gavin newsom

This essay is excerpted from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”

On January 20, 2004, I took a seat in the gallery of the House of Representatives to hear President Bush deliver his State of the Union address. The seat came courtesy of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Ten months earlier, Bush had made the decision to invade Iraq after his administration’s historic campaign of lies convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. We would not extricate ourselves from that costly conflict for another seventeen years. Much of his speech that night was a further attempt to sell to the nation the justification for his war. “Had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day,” Bush said. He characterized the Patriot Act, which had unleashed a new magnitude of spying on American citizens, as “one of those essential tools” in the war on terror.

“Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom

(Penguin Press)

The rest of his speech was standard fare, ho-hum really, until he reached a section near the end about American values and the need for us to “work together to counter the negative influences of the culture and to send the right messages to our children.” He said he was troubled by activist judges in activist states who were threatening to undo the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by his predecessor, President Bill Clinton. We had to “defend the sanctity of marriage” as the union of one man and one woman, he said. If need be, he would seek a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

As I was leaving the chamber, a middle-aged couple next to me was talking about how pleased they were that their president was finally confronting the “homosexual agenda.” The word homosexual came out of their mouths bent by contempt. I was supposed to head downstairs for a reception with Congresswoman Pelosi and a delegation of California Democrats, but I needed a breath of fresh air. Outside the Capitol, I kept walking and muttering to myself. “These are my people Bush is attacking. My constituents. My staff. My closest advisers.” In the cold and dark of Washington, I called one of my aides back in San Francisco and pledged that I was “going to do something about it” as soon as I returned home.

The law in our state was no different from the law in every other state. Same-sex unions could not be recognized by the local assessor-recorder’s office. They were illegal. As I explained to aides my willingness to now defy that law, I held up a copy of the California Constitution. In Article I, the first section promises that “all people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights.” Among these rights are pursuing and obtaining “safety, happiness and privacy.” It was not until Section 7.5 that these rights were then abridged: “Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This not only contradicted the first section but was discriminatory on its face.

My top staff didn’t disagree with my reading, but almost to a person they were opposed to my taking on the issue. Steve Kawa, my chief of staff, a gay Bostonian whose accent cut through all nonsense, pulled me aside and spoke from his heart. His father had renounced him for being gay, and he wanted nothing more than to live in an America where homophobia was no longer the norm. But swinging open the doors to the city clerk’s office and inviting gay men and lesbian women to the marriage altar was political suicide, he argued. We were new to office, for one thing. And polls showed that less than one third of Californians supported gay marriage.

The “go it slow” admonition was the mother’s milk of Democratic politics. In the endless battle for the hearts and minds of moderates, it seemed the only feasible way for a Democrat to get elected and govern. But this was San Francisco, and we were talking about equal protection under the law for a class of people whose ostracism by family, friends, and community had brought them to San Francisco in the first place. If not here, where? Eric Jaye, one of my campaign consultants, could see my quandary. I was caught between my conscience and the sound political advice of the people closest to me. We had several late-night conversations on the phone. “What the f— are you doing here? Why did we work so hard to win if you can’t do something bold?” he asked. “This is a short life, Gavin. Your time as a politician to get things done is just a blip.”

I thought back to my model for the wine store. The entire purpose was to turn the staid on its head and create a new reality. I called Joyce Newstat, my policy director, who was also gay. “We need to do this,” I told her. She could hear in my voice that I had made up my mind. “OK, but we can’t afford to take a wrong step,” she said. “Gays and lesbians have a history of being blindsided, and you don’t want to become part of that narrative. Give me a week or two to reach out to the community.” Joyce sat down with Kate Kendell, the brilliant executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, based in San Francisco. “Who is this guy?” Kendell wondered. “He can’t just come waltzing in here and upset the delicate balance we’ve taken years to achieve.” Joyce told her I couldn’t be talked out of it, that it had become internalized after I had gone to Washington and heard the words of bigotry ring out in the Capitol. “Well, OK. But if he’s going to do it, he has to do it right,” Kendell said. She directed her attorneys at the center to work with our team on fashioning a plan.

I then went to Mabel Teng, my former colleague on the board of supervisors who was now the assessor-recorder of San Francisco. I asked her what complications would be presented to her official duties if we allowed same-sex marriages at city hall. Mabel, who began her career in politics as an activist with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, did not surprise me with her reply. “It would be no problem at all, Mayor.” The marriage of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, would require hardly any change to the paperwork. Rather than “man and wife,” they would show up in her computer as “Applicant One” and “Applicant Two.”

Alarmed by my plans, my father and Uncle Brennan and their close friend Joe Cotchett — each one steeped in law and politics but only Joe standing six foot four and a former Special Forces paratrooper —attempted a last-minute intervention. They lured me to the Balboa Cafe for dinner and wine. They weren’t the kind to beat around the bush. Did I realize that I was about to torpedo my political career?

Joe got right in my face. “Why are you doing this, Gavin?”

“I’ll tell you why I’m doing this,” I said defiantly. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

I could not have given him a more simple and true answer, and it seemed to hit Joe, who had built his career out of representing the underdog, right in the gut.

“OK,” he said in a different voice. “Then let’s do it.”

With that, my father and uncle went quiet. Not another word was said about it. I left there that night thinking that even my Newsom kin, the ones who had my best interests at heart, could get it wrong from time to time. While I was open to skepticism and second-guessing, indeed I welcomed such a process, in the end I had to trust my own gut. On the matter of civil rights for all Californians, there was no turning back. As for big Joe Cotchett, he ended up joining the ranks of lawyers fighting for the legal right to same-sex marriage.

From “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom, published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Gavin Newsom.

There are two, seemingly irreconcilable, stories of how the Palisades fire became a deadly and destructive behemoth dominating post-fire discourse. One is told by the residents who lived through it, and the other by the government officials who responded to it.

Government officials have routinely argued they had little agency to change the outcome of a colossal fire fanned by intense winds. Palisadians point to a string of government missteps they say clearly led to and exacerbated the disaster.

Officials’ unwillingness to acknowledge any mistakes has only sharpened residents’ focus on them, functionally bringing to a grinding halt any discourse around how the two groups can work to prevent the next disaster.

Instead, residents have been left feeling gaslighted by their own government, while fire officials struggle to navigate the backlash to new fire safety measures.

When officials and residents do talk solutions, the former tend to emphasize personal responsibility — most prominently, Zone Zero, which will require residents to remove flammable materials and plants near their homes — while the latter often push for greater government responsibility: a bolstered fire service and a beefed-up water system.

The residents’ account goes like this:

The Fire Department failed to put out the Lachman fire a week prior. Mayor Karen Bass then left the country during dangerous weather while the deputy mayor for public safety position was vacant after Brian K. Williams, who formerly held the role, was put on leave after allegedly making a bomb threat against City Hall. L.A.’s city Fire Department officials failed to deploy 1,000 firefighters in advance of the fire and did not call for firefighters to work extended hours, while dozens of fire engines were out of commission at the time, waiting for repairs.

An aircraft drops fire retardant on the Palisades fire on Jan. 8, 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile the L.A. Department of Water and Power left a water reservoir designed for firefighting empty and the city failed to analyze how it would evacuate the community.

However, when government officials — be it the mayor, the fire chief or the governor — describe the fire, they tell a different story:

The day after the fire erupted, Bass placed some of the blame on climate change, which some scientists argue has exacerbated fires in the area by increasing the frequency and intensity of hot, dry and windy conditions. Fire officials stressed that the winds during the first few days of the fires were so strong that there was little even the best-equipped fire service could do and that the fire grew so large that there wasn’t a single fire hydrant system in the world that could handle the demand.

Many residents don’t deny that, under such extreme conditions and after the fire reached a certain scale and ferocity, the destruction became inevitable — and there are many who would just like to move on from January 2025.

However, others remain frustrated that these official versions of the story do not acknowledge the government’s failure to prepare for such conditions and its failure to stop the fire before it passed the threshold of inevitability. Indeed, at times, officials have shied away from these uncomfortable discussions to shield themselves from potential liability.

One telling example: On the one-year anniversary of the fire, residents gathered to voice these frustrations at a protest in the heart of the neighborhood. But when Bass was asked to comment on the event, she dismissed it as an unfit way to commemorate the anniversary and accused organizers of profiting off the disaster.

Survivors gathered in Palisades Village to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

This sort of dismissal has essentially forestalled any constructive discussions of climate change, the limits of the fire service and water systems and proposals like Zone Zero, since so many Palisadians now feel like any of that is just a fig leaf for the government’s agency and responsibility, and not a good faith discussion of how to solve the wildfire problem.

The reality is, how climate change is influencing wildfires in Southern California is still a subject of debate among scientists. That doesn’t mean that local leaders need to sit on their hands and wait for consensus. Experts can easily point to a litany of steps that can be taken to better protect residents, regardless of how profound the impact is of global warming on fire risk in the region.

Fire scientists and fire service veterans (who have the pleasure of speaking freely in retirement) argue both personal responsibility and government responsibility play key roles in preventing disasters:

Home hardening and defensible space slow down the dangerous chain reaction in which a wildfire jumps into an urban area and spreads from house to house. It is then the responsibility of a prepared and capable fire service to use that extra time to stop the destruction in its tracks.

The bottom line is that neither the government’s story nor the residents’ story of the Palisades fire is fundamentally wrong. And neither is fully complete.

The conversations around fire preparedness that need to happen next will require both homeowners and government officials to acknowledge they both have real agency and responsibility to shape the outcome of the next fire.

More recent wildfire news

Mayor Karen Bass personally directed the watering down of the city Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire in an attempt to limit the city’s legal liability, my colleague Alene Tchekmedyian reports. The revelations come after Bass repeatedly denied any involvement in the editing of the report to downplay failures.

Last Thursday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office had opened a civil rights investigation into the fire preparations and response for the Eaton fire, looking for any potential disparities in the historically Black west Altadena, my colleague Grace Toohey reports. West Altadena received late evacuation alerts, and officials allocated limited firefighting resources to the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the federal government is hard at work attempting to unify federal firefighting resources within the Department of the Interior — including from the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service — into one U.S. Wildland Fire Service by the end of the year. The effort does not yet include the federal government’s largest firefighting team in the U.S. Forest Service. Because it is housed under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior, merging it into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service would probably require congressional approval.

A few last things in climate news

An investigation from my colleague Hayley Smith found that, as Southern California’s top air pollution authority weighed a proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances, it was inundated with at least 20,000 AI-generated emails opposing the measure. When staff reached out to a subset of people listed as submitters of the comments, only five responded, with three saying they had no knowledge of the letters. The authority ultimately scrapped the proposal.

The National Science Foundation announced last week that a supercomputer in Wyoming used by thousands of scientists to simulate and research the climate would be transferred from a federally funded research institute to an unnamed “third-party operator.” It left scientists shocked and concerned.

The Department of Energy has made new nuclear energy a priority; however, no new commercial-scale nuclear facilities are currently under construction, and it’s unclear how the U.S., which imports most of the uranium used by its current reactors, would fuel any new nuclear power plants. These sorts of technical challenges have vexed nuclear advocates who are fighting against a decades-long stagnation in nuclear development, triggered primarily by safety concerns.

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.

Feb. 16 (UPI) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced an agreement with Britain on Monday that will bring $1 billion in investments into his state.

The climate agreement sets a framework for British companies to expand their access to California’s market and for cooperation on decarbonization and clean energy technology.

British energy company Octopus Energy is among the companies that will expand its access in California. It has committed nearly $1 billion to clean energy companies and projects based in California. Newsom announced the partnership after meeting with British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in London.

“California is the best place in America to invest in a clean economy because we set clear goals and we deliver,” Newsom said in a statement.

“Today, we deepened our partnership with the United Kingdom on climate action and welcomed nearly a billion dollars in clean tech investment from Octopus Energy. California will continue showing the world how we can turn innovation and ambition into climate action.”

Newsom visited Octopus Energy’s headquarters in London during his trip.

California has climate agreements with several countries around the world. During the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, it entered new partnerships with Chile, Colombia, Nigeria and Brazil.

President Donald Trump criticized the new agreement between California and Britain on Monday, saying it was “inappropriate” for the two sides to be working with each other.

“The worst thing that the U.K. can do is get involved in Gavin,” Trump told POLITICO. “If they did to the U.K. what he did to California, this will not be a very successful venture.”

The Trump administration has rolled back federal climate-focused initiatives, most recently eliminating greenhouse gas emissions standards.

In his first five years as California’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom made more than $4 million from his wineries, restaurants, hotels and other hospitality businesses.

And that’s on top of his government salary, which is $142,577 a year.

The former mayor of San Francisco is the first candidate in the 2018 race for governor to release his state and federal tax returns. He filed jointly with his wife, the actress and filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom. On Monday, Newsom allowed reporters to review — but not photocopy — six years of the couple’s returns, from 2010 to 2015, at the San Francisco offices of his campaign consultants, SCN Strategies.

Newsom, the early front-runner in the June 2018 primary, cites his business expertise as a key credential in his campaign for governor. With the help of the wealthy Getty family, he opened a San Francisco wine store in 1992, expanding it over the last 25 years into a network of nearly two dozen businesses known as PlumpJack Group. They include Napa Valley wineries, hotels in Lake Tahoe and Palm Springs, and bars and restaurants in San Francisco.

Here’s what you should know about the tax documents:

The Newsoms reported an average of $1.4 million in income from 2010 to 2015

The Newsoms’ tax returns provided a window into a complex web of the family’s financial interests throughout California. The couple’s lowest adjusted gross income since 2011 was $1.37 million in 2013.

The Newsoms’ average income and tax bills in the years 2010-2015 were:

• Adjusted gross income: $1.4 million.
• Federal tax rate: 26.4%.
• Rate of charitable giving compared to income: 6.8%.
• Federal taxes paid: $384,687.
• State taxes paid: $139,146.

PlumpJack Group was founded by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom as PlumpJack Wine in 1992. Newsom is still a partner in the company, which has expanded to include restaurants, bars and resorts in addition to three wineries and two wine shops, including this store in San Francisco. (Phil Willon/Los Angeles Times)

(Phil Willon/Los Angeles Times)

2015 was a good year for the Newsoms

The couple, who now live in Marin County, reported an adjusted gross income of $1,720,383 in 2015, the highest amount they earned in the past six years. The Newsoms’ total tax bill came to $753,866, with $568,333 going to the Internal Revenue Service and $185,533 to the California treasury. They donated $62,973 to charity, including a $1,000 contribution to the Bay Area Discovery Museum.

The Newsoms’ biggest income source came from Airelle Wines Inc., which runs Napa wineries, at roughly $790,000.

They made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling silver bars — and donated more than $100,000 to charities each year

• The tax returns show the Newsoms made hundreds of thousands of dollars trading silver bars during Newsom’s tenure as lieutenant governor. In 2011 alone, they turned a profit of $499,452 on the sale of silver bars.

• Newsom’s 2013 book, “Citizenville,” appeared to be a moderate money-maker. From 2011 to 2015, Newsom reported a total of $370,325 in income as an author and by working in media. A spokesman for the lieutenant governor said he was unsure if some of that total included money Newsom was paid for his former talk show on Current TV, “The Gavin Newsom Show,” which aired in 2012 and 2013.

• The Newsoms reported an average of $102,212 in charitable donations each year — nearly 7 percent of their income. But apart from clothing and toy donations to the Salvation Army and Goodwill, it was unclear which charities received money from the couple. Because the Newsoms hold interests in a wide network of partnerships, corporations and trusts, and most of their charitable donations were channeled through them, it is unclear which organizations received the money. A spokesman for Newsom’s political campaign said some of the charities the couple donated money to included the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Best Buddies and Planned Parenthood LA.

Newsom owns a Tesla, and received tax credit for it

Over the years, the Newsoms have received a few tax breaks for their rapidly growing, environmentally conscious family.

• Newsom received a $7,500 “Alternative Motor Vehicle Credit” on his 2012 taxes after buying a Tesla Model S.
• He received a $500 tax credit in 2012 for installing energy-efficient doors, windows and insulation.
• In 2010, the Newsoms’ daughter Montana was their only dependent. Then came their son Hunter in 2011. Daughter Brooklynn arrived in 2013. The Newsoms’ fourth child, Dutch, will make his grand entrance on the 2016 return.

Releasing his taxes ratchets up the pressure on his rivals to do the same

Newsom’s release of his tax returns puts pressure on his rivals to make theirs public too. The move could be a sign that the lieutenant governor is banking on revelations that he thinks could be useful to his campaign, such as information detailing Antonio Villaraigosa’s income sources in the years since he left office as mayor of Los Angeles.

Villaraigosa and Newsom’s other chief rival, state Treasurer John Chiang, have agreed to make public their tax returns, but have not yet specified when they will do so. Another candidate, Delaine Eastin, a former superintendent of public instruction, has also vowed to release her tax returns.

A spokesman for the leading Republican in the race, venture capitalist John Cox, said it was too early to say whether he would make his tax returns public.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

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SACRAMENTO — Gavin Newsom writes in his upcoming memoir about San Francisco’s highborn Getty family fitting him in Brioni suits “appropriate to meet a king” when he was 20 years old. Then he flew aboard their private “Jetty” to Spain for a royal princess’s debutante-style party.

Back home, real life wasn’t as grand.

In an annual performance for their single mom, Newsom and his sister would pretend to find problems with the fancy clothes his dad’s friends, the heirs of ruthless oil baron J. Paul Getty, sent for Christmas. Poor fit. Wrong color. Not my style. The ritual gave her an excuse to return the gifts and use the store credit on presents for her children she placed under the tree.

California’s 41st governor, a possible suitor for the White House, opens up about the duality of his upbringing in his new book. Newsom details the everyday struggle living with his mom after his parents divorced and occasional interludes into his father’s life charmed by the Gettys’ affluence, including that day when the Gettys outfitted him in designer clothes at a luxury department store.

“I walked out understanding that this was the split personality of my life,” Newsom writes in “Young Man in a Hurry.”

For years, Newsom asserted that his “one-dimensional” public image as a slick, privileged politician on a path to power paved with Getty oil money fails to tell the whole story.

“I’m not trying to be something I’m not,” Newsom said in a recent interview. “I’m not trying to talk about, you know, ‘I was born in a town called Hope with no running water.’ That’s not what this book is about. But it’s a very different portrayal than the one I think 9 out of 10 people believe.”

As he explores a 2028 presidential run and basks in the limelight as one of President Trump’s most vociferous critics, the book offers the Democratic politician a chance to write his own narrative and address the skeletons in his closet before opponents begin to exploit his past.

A book tour, which is set to begin Feb. 21 in Nashville, also gives Newsom a reason to travel the country, meet voters and promote his life story without officially entering the race. He’s expected to make additional stops in Georgia, South Carolina, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The governor describes the book as a “memoir of discovery” that sent him interviewing family members and friends and digging through troves of old documents about his lineage that his mother never spoke about and his father smoothed over. Learning about his family history, the good and the bad, Newsom said, helped him understand and accept himself. Mark Arax, an author and former Los Angeles Times journalist, was his ghostwriter.

“I’ve changed the opinion of myself,” Newsom said when asked if he believed the book would revise his glossy public image. “It kind of rocked so many parts of my life, and kind of cracked things open. And I started to understand where my anxieties come from and why I’m overcompensating in certain areas.”

Newsom writes that his interest in politics brought him and his father, William, closer. His mother, Tessa, on the other hand, didn’t share his father’s enthusiasm.

She warned him to get out while he still could, worried her only son would eschew his true self.

“My mother did not want that world for me: the shrewd marriage of tall husbands and tall wives that kept each year’s Cotillion Debutante Ball stocked with children of the same; the gritted teeth behind the social smiles; the spectator sport of who was in and who was out based on so-and-so’s dinner party guest list,” Newsom wrote.

At the heart of her concern was her belief that Newsom’s “obsessive drive” into business and politics was in response to his upbringing and an effort to solve “the riddle” of his identity from his learning disorder, dyslexia, and the two different worlds he inhabited.

“As I grew up trying to grasp which of these worlds, if either, suited me best, she had worried about the persona I was constructing to cover up what she considered a crack at my core,” Newsom writes. “If my remaking was skim plaster, she feared, it would crumble. It would not hold me into adulthood.”

Newsom’s mother was 19 years old when she married his father, then 32. He learned through writing the book that his mother hailed from a “family of brilliant and daring misfits who had carved new paths in botany and medicine and left-wing politics,” he writes.

There was also secret pain and struggles with mental health. His maternal grandfather, a World War II POW, turned to the bottle after returning home. One night he told his three young daughters to line up in front of the fireplace so he could shoot them, but stopped when his wife walked in the door and took the gun from his hand. He committed suicide years later.

Newsom’s father’s family was full of more traditional Democrats and Irish Catholic storytellers who worked in banking, homebuilding, law enforcement and law. Newsom describes his paternal grandfather as one of the “thinkers behind the throne” for former California Gov. Edmund “Pat” Brown, but his family never held public office despite his dad’s bids for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the California Legislature.

The failed campaigns left his father in financial and emotional turmoil that crippled his marriage when Newsom was a small boy. A divorce set the stage for an unusual contrasting existence for the would-be governor, offering him brief exposures to the wealth and power of the Gettys through his dad.

Newsom said he moved casually between the rich and poor neighborhoods of San Francisco as a boy.

“It was a wonder how effortlessly I glided because the two realms of my life, the characters of my mother’s world and the characters of my father’s world, did not fit together in the least,” Newsom writes.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his dad, Judge William Newsom, have lunch at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco.

(Christina Koci Hernandez / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Though William Alfred Newsom III went on to become an appellate court justice, Newsom’s father was best known for his role delivering ransom money to the kidnappers of J. Paul Getty’s grandson. He served as an adviser to the family without pay and a paid administrator of the $4 billion family trust.

The governor wrote in the book that the ties between the two families go back three generations. His father was close friends with Getty’s sons John Paul Jr. and Gordon since childhood when they became like his sixth and seventh siblings at Newsom’s grandparents’ house.

Gordon Getty in particular considered Newsom’s father his “best-best friend.” Newsom’s dad helped connect the eccentric music composer “to the outside world,” the governor wrote.

“My father had this way of creating a safe space for Gordon to open up,” Newsom writes. “He became Gordon’s whisperer, his interpreter and translator, a bridge to their friends, a bridge to Gordon’s own children.”

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his sister, Hilary Newsom, in a promotional portrait for the Search for the Cause campaign, which raises funds for cancer research, on Nov. 21, 2025.

(Caroline Schiff/Getty Images)

His father’s friendship with Gordon Getty exposed Newsom and his younger sister, Hillary, to a world far beyond their family’s own means. Gordon’s wife, Ann, and Newsom’s father organized elaborate adventures for the Gettys’ four sons and the Newsom children.

Newsom describes fishing on the Rogue River and riding in a helicopter while studying polar bears on the shores of the Hudson Bay in Canada. He recalled donning tuxedos and carrying toy guns pretending to be James Bond on a European yacht vacation and soaring over the Serengeti in a hot air balloon during an East African safari.

Throughout his travels, Newsom often blended in with the Gettys’ brown-haired sons. He wrote that the actor Jack Nicholson once mistakenly called him one of the “Getty boys” at a party in a 16th-century palazzo in Venice where guests arrived via gondola. Newsom didn’t correct him.

“Had I shared this encounter with my mother, she likely would have asked me if deception was something I practiced whenever I hobnobbed with the Gettys,” Newsom said in the book. “Fact is, I was always aware of the line that separated us from the Gettys. Not because they went out of their way to make us aware of it but because we, as good Newsoms, paid constant mind to the distinction.”

Newsom wrote that his mother seemed to begrudge the excursions when her children returned home. She raised them in a much more ordinary existence. Newsom describes his father’s presence as “episodic.”

“For a day or two, she’d give us the silent treatment, and then we’d all fall back into the form of a life trying to make ends meet,” he wrote. “After enough vacations came and went, a cone of silence took hold.”

Newsom’s mother worked as an assistant retail buyer, a bookkeeper, a waitress at a Mexican restaurant, a development director for a nonprofit and a real estate agent — holding as many as three jobs at once — to provide for her children. His mother’s sister and brother-in-law helped care for them when they could, but he likened himself to a latchkey kid because of the amount of time he and his sister spent alone.

They moved five times in 10 years in search of a “better house in a better neighborhood” with good schools, taking the family from San Francisco to the Marin County suburbs. Though his mother owned a home, she often rented out rooms to bring in extra money.

Tired of his mother complaining about finances and his father not coming through, Newsom wrote that he took on a paper route.

In the book, Newsom describes his struggles with dyslexia and how the learning disorder undercut his self-esteem when he was an emotionally vulnerable child.

Eager to make himself something more than an awkward kid with sweaty palms and a bowl haircut who couldn’t read, Newsom mimicked Remington Steele, the suave character on the popular 1980s detective show. He chugged down glassfuls of raw eggs like Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky” and ran across town and back like a prizefighter in training.

He found confidence in high school sports, but his struggle to find himself continued into young adulthood. Newsom wrote that he watched tapes of motivational guru Tony Robbins and heeded his advice to remake yourself in the image of someone you admire. For Newsom, that became Robbins himself.

“Find a person who embodies all of the outward traits of personality, bearing, charisma, language, and power lacking in yourself,” Newsom described the philosophy in the book. “Study that person. Copy that person. The borrowed traits may fit awkwardly at first, but don’t fret. You’ll be surprised by how fast the pose becomes you, and you the pose.”

His father scoffed at the self-help gurus and nurtured his interest in business.

More than a half-dozen friends and family members, including Gordon Getty, invested equal shares to help him launch a wine shop in San Francisco. Newsom named the business, which expanded to include restaurants, hotels and wineries, “PlumpJack,” the nickname of Shakespeare’s fictional character Sir John Falstaff and the title of Gordon Getty’s opera.

“Gordon’s really inspired me to be bolder and more audacious. He’s inspired me to be more authentic,” Newsom said. “The risks I take in business … just trying to march to the beat of a different drummer and to be a little bolder. That’s my politics. But I also think he played a huge role in that, in terms of shaping me in that respect as well.”

Newsom described Gordon and Ann Getty as like family. The Gettys also became the biggest investors in his wineries and among his largest political donors.

In an interview, Newsom said there are many days when he feels his mother “absolutely” was right to worry about the facade of politics and the mold her son stuffed himself into.

Gavin Newsom heads for his home neighborhood on Nov. 3, 2003, to cast hisvote for San Francisco mayor.

(Mike Kepka / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

He described the day the recall against him qualified for the ballot amid the COVID-19 pandemic as humbling and humiliating, though it later failed by a wide margin. Still today, he said, there’s a voice in his head constantly questioning why he’s in politics, what he’s exposing his wife and children to and doing with his life.

By choosing a career as an elected official despite his mother’s warnings, Newsom ultimately picked his father’s world and accomplished his father’s dream of taking office. But he said the book taught him that so much of his own more gutsy positions, such as his early support for gay marriage, and his hustle were from his mother.

Newsom said he’s accepted that he can’t control which version of himself people choose to see. Writing the book felt cathartic, he said, and left him more comfortable taking off his mask.

“It allowed me to understand better my motivations, my purpose, my meaning, my mission… who my mom and dad were and who I am as a consequence of them and what truly motivates me,” Newsom said. “There’s a freedom. There’s a real freedom. And it’s nice. It’s just so much nicer than the plaster of the past.”

These days, almost every cultural or news event seems fleeting. But there’s one thing that feels nearly as momentous as it did 20 years ago: the Super Bowl.

From a personal point of view, I can say that despite basically divesting myself from football (I haven’t watched a non-Super Bowl NFL game in well over a decade, and haven’t played fantasy football for just as long), I still participate in what has become, essentially, a national holiday. Maybe that’s just it: In the ideologically fractured world of 2026, there’s something to be said for having at least one relatively universal experience.

In any case, such a uniquely shared media event inevitably reflects the cultural milieu of the moment. That’s why, for a while now, I’ve been tracking how many of the commercials that air during each year’s Super Bowl have some relation to the environmental issues that I’ve been covering for most of my career as a journalist. I started this project when I was an editor at Time magazine, and thought it merited revisiting this year. Here’s what I found.

During Super Bowl LX on Sunday, there were just two commercials that focused in a meaningful way on products that would advance a transition to a fossil-fuel-free economy. One was for the 2026 Jeep Cherokee Hybrid. The other was for a Chinese supercar made by a vacuum-cleaner company.

It wasn’t long ago that domestic manufacturers were marketing a future based on electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes. During the 2022 Super Bowl, the second year of Joe Biden’s presidency, seven different ads focused specifically on existing and new EV models. Those were in some ways the halcyon days of American EV manufacturing, following the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which, in part, offered a $7,500 tax credit to anyone who bought a new electric car.

The second Trump administration quickly put an end to that; the credit was nixed as of Sept. 30 last year. That was just one of many moves Trump has made since retaking office to anesthetize the United States’ nascent green economy. Over the last year, the Trump administration has tried to shut down offshore wind energy projects while demanding the growth of the coal industry; reversed key policies that previously established legal precedent for the public health impact of greenhouse gases; and generally tried to undermine efforts by many states, California especially, to establish and regulate policies meant to make their infrastructure less dependent on fossil fuels.

So it’s no surprise that in 2026, the second year of Trump’s second presidency, there was just one Super Bowl ad for a domestically produced green product — and it wasn’t even entirely green. Indeed, it reflects a recent trend across the U.S.: Since the federal clean-vehicle tax credits expired in September, sales of purely electric vehicles have plummeted, while those of hybrids have continued to grow, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Tellingly, four different companies — Cadillac, Toyota, Volkswagen and Chevrolet — had ads that showed an EV but didn’t mention it. It’s become more something to hide than to promote.

Then there’s the one other green-energy ad this year, which, honestly, you could quibble with categorizing it as “green.” It’s a reportedly $10-million spot for an electric sports car, theoretically to be made by the Chinese company Dreame, which to date has primarily produced robotic vacuum cleaners. I say theoretical because it seems somewhat unlikely that an outfit that made its nut building knockoff Roombas will be selling an electric super car anytime soon. (As of writing, Dreame has not responded to emailed questions.)

Nevertheless, it is indicative of another trend: Tesla is down; BYD is up. U.S. car companies like Ford can’t seem to figure out how to transition to a gas-less (or, at least, less gas-forward) future, while many Chinese firms, some without any automotive heritage, such as the consumer-tech company Xiomai, are already driving laps around U.S. and European competitors in what is clearly the race for the future of global car-manufacturing dominance.

In 2025, more than half the cars made in China were EVs. And China is working to power those electric cars with renewable energy, while the U.S. is largely swimming against the tide. In 2025, China installed an estimated 315 gigawatts of solar and 119 gigawatts of wind capacity; the U.S. added an estimated 60 gigawatts of solar and 7 gigawatts of wind capacity in the same time.

Green tech doesn’t seem to have much cultural currency right now in the U.S., at least based on the Super Bowl ad lineup. What does, though, is artificial intelligence. There were at least eight different Super Bowl commercials for AI products, and many more that obviously used AI in their production.

Even setting aside the many intellectual-property and ethical issues they raise, there’s the reality that these AI tools rely on data centers that, in turn, require a huge amount of energy to operate — energy that should, ideally, be coming more and more from renewable sources.

Maybe it’s not all that sexy to advertise solar panels or wind turbines — but it also wasn’t that long ago that a pitch about talking to your hand-held computer to help with your scheduling would have seemed pretty lame.

More in climate and culture

One more thing about the Super Bowl: In this pretty cool video, Pearl Marvell, an editor at Yale Climate Connections, broke down the climate change references in Bad Bunny’s halftime performance.

In other sports+climate news, my colleague Kevin Baxter, reporting from Italy, wrote about the impact climate change is having on this — and future — Winter Olympics. The bottom line: Athletes are going to have to expect less fresh powder, and deal with more dangerous, icy conditions.

Last sports-related story of the week: My former colleague Sammy Roth recently wrote a nice profile of Jacquie Pierri, who plays for the Italian women’s hockey team and moonlights as a sustainable-energy engineer and climate activist. Italy plays the U.S. in the quarterfinals on Friday.

On a different note, on the podcast Zero, Akshat Rathi this week interviewed composer Julia Wolfe about how she uses classical music to work through, and communicate, her feelings about the climate crisis.

A couple of last things in climate news this week

California created a program meant to encourage the development of electric semi-trucks. But, as my colleague Tony Briscoe reported a few days ago, Tesla took advantage of it, claiming most of the money while failing to deliver and essentially bullying smaller manufacturers out of the space.

The Trump administration has indicated that it plans this week to rescind the so-called endangerment finding, a policy establishing the fact that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and that essentially acts as the legal underpinning for many climate regulations passed in recent years. Stay tuned — our reporters will have more on this as the story develops.

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.

“These are our homelands.”

“We are still here.”

The statements are objectively true: The Timbisha Shoshone have lived in what’s now popularly known as Death Valley for thousands of years. And they still live there, in a small village inside the national park that has about 30 full-time inhabitants.

In 2000, Congress officially recognized these two facts in the text of the hard-fought Homeland Act, which transferred nearly 7,800 acres of land, including the village site, back to the Timbisha Shoshone.

But federal officials have now taken issue with those seemingly innocuous sentences, according to Mandi Campbell, tribal historic preservation officer for the Timbisha Shoshone and a resident of the village.

The rationale? Orders from President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum directing the National Park Service to review interpretive materials for content that the administration feels “inappropriately disparages Americans.”

Only certain types of Americans, as it turns out: The executive order also has been cited in a lawsuit by the city of Philadelphia as the presumptive reason the NPS removed an exhibit on enslaved people from Independence National Historical Park.

Participants take time out for a photo during a march organized by the Timbisha Shoshone to mark the 25th anniversary of the Homeland Act.

(Kim Stringfellow)

And it’s prompted Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts to stop showing films about women and immigrant textile mill workers, according to the New York Times, which also reported that plaques referencing climate change have been removed from Muir Woods National Monument in California and Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina.

On top of that, Trump officials recently ordered the removal or editing of signs and other materials in at least 17 national parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, The Washington Post reports.

Back to Death Valley — a name that, by the way, members of the Timbisha Shoshone have never liked. Campbell told me that a celebration of the Homeland Act’s 25th anniversary that took place Friday at the national park’s Furnace Creek Visitor Center was supposed to include the unveiling of updates to its interpretive exhibit. The tribe had planned to place in a display case earrings and a medallion that members once gifted to former park Superintendent J.T. Reynolds to mark the passage of the act, along with some descriptive language, she said.

Ahead of the event, the Park Service submitted the additions to its parent agency, the Interior Department, for review. Campbell said that agency officials replied that not only could the new exhibit not include the new phrases “these are our homelands” or “we are still here,” but that similar language that’s been on display since 2012 would also be placed under review.

Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace said this is not true. “The Department has a long-standing history of working closely with tribal partners as part of exhibit development and review, and the park was never told they could not use that specific language or phrases,” she wrote in an email.

Peace went on to explain that although the new exhibit is under review pursuant to the executive and secretarial orders — both titled “restoring truth and sanity to American history” — the department hasn’t made any final decisions.

The review, according to Peace, is meant to ensure that parks tell “the full and accurate story of American history,” which includes addressing enslaved and Indigenous people, “informed by current scholarship and expert review, not through a narrow ideological lens.”

So, the 25th anniversary celebration went ahead without acknowledging the ongoing debate about the new exhibit.

There was a march from the village to the visitor center in which tribal members walked behind a banner that read, “We are still here,” which, Campbell said, was meant to echo a protest staged on Memorial Day in 1996 in which the Timbisha Shoshone demanded the restoration of their homelands after negotiations with the federal government broke down. That rally was widely credited with restarting the talks that eventually led to the passage of the Homeland Act.

Three decades later, the struggle continues. “Why do we still have to fight to be heard?” Campbell wondered earlier this week. “We weren’t even in history books. And we still can‘t tell our story. When do we get our chance?”

Despite the recent controversy, the tribe has a good relationship with the Death Valley-based NPS officials, Campbell said, and she’s confident they’ll be able to work through whatever happens next together.

After Friday’s march, tribal council members and park officials gave a series of speeches at the visitor center saluting their strong partnership and all the work that it’s taken to get to this point. Then they took pictures and ate cake.

More recent land news

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you probably are aware of how lawmakers have been using the Congressional Review Act, which enables Congress to overturn recent federal rules with a majority vote, to revoke specific Bureau of Land Management plans that limit mining and drilling in specific places. This was unprecedented until last year but has since been used to throw out BLM plans in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Now, a decision by the Government Accountability Office has cleared the way for Congress to throw out the BLM plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which protects the land from mineral extraction, limits grazing and prioritizes conservation. Experts expect Republican Rep. Celeste Maloy or another Utah member of Congress to introduce a bill to do so this year, according to Caroline Llanes of Rocky Mountain Community Radio. If it passes, it would mark the first time the act has been used to roll back protections in a national monument.

Four former U.S. Forest Service chiefs are speaking out against the agency’s move to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The 2001 rule protecting 58 million acres of national forests from road building and logging was supported by both political parties, and is needed to protect sensitive wildlife and maintain clean drinking water, argues an op-ed published in the Hill.

The Forest Service has revised its oil and gas leasing rules to “streamline” the permitting process by replacing parcel-by-parcel environmental reviews with a broader review that can sometimes cover millions of acres, reports Jake Bolster of Inside Climate News. Environmental groups told Bolster that the move will increase the likelihood that the agency misses sensitive habitat when deciding where to allow drilling.

Some environmental advocates are concerned about a new order from Interior Secretary Burgum that seeks to expand hunting and fishing access on federal public lands. “It flips conservation on its head and treats wildlife protection as the exception,” said Michelle Lute, executive director of nonprofit Wildlife for All. Others say the directive is more of a statement of values than something that will result in drastic changes on the ground. “It’s a nice nod to the hunting and angling community that acknowledges ‘we know these areas mean a lot to you,’” said Ryan Callaghan, president and chief executive of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers.

A few last things in climate news

Much has been made of a record-setting rainy season that’s helped lift California out of drought. But an extraordinarily warm January has left the snowpack across the Sierra Nevada and much of the Western U.S. far smaller than usual, Times water and climate change reporter Ian James writes. That means more hard times for the snowmelt-fed Colorado River, which provides water for farms and cities across seven states.

A federal judge recently ruled that a wind project off the coast of New York state can go forward — the fifth time a court has ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to halt major offshore wind projects, write Jennifer McDermott and Alexa St. John of the Associated Press. Meanwhile, the administration has also been stymieing solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying once-routine federal approvals, find Brad Plumer and Rebecca F. Elliott of the New York Times.

Peninsular bighorn sheep seeking to migrate back and forth across the California-Mexico border, as they’ve long done, are now being hampered by razor wire installed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Jacumba Wilderness, according to our wildlife and outdoors reporter Lila Seidman. Similar scenarios are playing out across the Southwest, where the 1,954-mile border cuts through the habitat of more than 80 threatened and endangered species.

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 land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.socialon Bluesky.

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gavin Newsom was in his element, moving and shaking amid the rich and powerful in Davos.

He scolded European leaders for supposedly cowering before President Trump.

He drew disparaging notice during a presidential rant and captured headlines after being blocked from delivering a high-profile speech, allegedly at the behest of the White House.

All the while, another governor and Democratic presidential prospect was mixing and mingling in the rarefied Swiss air — though you probably wouldn’t know it.

Flying far below the heat-seeking radar, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear leaned into the role of economic ambassador, focusing on job creation and other nutsy, boltsy stuff that doesn’t grab much notice in today’s performative political environment.

Like Newsom, Beshear is running-but-not-exactly-running for president. He didn’t set out to offer a stark contrast to California’s governor, the putative 2028 Democratic front-runner. But he’s doing so just the same.

Want someone who’ll match Trump insult for insult, over-the-top meme for over-the-top meme and howl whenever the president commits some new outrage? Look to Sacramento, not Frankfort.

“I think by the time we reach 2028, our Democratic voters are gonna be worn out,” Beshear said during a conversation in his state’s snowy capital. “They’re gonna be worn out by Trump, and they’re gonna be worn out by Democrats who respond to Trump like Trump. And they’re gonna want some stability in their lives.”

Every candidate enters a contest with a backstory and a record, which is condensed to a summary that serves as calling card, strategic foundation and a rationale for their run.

Here’s Andy Beshear’s: He’s the popular two-term governor of a red state that three times voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

He is fluent in the language of faith, well-liked by the kind of rural voters who have abandoned Democrats in droves and, at age 48, offers a fresh face and relative youth in a party that many voters have come to see as old and ossified.

The fact he’s from the South, where Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton emerged the last time Democrats experienced this kind of existential freak-out, also doesn’t hurt.

Beshear’s not-yet-candidacy, still in the fledgling phase, offers a mix of aspiration and admonition.

Democrats, he said, need to talk more like regular people. Addiction, not substance use disorder. Hunger, not food assistance.

And, he suggested, they need to focus more on things regular people care about: jobs, healthcare, public safety, public education. Things that aren’t theoretical or abstract but materially affect their daily lives, like the costs of electricity, car insurance and groceries.

“I think the most important thing we should have learned from 2024 is [Democratic voters are] gonna be looking for somebody that can help them pay that next bill,” Beshear said.

He was seated in the Old Governor’s Mansion, now a historic site and Beshear’s temporary office while the nearby Capitol undergoes a years-long renovation.

The red-brick residence, built in the Federal style and completed in 1798, was Beshear’s home from age 6 to 10 when his father, Steve, lived there while serving as lieutenant governor. (Steve Beshear went on to serve two terms as the state’s chief executive, building a brand and a brand name that helped Andy win his first public office, attorney general, in 2015.)

It was 9 degrees outside. Icicles hung from the eaves and snowplows navigated Frankfort’s narrow, winding streets after an unusually cold winter blast.

Inside, Beshear was seated before an unlit fireplace, legs crossed, shirt collar unbuttoned, looking like the pleasantly unassuming Dad in a store-bought picture frame.

He bragged a bit, touting Kentucky’s economic success under his watch. He spoke of his religiosity — his grandfather and great-grandfather were Baptist preachers — and talked at length about the optimism, a political rarity these days, that undergirds his vision for the country.

“I think the American people feel like the pendulum swung too far in the Biden administration. Now they feel it’s swung way too far during the Trump administration,” Beshear said. “What they want is for it to stop swinging.”

He went on. “Most people when they wake up aren’t thinking about politics. They’re thinking about their job, their next doctor’s appointment, the roads and bridges they drive, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community.

“And I think they desperately want someone that can move the country, not right or left ideologically, but actually forward in those areas. And that’s how I think we heal.”

Beshear doesn’t shy from his Democratic pedigree, or stray from much of the party’s orthodoxy.

Seeking reelection in 2023, he seized on the abortion issue and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade to batter and best his Republican opponent.

He’s walked the picket line with striking auto workers, signed an executive order making Juneteenth a state holiday and routinely vetoed anti-gay legislation, becoming the first Kentucky governor to attend an LGBTQ+ celebration in the Capitol Rotunda.

“Discrimination against our LGBTQ+ community is unacceptable,” he told an audience. “It holds us back and, in my Kentucky accent, it ain’t right.”

For all of that, Beshear doesn’t shrink from taking on Trump, which, essentially, has become a job requirement for any Democratic officeholder wishing to remain a Democratic officeholder.

After the president’s rambling Davos address, Beshear called Trump’s remarks “dangerous, disrespectful and unhinged.”

“From insulting our allies to telling struggling Americans that he’s fixed inflation and the economy is amazing, the President is hurting both our families’ financial security and our national security,” Beshear posted on social media. “Oh, and Greenland is so important he’s calling it Iceland.”

But Beshear hasn’t turned Trump-bashing into a 24/7 vocation, or a weight-lifting contest where the winner is the critic wielding the heaviest bludgeon.

“I stand up to him in the way that I think a Democratic governor of Kentucky should. When he’s doing things that hurt my state, I speak out,” Beshear said. “I filed 20 lawsuits, I think, and we’ve won almost all of them, bringing dollars they were trying to stop from flowing into Kentucky.

“But,” he added, “when he does something positive for Kentucky, I also say that too, because that’s what our people expect.”

Asked about the towel-snapping Newsom and his dedicated staff of Trump trollers, Beshear defended California’s governor — or, at least, passed on the chance to get in a dig.

“Gavin’s in a very different situation than I’m in. I mean, he has the president attacking him and his state just about every day,” Beshear said. “So I don’t want to be critical of an approach from somebody that’s in a very different spot.

“But the approach also has to be unique to you. For me, I bring people together. We’ve been able to do that in this state. That’s my approach. And in the end, I’ve gotta stay true to who I am.”

And when — or make that if — both Newsom and Beshear launch a formal bid for president, they’ll present Democratic voters a clear choice.

Not just between two differing personalities. Also two considerably different approaches to politics and winning back the White House.

California once had specialists dedicated to resolving conflict between people and wolves, mountains lions and coyotes. But after funding ran dry in 2024, the state let all but one of them go.

The move came as clashes between us and our wild neighbors are increasing, as climate change and sprawl drive us closer together.

Now, a coalition of wildlife advocates is calling for the state to bring back, expand and fund the coexistence program, at roughly $15 million annually.

Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) will soon introduce legislation that would create the program, her office confirmed. Nonprofits Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation are co-sponsors.

The money supporters want would be used to pay 50 to 60 staffers to focus on the Herculean task of balancing the needs of people and wildlife, as well as buy equipment like “unwelcome mats” to shock bears or fencing to protect alpacas from hungry lions.

Wildlife agencies acknowledge that education is key for coexistence, said Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, at a hearing Tuesday at the state Capitol dedicated to human-wildlife conflict. “But then staff time and resources don’t get allocated by agencies that are already chronically understaffed and underfunded.”

The hearing gave floor time to local law enforcement, representatives of affected regions and academics.

Since the funding expired, “I want to make it clear, the Department [of Fish and Wildlife] recognizes that we have potentially seen a gap in service, and folks have felt that,” Chad Dibble, deputy director of the department’s wildlife and fisheries division, said at the hearing.

Some aspects of the program live on — notably, a system that allows people to report run-ins with wildlife that may prompt the state to take action.

The same year the program fizzled, a mountain lion killed a young man and the state confirmed its first fatal black bear attack on an older woman. (Such attacks are very rare.)

Both tragedies unfolded in rural Northern California, with the fatal lion mauling occurring in El Dorado County.

Assemblymember Heather Hadwick — a Republican who represents El Dorado, as well as Lake Tahoe, which is ground zero for bear problems — called conflicts with predators her district’s biggest issue. “We’re at a tipping point,” she said.

Along with El Dorado, Los Angeles County, at the opposite end of the rural-urban continuum, leads the state for the highest number of reported wildlife “incidents.” These range from just spotting an animal to witnessing property damage.

Debates over how to manage predators can be fierce, but beefing up the state’s ability to respond is uniting groups that are often at odds.

A coalition that includes ranchers, farmers and rural representatives supports bringing back the conflict program, and also wants $31 million to address the state’s expanding population of gray wolves.

Most of that money would go to compensate ranchers for cattle eaten by wolves and for guard dogs, scaring devices or other means to keep them away from livestock.

The wildlife advocates support funding wolf efforts, but believe ranchers should be compensated only if they’ve taken steps to ward off the predators.

Asked his thoughts on it at the hearing, Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs for the California Cattlemen’s Assn., a trade group, called it “a complicated question.”

“Ranchers should be doing something in the realm of nonlethal deterrence, and they are, but we have to be careful to make sure that our nonlethal solutions are not overly prescriptive,” he said.

The elephant in the room: The state’s budget is strained, and many are clamoring for a piece of the pie.

More recent wildlife news

Twenty starving wild horses stranded in deep snow near Mammoth Lakes recently survived an emergency rescue by the Forest Service, I wrote last week. Several died, including one after the rescue, from starvation and exposure. Some, beyond saving, were euthanized.

For some, the Forest Service acted exceptionally, but others questioned the handling of the situation. It’s the latest controversy for these horses. Wildlife advocates have long opposed relocating a large portion of the herd, which the feds say is necessary to protect the landscape.

Beloved bald eagle couple Jackie and Shadow welcomed not one but two eggs in their Big Bear nest in recent days. One arrived on Jan. 23, The Times reported, and, according to the Desert Sun, the second followed three days later.

If you need a pick-me-up, take a gander at a video of an Austrian cow using a long brush to scratch herself. It’s not just adorable; as noted by the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni, it’s the first documented case of a cow using a tool.

Need even more awww? Read about sea turtle Porkchop’s recovery journey at Long Beach’s aquarium. She had a flipper amputated and a fishing hook removed from her throat, and could return to the wild in a matter of weeks.

Coyote mating season is here and that means you are likely to see more of the animals in your neighborhood, per my colleague Karen Garcia.

A few last things in climate news

More than a year after the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, contamination remains a top concern. A state bill introduced this week aims to enforce science-based guidelines for testing and removing contamination in still-standing homes, schools and nearby soil, my colleagues Noah Haggerty and Tony Briscoe report.

Highway 1 through Big Sur (finally) fully reopened after a three-year closure from landslides. As fellow Times staffer Grace Toohey writes, the iconic route is expected to face more challenges from the effects of climate change: stronger storms, higher seas and more intense wildfires.

Per Inside Climate News’ Blanca Begert, the Bureau of Land Management has revived an effort to open more of California’s public lands to oil extraction. Will it be successful this time?

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 wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.

SAN FRANCISCO — Katie Porter’s still standing, which is saying something.

The last time a significant number of people tuned into California‘s low-frequency race for governor was in October, when Porter’s political obituary was being written in bold type.

Immediately after a snappish and off-putting TV interview, Porter showed up in a years-old video profanely reaming a staff member for — the humanity! — straying into the video frame during her meeting with a Biden Cabinet member.

Not a good look for a candidate already facing questions about her temperament and emotional regulation. (Hang on, gentle reader, we’ll get to that whole gendered double-standard thing in a moment.)

The former Orange County congresswoman had played to the worst stereotypes and that was that. Her campaign was supposedly kaput.

But, lo, these several months later, Porter remains positioned exactly where she’d been before, as one of the handful of top contenders in a race that remains stubbornly formless and utterly wide open.

Did she ever think of exiting the contest, as some urged, and others plainly hoped to see? (The surfacing of that surly 2021 video, with the timing and intentionality of a one-two punch, was clearly not a coincidence.)

No, she said, not for a moment.

“Anyone who thinks that you can just push over Katie Porter has never tried to do it,” she said.

Porter apologized and expressed remorse for her tetchy behavior. She promised to do better.

“You definitely learn from your mistakes,” the Democrat said this week over a cup of chai in San Francisco’s Financial District. “I really have and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how do I show Californians who I am and that I really care about people who work for me. I need to earn back their trust and that’s what campaigns are literally about.”

She makes no excuse for acting churlish and wouldn’t bite when asked about that double standard — though she did allow as how Democratic leader John Burton, who died not long before people got busy digging Porter’s grave, was celebrated for his gruff manner and lavish detonation of f-bombs.

“It was a reminder,” she said, pivoting to the governor’s race, “that there have been other politicians who come on hot, come on strong and fight for what’s right and righteous and California has embraced them.”

Voters, she said, “want someone who will not back down.”

Porter warmed to the subject.

“If you are never gonna hurt anyone’s feelings, you are never gonna take [JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon to task for not thinking about how his workers can’t afford to make ends meet. If you want everyone to love you, you are never gonna say to a big pharma CEO, ‘You didn’t make this cancer drug anymore. You just got richer, right?’ That is a feistiness that I’m proud of.”

At the same, Porter suggested, she wants to show there’s more to her persona than the whiteboard-wielding avenger that turned her into a viral sensation. The inquisitorial stance was, she said, her role as a congressional overseer charged with holding people accountable. Being governor is different. More collaborative. Less confrontational.

Her campaign approach has been to “call everyone, go everywhere” — even places Porter may not be welcomed — to listen and learn, build relationships and show “my ability to craft a compromise, my ability to learn and to change my mind.”

“All of that is really hard to convey,” she said, “in those whiteboard moments.”

The rap on this year’s pack of gubernatorial hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, as though the lack of A-list sizzle and failure to throw off sparks is some kind of mortal sin.

Porter doesn’t buy that.

“When we say boring, I think what we’re really saying is ‘I’m not 100% sure how all this is going to work out.’ People are waiting for some thing to happen, some coronation of our next governor. We’re not gonna have that.”

Gavin Newsom, she noted, was a high-profile former San Francisco mayor who spent eight years as lieutenant governor before winning the state’s top job. His predecessor was the dynastic Jerry Brown.

None of those running this time have that political pedigree, or the Sacramento backgrounds of Newsom or Brown, which, Porter suggested, is not a bad thing.

“I actually think this race has the potential to be really, really exciting for California,” she said. “… I think everyone in this race comes in with a little bit of a fresh energy, and I think that’s really good and healthy.”

Crowding into the conversation was, inevitably, Donald Trump, the sun around which today’s entire political universe turns.

Of course, Porter said, as governor she would stand up to the president. His administration’s actions in Minneapolis have been awful. His stalling on disaster relief for California is grotesque.

But, she said, Trump didn’t cause last year’s firestorm. He didn’t make housing in California obscenely expensive for the last many decades.

“When my children say ‘I don’t know if I want to go to college in California because we don’t have enough dorm housing,’ Trump has done plenty of horrible attacks on higher ed,” Porter said. “But that’s a homegrown problem that we need to tackle.”

Indeed, she’s “very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”

Although California needs “someone who’s going to [buffer] us against Trump,” Porter said, “you can’t make that an excuse for why you are not tackling these policy changes that need to be.”

She hadn’t finished her tea, but it was time to go. Porter gathered her things.

She’d just spoken at an Urban League forum in San Francisco and was heading across the Bay Bridge to address union workers in Oakland.

The June 2 primary is some ways off. But Porter remains in the fight.