Under Pressure From Voters, Newsom Walks Back His Plan to Spend $50 Million of Taxpayer Money to Sue Trump for... Whatever

From Ed Morrissey: Even California Democrats have had their fill of Gavin Antoinette's "Let Them Eat Ideology" theory of governance.

From the Sacramento Bee:

California legislators were tight-lipped about their decision Thursday to delay votes on a pair of bills that would provide up to $50 million combined for the state Department of Justice and organizations that provide legal services to respond to actions taken by the administration of President Donald Trump.

The Assembly was set to take up the bills after they were approved last week in the Senate. But Democrats were called into a closed door meeting shortly after their work for the day began.

When they emerged roughly an hour later, the measures were not voted on before the body adjourned for the week.

From Politico:

But the decision also comes amid concerns about who would be able to access $25 million in legal aid to avoid deportation. Democrats -- newly sensitive to perceptions of being soft on crime -- this week faced criticism from Republicans who noted that the legislation doesn't explicitly prohibit nonprofits from using the money to help undocumented immigrants with criminal histories.

Los Angeles Democrats are so angry at incompetent ideologues engineering yet another city-clearing wildfire that they're considering the unthinkable, John Sexton reports.

From the California Globe:

According to a new poll released over the weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass' approval rating of her wildfire response reached a new low of only 37%, with a whopping 43% of likely voters in the city now saying that they would consider Republican leadership instead.

Since January 7th, Bass has received scorching criticism for her handling of the wildfire emergency, leading many to call for her resignation. Amongst Bass' many criticisms tied to the fires includes her cutting $17.5 million from the LAFD in the 2024-2025 city budget, deciding to travel abroad in January despite knowing that a major emergency could happen with high speed winds being expected, giving a minimal response to the fires on the first day, refusing to answer press questions, having promised to never travel abroad as Mayor yet doing it anyway, and showing an overall general mismanagement of the fires once she returned to L.A.

John Phillips at the Daily News writes that Los Angeles Democrats are so angry that the usual Democrat Party tactic of partisan key-jangles aren't working.

Los Angeles is a Democrat-run city, with a Democrat mayor, not a single Republican on the City Council, and a dominant Democrat Party that decides which candidates get the official blessing and which ones get cast out to the wilderness.

LA's version of ideological diversity is a healthy mix of left-wingers, far-left nut jobs, and Nithya Raman.

This lopsided political arrangement means that it doesn't matter how incompetently the local officials responded to the fires that ravaged the city, because there are never any consequences for Democrats from city voters.

No water in the reservoir? That's global warming.

Forgot to tell the fire department that there's no water in the reservoir? File that under, "Global warming is worse than you think."

Cut the fire department's budget? That's different. You can blame that on climate change.

Texted all the wrong people to evacuate? Repeatedly. Um, has anyone mentioned global warming?

And once you've gone down the list, everything else is Donald Trump's fault.

We good here? Everybody good? Okay, that's lunch!

Sure, none of it makes any sense, but for a highly partisan audience like LA voters, it was always good enough.

Except now, that might be changing.

A new poll says that voters significantly disapprove of Mayor Karen Bass' job performance on wildfire response.

According to a new survey of likely Los Angeles city voters conducted by pollster David Wolfson on behalf of the consulting firm Madison McQueen, 54 percent of Angelenos disapprove of how Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is handling the wildfires in Los Angeles, compared to 37 percent who approve.

If the 2026 election for Los Angeles mayor were held today, Bass would lose to her 2022 challenger, real estate developer Rick Caruso by 7 points, with Caruso sitting on 43 percent and Bass with 36 percent.

Also, if the election were held today, Bass would probably be attending a presidential inauguration in Africa.

Even 43 percent of voters said they would now consider Republican leadership in LA county and/or the city of Los Angeles.

Karen Bass' performance during the fires was so pathetic that highly partisan Democrats are starting to look for alternatives.

Bonus question: Is New Jersey in play?

Answer: New Jersey is in play.

Of the 1,000 registered voters Emerson surveyed, 48 percent viewed President Trump favorably, besting Mr. Murphy's [the current Branch Covidian Democrat governor] 44 percent. Mr. Trump's unfavorable tally was 46 percent versus 42 percent for the governor. Given the poll's three-point margin of error, only the president could claim statistically significant approval.

Mr. Trump is already focusing on New Jersey, issuing an executive order halting wind farms off its coast. A pet project of Mr. Murphy, they're unpopular along the Jersey Shore, plagued with problems, and a priority for just 24 percent in the state according to a Stockton University poll in October.

Owner of a golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey, Mr. Trump has improved his showing in the state each time he's run. He lost by 16 percent in 2016, 14 percent in 2020, and just under six percent last year, when he grew his support in all 11 counties.
Mr. Trump came closer to winning New Jersey than any GOP candidate since President George H. W. Bush, who lost by 2.4 points in 1992's three-way race. New Jersey last went Republican, for Bush, in 1988. Previewing his reelection loss, Democrats claimed the governorship the following year.

...

New Jersey Democrats enjoyed a one-million voter edge over Republicans when Mr. Biden took office, but that advantage has dropped below 900,000. The New Jersey Globe's editor-in-chief, David Wildstein, reported earlier this month that the state has gained 184,026 Republicans since January 2021 against just nine new Democrats.

This election is in November.

posted by Ace at 02:33 PM

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