Ben Stiller has made a lovely, dreamlike film about his parents, the comedian-actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, which is also a film about himself, his sister, Amy Stiller, and his own fatherhood as reflected back by his children and his wife, the actor Christine Taylor. Premiering Friday on Apple TV, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” is a show business story, in large part, but will be emotionally familiar to anyone who has had the occasion to wonder about their parents’ lives, in their parents’ absence.
Though both had set out to be actors — “I carried Eleanora Duse’s life under one arm,” says Anne, “and ‘An Actor Prepares,’ Stanislavski, under the other” — Jerry had been thinking of getting into comedy when he met Anne. They married in 1954, but it wasn’t until 1963 that the conjoined career of Stiller and Maera took off, with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They might play the last two people on Earth meeting for the first time, or an Irish girl and a Jewish boy matched by computer dating. He was a fretful perfectionist who would endlessly rehearse; Anne was naturally funny; she flowed.
As documentary subjects go, the Stillers were not remarkably dysfunctional — no violence, no skeletons — past the not uncommon situation of parents whose work, or fixation on work, often took them away from their kids, physically or mentally, with the added fillip of that work having made them famous. (There are references to Anne’s drinking, which bothered Jerry, but this is not a hole the film runs down, and there’s nothing here to suggest it diminished her life or work.) As different people with different goals — “My mom wanted to be happy independent of performing,” says Ben, “and I think for my dad performing was so important to him it was part of his happiness” — there was tension, but they loved each other, and they loved their kids, and stayed married for 62 years, until Anne’s death in 2015.
Stiller frames the film with his and Amy’s return to the Upper West Side apartment where they were raised in order to clear it out to be sold, providing the opportunity to see what their parents had left behind. (Jerry died in 2020.) And it was a lot — nothing is lost if nothing is thrown away. There are love letters, diaries, scripts, manuscripts. (Anne: “I think Jerry has a need to keep his name going and for some reason he thinks that when we check out and pass over that the Smithsonian institute is going to want his memorabilia.”) Jerry had a habit, amounting to a compulsion, of documenting their life on film and tape; some of their conversations, and arguments, would turn into routines. (“Where does the act end and the marriage begin?” Anne wonders.) Raised voices in another room might be rehearsing or fighting. One routine consisted of escalating declarations of hate: “I hated you before I met you.” “I hated you before you were born.”
They quit playing nightclubs in 1970 (they drove her “meshuggah”), but remained in public view — in guest appearances, game shows and talk shows, where, unlike the highly managed appearances of today, they seemed ready to dish the dirt on themselves, providing Ben Stiller with material for this film. And they went to work as actors, each amassing a long list of screen and stage appearances. Jerry, of course, is now best known from “Seinfeld,” where he played George’s father, Frank Costanza, and “The King of Queens,” acting in nearly 200 episodes.
Much of it has to do with Ben and Amy as children of famous people, of family vacations that became working vacations, and growing up on display. In one clip from “The Mike Douglas Show,” the siblings perform “Chopsticks” as a screechy violin duet. Young Ben, already interested in film and asked by an interviewer if his parents will feature in his movies, says that they won’t: “I’ll be making adventure or a murder or something like that, but never a comedy. I don’t like comedy.”
We get glimpses of Stiller’s own prolific career — in comedy, mostly, as it turned out — as well as confessions of his own failings as a family man. (His children, Quin and Ella, get to have their good-humored but penetrating say, as does Taylor, from whom he separated in 2017, and with whom he reunited during the pandemic.) But there’s no evident resentment on the part of Ben and Amy, just curiosity and self-examination as adults whose own lives have taught them something about being adults, amid the knowledge that their parents had parents, too, and some of their imperfections became imperfections of their own.
Both Anne and Jerry had come from dark places. “Their lives were always reaching for the light,” says the playwright John Guare, whose black comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” Anne performed in off-Broadway. “Why don’t you become a stagehand?” Jerry’s father told him when Jerry first told him of his ambition. “Where do you get off trying to be Eddie Cantor?” Anne’s mother died by suicide. “Your father was kind of a saint, you know,” Christopher Walken tells Ben.
Stiller’s approach is musical; his assembly of clips and photos is musical — poetic, not prosaic. He ends his film with a conversation between Jerry and his aged father, Willie, cut to a montage of the family through time.
“Isn’t this better than anything, just being alive?” says Jerry. “When we go, we’ll go together, you and me”
Willie: “Yeah, OK, hold hands and everything else.”
“You’ll take me to shows again when we get up there?”
“Yeah, when I go I’ll take you any place. … What is this?”
“It’s a tape recorder. … Whatever you say is on that tape. They’ll hear you forever. You’ll never be lost.”
And we see young Ben, filming a camera that’s filming him, as his father steps in behind him.
From the first time decades ago he was lampooned as a quirky upstart until now, the final stretch of his unprecedented fourth term as California’s governor, Jerry Brown has reveled in his reputation as a cheapskate.
“Nobody is tougher with a buck than I am,” he boasted during the 2010 campaign that sent him back to Sacramento.
Eight years later, Brown is poised to earn a place in the history books as the leader who helped right the ship of state. His mantra of measured spending could be a standard by which future governors are judged.
“We’re well positioned, but if the next governor doesn’t say ‘no’ at critical moments, things will get worse,” Brown said in an interview with The Times.
His promise of similar straight talk about California’s budget prevailed in the 2010 election, held in the shadow of financial collapse. The projected budget deficit he inherited — even after two years of cuts under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — stood at $27 billion.
All of which seemed a distant memory Wednesday as Brown signed a budget creating a $13.8-billion cash reserve, the largest in state history. “I think people in California can be proud that we’re making progress,” the 80-year old Democrat said standing beside legislative leaders — the oldest of whom was only 12 when Brown was first elected governor in 1974.
Gov. Jerry Brown displays a playing card with his dog, Sutter, on it during his State of the State speech in 2014. The cards, handed out to legislators, urged them to save — not spend — all of the growing tax revenues.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP )
While supporters tout his record on combating climate change or raising the minimum wage, the through line of Brown’s second chance as governor has always been the budget, a topic that demanded a fiscal reckoning just days after he took office.
“What surprised me was how deep the deficit became during Schwarzenegger’s last few years,” he said. “We had to get in there and cut, and find some new revenue and work it out the best way we could.”
Brown’s first moves in 2011 were to cancel new cell phones and government vehicles for state workers, political symbolism not unlike the bland Plymouth sedan he chose in the 1970s from the state vehicle pool. By spring, he convinced lawmakers to cut $8.2 billion from programs like higher education, daytime elderly care services and doctor visits for the poor.
When substantive efforts to solve the rest of the problem stalled that June, the governor did something his predecessors had never done: He vetoed the budget ratified by lawmakers.
“For a decade, the can has been kicked down the road and debt has piled up,” Brown said as he signed the veto message. “California is facing a fiscal crisis, and very strong medicine must be taken.”
The veto was a shot across the bow to the Legislature. “It communicated very clearly that there was going to be a minimum standard for the legislative budget, and they just couldn’t slap anything together and put the name ‘budget’ on it,” Brown says now.
“We were frustrated,” remembers John A. Pérez, who was Assembly speaker at the time. “But it laid the foundation for what has become eight years of on-time, balanced budgets.”
Deeper cuts ultimately were made. Within months, ratings agencies moved California’s credit outlook to positive, the beginning of a trend that has driven down interest rates for government borrowing, one way the state has saved money.
He later turned his attention to the short-term obligations that piled up during the financial crisis, from raided school funds to Wall Street-backed deficit bonds. Branded by Brown as the state’s “wall of debt” and once towering at nearly $35 billion, today the balance is less than $5 billion.
“I tell my friends that Jerry Brown is one of the most fiscally conservative Democrats that I know,” said Connie Conway, a Tulare County Republican who served as Assembly GOP leader from 2010 to 2014. She recalls saying at one point that Brown “is the adult in the room because at least he’s admitting we have debt.”
Still, it was Republicans who handed Brown his first real budget setback in 2011, refusing to support a special statewide election to extend temporary taxes. The governor, never a back-slapping kind of politician, nonetheless mounted an intense charm offensive. He hosted private dinners for legislative Republicans where California wine flowed freely. He brought along his affable Corgi, Sutter, for visits. GOP lawmakers wouldn’t budge.
In hindsight, it was a lucky break. Special elections have historically had a disproportionately high turnout of conservative voters who likely would have rejected the plan. When Republicans balked, Brown and a coalition of business and labor leaders qualified a tax increase for the ballot in 2012, a presidential election year with strong turnout from Democrats.
Gov. Jerry Brown holds up a sign in support of Proposition 30 while visiting a San Diego school on Oct. 23, 2012, in San Diego. The ballot measure passed with 55% of the vote.
(Lenny Ignelzi / AP )
The resulting Proposition 30, a surcharge on the state’s sales tax and the incomes of wealthy taxpayers, provided revenue for six years — a more robust plan, Brown now says, than what he asked Republicans to support. “We’d have been right back in the soup” with the original plan, he said. “This way, we got a couple of more years.”
Brown campaigned hard for the ballot measure, shrewdly making it about the budget’s biggest beneficiary — schools — and about his own commitment to balancing the books. On election day, it passed with 55% of the vote.
“There’s no way in hell the voters would have approved those taxes if not for their faith in his fiscal stewardship,” Pérez said.
The taxes and California’s recovering economy have since produced historic tax windfalls. The state Department of Finance estimates the 2012 tax initiative and an extension approved by voters (but not explicitly endorsed by the governor) in 2016 has, to date, generated $50 billion in additional revenue.
Not that all of the modern Brown era has been all about less spending. State government spending has risen by 59% since 2011. Much of that has gone to K-12 schools, as required by law, and Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. Healthcare spending, in particular, has more than doubled in seven years, to about $23 billion in general fund costs. California has fully embraced Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Brown has lashed out at efforts by President Trump to rescind the law.
The rush of revenue also has allowed for a substantial savings account. Brown and lawmakers crafted a robust rainy-day reserve fund, ratified by voters in 2014. “That’s the kind of collaboration you don’t often see between legislators and governors,” Pérez said.
Through lean and flush years alike, the governor’s job approval ratings remained strong. Liberal activists routinely criticized him for not doing more to help those in need, suggesting with an increasing frequency through the years that the scion of a prominent political family had never experienced those struggles first-hand.
Health and human services advocates hold a Los Angeles rally to protest Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget in 2014.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times )
“They’re always asking for more,” he said. “There’s no natural limit. There’s no predator for this species of budgetary activity, except the governor.”
Even critics acknowledged that Brown kept listening to advocacy groups. In 2016, he agreed to remove a provision in the state’s welfare assistance program, CalWORKs, that denied coverage to children born while their families were already receiving benefits. The ban had been in place for almost two decades.
“We came a long way,” said state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), the chair of the Senate’s budget committee and a vocal advocate for changing the welfare rule. From the beginning, she said, Brown’s advisers said it was about the cost, not the policy.
Mitchell recalled a flight from Los Angeles during which Brown, a voracious reader, spoke at length about a book that chronicled poverty around the world. “And I was able to say to him, ‘Yes, that chapter right there, that sounds like Central California,’ ” she said.
Likening income inequality to his celebrated efforts on climate change, Mitchell said she once told Brown, “By you just making it a priority, you’ve had worldwide impact. So have the same attitude about poverty.”
In recent years, Brown has agreed to expand childcare programs, Medi-Cal coverage for children regardless of immigration status and a state earned income tax credit for the working poor.
“His track record on issues of poverty, inequality and economic security adds up far better [over two terms] than it often looked in individual budget years,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the nonprofit California Budget and Policy Center, which advocates for the working poor.
Looking beyond the one-year-at-a-time approach to state budgets may be an important legacy of the Brown administration. The governor pointed to recently adopted five-year plans as a way to get a better look at what’s over the horizon. “It gets people thinking about the inevitable consequences of the decisions in this budget,” he said.
It also may help break one of the more ignominious traditions of California governors: leaving a fiscal mess for the next person to clean up. It’s the kind of dilemma his father, the late Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, left Ronald Reagan in 1967 and he left the late George Deukmejian in 1983.
“The story is one of governors always hitting a wall and leaving a big, fat deficit,” he said. “I wanted to avoid that if I could.”
One quarterback guru contacts the other, asking for help in creating a dynamic offense.
The answer is always yes. The results say as much about Jerry Neuheisel and Noel Mazzone’s devotion to one another as they do about their ability to mass-produce yards and points for UCLA.
“No matter what happens,” Neuheisel said in an interview with The Times, “as long as you’re around him you have a smile on your face.”
Noel Mazzone, then the offensive coordinator at UCLA, looks across the field during a game.
(Don Liebig / UCLA Athletics)
The latest call came from the longtime apprentice to his mentor.
With the Bruins sputtering toward an 0-4 start, Neuheisel spoke with Mazzone about possibly returning to Westwood to assist with the offense. Just like he routinely had when he was UCLA’s offensive coordinator a decade earlier, Mazzone cultivated the necessary intelligence, learning that Neuheisel would be promoted from tight ends coach to playcaller before Neuheisel did.
“He was in the car, I believe, the next morning and he was here that evening,” Neuheisel said, “and it was on to try to beat Penn State.”
Beat Penn State they did, reviving an offense and a team that have become the talk of college football. UCLA’s average of 40 points in its two victories has nearly tripled its previous output during that winless start, spawning reminders of the offense the Bruins ran under Mazzone with Neuheisel as a backup quarterback from 2012-15.
That was just the start of a winning combination.
Not long after they had parted ways at the end of their four seasons together in Westwood, Mazzone reached out to Neuheisel, convincing him to give up playing for the Obic Seagulls of Japan’s X League so that he could help Mazzone in 2017 during his second season as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator.
“When he gave me the call and said, ‘We’re going to the SEC, we’re going to College Station, Texas,’ ” said Neuheisel, who had long known he wanted to become a coach, “I didn’t even ask questions. I got the next flight home.”
Quarterback Jerry Neuheisel looks to pass the ball during UCLA’s game against Texas Longhorns at AT&T Stadium on Sept. 13, 2014.
(Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
After making the 22-hour drive from Los Angeles to College Station, Neuheisel stayed at a hotel for a week and a half while searching for a place to live — even though he hadn’t been formally hired.
All that mattered was that he was back with his mentor. Now they’re together again, only the roles have been reversed.
“It’s just the first time in my life he’s actually had to listen to all my ideas,” Neuheisel said with a chuckle, “so I have enjoyed the turning of the tables.”
It was only a few weeks ago that Mazzone reconnected with two other former UCLA quarterbacks.
Getting together with Brett Hundley and Mike Fafaul in the Phoenix area to watch some football the weekend that UCLA lost to Northwestern to fall to 0-4, Mazzone and his onetime players let Neuheisel know they were thinking about him.
“They sent a picture from the bar that they were watching us play,” Neuheisel said.
What they didn’t tell him was that they were already considering the possibilities for the 68-year-old Mazzone, who was then the offensive coordinator at Saguaro High in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“At the time, we weren’t doing so great,” Hundley said of the Bruins, “so we were joking that Mazzone would probably be back at UCLA.”
A coaching lifer, Mazzone had made more than 20 stops at the high school, college and NFL levels by the time he agreed to hop into his car and return for his second stint with the Bruins after the team replaced departed offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri with Neuheisel.
Several days later, after hurried preparations and some playcalling debut blunders such as Neuheisel fumbling with the button on his headset that allowed him to talk to his quarterback, UCLA scored on each of its first five drives on the way to a 42-37 victory over then-No. 7 Penn State that qualified as the upset of the college football season.
Jubilant players hoisted Neuheisel onto their shoulders in a scene reminiscent of his greatest moment playing for Mazzone and coach Jim Mora, when he came off the bench to lead a comeback victory over Texas in 2014.
UCLA quarterback Jerry Neuheisel, top, is carried off the field after UCLA’s 20-17 win over Texas on Sept. 13, 2014, in Arlington, Texas.
(Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)
About a half hour after beating the Nittany Lions, his hair still soaked from the water players had sprayed into the locker room air, Neuheisel revealed what it meant to share this new memory with one of his favorite mentors.
“To have coach Mazzone here has been honestly one of the coolest things ever,” Neuheisel said. “To have him helping with the quarterbacks, to have us to be able to bounce ideas off of him, awesome. Awesome.”
In some ways, the circumstances weren’t that much different when they met.
Neuheisel was the new guy, just trying to prove himself.
In the fall of 2012, he was a freshman quarterback, wanting to show he belonged on the same campus where only a few months earlier his father, Rick, had been fired as the head coach. Mazzone was also a recent arrival after having been hired as part of Mora’s first UCLA staff.
“Jerry’s coming in and you’ve got Kevin Prince, Brett Hundley, Richard Brehaut — I mean, he’s walking into a quarterback room with some studs,” remembered Johnathan Franklin, the running back who would become UCLA’s all-time leading rusher by the end of that season. “All three have played before, and Brett Hundley obviously was a rock star.”
UCLA quarterback Jerry Neuheisel sits on the field before a game against Virginia at the Rose Bowl on Sept. 5, 2015.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
It was a unique kind of pressure for a legacy who had been born at UCLA Medical Center at a time when his father was a Bruins assistant coach, after having starred for his alma mater as a Rose Bowl-winning quarterback.
“I was just there trying to make the team,” Neuheisel said.
What became quickly apparent given his intrinsic savvy and inquisitive nature was that his longterm future would likely be on the sideline.
“Jerry, for sure, you could always tell he was gonna be a coach from Day One,” Hundley said. “It was like his Pops 2.0.”
Equally impressive was the shrewd offensive coordinator who was quick with a quip and an answer for any challenge a defense might present. Mazzone ran an offense short on plays and long on possibilities. He would explain why certain plays worked in given situations and make sure even the quarterback understood blocking schemes so that everyone appreciated each other’s roles.
“It’s pretty much, you get your best players in space and you make a play,” Franklin said of the overriding philosophy. “I remember he used to call the plays, and he’s like, ‘Man, one guy shouldn’t tackle you, so we’re not going to work on blocking that guy — that’s between you and him, you’ve got to make it happen.’ ”
UCLA offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone leans over on the sideline and looks across the field during a game.
(Don Liebig / UCLA Athletics)
UCLA won 29 games in its first three seasons with Mazzone running the offense and Neuheisel playing a reserve role, except for the September day in 2014 when he earned a megawatt spotlight.
With Hundley sidelined by an elbow injury against nationally ranked Texas, Neuheisel came off the bench and threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Payton with three minutes left, rallying the Bruins to a 20-17 victory. His teammates hoisted him into the air and carried him off the field.
“I mean, unbelievable,” Mazzone said after the game. “Jerry went out and handled the situation better than anyone could. I mean, he really did an awesome job. Really proud for him.”
When he called a reporter after 8 o’clock Wednesday night, Neuheisel wasn’t done for the day. It was just a momentary respite from reviewing game video, several hours left to go before he could finally head home.
His schedule has become so crazed since his promotion that tight end Hudson Habermehl recently fielded a call from Neuheisel’s wife, Nicole, asking him to take an Uber Eats delivery order upstairs to Neuheisel’s office inside the practice facility.
Habermehl was happy to do it, a small thank-you gesture for the 33-year-old coach who has done so much for him and an offense that doesn’t resemble the one from earlier this season even though the Bruins are essentially running the same plays.
If it looks more like a Mazzone offense, that’s not by coincidence.
UCLA offensive coordinator Jerry Neuheisel hugs Bruins quarterback Nico Iamaleava during the Bruins’ win over Penn State on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“What made Noel’s offense so great and why I loved it is there was a utilization of space on the field,” Neuheisel said, “and I would say that is what we’ve been trying to emulate is trying to create space on the field and trying to create matchups for our players to have success.”
No one has benefited more than quarterback Nico Iamaleava, who has thrown for five touchdowns with no interceptions over the last two weeks while adding three rushing touchdowns. A previously inert running game has picked up considerable speed, averaging 253.5 yards in the victories over Penn State and Michigan State.
“It seems like there’s a new energy on offense,” Hundley said. “You know, it’s not like they got a whole new starting 11 out there. I mean, it’s the same guys that we were talking about in the beginning of the season, but now they’re putting Nico in a position to make plays.”
Habermehl said everyone’s playing freely and instinctively because Neuheisel explained the reasoning for each play and involved all position groups in offensive meetings to provide a universal understanding of concepts.
“When you coach guys,” Neuheisel said, “you need to let them in on the ‘why.’ I think it’s what I always appreciated when I was a player here and any good team I’ve been a part of.”
Neuheisel’s latest success is likely to earn him a permanent offensive coordinator job, if not a head coaching opportunity, next season. His old friend can probably expect a call asking if he’d like to be part of that staff, the answer a given.
“Wherever there’s ball,” Neuheisel said, “he’ll always find his way there.”
OAKLAND — Mayor Jerry Brown, who has projected an unconventional, even enigmatic, persona during 3 1/2 decades of public life, took a traditional step in his private life Saturday, marrying his longtime companion and manager of his upcoming campaign for state attorney general.
In a formal and quasireligious civil ceremony orchestrated by Brown himself and attended by almost 600 guests, the 67-year-old former governor exchanged rings with former Gap Inc. executive Anne Gust. It was the first marriage for each, and came after 15 years together.
Elements of Brown’s past, present and future converged in the half-hour ceremony packed with much of the Bay Area’s Democratic political establishment. It was held in the rotunda of a renovated, historic Civic Center office building, the sort of project Brown has promoted as a pro-development mayor. The wedding was laced with biblical readings and Gregorian chants in Latin that Brown knew all too well as a former Roman Catholic seminarian.
“I wanted the sound to be traditional,” Brown said afterward. “Most [of it] is 800 years old and nothing is less than 500.”
It was not exactly the sort of wedding people had come to expect from a man who many years ago was dubbed Gov. Moonbeam for living in Spartan fashion, driving a state-issued Plymouth and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. Nor was it the wedding of a man who studied yoga, volunteered for Mother Teresa’s home for the poor people in Calcutta, or more recently lived in lofts in gritty parts of this city.
“This is more than traditional,” former San Francisco mayor and onetime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said after the wedding. “It would have satisfied anything the Kennedy clan would have put together. It’s California [political] history for 40 years.”
The attendees were like signposts on the political road traveled by the son and namesake of the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.
Jerry Brown, who grew up in San Francisco and graduated from UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, served as secretary of state from 1970 to 1974 and governor from 1975 to 1983. He also ran for president and headed the state Democratic Party. He was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999, and is seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 2006.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a former San Francisco mayor, presided over the wedding in a pink dress. The 47-year-old bride, in an ivory Diane von Furstenberg dress, was presented by her father, Rockwell T. Gust Jr., who once ran for lieutenant governor of Michigan.
Gust, who is a lawyer, and Brown, in a black suit with white shirt and tie, exchanged rings and vows. Then Feinstein declared them husband and wife, and they embraced and kissed to applause as singers performed the final chant.
Brown’s sister, Kathleen, a former state treasurer and candidate for governor, was present. So were many other Democratic politicians, including Oakland’s top city officials, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Gov. Gray Davis.
Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, Brown’s designated successor as mayor, was there along with people from the early years of Brown’s career, such as Orville Schelle, dean of the journalism school at UC Berkeley, and PG&E; executive Dan Richard, who served on then Gov. Brown’s staff from 1979 to 1982.
“One person just said we should have buttons saying ‘I’m from the ‘70s,’ … ‘I’m from the ‘80s’ … ‘the ‘90s,’ ” Richard said.
After the civil ceremony in Oakland, another set of nuptials was to be held at the San Francisco church where Brown’s parents were married and he was baptized.
Then Brown said the newlyweds plan to spend a couple of days on the Russian River — then take a belated honeymoon in Italy in August — after the June primary.
“We have a little campaign in the meantime,” he said.
“Thank you, Jerry!” the crowd at Lambeau Field yelled repeatedly Thursday night after the Green Bay Packers’ 27-18 win over the Washington Commanders.
The chant was addressed toward someone who was not there — Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, who traded the 26-year-old star linebacker to Green Bay one week before the start of the season after a lengthy contract dispute.
The Packers sent two first-round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark to Dallas as part of the deal, but the chanting fans on hand at 1265 Lombardi Ave. for “Thursday Night Football” definitely seemed to be of the opinion that their beloved team had won the trade.
“I’m gonna lay out for a minute because this crowd has something to say,” Prime Video‘s Charissa Thompson said as she and her “TNF Nightcap” co-hosts sat with Parsons on the field ahead of a postgame interview. “I know you guys know what they’re saying. They’re saying, ‘Thank you, Jerry!’”
Parsons was shown bobbing his head and swaying his shoulders to the rhythm of the chant. He and Prime analyst Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was sitting directly to Parsons’ right, could be seen lifting their arms in an effort to further stir up the crowd.
Not that these fans needed any encouragement. The cheers were loud and often during the 10-minute interview, including other chants such as “Mi-cah!” and “Go, Pack, Go!” and “Let’s Go, Micah!”
Jones was a good sport when asked about the matter Friday during a radio interview.
“Well, I’ll tell you, the way they’re playing, the way Green Bay is playing, I’m all for them enjoying and chanting anything that they really want to [say],” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Jones added: “If you make a move on a top player, this shouldn’t surprise anybody that we would have that kind of reaction from their fan base, the other team’s fan base, or, for that matter, our fan base in general. … I knew that if I got to make this trade, that this would be there.”
Parsons was selected at No. 12 overall by the Cowboys in the 2021 draft. He has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first four seasons, registering 52.5 sacks during that span.
His relationship with the Cowboys — or at least with Jones — soured going into the fifth and final year of Parsons’ rookie deal as negotiations for an extension stalled. Parsons demanded a trade Aug. 1 and got his wish weeks later. He and the Packers then agreed on a four-year, $188-million contract that makes him the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history.
In a limited number of snaps during his first two games with Green Bay (30 in a Week 1 win over the Detroit Lions, 47 against the Commanders), Parsons has 1.5 sacks, three quarterback pressures, one quarterback hurry and three tackles.
He will return to AT&T Stadium with his new team in just a few weeks when the Packers play the Cowboys in Arlington, Texas, Sept. 28.
“Obviously, you know, my family and everyone’s looking forward to it, but I’m just gonna let the action talk,” Parsons said. “It’s just going to be funny because all my friends are there … so just going against those guys, it’s going to be heartbreaking. But, damn, I’m excited for the matchup.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, speaks during a signing ceremony for The Respect for Marriage Act in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on December 8, 2022. On Monday, Nadler announced in an interview with the New York Times that he would not seek re-election next year. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Sept. 1 (UPI) — Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving congressional member from New York, announced he has decided not to run for re-election next year in order to make room for a younger generation.
Nadler, 78, who serves New York’s 12th Congressional District — which includes Midtown and the Upper West and Upper East sides of New York City — told the New York Times in an interview published Monday that it is time, after 34 years, for a generational change.
“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Nadler told The Times, adding that someone younger “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
In December, Nadler said he was forced to step down as the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee in favor of a younger colleague. He threw his support behind Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., as his replacement.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee these past seven years,” Nadler wrote last year in a letter to his colleagues.
“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to help lead our party’s efforts to preserve the rule of law and to provide for a more just society that respects the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans,” he said. Nadler served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023.
Nadler was also preparing to face a much younger primary challenger in next year’s election. Liam Elkind, 26, who created an organization during the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver food and medicine, said his election challenge was a way of “respectfully asking” Nadler to retire.
While Nadler did not discuss who might replace him, he urged other aging Democrats to follow his lead.
“I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” Nadler said. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful, especially when we face the challenge of Trump and his incipient fascism.”
On Labor Day, Nadler honored “the generations of working people who built this country and the unions that won us safer workplaces, fair wages and the weekend.”
“I will always stand with workers and their unions. And I will continue fighting back against the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks on labor, attacks on the right to organize, on workplace protections and on the dignity of work itself,” Nadler wrote Monday in a post on X.
“Because when organized labor is strong, America is strong.”
Jerry Adler, who spent decades backstage on Broadway before reinventing himself in his 60s as a television actor, most memorably as Herman “Hesh” Rabkin on HBO’s “The Sopranos” and Howard Lyman on CBS’ “The Good Wife,” has died. He was 96.
Adler died Saturday in New York, where he lived, according to his family. A cause was not disclosed.
On “The Sopranos,” Adler played Hesh, a Jewish music producer and loan shark with long ties to the Soprano crime family. Not a member of Tony Soprano’s inner crew but close enough to be trusted, he was one of the few who could speak bluntly to James Gandolfini’s mob boss without fear of reprisal. Adler remained with the series from its 1999 pilot through the final season in 2007, a steady presence on the margins of Tony’s world.
Hesh turned up in some of the show’s most memorable arcs, helping Tony’s protégé Christopher and his girlfriend Adriana in their ill-fated stab at the music business, joining Tony in a horse-racing venture and, in the final season, watching their relationship sour when the boss pressed him for a large loan.
Steven Van Zandt, Adler’s “Sopranos” castmate and guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, paid tribute to Adler on social media: “Such an honor working with you. Travel well my friend.”
While “The Sopranos” launched a number of previously little-known actors to instant fame, Adler’s rise was unusual, the culmination of more than four decades spent behind the scenes on Broadway before he ever stepped in front of a camera.
A Brooklyn native born Feb. 4, 1929, Adler began his career as an assistant stage manager in 1950 on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and went on to work as stage manager, production manager or supervisor on more than 50 shows, including the original “My Fair Lady,” Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” and “The Apple Tree,” directed by Mike Nichols. He also directed several productions.
By the 1980s, he had moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his children and found steady work in daytime television as a stage manager. It wasn’t until his early 60s that acting entered the picture. After debuting on CBS’ “Brooklyn Bridge” in 1991, Adler found steady film and TV work as a character actor through the 1990s, appearing in Joe Pesci’s “The Public Eye” (1992) and Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993).
After “The Sopranos,” Adler remained a familiar presence on television. He joined “The Good Wife” in 2011 as Howard Lyman, a blustery, out-of-touch partner at the Lockhart/Gardner law firm. What was initially meant to be a one-off guest spot turned into a recurring role across six seasons, with Adler reprising the part in “The Good Fight” in 2017 and 2018.
Adler also recurred on FX’s “Rescue Me” as fire chief Sidney Feinberg and appeared in series ranging from “Northern Exposure” and “Mad About You” to “Transparent” and “Broad City.” His film credits include “In Her Shoes” (2005), “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) and “A Most Violent Year” (2014).
Adler returned to Broadway as a performer late in life, appearing in Elaine May’s 2000 comedy “Taller Than a Dwarf” and Larry David’s “Fish in the Dark” in 2015. Adler’s last screen credit came in the 2019 revival season of “Mad About You.” In 2024, he published a memoir, “Too Funny for Words: Backstage Tales From Broadway, Television, and the Movies,” reflecting on his unusual path through show business.
On Instagram, “Sopranos” co-star Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher, praised Adler as “a fantastic actor and the kindest of human beings. He brought so much humor, intelligence and truth to the role of Herman ‘Hesh’ Rabkin and was one of my favorite characters on ‘The Sopranos.’ I loved working and spending time with Jerry. A true class act.”
Survivors include his wife, Joan Laxman, whom he married in 1994, and his daughters, Alisa, Amy, Laura and Emily.
Jerry Jones was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in 2010 but overcame it with the help of an experimental trial drug, the Dallas Cowboys owner revealed this week.
“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.
“I now have no tumors.”
Jones told the Morning News that he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010 and began treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston soon after. In the decade that followed, Jones said, he underwent lung surgery twice and lymph node surgery two times as well.
He did not indicate when he began the PD-1 therapy.
According to the American Cancer Society, PD-1 is a protein that acts as an “off switch” to keep certain immune cells — T cells — from attacking normal cells. PD-1 inhibitor therapy blocks this protein to help the immune system better find and attack cancer cells.
Jones, 82, serves as the Cowboys’ president and general manager in addition to his role as owner. The first public mention of his diagnosis appears to have come during Episode 5 of the Netflix docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” which will be released Tuesday.
While telling an anecdote about a completely different subject — his relationship with former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson — Jones casually mentions that “12 or so years ago … I had some cancer treatment” at MD Anderson.
The Morning News followed up on that comment during its wider-range interview with Jones.
The first thing you notice in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Santa Monica office isn’t the full-size suit of armor from 2004’s “King Arthur” or the shelves lined with awards and celebrity photos. It’s the pens: dozens of ornate Montblancs, carefully arranged in display cases.
His wife gives them to him, Bruckheimer explains dryly. After nearly half a century of hits, what do you give the guy who has everything? “I sometimes write thank-you notes with them,” he says. Alongside neatly stacked copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times — which he says he still reads daily, in print — the pens reflect something ingrained in the legendary producer, a fondness for ritual, precision and old-school order.
Now 81, at an age when most of his peers are content to reflect on past glories in between tee times and early-bird specials, Bruckheimer still starts each day with a rigorous workout. (“I pick hotels based on the gym,” he says.) Then it’s back to doing what he’s always done: assembling the next blockbuster. Across more than 50 films — including culture-shaping hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun,” “Bad Boys,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” — his work has earned over $16 billion worldwide, cementing his name as shorthand for sleek, pulse-pounding entertainment. His elegant, brick-walled office, larger than the Detroit home where his working-class German immigrant parents raised him, stands as a monument to what that discipline helped build. “Our tiny little house was about as big as this room here,” he says, glancing around.
For Bruckheimer, success has never been about flash or chance. “The harder you work,” he says, in what amounts to a personal mantra, “the luckier you get.”
That philosophy is on full display in his latest production, “F1,” an adrenaline-fueled racing drama starring Brad Pitt as a retired Formula One driver lured back to the track to mentor a young phenom (Damson Idris) on a struggling team. Shot during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, and with a budget north of $200 million, “F1” speeds into theaters Friday with the kind of high-stakes ambition only someone with Bruckheimer’s track record could pull off.
Damson Idris, left, and Brad Pitt in the movie “F1.”
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
From the outset, the project, which reunites Bruckheimer with “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, sparked a bidding war among virtually every studio and streamer, ultimately landing as a co-production between Apple and Warner Bros.
“One of the reasons I went to Jerry,” says Kosinski by phone from his car, “is because I knew I was asking two massive corporations — Apple and Formula One — to work together. They’re both incredibly specific about their brands and how they do things. It took someone with Jerry’s CEO style of producing to be the diplomat in the middle and actually make it happen. He’s seen it all.”
Bruckheimer attributes the early frenzy around the project to the package’s pedigree: an appealing story, an A-list star and the global popularity of Formula One. But for Bruckheimer, it’s not just about star power or scale. “It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it’s got romance, it’s got humor,” he says. “It’s the reason I got into this business — to make movies that thrill you on that big screen, that you walk out feeling you’ve been on a real journey and got lost for a couple of hours. That’s the goal every time.”
Pitt’s character, Sonny, is in some ways a reflection of Bruckheimer: a seasoned pro forever chasing one more victory out of a sheer love of the chase. “Jerry could easily be on an island somewhere relaxing,” says Kosinski. “But he’d much rather be on set every day, meeting actors, hassling the marketing team, dealing with the studio. He just loves the job. His passion for it seems kind of endless.”
“F1” arrives at a moment when the Bruckheimer-style movie — star-driven, high-concept, engineered for maximum emotional impact — has surged back into fashion. In truth, it never entirely disappeared. But in an age of franchise fatigue, ironic tentpoles and streaming saturation, the earnest, four-quadrant spectacle had started to feel like a relic — until “Maverick” reminded Hollywood how potent that formula could still be.
The 2022 sequel didn’t just help bring moviegoing back to life after the pandemic; it earned Bruckheimer his first best picture Oscar nomination and raked in a staggering $1.5 billion worldwide. Even he didn’t see that coming.
“The early tracking said that you’re not going to get young people — nobody under 35 or 40 cares about this movie,” he remembers. “It ended up surpassing every possible metric. Anybody who tells you they know what’s going to be a hit, they don’t have a clue. You just don’t know.”
Tom Cruise in a scene from “Top Gun: Maverick”
(Paramount Pictures)
“F1” is not Bruckheimer’s first time around the racing track. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of his era-defining run with his late producing partner Don Simpson, he made “Days of Thunder,” a testosterone-fueled NASCAR drama that reunited the “Top Gun” team of Tom Cruise and director Tony Scott. The film epitomized the Bruckheimer-Simpson formula: glossy visuals, radio-ready soundtracks and MTV-style swagger. Tales of ballooning costs, nonstop rewrites, off-screen indulgence and on-set clashes swirled around the production, becoming the stuff of Hollywood lore.
Asked about the chaos surrounding “Days of Thunder,” Bruckheimer answers with his trademark restraint, the measured calm of someone who has spent decades managing egos, headlines and costly productions.
“There were definitely rewrites — that’s true,” he says. “As far as the budget going up, Paramount had a strict regime, and it’s not like you could go over budget easily. We wrecked a lot of cars, I’ll tell you that. I don’t think there was one standing at the end.”
Bruckheimer remembers the shoot as tough but exhilarating, a product of Scott’s notoriously seat-of-the-pants directing style. “Tony was just balls to the wall,” he says. “Joe [Kosinski] is balls to the wall too, but calculated. Joe’s got everything planned out. Tony would get on the set and see something over there and say, ‘We’re changing it, we’re going over there.’ It was a little more of a helter-skelter approach, but we somehow got through it. We held it together.”
By the time “Days of Thunder” was released in 1990, Bruckheimer and Simpson had spent nearly a decade together — a combustible but wildly productive run that had already delivered “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun.” Simpson, with his insatiable appetite for drugs and Hollywood excess, could be volatile and self-destructive. But Bruckheimer credits him with sharpening his eye for story and deepening his understanding of how the business really worked.
“I started in commercials — little 60-second stories — and Don was trained as a story executive,” says Bruckheimer, who began his career in advertising in Detroit and New York. “He was developing 120 projects every year so he knew every writer, every director. He had this great wealth of knowledge about the business: who’s good, who’s not good, who can talk a good game but can’t deliver. He was great with story and humor. He just was a genius at all this kind of stuff.”
The partnership was a crash course for them both: an informal academy with a class roster of two. “I went to school during those years — and so did he,” Bruckheimer says. “He didn’t know how to make a movie. He was an executive, so when he walked on set, all he really knew was not to stand in front of the camera. I picked up a lot of what he knew — and vice versa.”
“I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” Bruckheimer says, reticent to dwell on legacy. “I’m still working picture to picture.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
If Simpson was the explosive, sometimes erratic half of the duo, Bruckheimer was always the steady one: disciplined, controlled, methodical. He’s known for rarely raising his voice. But he admits even he has limits. “I try not to,” he says. “I usually don’t. But when people lie to you, when they say something’s going to be there and it’s not and they keep giving you a bunch of bulls—, yeah, you can raise your voice a little.”
Following “Days of Thunder,” Simpson and Bruckheimer would go on to make several more hits, including “Dangerous Minds,” “Crimson Tide” and “The Rock” before Simpson’s death in 1996 at age 52 from heart failure related to drug use. “It’s unfortunate that we lost him,” Bruckheimer says softly.
After decades in the business, Bruckheimer says he has learned to choose collaborators carefully. “Life’s too short,” he offers. “We’re such a small business, your reputation follows you everywhere you go.”
When his team hires a director or an actor, he says, they always do their research. “How were they on their last movie? Brad has a phenomenal reputation. Will Smith has a phenomenal reputation — minus that,” he adds, discreetly alluding to the 2022 Oscars slap. “Tom Cruise too. I’ve worked with actors who just want to know when they can leave. I try to avoid that.”
The landscape of Hollywood, of course, looks nothing like it did during the ’90s Simpson-Bruckheimer heyday. Studios that once ran on instinct and big personalities now operate more like data-driven conglomerates, reshuffling execs and hedging bets in a fractured, streaming-dominated market.
“It’s changed a lot,” Bruckheimer says. “Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they’ve got problems with that. Some of the studios aren’t healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.”
For all the hand-wringing about collapse, Bruckheimer has heard it before.
“There always was doom,” he says. “When TV came in, people said nobody would go to the theaters again. When I started, it was video cassettes. Everyone said that’s the end. Then DVDs — that’s the end. I’ve been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up. And yet, look at what’s happened. Look at ‘Minecraft.’ Look at ‘Sinners.’ Look at ‘Lilo & Stitch.’ If you do it right, people show up.”
He reaches for one of his favorite analogies: “You’ve got a kitchen at home, right? But you still like to go out to eat. You want to taste something different. That’s what we are. We’re the night out,” he says. “And if we give you a good meal, you’ll come back for more.”
By any measure, Bruckheimer has already accomplished more than almost anyone in the business, with a far-reaching empire that spans television (“CSI,” “The Amazing Race”), video games and sports. In addition to big-budget tentpoles, he has occasionally championed more grounded, character-driven fare, from “Dangerous Minds” and “Black Hawk Down” to the recent Disney+ biopic “Young Woman and the Sea.” But for all his success, he has never stopped looking for the next story. A new “Top Gun” script is underway. “Days of Thunder” may get another lap. Even “Pirates of the Caribbean” is back in motion.
Bruckheimer ultimately credits the directors and actors — and the tight-knit team at his company — with keeping him in the game. “I’m just the guy who says, ‘You’re really talented. I want to work with you.’ ”
Even as a kid, he says, that was his gift. “I can’t focus the way a director or writer focuses — I’m too ADD. But I always put things together. I put together a baseball team and a hockey team when I was very young. I always had the ability to gather people around a common cause.”
As for thoughts of his legacy, he demurs. “I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” he says. “I’m still working picture to picture. You’re only as good as your last movie. So you better be on your toes.”
It’s unlikely two consecutive California governors have ever shared the multigenerational family connection that links Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom to his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown. But beware those looking for something deep: Any ties that bind together the two Democrats do so loosely.
“It’s just not a normal political relationship,” Newsom, who will be sworn in Monday, said in an earlier interview with The Times.
Brown is a singular figure in California’s modern history, the scion of a political family whose meteoric rise in the 1970s gave way to failed efforts at the presidency and U.S. Senate before an electoral rebirth as a mayor, attorney general and governor. And it was Newsom, then a brash, young San Francisco mayor, who briefly stood in Brown’s way, launching an ambitious campaign for the 2010 governor’s race that fizzled almost a year before the election.
But the story goes back much further: Brown and Newsom are members of a political fraternity that dominated their shared hometown of San Francisco for much of the 20th century.
Former Gov. Pat Brown, the current governor’s late father, was elected that city’s district attorney in 1943 after a campaign financed by three friends, including William A. Newsom II, the governor-elect’s grandfather and son of a prominent builder and bank investor.
“If they hadn’t agreed to put up $5,000 [each], I wouldn’t have been a candidate,” Pat Brown said in a 1978 interview for UC Berkeley’s oral history project.
In 1960, Brown’s administration awarded a Squaw Valley concession contract to the elder Newsom, a deal panned by a legislative analyst as the state “paying for everything and getting nothing.”
The two men’s sons grew up alongside each other. William A. Newsom III, the governor-elect’s father, who died last month, was a few years older than Jerry Brown. Both graduated from San Francisco’s St. Ignatius High School and Bill Newsom once briefly dated Brown’s sister, the governor told the crowd at her eulogy in 2015.
During his first term as governor in 1975, Brown appointed Bill Newsom to the Superior Court in Placer County and then to a state appeals court. The governor-elect’s father once recounted how his interest in environmental law and preserving Lake Tahoe had intrigued Brown.
“I went up a couple of times when Gavin was a little boy, and we met with Jerry and talked about things at the lake,” Bill Newsom said in his own oral history interview with UC Berkeley in 2009.
Decades later, the young Newsom and an older Brown ended up on a political collision course. In 2011, frustrated with Brown’s slow pace for appointing members of an economic commission he chaired as lieutenant governor, Newsom drafted his own statewide proposal. Brown, deep into an effort to erase a $27-billion budget deficit, didn’t look kindly on the effort and grabbed the issue for himself by appointing a statewide jobs czar.
“Looking back, I wish I had a do-over,” Newsom told The Times last spring. “He’s dealing with triage and solvency. I would approach it differently.”
In the years since, Newsom has praised Brown’s fiscal philosophy for teaching that “you do not have to be profligate to be progressive,” a mantra to be tested once hundreds of bills — with spending projections sure to run into the billions of dollars — are sent to his desk by the Legislature.
At a campaign event last fall, already preparing to move to his Northern California ranch, he had a simple message for his successor: “I’m only an hour from Sacramento,” he said. “So, Gavin, do not screw up.”
Reporting from Sacramento — Less than four years after declaring California’s budget balanced for the foreseeable future, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday said the state is projected to run a $1.6-billion deficit by next summer — a noticeable shift in the state’s fiscal stability that could worsen under federal spending cuts championed by President-elect Donald Trump.
“The trajectory of revenue growth is declining,” Brown said in unveiling his $179.5-billion plan for the fiscal year that begins in July.
The governor’s sober assessment comes on the heels of several months of lagging tax revenue collections, a change in the state’s fortunes that could stifle his fellow Democrats’ call for additional spending and give fuel to Republican demands for additional cuts.
Brown’s budget advisors lowered the official tax revenue forecast, in part, because of slower than expected growth in wages. They also reduced expectations for sales and corporate taxes because of broader national trends.
Brown proposed to address the deficit primarily by slowing the growth in spending on public schools by $1.7 billion, a change that brings funding down to the minimum required by formulas enshrined in California’s Constitution. The governor also proposed scrapping $1.5 billion worth of spending ideas left over from last year’s budget negotiations, including higher subsidies for child-care programs and awarding new college scholarships to California students from middle-class families.
“To manage unreliability requires prudence,” Brown said of his decisions to address the projected budget shortfall.
The governor’s fiscal blueprint is the ceremonial first pitch in Sacramento’s annual budget writing season, and, as such, the details will shift in coming months to address changing fiscal conditions. That could include any effort by the nation’s ruling Republicans to rethink any of the $105 billion in federal funding promises the state expects to receive for a variety of services.
The most consequential of those is the $16.1-billion subsidy for Medi-Cal, the program offering healthcare to the state’s most needy, provided through the Affordable Care Act. Those funds have helped the state add more than 3.8 million people to the Medi-Cal system, a network of providers that reaches one in every three Californians.
Republican leaders in Congress and the president-elect have vowed to repeal the law championed by President Obama, though they have yet to identify when or how that will happen. That uncertainty is why Brown’s new budget plan does not officially lay out a path forward, though the governor made it clear on Tuesday that he thinks GOP leaders should rethink their political promises in regard to Obamacare.
“That’s very bold and, I think, a move that isn’t very consistent with decency,” the governor said Tuesday.
He also offered national leaders some advice as they weigh the merits of various federal subsidies.
“I don’t think this country needs any more divisive kinds of moves that divide the poor and the rich, split the middle class and all those other things that will be the result if the rhetorical thrust, as suggested in the last few weeks, becomes the operational reality in Washington,” Brown said.
But the governor offered a dash of his own brand of raw politics Tuesday by asking legislators to approve an extension of California’s system for buying and trading greenhouse gas pollution credits. That cap-and-trade program faces an uncertain future beyond 2020, as business groups have challenged its legality in court.
On Tuesday, Brown proposed that the Legislature officially reauthorize the program — which would require a supermajority vote in both houses — and hinted that he might otherwise block the spending of $2.2 billion in proceeds from the auctions of those credits.
“Given the fact that the federal government is going in the opposite direction,” Brown said of the climate change debate, “I would think that Californians want to strengthen their own commitment.”
Advocates for social services, though, saw the budget plan as lacking any new strength for the state’s most needy.
“This is just a very conservative budget that really doesn’t do anything to reduce poverty in the state of California,” said Mike Herald of the Western Center on Law and Poverty, who pointed to a lack of new money for welfare assistance efforts or affordable housing.
The governor’s budget also offers less than expected for backers of Proposition 56, last year’s tobacco tax increase earmarked to boost healthcare funding. While Brown pegs the tax’s infusion of new money at $1.2 billion, it is offset by overall sagging tax revenues, and therefore, unlikely to boost the reimbursement rates sought by doctors who treat Medi-Cal patients.
Democrats, in general, sounded positive notes about the governor’s proposal. One key source of early criticism, though, was his plan to phase out the scholarships offered to middle-class students attending University of California and Cal State campuses. The budget proposes to renew scholarships for 37,000 current recipients but offers no new assistance beyond that.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said the plan, coupled with proposed tuition increases, would be unfair.
“We must work to keep college affordable for California students,” he said, “and I will not support burdening them with higher fees and greater student debt.”
In all, Brown’s budget continues a long trend toward allowing additional spending while restraining the political desires of Democrats to do more. And while it doesn’t spell out a specific need to respond to changes pushed by Trump and congressional Republicans that are on the horizon, the governor made clear that all budget decisions in Sacramento are in some way subject to the national debate.
“That’s why we’re going to have to hold on to our hat here,” he said. “It’s going to be a rough ride.”
