IF COVID-WRACKED BODIES STACK UP THIS YEAR, BLAME RFK Jr., TRUMP

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“IF COVID-WRACKED BODIES STACK UP THIS YEAR, BLAME RFK Jr., TRUMP”

 

As Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues making vaccines in general and COVID-19 inoculations in particular harder to get, it will become more and more clear that the blame for any resulting deaths lies with him and his boss, President Trump.

 

That also applies to the current outbreak of whooping cough (or pertussis), of which 10,082 cases were reported by the end of May, killing five infants. That led Kennedy’s top U.S. Senate critic, Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, whose state had three times as many cases as last year, to call on him to encourage mass vaccinations for whooping cough. At this writing, Kennedy had not responded, and the outbreak was unabated.

 

It's important to make clear neither Trump nor Kennedy is responsible for the summertime measles death of a Los Angeles child infected when too young for vaccination and before either RFK Jr. or Trump took office.

 

Yet, there’s little doubt much of the blame in any future stackup of bodies dead from COVID-19 varieties will lie with Kennedy. For years, he was America’s foremost critic of vaccines of most types, from long-established preventives like the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) inoculations required for most schoolchildren to the newer COVID-19 antidotes.

 

We know New York City and parts of New Jersey experienced such high death tolls early in the COVID pandemic that hospitals and morgues used refrigerated trucks to store piled-up bodies. Images of mass burials on Hart Island near the Bronx also circulated widely during 2020 and 2021.

 

In that same year’s winter surge (the deadliest wave yet), hospitals in California, Arizona and Oregon also converted trucks into temporary morgues.

 

Now another round of COVID threatens, and we shall see how responsible the American public that elected Donald Trump president is willing to hold him and his political deal-making.

 

Just now, a new variety of COVID-19 – at least the fourth since the pandemic’s supposed end – proliferates across the nation, while Kennedy makes it continually more difficult for people to get protected by new forms of the vaccine.

 

As secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy names the committees that set the rules for this. He has systematically filled them with anti-vaccine cronies he calls “distinguished scientists.”

 

They’ve set rules making it almost impossible for anyone under 65 to get previously free vaccinations unless they tell a pharmacist they have some kind of underlying condition weakening their health.

 

Even some over-65s in California and other states have reported being forced to get COVID-shot prescriptions from physicians.

 

These are far higher barriers to inoculation than Americans faced as recently as last year, before RFK Jr. took over HHS.

 

Why blame Trump, too? For one thing, he put Kennedy where he is, part of a Trump/Kennedy political bargain sealed very publicly in August 2024.

 

That’s when Kennedy – until then a secondary presidential candidate – agreed to throw whatever support he had at the polls (it wasn’t much) behind Trump, often reported as an exchange for any cabinet job he desired.

 

Kennedy sorely wanted HHS. He has used it to the hilt, first lying about the extent of his anti-vaccine sentiments during Senate confirmation hearings and then acting on his true feelings after taking over the only federal job he ever wanted.

 

Trump knew he was suborning this deceit, saying later that “Everyone knows these (vaccines) work,” but still refusing to fire Kennedy even after most of Kennedy’s family begged him to. Who knows what written “pre-nup” may exist between the two men, restraining Trump from taking appropriate action?

 

Even senators who voted to confirm Kennedy as a cabinet member now loudly point out contradictions between his confirmation hearing testimony and his actions in office. “I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines,” said Cassidy, a doctor and the decisive vote to confirm Kennedy.

 

The bottom line: The direct line of responsibility for today’s rising positive results for COVID-19 and other once quiescent ailments like pertussis runs through both Kennedy and Trump. But no one knows if voters will hold either to account.

 

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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

IT’S LESS OVERT, BUT TRUMP’S ‘WAR ON CALIFORNIA’ CARRIES ON

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“IT’S LESS OVERT, BUT TRUMP’S ‘WAR ON CALIFORNIA’ CARRIES ON”

 

It’s not exactly the 100 years war, but Donald Trump’s undeclared ‘War on California’ carries on this fall just as intently as ever before.

 

No, it’s not as obvious as when he defied the governor and several judges to send National Guard and Marine troops by the thousands to quell a riot that wasn’t.

 

It isn’t merely that the count of California lawsuits against him is higher today than at the same point in his first presidential term. In some cases, Trump lets other Republicans carry his water and in others he is harming California more than other states with his nationwide moves, including the tariffs he has (possibly illegally) imposed on California’s largest trade partners.

 

These things will not likely knock California off its pedestal as the world’s No. 4 economy, just ahead of India and just behind Germany. For one thing, the large amount of rebuilding construction that will soon follow last January’s Los Angeles County firestorms will keep the cost of goods created here higher than before, suggesting a potential move up in the worldwide economic rankings.

 

But make no mistake, through a wide series of moves, Trump is doing what he can to make life less pleasant, more expensive and even less truthful for Californians.

 

Start with the Clean Air Act, where Trump coerced every Republican in the House of Representatives to vote last spring for elimination of the California waiver in the Clean Air Act of 1970. That’s the provision that allowed this state to clean up its air (not completely, by far) through measures like catalytic converters and electric vehicles, pioneered here and often resented elsewhere. Such resentment was why 35 Democrats voted with the House GOP.

 

Trump tried for this repeatedly in his first term, but was voted out before he could finish, rendering moot any legal cases surrounding his effort. Now it will be up to Democrats in the Senate to stop this effort to dirty up California air.

 

There is also significant legal debate on this. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stated that waivers like California’s are not subject to congressional review, suggesting Congress lacks the authority to overturn them. If this measure goes through, with a smirking Trump signing it, that issue would be decided by the courts.

 

But that’s only one move against California. Here are a few others (not the complete list):

 

n Termination of a study on guaranteed income. Trump halted a $9 million UC San Francisco clinical trial providing $500 monthly to 300 low-income Black young adults that aimed to learn whether this tactic can cut crime and homelessness.

 

n An executive order to Attorney General Pam Bondi to halt enforcement of state laws on climate change, explicitly challenging California’s cap-and-trade program that, among other things, produces electric and natural gas bill credits of about $50 per customer twice a year.

 

n Another order opening floodgates in two Central California reservoirs, supposedly aiming to address wildfire issues. But there were no fires near those reservoirs and none of the water reached any fire area, most of it flowing into depleted San Joaquin Valley aquifers.

 

n Trying to eliminate past California atrocities from the Smithsonian Institute and all other government-sponsored exhibits purporting to deal with all aspects of California history.

 

n Ignoring the bragging he voiced while visiting the January fire zones and again in an Oval Office meeting with Gov. Gavin Newsom – to provide quick federal aid to wildfire survivors. Reality is there has been no movement in Congress toward passing California’s request for $40 billion in fire aid.

 

Taken together, these moves compose an attack on California’s ability to control its own environment and fix its problems with tax money paid by this state’s citizens, who annually put far more into the federal treasury than they get back.

 

They would instead put this state on equal or even lesser footing than Republican-controlled states like West Virginia and Alabama, where smog and water safety issues have never been taken seriously, as they are here.

 

 

 

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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

 

Suggested pullout quote: “These moves are major parts of an attack on California’s ability to control its own environment and fix its problems.”

 

WHO ARE THE REAL HYPOCRITES IN THE GERRYMANDERING FIGHT?

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“WHO ARE THE REAL HYPOCRITES IN THE GERRYMANDERING FIGHT?”

 

For the better part of 20 years, Republican politicians across the nation have taken advantage of whatever privileges their status as state legislators gave them to assure they would stay in office perpetually, or at least as long as they wanted.

 

This has all been done at the expense of both Democratic pols and the minority groups many of them represent in Congress thanks to districts they have drawn for themselves from Texas to Florida, West Virginia to the Dakotas.

 

The GOP operatives never felt the slightest embarrassment or compunction about what they were doing, no matter how many times courts forced them to alter their maps and return to square 1 in the gerrymandering wars.

 

That’s why it is utterly laughable for figures like Joel Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. or the newly elected Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, who runs a fund-raising operation titled “Reform California,” to toss around words like hypocrite and apostate when California Democrats try to turn the tables on them, for once.

 

This all began when the order came down from Donald Trump in the Oval Office to Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, who despite his frequent toadying to the President nevertheless brags incessantly about what a political hotshot he is.

 

So when Trump essentially ordered Abbott early last summer to turn six minority congressional districts in the mostly minority Houston area into five white Republican districts and just one minority district, it was clearly meant as a tactic to assure continued Trump or Trumpist rule in the House of Representatives in perpetuity.

 

Never mind that the Constitution very plainly says congressional districts are to be drawn once every 10 years, just after the Census, and intended to last the full 10 years.

 

Democrats have stood still for this chicanery every time it’s been tried in the past. That’s likely why the GOP operatives who have pulled these trick plays so often in the past were taken aback when California Gov. Gavin Newsom, plainly running for president in 2028, decided to give them a piece of their own medicine.

 

Yes, California has a non-partisan state elections commission to draw its decennial borders. And that’s how it worked in 2021, the year after the last Census.

 

But Newsom realized that anything enacted by a California ballot initiative – as was the non-partisan election commission – can be undone by another initiative.

 

So he did the unprecedented: He decided to match Texas tit for tat, saying if you take away five Democratic districts in a 2026 election that figures to be extraordinarily tight, we’ll figure a way to get them back, right here in California.

 

Hence, the Legislature quickly approved a new map with five districts that figure to switch from red to blue, mostly in the eastern and southern parts of the state.

 

This didn’t sit too well with James Gallagher, the minority leader of the state Assembly. Gallagher had hoped to pick up one of the unknown number of changed seats due to come up after 2030. But James Gallagher, meet Jeff Stone.

 

Stone is a former Riverside County supervisor who devised another north-south split for California, this one intended to give the new eastern California state a couple more seats in Congress and two more Republican seats in the Senate. It was essentially the same things Gallagher wants to try now.

 

No shame on Stone’s part in this attempted manipulation. It didn’t work, just like all the other 40-plus state split schemes presented over the last half century.

 

Meanwhile, Newsom’s lone-wolf attempt to thwart Trump’s attempt at self-perpetuation is the only significant effort trying to stop the Republicans from cementing themselves into power for years, maybe decades, to come.

It appears to be the sort of tactic frustrated Democrats want their 2028 hopefuls to attempt. So even if Newsom’s effort fails, at least he will have tried, putting himself ahead of rivals like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Breshears. For now, at least, it gives Newsom a leg up on the rest of the Democratic field, although no one knows how long that advantage might last.

 

-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

NERVOUS TIME FOR SOME HISPANICS AT MANY CALIFORNIA COLLEGES -- AND NOT BECAUSE OF ICE

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
"NERVOUS TIME FOR SOME HISPANICS AT MANY CALIFORNIA COLLEGES -- AND NOT BECAUSE OF ICE”

 

As students headed back to school at California’s more than 200 college and university campuses, some had more reason than usual to be nervous.

 

For a federal program that – for a change – is not currently threatened for defunding by President Trump appears to be in trouble from a completely different source.

 

That’s the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HIS) grants given annually since 1995 to community colleges, four-year colleges and universities whose student bodies are 25 percent or more Latino. These have totaled more than $600 million for California campuses alone since the avent of the program.

 

With its huge populace of immigrants of varying legal status, California has gotten more than one-fourth of the money available under this plan, which lets campuses improve their student support programs from faculty instruction on how best to boost Hispanic students to added counseling for them, and student retention programs that keep both Hispanics and others in school when they might otherwise drop out.

 

Like Project Head Start for much younger folks, this is one of the great successes inaugurated or expanded during the Clinton Administration.

 

But the program is now under fire, and its survival is threatened in a day when the Trump administration has managed to eliminate many programs it labels as diversity, equity and inclusion because they are designed to help minority groups move up.

 

For sure, Hispanic students in California need some kind of help. Only 35 percent of all students in the K-12 grades met or exceeded grade-level standards in math and reading, with huge performance gaps between Latinos and Blacks at one end and whites and Asians on the other. White and Asian students had gaps averaging about 25 percentage points in performance on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress during 2023-24, the last available full year for which figures are available.

 

The obvious need for something to lift up Hispanic students, who might otherwise be doomed to second-class citizenship, does not matter to the folks opposed to the HSI funding.

 

The current opposition comes from the state of Tennessee and a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which previously sued successfully forcing Harvard University to end affirmative action admissions. It argues the rules for getting HSI funding are as unconstitutional as favoring some racial groups over others in admissions.

 

A current federal lawsuit from Tennessee and the Fair Admissions group uses essentially the same arguments employed against Harvard’s former affirmative action plan. The main contention is that all colleges serving low-income students of any ethnicity ought to be eligible for grants now available only to HSIs.

 

Of course, the efforts for which the HSI funds are used at the 167 California schools that get them are also supposed to benefit all students, not just Latinos. No one is screening Asians out of counseling programs, for example, even if they are designed specifically to meet Hispanic needs and not others.

 

Because the lawsuit is pretty much in line with Trump administration goals and initiatives, and because it names the federal Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon as defendants, it’s uncertain the action will even be seriously contested. The administration can simply concede and Tennessee and its companion citizen group would win.

 

Those who favor that outcome, according to the EdSource information service, consider the 25 percent-plus Latino enrollment benchmark illegal because it does not let other institutions with lower Hispanic enrollments participate.

 

Right now, HSI funds go to five of the nine University of California undergraduate campuses, all but one of the California State University campuses and the majority of the state’s community colleges.

 

Since the lawsuit’s objective is not to eliminate the funds, but rather make them more widely available, it’s possible most of those schools will still be able to participate in whatever new programs HSI might morph into.

 

Still, it’s unsettling for the faculty and counseling staff now using the money mostly to serve Latinos, especially since no one knows whether campuses would put up some of their other funds to keep these activities going if they are ruled illegal. It’s also doubtful the Trump administration would do anything to uplift any minority, considering how many of their campus actions now seem aimed to push them down.

 

-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

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.

 

 

 

 

 
-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

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