Trump’s refugee ban, Feinstein’s future, and the Legislature’s sort of leftward slant

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Jack Ohman introduces the latest San Francisco transplant. Check out his housing plans here.

Our take

Editorials

Democratic legislators take bold stands, except when they don’t: Democrats’ leftward slant will be tested on major bills affecting the powerful telecommunications industry, privacy rights and consumer protection.

Here’s how Jerry Brown can truly build a lasting environmental legacy: Officials need to focus on nurturing companies like Proterra that will provide good paying jobs in the green economy.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, meet Laith Hammoudi. He’d make a great neighbor: Laith Hammoudi helped America during the war in Iraq. Now, he is barred under Trump’s refugee ban. How counterproductive.

Modesto Bee: We’ve misunderstood Donald Trump all along. Instead of expecting a visionary like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a builder like Dwight Eisenhower, a great communicator like Ronald Reagan or a president willing to face down our foes like John F. Kennedy, we should have recognized that this president has a more unique gift. He’s an entertainer.

Columns

Erika D. Smith: One would think the city of Sacramento would be doing everything it could to help the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity turn more poor people into homeowners. But that’s not what the city is doing. That would make far too much sense.

Marcos Breton: He used to be homeless, sleeping in Sacramento parks. Now he’s a rookie CHP officer.

Jane Braxton Little: Birthright or asset? The town of Weed and Roseburg Forest Products have gone to court over Weed’s source of water, Shasta springs.

Op-Eds

Erwin Chemerinsky: The U.S. Supreme Court’s approach to President Donald Trump’s travel ban makes no sense and is causing needless chaos and suffering.

Doug Elmets: Mr. Trump: By demonizing the press, you threaten democracy. Maybe you want that.

Phil Serna: On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to debate adjustments to the county budget so we can achieve a safer, cleaner parkway while reducing impacts of homelessness in adjacent neighborhoods.

Takes on Feinstein

Should Dianne Feinstein run again?

Tom Epstein says no, good as she has been, it’s time for Feinstein to retire and give other talented Democrats the opportunity.

Phil Angelides says yes, she’s a voice of sanity and calm, leading the investigations, and standing up for us every day.

Take a number: 23.4 percent

Senior citizens, older than 62, took out more payday loans in California than any other age group last year, according to the latest state report. The Center for Responsible Lending highlights that number, warning that seniors are getting caught in the payday debt trap. The center, which wants California to cap the interest rate on these loans to 36 percent like other states, points out that most payday borrowers have multiple loans. The annual interest rate on payday loans rose in 2016 to 372 percent from 366 percent. But the report from the California Department of Business Oversight shows that the payday industry shrank in California last year. The total dollar amount plummeted 25 percent to $3.14 billion. –Foon Rhee, @foonrhee

Their take

Lexington Herald Leader: California’s action is arrogant, no doubt. Nonetheless, Kentucky lawmakers should revisit the potentially discriminatory clause singled out by California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra. The provision serves no purpose, could create unnecessary legal conflicts for Kentucky schools and hurt innocent students.

San Francisco Chronicle: Early Friday morning near downtown Oakland, almost 200 apartments approaching completion went up in flames, the latest in a series of suspicious construction-site fires. The day before in Sacramento, state lawmakers showed that there’s more than one way to incinerate new housing.

Los Angeles Times: Cities are loath to lose any local control over land use, and many are fighting Sen. Scott Weiner’s SB 35. But the bill wouldn’t eliminate local control; it would require cities to follow their own land-use plans.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: One of the quickest ways Santa Rosa can expand its housing inventory is by making it easier for property owners to build secondary dwellings, otherwise known as granny units. And with the help of a new state law designed to streamline the process, the city is taking an aggressive approach to do just that.

East Bay Times: It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that organized labor presents the biggest obstacle to meaningful campaign disclosure reform in California.

Raleigh News & Observer: Republicans have an iron lock on North Carolina’s General Assembly largely because of their support in rural areas, but, after six years of Republican rule, those areas are faring far worse than the state’s urban areas.

Syndicates’ take

Nicholas Kristof: Liu Xiaobo sometimes is known as “Teacher Liu.” We are hoping and praying that he finds comfort in the way his sacrifices have left a mark on all of us.

Kathleen Parker: The president was criticized for lambasting the U.S. media in his speech Thursday in Poland. Then Friday, as the world turned toward the much-anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, the media committed the same sins for which they’d blasted Trump.

Gail Collins: Our president has ever-changing personas, ranging from statesmanlike Reader-of-Speeches to Nearly Unhinged Trump, a version frequently seen on Twitter. And Diplomacy Don, who seemed to fall head over heels for Vladimir Putin.

Maureen Dowd: The Russians do not have our best interests at heart. They are playing Trump for a sucker.

Frank Bruni: Donald Trump has established a pattern of offending, or at the least ignoring, Jews. It happened again when he declined to pay his respects at a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw.

Ross Douthat: Nationalist arguments come in racist forms, but need not be the white nationalism that Trump’s liberal critics read into his speech. It can just be a species of conservatism.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: President Donald Trump shows the importance of democracy by articulating a dark worldview rooted in nationalism, authoritarianism, discomfort with ethnic and religious differences, and a skepticism about the modern project.

Paul Krugman: Instead of a new generation of Republicans who don’t push a cruel and mindless agenda of tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor, we have conservatives who keep scaling new heights of dishonesty in their attempt to sell their reverse-Robin Hood agenda.

Leonard Pitts Jr.: Kori Doty, who identifies as a non-binary transgender person, has decided that a child, born in Canada “outside the medical system,” will not be saddled with gender.

David Brooks: It’s the golden age of bailing. All across America people are deciding on Monday that it would be really fantastic to go grab a drink, only to later realize it would actually be more fantastic to go home.

Ruben Navarrette: Actors Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park, who are of Asian descent, recently left “Hawaii Five-0” on CBS after the network refused to pay them as much as their white co-stars. This is an insult that’s tough to explain, no matter how talented the spinners are in your public relations department.

Letters to the editor

“Hey, Bee, Just delete Erika D. Smith’s columns.” – Tom Hart, Sacramento

And finally,

Joe Mathews: Northern California has gotten more than its share of infrastructure money, including big funds for the new Bay Bridge. The next great California bridge should be built in the High Desert.

This story was originally published July 10, 2017 at 5:31 AM with the headline "Trump’s refugee ban, Feinstein’s future, and the Legislature’s sort of leftward slant."