Essential Politics November archives

Film icons, social justice activists and a renowned baseball player were among those inducted Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown and First Lady Anne Gust Brown into the California Hall of Fame, where honorees paid tribute to the “spirit of equality,” innovation and contributions of immigrants in the state.

“We want to look back and understand how California has come to be... the people who have built it in so many different ways,” Brown said. “We are always creating new things out of the soil that has preceded us.”

The newest class of inductees were actors Harrison Ford and George Takei, former San Diego Padres slugger Tony Gwynn, author Isabel Allende, former U.S. secretary of Defense William Perry, Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and artist Corita Kent.

Not all the inductees are California natives.

“But that is OK, because we know that most non-natives have made this place work,” Brown quipped when introducing Perry.

Perry, who served in the Army of Occupation in Japan and was at the forefront of crafting defense strategy against the Soviets, said he was attracted to “California’s pioneering spirit.”

“I am proud to be in a state that pioneered same-sex marriage,” he said to rounds of applause from the audience. “I am proud to be in a state that pioneered in introducing minority students and faculty at all of our state universities.”

Allende, a Chilean author and feminist icon in Latin America’s literary world, said she was “a real immigrant” to California.

“I am also a Latina at a time when it is very hard to be a Latina immigrant,” she said. But the induction into the state’s Hall of Fame made her realize California was home, she said.

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(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

The race may be over between Rep. Darrell Issa and challenger Doug Applegate, but one piece of business from the campaign may linger a long time.

The day before the Nov. 8 election, Issa sued Applegate for libel, claiming that two political ads have damaged his reputation.

Issa also named Applegate’s campaign manager, Robert Dempsey, and the campaign itself in the lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court. The incumbent, one of the wealthiest members in Congress, is seeking $10 million in damages and said he’ll donate any money awarded by the court to charity.

Issa had a 1,982-vote lead as of Wednesday afternoon — with 50.3% of the vote — and was declared the victor by news organizations Monday, with a small number of ballots remaining to be counted. Applegate subsequently admitted defeat but also announced he would run again in 2018.

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Author Isabel Allende, film star Harrison Ford and actor/activist George Takei are among eight inductees to the California Hall of Fame who will be honored Wednesday in a state ceremony at the California Museum.

Gov. Jerry Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown will present each with a Spirit of California medal. Among the other inductees is journalist and former California first lady Maria Shriver, who founded the Hall of Fame in 2006 when Arnold Schwarzenegger, her husband from whom she is separated, was governor.

Since then, 96 people have been honored for making a mark on California history.

The last day of November in an even-numbered year is almost always quiet in the Capitol, but it’s a big day according to state law: The end of a two-year legislative session.

Midnight marks what the California Constitution calls sine die, the final official day of the session that began on Dec. 1, 2014. For all 80 members of the Assembly and half of the 40-member Senate, this is the last day of their term in office.

Twenty members are leaving due to term limits. Assemblyman Brian Jones (R-Santee) tweeted a goodbye to his constituents.

More than 5,000 pieces of legislation were introduced over the last two years, but slightly less than half became law with the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown.

While the end of session is generally considered to be in late August or early September, depending on the year, Nov. 30 is the official changing of the guard. Rarely have lawmakers returned to Sacramento after election day in a lame-duck session. Last week, the brief speculation of last-minute work on a transportation funding plan came to an official end.

Alex Vassar, a historian of the California Legislature, has calculated that the concluding session had the least collective experience in office since 1927 — a function, Vassar said, of the large freshman class elected under relaxed term limits in 2012. But because those lawmakers can serve up to 12 years in the same office, the average time on the job will steadily rise in the next few years.

New and returning lawmakers will take the oath of office on Monday morning.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) came to the Senate floor Wednesday to praise his longtime friend and fellow retiring senator, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

The House and Senate are expected to recess for the year next week, and the farewell speeches are beginning for members such as Boxer and Reid, who have worked together in Washington for 34 years.

In a nearly 15-minute speech, Reid praised the California delegation for taking him into its fold when he came to Congress and was the only Democrat representing Nevada. He spoke about Boxer’s efforts in preserving the wilderness and protecting Planned Parenthood and their work together with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to protect Lake Tahoe.

“Barbara, I have three brothers. I have never had a sister. You’re the sister I’ve never had,” Reid said. “To this day, we still refer to each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’”

Boxer took to the Senate floor immediately after Reid was finished to thank him for his friendship and his words. She emphasized that she has a speech planned about Reid’s career that she’s sure will embarrass him.

Former California Assembly Speaker John Perez (D-Los Angeles).

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Former state Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, the first openly gay person to hold the post and a forceful former labor organizer, said he is considering a run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Politico first reported the news Wednesday.

Perez, who served as speaker from 2010-14 and ran unsuccessfully for state controller two years ago, on Wednesday said party leaders from across the nation have contacted him over the past several weeks to encourage him to run.

With President-elect Donald Trump about to enter the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate and House of Representatives, he said the national Democratic Party could learn from the methods used by California Democrats to win political dominance in the nation’s largest state.

“California has been through some of the challenges the rest of the country is facing right now,” Perez said in an interview with The Times. “It’s not that we’re an outlier. But we’re an interesting model for what’s possible in other states.”

During Perez’s tenure as speaker, the Democrats won a two-thirds supermajority in both the Assembly and state Senate. Democrats now hold every statewide political post in the state.

Several contestants for the new DNC chair have emerged, including Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who ran the national party in the run-up to Obama’s 2008 election, and Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a favorite of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the incoming Senate Democratic leader, Charles E. Schumer of New York.

The national party was rocked by controversies this past election season, including leaked emails that hastened the departure of its former chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. The emails, made public by WikiLeaks, showed her staff members discussing ways to undermine Sanders during the Democratic primary.

Perez, who lives in downtown Los Angeles, said he plans to deliberate about a possible run over the next several weeks.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

In a 98-96 vote, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Whittier) was elected the next vice chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus on Wednesday, making her the first Latina to ever serve in House leadership.

“We always knew it takes a lot of hard work to get a majority of your colleagues on board with something, I’ve been working at this for more than a year, worked diligently, and I knew today whatever the outcome, I left it all out on the field,” Sanchez said after the vote.

Earlier in the day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco fended off a challenge for her post from a group of younger members, some of whom had grumbled about how long some of the senior members have been in power, and whether newer members of the caucus had a voice.

Sanchez, who at 47 will also be the youngest member of House leadership, said she heard similar concerns from members as she campaigned for the position.

“I really see the vice chair position as a conduit of information from the membership to percolate it up to leadership,” she said. “I’ve heard it all in the last year, I’ve taken the time to really listen to some of their ideas, some of their concerns, some of their suggestions. I’ll be in a unique place to be able to sit in leadership meetings and try to make sure they’re aware of these discussions or these issues.”

The outcome of the election would have been historic either way. Sanchez beat out Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, who would have been the first black woman elected to House leadership.

Lee ran on a promise to create more ways for members to work on issues they care about, such as task forces and community meetings, if they aren’t on the related committees. She also said Democrats need to do more to talk directly to constituents across the country, and said she plans to find a way to do both outside of leadership.

“I’m going to create ways to do it, trust me,” Lee said after the vote. “I think that’s what we all have to do when we don’t have a sort of framework that’s institutional; we have to get out of the box and create those frameworks.”

Fellow California Democrats said it was a tough vote between hardworking, well-liked members. Three fewer votes were cast in the vice chair race than in Pelosi’s race for House minority leader early in the day, but with secret balloting, it wasn’t clear which members of the caucus didn’t vote.

Several congressional Democrats urged President-elect Donald Trump to protect so-called Dreamers, students and youth who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children, when he takes office next month.

In tweets and Facebook posts, elected officials urged Trump not to reverse President Obama’s Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals plan, which put off deportations for Dreamers, as he had promised to do on the campaign trail.

The online campaign uses an image that reads “We are a nation of immigrants” and the hashtag “SaveDACA” in reference to the program.

Leading the charge were prominent Californians, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Senator-elect Kamala Harris.

Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) also chimed in, linking to an article about the open letter California college and university officials sent to Trump on the issue.

California Democrats have already asked President Obama to pardon the Dreamers and protect their information before he leaves office.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Senator-elect Kamala Harris is making her first hiring move, announcing Wednesday that her chief deputy in the attorney general’s office, Nathan Barankin, will be her chief of staff when she replaces Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in November.

“Nathan has been my trusted advisor and right hand for many years in the Attorney General’s office. He is an exceptional lawyer, legislative expert, and career public servant. He has served three different Attorneys General of California in executive roles and has worked as a constitutional litigator and an advisor to the California Senate leadership for many years. I look forward to continuing to work with Nathan in the United States Senate,” Harris said in a statement.

New senators are sworn in Jan. 3. Harris also announced half a dozen people to help set up her new office, including advisors Debbie Mesloh, Michael Troncoso and Tony West.

Also helping from Harris’ camp is director of scheduling and operations Cortney Bright; deputy campaign manager Jill Habig; campaign manager Juan Rodriguez; advisors Brian E. Nelson, Matthew Spence, Hillary Blout and Lane Dilg; as well as press secretary Nathan Click.

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Democrats who take the oath of office next week in the California Legislature will find their ranks have swelled, with the party now holding a supermajority of seats in both houses.

But there are likely to be notable intraparty disagreements on economic issues, none more important than taxes.

“I think we need to be very careful about taxes,” said Assemblyman Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove), co-chairman of a business-aligned bloc of Democrats that calls itself the “moderate caucus.”

One tax proposal sure to face lawmakers in the coming weeks is a proposed increase in the state gas tax to help fund billions of dollars in transportation projects. A broad package of proposals designed to improve roads and highways failed to move forward in the previous session, in large part because the gas tax increase required a supermajority vote in both houses -- and Republicans balked at the idea.

Which gets back to the skepticism of some of the business-aligned Democrats to vote for a new tax.

“I think we need to be very careful,” said Cooper of a tax hike.

The looming transportation debate, say some, offers insight into the limits of Democratic dominance even in an era where the party’s political power seems stronger than ever.

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(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke to a sold-out crowd of 1,400 Tuesday night in Glendale, trying to help supporters grapple with the election of Donald Trump and chart a path forward.

Opening her conversation with Sanders at the Alex Theatre, comedian Sarah Silverman posed a question with a four-letter word she said has “been on everybody’s mind since the election.”

“What the [expletive]?” Silverman said to laughter and applause. “Is that the entire question?” Sanders responded, before warning that the Democratic Party “cannot be the party of the liberal elite.”

Sanders told the audience that it would be a mistake to assume that the only reason Trump won was because his supporters are “racists, sexists and homophobes.”

“What he touched on in many, many parts of this country is a pain and a level of despair that you never, ever see on television,” Sanders said. “A lot of people are suffering, a lot of people are hurting and they need a party which brings them into the process.”

Sanders continued to de-emphasize identity politics, a move he’s made in several media outlets in recent days, saying “it isn’t enough” to support a candidate because she’s a Latina or a woman. Democrats, Sanders said, need to stand against racism and discrimination, but also emphasize progressive values such as fighting Wall Street and drug companies.

He repeated his belief that the “overwhelming share” of Americans support his progressive ideals, including a desire for clean air and water, free college tuition and greater pay equality for women, all topics that drew sustained applause from the audience.

“As we try to figure out how best to deal with a President Trump, and I’m as reluctant as you to say that phrase ... please do not believe that members of Congress can do this alone. We need a mass movement of millions of people who are engaged,” Sanders said.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) is seeking to become the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee following news Tuesday that the current ranking member Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) will not run for the position again.

Levin, 85, said it was time to give younger members a chance to lead Democrats on the powerful tax-writing committee ahead of expected fights with the Trump administration and House Republicans over healthcare policy and tax reform.

Becerra asked for support in a letter to colleagues Tuesday night.

“With the White House and Congress in Republican hands, we need a strong, experienced and energetic leader who will take the fight for our democratic values on the Ways and Means Committee to the American people,” Becerra said. “Over the next two years, many of America’s toughest policy decisions will play out in this committee.

The member who will become the Democrats’ next leader on the committee isn’t determined by seniority. The ranking member elections have not yet been scheduled. Becerra is the committee’s sixth-highest ranking Democrat, and the ranking Democrat on its Social Security Subcommittee.

The committee’s second- and third-ranking Democrats, Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), are both retiring this year. Though he hasn’t officially signaled one way or the other, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) the fourth-ranking Democrat on the committee isn’t expected to pursue the job.

That leaves the race down to Becerra and the fifth-highest ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who challenged Levin for the ranking member position in 2010 and lost. Neal has not said if he plans to run.

Becerra, the fourth-highest ranking Democrat and the most senior Latino in the House, is term-limited as caucus chairman and had no other step upward in House leadership unless House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-M.D.) or Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) stepped down. The three are up for reelection in Wednesday morning’s leadership vote.

Becerra was a vocal surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and spent the last year crisscrossing the country for her and for House candidates. His name was floated as an early possibility for vice president, or for a cabinet position.

Democrat Doug Applegate

(Sean Dufrene/Associated Press)

Democratic congressional candidate Douglas Applegate came within a few thousand votes of knocking off GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, and now says he’s going to give it another try in 2018.

“As a Marine Colonel, I know that the hardest fights often take a couple of battles — and I look forward to continuing our fight in the days, weeks, and months ahead,” Applegate said in a statement released Tuesday. “That’s why I’m announcing my intention to run for Congress in 2018.”

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California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

John Burton isn’t afraid of the “l” word.

The chairman of the California Democratic Party wasn’t shy about calling it the “Liberal Party” in an email urging members to run to become delegates. For years Republicans have used the term “liberal” as a pejorative. Many Democratic politicians prefer to be called “progressive.”

The message sent by Burton, the former president pro tempore of the state Senate, also laid out “what California Democrats stand for” — a list of policy positions that largely mirrors the party’s official political platform.

Among the highlights of Burton’s list:

• A “common sense ban on deadly assault weapons”
• Abolishing capital punishment
• Endorsing Black Lives Matter
• A belief that “healthcare is a human right” and support for a single-payer health care system
• Support for debt-free college and free community college

Leaders of the California Republican Party are alleging that the state’s online voter registration system is susceptible to voter fraud, and say they are considering possible legal action in the days or weeks to come.

Harmeet Dhillon, the state party’s former vice chair and now a member of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday that party leaders believe the 4-year-old system allows multiple people to be registered from the same computer.

“The [California] secretary of state’s website does not track the IP addresses of the people who register to vote,” Dhillon said in a phone interview. “You could literally register hundreds or thousands of people from the same computer.”

When asked Tuesday how a single computer used to register multiple voters might be an indicator of fraud, Dhillon said she believes such a situation makes investigating fraudulent activity more difficult. But she said she does not support any ban on public computers for registering voters, such as the ones used in libraries.

The voter registration website, which asks for personal information, including a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number, was launched in 2012. State elections officials boasted last month of a record number of voter registration visits — more than half a million — on the website over two days in late October.

“There is more security on the websites that I shopped on Black Friday than there is on the secretary of state’s website,” Dhillon said.

An email sent to GOP leaders last weekend by the chairman of the California Republican Party, Jim Brulte, suggested possible legal action over the online site. The email, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, also outlined a handful of other “voter registration/turnout irregularities” during the 2016 election cycle.

In a written statement to The Times, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said his staff regularly assesses security of the site and blocks any suspicious activity.

“Undermining confidence in our elections by making unfounded claims of security vulnerabilities and voter fraud is irresponsible,” Padilla said. “I will continue to work to protect the integrity of our elections systems while making the voting experience, from voter registration to casting a ballot, accessible, fair and honest.”

Padilla was vocal over the weekend in criticizing the unproven allegations of widespread voter fraud in California by President-elect Donald Trump.

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3:37 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Harmeet Dhillon regarding the security of public computers.

FOR THE RECORD, 7:25 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorrectly quoted Harmeet Dhillon as saying, “You could literally register hundreds of thousands of people from the same computer.” The figures she cited were “hundreds or thousands.”

This article was originally published at 2:26 p.m.

House Democrats come together Wednesday to vote on their leadership for the next Congress, and with a challenge to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) looming, her supporters have taken to social media in recent days to explain why they back the long-serving leader.

Pelosi, who has been in House leadership for nearly two decades, has cast herself as a steady hand for Democrats as they push back against President-elect Donald Trump’s policies, including repealing the Affordable Care Act and deporting millions of people in the country illegally.

Pelosi’s challenger, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), represents a state that Trump won, and he has made the case that Democrats need to appeal to Middle America if they want to regain House control.

Several of California’s 39 Democrats joined the social media rally behind Pelosi, posting their own reasons to #StandWithNancy.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has taken a few swings at Pelosi since Democrats’ losses Nov. 8, saying keeping her in charge means Republicans will continue holding majority control of the House.

The National Republican Congressional Committee also jumped in Tuesday, hanging a banner outside their Washington office urging Democrats to “Hire Nancy” and joining the tweetstorm online. Pelosi’s staff responded, calling it a distraction from Trump’s transition.

California Senate leader Kevin de León met with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday to discuss how they will “protect California’s progressive policies and values,” De León said in a tweet.

The two Democratic leaders have said they are willing to engage the White House on common objectives. But they also have vowed to wage fierce opposition against the Donald Trump administration and a GOP-controlled Congress, which California lawmakers have said could threaten the state’s work on issues such as healthcare, immigration and climate change.

The state Senate has said it plans to hire its own outside counsel for guidance on how to fend off unfriendly directives from Trump.

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(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Los Angeles) will resign her congressional seat Sunday so that she can be sworn in as the newest member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Hahn will be sworn in Monday. Hahn’s staff said she has already submitted the necessary letter announcing her resignation to House officials.

Congress is expected to leave for the year Dec. 9, but still needs to pass a resolution to continue funding the government.

New members, including Hahn’s replacement representing the L.A. area’s coastal cities, Nanette Barragán, will be sworn in Jan. 3.

4:22 p.m. Dec. 1: The post has been corrected to reflect that Hahn’s resignation takes effect Dec. 4. It was originally published Nov. 29.

Assemblyman Marc Steinorth (R-Rancho Cucamonga) has defeated Democrat Abigail Medina to keep his seat in a surprisingly tight race.

The Associated Press called the race for Steinorth on Monday evening, nearly three weeks after election day. According to the latest election returns, Steinorth was ahead by 2,513 votes.

Medina’s strong showing in the primary — when she won by three percentage points — and the district’s high Latino voter registration made the 40th Assembly District a major target for Democrats this year.

State and county parties spent more than $2.4 million in an attempt to unseat Steinorth in the 40th Assembly District, and GOP committees spent $1.2 million defending him.

Medina, a San Bernardino school board member, was boosted by Tom Steyer’s NextGen political action committee, while Steinorth benefited from spending by groups funded by oil companies, the real estate industry and other business interests.

Much of the Democrats’ campaign centered on trying to tie Steinorth to Donald Trump in mailers and advertisements. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon also showed up to campaign with Medina on several occasions.

Underscoring the importance of this race to Democratic leaders, Medina was one of four legislative candidates to be endorsed by President Obama in the final weeks of the campaign.

Democrat Josh Newman has defeated Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) to win the race for the 29th Senate District, giving Democrats in the Legislature a two-thirds majority in both houses.

The Associated Press called the race Monday evening for Newman, who had been steadily gaining ground as provisional and absentee ballots were counted over the last three weeks.

As of Monday afternoon, Newman’s lead over Chang had grown to more than 2,100 votes.

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

“I am immensely honored to have earned the trust and support of so many of my neighbors, who’ve placed their faith and trust in me as their next state senator,” Newman said in a statement, crediting his supporters with helping counter what he called the “obscene levels of spending” in the race.

Democrats had already secured a supermajority in the state Assembly with the defeat of Republican legislators Young Kim (R-Fullerton), Eric Linder (R-Corona) and David Hadley (R-Manhattan Beach).

With a supermajority, a political party can raise taxes, place measures on the statewide ballot, enact laws immediately with an “urgency” clause and override a governor’s veto.

In a statement, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon congratulated Newman on his “clear and impressive victory.”

“He will bring bold ideas, independent thinking and boundless energy to our Caucus and our State Capitol,” De Leon said. “I look forward to welcoming him to our enthusiastic and expanding Senate Democratic majority and working with him to continue California’s unprecedented progress.”

Newman will be sworn in Dec. 5.

For the record, 6:03 p.m.: An earlier version of this post reported that Ling Ling Chang is a state senator. She is an assemblywoman.

The post was originally published at 5:49 p.m.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista)

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

In a race that’s been too close to call since election day, Vista Republican Rep. Darrell Issa appears to have built an insurmountable lead in his bid for reelection over Democratic challenger Doug Applegate.

Issa led by 2,348 votes as of Monday morning — less than 1% of the overall vote.

San Diego County spokesman Michael Workman said Monday that there are an estimated 1,000 ballots left to count in the race for California’s 49th Congressional District. That will make it practically impossible for Applegate, a retired U.S. Marine colonel, to close the gap.

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Democrat Josh Newman continues add votes to his lead over Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) in their drawn-out battle for state Senate.

The race is being watched closely statewide, since the Democrats’ prospects for a supermajority in both houses hinges on the outcome.

With updated vote counts released Wednesday afternoon, Newman was leading by 1,527 votes, up from a lead of 1,396 Tuesday.

The results are likely to be clearer Monday, when San Bernardino County is scheduled to release its latest counts. (While he was leading in Los Angeles and Orange County counts, Newman had been trailing Chang in San Bernardino County.)

“We feel really good about the trend, and we’re cautiously optimistic,” said Derek Humphrey, a consultant for the Newman campaign.

( (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times))

More than two weeks after election day, county officials across California have nearly 1.5 million ballots that have yet to be checked or counted.

Roughly 44% of the official total — 1,466,308 — were in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. State officials said the count could be static for days because of the Thanksgiving holiday break.

Two pending ballot races were called by the Associated Press on Wednesday: Voters narrowly rejected Proposition 53, an effort that sought to force statewide votes to fund a major water project and the future of high-speed rail. And they narrowly approved Proposition 66, which aims to speed up the death penalty.

As the California count has dragged on, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s lead in the national popular vote has increased to about 2 million.

There are multiple reasons for the long wait: California is home to more voters than any other state across the country. It also has more election laws designed to maximize a voter’s chances of casting a ballot.

By law, counties have up to 30 days to certify the final results to state election officials. In many cases, the uncounted ballots are the ones that were dropped off on election day or ballots that arrived in the mail at the last minute.

State law also allows for any ballot postmarked by election day that arrives no later than three days later to be counted.

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Christina Bellantoni, The Times’ assistant managing editor of politics, speaks with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer at the Essential Politics post-election symposium on Nov. 17 in downtown Los Angeles. More coverage at l

How will California’s leaders interact with the Trump administration?

San Diego’s Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Los Angeles’ Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti joined The Times’ Christina Bellantoni for a post-election symposium to discuss just that. Here are some highlights.

On the border wall

San Diego is the largest border city to Mexico. Faulconer called the city’s relationship with the neighboring country one of its greatest strengths.

“We are building bridges down at the border. Literally,” he said about a newly opened pedestrian bridge between his city and Mexico. He also cited job creation on both sides of the borders as a major benefit and importance of trading with our neighbors to the south.

On President-elect Trump’s relationship with California

When it comes to federal funding, both mayors hope President-elect Trump will not turn his back on the state’s infrastructure or advancements in combating climate change.

“The Port of L.A. in Long Beach is responsible for 43% of the consumer goods that come by sea into this country,” Garcetti said, stressing the state’s importance to the rest of the country. He later added, “I hope we have an administration that doesn’t bury their heads in the sand when it comes to climate change.”

On whom they voted for

Neither Garcetti nor Faulconer voted for Trump. Garcetti voted for Hillary Clinton, having spent months campaigning for her in swing states and back home. He also offered his theory on Trump’s win.

Faulconer, who supported Marco Rubio during the primary and criticized Trump’s rhetoric toward women and immigrants, said he voted for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on election day. It’s worth noting Ryan was not an official write-in option on the California ballot.

Will Faulconer run for governor?

The short answer is no.

“No plans to run for governor. I just got re-elected as Mayor of San Diego.”

On whether California should secede from the United States

Despite a renewed push from the “Cal-exit” secessionist movement, the mayors agreed California should not try to separate from the rest of the country.

“I think it’s a bad idea,” Garcetti said. “I love this country and I plan to have the political winds blow from the west.”

“We’re a great state,” said Faulconer. “What makes us great is we may have different views and opinions … but the strength of California is the strength of all of us coming together to make it a better state … So yeah, we’re going to stay as one state and do our best.”

Watch the full interview above. To learn more about Times events, sign up for the Essential Politics newsletter.

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(Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Proposition 58, which overhauls English-only instruction in California, cruised to victory on election night, granting public schools more power to develop and implement their own bilingual and multilingual programs. But it will now be up to parents and teachers to make that happen.

That could prove challenging, given the troubled legacy of bilingual education in the state and as schools continue to grapple with teacher and funding shortages.

Less than 5% of public schools offer bilingual and multilingual programs, though there are now 1.4 million English learners statewide — about 80% of whom speak only Spanish.

Meanwhile, the number of bilingual education teachers has declined over the last six years, down to 693 teachers last year.

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California voters have chosen to approve a ballot proposition that seeks to speed up the death penalty process, a late count of ballots has shown.

Proposition 66 intends to speed up executions by designating trial courts to hear petitions challenging death row convictions, limiting successive petitions and expanding the pool of lawyers who could take on death penalty appeals. As of Monday, the proposition was leading with 51.3% of the vote and on Tuesday, an Associated Press tally of votes found the proposition had received enough votes to pass.

Just two days after the election, with returns still being counted, death penalty opponents filed a preemptive lawsuit to try to block implementation of the proposition.

In contrast, Proposition 62, which would have replaced capital punishment for murder with life in prison without parole, failed with 46.1% of the vote and was called by the Associated Press the morning after election day.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Speculation over a potential last-minute push on a transportation funding plan ended Tuesday, when Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders declared there would be no lame-duck negotiations this month.

The current two-year session of the Legislature officially ends on Nov. 30, and lawmakers have left talks on a multi-billion transportation plan in limbo since adjourning in August.

Brown joined Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) in ending any speculation of a late effort to bring current lawmakers back to the state Capitol.

“While there will not be a lame-duck session of the Legislature to approve a transportation funding deal in 2016, our work on this critical issue continues,” the three men wrote in a letter to transportation groups.

Brown had put forth a $3.6-billion transportation proposal this summer, while some Democratic legislators wanted a plan to repair roads and highways of $7.4 billion. The long impasse over a deal centered on Republican opposition to efforts to raise the state gas tax as part of the package.

Brown and the legislative leaders wrote that they remain committed to working on the issue when the new Legislature convenes in January.

California’s high-speed rail project officially broke ground in January 2015.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Proposition 53, an effort that sought to force statewide votes to fund a major water project and the future of high-speed rail, failed in a late count of ballots Tuesday.

An Associated Press tally of votes found the ballot measure, which had been trailing since election night, narrowly lost.

Proposition 53 would have required state revenue bonds, borrowing that’s generally paid back by users of a large public works project, of $2 billion or larger to be approved by voters statewide. Revenue bonds could be an integral part of the future $17-billion effort to build twin underground water tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region. They could also be required to complete the controversial high-speed rail project from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Throughout California history, only bonds re-paid by taxpayers through the state budget — general obligation bonds — have been subject to approval through a ballot measure.

Proposition 53’s author, Stockton agribusiness owner Dean Cortopassi, insisted that his proposal was a way to force additional transparency about the cost of long-term government debt. He single-handedly bankrolled the ballot measure, but it spent much of the campaign season under the radar on a ballot featuring 17 propositions.

Gov. Jerry Brown launched a flurry of last-minute campaign events to help defeat the proposition, an effort backed by both business and labor groups that believed the new law would create an impediment to major projects across the state.

Josh Newman has taken the lead in his tightly contested race for a Southern California state Senate seat that could hand a supermajority to Democrats in both houses of the Legislature.

Newman, a Democrat, is ahead by 829 votes following the latest release of vote counts by Orange County elections officials Monday afternoon.

The new vote count does not include updated returns from Los Angeles County, where about 18% of voters in the 29th Senate District live, or San Bernardino County, which contains 8% of voters.

On Friday, GOP Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) was ahead, but her lead had narrowed to fewer than 200 votes.

Newman’s position could change yet again with new tabulations from San Bernardino County, where he had previously been trailing Chang by 2,294 votes.

Los Angeles County plans to release updated numbers later Tuesday, while San Bernardino County has a planned update Wednesday.

(Cliff Owen / Associated Press)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she plans to lead an aggressive opposition against President-elect Donald Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress, naming jobs, veterans and Medicare as the top priorities.

But first, Pelosi, who is being challenged for her leadership position by Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, is making an attempt to quell disenchantment within the House Democratic Caucus she has run for 14 years.

In a letter to colleagues sent Wednesday, Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Democrats must push back against the privatization of the Veterans Affairs health system and “insist on a bill that puts good-paying jobs for workers first — not one that is a corporate tax break disguised as an infrastructure bill.”

On Medicare, she said the GOP is “feeling emboldened to shatter the sacred guarantee that has protected generations of seniors.”

“If Speaker [Paul] Ryan presses forward with his plans to end Medicare as we know it, we will stand firmly and unified to stop him,” she said.

Pelosi’s leadership has come under fire from her opponent for the minority leader role, who has said Democrats have been reduced to their smallest congressional minority since 1929. But Pelosi has countered that she has the support of two-thirds of the caucus and helped Democrats regain the majority in 2006 while President George W. Bush was in office.

In an interview with Politico, the Democratic leader said she is the only one who can bring Democrats back to the House majority.

“I don’t intend on this phone call, or any conversation with members, to make myself a lame duck,” Pelosi told Politico. “What you have to do when you’re going into this is to go in with the most strength as possible. That’s just the way it is.”

The new California Legislature will look slightly more racially and ethnically diverse than the last, but its number of women has dropped lower than it has been in more than two decades, according to an analysis of preliminary 2016 election results from the California Research Bureau.

Of the 89 members in office, the number of nonwhite lawmakers has increased from 47 to 53, with gains made among Asian/Pacific Islander, Latino and multiracial lawmakers.

The rise in diversity is most pronounced in the Assembly, where the majority, or 54%, of legislators are now minorities.

(Kyle Kim/Los Angeles Times)

But the number of black lawmakers decreased by one. The total of female legislators dropped by four and now stands at 27. There have not been fewer women in office since 1991-92, and only in 1997-98 has that figure been equally low.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), vice chair of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, said the Democratic Legislative Women’s Caucus over the last two years “has worked to identify, recruit and help women run,” she said. But leaders on both sides of the aisle needed to replicate those efforts, she said.

“Unfortunately, there’s a real chance that not a single Republican woman will be elected this cycle to the Legislature even though half were termed out,” she said.

All demographic groups saw decreases in the number of women, except Latinas, which doubled their ranks from 5 to 10 lawmakers, according to the report.

(Kyle Kim/Los Angeles Times)

Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Salnias) said that was due to an intentional and well-coordinated effort to close the gender gap led by the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

Latino lawmakers had been watching the number of women in office decline since 2014, Alejo said, and last year endorsed 10 Latina candidates out of the 14 they supported for the state Assembly and Senate.

Latinas saw wins in districts where Latinos had never held office before and that many initially thought unlikely, such as Monique Limon in Santa Barbara and Sabrina Cervantes in Riverside County.

“We were very strategic about recruiting, endorsing and financially supporting Latina candidates,” said Alejo, chair of the caucus. “We were very successful because of the early commitment and planning that we carried out this election cycle. But it’s not enough and we are committed to increasing the overall numbers of women.”

(Tony Avelar / Associated Press)

America has a lot more pressing concerns than whether a mediocre quarterback for a lousy football team stands or kneels during the national anthem.

Standing during the pregame ritual, as practically all of us do, shows respect for the flag and expresses pride and gratitude in being an American.

We thank our lucky stars.

Kneeling, as San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick has been doing all season to protest alleged police brutality and the oppression of black people, is certainly within his right.

Personally, I think it’s misguided because it disrespects the core foundation of America and the Constitution that guarantees us the right to protest against systemic imperfections. Protest the imperfections, but not the whole of America, which the national anthem honors.

Moreover, it’s counterproductive. Black lives do matter, and too many police need to be better trained and not so quick on the trigger. But the simplistic kneeling by Kaepernick and other players who have copied him has focused much more attention on their behavior than on the real problems they’re protesting.

What really fries me, however, is that Kaepernick — the supposed committed idealist — didn’t bother to vote Nov. 8.

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Donald Trump’s election was the main topic at a meeting of the California Democratic Party executive committee last weekend in San Diego.

(Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times)

Leaders of the California Democratic Party spent the weekend in San Diego strategizing how to deal with the political era of President-elect Donald Trump. The meeting ended up being part therapy session, part pep rally.

“Donald Trump’s election was a shocking mistake of historical proportions. His dangerous ideas and policies threaten the freedom, the safety and the prosperity of every American,” said environmental activist Tom Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund billionaire who has been flirting with a 2018 run for governor. “This is our moment. We will rise to the occasion because there is no one else.”

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Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general’s office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.

Marcus Ruiz Evans, the vice president and co-founder of Yes California, said his group had been planning to wait for a later election, but the presidential election of Donald Trump sped up the timeline.

“We’re doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention,” Evans said.

The Yes California group has been around for more than two years, Evans said. It is based around California taxpayers paying more money to the federal government than the state receives in spending, that Californians are culturally different from the rest of the country, and that national media and organizations routinely criticize Californians for being out of step with the rest of the U.S.

Members of the Yes California group protest at the state Capitol on Nov. 9.

(Sophia Bollag / Los Angeles Times)

The attorney general’s office will give the ballot measure a title and summary, and Evans said he hopes to begin collecting signatures to get it on the ballot in the spring. Qualifying ballot measures typically requires significant resources to pay signature gatherers, and Yes California doesn’t have major financial backing. But Evans said 13,000 people have volunteered to collect signatures.

“This is real,” Evans said. “We treat it seriously.”

Various groups have made noise about California forming its own country in the wake of Trump’s election this month, most prominently Silicon Valley financier Shervin Pishevar. But similar proposals have dotted the state’s political landscape for years. Yes California has tried and failed previously, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper was not able to get a proposal to split California into six states onto the 2016 ballot.

Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman, who is running for state party chair.

(Colleen Shalby / Los Angeles Times)

The California Democratic Party is considering a new policy that would require party leaders to fully disclose any compensation they receive to advocate for a statewide ballot initiative or candidate for state office.

The push for transparency comes after Eric Bauman, chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and a candidate for state party chairman, faced criticism after his political consulting firm was paid by opponents of Proposition 61, which voters rejected on Nov. 8.

The statewide ballot measure sought to lower prescription drug prices by requiring that state agencies pay no more for medicines than the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bauman’s firm, Victoryland Partners in North Hollywood, received more than $100,000 from the pharmaceutical industry that opposed the measure.

The firm was also a paid consultant for supporters of Proposition 51, a $9-billion bond for school construction projects across the state; Proposition 52, to make permanent the hospital fee program that helps fund Medi-Cal; and Proposition 64, to legalize marijuana. All three measures passed.

Democrat Susie Shannon of Los Angeles said the new policy is necessary so party members know if any party leaders are being paid to lobby them on behalf of a ballot measure or candidate.

“What is at the core of the integrity of this party is transparency,” Shannon said.

The issue came before the rules committee at the California Democratic Party’s executive meeting in San Diego this weekend. The committee voted to draft the proposal so that it can be presented for a vote at the party’s May convention in Sacramento.

Bauman told the committee he was in favor of the change.

“I support this 100%,” he said.

Kimberly Ellis, who also is running for chair of the state party, said the initial proposal calling for members to simply disclose any financial interests in a ballot measure or candidate was too vague, and asked to committee to broaden its scope.

“Is this a party of the special interests or is it a party of the people?” asked Ellis, executive director of Emerge California, which works toward increasing the number of Democratic women elected to public office.

Pump jacks draw petroleum from the ground in an oil field over the Monterey Shale formation in Kern County.

(David McNew / Getty Images)

The California Democratic Party will no longer accept political donations from oil companies or their representatives in Sacramento.

The decree was handed down by Chairman John Burton and announced at the party’s executive committee meeting in San Diego on Saturday.

“I felt that big oil was just swaggering around the Capitol,” said RL Miller, president of Climate Hawks Vote Political Action and chair of California Democratic Party’s Environmental Caucus. “They just have too much influence in Sacramento.”

Miller urged Burton to enact the new policy. Burton’s term as chairman of the party ends next year, however, and the ban can be rescinded by the party leader who takes his place.

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

The Senate race between Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) and Democrat Josh Newman has narrowed significantly, making the Democrats’ chances of securing a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature suddenly much more likely.

As of Friday afternoon, as outstanding votes continued to be counted, Chang’s lead over Newman had been cut to just 187 votes in the 29th Senate District, which includes parts of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

The day after the election, Chang enjoyed a nearly 3,900-vote advantage, but that lead shrank dramatically as mail and provisional ballots were tallied this week.

Democrats already have secured a supermajority in the Assembly, but doing the same in the state Senate, where they needed to flip only one seat, seemed unlikely until Friday’s vote totals were reported.

With a supermajority, a political party can raise taxes, place measures on the statewide ballot, enact laws immediately with an “urgency” clause and override a governor’s veto.

It could be more than a week before the final tally is made available: Orange County, which accounts for the biggest bloc of voters in the district, says it has about 13,000 ballots left to count in the race. San Bernardino County needs to count about 2,000 ballots, according to officials.

“I don’t think all the votes will be counted before Thanksgiving Day,” said Jim Nygren, a consultant for Chang. “We’ll just keep watching the votes.”

If either candidate decides to ask for a recount, which they would be required to pay for, the final outcome may not be determined for months.

Times staff writer Liam Dillon contributed to this report.

Rep. Ami Bera shakes hands with his Republican challenger, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones.

(Jose Luis Villegas / Associated Press)

Rep Ami Bera will keep his U.S. House seat after a narrow victory over Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones in California’s 7th District.

When the Associated Press called the race Friday afternoon, more than a week after the election, Bera led Jones by a little more than 6,000 votes, or less than three percentage points.

His win ends a contentious race that saw both candidates plagued by scandals.

Bera faced scrutiny due to revelations his father illegally funneled money to two of his past campaigns. In August, a federal judge sentenced the elder Bera to a year and a day in prison. The congressman has said he didn’t know about his father’s illegal behavior and in May the U.S. attorney’s office said it found no evidence he was involved.

Over the summer, allegations surfaced that Jones sexually harassed a subordinate at the Sheriff’s Department. In a court deposition, a female deputy working for Jones said he made multiple unwanted sexual advances to her more than a decade ago, the Sacramento Bee reported in July. Jones has denied the allegations.

Bera used the allegations and Jones’ tough stance on illegal immigration to compare his opponent to Donald Trump, who has faced claims of sexual harassment from multiple women.

Times staff writer Christine Mai-Duc contributed to this report.

Kamala Harris, California’s newly elected U.S. senator, talks to media after speaking at the Eid-al Fitr Services hosted by the Islamic Center of Southern California at the L.A. Convention Center.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

California’s newly elected U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris on Friday criticized President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, saying he holds views that are “incompatible with constitutional guarantees.” She pointedly referred to GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama by his given name: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.

Sessions is considered one of the most conservative members of the Senate, and in the 1980s his nomination to become a federal court judge was blocked over allegations he made several racially offensive remarks.

Harris called the selection “troubling.”

“I have deep concerns about Senator Sessions’ nomination. Particularly, I am concerned with his support for policies that would undermine core Department of Justice functions and his views that are incompatible with constitutional guarantees,” Harris said in a statement.

She also said Sessions deserves a fair and thorough confirmation hearing by the Senate.

( (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times))

Defeated first-term Assemblywoman Patty Lopez (D-San Fernando) is eyeing a run for the Los Angeles Board of Education next year.

Lopez, who lost her 39th District seat to former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra last week, filed papers with the Los Angeles city clerk to run for the school board seat.

She has until Dec. 7 to submit at least 500 nominating signatures for her campaign. Lopez would be running to replace Monica Ratliff, who is raising money for a possible City Council run. Ratliff represents the LAUSD board’s 6th District, which includes much of Lopez’s current Assembly district.

The city’s primary elections will be held March 7, and the general election is May 16. If elected, Lopez would serve a 5 1/2-year term, as local school board elections are to be synchronized with state and national election cycles starting in 2020.

Lopez, a local community activist who shocked the Democratic establishment when she beat Bocanegra in 2014, ran on a platform focused on education, and has maintained her advocacy for adult education in particular during her time in Sacramento.

In recent weeks, she had expressed a desire to return to community activism if she was not reelected.

Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a favorite of liberals, is bidding to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is gathering support in his bid to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will meet with California party members this Saturday as they prepare for the new political era of President-elect Donald Trump.

Ellison, a progressive Democrat who was the first Muslim American elected to Congress, will be speaking to members of the California Democratic Party’s executive committee at their weekend conference in San Diego.

Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, and how the party should respond, is expected to be a primary topic at the meeting.

Ellison’s bid to head the DNC already has the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Sen. Charles Schumer.

The national party was rocked by controversies this past election season, including leaked emails that hastened the departure of former chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. The emails, made public by WikiLeaks, showed her staff members discussing ways to undermine Sanders during the Democratic primary.

As California turned blue on election night, state political leaders found themselves at odds with an incoming presidential administration some see as an existential threat to the progressive work they have accomplished.

In the days since, California’s Democratic leaders have rushed to set up the state as a liberal counterweight to President-elect Donald Trump, laying the groundwork for four years of battles with Washington.

The posture is out of character for a state that in recent times has not tended to view federal power with hostility. But it seems to be taking a cue from a perennial rival: Texas playing the role of chief antagonist to President Obama.

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(John Locher / Associated Press)

Want to be there in person to see Donald Trump sworn in as the nation’s 45th president? It’s time to start talking with your member of Congress.

Each congressional office receives a limited number of tickets for the swearing-in ceremony held on the Capitol’s west steps on Jan. 20. The tickets are normally standing room only, and there are some spaces in the area to glimpse the new president taking the oath even if you don’t get a ticket.

It’s not yet clear how many tickets each office will get this year, and a few offices have already started talking about giving them away. The majority of California’s 55 members (39 of whom are Democrats) haven’t put out a public call for takers yet.

But Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Whittier) announced she’s distributing her district’s tickets by lottery, and Rep. Darrell Issa has announced he’s allowing people to request them on his website.

With the unexpected-by-many election result, some Washington hotels still have rooms available at a premium price.

Sharon Quirk-Silva, left, in 2014, and Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) at the state Capitol.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press; Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

In the close race for the 65th Assembly District, Republican Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) has conceded to Sharon Quirk-Silva, according to a statement released by Kim Thursday evening.

Kim said she called Quirk-Silva Thursday to congratulate her.

“As our area faces some serious challenges in the weeks and months ahead, I will keep Sharon Quirk-Silva in my prayers that...she will have the knowledge and judgment to be the leader our area deserves.”

The closely watched race drew millions of dollars in spending from both parties and helped Democrats secure a supermajority in the Assembly.

Quirk-Silva declared victory Wednesday, after her election night lead grew by nearly 3,000 votes as absentee ballots were counted. As of Thursday evening, that lead had grown to more than 6,600 votes, or 5 percentage points, according to the latest vote count with the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

The Associated Press called the race in Quirk-Silva’s favor Thursday.

Kim thanked her campaign staff and volunteers, saying the result was “obviously disappointing.”

How did Donald Trump end up on the path to the White House?

Nine days after the presidential election, a bipartisan group of consultants and politicians came together for an L.A. Times panel to figure out what we all just went through and what’s next.

Democratic consultants including Sean Clegg, who worked for California Sen.-elect Kamala Harris this cycle, agreed that Trump’s populist message tapped into a part of the electorate in Rust Belt states that Hillary Clinton’s campaign did not appeal to.

“It was the economy, stupid, and we were stupid on the economy,” Clegg said.

Mickey Kantor, a former Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton, said Trump’s win reflected a worldwide angst among older workers about their place in a rapidly shifting economic and technological landscape, and cited Britain’s “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union.

“People are looking for something strong that they can hang onto,” he said.

Trump, he said, provided that.

Tim Clark, the Trump campaign’s California director, said since there was no ground game in California, volunteers focused on calling swing states.

Others wondered whether Trump would fulfill his promise to deport millions of Mexicans in the United States or establish a registry for Muslim Americans.

“We should take him at this word,” said Bill Burton, deputy White House press secretary in President Obama’s first term.

Kantor called the controversial appointment of Stephen K. Bannon as Trump’s chief strategist “ominous,” and rumors that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) could end up on Trump’s Cabinet “a real problem.”

Republican strategist Rob Stutzman, who used to work in former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration, was an outspoken Trump opponent and questioned whether the president-elect would follow through on all of his campaign promises.

He said Trump would squander all of his political capital if he actually went through with mass deportations.

Imagine, he said, federal agents knocking on the doors of millions of immigrants in the U.S. and detaining them for deportation while their family members or neighbors capture the video on cellphones.

“And all of that goes to Facebook?” he said. “I do think [Trump] is smart enough to consider that.”

Clegg said that regardless of whether Trump follows through with this promises, “we are in for a social movement that we have not seen in this country since the 1960s” in opposition to Trump’s administration.

Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant who advised Loretta Sanchez’s unsuccessful campaign for Senate, said Trump’s promises for new infrastructure spending and to protect entitlements would not play well with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s stated goals of reducing government spending.

“Everybody buy the popcorn, get in the seats — it’s gonna be a show,” he said.

The members of Congress who persuaded President Obama to grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought into the country illegally as children are now asking him to use a pardon to prevent those immigrants from being deported by President-elect Donald Trump.

The White House, however, promptly batted down the idea.

Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) and Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Obama on Thursday asking him to use his pardon authority to forgive the past and future civil immigration offenses of the nearly 750,000 people granted deportation deferrals under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

They believe that would keep those people from being deported, and even though it would leave them in legal limbo without work permits or visas, they could more easily apply for legal status from within the U.S. without immigration offenses on their records.

“They wouldn’t have a piece of paper, they wouldn’t have work authorization, but they wouldn’t have to be living in fear every moment of their lives about deportation,” Lofgren said after a news conference Thursday.

Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, said the pardons would probably be applied to the civil offenses related to entering and remaining in the country without authorization.

But whether a pardon would actually be applicable in the so-called Dreamers’ situation is unclear. Lawyers disagree over whether the immigrants could be pardoned for civil crimes they haven’t been formally accused of, and whether such a pardon would actually prevent them from being deported while they seek legal status.

A White House official signaled late Thursday that the administration was not considering a pardon for those registered under DACA because it believes a pardon would not allow them legal status.

“We note that the clemency power could not give legal status to any undocumented individual. As we have repeatedly said for years, only Congress can create legal status for undocumented individuals,” an administration official said.

After immigration reform efforts stalled in Congress during Obama’s first term, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressured Obama to act independently to protect from deportation certain immigrants brought into the country illegally when they were children. He then used an executive order to create the DACA program in 2012.

The Dreamers, one in three of whom are estimated to live in California, gave the Department of Homeland Security their fingerprints, home addresses and other information to undergo background checks that allowed them to defer deportation under DACA.

At the time, advocates and the administration emphasized that providing the information would protect the Dreamers and was worth the risk. But with Trump vowing to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally and many fearing he may let the DACA program expire, Dreamers are worried the information they provided will be used to deport them.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose husband is an immigration attorney, said at the news conference she has been getting a flood of messages from frightened Dreamers. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Obama asking him to keep their information from the Trump administration.

“We promised these recipients security, and now they are facing a nightmare,” she said.

Roybal-Allard said those who pushed Obama to create the program and persuaded people to come out of the shadows to register with the government have an obligation to protect them.

“These are kids. We feel a sense of responsibility. We went out into our districts and we talked to the Dreamers, and they asked us, ‘Is it really OK for us to do this?’” Roybal-Allard said. “And we said, ‘No, don’t worry, you need to come forward.’ Now we are in a situation where all that we said, in fact, could possibly be reversed.”

Although the president’s pardon power is normally used for individual cases, there is some precedent for the chief executive to pardon a large group of people.

President Jimmy Carter pardoned half a million Vietnam War draft evaders in 1977, and at least seven other presidents have issued broad pardons.

Congress and the Supreme Court cannot undo a presidential pardon, nor can a new president.

Lofgren said if Obama doesn’t pardon the Dreamers, she hopes he responds with his own idea to help them.

“These young people are not alone, they are not going to be abandoned by us,” she said.

UPDATES

4:59 p.m. This post was updated with additional details throughout.

2:15 p.m. This post was updated with the White House’s response to the proposal.

This post was originally published at 11:30 a.m.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) called a Trump supporter’s remark about the Japanese internment “beyond disturbing.”

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Several members of California’s congressional delegation denounced a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump for his remark that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II provided “precedent” for creating a national registration list for immigrants from predominately Muslim countries.

Carl Higbie, author of “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: A SEAL’s Story,” defended the idea of creating a registry for such immigrants during a Fox News interview by Megyn Kelly on Wednesday night.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose), who as a child was forced into an internment camp with his family during World War II, called the remarks “beyond disturbing.”

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) said the comment confirms many Americans’ worst fears about the incoming Trump administration.

“The imprisonment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II, including my parents and grandparents, is widely understood to be one of the darkest chapters in American history,” said Takano in a statement sent to reporters. “I am horrified that people connected to the incoming Administration are using my family’s experience as a precedent for what President-elect Trump could do.”

Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) said the United States must remain a safe haven for people of all religions, adding that “we cannot go backwards.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) called on Trump to immediately condemn Higbie’s remarks and also “repudiate the idea of a ‘Muslim registry.’ ”

During World War II, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from West Coast states were ordered to evacuate their homes and abandon their businesses and were placed in internment camps in remote areas across the West.

Supreme Court decisions in 1943 upheld the constitutionality of the military detention process. In 1988, President Reagan signed legislation that issued a formal government apology and provided reparations for those who had been interned.

“The incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans due to wartime hysteria and racism was a dark chapter in our nation’s history which led to civil rights violations so unconscionable that Congress later apologized for it,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said in a statement. “Like Japanese incarceration, imposing a registry upon American Muslims goes against our constitutional values and our very principles as a nation.”

Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) will again fill a leadership role for House Republicans.

“I am humbled that my peers unanimously reelected me to serve as their sophomore representative to House Republican Leadership,” Walters said in a statement.

Walters was tapped early for the leadership team, and she was also picked to represent her first-term colleagues in House leadership when she came to Washington in 2014. The party only has class representatives for the first two terms.

The position was created to give newer members a voice in House leadership, something Democratic members have complained they don’t feel like they have. It’s a complaint heard as part of the current challenge to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is being challenged for her leadership position by seven-term Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio.

“What we are doing right now is not working,” Ryan said in a letter to colleagues. “Under our current leadership, Democrats have been reduced to our smallest congressional minority since 1929. This should indicate to all of us that keeping our leadership team completely unchanged will simply lead to more disappointment in future elections.”

Amid rumors of a challenge, Pelosi (D-San Francisco) had earlier agreed to push the caucus leadership election back to Nov. 30. Nonetheless, members left Thursday for the Thanksgiving break, and there is little time for opposition to organize.

Pelosi has said Democrats need to be a strong, unified force to counter President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans.

In a letter to colleagues Wednesday, Pelosi said she has the support of two-thirds of the caucus, and made the case that she helped Democrats regain the majority in 2006 while President George W. Bush was in office.

“To be a strong voice for hard-working families and to uphold the values we cherish as Americans, House Democrats must be unified, strategic and unwavering. These qualities took us to victory in 2006 and I believe they will do so again. We must start now!” she said.

Ryan, who represents a state that Trump won, noted in his letter that Democrats have controlled the chamber only twice in the last 18 years. He had a strong speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, and was a vocal campaigner for Hillary Clinton and against Trump.

The top two House Democrats, Pelosi and Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have been in leadership positions for nearly two decades, and there have been increased rumblings from a new generation of members that it’s their turn, especially after Democrats gained less than a fourth of the seats they needed to retake the majority.

“I don’t think that you can come in and say the way forward for Democrats is to do exactly what we’ve been doing. That’s Einstein’s definition of insanity,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said Wednesday. “Clearly our message hasn’t resonated, especially with people in the middle of the country.”

Several California lawmakers said they’ll support Pelosi. Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) authored a letter signed by 50 female members (including 14 Californians) urging Pelosi to run again, saying the caucus needs her “strategic, battle-tested leadership to guide us through the years ahead.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) said Democrats need to support Pelosi as a steady hand against Trump.

Swalwell said he wants to “make sure at the very top that person is experienced and able to match the inexperience the Trump’s presidency will bring.”

While the nation’s attention was focused on the November election and which party would lead the next Congress, or who would or would not hold on to their seats, dozens of members were quietly packing up their Capitol offices, Washington apartments and district offices.

Reps. Sam Farr (D-Carmel) and Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) announced their plans to retire over a year ago, saying simply it was time to go home, and have been slowing packing up decades of mementos and papers since.

Those who won’t be returning next year have to vacate their offices by Dec. 1.

“We will be sort of unceremoniously dispatched to the basement,” Capps said, where each retiring House member gets a cubicle to work from for their last weeks.

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Sharon Quirk-Silva, left, in 2014, and Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) at the state Capitol.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press; Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva has declared victory in her quest to recapture the seat she lost to Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) two years ago.

As of Wednesday night, the Associated Press still considered the race too close to call.

But Quirk-Silva’s campaign said in a statement that she had gained a “decisive lead” of more than 4,300 votes, and that remaining ballots would likely increase that margin.

“I am grateful to the voters for their confidence,” Quirk-Silva said in the statement. “Nationally there is a lot of anxiety about what is coming and I, too, am concerned about the direction of our country,” she said, adding that she will fight to move the state forward.

Kim’s victory in 2014 was seen as one of the major reasons Democrats lost their supermajority in the Assembly, and was again central this year to the party’s efforts to recapture one.

State and county party committees spent more on this race than any other, with both sides dropping a combined $4 million since June 30.

More than $3 million of that was spent by the Democrats, who attempted to tie Kim to Donald Trump, a strategy they’ve used in several competitive statehouse races this year.

The candidates themselves also raised sizable war chests, with Quirk-Silva raking in more than $4.3 million and Kim bringing in another $2.8 million.

Six newly elected Californians are in Washington this week for a crash course in how to be a member of Congress.

They are sitting through daylong sessions on ethics, advice on hiring competent staff and managing their office budgets, and how to write legislation. Rep.-elect Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel) compared the experience to trying to drink from a fire hose.

So The Times asked some of California’s veteran members of Congress what advice they have for new members.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) suggested bringing noise-canceling headphones, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Whittier) advised buying duplicate pairs of shoes rather than carry them back and forth across the country.

Others were more serious tips. Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) urged her new colleagues to find members already working on issues they care about, rather than starting from scratch all alone. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) said they should go to every available training session or seminar on Capitol Hill in order to get up to speed as soon as possible.

“Follow the rules so that your good work is not undercut,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), who leads the California Congressional Caucus.

“Get to know the Republicans from your state,” Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) said. “It’s great to work across the aisle because there are lots of things you actually can do for your state that are positive.”

Some cautioned that the pace in Washington is slower that in the Statehouse or on a city council, where some new members have served.

“Slow and steady,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) said. “Don’t get too enamored with passing a bunch of bills.”

But the most frequent piece of advice was to focus on the people who sent them to Washington.

“Effective constituent services makes you a great public servant,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

Finally, “get to know a really good therapist,” advised Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord).

Darrell Issa said Wednesday in a fundraising appeal that he is mounting an effort to challenge the legality of some ballots still being counted in his tight reelection race in the 49th District.

Issa, an eight-term incumbent who leads Democrat Doug Applegate by just under 2 percentage points, said he expects that lead to shrink and that “I won, but now the liberals are trying to steal the election.”

Last week, Issa said he was confident his now 4,000-plus vote lead would hold. But in Tuesday’s fundraising appeal, he said the vote could come down to absentee and provisional ballots, and his lead could shrink to within 1 point. Then, he said, “Democrats will attempt to force the Registrars to allow thousands of illegal, unregistered voters to influence the election,” Issa wrote.

Robert Dempsey, Applegate’s campaign manager, said they’re “cautiously optimistic” that provisional and late-returned mail-in ballots will push them ahead.

Provisional ballots are cast by people who might not initially appear eligible to vote for a number of reasons. Once these ballots are cast, the registrar will verify that the voter was in fact eligible to vote, and, if so, count his or her ballot. If the person is ineligible, the vote is not included. Provisional ballots are the last to be counted.

Determining whether or not a provisional voter is eligible can be a complex process with legal nuances and disagreements. The vast majority, however, end up counted.

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State Sen. Connie Leyva, right.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

When the California State Senate convenes next month, Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino) says that she plans to introduce legislation to ban all registered sex offenders from school campuses without exception.

Levya said the proposal comes in response to increased concerns from parents in recent months, particularly in Fontana, where the school district approved a September 2016 policy that seeks to address the issue.

State laws keep registered sex offenders from living near schools. But those who have not been convicted of having sex with a minor under age 16 can visit or volunteer with groups or organizations that work with children if they give proper notice, are granted permission. They cannot work directly with children.

“The safety of students should always remain a top priority, so I look forward to introducing legislation in the near future that will tighten the loopholes that sex offenders could use to gain access to school campuses in California,” Levya said.

5:00 p.m.: This article was updated with information on state laws regarding sex offenders.

This article was originally published at 3:04 p.m.

This news won’t shock people who have been paying attention to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s recent moves, but it is worth noting.

The San Francisco Democrat, just reelected to serve a 16th term in the House, has filed paperwork to run again in 2018.

The 76-year-old also is running again to be her party’s leader in the House.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers could have $2.8 billion in discretionary dollars to spend in the state budget they will craft next year, under an analysis released Wednesday.

The annual fiscal forecast by the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office, while offering optimism about the state budget outlook in the near future, warns of considerable uncertainty after the summer of 2018.

Similar projections last year helped bolster Brown’s case for more prudence than some in the Legislature had wanted when it comes to additional spending.

In all, the analysis suggests that an economic slowdown might trigger short-term operating deficits but not a broader crisis, due to existing cash reserves.

“The state could weather a mild recession without cutting spending or raising taxes,” the report said.

(Carl Costas / For The Times)

Directors of the nation’s largest pension fund could decide early next year whether to firmly ratchet down long-term investment predictions, an action that would come at a substantial cost to state and local governments.

Board members of the California Public Employees Retirement System discussed the issue at length on Tuesday and could cut the “discount rate,” the official projected rate of return on CalPERS investments, as soon as February.

“There’s a need to look at the funding of the system more closely than ever before, to ensure the sustainability of the fund over the long term,” said Cheryl Eason, chief financial officer of CalPERS, during the hearing.

The $299-billion pension fund uses an assumed annual rate of return on its investments of 7.5%. That assumption has been slightly lowered in recent years, and analysts have suggested it may still be too optimistic.

CalPERS’ own estimates show it doesn’t have enough assets to cover all of its future obligations to public sector employees. And the fund’s top investment officer said last week’s election results add an additional layer of uncertainty to its economic and stock market predictions.

The only solution, some believe, is to force local and state governments to increase annual payments from their operating budgets.

“We are going to have to potentially make some decisions that will not be comfortable,” CalPERS board member Bill Slaton said.

The debate over lowering the pension fund’s investment prediction began last year, with its leaders approving a gradual reduction and shift of costs to taxpayers. The current discussion, though, is whether the 2015 action was too timid.

CalPERS board members who come from the ranks of public employees balked Tuesday, suggesting there had not been enough time to let recent actions take effect.

“I’m a little confused at the panic and expediency that you guys are selling us right now,” said board member Theresa Taylor. “I think that we need to step back and breathe.”

An official revision of CalPERS’ investment assumptions would place significant pressure on government spending, with public employee pension obligations consuming a larger portion of taxpayer dollars. That could, in turn, squeeze other government programs.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) will become the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which weighs attorney general nominees, as well as nominations to the Supreme Court and other courts, in January.

As the most powerful Democrat on the committee, Feinstein will play a major role in how President-elect Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees are treated and vetted.

“When President-elect Trump is willing to support responsible policies and nominees, I’ll hear him out, but this committee has a vital role to protect the Constitution and scrutinize policies, senior officials and judges very carefully, and that’s what we intend to do,” she said in a statement. “We simply won’t stand aside and watch the tremendous successes achieved over the past eight years be swept away or allow our nation’s most vulnerable populations to be targeted.”

Feinstein was a vocal critic of Republicans’ decision not to consider President Obama’s nominee to the high court, Merrick Garland, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

In 1992, Feinstein became the first woman to serve on the Judiciary Committee, and she will be the first woman and the first Californian to serve as its highest ranking Democrat. She said that makes the position especially meaningful.

“It’s a special honor to be the first woman to become ranking member of this committee, not to mention the first Californian,” she said in a statement. “This committee, which touches the lives of so many Americans, will face many tough issues in the coming years, and I’ll do my level best to represent all Americans.”

The power reshuffling came after Senate Democrats picked their chamber leaders Wednesday. The committee’s current ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), will become the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) will replace Feinstein as vice-chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

L.A. officials sort uncounted ballots from the Los Angeles primary election in 2015.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

California election officials continue their efforts to review and count as many as 4 million ballots from the Nov. 8 election, a daunting process that has kept a few closely watched races in limbo for almost a week.

A report from the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday put the total number of unprocessed ballots at 4.1 million, down from the previous high of more than 4.5 million reported on Monday.

But a closer look at the report reveals that it’s not entirely clear how to estimate the total number of uncounted ballots. Most notably, several counties have not updated their official count since the middle of last week. That could mean hundreds of thousands of ballots have, in fact, been counted — but just not reported to state officials.

In San Diego County, election officials have reported that about 170,000 of the ballots on the state’s uncounted report have been counted. Los Angeles County also looks to have counted 200,000 ballots that aren’t noted in Tuesday’s report. Those changes would bring the statewide total of uncounted ballots closer to 4 million.

Two of last week’s 17 statewide propositions have remained too close to call: Proposition 53, which would require voters to approve future revenue bond proposals of $2 billion or larger; and Proposition 66, which seeks to expedite the legal appeals of prisoners sentenced to death.

In all, more than 10.5 million ballots have already been counted. By law, counties have up to 30 days to certify the final results to state election officials. In many cases, the uncounted ballots are those dropped off on election day or those arriving in the mail at the last minute.

State law now allows any ballot postmarked by election day and arriving no later than three days later to be counted. Because the third day after the election was a federal holiday — Veterans Day — state officials extended the deadline until the close of business on Monday.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy will keep his current job when the new Congress begins in January.

McCarthy was chosen by his House Republican colleagues Tuesday to remain as the chamber’s second-highest ranking leader in the new year.

The Bakersfield Republican was elected to Congress in 2006 and first picked for House leadership in 2009 at Republican’s chief deputy whip. He has been majority leader since 2014.

He was widely considered the heir apparent to former House Speaker John A. Boehner until he shocked the political world when he announced he would not run for the position when Boehner stepped down last year.

House Republicans also again nominated current House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) as their choice for speaker of the 115th Congress. All members get to vote on the next speaker in January.

Democrats had also scheduled their leadership election for this week, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) moved it to Nov. 30 amid a possible challenge to her role.

State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) is the chairwoman of the Legislative Women’s Caucus

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

California’s women lawmakers are fighting against President-elect Donald Trump’s statements that he’d support overturning abortion rights.

“President-elect Trump’s statements and policies threaten to restrict our freedoms, cut off our healthcare, affect our economy and the pocketbooks of working families, and drag us back to an era of back alley abortions,” said state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), chairwoman of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, in statement from its Democratic members. “While our abortion rights will remain protected here in California due to the strength of our state laws and Constitution, we will remain vigilant in speaking out against any Supreme Court nominee who will overturn our hard-fought American freedoms and impact the economic security of working families.”

Trump campaigned on restricting abortion rights and told CBS News Sunday that he would appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision that prevented states from banning abortions, legalizing it throughout the nation. Trump indicated that once the decision was overturned, women would have to go to states without abortion bans to get one.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), the women’s caucus vice chairwoman, said in the statement she is also worried about decreased federal funding for cancer screenings and birth control.

“We will vigorously uphold our long-held commitment to ensuring all women retain control over their bodies, healthcare and livelihoods,” Garcia said.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

After tweeting a link to a false article about a homeless veteran being beaten to death, purportedly by protesters opposed to President-elect Donald Trump, a Southern California lawmaker has deleted the post and apologized.

The original tweet by Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) was posted Sunday night and reported by The Times on Monday. It linked to a story by a website called Christian Times Newspaper, alleging a homeless veteran was fatally beaten near Philadelphia by anti-Trump protesters.

The video in the story, however, was of an unrelated incident in 2015.

Melendez did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, but deleted the tweet on Tuesday with a brief apology.

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) discussed how President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed policies might affect black Americans in a video posted to social media Tuesday.

“He clearly has spent little to no time in any inner-city community,” she says in the nearly 17-minute video, which was posted on Facebook and YouTube, as she ticks through several ideas Trump has put forward, including school vouchers, “stop and frisk” and increased police presence in certain communities.

“We will resist every step of the way Donald Trump moving our country backwards,” she said.

Bass spends some time at the beginning and end of the video reacting to Trump’s selection of Steve Bannon as his chief White House strategist. Critics note that Bannon, as editor of Breitbart News, has provided a platform for white nationalism.

“He’s an open anti-Semite!” Bass says in the video. “This is who he is bringing in to the Oval Office.”

(David Butow / For The Times)

At a time when President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to roll back laws on climate change, state Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) on Tuesday led a delegation of California officials attending a conference in Morocco on global warming.

De León and seven other state officials are attending the United Nations 22nd Conference of Parties to discuss ways to move forward with a climate agreement reached in Paris last year. Also on the trip is Matt Rodriquez, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, and other state administrators. No other elected state official is attending, according to Dana Coffman, a director of the Climate Registry, a nonprofit group that designs programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The registry is paying for the travel of De León and other Californians in cooperation with the Climate Action Reserve, a group that certifies projects that offset greenhouse gas emissions and advocates for solutions to climate change.

De León said the California delegation would work to convince officials of other governments that the state remains committed to pursuing efforts to reduce emissions.

“California leaders are committed to protecting and building upon our global leadership role in the fight against climate change,” De León said in a statement. “It would be extremely irresponsible and short-sighted to do otherwise. The world is counting on us more than ever and I look forward to reassuring our partners in other countries.”

Trump has questioned the conclusion reached by many scientists that human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, has had significant, negative effects on the global environment.

The governor’s office said others in Morocco are Ken Alex, director of Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, David Hochschild, a member of the California Energy Commission, Alexa Kleysteuber, deputy secretary of California Environmental Protection Agency, Edie Chang, deputy executive officer for the California Air Resource Board, Emily Wimberger, chief economist for the California Air Resource Board, and Fan Dai, climate change adviser for the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Twenty-four other state lawmakers have taken fact-finding trips to China, Germany, the Czech Republic and Maui ahead of next month’s gaveling in of a new legislative session.

Four members of the Erotic Service Providers Union are asking to meet with Gov. Jerry Brown to deliver a petition with 24,000 signatures in support of decriminalizing sex work.

The governor signed more than half a dozen bills this past legislative session including measures to decriminalize prostitution for minors and increase court protections for children and young adults swept into the sex trade. But sex workers said efforts to combat human trafficking do not help and can hurt everyday workers making a living in the business.

“Our population live in California, and we deserve to be represented, and we want our voices heard,” said Maxine Doogan, founder of the union. “We know that there are lots of pieces of legislation that are proposed and passed on our behalf every year calling us victims or criminals, and in fact, we are legitimate workers.”

Just four union members stood on the north steps of the Capitol on Tuesday to make their appeal. They said sex workers face discrimination and law enforcement repercussions when attending rallies.

With President-elect Donald Trump vowing to deport thousands of people in the country illegally, Rep. Judy Chu on Tuesday urged the Obama administration to protect the names of “Dreamers,” people brought to the country illegally as children who applied for temporary status in the United States.

Trump is expected to unwind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Obama that gave temporary legal status to Dreamers.

Of the 742,000 people across the country protected under DACA, about one in three are estimated to live in California and state officials are already gearing up for a fight over immigration with the Trump administration.

“These children and families provided extensive amounts of sensitive information to their government, including fingerprints and relatives’ home addresses, with the understanding that it would not be used against them. We promised them security,” Chu said in a statement. “Now they are facing a nightmare. When we asked immigrants to come out of the shadows, we never imagined the election of a candidate who ran on a policy of mass deportation.”

Chu’s staff said she’s talking with the Obama administration and federal agencies to determine what legal right to privacy those who applied for the program might have, and what might be done to make it more difficult to use the information to identify people in the country illegally.

Retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) filed legislation Tuesday to abolish the Electoral College in light of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote but still losing the election.

Such legislation makes a statement after an election that shocked Democrats, but is unlikely to gain traction with Republicans holding control of both chambers of Congress in a lame duck session.

Her bill calls for an amendment to the Constitution that would end the Electoral College system. Should such a thing pass, the amendment would only take effect if ratified by three-fourths of the states within seven years after its passage in the U.S. Congress.

Clinton leads President-elect Donald Trump by nearly 800,000 votes nationally with a final count still pending, but Trump won the most electors in the electoral college system that is how the country actually picks its president.

Boxer was a vocal advocate for Clinton throughout the campaign and had said that electing the first female president was on her to-do list before leaving the Senate in January.

This is just the fourth time in U.S. history that a nominee has won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency. The most recent was Al Gore’s Electoral College loss to George W. Bush in 2000.

“In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote,” Boxer said in a statement. “The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

Boxer has co-sponsored legislation to repeal the Electoral College before, none of the bills have been considered.