• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) was sworn into his fifth term in Congress representing the 24th District on Jan. 3. “As someone who grew up, got his first job and a great education, and started a family on the Central Coast, I am deeply grateful to continue working on its behalf in Congress,” Carbajal said in a statement. “There are a vast array of challenges facing our families and the communities they call home—from rising costs of living to national threats like climate change, gun violence, and far-right extremism targeting our basic civil rights. On these and many other issues, I pledge to work with anyone to advance solutions to these challenges and raise the quality of life for every resident of the Central Coast.” In his most recent term, he helped create new laws to tackle contaminated groundwater near Central Coast airports, improve transparency to military housing for military families, boost the federal response to the fentanyl crisis, and improve cybersecurity for the nation’s nuclear systems, according to Carbajal’s office.
• U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) was sworn in to serve his first six-year term on Jan. 3. According to his office, Schiff set a record as the only senator in the nation’s history to take the oath of office three separate times in less than a month. In 2024, Schiff won a special election and then won a general election after U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away. On Dec. 9, 2024, Schiff was appointed to the Senate following U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler’s resignation and sworn in for the first time. On Dec. 19, 2024, Schiff took the oath once more after California certified the state’s general election results. “We must work to ensure that every Californian can share in what our state has to offer. And that starts with the work necessary to build more housing and lower the cost of living,” Schiff said in the statement. “To create an economy that works for everyone and protects our planet for generations to come. And to defend our democracy and preserve the institutions that make progress possible and lasting change achievable.”
• On Jan. 6, President Joe Biden took aim at future oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, withdrawing 635 million acres of federal waters from oil or natural gas leasing. “Drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.” In a memo to the secretary of the interior, Biden said the action was allowed under the authority granted to the president as part of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The withdrawals don’t have an expiration date and include more than 250 million acres off the West Coast. California Gov. Gavin Newsom thanked the Biden-Harris administration in a statement. “Hundreds of miles of California’s iconic coastline is now fully protected from offshore drilling,” Newsom said. “For decades, we have led the fight to protect the Pacific Coast and the millions of Californians who call coastal communities home. … New offshore drilling has no place in California.”
This article appears in Jan 9-19, 2025.