The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has drawn a line on homelessness, voting 3-2 to support a challenge to an expansive 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that forbids local governments in nine Western states from enforcing laws against camping or sleeping on sidewalks or in other public places unless overnight shelter is available.

That ruling came in September 2018. In invalidating a Boise, Idaho, law against sleeping on public lands, Judge Marsha Berzon wrote that “just as the state may not criminalize the state of being ‘homeless in public places,’ the state may not criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying or sleeping on the streets.’” Berzon wrote for a three-judge panel.

Ted Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general who won the Bush v. Gore case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, is among the attorneys working with the city of Boise on an appeal. Los Angeles County will file an amicus brief in support of the appeal.

Republican Supervisor Kathryn Barger and Democrat Supervisor Janice Hahn co-sponsored the resolution to file the brief. Democratic Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state homelessness task force, surprised some observers by being the third vote for the resolution. Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and many big-city Democrats have endorsed policies that emphasize helping and sympathizing with the homeless. Garcetti has called homelessness “the moral and humanitarian crisis of our time.”

Supervisor: Don’t accept ’emergency’ as ‘new normal’

But Ridley-Thomas said in a statement that he was “fed up. The status quo is untenable. … We need to call this what it is — a state of emergency — and refuse to resign ourselves to a reality where people are allowed to live in places not fit for human habitation. I refuse to accept this as our new normal.” Los Angeles County has nearly 60,000 homeless people, according to official estimates, more than double the numbers seen 20 years ago.

Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis, both Democrats, voted no on the resolution, saying homelessness should not be criminalized. Kuehl also said she feared what a “terrible” U.S. Supreme Court might decide in its ruling.

Activists blasted Barger, Hahn and Ridley-Thomas not only for lacking compassion but for reinforcing the narrative of President Donald Trump that homelessness is out of control in coastal California.

“We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” Trump said last week.

The president has used Twitter to depict leaders of these cities as hapless and paralyzed in responding to declining quality of life caused by homelessness. He also dispatched Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to visit Skid Row in Los Angeles last week and said he wanted to help California deal with its homeless problem.

But the nature of possible federal help is unclear. Trump has suggested that homeless people might be rounded up and housed on federal property or military bases, but civil-rights lawyers say the president has no authority to forcibly relocate individuals who have not committed federal crimes. 

The Associated Press reported that Carson might link federal housing grants to local governments’ efforts to make it easier to add housing by limiting regulations. That approach would parallel efforts by Newsom and lawmakers led by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, to weaken local zoning rules that they say enable NIMBYs to block new housing.

California High-Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Brian Kelly sent two letters defending Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January remarks that he would focus on completing a 119-mile segment now being built in the Central Valley – backing away from a promise to state voters in 2008 and to the federal government in 2009 and 2010 to build a statewide bullet-train system. Kelly said the state was comporting with key federal regulations.

The limited segment linking Bakersfield and Merced is expected to cost up to $18 billion. Were it ever built, the costs of the originally envisioned statewide bullet-train system – ranging along the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego and inland to Sacramento – could have been 10 times as much or more. The cost of each end of the Los Angeles to San Francisco segment was so extreme that in 2012, the rail authority gave up on true high-speed rail in those links – opting for a “blended” system that relied on regular rail to cover the final 45 miles or so into each of the population centers.

The Trump administration has already canceled a $929 million grant issued to the project in 2010 by the Obama administration. It has indicated it hopes to recover $2.5 billion the federal government has already allocated to California as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package on the grounds that the project is far behind schedule and no longer meets promises of sound planning and financial viability made to secure the $2.5 billion.

But Kelly argued that the Federal Railroad Administration under the Obama administration and for the first two years of Trump’s administration concluded that the project was meeting minimum benchmarks to qualify for federal funding.

“Any clawback of federal funds already expended on this project would be disastrous policy,” Kelly wrote. “It is hard to imagine how your agency – or the taxpayers – might benefit from partially constructed assets sitting stranded in the Central Valley of California.”

LAO questioned project’s finances in 2010

Kelly’s letter hinted at but did not explicitly suggest the DOT’s attempts to recover the $2.5 billion were motivated by President Donald Trump’s two-year-plus war of words with California’s governors, which began under Jerry Brown and has continued with Gavin Newsom. In that span, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed or joined in nearly 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration. Newsom has called the targeting of California’s project politically motivated.

Kelly’s argument that the “clawback” of that much in federal funds would be unprecedented appears correct. But the state’s arguments are weakened by the difficulty it will face in asserting it acquired the federal funds while acting in good faith. Despite telling the U.S. Department of Transportation repeatedly, beginning in 2009, that the bullet-train project was in good shape financially, rail authority officials couldn’t persuade state watchdogs that was the case in the same time frame.

In January 2010, the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned the authority didn’t have a legal business plan because it anticipated that revenue or ridership guarantees could be provided to attract private investors to help fund the project. Because such guarantees amounted to a promise of subsidies if forecasts weren’t met, they were illegal under Proposition 1A, the 2008 state ballot measure providing $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the then-$33 billion project.

The LAO and the California State Auditor’s Office have been uniformly critical of the project for a decade.

Rep. McCarthy: Move $ to other transportation projects

If the Trump administration takes steps to recover the $2.5 billion by withholding unrelated federal dollars bound for California, the dispute seems certain to end up in federal court.

Meanwhile, the California congressman whose district has arguably been most affected by early construction of the bullet train on Thursday introduced a bill that would “repurpose” all $3.4 billion in federal funds for the project to water infrastructure projects in California and other Western states. The measure by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, faces long odds in a chamber in which Democrats retook control in January.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott retired last week but only after giving interviews in which he called for sweeping changes in how state officials and the public think about wildfire risks. He also challenged conventional wisdom on the state’s attitude about forest thinning and on who was most responsible for starting most fires.

Pimlott told the Associated Press that local and state planners should only approve new housing projects in wilderness and canyon areas if far more efforts are made to guarantee there are easy evacuation routes and unless home fire defense measures are mandatory. He also called for much tougher building standards in so-called wilderness “interface” areas to make it more difficult for homes and commercial and government structures to burn.

“We’ve got to continue to raise the bar on what we’re doing, and local land-use planning decisions have to be part of that discussion,” Pimlott said.

His remarks were seen by some as a comment on Los Angeles County officials giving their final approval last week to a 19,000-home project at Newhall Ranch near Interstate 5, about 70 miles north of the city of Los Angeles. Project opponents said the county didn’t go nearly far enough in imposing conditions that would reduce fire risks.

Public urged to take ‘red flag’ warnings more seriously

Pimlott also said more civil defense-type programs and emergency alarm systems are needed in communities in wooded areas. And he said the public in areas at risk of wildfires needed to take “red flag” extreme danger warnings far more seriously – not as a vague and unlikely threat but as an imminent personal risk.

“The reality of it is, California has a fire-prone climate and it will continue to burn. Fire is a way of life in California and we have to learn how to live with it, we have to learn how to have more resilient communities,” he told AP.

At least if Pimlott’s warnings are taken seriously, the push for tougher building regulations in fire-prone areas will only make addressing California’s housing crisis more difficult. That’s because a mantra of housing reformers has been to reduce, not increase, state housing regulations to bring down costs. By some accounts, the Golden State has the nation’s costliest construction rules.

In an interview with the New York Times, the retiring fire official said that President Donald Trump’s assertion that poor forest management was behind the state’s awful run of monster wildfires since 2015 was misleading. He said state officials are hardly ignoring the problems caused by dead trees and thick undergrowth.

“Over the next five years, there’s over a billion dollars invested in both forest thinning and forest health projects,” Pimlott said.

Blame public, not stressed utilities, for ‘95%’ of fires

At a time when Pacific Gas & Electric and, to a lesser extent, Southern California Edison, have faced lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions in damages or more because of allegations that poorly maintained utility equipment triggered wildfires, Pimlott said there is an insufficient appreciation of how much bigger the fire threat is than just a decade ago.

“There has been negligence in some cases,” the 30-year firefighter told the Times. But he said that in most cases, “folks have complied with everything and you have winds that are blowing at 80 miles an hour, you have infrastructure that was never designed to function in these extreme conditions that we are now seeing.”

Who is most to blame for fires in the Golden State? Pimlott said the answer is the same that it’s always been.

“In reality, 95 percent of fires in California are caused by people – welding, grinding, pulling a car off the edge of the road, weeding at the wrong time of day,” he said.

Pimlott told the Times that he intends to spend much of his time in retirement on a 70-acre parcel in a heavily forested area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The parcel was badly scorched by a 2014 wildfire.

The Trump administration has launched a bold effort to up-end water policies in the Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, calling for big changes that would favor farmers over endangered species in allocating water.

Helping craft the administration’s new approach: Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the Westlands Water District, which is the nation’s largest agricultural water district with 600,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties.

As CalWatchdog reported in June 2017, the prospect of having Bernhardt overseeing the federal government’s California water policies was opposed by nearly all Democrats in Congress because of his history. Meanwhile, to GOP lawmakers from the Golden State, his nomination was seen as confirmation of Trump’s 2016 campaign promises to abandon the old status quo involving Central Valley agriculture.

The Oct. 19 memo signed by Trump reflected Bernhardt’s years of calling for lesser regulatory burdens, specifically including long-lived protections for endangered species. It underlined the determination of the Trump administration to make sure farmers got more water. The memo also ordered that major water projects receive faster environmental reviews.

Trump signed the memo before a campaign rally in Arizona while flanked by three California House members – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Jeff Denham of Turlock and Tom McClintock, who represents a wide swath of Central and Eastern California. All have denounced what they see as excessive federal deference to environmentalists – including by the George W. Bush administration, not just the Obama administration.

“This will move things along at a record clip, and you’ll have a lot of water,” Trump assured them.

But veterans of the water wars – including those who back Trump’s new policy – have warned farmers not to get their hopes up for the rapid changes the president predicted. More modest changes in policies by the last Bush administration were fought in both federal and state courts by well-funded environmental law firms. They won not just stays of federal orders but full victories from judges who agreed with their interpretation of Congress’ intent when it adopted far-reaching water laws last century.

Fight over economic impact of rules looms

Bernhardt’s remarks at a May 2017 Senate hearing point squarely to one coming fight with broad implications for all of the federal government. When asked whether the Interior Department would keep its commitment to “scientific integrity” in enforcing federal laws, Bernhardt said, “I will look at the science with all its significance and its warts. You look at that, you evaluate it and then you look at the legal decision you can make. In some instances the legal decision may allow you to consider other factors, such as jobs.”

The idea that governments can consider such economic factors when interpreting laws has been one of the favorite legal arguments of conservative and libertarian law professors since it was advanced in 1973 by Richard A. Posner, who went on to serve 36 years as a federal appellate judge and to emerge as one of the most important and provocative legal thinkers of the 20th century.

If there is any evidence this philosophy is leading to new Trump administration interpretations of federal laws, a strong legal challenge is certain – not just because of what it would mean for water policy but because it would give business interests a powerful new tool to challenge a wide range of laws that create economic burdens.

Posner’s most crucial, basic claim – that the “common law” that is the basis of the legal system holds efficiency as a value – is scoffed at by many legal academics. A Stanford law school analysis that was otherwise sympathetic to Posner’s theories says it is based on “ambiguous” precedents.

The fight over the Posner-Bernhardt view of the law is in some ways the reverse of normal fights over the extent of judicial authority. Democrats say the claim that “efficiency” is part of how laws should be interpreted was invented out of whole cloth, with no evidence it reflected the wishes of the nation’s founders. 

This is the line of argument often made by conservative strict constructionists, who reject the idea that the Constitution and other long-standing laws are “living documents” subject to new interpretations because of changing circumstances.

“Duncan Hunter’s Indictment in California Opens the Door for a Long-Shot Challenger,” was the headline on a New York Times analysis by veteran political reporter Adam Nagourney.

“Hunter’s scandals make his once-safe Republican district competitive,” declared a Vox piece written by Tara Golshan.

But the idea that California’s 50th Congressional District – which covers much of east and north San Diego County and south Riverside County – might be in play seemed far more plausible to East Coast media outlets than to media in Southern California.

That’s because the district is as solidly Republican as any in California. Republicans hold a 15-percent registration edge over Democrats, Donald Trump won the district by the same amount in 2016, and in the June primary, Democrats only got 36 percent of the vote – even though stories about Hunter’s profligate spending of campaign funds had been in the news for more than two years.

Opponent may be hard sell in pro-Trump district

It’s also because of Hunter’s young, inexperienced opponent – 29-year-old Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former U.S. Labor Department spokesman. While the first-time candidate has so far slightly out-raised Hunter in campaign donations, his background may make him a uniquely hard sell in a district known for its ardent support of Trump. Campa-Najjar is the son of an Arab father and a Mexican-American mother – and, as Fox News and other conservative outlets emphasized, the grandson of one of the terrorists who helped plan the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.

Campa-Najjar, a Protestant, told a reporter for The Independent newspaper of London that he was confident district voters would recognize the irrelevance of the issue. “[W]hen it comes to my distant relative – who died 16 years before I was born – he influenced my thinking as much as he did yours, which is not at all,” he said. “I knew him as much as you did. So it really is kind of a non-sequitur. It plays on xenophobia and distorting facts and it really has no bearing.”

Campa-Najjar told the San Diego Union-Tribune that his “ethnic background is not a liability, it’s an asset,” citing the large number of Chaldeans and Latinos in the 50th.

Nevertheless, in a Survey USA poll released Monday, Hunter held a 47 percent to 39 percent lead over Campa-Najjar. But the subcategories of the poll point to the obstacles facing the challenger. Hunter received a surprising 41 percent of the vote among independents. The 23 percent of Republicans who now say they won’t back him could consolidate behind the five-term incumbent – especially as the prospect of Democrats retaking the House is emphasized by the media in the run-up to the November vote.

Hunter’s claim that he is the victim of a Justice Department plot led by prosecutors who were donors to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign resonated with many voters. Among decline-to-state voters, 41 percent said they believed the Hunter indictment was political; 64 percent of Republicans held that view.

Hunter, a former Marine, was the first member of Congress to have served in the military in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He succeeded his father in 2008, who had represented eastern San Diego County in the House since his 1980 election.

The long-expected showdown between the Trump administration and the state of California over water, farmers and the Central Valley appears to be imminent. On. Aug. 17, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a memorandum declaring his staff had 15 days to draft a plan that would increase water for the region’s agricultural industry by reinterpreting relevant federal policies and laws and by targeting “unacceptable conditions” advocated by the state of California.

Zinke specifically cited the need to “streamline” the process under which the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act are considered and invoked in Central Valley decisions. He wrote that this has prevented long-term changes in federal water decision-making.

Behind the bureaucratic language, it appears the Trump administration is taking dead aim at broad water policies that Central Valley House Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes have long said valued the interests of declining fish populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta over the interests of the region’s farmers, who have made the Central Valley the nation’s agricultural breadbasket.

But even if the Zinke deadline is met and the Interior Department has new water allocation rules and policies in place by the Sept. 1 deadline, quick change seems unlikely. That’s because environmental groups which have fought previous changes sought by the previous Republican presidents, in particular George W. Bush, have long found judges to be sympathetic to their interpretation of the ESA. A significant number of moderate GOP lawmakers also oppose major changes in existing green regulations.

The green coalition contends that the health of salmon and Delta smelt in Central Valley waterways and rivers is a proxy for the health of Northern California’s ecosystem. Greens say that giving more water to farmers by diverting some of the fresh water now pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could lead to a disaster that affects the whole state – very much including the 19 million residents who deeply rely on water from the rest of the state that’s distributed by the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Trump’s promises to Central Valley farmers during an August 2016 campaign appearance in the region foreshadowed Zinke’s order. But a more specific, recent cause may have been farmers’ complaints about the California State Water Resources Board, which took two days of public testimony last week on its plan to increase water pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from February to June to shore up endangered salmon.

Farmers, allies also weigh court challenges

Just as environmentalists threaten legal action over how federal decisions affect Central Valley water use, those aligned with farmers vow court fights over the proposed state policy change.

“If they vote to take our water, this does not end there,” state Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Modesto, told the Associated Press. “We will be in court for 100 years.”

While Trump was nearly doubled up in 2016 California voting by Democrat Hillary Clinton, he ran far better in farm regions. He won easily in the two counties with the state’s largest agricultural economies, taking Kern County by 55 percent to 40 percent and Tulare County by 53 percent to 41 percent.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Wednesday explained in a notice to the Federal Register that it will explore the impact of fracking in the state, setting off alarm bells among environmentalists.

“[T]his document announces the beginning of the scoping process and seeks public input on issues and planning criteria related to hydraulic fracturing,” the notice reads.

Specifically, BLM will prepare a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to determine what environmental impacts the technology will have on the region.

The land in question includes “approximately 400,000 acres of public land and an additional 1.2 million acres of Federal mineral estate,” according to the agency, and spans across multiple counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Fracking is a technique by which water, sand and additives are injected deep into the ground at high pressures to crack open rocks and release the oil or gas trapped inside. It’s led to drilling booms in places like Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Proponents argue that it’s a safe technology that is increasing America’s energy independence and creating jobs, while opponents say it poses environmental risks and recklessly promotes an energy policy centered around fossil fuels instead of alternative energy resources.

“This step toward opening our beautiful public lands to fracking and drilling is part of the Trump administration’s war on California,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We desperately need to keep these dirty fossil fuels in the ground. But Trump is hell-bent on sacrificing our health, wildlife and climate to profit big polluters.”

The administration has already faced backlash over similar moves. This spring, for example, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke postponed a sale for leasing public lands for drilling near Livingston, Montana, following heavy outrage due to its proximity to Yellowstone National Park.

“I’ve always said there are places where it is appropriate to develop and where it’s not. This area certainly deserves more study, and appropriately we have decided to defer the sale,” Zinke responded in a March statement.

More broadly, the development is just the latest high-profile fight between California and the Trump administration, as the state has challenged the president’s agenda on nearly every hot button issue, including immigration, climate change and health care. 

And just last week, President Trump issued a series of tweets lambasting the state’s environmental regulations, claiming that the rules are hindering the ability to effectively fight wildfires, remarks that drew wide condemnation from state officials.

The initiative received around 600,000 signatures — almost double the amount needed to qualify for the November 6th ballot.

“Three Californias” is backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper and would divide the Golden State up into California, Northern California, and Southern California.

“Californians deserve a more effective education system that isn’t failing our families, more reliable infrastructure that isn’t fracturing our communities, and more sensible taxes that aren’t stifling our opportunities,” the Cal 3 campaign site reads.

Northern California would go from the San Jose area and extend to the Oregon border. Southern California would start in Fresno and cover most of Southern California, including the Inland empire and San Diego, and California would include Los Angeles County and extend up the coast to Monterey County.

“No one can argue that California’s government is doing a good job governing or educating or building infrastructure for its people,” Draper told The New York Times last year. “And it doesn’t matter which party is in place.”

While the group faces heavy hurdles in actually swaying voters, as a recent SurveyUSA poll shows voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the move, if it passed, the change could have a sizable effect on the national election map, and perhaps be a boost to the GOP in the electoral college.

For example the potential “Southern California” includes Fresno, Tulare, Madera and Kern counties, all of which voted for President Trump in 2016. Additionally, the historically conservative Orange County is in that theoretical state.

But it would also likely result in four more Democratic senators from California and Northern California.

Even if voters were persuaded to backing it, the intuitive would still need the approval of the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress.

The plan still comes with numerous question marks — like the transactional costs of actually breaking up the state with respect to how university systems, public works projects, and other governmental services would be divided and structured during a transition into three separate states.

“California government can do a better job addressing the real issues facing the state, but this measure is a massive distraction that will cause political chaos and greater inequality,” tweeted Steve Maviglio, a consultant for the opposition effort NoCABreakup. “Splitting California into three new states will triple the amount of special interests, lobbyists, politicians and bureaucracy.”

But supporters cite those same issues as reasons for breaking up the state in the first place, arguing that California has become too big to succeed.

“The California state government isn’t too big to fail, because it is already failing its citizens in so many crucial ways,” Peggy Grande, a spokesperson for Citizens for Cal 3 campaign, said in a statement. “The reality is that for an overmatched, overstretched, and overwrought state-government structure, it is too big to succeed. Californians deserve a better future.”

The poll was based on 691 registered voters, as well as 517 voters likely to vote in the primary. The top two vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the Nov. 6 general election.

Newsom, the current lieutenant governor, received 21 percent of the vote, with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Republican businessman John Cox contending for second place with 11 percent and 10 percent of the vote, respectively; well within the margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Of potential interest to the battle for second place could be President Trump’s recent decision to endorse Cox. While it could potentially mobilize Republican support, it could just as easily backfire and turn away moderates.

California Treasurer John Chiang, who was hoping to become the state’s first Asian-American governor, and Huntington Beach State Assemblyman Travis Allen, who has brashly courted Trump supporters, stand at 6 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

When it comes to issues that could swing voters in congressional races, the Trump administration’s tax overhaul and attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act hold the most cache. Almost half of poll respondents opposed the December tax overhaul, with 52 percent being less likely to re-elect their representative if they supported the changes. And six out of 10 residents support the ACA; similarly, 54 percent would be less likely to vote for a representative trying to repeal Obamacare.

The meeting was the latest development in an ongoing battle between California and the Trump administration over its sanctuary policies. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state earlier this year and the disagreement is expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court.

The main law in question, Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, prohibits local law enforcement from diverting resources to assist federal immigration authorities and detaining citizens past their normal detention at ICE’s request. It’s backed by other laws, such as one that requires private companies to warn employees in advance of immigration inspections.

Since the announcement of the federal lawsuit, many municipalities, such as Orange County and the city of Los Alamitos, have expressed their opposition to sanctuary policies and tossed their weight behind the lawsuit.

Among those in attendance at the meeting: mayors from Los Alamitos, Barstow, San Jacinto and Escondido, Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (CA-67), El Dorado County Sheriff John D’Agostini, and Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel. On the federal side, Department of Justice Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Director of ICE Thomas Homan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

While supporters argue that the legislation makes the public safer by improving trust between police and immigrant communities, many in attendance pointed to public safety concerns as the reason for their opposition to sanctuary laws. 

“When Jerry Brown cares more about illegal criminals than he cares about the Hispanic community and the American citizens, this is insanity, and this is unconstitutional,” said Escondido Mayor Sam Abed. “This is personal to me. I’m going to work hard to make sure our community is safe.”

In response to the meeting, Gov. Jerry Brown tweeted that the president “is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA. Flying a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world, are not impressed.”