Politics

For many Americans, the Republican dysfunction that has ground business in the U.S. House to a halt as two wars rage abroad and a budget crisis looms at home is feeding into a longer-term pessimism about the country’s core institutions.

Declaring that U.S. leadership “holds the world together,” President Joe Biden told Americans on Thursday night the country must deepen its support of Ukraine and Israel in the middle of two vastly different, unpredictable and bloody wars.

California’s push to have independent panels — not politicians — draw election districts has floundered into a more piecemeal approach. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the most ambitious bill passed by state lawmakers, Assembly Bill 1248, which called for independent redistricting commissions in every city and county across the state with more than 300,000 residents, and every school or community college district with more than 500,000.

California has put a water-stressed farming region on notice for having “inadequate” plans to curb its overuse of groundwater, bringing officials closer to directly intervening, for the first time in state history, in the way growers manage their underground water supplies.

Nearly two decades ago, Gavin Newsom catapulted onto the national political stage when, as mayor of San Francisco, he began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It was an act of defiance, far ahead of public opinion at the time, and so controversial that some of his fellow Democrats blamed him for costing the party the presidential election later that year.