Gov. Gavin Newsom left California on Sunday to travel with his family for Thanksgiving, but due to security concerns, his office said the location of the trip will not be known until next weekend.
According to Newsom’s office, the California Highway Patrol, which is responsible for the governor’s security, made the safety decision. The CHP did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Newsom’s out-of-state trips have come under heightened scrutiny since his summer trip to visit his in-laws in Montana, one of 23 states to which California has banned publicly funded travel because of a policy it says discriminates against LGBTQ+ people. Although Newsom paid for the trip out of personal funds, it appears he was accompanied by a taxpayer-funded security detail — which his office and the CHP believe is an exception allowed under the travel ban.
The nature of the security concerns is unclear, although Newsom told me in an interview last year, “You guys, sweetly, have no sense of the dangers.” Still, when Newsom traveled for Thanksgiving last year, his office announced in advance that he would be in Mexico.
However, the profile of both Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has grown significantly over the past year. While Newsom has begun battling Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and parlaying her national profile into a possible presidential campaign, Siebel Newsom testified last week at Harvey Weinstein’s high-profile Los Angeles sexual-assault trial, alleging the disgraced movie producer raped her in 2005. Weinstein has denied the allegation.
Newsom left for the Thanksgiving trip two days after meeting with city and county officials in Sacramento to discuss developing more ambitious plans to reduce street homelessness. The result: Newsom will release most of the $1 billion in one-time homelessness funding he blocked just two weeks ago as long as applicants promise to come up with more aggressive plans for the next round of funding, CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias reports.
Still, local officials warned that their ability to alleviate homelessness would be limited without sustained state funding.
Related Note: What Was California’s Wildest Housing Story in 2022? Make your voice heard by taking a short survey on Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis podcast hosted by Manuela and Liam Dillon of the Los Angeles Times.
Other Stories You Should Know
1 California election updates
With about a million ballots remaining in California’s Nov. 8 election as of late Friday night, here’s a look at the latest election updates:
2022 Election
The latest coverage of the 2022 general election in California
2 State more likely to transfer mentally ill inmates
According to data analyzed by CalMatters’ Byrhonda Lyon, Jocelyn Wiener and Erica Yee, California’s state prison system transfers inmates with severe mental illness far more often than other inmates. They found that between 2016 and 2021, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred inmates who received “enhanced outpatient” mental health treatment at an average rate of three times that of other inmates — and one person in and out of a mental health program was transferred an astounding 75 people. times during this period. The numbers shed light on California’s practice of mixing around mentally ill inmates, revealed by a June CalMatters investigation that focused on Adam Collier, a severely mentally ill inmate who was moved 39 times between 2016 and 2020 before he killed himself at Kern Valley State Prison.
In related news: Inmates at several of California’s privately run for-profit immigration detention centers are seeking better wages, calling their current $1-a-day wages in a voluntary work program a “slavery rate,” KQED reports. State lawmakers earlier this year rejected a bill to ban involuntary servitude in California, which advocates say would have paved the way for inmates in state prisons to earn minimum wage.
3 On job front, both good and bad news
California’s economy continues to send mixed signals: The state’s unemployment rate rose to 4 percent in October from a record low of 3.8 percent last month, the Employment Development Department said Friday. Yet California has now regained 101% of the more than 2.7 million jobs lost in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic and, as Newsom’s office noted, accounted for more than 20% of the nation’s new jobs in October.
“Given the other negative jobs news in recent days — continued technology layoffs, a projected $25 billion budget deficit — this is overall positive news,” said Michael Bernick, former EDD director and attorney for Duane Morris. told me in an email. However, he added that the “technology firing will continue” amid concerns about an impending recession. California-based tech companies have laid off at least 82,600 workers this year, according to the California Center for Jobs & economy.
Other economic news you should know:
CalMatters Commentary
CalMatters Columnist Dan Walters: Not only does California have a severe shortage of affordable rental housing, it’s also facing a homeownership crisis, making it the nation’s most expensive home market relative to family income.
Understanding California’s Youth Voter Turnout: The narrative that young voters outnumbered seniors in voter turnout is simply not true. But younger voters give progressives the overwhelming margin they need to win elections, Political Data Inc. writes. Vice President Paul Mitchell.
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