• On Oct. 7, U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff (D-California) and Alex Padilla (D-California) partnered with state representatives from Oregon and Illinois on a joint statement that addresses National Guard deployment concerns related to each officials’ respective state. “Whether in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Portland, the Trump administration continues fabricating claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify his false assertions that there is a ‘need’ to deploy troops into our cities—all while literally defunding our police by cutting funding that helps local law enforcement make our cities safer,” the statement reads. “None of our states asked for this. None of our states need this. And none of our National Guard troops—who are our friends and neighbors—signed up to intimidate their fellow Americans in their own communities or to be used as political pawns by a vindictive president. Donald Trump should immediately reverse course and end these un-American deployments.” In September, Schiff and Padilla sent a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Defense to demand information about the deployment of California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles in June. Among the details requested was the total cost to taxpayers, including the sources of any funding that was reprogrammed for the activation and how many military and civilian personnel have been assigned to missions in and around Los Angeles.
• On Oct. 8, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 656, which requires social media companies to make canceling an account straightforward and clear for users, while ensuring that a cancellation triggers a full deletion of the user’s personal data on the respective app. “It shouldn’t be hard to delete social media accounts, and it shouldn’t be even harder to take back control of personal data. With these bills, social media users can be assured that when they delete their accounts, they do not leave their data behind,” Newsom said in a statement. Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Santa Clarita), who introduced AB 656, stated that social media users deserve “to have the confidence that they can easily delete their account and when they do that their personal information is deleted too.” According to Newsom’s office, AB 656 builds on the governor’s prior work related to consumer privacy protections, such as last year’s Click to Cancel bill (AB 2863), which requires companies that offer automatic renewals and continuous services to provide consumers with a user-friendly option to unsubscribe from services they no longer want, without being trapped by hidden fees or protocols.
• U.S. Reps. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) and Trent Kelly (R-Mississippi) recently reintroduced the Community College Agriculture Advancement Act, a bipartisan bill that would fund community college workforce training, education, and research programs in agriculture. Carbajal described the bill as an aim to correct community college agricultural programs’ longtime exclusion from federal funding opportunities. The bill would amend the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977 to allow community colleges to access grant money for agriculture programs, while establishing a competitive U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant program for the nation’s nearly 1,100 community colleges to apply for to fund workforce training, education, research, and outreach programs in agriculture. “Agriculture is the leading industry on the Central Coast, yet the funding meant to sustain the next generation of farmers isn’t reaching our community colleges,” Carbajal stated in late September. “This bipartisan bill strengthens the resources available to the community and technical colleges that educate and train our country’s agricultural workforce.”
This article appears in Oct 16 – Oct 23, 2025.