Free Republic

LOS ANGELES, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) traveled to Baldwin Hills to sign legislation restricting oil and gas facilities — and removing the pumpjacks behind him, ending a century of the oil and industry’s role in the area. AB 2716 will close the Baldwin Hills oil facilities, which existed prior to the surrounding area becoming developed for residential use, but which now sit inside what has become L.A.’s most prominent middle-class black neighborhood. AB 3233 will give local authorities more power to prohibit oil and gas drilling. AB 1866 will expand on existing law and increase and accelerate the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law on Sunday that bans the use of plastic bags at grocery stores — after the state’s ten-year-old ban on single-use plastic bags was shown to have made plastic pollution even worse. Newsom’s office buried the news in a press release on Sunday in which it failed to identify the legislation as a plastic bag ban. The press release simply identified the law as “SB 1053 by Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) – Solid waste: recycled paper bags: standards: carryout bag prohibition.” It was one of dozens of bills Newsom signed.

Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday threatened a possible lawsuit against the city of Norwalk if a recently adopted moratorium on emergency shelters for the homeless as well as single room occupancy and transitional housing isn’t reversed. The Norwalk City Council adopted the urgency ordinance on Aug. 6, which put a moratorium on various establishments, including emergency shelters, along with transitional and supportive housing. ... Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “It is counterproductive and immoral for any community to throw up their hands and say they’ve done enough while still having people in need. We can’t leave people in dangerous...

Governor Gavin Newsom called lawmakers into a special session Saturday to address spikes in gasoline prices. The move follows pushback Newsom received on a request to approve a series of bills that would cut energy costs for Californians and require petroleum refiners to maintain a stable inventory. Across the nation, Californians pay the highest rates for gas at an average of $4.64 a gallon for regular unleaded, compared to the national average of $3.33, according to AAA. Electricity bills in the state have also nearly doubled in the last decade and are expected to keep outpacing inflation through 2027 as...

When Joe Biden was elected in 2020, an overjoyed Los Angeles Times boasted that his goal was to “make America California again.” Biden has fulfilled the Times’s vision, if with less than complete success.Over the past few weeks, however, lunchbucket Joe from Scranton has been unceremoniously dumped by the Golden State elite — Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, George Clooney and a passel of tech oligarchs — to be replaced with one of their own, Vice President Kamala Harris. But given the chances of a GOP win this year, the Californians have another favorite in the wings, Governor Gavin…When Joe Biden...

Linda Lynch, a KTLA viewer in the Antelope Valley, was shocked to see that her electric bill skyrocketed to $900 this month, hundreds MORE than usual. Linda writes that she can barely afford food, never mind electricity. We should point out that the Antelope Valley in Southern California saw excessive heat warnings issued for stretches of days this month. The warnings are issued when heat is forecast to be extreme and often come with an advisory to keep cool and only go out if necessary. And Linda wasn’t the ONLY one who emailed. Carla Chang writes, “Hello! Please look into...

The federal government has backed up California state regulators in ordering the company that bottles Arrowhead water to stop drawing from the San Bernardino Mountains. Though BlueTriton Brands draws from springs in the mountains that have been used for bottled water since 1906, environmental activists have claimed the removal of that water is harming wildlife, particularly Strawberry Creek. About a year ago, California’s Water Resources Control Board ordered BlueTriton to stop using the water, which flows through public lands like the San Bernardino National Forest.

Chevron plans to relocate its headquarters from California to Texas, joining a growing list of companies bound for the Lone Star State citing excessive regulation for their departure. The Financial Times reports the second-biggest U.S. oil company said Friday it would leave the state where it has been a fixture for almost 150 years following clashes with authorities over climate policies and penalties it has said render California “closed for business.” The promise of lower taxes and lighter regulation is also often given as a reason by other companies that have also made the same move from the West Coast.

Never has an NCAA Sports Day been so widely and breathlessly covered as it was on Monday.And never has it been clearer that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, did not just fall out of a coconut tree.With President Biden recovering from COVID-19, the task of honoring top college athletes from across the country fell to Harris, who performed the same duty last year with much less fanfare.This year, of course, the event occurred the day after Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris as the party’s replacement candidate for president....

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Monday “Bloomberg Technology” that her city has constantly been cleaning streets and helping the homeless get shelter while discussing preparing for the APEC Summit of President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping. Host Ed Ludlow said, “Why has it taken the visit of U.S. President Biden, China’s President Xi, leaders around the world for action on all of the problems the city has been talking about for 4 years now?” Breed said, “Just to be clear, we have been working on this for a few years. This is not an issue have been sitting...

More than 200 Oakland businesses are prepared to go on "strike" next week in an effort to bring attention to how crime is hurting their bottom lines. Andrea Nakano reports. (9-22-23)

Over the last few years, the idea of reparations — which would compensate the descendants of American slaves — has surfaced across the country. Though a state task force recently recommended making cash reparations a reality in California, voters in the Golden State oppose doing so by a roughly two-to-one margin, according to a new poll from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Health officials in California recently spoke about the possible return of mask mandates in the state amid a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases. On Thursday, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health held a press conference to speak about a rise in new COVID-19 cases, saying that over the past week cases have doubled. During the press conference, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was asked about the potential return to mask mandates and if the county would ever make them mandatory again. "'Ever' is not a word I'm comfortable with. There's...

California Republican officials and lawmakers at the state and national levels spent Monday promoting the party’s “Bank Your Vote” campaign, which is meant to boost turnout among conservative voters by encouraging them to take advantage of mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day next year. “To win in 2024, we know Republicans must reach more voters than ever before, which is exactly what we are doing through the ‘Bank Your Vote’ program,” Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, reportedly said on a Monday call with news outlets. What’s going unsaid in the praise for mail-in ballots is exactly...

We have a truck camper (slide in pickup camper) and typically camp in remote areas or national forests or national parks where there is no electrical hook-ups. This means, like many other campers, we depend on our gas-operated refrigerator to keep our food cold or frozen. Due to our age it is no longer comfortable to be climbing into the camper and especially out of bed at night, so we decided to get a conventional ball-hitch travel trailer. To our amazement the majority of new travel trailers we looked at were all 12v batter powered only, that relied on a...

What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis? That is in many ways a terrible qBut absent major breakthroughs in carbon-capture technology, we’ll eventually need to shutter most if not all of those gas plants to avoid disastrous temperature jumps. Scientists say we need to cut carbon pollution nearly in half by 2030. Could we get started ditching gas sooner — and save some money — by accepting a few more blackouts for the next few years? It’s a heretical question in power-grid circles. When I posed it...

Across social media, videos show a brawl breaking out at Riverside's Martin Luther King High School. What began as two students arguing on campus turned into a brawl involving a student who identifies as transgender. While fights aren't uncommon on high school campuses across the country, but families and students at MLK tell FOX 11 that the transgender student from the viral fight video has a history of erratic and uncomfortable behavior. Parents and students tell FOX 11 that the said student has access to the girls' locker rooms and bathrooms. "He's [in the] girls' locker room, using girls' restrooms,"...

Senator Melissa Hurtado reintroduces Senate Bill 464, which will allow undocumented immigrants to qualify for food assistance programs

California would present itself as a haven for transgender youth facing discrimination in other states under a bill that advanced Monday, much as it is positioning itself as a sanctuary for those seeking abortions.

At work, white people are being told to check their privilege at the door. But a court ruling on Friday indicates there's still hope for fair treatment in the corporate world, even if you're not a racial minority. On April 1, a California court struck down a state law mandating that corporate boards seats be reserved for people of minority groups. The court said quotas violated the state's constitutional guarantee that everyone is treated equally under the law. Equal protection isn't just for minority races. It's everyone's right. Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American on the U.S. Supreme Court,...