HEAD START MAY BE THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“HEAD START MAY BE THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL”

 

A little-hyped effort to gut and likely shut down Project Head Start composes one of the oddest and perhaps cruelest spending cuts mandated by President Trump and his unofficial – but very active – Department of Government Efficiency.

 

This is a cut no voters demanded, despite Trump’s insistence that his entire effort to rid America of programs he doesn’t like is the result of a voter mandate. For one thing, neither Head Start or any other government program was ever voted on anywhere except in Congress, where all existing government programs and departments are vetted and approved, or not.

 

For another, Trump fell short of winning a popular vote majority, winning only a plurality of votes against former Vice President Kamala Harris. So despite his talk of a strong mandate, he really has none.

 

Head Start, which serves about 800,000 low-income children across the country and well over 80,000 in California, was long among the most popular of federal programs, despite having been targeted by Trump in his first administration.

 

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, under whose umbrella Head Start operates, did not respond to calls seeking comment on Trump’s proposed complete defunding of the program by 2026.

 

If they did talk, they might have to get specific about why they’re using diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) factors as a cudgel to destroy a program that readies very young children for kindergarten better than any other government program. If it weren’t doing that, there’s no way Head Start would have survived and steadily grown since 1965.

 

Head Start officials themselves cannot conduct lawsuits against their bosses in the Trump administration hierarchy, but the American Civil Liberties Union has made this one of its major projects in questioning Trump’s overall cuts.

 

Many of those cuts have used DEI to allege that schools and universities have favored some ethnic groups over others, especially discriminating against whites in hiring and admissions. Other lawsuits made such allegations several times in the three years leading up to Trump’s second inauguration.

 

In trying to reverse Trump’s cuts, opponents often argue that the administration’s definitions of DEI discrimination are “unconstitutionally vague,” winning a few federal court orders to delay or stop the cuts. No one knows how long those orders will stay in place,

 

One reason for confusion is that Head Start has always needed diversity because the children it serves come from such a wide array of backgrounds. To be effective, the program needs teachers who can instruct in the native languages of students, who often have immigrant parents, even if they themselves are native citizens.

 

For some involved with Head Start, the ACLU lawsuit has been far too little and far too late. Scores of federally-paid Head Start workers were laid off in February, and the Associated Press reported a leaked version of the next federal budget that would shut down the program completely.

 

It's a bit of a mystery why Trump would target Head Start, whose participants are relatively low-profile kids. The program had always previously received strong support at budget times from both Democrats and Republicans. Would Senate Democrats filibuster a proposed budget that eliminates a program almost everyone likes?

 

That’s a big unknown, probably not to be resolved until the fall. Another unknown is whether state and local governments would step in and provide enough money to keep the doors open, even if some Head Start activities would have to be ended or curtailed.

 

Meanwhile, it’s also a bit uncertain who will supervise California’s many Head Start locations in the future if the overall program survives. For early on, Trump’s budgeteers shut down 12 regional offices, including the one covering California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and American Samoa.

 

The bottom line is that the uncertainty surrounding Head Start today cannot help children who need a stable learning environment. But uncertainty is the order of the day under Trump in virtually every federal department except Defense, where massive spending remains commonplace.

 
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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

JUDGE SHOPPING CARRIED TO HARMFUL NEW EXTREMES

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “JUDGE SHOPPING CARRIED TO HARMFUL NEW EXTREMES”

 

        Judge-shopping is commonplace in American courts, lawyers constantly trying to get their cases heard by judges they consider predisposed to rule their way.

 

        But it has been carried to new extremes this spring, in at least two cases with the potential to affect millions of lives and potential lives.

 

        When one district judge ordered the federal Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of the orally-taken abortion drug mifepristone and another ruled that the drug must be kept available in 17 states that sued for this in his court, there was no doubt about the judge-shopping in play.

 

        Both courts lacked any semblance of the fairness and objectivity that citizens ought to be able to expect from federal judges with lifetime appointments. It was no accident these cases were brought in the legal backwaters of Amarillo, Tex. and Spokane, Wash., where the two ideologically opposed judges preside.

 

        But let’s first take a look at the general practice of judge shopping, which by all rights should be outlawed, as judges in all cases ideally should be chosen as randomly as possible.

 

                 It’s become so accepted that now judges have begun to try it on each other. During the spring, the trend reached a new extreme.

         

                     In March, Patrick Connolly, a conservative state court judge in Los Angeles, asked another court to disqualify fellow Judge Daniel Lowenthal from presiding over the sentencing of a convicted cop killer. The reason: A belief that Lowenthal, son of former longtime Democratic Congressman Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach, is too sympathetic to criminals. Connolly, a former deputy district attorney, prosecuted killer Justin Flint in 2007 for felony murder in the death of a sheriff’s deputy gunned down in her driveway during an attempted robbery.

                     

                          Connolly objected to a Facebook post from Lowenthal advocating for police to be trained in “civil rights, civil liberties and…(to) understand past inequities and oppression…” that allegedly influence some crimes today.

                     

                             Lowenthal denied any prejudice in the case and ultimately fended off Connolly’s bid to disqualify him.

                    

                         If judges can try to get colleagues disqualified because of alleged prior prejudices that affect only one person’s fate, it cannot be surprising that lawyers in wider-ranging cases carefully seek out precisely the jurist most likely to help them.

          

                     Lawyers for the anti-abortion, Roman Catholic aligned Alliance Defending Freedom did just this when seeking to reverse the more than 20-year-old approval of mifepristone for use in pharmaceutically-induced abortions.

          

                  It’s unknown if those lawyers began by speaking with Amarillo’s Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, but his background includes four years as deputy general counsel of First Liberties Institute, a conservative Christian legal group that has long opposed abortion. Kacsmaryk was among Republican ex-President Donald Trump’s first judicial appointees in early 2017.

          

                  So no one should have been surprised when Kacsmaryk ruled that the 1873 Comstock Act – mostly aimed against vice, but also containing a clause criminalizing the mailing of obscenity, contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys and personal letters with sexual content – makes shipping mifepristone illegal no matter its record of safety or what the FDA might say about it.

    

               It was equally obvious to attorneys general of 17 states including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan – but oddly not California – that they would get the opposite sort of ruling if they went before federal Judge Thomas Rice in Spokane, who tried to assure access to the abortion drug in those states and the District of Columbia.

      

                  Rice, a former federal prosecutor, was appointed by Democratic ex-President Barack Obama in 2011 and developed a moderately liberal reputation on the bench.

        

               In each venue, the plaintiffs got just what they wanted. But the American people got confusion, not justice or clarity, and it remains to be seen how this will be resolved. For sure, the Republican-controlled House shows no inclination to update the 152-year-old Comstock Act, mostly designed to limit damage from snake-oil salesmen who traveled widely during the late 19^th Century.

 

         What’s clear from all this action, both in federal and state courts, is that judge-shopping is a dangerous practice likely to continue as long as judges are appointed for their ideology, not their legal acumen.

 

         It’s likely only to become more common and destructive so long as the court system stays as it is today.

 

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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

WHO NEEDS CALEXIT? CALIFORNIA ALREADY ACTING INDEPENDENT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

      “WHO NEEDS CALEXIT? CALIFORNIA ALREADY ACTING INDEPENDENT”

          Even as volunteers circulate petitions that could lead to a 2018 vote on whether California should leave the United States, some of the impetus behind the nascent Calexit secession movement may be dissipating.

          Calexit got nowhere between the time a book proposing the idea appeared in 2013 and the election last year of President Donald Trump. Suddenly, Trump’s seemingly authoritarian tendencies and his raft of policies threatening cherished California goals and regulations boosted the idea of separation, its poll rating jumping from single figures to about 32 percent soon after Trump’s inauguration.

          Even then, no elected California official gave the notion much credence, most scoffing at it if they said anything at all. Instead, many officials went to work to ensure the Trump administration would affect California as little as possible.

          Trump ordered the deportation of far more undocumented immigrants than authorities had under Barack Obama, and raids began in workplaces, grocery stores and other locales that had seen none in many years. So California legislators quickly began work on a “sanctuary state” law that, when passed (as appears likely), will prohibit state and local law enforcement from investigating or arresting people for their immigration status. State, county and local officers would also be forbidden to aid federal officers in immigration raids, even if their city or county leadership prefers otherwise.

          Trump signed a law repealing previous rules limiting what broadband or Internet providers could do with customer information. A California law re-installing those regulations in this state immediately appeared in the Legislature.

          When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos revoked a 2016 federal rule giving transgender students the same legal protections as all other schoolchildren, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra responded quickly. “California’s laws are strong and protect students regardless of their gender identity,” he said. “Our state stands with transgender students.”

          Essentially, he told Trump and his cohorts, “if you act to remove rights and protections, we will make sure they survive here, at least.”

          Then there was Gov. Jerry Brown, first traveling to China in the style of a head of state and then welcoming foreign leaders like the president of the tropical Fiji Islands to Sacramento just after Trump pulled America out of the Paris climate change accords. That agreement never had the status of a treaty and didn’t commit this country to do much. But it was a symbol.

          So Brown, continuing a practice begun by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed memoranda of understanding with major provinces in China and elsewhere, and with some small countries willing to pledge actions aimed to slow climate change. Those documents also fall short of treaty stature, but they establish that California is willing and able to act separately from the national administration.

          There’s also health insurance, where Trump and congressional Republicans keep trying to gut the Affordable Care Act that spawned Covered California and gave health insurance to at least 4 million Californians who didn’t previously have it. The California response: a single-payer health insurance plan which passed the state Senate before stalling in the Assembly, ostensibly to get details worked out. Again, California eventually may go it alone, acting contrary to Trump’s preferences and promises.

          Most major candidates to succeed Brown next year backed all these moves and will likely take similar actions of their own if elected. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor and leader in all polls taken so far on the 2018 run for governor, said of several Trump policies: “We’re not going to let it fly in California.”

          Every one of these California actions, both prospective ones and moves already made, assert states’ rights, but also move toward independence of a sort. “California is clearly developing a sense of nationalism even if perhaps it is not yet willing to accept the terms of formally becoming a nation,” said longtime Calexit leader Marcus Ruiz Evans.

          So strong are some state stances that Trump officials are occasionally forced to backtrack, as Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt did the other day when he rescinded an earlier threat to Clean Air Act waivers that long have allowed California to pioneer anti-smog tactics.

          With California already acting very independent, is there a really a need for a risky action like formal secession?

                  

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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, go to www.californiafocus.net

WILL LAWMAKERS KILL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE MOVES?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2014 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “WILL LAWMAKERS KILL ENERGY INDEPENDENCE MOVES?”

          Nothing is more important to California’s large privately-owned utilities than the virtual monopolies they enjoy in most of the state.

          Those monopolies make it virtually impossible for almost all businesses and residents outside cities with municipal power companies to buy electricity from anyone but companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, also guaranteeing significant profits to those utilities in perpetuity.

          But the big energy companies feel threatened these days by a movement toward energy independence now afoot from Sonoma and Marin counties to big cities like San Francisco and San Diego. Moves are also active in Alameda County and Lancaster.

          Whether the independence efforts succeed or not will depend in part on the fate of a proposed law now working its way through the state Legislature, one that advocates of competition say will surely kill their movement if it passes.

          The proposal, Assembly Bill 2145, looks innocuous on its surface: It would mandate an opt-in approach for newly-independent electric arrangements known as community choice aggregations (CCAs), rather than the opt-out setup on which every such plan in America has been based.

          So far, only two CCAs operate in California, covering much of Marin and Sonoma counties. They buy power from generators and sell it to local residents, transmitting the energy over the power grid owned and operated by the big utilities. Customers still get bills from the big firms, but part of what they pay goes to the CCAs, set up on votes by city and county governments.

          Organizers in Marin and Sonoma counties say their customers are saving a minimum of 4 percent on monthly bills, with some invoices reduced by about 6 percent. Net savings reported so far: More than $4 million.

          In each area with a CCA, existing utility customers automatically get power from the new agency, unless they opt out and go back to their former utility, which about 20 percent of Marin customers have done. AB 2145 would flip that around, forcing CCAs to recruit each of their customers.

          “This would rob community choice programs of the critical mass they need to get off the ground,” said San Diego County supervisors Dianne Jacob and Dave Roberts in a recent essay. The two want a CCA for the San Diego area. “This change would cripple the creation of local initiatives and lock in an energy market that is rigged against consumers,” they said.

          AB 2145 sponsor Steven Bradford, a Democratic assemblyman from Gardena and a former Southern California Edison executive, argues that because most Californians have no idea what a CCA is, the new agencies should be forced to market themselves. “These outfits need to go into the community and convince people to join,” he said. “That is the consumerist way to introduce competition.”

          His argument is a “red herring,” says Shawn Marshall, director of a pro-CCA group called LEAN Energy US, who helped organize the Marin and Sonoma agencies. “We have no problem with reporting all we do to the ratepayers. But Bradford and the utilities know opt-in is a poison pill that would kill this entire concept.”

          Bradford’s bill passed the Assembly in May and is now before state Senate committees. It is the second utility-backed effort of the last four years to kill CCAs.

          The first was the failed 2010 Proposition 16, which sought to require a two-thirds vote for a local ballot measure before any government could set up a CCA. PG&E invested more than $40 million in that failed proposition, far exceeding what CCA backers spent. Neither it nor the other big utilities want to become mere common carriers that mainly supply transportation of power, rather than also providing the electricity.

          Bradford insists an opt-in system is needed because most citizens are clueless about CCAs. The danger is that because his fellow lawmakers are for the most part also uninformed, they will pass AB 2145, leaving it up to Gov. Jerry Brown to sign or veto the measure, which is strongly backed by labor unions which are big funders of his campaigns.

          But if there is ever to be significant energy competition in California, this bill must die, despite the consumerist rhetoric in which Bradford carefully wraps it.

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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