Speaker 1: Yesterday on the show, I felt a little ambivalent to
Speaker 1: flip floppy. I was reading through a piece about what
Speaker 1: a Trump administration could do to impact California and specifically
Speaker 1: California housing, and I sort of came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that there's not necessarily a ton that Trump could do.
Speaker 1: There's certain things, maybe, but there's just not a lot
Speaker 1: through executive action that Trump could do that's going to
Speaker 1: counteract the layers and layers of state law and state
Speaker 1: regulation that make it difficult for builders to build. Clearly,
Speaker 1: housing affordability as a priority for the administration, but what
Speaker 1: the federal government can do to pierce all these layers
Speaker 1: of California law, I'm not exactly sure. However, another area
Speaker 1: of California life, very important for us in the San
Speaker 1: Joaquin Valley is agriculture, and there is more that Trump
Speaker 1: could potentially do to benefit California farmers. All of you
Speaker 1: listening to this from Vicelia up through Modesto. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of important stuff that a Trump administration could do
Speaker 1: with agriculture and specifically with water. So this actually relates
Speaker 1: to so I think it's always good to do this
Speaker 1: on a semi regular basis, just to give a summary
Speaker 1: of California water and kind of how it works. So
Speaker 1: water in California, the reason why we are able to
Speaker 1: have water is because of rivers and then pumping the
Speaker 1: water from the rivers down south from the Bay area
Speaker 1: south through a series of man constructed waterway systems that
Speaker 1: help bring agricultural water for our fields in the San
Speaker 1: Joaquin Valley and which helped transform the San Laquin Valley
Speaker 1: fortify the San Joaquin Valley into the greatest food production
Speaker 1: engine the world has ever known, as well as pumping
Speaker 1: water down so that people who live in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: can shower and get water from their sink and water
Speaker 1: to drink at the tap, and all of that even
Speaker 1: if they live somewhere like Palm Springs or Palm Desert
Speaker 1: or something. So water flows out of the mountains into
Speaker 1: the San Joaquin River for most of us here in
Speaker 1: San Quae Valley, and the Sacramento River for folks up
Speaker 1: north in the Sacramento Valley. Water from the Sacramento and
Speaker 1: San Joaquin Rivers comes to meet and then it branches
Speaker 1: off into a bunch of gazillion little tributaries that flow
Speaker 1: out into the San Francisco Bay. The series of little
Speaker 1: tributaries that flow out into the San Francisco Bay are
Speaker 1: called the delta. It's called a delta from the Greek
Speaker 1: letter delta, which is shaped kind of like a triangle.
Speaker 1: So a river delta is where the river sort of
Speaker 1: splits into a bunch of little branching off tributaries as
Speaker 1: it flows into the ocean. The Nile River has a delta,
Speaker 1: for example, so it kind of looks it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a triangle from one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: So at the delta. Instead of the water all just
Speaker 1: flowing off into the ocean, we take that water and
Speaker 1: we pump it south. We pump it south into two
Speaker 1: one of two different Now, now much of it does, yes,
Speaker 1: just flow out into the ocean, but much of it
Speaker 1: we take and we pump south into one of two
Speaker 1: different man made water transport canal systems. The one is
Speaker 1: the California Water System. The California Water System, as you
Speaker 1: can tell by its name, is managed by state agencies
Speaker 1: of the state of California. It takes this water and
Speaker 1: largely what this water is used for is for southern
Speaker 1: California residential use. And there are kind of three uses
Speaker 1: that you can have for water. There's normal like residential use,
Speaker 1: so water that is in the tap and in your
Speaker 1: toilet and in your shower and et cetera. There's agricultural use.
Speaker 1: And then lastly there is quote environmental use i e.
Speaker 1: Non use, letting the water just flow into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Letting the water flow into the ocean. Because the idea
Speaker 1: is the more water that exists in our waterways in
Speaker 1: the Sacramento River, in the San Juaquin River, in the Delta,
Speaker 1: the more this benefits the fishies. Okay, and the fish
Speaker 1: populations in the Sacramento San Juaquin rivers and the Delta,
Speaker 1: many of them are protected by layers of either the
Speaker 1: Federal or the California and Endangered Species Act, and this
Speaker 1: has been the source spot for water anyway. So the
Speaker 1: water from the Delta gets pumped south either in the
Speaker 1: California Water System, which is usually for resident which is
Speaker 1: much of which is used for residential water in southern California.
Speaker 1: And then there's another waterway system that starts at the
Speaker 1: Delta and water gets pumped south, which is the Central
Speaker 1: Valley Water System. This water system was built during World
Speaker 1: War Two by the federal government and is to this
Speaker 1: day controlled operated by the federal government by various federal agencies.
Speaker 1: This water system, its chief use is water for agriculture
Speaker 1: in San Jaquin Valley. Now that's sort of the basics
Speaker 1: of water in California, and the big difficulty there's been
Speaker 1: difficulties with water in a number of respects. One is
Speaker 1: how much water are we diverting for environmental purposes i e.
Speaker 1: Helping keep salmon and delta smelt and other fishy species
Speaker 1: alive versus residential and agriculture use. So the idea being, well,
Speaker 1: there's a more or less finite supply of water in
Speaker 1: any given year, and the amount of water you have
Speaker 1: is determined by how much rain you had, how much
Speaker 1: snowmelt you have, et cetera. You have this finite amount
Speaker 1: of water, how much is going towards environmental use i eat.
Speaker 1: Not going to be used by humans for anything, either
Speaker 1: residential use or agricultural use. Secondly, we've had in California
Speaker 1: the problems of water storage. Yes, there are some years
Speaker 1: that are more dry where we don't have as much
Speaker 1: snow melt, we don't have as much rain, we don't
Speaker 1: have as much water. If we were able to store
Speaker 1: our water for a non rainy day, then maybe we
Speaker 1: and be so much at the mercy of year to
Speaker 1: year this season fluctuations in precipitation levels. California hasn't wanted
Speaker 1: to build any more water storage in decades because again,
Speaker 1: California environmental law makes it so difficult to do. Any
Speaker 1: attempt to build some kind of water storage system or
Speaker 1: damming is met with furious environmental objections because dams usually
Speaker 1: hurt the fishies. And this is also the problem, is
Speaker 1: that when we do have a really good year, we're
Speaker 1: not able to capture all the water from the good year.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is just beyond our capacity to
Speaker 1: capture and save. So we are wasting this opportunity to
Speaker 1: capture water that we could use again for a non
Speaker 1: rainy day. Now, in the first Trump administration, there were
Speaker 1: it was it was I heard it characterized this way
Speaker 1: by sort of Devin Nunez, who was a congressman at
Speaker 1: the time. And now Nunez has been a close Trump
Speaker 1: confidante in the year since Trump left office. Trump made
Speaker 1: Devin Nunez the CEO of Truth Social and I guess
Speaker 1: I would not be shocked if Nunez winds up getting
Speaker 1: some kind of prominent role in the Trump forty seven
Speaker 1: administration as a result. I mean, he's managed to stay
Speaker 1: very tight with Donald Trump. Nunez characterized it. I remember
Speaker 1: I went to some kind of water related event in
Speaker 1: I think it was down into Larry sometime in like
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen twenty nineteen that Trump had introduced the first
Speaker 1: set of either federal or state regulations that had actually
Speaker 1: resulted in more water delivery to farmers rather than le
Speaker 1: us in forty years. So basically what Trump had done
Speaker 1: is the Obama era rules for water allocation, what is
Speaker 1: going to ag versus what is going towards environmental purposes
Speaker 1: were very inflexible and draconian towards farmers. Environmental was getting
Speaker 1: a lot, farmers were not, and it was just under
Speaker 1: you know, it was based on federal regulatory agencies and
Speaker 1: environmental agencies looking at the state of different species that
Speaker 1: lived within the Central Valley System's waterways and in the delta,
Speaker 1: and then assessing for a whole year basically that only
Speaker 1: this much water will be pumped through the Central Valley
Speaker 1: System for farmers. And it's based on this one assessment,
Speaker 1: and then you're locked into that assents basically for a
Speaker 1: full year, and farmers were getting short shrift. They just
Speaker 1: were not getting much allocated to them. When Trump came
Speaker 1: into office, he put in place regulations that actually, at
Speaker 1: least it was characterized to me, now, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if maybe this is just Republicans trying to put a
Speaker 1: nice spin on it, and actually it wasn't more politicized
Speaker 1: than this. But the messaging from Nunez et al. Was
Speaker 1: that agencies within the federal government were coming up with
Speaker 1: better and more scientifically grounded guidelines for water pumping, and
Speaker 1: the idea being well instead of just having one set
Speaker 1: amount that was going to be allocated for the full year,
Speaker 1: for the full time frame, instead, federal agencies would engage
Speaker 1: in continual, regular assessments of the health of different species
Speaker 1: within California waterways and would have the flexibility to pump
Speaker 1: more or less depending on how things were going, which
Speaker 1: was going to result in more water going down for farmers.
Speaker 1: So instead of an inflexible, draconian standard that the Obama
Speaker 1: administration had, the Trump administration was basically giving more flexibility. Now,
Speaker 1: this was met with furious objection by the incoming Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom administration. Who proceeded to sue the federal government over this.
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom taking the posture that he represents the fishies
Speaker 1: of California, not the farmers of California, or allegedly the
Speaker 1: fishies of Calumlifornia, and basically Newsome was sort of implacably opposed.
Speaker 1: He was just totally opposed to these Trump regulations. Now,
Speaker 1: when we return, we're going to talk through Dan Walter's
Speaker 1: piece in cal Matters and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what kinds of things Trump could do this second time around,
Speaker 1: how that relates to state government, etc. That is next
Speaker 1: on the John Girardi Show. Dan Walter's the longtime columnist
Speaker 1: for the Sacramento b He runs Calmatters dot org. That's
Speaker 1: his outlet now and he's still, I think the most interesting,
Speaker 1: incisive commentator on California politics that we have. And he's
Speaker 1: got a great piece you can find out my Twitter page,
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com, slash Fresnojohnny at Fresnojohnny basically talking about
Speaker 1: California water, California agriculture and what a Trump administration could
Speaker 1: do for it. He writes there are three policy issues
Speaker 1: particularly important to California's farmers that Trump wants to change.
Speaker 1: If he does what he has promised one one might
Speaker 1: benefit the industry and two might damage it. The beneficial
Speaker 1: change is what the California Farm Bureau President Shannon Douglas,
Speaker 1: in a post election statement, calls securing a sustainable water supply.
Speaker 1: For years, state officials have been trying, either through regulatory
Speaker 1: decrees or negotiations, to reduce the amount of water san
Speaker 1: Juquin Valley farmers take from the San Juquin River and
Speaker 1: its tributaries to enhance flows through the Sacramento San Juan Delta,
Speaker 1: thus improving its water quality to support fish and other wildlife.
Speaker 1: So they're mad. The state officials are mad that farmers
Speaker 1: want water from the San Juquin River because they think
Speaker 1: that hurts the fishies downstream in the Delta. That's the rub.
Speaker 1: Farmers are miffed that, after two wet winters filled the
Speaker 1: state's reservoirs, state Federal Water Manager still limited agricultural deliveries
Speaker 1: a few days because the state views farming as a
Speaker 1: blight upon the face of California. Maybe I might rant
Speaker 1: about this later. A few days before the election, the
Speaker 1: State Water Resources Control Board issued the latest version of
Speaker 1: its water quality plan, but The supposed compromise is being
Speaker 1: critiqued by both farmers who want to minimize restrictions and
Speaker 1: environmentalists who demand a crackdown on water diversions. Trump stepped
Speaker 1: into the issue during his first presidency, directing federal water
Speaker 1: regulators to increase agricultural supplies, and is likely to do
Speaker 1: so again. Just before the election, Trump described California water
Speaker 1: policy in all caps in all capital letters on his
Speaker 1: Truth social website as quote insane insane policy decisions, which
Speaker 1: he defined as the ridiculously re routing of millions of
Speaker 1: gallons of water a day from the North out of
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean rather than using it free of charge
Speaker 1: for the towns, cities, and farms dot it all throughout California.
Speaker 1: I can't really do a very good Trump, I'll just
Speaker 1: keep it going. The two pending issues that could so Basically,
Speaker 1: Trump said, California has insane policy decisions that ridiculously re
Speaker 1: route millions of gallons of water a day from the
Speaker 1: north out of the Pacific Ocean rather than using it
Speaker 1: free of charge for the town, cities, and farms dotted
Speaker 1: all throughout California. The two pending issues that could backfire
Speaker 1: on farmers who voted for Trump. So okay, So that's
Speaker 1: the positive. Is that Trump put in place these beneficial
Speaker 1: regulations for more water allocation for farmers the first time.
Speaker 1: He'll likely do it again. Trump clearly gets this issue.
Speaker 1: He clearly gets how ridiculous it is that we're just
Speaker 1: letting tons and tons of water dump out into the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean completely uselessly, while we have farms that are
Speaker 1: dying on the vine out Walters is China both sides
Speaker 1: of it, he says. The two penning issues that could
Speaker 1: backfire on farmers who voted for Trump are imposing tariffs
Speaker 1: on imports from China, which could invite retaliatory tariffs on
Speaker 1: agricultural exports, and deporting undocumented immigrants, who comprise at least
Speaker 1: half of the state's agricultural workers. Despite objections from California's
Speaker 1: Republican congressional delegation, Trump hit China with tariffs during his
Speaker 1: first term, and China retaliated with import tariffs that target
Speaker 1: US agriculture. According to a report from the University of
Speaker 1: California's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, for almans and pistachios,
Speaker 1: the tariffs did not reduce the volume of uxx US
Speaker 1: exports to China, the report continued. However, the trade war
Speaker 1: diminished california exports of walnuts, wine, oranges, and table grapes.
Speaker 1: Cracking down on undocumented immigrants has been a bedrock issue
Speaker 1: for Trump throughout his political career, and he's promised to
Speaker 1: make good on his deportation pledge immediately after taking office.
Speaker 1: For a variet reasons, the state's farmers have had difficulty
Speaker 1: finding enough workers to till and harvest their crops in
Speaker 1: recent years. Immigration restrictions, California's high living costs in the
Speaker 1: creation of new factory jobs in Mexico are among the reasons.
Speaker 1: California has as many as two million undocumented residents. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I'd have to think it's more than that, many of
Speaker 1: whom work in industries ranging from construction to agriculture. The
Speaker 1: full blown roundup Trump promises would have an immense economic
Speaker 1: effect on the state, with agriculture arguably the most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: When Central Valley farmers were enthusiastically backing a second term
Speaker 1: for Trump, they undoubtedly were hoping for relief from water restrictions,
Speaker 1: Yet that could be the smallest impact Trump two point
Speaker 1: zero may have on their industry. So this is Walter's
Speaker 1: kind of given both sides of it, which I think
Speaker 1: is fair. Personally, on the labor shortage front, I sort
Speaker 1: of hate. I sort of think I'm going through puberty
Speaker 1: on the radio. I sort of think that all of
Speaker 1: the arguments that we need to keep illegal immigrants here
Speaker 1: because otherwise who will pick our grapes? Honestly, it kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of Sparta in sort of the four
Speaker 1: hundred 's BC. Sparta was a horrifically unjust society that
Speaker 1: was built on the backs of slavery of the Helots.
Speaker 1: So basically, this city nearby Sparta that Sparta conquered, they
Speaker 1: made all of its residents and into slaves. Slaves, so
Speaker 1: it was like this whole slave society whose only role
Speaker 1: was to exist as a prop for Sparta. The Helots
Speaker 1: were beyond second class citizens. They were a slave population
Speaker 1: who were sort of the bedrock of this two stratosphered society.
Speaker 1: Now it's not that bad, but the idea that we say,
Speaker 1: the idea that we're just comfortable saying, oh, we need
Speaker 1: to keep a legal immigration because otherwise who will do
Speaker 1: all these crappy jobs. Well, boy, that's pretty classist, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty an egalitarian that we just leave all of
Speaker 1: our most difficult or dangerous or laborious jobs for people
Speaker 1: who are here in a perilous legal state, whom we
Speaker 1: can get away with paying dirt cheap wages and you
Speaker 1: know whatever, because they're not even really supposed to be here.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I don't like this attitude that,
Speaker 1: you know, these are the only kinds of people who
Speaker 1: can do this, and that this is somehow adjust set up. Secondly,
Speaker 1: I also just think realistically, there's gonna be enough people
Speaker 1: to pick. Okay, economic incentives are there. Farming is still
Speaker 1: a big business. They're going to find the people they
Speaker 1: need to pick stuff. Trump is not going to be
Speaker 1: able to deport all, you know, twenty million whatever it
Speaker 1: is illegal aliens who are here. Clearly there's going to
Speaker 1: be some prioritization that has to happen, and it's probably
Speaker 1: not going to start with guys who are busy productively working.
Speaker 1: It's probably gonna start with people who've committed crimes here,
Speaker 1: people who recently came here illegally, et cetera. I just
Speaker 1: don't think that the impact on the labor market for
Speaker 1: agriculture is going to be so profound, so immediately, I
Speaker 1: think water is the lifeblood of all of this. And
Speaker 1: if Trump can actually and the problem is, can Trump
Speaker 1: pierced through the fact that California could no could veto
Speaker 1: his efforts effectively through litigation. California just seems Newsome has signaled, Yep,
Speaker 1: we are going to be back in full on resistance mode.
Speaker 1: We don't want to comply or go along with absolutely
Speaker 1: one single dogone thing that the Trump administration wants to do.
Speaker 1: If he and Rob Bonta continue to take that posture,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I don't know that Trump's Even
Speaker 1: if Trump does put into place positive regulations to deliver
Speaker 1: more water, will it help you know? Will will it
Speaker 1: actually be effective at delivering more water? I guess we'll
Speaker 1: wait and see when we return. When the executive can't
Speaker 1: really be the executive an extensive thought on the Governor
Speaker 1: of California and the Office of the Presidency of the
Speaker 1: United States next on John Girardi Show. This is going
Speaker 1: to be a bit of an extended ramble, and it's
Speaker 1: about the executive branch, the executive branch of the federal
Speaker 1: government and the executive branch of the State of California.
Speaker 1: Over time, the executive spreads and spreads and spreads its power,
Speaker 1: and I think over the course of history, some of
Speaker 1: that is sort of a natural progression. Over time, the
Speaker 1: government starts regulating more and more things, and it has
Speaker 1: to task the actual act of regulating or enforcing the
Speaker 1: regulations to somebody, and they give that task to the executive.
Speaker 1: And the executive can't do it all by himself. He's
Speaker 1: just one man who lives at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue
Speaker 1: or at the governor's residence in Sacramento or wherever. And
Speaker 1: so executive agencies get formed more and more and more
Speaker 1: and more executive officials who exist to enact the will
Speaker 1: of the president. And there's always been this sense of, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we're creating these bureaucratic agencies, and they begin to take
Speaker 1: on a kind of life and a characteristic of their own.
Speaker 1: Because not everyone leaves the minute a new executive comes in.
Speaker 1: People tend to have skills that are useful for that
Speaker 1: agency as it continues onward, and you know, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: leaves and Joe Biden comes in, and some people still
Speaker 1: stay arnold. You know, Gray Davis gets recalled and Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger comes in, and it's seemed that there's some kind
Speaker 1: of benefit to some kind of ongoing continuity, that not
Speaker 1: everything every single executive agency does is totally a reflection
Speaker 1: of the changing political sentiment of the population, and that
Speaker 1: people can still be in that executive agency, still doing
Speaker 1: work without it violating the will of the people. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem is when that doesn't happen all the time.
Speaker 1: We've sort of accepted this, not this fiction, but we've
Speaker 1: accepted this concept largely throughout the federal government. Okay, An,
Speaker 1: your rank and file FBI agent working at the FBI
Speaker 1: field office in I don't know, Pierre, South Dakota. He
Speaker 1: doesn't lose his job now because Donald Trump was elected
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden is going out of office. Yes, he
Speaker 1: is a federal executive brand NCH official. Yes, his authority
Speaker 1: is only an extension of the President's authority. But we
Speaker 1: don't fire him. We keep him in office, and we
Speaker 1: think that's pretty reasonable. Your rank and file FBI officer
Speaker 1: is not setting policy for the FBI. He's not deciding
Speaker 1: who or how to enforce the law. He's just he's
Speaker 1: at the end of the line, taking orders in a
Speaker 1: fairly a political fashion, dealing with fairly a political nuts
Speaker 1: in Bolt's federal criminal law enforcement. And we think that's okay.
Speaker 1: But as we get higher and higher up, the divide
Speaker 1: starts to happen at the level of director of the FBI,
Speaker 1: where we start to realize, hey, the FBI has been
Speaker 1: pretty darn politicized, and FBI directors, by the way, that
Speaker 1: the idea that James Comy when he was director of
Speaker 1: the FBI, that he was overly politicized not the first
Speaker 1: time that of the FBI has been wildly over politicized
Speaker 1: and viewed his role as a little fief dum unto himself.
Speaker 1: J Edgar who I mean, that's why j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: was famous, notorious, infamous because of his meddling and all
Speaker 1: kinds of political things. And now there is a sense
Speaker 1: in which, however, federal executive agencies, Yes, they are supposed
Speaker 1: to be responsive to the president. They're supposed to do
Speaker 1: what the president wants. But there's a limit, right, the
Speaker 1: limit being the parameters of the law. And the parameters
Speaker 1: and that parameter is simply the law the FBI is
Speaker 1: supposed to enforce. The law on behalf of the president.
Speaker 1: They can't do stuff that's just purely self serving to
Speaker 1: the president, and you get problems when that line gets blurred.
Speaker 1: Lyndon Johnson using the FBI to spy on his political
Speaker 1: foes or you know what have you? I think Johnson
Speaker 1: used the FBI to do that. I have to go back.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of presidents who did wildly abusive
Speaker 1: things with the FBI. Now, so we've sort of accepted
Speaker 1: that some people should sort of stay on in their
Speaker 1: executive branch roles even when an executive leaves. But the
Speaker 1: problems we saw in the Trump administration was that a
Speaker 1: huge percentage of the federal workforce, a huge percentage of
Speaker 1: the federal bureaucracy apparatus, was staffed by people who hated
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and who subverted the policy things he wanted
Speaker 1: to get done, slow rolled, it didn't work, put poison
Speaker 1: pill regulation into otherwise good regulations, actively undermined him. So
Speaker 1: that's a problem. The bureaucracy should not be fighting against
Speaker 1: the president. The UH. There's a great tweet on this
Speaker 1: from Michael Brennan Doherty. He's criticizing these liberal commentators who
Speaker 1: are so upset that Trump wants to put quote loyalists
Speaker 1: in his various executive branch positions, when it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course he should put loyalists in executive branch positions.
Speaker 1: He's the executive. All executive branch officials are his. Are
Speaker 1: there to put in place his policies. He can't have
Speaker 1: executive branch officials who disagree with his policies. It's undemocratic
Speaker 1: to do so. So there's this guy Tom Nichols, used
Speaker 1: to be a conservative commentator and beca this heavily anti
Speaker 1: Trump guy who writes, if you want to subvert a democracy,
Speaker 1: the first three institutions you try to capture with loyalists
Speaker 1: are the military, the justice system, and the intelligence community.
Speaker 1: Trump is on the offensive against all three, to which
Speaker 1: Michael Brendan Doherty writes for National Review wrote, if there
Speaker 1: is anything our founders wanted for us, it was a
Speaker 1: military and an intelligence community that would resist the elected executive.
Speaker 1: And he's right Doherty's pointing out how absurd this is.
Speaker 1: Of course, the founding fathers did not want the military
Speaker 1: to be opposing the president or telling the president no,
Speaker 1: or the intelligence community to be actively spying on and
Speaker 1: acting against the president. No, of course not. That is
Speaker 1: the inversion of what democracy is supposed to be. Like
Speaker 1: I see these, like without blinking, these liberal stories coming
Speaker 1: out about like, oh, there will be no check within
Speaker 1: the executive branch on Trump's power. There's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be a check on the Trump's power in the executive branch.
Speaker 1: The only check on Trump's power in the executive branch
Speaker 1: is if Trump tells someone to do something that is flatly,
Speaker 1: clearly obviously illegal, and then that person should resign. That's
Speaker 1: the only check. If it even is a check within
Speaker 1: the executive branch. The check on the president's power is
Speaker 1: from the other branches of government, the judiciary and the
Speaker 1: legislative branches of government. That's why the framers of the
Speaker 1: Constitution said, hey, we're only going to have a declaration
Speaker 1: of war if Congress votes for it, specifically, if the
Speaker 1: House votes for it. I mean, that was the safeguard
Speaker 1: so that the president can't just use the militarrea has
Speaker 1: his own crazy toy. That's the check on presidential power.
Speaker 1: With regards to the military, a president using the military
Speaker 1: to fight a war without congressional approval is against the law.
Speaker 1: That's the check. Now, this caused me to think a
Speaker 1: little bit about California, and you know, I'll save it
Speaker 1: for a final segment when we return. Even if Republicans
Speaker 1: elected a good governor of California, how much could he
Speaker 1: or she really do next? On The John Girardi Show,
Speaker 1: the thing I've been wondering. I've had a couple of
Speaker 1: segments on this show over the last two weeks here
Speaker 1: where I've been sort of speculating about what do these
Speaker 1: election results mean for the future of California? And I
Speaker 1: honestly can see, for the first time in gosh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, almost the first time in my adult life,
Speaker 1: the first time post Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think I could
Speaker 1: actually see a window, an avenue for a Republican to
Speaker 1: win the governor's race in California. I think I can
Speaker 1: see a path. I think Republicans would have to pick
Speaker 1: someone really good. I think they'd have to pick someone charismatic,
Speaker 1: well spoken, not easily labeled as a kook, someone relatable.
Speaker 1: I think the never ending cavalcade of white guys that
Speaker 1: you know, not that I believe in identity politics too much,
Speaker 1: but like politics is marketing, you're dealing with a populace
Speaker 1: that kind of is down with identity politics. And the
Speaker 1: fact is California has run just a never ending series
Speaker 1: of boring, nondescript white guys without much name, without either
Speaker 1: much name recognition or significance. The only exception to that
Speaker 1: being Larry Elder, who in the recall election also got
Speaker 1: his doors blown off. But other than Larry Elder, there
Speaker 1: was no nothing other than white guys. John Cox, Brian Dolly,
Speaker 1: all this white guy after white eyved white guy for
Speaker 1: these senator and governor's races, and none of them make
Speaker 1: it anywhere. So I think if you find a candidate,
Speaker 1: someone who is dynamic, someone who could maybe appeal to
Speaker 1: the emerging pro Trump Latino voter block that we saw
Speaker 1: gains for Trump among Latinos even in California, maybe there's
Speaker 1: someone who breaks the mold of the Orange County old
Speaker 1: white guy who could be an attractive candidate for governor.
Speaker 1: I think if someone could wrap him or herself in
Speaker 1: the mantle of Prop. Thirty six, that could be something
Speaker 1: really significant. There were several issues where California was voicing
Speaker 1: it's getting tired with really extreme liberal policies that you
Speaker 1: could see that in twenty twenty four elections. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing is, though, even if we elected a Republican governor,
Speaker 1: what could this person really do. I talked about this
Speaker 1: in the last segment about the administrative state. It's not
Speaker 1: like the governor could actually totally change the administrative state,
Speaker 1: and even more so in California. Like you look at
Speaker 1: the California Air Resources Board. The California Air Resources Board
Speaker 1: as a bunch of members who have multi year terms
Speaker 1: that are gonna outlast Gavin Newsome, and they have law
Speaker 1: enforcement power in California to regulate air quality stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know that a new governor could just totally fire
Speaker 1: them right away, and that's an extremely consequential thing. He
Speaker 1: could slowly, over time change it. But whether in four
Speaker 1: years he could undo what Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown
Speaker 1: have and the state legislature have done with the Air
Speaker 1: Resources Board over the last fourteen years, I find hard
Speaker 1: to believe. And that's the difficulty I see. No Republican
Speaker 1: governor of California is ever going to pass any legislation
Speaker 1: through the state legislature. No Republican governor of California is
Speaker 1: going to be able completely to bend the state to
Speaker 1: something approaching sanity. Certainly there's some things he or she
Speaker 1: will be able to do, but not all. And really,
Speaker 1: I think the power of a Republican governor in California
Speaker 1: would be the sort of bully pulpit that he or
Speaker 1: she would have to try to get ballot initiatives passed.
Speaker 1: I think that's the main thing, to get ballot initiatives
Speaker 1: qualified and passed. We're only going to fix California if
Speaker 1: we fix SEQUA, the California in Environmental Quality Act. We're
Speaker 1: only going to fix California if we can insist on
Speaker 1: adequate criminal law enforcement. We're only going to fix California
Speaker 1: if we can have actual solutions to homelessness that are
Speaker 1: outside of the solutions that our state legislature wants to consider.
Speaker 1: And maybe there's a governor candidate out there who could
Speaker 1: message this. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that there is.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable, you know, I would love to see someone
Speaker 1: like Melissa Melendez, who's a Republican California state senator for
Speaker 1: several years, a Navy vet, if she would run for governor.
Speaker 1: I think there are people who could do it, and
Speaker 1: I think there's an actual avenue there that'll do it.
Speaker 1: John j Already show see next time on Power Talk