“National labor unions are pushing AI regulations as a top policy priority amid polls showing growing and bipartisan majorities fear the technology’s potential impacts. Those include AI-fueled layoffs, youth suicides allegedly linked to AI chatbots and increasing use of high-tech surveillance technologies in workplaces. Layoffs have been particularly acute in California and other tech hubs as giants like Amazon and Meta shed staff to compete for AI dominance.
…
Newsom has defended his AI stance as striking a balance between curbing safety concerns associated with technology and promoting its innovation to boost California’s budget, which is heavily reliant on tax income from Silicon Valley and the ultra-rich. In 2025, he signed an internationally-watched AI safety bill from Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener among a slate of other rules for chatbots and AI-generated deepfakes, despite vetoing a labor priority.
The California Labor Fed began unveiling its latest AI agenda this week. Proposed measures include SB 951, which would require employers laying off workers due to AI to give advance notice, as well as SB 947, which would again attempt to require human oversight over algorithms used to make discipline or firing decisions.
Gonzalez also vowed to continue work on a bill introduced in 2025, AB 1331, which would ban the use of surveillance tools in bathrooms and public spaces in the workplace. She said the rest of the bills will largely fall under addressing surveillance issues, safety concerns related to AI and combatting joblessness.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/04/labor-leaders-blast-gavin-newsom-over-ai-demand-more-regulation-00764927
“Few alphabet soups have as many letters as California’s system for financing affordable housing.
The time and headaches developers must endure when seeking funding from acronym-laden state agencies helps drive up California’s nation-high cost to build apartments for low-income residents, strangling housing production in a state badly in need of affordable places to live.
…
after six years of half-measures and stalled reforms, the governor has unveiled a proposal to streamline the system, while at the same time consolidating power in his office. In the state budget proposal he released this month, Newsom outlined a plan to move decisions over potentially billions of dollars annually in cash, tax credits and bond allocations to a new housing agency he controls, and by doing so, strip authority from State Treasurer Fiona Ma.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/21/it-costs-more-to-build-affordable-housing-in-california-than-anywhere-else-newsom-wants-to-fix-it-by-consolidating-power-00738542
How Gavin Newsom Became the Democrats’ 2028 Frontrunner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqBsRNUXWfs
Republican and right wing media hypocrisy and dishonesty on gerrymandering is outrageous.
Their responses to Newsom make this hypocrisy and/or dishonesty clear as day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MetueJ_uelQ
Gavin Newsom tweets in a manner that mirrors Trump’s tweets; Fox News calls it childish for a governor to tweet in such a way while not similarly criticizing the president of the United States. Ridiculous hypocrisy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lm2g9ZddYg
Trump used ICE for political purposes. This is not the action of a democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ku08PQqrvs
“Without Newsom’s efforts, major CEQA reform would have died on the vine. Another late-breaking housing bill was under consideration as part of the budget, but not subject to Newsom’s ultimatum—but the Legislature caved in to union demands. The Sacramento Bee reports this bill was roughly based on another measure that “allows developers to bypass CEQA review if they agree to pay a certain minimum wage to construction workers.”
Mandating wage boosts drives up the cost of housing construction and weakens the usefulness of these deregulations, but it was an attempt to lessen the degree to which unions use CEQA to slow construction projects to extract concessions. Newsom’s failure to overcome union opposition here is a disappointment, but doesn’t tarnish an otherwise noteworthy effort.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/04/with-environmental-regulatory-reform-california-gov-gavin-newsom-finally-does-something-substantial/
“However the 9th Circuit ultimately comes down on that question, any decision addressing the legal merits of Newsom’s argument will amount to a rejection of the Trump administration’s alarming position that the president has the authority to deploy National Guard troops at will, even without pretending to meet statutory requirements or citing any facts to support his decision. That argument would transform the National Guard, today’s version of the state militia, into a federal force that the president can use at his discretion, without regard to constraints imposed by Congress or the 10th Amendment.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/18/trump-argues-that-he-can-take-over-a-states-national-guard-whenever-he-feels-like-it/
Local law enforcement had the vandals and rioters under control and sending the military was uncalled for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLKFojoYAA