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SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Wednesday to provide $90 million to Planned Parenthood, a move intended to help offset the losses from recent federal cuts targeting abortion providers.

“These cuts were designed to attack and assault Planned Parenthood,” said Newsom, speaking at a news conference near the Capitol. “They were not abortion cuts; they were attacks on wellness and screenings and they were attacks on women’s healthcare.”

The Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed last year by President Trump, blocked federal Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood. More than 80% of the nearly 1.3 million annual patient visits to Planned Parenthood in California were previously reimbursed by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Sen. John Laird, who authored the legislation for the funding, Senate Bill 106, said the measure showed that California won’t back down. “This is us standing up to the immediate cut that was in that bill,” said Laird, (D-Santa Cruz). “This is how we are fighting back.”

Jodi Hicks, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, thanked legislators for their support and said the organization could not survive without support from the state. She said Planned Parenthood would always fight against federal attacks but “needed an army” this time to stand beside them.

During the news conference, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom expressed frustration with reporters for asking off-topic questions and said the media should be more concerned about women’s issues.

“All of these questions have really been about other issues,” she said. “This happens over and over and over again — (and we) wonder why we have such a horrific war on women in this country.”

Planned Parenthood offers a range of services, including abortions, birth control, cancer screenings and testings for sexually transmitted diseases. A coalition of states, including California, filed a lawsuit last year against the Trump administration over the cuts to the nonprofit. The states argue in the ongoing lawsuit that the measure violates the spending powers of Congress by singling out Planned Parenthood for negative treatment.

Senate Bill 106 has drawn ire from Republicans, who question why funding is going to Planned Parenthood when many hospitals in the state need more financial support.

“For rural Californians, this conversation is about access to care,” Sen. Megan Dahle (R-Bieber) said in a statement from the Senate Republican Caucus. “Hospitals are cutting services or facing closure, forcing families to drive hours for life-saving treatment. State lawmakers should prioritize stability for these communities.”

IN RECENT WEEKS, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators have talked about giving California a well-deserved bigger say in the presidential campaign by moving up the state’s primary. However, if Democrats really want to put the party in the strongest possible position to succeed in presidential elections, let’s completely rethink the current primary system and replace it with a nominating process designed to pick the candidate best able to win.

In 2004, the primary season was frontloaded around a few early, relatively small and not especially diverse states in order to identify as quickly as possible the “most electable” candidate and to conserve money for the general election. Because these were small states that are historically won one voter and one constituency group at a time, candidates were rewarded for their retail campaign skills: one-on-one politics, constituency group building and a good biography. Unfortunately, these skills are about as relevant to a 21st century national presidential campaign as horseback riding is relevant to driving a car.

Modern presidential campaigns are tests of character; they’re a hunt for candidates who have broad appeal (as opposed to a biography attractive to only a limited range of voters). They’re about identifying candidates with the ability to articulate a message that speaks to all Americans, rather than those who rely on the typical 12-point plans constructed for one constituency group or another. Modern presidential races are about the ability to connect with voters over the TV in their living rooms — not about a candidate’s charm when he meets with them in person in their own living rooms. And they’re about the capacity to assemble and run a far-flung organization capable of raising well in excess of $100 million in just a few years.

With three reforms, the Democrats can put in place a nominating system that will produce the strongest and, yes, most electable candidate.

First, the Democratic primary schedule should open with a group of states that, when taken together, represents the mosaic that is America. Along with a Midwestern Iowa and a Northeastern New Hampshire, let’s have a state from the Southwest, South and West all voting on the same day.

A multi-state campaign taking place on one day and involving a diverse set of states will begin the process of identifying the candidate who can put together the winning qualities of a national campaign.

Second, the primary season needs to be spread over a longer time period — not just in theory but in practice as well, so candidates are truly tested. Beginning in early February and going until May, Democrats should schedule a series of 10 primaries, with each involving five geographically diverse states voting every two weeks. The diverse and multi-state nature of the races would make it far more likely that the campaign would be competitive for a longer period. (Under the current system, the 2008 primary could effectively be over after four early states vote in a span of a few weeks, as it was in 2004. The compressed time period and winner-take-all nature of the existing system means that whoever does well in these first states, especially the first two, is in all likelihood the presumptive nominee.)

This sort of diverse process over an extended time period worked in 1992 — the only time in the last 25 years that the Democrats nominated a candidate, Bill Clinton, who went on to be sworn in as president. That year, because Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin was running in the Iowa caucuses and because New Hampshire voters chose former Sen. Paul Tsongas of neighboring Massachusetts, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire played their historically determinative roles. In fact, the 1992 election was the first time in history that a candidate became president who did not win the New Hampshire primary. Instead, Democrats had to compete vigorously over the course of several months in such places as South Dakota, and then in Georgia (where Clinton got his first win), Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina, Arizona, Super Tuesday, and then on to Connecticut, New York and eventually California, where Clinton wrapped up the nomination in early June.

If Democrats had been using the 2004 primary system in 1992, their nominee could well have been Tsongas. The longer, diversified schedule, however, allowed Clinton to prove himself to voters, exposed the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses and allowed the Democrats to stay on the offensive and define the terms of the general election. Democrats ended up with a candidate who actually won a number of states in the South and all the states in the upper Midwest — and who had the message, the battle-hardened ability and the proven campaign operation needed to beat the Republicans.

The third reform, in order to encourage more voter participation and loosen the grip of the Washington establishment on the Democratic Party’s nomination process, is a three-part proposal: Eliminate the “super delegate” system. Super delegates are a significant pool of at-large, free-agent delegates representing the Democratic apparatus (including both party and elected officials) in the nominating process. In addition, the party should establish a system that more closely resembles the system that states such as Maine and Nebraska use in the general election, in which they divide nominating delegates by congressional districts, with votes for each district and additional points for whichever candidate wins the majority of the state’s total vote. Finally, as in New Hampshire, independents should be allowed to vote in Democratic primaries.

These changes would force candidates to compete for an ideologically broader range of voters throughout all regions of a state, including in urban, suburban, exurban and rural districts.

Even a cursory glance at a red-and-blue color-coded map that divides the country’s counties up shows that Democrats need to compete in more than just the major cities and coastal regions. Not only will this be of enormous help to producing a candidate who can compete nationally — it will help the party’s candidates lower down on the ballot, where Democrats face challenges in traditional swing communities.

The winning coalition for Democrats will in all likelihood not be the old Democratic coalition of labor, minorities, women and coastal progressives. As the 2006 midterms demonstrated, for the Democratic Party to regain a permanent majority status, our candidates must win by talking to all Americans.

MINNEAPOLIS — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Thursday she is running for governor of Minnesota, promising to take on President Trump while unifying a state that has endured a series of challenges even before the federal government’s immigration crackdown.

Klobuchar’s decision gives Democrats a high-profile candidate and proven statewide winner as their party tries to hold on to the office occupied by Gov. Tim Walz. The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, Walz abandoned his campaign for a third term this month amid criticism over mismanagement of taxpayer funding for child-care programs.

“Minnesota, we’ve been through a lot,” Klobuchar said in a video announcement. “These times call for leaders who can stand up and not be rubber stamps of this administration — but who are also willing to find common ground and fix things in our state.”

Klobuchar cited Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, federal officers killing two Minnesotans, the assassination of a state legislative leader and a school shooting that killed multiple children — all within the last year. She avoided direct mention of ongoing fraud investigations into the child-care programs that Trump has made a political cudgel.

“I believe we must stand up for what’s right and fix what’s wrong,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar becomes the fourth sitting senator to announce plans to run for governor in 2026. The other races are in Alabama, Colorado and Tennessee.

Multiple Minnesota Republicans are campaigning in what could become a marquee contest among 36 governorships on the ballot in November. Among them are MyPillow founder and Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier who is close to Trump; state House Speaker Lisa Demuth; Dr. Scott Jensen, a former state senator who was the party’s 2022 gubernatorial candidate; and state Rep. Kristin Robbins.

Immigration and fraud will be at issue

The Minnesota contest is likely to test Trump and his fellow Republicans’ uncompromising law-and-order approach and mass deportation program against Democrats’ criticisms of his administration’s tactics.

Federal agents have detained children and adults who are U.S. citizens, entered homes without warrants and engaged protesters in violent exchanges. Renee Good was shot three times and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in early January. On Saturday, federal officers fatally shot intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti during an encounter.

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill, in turn, have voted against spending bills that fund Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. A standoff over the funding could lead to a partial government shutdown.

Trump and other Republicans also will try to saddle Klobuchar — or any other Democrat — with questions about the federal investigation into Minnesota’s child-care programs and its Somali community. Trump also has made repeated assertions of widespread fraud in state government, and his administration is conducting multiple investigations of state officials, including Walz. The Democrat has maintained that Walz’s administration has investigated, reduced and prosecuted fraud.

Demuth was quick to release a new video and a webpage that illustrate what’s likely to be another main line of her campaign: that Klobuchar cannot be trusted to end the fraud in public programs or curb the growth of government. “Minnesotans only need to look at her record to know that she simply cannot deliver the change that our state needs, and would be nothing more than a third term of Tim Walz,” Demuth said in a statement.

Klobuchar has won across Minnesota

Now in her fourth Senate term, Klobuchar is a former local prosecutor and onetime presidential candidate who positions herself as a moderate and has demonstrated the ability to win across Minnesota.

She won her 2024 reelection bid by nearly 16 percentage points and received 135,000 more votes than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Harris outpaced Trump by fewer than 5 percentage points.

Klobuchar gained attention during Trump’s first term for her questioning of his judicial nominees, including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. At his acrimonious confirmation hearings, she asked Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault as a teenager, whether he ever had so much to drink that he didn’t remember what happened. Kavanaugh retorted, “Have you?”

The senator, who had talked publicly of her father’s alcoholism, continued her questioning. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed by a single vote, later apologized to Klobuchar. Kavanaugh has denied that the alleged assault occurred.

After Trump’s first presidency, Klobuchar was among the most outspoken lawmakers during bipartisan congressional inquiries of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol during certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. As Senate Rules Committee chair, she pressed Capitol Police, administration officials and others for details of what authorities knew beforehand and how rioters breached the Capitol.

“It’s our duty to have immediate responses to what happened,” she said after helping write a report focused not on Trump’s role but on better security protocols for the seat of Congress.

2020 presidential bid

Klobuchar sought the presidential nomination in 2020, running as a moderate in the same political lane as Biden. She launched her campaign standing outside in a Minnesota snowstorm to promote her “grit” and Midwestern sensibilities that have anchored her political identity.

As a candidate, Klobuchar faced stories of disgruntled Senate staffers who described her as a difficult boss but also distinguished herself on crowded debate stages as a determined pragmatist. She outlasted several better-funded candidates and ran ahead of Biden in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But Biden, then a former vice president, trounced her and others in the South Carolina primaries, prompting her to drop out and join others in closing ranks behind him.

After Biden’s victory, Klobuchar would have been well positioned for a Cabinet post, perhaps even attorney general. But the Senate’s 50-50 split made it untenable for Biden to create any opening for Republicans to regain control of the chamber.

Klobuchar announced in 2021 that she had been treated for breast cancer and in 2024 announced that she was cancer-free but undergoing another round of radiation.

Barrow and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.

Jan. 27 (UPI) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz met with President Donald Trump‘s border czar Tuesday to discuss the situation on the ground as immigration enforcement personnel operate in the state.

“Governor Walz met with Tom Homan this morning and reiterated Minnesota’s priorities: impartial investigations into the Minneapolis shootings involving federal agents, a swift, significant reduction in the number of federal forces in Minnesota, and an end to the campaign of retribution against Minnesota,” the governor’s office said in a statement to the media.

The two agreed to continue talks on the matter.

“The Governor and Homan agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals, which the President also agreed to yesterday. The Governor tasked the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as the primary liaison to Homan to ensure these goals are met.”

Homan was sent to the state by Trump after he recalled Immigrations and Customs Enforcement commander Greg Bovino. Trump said that Homan will manage ICE operations in the state and will report directly to him.

“He has not been involved in that area but knows and likes many of the people there,” Trump said of Homan on Monday. “Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me.”

Since ICE began Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in December, two people in the state were killed by federal immigration agents, causing a swell of protests throughout the state. Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were both shot by agents. Good was driving away, and Pretty was filming an agent with his cell phone.

Walz said he had a “productive call” with Trump on Monday.

“The President agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and to talk to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] about ensuring the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is able to conduct an independent investigation, as would ordinarily be the case,” Walz posted on X.