a statement saying, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

Even so, if the court had agreed to decide the Medicaid dispute, the justices could well have split along the usual conservative versus liberal lines, with the five Bush or Trump appointees on one side and the Clinton and Obama appointees on the other side in dissent.

In their appeals, lawyers for Kansas and Louisiana pointed to a recent split among the U.S. appeals courts. Last year, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, breaking with others, upheld Arkansas’ decision to cut off funding to Medicaid to Planned Parenthood clinics.

It takes four justices to hear a case, and these appeals were considered in a series of closed-door meetings since late September. But the court’s conservatives were unable to gain the needed fourth vote. Kavanaugh took his seat in the second week of October, and his supporters have assumed he would vote in favor of restricting abortion rights when given the opportunity.

Catherine Foster, president of Americans United for Life, said her group was disappointed with the court’s action. “We join the dissent in calling on the court to do its duty,” she said.

“The pro-life citizens of states like Kansas and Louisiana, through their elected representatives, have clearly expressed their will. They do not want Medicaid tax dollars used to prop up abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion nonprofit. “The pro-life grass roots will not stop fighting until every single tax dollar is untangled from the abortion industry.”

Planned Parenthood called the outcome a victory for patients. “As a doctor, I have seen what’s at stake when people cannot access the care they need, and when politics gets in the way of people making their own healthcare choices,” said Dr. Leana Wen, the group’s president. “We won’t stop fighting for every patient who relies on Planned Parenthood for life-saving, life-changing care.”

In the last decade, conservative states have sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it is the nation’s largest single provider of abortions. None of the Medicaid money pays for abortions, and most of the state funding bans have been blocked by federal judges.

Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal government and the states, and Congress has said its funds may not be used to pay directly for abortions, except when the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of rape or incest. But more than 2 million people go to Planned Parenthood clinics for birth control and general healthcare, including cancer screenings and pregnancy tests. And for low-income women, this healthcare can be paid for through Medicaid.

Republican lawmakers who sponsored the defund laws argue the states should not indirectly subsidize facilities that perform abortions.

But lawyers for Planned Parenthood and their patients have gone to federal courts and won rulings blocking most of the laws from taking effect. They have done so by relying on a provision in the Medicaid Act that says eligible patients may go to any doctor’s office, hospital or clinic that is “qualified to perform” the required medical services. If a federal law creates a right for individuals, plaintiffs like the Planned Parenthood patients may go to court and sue if that right is denied.

But in their appeals, lawyers for Kansas, Louisiana and 13 other states argued that Medicaid is a healthcare spending agreement, not a law that establishes rights for individuals. If so, they said, states may decide who is a qualified provider of healthcare.

The latest from Washington »

More stories from David G. Savage »

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The first Democratic primary debate was surprisingly entertaining.

In between Lincoln Chafee leading with a boast about his lack of scandals and Jim Webb cheerfully referencing the time he killed a man, there were lots of good moments. But the highlight was definitely when Bernie Sanders weighed in on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ongoing email saga.

After responding to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper about the email scandal, Clinton finished by saying, “Tonight, I want to talk, not about my emails, but about what the American people want from the next president of the United States!”

Sanders decided to jump in.

“Let me say this. Let me say something that may not be great politics,” he said. “But I think the secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”

“Thank you,” she responded. “Me too. Me too.”

Sanders briefly pontificated on his campaign talking points before ending with “Enough of the emails” and reaching out to shake hands with his top opponent.

The crowd went wild. So did the Internet.

Our watch party at the Regent Theater also liked it:

Sanders’ campaign — which sent several fundraising emails throughout the night — wasted no time making the most of the positive response.

Will “enough about your damn emails” become a meme as enduring as Romney’s “binders full of women”? Perhaps.

And finally, a sentiment we can all agree with.

For more social media news, follow Jessica Roy on Twitter@jessica_roy

DES MOINES — Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses in January, with Mitt Romney a close second, but neither was the true winner this weekend when the delegates who actually will vote at the Republican National Convention were selected. That would be Ron Paul.

The congressman from Texas finished a distant third in the Iowa caucuses more than six months ago, but of the 28 delegates selected Friday and Saturday to head to the national convention, 23 are Paul supporters – and they are not bound to support the victor of the state’s first-in-the-nation voting contest.

It’s part of a quiet strategy by Paul and his backers to amass an army of supporters at the GOP gathering in August in Tampa, Fla., to push Paul’s views on liberty, states’ rights, the monetary system and foreign policy. By working arcane electoral rules and getting supporters into positions of power in local, county and state party operations, the strategy is paying dividends across the nation.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Iowa GOP caucuses

Paul has stopped actively campaigning and has conceded that Romney will be the GOP nominee. It’s unclear whether Paul’s name will be submitted for nomination; mathematically, he does not have the numbers to derail Romney. But his supporters can have an effect on the party in other ways.

“We want to have a real big voice on the platform; we want to influence the direction of the party more than anything else,” said Joel Kurtinitis, a Paul supporter who was pleased after the Saturday vote.

He was Paul’s state director in Iowa until Paul suspended his presidential bid in May, and he said that although he would love to see Paul awarded a prime speaking spot at the convention, his followers’ efforts are about more than one man.

“We’re going to hold up our values and we’re going to bring conservatism back to the mainline of the Republican Party. That’s where my hopes are at and that’s my hope for this convention more than seeing Ron Paul do X, Y and Z,” Kurtinitis said.

Romney and his campaign have treated Paul and his followers deferentially, perhaps mindful of not alienating his incredibly loyal supporters. At the Iowa GOP convention, a Romney staffer who flew in from Boston watched the proceedings but did not get involved. At the Romney table, workers distributed three fliers to conventioneers – a general brochure about his candidacy, an invitation to a rally in Davenport on Monday and a news release that touted Romney’s endorsement by Paul’s son, Rand Paul, and effusively lavished praise on the Kentucky senator who many believe is the heir apparent for Paul’s movement.

But others say the move by the Iowa GOP is a black eye for the state’s caucuses and for the presumptive GOP nominee.

“Embarrassment is the word that comes to my mind,” said Jamie Johnson, who served as Santorum’s state coalitions director in Iowa. The former senator from Pennsylvania, who narrowly won the caucuses but has endorsed Romney since ending his presidential bid in April, appears to have one solitary Iowa delegate who supported him heading to the convention.

“I believe that it seriously puts the Iowa caucuses’ first-in-the-nation status in jeopardy,” Johnson said. “It will be a major embarrassment to Gov. Romney if there is a strong Ron Paul vote from the floor on the night in which the votes are counted.”

Paul is counting on having 200 delegates on the floor who can vote for him, and a few hundred more who are bound to vote for Romney but are his supporters.

“While this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!” Paul wrote in an email to supporters last week. “I hope every one of you continues the fight we have advanced so well this year. I hope you will finish your local and state conventions, and, if you were selected as a national delegate, that you will head to Tampa in August to force the Republican Party to listen to the voice of liberty.

“We have never had this kind of opportunity. There will be hundreds of your fellow supporters in Tampa who will be ready and willing to push the Republican Party back to its limited government, liberty roots.”

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Political newcomer Jeff Hall has run a discreet campaign trying to unseat an incumbent on an obscure Riverside County water board. He hasn’t posted any signs, didn’t show up to a candidates forum and lists no occupation on the November ballot.

But Hall is well-known as a white supremacist.

As California director of the National Socialist Movement — the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group — Hall has helped lead demonstrations in Riverside and Los Angeles, where white supremacists waved swastika flags, chanted “white power” and gave stiff-armed Nazi salutes surrounded by hundreds of counterprotesters.

Hall’s bid for a seat on the board of directors of the Western Municipal Water District has drawn outcry from community groups dismayed that a neo-Nazi who has held racist rallies at a day laborer center and a synagogue wants to administer their water — or at least gain publicity in the quest to do so.

“It looks like he’s hoping to get a certain percentage of the vote as an anonymous anti-incumbent and then claim that some percentage of the electorate support the Nazis,” said Kevin Akin, a member of Temple Beth El in Riverside, where Hall and other neo-Nazis have demonstrated. “He apparently intended to do nothing, just to be a stealth candidate.”

Not so, said Hall, a 31-year-old plumber who in a phone interview Monday called for water conservation and affirmed his belief that all non-whites should be deported.

“I want a white nation,” he said. “I don’t hide what I am, and I don’t water that down.”

Hall has been campaigning by handing out business cards, he said, but turned down an invitation to a candidates forum because it was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and a Latino community group.

He is not the only known white supremacist running for office in Southern California this fall.

Dan Schruender, a member of the Aryan Nations, known for distributing racist fliers in Rialto, is seeking a seat on that city’s school board.

Neo-Nazis have periodically sought a platform for their views by running for local office, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“We see this from time to time. They push things like school boards — local elections that kind of slip under the radar,” Levin said. “It gives them publicity, it gives them a foothold and it gives them an anchor to spew their bigoted opinions in other forums.”

Hate group experts say Hall’s bid for the water board is a reminder to be careful when deciding whom to vote for, because some candidates’ beliefs lie well outside the norm.

The platform of the National Socialist Movement, for instance, advocates limiting citizenship to those of “pure White blood” and deporting people of color.

It is the largest such group in the nation and has been expanding its activity in California over the last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Even with its growth, it’s still quite small, said Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the ADL.

“We’re talking about a couple dozen people in the most populous state in the country,” he said.

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Emily Burgueno calls them “sovereign burns.”

It’s the subversive act of simply identifying a need in the landscape or the community — maybe the community garden could use some soil revitalization, or the oak trees plagued with weevil pests could use some fumigation — and tending to it with cultural fire. No need for permission.

California has made supporting Indigenous fire stewardship a priority in recent years to help address the state’s growing wildfire crisis. But burning freely across the landscape (with perhaps only a phone call to the local land manager or fire department to give them a heads up) is still a dream, a long way off.

California outlawed cultural burning practices at statehood in 1850 and in most cases, burning freely without permits and approvals is still illegal. Even recently, Burgueno, a cultural fire practitioner and citizen of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, has seen local authorities arrest an elder on arson charges for using cultural fire in tending the land.

It’s a practice far older than prescribed burning, the intentional fires typically set and managed by U.S. government fire personnel.

With the tradition comes wisdom: Through joint trainings and burns, fire officials versed in prescribed fire are often delighted by the detailed knowledge of fire’s role in an ecosystem that cultural fire practitioners can nonchalantly drop — for example, the benefits of burning after bees pollinate.

While prescription burns carried out by the Forest Service often focus on large-scale management goals, cultural burns are an elegant dance, deeply in tune with the individual species on the landscape and the relationships they have with each other and fire. Burning is one of many tools tribes have to shape the ecosystem and help it flourish through the years.

“It is grounded in our creation stories, our sacred beliefs and philosophy,” Burgueno said. “It helps us understand how to be a steward of the land, which requires us to be a steward within ourselves — to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit.”

For Don Hankins, a Miwok cultural fire practitioner and a geography and environmental studies professor at Chico State, it’s this fundamental tie to culture that makes the practice unique.

The way willows grow back after fire, for example, “they’re long; they’re slender. They’re more supple than if they were not tended to with fire,” Hankins said. “As a weaver, those are really important characteristics.”

The state now sees its prohibitions, enforced with violence, as wrong and has taken significant steps in recent years to address the barriers it created to sovereign burning. In order to freely practice, tribes need access to land, permission to set fire and the capacity to oversee the burn. But the solutions, so far, are still piecemeal. They only apply to certain land under certain conditions.

Hankins, who started practicing cultural burning with his family when he was about 4, has made a practice of pushing the state and federal government out of their comfort zones. He, too, dreams of a day when a burn is defined solely by the needs of the land and its life.

“The atmospheric river is coming in, and we know that once it dumps the rain and snow … we close out the fire season — but what if we went out ahead of that storm, and we lit fires and worked through the ecosystems regardless of ownership?” he said. “That’s the long-range goal I have. In order to get fire back in balance, first we have to take some pretty bold steps.”

More recent wildfire news

At an October town meeting in Topanga, a fire official with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told residents that, during a wildfire, the department may order them to ride out the blaze in their homes. It’s part of an ongoing debate in California about what to do when an evacuation could take hours, but a fire could reach a town in minutes.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department is requesting a 15% increase in its budget to support wildfire response, my colleague Noah Goldberg reports. The request includes funding for 179 new firefighter recruits and a second hand crew specializing in wildfire response. LAFD’s union is also proposing a ballot measure for a half-cent sales tax to raise funds for new fire stations and equipment.

The U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on more than 127,000 acres during the government shutdown, the Hotshot Wake Up reports, despite fears the disruption would severely limit the Forest Service’s ability to burn during optimal fall weather conditions.

A few last things in climate news

A proposed pipeline could end California’s status as a “fuel island,” connecting the golden state’s isolated gasoline and diesel markets with the rest of the country, my colleague Hayley Smith reports. The state is grappling how to balance consumer affordability with the transition to clean energy, with the upcoming closure of two major refineries.

The Department of Energy is breaking up or rebranding several key offices that support the development of clean energy technologies, Alexander C. Kaufman reports for Heatmap News. It’s unclear how the restructuring will impact the Department’s work.

During the COP30 climate conference in Brazil — which produced a last-minute incremental deal that did not directly mention fossil fuels — the South American nation recognized 10 new Indigenous territories, the BBC’s Mallory Moench and Georgina Rannard report. The hundreds of thousands of acres they span will now have their culture and environment legally protected. Although, the protections are not always enforced.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — President Bush carried his message of military victory and economic challenge to the job-blighted Silicon Valley on Friday, thanking defense workers for their contributions to the war with Iraq and pressing his tax cut plan as the cure for the region’s — and nation’s — economic ills.

“We’ve come through some hard times,” Bush told engineers and technicians at United Defense Industries, which makes combat fighting vehicles. “Remember, we’ve overcome a recession. We’ve overcome an attack on our soil. We have been in two major battles in the war against terror, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.”

As he gears up for his 2004 reelection campaign, Bush has been formulating a message that puts the blame for the sluggish economy and rising unemployment on outside forces and national security emergencies. But to call attention to his record on national security issues, Bush has been choosing defense-related settings for speeches on the economy.

Bush on Friday acknowledged the especially difficult circumstances in Silicon Valley, which he described as “this incredibly vibrant part of the American economy over the past years [which] is not meeting its full potential.”

The president’s visit came as the Labor Department in Washington announced a jump in the unemployment rate for April, bringing it to 6%. That tied the figure for December as the highest rate in almost nine years.

Bush noted the news and called it “a clear signal to the United States Congress we need a bold economic recovery package so people can find work.”

The president then devoted much of his speech to pushing for a tax cut of at least $550 billion, which he claimed would create 1 million jobs nationwide by 2004.

“The plan I just outlined is one that will boost the economy in the Silicon Valley,” Bush said. “It’s a plan that is bold because we need a bold plan. It’s a plan that is thoughtful because we need a thoughtful plan. Most importantly, it’s a plan that will invigorate the entrepreneur spirit, which has been so strong here, and make it more likely somebody who’s looking for a job will be able to find one.”

But Bush’s plan has run into resistance in Congress. The president initially proposed a $725-billion, 11-year tax cut plan to stimulate economic growth. House Republican leaders, responding to concerns about the mounting federal budget deficit, have reduced the plan to $550 billion. In the Senate, moderate Republicans have led the push to limit it to $350 billion.

“I know you’ll hear talk about the deficit,” Bush said. “And we’ve got a deficit because we went through a recession. A recession means the economy slowed down to the extent where we’re losing revenues to the federal treasury. We got a recession because we went to war, and I said to our troops, if we’re going to commit you into harm’s way, you deserve the best equipment, the best training, the best possible pay.”

The president also reprised the theme he laid out a day earlier in a national address from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego — that the military conflict with Iraq was “one victory” in the war on terrorism that began after the 2001 attacks on America.

“On September the 11th, 2001, America learned that the vast oceans no longer protect us from the threats of a new era,” Bush said. “On that day 19 months ago, we also began a relentless worldwide campaign against terrorists and those who hate freedom in order to secure our homeland and to make the world a more peaceful place. And we’re making great progress.”

The defense sector is a bright spot in Silicon Valley, one of the most beleaguered regions of the state. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, the San Jose area has lost almost 16% of its workforce since Bush took office in January 2001, a total of about 175,000 jobs.

Nationwide, 2.7 million jobs have been lost since March 2001, when the recession began.

“The economy is not growing fast enough, and you know it as well as anybody here,” Bush said.

Democrats responding to Bush’s remarks pointed to the job-loss figures. “There continues to be serious question in his leadership on economic security issues,” said Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.).

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Bush to extend federal unemployment benefits in response to the rising jobless rate — “a very fast way for us to inject purchasing power into the economy,” she said.

As president, Bush has been an infrequent visitor to California, which he lost to Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000 by 14 percentage points. Bush’s trip was the sixth in his presidency and the first since Aug. 24. In contrast, Bill Clinton had visited California 17 times at this stage in his presidency.

Silicon Valley leans Democratic politically, but the choice of a defense industry plant ensured a warm and responsive crowd. The president spoke at a division of United Defense Industries, based in Arlington, Va., which makes ground combat systems such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which was integral in Iraq.

Bush noted the 750-employee Santa Clara facility also makes the Hercules Tank Recovery Vehicle, which helped topple the statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad.

“The guy with the sledgehammer on the statue needed a little help,” Bush said to laughter and cheers from the audience. “Thankfully, there was a Hercules close by.”

As he left Santa Clara, Bush was joined by Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his wife, who were to ride with him on Air Force One to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Howard, who was a strong supporter of the president’s confrontation with Iraq, was to spend a night at the ranch — an honor that has been reserved for foreign leaders closest to Bush.

*

Times staff writers Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.

Reporting from Washington — A pair of influential senators presented President Obama with a three-page blueprint for a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, but the proposal’s viability is threatened by politics surrounding the healthcare debate.

Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), in a 45-minute meeting Thursday in the Oval Office, also asked for Obama’s help in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an immigration bill this year.

Although details of their blueprint were not released, Graham said the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs.

Graham also said the proposal included “a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States.” He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

“We’re not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we,” Graham said. “But we need a system so they don’t get an advantage over others for citizenship.”

In a statement after the Obama meeting, Graham predicted that their effort would collapse if Senate Democrats proceeded with a strategy to pass a healthcare bill through a simple majority vote — a process known as “reconciliation.” Senate leaders say they are committed to doing just that.

“I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if healthcare reconciliation goes forward,” said Graham, who portrayed the document handed to Obama as “a work in progress.”

Graham added: “For more than a year, healthcare has sucked most of the energy out of the room. Using reconciliation to push healthcare through will make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration.”

In their own statements, Obama and Schumer sounded more upbeat.

The president said: “Today I met with Sens. Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system. I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find common sense answers to one of our most vexing problems.”

Immigration has gotten scant attention of late. Obama had initially promised to address the issue in his first year, but the deadline slipped as he struggled to pass a healthcare bill. Latino voters, who were a crucial piece of Obama’s winning coalition in the 2008 campaign, have grown impatient. Some advocates of an immigration overhaul warn that Latino voters will stay home in the November mid-term elections if the issue is delayed again.

In an attempt to defuse the anger, Obama met with a group of 14 immigration advocates in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, hours before his meeting with the two senators.

Afterward, some of the guests described the atmosphere in the room as tense. They said they told Obama that families were being severed by widespread deportations. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the U.S. deported 388,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security — up from 369,000 the year before.

“I don’t think the president liked hearing that the immigration system is tearing apart families. But that’s our reality,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, who attended the meeting.

Obama agreed to have them meet with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to discuss deportation policies, the White House said.

Even without the healthcare obstacle, passing an immigration bill would be difficult. Schumer has been trying to line up additional Republican co-sponsors in hopes of broadening the bill’s bipartisan support. None has signed up.

Those who attended the meeting said that Obama committed to helping find Republican votes. But he also conceded that in a polarized Senate, that was a difficult mission.

“He was very frank about the challenge of moving this or anything else in the U.S. Congress,” said John Wilhelm, president of the labor union Unite Here.

peter.nicholas@

latimes.com

WASHINGTON — President Trump has a lot riding on a precarious agreement with Taliban militants to end America’s longest war. But the process, which began over the weekend, is fraught with obstacles that could lengthen the conflict rather than conclude it.

The first step in the deal agreed to by the U.S. and the Taliban is a seven-day period of “reduced violence” in which neither side attacks. The period began Saturday and includes a moratorium on the roadside explosive devices, rockets and suicide bombers that have been the Taliban trademark and continued as recently as last month.

It falls short of a cease-fire, which the Taliban consistently refused to consider. But if the weeklong pause is declared a success, U.S. and Taliban leaders will sign a deal in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 29 that begins the drawdown of American troops in exchange for Taliban vows to fight terrorism and stop attacks against the United States.

“This [reduction in violence phase] will serve as a test period of Taliban intent and control of their forces, and as a proof of concept of their commitment to the peace process,” senior State Department official Molly Phee said last week.

“It has taken a lot of work, frankly, to get to this point. But we believe we have established the conditions that can transform the trajectory of the conflict,” she added. “It is high time for the parties to begin moving off the battlefield and into a political process.”

Phee is deputy to Zalmay Khalilzad, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan who has led more than a year of negotiations with a Taliban team that includes men once jailed in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As of Thursday, Taliban attacks and U.S. airstrikes had fallen off significantly and the truce was largely holding, U.S. officials said.
.

But numerous obstacles will complicate the next phase, which includes bringing the Afghan government into talks with the Taliban and other domestic organizations. The government has been kept out of negotiations until now, in part because Taliban leaders don’t recognize it.

Some critics worry that in a rush to secure an election-year troop withdrawal, Trump might agree to terms that fail to protect U.S. counterterrorism operations or hard-fought civil rights in Afghanistan. Others say conditions for withdrawing U.S. troops are as good now as they ever will be.

“This is a long shot under the best of circumstances,” said Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA officer who specialized in the region and advised Democratic and Republican White Houses. “Trump badly wants to claim a victory.”

But Riedel said one hard part will be working directly with the Taliban without undercutting the Afghan government, which Washington has backed throughout the nearly two decades of U.S. intervention launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “We are stuck in a war with no easy way out without leaving one side in the lurch,” he said.

Complicating matters even more, the Trump administration now finds itself in the odd position of entering into important deals with the Taliban without a clear partner in the Afghan government.

Official presidential election results announced last week — nearly five months after the vote — gave the victory to incumbent President Ashraf Ghani. But his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has refused to recognize that outcome and declared himself the victor. Within days, the opposing camps deployed their own security forces in an increasingly tense Kabul, and regional warlords were choosing sides.

When asked about the election results, Pompeo declined to endorse Ghani.

Negotiating with the Taliban presents its own challenges. Like the rest of Afghan society, the sprawling group is riven by tribal and regional rivalries. And it has killed hundreds of Americans.

It remains to be seen what happens if attacks against Americans resume after the seven-day pause. Officials say they will deal with such attacks on a case-by-case basis. But Trump has said killing Americans is a red line. He hastily backed out of a deal with the Taliban last fall after it launched an attack that killed a U.S. soldier.

The agreement to be signed Feb. 29 calls for an initial U.S. troop withdrawal over a five-month period. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin “Scotty” Miller, has told Pentagon officials he can safely reduce the U.S. troop level from the roughly 12,000 service members now there to 8,600.

Pentagon officials have insisted that even the first round of withdrawals will be conditioned on Taliban leaders not permitting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups on Afghan territory.

Other officials have also pressed for limiting troop withdrawals unless violence levels remain low and Taliban leaders follow through on promises to hold planned power-sharing talks with Afghan government negotiators.

Whether the U.S. insists on those conditions before making steep troop reductions will depend to a large degree on Trump, said a senior U.S. Defense official who did not want to be quoted speaking about the internal deliberations.

Critics fear that as his reelection campaign moves into full swing this summer, Trump may order troop withdrawals whether or not the looming Afghan peace talks go smoothly, in order to be seen as delivering on his promise to end an era of lengthy U.S. overseas wars.

Trump “wants to bring the force levels down. He’s made that clear. The question is whether he is willing to do it if things start to fall apart. And they usually do in Afghanistan,” a senior Defense official said.

The Pentagon plans to continue its training of Afghan army and police, even as it sharply cuts overall force levels. “A big part” of the remaining U.S. force will be focused on that training, said another U.S. Defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Miller has also developed options for continuing military operations against Al Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups, using forces stationed in the region but outside Afghanistan, if necessary.

As long as the Afghan peace talks remain on track, Pentagon officials believe counterterrorism operations can be carried out with relatively small numbers of special operations troops and airstrikes.

Douglas Lute, a retired U.S. Army general who coordinated fighting in Afghanistan late in the George W. Bush administration and under President Obama, said improved U.S. intelligence in the region and a diminished Al Qaeda threat bode well for security.

“We have intelligence access that we didn’t have before,” Lute said. “We’re much better than we were back when we were simply launching cruise missiles into the desert.”

U.S. officials have also pressed NATO members and other countries with troops in Afghanistan not to exit too hastily. There are roughly 8,000 non-U.S. foreign troops there now, and a quick exit of many of them would force steeper cutbacks in critical training programs.

It is unclear whether the agreement will include a timetable or explicit language committing Washington to a complete pullout of its troops. But it’s unlikely the Taliban would sign on to a deal that does not at least theoretically hold that out as the goal, said Laurel Miller, the former acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department.

“You have to look at the U.S.-Taliban agreement as the easy part of the deal,” she said. “It’s a viable first step. Whether that first step leads to further steps is still an open question.”

She said the likely message that the administration is sending the Afghan government is: We’re leaving, so you better make the best deal you can. And if you do, we will support you with aid.

However, she added, “If the U.S. withdraws its troops, I’m deeply skeptical that the U.S. Congress is going to continue to send billions of dollars a year to prop up the Afghan government.”

Congress has appropriated nearly $137 billion in aid for Afghanistan since 2002, with about 63% earmarked for security forces and 26% for development projects, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the White House is seeking $4.8 billion in military assistance and $400 million in economic aid.

Another wild card is Pakistan, which has backed the Taliban and benefited from the unrest in its neighbor. Although Pompeo has invested considerable time courting senior Pakistani officials, Islamabad’s support for peace talks is unclear.

Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary for Defense, said that while she is concerned Trump might “lose patience and pull the plug,” she believed chances for a broad agreement were the best they have been “across three administrations.”

“While we have been fighting this for 20 years, the Afghans have been fighting this for 40,” she said, referring to the civil war and Soviet intervention that predated U.S. involvement. “So there is a degree of exhaustion on both sides and a degree of stalemate.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking Congress to give it four additional months to complete the 2020 Census, blaming the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Census Bureau had previously halted its in-person outreach because of the virus’ spread, but it had maintained it would still be able to meet its legal obligation to present results to the president and Congress by Dec. 31.

In a conference call with members of Congress Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asked for legislation giving the bureau an additional 120 days to present the results.

Field operations, such as going door to door to collect information for those who did not respond to the census online or by mail, are now scheduled to resume June 1 and would last until Oct. 31, according to the bureau, which falls under the Commerce Department.

That means rather than have the data ready by Dec. 31, the bureau would need until April 30, 2021. Data used to redraw the country’s congressional district boundaries would be delivered to the states no later than July 31, 2021, rather than in March.

The existing deadlines are set in federal law, and it will take an act of Congress to move them.

President Trump on Monday said the bureau would need a “major delay” and questioned if 120 days was long enough. “Obviously they can’t be doing very much right now,” Trump said at a briefing on the coronavirus. “How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time now?”

The 2020 census was already unusually politically fraught after the administration attempted to include a question about citizenship on the form, a move that was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court. Critics said the effort was an attempt to suppress census response rates in blue states with large immigrant communities, like California.

Democrats said they would review the bureau’s request, but would also want to see detailed information supporting the need for a delay.

“The oversight committee will carefully examine the administration’s request, but we need more information that the administration has been unwilling to provide,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, in a statement. “The director of the Census Bureau was not even on today’s call, and the administration has refused for weeks to allow him to brief members of our committee, despite repeated requests.”

William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution, said it makes practical sense to ask for a delay now, so Congress has time to consider it.

“It’s a fairly big deal to do this. But on the other hand, we’re in a fairly unusual situation,” Frey said.

For the first time this year, people can fill out the census online, and so far 48% of households have responded, according to the bureau. But millions of Americans don’t respond, prompting the need for a half million census workers to make in-person visits nationwide to ensure an accurate count.

But door-to-door canvassing is difficult to imagine at a time when governors in most states have ordered nonessential workers to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus that has more than 500,000 positive U.S. cases already.

“People are pretty likely to be home, [so] it seems like a good opportunity to do the census. But it seems unlikely that people are going to feel safe doing that [door-knocking],” Menlo College Political Scientist Melissa Michelson said. “It’s another reminder that we are not living in normal times and a lot of things that would happen this year are not going to happen.”

There is some precedent to a delay. More than 100 years ago, the census director blamed the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, along with World War I and other things, for a five-month delay in delivering the results of the 1920 census.

The once-every-decade count of the country’s population is mandated by the Constitution and the results are used to redraw congressional districts so that each represents about the same number of people. A delay in the results could have a cascading effect, as they are also used to redraw state legislative districts, city council boundaries and even school board seats ahead of the 2022 election.

Michelson said a delay in providing the data to states would compress the time left to redraw those boundaries, and to litigate the court battles that occur in some states over whether the lines were fairly drawn, all before the 2022 primary elections begin.

The decision could have a pronounced impact on California, where a 14-member citizen’s redistricting commission will draw boundaries for congressional and legislative districts for just the second time since voters wrested the job from the California Legislature in 2008. By law, the panel — consisting of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters chosen through a lengthy public vetting process — must base its work on detailed census data.

In 2011, the citizens panel held extensive hearings across California seeking public input on how best to draw legislative and congressional districts with an eye toward fair representation. The commission’s final deliberations on the maps came in late July 2011.

But under the new proposed census schedule, that’s the month in 2021 that states would first receive the data. That delay could push the California commission’s work dangerously close to the 2022 election cycle and could potentially bleed into the time frame in which candidates file paperwork to run for those positions.

Times staff writer John Myers in Sacramento contributed to this report

Reporting from Washington — The FBI’s race to hack into the cellphone of slain San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was hindered by poor internal communication, but officials did not mislead Congress about their technological capabilities, according to an inspector general’s report released Tuesday.

After the December 2015 terror attack, the FBI waged a high-profile public fight to force Apple Inc. to unlock the iPhone, even going to court in a case that pitted national security against digital privacy.

The watchdog report opens a window into the shadowy units inside the FBI that try to hack into computers, and the internal tensions between technicians engaged in national security investigations and those working on criminal cases.

One official was unhappy after the bureau hired an outside technology company to help it unlock the phone, the report said, because that undercut the legal battle against Apple.

“Why did you do that for?” the report quotes the official as saying.

More than two years after the struggle over Farook’s phone, the FBI says the problem of encrypted devices is more difficult than ever. The method used to hack Farook’s iPhone 5c — which cost the FBI more than $1 million — quit working as soon as Apple updated the phones.

In 2017, the FBI was unable to access data on 7,775 devices seized in investigations, according to director Christopher Wray.

“This problem impacts our investigations across the board,” Wray said in January at a speech at a cybersecurity conference, calling it “an urgent public safety issue.”

On Dec. 2, 2015, Farook, a health department worker for San Bernardino County, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked a holiday party for Farook’s co-workers, killing 14 people and injuring many others. The couple was killed in a shootout with police.

The FBI, trying to figure out whether anyone else was involved in the plot, thought that Farook’s county government-issued cellphone might have the answer. In February, the bureau announced that its technicians were unable to get into the iPhone, which they feared had been set up with a security feature by Farook that would permanently destroy encrypted data after 10 unsuccessful login attempts.

The bureau asked Apple to write software that would disarm that security feature, allowing agents to keep trying codes until one worked, but the company refused. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, said such a backdoor could compromise security for Apple customers.

“[T]he U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create,” he said in a statement at the time.

The dispute ended up in federal court, as the government sought an order forcing Apple to comply.

Then-FBI Director James B. Comey, in testimony to Congress on Feb. 9 and March 1, 2016, said the bureau was unable to get into the phone without Apple’s help. Amy Hess, then the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the technology division, said the same thing in her testimony.

But inside the bureau, even though top officials had ordered a “full court press,” not everybody was working on the problem, the inspector general found.

The digital forensic experts at the bureau’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit had tried and failed to get into the phone. But the leader of another squad, the Remote Operations Unit, said he never learned about the issue until a staff meeting in February. He started contacting the unit’s stable of hackers to see whether anybody had a solution.

That supervisor said he believed he wasn’t asked for help sooner because the FBI had “a line in the sand” that blocked the unit’s classified hacking techniques from being used in domestic criminal cases.

“He said this dividing line between criminal and national security became part of the culture in [the technology division] and inhibited communication,” the report says. Other officials told the inspector general that no such line existed.

As it happened, the report found, one of the bureau’s hacking outfits had been working on cracking the iPhone for months and was close to a solution.

The FBI called off the court fight on March 28, saying it no longer needed Apple’s help.

The FBI eventually found that Farook’s phone had information only about work and revealed nothing about the plot.

After the outside vendor surfaced, the cryptographic unit chief “became frustrated that the case against Apple could no longer go forward,” the report says. Hess said the bureau had viewed the Farook phone as “the poster child case” that could help it win the larger political struggle to access encrypted devices.

The inspector general’s inquiry began after Hess reported concerns about the internal conflicts and said she was worried that FBI staff had deliberately kept quiet about their capabilities and allowed Comey and her to give false testimony to Congress.

That wasn’t the case, the inspector general found, because the bureau hadn’t figured out how to crack the phone at the time of those hearings. Through a spokesman, Hess, now special agent in charge of the FBI’s Louisville office, declined to comment.

The FBI said it agreed with the recommendations in the report and said it is now setting up a new unit to consolidate resources and improve communication between people working on encryption issues. Communications problems also were addressed through “a change in leadership” of the units involved, the bureau said.

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President Trump has united the Latino vote … in its disdain for the policies of his second term.

A new study from the Pew Research Center found that a majority of U.S. Latino adults disapprove of the job Trump has done since returning to the White House earlier this year.

Ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids throughout the country and continued economic turmoil have led many Latinos to grow upset with the politician — whose 2024 campaign centered on carrying out the “largest deportation operation in American history” and fixing the nation’s fledgling economy.

Pew’s findings revealed that 70% of Latinos disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president. When it came to immigration, 65% disapproved of the current administration’s approach to the issue. Regarding the economy, 61% said Trump’s policies have made economic conditions worse.

However, party affiliation still played a significant role in how Latinos graded Trump’s performance. Overall, 81% of 2024 Latino Trump voters approved of his job so far — an impressive level of support, though it has notably dipped from 93% since the onset of his second term.

Among Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris, Trump had a 4% approval rating in February, which has since plummeted to 0%. His approval rating with 2024 Latino nonvoters moved from 42% down to 27%. As a whole, the president’s approval rating among all Latino groups has slumped from 42% at the beginning of the year to 27% this fall.

In the Pew study, Latino voters also expressed pessimism about their future in the U.S. Of those surveyed, 68% said the situation for U.S. Latinos is worse today than it was a year ago, 9% responded that it was better and 22% felt it was about the same. Harris voters overwhelming felt the situation is worsening for Latinos at 89%; 66% of nonvoters agreed with that assessment; and 31% of Trump voters felt Latinos were worse off now than last year.

A plurality of voters who went red in 2024 — 40% — felt the situation for Latinos in the U.S. was about the same year over year. Additionally, 28% of that voting bloc believed U.S. Latinos are better off now compared with 2024.

This data set lines up with a recent Axios/Ipsos poll conducted in partnership with Noticias Telemundo.

Of the more than 1,100 people surveyed, 65% said that it’s a “bad time” to be Latino or Hispanic in the U.S.; when the poll was conducted in March 2024, that figure stood at 40%. When broken down by party, 84% of Democrats said it was a bad time, compared with 68% of independents and 32% of Republicans.

At 78%, a majority of those polled by Pew felt that Trump’s policies have been more harmful than helpful to the Latino community. Harris voters were once again united against Trump with 97% agreeing that his policies have negatively affected their community. Nonvoters were in agreement with 78% feeling the Republican president’s policies have had adverse effects on Latinos.

Trump voters were split on the issue with 41% saying Trump’s policies have been helpful to Latinos, 34% believing they’ve been harmful and 22% responding that they’ve had no effect.

These findings seemingly muddle the narrative that Latinos nationwide have made a rightward turn politically in recent years.

In the 2024 presidential election, Trump garnered 48% of the Latino vote compared with Harris’ 51% share and significantly jumped past the 36% clip that he got in the 2020 presidential election. Initial 2024 exit polls actually underestimated Latinos’ Trump support, with the Republican candidate tracking at 46% of the Latino vote on election day.

Additionally, 47% of naturalized citizens of all ethnic backgrounds voted for Trump in 2024, compared with 38% in 2020. In that same voting bloc 51% voted for Harris in 2024, a notable drop from the 59% who voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Latino naturalized citizens recorded a 12% bump in voting for Trump, jumping from 39% in 2020 to 51% in 2024.

SACRAMENTO — Republican Gov. George Deukmejian announced Thursday night that he intends to veto Democrat-backed anti-apartheid legislation, placing in jeopardy final passage of major unrelated legislation designed to overhaul the state’s unitary tax system.

Deukmejian, saying he shared the Democrats’ “repugnance” for South Africa’s racial policies, proposed in a counteroffer to issue an executive order asking the directors of the state pension funds to review their investments in companies doing business in South Africa or with the government of South Africa.

The order would be patterned after the selective investment policy adopted last June by the University of California Board of Regents.

Brown Not Satisfied

This did not satisfy Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), a UC regent who believes that the university’s policy is not strong enough, and the anti-apartheid bill’s author, Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

“I got no comment,” Brown said angrily when approached by reporters.

Democrats displayed their anger at Deukmejian’s decision by voting to bottle up in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee the unitary tax repeal legislation favored by Deukmejian. This put in serious doubt the fate of the bill since the Legislature will adjourn for the year today.

Waters’ bill goes substantially beyond the UC policy, carrying both civil and criminal penalties. It would prohibit new investments of state pension funds, or surplus treasury dollars, in companies with South African connections.

Waters said, “Obviously the governor’s ideas about sanctions are very different from my own ideas.”

The Los Angeles legislator added: “I don’t think they’re tough enough. I don’t think they’ll send a clear message that the state of California is on record in opposition to apartheid.”

The Speaker earlier in the day Thursday told Assembly lawmakers he would not allow a floor vote on the unitary tax repeal bill until Deukmejian indicated he would sign anti-apartheid legislation.

The South Africa issue, in Brown’s words, was the only major sticking point blocking final passage of the tax legislation.

The Speaker seemed optimistic that the issue could be resolved until a late afternoon meeting between Deukmejian and Waters in the governor’s office, in which the governor told the legislator he will veto her bill.

Sullivan Principles

In his statement, Deukmejian said his policy would exempt from sanctions companies that subscribe to the so-called “Sullivan principles,” a code that requires equal opportunity practices in South Africa.

“If the pension boards adopt the same approach as the University of California, the state will have joined the growing chorus of voices protesting the repressive system of apartheid in South Africa,” Deukmejian said.

“Such a message would be sent in a clear and responsible manner consistent with the legal and moral obligations that exist to those who depend upon the sound investment of their pension funds,” he declared.

The Speaker had expressed optimism to reporters earlier in the day that Deukmejian’s remarks Wednesday to the national convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting in Anaheim, indicated the governor might be more agreeable to imposing state sanctions against South Africa. In the speech, Deukmejian said that further U.S. government sanctions against the Pretoria regime may be necessary because of that nation’s denial of “basic human rights and liberties” to blacks.

The heavily lobbied unitary bill, carrying an estimated $258 million in tax breaks for some of the world’s largest corporations, involves a bitter struggle between foreign-based multinational corporations and U.S. corporations.

Foreign Pressure

Foreign firms, particularly the Japanese, have provided the strongest push to pass the legislation. It would overhaul the state’s controversial unitary tax system, freeing foreign firms from state regulations requiring that they pay a corporate tax based on worldwide business operations. They claim the tax is discouraging them from investments in California.

Domestic companies claim the bill would give their overseas competitors an economic advantage.

But Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), sponsor of the bill in the Assembly, called the unitary system “a dark cloud over California’s future.” He added, “There are companies in France and Canada, in Great Britain and Japan who are boycotting California.”

Waters told reporters she was worried that corporations would use money from the tax break to invest in South Africa. Her bill would prohibit state investments in any companies that make new investments in South Africa.

“I think it’s very relevant to be able to say that if you get this tax break we are going to ensure that there are going to be no new investments in South Africa,” she said.

Alarmed that two-thirds of $330 million in contributions to California ballot measures in 2006 were in amounts of $1 million or more, a political watchdog group proposed Friday to limit contributions to $100,000, to level the playing field.

The limit on contributions is one of several changes proposed by the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan group.

Other proposed changes include extending the period for circulating petitions to qualify initiatives from 150 days to 365.

— Patrick McGreevy

In a fiery rebuttal to allegations he’d criminally misrepresented facts in his mortgage documents, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Tuesday — accusing him of criminally misusing government databases to baselessly target President Trump’s political opponents.

“Pulte has abused his position by scouring databases at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — two government-sponsored enterprises — for the private mortgage records of several prominent Democrats,” attorneys for Swalwell wrote in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. “He then used those records to concoct fanciful allegations of mortgage fraud, which he referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution.”

They said Pulte launched his attack on Swalwell at a particularly inopportune time, just as Swalwell was launching his campaign for California governor.

Pulte’s attack, Swalwell’s attorneys wrote, “was not only a gross mischaracterization of reality” but “a gross abuse of power that violated the law,” infringing on Swalwell’s free speech rights to criticize the president without fear of reprisal, and violating the Privacy Act of 1974, which they said bars federal officials from “leveraging their access to citizens’ private information as a tool for harming their political opponents.”

Pulte, the FHFA and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Pulte has previously defended his work probing mortgage documents of prominent Democrats, saying no one is above the law. His referrals have exclusively targeted Democrats, despite reporting on Republicans taking similar actions on their mortgages.

Swalwell’s lawsuit is the latest counterpunch to Pulte’s campaign, and part of mounting scrutiny over its unprecedented nature and unorthodox methods — not just from targets of his probes but from other investigators, too, according to one witness.

In addition to Swalwell, Pulte has referred mortgage fraud allegations to the Justice Department against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who have all denied wrongdoing and suggested the allegations amount to little more than political retribution.

James was criminally charged by an inexperienced, loyalist federal prosecutor specially appointed by Trump in Virginia, though a judge has since thrown out that case on the grounds that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed. The judge also threw out a case against former FBI Director James Comey, another Trump opponent.

Cook’s attorneys slammed Pulte in a letter to the Justice Department, writing that his “decision to use the FHFA to selectively — and publicly — investigate and target the President’s designated political enemies gives rise to the unmistakable impression that he has been improperly coordinating with the White House to manufacture flimsy predicates to launch these probes.”

Schiff also has lambasted Trump and Pulte for their targeting of him and other Democrats, and cheered the tossing of the cases against James and Comey, calling it “a triumph of the rule of law.”

In recent days, federal prosecutors in Maryland — where Schiff’s case is being investigated — have also started asking questions about the actions of Pulte and other Trump officials, according to Christine Bish, a Sacramento-area real estate agent and Republican congressional candidate who was summoned to Maryland to answer questions in the matter last week.

Pulte has alleged that Schiff broke the law by claiming primary residence for mortgages in both Maryland and California. Schiff has said he never broke any law and was always forthcoming with his mortgage lenders.

Bish has been investigating Schiff’s mortgage records since 2020, and had repeatedly submitted documents about Schiff to the federal government — first to the Office of Congressional Ethics, then earlier this year to an FHFA tip line and to the FBI, she told The Times.

When Trump subsequently posted one of Schiff’s mortgage documents to his Truth Social platform, Bish said she believed it was one she had submitted to the FHFA and FBI, because it was highlighted exactly as she had highlighted it. Then, she saw she had missed a call from Pulte, and was later asked by Pulte’s staff to email Pulte “the full file” she had worked up on Schiff.

“They wanted to make sure that I had sent the whole file,” Bish said.

Bish said she was subsequently interviewed via Google Meet on Oct. 22 by someone from the FHFA inspector general’s office and an FBI agent. She then got a subpoena in the mail that she interpreted as requiring her to be in Maryland last week. There, she was interviewed again, for about an hour, by the same official from the inspector general’s office and another FBI agent, she said — and was surprised their questions seemed more focused on her communications with people in the federal government than on Schiff.

“They wanted to know if I had been talking to anybody else,” she said. “You know, what did I communicate? Who did I communicate with?”

Schiff’s office declined to comment. However, Schiff’s attorney has previously told Justice Department officials that there was “ample basis” for them to launch an investigation into Pulte and his campaign targeting Trump’s opponents, calling it a “highly irregular” and “sordid” effort.

The acting FHFA inspector general at the time Bish was first contacted, Joe Allen, has since been fired, which has also raised questions.

On Nov. 19, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) — the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — wrote a letter to Pulte denouncing his probes as politically motivated, questioning Allen’s dismissal and demanding documentation from Pulte, including any communications he has had with the White House.

Swalwell’s attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s lawsuit that he never claimed primary residence in both California and Washington, D.C., as alleged, and had not broken any laws.

They accused Pulte of orchestrating a coordinated effort to spread the allegations against Swalwell via a vast network of conservative influencers, which they said had “harmed [Swalwell’s] reputation at a critical juncture in his career: the very moment when he had planned to announce his campaign for Governor of California.”

They said the “widespread publication of information about the home where his wife and young children reside” had also “exposed him to heightened security risks and caused him significant anguish and distress.”

Swalwell said in a statement that Pulte has “combed through private records of political opponents” to “silence them,” which shouldn’t be allowed.

“There’s a reason the First Amendment — the freedom of speech — comes before all others,” he said.

A high-ranking employee at the Department of Water and Power made staffers run personal errands for her, including purchasing tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert, according to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission’s director of enforcement.

Renette Anderson, who has worked as an executive assistant to the DWP’s general manager since 2002, asked subordinates to book a plane ticket for her personal travel, make physical therapy appointments for her, purchase party supplies for a non-work party at her home and make a service appointment at a Mercedes Benz dealership for her personal vehicle, wrote the enforcement director, Kenneth Hardy, in an accusation document dated Nov. 4.

Anderson’s requests to two DWP employees, Brian Johnson and Angenee Reygadas, were made during work hours in 2022 and 2023, and the employees used city resources to fulfill the requests, Hardy wrote.

On June 22, 2023, after the Snoop Dogg & Friends concert at the Hollywood Bowl was canceled, Anderson asked Johnson to request a refund, Hardy wrote.

Hardy accused Anderson of seven counts of misusing her city position to create a personal benefit for herself. If the parties do not come to an agreement, the Ethics Commission will hold a hearing and decide what penalties to impose. Each count comes with a potential $5,000 fine.

John Harris, an attorney for Anderson, did not respond to a request for comment.

Paola Adler, a spokesperson for the DWP, said the department cannot comment on personnel matters but that it takes accusations of unethical conduct seriously.

Anderson serves as director of Equal Employment Opportunity Services and reports directly to Chief People Officer Tracey Pierce. Anderson was appointed to her role by a previous general manager, not by Janisse Quiñones, who has been in the role since May 2024, the DWP said.

“She has been the primary voice on all matters related to Equal Employment Opportunity, workforce diversity, and the fair and equitable treatment of over 10,000 employees,” according to Anderson’s bio on the website of the Stovall Foundation, where she is a board member.

In less than five weeks, California voters will decide on Proposition 10, a ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties across the state to expand rent control.

Supporters of the measure say it will offer relief for tenants during a time of unprecedented housing affordability problems in California. Opponents contend it will stymie housing construction — the levels are already low — and further increase costs.

Here’s a rundown of some of the difficulties renters face and how Proposition 10 would affect them and broader affordability issues.

Just how dire is the situation for renters in California?

Very. Nine and a half million renters — more than half of California’s tenant population — are burdened by high rents, spending at least 30% of their income on housing costs, according to a recent analysis of U.S. census data by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.

Rents have jumped since the end of the last recession as many areas of the state have seen strong job growth but little housing production. In Los Angeles, the median one-bedroom rental is $2,370, according to real estate website Zillow — an increase of 43% over the last eight years. Similar rent hikes have hit San Francisco and the state as a whole.

Rents in California have far outpaced rents in the rest of the country. Nationwide, the median one-bedroom rent is $1,299, according to the Zillow data, increasing 25% over the same eight-year period.

High housing costs have left millions of Californians poor. Nearly 1 in 5 California residents lives in poverty when housing and other costs of living are considered, helping give the state the distinction of having the nation’s highest poverty rate.

As economic pressures on renters have increased, tenant activists have ramped up their promotion of rent control as a way to hold down costs.

Does rent control help with housing affordability?

Economists of different political stripes rarely agree on much. But there’s consensus, even among liberal economists, that rent control doesn’t help with housing affordability.

Economists generally believe that when government limits the price landlords can charge for housing, there will be fewer houses produced, which in turn drives up prices.

“When you have a price ceiling, it induces a shortage,” said Christopher Palmer, an MIT economist and coauthor of a study on rent control in Cambridge, Mass. “The common wisdom is that rent control reduces the quantity and quality of available housing.”

Instead of rent control, Palmer said, economic research contends the primary solution to housing affordability problems is to build lots more homes and have the new supply force prices down.

But what about California tenants who are struggling now?

By one estimate, developers in California need to build an average of about 320,000 new homes a year to address the state’s shortage and make a major dent in affordability problems — a rate roughly triple the current pace of construction. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said the state would need to increase subsidies by billions of dollars a year to finance enough low-income housing for those most in need.

But these goals will be very hard to achieve, and some researchers say rent control is necessary to protect tenants from the continued threat of rising prices. The UC Berkeley Haas Institute report contends that rent control is the only way cities and counties can keep costs down cheaply and immediately.

“This is really the one thing that can be implemented most quickly,” said Nicole Montojo, a coauthor of the report. “The building is not going to happen fast enough. It’s just not possible.”

Cities and counties can also tailor rent control rules to limit negative consequences for new construction and other potential downsides, said Manuel Pastor, a sociology professor at USC and author of a forthcoming review of existing rent control research.

“For the life of me, I can’t think why you would give up rent stabilization as a tool given the extent of the crisis,” Pastor said.

How would Proposition 10 work? And what is Costa-Hawkins?

Fifteen California cities have some form of rent control now. But local governments are hamstrung when it comes to implementing most new rent control policies because of a 1995 state law, the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

That law restricts city and county rent control efforts in three ways. Local governments are not allowed to:

• Implement rent control on single-family homes.
• Take away the right of landlords to charge what they want for apartments after a rent-controlled tenant moves out.
• Control rents on buildings constructed after 1995. The law also locked into place rules in cities with rent control when Costa-Hawkins passed. For instance, Los Angeles ties rent hikes to inflation on apartments built on or before Oct. 1, 1978, and is prohibited from applying its provisions to more recently constructed properties.

The 1995 law chilled cities’ and counties’ passage of new rent restrictions. In 2016, Mountain View and Richmond in the Bay Area became the first communities to implement new rent control rules in more than three decades.

Proposition 10 does not change existing rent control policies — it simply repeals Costa-Hawkins. So passage of the initiative would not, in most cases, immediately lead to new rent control rules. Instead, it would allow cities and counties to craft policies without restrictions.

Proposition 10 also would be hard to undo in the future. The initiative includes a provision that says any effort to implement statewide restrictions on rent control would have to be approved by California voters. The authors of Proposition 10 say they wrote the measure that way to prevent state lawmakers from undermining it. But the provision has faced criticism from those who contend any negative consequences from the measure would be very hard to fix.

How has rent control affected San Francisco?

Researchers at Stanford recently published a detailed examination of rent control’s effects in San Francisco, where the policy is restricted to apartments built on or before June 13, 1979.

Among the biggest beneficiaries: longtime tenants who would have been forced out of the city without renter protections. The study found rent control especially helped older and black and Latino tenants from being displaced.

Landlords who weren’t able to charge higher prices lost out. The study also found that landlords responded to rent control in San Francisco by converting their rental properties to owner-occupied condominiums, which decreased available apartments in the city and increased prices overall. The research contends that the system added to gentrification in San Francisco by increasing the number of older rental properties being made into units that were typically sold to wealthier residents.

“It may seem like a solution in the short run, but in the long run it really hurts renters and the rental market,” said Rebecca Diamond, an assistant professor of economics at Stanford and the study’s lead author.

Rent control supporters believe the study unfairly blamed the system for fueling gentrification and said the city could have worked to lessen some of the negative effects.

“Even though the costs they found are substantial, those costs could have been contained by the city of San Francisco having tighter controls on condominium conversions,” said Stephen Barton, a coauthor of the UC Berkeley Haas Institute study.

If Proposition 10 passes, what happens next?

Expect a lot of new local battles over rent control.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he wants to expand rent control in the city if Proposition 10 passes. And Berkeley voters will decide in November whether to bolster the city’s own rent control policies — the new rules would take effect at the same time as Proposition 10.

Fights at the city and county levels are likely to be long and contentious. Mountain View, which in 2016 passed a limited version of rent control that’s allowed under existing state law, has had a continuous struggle over rent control policies for the last three years with no end in sight.

Imagine this scenario if you can: A Democratic President nominates a liberal judge to the Supreme Court. This would-be justice then admits he or she had smoked marijuana while a student in college. Then all the conservative senators stand up and say, “Gee, we have no problem with that. We’re sure it was only a youthful indiscretion.”

WILLIAM CARROLL

North Hollywood