Hartmut R. Ziesak, lovingly known as “Hardy,” passed away peacefully on August 23, 2025, at the age of 86. Born on May 4, 1939, in Labonen, Germany, to Frida and Arthur Ziesak, Hardy’s early life was marked by immense hardship and resilience. Following the death of his father, the family fled the Soviet occupation, eventually immigrating to the United States in June of 1950 aboard the Queen Mary.

They settled in Richmond, Michigan, where Hardy spent his formative years. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, a decision that would lead him to Sacramento, California. It was there that Hardy achieved one of his proudest moments, becoming a U.S. citizen. It was also in Sacramento, at Arcade Baptist Church, that he met the love of his life, Jean. They were married on April 7, 1962, and soon after, they moved to Eureka, where they would build their life and family together.

Hardy embraced a variety of careers throughout his life, from his early days at Louisiana Pacific plywood mill to his retirement from HCAR. Yet, his true passion was his family. He and Jean welcomed their son, Matthew, in 1968, and their daughter, Tammi, in 1971. The family created a lifetime of cherished memories, from cross-country trips to Michigan to visit family, to camping adventures, and especially their time spent at Triumphant Life Camp (TLC), a place Hardy held dear to his heart.

A man of deep faith, Hardy was a long-time member of First Covenant Church of Eureka, where he treasured the fellowship and friendship of his community. He had a love for motorcycles, spending his earlier years tinkering on and riding everything from Harleys to Hondas. Later in life, he developed a passion for the San Francisco Giants, a love he shared with his wife, Jean. He rarely missed a game, often listening intently even when his eyes were closed.

Hardy is preceded in death by his beloved wife of 60 years, Jeanie; his parents, Frida and Arthur; his brothers Herbert, Dieter, and Manfred; his sister, Helgard; and his nephew, Jered.

He is survived by his children, Matthew (Lisa) and Tammi (Rod); his grandchildren, Cameron, Abby (Andrew), Bridget, Lily, Jackson (Sophia), and Gabe; his great-grandchildren, Lucy and Bella; his sister-in-law Joanne (Larry) and their son, Eric; as well as many other nieces and nephews.

The family extends their sincere gratitude to Becca for her dedicated care, as well as the staff at Timber Ridge Community and Hospice of Humboldt.

A memorial service will be held at 1:30 PM on September 25, 2025, at First Covenant Church of Eureka. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to TLC c/o First Covenant Church, 2526 J St., Eureka, CA 95501.

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Earlier this year, Selena Peña spent her days helping Kern County residents learn how to lead healthier lives through nutrition and fitness classes. She was part of a public health team focused on reducing high rates of obesity and heart disease.

But in July the county eliminated the program, citing the loss of $12.5 million in federal public health funding. It was early in a series of cascading cuts to Kern’s health programs this year. Other counties are making similar decisions.

Across the state, county health and human services departments have made significant reductions to bread-and-butter programs as a result of the Trump administration’s funding cuts and freezes. Kern, San Luis Obispo, Orange and Los Angeles counties, as well as the city of Long Beach, are among those reducing health services. The state’s budgetary crisis and subsequent public health cuts have also strained local resources.

California cities and counties have closed public health clinics, eliminated family planning programs, stopped dental services, reduced appointment availability for immunizations, instituted hiring freezes and laid off dozens of local health workers. At the end of the month, because of cuts in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, most county health departments will shut down nutrition programs focused on teaching low-income families how to stretch their food stamp dollars and cook healthier food.

Kern has the highest rate of diabetes-related deaths in the state, and 78% of adults are overweight or obese, according to state data. Peña, who was born and raised there, has seen firsthand how poverty, lack of education and language barriers contribute to poor health. That’s why she was thrilled to do work that helped people like her mom begin to take control of their health.

The irony is not lost on local health leaders that while U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vocally pushes an agenda targeting leading causes of chronic disease like obesity and heart disease, local programs to address these issues and more have been gutted. His recent “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report called out poor diet and lack of physical activity as primary drivers of chronic disease among kids.

“It’s not good enough to say this is important,” said Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of the school of population and public health at UC Irvine. “They talk about nutrition, but where’s the money on nutrition?

Health departments are well-positioned to improve community health outcomes, Boden-Albala said, because their services are often aimed at improving systemic barriers that make it harder for people to be healthy. They focus on food insecurity, health education and access, disease prevention and surveillance, mental health and regulations to promote safety.

The work is preventative in nature, and without it communities will have more illness, higher costs and fewer health care options, said Long Beach Health and Human Services Director Alison King.

“When public health funding is reduced, prevention work is often the first to be impacted,” King said.

Long Beach has lost nearly $4 million in federal grants with the largest cut affecting its HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention program.

These policies “will reverberate for the rest of this administration if not well beyond that,” said Arthur Reingold, professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and global infectious disease expert.

DOGE cuts billions of public health dollars

Many of the cuts to local health departments started in March when Elon Musk, then-adviser to the Department of Government Efficiency, terminated more than $11 billion of public health funding nationwide. California lost nearly $1 billion.

Those cuts targeted money that health departments had used to bolster their response to the COVID-19 pandemic by shoring up laboratory capacity, community outreach and immunization programs. In turn, many counties hired dozens of public health workers and were able to expand other services.

The grants were, in some cases, scheduled to last until 2027. Their abrupt termination left counties scrambling.

“We couldn’t even prepare for the end of this funding. That was what was so catastrophic for us,” said Brynn Carrigan, Kern County public health director. “We received notification the day after the stop-funding order was effective.”

California sued to prevent the Trump administration’s cuts, and a federal judge ruled in May that the money must be restored while the lawsuit plays out. But in many ways, the tug of war between federal cuts and state litigation still left local governments with no choice but to eliminate services. If the courts were to ultimately side with the Trump administration, counties would have to repay the money to the federal government.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, pop-up food distributions in Los Angeles served 1,600 tourism industry workers facing reduced wages or job loss. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Regional Food Bank

“At the end of the day all of the liability and all of the risk is on the county, and we’re talking millions of dollars,” Carrigan said.

That’s why programs like Peña’s healthy habits team and others have been terminated.

Her team — called “Know Your Numbers” — checked residents’ blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol and body mass index before providing seven weeks of free dietary and exercise classes to show them how their numbers improved.

“Our health should be a priority. We should want to combat the things that make us unhealthy: Diseases, tobacco, unhealthy foods,” said Peña, a member of Service Employees International Union Local 721. “It’s discouraging when the government doesn’t want to care for the health of the public.”

California counties eliminate dental, other programs

In Kern County, the department has also been forced to close a clinic serving rural farm communities, stop most mobile clinic services, reduce appointment availability at its primary Bakersfield clinic by 67%, and eliminate 35 jobs.

More than 170 miles south, Orange County Health Director Veronica Kelley has grappled with the same difficult decisions. Public health has “not been whole for decades,” Kelly said, but the early federal grant terminations have been especially harsh. They cost Orange County $13.7 million over the next two years.

In May, the county closed its emergency dental clinic. A month later, the children’s clinic and family planning clinic also closed. A federal program to help new moms with diapers, breastfeeding support and food has also been reduced. In October, the county will lose an additional $4 million to combat obesity and food insecurity.

“If we do care about the health of Americans and people who live here and the health of Orange County residents, then we need to put more focus on funding these services,” Kelley said.

The department tried to make reductions in areas where other community providers could absorb the patient load and have the least impact on access to services, Kelley said. But the county isn’t blind to the probability that more cuts will happen in the coming years, as federal support for Medicaid decreases substantially.

Most counties rely on Medicaid to provide mental health services and inpatient substance abuse treatment. It also helps pay for public health clinics where people can get immunizations and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Counties that run public hospitals are facing even greater uncertainty.

Los Angeles public hospitals brace for Medicaid cuts

In Los Angeles County, the health services department projects it will have a $1.85 billion annual deficit by 2028-29 largely due to Medicaid cuts. The department operates four public hospitals, and 80% of its patients rely on Medicaid for health insurance.

At a recent county supervisors meeting, county Chief Executive Fesia Davenport said federal cuts will likely result in thousands of layoffs and could precipitate the closure of a county hospital.

There are no current plans to close any hospitals, said Jorge Orozco, chief executive of L.A. General Medical Center, but the department has instituted a hiring freeze. County officials are also considering consolidating services that might be provided at multiple hospitals like radiation oncology and delaying maintenance and capital improvement projects.

Still, a deficit of that magnitude will be impossible for the county to fully absorb.

“Belt tightening efforts and cost efficiencies really are not sufficient to make up $1.85 billion,” Orozco said. “That’s really catastrophic.”

The L.A. County Department of Public Health earlier this year also lost $45 million in federal grants and has instituted a hiring freeze.

Orozco said cuts to the health care safety net will ultimately impact everyone in L.A. County. One-third of all trauma cases are taken to a county hospital, he added.

“Our safety net system really serves a huge segment of our population here at L.A. General,” Orozco said. “So the impact of service reductions, the impact of budget reductions, will be felt not only to the most vulnerable, but really all of our community.”

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Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

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Three days before the scheduled end of the legislative session this week, Sen. Lena Gonzalez introduced legislation to limit Los Angeles’ controversial recent “mansion tax” on high-value real estate deals. She backed down just a day later.

“We wanted more time,” she said. “We wanted to do more due diligence … There were so many other issues on the docket.”

The California Legislature slogged through a marathon final week this week, extending its session into Saturday to push through a major package of climate and energy policies. The Saturday vote was needed because Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire didn’t finalize their privately negotiated deal on how to extend the state’s cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emissions program until early Wednesday, past the normal legislative deadline for introducing bills.

Lobbied heavily by interest groups across the state, the package took up significant energy in the final days of the session.

Leaders also rushed through several Newsom administration budget measures that shield construction for the Los Angeles Olympics from environmental review, prop up struggling child care centers, bolster the state’s ability to recommend immunizations and allocate $70 million in new state general fund spending.

The result? Other measures ran out of time. And, many Democrats were left grumbling about how business gets done on consequential measures — but they still overwhelmingly approved them.

Sen. John Laird, a Santa Cruz Democrat who has served in the Legislature for a combined 11 years, said the week seemed to contain “the most number of issues that are big issues that have been addressed in the last days of session.”

“To the extent any of them had already been through the policy committees, that’s great,” he said. “To the extent they’re seeing sunshine for the first time, then not so great.”

Assembly Budget Chair Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat, attributed the time crunch partly to Democrats’ whirlwind weeklong efforts last month to place a congressional redistricting plan on the November ballot.

Gabriel said he shares the frustration with the lengthy session. “It’s a very clear negotiating strategy to drag things out to try to create leverage at the last minute,” he said.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Rivas said the January wildfires, President Donald Trump’s policies and the state’s structural budget deficit also added to the Legislature’s work this year. But he deemed it“the most productive year over the past decade,” celebrating the energy and climate deals as well as a historic rollback of the state’s environmental law to clear the way for development.

“With unity, with urgency and focus, this Assembly delivered,” he said in a floor speech.

Disputed antisemitism measure goes to governor

Lawmakers did approve a series of high-profile measures to fight federal immigration crackdowns, boost transit-oriented housing, rein in the tech industry and expand labor’s reach.

This week, the Legislature OK’d a pair of proposals to ban local, out-of-state and federal law enforcement from wearing masks on duty, a reaction to sweeping immigration raids by unidentified agents. They passed a labor-championed measure to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, tying it to an industry-friendly measure to lower companies’ insurance costs. They also gave the final greenlight to Senate Bill 79, a controversial measure allowing developers to build denser housing near transit regardless of local zoning regulations.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, lawmakers agreed to appropriate $10 million per year toward funding local news. Google has agreed to commit $10 million toward the effort as well.

Also heading to Newsom’s desk is a controversial measure that aims to prevent antisemitism in schools. The bill, supported by the legislative Jewish Caucus, was passed following emotional hearings and animated debates. Following the bill’s passage, a few pro-Palestinian protesters began shouting from the Assembly gallery, yelling, “You will all have blood on your hands” as lawmakers continued their business.

While supporters argue the legislation is necessary to protect Jewish students from discrimination, opponents, including major education associations and the American Civil Liberties Union’s political action arm, argued for months that the proposal risked “weaponizing” public education and censoring Palestinian-related instruction in K-12 schools.

People gather in the rotunda of the state Capitol during the end of session in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Another bill awaiting Newsom’s signature would require human oversight when an employer primarily uses artificial intelligence for disciplinary purposes.

But lawmakers punted multiple tech measures to next year, including a proposal to require tests of automated decision systems before they can be used in important personnel decisions. This is at least the second time such efforts have stalled, amid strong opposition from business associations and health care providers.

They also shelved a measure that would have restricted workplace surveillance by public and private employers, a victory for the California Chamber of Commerce.

A controversial criminal justice bill that drew strong opposition from moderate Democrats failed to advance. The measure would have made low-level felony offenders eligible for diversion programs, allowing them to avoid jail time.

Some Democrats including Stephanie Nguyen of Elk Grove, Maggy Krell of Sacramento and Anamarie Avila Farias of Concord joined Republicans in opposing the bill.

Property tax limit, environmental rules fall short

The pileup of priorities caused some issues to fall by the wayside.

Gonzalez’s bill would cap the Los Angeles voter-approved tax on high-value real estate deals, currently 4 to 5.5% of the property’s value, over concerns it’s dampening construction.

The measure sparked opposition from tenants’ advocates, who campaigned for the tax to raise affordable housing funds, and from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which opposes the tax. The bill is written to kneecap an anti-tax ballot initiative the association filed for next fall’s election.

The Long Beach Democrat said she’ll pick up the issue next year, and said she couldn’t meet with all sides this year in part because of the volume of priorities this session.

Another issue that remains unresolved: How to restore environmental review requirements for the construction of certain manufacturing plants — a priority for environmental justice advocates. Newsom earlier this year strong-armed lawmakers into loosening those reviews, but McGuire and other Democratic leaders promised in June to revisit it this fall.

But top Democrats failed to agree, angering colleagues. In a mad dash to show their efforts, lawmakers rolled out three last-minute proposals, but the only one to pass does little to address environmental concerns.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, right, speaks with Assemblymember Chris Ward during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

Rivas called the lack of progress “unfortunate,” and promised to convene a working group next year.

“Certainly it is unacceptable that that work was not completed by the end of session,” he told reporters.

Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs the budget committee, attributed the lack of a deal to a disagreement with the Assembly, and said redistricting took up negotiating time

“We had a lot on our plate, and it delayed resolution of some issues,” he said. “That being said, it’s all happening … I don’t want to be here on a Saturday, but so be it.”

Frustration permeates California Senate

As the session dragged to its conclusion, some lawmakers were ready for new leadership.

Frustrations spilled over Wednesday night in the Senate Budget Committee, when several lawmakers of both parties criticized Newsom’s administration and legislative leaders for asking them to approve millions of dollars of state spending with little notice. The bills had been unveiled the day before, with no time left to amend them.

Several Democrats took issue with how leaders steered some funds to local projects without their input.

Sen. Chris Cabaldon, a Napa Democrat, singled out projects in the North Coast that would get funding and said he found “no basis” for why Californians and lawmakers statewide weren’t consulted.

“There are more than just a handful of disadvantaged communities, plus the North Coast, in California,” he said.

McGuire happens to represent that region. Altogether, his district would get upwards of $85 million through the bill for environmental, housing, transportation and fire protection projects. That includes about $50 million from the climate bond for the Great Redwood Trail, a plan McGuire has championed to convert 231 miles of old railway into a trail in Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties.

Cabaldon slammed the “concentration of decision-making power that has emerged through this process this year.” In an interview, he said he wasn’t blaming anyone specifically, but“everyone is frustrated” by how the week played out.

Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Van Nuys Democrat, was more frank.

“The buck stops with the people in charge,” Menjivar said. “How everything transpired this week left a sour taste in people’s mouths. I don’t think a majority of us would want us to repeat this next year.”

After being told in the spring that lawmakers needed to cut funding for undocumented immigrants’ health coverage, she was angered not to have gotten the chance to weigh in on new spending, and complained to Senate leadership.

Following all the griping, McGuire announced this week that the Senate was moving up the date that incoming Senate leader Sen. Monique Limón of Santa Barbara would take over, to Nov. 17 instead of in January.

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CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff and Ben Christopher contributed reporting.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom closed out the legislative year with one of the most sweeping overhauls of California’s energy and climate policies in decades — a package that could give him a presidential debate-stage talking point on rising energy costs as the Democratic Party shifts its focus to affordability.

The six-bill deal — passed Saturday after lawmakers extended their session by an extra day because of last-minute dealmaking — was sold as a way to ease gas prices and soaring electricity bills while preserving the state’s signature climate programs.

Ratepayers are expected to get some relief through measures to cut the cost of building transmission lines, and an expanded cap-and-trade energy credit aimed at blunting rising energy bills. They also will get some protection from utilities hiking rates based on the cost of wildfire-proofing their infrastructure, such as by putting power lines underground. But they’ll also continue paying $9 billion over the next decade into a fund to compensate wildfire victims.

The package of legislation now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.

Newsom and his allies, who negotiated the package in the final days of the legislative session, said the state needed to allow more permits to drill oil to head off more refinery shutdowns that could send gas prices soaring.

Critics said the biggest winners of the maneuvering were the oil industry and the state’s major utilities. Oil drilling measures advanced in Kern County after refiners threatened to shutter plants. Utilities gained sweeping new wildfire liability protections and the ability to join a regional power market — a step critics warned could tether California to fossil-fuel states at a time when the Trump administration is moving to roll back clean energy.

Michael Wara, a Stanford legal scholar focused on energy policy, called it “astonishing” that lawmakers managed to pass so many major bills at once, including the two-thirds vote to reauthorize cap-and-trade. California is making steady progress in shifting from fossil fuels to renewables, even as wildfires complicate the transition, and while the measures were imperfect, they were necessary, he said.

“I’ve been a part, over the last decade, of getting individual tweaks done in each of these areas — but the idea that we would get them all done at once, on time, when we needed to, is astonishing to me,” Wara said. “Are the bills perfect? No, from my perspective they’re not perfect, but they are all material improvements over the status quo.”

The future of cap and trade reinforced

At the center of the bargain was the extension of California’s cap-and-trade system — rebranded by Newsom as “cap and invest” — through 2045. The extension, hammered out in backroom talks, was one of the most divisive elements of the package.

The carbon-trading program, launched in 2013, is California’s way of putting a price tag on greenhouse gas emissions — those responsible for climate change. The program sets a strict cap on emissions for polluters and hands out a limited supply of permits companies can sell to other polluters if they cut enough emissions.

The final agreement on the program preserved rules that let oil companies avoid paying the full cost of their emissions while leaving untouched a cap on carbon prices. That setup shields polluters while leaving consumers potentially exposed to higher gas prices, experts said.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas stood by the energy package on Saturday, arguing the measure to boost in-state oil production and keep refineries from closing would keep prices down at the pump. “Altogether,” he told reporters, the deal “is going to result in some billions of dollars in savings.”

The California Chamber of Commerce was out front in opposing the cap and trade deal, arguing it would make energy less affordable by taking credits away from gas customers and giving them to electric utilities — hurting families, renters, and small businesses that still depend on natural gas. The powerful business group has poured at least $6.9 million into legislative races over the past decade, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

The oil industry’s chief lobbying group, the Western States Petroleum Association, which had pushed back early on, eventually settled into neutrality. Meanwhile, environmental justice advocates remained staunchly against it, saying the program protects oil and gas companies while leaving nearby low-income communities to bear the health costs of pollution.

Construction site of the High Speed Rail ramp in Fresno on Sept. 12, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

A group of seven environmental justice groups from across the state, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network Action, said the extension “institutionalizes inequality in California’s climate policy.”

“This year, California’s leaders gutted basic public health and safety protections and took away tools communities need to protect themselves from polluters,” the groups said.

Alongside reauthorization of the program, a companion bill provided a blueprint for how the state should spend its revenues, reshaping it starting in 2026 to guarantee $1 billion a year for high-speed rail and $1 billion a year for lawmakers to direct through the budget.

Questioning the affordability premise

The sweeping climate and energy package was born of mounting pressures — some long expected, others abrupt. Affordability has become the defining fault line in Democratic politics since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, powered by a campaign fixated on cutting costs and fighting inflation.

At the same time, Democrats are leaning into the rhetoric of “abundance,” a term popularized by columnist Ezra Klein to capture the idea that more housing, clean energy and infrastructure can ease scarcity and lower costs. But some consumer advocates and Capitol insiders argue the measures won’t ultimately help consumers.

“I don’t know how any of this saves money,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “But this is the new state of Sacramento. I think it happened because of Trump, honestly, I think this is all about abundance and Trump, and Democrats trying to make a name for themselves by dumping regulation.”

Republicans, too, slammed the package, but they called it over-regulation that would continue to keep gas and energy costs high. Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican, called Democrats’ goals of using the cap-and-trade dollars to improve transit “unrealistic” when Californians “are not going to give up driving their cars,” and said the party’s stated three goals can’t coexist.

“Climate, energy and affordability are like oil, water and sand,” he said. “People aren’t going to be able to live here.”

Newsom’s push to keep gasoline prices and energy bills in check — a message potentially aimed as much at a national audience in a future presidential bid as at Californians — meshed with Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas’s early pledge to make 2025 the Legislature’s “year of affordability.”

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and his team resisted giving ground to oil and gas interests without securing gains for environmental and social justice priorities, given the concentration of polluting industries and poor air quality in low-income communities.Cap-and-trade renewal took on urgency as carbon auctions faltered and Trump singled out the program — originally set to expire in 2030 — as potentially unconstitutional.

A ‘giveaway to big oil’?

At the same time, refinery closures and oil company threats to leave California put Newsom in a bind. After blasting the industry as deceitful and politically manipulative for years, Newsom reversed course. His administration unveiled concessions to keep production in the state and the California Energy Commission suspended a controversial profit cap on gasoline refiners for the next five years.

Oil pumps in the Kern River Oil Field near Bakersfield on July 6, 2022. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

While much of the governor’s original oil refinery proposal was pared back in the Legislature, drilling approvals advanced in Kern County. That was a victory for Republican Sen. Shannon Grove, who represents the county. Grove has spent a decade pushing to keep drilling and its middle-class jobs alive there.

The approved oil permits, she said, “will result in California-compliant oil that is the most regulated in the world.”

Nevertheless, Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Democrat from Milpitas, criticized the oil deal from the Assembly floor Saturday as a “giveaway to big oil.”

“The thing we need to focus on is a controlled and managed phaseout of fossil fuel, like the dinosaurs that they process, the petroleum-oil, fossil-fuel industry fuel is dying out,” Lee said. “Refineries and facilities are closing, not just in California, but in Texas and across the world.”

Lawmakers also established a state fund to monitor pollution mitigation in disadvantaged communities.

Layered onto those debates was a high-stakes battle over utility finances. Wildfire liabilities loomed over investor-owned utilities, especially Southern California Edison, now under scrutiny for its potential role in the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Newsom pressed to expand California’s $18 billion wildfire fund — a safeguard supporters said was vital to protect ratepayers if utilities sparked future blazes, but one that critics warned could ultimately drive consumer bills higher.

Meanwhile lawmakers took a major push to let California join a shared Western electricity market, allowing power to flow more easily across state lines. Supporters say it could cut costs for customers and steady the grid during crunch times like heat waves, while supporting in-state clean power producers who could sell excess electricity to neighbors.

Consumer advocates, led by The Utility Reform Network, warned the change could weaken California’s control over its clean energy agenda and hand more power to a federal government under Trump that is siding with fossil fuels. Some environmental and consumer groups shared that concern.

The shift is important because California has spent decades building one of the cleanest grids in the world and the move to open up that system to other Western states could reshape how both renewable and fossil power move across the region.

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CalMatters reporter Yue Stella Yu contributed.

Dear Friends,

I’ve sensed a pivotal moment in our country. I bet you can sense it as well—everyone holding a collective breath, wondering the consequence of the assassination, the violent and disgusting murder of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in broad daylight. Immediately people reacted with grief, fear, shock, and anger posting their videos and thoughts to express and make sense of their feelings. I did too.

I didn’t follow much of Charlie Kirk’s vocation, mainly because debates easily dissolve into dehumanizing rhetoric where there’s a winner and a loser. But I’ve observed him as a powerful, straight white Christian man, where his personhood was rarely on the line so he was able to debate without seeming to take anything personally–even the hatred thrown towards him. This was a privilege and advantage he had compared to many young college students directly and negatively impacted by his political and religious views. Gender, religious, racial, and sexual minorities bore the brunt of his opinions and they felt it acutely.

While Charlie may not have noticed his own level of privilege, I still deeply respected his willingness to engage with people who thought very differently from him. He chose to practice free speech in public settings while giving others the opportunity to do likewise. Many young people in our country have felt emboldened by his example—either continuing forth with his ideas or against his ideas. He lived our country’s legacy of democracy through public debates and free speech in the public square.

But there is a loud movement attempting to stop this legacy and end democracy. We’re told to hate our neighbors and be against our countrymen, furthering the distance from each other. Instead of empowering people toward free speech, we’re pitted against each other, suspicious of the other. This widening tear has existed for generations, where people keep gluing, sewing, repairing, fastening that tear, attempting to hold it together, praying this or that leader will have better bonding power. The beautiful idea of our nation is altruistic but divided by how those ideas should manifest.

We horrifically witnessed a public execution of a public figure. We can continue forth, protecting and respecting free speech or be torn apart by saying it’s “their” fault: It was the radical left’s fault because they looked down on and hated everyone who doesn’t think like them. It was Charlie Kirk’s fault because he said horrible things about people and believed in guns. It was to stop people from talking about the Epstein Files. It was the liberal college campuses that produced violent rhetoric. It was MAGA who hated immigrants, trans-people, and women.

We point fingers while calling on others to rise up and take his place—emboldened by divisive blaming rhetoric seeming bent on creating a wider tear where repair seems hopeless. I’ve heard of celebrations over his death and pictures of his cartoon face with blood spurting from his neck. I’ve read how it’s time to start a civil war against those liberals who caused his murder. I’ve heard pastors say it’s time to double down and get more aggressive against the left.

After listing out recent political attacks on both Democrats and Republicans, journalist Ezra Klein wrote, “Political violence is contagious. It is spreading. It is not confined to one side or belief system. It should terrify us all.” We must see our shared need for each other instead of our desire to make enemies and blame.

You know whose voices have been loudest? The collective grief and desperate prayers for his wife and children—both those on the left and the right who have purposefully and publicly condemned this act of violence, voices shaking with deep sadness and anger over his death and the loss his family will forever feel.

Repairing the tear means we must see each other rightly. Charlie Kirk was a villain to some and a saint to others, but he was neither fully villain nor fully saint. He existed somewhere in the middle, as we all do. The temptation is to air his dirty laundry or whitewash his legacy but no one is all good or all bad. When we attempt to paint him in such a light, we begin to fight each other, creating a wider tear. The Apostle Paul once wrote our fight isn’t against each other—against human beings. Our fight is against the powers and principalities, against evil and demonic forces that dehumanize and objectify people by stealing their personhood, killing their body, and destroying their influence–as Jesus once said in John 10:10. When we participate in these behaviors, we are aligning ourselves with the Adversary of lies and against the God of truth.

My prayer for our nation within the legacy of Charlie Kirk is we will uplift and support free speech in various forms, becoming more educated and grounded debaters bent on love and understanding. That we don’t fall prey to the divisive rhetoric from politicians or pulpits or perpetuate political violence. That we will respect each other’s personhood even if we can’t respect their ideology. And we will work together, in the midst of our differences, to repair the tear.

With Christ’s love,
Pastor Bethany

Humboldt County just took a big step towards protecting our night sky! In August, the Board of Supervisors approved the Inland Outdoor Lighting Ordinance, regulating outdoor lights to limit light pollution and light trespass. This is a significant win for the dark sky movement and will require new development on unincorporated land to use light fixtures and bulbs that reduce light pollution.

But this isn’t just about seeing more stars — light pollution disrupts the natural rhythms of wildlife and humans alike. Bright lights left on at night can alter the timing of bird migrations, interfere with seasonal flowering cycles, and affect our own sleep cycles.

Sylvia van Royen, GIS & Policy Analyst for Humboldt Waterkeeper, joins us to discuss the new lighting ordinance and how Humboldt residents can adapt their outdoor lighting to be friendlier to migrating birds and support the biological rhythms essential to our region’s biodiversity.

To learn more:

• Humboldt Waterkeeper Light Pollution Factsheet
• DarkSky Approved lighting fixtures
• DarkSky International’s explainer on What is Light Pollution? & Glossary of light-related terms.
• Light Pollution Webpage from the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals
• New World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness

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This is what Webster’s Dictionary says about “huckleberry”: “1. Any of a genus (Gaylussacia) of plants of the heath family, having dark blue berries resembling blueberries, but with 10 large seeds.”

Now I don’t agree with this description of the huckleberries growing in Humboldt County. My wife and I join other family members who live in Arcata and Dows Prairie each fall to participate in our annual huckleberry picking party. I haven’t noticed any seeds in the berries I have picked.

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[UPDATE from 2025: The word “huckleberry” means different things in different places. Mr. Dearing’s Webster’s had an East Coast bias, as one might expect: Gaylussacia are found only on that lesser shore, and in South America. The Humboldt County huckleberries the author describes are almost certainly Vaccinium ovatum, pictured above. It will be the Outpost’s featured “PLANT of the DAY” on Aug. 28, 2029, but you can see it here, now. — Ed.]

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The one person in our family most responsible for our enjoyment of huckleberry picking is Bea Reckord, sister of Marilyn Moxon, Art’s wife. These girls were born and raised in Dows Prairie. The Worth family children consisted of one boy and five girls. They grew up with huckleberries. Bea tells me they picked and cleaned huckleberries and sold them for 60 cents a gallon when they were young girls.

To this day, Bea and Marilyn love to go out, find the patches that are lush with berries, and telephone us when to drive to Arcata for the fun.

During the last 10 days of September and the first 10 days of October, the huckleberries are ripe and ready to be picked. It is true they are time consuming to pick and clean. Actually the picking is easy, and can be lots of fun, but if you pick them “dirty,” the way I do, they are tough to clean. I imagine if you kept track of the time required to clean a few gallons, you would be working for about two-bits an hour, but when you eat a pie filled with huckleberries, it is well worth the effort.

We were in Arcata recently to attend my wife’s college homecoming celebration. Part of the program was in honor of the Class of ‘39 — but that is another story. On that particular Sunday we got our gear together and headed for the huckleberry patch. Now I know you will understand that I can’t tell you exactly where we go to pick; we are like fishermen who never tell where they have all the luck. We are selfish, and besides, the girls who comprise the main crew would disown me if I say too much.

I know other people are aware of this patch of berries because many of the bushes were already picked, but there were plenty left for us and we picked from 1 p.m. until after 6. These girls never know when to stop.

My brother-in-law Art Moxon didn’t go with us this year. He talked himself out of going by saying he had to pick up irrigation pipe all afternoon. I know he fails to find anything attractive about picking huckleberries, but when he did go, he kept the party loose with his bear noises and his berry stealing. Now Art didn’t really steal any berries, he just borrowed them in order to be able to impress the girls with his ability to pick huckleberries. As soon as the girls started dumping their filled buckets into a larger container, he would sneak around, being careful to keep out of sight, fill his pail with berries from the container, then walk around and show everyone how full his bucket was. He would claim he had picked his quota, and would just scout around to find patches with more berries for them to pick.

It is true that bears enjoy huckleberries. I know this as a fact because, in the 1920s, I was with my father when he was hunting deer close to the Preston Ranch. We were camped in a small clearing for the night and, as we cooked supper, we heard noises several times back in the brush. My dad acted as if nothing of importance was happening, but the next morning as we went up a draw hunting, we startled a black bear while he was in the act of feasting upon huckleberries for breakfast.

Years ago we picked huckleberries on the Samoa Peninsula. There were plenty of bushes and berries too, but unfortunately there were great big mosquitoes, and they were hungry! It just wasn’t possible to pick very long at a time which was too bad because it was easy to get to.

It is sort of interesting to think about the economics of huckleberries. They have never been available on the market, and no doubt that is because they require too much time to gather and clean. Charley Riford, a Humboldt resident for many years, claimed to have a method to clean huckleberries. I never saw him try it though, he told me about it whenever we complained about the time required to clean a gallon. Charley was from Vermont, and when he was a young fellow he claimed he picked and cleaned huckleberries. He said there was nothing to it. You just fasten a wool blanket, preferably a dark colored one and old, to a fence. You drape the blanket with the top tied to the fence about 4-foot-high, then drape the rest of the blanket on the ground. You toss the berries, a few at a time, up onto the top the blanket and, as they roll to the bottom, all the leaves, worms and stems remain stuck to the blanket.

When I approached my wife with this idea she said, “Are you nuts? A wool blanket cost $100 today. I haven’t any blankets for you to experiment with (so) we will clean the berries the same as always.”

And, do you know, I just finished three days sitting at a table on the deck cleaning huckleberries. Oh, she worked right with me to keep me from goofing off. After all, she also washes them, dries them, and then freezes them, putting them in plastic bags with a date included. This is so we can rotate them as they are used. She bakes perhaps the most delicious huckleberry pies in the world; our kids all know it. When I taste one of those pies I am ready to go through all the fun and trouble again of picking Humboldt County huckleberries.

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The story above was originally printed in the September-October 1991 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.