Chuck daylight savings? California already weighed in.

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Happy Friday! Welcome back to Capitol Confidential. 

Though our Capitol has been quiet this week, Congress has been quite the opposite. Between the highly anticipated confirmation hearing for the president’s next attorney general to a House vote on a bill that proposes doing away with a practice that has long governed Americans’ seasonal rhythms, activity on the Hill has several possible California implications. 

Here’s what to know. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Lawmakers are trying to end the twice-yearly practice of changing the clocks, and want to impose year-round daylight saving time.

The House passed a bill to do so this week, but it’s unclear how it will fare in the Senate.

It’s a familiar debate for California politicians and residents. California voters approved a ballot measure in 2018 to make daylight saving time permanent, but it required Congress to act before the state would be allowed to make the change. That hasn’t happened, and California has continued changing the clocks.

California’s congressional delegation largely supported the measure: All eight Republican members voted yes, while the Democrats split 33-9.

California Sen. Alex Padilla said last year that he’s on board with the effort: “More daylight after work means more business and more active, safer California communities,” he said in a statement. “Californians already voted years ago to lock the clock — and it’s past time for Congress to do the same.” 

Though the topic itself elicits strong opinions among many everyday Americans, the bipartisan House bill has been a rare instance of cross-aisle agreement, including among the California delegation. Republican Rep. James Gallagher, elected in June to fill the Chico-based seat left vacant by Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s death, echoed Padilla’s endorsement of the bill. 

"Californians voted years ago to ‘fall back’ from the twice-yearly time change because they were tired of the disruption it causes for families, workers, students, and businesses,” Gallagher said in an email to the Chronicle. “When the ballot initiative was approved in California, we had to ‘spring forward’ on Congress to act, and I am proud to be a part of that change."

The effort will face a rockier path in the Senate, but even if it does pass through the chamber and become federal law, states do have the option to opt out. To do so, they would need to pass legislation to avoid the new time from going into effect – but since Californians have already expressed their desire to do away with the practice, it’s unlikely the Legislature would do so without significant pushback. 

A bill by Assembly Member Mia Bonta got a surprising amount of airtime in an unusual place Wednesday: the U.S. Senate. It probably wasn’t the kind of attention Bonta, D-Alameda, would welcome, the Chronicle’s Raheem Hosseini reported.

During the confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next attorney general, a Republican senator from Florida re-floated conservative talking points about fraud in blue states to troll Bonta’s bill, which is meant to protect immigrant nonprofit workers.

“In California, they have a Stop Nick Shirley Act, which should be called the ‘Protect Fraudsters Act,’ I assume, but tell us what you’re doing different and how you’re going to work to uncover and root out and go against criminals in these states where these elected officials are complicit, maybe aiding and abetting because they’re going after the people that are trying to raise the issues,” Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Florida, asked Blanche in his five-hour Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.

Shirley is an alt-right influencer who has posted repeatedly about fraud in Minnesota’s childcare system and California’s hospice system, often without any evidence for his claims. Trump credited Shirley in his Jan. 8 executive order establishing a fraud division under the Department of Justice that Blanche is seeking to lead as its permanent director.

But the act Moody was referring to is actually California’s Assembly Bill 2624, a modest expansion of a state anti-harassment program crafted nearly three decades ago. Started in 1999, the Safe at Home program shields the addresses of domestic violence survivors, elder abuse victims, and reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare workers. AB2624 would extend the same offer to immigrant nonprofit workers, who have faced a surge of threats and harassment since Trump’s inauguration.

The “Stop Nick Shirley Act” nickname is a moniker created by Assembly Member Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, in press releases decrying the bill.

No news media organizations have opposed AB2624 and only two conservative religious groups have formally opposed it, according to the state Senate Public Safety Committee’s analysis.

Shirley, who has developed a following by surprising immigrant workers in blue cities and accusing them of committing fraud, also testified Wednesday before a separate Senate committee. He said AB2624 “will help fraudsters cover up their crimes.”

In one instance, Shirley claimed that fraud was the reason that California’s Medi-Cal spending is projected at $222 billion this fiscal year. The Legislative Analyst’s Office determined that it was largely due to managed care plans costing more, particularly for California’s seniors and people with disabilities 

Blanche told senators during his confirmation hearing that he would review the 2022 decision by the Department of Justice that allowed doctors to mail abortion drugs to patients, the Chronicle’s Sophia Bollag and Raheem Hosseini reported.

California officials over the past several years have shored up legal protections in the state to ensure access to medication abortion drugs, such as mifepristone. 

Reproductive health legal experts have worried about the possibility of Republicans limiting or revoking access to abortion drugs since Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation agenda for Trump’s first 180 days in office, called for using the Comstock Act to outlaw abortions. 

During Blanche’s Wednesday hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked about his interpretation of the law. When asked by Cruz if he would “commit to carefully reviewing” the Biden-era interpretation of the law and whether he would promise the Department of Justice would “ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act and other federal pro-life acts,” Blanche replied with a “yes.” 

Laws California and other states enacted to protect access to abortion care would wither under an expansive interpretation of the Comstock Act, a Victorian-era statute that has never been applied to legal abortions over its 150-year history, reproductive health legal advocates have said.

Some of the most expansive state legal protections for abortion access were passed by California lawmakers in the wake of the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The right to abortion was enshrined in the state constitution after voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1. 

Over the past few years, access to abortion pills by mail has become a new front in the federal-versus-state battle, and California has been among the most aggressive in passing protections. The state’s major telehealth shield law, SB345, introduced by then-state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, protects California-based healthcare providers who dispense abortion medication to patients out of state.

Just last year, the California Legislature passed AB260 by Assembly Member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, in response to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to reevaluate federal approvals of abortion medications. It requires insurance companies to cover the cost of abortion drugs in the state, allows pharmacists to dispense abortion drugs without names and addresses on the label and creates protections for abortion medication providers against professional discipline, civil penalties or criminal prosecution. 

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