Legislature’s session remains ‘fluid’ + It’s Census Day in America + Drive-by protest

It’s April 1, California. Happy Fool’s Day. Kinda feels like we’re being pranked these days, huh? Except nobody is laughing.

ABOUT THAT APRIL 13 DEADLINE

Don’t count on it.

The Legislature voted on March 16 to break until mid-April so lawmakers wouldn’t have to convene in Sacramento amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Clearly things have taken an even more unprecedented turn since then, and we’re looking at a potential stay-at-home order that could last until the summer.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said during his daily COVID-19 press conference yesterday that he’s talked with Senate President Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, about the legislative calendar.

“That’s fluid. There is no time certain to come back in session,” Newsom said. “It’s their houses, the legislative branch, and we will support them and accommodate them but they are being incredibly deferential to the experts, the health experts, and the needs of their membership in communities up and down the state.”

LATEST ON COVID-19:

• State Superintendent Tony Thurmond is expected to make an announcement in the next day or two about feeding California’s students, distance learning, special education and yes, the calendar year. Newsom said his team is developing a more “robust” framework that is “more precise” for the districts.
• We’re nearing 7,000 cases in California, according to the California Department of Public Health’s Tuesday release. There have been 150 deaths recorded.

• More than 25,000 people have signed up for the California Health Corps announced on Monday, Newsom said.

• The governor also said his team is working to deliver new guidelines on whether people should be wearing masks in public.

• 1,617 people are currently hospitalized, 657 individuals in the ICU, Newsom said. If you roll a five-day average, he explained, that’s double the amount of people in hospitals, triple the number in intensive care units.

• The state has a new hotline to connect elderly people with their neighbors, Newsom said, encouraging people to call 833-544-2374.

CENSUS DAY

April 1 is Census Day, and slightly more than a third, 35.7 percent, of Californian households have responded to the Census so far. That’s nearly in line with the national average, said Ditas Katague, director of California Complete Count Census 2020.

“I think things are going as well as they can, considering what we’re facing,” Katague said.

The counties leading the pack so far in terms of census responses are Santa Clara, San Mateo, Contra Costa, Orange, Alameda, Sacramento and Ventura counties.

April 1 is significant because it’s the day that the U.S. Census Bureau uses to determine who is living in each American household. That translates into political power, money and data, Katague said.

Since the state declared an emergency over COVID-19, the California Census team has had to take a different approach than originally planned. Katague said that in-person outreach, particularly in hard-to-reach communities, has been replaced with alternative forms of outreach: Phone-banking, peer-to-peer texting, emailing, video conferencing and direct mail.

Katague said that census partners have also been reaching out to those areas where Californians can still congregate, such as grocery stores, pharmacies and food banks, and leaving Census handouts for people to take.

Katague said that Sacramento could play a special role in disseminating that it’s Census Day; she said she would love to see lawmakers and all the trade associations that call Sacramento home reach out to remind people to do their duty and fill out the Census.

“We forget that Sacramento is a hub across the state and has reach all the way to the far corners of the state,” she said.

DRIVE-BY PROTEST

Activists in both Northern and Southern California took part in a direct action car-based protest to call on Gov. Gavin Newsom and local governments to use their emergency powers to release immigrants from detention in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The protest was organized by a coalition of groups, led by Never Again Action groups from Sacramento, the Bay Area and Los Angeles, as well as Jewish Action NorCal and Otay Mesa Detention Resistence.

The coalition warned that COVID-19 could be especially deadly to those behind bars, who are unable to properly socially distance and take other precautions against the disease.

“We know that Anne Frank didn’t die in the gas chambers, but rather she died of a communicable disease in the crowded and dirty conditions of a detention center,” Never Again Action Bay Area organizer Sam Tunick said in a statement. “We don’t want to see history repeated — we are doing what we wish bystanders during the Holocaust had done for our ancestors.”

The protests occurred simultaneous at noon in front of the Capitol in Sacramento, in Los Angeles and in San Diego, and at 12:30 p.m. in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in San Francisco.

The coalition acknowledged in a statement that there are legal risks to protesting when there is a shelter-at-home order in place, “risks they are willing to take in order to call attention to the grave and immediate danger faced by migrants in detention centers and being transferred to ICE custody.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Physical distancing ≠ Emotional isolation. Please check in on your loved ones, especially those who are older or high-risk. We have to be in this together, apart. #StayHomeSaveLives Check in.”

- Sen. Toni Atkins, via Twitter.

Best of the Bee:

• As the state scrambles to slow the spread of the coronavirus, 1.6 million Californians have applied for unemployment insurance, Newsom said. More than 150,000 people filed Monday, setting a record, by Sophia Bollag

• Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Tuesday rejected calls for emergency court orders to release prison inmates because of the coronavirus crisis, saying prison officials already are taking sufficient steps to curb overcrowding and protect inmates,” by Sam Stanton

• The Trump administration announced its long-anticipated plan to lower fuel efficiency and carbon emissions standards for automobiles Tuesday, setting up a bruising showdown with California over pollution and climate change, by Michael Wilner and Dale Kasler