California more than doubles film and TV tax credit program
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
California just showed that a better Democratic Party is possible
California just demolished a major obstacle to housing construction within its borders — and provided Democrats with a blueprint for better governance nationwide. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of housing bills into law. One exempts almost all urban, multifamily housing developments from California's environmental review procedures. The second makes it easier for cities to change their zoning laws to allow for more homebuilding. Both these measures entail restricting the reach of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a law that requires state and local governments to research and publicize the ecological impacts of any approved construction project. Individuals and groups can then sue to block these developments on the grounds that the government underestimated the project's true environmental harms. At first glance, these events might seem irrelevant to anyone who is neither a Californian nor a massive nerd. But behind the Golden State's esoteric arguments over regulatory exemptions lie much larger questions — ones that concern the fundamental aims and methods of Democratic policymaking. Namely: Is increasing the production of housing and other infrastructure an imperative of progressive politics that must take precedence over other concerns? Should Democrats judge legislation by how little it offends the party's allied interest groups or by how much it advances the general public's needs (as determined by technocratic analysis)? In making it easier to build urban housing — despite the furious objections of some environmental groups and labor unions — California Democrats put material plenty above status quo bias, and the public's interests above their party's internal harmony. Too often in recent decades, Democrats have embraced the opposite priorities. And this has led blue cities and states to suffer from exceptionally large housing shortages while struggling to build public infrastructure on time and on budget. As a result, Democratic states have been bleeding population — and thus, electoral clout — to Republican ones while the public sector has fallen into disrepute. California just demonstrated that Democrats don't need to accept these failures. Acquiescing to scarcity — for the sake of avoiding change or intraparty tension — is a choice. Democrats can make a different one. Critics of California's CEQA reforms didn't deny their state needs more housing. It might therefore seem fair to cast the debate over those reforms as a referendum on the importance of building more homes. But the regulatory regime that the opponents of CEQA reform sought to preserve is the byproduct of an explicitly anti-development strain of progressivism, one that reoriented Democratic politics in the 1970s. The postwar decades' rapid economic progress yielded widespread affluence, ecological degradation, and disruptive population growth. Taken together, these forces spurred a backlash to building: Affluence led liberal reformers to see economic development as less of a priority, environmental decay prompted fears that humanity was swiftly exhausting nature's bounty, and the swift growth of booming localities led some longtime residents to fear cultural alienation or displacement. California was ground zero for this anti-growth backlash, as historian Yoni Appelbaum notes in his recent book Stuck. The state's population quintupled between 1920 and 1970. And construction had largely kept pace, with California adding nearly 2 million units in the 1950s alone. As a result, in 1970, the median house in California cost only $197,000 in today's dollars. But millions of new people and buildings proved socially disruptive and ecologically costly. Many Californians wished to exclude newcomers from their towns or neighborhoods, so as to preserve their access to parking, the aesthetic character of their area, or the socioeconomic composition of their schools, among other concerns. And anti-growth progressivism provided both a high-minded rationalization for such exclusion and legal tools with which to advance it. In 1973, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and his team of researchers prepared a report on land-use policy in California. Its overriding recommendation was that the state needed to make it easier for ordinary Californians to block housing construction. As one of the report's authors explained at a California Assembly hearing, lawmakers needed to guard against both 'the overdevelopment of the central cities' and 'the sprawl around the cities,' while preserving open land. As Appelbaum notes, this reasoning effectively forbids building any housing, anywhere. The California Environmental Quality Act emerged out of this intellectual environment. And green groups animated by anti-developed fervor quickly leveraged CEQA to obstruct all manner of housing construction, thereby setting judicial precedents that expanded the law's reach. The effect has been to greatly increase the amount of time and money necessary for producing a housing unit in California. Local agencies take an average of 2.5 years to approve housing projects that require an Environmental Impact Report. Lawsuits can then tie up those projects in court for years longer. Over the past decade, CEQA litigation has delayed or blocked myriad condo towers in urban centers, the construction of new dormitories at the University of California Berkeley (on the grounds that the state's environmental impact statement failed to account for noise pollution), and even a bike lane in San Francisco. CEQA is by no means the primary — let alone, the only — reason why the median price of a California home exceeded $900,000 in 2023. But it is unquestionably a contributor to such scarcity-induced unaffordability. Refusing to amend the law in the face of a devastating housing shortage is a choice, one that reflects tepid concern for facilitating material abundance. Anti-growth politics left an especially large mark on California. But its influence is felt nationwide. CEQA is modeled after the National Environmental Policy Act, which enables the litigious to obstruct housing projects across the United States. And many blue states — including Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York — have their own state-level environmental review laws, which have also deterred housing development. In sum, California Democrats' decision to pare back the state's environmental review procedures, so as to facilitate more urban housing, represents a shift in the party's governing philosophy — away from a preoccupation with the harms of development and toward a greater sensitivity to the perils of stasis. Indeed, Newsom made this explicit in his remarks on the legislation, saying, 'It really is about abundance.' Democrats elsewhere should make a similar ideological adjustment. If anti-growth progressivism helped birth CEQA's excesses, Democrats' limited appetite for intraparty conflict sustained the law's defects. In recent years, the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) movement has built an activist infrastructure for pro-development reform. And their cause has been buttressed by the energetic advocacy of myriad policy wonks and commentators. One of this year's best-selling books, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, is dedicated in no small part to making the case against California's housing policies. Nevertheless, environmental organizations and labor unions have long boasted far greater scale and influence than 'pro-abundance' groups. And past efforts to curtail CEQA's reach have attracted vigorous opposition from some greens and unions. Democrats typically responded by scaling back their reform ambitions to better appease those constituencies. The hostility of green groups and the building trades to CEQA reform is as much instrumental as ideological. Some environmentalists retain the de-growth impulses that characterized the 1970s left. But environmental review lawsuits are also the stock and trade of many green organizations. CEQA litigation provides these groups with a key source of leverage over ecologically irresponsible developers and — for environmental law firms — a vital source of billings. The building trades unions, meanwhile, see CEQA as a tool for extracting contracts from housing developers. Such groups have made a practice of pursuing CEQA lawsuits against projects until the builders behind them commit to using union labor. For these reasons, many environmentalists and labor leaders fiercely condemned this week's CEQA reforms. At a hearing in late June, a representative of Sacramento-Sierra's Building and Construction Trades Council told lawmakers that their bill 'will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs.' Roughly 60 green groups published a letter condemning the legislation as a 'backroom Budget Trailer Bill deal that would kill community and environmental protections, even as the people of California are faced with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.' The opposition of these organizations was understandable. But it was also misguided, even from the standpoint of protecting California's environment and aiding its construction workers. The recently passed CEQA bills did not weaken environmental review for the development of open land, only for multifamily housing in dense urban areas. And facilitating higher rates of housing development in cities is vital for both combating climate change and conserving untouched ecosystems. All else equal, people who live in apartment buildings by mass transit have far smaller carbon footprints than those who live in suburban single-family homes. And increasing the availability of housing in urban centers reduces demand for new exurban housing development that eats into open land. Meanwhile, eroding regulatory obstacles to housing construction is in the interest of skilled tradespeople as a whole. A world where more housing projects are economically viable is one where there is higher demand for construction labor. This makes CEQA reform unambiguously good for the 87 percent of California construction workers who do not belong to a union (and thus, derive little direct benefit from the building trades CEQA lawsuits). But policies that grow California's construction labor force also provide its building trades unions with more opportunities to recruit new members. Recognition of that reality led California's carpenters' union to back the reforms. Therefore, if Democrats judged those reforms on the basis of their actual consequences — whether for labor, the environment, or the housing supply — they would conclude that the policies advanced progressive goals. On the other hand, if they judged the legislation by whether it attracted opposition from left-coded interest groups, then they might deem it a regressive challenge to liberal ideals. Too often, Democrats in California and elsewhere have taken the latter approach, effectively outsourcing their policy judgment to their favorite lobbies. But this time, the party opted to prioritize the public interest over coalitional deference. Importantly, in doing so, California Democrats appeared to demonstrate that their party has more capacity to guide its stakeholders than many realized. In recent years, Democratic legislators have sometimes credited their questionable strategic and substantive decisions to 'the groups' — as though the party were helplessly in thrall to its advocacy organizations. But these groups typically lack significant political leverage. Swing voters do not take their marching orders from environmental organizations. And in an era of low union density and education polarization, the leaders of individual unions often can't deliver very many votes. This does not mean that Democrats should turn their backs on environmentalism or organized labor. To the contrary, the party should seek to expand collective bargaining rights, reduce pollution, and promote abundant low-carbon energy. But it should do those things because they are in the interests of ordinary Americans writ large, not because the electoral influence of green groups or building trades unions politically compel them to do so. Of course, all else equal, the party should seek to deliver victories to organizations that support it. But providing such favors should not take precedence over advancing the general public's welfare. And pushing back on a group's demands will rarely cause it to abandon your party entirely. After seeing that Democrats would not abandon CEQA reform, California's Building Trades Council switched its position on the legislation to 'neutral,' in exchange for trivial concessions. It is important not to overstate what California Democrats have accomplished. Housing construction in the Golden State is still constrained by restrictive zoning laws, various other land-use regulations, elevated interest rates, scarce construction labor, and a president who is hellbent on increasing the cost of lumber and steel. Combine these constraints on housing supply with the grotesque income inequalities of cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you get a recipe for a sustained housing crunch. CEQA reform should reduce the cost and timelines of urban homebuilding. But it will not, by itself, render California affordable. Democrats cannot choose to eliminate all of blue America's scarcities overnight. What they can do is prize the pursuit of material abundance over the avoidance of disruptive development and intraparty strife. And California just provided the party with a model for doing precisely that.
Newsweek
15 hours ago
- Newsweek
Gavin Newsom Is Heading to a Key 2028 State
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. California Governor Gavin Newsom is heading to South Carolina, likely to be a key Democratic primary state, amid speculation he plans to run for president in 2028. Newsweek reached out to Newsom's office for comment via email. Why It Matters Newsom has long been believed to be a potential presidential candidate for Democrats, and his trip to early-voting South Carolina is likely to continue to fuel that speculation. Newsom has cast himself as a leading rival to President Donald Trump amid his second term in office. Several prominent Democrats are expected to jump into the race. While the primary is still more than two years away, potential candidates are already making early moves with the goal of giving themselves an advantage among Democratic primary voters. What to Know The South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) announced a multi-county tour with Newsom across some of the most "economically challenged and environmentally vulnerable rural counties in South Carolina" next week. Several of these counties have experienced "hardship" from job loss, wildfires and hurricanes, the SCDP wrote in a statement, adding that the rural areas have been "left behind" by Republican leaders in the state. California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2025 in Los Angeles. California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2025 in Los Angeles. Frazer Harrison/WireImage via Getty Images It will also give Newsom the opportunity to engage with voters in what is likely to be an early-voting state. South Carolina voted first in the 2024 primary but has long been among the four first states to vote—along with Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. Whether the schedule may change remains unclear at this point. The statement, however, makes no mention of his potential 2028 ambitions. SCDP Chair Christale Spain wrote in a statement that Newsom "leads the largest economy in America and the fourth largest in the world" and is "coming to meet folks in towns that have been hollowed out by decades of Republican control." "This is about building partnerships, uplifting communities, and showing rural voters they aren't forgotten," Spain wrote. Gavin Newsom's Chance of Winning 2028 Primary—Polls Newsom has been among the leading candidates in most polls of the 2028 primary, along with former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The latest Morning Consult poll of the potential 2028 field showed that Newsom's standing doubled after the Los Angeles protests over Trump's immigration policies and mass deportations. Eleven percent said they planned to support him, up from 5 percent in March. Still, 34 percent said they leaned toward Harris. Seven percent said they planned to vote for Buttigieg and Ocasio-Cortez. The poll surveyed 1,000 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents from June 13 to June 15, 2025. An Emerson College poll last month showed Newsom with 12 percent support, compared to 16 percent for Buttigieg, 13 percent for Harris and 7 percent for Ocasio-Cortez. The poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from June 24 to June 25, 2025, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. What People Are Saying Spain wrote in the press release: "Our strategy isn't about chasing cable news coverage, it's about showing up and building trust, town by town, county by county, that is our path back to power. We're proud of the gains we are making but we're even more focused on what's ahead." Newsom told The Wall Street Journal in June: "I'm not thinking about running, but it's a path that I could see unfold." What Happens Next Typically, most candidates do not begin announcing presidential runs until after the midterm elections. Newsom has not confirmed plans to run for president.
Fox News
17 hours ago
- Fox News
Trump v. California: Sanctuary cities to EV bans, Trump puts left-wing state under repeated scrutiny
President Donald Trump and his administration have taken a hatchet to left-wing policies that infiltrated the federal government, which has included directly combating policies originating in the state of California, where local leaders repeatedly have sparred with the president since even before Inauguration Day. "Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation's beautiful California," Trump posted to Truth Social just days after his November 2024 election win. "For the first time ever, more people are leaving than are coming in. He is using the term 'Trump-Proof' as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to 'Make California Great Again,' but I just overwhelmingly won the Election." California's embrace of sanctuary status designations to protect illegal immigrants from deportation efforts, environmental and education policies, and its handling of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots and massive wildfires that rocked Southern California have all fallen under Trump's ire, Fox Digital found. Trump's long battle with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which stretches back to his first presidential administration, regarding his handling of wildfire prevention and response was resurrected in the waning days of the Biden administration when massive fires broke out in the Los Angeles area ahead of Trump reclaiming the Oval Office. "Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way," Trump posted to Truth Social as the fires raged just weeks ahead of his inauguration. "He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn't work!), but didn't care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!" Newsom's office shot back that "there is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need." Trump has a long history of putting Newsom's handling of wildfires under the microscope across his first four years in the White House, including in January 2019 when he threatened to cut off federal funds to California if reforms were not made to the state's forest management services. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office in 2025, titled "Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California," that ordered water resources to be re-routed to the Los Angeles area. "The water is flowing in California," Trump posted to Truth Social in February. "These once empty 'halfpipes' are now brimming with beautiful, clean water, and heading to farmers throughout the State, and to Los Angeles. Too bad they refused to do this during my First Term - There would have been no fires!" When asked about the repeated barbs between Newsom and Trump since Inauguration Day, the White House said the governor should stop "daydreaming about his 2028 presidential campaign" and focus on leading California. "Gavin Newscum has turned the California Dream into a nightmare – violent illegal immigrants invade communities, enabled criminals destroy small businesses, and men compete in women's sports," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox Digital Thursday when asked about Trump and Newsom repeatedly trading barbs. "President Trump will always prioritize people over politics because he wants to see the entire country succeed. Gavin should stop daydreaming about his 2028 presidential campaign and prove that he can successfully run just one of fifty states." The governor's office directed Fox News Digital to a Wednesday press conference where Newsom touted a $750 million tax credit for films and TV programs made in California. "How did you get this thing through considering everything else that's happening?" a reporter asked Newsom during the press conference of the tax credit. "I think because of everything else happening this year," Newsom responded. "I think, frankly, the conditions only further the imperative of this. From October when we announced this, to the devastation of these fires, to the reality of what we're up against in the headwinds in Washington, DC, that we're on our own in many respects, and we've got to step things up. And we've got to be more intentional. We've got to be more targeted. And we've got to knit together different economic strategies." Newsom's woes grew larger on the national stage in June when riots broke out in Los Angeles in response to federal law enforcement converging on the city to conduct raids to deport illegal immigrants. Riots formed in the left-wing city in early June as local leaders such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom, quickly denounced the immigration raids in public statements while offering words of support for illegal immigrants in the state. Protests over the raids soon devolved into violence as rioters targeted federal law enforcement officials, including launching rocks at officials, as well as videos showing people looting local stores, setting cars on fire and taking over a freeway. Trump announced shortly after violence broke out in the city that he would deploy 2,000 National Guard members to help quell the violence, bypassing the governor, who typically activates the National Guard. California subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for efforts to allegedly "federalize the California National Guard." "Governor Gavin Newscum and 'Mayor' Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists," Trump posted to Truth Social on June 8 amid the riots. The riots quieted in mid-June following the "No Kings Day" protests June 14, the same day Trump held a military parade in Washington, honoring the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. The Trump administration's Department of Justice Monday filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles for its sanctuary city policies, which the DOJ said discriminates against federal immigration law enforcement officials. "Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles," Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News of the suit. "Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level — it ends under President Trump." The suit follows Trump signing an April executive order that works to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that identify as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants and fail to comply with federal law enforcement. Newsom slammed Trump again in June when reports spread the Trump administration was considering revoking national monument status from two natural areas in the Golden State enshrined into protection by former President Joe Biden. "This is just getting petty. Grow up," Newsom said on X June 13 in response to reports Trump was considering abolishing the Chuckwalla and Sattitla Highlands National Monuments. "If it's a day ending in Y, it's another day of Trump's war on California," Newsom's office said in a separate X post. The Trump Justice Department issued a July memo ruling that the president's power to revoke national monument status is reversible by future administrations. The White House told Reuters that the U.S. needs to "liberate our federal lands and waters to oil, gas, coal, geothermal, and mineral leasing." Trump signed a trio of congressional resolutions June 12 ending California's restrictive rules for diesel engines and mandates on elective vehicle sales, with Trump celebrating that his signature "will kill the California mandates forever." "Under the previous administration, the federal government gave left-wing radicals in California dictatorial powers to control the future of the entire car industry all over the country, all over the world, actually," Trump said Thursday from the White House ahead of singing the resolutions. "They approved Governor Gavin 'Newscum's' ridiculous plan to impose a 100% ban on all new gas-powered cars within a very short period of time," he said. "Think of this, you can't buy any other car except an electric powered car, and in California they have blackouts and brownouts. They don't have enough electricity right now." The resolutions work to end California's plan to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035, including one ending a waiver issued by the Biden-era EPA that mandated at least 80% of vehicles be electric vehicles in California by 2035, as well as another resolution ending the Biden-era EPA's approval of a plan to increase the number of zero-emission heavy-duty trucks in California, and another on California's low-nitrogen oxide regulations for heavy-duty vehicles, including off-road vehicles. Trump was able to revoke the state's rules as they were based on the Biden administration granting the state special permission to exceed federal standards related to pollution. Trump's signature overturned the Biden administration's approval of California's rules. Newsom called the resolutions an ongoing "all-out assault on California," and announced the state filed a suit against the Trump administration over the resolutions. "Trump's all-out assault on California continues — and this time he's destroying our clean air and America's global competitiveness in the process," Newsom said in a press release. "We are suing to stop this latest illegal action by a President who is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big polluters." Trump's resolutions follow him signing a bevy of executive orders that aim to "unleash American energy" as part of his 2024 campaign vow to again make the U.S. energy independent, including by revitalizing the coal industry by cutting red tape and regulations, and unleashing oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The Trump administration's Department of Justice announced a federal probe into California over potential Title IX violations regarding its policy allowing trans athletes in girls' sports earlier in June, following the Department of Education finding the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation were in violation of Title IX and failed to protect women and girls from sex-based discrimination. "A Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so. As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!" Trump wrote on Truth Social in June after a biological male trans athlete won multiple girls' state titles in track and field. The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Fox Digital in June that the state was working to ensure all students were free from discrimination and harassment. "We're very concerned with the Trump Administration's ongoing threats to California schools and remain committed to defending and upholding California laws and all additional laws which ensure the rights of students — including transgender students — to be free from discrimination and harassment. We are reviewing the letter and closely monitoring the Trump Administration's actions in this space," the statement read. The Trump administration also gave California's federally funded sex education program 60 days June 20 to remove all references to gender identity or face potential termination of its funding. California's Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant has been under scrutiny by the Trump administration since at least March, when the HHS's Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested the federally funded state-operated program send copies of its curriculum and other relevant course materials to them for review. "The Trump administration will not tolerate the use of federal funds for programs that indoctrinate our children," said ACF's acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison. "The disturbing gender ideology content in California's PREP materials is both unacceptable and well outside the program's core purpose. ACF remains committed to radical transparency and providing accountability so that parents know what their children are being taught in schools." Among the materials ACF found, which it now wants to be removed, was a lesson for middle school-aged students that seeks to introduce them to the concepts of transgenderism. "We've been talking during class about messages people get on how they should act as boys and girls—but as many of you know, there are also people who don't identify as boys or girls, but rather as transgender or gender queer," the lesson states to students. "This means that even if they were called a boy or a girl at birth and may have body parts that are typically associated with being a boy or a girl, on the inside, they feel differently." Trump's administration put California's high-speed rail proposal, which had been in the works for nearly two decades but with very little progress to show, on notice in February when the administration called for an audit of the multibillion dollar project. "It's been 17 years and $16 billion and no rail has been built," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in February. Newsom had touted just in January that California was on the verge of launching a high-speed rail that would ultimately stretch from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The project is expected to cost $106 billion, with federal taxpayers already spending nearly $3 billion on the project, Fox Digital previously reported. "No state in America is closer to launching high-speed rail than California — and today, we just took a massive step forward," Gov. Gavin Newsom said in January. "We're moving into the track-laying phase, completing structures for key segments, and laying the groundwork for a high-speed rail network." The Department of Transportation proposed in a 300-page report in June that $4 billion in grants for the proposed line be terminated. "We're not going to fund that … it's out of control," Trump said of the project in June. "It doesn't go where it's supposed to. It's supposed to go from LA to San Francisco now, because they don't have any money ... and they made it much shorter," he added.
