senate bill

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a plan to offer $11 insulin pens through the state’s pharmaceutical venture.

Beginning Jan. 1, consumers can purchase a five-pack of pens for a suggested price of $55, according to the governor’s office. The packs will be available to California pharmacies for $45.

California is the first state in the nation to sell its own brand of generic prescription drugs as Newsom and other state leaders seek ways to drive down rising healthcare costs.

Insulin users without health insurance today can pay $400 for a small vial.

Newsom, in a statement Thursday, said that Californians shouldn’t “ration insulin or go into debt to stay alive.”

“California didn’t wait for the pharmaceutical industry to do the right thing — we took matters into our own hands,” Newsom said.

Officials hope the drug will lower costs across the board, not just for the consumers ultimately picking up the drug. Major drug companies have also cut prices on insulin, but critics contend those cost savings are passed on to other consumers.

Earlier this week, Newsom signed legislation, Senate Bill 40, capping insulin co-pays at $35 for the first time in California.

“This law ensures no family will be forced to choose between buying insulin and putting food on the table in California again,” the bill’s author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), said in a statement.

Newsom, who vowed to be the “healthcare governor” during his campaign, in 2020 unveiled a proposal for California to make its own line of generic drugs.

Three years later, he announced a $50-million contract with the nonprofit generic drugmaker Civica to produce insulin under the state’s own label.

Earlier this year, the state began selling Naloxone, a medication that blocks the effects of opioids, at below market prices.

In response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that have roiled Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed a package of bills aimed at protecting immigrants in schools, hospitals and other areas targeted by federal agents.

Speaking at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in Los Angeles, Newsom said President Trump had turned the country into a “dystopian sci-fi movie” with scenes of masked agents hustling immigrants without legal status into unmarked cars.

“We’re not North Korea,” Newsom said.

Newsom framed the pieces of legislation as pushback against what he called the “secret police” of Trump and Stephen Miller, the White House advisor who has driven the second Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement in Democrat-led cities.

SB 98, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), will require school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Assembly Bill 49, drafted by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Rolling Hills Estates), will bar immigration agents from nonpublic areas of a school without a judicial warrant or court order. It will also prohibit school districts from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant.

Sen. Jesse Arreguín’s (D-Berkeley) Senate Bill 81 will prohibit healthcare officials from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace — or giving access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics — to immigration authorities without a search warrant or court order.

Senate Bill 627 by Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) targets masked federal immigration officers who began detaining migrants at Home Depots and car washes in California earlier this year.

Wiener has said the presence of anonymous, masked officers marks a turn toward authoritarianism and erodes trust between law enforcement and citizens. The law would apply to local and federal officers, but for reasons that Weiner hasn’t publicly explained, it would exempt state police such as California Highway Patrol officers.

Trump’s immigration leaders argue that masks are necessary to protect the identities and safety of immigration officers. The Department of Homeland Security on Monday called on Newsom to veto Wiener’s legislation, which will almost certainly be challenged by the federal government.

“Sen. Scott Wiener’s legislation banning our federal law enforcement from wearing masks and his rhetoric comparing them to ‘secret police’ — likening them to the gestapo — is despicable,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

The package of bills has already caused friction between state and federal officials. Hours before signing the bills, Newsom’s office wrote on X that “Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.”

Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, fired back on X accusing the governor of threatening Noem.

“We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials,” Essayli wrote in response, adding he’d requested a “full threat assessment” by the U.S. Secret Service.

The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether California could enforce legislation aimed at federal immigration officials.

Essayli noted in another statement on X that California has no jurisdiction over the federal government and he’s directed federal agencies not to change their operations.

“If Newsom wants to regulate our agents, he must go through Congress,” he wrote.

California has failed to block federal officers from arresting immigrants based on their appearance, language and location. An appellate court paused the raids, which California officials alleged were clear examples of racial profiling, but the U.S. Supreme Court overrode the decision and allowed the detentions to resume.

During the news conference on Saturday, Newsom pointed to an arrest made last month when immigration officers appeared in Little Tokyo while the governor was announcing a campaign for new congressional districts. Masked agents showed up to intimidate people who attended the event, Newsom said, but they also arrested an undocumented man who happened to be delivering strawberries nearby.

“That’s Trump’s America,” Newsom said.

Other states are also looking at similar measures to unmask federal agents. Connecticut on Tuesday banned law enforcement officers from wearing masks inside state courthouses unless medically necessary, according to news reports.

Newsom on Saturday also signed Senate Bill 805, a measure by Pérez that targets immigration officers who are in plainclothes but don’t identify themselves.

The law requires law enforcement officers in plainclothes to display their agency, as well as either a badge number or name, with some exemptions.

“Ensuring that officers are clearly identified, while providing sensible exceptions, helps protect both the public and law enforcement personnel,” said Jason P. Houser, a former DHS official who supported the bills signed by Newsom.

After a tense and sharply divided debate Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to oppose a state bill that aims to vastly expand high-density housing near public transit hubs, arguing that the state should leave important planning decisions to local legislators.

The council voted 8 to 5 to oppose Senate Bill 79, which seeks to mitigate the state’s housing shortage by allowing buildings of up to nine stories near certain train stops and slightly smaller buildings near some bus stops throughout California.

“A one-size-fits-all mandate from Sacramento is not safe, and it’s not responsible,” said City Councilmember Traci Park at a news conference before the vote.

Park, who was joined at the news conference by Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and John Lee, said the bill was an attempt by its sponsor, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), and other state legislators to “hijack” local planning from the city.

Lee, who authored the resolution opposing the bill, called it “not planning” but “chaos.”

Wiener lamented the City Council’s vote.

“Opponents of SB 79 are offering no real solutions to address our housing shortage at the scale needed to make housing more affordable,” Wiener said in a statement. “California’s affordability crisis threatens our economy, our diversity, and our fundamental strength as a state.”

In addition to creating more affordable housing, the bill would increase public transit ridership, reduce traffic and help the state meet its climate goals, he said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who voted against opposing the bill, said the city’s housing crisis is so dire that the council needs to work with the drafters of the bill — even if there are elements of it they do not support.

“Overall, we talk a lot about our housing crisis on this body, but our actions have not met the moment,” she said. “If I thought that this body was acting in good faith to address our housing crisis, I would support this [resolution].”

The bill, which passed the Senate and is before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, would allow heights of nine stories near major transit hubs, such as certain Metro train stops in L.A. A quarter-mile from a stop, buildings could be seven stories tall, and a half-mile from a stop, they could be six stories. Single-family neighborhoods within a half-mile of transit stops would be included in the new zoning rules.

Near smaller transit stops, such as light rail or bus rapid transit, the allowed heights would be slightly lower.

Next week, the Appropriations Committee will determine whether the bill goes to the Assembly floor for a vote. If passed in both chambers, the bill would go to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign by mid-October.

The City Council’s resolution opposing the bill has no binding effect on the state Legislature but gives the council a platform to potentially lobby in Sacramento against its passage. The resolution also called for the city to be exempt from the bill because it has a state-approved housing plan.

“If they hadn’t taken a position on this, the state Legislature would say, ‘Well, the city of L.A. doesn’t care,’” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former City Council member and now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Mayor Karen Bass has not yet taken a position on the bill. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto came out against it in May, arguing that it would cost the city billions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure such as sewage and electrical systems to handle an influx of residents in previously low-density neighborhoods.

Wiener’s office said the bill allows for cities to exempt some properties near transit hubs if they meet density guidelines.

This year, the City Council passed the Citywide Housing Incentive Program, which provides incentives for developers to build market-rate and affordable units and aims to boost building along commercial corridors and in dense residential neighborhoods.

The council passed the ordinance, which left single-family zones largely untouched after pushback from homeowners groups, a week before a state deadline for the city to have a housing plan in place. As part of the plan, the city was required to find land where an additional 255,000 homes could be built.

This week, reality TV show star Spencer Pratt posted multiple videos on social media savaging a proposed state bill on wildfire rebuilding. In one, Pratt told his 2 million TikTok followers that he consulted an artificial intelligence engine about Senate Bill 549. He said it told him the legislation would allow L.A. County to buy burned-out lots in Pacific Palisades and convert them to low-income housing, strip away local zoning decisions and push dense reconstruction. He urged people to oppose it.

“I don’t even think this is political,” Pratt said. “This is a common sense post.”

None of what Pratt said is in the bill. But over the last week, such misinformation-fueled furor has overwhelmed the conversation in Los Angeles, at the state Capitol and on social media about wildfire recovery. Posts have preyed on fears of neighborhood change, mistrust of government authorities and prejudice against low-income housing to assert, among other things, that the wildfires were set intentionally to raze the Palisades and replace the community with affordable housing.

The chatter has unmoored debate over a major rebuilding proposal from L.A. County leaders. Under the plan, a new local authority would be able to buy burned lots, rebuild homes and offer them back at discounted rates to the original owners. The idea is to give property owners struggling to rebuild another option to stay in their communities. There are no changes to any rules that require zoning amendments or approvals for individual housing developments.

State Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), the author of SB 549, which creates the local authority, said he understands legitimate policy disagreements over the new powers granted in the bill.

But those discussions have been overshadowed, he said.

“It’s become this total meme among the right-wing blogosphere and, unfortunately, picked up by some lazy-ass journalists that don’t bother to read the bill that say this bill seeks to turn the entire Palisades into low-income housing,” Allen said.

Some of his own friends who lost homes in the Palisades, Allen said, have been texting him asking why he’s trying to force low-income housing into the neighborhood.

“People are saying I want to put a train line in there,” Allen said. “It’s insane.”

The frenzy, in part, is due to an issue of timing. Last month, a 20-member expert commission impaneled by L.A. County proposed the local authority as a key recommendation for rebuilding after January’s Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 18,000 homes and other properties.

Commission leaders then approached Allen about writing a bill that would allow for its implementation. Allen wanted to do it, but deadlines for introducing new legislation had long passed.

Instead, Allen took SB 549, which had nothing to do with wildfire rebuilding but was still alive in the Legislature, and added the rebuilding authority language to it. This is a common legislative procedure used when putting forward ideas late in the year.

Allen decided as well to keep the original language in the bill, which called for significant spending on low-income housing in an unrelated financing program. Multiple news articles conflated the two portions of the bill, which added to the alarm.

The version of SB 549 with the wildfire rebuilding authority in it had its first hearing in a legislative committee on Wednesday. Allen spent much of the hearing acknowledging the confusion around it.

Misinformation over the rebuilding authority was fueled by a separate announcement California Gov. Gavin Newsom made this month.

State housing officials carved out $101 million from long-planned funding allocations for low-income housing and dedicated it to building new developments in Los Angeles.

The money will be used to subsidize low-income apartment buildings throughout the county with priority given to projects proposed in and around burn zones, that are willing to reserve a portion to fire survivors and are close to breaking ground.

The fires exacerbated the region’s housing crisis. Higher rents persist in nearby neighborhoods and low-income residents continue to struggle. Newsom cast the announcement as assisting them in regaining their footing.

“Thousands of families — from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu — are still displaced and we owe it to them to help,” Newsom said when unveiling the spending.

Like the proposed rebuilding authority, the funding does not change any zoning or other land-use rules. Any developer who receives the dollars would need separate governmental approval to begin construction.

Nevertheless, social media posters took the new money and the proposed new authority and saw a conspiracy.

“Burn it. Buy it. Rebuild it how they want,” said a July 15 post from X user @HustleBitch_, who has nearly 124,000 followers. “Still think this wasn’t planned?

Newsom called the situation another example of “opportunists exploit[ing] this tragedy to stoke fear — and pit communities against each other.”

“Let’s be clear: The state is not taking away anyone’s property, instituting some sort of mass rezoning or destroying the quality and character of destroyed neighborhoods. Period,” Newsom said in a statement to The Times. “Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or deliberately lying. That’s not just wrong — it’s disgraceful.”

Not all of the debate about the rebuilding authority is based on false information.

Allen and local leaders acknowledged the need for more consensus over its role, especially given the sensitivities around recovery. Still unresolved were the authority’s governing structure, and whether it would encompass the Palisades or be limited to Altadena and other unincorporated areas.

Pratt lost his Palisades home in the fire and has sued the city, alleging it failed to maintain an adequate water supply and other infrastructure. In social media videos this week, Pratt said he and other residents didn’t trust the county with increased power over rebuilding when he believed leaders failed to protect the neighborhood in the first place.

“We’re a fire-stricken community, not a policy sandbox,” Pratt said. “We do not support the county becoming a dominant landowner in the Palisades.”

Representatives for Pratt could not be reached for comment.

By the end of Wednesday, Allen conceded defeat on SB 549. There were many legitimate hurdles to the bill passing before the Legislature adjourns in mid-September, he said. Notably, a representative for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told the legislative committee that she was opposed to the bill because the city had yet to be convinced of its efficacy.

But the misinformation surrounding the bill made it even harder to envision its success, he said. Allen decided to hold the bill and have it reconsidered when the Legislature convenes again in January.

“If we’re going to do this, I want the time to do it right,” he said.

A coalition of press rights organizations is seeking a court order to stop the “continuing abuse” of journalists by the Los Angeles Police Department during protests over President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The federal lawsuit, filed Monday by the Los Angeles Press Club and investigative reporting network Status Coup, seeks to “force the LAPD to respect the constitutional and statutory rights of journalists engaged in reporting on these protests and inevitable protests to come.”

The suit cites multiple instances of officers firing foam projectiles at members of the media and otherwise flouting state laws that restrict the use of so-called less-lethal weapons in crowd control situations and protect journalists covering the unrest. Those measures were passed in the wake of the 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis when journalists were detained and injured by the LAPD while covering the unrest.

The recent suit filed in the Central District of California describes journalists being shot with less-lethal police rounds, tear-gassed and detained without cause.

Carol Sobel, a longtime civil rights attorney who represents the plaintiffs, said LAPD officers have also been blocking journalists from areas where they had a right to be, in violation of the department’s own rules and Senate Bill 98, a state law that prohibits law enforcement from interfering with or obstructing journalists from covering such events.

“You have people holding up their press credentials saying, ‘I’m press,’ and they still got shot,” she said. “The Legislature spent all this time limiting how use of force can occur in a crowd control situation, and they just all ignored it.

Apart from journalists, scores of protesters allege LAPD projectiles left them with severe bruises, lacerations and serious injuries.

The Police Department said Monday that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. A message for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, which represents the LAPD in most civil suits, went unreturned.

Sobel filed a similar action in the wake of the LAPD’s response to the 2020 protests on behalf of Black Lives Matter-L.A. and others who contended that LAPD caused scores of injuries by firing hard-foam projectiles. A federal judge later issued an injunction restricting the department’s use of 40-millimeter and 37-millimeter hard-foam projectile launchers to officers who are properly trained to use them.

Under the restrictions, which remain in place with the court case pending, police can target individuals with 40-millimeter rounds “only when the officer reasonably believes that a suspect is violently resisting arrest or poses an immediate threat of violence or physical harm.” Officers are also barred from targeting people in the head, torso and groin areas.

The city has paid out millions of dollars in settlements and jury awards related to lawsuits brought by reporters and demonstrators in 2020 who were injured.

On Monday, the LAPD announced an internal review of a June 10 incident in which a 30-year-old man suffered a broken finger during a confrontation with officers of the vaunted Metropolitan Division.

According to the department’s account, the Metro officers had been deployed to contend with an “unruly” crowd on Alameda Street and Temple Street and said that Daniel Robert Bill and several other demonstrators refused to leave the area and instead challenged officers. During a confrontation, several officers swung their batons and fired less-lethal munitions at Bill “to no effect” and then “used a team takedown” before arresting him.

After his arrest, Bill was taken to an area hospital, where he underwent surgery to repair a broken finger on his left hand.

The department’s Force Investigation Division will review the case, as it does all incidents in which someone is seriously injured or killed while in policy custody.

Department leaders have in the past argued that officers need less-lethal weapons to restore order, particularly when faced with large crowds with individuals throwing bottles and rocks.

The department’s handling of the recent protests is expected to be addressed at Tuesday’s meeting of the LAPD Police Commission, the department’s civilian policy-making body. The body reviewed complaints of excessive force against the department stemming from the 2020 protests but has not staked a public position about the continued use of the 40-millimeter projectiles and other crowd control measures.

SACRAMENTO — California’s state Democrats are shaking up leadership, with the Senate Democratic Caucus pledging unanimous support to Sen. Monique Limón (D-Goleta), who will take over as Senate president pro tem in early 2026.

Limón, who was elected to the state Senate in 2020, is chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus and the Senate banking committee. The 45-year-old Central Coast native served in the Assembly for four years before her Senate campaign and worked in higher education at UC Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara County School Board before entering politics.

She highlighted the importance of the moment, noting that the caucus, amid ICE raids led by the Trump administration targeting minorities in Los Angeles and across the state, elected her — the first woman of color to hold the position.

The uncertain times, she said, were “a reminder of why leadership today, tomorrow and in the future matters, because leadership thinks about and influences the direction in all moments, but, in particular, in these very challenging moments. And for me, it is unbelievably humbling to be here.”

Recently, Limón has been vocal on the Sable Offshore Pipeline project, which aims to repair and reopen a pipeline off the coast of Santa Barbara County that spilled 21,000 gallons of crude oil in 2015. This year she wrote a measure, Senate Bill 542, in response to the project that would require more community input on reopening pipelines and better safety guidelines to find weak points that could lead to another spill.

“No one has fought harder to make college more affordable than Monique Limón,” said current Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), who also applauded her work on wildfire recovery. “She is a tireless voice for the Central Coast in rural parts of this great state.”

McGuire took leadership of the Senate in a unanimous vote by Democrats with former speaker and gubernatorial candidate Toni Atkins’ blessing in February. He pledged to protect the state’s progressive ideals ahead of a problematic state budget that continued to bubble over, with the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress supporting cuts in federal aid to the state for heathcare for low-income Californians, education and research and other essential programs.

The Sonoma County Democrat’s takeover was part of a wider change — both legislative houses were led by lawmakers from Northern California this year, leaving Southern California legislators with limited control. Limón’s district covers Santa Barbara County and parts of Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties.

McGuire terms out of office next year and may be planning a run for insurance commissioner in 2026 but wouldn’t confirm his plans despite collecting more than $220,000 in contributions so far this year.