I often ask myself if Gavin Newsom is actually a demon in politician’s clothing.
Harsh, I know. But he did invite out-of-state women to come to California to abort their babies in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow states to decide their abortion policies, which in turn, allowed Arizona’s abortion ban to stand. Only an evil guy would accommodate for the slaughter of the unborn.
Newsom has racked up a myriad of problems but was he in Sacramento last week? No, he was in Davos playing world leader, telling Europeans – in his hatred for all things Trump – to fight him and the United States. And he vulgarly suggested that European leaders who concede to Trump wear kneepads – and we all know what he inferred. It shows how off the rails the governor is beyond his failures to deal with problems here. The man should be completely disqualified from ever winning national leadership.
We haven’t forgotten how he flipped the bird at the will of California voters who overwhelmingly voted in favor of Prop 10 in 2008 to have district boundaries drawn by an independent citizen’s commission and instead pushed for his Democrat Party to gerrymander. He did so by running TV propaganda of “let’s get back at Orange Man bad.”
Republicans have not taken this lying down. They are taking Prop. 50 to court. Earlier this month a three-judge panel in Los Angeles Federal Court ruled against a lawsuit that would nullify congressional maps approved by California voters in November. Authoring the lawsuit was Assemblyman David Tangipa, but the 2-1 court split has fueled his push to overturn Proposition 50, which he believes violates the Constitution. He’s reviewing the court’s 117-pages decision. The lawsuit suggests that the state’s new political maps were drawn with race playing too big a considering which crosses a legal line since there are strict protocols to follow. Tangipa sees the 2-1 court split as proof that the challenge has serious merit.
According to Tangipa, “when the mapmaker out there says that the first thing I did when creating these Prop 50 maps was create an additional Latino district. Well, he just admitted right there that it was race-based redistricting.”
Democrats are responding by saying, hey, this is what the voters supported. But it’s clear the Democrats wanted to redraw the maps in that party’s favor to possibly flip five House seats when you hear this from Fresno County Democratic Central Committee’s Lonny Johnson: “We felt very strongly that we had to do something to respond to the actions in Texas by the Republican Party and President Trump.”
It was all about Trump, not about fair districting in California.
Newsom, of course, wants the Dems to become the majority in the House of Representatives to obstruct Trump. But what he likely did was prompt even more states than Texas to gerrymander to the benefit of securing more GOP seats.
This week the Trump Administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on Prop 50 on an emergency basis, saying that Newsom and others sought to shore up Latino support for the Democratic party through the pernicious and unconstitutional use of race. The emergency is owing to the fact that Feb. 9 is the start of California’s candidate filing period for the June 2026 primaries.
Folks, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
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There’s a story I want to share to illustrate the problem with government and unions.
The West Contra Costa Unified School District board narrowly approved tentative labor agreements hammered out at the bargaining table late last year with its teachers and other employees, but without a clear plan for how to pay for them.
Problem: Approve generous wage hikes with no way to pay for them.
Teachers there participated in a five-day strike in December, the first in that district’s history.
Oakland and San Francisco are also at impasse as the California Teachers Association union is waging a “We Can’t Wait” campaign.
The board relented in a 3-2 vote and offered teachers an 8% pay increase this year and next, as well as well as more generous health benefits. This will cost $105 million over three years of the contracts – in addition to ongoing budget deficits.
Earlier this month, the West Contra Costa Unified school board passed a resolution committing itself to significant budget reductions in order to stay solvent. Administrators project the district will need to come up with $127 million over the next three years and they say they plan to cut deep by cutting staff.
Here we have a district which has budget problems and yet giving teachers an 8 percent pay raise. The private sector cannot afford to pull such a stunt. We at the Courier, for example, just took a sizeable pay cut last week.
Demetrio Gonzalez Hoy, a board member and a former teacher who served as union president, of course was in favor of the cushy raises, saying: “They show up every day for our students, often with fewer resources and lower pay than neighboring districts. And they deserve respect and our support for that commitment.”
Leslie Reckler, another board member, voted no, saying it’s not sustainable.
Government should – but rarely – lives within its means. It continues to be a gluttonous creature always wanting more and more and you and I to dig deeper into our pockets. Something has got to give.
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Lawmakers are debating whether to reform AB 218, a 2020 law that lifted the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse lawsuits. The bill sparked a cascade of costly litigation against schools and other public agencies.
Since AB 218 became law, school districts have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle suits in which students and former students have claimed they were sexually abused by teachers, principals and school workers as far back as the 1960s.
The result is that all districts are suffering from the escalation in liability insurance costs thanks to AB 218 and the resulting lawsuits. Take for example the Buckeye Union School District, a small district of 4,200 students in El Dorado County. It saw an increase of 146 percent over a decade, now paying $389,000 for liability insurance compared with $158,000 in 2017-18.
Examples of settlements include:
• In 2023, a Riverside County jury awarded $135 million to two former students of the Moreno Valley Unified School District, who it found were molested by a middle school teacher, Thomas Lee West, in the 1990s. West was sentenced to 52 years in state prison. The district eventually settled with $45 million;
• The Roseville City School District saw a jury award the victim slightly more than $3 million. But when the district appealed the verdict, negotiations led to a $1.5 million settlement.
• Santa Cruz City Schools reached a $4.5 million settlement for two victims who alleged a teacher abused them in the late 1980s.
• In a 2025 settlement, a woman who sued alleging abuse by a San Francisco Unified School District teacher from 1963 to 1969 received a $750,000 settlement.
• The Oakland Unified School District paid $1.1 million combined to settle four suits that alleged assaults on children by school employees in the 1970s.
Sadly, there are examples of fraud abuse as some are filing alleged fake claims that appear to be unsubstantiated for a big payout.
Andy Sheaffer, the vice president of the Carpinteria Unified School District board in Santa Barbara County, said that AB 218 is “an existential threat to public education in California.” He noted that lawsuit costs are “being pulled directly from classroom budgets, not state reserves or insurance payouts. In some cases, the claims predate any known documentation, witnesses, or even the existence of current staff or board members.
A Democrat (Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez) wrote the bill and now is time for the Legislature to fix the mess created by her. While sexual abuse is tragic, there is no reason why multi-million dollar settlements should be paid out by school districts at the cost of education budgets which adversely affect students who need to learn in our failing education system.
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Harry Truman, the late former president, had some disparaging comments about folks who mobbed him for autographs when he was out in public. He likened them to dogs who would pee on fire hydrants just because other dogs did so.
I think it would be appropriate to apply the same to the ICE protestors who are throwing tantrums and trying to become martyrs by getting in the way of law enforcement agents for the cause of social justice. Most of Minnesota – which is solidly red outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area – are busy earning a living. Maybe the blue and purple haired crowd, in their misplaced crusade to protect lawbreakers, just needs to feel some kind of validation because their lives are truly empty.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
