Bills countering Trump teed up for floor debates

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Good morning and welcome back to another week of Capitol Confidential. We’re in the final two-week stretch of the legislative session. 

Hundreds of bills are headed to the Senate and Assembly floors now, including more than 600 that made it out of the suspense file hearings.

As I wrote last week, Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB895 squeaked through the Assembly Appropriations Committee’s suspense file hearing on Thursday. The San Francisco Democrat’s bond measure had failed to garner enough leadership support to make it to the November ballot. Initially introduced as a $23 billion measure, it’s designed to backfill critical science and research funding after the Trump administration slashed federal funding sources, decimating many university programs that study cancer and rare diseases. It now heads to the floor at a fraction of its original amount, after Appropriations amended it down to just $5 billion. 

But Wiener’s bond is far from the only bill the Legislature will vote on in the next few weeks that is a direct response to the Trump administration. It’s also among a group of similar bills that have been hit with significant amendments, further calling into question how they will fare on the Senate and Assembly floors – or with the authors themselves. 

Some, like Wiener’s, would shore up funding for programs and agencies. Others take a more offensive position, like those designed to prevent Trump-backed election changes or the many bills that would place tighter restrictions and oversight measures on Trump’s immigration crackdown in California.

Three bills by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, the Senate Appropriations chair, fall into these categories.

SB970 calls on the secretary of state to create a way for military and overseas voters to submit their ballots electronically, in response to the administration abruptly ending a decades-old fax service that many absentee voters use to return their ballots while overseas. 

SB1164 and SB1360 are a package to significantly update the California Voting Rights Act. 

SB1164 would prohibit state and local agencies from doing anything that makes it harder for eligible Californians to vote or that would dilute the vote of protected minority groups. It would also clarify the authority of the attorney general and secretary of state to weigh in before local governments change their election processes, a seeming response to legal sagas in Huntington Beach and Shasta County over restrictive voter ID policies challenged by the state.

SB1360 would expand requirements for counties to provide ballots and voting information in foreign languages.

Both passed with several amendments, including extending deadlines for furnishing translated election materials and, as Cervantes said during the infamously opaque suspense file hearing, “other changes.”  

Other Trump-focused bills aim to strengthen the state’s protections of LGBTQ+ Californians. AB1930, by Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, would require healthcare providers to notify the attorney general if they receive a subpoena seeking sensitive health information about patients receiving gender-affirming care. 

AB1775 by Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, would authorize expedited veterans assistance for U.S. service members who were ousted from their positions as a result of Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from the military.

Several detention center and ICE bills killed, others head to floor amended

Earlier this year, the Legislature was considering more than two dozen bills seeking to improve transparency and oversight of both ICE operations and immigration detention facilities in the state. Last week’s Appropriations hearings passed many of them onward – though several were amended. A handful were held on the suspense file, effectively killing the bills this session.

Two closely watched detention center accountability bills authored by Sen. Sasha Pérez, D-Alhambra, died last week. 

SB995, known as the Masuma Khan Justice Act, is named after a California woman who was found to be wrongfully detained at a private immigration detention center by a federal judge, and claimed she was denied adequate medical care. It would have authorized the state Department of Public Health to inspect an involuntary residential facility, including immigration detention facilities. The other, SB1103, would have required retail stores to provide the attorney general with copies of documentation related to immigration enforcement activity on its properties. That bill was motivated by the death of Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez, who died in a Home Depot parking lot last year after fleeing from immigration agents. 

A bill by Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, SB1171, that would have prevented companies that contract with ICE from receiving publicly funded grants or loans, also failed in appropriations. 

SB1257 by Sen. Jesse Arreguín, D-Berkeley, also met its end last week. It would have required the attorney general to post an annual report of the immigration enforcement incidents it receives in the state.

Despite those bill deaths, more than a dozen others are moving on, many with amendments. Here’s the rundown of five bills we’ve been covering and keeping an eye on the last few months: 

Several ICE and detention center bills also passed through Appropriations committees last week without amendments, potentially signaling an easier path forward. Here are five we’re watching:

It’s been less than two months since a bill aimed at accelerating denser housing projects went into effect, and already it’s locked in a legal tussle. 

Wiener’s SB79, which went into effect July 1, overrides local government zoning restrictions to allow for dense, multistory housing projects near major public transportation stops and on transit agency land.

But as the Chronicle’s Laura Waxmann reported, San Francisco officials exempted from the new law swaths of the city it is classifying as industrial employment hubs or “low-resource” zones. That amounts to nearly 1,900 parcels city and state housing officials claim are not subject to SB79’s zoning override.

Now, housing advocates are suing both the city and the state, claiming the move is illegal.

In a lawsuit filed last week, YIMBY Law, the California Housing Defense Fund and Californians for Homeownership argued that San Francisco’s designation of three, roughly 250-acre, primarily industrial areas in the SoMa, Bayview and Bayshore neighborhoods should not be exempt from SB79. 

Waxmann reported the groups’ complaint asks the court to invalidate the city’s alternative plan.

Questions? Thoughts? Interesting tidbits to share? Reach out at [email protected], and follow me on X, @KathrynPlmr.