PCH to reopen Friday for first time since Palisades Fire
The Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Caltrans, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have deployed hundreds of workers and heavy equipment in order to finish ahead of the deadline. According to The Malibu Times, more than 100 Army Corps crews have been working around the clock. They've been demolishing structures and hauling away more than a thousand truckloads of debris each day. The highway itself is being used as the main haul route.Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol are also urging drivers to follow 'Move Over' laws to keep workers and first responders safe.Officials warned that while the road will be open, traffic will likely be heavy over the weekend, and construction is still ongoing. Drivers should expect delays, plan for extra travel time, or consider alternate routes.
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Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
Democrats retreat on climate: ‘It's one of the more disappointing turnabouts'
SACRAMENTO, California — Donald Trump is coming for California's signature climate policies — and so is California. Stung by the party's sweeping losses in November and desperate to win back working-class voters, the Democratic Party is in retreat on climate change. Nowhere is that retrenchment more jarring than in the nation's most populous state, a longtime bastion of progressive politics on the environment. In the past two weeks alone, California Democrats have retrenched on environmental reviews for construction projects, a cap on oil industry profits and clean fuel mandates. Elected officials are warning that ambitious laws and mandates are driving up the state's onerous cost of living, echoing longstanding Republican arguments and frustrating some allies who say Democrats are capitulating to political pressure. 'California was the vocal climate leader during the first Trump administration,' said Chris Chavez, deputy policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air. "It's questionable whether or not that leadership is still there." California leaders are still positioning themselves as the vanguard of the resistance to the president's environmental rollbacks, and polls still consistently find voters believe addressing climate change is worth the cost. Gov. Gavin Newsom has sued to block Trump's removal of California's permission to enforce its clean car standards and vowed to extend a landmark cap-and-trade program imperiled by Trump. But they're in a far different position than during Trump's first term, when they were signing deals with automakers to keep the state's emissions rules afloat — and even two years ago, when they were taking on oil companies by threatening to cap their profits. It's a reversal that is dismaying to climate activists, an outspoken part of the Democratic Party's base. And it's a tradeoff — freighted with significant and potentially long-lasting policy implications — that party leaders are making in an effort to regain political strength. 'We've got some challenges, and so it just requires some new considerations,' Newsom told reporters last week, after his administration proposed steering clear of the oil-profits cap as a way to keep refineries open. 'It's not rolling back anything — that's actually marching forward in a way that is thoughtful and considered.' Other parts of the country are pulling back on climate policies in the name of affordability, too. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is delaying plans for a carbon-trading system and slowing enforcement of the state's rules for clean cars and trucks, which follow California's. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is similarly pausing on carbon trading. And in Congress, some 36 Democrats — including two from California — signed on to the effort to overturn California's vehicle rules. But California, as the state with the strongest suite of climate policies and a decades-long reputation of stalwart environmentalism, is now becoming an unlikely leader in Democrats' pivot as they try to respond to cost-of-living concerns that they fret may have cost them the election. 'This is part of the Democrats' doing some soul-searching and really trying to figure out what they stand for,' said Marie Liu, California director at the Energy Foundation and a former top climate adviser to legislative Democrats. Newsom and other Democrats last week infuriated environmentalists by punching exemptions for housing developments and other projects like health clinics and high-speed rail into a decades-old law requiring a wide range of projects to clear environmental reviews. A separate push in the state Senate to dilute the state's stringent fuel rules drew a rebuke from the head of California's powerful Air Resources Board, who called it 'irresponsible' in the face of a federal onslaught. And Newsom in March ordered his recycling regulator to rewrite plastic waste reduction rules to lessen costs for businesses, which upset the state lawmakers and environmental groups who originally negotiated the waste reduction deal but energized business groups opposing similar rules in New York. The backtracking reflects a pervasive sense that once-popular climate policies are exacting a political price by pushing up energy and housing costs, draining support from both Democratic candidates and climate policies themselves. 'For a lot of Democrats, the 2024 election was a reality check about the importance of cost-of-living issues and affordability for Californians,' said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California. 'That's given policymakers some pause about what is actually workable in terms of environmental policy.' Newsom and allies are retrenching in Sacramento as Republicans in Washington take aim at core California climate planks, like its longstanding ability to set tougher pollution limits. Yet even on Capitol Hill, Democrats who typically decry Trump's agenda have sided with Republicans who call California's policies unsustainable. Rep. Lou Correa, who has said the 2024 election showed Democrats must heed cost-strained voters, and Rep. George Whitesides, who flipped a commuter-heavy Los Angeles district last cycle, voted to block Newsom's order phasing out the sale of new entirely gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Climate change has dominated Sacramento's agenda in recent years. Newsom spent substantial political capital in 2022 to muscle through a sweeping set of environmental laws, reviving efforts that had formerly succumbed to resistance from the oil industry and its union allies. Newsom followed up by pushing to cap industry profits. Not in 2025. 'Affordability' has become the watchword for Democrats who saw inflation woes drive votes to Republicans across the 2024 ballot. In a poll presented to Assembly Democrats during a caucus meeting, cost of living led voters' stated priorities. Climate change sat in last place. Yet Liu warned Democrats were learning the wrong lesson by focusing narrowly on immediate concerns like gas prices at the expense of a larger effort to shift from fossil fuels. 'It's easy to focus on the very short-term responses but not take the longer-term view,' Liu said, which would require 'not just playing around on ten cents a gallon, but looking at the actual transition to cleaner alternatives.' In-state oil producers have maintained political pressure on Democrats, spending more than $15 million over the last two years on a sustained campaign of mailers and advertisements blaming the state's climate policies for high prices. Signs at gas stations urge voters to put pressure on their elected officials. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association, said she was heartened by regulators' recent recommendations to pause a refinery profit margin cap and streamline permitting for in-state crude oil production. 'I had no idea that it would sort of come to fruition this year, but I am encouraged by it," she said. Republicans have pummeled Newsom and Democrats over the state gas tax's annual increase and a tightening of the state's fuel standards. To some GOP leaders in California, Democrats' recent backtracking validates years of Republican warnings about cost-inflating climate policies. 'Of course Democrats are on the defensive and scrambling on climate policies — they're losing,' Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones said in a statement. 'Californians love the environment and rightly expect clean air, clean water, and clean streets. What they don't love are out-of-touch policies that destroy livelihoods in the name of climate change.' State laws explicitly direct California to move away from fossil fuels, which would mean putting the state's historically large and politically powerful oil industry out of business. Yet the threat of plummeting production — with two refineries announcing their plans to close within the past year — has rattled elected officials, who fear plunging capacity could lead to a price spike. The California Energy Commission's plan to keep refineries operating specifically seeks to avoid that scenario. 'We always knew this was going to be a really tough time, where we've made enough progress that refineries have to make tough business decisions but you still have a majority of Californians relying on gasoline,' said Daniel Barad, western states policy senior manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'You have to do things in this mid-transition point that's going to make your stomach hurt a bit but is going to stabilize gas prices in the near term.' The shifting dynamics are spilling into the debate over the state's landmark cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, which both state lawmakers and Newsom have endorsed extending beyond its 2030 expiration date. But Newsom upset environmentalists — and cheered business groups — by declining to endorse fixes to the program aimed at further reducing emissions. The politics have moved markedly since California reauthorized the program in 2017. At the time, then-Republican Assembly leader Chad Mayes persuaded a handful of fellow Republicans to vote for it, arguing it was a more market-friendly option. He lost his job as a result. Mayes said progressive Democrats explicitly told him at the time that they wanted a more aggressive set of rules in part because they would push up oil prices, hastening a shift to alternative energy. Now, he said, Democrats are responding to the 'very clear signal voters are sending to their elected officials' that 'it's just too much right now.' 'If you're going to talk about affordability then you have to be honest about the policies you've put in place and what those costs are,' said Mayes, who left the Republican Party in 2019 and now oversees climate policy for a lobbying firm whose clients include renewable energy companies. 'It's appropriate for people to take a second look and say: 'How expensive are we going to allow our energy costs to be?'" But to many climate activists, that kind of calculation reads more like a surrender. 'It's one of the more disappointing turnabouts,' said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, whose group has advocated tougher oil industry rules. 'We have backed down, and we may not be flying a white handkerchief, but it's pretty close to white." Marie J. French, Alex Nieves and Jordan Wolman contributed to this report.
CBS News
4 days ago
- CBS News
Volkswagen to restore "magic bus" that survived Palisades Fire
Volkswagen of America is restoring the VW bus that miraculously survived the Palisades Fire in January and will hopefully get it back on the road by the end of the year. The long blue bus became a symbol of resilience during the wildfire after a photo of it seemingly unscathed while everything around it burned spread through social media. Gunnar Wynarski is part of the Volkswagen team restoring the bus after the image caught the attention of the automaker's staff in Oxnard. He said the classic bus was in worse condition than everyone thought when he finally got to see it up close. "The car looked pretty cool from the driver's side, which was shown in the picture," Wynarski said. "Unfortunately, you couldn't tell the damage, like melted plastic, paint chipping away on the side that was close to the fire. You also have a busted front window, the paint on the roof is really burned off until the bare metal. Inside of the car, you still have all the ashes. It still smells like a fire." Volkswagen tracked down the owner, Megan Weinraub, and promised they would restore it to its pre-fire condition if they could. While Weinraub calls her 1977 microbus "Azul," it became known as the "Magic bus" on social media. "I was lucky and grateful to have the opportunity for them to restore it because I wouldn't have been able to restore it myself," she said. The team plans to take the bus apart, strip it down and put it back together with a fresh coat of paint. "All the devastation, all the fire, all the damage, so many things got lost, that are gone forever," Wynarski said. "It was really nice to see this car and it felt it gives some kind of hope." Weinraub said she believes her bus became a symbol of hope during a difficult time and can't wait to get Azul back on the road. "I'm excited to have it back," she said. "Where I live now, there are so many VW buses. It will be cool to drive it around town."
Politico
5 days ago
- Politico
Jumping fuel prices are a gas, gas, gas
With help from Camille von Kaenel STEPPING ON THE GAS: Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump are both basking in relatively low gas prices ahead of one of the country's biggest driving weekends. But California regulators and lawmakers are also desperately scrambling to keep gas prices steady in an acknowledgement that Republican political attacks on the issue are sticking. Tuesday could have been a doozy, after both the state's annual gas tax hike and closely watched amendments to the low-carbon fuel standard aimed at hastening the transition away from fossil fuels took effect — and didn't cause an immediate spike in gas prices. 'Republicans spent the last 6 months fearmongering that gasoline prices would 'increase by 65 cents on July 1,'' Newsom's office said in a press release Wednesday, pointing to data from AAA. 'Did this happen? The answer: No.' But lawmakers are getting impatient. They advanced a bill Wednesday that would have the state immediately allow suppliers to blend more ethanol into gasoline — 15 percent, up from a limit of 10 percent now. The move would make California the last state to switch to E15, a blend that a study last year by UC Berkeley and US Naval Academy economists found could lower gasoline prices by 20 cents per gallon. It's something the California Air Resources Board has been studying since 2018 but hasn't yet greenlit. Ethanol, while less carbon-intensive than gasoline, comes with separate concerns related to growing corn for production. Assemblymember David Alvarez said needs to pick up the slack. 'The reason this bill is needed is due to regulatory delays that we've seen from the Air Resources Board,' he said at today's hearing. CARB didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But the concept dovetails with Newsom's budget language, which gives $2.3 million to help CARB finish the job. Another idea, floated by Senate Democrats last week in a sweeping bill that also took aim at the low-carbon fuel standard, is to move away from another of the state's bespoke gasoline formulations: CARBOB, a '90s-era summer blend aimed at reducing smog, in favor of a West-wide blend that refineries in neighboring states would also produce. That West-wide fuel standard concept has garnered a surprising amount of interest among environmental and clean transportation groups. 'I do think it's something worth examining,' said Katelyn Roedner, California director for the Environmental Defense Fund. 'Do we still need a special blend?' And the E15 idea is getting good reviews, too. 'Generally speaking, it makes a lot of sense, provided we do it in a way that doesn't require expanding ethanol production capacity,' said Colin Murphy, co-director of the Low Carbon Fuel Policy Research Initiative at Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies. But neither is a quick fix. If California moves away from its low-smog formulation toward more reliance on outside sources, it would need to quickly build up its capacity to import more fuel while making sure not to undercut in-state refineries and potentially create more closures, Murphy said. It's unclear, so far, what other states think of the idea, which would hinge on their buy-in to pull off. Spokespeople for the governor's office in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the bill. But Arizona and Nevada rely on California for gasoline supplies and are the most likely candidates to have open ears. The governors of both states jumped into the Sacramento fray last year, lobbying against a special session bill that requires refineries to maintain backup fuel supplies for when facilities go down for maintenance. And CARB cautioned that its E15 rulemaking could still take a while. CARB spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said that process could be finished sometime in 2026, 'assuming we get the staff and are able to start the rulemaking process later this year.' — AN Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here! CEQA HANGOVER: State lawmakers are still advancing a suite of one-off bills poking holes into environmental reviews days after Newsom signed a sweeping overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act in the name of speeding up housing development — though at least one said she's had enough. 'At least for me personally, it's going to be very difficult for me to support any CEQA exemption or streamlining bills moving forward, just because I think we need to tip the balance the other way now, just because CEQA has been really dismantled,' Sen. Caroline Menjivar said at a Wednesday hearing on several more of them. Menjivar voted for the CEQA overhaul on Monday but declined to support bills waiving more environmental reviews for wildfire prevention projects near evacuation routes and for exploratory geothermal energy projects in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Wednesday. Both bills passed with little to no other opposition. — CvK SUN BURN: The board of a powerful irrigation district in the desert of Southern California has had enough with solar panels replacing crops. The Imperial Irrigation District passed a resolution on Tuesday opposing new utility-scale renewable energy development on farmland in the Imperial Valley, where farmers grow alfalfa, lettuce and other crops but face increasing water restrictions that have forced some to leave their fields fallow. Renewable energy developers see potential in the desert region's open spaces and have already covered nearly three percent of the region's total farmland with solar panels. 'It's time to draw a line,' said IID vice chair JB Hamby. 'Farmland in the Imperial Valley feeds this country and anchors our economy. … We support renewable energy — just not at the expense of our future.' Hamby is currently locked in multi-state negotiations over dwindling Colorado River supplies, which irrigate the Imperial Valley's farmland. The irrigation district will pass along its recommendation to local, state and federal land use decision makers, including the Imperial County Board of Supervisors. — CvK GRID GAMES, CONT: The Public Advocates Office, an independent organization within California's utility regulator that lobbies on behalf of ratepayers, has taken its stand on a controversial grid regionalization proposal winding its way through the state Legislature: yes, if amended. The position, detailed in a letter on Friday, matters because the proposal has divided environmental and ratepayer groups, with some saying the proposal would reduce costs and improve grid reliability and others saying it could undercut California's renewable energy goals. The director of the Public Advocate's Office, Linda Serizawa, is largely taking the side of the business and utility groups who want to see state lawmakers reverse recent amendments to the bill. Those amendments gave California more control of the regionalization, but Serizawa wrote that may risk alienating other states interested in linking up with California. — CvK — Tesla posted another drop in vehicle deliveries for the second quarter of 2025. — Between rising seas and raging wildfires, California may be running out of safe places to build the housing it needs. — Recycling firm Redwood Materials is hooking up used electric vehicle batteries and solar panels to power a data center in Reno, Nevada.
