California Politics: Newsom responds to reparations task force recommendations, Feinstein returns
Welcome to our weekly discussion of all things current in California politics. I'm walt gray joined this week by reporter Emily Hoven political columnist with a San Francisco Chronicle Emily nice to have you here on this Sunday morning. Let's talk about the governor and the task force and the reparations. It seemed initially when he spoke this week that he was sort of dodging the whole cash payments thing. What you're feeling on that. Yeah so the reparations task force has now indicated that people who are you know suffering from their the legacy of racism and slavery in California could receive up to one point two million dollars for those harms. And they put out those numbers and the governor when asked about the report at first made a comment that seemed to suggest he wasn't really on board with that concept.
He said reparations is about more than cash payments. Kind of suggesting that you know there's other policies that we might want to consider first and later he sort of seemed to walk that backward a bit saying you know they still haven't issued the final final paper. We still have to talk with lawmakers to see what's what's going on. But I think it does suggest very clearly that any sort of cash payment is going to be very hard in California. What's the budget deficit alone. I think that coming up with the total amount of money which some have estimated could be eight hundred billion dollars which is vastly more than California's entire budget is going to be very difficult. And they'll wrap up their their investigation.
The task force will sometime this July. Diane Feinstein at long last is back in Washington D.C. a long time and coming. She is. Yeah. She finally returned to D.
C. this week. She had been diagnosed with shingles and was coming up on about three months of her recovery period. I think also you know the decision to come back was right after the New York Times editorial board came out and basically said look like you need to return or you need to resign because you are holding up judicial confirmation and other important important business in the Senate. And I think it was very clear that pressure was mounting on her. She says that she feels better and that she's you know able to do her duties although at somewhat of a lighter pace. But I do think it's clear that she is still suffering and not 100% back to normal.
Some photos have shown that she you know she does still look fragile and is going to have to kind of continue to recover while she's working. Right on a lighter note today. Happy Mother's Day to all watching and your column this week in the San Francisco Chronicle touches on Mother's Day. It does. Yeah. It's kind of a reflection on the fact that you know I feel like I'm sort of in this phase of my life where I'm still partially able to be a kid sometimes and I'm just reflecting on the fact that probably in the next 10 years that's going to change if my brother and I have our own families and just it's also a day of remembrance. You know my my grandma passed away about five five or six years ago and just kind of realizing that every moment you have with your with your mom and your parents or whoever your your guardian is is incredibly rare and precious.
Wow. Kind of an emotional moment here on on on the program. Emily. Happy Mother's Day to you someday. And and to your mom as well Kelly watching I hope and Fremont. All right that's going to do it for us. If you'd like to reach out to Emily you can do so via email Emily dot hovind at SF Chronicle dot com.
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