RACE

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — If there’s agreement on anything in the two states with governor’s races this year, it’s that utility bills are a growing concern among voters.

One Virginia voter, Kim Wilson, lamented at a town hall recently that her electricity bill seems to go up every month, no matter how much she tries to mitigate the costs. She was drawn to the event in part by its title: “The energy bills are too damn high.”

“It’s way too high,” Wilson readily agreed.

In New Jersey, Herb Michitsch of Kenilworth said his electric bill has climbed to nearly $400 a month, or more than four times what it was when he and his wife moved into their home half a century ago.

“Something really has to be done,” Michitsch said.

That something must be done is pretty much where the agreement ends. It’s what must be done that splits politicians back into rival camps.

Democratic candidates in the two states are far more likely to embrace clean energy options like wind and solar than their Republican opponents. The two states’ Republican nominees are more closely aligned with the policies of President Trump, who has called climate change a “con job” and promotes more traditional energy sources like gas and coal. New Jersey Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli has acknowledged that human-caused climate change is occurring, but he says Democrats have driven up costs with their clean energy push.

Which side voters land on in the off-year elections will give both parties plenty to consider in what feels destined to be an emerging economic issue heading into next year’s midterm elections.

At a recent rally in New Jersey, Democratic state Sen. Vin Gopal made clear that he stood with Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill in support of her plans to lower costs. But Gopal acknowledged that the outcome could signal whether voters are ready to embrace the president’s approach or have simply grown weary of national politics.

“The whole country is watching what happens,” he said.

Technology drives up costs

The debate comes as people in the two states grapple with double-digit percentage increases in monthly electricity bills. The exploding costs are driven by soaring demand, particularly from data centers, and by the rapid onset of energy-intensive artificial intelligence technology. Virginia’s largest energy utility also has linked potential future rate increases to inflation and other costs.

In Virginia’s open race to succeed a term-limited GOP incumbent, Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are at odds over the development of renewable energy sources.

Spanberger has laid out a plan to expand solar and wind production in underused locations, praising a wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach. In a debate against her opponent, she also said she would “ensure that data centers pay their fair share” as costs rise. The state is home to the world’s largest data center market,

Republican Winsome Earle-Sears wasn’t having it.

“That’s all she wants, is solar and wind,” Earle-Sears said of Spanberger at the debate. “Well, if you look outside, the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing, and then what, Abigail, what will you do?”

In New Jersey, where Ciattarelli’s endorsement by Trump included recent social media posts praising his energy affordability plans, the GOP nominee blames rising costs on eight years of Democratic control of state government.

Ciattarelli says he would pull New Jersey out of a regional greenhouse gas trading bloc, which Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy reentered when he first took office in 2018.

“It’s been a failure,” Ciattarelli said at the final debate of the campaign. “Electricity is at an all-time high.”

He’s also come out as a strident opponent of wind energy off the state’s coast, an effort Democrats spearheaded under Murphy. A major offshore wind project ground to a halt when the Danish company overseeing it scrapped projects, citing supply chain problems and high interest rates.

At the center of Sherrill’s campaign promise on the issue is an executive order to freeze rates and build cheaper and cleaner power generation.

“I know my opponent laughs at it,” Sherrill said recently.

A growing concern among voters

The candidates’ focus on affordability and utility rates reflects an unease among voters. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults, at a time when data center development for AI could further strain the power grid.

Perhaps that’s why the statewide races have become something of an energy proxy battle in Virginia. Clean Virginia, a clean energy advocacy group that targets utility corruption, has backed all three Democratic candidates for statewide office in Virginia — a first for the organization. GOP statewide candidates, meanwhile, have accepted money from Dominion Energy, the largest electric utility in Virginia.

To further complicate an already complex issue: Virginia has passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which calls for utilities to sunset carbon energy production methods by 2045.

Republican House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, who represents the southwest edge of Virginia, had failed to alter part of the state’s Clean Economy Act earlier this year. Kilgore, whose top donor is Dominion Energy, said in February: “If their bills go any higher, there are folks in my region that are not able to pay them now, they’re definitely not going to be able to pay them in the future.”

Evan Vaughn, executive director of MAREC Action, a group of Mid-Atlantic renewable energy developers, said candidates from both parties are in a tough spot because bringing down prices quickly will be difficult given broader market dynamics.

“Voters should look to which candidate they think can do the best to stabilize prices by bringing more generation online,” he said. “That’s really going to be the key to affordability.”

Michitsch, who’s backing Sherrill in the governor’s race and said he would campaign for her, said her proposal shows she’s willing to do something to address spiraling costs.

“We need to change,” he said. “And I think she is here to change things.”

Diaz and Catalini write for the Associated Press.

The New York City mayoral election is dominated by Democrats, a reflection of the US metropolis’s deeply liberal bent. But a Republican could make the difference in the race.

Candidate Curtis Sliwa has remained defiant ahead of the November 4 election, shrugging off appeals from some top conservatives to drop out and boost the chances of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after being routed in June’s Democratic primary.

Some political observers see Sliwa’s exit as the only way for Cuomo to have a shot at defeating frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, who has surged to the top of voter polls on a Democratic Socialist platform.

“New Yorkers are tired of Andrew Cuomo, but Andrew Cuomo doesn’t seem to understand when ‘no’ means ‘no’,” said Rusat Ramgopal, Sliwa’s deputy campaign manager, with a pointed reference to the sexual misconduct allegations that forced Cuomo from his post as New York State’s governor in 2021.

Sliwa has also doled out blows to both of his opponents.

“Zohran, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City,” he said during the final mayoral debate on October 22.

Sliwa has also dipped into the same Islamophobic tropes perpetuated by Mamdani’s critics, falsely claiming during the final debate that the leading candidate supports “global jihad”.

Local showman or subway hero?

So who is Curtis Sliwa? It is a question that has dogged Sliwa since he rose to prominence as the leader of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime-fighting group that became famous for its patrols of the New York City subway system.

Supporters have identified with the do-it-yourself ethos of the group, which Sliwa started in 1979, when he was a 24-year-old night manager at a McDonald’s restaurant in the Bronx. Many continue to hail him as an emblem of New Yorkers stepping up when city administration fails.

“When people see that red beret, they think about subway safety, public safety. They remember what he’s done for the city,” Ramgopal said.

“He is a larger-than-life figure who’s been integral to New York life for so many decades at this point.”

Others have accused the Guardian Angels, who do not carry weapons, of perpetuating a dangerous brand of vigilantism. The group has also faced criticism for alleged racial profiling, demonising immigrants, and wrongfully accusing individuals of committing crimes.

On the campaign trail, Sliwa has regularly condemned “migrant” crime.

The authenticity of the group’s exploits have been scrutinised, with Sliwa admitting in 1992 that he faked some crimes to boost publicity.

In recent years, Sliwa has been a candidate in local politics, a radio host and a media personality.

What are his platforms?

Unsurprisingly, Sliwa has made public safety, particularly in the transit system, the focus of his campaign. Even as crime dropped, Sliwa maintained the city is “facing a crisis of crime, lawlessness and failed leadership”.

He has vowed to hire 7,000 new New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, re-up controversial police units, and — as his website puts it — “enhance proactive and intrusive policing strategies to target illegal firearm carriers, repeat offenders, and violent criminals before crimes occur”.

Critics have said those strategies have historically led to increased racial profiling, the over-policing of minority communities, and intrusions on civil liberties.

He has also pushed affordability, an issue that has been dominant this campaign season, pledging to overhaul the system the city currently uses to coordinate with affordable housing programmes.

In addition, Sliwa, who owns several cats, has made animal protection a key plank of his campaign.

What do supporters see in him?

As the only right-wing candidate in the race, Sliwa has strong support among registered Republicans, who comprise 11 percent of New York’s 4.7 million registered voters.

Despite rising to prominence decades ago, he continues to rally new supporters.

“His work with the Guardian Angels has resonated with me a lot,” Shan Singh, a 30-year-old cab driver from Richmond Hill, Queens, told Al Jazeera.

Singh had previously been a Democrat but switched his support to US President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 presidential election. He perceives the recent protests that have swept the city as dangerous.

The fact that Sliwa is trailing in the polls, he added, is not enough to lose his vote.

“Regardless of the numbers, Curtis is the person who seems most real to me,” he said.

Russell, a 28-year-old from Brooklyn who asked that his last name be withheld, came out to show support for Sliwa ahead of the first mayoral debate in midtown Manhattan.

He said both Cuomo and Mamdani were too soft on crime, and he took particular issue with their support for bail reform programmes, designed to eliminate cash bail for low-level offences and avoid mass incarceration.

“It emboldens criminals to keep committing crimes, because there are no repercussions for it,” Russell said.

Does he have any chance at winning?

Short of a miracle, Sliwa has no real path to victory. The latest Quinnipiac University poll found he had the support of 14 percent of likely voters. That paled in comparison to Mamdani’s 43 percent and Cuomo’s 33 percent support.

That’s why Cuomo has pushed so hard for him to exit the race. The former governor made repeated overtures to conservative voters, saying a vote for Sliwa is, in essence, a vote for Mamdani.

Cuomo has even left the door open to giving Sliwa a role in his administration if he were to drop out.

As of yet, the appeals have been to no avail. It also remains unclear how many of Sliwa’s staunchest supporters would be willing to cross party lines.

“If Sliwa leaves the race, I wouldn’t vote for either [Cuomo or Mamdani],” Russell told Al Jazeera.

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s me again, California columnist Anita Chabria, filling in for your usual host, Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner, who will be back next week.

California’s Proposition 50, the measure that would redraw election maps to favor Democrats, started out seeming controversial and likely to spark a huge battle.

But in recent days, it’s become clear that the majority of Californians are pro-50. So much so that Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered up the ultimate taunt — he’s ended small-donor fundraising on the measure. Can you imagine President Trump telling MAGA, “Keep your five bucks. It’s better in your pocket than mine.”

So it’s sort of like Newsom is walking across the finish line flush with swagger and cash — maybe not wise, but a statement.

Obviously, Newsom will soon be asking for more money for more things, including his was-never-not-happening presidential bid. But for now, the narrative he’s crafted with Proposition 50 (win or lose, because truly you don’t know until the last ballot is counted) is a consequential and important win for democracy and a ray of hope for the next election, merely a year away.

Here’s why.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Texas state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins appear at a news conference in July at the governor’s mansion.

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

It was never unpopular

The big secret you should know about Proposition 50 is that it was never unpopular with California’s blue voters.

Sure, Republicans hate it. Especially those, such as Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who will probably lose their jobs if it passes. I’ll give Kiley credit on this — he for a short bit tried to convince his party that all mid-decade redistricting was bad. He had no luck, mostly because House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) rolls like jelly when it comes to Trump.

But the majority of Republicans in California and across the country have offered nary a whisper in condemnation of red-tilting cheat maps.

In truth, Proposition 50 started out as a bluff — nothing more than a way to push back on Texas Republicans who were working at full speed to appease Trump by rejiggering their own maps to provide him with a safe margin of seats for the midterms.

Hoping to deter Texas appeasement GOPers from this scorched-earth pursuit, Texas Democratic congressional representatives started floating the rumor this year that if the Lone Star State went forward with its scheme to create five extra red seats, California would do the same for blue. It was nothing more than a bit of tit-for-tat blustering.

There was, however, no such plan by Newsom, and insiders say the feint took the governor by surprise. But kind of a happy surprise, because the idea caught on like wildfire and — even more surprising — turned out to be legally doable.

Newsom’s team did a couple of polls and guess what? Yep, voters wanted to fight back against Trump’s takeover. Congressional Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, agreed to back the measure and fundraise and here we are: A poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 6 in 10 likely voters support the measure, and of those who have already voted, 67% are in favor.

That backs up another new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California that found 56% of likely voters support the measure, mostly along party lines. Forty-three percent are against it.

Only 2% were undecided in The Times’ poll, and that dropped to 1% in the PPIC poll.

So Californians have made up their minds — now they just need to mail in their ballots (I swear I will send mine very, very soon).

What will 50 actually do?

So let’s say Proposition 50 does sail to victory. What then? Will it really save democracy, which is really in need of saving?

Probably not. Maybe. Hopefully? Here’s the truth. Our elections are in hugely big trouble, which I wrote about on Tuesday. For the vast majority of you who didn’t read that, here’s the recap: Donald Trump will probably try to cheat.

That suppression may take many forms. It could be new rules to make it harder to vote — such as requiring multiple forms of IDs with matching names (which many married women lack). It could involve something as dire as military “protection” of our polls. It may look like another attempt to end mail-in ballots or early voting.

It could involve Mike “Jelly” Johnson refusing to seat elected Democrats, as he is currently doing with Arizona’s newly elected, release-the-Epstein-files Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva.

It will almost certainly include charges of voter fraud, which Trump is already yapping about on social media. And it will almost certainly involve Republican gerrymandered maps in states besides Texas (though there are surprising holdouts in some places, including Nebraska).

All of that is to say that the midterms are going to be both a big, steaming mess and historically important.

But Proposition 50 shows that not only is there will to resist this breakdown of democracy, but there are also ways to fight. Whether or not it ultimately is the key to restoring the power check of an independent Congress, it’s an important proof that the fight is not over.

There are a couple of other things that stand out in this moment of uncertainty. First, Newsom is the Comeback Kid. There was a time after Kamala Harris took the Democratic nomination when his chances of ever sitting behind the Resolute Desk seemed slim. But Proposition 50 coincided with, and fed, his new turn as chief troll — and actually as an effective foil — to Trump.

He has quickly become one of the most recognizable leaders nationwide in fighting authoritarianism, and to his credit, he is speaking truth at a difficult moment.

Yes, that benefits him, but I’ll take pro-democracy pushback wherever I find it — and so apparently will other Californians. The same PPIC poll that found the majority of likely voters support Proposition 50 also found that 55% approve of the way Newsom is doing his job, and about half think California is on the right track.

Nationally, he’s gaining ground too. Another poll about the New Hampshire primary, often considered one of the first harbingers of Democratic things to come, found Newsom in second place after former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

In a couple of other polls, Newsom is in the mix, along with Buttigieg and New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So he’s in the running, and not just in his own head — making Proposition 50 a win for the governor.

But Congress, that’s another story. Californians (and Americans in general) are not pleased with their congressional representatives. The PPIC poll found that only 14% of California adults are happy with the way Congress is doing its job. Honestly, judging from the way I feel about it, that seems high.

So keep your eye on California races, even after the maps are redrawn. The youngs are after the olds, and voters seem ready for change. Pelosi is facing two serious challengers, including state Sen. Scott Wiener. In Sacramento, Rep. Doris Matsui has a youthful contender.

California voters may end up wanting even more change than Democrats anticipate. They’re clearly in a mood to fight, and no telling with whom.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: We checked DHS’s videos of chaos and protests. Here’s what they leave out.
The what happened: The Republicans thwarting the White House’s redistricting hopes
The L.A. Times special: ICE officials replaced with Border Patrol, cementing hard tactics that originated in California

P.S. More from Homeland Security. This is deeply disturbing propaganda being produced and disseminated without much remark by an armed federal agency. For those who aren’t J.R.R. Tolkien nerds, it’s a reference to a great evil destroying society. Whether or not you support the removal of undocumented people, the portrayal of all undocumented folks as evil and dangerous is well … dangerous. And wrong.

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With millions of people in the United States at risk of losing access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – also known as food stamps – from November 1, a viral chart has claimed to show the majority of the nation’s food stamp recipients are non-white and noncitizens.

The chart, titled Food Stamps by Ethnicity, listed 36 groups of people and said it showed the “percentage of US households receiving SNAP benefits”.

The groups were labelled by nationality, such as “Afghan”, “Somali”, “Iraqi”, along with the racial groups “white”, “Black” and “native”. The chart appeared to show that Afghan people were the largest group receiving SNAP benefits, at 45.6 percent, followed by Somali (42.4 percent) and Iraqi (34.8 percent). White people, represented on the chart with the US flag, were third to last at 8.6 percent.

The federal government shutdown, which started on October 1, is the cause of the looming SNAP funding lapse. SNAP provides food purchasing benefits to low-income households. Conservatives have peddled the misleading narrative that Democrats are pushing for healthcare for undocumented migrants, and people commenting on the chart rehashed a similar talking point.

“Who is getting their EBT cut?” read the caption of an October 25 X post sharing the chart, which had 3.1 million views as of October 27. EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer, which is a SNAP payment system.

“Only 18.7% of EBT or food stamp recipients are American. Let that sink in …” read another post sharing the chart, seemingly mistakenly referring to the figure next to the word “Armenian”; there was no “American” category in the chart. “We are subsidizing foreigners on the taxpayers dime.”

Who is getting their EBT cut pic.twitter.com/el8x9X5iVX

— The General (@1776General_) October 25, 2025

The chart doesn’t show the full picture of SNAP recipients by race or ethnicity. The most reliable source for the breakdown of SNAP recipients by demographics comes from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the programme.

According to the most recent USDA data available, from 2023, white people are the largest racial group receiving SNAP benefits, at 35.4 percent. African Americans are next, making up 25.7 percent of recipients, then Hispanic people at 15.6 percent, Asian people at 3.9 percent, Native Americans at 1.3 percent and multiracial people at 1 percent. The race of 17 percent of participants is unknown.

The same report found that 89.4 percent of SNAP recipients were US-born citizens, meaning less than 11 percent of SNAP participants were foreign-born. Of the latter figure, 6.2 percent were naturalised citizens, 1.1 percent were refugees and 3.3 percent were other noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents and other eligible noncitizens.

While large shares of the groups listed in the chart may receive food stamps, “they are certainly a tiny share of the households and spending on SNAP”, said Tracy Roof, University of Richmond associate professor of political science.

Survey data shows an incomplete picture on SNAP recipients

The chart shared on social media originated from a June blog post from The Personal Finance Wizards, which cited “US Census Table S0201” as its source. The site offers financial advice, but published a disclaimer saying it cannot guarantee the “completeness, accuracy, or reliability” of its information.

The site’s authors appeared to cherry-pick groups to include in the chart, noting, “It’s important to note that the graph highlights a selection of ethnicities we felt would be most relevant and engaging for our audience.” It did not name an author.

In a comment on an Instagram post sharing the chart, Personal Finance Wizards shared a link to the US Census table it used. It shows data from the 2024 American Community Survey, filtered by 49 racial and ethnic groups. The filtered groups don’t completely overlap with the groups in the chart, but the dataset has a column for “households with food stamp/SNAP benefits”, which shows percentages similar to the ones in the chart.

The data does not show what percentage of all SNAP beneficiaries belong to an ethnic or nationality group.

Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the food assistance team at the liberal think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the chart appeared to show the shares of households receiving SNAP based on the household respondents’ reported ancestry, which is different from citizenship status.

“Without context, this graphic is misleading and may lead some to conclude that many non-citizens are participating in SNAP, which is not true,” he said.

The American Community Survey allows respondents to self-identify their race. It also defines ancestry as a “person’s ethnic origin or descent, roots or heritage, place of birth, or place of parents’ ancestors before their arrival in the United States”.

Colleen Heflin, Syracuse University expert on food insecurity, nutrition and welfare policy, said the American Community Survey data on SNAP receipts is self-reported, and that question “is known to have a great deal of measurement error” when compared with SNAP administrative data.

Chart reflects higher levels of need in groups with higher shares of SNAP participation

Groups such as Afghans and Iraqis, who are first and third on the chart, would have been more likely to have immediately qualified for the SNAP programme before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s passage because of their special immigration status.

Before the law’s passage, refugees and people who had been granted asylum were also eligible for SNAP without a waiting period. Somalis, who were second on the chart, are “more likely” to qualify based on those criteria, Roof said.

Other noncitizens, such as lawful permanent residents, could be eligible for SNAP only after a five-year waiting period.

But the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the eligibility, making refugees and asylum seekers ineligible. Immigrants in the country illegally are not and have never been eligible for SNAP.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s anti-Trump, anti-Texas congressional redistricting gamble seems about to pay off.

Newsom’s bet on Proposition 50 is looking like a winner, although we won’t really know until the vote count is released starting election night Nov. 4.

Insiders closely watching the high-stakes campaign would be shocked if Republicans pulled an upset and defeated the Democrats’ retaliatory response to red state gerrymandering.

They talk mostly about the expected size of victory, not whether it will win. The hedged consensus is that it’ll be by a modest margin, not a blowout.

Any size victory would help Newsom promote himself nationally as the Democrat whom party activists anxiously seek to aggressively fight Trumpism. It could energize grassroots progressives to back the Californian in early 2028 presidential primaries.

Propositions 50’s defeat, however, could be a devastating blow to Newsom’s presidential aspirations. If Californians wouldn’t follow him, why should other people?

Private and independent polls have shown Proposition 50 being supported by a small majority of registered voters. Not enough for an early victory dance. But the opposition is nowhere close to a majority. A lot of people have been undecided. They may not even bother to vote in a special election with only one state measure on the ballot.

As of last week, the return of mail-in ballots was running about the same as in last year’s presidential election at the same point — very unusual.

A slightly higher percentage of Democrats were casting ballots than GOP registrants. This is particularly significant in a state where 45% of voters are Democrats and only 25% are Republicans. The GOP needs a humungous turnout to beat Democrats on almost anything.

You can credit President Trump’s antics for riling up Democrats to vote early.

One practical importance of early Democratic voting is that the “yes” side doesn’t need to spend more money appealing to people who have already mailed in their ballots.

“It’s a bird in the hand kind of thing,” says Paul Mitchell, the Democrats’ chief data processor and principal drawer of the gerrymandered congressional maps up for approval in Proposition 50.

Mitchell believes the large recent weekend turnouts in California of “No Kings” protesters are indicative of the anti-Trump outrage that is generating Democratic enthusiasm for Proposition 50.

Republican consultant Rob Stutzman thinks that Proposition 50 could have been beaten with enough money. But not nearly enough showed up. Potential donors probably concluded it was a lost cause, he says. Don’t waste the cash.

It takes ridiculous amounts of money to win a competitive statewide race in California, with 23 million diverse voters scattered over hundreds of miles and several costly media markets.

Democrats, with their unmatched California power, have raised well over $100 million from unions, billionaire Democratic donors and other political investors.

Billionaire hedge-fund founder Tom Steyer put up $12 million. There are rumors he’s tempted to run for governor.

Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso is thinking very seriously about entering the 2026 gubernatorial race. He just paid for 100,000 pro-50 mail pieces in L.A. County, aimed at those least likely to vote.

One problem for the opposition is that it never unified behind a main anti-50 message. It ranged from “reject Newsom’s power grab” to “win one for Trump” and a purist lecture about retaining California’s current congressional districts drawn by a voter-created good government citizens’ commission.

The basic pro-50 message is simply, as Steyer says in his TV ad: “Stick it to Trump.”

This contest at its core is about which party controls Congress after next year’s midterm elections — or whether Republicans and Democrats at least share power. It’s about whether there’ll be a Congress with some gumption to confront a power-mad, egotistical president.

The fight started when Trump banged on Texas to redraw — gerrymander — its congressional districts to potentially gain five more Republican seats in the House of Representatives. Democrats need only a slight pickup to capture House control — and in an off-year election, the non-presidential party tends to acquire many.

Texas obediently obliged the nervous Trump, and other red states also have.

Newsom responded by urging the California Legislature to redraw this state’s maps to potentially gain five Democratic seats, neutralizing Texas’ underhanded move. The lawmakers quickly did. But in California, voter approval is needed to temporarily shelve the independent commission’s work. That’s what Proposition 50 does.

It also would boost Newsom’s standing among party activists across America.

“He’s been trying to claim the national leadership on anti-Trump. This is a chance for him to show he can deliver,” says UC Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler. “There’s a sense the party doesn’t know how to fight back.

“On the flip side, if he were unable to persuade California voters to go along with him, it would be a hard sell to show Democrats nationally he’s the best person to take on Republicans.”

“It’s a gamble,” says UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser. “If 50 wins, he’s a person who can effectively fight back against Donald Trump. If it loses, he has no hope of winning on the national level.”

But veteran political consultant Mike Murphy — a former Republican who switched to independent — thinks Newsom could survive voters’ rejection of Proposition 50.

“It would take some of the shine off him. But he’d still be a contender. It wouldn’t knock him out. The worst you could say was that he lost 50 but was fighting the good fight.

“If 50 wins, Gavin might have a good future as a riverboat gambler if he puts all the chips in.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Pelosi faces challenges as age becomes unavoidable tension point for Democrats
The TK: Justice Department says it will monitor California poll sites amid Prop. 50 voting
The L.A. Times Special: She was highly qualified to be California governor. Why did her campaign fizzle?

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Great Britain’s Anna Morris leaps from sixth to second after the final sprint for the line to take silver in the women’s points race at the World Track Cycling Championships.

SEE MORE: GB’s Archibald & Leech win madison gold

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Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, has energised liberal voters and has strongly condemned Israel’s war on Gaza.

Polling places have opened for the start of in-person voting for one of the year’s most closely watched elections in the United States, the New York City mayor’s race.

New Yorkers on Saturday began choosing between Democrat Zohran Mamdani, who has built up a sizeable lead in the polls, Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat appearing on the ballot as an independent. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, is also on the ballot, but dropped out of the race last month and recently threw his support behind Cuomo.

Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, has energised liberal voters, drawn to his proposals for universal, free child care, free buses, and a rent freeze for New Yorkers living in about 1 million rent-regulated apartments.

Cuomo has assailed Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, over his criticism of Israel.

Mamdani, who has weathered anti-Muslim rhetoric during the contest, says Israel’s military actions in Gaza have amounted to genocide, a view shared by a UN inquiry, genocide experts and numerous rights groups.

In an emotional speech on Friday, Mamdani said the attacks against him are “racist, baseless”.

“To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity, but indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does,” said Mamdani, who in June beat Cuomo to achieve a landslide victory in the Democratic mayoral primary.

Cuomo has portrayed Mamdani’s policies as naive and financially irresponsible. He has appealed to voters to pick him because of his experience as the state’s governor, a position he gave up in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.

New York has allowed early voting since 2019, and it has become relatively popular. In June’s mayoral primary, about 35 percent of the ballots were cast early and in person, according to the city’s campaign finance board.

In neighbouring New Jersey, the governor’s race is also being closely followed. It features Republican state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli against Democratic US Representative Mikie Sherrill. New Jersey adopted early voting in 2021.

The off-year elections in the two states could be bellwethers for Democratic Party leaders as they try to decide what kinds of candidates might be best to lead their resistance to Republican President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The races have spotlighted affordability and cost of living issues as well as ongoing divisions within the Democratic Party, said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“New York City pits the progressive wing against the establishment old guard in Mamdani versus Cuomo, while New Jersey is banking on moderate candidate Mikie Sherrill to appeal to its broad middle,” she said.

The New Jersey gubernatorial candidates, in their final debate earlier this month, sparred over the federal government shutdown, Sherrill’s military records, Trump’s policies and the high cost of living in the state.

The winner would succeed Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who is term-limited.

New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has condemned Islamophobic attacks against him after opponent Andrew Cuomo laughed at a radio host’s remark that Mamdani would ‘cheer another 9/11’. In an emotional speech, Mamdani said such rhetoric reflects a wider tolerance of anti-Muslim sentiment.

Great Britain’s Josh Tarling produces a blistering display to win his first track world title in the men’s 40km points race at the UCI Track World Championships.

WATCH MORE: Archibald wins historic silver at World Track Championships

Available to UK users only.

STOCKTON — Four of California’s gubernatorial candidates tangled over climate change and wildfire preparedness at an economic forum Thursday in Stockton, though they all acknowledged the stark problems facing the state.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, stood apart from the three other candidates — all Democrats — at the California Economic Summit by challenging whether the spate of devastating wildfires in California is linked to climate change, and labeling some environmental activists “terrorists.”

After a few audience members shouted at Bianco over his “terrorists” comment, the Democratic candidates seized on the moment to reaffirm their own beliefs about the warming planet.

“The impacts of climate change are proven and undeniable,” said Tony Thurmond, a Democrat and California superintendent of public instruction. “You can call them what you want. That’s our new normal.”

The fires “do have a relationship with climate change,” said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Besides environmental issues, the hour-and-a-half forum at the business-centric California Forward’s Economic Summit focused primarily on “checkbook” topics as the candidates, which also included former state Controller Betty Yee, offered gloomy statistics about poverty and homelessness in California.

Given the forum’s location in the Central Valley, the agricultural industry and rural issues were front and center.

Bianco harped on the state and the Democratic leaders for California’s handling of water management and gasoline prices. At one point, he told the audience that he felt like he was in the “Twilight Zone” after the Democrats on stage pitched ways to raise revenue.

Other candidates in California‘s 2026 governor’s race, including former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and former Rep. Katie Porter, were not present at Thursday’s debate. Former Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon planned to come, but his flight from Los Angeles was delayed, audience members were told.

All are vying to lead a state facing ongoing budget deficits caused by overspending. A state Legislative Analyst’s Office report released this month cited projected annual operating deficits ranging from roughly $15 billion to $25 billion through 2029. At the same time, federal cutbacks by the Trump administration to programs for needy Californians, including the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare program, will put more pressure on the state’s resources.

All of the candidates had different pitches during the afternoon event. Asked by moderator Jeanne Kuang, a CalMatters reporter, about ways to help rural communities, Thurmond cited his plan to build housing on surplus property owned by the state. He also repeatedly talked about extending tax credits or other subsidies to groups, including day-care providers.

Yee, discussing the wildfires, spoke on hardening homes and creating an industry around fire-proofing the state. Yee received applause when she questioned why there wasn’t more discussion about education in the governor’s race.

Villaraigosa cited his work finding federal funds to build rail and subway lines across Los Angeles and suggested that he would focus on growing the state’s power grid and transportation infrastructure.

Both the former mayor and Yee at points sided with Bianco when they complained about the “over-regulation” by the state, including restrictions on developers, builders and small businesses.

Few voters are probably paying much attention to the contest, with the battle over Proposition 50 dominating headlines and campaign spending.

Voters on Nov. 4 will decide whether to support the proposition, which is a Democratic-led effort to gerrymander California’s congressional districts to try and blunt President Trump’s attempt to rig districts in GOP-led states to retain control of the House of Representatives.

“Frankly, nobody’s focused on the governor’s race right now,” Yee said at an event last week.

The McLaren drivers go into the final five races free to race with each other and with no internal team rules hanging over them – other than not to crash with one another.

Norris had been facing undefined “repercussions” after colliding with Piastri while taking third place from him at the first sequence of corners in Singapore.

Following the crash between the two at the start of the sprint at the US Grand Prix last weekend, these have now been removed.

“There is a degree of responsibility from my side in the sprint and we are starting this weekend within a clean slate for both of us, just going out and going racing,” said Piastri.

The Australian, who won at Zandvoort, has seen his lead erode after being beaten by Norris in each of the past four races, but he said he had also been surprised Verstappen had come into the equation so quicky.

“The run of form he’s had since Monza has been a bit of a surprise,” said Piastri.

“There were flashes earlier in the season but there were also some pretty big dips. We know they have been throwing a lot of things at their car trying to improve it but he has come to the fight quicker than I expected.”

However, when asked if he was concerned about Verstappen, Piastri said: “It’s not really something I think about. He has been consistent and strong the last few weekends but there is no benefit in worrying about or focusing on that.

“The thing that’s going to help me win the championship is get the most out of myself, the car, the team. He’s there, he’s in the fight but ultimately it doesn’t change how I go about my racing.”

Norris added: “Max has had very good form the last month or so. They have been performing better than we have.

“He has won a good amount of races and he’s Max Verstappen. You’d be silly if you didn’t want to give Max a chance.

“At the minute, they are in better form, a lot of races they have been quicker. But we still have chances. We have a better car from now until the end of the season and we just have to make use of that.”

Verstappen said: “It’s clear we had a good run, definitely been enjoying it a lot more like that and we will try to carry that momentum forward. We know we need to be perfect to the end to have a chance, but we just try to maximise everything and see where we end up.”

Oct. 23 (UPI) — Outgoing New York Mayor Eric Adams officially endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to replace him.

Adams ended his campaign for re-election in late September after a federal bribery indictment and the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to withhold millions in public matching funds. After Cuomo pressured him to leave the race, Adams called him a “snake and a liar,” The New York Times reported.

But now the two are friends again, announcing the endorsement together on a sidewalk in East Harlem. “Brothers fight,” Adams said. “But when families are attacked, brothers come together.”

On Wednesday night, Cuomo, a Democrat running as an independent, participated in the final debate of the election season, facing off against front-runner Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist running as a Democrat; and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

In an interview with The Times Thursday, Adams said that he would campaign with Cuomo in neighborhoods where the mayor is most popular and try to urge people to vote for Cuomo.

“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams said. “They have watched their rents increase in terms of gentrification and they have been disregarded in those neighborhoods, and I’m going to go to those neighborhoods and speak one on one with organizers and groups, and I’m going to walk with the governor in those neighborhoods and get them engaged.”

Mamdani released a statement after the announcement.

“Today confirms what we’ve long known: Andrew Cuomo is running for Eric Adams’s second term,” Mamdani said. “It’s no surprise to see two men who share an affinity for corruption and Trump capitulation align themselves at the behest of the billionaire class and the president himself. We are going to turn the page on the politics of big money and small ideas that these two disgraced executives embody and build a city every New Yorker can afford.”

Sliwa brushed off the endorsement at a press conference Thursday. He told reporters that the two men were “corrupt birds of a feather flocking together.”

“The guy who called Andrew Cuomo a snake is now the snake charmer,” Sliwa said. “Are you surprised by that?”

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s Anita Chabria again. Today, I’m coming to you from a coffee shop where I just used Apple Pay to buy a dirty chai.

Why does that matter? Because in the last five minutes, I’ve dropped all kinds of data into the universe. What I drink, how much I’ll pay for it, how long I sat here using this Wi-Fi and dozens of other details that companies are willing to pay for but that I don’t even think about — much less benefit from.

Every day, we all walk around dropping data like garbage — when in reality it’s gold. Especially in the age of budding artificial intelligence, when the smallest bit of insight is being crammed into these new robo-gods in the hope of making them seem ever smarter and more human.

It all raises the question, if it’s our data, shouldn’t we be paid for it?

André Vellozo thinks so, and is working to make that a reality. He’s a Brazilian hippie based in Silicon Valley, an outsider in an increasingly conservative and insular community with an idea that’s more about equality than power.

“Everything you do generates value and data,” Vellozo said. “Now you can collect.”

Here’s what he envisions — and why it’s as much politics as business.

A bus stop advertises Artisan AI, an artificial intelligence software company, along the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco.

(Florence Middleton / For The Times)

Pennies add up

Think of Vellozo’s idea a bit like streaming royalties, giving you a small paycheck every time information you create is used, be it details of a coffee purchase or your hospital stay. Obviously, an artist could never keep track of every single time their show or song is played — they rely on managers and brokers.

Vellozo’s company, DrumWave, would act as that broker for individuals’ data. In his scenario, every person from birth would have a digital wallet where every bit of data they drop is accounted for. This is stuff you are already creating, whether you’re aware of it or not — and which companies are too often collecting, whether you are aware of it or not.

How many “accept all” buttons have you clicked in your life without reading the details of what you are agreeing to, including allowing others to sell your data for their own profit?

When companies want to use that data — which they do to understand economics in the macro and micro, or to study health outcomes, or to feed those large language models such as ChatGPT — DrumWave packages it and licenses it for use without identifying details, but with each consumer’s consent.

Data goes out, payment comes it — over and over for the life of the account.

It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a similar idea in 2019, arguing, “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”

Nothing ever came of it, in no small part due to the lobbying and money thrown at government by big tech. I asked the governor’s office if there was still any interest around the idea and got nothing back from them. But California already has a law that could give folks control of their data, though it isn’t often used the way Vellozo envisions.

Downsides

There are, of course, many obstacles and potential pitfalls. Data privacy is one that comes up often — do we really want to be selling the details of our most recent colonoscopy, anonymous or not?

And of course, there’s also the potential for exploitation. What data would the poor or desperate be willing to sell, and how cheaply?

Annemarie Butler is an associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University who specializes in the ethics of AI. She wonders if people would really understand what their data was being used for or by whom, and if they would be able to pull it back in any way once it’s out there.

She also said that there may be no meaningful way to opt out.

“Our own data are not always restricted to that one person,” she warns. “DNA is probably the clearest example of this: When one shares a DNA sample, she shares vital (and immutable) information about any of her blood relatives. And yet only she provides the consent.”

Of course, privacy is something of an illusion right now.

And, Vellozo points out, it’s not just that we are currently giving data away for free under the current system — we are all actually paying to create that data in the first place. We pay for the electricity that charges our phones. We pay the monthly service charge on our devices. We are actively putting in our time and labor to create the information.

Vellozo’s company is currently running a pilot of digital wallets with rideshare drivers in California.

He points out that these drivers spend a lot of money and energy creating information that will likely be used to train their AI replacements — their gas, the cost of the car, insurance, maintenance and time. Then all that information — who they pick up, when, how long the ride is and a million other details — is just collected and used to create profit for others.

In another milestone, Brazil — a country that has embraced a national model of digital payments much to the chagrin of many technology and banking companies, and President Trump for that matter — is on board with the idea of a digital wallet for all citizens. Vellozo was back home this week to work on that effort.

A check on AI

So why does all this matter in a politics newsletter?

Beyond money, data ownership offers another benefit: Regulation. Although California has arguably done more to regulate AI than almost any other state, the controls on the technology remain woefully slim. The federal government, after a fancy dinner redolent in flattery at the White House, has made it clear it has no interest in protecting people from this powerful technology, or the men who would wield it.

Vellozo sees the ownership of data as an important step in curbing the power of corporations to pursue ever-mightier AI models without oversight.

The coming changes induced by artificial intelligence are going to be profound for the average person. Already, we are seeing a world in which physical money, or at least the movement of it, is increasingly a relic. Financial companies are becoming tech companies, and money is digital (yes, economists, I know this is technically too simple).

Combine that with the changes in our ability to earn money through work, and the power imbalance already faced by the poor and working class becomes, well, really bad. Remember the railroad barons? This is going to make it seem like they were running ice cream trucks.

We need to rethink what a successful economy looks like. Because AI is going to give a few people not just a lot of money, but a lot of power — by scavenging the knowledge and work of the rest of us. It will take all of us to build successful AI, but the rewards will go to a handful.

So the idea of owning our data is not really about Vellozo’s company or if it accomplishes its goal.

It’s about creating a future in which individual power isn’t a thing of the past.

And where the coming changes benefit society, not just the corporate titans who would like us all to remain too confused to object.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Just like humans, AI can get ‘brain rot’ from low-quality text and the effects appear to linger, pre-print study says
The what happened: Trump empowers election deniers, still fixated on 2020 grievances
The L.A. Times special: Malibu residents flee as international buyers snap up burned-out lots

P.S. We’re continuing to look at the blatant (and frankly frightening) propaganda that Homeland Security is posting on its official social media. Case in point, this recruitment ad with … medieval knights? Not only is this image chock-full of Christian nationalism dog whistles, it’s aimed at the young men Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hoping to recruit with its edgelord/video game fanatasies that would turn legimate law enforcement efforts into a religious crusade against immigrants.

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Oct. 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing a decision in the case Louisiana vs. Callais that may guide how the Voting Rights Act is enforced.

The high court heard rearguments last week in the case over the Louisiana legislature’s redistricted congressional map. A decision may be weeks, if not months, away.

The legislature redrew its congressional map in 2024 to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new map included two districts where a majority of voters are Black out of six districts total.

Plaintiffs in Louisiana vs. Callais argue that the redrawn map violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because race was a guiding consideration in redistricting.

The Supreme Court has broadened the scope of this case with reargument under a supplemental question: Is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act constitutional?

The collision between these two pieces of doctrine, both intended to insure equality in political participation, raises a critical question about how race and representation should be approached, one that the court is now poised to answer.

“The court is signaling that there has to be some reconciliation that happens beyond the status quo,” Atiba Ellis, Laura B. Chisholm Distinguished Research Scholar and professor of law in the Case Western Reserve School of Law, told UPI. “It’s hard to predict exactly how far that will go.”

One goal, different approaches

Section 2 and the Equal Protection Clause may share an underlying purpose but they take different approaches to meeting that goal.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racial discrimination in election practices.

The extremes, according to Ellis, are that the court could determine Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional or it could reinterpret the test that it has long used in addressing concerns about race in redistricting cases.

Somewhere between the extremes is the court striking down the map at question but preserving Section 2.

“On the scale of possible solutions, it demonstrates that the court, informed by its colorblind jurisprudence that we saw in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard College, is wanting to further restrict if not all but abolish the use of race-conscious remedies in the elections context,” Ellis said.

Legal tests, cases

In the 2023 case Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled that using race as a factor in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause.

The test that guides Section 2 enforcement, referred to as the Gingles test, is the criteria required to prove vote dilution under Section 2. It is based on the court’s decision in the case Thornburg vs. Gingles in 1986.

The Gingles test is a “results test,” Ellis said.

“We simply look at a practice like redistricting in its context and the results that it has,” he said. “Thornburg v. Gingles basically created a roadmap for the inquiry. Then a court can make an inquiry within the totality of the circumstances, including the impact, the history, the background and determine whether that practice violates Section 2.”

Equal Protection Clause enforcement is guided in part by a precedent established in the case Shaw vs. Reno. This case in 1993 was over an oddly shaped majority-Black congressional district drawn in North Carolina.

The Supreme Court struck down this map, ruling that it violated the Equal Protection Clause because race was a predominant factor in its creation.

Unlike the Gingles test, the Shaw test is based on intent, according to Ellis.

“From the Shaw line to today, legislatures have had to basically walk this balance between not making race the predominant factor in redistricting — but you also can’t use race divisively by subsuming a minority group’s political power to the majority’s advantage,” Ellis said. “The former is what the Shaw line of precedent is out to do. The latter is what Section 2 does.”

“The problem, at least according to the Callais plaintiffs bringing the suit and other political entities that are supporting their position, is that these two precedents are inherently irreconcilable,” he continued.

John Cusick, assistant counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, serves as a member of the counsel in the Louisiana vs. Callais case arguing in defense of the Louisiana congressional map. He represents the appellants in the case Robinson vs. Landry, which was the impetus for Louisiana to redraw its congressional map.

Cusick told UPI that the case is part of a broader effort to limit race-conscious remedies to Civil Rights violations.

“What’s at stake in this case is that opponents are seeking to roll back progress while there is a simple truth that remains: that Black voters in Louisiana deserve the same fair and effective representation as many other communities throughout the country,” Cusick said. “So Louisianans have organized and legislated and litigated for the promise of a fair legislative map.”

“What’s consistent here is that decades of Supreme Court precedent make clear that districts created to remedy the type of racial discrimination against Black voters that’s at the heart of this case is clear and consistent and well-settled law,” he continued. “That Louisiana creating a first and second majority minority district is constitutional and not, per se, a racial gerrymander.”

Broader issue

Based on the Supreme Court precedents at play, Cusick believes Louisiana’s congressional map will be found to be permissible. However, the supplemental question over whether the constitutionality of Section 2 as a whole could send ripples across Civil Rights law.

“The Voting Rights Act is the crown jewel of Civil Rights legislation,” Cusick said. “It has the greatest effect on this country’s promise of full and equal citizenship for all Americans. We are seeing efforts throughout the country to attack many of the tools that Civil Rights legislatures have relied on, whether they are constitutional protections, whether they are statutory protections, that identify racial discrimination, that root it out and provide fair and effective remedies in doing so.”

Cusick adds that attempts to peel away Section 2 can also have effects beyond Civil Rights protections against racial discrimination. Protections for people based on gender identity and disability are also at risk.

“If the court is adhering to the supplemental question presented, this case shouldn’t have a broader impact on the Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2, let alone other areas of the law,” Cusick said. “While we’re hopeful of that, we’re not naive.”

SACRAMENTO — Some witty person long ago gave us this immortal line: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Humorist Will Rogers usually is credited — wrongly. Mark Twain, too, falsely.

The real author was Gideon J. Tucker, a former newspaper editor who founded the New York Daily News. He later became a state legislator and judge, and he crafted the comment in an 1866 court opinion.

Anyway, Californians are safe from further legislative harm for now. State lawmakers have gone home for the year after passing 917 bills. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 794 (87%) and vetoed 123 (13%).

I’m not aware of any person’s life being jeopardized. Well, maybe after the lawmakers and governor cut back Medi-Cal healthcare for undocumented immigrants to save money.

One could argue — and many interests did — that what the Legislature did to increase housing availability made some existing residential neighborhoods less safe from congestion and possible declining property values.

But kudos to the lawmakers and governor for enacting major housing legislation that should have been passed years ago.

Public pressure generated by unaffordable costs — both for homebuyers and renters — spurred the politicians into significant action to remove regulatory barriers and encourage much more development. The goal is to close the gap between short supply and high demand.

But legislative passage was achieved over stiff opposition from some cities — especially Los Angeles — that objected to loss of local control.

“It’s a touchy issue that affects zoning and is always going to be controversial,” says state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who finessed through a bill that will allow construction of residential high-rises up to nine stories near transit hubs such as light-rail and bus stations. The measure overrides local zoning ordinances.

Wiener had been trying unsuccessfully for eight years to get similar legislation passed. Finally, a fire was lit under legislators by their constituents.

“The public understands we’ve screwed ourselves by making it so hard to build homes,” Wiener says.

But to win support, he had to accept tons of exceptions. For example, the bill will affect only counties with at least 15 passenger rail stations. There are eight: Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Sacramento.

“Over time it will have a big effect, but it’s going to be gradual,” Wiener says.

Dan Dunmoyer, who heads the California Building Industry Assn., calls it “a positive step in the right direction.”

Yes, and that direction is up rather than sideways. California could accommodate a cherished ranch-house lifestyle when the population was only a third or half the nearly 40 million people it is today. But sprawling horizontally has become impossibly pricey for too many and also resulted in long smog-spewing commutes and risky encroachment into wildfire country.

Dozens of housing bills were passed and signed this year, ranging from minutia to major.

The Legislature continued to peck away at the much-abused California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Opponents of projects have used the act to block construction for reasons other than environmental protection. Local NIMBYs — ”Not in my backyard” — have resisted neighborhood growth. Businesses have tried to avoid competition. Unions have practiced “greenmail” by threatening lawsuits unless developers signed labor agreements.

Another Wiener bill narrowed CEQA requirements for commercial housing construction. It also exempted from CEQA a bunch of nonresidental projects, including health clinics, manufacturing facilities and child-care centers.

A bill by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) exempted most urban infill housing projects from CEQA.

You can’t argue that the Legislature wasn’t productive this year. But you can spar over whether some of the production was a mistake. Some bills were both good and bad. That’s the nature of compromise in a functioning democracy.

One example: The state’s complex cap-and-trade program was extended beyond 2030 to 2045. That’s probably a good thing. It’s funded by businesses buying permits to emit greenhouse gases and pays for lots of clean energy projects.

But a questionable major piece of that legislation — demanded by Newsom — was a 20-year, $1-billion annual commitment of cap-and-trade money for California’s disappointing bullet train project.

The project was sold to voters in 2008 as a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s $100 billion over budget and far behind its promised 2020 completion. No tracks have even been laid. The new infusion of cap-and-trade money will merely pay for the initial 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield, which the state vows to open by 2033. Hot darn!

Newsom muscled through the bill at the last moment. The Legislature should have taken more time to study the project’s future.

One gutsy thing Democratic legislators and the governor did — given that “oil,” among the left, has become the new hated pejorative sidekick of “tobacco” — was to permit production of 2,000 more wells annually in oil-rich Kern County.

It was part of a compromise: Drilling in federal offshore waters was made more difficult by tightening pipeline regulations.

Credit the persistent Sen. Shannon Grove, a conservative Republican from Bakersfield who is adept at working across the aisle.

“Kern County knows how to produce energy,” she told colleagues during the Senate floor debate, citing not only oil but wind, solar and battery storage. “We are the experts. We are not the enemy.”

But what mostly motivated Newsom and legislators was the threat of even higher gas prices as two large California oil refineries prepare to shut down. Most Democrats agreed that the politically smart move was to allow more oil production, even as the state attempts to transcend entirely to clean energy.

Let’s not forget the most important bill the Legislature annually passes: the state budget. This year’s totaled $325 billion and allegedly covered a $15-billion deficit through borrowing, a few cuts and numerous gimmicks.

Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek last week projected deficit spending of up to $25 billion annually for the next three years.

In California, no state bank account is safe when the Legislature is in session.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Sen. Scott Wiener to run for congressional seat held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi
California vs. Trump: Federal troops in San Francisco? Locals, leaders scoff at Trump’s plan
The L.A. Times Special: One of O.C.’s loudest pro-immigrant politicians is one of the unlikeliest

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Piastri had looked to be struggling compared with Norris since the start of practice and was a good chunk off the Briton in all three qualifying sessions.

Norris said: “Disappointed not to be on pole but not a surprise for us to be just a bit slower than the Red Bull lately.

“A little couple of bits here and there I could have improved on and caught a few bumps a little bit wrong, that’s the difficulty of this track. Otherwise, all happy.”

Piastri said: “A pretty scruffy lap. Just didn’t really get it together. In some ways, I feel a bit fortunate to be third. The pace in the car is good. It’s nothing major, just been a bit of a messy lap and hopefully I can tidy it up tomorrow.”

The sprint offers eight points for the winner down to one for eighth place.

The stand-out performance in qualifying came from Hulkenberg, the first time he has qualified in the top 10 all year, and the best Sauber performance of the season.

Their previous top grid position was seventh for team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto in Hungary at the start of August.

“Satisfied, happy, as you might imagine,” the German said. “P1 looked too good to be true. We weren’t sure if it was the real deal but we were able to continue that trend. Hopefully we can hang on to it this weekend.

“The pace was just there. The car seemed to be fast and in a good window, hit the sweet spot, I think that’s all.”

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s me, California columnist Anita Chabria, filling in for your usual host, Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner.

Andrea Grossman was a kid when her mother pulled her out of school to join the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, a nationwide day of peaceful protest. They held hands while her mom walked in a knit suit and ladylike shoes, joining more than 2 million people nationwide.

Grossman, now one of the organizers of the Beverly Hills segment of the “No Kings” marches being held in more than 2,000 cities this weekend, remembers that opponents of that long-ago protest threw stinky rat poison on the lawns in Exposition Park so participants couldn’t sit on the grass. But protesters were not deterred.

“It made it all the more rebellious of us to be there,” Grossman told me. “It made us more insistent that we had to be there.”

Today, that rat poison is being metaphorically hurled by MAGA leaders such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), in the form of noxious allegations that the No Kings marches are “Hate America” rallies staged for a “rabid base” of criminal agitators.

“It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out,” Johnson said on Fox News.

Of course, that is dumb and false. It would be all too easy to write off comments such as Johnson’s as partisan jibber-jabber, but his insidious words are the kind of poison that seeps into the soil and shouldn’t be ignored.

Participants in the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstrate in 1969 at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

(Clay Geerdes / Getty Images)

The ‘enemy within’

Johnson isn’t the only Republican working overtime to smear everyday folks such as Grossman. Talk about organized campaigns — Trumpites are all going after No Kings with the same script.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said: “These guys are playing to the most radical, small, and violent base in the country. You’ll see them on Saturday on the Mall. They just do not love this country.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has parroted similar messaging, and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), diving into old, antisemitic conspiracies, described the events as “a Soros paid-for protest,” adding that the National Guard would probably need to be activated.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi added her two cents, apparently confusing printed signs, the kind that say, a union or organizations such as Planned Parenthood or the ACLU, might have made up, with evidence of diabolical terrorist networks.

“You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match,” Bondi told Fox News. “They are organized and someone is funding it. We are going to get to the funding of antifa, we’re going to get to the root of antifa and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.”

Note to Bondi: Matching signs are not a conspiracy. Just ask Kinko’s.

But in her defense, it was a mere two weeks ago when President Trump addressed the leaders of the U.S. military at Quantico, Va. There, he warned that the use of military troops on American protesters was about to become reality, if he has any say in it.

“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump said.

That came on the heels of his executive order declaring antifa — a general descriptor for anyone who opposes fascism — as a terrorist organization.

So to recap: The president declares “antifa” a terrorist organization, warns military brass that they must be ready to defeat internal enemies, then MAGA Republicans begin to falsely claim No Kings rallies are full of “antifa.”

Andrea Grossman, second from left, with other activists in 2024 discussing efforts to protect a Beverly Hills abortion clinic.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Bad journalism

Grossman calls the idea that she is anti-American “preposterous.”

“We wouldn’t be out there spending our time and energy if we weren’t desperately worried for our country. Of course we love America,” she said.

Here’s where I eat my own: Media are failing miserably and unforgivably in covering this issue — this terrifying march to turn peaceful protest into a criminal offense. We shouldn’t be asking Grossman whether she hates America. We should be pushing Johnson and his ilk to defend his attack on people like her.

“We can both recognize that it’s ridiculous and also that it’s pretty sinister,” Leah Greenberg told me.

She’s the co-executive director of Indivisible, the organization behind the No Kings effort, and she’ll be at the D.C. event — the one Johnson specifically condemned. At the first No Kings rally in Philadelphia, her husband led more than 1,000 people in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, some real anti-American stuff.

“We have to see what is currently happening here, not only as Republicans desperately grasping for a message, but also of them creating a permission structure to, you know, invite a broader crackdown on peaceful dissent,” Greenberg warned.

I asked Grossman whether she felt personally at risk by taking on this organizing role at such a fraught moment, even in Beverly Hills, that hotbed of radicalism. At first, she said she didn’t. But when I asked her why not, she paused for a bit.

“We have to put ourselves out there and it takes risk sometimes,” she finally said. “I mean, I don’t consider myself a freedom fighter by any means. I consider myself a woman of a certain age, you know, who has to stand up and be loud and noisy.”

In her regular life, Grossman runs one of the preeminent literary salons in Los Angeles, drawing authors and luminaries including Rob Reiner, Rep. Jasmine Crockett and legal podcaster Joyce Vance. She was also one of the “abortion yentas” who last year fought a losing battle to protect a controversial abortion clinic in the neighborhood. So she knows risk and doesn’t shy away from it.

But this moment is different, because it’s not normal for a president to declare protests to be terrorism, or for legislators to deem them un-American. It is not normal to fear that the military will be used to silence us.

Which is why No Kings is so crucial to this moment.

It is a movement that seeks to draw the most normal, the most average, the most mild of people to highlight just how abnormal this government is. No flags are going to be burned (though that is a protected 1st Amendment right, no matter what Trump says). No Molotov cocktails will be tossed. Hamas is not invited.

Greenberg said that “anybody with eyes” can see who comes to a No Kings rally.

“You see veterans, you see members of faith communities. You see federal workers, dedicated public servants. You see parents and grandparents and kids all coming together in this joyous and defiant opposition,” she said.

Those are exactly the types that turned out in June, when somewhere between 3 million and 6 million people marched in what felt like a cross between a fall school carnival and a Fourth of July parade. People sauntered, they sat, they sang. But most of all, they showed up.

“If we’re going to be afraid and not say anything, then [they] win,” Grossman said. “The only way to stand up to oppression is to get out there in huge, great numbers.”

So like her mom, she’ll march and she’ll ignore the poison — and much to the dismay of MAGA, I suspect millions of others just like her will too.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Justices lean toward rejecting race in redistricting, likely boosting GOP in 2026
The what happened: Mike Johnson’s nightmare: Kevin Kiley is unhappy with the speaker and has nothing to lose
The L.A. Times special: USC finds itself in funding battle between Trump and Newsom over the campus’ future

P.S. This is another bit of propaganda from the Department of Homeland Security. “Remigrate” is a term often embraced by the far right that alludes to the forced deportation of immigrants, legal or not, especially those who are not of European origin.

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For this season, the cooling vests are optional, and some drivers, such as four-time world champion Max Verstappen, do not like them because they consider them uncomfortable and flawed.

Williams driver Alex Albon said it was a “polarising subject”, between “the old-school and new-school mentality”, but that the cooling vest was “a good thing”.

Referencing the Singapore Grand Prix on 5 October, he added: “As a team we’ve done a really good job with the cooling system. It works well on our car, it’s comfortable. The first 20 laps of the race I was actually cold rather than hot, which was definitely a new thing for me.

“In a weird way I think we see it as an advantage as a team because if we’ve got drivers that are fresher at the end of the race then surely that’s performance.”

But Albon said he did not know whether the system would be necessary in Austin this weekend.

“Humidity is always a struggling factor,” Albon said. “Getting your skin to breathe with all the fireproofs that we have on our car and all these kind of things.

“When it’s dry heat, and this doesn’t feel that humid out there at the moment, it’s relatively comfortable for us.”

Mercedes driver George Russell wore the vest when he won in Singapore in hot and humid conditions on 5 October.

If the driver chooses not to wear the vest, his car must carry 500 grams of ballast to compensate for the weight of the system so he does not gain a competitive advantage.

The system, which teams can make to their individual designs, typically features a liquid such as glycol pumped through a tank of dry ice and through the driver’s fireproof top.

Issues with the system include the dry ice running out. This leads to liquid at car temperature, which is hotter than ambient temperature, being pumped through the system.

Meta Platforms (META 0.52%) is no longer just a social media giant. It’s building one of the world’s largest AI infrastructures, recruiting elite talent, and embedding artificial intelligence into every layer of its ecosystem — from apps and ads to AR glasses.

While OpenAI and Google dominate the spotlight, Meta is quietly constructing the foundation to lead the next decade of AI development. Here’s how it plans to win.

Image source: Getty Images.

Building the backbone: A massive infrastructure bet

Meta’s AI ambitions rest on one of the biggest infrastructure buildouts in tech history. The company plans to spend $60 to 65 billion in capital expenditures this year, channeling much of that into data centers and custom AI hardware. By the end of 2025, Meta expects to operate over 1.3 million GPUs — a scale few companies can match.

This massive investment isn’t just brute force spending. It’s a strategic move to gain control. Meta is already testing its own AI chip, designed to reduce reliance on Nvidia and optimize training efficiency. Like Amazon‘s in-house silicon program, this initiative gives Meta tighter control over cost, performance, and innovation speed.

The company is also expanding a global network of data centers equipped with liquid cooling and energy-efficient designs. These facilities will train large language models such as LLaMA 3 and future generations while powering AI-driven features across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

For Meta, infrastructure is more than a resource — it’s a moat. Every improvement in computing efficiency compounds across billions of users and trillions of interactions. That scale gives Meta a self-reinforcing infrastructure advantage.

Investing in people

Technology changes fast, but exceptional people adapt and shape the future. Meta understands that better than most. Over the past year, the company has aggressively recruited top AI researchers and engineers from DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

In a bold move, Meta hired Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, to lead its new Superintelligence division. And that’s after investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI, the AI company Wang founded after dropping out of MIT. The hire signals Meta’s intent to compete not just in applied AI but in the broader race toward artificial general intelligence.

Zuckerberg’s philosophy is straightforward: world-class talent compounds like capital. So, it makes sense to spend heavily to acquire the best talent. This strategy is not new to Meta. Years ago, it paid a hefty sum ($16 billion) to acquire WhatsApp early on — mainly for the talent and technology.

While such a strategy does not guarantee an outcome, it has its advantages, particularly in securing the best talents — while eliminating a potential future competitor. That’s precisely what Meta did with its WhatsApp deal, and the learnings from the WhatsApp acquisition helped fuel the development of Messenger, Meta’s own messaging app.

Integration: Hardware, software, and ecosystem

Meta’s most significant edge lies in integration — uniting infrastructure, talent, and products under one ecosystem. The company’s open-source large language model, LLaMA, already powers its AI-driven functions such as real-time translation and intelligent assistants across Messenger and WhatsApp. Each deployment brings new data, which strengthens the next generation of models.

But Meta isn’t stopping at software. Its Reality Labs division is bringing AI into the physical world through devices like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which include conversational assistance, translation, and image recognition. Zuckerberg envisions a future where AI becomes ambient — invisible, intuitive, and always available.

Over time, Meta’s ecosystem could span everything from LLaMA models running on powerful clusters to lightweight AI running directly on AR glasses or smartphones. With more than 3 billion users, Meta holds an enormous testing ground for refining these systems at scale.

What does it mean for investors?

Meta’s AI strategy isn’t about racing to release the flashiest model. It’s about building the foundation of the next computing era. By investing heavily in hardware, empowering world-class talent, and integrating AI into every layer of its ecosystem, Meta aims to become the operating system of the AI age.

Execution remains the real test. Building trillion-parameter models and next-generation chips is one challenge; translating them into durable products is another. But Meta has a history of thriving when it builds patiently, at scale, and in plain sight. And that’s precisely what it’s doing right now.

Investors looking to invest in AI companies should keep the stock on watch.

Kilian Jornet, one of the world’s most accomplished mountaineers, did something this month that left even other elite athletes gasping: He climbed all 72 summits in the contiguous United States that stand over 14,000 feet tall.

In 31 days.

That’s like climbing California’s Mt. Whitney — the nation’s tallest mountain outside of Alaska — two-and-a-half times per day, every day, for a month.

But reaching so many summits, so quickly, was only half the battle. In fact, it was “the fun part,” a surprisingly rested-looking Jornet said in a Zoom interview from Seattle earlier this month, three days after summiting Mt. Rainier in knee-deep snow to complete the grueling journey, which he started in early September.

The hard part was negotiating the spaces in between.

Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet treks through the Sierra Nevada range known as the Normans 13, which connects 13 summits over 14,000 feet.

(Andy Cochrane)

“If you’re driving, you see the landscape,” Jornet explained. “But you don’t feel it.”

OK, how do you feel it?

By running the hundreds of miles of remote mountain ridges, and biking the thousands of miles of desolate highway, that separate the towering summits scattered across Colorado, California and Washington.

In total, Jornet covered 3,198 miles under his own power. He biked 2,568 miles. He ran 629 miles. He climbed 403,638 vertical feet.

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Tommy Caldwell, arguably the best technical rock climber of his generation and the first to climb Yosemite’s nearly impossible Dawn Wall, followed Jornet’s progress on Instagram. When the Spaniard finished, Caldwell posted, “my mind is officially blown.”

Like many elite climbers, Jornet, 37, slips into a stoic, been-there-done-that voice when describing mountain conditions that would terrify mere mortals. But he broke character, briefly, talking about climbing the summit of Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

As often happens on that free-standing volcano, a howling gale struck just as Jornet approached the 14,162-foot summit.

Shaky video shot by a climbing partner shows Jornet’s trekking poles flailing and his feet sliding around on the ice as he struggles — and fails — to remain upright in what sounds like a hurricane.

“It was crazy,” he conceded, “probably the windiest day I have ever had in the mountains.”

Asked why, exactly, he puts himself through so much agony, he snapped back into aw-shucks mode. He sank into his comfy seat, smiled with the confidence of a man who has parried that question a thousand times, and said:

“Why not?”

Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet climbed 72 summits over 14,000 feet in the contiguous U.S. in 31 days.

(Nick Danielson)

In an age saturated with professional outdoor athletes competing for social media attention and lucrative sponsorships — and in a world where the most iconic summits have been climbed, the biggest waves have been surfed and the wildest rivers have been run — one fashionable way to stand out is by setting a fastest known time, or “FKT.”

Jornet’s jaunt over and between those 72 summits, which he dubbed “States of Elevation” and gorgeously documented for his 1.8 million followers on Instagram, was, by all accounts, the fastest known time. It was also the only known time. Apparently, nobody else has tried to link all of those summits together in a single, human-powered push.

“Yes, it’s hard,” Jornet said with a laugh when asked if the constant, grinding pain was worth it. But after a while, “you get used to the discomfort, it’s just part of it, it doesn’t really bother you.”

The finale of Jornet’s 72-peak feat was a 14,441-foot volcano covered with glaciers, one of the broadest and most visually imposing mountains on the planet. Few people even attempt to climb Mt. Rainier this time of year because the weather can be so brutal.

As Jornet pedaled closer to the peak, it started to rain down in the flats, so he knew that meant snow on the mountain.

Crossing the glaciers with their immense, yawning crevasses hidden by fresh snow would have been too dangerous, so Jornet chose a steep and challenging rock route known as Success Cleaver. But even that was buried in knee-deep snow.

After summiting Mt. Rainier, Jornet posted that his U.S. journey was, “never about just the numbers, but rather a deep connection to wild places, and true test of resilience in body and mind.”

Anyone else claiming that might have been met with eye rolls, but Jornet is one of the few outdoor athletes who probably doesn’t need to pad his resume: He cemented his legacy as one of the all-time greats long ago.

Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet hikes in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado in September.

(Nick Danielson)

Born just outside of Barcelona in 1987, he grew up in a ski area in the Pyrenees where his father was a mountain guide. He climbed his first mountain over 10,000 feet when he was 5.

At 20, he won the first of six titles in the Sky Runner World Series, an international competition consisting of long, high-altitude foot races that test speed and endurance on steep mountainsides.

At 26, he set FKTs for climbing Switzerland’s Matterhorn and France’s Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Western Europe. A year later, he broke the speed record climbing the bitterly cold and deadly Denali, in Alaska, the tallest mountain in North America.

A few years after that, he climbed Mt. Everest twice in one week without supplemental oxygen.

In addition to all of the technical mountaineering, Jornet has been one of the most successful ultramarathoners in history, winning the prestigious Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, a 100-mile race through the Alps, four times.

After his early career dominating distance races in relatively cold climates, Jornet showed up at Northern California’s Western States ultramarathon in 2010. It’s a 100-mile race that starts near the shore of Lake Tahoe and descends to the Sacramento suburbs in late June, when the sun and temperatures can be unforgiving.

He was comically unprepared. “I didn’t do any heat training,” Jornet recalled, “so when I arrived I was like, ‘Should I have brought water for this race?’” Still, he came in third, then returned the next year to win.

In June, he went back to the Western States 100 for the first time in 14 years. The event has evolved since then: The field is fitter and more professional. But even at his relatively advanced age, Jornet came in third, dropping more than an hour off his winning time in 2011.

Back then, he relied mostly on raw talent, Jornet said. “I train much better now, I know I need to prepare specifically and put in the work.”

But does he ever just kick back and spend a weekend sprawled on the couch, a remote in one hand and a bowl of ice cream in the other?

“For me, that’s not relaxing,” he said, recalling the time he and his wife, Emelie Forsberg, also a world champion runner and skier, tried to take a normal vacation.

They had just completed a race on Reunion Island, off the coast of Madagascar, when they decided to spend a week on the nearby tropical island of Mauritius.

“We said we’d just sit on the beach and read books, and that’s all,” Jornet said. But by the end of the first day they looked at each other and wondered if they should change their flight to get back to running and skiing in the mountains. “It was like, yes, yes, yes for both of us,” Jornet said.

Spanish mountaineer Kilian Jornet in the Sierra Nevada range known as the Normans 13, which connects 13 summits over 14,000 feet.

(Andy Cochrane)

After years living in Chamonix, France, a hard-partying resort in the Alps regarded as the mountain sports capital of the world, Jornet and Forsberg moved to a house by a remote fjord in Norway. It’s a quiet place to raise their three young children, grow their own vegetables and train in the surrounding mountains, some of which have no names.

“Sometimes when you’re climbing Everest, or Mont Blanc, or Mt. Whitney, it’s like you’re climbing the famous name,” Jornet said. As he matures, he prefers climbing mountains simply “because they’re beautiful.”

But he still craves big challenges.

Last year, he climbed all 82 summits in the Alps over 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) in 19 days, traveling the 750 miles between them on foot and bicycle.

“This was, without any doubt, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life, mentally, physically, and technically,” he wrote on social media. “But also maybe the most beautiful.”

That got him thinking even bigger, trying to imagine the most “aesthetic line” for a similar expedition in the United States.

After landing in Denver last month, he went straight to the trailhead for 14,256-foot Longs Peak. “But I really felt like crap,” he said, blaming a combination of jet lag and the air being so much drier in Colorado than in Norway.

For the first week, he wondered if he should just quit. But then, somewhere along the way, his body switched, “from fighting to adapting,” and he settled into a comfortable rhythm.

After summiting 56 mountains in Colorado, Jornet hopped on his bike and pedaled 900 miles to California, where 15 more high peaks awaited. At times, the headwind was so brutal he slowed to a maddening crawl, even when going downhill.

He’d also lost 10 pounds in the mountains and, at 5’7” and about 130 pounds, his slender frame has nothing to spare. So he spent much of his time on the bike shoveling calories — even spiking his water bottles with generous helpings of olive oil — to replace lost fat.

His long slog on the bike ended in Lone Pine, a dusty town four hours north of Los Angeles, where the Eastern Sierra rise 10,000 feet, like a solid granite wall, from the desert floor.

Jornet had covered nearly 200 miles that day, and faced a 6,000-foot climb to the Cottonwood Lakes trailhead, where he would sleep before starting the toughest part of the whole trip.

The road up to Cottonwood Lakes is 23 miles of harrowing switchbacks, with vertigo-inducing views of the valley below at almost every turn. The drive, alone, freaks out a lot of people.

“It was cool that I arrived there in the dark,” Jornet said, undaunted by the prospect of pedaling off the side of a cliff. “Nice to do the climb when it wasn’t so hot.”

The next morning he started running “Norman’s 13” — a baker’s dozen of 14,000-foot summits along the Sierra Crest between Lone Pine and Bishop, the most remote and punishing alpine terrain in California. He made astonishing time: cruising over 14,032-foot Mt. Langley and 14,505-froot Mt. Whitney like they were speed bumps.

But for all their imposing altitude, the standard routes up Langley and Whitney don’t require any special skills, they’re just long hiking trails with very little exposure to deadly falls. Things changed when Jornet reached a section called the Palisades Traverse, just up the hill from Big Pine.

There, a ridge of jagged granite rises like an upside down saw’s blade over one of the last remaining glaciers in California. There are no hiking trails, just daunting towers of shattered and jumbled rock, where seemingly any misstep can lead to a thousand-foot fall.

Only the most committed mountaineers go there, and they tend to take their time, waiting for good weather and climbing with ropes and harnesses.

But when you’re on a mission like Jornet’s, you don’t get to “choose your weather,” he said. You just start and then you’re committed, you have to take what comes.

What came the day he reached the traverse was a surprising, early-season blizzard. It covered the usually reliable, grippy granite with about 4 inches of snow and ice. The storm made climbing “more complicated,” Jornet said, and more miserable.

It was cold and “I was completely soaked,” Jornet said. But with the help of Matt Cornell, a well-known climber from Bishop, he was able to keep going and finish the 100 miles of Norman’s 13 in 56 hours, shaving more than 19 hours off the previous record.

He only slept once during that span, he said, for about an hour and a half, lying in the middle of a trail.

When speed climbing over peaks, Jornet traveled light, carrying only the bare essentials to stay nourished and protected from the weather.

When possible, he was accompanied by photographers and videographers, most of whom had to be exceptional athletes to keep up.

He also stayed in contact with his press team and social media producers, and he sometimes slept in a support RV at the trailheads.

But after the frigid Palisades Traverse he indulged in a bit of luxury, pizza and a glorious night in a hotel bed in Bishop. The next morning, he hiked 14,252-foot White Mountain and then hopped on the bike for the 500-mile ride to the unexpected ordeal that awaited him on Mt. Shasta.

Having survived that with no serious damage, he biked through Oregon, finally with a tailwind, and then surmounted Mt. Rainier.

When he finally descended, instead of popping champagne in front of cameras and an adoring crowd, he and a few close friends spent a quiet night in an RV, swapping stories from the road and sharing shots of pickle juice — an inside joke that started somewhere during the trip.

“I’m not a big celebration guy,” Jornet explained.

He wouldn’t say what his next project will be, but several times he returned to the idea of climbing without crowds or fanfare.

“I do these things because I love them, because they bring me joy and happiness, not because I think they’re very important.”

One place he can sit quietly is at home in Norway, looking out the window, across the fjord to the nameless, snowcapped mountains in the distance.

He lets his eyes linger on their faces, settling on pretty lines to climb up or ski down.