At a time when many a Californian’s thoughts turn to decking halls with boughs of holly, the Golden State’s elected leaders seem more interested in hollow gestures.
Those include an event that prompts an annual rant of mine: next week’s unveiling of the latest class of inductees to the California Hall of Fame, as chosen by Governor Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
The hollowness: This year’s class (actually, it’s the year’s second round of inductees) is dedicated solely to deceased women described as “trailblazers in athletics, civil rights, culinary arts, entertainment, and more.”
Not only is that gimmicky (and troubling, as greatness shouldn’t be defined by identity politics), but it yet again leaves the history of a fabled state at the mercy of the First Couple and their decidedly upscale lifestyle and progressive bent to decide which Californians should be immortalized. One example: Helene An, an exemplar of an inspirational immigrant story but also the so-called “Mother of Fusion Cuisine” whose restaurant fare isn’t the stuff of middle-class budgets (one reviewer likens her success to “selling garlic noodles to the rich and famous”).
Then again, what Chef An creates is a treat for the senses. Whereas this month’s special legislative session in Sacramento leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.
About that call to action: The ball started rolling two days after the November election, when the governor issued a proclamation convening the legislature to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration,” according to a gubernatorial press release, which added: “The special session will focus on bolstering California legal resources to protect civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate action, and immigrant families.”
When the legislature actually convened on December 2, the signature item was a Newsom proposal to give California’s Department of Justice and state agencies an extra $25 million “to defend California from unconstitutional federal overreach, challenge illegal federal actions in court, and take administrative actions to reduce potential harm.” (Apparently, the state’s DoJ is in such dire financial straits that it can’t find a spare $25 million in its $1.3 billion annual budget to protect the Golden State from an onslaught of MAGA-brand vengeance.)
So why is this a “hollow” gesture?
For three reasons.
First, the rush to “lawyer up” against Trump doesn’t jibe with the calendar. California’s legislature convenes on January 6 of next year to begin its biennial session—two weeks before Trump takes office. Did lawmakers really need to meet under unusual circumstances just to write a check to a governmental body, an act that easily could be settled during early to mid-January?
Second, if the idea of “Trump-proofing” California is so chock-full of virtue and urgency, why didn’t other progressive states follow the Golden State’s lead?
New York State considered a special legislative session, with Albany choosing not to emulate Sacramento. In one Empire State legislator’s words: “We will be in session starting in January through June, so we will have plenty of time to deal with things as they arise then.”
The same wait-and-see approach applies to New York’s neighbor to the northeast, Vermont. Yes, bucolic Vermont has a population about one-sixtieth that of California, with California having maybe 60 times more fiscal and societal problems. Then again, Vermont was more anti-Trump than was California in last month’s election (Kamala Harris receiving 63.8% support in Vermont vs. 58.8% in California), and it returned a self-described Democratic Socialist to the US Senate. Still, the land of Ben & Jerry’s (makers of the anti-Trump “Pecan Resist,” released back in 2018) chose not to lawyer up.
But perhaps the most compelling reason why California’s legislative special session rings hollow: It honors neither the spirit of the law nor the Golden State’s most pressing concerns.
While California’s state constituton entitles the governor to call for special sessions “on extraordinary occasions,” it’s up to the chief executive to decide what truly is “extraordinary”—i.e., matters that simply can’t wait.
A good example of doing this the right way: a pair of special sessions requested nearly 30 years by my former boss, then-Governor Pete Wilson. One asked the legislature to deal with nearly two weeks of flooding in the Golden State, with 34 of 58 counties having been declared federal disaster areas. The other, a month later, called on the legislature to help Orange County recover from what was at that time the worst governmental bankruptcy in US history.
Apparently, I’m not alone on a partisan island in questioning the need for anti-Trump theatrics. Also critical of the special session is Matt Mahan, San Jose’s mayor (albeit a Democrat who’s not afraid of calling out Newsom, whether on crime or homeless encampments). As the mayor recently tweeted: “The best ‘resistance’ is creating a California that works. We need a special session focused on getting everyone housed, controlling the cost of living for working families, and ensuring our state is the most economically viable and competitive. We can continue to lead if we focus on policy instead of politics.”
The good news: California’s progressive officeholders are showing more restraint and reason than they did last month. For example, a couple of weeks after issuing a sweeping sanctuary city ordinance, the Los Angeles City Council revised that policy to make exceptions allowing federal officials to deal with felonious undocumented migrants. Nationwide, some Democratic governors have gone so far as to praise controversial Trump appointments or suggest they’re ready to work with the president-elect.
But not California’s governor. In addition to the special-session proclamation, Newsom ventured to the California-Mexico border late last week to denounce Trump’s tariff threats—a few weeks after insisting to reporters that he wanted to offer an “open hand, not a closed fist” to the president-elect.
The shame of this is California—and the nation, for that matter—deserves a maturer discourse between the governor of America’s most populous state and the leader of the free world (granted, the president-elect and his minions are guilty of sometimes juvenile California bashing).
Federal water policy and its impact on farmers and residencies is complicated and, as such, merits an adult conversation. As is a megastate’s infrastructure needs. On that front, Vivek Ramaswamy (Elon Musk’s partner in Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency initiative) has slammed California’s ambitious high-speed rail project as a “wasteful vanity project” that’s siphoned away “billions in taxpayer cash, with little prospect for completion in the next decade.”
The good news, if you want to call it that: $25 million in anticipated legal costs isn’t the same as an imagined rail system “$100 billion short and many years from reality.” But neither is to be confused with the concerns expressed by voters last month.
Maybe California needs yet another legislative special session: to protect the Golden Stare from the elected class’s poorer knee-jerk tendencies.
