Capitol Briefs: And so it begins

Trump 2.0, Day 1: As expected, President Donald Trump wasted no time on Monday unleashing a flurry of executive orders targeting immigration, the environment, citizenship, Tik Tok, energy and much more.

He also issued pardons or commutations to approximately 1,500 people convicted or charged with carrying out the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by his supporters seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

An EO pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement – the international treaty to combat climate change with almost 200 participating nations – drew a quick response from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who issued a release stating “If you don’t believe in science, believe your own damn eyes.” The statement was set above four pictures of firefighters battling the ongoing fires in Los Angeles.

Newsom also issued a terse response to another Trump EO that seeks to end birthright citizenship, saying simply “This is unconstitutional.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta agreed, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional and quite frankly, un-American.” Bonta on Tuesday filed suit seeking to block the order. The suit was joined by the attorneys general of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and the City of San Francisco.

CA special session wildfire bills introduced: As reported by California Assembly budget guru Jason Sisney in his Substack newsletter, lawmakers introduced two special session budget bills related to the Los Angeles wildfires on Monday. Both will clear the 72-hour requirement on Thursday and special session budget committee hearings on the bills are expected to commence on Wednesday, January 22.

A notable passing: Longtime Capitol lobbyist Dick Ratcliff passed on Jan. 17^th. As noted in the Capitol Morning Report, Ratcliff lobbied mostly for utilities, transportation and banking interests before retiring and throwing himself into the arts, specifically sculpture. His work appeared at several Sacramento area galleries, but he may best be remembered on that front for the iconic fox and goose sculptures adoring the front walkway at the Fox & Goose Public House at 10^th and R Streets in Sacramento.

Today’s historical Capitol tidbit: As recently noted by everyone’s favorite Capitol historian, Alex Vassar, only three current sitting California lawmakers – John Laird, Tom Umberg, and Anna Caballero – have served during the terms of three governors.  (For Laird it was Gov. Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Gavin Newsom; Umberg was Gov. Pete Wilson, Schwarzenegger, and Newsom while for Caballero it was Govs. Jerry Brown, Schwarzenegger, and Newsom). But which lawmaker in California history served with the most governors, you ask? That, Vassar tells us, would be one Charles Lyon, who served with nine different governors over a long legislative career in both the Assembly and Senate that ran from 1914 to 1954. Lyon’s career featured one truly significant high note – legislation that created the UCLA campus – and one very low point: his conviction in 1954 on corruption charges, which earned him 18 months in jail at the San Luis Obispo’s Men’s Colony. Lyon received a pardon in 1958 from Gov. Goodwin Knight and he spent the last few years of his life as a lobbyist.

Editor’s note: This last snippet has been corrected from an earlier version, which did not correctly list the sets of governors each of the three listed lawmakers served with. We regret the error.