When you have a president who mocks our inclusivity, who demonizes our diversity... you can't ask for patience.Collection: Patience
We will not lift a single finger or spend a single cent to be a cog in the Trump deportation machine, and we won't be complicit in his effort to make American great again by reengineering the legal immigration system.Collection: Legal
Foreign relations should involve human rights, workers' rights, and environmental protection.Collection: Environmental
Our State Senate must lead by example, restore trust and transparency, stop sweeping workplace misconduct under the rug, and do everything we can to protect women who work in and around the Capitol.Collection: Trust
While we need to provide leadership and stability to the world, we should do that through diplomacy.Collection: Leadership
Clean air shouldn't be a privilege dictated by where you can afford to live but a right to which we are all entitled.
Banning plastic bags so that people use paper bags or imported reusable bags that will end up in local landfills soon thereafter is not the only solution to our plastic bag challenge.
Recycling more plastics can help local businesses and expand jobs while supporting the goals of sustainability.
Seniority means nothing if you don't do anything with it.
There isn't enough renewable fuel in the world to crack our growing addiction to foreign oil. We need to decrease miles driven and increase engine efficiency.
Our communities will become more - not less - dangerous when local police officers are pulled from their duties to arrest otherwise law-abiding maids, busboys, and day laborers for immigration violations.
Police chiefs know a thing or two about public safety.
No one wants dangerous criminals in our communities.
Drafting local police into Trump's immigration crackdown undermines public safety and is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
California lost its way in 1994 with Prop. 187, but that tragic episode gave birth to a new California consciousness - one that will now do everything within its power to protect our diversity and the economic power it has created.
Unlike Washington, the California legislature has proved that cooperation is both possible and essential to successful policymaking, while stubborn absolutism will have you trailing head lice in popularity polls.
Yes, we absolutely need to eliminate the single-use plastic bag, but we don't have to eliminate the jobs of hardworking Californians to accomplish this goal.
Dependence on oil from volatile foreign markets undermines our economic security and threatens our national security. Moreover, that addiction is producing toxic air and a public-health epidemic.
California serves as our nation's cutting edge on many fronts.
Lawmakers must stand up for companies that choose public safety over profit margins.
No corner of our society has been left unscathed by the horrors of gun violence. To end it, we'll need to bring together the best from each corner, taking what works from government, the private sector, and our local communities and crafting common-sense solutions to gun violence.
Addressing budget issues is usually a balancing act in which cuts are weighed against revenue increases to find the best solution for the state.
There's always more employers can do to protect their employees.
I wouldn't have voted for the war in Iraq, which has cost us trillions we could have been spending on a carbon-free economy, affordable college, and single-payer health care.
I wouldn't have voted to prosecute 13-year-olds as adults.
I wouldn't have supported invoking Taft-Hartley to help George Bush end a strike.
I worry about civil-rights activists being targeted as black-identity extremists. I worry about the government saying, 'I don't like this progressive blogger' and subjecting them to scrutiny.
As the youngest child of a single immigrant mother with a third-grade education, I never thought in my wildest dreams that I'd ever be an elected official.
Democrats are very good at governing. When it comes to messaging, I'm not too sure about.
Poverty is poverty. At the end of the day, people want a job.
We can't cross our fingers and hope that President Donald Trump can 'learn and change.'
California is the greatest beacon of opportunity the world has ever known. But we didn't get here through years of political seniority - we built it through acts of audacity.
I am not just a defender of the California Dream. I am a product of it.
If I've learned one thing as a state leader, it's that California will never fulfill its truest potential if we wait for Washington to change on its own.
Cap and trade is an important tool in California's climate policy portfolio. It sends a price signal to industries to reduce their carbon pollution while generating billions of dollars in revenue for investments in clean transportation and direct pollution reduction.
Thanks to policies mandating clean energy development, California's electric grid is one of the least carbon-intensive in the world.
Clean energy isn't just good for the planet; it's good for consumers' monthly utility bills and for the economy.
California continues to pass the most ambitious laws in the world to expand clean energy and combat climate change.
My mother passed away young - she died from ovarian cancer at just 54 years old. Her sacrifices for my sisters and I evoke a tribute in her honor each and every Mother's Day.
I've been surrounded by strong, hardworking women like my mother all my life.
Domestic workers allow many people with disabilities to maintain independent, productive lives and live in their own homes - not in institutions.
My mother, Carmen, cleaned houses and took care of elderly people.
I'm not into political gamesmanship.
I think that many Californians have been accustomed to, have normalized, that being good sometimes is good enough.
We have proven that you can actually move strong, progressive policies, grow the economy, and improve the human condition.
You've got to lead from a position of strength.
President Trump's threat to weaponize federal funding is not only unconstitutional but emblematic of the cruelty he seeks to impose on our most vulnerable communities.
It is erroneous and profoundly irresponsible to suggest that up to three million undocumented immigrants living in America are dangerous criminals.
It's incumbent on all of us to remember our history and not repeat our past sins.
The Internet is now the catalyst in our society for growing our economy, engaging in the democratic process, and connecting with one another. It is an information equalizer, and everyone from farmworkers to financiers deserves fair access to it.