Newsletter: Essential Politics: Can the White House lift the Comey cloud?

I’m Christina Bellantoni, and even President Trump’s allies are saying he has all but squandered his honeymoon.

With that deep thought, welcome to the Monday edition of Essential Politics.

It’s a new week, and perhaps the White House can pivot from a rough few days after the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Perhaps Trump can focus instead on his international agenda when he begins his first trip outside of America.

As Noah Bierman reports, Trump no longer behaves like a president eager to disengage from the world and from the postwar alliances of the last seven decades that he so denigrated as a candidate. Trump’s debut abroad is a big test of just what he means by “America first.”

There will be enough in that whirlwind trip beginning Friday — stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe, not to mention a meeting with the pope — to fill several news cycles, which could give administration aides a breather from the Comey conversation.

Or it might get even uglier. Lawmakers from both parties signaled Sunday they are unhappy with what’s been happening, and calls are growing for an independent investigation into Russia’s meddling with the November election.

In one local example, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) has called for an independent prosecutor to take over the FBI investigation. He is the second California Republican to join Democrats in saying the Justice Department should no longer control the probe.

(Track where each senator stands on Comey’s dismissal on our nifty interactive.)

As we look back over what happened the last week, our team in Washington reports that even Trump’s friends were stunned by the firing.

David Savage evaluated if Trump’s Friday tweet saying Comey had better hope there were no “tapes” of their conversations, or his contradictory statements on the matter, could put the president in legal hot water.

Trump’s repeated references to the Russia investigation in interviews, tweets and the letter firing Comey could be interpreted as an effort to “obstruct or impede” the investigation, legal experts told Savage. The threat is not a completely theoretical one: President Nixon, who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment, and President Clinton, who was impeached, were both accused of obstruction of justice, he writes.

We’ll be tracking the very latest — and streaming Sean Spicer’s press briefing — on Essential Washington. And you can check out our compilation of all the president’s tweets here.

JERRY BROWN ON TRUMP: ‘HE DOESN’T HAVE THE ANSWER’

Gov. Jerry Brown has avoided tangling with the president in most cases this year, but made it clear over the weekend he thinks Trump has missed the mark.

In a CNN interview on Saturday night with political strategist David Axelrod, Brown suggested that Trump rightly tapped into the frustration of millions of voters last week in a way that Hillary Clinton did not. But that was where the agreement ended.

“He didn’t have the answer” for those voters, said Brown. “And he demonstrated he doesn’t have the answer.”

AND OH YEAH, HEALTHCARE

The spotlight was on California’s congressional Republicans last week when they came home after voting to dismantle Obamacare. Some, like Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine), were nowhere to be found. She was a no-show at an activist-organized “town hall” that drew more than 800 people.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Rep. Darrell Issa’s Vista office while the congressman raised money on a white sand beach resort in Florida. The handful of people who showed up to the Simi Valley office of Rep. Steve Knight talked to a single staffer, while others were met with a locked door.

And one of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s 2018 opponents is already up with an ad criticizing the vote.

With the first major policy vote on Trump’s agenda complete, members of the so-called “resistance” and the members of Congress who represent them seem to have gone to their corners as they prepare for what Democrats hope will be a competitive 2018 election season. More and more, left-leaning activists in these Republican-held districts are shifting from attempts to engage with their lawmakers to promises to defeat them.

Knight, the Antelope Valley Republican, has a repeat challenger in 2018: Democratic attorney Bryan Caforio announced his campaign over the weekend in the high desert city of Palmdale, Javier Panzar reports. Knight beat Caforio handily in 2016 but Clinton won the district — fueling Democratic hopes that Caforio might emerge triumphant in 2018 — especially after Knight voted for the Obamacare repeal.

BROWN BUDGET ROUNDUP

Lawmakers in Sacramento will begin sifting through the proposals in Brown’s revised state budget this week, with their deadline to approve a final plan one month from today.

Here are some of the highlights.

-- The proposal includes an extra $15 million to help Californians facing deportation.

-- The governor is pessimistic about a big housing deal coming together this year.

-- Uber and Lyft oversight is remaining under the state’s utility regulator, but Brown argues that shifting other services away will better focus the agency on ride-hailing.

-- Brown’s budget holds back $50 million from the University of California until it adopts reforms recommended by a scathing state audit that found the system has tens of millions of dollars in undisclosed reserves and paid excessive salaries to administrators.

-- The Brown budget also gives the attorney general’s office more funding to fight Trump policies.

-- Brown’s budget is so liberal, it preserves California’s status as a lefty state, George Skelton writes in his Monday column.

Keep an eye on our Essential Politics news feed for updates on the budget process and the latest California happenings.

CALIFORNIA PREPARES FOR THE BIG CLIMATE SQUEEZE

California has been cruising toward its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, but there’s a much steeper challenge around the corner. Reaching an even tougher target by 2030 will require more stringent policies, and lawmakers are sorting through a flood of ideas this year. Chris Megerian takes a look at how getting the details right could be the difference between the state remaining an incubator for innovation or becoming a canary in the coal mine.

One of the most important programs is cap and trade, which requires companies to buy permits to release emissions. Lawmakers are considering several proposals to modify the program, and Megerian has the rundown on all the highlights.

Reaching a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature to extend cap and trade will likely prove difficult, but Brown is still pushing to reach a deal in the next month. Despite some significant disagreements, business groups including the powerful Chamber of Commerce are backing the program as an alternative to more onerous regulations.

Brown is also taking his show on the road next month, setting course for China. He’s planning to be there for a week, including multiple meetings on climate change.

THE BIG ISSUE COMPLICATING THE STATE’S HOUSING DEBATE

California has a housing affordability crisis, and Brown and state lawmakers have been trying for the past couple of years to make it easier for developers to build.

But the union representing construction workers statewide has opposed all the major efforts to do so. It wants legislation to force developers who qualify to pay construction workers more — a rate often equivalent to union wages. This fight over construction worker pay, known as a “prevailing wage,” has been going on for a long time at the Capitol, and as Liam Dillon writes, shows the huge influence of the construction workers union over housing policy.

GET TO KNOW GAVIN NEWSOM

Looking ahead to 2018, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is deftly using his nearly powerless office as a platform to call for tighter gun control, legalized marijuana, a ban on new offshore oil drilling, and rollbacks of university tuition hikes.

With much of California seething over Trump’s presidency, Michael Finnegan reports, the climate is good for the unabashed liberal politics of a former San Francisco mayor still best known for his trailblazing 2004 decree legalizing same-sex marriage.

This is the first of The Times’ in-depth profiles of the candidates for governor.

VILLARAIGOSA’S ROOF-TOP FUNDRAISER

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is getting some help from some of this old City Hall aides, and friends and family, for a fundraiser for his 2018 bid for governor. The event is being held at EVO rooftop lounge in downtown L.A. on June 11, Phil Willon reports.

Along with his daughter Marisela Villar, the hosts include Larry Frank, Jonathan Parfrey and Barbara Maynard. Frank served as Villaraigosa’s deputy mayor of community and neighborhood services, and Parfrey was one of Villaraigosa’s appointees on the DWP board. Maynard was the spokesperson for the Coalition of L.A. City Unions when Villaraigosa was at City Hall.

Track the money in the race.

POLITICAL PARTYING

As turmoil over the Comey firing continued to roil the nation’s capital, the Republican Party’s leaders appeared unfazed when they gathered at the swanky Hotel del Coronado just outside of San Diego for their spring meeting. Trump made a video appearance and made them a promise.

Meanwhile, the California Democratic Party prepares to elect a new chairperson this weekend at its annual gathering in Sacramento. Front-runners Eric Bauman and Kimberly Ellis had a spirited debate that crystallized the differences in their candidacies at a union hall in San Diego, Seema Mehta reports.

POLITICAL ROAD MAP: A SUPERSIZED PENSION PAYMENT

Brown’s new budget offers an idea that gives the state a chance to take a bigger bite than expected out of its long-term commitment to pensions for public employees.

As John Myers points out in his Sunday column, the governor wants to essentially double next year’s pension payment by borrowing money from an obscure fund of surplus state government dollars. In all, California’s biggest pension fund would get $12 billion next year.

TODAY’S ESSENTIALS

-- On this week’s California Politics Podcast, the group looks at the likely battles to come over the newly revised state budget and the tough political road ahead for some of California’s GOP House members over the federal healthcare debate.

-- State auditors on Friday provided new details on questionable travel and entertainment expenses approved by the University of California system. Among them: $350 hotel nights and limo rides in Europe.

-- Robert Lee Ahn got endorsements from religious leaders, including the pastor of First AME Church, and L.A.’s first Asian American city councilman last week in his congressional runoff against Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez.

-- We asked six burning questions to both Ahn and Gomez when they stopped by the L.A. Times, including their favorite restaurant in the district.

-- Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) is the first member of Congress to join a progressive group that will challenge some sitting Democrats they don’t think are progressive enough.

-- Brown said the state’s scandal-plagued tax board will have to undergo reform, but it is unlikely the panel would be merged with other state financial agencies. A recent Department of Finance audit found that the state Board of Equalization “had difficulty providing complete and accurate documentation” in response to basic financial inquiries and could not consistently explain why some tax money was misdirected to the wrong state accounts. In response, Brown stripped the board of its power to hire and approve contracts and asked for an investigation by the state Department of Justice.

-- After a successful ballot measure in November, California’s tobacco tax has vaulted into the top 10 nationwide.

-- Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart became the first sheriff to endorse the so-called sanctuary state bill.

-- A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel will hear arguments in the Trump travel ban case on Monday.

LOGISTICS

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