The Brief

Gov. Gavin Newsom will deliver his final State of the State address on Thursday, capping seven years in which he oversaw an aggressive expansion of health care and early childhood education access in California, pushed the state’s progressive climate policies and — in a break from his predecessors — made reducing homelessness and increasing housing supply top state priorities.

In his speech, Newsom is expected to unveil his budget priorities for the year ahead. The address comes as Newsom continues to burnish his national reputation ahead of a possible presidential run in 2028, and as the state faces ongoing fiscal threats from both rising state costs and the Trump administration.

Jason Elliott, a longtime adviser to Newsom who left the administration last year but remains close to the governor, said this year will probably be more about finishing what Newsom started than rolling out new initiatives.

“Gov. Newsom, in order to feel satisfied with the job he did as governor, will want to see universal transitional kindergarten extended to every single eligible kid in California. He will want to see child care slots expanded to the level that he promised and promoted. He will want to see homeless encampment grants and Proposition 1 bond funding for homeless mental health housing be administered quickly,” he said.

“There’s a lot that he talked about over the last eight years that is not quite done that needs to get finished,” Elliott said, “and I would expect that his focus would be very much on completing those multi-year commitments that he made.”

While there are critics aplenty, as Newsom begins his final year in the governor’s office, he has managed to maintain relatively cozy relationships with business and labor leaders as well as other powerful interest groups in Sacramento.

Advocates for education and child care, affordable housing, health care, and the business community all cited major policy accomplishments that they are hoping to protect in the face of growing costs and shrinking revenues.

Leading on early childhood education

Among the governor’s biggest achievements, said longtime early childhood education advocate Scott Moore, was the creation of a new school grade for all 4-year-olds, transitional kindergarten, as well as the expansion of child care and preschool slots for low-income families.

“Unquestionably, he is the early childhood champion governor,” said Moore, who advised both Newsom and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on state councils and is now CEO of Kidango, a nonprofit preschool organization that serves low-income families in the Bay Area.

The toddler room at Kidango Early Care & Education in San José on Dec. 11, 2024. (Juliana Yamada/KQED)Moore has worked in the field for a quarter-century and said the progress made just in the past few years has been staggering.

“Back then, we had about 50,000 or so children that got public-funded pre-K in the state of California. And now we have over 500,000. That’s a big difference. And most of that growth happened under Governor Newsom,” he said.

Health care expansion limited, holding the line on taxes

Health care advocates also give Newsom high marks for his aggressive expansion of coverage, including to immigrant communities. But they remain disappointed that last year — facing budget constraints and political pressure — Newsom and lawmakers moved to freeze new enrollments of undocumented adults in Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program.

Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, which works to ensure all Californians have access to quality, affordable health care, said Newsom has made universal coverage a priority since day one.

“The first executive order that he signed immediately after being sworn in was to establish the Office of the Surgeon General … That really showed that he understood the connection between the conditions that poor communities are facing and health outcomes,” she said. “He has continued to tackle what we consider the twin issues of the rising and unsustainable cost of health care, and getting to universal health coverage for all Californians.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a successful 2024 mental health ballot initiative at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego on March 19, 2023. (Adriana Heldiz/The San Diego Union-Tribune via AP Pool)Savage-Sangwan also gave Newsom high marks for establishing an Office of HealthCare Affordability in 2022. But as he heads into his final year, she hopes he will reconsider limiting Medi-Cal for undocumented adults — especially as consumers confront President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to both Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies.

“We’re hoping that this is gonna be a moment for the state of California to distinguish ourselves from what is happening at the national and federal levels,” she said. “We think that California has an opportunity to stand in contrast to that rather than bow down and continue that trajectory of taking health care from people.”

She urged Newsom to consider new revenue sources, something that the business community is staunchly opposed to and that Newsom has been generally unwilling to consider.

In fact, CalChamber CEO Jennifer Barrera said taxes are one area where Newsom and the business community have been in lockstep. This year, he has made clear his opposition to a proposed ballot measure being pushed by labor unions that would levy a one-time tax on billionaires.

“He has really drawn the line in the sand on tax policy. He has been the one who has been defending against tax increases for the past several years,” Barrera said.

Barrera also gave Newsom high marks for generally embracing fiscal restraint, for helping broker a huge deal between labor and business in 2024 related to labor protections and litigation, and for generally understanding the importance of the business community to the state’s economic health.

But there have been areas of sharp disagreement, Barrera noted, including around labor protections, environmental laws and oil and gas regulation.

“There’s always going to be those tough calls on some of these labor bills,” she said. “In the environment space, there was some legislation that we certainly would have preferred not be signed and are dealing with now.”

She cited laws limiting oil and gas operations and others requiring large companies to disclose climate emissions as among those challenges. One of the climate disclosure laws is on hold after a lawsuit by business groups.

Mixed reviews on housing, homelessness

Newsom also gets mixed reviews in one of his signature policy areas: housing and homelessness. Republican leaders in the state Legislature note that Newsom failed to deliver on his 2018 campaign promise to build 3.5 million new homes, and say it’s part of a larger pattern.

“Gov. Newsom has made big promises and launched endless new initiatives,” Assembly Republican Leader Heath Flora said in a prebuttal to Newsom’s speech. “But no matter what he says [today] Californians are paying more and getting less, because his policies keep driving up the cost of everyday life.”

California state Assemblymember Heath Flora in Sacramento on May 15, 2017 (Bert Johnson/KQED)But others say Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature made big strides in increasing housing production and tackling homelessness through policies that will continue to pay dividends after he leaves office. Newsom also used the bully pulpit to bring the issue front and center, said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which advocates for affordable housing.

Pearl noted that Newsom’s 2020 State of the State speech was entirely about housing and homelessness.

“With former governors, when they’d have a State of the State, we would look for anywhere where housing was mentioned,” he said. “I think more than anyone, he helped change the trajectory of the housing issue and made it a mainstream issue.”

Pearl said Newsom pushed unprecedented state investments in affordable housing by significantly increasing tax credits and other resources. He’s hopeful this year that the governor will support a proposed $10 billion affordable housing bond being considered by lawmakers.

As Newsom enters his final year and looks to a potential 2028 presidential run, those close to him know that the state’s shortcomings — and what Newsom did or didn’t do to address them — will be under a microscope.

Elliott, Newsom’s former adviser, said he believes the governor laid the groundwork over his two terms to fundamentally change the state’s trajectory, particularly around housing and homelessness.

“When you’ve got a problem that’s 40-plus years in the making, you don’t see overnight results. That’s frustrating to me. I know it’s frustrating for the governor. I know it’s frustrating to the average Californian,” he said. “What I’m saying is we’ve spent the last seven or eight years in this state putting the pieces in place to materially address all those problems.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”