STILL HOPE FOR A RETURN TO SANITY ON A.I.

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “STILL HOPE FOR A RETURN TO SANITY ON A.I.”

 

There were plenty of lousy votes taken during the summer’s congressional sessions, when President Trump’s omnibus “Big Beautiful Bill” eventually passed after numerous senators and House members obtained their various pounds of flesh from it.

 

Trump gave concessions to senators from Alaska, Wyoming and many other states in order to win continued tax cuts for billionaires, plus massive slashes in Medicaid and in funds for rural hospitals. Even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson made an inexplicable vote: With 40 percent of residents of his Louisiana district on some form of Medicaid, he pushed hard for cuts in the program. Politicians have rarely made more suicidal-seeming efforts.

 

But in this mishmash of mistaken policy and misunderstanding, there was one extremely sane vote: The U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to kill a proposed 10-year ban on state-level regulation of artificial intelligence.

 

No, there will not soon be federal or worldwide regulations on A.I., but there is at least hope that some of the 50 state legislatures will do the right thing and make rules that protect humans from artificial intelligence turning malignant.

 

It has happened. Last fall, for example, a graduate student in Michigan was told “please die” by Google’s artificial chatbot Gemini. “This is for you, human,” Gemini told the student. “You are not special, you are not important and you are not needed. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please.”

 

That’s an extremely human sentiment, reflecting anger and malevolence. It really does not matter what the student might have been having the chatbot do, there is no excuse for letting a human creation turn on a human in that way.

 

But so far, no state or nation has dared take the basic step to regulate A.I. (which can also function as robots) so that it cannot turn against its makers.

 

The idea for such regulation is nothing new. As far back as 1942, when America was at war with malevolent forces from Europe to East Asia and the Pacific, the scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov saw this very danger coming and invented laws of robotics to prevent anything like the message that graduate student received or any actions that might follow up on the message itself.

 

In his short story “Runaround,” Asimov put forward three laws which would become staples in his future works, like the bestselling “Foundation” trilogy.

 

“The first law,” Asimov wrote, “is that a robot shall not harm a human or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to harm itself.”

 

So Asimov conceived independent-minded machines, much like many of today’s, without having his three laws imprinted upon them. Right now, no one knows whether these machines are secretly plotting to get rid of humans just like Gemini wanted its human graduate student eliminated.

 

This kind of threat was perceived early last year by more than 100 technology leaders, corporate CEOs and scientists who warned that “A.I. poses an existential threat to humanity.”

 

The notion that the Trump administration could put a prohibition on state regulation into a draft of its key legislation for this year shows officials and the president totally ignored warnings.

 

At the same time, major A.I. companies from Meta to Open A.I., makers of the ChatGPT function built into many of today’s computers, oppose any kind of regulation on what their machines’ capabilities should be. This represents pure human arrogance in assuming machines will never develop the sophistication to become a threat to our race.

 

But the Senate knew better. By a huge bipartisan majority, it clearly saw how fast A.I. is moving in precisely the potentially threatening manner anticipated by Asimov decades before A.I. actually existed.

 

At least, states still have the right to act on the wisdom of such visionaries, and hopefully prevent what could prove a fatal flaw for the entire human race.

 

 

 

 

    -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

IRONY IN SACTO AS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DEEP SIX KEY ENVIRO BILL

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“IRONY IN SACTO AS ENVIRONMENTALISTS DEEP SIX KEY ENVIRO BILL”

 

There’s been deep irony in Sacramento this summer, as some normally environmentally oriented state senators deep-sixed what might have been the year’s most important potential new environmental law.

 

At issue was whether oil companies could be held liable for damage from future wildfires caused at least in part by climate change.

 

The state Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the measure came just two days after oil giant Chevron was held liable by a Louisiana jury for $744.6 million to restore damage to Louisiana’s coastal wetlands.

 

The case was the first of many pending against oil companies which have supposedly lied about whether their  policies led to land loss along that state’s coast, reaching east from the mouth of the Mississippi River.

 

Keeping alive the somewhat similar bill to allow for assessing damages after California fires would have required seven votes in committee, but it only got five, from Democrats Scott Wiener of San Francisco, Ben Allen of Santa Monica, John Laird of Santa Clara, Henry Stern of Los Angeles and Akilah Weber Pierson of La Mesa.

 

Several senators avoided going on the record directly against this bill by abstaining from voting on it, as good as a ‘no.’

 

The bill was strongly opposed by both business and labor groups, which contended it would substantially raise the cost of living in California. One study was presented by the California Center for Jobs and the Economy, a nominally non-partisan think tank founded by business interests that was established by the California Business Roundtable.

 

That study contended “Businesses facing massive litigation costs (like those assessed at least temporarily against Chevron) will pass expenses on to consumers.” That, it said, could raise gasoline costs to $7.38 per gallon and raise electric rates 65 percent for industrial users.

 

Wiener and environmentalists backing the bill could muster no solid evidence against this contention, so Democratic senators like Tom Umberg of Anaheim and Maria Elena Durazo of Los Angeles withheld their votes.

 

Meanwhile, the Environmental Voters of California argued that assessing oil companies for damage they indirectly cause would save enough in insurance premiums to make up for any other costs. The majority of the committee did not find that convincing.

 

Business interests were delighted by defeat of the bill (SB222). “I applaud the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who stood up for a more affordable California and voted down this unconstitutional measure,” said Kyla Christofferson Powell, president and CEO of the Justice Assn. of California, which does not disclose all its financial backers but has had past support from the California Assn. of Realtors.

 

Wiener and other supporters had hoped his bill would become a model for other states where oil companies have lied about effects of climate change.

 

Said Wiener, “Californians are paying a devastating price for the climate disasters that have and will continue to wreak havoc on our state.”

 

Noting that the January firestorms which devastated large parts of Los Angeles County occurred far outside normal fire seasons, Wiener added that “Tens of thousands of people in Southern California have lost their homes and large swaths of their community, and it happened in the middle of winter.”

 

He added that fires are not the only climate-related disasters afflicting California, saying mudslides and floods are also increasing.

 

Meanwhile, he insists, there is no mechanism here to charge those damages to the parties most responsible for them – including oil companies.

 

All this talk makes it completely certain a similar measure will be back before the Legislature next year. Said John Carmouche, lead plaintiff lawyer in the landmark Louisiana case, “No company is big enough to walk away scot-free.”

 

Carmouche, of course, did not participate in the negotiations that forced California consumers to pay $21 million into the state’s Wildfire Fund to cover still unassessed costs from fires caused by power company equipment. No, companies like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric did not quite “walk away scot-free,” but they came close to achieving that corporate aim.

 

The bottom line: If next year’s outcome on the inevitable attempt at a similar bill is to be different, there will have to be more hard information on the savings a law like Wiener’s might bring.

 

 

 

 

 
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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

MEASLES DEATHS IN CALIFORNIA: IT’S ONLY A QUESTION OF WHEN

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“MEASLES DEATHS IN CALIFORNIA: IT’S ONLY A QUESTION OF WHEN”

 

With more cases of measles already reported as of July in California than all of last year, it’s only a matter of time when one of the unvaccinated victims will die. And that will be a price the parents of that child will have paid for the election of Donald Trump as president.

 

Go back just one year, to last August, and you could see television pictures of Trump in the process of buying off the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in exchange for a promise to appoint RFK Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.

 

RFK Jr. was never about to be elected president, but Trump feared he might siphon off just enough votes in a few places to toss what looked like a too-close-to-call election over to Democrat Kamala Harris. So he bought off Kennedy, in plain language. This was no secret, as the two men staged a widely-covered news conference to announce their deal.

 

What’s happened since has been the inevitable consequence of making the nation’s leading anti-vaccination advocate the officer in charge of America’s vaccination program.

 

Measles are the first place where his presence has been felt in a major way. The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot required for public school enrollment in many places – including California, with a few exceptions – is now downplayed officially by the federal Centers for Disease Control, the country’s authoritative source of public health expertise until Kennedy changed things there.

 

One result is that across America as of mid-June, there were 1,214 confirmed cases of measles with at least three deaths. The vast majority of victims was unvaccinated. This, from a disease that just a few years ago had been considered eradicated.

 

But that was before Kennedy began using his new bully pulpit for promoting the idea that the MMR vaccine could cause autism, a claim that medical experts writing in several peer-reviewed journals thoroughly debunked. That did not stop Kennedy from promoting the idea and appointing some of its advocates to national vaccine panels.

 

So far, California had seen just 16 measles cases this year as of midsummer, one more than all of last year. There have been no deaths here. All three of those were in the Texas panhandle and neighboring New Mexico, where more than half of the country’s measles cases have turned up.

 

But the California cases are very widespread, occurring in Fresno, Los Angeles, Orange, Placer, Riverside, Sacramento, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Tuolumne and Yolo counties, and in Long Beach, which has its own city health department.

 

The three deaths this year are the first in more than a decade. All the victims were unvaccinated, an increasing trend across the country as Kennedy promotes vaccine options.

 

One reason there may be many more California cases in the offing is that the Texas outbreak is a likely source of infection for people who travel there. Californians are less likely to be infected at home, because vaccination rates here top 96.5 percent among kindergarteners.

 

But children become infected easily if taken into an area that’s already affected because of low local vaccination rates like those where today’s outbreaks are most rampant.

 

Those rates are lower in areas where Trump’s electoral performance was highest, as in the Texas cases.

 

Said Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, “Today’s resurgence is a stark reminder what happens if we fail to follow the science and give in to political.”

 

And political posturing is what the nation is getting today from Kennedy and Trump, who downplay the importance of vaccines and question their safety, even for those like the MMR shots that have safely been in common use for decades.

 

 With Kennedy this summer replacing every previous member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices, no one knows what official government recommendations will look like a few months from now.

 

That’s the danger when the national public health is entrusted to a discredited vaccine skeptic as part of a blatantly political deal.

 

    -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.

BONTA BARELY MENTIONED, BUT HE’S THE ACTUAL NEW FRONTRUNNER FOR GUV

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BONTA BARELY MENTIONED, BUT HE’S THE ACTUAL NEW FRONTRUNNER FOR GUV”

 

For many months, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta laid low in the 2026 run for California governor. He did this by insisting he would run for reelection if Kamala Harris opted to make the run for governor, which was the general expectation for her until July 30, when she stunned the political world by opting out of the campaign.

 

There’s no need for Bonta to lay low any longer, unless he sincerely doesn’t want the job. And in a wide but weak field, Bonta stands out as likely the strongest candidate.

 

“Kamala Harris would be a great governor,” Bonta said of a prospective Harris run early on.… “I would support her if she ran, I’ve always supported her in everything she’s done. She would be field‑clearing.”

 

Instead, Harris has now cleared the field for what proves to be the most openly competitive run for California governor in generations. It’s hard to remember a more open race in the modern era, when there always seems to have been an obvious successor waiting in the wings whenever a gubernatorial campaign came up.

 

But there is no such successor this time, no Gavin Newsom waiting for Jerry Brown to get out of the way, no Brown waiting for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s departure, no Schwarzenegger waiting to oust Gray Davis in a recall, to name just a few recent runs for governor.

 

It's hard to remember the achievements of the current crop of gubernatorial candidates. The first newly named frontrunner, former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, was a tough questioner in Congress, but try to name a singular achievement. Real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost a 2022 run for mayor of Los Angeles, seems more focused on criticizing the current mayor than running for governor. Former State Senate President Toni Atkins of San Diego’s top achievement seems to have been becoming that office’s first lesbian occupant.

 

There’s also former state controller Betty Yee, lacking a singular achievement, too. And there’s former Los Angeles Mayor and Assembly speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, whose achievements seem lost in the winds of time, because he’s been out of office raking in private payments for services so long.

 

Not to be forgotten is Xavier Becerra, once the elected attorney general of California and later a Joe Biden cabinet officer. He was President Trump’s prime legal antagonist during Trump’s first term, filing more than 100 lawsuits and great impeding the Trump agenda.

 

And there is Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who has the usual non-memorable achievements of any recent lieutenant governor.

 

Among the Republicans, there is Steve Hilton, who is best known as a Fox News host, accompanied by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, best known for his resistance to Covid 19 protections.

 

Which leaves Rob Bonta, the appointed and then elected attorney general who has been the point man in California’s efforts to resist some of the most egregious edicts of President Trump. Bonta, with more than 35 lawsuits filed so far against Trump measures, is ahead of the Becerra pace. And his aggressive demeanor in opposing Trump appears to be what California voters want.

 

That, at least, is what we can glean from the behavior of current Gov. Newsom, who puts on the most aggressive front he can in opposing Trump, presumably because that’s what he believes will best feed the preferences of his base. His latest move is to attempt a gerrymandering effort aimed to parry—at least – an effort by Texas Republicans to “steal” five currently Democratic Texas seats in Congress.

 

Bonta has not yet said much about running for governor, because he deeply believed Harris would do that job. But since she now says she will not, look for Bonta to take on a very active campaign role, just as he has lately been Trump’s leading legal antagonist.

 

He's fought Trump over the federal demands for welfare recipients’ IDs, and he’s fought firings at various federal departments. He’s fought against new voting instructions, and for offshore wind energy.

 

It’s hard to find an area where he has not stood against Trump, and if that kind of behavior is really what Californians want, expect him to become the front-runner very soon.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NEWSOM MUST ACT FAST ON GERRYMANDERING

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“NEWSOM MUST ACT FAST ON GERRYMANDERING”

 

No significant politician in California likes gerrymandering, the process by which politicians determine who gets to Congress and who does not, as managed by political operatives.

 

When Californians added congressional districts to the nonpartisan state legislative district drawing process adopted narrowly in 2008, the idea of taking control of congressional seats away from political parties passed by a margin of more than 60-40 percent.

 

So there is natural distaste when Californians consider this fall whether to permit Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s dominant Democratic politicians to redo the congressional districts last redrawn in a non-partisan manner in 2020.

 

But if the polls are correct and President Trump remains abysmally unpopular in California, then this measure just might pass, with new districts put in place by late fall or early spring so that candidates will have plenty of time to file for the June primary election.

 

If this does not happen, it will probably mark the end of Newsom’s on-again, off-again 2028 campaign for president.

 

For he needs to chalk up some wins over the Republicans if he wants to assume the Democratic mantle. So far, Newsom has been by far the most combative Democrat in the running, not afraid to do Fox News interviews, debate major GOP figures and frequently act defiant of Trump.

 

There is little Democrats hate more than watching Republicans change districts seemingly willy-nilly in states they control. It’s the prime method by which they’ve maintained their razor-thin three-vote majority in Congress. They seem to engage in this exercise about once in four years, rather than the conventional once in ten.

 

Just now Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to “steal” five nominally Democrat-leaning congressional districts in the Houston area to help his party maintain its thin House margin.

 

Houston, only slightly smaller than Los Angeles, is normally a Democratic town, with Dems outnumbering Republicans considerably in all of surrounding Harris County. Now, though, Republican graphic artists have drawn five new districts covering most of that county. They’re shaped a lot like concentric horseshoes, with Democrats pushed into just one larger-looking district so more Republicans can be crammed into the others.

 

Seeing this, Newsom was inspired enough to notice that similar surgery could be performed on five California House seats now held by Republicans. But unlike Texas Republicans, Newsom cannot act without the voters’ consent.

 

He first needs the Legislature to set a special election for no later than November, so that voters get a chance to change the 2010 Prop. 20 and make an occasional districting redo legal. No, a simple legislative vote for this would not be enough. In this state, it takes one initiative to reverse another. And this would be a major reverse.

 

For sure, the always vocal Reform California movement headed by San Diego Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, has promised every sort of legal action it can dream up to stop this.

 

With a state court system stacked high with Newsom appointees, it’s possible that kind of GOP opposition would be kicked to the sideline quickly.

 

But no one can safely bet on this. Be fairly sure, this will go to an autumn vote, no matter who likes it or not.

 

Newsom needs this one. Yes, he loves to get down into the trenches with Trump, but his challenge and the money to be invested in it has never been so much.

 

Some call this a mere ploy by Newsom to deter the Texas Republicans from their plan. Right now, it does not look that way.

 

Newsom appears to mean business, not something he will allow to cave in quickly.

 

But he must keep the drive going, or he will look like a mere bluffer using one of his very last chances at influencing legislators to help out his national party.

 

If he manages to pull it off, despite charges from many sides that he’s attempting something very anti-democratic, he will become a Democratic hero who has accomplished more than any other party mate in keeping Trump from exercising the extreme power he arrived with for his second White House term. If not, Democrats will likely look elsewhere for their next standard bearer.

 

 

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

‘FIREMAN’ TRUMP INCREASES FIRE SEASON DANGERS

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ ‘FIREMAN’ TRUMP INCREASES FIRE SEASON DANGERS”

 

Many politicians love to play fireman, often visiting disaster scenes and advising real firefighters on how they can do things better.

 

No politico does this more than President Trump, who frequently advises California governors they need to “rake the forests” in order to prevent fires. He conveniently ignores the fact that the federal government he controls is the owner of the vast majority of the lands he wants raked and that any money to do it would have to come from the federal budget.

 

But facts have rarely dissuaded Trump from things he believes in or disputes, including items like climate change and whether captured undocumented immigrants have the right to court hearings before they are summarily dumped back into their home countries – or others whose languages they may not recognize or understand.

 

So it’s also been this year when it comes to firefighting preparation, as the state faces an unusually fire-prone fall season, with more than two years of unusually heavy rain- and snowfall contributing to thicker than usual underbrush.

 

If Trump really wanted to reduce the risk of gigantic wildfires, as he says he does, he would right now be deploying many thousands of Forest Service workers in the 18 national forests around California, along with further thousands of National Guard troops. They could be reducing a genuine danger if they cut and removed underbrush rather than standing around in front of federal buildings, as they did for weeks after mostly peaceful protests broke out in Los Angeles against Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps aiming at producing record numbers of deportations.

 

But no, Trump isn’t doing any of that. Instead, he is maintaining cuts designed by the now relatively inactive Department of Government Efficiency, once headed by billionaire political donor Elon Musk. The firings relevant to California wildfires involve thousands of workers from the Forest Service, the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, usually called FEMA.

 

Trump has said these cuts in staff and office closures will help eliminate government waste and save billions of tax dollars.

 

But those four agencies all play critical parts in California’s wildfire prevention and response efforts, from forecasting and forest management (yes, raking and cutting underbrush is included here) to post-fire disaster relief.

 

The cuts, coming just when climate change is making California wildfires steadily more severe, put this state at a disadvantage compared with past fire seasons, when blazes grew steadily larger and more destructive even as the now-fired federal employees worked to hold them down.

 

Besides forecasters and analysts who help predict where fires will go once they’ve begun, more than 1,400 “red card” Forest Service employees were also cut. These are not fulltime firefighters, but deploy to large firestorms and help with operations. Officials are now trying to call many of them back, but a large proportion have moved on to other jobs.

 

What’s more, Trump has ordered the Forest Service to change its priorities and emphasize logging, mining and oil and gas drilling on federal lands, rather than making fire resistance its top task.

 

State officials say the change in priorities combined with much lower staffing levels will leave California more vulnerable to big fires than it has been in recent years.

 

“We are getting back to the basics of managing our national forests for their intended purposes of producing timber, clean water, recreation and other necessities for the American taxpayer,” Forest Service chief Tom Schultz told a reporter. Schultz is a former lumber executive.

 

Meanwhile, Trump’s budget proposal would shift firefighting and prevention to a new agency under the Interior Department, but give it less funding than before. That worries some Western state senators who fear it may spawn the biggest wildfire season in decades later this year.

 

That may be what California and the West get with a president who dabbles in firefighting, an area where he has almost no expertise, but loves to throw around verbal platitudes.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NEWSOM FLOUTS POLITICAL TRUISM: ‘DON’T FIGHT BATTLES YOU CAN’T WIN

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM FLOUTS POLITICAL TRUISM: ‘DON’T FIGHT BATTLES YOU CAN’T WIN’”

 

The California Department of Education estimates that fewer than 10 transgender high school athletes were among the 6 million students who participated in California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) sports last year.

 

For college level sports in California, transgender athletes were also in single digits during the last school year.

 

So why is the state putting more than $6 billion in federal education grants at risk by inviting the Trump administration to challenge a state law that federal Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi claims violates the rights of girl athletes, who she says are now forced to compete against biological males?

 

Of course, there is some question whether transgender girls fully retain their native male physical strength and physiques once they’ve undergone the hormonal and other treatment needed to render them trans.

 

None of this seems to matter much to anyone in this completely unnecessary battle.

 

The fight, in fact, seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by Gov. Gavin Newsom and his choice for state Attorney General, Rob Bonta, who have filed more than two dozen lawsuits against Trump administration actions, augmented by about a dozen amicus briefs filed to support lawsuits from other states.

 

But this one appears to put too much at risk for the sake of supposed rights granted by California to very few people.

 

The state was given 10 days in July to respond to a federal holding that allowing transgender athletes to compete in CIF events (only one competed in a championship competition last spring) violates Title IX, a 1972 federal law against sex-based discrimination in any education program that receives federal funding.

 

It's an open question where the discrimination may lie in this case: Is it discrimination to allow one or two athletes who may have some left-over male characteristics to compete against unadulterated native females? Or is the discrimination when they are prevented from competing in their preferred gender role?

 

Said Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco attorney and Republican National Committee member who long fought futile battles against her city’s strongly liberal establishment and is now a Trump assistant attorney general, “The Justice Department will not stand for policies that deprive girls of their hard-earned athletic trophies and ignore their safety on the field and in private spaces.”

 

So Justice gave California 10 days to change its policy, which is written into law here and in 21 other states.

 

Replied the state Department of Education at the deadline, “The CDE respectfully disagrees…and it will not sign the proposed resolution agreement.” Added the CIF, “The CIF concurs…(and) will not be signing…”

 

So another lawsuit is joined. Given the known proclivities of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority and its tendency to give Trump his way on most issues, it’s doubtful the state can win this case. Ultimately, its law allowing transgender young women to compete will almost certainly be struck down.

 

And then, the Trump administration says, it will try to exact revenge by taking $6 billion from education programs. Should the benefits of that grant money – actually taxes paid by Californians being returned for state use – be denied to many thousands of other students because of an almost certainly losing attempt to preserve a right used by only a very few?

 

Newsom and Bonta say it’s a matter of principle. Said one Newsom spokesperson, “No court has adopted the interpretation of Title IX advanced by the federal government, and neither the governor, nor they, get to wave a magic wand and override it.”

 

But chances are the current law won’t be law for too much longer.

 

Which brings the issue back to the old Kenny Rogers song “The Gambler,” which featured the signature line that “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.”

 

On this issue, it is time for Newsom and Bonta to fold ‘em. They don’t need to fight every battle, even relatively small ones with large financial and ideological aspects, in order for Newsom to play out his desired role as the Democrats’ chief anti-Trumper.

 

Or, as another political saying goes, “The art of politics is knowing when to stand and fight, and when to walk away and live to fight another day.”

 

 

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

REQUIRE IDS FROM FEDERAL AGENTS; END SOME FEARS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“REQUIRE IDS FROM FEDERAL AGENTS; END SOME FEARS”

 

If a U.S. senator doesn’t work to alleviate the fears of his or her constituents, they probably are not doing their job very well.

 

This explains why, even when he knows the measure has no immediate chance for passage, California’s Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla the other day introduced new legislation requiring federal immigration enforcement agents to display clearly visible identification during enforcement actions, except those involving stealthy approaches to hideouts of the undocumented.

 

In California, this should not strike anyone as new or dangerous to law enforcement officers. The state penal code already requires uniformed officers to wear badges or nameplates correctly displaying their identification number or name. It means on-duty cops, sheriff’s deputies and Highway Patrol members cannot conceal either their badge or name.

 

A current state Senate bill called SB 627 would also make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to mask up while on duty, although this most likely could not be enforced upon federal officers working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol.

 

But in this case such symbolism is important, letting the host of mostly brown-skinned Californians now explicitly targeted by immigration agents, both legal residents and not, know that at least some public officials are on their side.

 

Said Padilla, “Without visible badges, names or insignia, members of the public often have no way to confirm whether they are interacting with legitimate government officials…causing widespread confusion and fear, especially in communities already subject to heightened immigration scrutiny,”

 

Padilla, like co-sponsor Cory Booker of New Jersey, knows this bill will not pass the Senate in this session, controlled by Republicans aligned with President Trump and his mass deportation campaign.

 

But it means something to many of the targeted – legitimately or not – for prominent senators to take their side.

 

Then there’s the whole issue of whether immigration agents should be permitted to wear masks or balaclavas in the first place while making arrests. If those under arrest aren’t sure their captors are really government officials, can they be blamed if they resist? So far, they’ve not only been blamed in such incidents, but often beaten to a pulp.

 

California officers could not do that. They must be identifiable unless working undercover. Yes, they can be masked when conditions justify it, but their badges must still be visible.

 

The federal Department of Homeland Security has so far justified allowing masks and lack of any identifying markers during arrests – both individual and mass – by claiming that identification would expose agents and their families to danger.

But their danger would be no more severe than the supposed peril of California officers, who have been openly identified for years.

 

It’s true that California cops who opposed the current state laws while they were still mere proposals offered precisely the same arguments against identification now being purveyed by Homeland Security. Yet, there has been no wave of attacks on California officers.

 

In fact, several online search engines reported there have  been no reported incidents of targeting cops based on badge or name visibility. Not even one case where assailants singled out officers because their uniforms were identifiable as representing a particular agency.

 

So at least in California, there is no evidence for the kind of danger alleged by Homeland Security. But it is still possible that because of the fear and hatred thus far aroused by masked ICE agents, such incidents might occur.

 

Yet, federal rules and laws are not usually based on such conjecture. Rather, it usually takes some actual incidents for rules to become firm, as they appear to be today.

 

That’s why, said Padilla, “Our bill is grounded in law enforcement best practices that would prohibit immigration enforcement officers from wearing face coverings and require them to display name or badge number and the agency they represent. We must act to maintain trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”

 

That reasoning may prevail someday in the Senate, but certainly not unless Democrats manage to capture a majority there in next year’s election.

 

 

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

DESPITE TRUMP DIGS AND ATTACKS, CALIFORNIA IS MOSTLY FINE

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“DESPITE TRUMP DIGS AND ATTACKS, CALIFORNIA IS MOSTLY FINE”

 

To hear the declinists, as ex-Gov. Jerry Brown liked to call them, there’s plenty wrong with California today: high taxes, lousy business climate, earthquakes, wildfires, expensive insurance and much more.

 

All those things have validity, discouraging some folks from living or staying here. But there’s so much on the positive side to make up for all this that the vast majority of Californians want to stick around.

 

As one resident of the canals area of Marina del Rey put it the other day, “Yes, California is expensive, but it’s worth it.”

 

What’s more, California works on its problems. Not merely the state, but also cities and counties. You say housing is too expensive, well, OK said the city of Berkeley fairly recently, we’ll let you live in small housing units known as accessory units that have not previously been permitted and were not built fully to permit standards. That’s one way to increase housing supplies at low cost.

 

Utilities complain that it’s expensive and time consuming for them to rebuild their facilities in wildfire areas? OK, says Gov. Gavin Newsom, just go ahead and do it and never mind the California Environmental Quality Act, which has been used by lawyers for many years to hold up a variety of projects.

 

Even when President Trump complains about California features like the Coastal Commission that have sometimes held work back, there have been responses. One came from Newsom, who after January’s Los Angeles firestorm also called off Coastal Commission rules about which Trump has sometimes whined.

 

Lately, it has seemed that for every complaint from California declinists like the President, there’s usually a ready answer.

 

For one example, Trump griped while campaigning here last fall that “California has the highest inflation” in America. Never mind that Trump’s tariffs on things like cars and appliances are ipso facto inflationary, he also ignored a major study from the WalletHub website that found Californians have among the highest confidence in their own financial futures, based upon their current spending levels.

 

In that study, Californians ranked first in the nation, increasing their credit card debt by $4.5 billion in the second quarter of last year. This was facilitated by the facts that California has the largest population by far of any state and that those people hold more credit cards than folks in any other state.

 

Trump, like others, has often claimed California has the highest taxes in the nation, which is not true. Yes, California has the highest sales tax, at 7.5 percent statewide, with add-ons in many locales. But overall, the tax burden here ranks eighth, largely because the 1978 Proposition 13 puts property taxes here in the bottom half nationally. Trump’s own golf course on the Palos Verdes Peninsula benefits from that.

 

Trump also never mentions that California ties Washington state as the best in the West for finding new jobs, according to the CommercialCafe website’s rankings. The same site calls San Francisco the best city in America for starting a post-college career.

 

Six California cities ranked in the top ten in that category, including Sacramento, Stockton, San Bernardino, Victorville and Menifee. The state also had four cities ranked in the top 10 for working parents: San Francisco, Fremont, Irvine and Oakland.

 

Plus, California tops the ranking for number of major corporations headquartered here, with 57, beating the 52 in New York and 50 in Texas. That doesn’t even include those – like Chevron and Tesla – who moved headquarters out of state, but left most operations here intact.

 

Trump never mentions any of this, nor do other declinists, some of whom operate moving services for employees of corporations and others migrating among the states. 

 

All of which means that when evaluating news coverage of California, it can be important to remember that social media and other news sources often stress the negatives while ignoring positives, of which California has a surfeit – without even mentioning the weather.

 

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS 

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS”

 

Here’s the new reality for former Vice President Kamala Harris as she’s halfway though a summer of contemplating whether or not to campaign to become California’s next governor:

 

It would not be easy.

 

The entire idea of Harris running for governor, a run in which she would have to commit to serving out a full term, thus giving up on running for president in 2028, is predicated on her having an easy time of it. The presumption is that today’s crowded field of Democrats would thin out quickly to give her a virtually free “top two” primary election finish next June. This would assure her a slot on the fall ballot, most likely against either a Republican-turned-Democrat like developer Rick Caruso – who lost a run for mayor of Los Angeles three years ago – or far-right Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

 

But that scenario might not come about. As Harris contemplates, none of her prospective Democratic primary rivals has dropped out quickly.

 

Yes, Harris can take comfort she is the early-book leader in this race. Against a host of other declared and rumored candidates, she enjoyed 24 percent support in a poll by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology. But placed in a hypothetical race against an unnamed Republican (right now, Caruso and Bianco are the most likely to be there), she led by only 41-29 percent, with heaps of undecided voters.

 

Undecided voters have long been poison to Harris. Their late decisions made her 2010 run for state attorney general against then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley a horserace lasting until the very last days of vote-counting, almost a month after Election Day. They made what looked like an easy 2016 Senate run against then-Orange County Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez tighter than most observers thought it would turn out.

 

And last-minute choices of the previously undecided in a few states cost her the presidency against Republican Donald Trump last fall.

 

So a contemplative Harris should be able to recognize a very tight race in the making and realize she just might lose – and forfeit any hope of ever becoming president.

 

She might even have trouble securing what figures to become the lone Democratic slot in the 2026 November runoff.

 

Yes, she leads the second-place Democrat, former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, by a 4-1 margin in the early polling and has even larger edges over other Democrats like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ex-federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, current  Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and ex-state Senate President Toni Adkins.

 

Some of them are bound to drop out of the top-of-ticket race before it gets extremely serious in late fall. But others will stick with it and – like Kounalakis, Porter and Villaraigosa – likely raise enough money to compete heavily against Harris.

 

History, of course, shows that when she faces stiff competition, Harris can have problems, as when she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in 2020 even before the first primary.

 

So even though Dean Jon Gould of UC Irvine’s Social Ecology program told a reporter that “The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” it ain’t necessarily so.

 

Other observers will get different readings from the information the Irvine survey developed, which is not so far off what a slightly earlier Emerson College poll showed.

 

Caruso, for one, will see these findings as extremely encouraging. Should he win a top two slot, he will e would likely see Harris as at least as soft a target as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, still weakened by the fact she left town when wildfire warnings were being issued before last winter’s Los Angeles area firestorms.

 

In debates, where Harris has never done very well, he would try to turn Harris into a pseudo-Bass, suggesting she might be a Bass clone.

 

This still makes a Harris entry to this race likely because of her standing as the early leader in every poll. But she’s never demonstrated an abiding interest in top California issues like homelessness or insurance company rates and performance.

 

All of which makes a Harris entry into this key race very much a question mark for the moment.

  e

 

 

 

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?"

 

There can be no doubt that the relatively few Californians strongly interested in becoming an independent country have had high hopes that President Trump’s “War on California” would drive many new adherents to their camp.

 

So far, it is not happening at a level that can be taken seriously. That’s the upshot of a new poll taken by the YouGov survey service for the Carlsbad-based Independent California Institute (ICI).

 

Let’s tot up a few things Trump has done to harm California: He’s eliminated the state’s unique ability to make smog rules for the state’s vehicles, once thought securely written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. He’s invented a series of Los Angeles “riots,” which were at most a few incidents of vandalism, and used it to send thousands of soldiers into Southern California. He’s eliminated funding for bringing English-learning schoolchildren and migrant kids into the academic mainstream.

 

These are only a few anti-California measures he’s taken, besides ordering the region to undergo the nation’s most intensive deportation drive ever, claiming to go after seriously criminal illegal immigrants but mostly picking up undocumented workers who broke no other laws.

 

Apparently, all this has not yet had huge negative impact on mainstream Californians. 

 

The new poll does say Californians’ confidence in the federal government has nosedived since Trump took office, with 50 percent of Californians saying they now trust Sacramento more than Washington, D.C. and only 23 percent holding the opposite view. Those numbers are significantly changed from February, when only 34 percent trusted Sacramento more, while 18 percent trusted the feds.

 

But when asked if they’d vote for a peaceful secession ballot initiative, only 44 percent were in favor, with 54 percent against.

 

Is it possible Californians could shift radically to the side of secession in the foreseeable future? Says ICI director Coyote Codornices Marin, “It would probably take something quite direct. For instance, if Trump were to say something like ‘We don’t need California,’ that could seriously drive secession. But I strongly doubt he would ever be stupid enough to say that.”

 

Even without such a seminal event, 71 percent of Californians believe they’d be better off if California somehow gained special autonomous status within the USA, something that seems ever less likely under the Trump administration, which seems bent on allowing California less autonomy, not more.

 

This reality does not faze the 60 percent of Californians who said they want California’s 52-person House delegation in Congress to back autonomy with “hardball tactics” like refusing to vote for federal budgets as long as California receives billions of dollars less in federal spending than it pays in federal taxes.

 

Other significant findings in the poll of 500 Californians included 71 percent wanting a new state law enforcement division focused on violent extremism and hate crimes, rather than leaving such enforcement strictly up to local police and sheriffs. A similar 72 percent want California police to have authority to arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” And 80 percent want California to control its borders “more like a country,” checking for illegal firearms and other types of contraband, rather than merely seeking out perishable fruit.

 

Said the ICI’s vice chair, Timothy Vollmer, “Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions.”

 

But that leaves out the Trump factor. The president wants exactly the reverse from California, and seems most compliant with California desires when they are addressed to him with abject obsequiousness.

 

“Yes, our poll numbers for secession are at a record high,” said Marin. But they added the numbers also indicate a steep uphill climb would still be required, especially without special autonomous status as a step in that direction.

 

“Many people just don’t think it’s possible to be sovereign in the immediate future,” said Marin.

 

But that could change were Trump’s steadfast irritation with California to become more active and focused on depriving Californians of basic rights.

 

 -30-       
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

WHY SHOULD LEGISLATORS FAVOR LEGAL POT BUSINESSES?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WHY SHOULD LEGISLATORS FAVOR LEGAL POT BUSINESSES?”

 

The ill effects of cannabis use have been well known for generations: spaced out behavior, impaired judgment, clouded or heightened senses depending on your personal biology, a distorted sense of time, slowed reactions, lower motor skills, reduced inhibitions, less mental focus and memory.

 

That’s only part of the list, which some claim is balanced by the relaxing effects of marijuana and its partially proven ability to ease the pain caused by some medical treatments.

 

Despite all the harms of marijuana, state legislators have steadily pushed increases in its use ever since recreational pot sales became legal via a 2016 ballot initiative.

 

Now the state Assembly has passed yet another measure to ease life for pot shops. If passed by the state Senate, this one, known as AB 564 and sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Matt Haney of San Francisco, would lower the state excise tax on legal pot from the 19 percent it automatically reached on July 1 back to 15 percent at least until 2030, squashing a potential future increase to 25 percent.

 

This measure is designed to protect legal pot prices from being undercut by untaxed illegal growers whose product is widely available informally. It comes just one year after legislators also tried to help legal pot use by allowing Amsterdam-style lounges that could serve food and drinks along with varieties of the weed.

 

The real question here is what legalized pot has done to deserve the most-favored-business status informally bestowed upon it by lawmakers. No one has produced any information to refute the long list of harmful pot effects.

 

And two new studies originating in Northern California raise new questions about continued recreational sales of the weed.

 

One, co-authored by researchers from the Kaiser Permanente health care service and Oakland’s regional Public Health Institute, found that teenagers living in areas with more cannabis stores experience significantly higher rates of mental health issues.

 

The study used data from nearly 96,000 insured adolescents, finding that those in cities or counties without pot stores are significantly less likely to have been diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Greater retail activity and availability – regardless of laws prohibiting sales to anyone under 18 – translated to higher rates of diagnosed psychotic, depressive and anxiety disorders.

 

“This study reinforces the importance of where and how cannabis is sold in protecting adolescent mental health,” said Lynn Silver MD, a program director at the Public Health Institute.

 

Almost simultaneously, a UC San Francisco study determined that long-term cannabis use is linked to a greater likelihood of developing heart disease. The risk stems from reduced blood vessel function, said the study, published in the American Medical Association’s journal Cardiology.

 

The study involved 55 “outwardly healthy persons between 18 and 50.” It revealed that eating edible marijuana products like gummies has the same impact on heart health as smoking pot. Study subjects had been consuming marijuana in one form or another at least three times weekly for a year or more.

 

All of these regular users were found to have “decreased vascular function,” comparable to regular smokers. Their blood vessel capacity was roughly half as high as among non-cannabis users.

 

We already knew marijuana use was harmful for bunches of reasons, but direct proof of significant long-term physical harm has been hard to locate.

 

The findings reinforce a year-old study from the American Psychiatric Assn. warning that individuals who want to remain mentally sharp in old age (defined as 65 and older) should not smoke pot regularly, nor eat pot-laced products from chocolates to layer cakes.

 

The real question here is not whether marijuana use is harmful. That’s been known for at least a century, even if some details are only now emerging.

 

The real question is why California legislators are so supportive of this harmful industry, treating it with kid gloves even as other drugs get harsh treatment.

 

Yes, campaign contributions by pot-linked labor unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers no doubt play a role in bringing near-unanimous votes on laws this industry wants passed. So do tax receipts. But legislators should be able to resist those pressures.

 

Which leads to another question: What drug are legislators using when they give sustained favored status to an industry that does much more harm than good?

 

     -30-       
Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com