California Politics: How Trump’s indictments may shape California’s Senate race

If you watch cable news there’s a good chance you’ve seen Rep. Adam B. Schiff recently.

The Democrat from Burbank has been on MSNBC or CNN at least 10 times since mid-July as indictments against former President Trump roll in on a monthly basis.

Which makes sense, since Schiff has for years positioned himself as one of Trump’s top antagonists by leading the first impeachment and serving on the House Select Committee that examined the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Schiff is well versed in the accusations prosecutors are now leveling against Trump for his efforts to remain in power after losing reelection in 2020. The former president was charged with four felony counts last month in Washington, D.C., and more than a dozen felonies this week in Georgia.

Could Trump’s indictments help Schiff in his campaign to win the seat of retiring California Sen. Dianne Feinstein?

It’s not as if his top Democratic rivals in the race are pro-Trump lackeys, writes Times political reporter Ben Oreskes. Both Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) have found prominent ways to stand up to Trump. Lee is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. And throughout Trump’s tenure, Porter used her whiteboard and tough questioning style to expose what she saw as flaws in his administration’s policies.

But when Trump’s legal troubles are in the news, it’s Schiff whom the national cable networks invite on their shows. The repeated exposure — with Trump’s cases unfolding in multiple legal jurisdictions over the coming months — may give Schiff an advantage in what’s begun as a tight race by putting him in the living rooms of millions of California voters at no expense to his campaign.

Oreskes spent time on the campaign trail with Schiff this week and talked to experts about how Trump’s indictments could shape next year’s Senate race. Read more in this article: How Rep. Adam Schiff celebrated the fourth indictment of former President Trump

I’m Laurel Rosenhall, The Times’ Sacramento bureau chief, bringing you the week’s news in California politics.

GOP finds power on school boards

Chino Valley school board president Sonja Shaw rallied with conservative parents at the state Capitol this week

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

A Republican bill requiring school districts to inform parents if their children use a different gender identity at school from the sex on their birth certificate was such a nonstarter in California’s Democratically controlled Legislature that it was not even taken up for discussion when introduced earlier this year.

But there was the bill’s author, Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona), standing in front of the state Capitol on Monday with an air of victory.

“I have a message to my colleagues in the Legislature: You can shut me up in Sacramento. But you cannot shut up the people of the state of California,” Essayli said to applause from a crowd of parent activists standing behind him.

His policy that stalled in the Legislature recently passed in two school districts — first in Chino and then in Murrieta — and was up for debate this week in Orange County. Essayli predicted that many more would pass it in the weeks and months to come.

In a state where Republicans have almost no political power at the Capitol — they haven’t won a statewide office since 2006 and hold fewer than a quarter of the seats in the Legislature — conservative efforts to shape school boards are now bearing fruit. Republicans are hoping the education-based culture wars will help the GOP build power in the coming election year.

Read more about how the strategy is playing out in this article I wrote with my colleagues Hannah Wiley and Mackenzie Mays: Lacking political power in California, conservatives turn focus to local school boards.

The dispute testing California’s image as an abortion haven

Beverly Hills has emerged as an unlikely battleground over reproductive rights, illustrating that even in the bluest parts of America, abortion rights face challenges — especially when it comes to the most controversial procedures.

An abortion provider that planned to open a clinic in Beverly Hills offering procedures beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy is alleging that the city “colluded and conspired” with antiabortion activists to force out the clinic, reports Times national correspondent Jenny Jarvie:

DuPont Clinic, a Washington, D.C.-based provider, claims to have spent millions of dollars updating a medical facility on Wilshire Boulevard with the goal of expanding to the West Coast. In a letter to the city — a required precursor to a lawsuit — the clinic alleges that four city officials, including Mayor Julian Gold, acted to withhold permits to the facility after antiabortion protests.

It claims that Beverly Hills — where voters in 2020 chose Democrat Joe Biden by 17 percentage points over Republican Donald Trump — pressured the landlord to back out of the lease; held “secret meetings” with members of the group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust and “promised them it would stop DuPont from opening.”

The clinic alleges city officials “bowed to the political pressure of the antiabortion community,” Jarvie reports, instead of protecting “the right to abortion enshrined in the California Constitution.”

Read Jarvie’s full article here: Dispute over an all-trimester abortion clinic puts California’s image as haven to the test

Keeping up with California Politics

Skelton: An unlikely solution to the problems with Harris and Feinstein
“President Biden has a problem. So does Vice President Kamala Harris. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a problem. There’s a solution for all of this,” writes columnist George Skelton.

Kevin McCarthy has a bill to save the sequoias, but some environmental groups aren’t into it
A bipartisan bill in Congress would approve $205 million over the next seven years to protect sequoia groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. It would also expedite environmental reviews for grove-protection projects, which often include clearing excess fuel near the groves that can intensify fires.

GOP leaders promote mail voting despite Trump calling it a scam
After years of Republican attacks on voter integrity, GOP leaders this week emphasized the importance of early voting and how such efforts are critical to their party’s efforts to hold on to Congress and win the White House next year.

Fifty years later, hip-hop is still influencing California politics
As hip-hop turns 50, the music is still provoking discussions about high-stakes political issues that include police brutality and gun violence. The use of artificial intelligence has sparked fears about the future of music and hip-hop artists have been at the forefront of that debate.

Ex-Anaheim mayor to plead guilty to corruption charges tied to Angel Stadium sale
Former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu, who championed the sale of Angel Stadium to a company controlled by the team’s owner, has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges stemming from the since-scuttled deal.

California voters agree political disinformation is a big problem. But how to fix it?
A majority of California voters across lines of party, race and age find political disinformation a serious problem — and there is little agreement about whom to trust, a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found.

What makes for a transgender safe haven? California, other blue states are figuring it out
As red states have moved to restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people, some Democratic statehouses have rushed to legislate in the opposite direction, often with enthusiastic endorsements from their governors.

Our climate change challenge
If the Golden State is going to lead the world toward a better, safer future, our political and business leaders — and the rest of us — will have to work harder to rewrite the California narrative. This unusual collection of articles looks at whether California’s efforts to adapt to climate change will move the needle, and what Californians can do to push the state forward.