REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS 

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS”

 

Here’s the new reality for former Vice President Kamala Harris as she’s halfway though a summer of contemplating whether or not to campaign to become California’s next governor:

 

It would not be easy.

 

The entire idea of Harris running for governor, a run in which she would have to commit to serving out a full term, thus giving up on running for president in 2028, is predicated on her having an easy time of it. The presumption is that today’s crowded field of Democrats would thin out quickly to give her a virtually free “top two” primary election finish next June. This would assure her a slot on the fall ballot, most likely against either a Republican-turned-Democrat like developer Rick Caruso – who lost a run for mayor of Los Angeles three years ago – or far-right Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

 

But that scenario might not come about. As Harris contemplates, none of her prospective Democratic primary rivals has dropped out quickly.

 

Yes, Harris can take comfort she is the early-book leader in this race. Against a host of other declared and rumored candidates, she enjoyed 24 percent support in a poll by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology. But placed in a hypothetical race against an unnamed Republican (right now, Caruso and Bianco are the most likely to be there), she led by only 41-29 percent, with heaps of undecided voters.

 

Undecided voters have long been poison to Harris. Their late decisions made her 2010 run for state attorney general against then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley a horserace lasting until the very last days of vote-counting, almost a month after Election Day. They made what looked like an easy 2016 Senate run against then-Orange County Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez tighter than most observers thought it would turn out.

 

And last-minute choices of the previously undecided in a few states cost her the presidency against Republican Donald Trump last fall.

 

So a contemplative Harris should be able to recognize a very tight race in the making and realize she just might lose – and forfeit any hope of ever becoming president.

 

She might even have trouble securing what figures to become the lone Democratic slot in the 2026 November runoff.

 

Yes, she leads the second-place Democrat, former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, by a 4-1 margin in the early polling and has even larger edges over other Democrats like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ex-federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, current  Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and ex-state Senate President Toni Adkins.

 

Some of them are bound to drop out of the top-of-ticket race before it gets extremely serious in late fall. But others will stick with it and – like Kounalakis, Porter and Villaraigosa – likely raise enough money to compete heavily against Harris.

 

History, of course, shows that when she faces stiff competition, Harris can have problems, as when she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in 2020 even before the first primary.

 

So even though Dean Jon Gould of UC Irvine’s Social Ecology program told a reporter that “The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” it ain’t necessarily so.

 

Other observers will get different readings from the information the Irvine survey developed, which is not so far off what a slightly earlier Emerson College poll showed.

 

Caruso, for one, will see these findings as extremely encouraging. Should he win a top two slot, he will e would likely see Harris as at least as soft a target as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, still weakened by the fact she left town when wildfire warnings were being issued before last winter’s Los Angeles area firestorms.

 

In debates, where Harris has never done very well, he would try to turn Harris into a pseudo-Bass, suggesting she might be a Bass clone.

 

This still makes a Harris entry to this race likely because of her standing as the early leader in every poll. But she’s never demonstrated an abiding interest in top California issues like homelessness or insurance company rates and performance.

 

All of which makes a Harris entry into this key race very much a question mark for the moment.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?"

 

There can be no doubt that the relatively few Californians strongly interested in becoming an independent country have had high hopes that President Trump’s “War on California” would drive many new adherents to their camp.

 

So far, it is not happening at a level that can be taken seriously. That’s the upshot of a new poll taken by the YouGov survey service for the Carlsbad-based Independent California Institute (ICI).

 

Let’s tot up a few things Trump has done to harm California: He’s eliminated the state’s unique ability to make smog rules for the state’s vehicles, once thought securely written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. He’s invented a series of Los Angeles “riots,” which were at most a few incidents of vandalism, and used it to send thousands of soldiers into Southern California. He’s eliminated funding for bringing English-learning schoolchildren and migrant kids into the academic mainstream.

 

These are only a few anti-California measures he’s taken, besides ordering the region to undergo the nation’s most intensive deportation drive ever, claiming to go after seriously criminal illegal immigrants but mostly picking up undocumented workers who broke no other laws.

 

Apparently, all this has not yet had huge negative impact on mainstream Californians. 

 

The new poll does say Californians’ confidence in the federal government has nosedived since Trump took office, with 50 percent of Californians saying they now trust Sacramento more than Washington, D.C. and only 23 percent holding the opposite view. Those numbers are significantly changed from February, when only 34 percent trusted Sacramento more, while 18 percent trusted the feds.

 

But when asked if they’d vote for a peaceful secession ballot initiative, only 44 percent were in favor, with 54 percent against.

 

Is it possible Californians could shift radically to the side of secession in the foreseeable future? Says ICI director Coyote Codornices Marin, “It would probably take something quite direct. For instance, if Trump were to say something like ‘We don’t need California,’ that could seriously drive secession. But I strongly doubt he would ever be stupid enough to say that.”

 

Even without such a seminal event, 71 percent of Californians believe they’d be better off if California somehow gained special autonomous status within the USA, something that seems ever less likely under the Trump administration, which seems bent on allowing California less autonomy, not more.

 

This reality does not faze the 60 percent of Californians who said they want California’s 52-person House delegation in Congress to back autonomy with “hardball tactics” like refusing to vote for federal budgets as long as California receives billions of dollars less in federal spending than it pays in federal taxes.

 

Other significant findings in the poll of 500 Californians included 71 percent wanting a new state law enforcement division focused on violent extremism and hate crimes, rather than leaving such enforcement strictly up to local police and sheriffs. A similar 72 percent want California police to have authority to arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” And 80 percent want California to control its borders “more like a country,” checking for illegal firearms and other types of contraband, rather than merely seeking out perishable fruit.

 

Said the ICI’s vice chair, Timothy Vollmer, “Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions.”

 

But that leaves out the Trump factor. The president wants exactly the reverse from California, and seems most compliant with California desires when they are addressed to him with abject obsequiousness.

 

“Yes, our poll numbers for secession are at a record high,” said Marin. But they added the numbers also indicate a steep uphill climb would still be required, especially without special autonomous status as a step in that direction.

 

“Many people just don’t think it’s possible to be sovereign in the immediate future,” said Marin.

 

But that could change were Trump’s steadfast irritation with California to become more active and focused on depriving Californians of basic rights.

 

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

WHY SHOULD LEGISLATORS FAVOR LEGAL POT BUSINESSES?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WHY SHOULD LEGISLATORS FAVOR LEGAL POT BUSINESSES?”

 

The ill effects of cannabis use have been well known for generations: spaced out behavior, impaired judgment, clouded or heightened senses depending on your personal biology, a distorted sense of time, slowed reactions, lower motor skills, reduced inhibitions, less mental focus and memory.

 

That’s only part of the list, which some claim is balanced by the relaxing effects of marijuana and its partially proven ability to ease the pain caused by some medical treatments.

 

Despite all the harms of marijuana, state legislators have steadily pushed increases in its use ever since recreational pot sales became legal via a 2016 ballot initiative.

 

Now the state Assembly has passed yet another measure to ease life for pot shops. If passed by the state Senate, this one, known as AB 564 and sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Matt Haney of San Francisco, would lower the state excise tax on legal pot from the 19 percent it automatically reached on July 1 back to 15 percent at least until 2030, squashing a potential future increase to 25 percent.

 

This measure is designed to protect legal pot prices from being undercut by untaxed illegal growers whose product is widely available informally. It comes just one year after legislators also tried to help legal pot use by allowing Amsterdam-style lounges that could serve food and drinks along with varieties of the weed.

 

The real question here is what legalized pot has done to deserve the most-favored-business status informally bestowed upon it by lawmakers. No one has produced any information to refute the long list of harmful pot effects.

 

And two new studies originating in Northern California raise new questions about continued recreational sales of the weed.

 

One, co-authored by researchers from the Kaiser Permanente health care service and Oakland’s regional Public Health Institute, found that teenagers living in areas with more cannabis stores experience significantly higher rates of mental health issues.

 

The study used data from nearly 96,000 insured adolescents, finding that those in cities or counties without pot stores are significantly less likely to have been diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Greater retail activity and availability – regardless of laws prohibiting sales to anyone under 18 – translated to higher rates of diagnosed psychotic, depressive and anxiety disorders.

 

“This study reinforces the importance of where and how cannabis is sold in protecting adolescent mental health,” said Lynn Silver MD, a program director at the Public Health Institute.

 

Almost simultaneously, a UC San Francisco study determined that long-term cannabis use is linked to a greater likelihood of developing heart disease. The risk stems from reduced blood vessel function, said the study, published in the American Medical Association’s journal Cardiology.

 

The study involved 55 “outwardly healthy persons between 18 and 50.” It revealed that eating edible marijuana products like gummies has the same impact on heart health as smoking pot. Study subjects had been consuming marijuana in one form or another at least three times weekly for a year or more.

 

All of these regular users were found to have “decreased vascular function,” comparable to regular smokers. Their blood vessel capacity was roughly half as high as among non-cannabis users.

 

We already knew marijuana use was harmful for bunches of reasons, but direct proof of significant long-term physical harm has been hard to locate.

 

The findings reinforce a year-old study from the American Psychiatric Assn. warning that individuals who want to remain mentally sharp in old age (defined as 65 and older) should not smoke pot regularly, nor eat pot-laced products from chocolates to layer cakes.

 

The real question here is not whether marijuana use is harmful. That’s been known for at least a century, even if some details are only now emerging.

 

The real question is why California legislators are so supportive of this harmful industry, treating it with kid gloves even as other drugs get harsh treatment.

 

Yes, campaign contributions by pot-linked labor unions like the United Food and Commercial Workers no doubt play a role in bringing near-unanimous votes on laws this industry wants passed. So do tax receipts. But legislators should be able to resist those pressures.

 

Which leads to another question: What drug are legislators using when they give sustained favored status to an industry that does much more harm than good?

 

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS”

 

One certainty about the just-signed AB 130 budget trailer bill is that it will lead to building projects that are extremely unwelcome in the areas where they’ll eventually stand.

 

This bill, which quite improbably passed the state Assembly on a unanimous vote after being pushed for two years by the East Bay’s Democratic Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, is likely to produce a boom in what is loosely called “infill housing” designed to help solve the state’s unquestioned housing shortage.

 

One of its major features applies the tag “infill housing” to anything built on any vacant plot of land containing less than 20 acres in a city or urban mapping area.

 

Until now, most folks thought of infill housing as apartments or condominiums on vacant lots or other small pieces of property. But 20 acres is an entirely new definition of “infill” or “small.” A plot that size built up to five stories can easily hold 1,000 or more new units, which is a large development. The previous definition of an infill site had a size limit of 5 acres.

 

As usual, with new housing in the new California, parking space requirements will be minimal, sometimes even non-existent for developments near major transit stops, on the presumption that very few living there will want the independence of owning their own car or small truck. Occupants will have to ride transit or fight for street parking every time they come and go from their new digs.

 

What’s more, the new developments will not be subject to community input, with no mandated public hearings on permits. It’s a developer’s fantasy.

 

Except for the Donald Trump effect. His campaign for unprecedented deportation efforts by Homeland Security agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol has created new shortages of labor in trades from roofing to drywall, from plumbing to demolition of smaller existing structures.

 

So one consequence of AB 130, which was quickly whipped into state law via the “budget trailer bill” maneuver, will likely be the proliferation of canvas-covered fencing around building plots where work is delayed.

 

Never mind that AB 130, which became law shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the newest state budget, is wildly unpopular, once Californians are informed of what it contains – which is the biggest blow to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) since it passed in 1970 and was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

 

Fully 66 percent of Californians in a poll taken for building trades unions and other major state interest groups opposed the bill once they learned it eliminates community input on new developments and bypasses some environmental protections, especially on land that has previously been surrounded by urban uses.

 

The poll also showed 70 percent of Californians still support CEQA, despite years of grousing about it by governors from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jerry Brown to Newsom.

 

The single most significant new related bill, also a budget trailer, is Senate Bill (SB) 131, from San Francisco’s Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener. This creates new CEQA exemptions for things like health centers and rural clinics, childcare centers, food banks wildfire mitigation projects and parks.

 

Why would legislators unanimously pass a bill that goes so much against public sentiment as AB 130? One reason is differences in the polls, with some showing majorities in favor of building as much housing as possible as soon as possible, and hang the consequences.

 

Another is that Newsom is clearly seeking a legacy. While running for president in 2027 and 2028, he will only be able to get so much mileage out of being the anti-Trump, a role he has sought to grab ever since the president nationalized the California National Guard and sent thousands of its troops into Los Angeles, where there was little violence either before or after their arrival.

 

If Newsom can claim to have solved or at least partially solved the housing crunch and California rents begin to drop, he will have a brand new hook for his presidential hat. 

 

That’s strong motivation for any politician and probably explains the easy, greased passage of AB 130 better than anything else.

 

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

WILL STATE ASSEMBLY SAVE CALIFORNIA ENERGY INDEPENDENCE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“WILL STATE ASSEMBLY SAVE CALIFORNIA ENERGY INDEPENDENCE?”

 

There is rarely a shortage of self-destructive bills in the Legislature when lawmakers come back from their summer recess and get ready to confront the real consequences of proposed laws that have already passed one legislative house.

 

Perhaps this year’s best example as legislators arrive back in town this August will be a bill known as SB 540, sponsored by Silicon Valley Democrat Josh Becker.

 

This bill would essentially end California’s ability to decide what kind of electric energy it will use for all time to come. It throws out Enron-era protections against price manipulation and essentially gives the Trump administration control over this state’s environmental laws.

 

Yes, coal could be back, if that’s what President Trump or utility executives in states like Idaho and Utah want to impose on Californians. And they do.

 

This summer has already given ample evidence of how poorly Trump and his minions understand California. First, they had the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conduct a wave of raids across Southern California, claiming they were going after criminal illegal immigrants.

 

They did in fact arrest and deport a few undocumented persons with serious criminal records. But most raids were conducted at restaurants, car washes and building supply stores where the undocumented often seek day work. These aroused crowds of thousands, almost all of whom protested peacefully, even though there was some vandalism, mostly at night when crowds had thinned.

 

Trump responded by nationalizing and calling out thousands of National Guard troops, excoriating Newsom for interfering with federal operations when he did nothing of the sort and threatening mass arrests. All while local police and sheriff’s deputies already had things under control.

 

There is no reason to believe Trump understands the California electric grid any better than he understands how Californians protest and react to what many see as injustice.

 

That’s what makes the Western grid envisioned in SB 540 so potentially pernicious. This bill, strongly backed by Google and other Silicon Valley giants, would give much of the power to determine where and what kind of power plants would be placed around the West to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

 

That agency is now controlled by Trump appointees who outspokenly advocate for coal power. Californians who want cleaner energy and more solar and wind power will be overruled, just as Newsom was when Trump ordered out the National Guard.

 

So much for California’s independence or control over its own energy fate.

 

Of course, big California companies purveying currently trendy artificial intelligence are all for this. They’re building more and more data centers in the rural west, including parts of California’s Central Valley, and they need huge new power supplies.

 

Yes, some senators voiced concerns about Trump pre-empting California laws to provide this – and the lack of legislative oversight in the bill. But that did not keep the vote in the state Senate from going 33-1 to advance this deregulation law.

 

As the bill moved through Senate committees, amendments were added to require minimizing costs and maximizing supply, as well as some transparency. But all those disappeared before the final vote and would need to be reinstated by the Assembly – unless it is similarly intimidated by the high-tech support for this measure.

 

One analysis by the Senate Judiciary Committee was especially on point: “California could see significant harms to its energy goals and its standing in the regional market,” the committee staff said. “These dangers are even greater now that Trump has…directed the U.S. attorney general to find ways to curtail our state’s climate change efforts.”

 

Still, many Democrats with strong environmental records went along with this, even okaying repeal of price gouging protections.

 

It’s all a way for artificial intelligence firms to control the electric market for their benefit with little or no transparency for millions of other consumers. It is certainly daring, but could also yield an Enron-like disaster if they hoard power and force prices up. Only this time, the law would not allow California to solve the problem on its own, but rather would keep it tethered to other states who don’t care a bit about California consumers. And all this stupidity is only part of what makes SB 540 perhaps the year’s dumbest bill.

 

   -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

FIRST ELECTED INSURANCE COMMISH WANTS INCUMBENT OUT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS5
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 15, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FIRST ELECTED INSURANCE COMMISH WANTS INCUMBENT OUT”

 

Think back: When was the last time you heard the former occupant of an important political office, state or national, declaim publicly that a successor of the same political party wasn’t doing the job well and ought to be ousted?

 

If your answer is never, that would be correct. Jerry Brown has never criticized Gavin Newman. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, neither George W. Bush nor his father George H.W. Bush said much about his performance.

 

But John Garamendi has changed that script. An eight-term Democratic congressman from a Central Valley district and the original elected insurance commissioner (he served from 1991 to 1995), Garamendi is sickened by what he’s seeing from Ricardo Lara, the fellow Democrat who now holds the office.

 

He looked on silently for six years as Lara first took political contributions from the insurance companies he regulated, then was forced to return them. He also said nothing when Lara began kowtowing to those same companies by okaying extra-high premium increases. 

 

But he’s now had it. He’s told a San Francisco Bay Area television station that Lara “should go” if he’s unwilling to battle those same insurance companies. 

 

And Lara is demonstrably not willing to fight the hand that fed him, the hand he’s not supposed to hold in any affectionate way so long as he’s in the office he now holds. 

 

For example, when the insurance rates on a building directly next to a fire station in the hilly town of Portola Valley were raised 50 percent this year, Lara said nothing, did nothing to prevent it, even though its very location makes that structure about as fire-safe and risk-free as anyplace could be. 

 

Garamendi pointed out that Lara, when a candidate in 2018, pronounced himself “leery” of insurance rate hikes unless customers were getting something in return, like more extensive coverage or guarantees of renewal. 

 

But that’s all gone by the wayside. Lara has finalized a plan to allow insurance companies to assess massive rate increases even in areas with no significant fire danger without making the concessions he had promised to require.

 

For example, he promised earlier this year that insurance companies would have to cover 85 percent of homes in wildfire areas (where policy cancellations have lately been rampant) in exchange for significantly higher rates. But the regulation he issued said that companies can instead opt to cover only 5 percent more homeowners than they do now.

 

“The commissioner lied,” said the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group. “And companies don’t even have to meet that 5 percent threshold; they can opt out…if they want,” added the group’s president, Jamie Court.

 

Lara’s response was to say new rates will “reflect the risks of where we’re living.” But that’s not true, either, since all homeowners will be paying more, even if they don’t live in fire areas. Said one Santa Monica policy holder who has never filed a fire claim in more than 45 years of home ownership, “Any fire would have to cross an awful lot of city before it got to me, but my rates are going up anyway.”

 

She is not alone. Meanwhile, some owners of city properties in sections of San Francisco with many older homes that have been remodeled in recent years (like Noe Valley and the Mission District) have seen their policies cancelled even though few claims have been made in those districts.

 

That led Garamendi to say, “Over the last three years, I have observed that this commissioner is not willing to take the hard task and the necessary task to stand up to the insurance industry. If the commissioner is not willing to do that…then he’s not doing his job and he should leave.”

 

In short, the pioneering insurance regulator Garamendi is saying “Lara must go.”

 

But there’s no sign of that. As a candidate, Lara said that he was running because “California needs a strong defender, one who will stand up to bullies.” But his predecessor finds he hasn’t come close to doing that.

 

Which leads to an almost unprecedented political scene, with one Democratic party stalwart telling another to depart.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

 

HEAD START MAY BE THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 11, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“HEAD START MAY BE THE UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL”

 

A little-hyped effort to gut and likely shut down Project Head Start composes one of the oddest and perhaps cruelest spending cuts mandated by President Trump and his unofficial – but very active – Department of Government Efficiency.

 

This is a cut no voters demanded, despite Trump’s insistence that his entire effort to rid America of programs he doesn’t like is the result of a voter mandate. For one thing, neither Head Start or any other government program was ever voted on anywhere except in Congress, where all existing government programs and departments are vetted and approved, or not.

 

For another, Trump fell short of winning a popular vote majority, winning only a plurality of votes against former Vice President Kamala Harris. So despite his talk of a strong mandate, he really has none.

 

Head Start, which serves about 800,000 low-income children across the country and well over 80,000 in California, was long among the most popular of federal programs, despite having been targeted by Trump in his first administration.

 

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, under whose umbrella Head Start operates, did not respond to calls seeking comment on Trump’s proposed complete defunding of the program by 2026.

 

If they did talk, they might have to get specific about why they’re using diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) factors as a cudgel to destroy a program that readies very young children for kindergarten better than any other government program. If it weren’t doing that, there’s no way Head Start would have survived and steadily grown since 1965.

 

Head Start officials themselves cannot conduct lawsuits against their bosses in the Trump administration hierarchy, but the American Civil Liberties Union has made this one of its major projects in questioning Trump’s overall cuts.

 

Many of those cuts have used DEI to allege that schools and universities have favored some ethnic groups over others, especially discriminating against whites in hiring and admissions. Other lawsuits made such allegations several times in the three years leading up to Trump’s second inauguration.

 

In trying to reverse Trump’s cuts, opponents often argue that the administration’s definitions of DEI discrimination are “unconstitutionally vague,” winning a few federal court orders to delay or stop the cuts. No one knows how long those orders will stay in place,

 

One reason for confusion is that Head Start has always needed diversity because the children it serves come from such a wide array of backgrounds. To be effective, the program needs teachers who can instruct in the native languages of students, who often have immigrant parents, even if they themselves are native citizens.

 

For some involved with Head Start, the ACLU lawsuit has been far too little and far too late. Scores of federally-paid Head Start workers were laid off in February, and the Associated Press reported a leaked version of the next federal budget that would shut down the program completely.

 

It's a bit of a mystery why Trump would target Head Start, whose participants are relatively low-profile kids. The program had always previously received strong support at budget times from both Democrats and Republicans. Would Senate Democrats filibuster a proposed budget that eliminates a program almost everyone likes?

 

That’s a big unknown, probably not to be resolved until the fall. Another unknown is whether state and local governments would step in and provide enough money to keep the doors open, even if some Head Start activities would have to be ended or curtailed.

 

Meanwhile, it’s also a bit uncertain who will supervise California’s many Head Start locations in the future if the overall program survives. For early on, Trump’s budgeteers shut down 12 regional offices, including the one covering California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and American Samoa.

 

The bottom line is that the uncertainty surrounding Head Start today cannot help children who need a stable learning environment. But uncertainty is the order of the day under Trump in virtually every federal department except Defense, where massive spending remains commonplace.

 
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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net