WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday canceled an Obama-era prohibition on the use of anti-personnel landmines outside of the Korean peninsula. With potential future conflict with China and Russia in mind, the new policy specified no geographic limits on landmine use, declaring that the weapons offer an important war-fighting...
Walters: Community College Report Ignores Reality
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises state lawmakers on budgetary matters, prides itself on taking an independent, nonpartisan and even nonpolitical approach to important policy issues. That well-established tradition continues in a new LAO report on a pilot program that allows a few community college districts to offer four-year degrees in a...
Walters: California's Half-a-Loaf Syndrome
Joe Mathews, another guy who makes his living by scribbling about California, penned a very perceptive article recently about the state’s proclivity for not following through on policy pronouncements. “California is stuck in the gray zone,” Mathews wrote, referring to “a military term for the space between peace and war… “In California...
Rejecting Federal Proposal, California Lays out Vision for Protecting Endangered Species and Meeting Water Needs
California’s water policy can be complex, and — let’s be honest — often polarizing. Water decisions frequently get distilled into unhelpful narratives of fish versus farms, north versus south, or urban versus rural. Climate change-driven droughts and flooding threats, as well as our divided political climate, compound these challenges. We...
US Angers Palestinians With Reversal on Israeli Settlements
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday softened the U.S. position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, reversing four decades of American policy and further undermining the effort to gain Palestinian statehood. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. is repudiating the 1978 State Department legal...
What California Can Learn From Seattle About Police Shootings
By Laurel Rosenhall, CalMatters As California debated a new law limiting when police can use deadly force, advocates pointed to Seattle as an example of a place that’s benefited from a similar policy. The Seattle Police Department has made a lot of changes in recent years, and its use of...
Groups Threaten to Sue UC Over SAT, ACT Use
A coalition of California students and community groups is threatening to sue the University of California system unless it drops the SAT and ACT exams from its admissions requirements, arguing that the tests favor wealthy, white students at the expense of poorer black and Hispanic students. Lawyers representing three students,...
As Trump Abandons Kurds, Israel Worries How Dependable He Is
JERUSALEM — For the past three years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bet heavily on President Donald Trump and been rewarded with major diplomatic gains in exchange for his warm embrace of the U.S. leader. But the U.S. pullback from northeastern Syria, essentially abandoning its Kurdish allies, has called that strategy —...
Trump Fires National Security Adviser John Bolton
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he fired national security adviser John Bolton, citing strong disagreements on a number of policy issues. Trump tweeted that he told Bolton Monday night his services were no longer needed at the White House and said Bolton submitted his resignation on Tuesday morning....
Powell Says Fed Will Aid Economy, but Trump Escalates Attack
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled Friday that the Fed stands ready to cut interest rates further if the economy needs it but wasn't clear about when or by how much. Powell had barely finished speaking to central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, before President Donald Trump escalated...