Newsom touts clean energy milestone as House considers ending ban on gas cars
Happy Tuesday and welcome to the AM Alert! I am your governor reporter, Lia Russell, and I’ll be authoring this week’s AM alerts. Send tips and the names of your favorite Sac-area dive bars to LRussell@sacbee.com.
CALIFORNIA VS. CONGRESS
The Golden State hit a major climate change milestone at the same time as Congress is considering taking away the state’s ability to set its own emission standards.
California can now store up to 15,763 megawatts of energy by capture window and solar power and reverting it back to the grid during peak-demand times, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Monday. The net effect creates a “safer and more reliable power grid,” a necessity after heatwaves caused utility companies to institute rolling blackouts in 2020 and 2022.
Buried in the release was the news that California’s greenhouse gas emissions have been down 20% since 2000, which Newsom’s office has attributed to an increase in renewable fuels and electric vehicle sales. But that progress could be threatened.
Recently, 35 Democrats in the U.S. House joined all of their Republican colleagues in voting to overturn a state ban on sales of gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
KAMALA FOR GOVERNOR 2026?
Kamala Harris may mount a run for governor after all, according to a CNN report published Sunday. The former Vice President, who is also viewed as a presidential 2028 contender, has been researching and discussing with her staff how to tackle California’s myriad problems like its budget holes, homelessness and high-speed rail funding woes. It doesn’t hurt that polls show her as having the most name recognition of all potential and declared candidates, though this is also true at the national level.
The current governor, who is believed to be considering his own run for the White House in 2028, is termed out and cannot run again for office in November 2026. Those who have filed to succeed him (from both sides of the aisle) include former Rep. Katie Porter, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former conservative British political advisor Steve Hilton, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, billionaire Stephen Cloobeck, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, current state officials Betty Yee and Tony Thurmond, and former Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins.
One of Harris’s aides told The Sacramento Bee last month that she wouldn’t make a decision until the end of the summer, and wouldn’t give a particular month or timeline. People close to her said if she does make up her mind by then, she would launch a campaign in either late August or by Labor Day, CNN reported.
SPEAKING OF HIGH-SPEED RAIL...
A segment of the state planned bullet train system that would connect Bakersfield and Merced will cost another $3.2 billion to complete, causing the project’s budget gap to swell to over $10 billion. KCRA first reported the numbers, which were provided to state legislators after last week’s budget revise, in which Newsom proposed allotting the project another $1 billion through 2045.
Liberal journalists Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein recently described the high-speed rail in their buzzy book, “Abundance,” as a failed venture dogged by cost overruns and bureaucratic overregulation. Newsom has defended the “transformative” project by comparing it to its Texas counterpart, and it remains popular among Californians.
State Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, the Vice Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said in a statement he was “disturbed” at the updated numbers.
“The high-speed rail project continues to suffer from self-inflicted wounds, and I am extremely disturbed to learn about this latest information, which further erodes the public’s trust in a project as proposed will never be built,” he said. “I urge my colleagues in the Senate to have a serious conversation on how we can discontinue this failed project as our state truly does not have the money to waste, and Californians are sensitive to government waste.”
Neither committee chair Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, nor the Assembly Transportation Committee immediately responded to requests for comment.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Well, if it was 2013 — when did I stop being vice president?”
—Former President Joe Biden during his October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The White House released audio of the interview on Saturday, one day before Biden announced a doctor had diagnosed him with Stage 4 prostate cancer.
Best of The Bee:
GOP wants to overturn California’s EV mandates. How will it affect Gavin Newsom? via David Lightman
Don’t like Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget? California Legislature gets to respond, via Stephen Hobbs
City Council will vote on tiny homes site for homeless in South Sacramento, via Mathew Miranda
