Let’s start with Vice President Kamala Harris. She is finding that the job can be very hard on her politically and very limiting when voters don’t like her boss and her staff doesn’t like her. Then there’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who is fighting with a Democratic Party with an identity crisis and a wave of retirements from her caucus before what is likely to be a rough midterm election. We also can’t forget House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who isn’t exactly a model of courage after giving in to the Big Lie and making peace with his party’s extremists.
Even Xavier Becerra, a veteran politician from California whose star seemed to be on the rise, is having trouble making a name for himself as secretary of Health and Human Services. His performance on the job has been criticised by Democrats in the White House and experts in public health, which makes Becerra’s political future uncertain.
Still, a trip I took to do research for my series on the United States of California reminded me that the state still steers the country, even though its most visible leaders in Washington seem to be stuck in neutral right now.
I was working with a group of Ace Times videographers and photographers to get the next set of stories for our series, which looks at how our state affects the way the rest of the country makes decisions. California has always been a place where new ideas are born, and the Biden administration hasn’t changed that.
Dreams of California
In this series, which began last year, we’ve looked at how new policies in California have changed the rest of the country, sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
Our reporting has focused on everything from making it illegal for corporate boards to be made up of only white men to complicated carbon trading schemes to the state’s big plans to make Ronald Reagan’s dream of a return-free tax system a reality.
Reporting on these stories has helped us figure out how some of the most ambitious and new plans of the Biden administration could work in the real world.
In our most recent story, for example, we looked at how the small farmworker town of Huron in California’s Central Valley is making a plan for the country to switch to electric cars. This place was hard to get to for a long time. But the mayor had a plan to build a shadow transit system out of electric cars that people could use to get to work, the doctor’s office, or the store by calling a ride through an app.
Rich people are quick to buy cars that don’t put out any pollution. But putting them in communities with low incomes is a more difficult and urgent policy issue. The Biden administration has noticed that Huron is showing how it can be done.
As the Biden administration brings back California’s unique role in cleaning the air, it is also clear that the state has a big say in environmental and transportation policy. The Environmental Protection Administration is basically getting rid of a rule from the Trump administration that was meant to stop California from putting in place stricter rules for vehicle emissions than what Washington requires. The move shows that the Biden administration wants California to lead the way toward cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars and trucks for the whole country.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it clear how important it is to have these kinds of policies. As the world tries to figure out how to lessen its dependence on Russian fossil fuels, California is releasing new ideas that could help.
During our recent trip, we stopped by two refineries in the state that are giving up on crude oil to make diesel fuel out of food waste, soybean oil, and animal fat. The change was made possible by a California programme called the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which required fuel makers to make fuels that were better for the environment as time went on. Even though the switch to biofuels is controversial, with analysts and environmental groups warning that the state risks making as many problems as it solves, the programme is having a huge impact. It has caused refineries all over the country to change their ways of doing business. It has also caused industrial farms to change their ways of doing business as they try to figure out how to take advantage of California’s incentives.
Watch for our full report on all of that in the coming weeks. We will also soon publish a story about how a Silicon Valley billionaire’s plan to improve the country’s poorest neighbourhoods made some of the richest Americans a lot of money. And we’re even diving into another (surprisingly) controversial topic: the branding of olive oil.
We can’t wait to tell you the stories and hear what you think of them.