And how we can do more

• Californians don’t have to bow to King Trump
• Californian spoken here
• Despite Trump, California takes environmental leadership

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Did you know: 63% of Californians believe our U.S. House members are justified in using “hardball tactics,” like refusing to vote to raise the debt ceiling or other must-pass bills, to gain more autonomy for California.

MONEY OUT, MONEY IN

California’s balance of payments

1. California pays our own way while the federal government racks up debt.

C.C. Marin, Executive Director, Independent California Institute

From 2015 through 2019, the green line (spending) was below the red line (taxes). During that time, Californians actually lost an average of $23 billion dollars of public money into the federal system each year. In other words, California’s balance of payments averaged negative 23 biilion dollars a year. That’s why they call the place I got this data the Balance of Payments Portal. (It could have been the name of a fantasy novel series, but the Rockefeller Institute nabbed it first!) For a sense of scale, $23 billion is almost as much California’s entire yearly budget for higher education (including UC, CSU, and community colleges).

In 2020 and 2021, it looks like something crazy happened (spoiler: it was COVID), the lines crossed, and California suddenly got an average of $280 billion dollars more from the federal government than it collected in taxes. In terms of California’s budget, $280 billion is nearly the size of the entire budget, which is to say, the roughly $300 billion of non-federal dollars our state government spends each year.

Then in 2022, the lines crossed again, leaving us with a negative $91 billion balance of payments. (I said $83 billion at the start of the article, but remember, that was in 2022 dollars and we’re adjusting for inflation.) That’s almost four times as bad as California’s pre-pandemic “normal.” $91 billion is more than California budgets towards K-12 education (the entire public school system). It’s also more than twice as much as California is requesting in federal disaster assistance for the L.A. fires.

Some ways this graph is similar than the one for California alone: there’s a big bulge in spending in 2020 and 2021. Tax revenue also follows a similar pattern, dipping a bit in 2020 and then increasing toward 2020.

How is this graph different? Well, yes, the numbers on the y-axis are bigger. But more importantly, the lines don’t cross anymore. As a whole, U.S. states got more more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes in every year we have data for.

In fact, those lines haven’t crossed in a long time; the last time the federal government ran a surplus was in 2001. Keep in mind that running a federal surplus doesn’t just mean spending less on states than the federal government collected in taxes. It also means having enough tax dollars left over to pay interest on the national debt!

Finally, there’s another difference between the graphs that’s easy to miss: before the pandemic, the balance of payments for all states grew smoothly from about $600 billion in 2015 to $1 trillion, and then after the pandemic, it was—still a trillion! It didn’t quadruple, like California’s (negative) balance of payments did. Something happened to California that didn’t happen to the rest of the country, making Californians worse off.

Get the full story here.

CALIFORNIA TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Unions ask California to play a more powerful role in labor disputes

As businesses like SpaceX and Amazon seek to undo the National Labor Relations Board, California unions are trying a novel tactic to preserve labor organizing rights.

Lynn La and Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters

Assembly Bill 288 by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor would give the state jurisdiction over union elections, accusations of employer retaliation and other cases between employers and unions — in the event the federal board doesn’t or can’t respond.

The proposal by the Inglewood Democrat is likely to face pushback from businesses and legal challenges, primarily over the question of whether the bill would infringe on federal law.

Experts say because the National Labor Relations Act already governs union organizing rights and the procedures for unionizing for most private-sector workers nationwide, state agencies can’t have jurisdiction.

But the California Labor Federation says the state must try to step in as the federal agency is increasingly in the crosshairs of prominent businesses, which have argued in federal court that the agency is unconstitutional, and the Trump administration.

‘California isn’t having it’: Golden State seizes leadership on the environment amid White House rollbacks

A new satellite project and bipartisan coalition are at the heart of California’s climate plans, many of which clearly oppose Trump’s national policies.

Matt Simons, Courthouse News Service

While the federal government is rolling back dozens of environmental protections on a national scale, California is taking the fight against climate change into its own hands.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is joining America Is All In, a bipartisan coalition of state leaders committed to reducing carbon emissions, as the organization’s newest co-chair. In his announcement, the governor criticized the federal government’s “all-out assault” on low-carbon and green energy initiatives and said state and city leaders must “step up.”

“In California, we’re not slowing down our work to slash pollution and dominate clean industries of the future. In fact, we’re ramping up because it will take all of us to meet this moment,” Newsom said in a statement.

California and Sonora sign agreement to boost clean energy and climate collaboration

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo Montaño have signed a four-year agreement to strengthen cross-border clean energy efforts and improve supply chain resilience.

Environmental Health News

California and Sonora face intensifying climate challenges, from droughts to extreme weather, that threaten energy systems and economies. Cross-border collaboration could help stabilize clean energy infrastructure and strengthen supply chains for critical technology like electric vehicles.

This cross-border collaboration comes at a time of political friction. California’s aggressive climate policies have often diverged from the federal government’s approach, and trade policies under President Trump’s administration continue to shift. As California moves ahead with its green energy goals, federal tariffs, trade restrictions, and shifting diplomatic strategies could complicate the path forward. The agreement underscores the push-and-pull between state-led climate action and federal economic policy, raising questions about how much autonomy states have in shaping international environmental cooperation.

Applying for CalFresh food aid is complicated. California colleges are trying to make it easier

Across California, only one in five eligible college students receive CalFresh due to complicated requirements and an arduous application process. With two-thirds of students experiencing food insecurity, many campuses have started helping them apply for CalFresh.

Amy Elizabeth Moore, CalMatters

Across California, between 400,000 and 750,000 college students meet SNAP eligibility but only about one-fifth receive federal food assistance, leaving around $140 million untapped, according to the California Policy Lab. While several campuses offer food pantries, meal donation programs and staff dedicated to helping students apply for CalFresh, many students still struggle to meet their nutritional needs.

Students who don’t have enough food experience problems with mental and physical health, earn lower grades and graduate at lower rates, research finds. They are more likely to miss or drop classes and may not have the money to buy course materials. Meanwhile, students who do receive SNAP perform better academically, researchers have found.

So why aren’t students enrolling in CalFresh? Two big obstacles trip them up: the application process and eligibility requirements.

Beyond Congress: How the blue states can lead the Trump resistance

Roughly half of America’s population lives in states where Democrats have far more power than they do on Capitol Hill.

Micah Lasher, The New Republic

• Empower state agencies to do what the feds won’t.
• Protect the people Trump is targeting.
• Supercharge state attorneys general.
• Wage fiscal warfare. Blue states must figure out how to fight back, including developing mechanisms to replace federal funds without the kinds of tax increases that drive people from one state to another.

We are all undocumented now

We Americans no longer have undeniable legal status in this country. Our rights, our organizations, our jobs, our health, our schools, our laws, our constitution — all are now provisional, subject to the whims of the self-proclaimed “King” in the White House.

Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square

Our very citizenship is provisional now. The U.S. Constitution may say that all person born here are citizens. But the King says he may cancel the constitution by executive order.

He says he is only seeking to keep out the children of undocumented immigrants, or of “invaders” or “terrorists.” But the precendent the King is setting is clear: Any of us may be declared terrorists or invaders or children of same. Any of us may be stripped of citizenship, jailed, deported. Your U.S. birth certificate is just another piece of paper.

If we listen to undocumented immigrants, we might learn how to defend ourselves from federal officials who might take us away on a whim. And we might realize that our decades of failing to legalize our undocumented neighbors have left all of us in danger.

Maybe then we will finally understand that protecting ourselves from a tyrant requires fighting for everyone.

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Californian spoken here

A righteous tale of the rad search to identify the California accent and its ever-changing permutations.

Adam Rogers, Alta

All languages undergo change, and pretty much every region evolves a local variety. Most likely, some of them get famous only because there’s a linguist there to study them, trees falling in the phonological forest. Now that social media has accelerated people’s contact with new dialects and new communities, the old rules for speed of transmission and geographical relationships can break down. People are way more likely to encounter lexical innovation through digital influencers than via the popular kids in the school cafeteria. Try to figure out where a Gen Zer is from by their accent, and the answer will probably be TikTok.

But one accent seems to have sticking power. It’s the one that nobody thought existed 50 years ago. “The Northern-cities shift, the East Coast accents, the Southern vowel shift—in the last 10 to 20 years, we have documentation that they’re actually receding,” D’Onofrio says. “New Yorkers are sounding less New Yorky. Chicagoans are sounding less Northern-cities. But that’s not the case in California. The California vowel shift continues to advance.”

25 Books that define California

Whether you are looking to build a California library from scratch or revisit some old favorites, we’ve got the list for you.

Alta Journal

The ‘abundance’ movement comes home

The “abundance” movement born largely out of California has gone national thanks to a book of the same title, which is landing just as Democrats are in the political wilderness and searching for ways to rebuild after a disastrous 2024.

Dustin Gardiner, Melanie Mason and Blake Jones, Politico

Journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson — the authors who’ve thrust the conversation into the spotlight — are making a homecoming of sorts to the Golden State as part of their book tour.

Klein appears today on the latest episode of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast. And Klein and Thompson are speaking to sold-out crowds at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater tonight and tomorrow.

The moment speaks to how they took inspiration from California and San Francisco as the poster children for how liberal governance has failed to build what people need because, they argue, Democratic leaders are too focused on process and regulation at the expense of results.

The ways in which supporters of the abundance theory argue California has struggled to deliver: a lack of affordable housing; clean energy, including solar and wind farms; high-speed rail; mass transit and safe streets — and the list goes on and on.

Liberals can’t blame Trump for California

The self-described champions of clean energy, transit, and affordable housing have allowed those goals to fall by the wayside while they prioritize onerous regulations, processes, and a myriad of competing interest groups.

Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic

On today’s episode of Good on Paper, Thompson and Klein join the show to talk about why states like California and New York struggle to achieve the priorities they claim to have. Why is high-speed rail nothing but a dream? Why does Texas build more utility-scale solar than California? Why is New York, a state run by Democrats, unable to tackle its affordable-housing crisis?

“Liberalism should be an advertisement for liberalism,” Thompson added. “Democrats should be able to say, Vote for us, and we’ll make America like California. And instead, Republicans can say, Vote for Democrats, and they’ll turn America into California. They’ll turn America into Portland; they’ll turn America into Oregon.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

See how drought whiplash led to California wildfires

California is experiencing wider swings between wet and dry spells

Clara Moskowitz & Wesley Grubbs, Scientific American

“It was a classic example of wet-to-dry whiplash,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. And such whiplashes may be getting more common. “With climate change, it’s not just that we’re seeing things get drier and drier. There’s also a trend toward more variability, with wider swings between wet and dry,” Swain says.

The warming climate is leading to what scientists call the “expanding atmospheric sponge” effect. Warmer air can hold more water vapor than cooler air, so the atmosphere is like a kitchen sponge that gets larger. If water is available, the atmosphere will absorb more of it, and when you wring out the sponge, you get more precipitation. But if there is no water to absorb, that thirstier air sucks more moisture out of the landscape, from bodies of water, surfaces and plants, drying everything out.