Nation

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom left the state Tuesday to join international leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Antalya, Turkey.

Newsom framed his attendance as an opportunity to tell the world that California’s climate leadership is delivering results as he criticized President Trump as a “no-show” for declining to send a delegation on behalf of the United States.

“While Donald Trump sells out America’s economic security to his fossil fuel donors, California isn’t backing down from the climate fight,” Newsom said in a statement. “Trump is temporary. California’s partnerships around the world are not.”

Trump’s absence on the international stage has created an opening for California governors to contrast their climate policies with the federal government’s attempts to reverse the nation’s progress.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017 sharply condemned the president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. On a 10-day trip to the Vatican, Brussels, Oslo and a U.N. Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany, later that year, Brown was labeled America’s “anti-Trump” as he warned that humanity was on the chopping block unless world leaders took action to reduce global emissions. Brown also hosted his own international climate summit in San Francisco in 2018 to recommit countries to the ideals of the accord that Trump disavowed.

Since taking office, Newsom has appeared at several annual Climate Week events in New York and used his speaking opportunities to blast Trump in traditionally apolitical forums, often garnering international applause.

In 2019, he burst onto the climate scene when he told foreign leaders he was “absolutely humiliated” by Trump’s efforts to walk back the nation’s climate policies as the state and the federal government were locked in a battle over vehicle emission standards.

Newsom’s voyage to Turkey follows a trip to Brazil last year to attend the U.N. conference, where he similarly cast California as a proxy for the Trump administration.

As he considers a run for president in 2028, Newsom is framing his remarks in Antalya, a tourist city on the Mediterranean coast, around his work to reduce greenhouse gases, encourage the use of zero-emission and electric vehicles and increase his state’s reliance on clean energy.

Newsom is expected to meet with other world leaders and sign pacts to address climate change together.

The governor’s envoy in Turkey includes First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and his top climate confidants: Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, and Lauren Sanchez, chair of the California Air Resources Board, among others.

When it came to which candidate weathered the most overtly racist attacks, in a midterm election full of the most overtly racist campaign attacks in modern memory, there was no contest.

Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, was called a “jihadist” by the president. Labeled a representative of “terrible evil” by the vice president. Smeared as an “extremist” by his Republican opponent. They all intentionally mispronounced his name as if it was a poison on the tongue that needed to be expelled.

But the hate offensive didn’t work. El-Sayed, 42, stepped up to the mic late Tuesday and delivered his victory speech as the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.

“My name,” he said, pointedly using full, guttural Arabic pronunciation, “is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.”

It was a clarifying moment for Muslims and for millions of others appalled by the normalization of bigotry handed down from the White House. There is an Allah, after all.

The son of Egyptian immigrants, El-Sayed prevailed over former Rep. Mike Rogers by seven percentage points in one of the most closely watched races of the midterms.

His victory was one among several historic wins scored by the Democrats as they elected more governors and flipped the House and Senate — including the triumphs of America’s first openly gay senator (Chris Pappas of New Hampshire) and first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland of New Mexico), as well as Texas’ first Latina governor (Gina Hinojosa).

But beyond the political implications, El-Sayed speaks for those of us who have been othered by our “foreign” heritage, the color of our skin, the food we eat, our accents or the way we pray.

He embodies what it means to face blistering attacks on your background and faith, and to come out the other side as more American in your ideals and resolve than your slur-slinging detractors.

If that sounds dramatic, so be it. It’s been a brutal decade for Muslims, Arabs or anyone associated with groups maligned, targeted or in many cases deported by the Trump administration. We needed this win to prove to ourselves, and perhaps the rest of the world, that this is not a nation dominated by narrow-minded exclusionists, despite what MAGA has wrought.

El-Sayed kept his cool on the campaign trail, sticking to Michelle Obama’s motto of “When they go low, we go high.” But he showed Tuesday how to have fun poking at the opposition with one hand while holding an olive branch in the other.

“Donald, I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can go on and call me Senator,” he said, rubbing in his victory while calling out President Trump for his brazen, Islamophobic rants.

The senator-elect also indirectly responded to JD Vance’s low blows against him and his campaign, which included the vice president calling him a “psychopath” and claiming he trafficked in “anti-white racial hatred.”

In doing so, El-Sayed addressed Vance with a widely used Arabic word meaning “my love.” Why? Because when deploying it against a detractor, it’s the equivalent of sarcastically calling them “sweetheart.”

“JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” said El-Sayed before throwing a college sports rivalry barb at the Ohio native: “Wolverines 1, Buckeyes 0.”

And as he has always done publicly, El-Sayed openly embraced his Muslim faith while addressing the American people.

He reminded us of the times during his campaign when he said “inshallah” (or “God willing”) to describe his hopes for winning the seat.

“Today, tonight, we can turn that ‘inshallah’ into an ‘alhamdulillah,’” meaning “praise be to God.”

It wasn’t long ago when such words uttered by a Muslim might strike fear in Americans who interpreted them as the calling card of terrorists just before they pulled the pin, flipped the switch or lobbed the bomb (thanks, Hollywood). Now, those words are part of a future senator’s speech to the millions of Americans he’s vowed to represent.

El-Sayed may just be making Arabic halal for the masses. And as the midterm results show, we’re ready for it.

Voters sent a message to Washington rebuking MAGA’s war on DEI, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community. The Trump-era culture war against folks who look like El-Sayed has not quelled inflation, made housing cheaper, caused gas prices to drop or rendered health insurance affordable. But it may have helped us see each other again, as fellow citizens struggling to keep up.

“As I was campaigning, some of you would come up and ask, ‘How come you don’t hit back? How come you don’t call them racist or hateful?’” El-Sayed said during his victory speech. “They weren’t just attacking me. They were targeting and attacking you. They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America.”

It is about all of us, of course. But Muslim Americans who never thought they’d see the day are basking in El-Sayed’s win.

“We knew that the attacks on Abdul’s Muslim background were a big bull’s-eye for Rogers,” said Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. “What was heartening was to see it backfire.”

I’m not naive enough to think that the racist sentiment used by some Republicans to energize facets of their electorate is now a thing of the past. It’s always there. But you know what else is always there? People who choose progress instead of fear.

“Thank you. You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates,” El-Sayed said during his victory speech.

Mabruk, Abdul. You did it. We did it.

Oct. 28, 2026 8:08 AM PT

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Tuesday failed to secure a grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against President Trump before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.

A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case. It’s the latest setback in the Justice Department’s efforts to persuade grand jurors in the nation’s capital to bring politically sensitive cases.

Details of prosecutors’ allegations against Hutchinson were not immediately clear, but Republican lawmakers had accused her of lying under oath in her explosive testimony in 2022 about Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The effort to indict Hutchinson was hardly isolated. It is part of a surge in politically sensitive actions by the Justice Department in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections targeting perceived adversaries of the president, including a new attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and a search by federal agents of the home of outspoken Trump critic and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

It’s highly unusual for grand juries to decline to return indictments, but the Justice Department under Trump has been rebuked by citizens in the nation’s capital in a number of high-profile cases. A grand jury in Washington earlier this year declined to indict Democratic lawmakers in connection with a video they recorded urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.

Hutchinson declined to comment through her lawyer on Tuesday.

Hutchinson said Trump was angry and defiant on Jan. 6

Hutchinson’s testimony, at a surprise hearing announced just 24 hours earlier, was seen at the time as particularly compelling given her proximity to power as special assistant to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.

She described an angry, defiant president who was trying to let armed protesters avoid security screenings at a rally that morning to protest his 2020 election defeat and who later grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol. And when the events at the Capitol spiraled toward violence, with the crowd chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” she testified that Trump declined to intervene.

Trump at the time denied on his social media platform, Truth Social, much of what Hutchinson said. He called her a “total phony” and “bad news.”

Hutchinson’s description of the altercation inside the presidential SUV was regarded as particularly explosive, even as she acknowledged during her testimony that she was relaying what she had heard from a White House security official and did not have firsthand knowledge of the episode because she was not there.

Her account was quickly disputed.

In March 2024, House Republicans released a previously undisclosed transcript of the Select Committee’s interview with a Secret Service officer who drove the presidential SUV. That transcript of the presidential limo driver contradicted some of Hutchinson’s testimony but corroborated other aspects of her account, including Trump’s attempt to join the mob scene at the Capitol.

The driver described the president as insistent on going to the Capitol but said he did not see the altercation that Hutchinson described. The driver said Trump “never grabbed the steering wheel” and also said: “I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.”

Hutchinson has alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the committee. She also testified in a closed-door interview released by the committee that a former lawyer of hers — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her “the less you remember, the better.”

“It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth,” she told the committee. “And I never wanted to diverge from that.” The former attorney has disputed that account.

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2021 on allegations that he incited the mob that attacked the Capitol, but he was later acquitted by the Senate. The Justice Department under Biden charged Trump with felony offenses, accusing him of illegally working to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the Capitol attack, but then-special counsel Jack Smith abandoned the case after Trump’s 2024 presidential victory. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution.

Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and interned for Republicans, including Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press.

Oct. 26, 2026 9:23 AM PT

NEW YORK — The Trump administration last year illegally fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, from her job as a federal prosecutor in New York, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Maurene Comey, who was an assistant U.S. attorney for a decade, was illegally fired in July 2025 despite her work on some of the nation’s highest-profile cases and consistently receiving “the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike,” Judge Jesse M. Furman found.

After her firing, Comey sued the Justice Department and others, saying her termination violated the constitutional separation of powers, the 1st Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment.

She asserted that she was fired because she was the daughter of James Comey, whom President Trump has long viewed as an enemy, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, the judge noted.

Furman rejected the government’s claim that Comey could be fired because federal prosecutors exercise the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers.

He said the government’s claim that Congress is barred from regulating the removal of federal prosecutors “flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent.”

Furman added: “Indeed, to accept Defendants’ argument would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”

The firing violated the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and her 5th Amendment due process and statutory rights, the judge ruled.

Furman reserved judgment on Comey’s 1st Amendment claim pending further arguments to be submitted by each side, though he said he was inclined to dismiss the claim because it was largely moot since she is now in private practice and no longer seeks actual reinstatement.

The judge granted Comey retroactive reinstatement and back pay from the date of her firing through Dec. 20 to “make her whole” and ensure that she doesn’t suffer adverse employment consequences for the “unlawful termination.”

Comey’s lawyers, Ellen Blain, Nicole Gueron, Deepa Vanamali and Margaret Donovan, lauded the ruling.

“This hard-earned victory belongs to Ms. Comey, to all civil servants, and to all fighting for the rule of law,” they said in a statement. “As the Court correctly held, to accept the government’s argument about unlimited executive power ‘would be to unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.’ This decision reaffirms our bedrock system of checks and balances: the President is not above the law.”

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Justice Department during the Trump administration has fired scores of career employees, including prosecutors and FBI agents, who participated in investigations of President Trump or who were perceived as opposed to the administration’s agenda. Some of those firings have also resulted in federal lawsuits.

The firing of Maurene Comey was seen as particularly personal, given her father’s longtime adversarial relationship with Trump.

The president fired James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as the bureau was investigating ties between Russia and the Republican’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House. Trump in the years since has repeatedly called for Comey to be jailed, and his Justice Department has worked with mixed success to make that happen.

An earlier criminal case accusing James Comey of having lied to Congress in 2020 was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges the former FBI director with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47,” a case he has sought to dismiss that some legal experts have greeted with skepticism.

Sisak, Tucker, Durkin Richer and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

In the most complimentary way, I ask: What the heck was that first half, UCLA?

Yes, really. With Saturday’s 28-10 victory over Michigan State, Bob Chesney has the Bruins football team 7-0 for the first time since 2005. Still undefeated and still the only team in the Big Ten — and SEC — conferences that can say so. Ranked No. 9 in the nation and moving on up.

And so I ask: Two lost fumbles before halftime? Two drops? Two holding penalties? A meager 84 yards through the air and a modest 14-7 halftime lead? Against a majorly depleted Michigan State team fielding a freshman third-stringer at quarterback — that also lost two more of its best players to injury in the first half?

These Bruins are too good to be letting the wounded Spartans (2-6, 0-5 Big Ten) hang with them for even a half.

And yet, for a hot moment, doubt started to creep back in: Was this the day Chesney’s chariot turned back into a pumpkin? Was the last petal from the enchanted rose about to fall, this beauty of a season due to turn ugly? Was the fairy tale almost over?

No. The nation’s best second-half team gathered itself — “at halftime in the locker room, guys coming over, ‘Let’s go, man. We got you!” quarterback Ty Dieffenbach said — exerted its will and outscored the Spartans 14-0 in the third quarter. They mercifully ran out the clock with a commanding 28-7 lead going into the fourth and improved to a tidy 5-0 in the Big Ten.

It’s what Chesney’s teams do.

Last season at James Madison, the Dukes led the nation in second-half scoring, averaging 20.9 points per game.

And this charmed season at UCLA, the Bruins came into Saturday’s game averaging the second-most second-half points in the nation (20.8).

Being able to bear down and wear down opponents is a sign of a good team.

Being able to jump on them at the outset would be the sign of a great one.

Let’s fast-forward a year. You’ve stopped pinching yourself to make sure you aren’t dreaming and the Bruins — who were unranked and unheralded to start the season after so many years of ineptitude — really are in control of their own College Football Playoff destiny.

UCLA linebacker Donavyn Pellot celebrates with linebacker Sammy Omosigho, left, after a 67-yard interception return against Michigan State on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

A year from now, you’ll have been conditioned to expect them to win these games, and you’ll no longer be worried about whether this was all a dream.

But you would be concerned about slow starts. You’d bemoan sluggish opening acts and fret about how that might bite the Bruins in the big games that are looming.

Chesney doesn’t have to make that imaginative leap into the future.

He’s worried about it now. And that’s why his Bruins are legitimately a team to contend with, because he’s coaching them to be that. He expects it: “When you walk on that field on Saturday, you walk out and know that you’ve done it the right way, and that’s how you treat something that’s important. Not special, but important.”

And so I ask: Why didn’t UCLA treat the first half like it was important Saturday?

“Two fumbles, two drops, two holding penalties? You can’t do it, you just can’t do it if you want to win really close games,” said Chesney, the first-year UCLA coach, who said he’d spend the week before the Bruins host Nevada in a nonconference Halloween game by emphasizing ball security at practice and that he’d watch the tape to determine what triggered the holding penalties.

“We’re taking three, four touchdowns off the board by doing that,” Chesney added. “Never going to let this happen again.”

UCLA can’t because it doesn’t have any room for error.

UCLA coach Bob Chesney works with players before a 28-10 win over Michigan State at the Rose Bowl on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

If the Bruins win out, Chesney will have directed an underdog to a surprise CFP berth for the second consecutive season. But if the Bruins lose a game, it gets dicey.

Never mind the rows of recruits at Saturday’s victory, and forget for a moment about the fans who are slowly finding their way back to the Rose Bowl for Bruins football games. UCLA needs to continue to impress the computers and the pollsters and CFP committee members who could eventually determine UCLA’s fate if the Bruins don’t do it themselves.

And though no fault of Chesney’s, UCLA is playing a soft schedule. Per ESPN, the Bruins’ slate was the 51st easiest coming into the season and what remains of it is the 64th easiest.

And UCLA, which is winning behind a backup quarterback, which went 3-9 last season and which had so much ground to cover after starting the season outside of the top 25 — won’t likely get anyone’s benefit of the doubt if a first-half lull leads to a loss.

The Bruins are proving themselves probably the best team in the nation after halftime.

If they can do that, why not aim to be the best team in the nation?

Fours (quarters) up!?

A bittersweet homecoming — emphasis on the bitter — propels Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski’s spare, precise drama “Fatherland,” which takes an episode from the life of Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann and, with the help of some poetic license, creates a story full of simmering anger and sorrow. Only rarely do the dignified characters allow their emotions to come storming out. When they do, though, the sound seems to reverberate, the tumult of the past ringing in our ears.

Like Pawlikowski’s previous two features, “Ida” and “Cold War,” “Fatherland” is a period piece shot in black and white in a boxy 4:3 aspect ratio so that the frame resembles an old photograph, although his images contain no hint of nostalgia. It’s 1949, and the 70-something Mann (Hanns Zischler) has returned to Germany for the first time since fleeing to America 16 years prior. Accompanying him is Erika (Sandra Hüller), his daughter and fellow writer, who begrudgingly serves as interpreter, personal assistant and driver. In addition, she’ll offer her brutally honest thoughts on the flowery speeches he will deliver while being honored for his artistry.

Quickly, they discover that while the war may be over, the bombed-out buildings remain, as do the lingering resentments within Germany, which is controlled by the United States in the west and the Soviets in the east. Thomas, an outspoken critic of Nazism, leading to his exile, believes that his public appearances can unite the country he loves. The cynical Erika knows better, convinced he’s a PR tool for a nation hoping to refurbish its tarnished reputation.

Drawing inspiration from “The Magician,” Colm Tóibín’s fictionalized 2021 Mann biography, Pawlikowski uses this trip as a jumping-off point, introducing real-life individuals who were not present and inventing a new central dynamic. (In truth, Thomas traveled with his wife, not his daughter.) But those creative liberties merely accentuate Pawlikowski’s narrative and thematic aims, which, as in “Ida” and “Cold War” include pairing an intimate story with the larger rumblings of postwar Europe. Thomas and Erika arrive in a Germany torn apart and the ruptures within their family are nearly as tumultuous.

The film is haunted by the specter of Klaus (August Diehl), Erika’s brother, who is actually the first person we see onscreen. In a masterful unbroken shot, Klaus is on the phone from France with his sister, expressing his bottomless anguish. “I don’t believe in anything anymore,” Klaus, who is also a writer, declares. “I can’t remember the last time I felt something.” He’s talking about the fractured Germany, but his depression speaks to something closer to home too. Concerned, Erika encourages Klaus to join them. He declines, but his absence — and a shocking later revelation — informs so much of their journey, personalizing the sense of disrepair Thomas and Erika experience.

Working with his usual cinematographer Łukasz Żal, Pawlikowski prefers a static camera, leaving plenty of headroom above the characters so that they feel entombed by their surroundings. The effect is especially disconcerting as this father and daughter navigate glad-handers and former Nazi collaborators in West Germany who are anxious to bury the past. But Thomas and Erika are no fools, coolly telling off smiling Hitler sympathizers during a tony reception. There has been no more satisfying slap in cinema this year than the one Erika lands on a smug German actor, leading to a wicked punchline that shouldn’t be spoiled.

Such moments of barbed humor are infrequent in “Fatherland,” but Pawlikowski wields them like grenades, shattering the stifling niceties enveloping Thomas and Erika. The Germany of “Fatherland” is one of contradictions, with Erika uncovering letters sent to Thomas’ hotel that savagely accuse him of betraying his country, despite state officials eager to embrace him as a symbol of the nation’s creative and cultural excellence. In contrast to the gorgeous monochrome visuals, this is a land that stinks of complicity and delusion — of opportunists desperate to scramble onto the right side of history. Pawlikowski has said that he keeps returning to the past in his films because addressing our modern ills directly would be too daunting. But whether in Frankfurt or, later, Weimar — where Soviet officials are as keen to canonize Thomas — this father and daughter aren’t simply driving through Germany but taking a tour across fascism’s long shadow, which still darkens the world.

Both leads are exceptional, with Zischler articulating the great writer’s arrogance and willful denial of the inconvenient truths he wants to ignore. As for Hüller, this is another superb performance in a series of them in recent years. Where Thomas is aloof and proud, Erika is prickly and sardonic, excellent tools for protecting a surprisingly fragile heart. Their journey to Germany will heal neither the nation nor the divisions within this family. You can’t go home again and in the case of the characters in “Fatherland,” maybe you shouldn’t try.

Protests are sweeping France as anger over conditions in schools meets frustration with high living costs and a government accused of doing little to address problems facing people.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, celebrated the 20-year anniversary of landmark climate legislation he signed while in office alongside Democrats including Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday.

“California is the perfect example of what can be done when people work together and when we don’t look at this as a Republican or as a Democratic issue,” Schwarzenegger said at an economic conference in Long Beach, noting that Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act had significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions while creating more than a half a million clean-energy jobs.

“This is the message that is so important for the world,” he said, because the state’s policies have become a model for other states and nations.

Newsom noted that the state had met “audacious” goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, touting 39,000 megawatts of clean energy that have been installed in the last seven years, 23,000 megawatts of battery storage created, and that no flex alert has been issued in the state in four years.

“So we’re not in the goal-setting business; we’re in the how business,” he said.

He added that the clean energy transition is “the most critical national security issue in the United States of America,” with economic and supply chain leadership at stake as China surpasses the U.S. in electric vehicles, clean-energy manufacturing and the deployment of renewables.

The state already met the climate change legislation’s ambitious target — returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — four years ahead of schedule. However, recent analyses indicate California is not on track to meet its future targets of cutting emissions 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2045.

The legislation paved the way for the creation of California’s nation-leading carbon market, cap-and-invest, which launched in 2013. The Legislature extended cap-and-invest’s life to 2045 last year, and the state is now initiating the process of linking its market with Washington state.

The event as well as a luncheon the prior day in Santa Monica were rare displays of bipartisan unity at a time of heightened political polarization in the United States. Schwarzenegger and Newsom piled praise upon each other during the Wednesday afternoon discussion, hugging at the end.

At the luncheon, former Gov. Gray Davis, whom Schwarzenegger ousted from office in the 2003 recall election, as well as billionaire hedge-fund founder turned environmental warrior Tom Steyer, who unsuccessfully ran for governor this year, were among the Democrats in attendance, as well as former state Assembly Speaker Fabien Nunez and former state Sen. Fran Pavley, who were both pivotal in the passage of the climate-change legislation.

In addition to remarks highlighting the foundation of some of the nation’s bedrock environmental policies, such as former GOP President Richard Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency and signing the Endangered Species Act, there were moments of levity.

Schwarzenegger said he told fellow Republicans “f— you” when they balked at him naming Susan Kennedy, a Democrat, as his chief of staff, he said Tuesday.

During a breakout session at the Wednesday conference, he referenced his former wife, Maria Shriver, a scion of the Kennedy family, as he described his desire to hear from people on both sides of the aisle.

“So I had Democrats in my administration, and of course the Republican Party went nuts,” he said. “I didn’t care because, to me, I thought I wanted to hear what the Democrats were thinking. Plus, I was sleeping with one every night anyway.”