‘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.

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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.

 

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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?

 

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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

NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS”

 

One certainty about the just-signed AB 130 budget trailer bill is that it will lead to building projects that are extremely unwelcome in the areas where they’ll eventually stand.

 

This bill, which quite improbably passed the state Assembly on a unanimous vote after being pushed for two years by the East Bay’s Democratic Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, is likely to produce a boom in what is loosely called “infill housing” designed to help solve the state’s unquestioned housing shortage.

 

One of its major features applies the tag “infill housing” to anything built on any vacant plot of land containing less than 20 acres in a city or urban mapping area.

 

Until now, most folks thought of infill housing as apartments or condominiums on vacant lots or other small pieces of property. But 20 acres is an entirely new definition of “infill” or “small.” A plot that size built up to five stories can easily hold 1,000 or more new units, which is a large development. The previous definition of an infill site had a size limit of 5 acres.

 

As usual, with new housing in the new California, parking space requirements will be minimal, sometimes even non-existent for developments near major transit stops, on the presumption that very few living there will want the independence of owning their own car or small truck. Occupants will have to ride transit or fight for street parking every time they come and go from their new digs.

 

What’s more, the new developments will not be subject to community input, with no mandated public hearings on permits. It’s a developer’s fantasy.

 

Except for the Donald Trump effect. His campaign for unprecedented deportation efforts by Homeland Security agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol has created new shortages of labor in trades from roofing to drywall, from plumbing to demolition of smaller existing structures.

 

So one consequence of AB 130, which was quickly whipped into state law via the “budget trailer bill” maneuver, will likely be the proliferation of canvas-covered fencing around building plots where work is delayed.

 

Never mind that AB 130, which became law shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the newest state budget, is wildly unpopular, once Californians are informed of what it contains – which is the biggest blow to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) since it passed in 1970 and was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

 

Fully 66 percent of Californians in a poll taken for building trades unions and other major state interest groups opposed the bill once they learned it eliminates community input on new developments and bypasses some environmental protections, especially on land that has previously been surrounded by urban uses.

 

The poll also showed 70 percent of Californians still support CEQA, despite years of grousing about it by governors from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jerry Brown to Newsom.

 

The single most significant new related bill, also a budget trailer, is Senate Bill (SB) 131, from San Francisco’s Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener. This creates new CEQA exemptions for things like health centers and rural clinics, childcare centers, food banks wildfire mitigation projects and parks.

 

Why would legislators unanimously pass a bill that goes so much against public sentiment as AB 130? One reason is differences in the polls, with some showing majorities in favor of building as much housing as possible as soon as possible, and hang the consequences.

 

Another is that Newsom is clearly seeking a legacy. While running for president in 2027 and 2028, he will only be able to get so much mileage out of being the anti-Trump, a role he has sought to grab ever since the president nationalized the California National Guard and sent thousands of its troops into Los Angeles, where there was little violence either before or after their arrival.

 

If Newsom can claim to have solved or at least partially solved the housing crunch and California rents begin to drop, he will have a brand new hook for his presidential hat. 

 

That’s strong motivation for any politician and probably explains the easy, greased passage of AB 130 better than anything else.

 

 

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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