The California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has declared his plan to make sure the state is prepared for any actions or policies that could come from Donald Trump should he be inaugurated again in January 2025. Some of the measures he aims to implement may not sit well with the state’s residents. Lawmakers who represent districts that supported Trump in the past or experienced a significant increase in Trump supporters will likely hesitate to openly support Newsom’s bold initiatives. This poses a challenge for Newsom, who may have been accustomed to wielding extensive authority during the State of Emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted from March 2020 to February 28, 2023.
Enter Avian influenza A (H5N1), commonly known as “Bird Flu.”
Newsom declared a new State of Emergency on Wednesday ostensibly aimed at being “proactive” in dealing with an outbreak of bird flu in dairy cattle herds in the state, even though the outbreak started in August. In the five-page declaration, Newsom gives state and local authorities broad authority to ignore various rules, regulations, and laws to “address the effects of bird flu,” to “prevent the spread of this virus,” and to “protect [people’s] safety” even though in a statement accompanying the declaration he admitted the risk to the public is low:
“This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak. Building on California’s testing and monitoring system — the largest in the nation — we are committed to further protecting public health, supporting our agriculture industry, and ensuring that Californians have access to accurate, up-to-date information. While the risk to the public remains low, we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus.”
Even if Californians weren’t already highly skeptical of Newsom’s use of State of Emergency powers because of his tyranny during COVID, this SOE declaration is dubious at this moment in time. All in all, there are 34 reported human cases of bird flu in the state, and 33 of them are in farm workers. Although Newsom’s declaration comes on the same day it’s being reported that a person in Louisiana is hospitalized in critical condition due to bird flu, the virus genotype in that case is linked to wild birds, not cattle.
In the declaration and his comments, Newsom specifies that any additional authority or spending, or suspension of provisions of the Government Code, are only applicable to efforts to address the bird flu emergency. However, Newsom used the COVID state of emergency to enact full mail-in voting and restrict liberty in all sorts of ways unrelated to the spread of COVID-19 and to set DEI-like standards for when various communities would be allowed to regain their rights – and bragged that he was going to use emergency powers to usher in a progressive era in the state:
Newsom takes the scenic route to get to the answer, but when he does get there he admits fully that, yes, this crisis is an opportunity to fundamentally change America.
“There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” Gov. Newsom said. “So yes, absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”
Newsom goes on to talk about how this “shouldn’t send shivers up the spines” of either party, but that it’s necessary to “meet this moment.”
So, Californians are rightly highly skeptical of this declaration; they’re justifiably wondering if he’s going back to a tactic that worked so well in the past.
