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      California prosecutor who campaigned against vaccine mandates dies of Covid

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      California prosecutor who campaigned against vaccine mandates dies of Covid Kelly Ernby, who recently ran for the state assembly, was unvaccinated at the time of her death, husband says A deputy district attorney from California who regularly spoke out against vaccine mandates has died of complications from Covid-19.Kelly Ernby, 46, a prosecutor from Orange county, southern California, who recently ran for the state assembly, died after contracting the virus, her family and friends have said.According to Ernby’s husband, Axel Mattias Ernby, Kelly Ernby was unvaccinated at the time of her death.“She was NOT vaccinated. That’s the problem,” Axel Ernby said on social media posts.A month before her death, Kelly Ernby spoke out against vaccine mandates at a rally outside Irvine city hall. The protest was organized by chapters of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization, representing members at California State University, Fullerton and University of California Irvine.“There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,” Ernby said, according to the Daily Titan, a student newspaper.On her personal Facebook, Ernby also spoke out against Covid vaccine mandates, writing in August that “thevaccine is not the cure to Covid, and mandates won’t work”.Before the pandemic, Ernby also denounced vaccine mandates. At an online town hall in 2019, Ernby said she opposed a new state law that would tighten vaccine rules for California school children.“My fundamental belief is that government should be very small and I don’t believe in mandates,” said Ernby then.“I don’t think that the government should be involved in mandating what vaccines people are taking,” she said. “I think that’s a decision between doctors and their patients … If the government is going to mandate vaccines, what else are they going to mandate?”News of Ernby’s death has gained widespread attention online, underscoring tensions between those who oppose vaccine mandates as a form of government overreach and others who see it as critical protection against Covid and the way to end the pandemic.Among the posted condolences to Ernby’s friends and families, some online commenters blamed Ernby for her own death and posted replies about Ernby’s anti-vaccine-mandate stance.Ernby lived in Huntington Beach, California, an hour outside of Los Angeles, where a number of anti vaccine-mandate rallies have taken place.She had worked in the district attorney’s office since 2011 and specialized in environmental and consumer law, according to a statement posted by the Orangecounty district attorney, Todd Spitzer.“Kelly was an incredibly vibrant and passionate attorney who cared deeply about the work that we do as prosecutors – and deeply about the community we all fight so hard to protect,” said Spitzer in the statement following Ernby’s death.In 2019, Ernby ran for the California state assembly and lost in the 2020 primary to fellow Republican politician Diane Dixon.Ernby later was elected as an Orange county GOP central committee member in 2020 but died halfway through her four-year term.Vaccine mandates have continued to receive pushback, despite soaring cases of the Omicron variant.The Mayo Clinic, the non-profit medical center, fired about 700 out of 70,000 employees who refused to comply with the mandatory vaccination policy, reported NBC news.Employees were told to receive their first dose of the vaccine by Monday or get a medical or religious exemption. Staff who had already received their first jab were told to not delay getting their second shot.“While Mayo Clinic is saddened to lose valuable employees, we need to take all steps necessary to keep our patients, workforce, visitors and communities safe,” said the clinic in a statement, also confirming that 99% of Mayo Clinic employees across all locations complied with the mandate.TopicsCaliforniaUS politicsOmicron variantVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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      California bill would hold gunmakers liable for injuries or deaths

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      California bill would hold gunmakers liable for injuries or deathsThe legislation is modeled after a first-in-the-nation New York law that declares such violations a ‘public nuisance’ Some Democratic California lawmakers want to make it easier for people to sue gun companies for liability in shootings that cause injuries or deaths, a move advocates say is aimed at getting around a US law that prevents such lawsuits and allows the industry to act recklessly.In general, when someone is injured or killed by gunfire it’s very hard for the victim or their family to hold the gun manufacturer or dealer responsible by suing them and making them pay damages. A federal law prevents most of those types of lawsuits.But US law does permit some types of liability lawsuits, including when gunmakers break state or local laws regarding the sale and marketing of their products. Last year, New York approved a first-in-the-nation law declaring such violations a “public nuisance”, opening up gunmakers to lawsuits.Reporting on US gun violence in 2021 revealed how the toll is spread unequallyRead moreOn Tuesday, the California assembly member Phil Ting of San Francisco unveiled a bill modeled after the New York law.“Almost every industry in the US is held liable for what their products do … The gun industry is the one exception,” Ting said. “Financial repercussions may encourage the firearms industry and dealers to be more responsible.”The bill is co-authored by assembly members Chris Ward of San Diego and Mike Gipson of Carson. Gipson’s son, his son’s fiancee and another man were shot in Los Angeles in April 2020. Gipson’s son and fiancee survived. But the other man, Gary Patrick Moody, was killed.“This is absolutely personal to me,” said Gipson, a former police officer.The New York bill is already being challenged in court by gunmakers. And critics were swift to denounce the California proposal as well.Gun advocates denounced the bill, known as AB1594, as a smokescreen for another attempt by California progressives to ban guns. Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, compared it to suing the California governor, Gavin Newsom, because he owns a winery and people have misused his products by drinking and driving.“He can’t ban guns, but he’s going to try to bankrupt lawful firearms-related businesses,” Paredes said.California already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, including a ban on most assault weapons that has been in place for decades. But last year, a federal judge overturned California’s assault weapons ban, prompting a lengthy appeals process.Angered by the move, Newsom last month asked the state legislature to pass a law allowing citizens to enforce the state’s assault weapons ban through lawsuits. The idea is similar to a Texas law that bans most abortions but leaves it up to private citizens to enforce the law by taking offenders to court.The bill announced on Tuesday would not do that. Instead, Ting said it would let people and governments sue gun manufacturers or dealers for liability in shooting deaths or injuries. That’s a key distinction from the Texas abortion law, which is only enforceable by private lawsuits.It’s unclear what these potential lawsuits against gunmakers could include. The bill filed in the state legislature is just one sentence long, declaring gun manufacturers have created a public nuisance if their failure to follow state and local gun laws result in injury or death. The bill will probably be changed several times as it moves through the legislative process.Tanya Schardt, senior counsel for gun control group the Brady Campaign, said lawsuits could include suing gun dealers who knowingly sell weapons to people who then sell them illegally to others who are not allowed to own them. Or it could mean suing a gun manufacturer that supplies dealers they know are selling guns used in crimes.The goal is to “create an environment where the gun industry is held accountable”, Schardt said.Chuck Michel, a civil rights attorney and president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, said that goal will likely backfire by making it harder for law-abiding citizens to have guns for self-defense.“As a matter of policy, to try and shift the blame for the criminal misuse of a lawful product that is used far more often to save lives and protect lives than to take them is a terrible idea,” he said.TopicsCaliforniaGuns and liesUS gun controlUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      What We Learned About California in 2021

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      Here’s what we learned about the Golden State this strange year.A firefighter worked to save a home in Meyers as the Caldor fire raged in August.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesLooking back on this year as we head into the new one, it may feel as if not much changed in California during 2021.A year ago, Californians were hunkering down against surging Covid-19 infections, as they are now. Although vaccines had arrived, distribution was a challenge. Holiday plans had been disrupted.I was even writing this newsletter. (This time, I’m filling in for Soumya, who’s taking a much-deserved break.)But we’ve been making progress. Hospitals are not overwhelmed in Los Angeles, one of the national centers of the pandemic at this time last year. Millions of Californians are vaccinated and have gotten booster shots, providing them with a level of protection against illness and hospitalization that felt unimaginable a year ago. The Rose Parade is back on.And we still managed to deepen our understanding of this vexing, beautiful state. Here are some of the stories that taught my colleagues and me something new — or, at least, made us think — about California:Gov. Gavin Newsom’s sound defeat of the recallGov. Gavin Newsom successfully battled the recall effort against him by framing it as a national political issue.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesIt has long been relatively easy to attempt a recall of the governor of California. But as my colleague Shawn Hubler reported, there are reasons that the only person to have successfully unseated the state’s leader is the singular Arnold Schwarzenegger.Although Californians spent months in a state of limbo — wondering whether we’d be asked to decide whether to oust Newsom from office and if so, when — once the election was on, the governor tried to beat back the campaign against him by leaning into national political divisions. The choice, he said, was effectively between him and former President Donald J. Trump, between science and conspiracy theories. The strategy worked, as voters across the state — including in the political seesaw that is Orange County — rejected the recall.A wave of anti-Asian violenceUnited Peace Collaborative volunteers, in blue, patrolled San Francisco’s Chinatown after attacks aimed at members of the A.A.P.I. community.Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesEarly this year, a string of jarring attacks, captured on video, reignited simmering fear and hurt among Asian Americans who have felt like targets for violence and harassment. For many, the anxiety started with the former president’s rhetoric — his insistence on calling the coronavirus “the China virus” or the “Kung Flu” — but in 2021, that anxiety and fear coalesced into outrage.That was before March, when a gunman shot and killed eight people in Georgia, six of whom were women of Asian descent working in spas. Across the country and in California, my colleagues and I reported, Asian Americans were at once devastated and galvanized. Leaders demanded serious action to address anti-Asian discrimination.But as my colleagues Kellen Browning and Brian X. Chen recently wrote, agreeing to fight racism is one thing. Reaching consensus on what that actually entails is quite another.Climate change’s continuing chokeholdIn 2020, while huge swaths of the West burned, many tourists sought refuge at and around Lake Tahoe, the azure gem of the Sierra Nevada. This year, as the Caldor fire burned dangerously close, residents were forced to flee in an exodus that felt symbolic: a cherished sanctuary, suffocating in smoke.This year, in addition to contending with fire and power outages, Californians became acutely aware that the state is running out of water. (My colleague Thomas Fuller wrote about a Mendocino innkeeper pondering the reality of $5 showers.) And scientists say drought is very much in the future, even if it is raining or snowing where you are now. But as I learned when I reported on San Diego’s long, difficult journey to water stability, the situation isn’t hopeless.The enduring changes brought about by the pandemicDiego Ponce selling fruit from his family’s stand at the Clement Street Farmers Market.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesLast year felt like one long string of crises, each one colliding with the one that came before it, like cars piling up on the freeway. (Drive safe this weekend, by the way.) This year, it felt as if there were finally opportunities to take stock of ways the pandemic helped us break free from some of the conventions of life before.In California, as my colleague Conor Dougherty reported, a small pilot program aimed at getting homeless people off the streets, away from Covid-19, and into hotels, also showed a possible path forward for making a dent in the state’s enormous homelessness crisis.As Soumya reported in October, Clement Street in San Francisco’s Richmond District was spared the financial ruin that ravaged other cities in large part because it is relatively self-contained — residents can find most of what they need within a short walk or bike ride. Clement Street’s success, she wrote, shows how neighborhoods of the future can be resilient.Here are a few more uplifting stories that defined this year:Britney Spears pleaded with a Los Angeles judge to end the conservatorship that controlled her life for 13 years. It was an astonishing development and a request the judge granted, finally freeing Spears.A deaf football team took the state by storm.Betty Reid Soskin — the woman synonymous with the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, once described as “sort of like Bette Davis, Angela Davis and Yoda all rolled into one” — turned 100.A 2018 voter-approved California ballot measure, to take effect Jan. 1, 2022, set the nation’s toughest living space standards for breeding pigs.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressThe rest of the newsNew laws 2022: With bacon leading the roundup, here’s a list of new laws going into effect starting in 2022, The Associated Press reports.5 million cases: California is the first state in the country to record five million coronavirus infections, The A.P. reports.State Medicaid overhaul: The federal government approved California’s overhaul of CalAIM, an insurance program for low-income and disabled residents, The A.P. reports.SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAHoliday Bowl canceled: The 2021 San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl was canceled after U.C.L.A. pulled out hours before kickoff, City News Service reports.CENTRAL CALIFORNIAWildlife corridor: With the acquisition of one final property, a 72,000-acre preserve centered in the Tehachapi Mountains was completed after 13 years, The Bakersfield Californian reports.Farming in a drought: Though California is experiencing the driest decade in history, farmers added a half-­million more acres of permanent crops, Technology Review reports.NORTHERN CALIFORNIADiscord: In 2015, Jason Citron, a computer programmer, turned his video game’s chatting feature into its sole product and named it Discord.Reservoir levels: Though Northern California reservoirs are still at historically low levels, December precipitation gave them a boost, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.Missing skier: Severe snow storms hinder the search for a skier who disappeared Christmas Day in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, NBC reports.Mask mandate: Bay Area Counties are rescinding exemptions that allowed masks to come off in places like gyms, offices, and places of worship, SFist reports.Boosters: San Francisco will require some workers to receive a coronavirus vaccine booster by Feb. 1, The Associated Press reports.Shark attack: A man killed in a Morro Bay shark attack was identified as a Sacramento resident, The Sacramento Bee reports.Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesWhat we’re eatingVegetarian chili with winter vegetables.Jason Henry for The New York TimesWhere we’re travelingToday’s travel tip comes from Lori Cassels, a reader who lives in Alameda. Lori recommends Point Reyes National Seashore:“Kayak on Tomales Bay, and you can even see bioluminescence in the new moon nights. Hike any trail and you will awed by natural beauty at every turn. Eat oysters or drink local wine and drive by Tule elk. And it is only an hour away from where live.”Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.Tell usHow are you marking the start of the 2022? Are you making any New Year’s resolutions?Share with us at CAtoday@nytimes.com.And before you go, some good newsSometimes, two birds in the bush may be better than a bird in the hand.It seems as if that would be the case, anyway, for the avian enthusiasts who recently participated in the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s 122nd annual Christmas bird count.Their mission, The San Francisco Chronicle reports, was to tally every bird within about 177 square miles over the course of a day.That task, birders said, requires a kind of Zen-like patience.“It can be hard. It’s not for everyone,” Terry Horrigan told The Chronicle. “Sometimes, for hours, you’re just looking and looking and looking.”Thanks for reading. We’re off tomorrow and will back in your inbox on Monday. See you in 2022.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Sunscreen letters (3 letters).Soumya Karlamangla, Jonah Candelario and Mariel Wamsley contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Our favorite photos from 2021: how Guardian US pictures captured a historic year

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      Our photographers captured many moving and inspirational moments in 2021. Here’s our pick of the most striking imagesby Gail Fletcher and Alvin ChangIn 2021, our photographers told some of the most profound stories in America. They captured personal moments, like a man assessing the remnants of his home after Hurricane Ida. There were inspirational stories, like how a majority Black high school created a girls lacrosse team during the pandemic. And there were historic scenes, like the lead-up to the presidential inauguration just weeks after insurrectionists tried to overturn the election results. Thank you to all the photographers who worked with us this year.US cities are suffocating in the heat. Now they want retributionThe city of Baltimore is suing oil and gas companies for their role in the climate crisis, which has had an outsized impact on community of color. The image below shows Karen Lewis, who says her row house in Baltimore can get so hot that sometimes she has trouble breathing.Photographer: Greg KahnBallparks, stadiums and race tracks: US mass vaccination sites – in picturesPhotographer Filip Wolak took aerial photos of mass Covid-19 vaccination sites around the US. The Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta was selected as one of Georgia’s four mass vaccination sites beginning 22 February 2021.Photographer: Filip WolakAfter slavery, oystering offered a lifeline. Now sewage spills threaten to end it allRaw sewage leaks in Virginia have threatened the livelihoods of the few remaining Black oyster-people on the east coast. These leaks can be seen draining through neighborhoods, like this culvert that connects the historic African American Pughsville neighborhood to the larger drainage system. Below is five-year-old Braxton Miller swinging above the water.Photographer: Alyssa SchukarA quiet revolution: the female imams taking over an LA mosqueIn some mosques, women aren’t allowed to pray in the same room as men; in some mosques, women can’t even pray inside. But female imams in Los Angeles are pushing those boundaries with mixed congregation mosques and LBGTQ mosques, and using their sermons to talk about topics like sexual violence and pregnancy loss. Below are Nurjahan Boulden, Tasneem Noor and Samia Bano after praying together in Venice, California.Photographer: Anna BoyiazisThe preparation for an inauguration like no other – a photo essayThe Guardian asked photographer Jordan Gale to document the lead-up to the presidential inauguration, which happened just weeks after insurrectionists tried to overturn the election results on 6 January 2021. Below are steel gates blocking off parts of Pennsylvania Avenue leading up to the US Capitol and a woman looking through a security checkpoint.Photographer: Jordan GaleSalmon face extinction throughout the US west. Blame these four damsFour closely spaced damns in eastern Washington state are interfering with salmon migration. Below, salmon are seen swimming through the viewing area at Lower Granite Dam Fish Ladder Visitor Center in Pomeroy, Washington.Photographer: Mason TrincaThe California mothers fighting for a home in a pandemic – photo essayIn this photo essay about the precarious nature of America’s safety net, Cherokeena Robinson, 32 – who lost her job during the pandemic – lays in bed with her son Mai’Kel Stephens, 6, at their transitional house in San Pedro, California that they share with one or two other families at a time.Photographer: Rachel BujalskiA tiny Alaska town is split over a goldmine. At stake is a way of lifeIn Haines, Alaska, a mining project promised jobs, but some are worried contamination from the mine could destroy the salmon runs they rely on. In the photo below, a seagull flies above hundreds of spawning chum salmon on a slough of the Chilkat River, just below the Tlingit village of Klukwan.Photographer: Peter Mather‘Sad and so unfair’: Palestinian Americans celebrate a painful EidFor Palestinian American Muslims, the conclusion to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is supposed to be a time of celebration. This year, the violence in Gaza and Jerusalem made it a somber event. The photo on the left is Tiffany Cabán, who would eventually win a seat on the New York city council. On the tight are Muslim greetings each other after morning Eid al-Fitr prayers.Photographer: Ismail Ferdous‘This is a spectacular chorus’: walk into the cicada explosionTrillions of periodic cicada emerged this year after a 17-year dormancy underground along the eastern US. In the photograph below, cicadas swarm the trees near a home in Columbia, Maryland.Photographer: Gabriella DemczukHow a majority Black school in Detroit shook up the world of lacrosseDetroit Cass Technical high school, where the student body is 85% Black, only offered three spring sports for girls – until a group of girls asked the administration to add lacrosse. It was a unique request; while it’s a Native American game, most participants are white. This story is about this team’s two-year journey to get on the field and, eventually, win. Below, clockwise, are Kayla Carroll-Williams, 15, Zahria Liggans, 18, Alexia Carroll-Williams, 17, and Deja Crenshaw, 18.Photographer: Sylvia JarrusA chemical firm bought out these Black and white US homeowners – with a significant disparityIn 2012, the South African chemical firm Sasol announced plans to build a complex in Mossville, Louisiana. They bought out the homes of people who lived on that land, but an analysis found that they offered significantly less money to Black homeowners than white homeowners. The image on the right shows Eyphit Hadnot, 58, and his older brother Dellar Hadnot, 61. The Hadnot family lived in Mossville for 80 years when Sasol offered them the buyout, which they rejected. On the left is a plot of land where a home used to stand before Sasol leveled the building.Photographer: Christian K Lee‘Ida is not the end’: Indigenous residents face the future on Louisiana’s coast – photo essayThe communities of Pointe-aux-Chenes and Isle de Jean Charles suffered some of Hurricane Ida’s worst destruction. That left then with a hard question: Stay to rebuild, or leave? The photo shows Kip de’Laune searching for any salvageable items at his home in Point-Aux-Chenes after Hurricane Ida.Photographer: Bryan TarnowskiShe survived Hurricane Sandy. Then climate gentrification hitAfter Hurricane Sandy, Kimberly White Smalls hoped the city would help her rebuild her home in New York’s Far Rockaway neighborhood. Instead, the only option she was left with was to sell the house to the city. Below are Smalls’ grandsons – Donovan E Smalls, 9, left, and Kelsey E Smalls Jr, 8 – running down the street in Far Rockaway, Queens.Photographer: Krisanne JohnsonTopicsPhotographyUS politicsCoronavirusClimate crisisCaliforniaAlaskaReuse this content More

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      Redistricting Makes California a Top House Battlefield for 2022

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      As legislators across the country draw House maps to protect incumbents, a nonpartisan commission of California citizens is drafting one that will scramble political fortunes for both parties.FRESNO, Calif. — For nearly three years, Phil Arballo has been running for Congress against Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican that Democrats across the country have loved to loathe, raising money by the truckload and compiling an email outreach list that is all the more impressive considering his lack of political experience.On Monday, Mr. Nunes announced he would resign from Congress at year’s end to lead former President Donald J. Trump’s media and technology company, continuing an unswerving fealty to Mr. Trump that had turned him into a national figure of admiration on the right and contempt on the left.Mr. Nunes was prodded toward that decision in large part by the nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which this week is putting the finishing touches on new boundaries.The plan is likely to transform the district he has represented for 19 years from a dusty, rural swath that voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 by 5 percentage points into one centered here in Fresno, the fifth-largest city in California, which Joseph R. Biden Jr. would have carried handily.Mr. Arballo, who lost to Mr. Nunes last year and had been hoping to challenge him again, realizes he will have a different opponent.“It’s going to be fun, though,” Mr. Arballo said, speaking from his spare campaign headquarters in a nondescript office park here. “And what we can do is also wash away the gerrymandering that’s going to be happening all over the country.”Legislatures from Nevada to Georgia are drafting new House district lines under the required reapportionment that occurs every 10 years. Most of them are seeking to protect incumbency and maintain a partisan edge by eliminating competitive seats, a process that Republicans in particular have exploited to gain a heavy early advantage in their push to wrest control of the House next year. The Justice Department filed suit on Monday against a Texas map gerrymandered by the Republican-led legislature that would make that state redder, potentially leaving only a single district in play.Mr. Nunes in Washington last year. He announced on Monday that he would resign from Congress to lead former President Donald J. Trump’s media and technology company.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesBut in California, the map will stand in stark contrast to most of the country, scrambling the fortunes of lawmakers in both parties and creating the broadest — perhaps the only — true battlefield for 2022. Lawmakers should see the full plan by Friday, and the commission will send it to the secretary of state by Dec. 27.Legislatures in nine other states, working off the 2020 census, have completed new maps of 116 House districts. In only 10 of those would the candidate who won 2020 have prevailed by 7 percentage points or less, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project; that is half the number of competitive districts that existed in 2018 and 2020.Redistricting at a GlanceEvery 10 years, each state in the U.S is required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional and state legislative districts in a process known as redistricting.Redistricting, Explained: Answers to your most pressing questions about redistricting and gerrymandering.Breaking Down Texas’s Map: How redistricting efforts in Texas are working to make Republican districts even more red.G.O.P.’s Heavy Edge: Republicans are poised to capture enough seats to take the House in 2022, thanks to gerrymandering alone.Legal Options Dwindle: Persuading judges to undo skewed political maps was never easy. A shifting judicial landscape is making it harder.In contrast, California alone could end up with eight or nine battleground districts.“There’s no question we’re going to end up with more competitive seats,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in Sacramento.The first draft of the map shocked much of the California delegation. No longer able to count on his rural, agricultural base, Mr. Nunes would have had to win over the gracious neighborhoods along Van Ness Avenue in Fresno, with their verandas and Black Lives Matter flags, and the hipsters of the city’s Tower District, who have more affection for Devin Nunes’ Cow, a Twitter account mocking the congressman, than the man himself. The commission appears intent on giving Latinos in the Central Valley a chance to elect their first representative ever.Mr. Nunes could have moved to a new district taking shape along the Nevada border, which will be heavily Republican, but he chose to go elsewhere. He was not alone in pondering a new future. After losing his San Diego-area seat to a Democrat in 2018, another outspoken conservative, Darrell Issa, moved to a conservative district abandoned by the indicted Republican Duncan Hunter. That seat could end up far more competitive.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican, won a special election to replace a young Democrat felled by a sex scandal, then shocked Democrats by winning re-election last year by 333 votes in a district that Mr. Biden won by 35,000. The commission, however, appears intent on lopping off Republican-heavy Simi Valley from Mr. Garcia’s district in north Los Angeles County, leaving him holding on by a thread to a considerably less conservative seat.“It makes guys like me perk up and go, ‘OK, what was the rationale for dumping this?’” Mr. Garcia said of the commission’s decision. “When you go through all the questions that are, in my opinion, objective, the only thing you’re left with is a rationale that is political.”Democrats are at risk, too. The commission has proposed eliminating the Los Angeles seat of Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, who in 1992 became the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress. Representative Katie Porter, a hero of the national Democratic Party, appears likely to be left with a more Republican district in Orange County — a fate that could prompt her to run for the Senate instead, either by challenging Alex Padilla, the Democrat appointed to fill Vice President Kamala Harris’s seat, or waiting for Senator Dianne Feinstein, 88, to step aside.Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard on Capitol Hill in 2019. The nonpartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission has proposed eliminating her seat.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesCalifornia’s 10th Congressional District, currently represented by Representative Josh Harder, a young, up-and-coming Democrat, will become heavily Republican, most likely sending Mr. Harder in search of a new district. (It was the expected destination of Mr. Nunes.) That could cost the quiet backbench Democrat Jerry McNerney, who might find himself a sacrificial lamb.The former governor who set the process in motion, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is watching the free-for-all with glee. When he took office in 2003, he had never thought of redistricting reform, he said in an interview last week. But what he found was a system he called “wacky,” in which Democrats and Republicans came together every 10 years to redraw the lines of State Assembly districts, State Senate seats and U.S. House seats to preserve the status quo — politicians picking their voters, not the other way around.“It was worse than the Politburo,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who came to office after a recall election. “The Constitution says, ‘We the people,’ not ‘We the politicians.’”From 2002 to 2010, one California congressional district changed party hands. Since 2012, when the first map of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s redistricting commission went into effect, 16 seats have flipped. He called it “without doubt” one of his proudest achievements.The commission includes five Republicans, five Democrats and four members not affiliated with a party, selected from citizen applicants. Commissioner J. Ray Kennedy, a Democrat, said the panel must create districts of equal population that are contiguous and compact, and to the extent practicable, keep counties, cities, neighborhoods and “communities of interest” together.A person should be able to walk from any part of a district to another without crossing into a different one, though bulges and loops do form to comply with the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that minority voters get representation. Competitiveness is not a criterion, but it is a byproduct.Compliance with the Voting Rights Act could create the first two Latino districts in the Central Valley, to the detriment of two Republicans: Mr. Nunes and Representative David Valadao, who will square off next year with Rudy Salas, a member of the State Assembly and a prime Democratic recruit. The district remains highly competitive but will slightly shift from Fresno and into Mr. Salas’s stronghold of Bakersfield.“The way that the commission is looking at this independently, it’s actually shifting the district toward my home base, Kern County, which is my media market, where they’ve known me for at least 12-plus years since my time at City Council, and now with the State Assembly,” Mr. Salas said on Tuesday. “So I feel very confident.”The contrast between California and the rest of the country is stark.Ryan Mulcahy, the campaign manager for Mr. Arballo’s congressional campaign, in Fresno, Calif., on Friday.Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesIn Georgia, Republican legislators collapsed two competitive districts won narrowly by Democrats into one heavily Democratic district in suburban Atlanta. The state will have no competitive districts next year.Understand How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Congresswoman Jackie Speier: ‘Republicans are about doing what’s going to give them power’

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      InterviewCongresswoman Jackie Speier: ‘Republicans are about doing what’s going to give them power’Joan E Greve in WashingtonThe Democratic congresswoman talks about her effort to censure Paul Gosar, her retirement and the shifting dynamics of the House For Jackie Speier, the growing threat of political violence in America is personal.Before becoming a member of the House of Representatives in 2009, Speier served as a staffer to congressman Leo Ryan. When Speier joined Ryan for a 1978 trip to Guyana to investigate the Jonestown settlement, she was shot five times.Speier survived the attack, but Ryan and four other members of their delegation did not.So when one of her Republican colleagues recently shared a threatening video about the president and another House member, Speier knew she needed to act. The Democratic congresswoman spearheaded an effort to censure Paul Gosar, who had tweeted an altered anime video showing him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden.‘Inciting violence begets violence’: Paul Gosar censured over video aimed at AOCRead moreThe censure resolution passed the House last week, in a vote of 223 to 207. All but three House Republicans voted against the resolution, with the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, condemning the measure as a Democratic “abuse of power”.The Guardian spoke to Speier to discuss the censure resolution, her coming retirement and the shifting dynamics of the House as lawmakers face more threats of violence. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.Why was it so important for the House to censure Gosar?The ramping up of vitriol on the House floor has been demonstrable for a number of years now. It was like a match got lit during Donald Trump’s presidency, and it was seen as benefiting members to be provocative and then fundraising off of statements they made on the House floor.It’s very clear that, if you are silent about a member of Congress wanting to murder another member of Congress, even in a “cartoon”, you are inciting violence. And if you incite violence, it begets violence.So that’s why I felt so strongly that we had to draw the red line. This has got to be a red line. And obviously my colleagues agreed, and we passed the resolution.We saw some of your Republican colleagues either trying to justify Gosar’s behavior or downplay it. Do you feel like some of your colleagues have not learned the lessons of the Capitol insurrection, when we saw that violent rhetoric can escalate to potentially deadly violence?The facts don’t matter. That’s the problem. The facts don’t matter. I heard one of the Republicans on a show this morning say she thought it was reprehensible, but she voted against the censure because it also stripped him of his committee assignments. So they always will come up with a rationale to allow them to continue to follow the lead of former President Trump or Kevin McCarthy. It’s not about doing what’s right any more. It’s about doing what’s going to give them power.Specifically in terms of Kevin McCarthy, do you think that his rationalization for this behavior makes it inevitable that this is going to happen again?He’s got a number of radical extremists in his caucus that are very effective communicators to the right fringe, and he can’t really rein them in because reining them in means they will attack him. So they have become the face of the House Republicans. You might as well put a brass ring in Kevin McCarthy’s nose because they’re pulling him around.Politics is politics, but we’re talking about taking the life of another member of Congress. How is that not appropriate for censure?Does it feel like there’s a disconnect between Republicans’ rationalizations and the very real violence we saw earlier this year [during the Capitol insurrection] that could have resulted in the death of a member?Not to mention the fact that they’re eating their young. They’ve got one member, one of these fringe rightwing members, who was giving out the telephone numbers of members who voted for their districts and voted for what is a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and [Republican congressman Fred] Upton gets death threats.You’ve got to have an alligator’s skin to do this job. We know that. I’ve been doing this for 38 years. I’m very accustomed to it. I’m also accustomed to getting death threats. And some are seen as credible, and some are not.So that happens. There has to be a repercussion for that. And, as someone said, if in corporate America, you put out an animated video killing one of your co-workers, you would be fired.There’s a lack of reality in Congress right now. And anything goes. The more hyperbolic you are, the more extremist you are, the more successful you are because it’s all about raising money. Raising money gets you clout and power within the caucus.They have made Minority Leader McCarthy impotent in terms of disciplining anyone in his caucus who strays, who crosses that red line.What is your response to suggestions that Republicans will strip Democrats of committee assignments when they come back into power?If one of my colleagues put up an animated video or a tweet that said they wanted to kill a Republican colleague, I would introduce a censure motion for that. You cannot excuse away that kind of conduct. Someone is going to get injured or be killed. That’s how serious that conduct was.You have been in and around the House for decades now. Do you think that the increased number of threats against members has changed the dynamics of the House in any way?I think it’s become a bloodsport. And if a bipartisan bill like the infrastructure bill that had bipartisan support in the Senate and has bipartisan support in the House is then turned on the members that worked in consensus-building, then that suggests that we don’t want to legislate any more.I know that you announced your retirement this week. As you prepare for your next steps, would you say that this resolution was one way to protect the House as an institution?I love this institution. It’s such a privilege to serve. And I think when you’re in the heat of doing your everyday job here, you might lose sight of the fact that this is such a privilege. We’re given the opportunity to fashion legislation to make lives better for the American people. And that’s what we should be doing.When we get sidetracked into wanting to just disparage each other, then we’re not doing our jobs.I introduced the resolution because it just hit me so dramatically. And it’s yet again another example of women becoming the subject of attacks – physical attacks, psychological attacks – women of color in politics even more. I’ve worked on this issue for years now. And I see it as a way of silencing women and discouraging women from running for office.So for all those reasons, it was really important to take action.TopicsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRepublicansCaliforniainterviewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0

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      ‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0 In Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming and California, the next generation of GOP extremists are passing laws, picking their own voters … and preparing for powerThe website of the Oklahoma Republican party has a running countdown to the 2024 presidential election measured in “Maga days”, “Maga hours”, “Maga minutes” and “Maga seconds” – Maga being shorthand for Donald Trump’s timeworn slogan, “Make America great again”.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead moreThe state party chairman, John Bennett, a veteran of three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described Islam as a “cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out” and posted a yellow Star of David on Facebook to liken coronavirus vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.This is just one illustration of how Republican parties at the state level are going to new extremes in their embrace of Trump, an ominous sign ahead of midterm elections next year and a potential glimpse of the national party’s future. Yet the radicalisation often takes place under the radar of the national media.“We are not a swing state and we’re nowhere near a swing state so no one’s looking,” said Alicia Andrews, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party. “And because no one is looking at Oklahoma, we are allowed to be way more extreme than a lot of states.”Andrews pointed to the example of a state law passed by the Republican majority in April that grants immunity to drivers who unintentionally injure or kill protesters and stiffens penalties for demonstrators who block public roadways.“Only three states passed it, with Oklahoma being the first,” she said. “And you know why? Because there wasn’t national attention. We were talking about Florida passing it and Texas passing it. No one was even considering what was going on in Oklahoma and it quietly passed in Oklahoma.”Similarly, Andrew argues, while other states were debating “critical race theory” in schools, in Oklahoma a ban was rammed through with little coverage. Another concern is gerrymandering, the process whereby a party redraws district boundaries for electoral advantage.Andrews, the first African American to lead the Oklahoma Democratic party, said: “Our legislators are in a special session right now to review our maps and they are really eroding an urban core, taking at least 6,000 Hispanic Americans out of an urban district and moving them to a rural district, thus denuding their votes. I didn’t think that they could make it worse but they are.”Oklahoma is a deep red state. As of August, its house and senate had 121 Republicans and 28 Democrats. It continues to hold “Stop the Steal” rallies pushing Trump’s “big lie” that Joe Biden robbed him of victory in the presidential election.Andrews warns that Republicans in her state are indicative of a national trend.“Their stated strategy is start at the municipal level, take over the state, take over the nation. So while everybody’s talking about the infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan, they’re rubbing their hands together and making differences in states.”She added: “We’re like the testing ground for their most radical right exercises, and once they perfect it here, they can take it to other states.”‘Owning the libs’Republican state parties’ rightward spiral has included promotion of Trump’s “big lie” about electoral fraud, white nationalism and QAnon, an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving Satan-worshipping cannibals and a child sex-trafficking ring. It can find bizarre and disturbing expression.Arizona staged a sham “audit” of the 2020 presidential election that only confirmed Biden’s victory in the state. Last month in Idaho, when Governor Brad Little was out of the state, his lieutenant, Janice McGeachin, issued an executive order to prevent employers requiring employees be vaccinated against Covid-19. Little rescinded it on his return.The Wyoming state party central committee this week voted to no longer recognise the congresswoman Liz Cheney – daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and a hardline conservative – as a Republican, its second formal rebuke for her criticism of Trump and vote to impeach him for his role in the US Capitol attack.Nina Hebert, communications director of the state Democratic party, said: “Wyoming is not exempt from the extremism that Trump has intentionally cultivated and fuelled and continues to court today.“He was a popular figure in Wyoming in the 2016 election and he retains that popularity amongst voters in the state, which I think is the most red in the nation.”Gerrymandering is a longstanding problem, Hebert said, but Trump’s gleeful celebration of the 6 January riot has opened floodgates.“They have created situations where Republican-controlled state legislatures have no reason to pretend even that they’re not just trying to hold on to power. This has become something that is acceptable within the Republican party.”The shift has also been evident in policy in Florida, Texas and other states where Republicans have taken aim at abortion access, gun safety, trans and voting rights. Often, zealous officials seem to be trying to outdo one another in outraging liberals, known as “owning the libs”.The drift is not confined to red states. When Republicans in California, a Democratic bastion, sought to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, they rallied around a Trumpian populist in the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder rather than a more mainstream figure such as Kevin Faulconer, a former mayor of San Diego.Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee who was once an aide to a leading California Republican, said: “To me that was a bellwether. If even a state like California can’t get a more moderate, pragmatic Republican party at the state level, there’s really no hope for any of the parties in any state at this point.“They’re leaning so hard into this anti-democratic, authoritarian, non-policy-based iteration and identity. The old adage, ‘As goes California, so goes the country,’ well, look at what the California Republican party did and we’re seeing that play out across the board.”‘Wackadoodle Republicans’Like junior sports teams, state parties are incubators and pipelines for generations of politicians heading to Washington. The primary election system tends to favour the loudest and most extreme voices, who can whip up enthusiasm in the base.Trump has been promiscuous in his endorsements of Maga-loyal candidates for the November 2022 midterms, among them Herschel Walker, a former football star running for the Senate in Georgia despite a troubled past including allegations that he threatened his ex-wife’s life.Other examples include Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary running for governor in Arkansas, and Karoline Leavitt, a 23-year-old former assistant press secretary targeting a congressional seat in New Hampshire.‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickRead moreThis week, Amanda Chase, a state senator in Virginia and self-described “Trump in heels”, announced a bid for Congress against the Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Chase gave a speech in Washington on 6 January, hours before the insurrection, and was censured by her state senate for praising the rioters as “patriots”.The former congressman Joe Walsh, who was part of the Tea Party, a previous conservative movement against the Republican establishment, and now hosts a podcast, said: “I talked to these folks every day, and for people who think [members of Congress] Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are nuts, they ain’t seen nothing yet.“The Republicans at the state and local level are way, way more gone than the Republicans in Washington. We’re talking about grassroots voters and activists on the ground and eventually, to win a Republican primary at whatever level, every candidate has to listen to them.“So you’re going to get a far larger number of wackadoodle Republicans elected to Congress in 2022 because they will reflect the craziness that’s going on state and locally right now.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsOklahomaWyomingCaliforniaIdahoUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      SALT Deduction That Benefits the Rich Divides Democrats

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      House Democrats are poised to lift a cap on the state and local tax deduction, a gift to wealthy homeowners in some blue states.WASHINGTON — A plan by House Democrats to reduce taxes for high earners in states like New Jersey, New York and California in their $1.85 trillion social policy spending package is becoming an early political albatross for the party, with Republicans already mobilizing to accuse Democrats of defying their populist principles in favor of cutting taxes for the rich.The criticism offers a preview of the emerging battle lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections and underscores the challenge that Democrats face when local politics collide with the party’s national ambitions to promote economic equity. For Republicans who have defended their 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, the proposal by Democrats to raise the limit on the state and local tax deduction is an opportunity to flip the script and cast Democrats as the party of plutocrats.“I think they’re struggling to maintain their professed support for taxing the wealthy, yet they are providing a huge tax windfall under the SALT cap,” said Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, referring to the acronym for state and local taxes. “If your priorities are working families, make that the priority, not the wealthy.”Republicans, looking for ways to finance their own tax cuts in 2017, capped the amount of state and local taxes that households could deduct from their federal tax bills at $10,000. Democrats from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California have spent years promising to repeal the cap and are poised to lift it to $80,000 through 2030, before reducing it back to $10,000 in 2031. The cap, which is currently set to disappear in 2025, would then expire permanently in 2032.The bill would cut taxes sharply for the next five years by increasing the value of the deduction, but it would mean higher taxes in the following five years than if the cap were allowed to expire. The Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday that over the course of a decade, the changes to the deduction would amount to a tax increase that would raise about $14.8 billion in revenue.The House proposal is likely to change in the Senate, where it has its own champions and detractors. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has embraced a more generous deduction while Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has sharply criticized the House proposal. He joined Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in negotiating an income cap — as high as $550,000, though that number is in flux — on who can receive the deduction.This week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released survey data that it said suggested most voters in battleground states would be less likely to vote for Democrats who supported a policy that gave tax cuts to rich homeowners in New Jersey, New York and California. It said that the Democratic Party would have “to defend its politically toxic policies which penalize hard working families to reward liberal elites.”Prominent tax and budget analysts have argued that expanding the deduction amounted to an unnecessary giveaway to the rich.According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a family of four in Washington making $1 million per year would receive 10 times as much tax relief next year from expanding the state and local tax deduction as a middle-class family would receive from another provision in the social policy package, an expansion of the child tax credit. Citing calculations from the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the group said that two thirds of households making more than $1 million a year would get a tax cut under the legislation because of the increase to the state and local property tax deduction.The proposal has put some Democrats on the defensive.Rep. Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said this week that tax giveaways to millionaires sounded like something that Republicans would have come up with.“Proponents have been saying that the BBB taxes the rich,” Mr. Golden said on Twitter, referring to the bill known as the Build Back Better Act. “But the more we learn about the SALT provisions, the more it looks like another giant tax break for millionaires.”The issue is further complicating passage of the bill, which Democrats are trying to get through both the House and Senate without Republican support. Given their thin majorities in both chambers, Democrats can afford to lose no more than three votes in the House and none in the Senate.Some Democrats in Congress from states with high taxes have made the inclusion of the more generous deduction as a prerequisite for their backing the bill.“There’s a series of competing views on SALT, but I mean, it’s pretty obvious something has to be in there, that’s for sure,” said Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.The unexpectedly tight race for governor of New Jersey was a clear reminder that the state’s high property taxes — and the limit on their deductibility — are high on voters’ lists of worries, strategists and other political observers said.“As Covid kind of recedes, taxes are taking its place as the top issue in New Jersey,” said Michael DuHaime, a Republican political strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.The SALT cap “essentially resulted in a pretty large tax increase for a lot of families” in the suburbs of New York City, Mr. DuHaime said. With Democrats in power, those homeowners are counting on some relief, he said.Now that former President Donald J. Trump is out of office, New Jersey has “reverted to its mean” of being deeply concerned about the state’s affordability, said Julie Roginsky, a strategist who advised Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, during his first campaign in 2017. The average homeowner in the state pays about $10,000 in property taxes, she said, with the cap hitting about one-third of New Jersey residents.“I think it’s absolutely a line in the sand that some of these vulnerable members of Congress need to draw,” Ms. Roginsky said.Several Democrats who represent affluent suburban areas where most homeowners pay much more than $10,000 a year in property taxes will face stiff challenges in the midterm election next year, strategists said. Their short list of vulnerable House members include Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill and Tom Malinowski from North Jersey, and Andy Kim, who represents part of the Jersey Shore, all of whom support raising the SALT cap.If the Democrats can engineer a change to the SALT deduction that is retroactive to cover 2021 taxes, those incumbents can campaign on having provided a tax cut, Ms. Roginsky said. But if they fail, their Republican opponents — like Thomas Kean Jr., a state senator who is challenging Mr. Malinowksi — will be able to use that against them, she said.Several House Democrats who represent affluent suburbs, including Mikie Sherrill, whose district includes part of Montclair, N.J., are expected to face stiff challenges in next year’s elections.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“It may not play well in Vermont or in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, but if you’re Nancy Pelosi, you understand that the road to your majority runs through places like suburban New Jersey and suburban California and suburban New York,” Ms. Roginsky said.Ben Dworkin, the director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., cited the unexpectedly close race for New Jersey governor this year. He noted how effective Mr. Murphy’s challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, was in playing to voters’ feelings about the state’s high taxes.“He hammered home that issue,” Mr. Dworkin said.Public polling leading up to that election showed that affordability in general was the “top issue” in the state, he said.Biden’s ​​Social Policy Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 6A proposal in flux. More