Democratic lawmakers are harshly criticizing the Trump administration’s attempt to defy the intent of a new state law banning privately run prisons and detention centers.

On Oct. 11, when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 32, liberal activists rejoiced. Private prisons are considered far more likely to be inhumane and generally use non-union workers. Private detention centers holding unauthorized immigrants are seen as a symbol of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that has become a target for the left since President Donald Trump’s election.

But while the law takes effect Jan. 1, it allows existing contracts to be honored. Five days after Newsom’s signing of AB32, ICE put out a solicitation on the Federal Business Opportunities website for contractors to run detention centers in the general areas of Northern California, Los Angeles and San Diego that had a total of 5,000 beds.

A month later, California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris and 19 fellow Democrats in the Golden State’s House of Representatives delegation are crying foul. They say ICE is flouting normal procedures in an attempt to ensure three existing facilities keep operating.

“Given the timing and terms of this solicitation – particularly in light of ICE’s history of suspect contract activities and insufficient oversight – we are understandably concerned that the solicitation is intended to favor incumbent contractors,” the 21 Democrats wrote in a letter to several federal agencies. “If so, these efforts would be in direct contradiction with the spirit of full and open competition required by federal procurement law.”

The solicitation asked for interested parties to respond within two weeks instead of the usual 30 days. It also specified that bidders had to have “turnkey ready” facilities with specific ranges of available beds. The contracts are for five years, with the option for two five-year extensions.

Democrats say bidding process is rigged

Democrats said this ensured that the only applicants would be the three companies that are already running federal immigration detention centers in California: GEO Group, which has centers in Adelanto in the Inland Empire and Bakersfield; CoreCivic, which runs a center in San Diego; and the Management and Training Corp., which has one in Calexico in Imperial County, east of San Diego.

ICE signed a $62 million contract with GEO for the Adelanto facility in March in which GEO was the only bidder. Democrats didn’t object to the contract at the time but now say it also was awarded in a way that violated the spirit of federal procurement laws by essentially ensuring only one company had a chance to win.

But an ICE official told the Palm Springs Desert Sun that the agency “remains compliant with federal contract and acquisitions regulations, as we advertise opportunity notices and subsequently implement the decision process.”

AB32’s author – Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland – blasted ICE in comments to the Desert Sun, saying the agency was attempting to “circumvent the will of the people of California.”

ICE’s parent agency – the Department of Homeland Security – has a history of claiming more flexibility under federal rules than its critics say it has. The same goes for the Trump administration, most notably in its use of $6.1 billion in defense funding to build sections of a border wall without congressional authorization.

In their letter to DHS and other agencies, the California Democratic lawmakers asked for information on how ICE crafted its solicitation for detention center bids.

Their chances of getting a quick response are unclear. ICE has long faced criticism over its handling of public record requests, which it is supposed to respond to in 20 days or less. The agency was sued earlier this month by the Project on Government Oversight for allegedly withholding information over how it used facial recognition and other technology in surveillance and data collection programs.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court hearing where the justices’ conservative majority appeared prepared to accept the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census form has triggered sharp criticism from California Democrats. If the question leads to millions of unauthorized immigrants not filling out forms, as the Census Bureau expects, that would lead to a significantly lower population count in the Golden State, which has the most such immigrants.

This has led to analyses predicting that California could lose one or two of its 53 House seats and, over the long term, billions of dollars in several categories of federal aid. These are divvied up based on census reports of total population. A Legislative Analyst’s Office study released in December detailed how in 1990, California had a census undercount with a similar effect.

But what has received less attention is the potential of the citizenship question to reduce the number of safe Democratic seats and to increase the number of swing seats in the House and state Legislature. Because House, Assembly and Senate seats are apportioned based on total population data from the 2010 census, turnout of voters — who have to be U.S. citizens — is often much smaller in rural agricultural areas which have a higher proportion of unauthorized immigrants, as well as in poor areas of Southern California.

Democrats much more likely to win low-turnout races

According to the official state results from November’s election, excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, there were 21 House seats that Democrats won with fewer than 150,000 votes and only three such seats where Republicans won. In the 21st House district, Rep. T.J. Cox, D-Fresno, won with only 57,239 votes.

State Senate districts have on average about 25 percent greater total population than House districts. In November’s election, again excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, of the 20 seats up for grabs, six were won by Democrats with fewer than 180,000 votes versus only one won by a Republican. In the 14th state Senate district, Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, won with just 80,942 votes.

State Assembly districts have on average half the population of state Senate districts. In November’s election, again excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, of the 80 seats up for grabs, 22 were won by Democrats with fewer than 90,000 votes versus six won by Republicans. In the 32nd Assembly district, Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, won with just 39,328 votes.

With Democrats having overwhelming numerical advantages in California’s House, Senate and Assembly seats, too much can be read into statistics showing they are far more likely to win low-turnout races. Democratic candidates in affluent communities in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and Southern California often won high-turnout races.

But the extremely low turnout districts concentrated in the Central Valley and Los Angeles County all elected Democrats. These districts are likely to change considerably after the reapportionment following the 2020 census, if the citizenship question is asked and has the effect of reducing the number of state residents who fill out census forms.

The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision in the census case in late June.

President Trump’s signing of executive orders Wednesday to begin planning for construction of a wall along the Mexican border, to withhold federal funds from local governments that don’t cooperate with immigration authorities and to increase efforts to track down illegal immigrants immediately prompted Senate President Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles (right), to

There’s a road map for how a large, wealthy state can resist a president whose edicts it doesn’t like: Texas in the past eight years under Obama.

According to a running count kept by the Texas Tribune, Texas’ last two attorney generals — Greg Abbott, now the governor, and his successor, Ken Paxton — sued the Obama administration at least 48 times. Texas’ record: Seven wins, 12 losses, 20 cases pending and nine withdrawn.

State blocked Obama bid to protect undocumented

The cases run the gamut from huge wins to huge defeats.

The biggest victories came in a Texas-led lawsuit against Obama executive orders meant to protect 5 million illegal immigrants from risk of deportation. Arguing that such decisions amounted to rewriting plainly written existing laws, Texas prevailed at the appellate level and a 4-4 Supreme Court split last year left the lower-court ruling in place.

Texas also won complete or partial victories in a variety of cases in which it asserted the EPA had been excessively zealous in regulating or rejecting state pollution rules. In the most notable example, the state’s basic pollution control permitting program was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals despite being trashed by federal regulators as weak and poorly managed.

The state also suffered sweeping defeats. Texas led a 13-state coalition challenging the legality of the Affordable Care Act, but it was rebuffed in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in 2012.

It lost a bid to keep federal authorities from relocating Syrian refugees in the Lone Star State, as well as five lawsuits contending the EPA exceeded its authority in such matters as greenhouse gas regulation and rejecting specific state pollution programs as inadequate.

Texas also has lawsuits pending challenging federal decrees that transgender students at schools receiving public funds can decide which bathrooms to use and a wide variety of other EPA rulings. But these suits may become moot if Trump’s administration abandons the federal decrees that led to Texas’ challenges.

The parallels between Texas and California go beyond a fight between conservative and liberal readings of the law, just with the roles reversed. As the Texas Tribune noted, the lawsuits were a “point of pride” for the state’s Republican political establishment, and GOP voters never balked at the state spending millions of taxpayer dollars on cases even if they went nowhere. In California, if Gov. Jerry Brown and new Attorney General Xavier Becerra adopt a similar approach, they will win props from state Democrats eager to do all they can to signal their disdain for the Trump administration.

Tougher to fight laws than executive orders

However, California may find rougher sledding than Texas. In most of the cases Texas won, it argued that the Obama administration had ignored limits on executive authority established by previous presidents and administrations. But on illegal immigration, for example, efforts to fight a Trump crackdown run up against the plain fact that federal law categorically states that the federal government can eject those who are not in the nation legally. Arguments that defend “sanctuary city” policies are driven by the ideas that they are humane and help persuade unauthorized immigrants to cooperate in reporting crime — not any legal precedent.

Another likely headache for California is that some of the sweeping policy changes that Trump wants won’t be achieved by executive orders but through the GOP-controlled Congress’ enactment of legislation.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom told The Los Angeles Times earlier this month that he expected to be able to use federal and state environmental laws to sue to block, or at least stall, construction of a border wall. But just as the state Legislature can exempt stadiums being built by favored developers from such lawsuits, Congress can do so with the border wall. There is no right to challenge an inadequate environmental impact statement in the U.S. Constitution. The EPA was created by statute.

And there is a clear precedent for federal lawmakers to make such exemptions on national-security grounds. In 2003, Congress exempted training exercises by the U.S. military from many federal environmental laws.

By the numbers

California has become a flashpoint for immigration politics despite indications that the long wave of illegal immigration impacting the state has crested. “More Mexicans are leaving the United States than migrating into the country, marking a reversal of one of the most significant immigration trends in U.S. history,” according to CBS News. “A study published Thursday by the Pew Research Center said a desire to reunite families is the primary reason Mexicans go home. A sluggish U.S. recovery from the Great Recession also contributed. Meanwhile, tougher border enforcement has deterred some Mexicans from coming to the United States.”

Public opinion has not shifted as dramatically — reflecting the persistent consequences of a generation’s worth of immigration. In a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, “59 percent of California voters said immigrants strengthen society, compared with 49 percent of all U.S. voters,” noted the International Business Times. “Thirty-five percent of California voters reported immigrants weaken U.S. society, while 43 percent of all U.S. voters said they weaken it. But Californians weren’t without reservations regarding immigration,” the paper added. “Despite feeling immigrants strengthen society, 41 percent of California voters said immigrants also make life harder for natives financially, while 10 percent said immigrants make things easier and 39 percent said immigrants made no difference to their lives financially.”

Checks and balances

At the same time, eight Democrats in California’s Congressional delegation recently broke with their party and voted against the president in supporting legislation that would tighten strictures on would-be refugees from Iraq and Syria. Their votes reflected the extraordinary uncertainty and discord surrounding federal immigration policy more broadly. President Barack Obama appealed to the Supreme Court for expedited consideration of the fate of his anti-deportation plan for unlawfully present immigrants, which 26 states launched an effort to reject. “Moving quickly to put the issue before the justices in time for a decision while President Barack Obama is still in office, the administration called for the court’s immediate review of its plan to protect and give work permits to as many as 5 million immigrants,” according to the Associated Press. “So far, the federal courts have sided with the GOP-led states and effectively blocked the plan.”

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, currently campaigning to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, threw her weight behind the administration and lambasted the ruling against it. “Harris said the ruling by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will be a blow to the California economy and would threaten public safety because many immigrants fear reporting crimes out of concerns they may face deportation,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court sided with Texas and 25 other states that had sued to block Obama’s immigration programs, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, and an extension of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.”

Harris’s leading opponent, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., chided the court as well, calling its holding “another setback for our dysfunctional immigration system,” the Times added. “Congress must take action to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and voters must make their voices heard at the ballot box,” said Sanchez.

Networking opposition

The push against Syrian refugees has received significant support from conservatives in California. Liberals and progressives have singled out San Diego donor Robert Shillman, whose fellowship program for online journalists and funding for grassroots networks has been credited with mobilizing widespread opposition to admitting Syrian refugees in California and elsewhere. During the controversy around a Texas contest to draw Mohammad, which Shillman threw his weight behind, he told Reuters “that violent attacks on such events are making people fearful and prone to self censorship,” denying that he was “anti-Muslim.”

The new posture became official through a delegates’ vote at the state party’s semiannual convention in Anaheim. Carefully calibrated wording produced an amended statement that drew its share of criticism but ultimately passed, as the Los Angeles Times reported:

The changes say Republicans “hold diverse views” on “what to do with the millions of people who are currently here illegally.” The wording of the amendment was tweaked after a Saturday committee meeting, which used the phrase “otherwise law-abiding folks” instead of “people.” Although the new language emphasizes opposition to “amnesty,” it removes the statement that “allowing illegal immigrants to remain in California undermines respect for the law.”

Although the momentum for the changes was driven by a years-long disagreement within the party over how fiercely to oppose illegal immigration, the direct impetus came from a relatively new source: Donald Trump. Marcelino Valdez, the party’s regional vice chairman in Fresno, told the Times he spearheaded the initially proposed changes in order to formally counteract Trump’s recent remarks on the issue.

Calling Trump “an entertainer,” Valdez called the revised wording “a common-sense approach” that shows Republicans are “far from” anti-immigrant, according to the Orange County Register.

A play for votes

But Valdez left no uncertainty about the party establishment’s ambitions. “We’re absolutely trying to reach the Latino vote,” he added. GOP strategists in California have watched with alarm as polling reflected Trump’s negative impact on its view of the party. “Trump stands apart from the field,” as MSNBC observed. “A recent MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll of Latinos found that 70 percent of respondents had a negative view of Trump – far more than any other candidate – and 65 percent felt he was hurting the GOP’s brand.”

Although some strategists have counseled that Republican presidential candidates can succeed at the national level without making a strong play for Latino voters, that argument carries less weight in the Golden State, where California Republicans looking to expand their base often see little alternative. “Republican registration has fallen to 28 percent statewide,” the Sacramento Bee noted.

Drawing contrasts

For that reason, Carly Fiorina’s rising political stock has rekindled their hopes in shaking the state party loose of Trump’s perceived influence. In the recent presidential debate hosted in Simi Valley, “Fiorina took a measured and careful approach to how she answered questions about immigration,” the International Business Times observed. “Largely avoiding the issue as a matter of policy, she navigated between attacking Trump and President Barack Obama, making no mention of her thoughts on what to actually do with the millions of immigrants currently in the country without legal documentation.”

During that debate, Trump, by contrast, “reiterated that he would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, then deport ‘a lot of really bad dudes in this country from outside,'” according to the Bee, which added that Democrats have shown little hesitation in trying to tie the California GOP to Trump’s most aggressive remarks on on the issue. Trump’s latest debate comments, however, seemed to represent a shift away from insinuations he made earlier in the campaign that every immigrant who entered the U.S. unlawfully would be deported if he were elected president.

Chasing attention

Analysts remained unsure, however, whether voters would pay a great deal of attention to the intra-party struggle over the finer points of its preferred immigration policy. Prof. Jeff Jarvis of Cal State Fullerton told Southern California Public Radio that, most likely, the party’s rejiggered language was “getting drowned out in the conversation by Trump and the national party moving to the right on immigration.” With presidential candidates like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz still in the hunt, however, that dynamic could eventually change as quickly as Republican primary voters’ preferences have already shifted to date.

California’s often-beleaguered Republican voters are putting their faith in their party’s biggest outsiders.

In a new poll conducted by USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times, respondents indicated an overwhelming preference for Donald Trump and Ben Carson, reflecting West Coast conservatives’ deep dissatisfaction with politics as usual.

“Trump won the support of 24 percent of California Republicans surveyed, while Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and lesser-known conservative favorite, was backed by 18 percent,” the Times reported. “More than a dozen other candidates, most of them elected politicians, resided in the single digits, far behind the leaders.”

A fluid race

The poll suggested Trump owed his edge in the Golden State to the traction gained by hammering hard on the consequences of illegal immigration. But Carson, who has not belabored that issue, came in such a close second to Trump that the margin between them fell within the poll’s 5.3 point margin of error. In fact, as the LA Weekly noted, the poll revealed that “Carson held an 11-point lead when matched against Trump in a one-on-one matchup — 43 percent of Republicans supported him for president while 32 percent backed Trump.”

At the same time, respondents also demonstrated that the primary race in California remains as competitive as it appears to around the country. “Among Republicans, 1 in 5 voters polled in the state was undecided about which candidate to back, and many candidates were unknown to a quarter or more of voters interviewed,” the Times added.

Dan Schnur, director of the poll and USC’s Unruh Institute of Politics, described the result as a triumph of anger over ideology. “More than half of the Republican primary voters who have chosen a candidate are supporting someone who has never held elected office,” he said, according to The Hill.

The Trump effect

Although hardly the runaway favorite, Donald Trump has become a uniquely significant political force – especially in California, where his polarizing remarks on immigration have given Republicans and Democrats alike an opportunity to score political points of their own.

Some campaigning Democrats have turned Trump into their hoped-for advantage. “Former Hermosa Beach City Councilwoman Nanette Barragán and state Sen. Isadore Hall will attend two separate events in their district Tuesday protesting Trump’s arrival to the state for Wednesday’s GOP primary debate,” Roll Call noted. “Both Hall and Barragán are competing in a Democratic primary in California’s 44th District to replace Rep. Janice Hahn,” the outgoing Democrat who opted this year to run for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

What’s more, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom himself jumped into the fray, unleashing an animated video designed to deride Trump’s stance on immigration and, by implication, pump up Newsom’s own. “Mocking Trump as ‘Mr. Make America Great Again’ — the theme of the New York real estate magnate’s campaign — Newsom criticized Trump’s demand that the United States build a wall along the southern border, deport 11 million or so immigrants here without proper papers, and restrict citizenship rights of children of those in the country illegally,” the Los Angeles Times observed. “‘Trump’s plan will be a disaster and I’ll debate that at any time,’ Newsom said.”

The move underscored how Newsom, off to what the New York Times called an “early start” to his own political campaign, saw Trump as an opportunity to hit out at California Republicans. According to the Times, “other Democrats are likely to imitate his strategy of making Mr. Trump the face of the Republican Party. Mr. Newsom has been critical of Mr. Trump since he announced his presidential run, warning in July that Mr. Trump’s remarks about immigrants are dangerous.”

But the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll suggested Democrats would be advised not to push too hard in trying to reduce Trump’s California support to immigration. Discontent with Sacramento has extended throughout a host of other economic and policy issues as well, creating opposition that will remain fierce even with Trump and his rhetoric out of the picture. “Supporters of Trump and Carson had a far bleaker notion of California than other Republicans; only 5 percent of Trump backers and 8 percent of Carson voters said the state was headed in the right direction. Among supporters of other candidates, 18 percent said the state was going in the right direction,” according to the Times. 

Emerging statistics have revealed that California’s extension of drivers licenses to unlawful immigrants aroused unexpected demand — with no end in sight.

“While state officials expected 1.4 million undocumented immigrants to apply for licenses in the first three years, in the first six months since the law has been enacted more than 1.1 million undocumented immigrants have so far taken the written test, and another 436,000 have taken the driving test,” reported Fox News Latino.

“During the first six months that the Safe Driver and Responsibility Act — or AB 60 — went into effect, the Department of Motor Vehicles saw more than 600,000 applications from undocumented immigrants,” the Los Angeles Daily News observed. DMV officials announced that, in the first half of the year, some 397,000 licenses have been issued to unlawfully present immigrants — half the total of roughly 759,000 licenses issued, according to the Associated Press.

And according to officials, the robust numbers were only the beginning. “An estimated 1.5 million applications from undocumented immigrants are expected to be processed over the next three years,” the Daily News confirmed.

Partial identification

The rules for the special licenses were crafted to strike what seemed to be an inviting compromise. “The new license is marked differently than those issued to other drivers in the state and is not considered a valid form of federal identification, for example, to board an airplane,” AP added. “Applicants must pass driving tests and show proof of residency and identity” — the same documents as lawful immigrants and citizens, as KCRA noted.

But the license’s limited use as a form of identification underscored how California’s effort to bring unlawful immigrants out of the shadows plunged them into a different kind of gray area. In addition to what has often proven to be a steep learning curve, with many struggling to pass the written exam, applicants have had to take “a leap of faith that government officials won’t use immigration status against an applicant,” KCRA pointed out.

That teed up the kind of potential conflict playing out now between California’s so-called “sanctuary cities” and its Congressional delegation. As National Journal reported, Sen. Dianne Feinstein “has pledged to make a legislative push” to rein in Californian leniency. In one sign of the rising stakes, National Journal continued, “Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has come out in support of limiting the power of officials in sanctuary cities.”

Looking for evidence

Nevertheless, support for the licenses appeared to be strong enough to sustain the program. As activist organizations that pushed for the changes had noted, until 1994, “immigrants had access to a driver’s license in California, regardless of immigration status,” according to Drive CA, one such group. In that sense, AB 60 marked a return to the old status quo.

On the other hand, California’s population of illegal immigrants rose profoundly over the ensuing decades. Activists have used that fact to advance the argument that too many unlicensed immigrants on the roads present a peril to all drivers. 

“Supporters of the law say giving licenses to people regardless of their immigration status makes the roads safer for everyone,” as AP recalled. Authorized drivers, the logic ran, would be more likely to operate well-maintained cars, and to obey traffic laws without trying to evade detection. But the debate over whether the program made roads safer has had to wait for more data. As Fox News Latino noted, “the California Department of Insurance does not have data available on whether the boom in new license-seekers has led to increased auto insurance sales, but anecdotal evidence does appear to show a slight uptick in people buying car insurance.” Californians will have to await additional information on how many licensed unlawful immigrants have been involved in vehicle collisions.

BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons

With gripping yet measured words, Jim Steinle — whose daughter was recently slain in San Francisco by an unlawful immigrant released under the city’s rules — urged Congress to quickly pass new reforms.

“While Steinle was careful to acknowledge that the nation’s immigration laws were complicated, he made it clear that his family wants to see legislation ‘to take these undocumented immigrant felons off our streets for good,” Politico reported.

“Unfortunately, due to disjointed laws and basic incompetence on many levels, the U.S. has suffered a self-inflicted wound in the murder of our daughter by the hand of a person that should have never been on the streets in this country. We would be proud to see Kate’s name associated with some of this new legislation,” he said.

Steinle wasn’t alone on Capitol Hill. According to the Associated Press, he “testified alongside several other relatives of people allegedly killed by immigrants living in the country illegally.” As their testimony drew swift headlines, members of Congress hastened to show their responsiveness to the brewing controversy. “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle offered bills to crack down on the hundreds of ‘sanctuary’ communities like San Francisco and Santa Clara County that have openly defied federal immigration enforcement, while officials in those communities vowed more cooperation,” the San Jose Mercury News noted.

Bipartisan reactions

Not every player involved in the debate over illegal immigration shifted toward a more hawkish stance, however. Activists, predictably, urged caution. In a letter to members of Congress obtained by Politico, a coalition of groups including the National Immigration Law Center and United We Dream warned against sweeping changes to the current patchwork regime.

“Good policies are made over time, by examining our shared values and opinions, and by working toward equality and justice for all people. They are not made based on a single, tragic incident or by taking the actions of one individual to justify a policy that criminalizes an entire community,” they wrote.

Some free-market groups issued warnings of their own, discouraging lawmakers from buying in to rhetoric that presents unlawful immigrants as especially prone to break other laws. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center, for instance, which compared crime statistics to rates of unauthorized immigration, drew favorable notice in a Wall Street Journal editorial by Manhattan Institute scholar Jason Riley.

Between 1990 and 2013, Riley noted, although the population of illegal immigrants “more than tripled” to over 11 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%,” according to the study — a figure “which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”

High-stakes legislation

Sacramento Democrats have advanced a piece of legislation, authored by State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, that would grant access to Affordable Care Act benefits to unlawful immigrants. SB4, which would open up Medi-Cal enrollment, cleared the Assembly Health Committee on a party line vote, drawing a few dozen opponents at the bill’s hearing.

According to Lara’s website, some “three to four million people in the state will remain uninsured in spite of ACA, and almost a million of those will be undocumented residents eligible for coverage, save for their legal status.”

Last month, the state Senate voted to clear the bill, also known as the Health For All Act, with Lara describing the scheme as “a transformational and decisive step forward on the path to achieving health for all,” according to MSNBC. But Gov. Jerry Brown’s office already intervened once to scale back Democrats’ ambitions.

“The initial bill, which would have allowed all undocumented immigrants to sign up via Medi-Cal, was pared down after it was estimated to cost up to $740 million a year, a price tag Brown said was unacceptable. The governor has not indicated whether or not he’ll sign off on the latest legislation.”

Nevertheless, as Politico reported, Brown did sign off on spending “millions in state dollars to provide health care to undocumented children, mirroring similar efforts in a handful of other liberal states.”

Covered California, the state-run health care exchange, has become an Obamacare keystone, although its second-year enrollment numbers have fallen short of goals. Continued tension between Gov. Brown and state Democrats on the costs of expanding coverage could pose problems for the party on a national level.  “Republicans never trusted Democrats’ repeated assurances while the law was being drafted that the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t cover undocumented immigrants,” Politico noted. “That built up to Rep. Joe Wilson’s infamous ‘You lie!’ moment, when the South Carolina Republican interrupted President Barack Obama’s 2009 health care address to Congress.”

Walking the line

In some parts of the state, strategies for expanding benefits have had to adapt to changing political circumstances. Although state Democrats at the municipal level have long adopted a generous attitude, a new expansion of health funding stopped short of including the unlawfully present.

The San Francisco Department of Health was recently put in charge of administering a new effort under its so-called City Option initiative, which makes it easier for workers to buy insurance through Covered California. Previously, beneficiaries were eligible for reimbursements supplied by the city, whereas, under the new effort, San Francisco will directly subsidize purchases made through the state exchange. “The new subsidies will not benefit immigrants living in San Francisco who are in the U.S. illegally,” however, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

As the Chronicle added, illegally present immigrants have already received some favor under municipal law: “They are still eligible to receive health care services through the city’s Healthy San Francisco program.”

In the city, illegal immigration has become a freshly charged issue in the wake of a shooting that made national news, eliciting comments from Republican presidential candidates. While Donald Trump tied the killing to the city’s so-called “sanctuary” status, Jeb Bush, on a recent visit reported by the Los Angeles Times, said it was inappropriate to “prey on that fear,” suggesting “it’s not a winning message either.”

If San Francisco’s decision not to extend the new subsidy to unlawful immigrants reflected unease on the left, Bush’s remarks suggested something similar on the right. “I think candidates ought to lay out proposals to solve problems rather than basically prey on legitimate fears and concerns,” he said, trying to strike a moderate tone.

That’s why he has a unique niche in American journalism: He’s a liberal who relentlessly argues against tolerating illegal immigration or “comprehensive immigration reform” on the grounds that the last thing a nation beset by income inequality needs is a flood of inexpensive, low-skilled laborers.

This has led him to focus on House Republican leaders’ interest in “comprehensive immigration reform.” Here’s an example excoriating House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as a secret champion of amnesty.

Overnight lots of folks began crediting Kaus for helping obscure econ prof Dave Brat beat Cantor on Tuesday in a Virgina GOP congressional primary and for suggesting it was a real possibility when the conventional wisdom was that the powerful Cantor would cruise to a lopsided win. CNN’s Jake Tapper called him “Kaustrodamus.”

Brat against crony capitalism and bailouts

Kaus likes Brat for his economic populism.

“Notes: 1) This is a pitch — against a ‘low wage agenda’ and ‘crony corporate lobby’ — that can appeal to Democrats as well as Republicans. Maybe partisanship will eventually be transcended, not at the top, with David Brooks, Gloria Borger and Jon Huntsman imposing a Beltway consensus they hammer out at an Atlantic panel, but at the bottom, where less sleek figures like Brat, Phyllis Schlafly and Jeff Sessions, can make common cause with Democratic workers who’ve gotten the short end of previous top-down triumphs such as global trade and Reagan’s 1986 amnesty, as well as of ineluctable technological trends like automation. 2) Perhaps not coincidentally, Democrats can vote in the Cantor vs. Brat primary. …

“Backfill: See also this earlier Brat release, which expands the potentially bipartisan anti-corporate agenda to other issues – like spending, debt and insider trading.”

Will Brat’s stunning victory presage a national populist uprising?

The National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who seems liberated since he stopped being AP’s Washington D.C. bureau chief, thinks it’s possible.

One way or the other, Cantor’s loss shows there’s no such thing as a safe House seat anymore.