The state party has completely lost the plot

In what may go down as the least self-aware troll attempt in history, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted this fake AI image to social media.

Anyone with an internet connection is aware that yesterday was another day of “No Kings” protests around the country. As a threshold matter, that’s got to be one of the worst rallying cries in history. Who came up with that balderdash? The superior alternative was staring them in the face: No Tyrants. The bigger problem for the Democrats nationally is their own internal civil war. It’s “Democratic Socialists” (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) versus the old guard, Zorhan Mamdani’s slick charisma versus Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s geriatric irascibility. Voters are bored of the latter and squeamish over the former. Neither is a good look.

No matter the name, here in California, the No Kings cry is pretty rich coming from a party that has spent much of the last decade chipping away at the foundations of local democracy and concentrating power in the state capital, all to the benefit of some of the wealthiest and most powerful special interests in the state, indeed in the country. They’ve been acting pretty Trumpian.

I said as much to L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath at a virtual town hall in Pacific Palisades last week. The issue was the city’s plan to install a new bus station next to Gladstone’s restaurant at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and PCH.  Many people, including myself, have deep concerns that the hub will, among other things, enable developers to utilize a new law, SB 79, to erect buildings as high as 15 stories in single family neighborhoods. You can read my analysis of the bill — and its economic illiteracy — in a previous post.

During her comments, Horvath — who made it plain she doesn’t really understand the bill — claimed those of us raising concerns were “spreading misinformation.” That old chestnut. When it was my turn to speak, I opened by telling her she sounded an awful lot like Donald Trump. It visibly short-circuited her, and she later apologized.

Local democracy under attack

Neither the city nor the state — which owns the beach and the property where the bus station would go in — have engaged in any outreach to Palisades residents with regard to this major expansion of transit in their community, an expansion that in the wake of the January wildfire could have profound consequences.

Down the road in Santa Monica, county officials failed to inform residents of their plans for a new facility for dangerously violent mentally ill homeless people in the middle of a residential neighborhood and across the street from the popular, bustling Palisades Park. The facility is intended for individuals who, because of a mental health and/or substance use condition, “may be agitated, acutely suicidal, violent, psychotic, manic, intoxicated, and/or experiencing withdrawal. They may be involuntarily held due to posing a danger to themselves or others.” Well, then. After the Westside Current broke the story two weeks ago, residents were outraged. You can read that story here and here. The county has paused its plans, for now.

This kind of under-cover-of-darkness planning has become the norm in L.A. and California. Sacramento’s Democrat supermajority has passed hundreds of laws that strip local governments and agencies of authority over everything from zoning and land use to environmental protections and education. With the passage of SB 79 this year, cities and average residents have lost the last modicum of control over what profit-driven developers can build in their neighborhoods. Don’t want a new 15-story glass and steel high rise in your suburban single family neighborhood? Too bad, it was your fault for wanting to live there in the first place, you racist.

Don’t want this kind of high rise in your neighborhood? Too bad. Architect’s composite rendering of a proposed building at 1038 10th St. in Santa Monica.

When city councils — the level of representative democracy closest and most accessible to the people — resist, King Newsom goes into tough guy mode, threatening to withhold state funds from cities that don’t comply with his dictats regarding housing and homelessness — issues upon which, by the way, he’s been failing for a quarter century. Like a tyrant, his rules are for thee, not for he. Along with his henchman, Attorney General Rob Bonta, he’s sued working class, immigrant majority cities that attempted to defy his will. He hasn’t deployed the National Guard to enforce state mandates yet. Yet.

Consider the picture above. The unintentional irony is almost impossible to overstate. At their “No Kings” rally, San Franciscans also rallied in support of Proposition 50. That ballot initiative — at least the voters will have a say — would change how California draws Congressional and state Senate and Assembly districts. In 2008, voters approved Prop. 11, which created a Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC) which, as its name implies, consists of average citizens. The CRC is far from perfect, but it does ensure that redistricting is as bipartisan, impartial and free from conflicts of interest as possible. Prop. 50 would restore the Democrat dominated state legislature’s authority to draw maps for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections.

Newsom and the California Democrats have made it clear that Prop. 50 is all about gerrymandering at least five seats in the House of Representatives currently held by Republicans out of existence. It’s in response to redistricting in Texas that gave that state’s Republican majority at least five new seats. That move had President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic support.

Prop. 50 is expected to cost nearly $300 million in taxpayer funds and has drawn the ire of voters across the spectrum. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out against it.

To summarize: California Democrats, during a protest against tyranny, also called for California to undertake the exact same anti-democratic move as a MAGA Republican state. Prop. 50 asks Californians democratically self-immolate. Oh, and for good measure, the San Francisco protest was at Ocean Beach, where the city last year closed the Great Highway. The closure came after a city election in which an overwhelming majority of residents in affected neighborhoods voted against it, only to be overruled by residents from elsewhere who, in the abstract, were persuaded it was a good idea. You simply cannot make this stuff up.

They’re just getting warmed up

California Democrats hit the afterburners on their assault on democracy this summer with a pair of bills, AB 130 and SB 131, that effectively gut environmental review for entire categories of new construction. Sonoma County Conservation Action explains, “AB 130 carves out wide exemptions for urban housing development, sweeping aside detailed environmental review for entire categories of projects. It removes requirements for analysis of cumulative air pollution, traffic congestion, and displacement of low-income residents. The bill further suspends cities’ rights to adopt stronger building standards, except in very narrow cases, until 2031.

“SB 131 compounds this damage by exempting nine more classes of infrastructure and industrial projects, including high-speed rail facilities and advanced manufacturing plants. Under this bill, semiconductor factories, facilities known to produce toxic chemicals, will enjoy fast-tracked approval with far less public scrutiny.”

SB 131 also restricts cities’ power to determine where these new “advanced manufacturing plants” will be sited. Lower income communities will be particularly vulnerable.

California’s environmental protection law, CEQA, is one of the most consequential in history. It was a bipartisan bill signed into law in 1971 by then Governor Ronald Reagan. AB 130 and SB 131 are bad enough in terms of what they do to CEQA. Worse is the method by which the legislature passed them. 

In light of that fact, you’d think the people’s representatives would go to extra lengths to give their constituents and the media a chance to weigh in. You would be wrong. They didn’t pass these historically consequential bills through the regular legislative process. Instead, they passed them as “budget trailer bills.” I explained that process in detail in a previous post.

It was a complete perversion of the democratic process. Trailer bills receive virtually no public scrutiny. Regular bills are analyzed by at least four legislative committees, two in each house, and are voted upon publicly by both houses. In contrast, AB 130 and SB 131 — which combined run for nearly 400 pages — were simply tacked onto the 2025-26 budget and passed as part of the Budget Act. Calling it undemocratic is like calling the Titanic a mishap.

Protesting tyranny in a one-party state

Which brings us back to the California Democratic Party’s hysteria over “No Kings.” They control what is for all intents and purposes a one-party state. They hold 30 of 40 seats in the state Senate and 60 of 80 in the Assembly, as well as all statewide elected offices and an overwhelming majority of council seats in the state’s six largest cities — 55 of 59 (all five non-Democrats are independents). 

Yet their policies and plans have become so extreme that they still have to resort to backroom dirty tricks to force their agenda through, going to great lengths to hide from the public. Up at the top, Newsom’s power is checked only by his own party.

Their handiwork is on full display everywhere you look — staggering income inequality, a homelessness crisis that continues to spiral out of control, mental health and addiction crises, rotting downtown cores, crumbling infrastructure, schools that in a true democracy would be the shame of the state. The list goes on almost endlessly. All of it with hardly a scintilla of accountability.

In most actual monarchies, the king or queen and the aristocracy at least have a sense of noblesse obligé, the notion that with great power comes great responsibility. The Roman patronage system, the medieval chivalric code, the pre-Revolution French aristocracy.

Here in California, our kings and queens don’t even bother with that pretense anymore.