GOV GAVIN NEWSOM SAYS CALIFORNIA NOT GOING BACK TO NORMAL UNTIL VACCINE ARRIVES - BUT THAT IS NOT ANY TIME IN THE NEAR OR FAR FUTURE

Gavin Newsom: California ‘Not Going Back to Normal’ Until We Have a Vaccine

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Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

HANNAH BLEAU

6 May 20201,514

2:19

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday warned that, while California will move into the next phase of reopening its economy this week, it is “not going back to normal” until there is a vaccine.

Newsom this week announced that the state will move into the next phase of its recovery plan by Friday, May 8, allowing certain businesses — like bookstores, flower shops, clothing stores, and sporting goods stores — to reopen with certain modifications, which will be provided this week. According to the governor, offices and dine-in restaurants “will be part of a later Stage 2 opening.”

Per his office:

The announcement for Friday does not include offices, seated dining at restaurants, shopping malls or schools. As the Governor noted last week, the state is working with school districts and the California education community to determine how best and safely to reopen. That continues to be the case – this May 8 announcement does not move up this timeline.

Newsom’s office noted that individual counties “can choose to continue more restrictive measures in place based on their local conditions.”

Despite the slow and steady effort to return to a place of pre-virus normalcy, Newsom told Californians on Tuesday that the state will not return to normal until “we get to immunity and a vaccine.”

“We’re not going back to normal. It’s a new normal with adaptations and modifications, until we get to immunity and a vaccine,” the governor said during Tuesday’s press briefing.

While researchers are working on a vaccine for COVID-19 specifically, no vaccine for other forms of coronavirus have ever been approved, casting doubt on the efforts.

Christopher Whitty, the U.K.’s Chief Medical Officer, told a parliamentary committee last month that there are no guarantees in the development of a vaccine.

We need “to be careful that we don’t assume that we are going to have a vaccine for this disease as we have had for, let’s say measles, which once you have it you’re protected for life,” he said, according to Business Insider, adding, “We cannot guarantee success.”

President Trump, meanwhile, remains hopeful, telling reporters over the weekend that America will likely have a vaccine by the end of the year.

Kobach: California Shouldn’t Demand Money from the Rest of Us Only to Give it to Illegal Aliens

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KRIS W. KOBACH

17 Apr 20208,016

3:51

Once again, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has gone to extraordinary lengths to reward illegal immigration and encourage illegal aliens to stay in the United States. On Wednesday, he announced that—due to the coronavirus pandemic—California will give $500 checks to 150,000 low-income illegal aliens. The cost to taxpayers will be $125 million.

This came a day after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that illegal aliens will be eligible to receive $1,500 checks that the city will be handing out to its residents.

What Newsom and Garcetti are doing is illegal under federal law. In 1996 Congress passed a major welfare reform act. A crucial section of that law prohibits states and localities from giving public benefits to illegal aliens. And it remains in federal law today at 8 U.S.C. 1621: an illegal alien “is not eligible for any State or local public benefit.” Public benefit includes “any … benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of a State or local government….”

We stopped hoping that California would follow federal law a long time ago; these latest actions continue a pattern. As I wrote last July, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) was the first governor to sign a bill making free health care available to illegal aliens. The cost of providing those benefits to illegal aliens was a massive $98 million. That giveaway, too, violates federal law.

But now Newsom is providing millions of dollars in checks to illegal aliens while at the same time expecting the rest of the country to subsidize this spending. California officials are hoping that the federal government will reimburse 75% of the state’s coronavirus expenditures.

And Democrats in Congress are demanding that we federal taxpayers cough up the money. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) want the federal government to provide $150 billion to state and local governments to help absorb their coronavirus spending.

The audacity of handing unlawful checks to illegal aliens while demanding that the rest of us pay for it is breathtaking. Especially when red states have kept their spending under control and have not been handing checks to illegal aliens.

No state that is handing checks to illegal aliens, subsidizing free health care for illegal aliens, and offering sanctuary to illegal aliens – all in violation of federal law – deserves a penny of assistance from the rest of us taxpayers. Not to mention the fact that an unprecedented number of low-income Americans are unemployed. Those U.S. citizens shouldn’t have to compete with illegal aliens for jobs when the economy reopens. But Newsom and other California Democrats are encouraging the illegal aliens to remain.

You would think that California officials would put U.S. citizens first just once, during this time of national crisis. But you’d be wrong.

Kris W. Kobach is a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and is the former secretary of state of Kansas. He is currently General Counsel for We Build the Wall. An expert in immigration law and policy, he coauthored the Arizona SB-1070 immigration law and represented in federal court the 10 ICE agents who sued to stop President Obama’s 2012 DACA amnesty. During 2001-03, he was Attorney General John Ashcroft’s chief adviser on immigration law at the Department of Justice. His website is kriskobach.com.