The shift, made this week, is accompanied by a new court calendar reserved for people who discover they are the subject of bench or arrest warrants, and until now had to submit to jail booking — and possible detention — just for the chance to argue to a judge why they shouldn’t be in custody.

According to the court and attorneys involved in shaping the new policy, the change had been in the works for several months. The issue gained added public pressure in July when the ACLU and the Stanford Law School Criminal Defense Clinic sued the court over the previous practice.

The plaintiffs — led by a man who discovered he had a warrant for a minor offense, then spent three days in jail only to be released at arraignment — called the system a “bail or jail” test that unfairly burdened poor people.

“Our hope is that this allows people to avoid truly unnecessary incarceration,” said Emi Young, a staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “That’s something that never should have happened. It was extremely harmful to individuals and was bad public policy.”

The Superior Court declined to offer any comment other than to assert that the lawsuit was not the catalyst for the policy change.

Under the new protocol, people who learn they are wanted for a warrant now have the option, through an attorney, to request an arraignment date on the court calendar. They would still have to submit to an “informal booking” requiring a photograph and fingerprint recording, but they would head to court from there instead of being faced with posting bail or going into jail custody. In its initial stages, the reserved calendar for these cases will be on the second and fourth Mondays of the month.

A judge still has the final say on whether someone will be released, based on a person’s individual case and history. The kinds of cases on this calendar will typically involve minor and nonviolent offenses for which there is a good chance that someone will be ordered released while their case is adjudicated.

Meghan Piano, a county deputy public defender who was involved in drafting the new protocol — joined by representatives for the court, pretrial services, the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office — said the change is an important step toward leveling court access.

“Prior to this calendar, if you were poor and could not post bail, you sat in jail, whereas your wealthy neighbor would never step foot into a cell,” Piano said. “What matters is that we are here addressing this gaping hole of inequity.”

In several ways, this new calendar is a return to form. A similar practice was instituted as an emergency measure near the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. But in July 2022, Criminal Division Supervising Judge Daniel Nishigaya sent an email directive to judges stating that continuing to calendar unserved arrest warrants created an “administrative difficulty” that muddied recording, tracking, and reporting of cases.

Brandon Cabrera, supervising deputy district attorney for his office’s court diversion and mental-health unit, said a series of meetings followed in which there was a consensus to move away from forcing jail stays for people whose situations meant they would likely be released by a judge anyway.

“We got all the right people finally together to have a conversation about this,” Cabrera said.

Cabrera said that led to discussions about how to tackle those “administrative difficulties,” which ultimately led to the court agreeing to reserve a court session on two Mondays a month, when the arraignment calendar is the least busy, and the sheriff’s office agreeing to staff those Mondays at the county jail specifically to handle the warrant bookings.

What resulted, partly at Piano’s urging, was a “one-stop shop” system in which someone could get booked at the jail and go to court on the same day to see a judge and argue for release.

The new system is currently in a pilot phase, starting with one case this past Monday, and continuing with a full 10-case calendar Nov. 27.

Piano, who supervises the Pre-Arraignment Representation and Review program at her office, said she is already getting a flood of inquiries from people about the new court calendar.

“Just in the past week I have received numerous phone calls from people who really want to take care of their case but are petrified, and rightfully so, of having to sit in custody while they do so,” she said.

“It’s this unexpected complete interruption in life. All the main staples of what people have to hold on, their housing or their job or their family situation, they get ripped away from all that,” De-Bug cofounder Raj Jayadev said. “Even if the jail stay is only a couple of days, some of those things might never come back.”

Cabrera added that the new policy helps streamline the court system by incentivizing people to resolve their warrants, and allow cases to move along rather than wait for an unserved warrant to get activated by a happenstance encounter with law enforcement.

“If we can avoid someone waiting two to three days in jail and we know they don’t need to be there, this is a perfect solution,” he said.

Read the House committee’s report here:

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Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Visa Inc. CEO Ryan McInerney will also join them at the soiree in San Francisco, according to people briefed on the matter. Pfizer Inc. CEO Albert Bourla earlier confirmed he would attend the event, as he spoke on the sidelines of a summit that’s part of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meetings.

Technology CEOs including Qualcomm Inc.’s Cristiano Amon and Broadcom Inc.’s Hock Tan are also on the guest list, said the people, who asked not to be identified sharing details of a private event.

Xi will have the chance to talk up China’s economy to some of the world’s most-powerful foreign investors at the event, after a post-pandemic reopening expected to spur global growth failed to deliver. The Chinese leader will go into the dinner after wrapping an afternoon of talks with US President Joe Biden, aimed at stabilizing a tumultuous bilateral relationship that’s also troubled investors.

China is a major market for consumer electronics, accounting for about one-fifth of sales for Cupertino, California-based Apple. Qualcomm and Broadcom are among the world’s largest makers of chips for mobile phones, and their components are used in millions of handsets sold across China. Representatives of Apple, Qualcomm and Broadcom either declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment.

China sees investment by international companies as key to upgrading its faltering economy and has stepped up efforts to attract foreign investors this year. Its tightening of national security controls and messaging that foreign actors pose spy risks, along with years of policy crackdowns, have left some skeptical of that message.

“The Chinese economy is clearly weakening. There’s no question,” said Derek Scissors, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “But if you need to stay in China, and you’re worried about your position because of Chinese government behavior, it’s even more important to be able to talk to Xi.”

Details around the dinner have been closely guarded. Its hosts, the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations and the US-China Business Council, had in recent days remained silent even over which Chinese leader would attend the event, as well as its location.

Shortly before the event — being held at a San Francisco hotel where crowds gathered in support and in protest of China — the official program was available to attendees: Xi would address the dinner following an introduction from Chubb Ltd. CEO Evan Greenberg, chair of the committee.

Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, claimed at an anti-CCP rally on Saturday that attendees were paying $40,000 to sit at Xi’s table. The Chinese leader is also expected to deliver an address to the dinner.

A group of Xi’s “old friends” from Iowa have also been invited to the dinner, Bloomberg earlier reported. The group hosted Xi during a visit to the US to learn about agricultural practices some 38 years ago, when he was a little-known Chinese Communist Party official.

–With assistance from Fran Wang, Gabrielle Coppola, Aisha Counts, Dawn Lim, Silla Brush, Mark Gurman and Ian King.

(Adds details on program starting in ninth paragraph.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Ethics Committee in a scathing report Thursday said it has amassed “overwhelming evidence” of lawbreaking by Republican Rep. George Santos of New York that has been sent to the Justice Department, concluding flatly that he “cannot be trusted” after a monthslong investigation into his conduct.

Shortly after the panel’s report was released, Santos blasted it in a tweet on X as a “politicized smear” but said he would not be seeking reelection to a second term. He gave no indication, however, that he would step aside before his term ends next year, vowing to pursue his “conservative values in my remaining time in Congress.”

But a renewed effort to expel him from the House was quickly launched. The House could vote on his expulsion as soon as it returns from the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.

The panel said that Santos knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission, used campaign funds for personal purposes and violated the Ethics in Government Act with financial disclosure statements filed with the House.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” an investigative subcommittee said in a 56-page report detailing its findings to the full Ethics Committee.

The ethics panel also detailed Santos’ lack of cooperation with its investigation and said he “evaded” straightforward requests for information. “Particularly troubling was Representative Santos’ lack of candor during the investigation itself,” the committee determined.

The panel tasked with investigating the allegations against Santos provided him the chance to submit a signed, written statement in response to the allegations made against him, to provide documents responsive to the panel’s request for information, and to provide a statement under oath. But he did not do so, the report said. The information that he did provide, according to the committee, “included material misstatements that further advanced falsehoods he made during his 2022 campaign.”

The committee’s investigative panel said that without Santos’ cooperation it was unable to verify whether some expenses reported by his campaign were legitimate. But certain expenses on their face did not appear to have a campaign nexus. For example, it cited $2,281 spent at resorts in Atlantic City and $1,400 spent at a skin spa for what one spreadsheet described as “Botox.”

The panel also identified a $3,332 expense for a hotel stay, though the campaign’s calendar indicated he was “off at the Hampton’s for the weekend.” And there were tax and hotel charges on the campaign credit card from Las Vegas, during a time Santos told his campaign staff he was on his honeymoon and there were no corresponding campaign events on the calendar.

The report says that an investigative subcommittee decided to forgo taking steps that would have led to a lengthy sanctions hearing by the full Ethics panel, after which the panel could make recommendations about punishment to the full House. Instead, it urged House members “to take any action they deem appropriate and necessary” based on the report.

The findings by the investigative panel may be the least of Santos’ worries. The congressman faces a 23-count federal indictment that alleges he stole the identities of campaign donors and then used their credit cards to make tens of thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges. Federal prosecutors say Santos, who has pleaded not guilty, wired some of the money to his personal bank account and used the rest to pad his campaign coffers.

Santos, who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, is also accused of falsely reporting to the Federal Election Commission that he had loaned his campaign $500,000 when he actually hadn’t given anything and had less than $8,000 in the bank. The fake loan was an attempt to convince Republican Party officials that he was a serious candidate, worth their financial support, the indictment says.

The Justice Department declined to comment about the ethics report, as did the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which is handling the case against Santos.

Earlier this week, a former fundraiser for Santos pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge, admitting he impersonated a high-ranking congressional aide while raising campaign cash for the embattled New York Republican.

Santos easily survived a vote earlier this month to expel him from the House as most Republicans and 31 Democrats opted to withhold punishment while both his criminal trial and the Ethics Committee investigation continued. But the committee’s report could prove to be a gamechanger.

Rep. Susan Wild, for example, the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said she was no longer obligated to maintain neutrality because the committee’s work is now complete.

“I intend to vote yes on any privileged expulsion resolution that is brought forward,” Wild said.

Expulsion, the sternest form of punishment, has occurred just five times in the history of the House — three times during the Civil War for disloyalty to the Union and twice after convictions on federal charges, most recently in 2002.

If Santos were to be expelled, it would narrow the GOP’s already thin majority in the House, which now stands at 221-213. But many of his Republican colleagues from New York support booting Santos from the House as they seek to distance themselves from his actions.

While Santos now says he won’t seek reelection, his campaign was already woefully short on resources and candidates from both parties were scrambling at the chance to challenge him. Campaign records show he had about $28,000 on hand at the end of the fundraising quarter ending Sept. 30, an incredibly small sum for an incumbent.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of U.S. Rep. George Santos at https://apnews.com/hub/george-santos.

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Associated Press staff writers Stephen Groves, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO  — The first time Toni Atkins acted as the governor of California, she used her powers to honor the passing of San Diego Padres baseball player Tony Gwynn while playfully rebuffing Jimmy Kimmel’s advice that she “ invade Oregon. ”

It was 2014, and Atkins — the first lesbian to be the speaker of the state Assembly — was filling in for former Gov. Jerry Brown, a quirk of the California Constitution that requires governors to put someone else in charge whenever they leave the state.

Atkins, now the president pro tempore of the state Senate, has filled in as governor a few more times since then, most recently in July when she signed three bills into law and quipped that she was thrilled to once again step into the governor’s shoes, “ although I have better shoes. ”

Now, the 61-year-old lawmaker is turning her attention once again to the governor’s office — only this time, she’s exploring a much longer stay.

“I’m very interested in looking at that possibility” of running for governor, Atkins told The Associated Press in an interview, saying publicly for the first time what many have assumed since she announced she would step down as the Senate’s top leader next year. “I am looking at it seriously.”

The race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom will likely be a Democratic free-for-all sure to attract the party’s top talent for the chance to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fifth largest economy. California voters have never elected a woman to the governor’s office, nor a person who is openly LGBTQ. And a host of other Democratic candidates are also vying to make history.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis was the first to formally announce her candidacy just a few months into Newsom’s second term. Tony Thurmond, the Black state superintendent of public instruction, is also in, along with former Controller Betty Yee. Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is Filipino, has said he is seriously considering a run.

But Atkins is banking on her experience to give her an edge. That includes a brief stint as mayor of San Diego, one of the nation’s largest cities. And it includes becoming just the third person and first woman ever to hold both of the Legislature’s top jobs: speaker of the Assembly and president pro tempore of the Senate, where she negotiated eight state operating budgets and had her hands in countless major policy decisions.

“I sort of feel like I’m addicted to responsibility,” she said. “I think experience counts and matters, and I believe I have experience to continue to contribute in some way.”

California’s top legislative leaders are some of the most powerful people in the state, but it often doesn’t feel like it. While they negotiate major polices, it’s the governor who gets the attention when the deals are done.

That’s especially true for Atkins, who has been a more quiet leader than most. During her tenure as Senate leader, Democrats have grown their caucus to 32 out of 40 seats — their largest majority since 1883. That majority means there is little incentive to work with Republicans. But Atkins made sure Republicans had their bills heard in public hearings and even pushed for former Republican Leader Shannon Grove to be included in briefings with the Newsom administration.

“She always included us and there was never any surprises. I didn’t agree with what was going on, but we had input and participation,” said Grove, who noted she and Atkins bonded over their impoverished upbringing and a shared love of country music icon Dolly Parton. “She understands that we represent a portion of Californians as well and we were duly elected and therefore our voices should be heard.”

Atkins grew up in rural southwest Virginia, where her dad was a miner and her mother was a seamstress. Her childhood home did not have running water, and some of her earliest memories are of walking down a hill with her twin sister to fetch water from a spring to use for cooking and doing laundry.

As a young lesbian in Appalachia, Atkins dreamed of moving to California. She got her chance when her twin sister joined the Navy and was stationed in San Diego. Atkins moved there to help care for her sister’s young son, and never left.

“Toni is not the kind of person that wants to be the smartest person in the room. She wants to be the most helpful and effective person in the room. And oftentimes she is,” Kehoe said.

Atkins followed her mentor to the state Legislature in 2010, where she soon found herself in a contentious race for speaker against Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles. Atkins won, but left after two years to run for the Senate.

It wasn’t long before Atkins was selected by her colleagues to lead the state Senate, forcing her to work with Rendon, who had replaced her as speaker in the Assembly. Their relationship was rough at times, but fruitful for Democrats. Their partnership expanded Medicaid to include all eligible adults regardless of immigration status and free meals for public school students.

“We had problems, but I think it was, you know, related more to ambition than anything and, you know, probably to an extent immaturity on my part, too,” said Rendon, who plans to run for state treasurer in 2026. “Toni Atkins is a very forgiving person. I have not always been the easiest person to deal with. But she, you know, kept coming back and trying to forge a relationship.”

Atkins said she is most proud of the policies that were inspired by her impoverished upbringing, including helping implement the federal Affordable Care Act and creating a tax credit for poor families worth several hundred dollars.

Those wins are part of what’s driving her potential run for governor, too.

“I see what you can do when you’re in that role,” she said. “There is something about being at the table.”

Although a final decision won’t be made until January, efforts are being made to retain the program at Lynbrook, Homestead and Fremont high schools, and phase it out at Cupertino and Monta Vista. Chinese — whose projected cut at Homestead was also contested by the community — will continue to be offered at that school, while French would be phased out at Fremont High.

Since 2019, enrollment in Fremont Union’s world language offerings have dropped by 18%, while total enrollment has dropped by 12%, according to the district. Fremont Union also anticipates its student population will drop by more than 2,000 students in the next five years.

“As we face declining enrollment, it gives us all an opportunity to think about what our values are vis-à-vis education. What are our resources, and what are our priorities?” said Jeremy Kitchen, the Japanese teacher at Lynbrook High School. “I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet, as declining enrollment looks like it’s going to continue. Districts all around this area are going to continue to be faced with difficult decisions.”

Fremont Union is far from alone. Across the Bay Area, schools are grappling with declining enrollment, along with the funding, resourcing and staffing implications of that trend. Over the last six years, the district has spent more than $2.4 million overstaffing dwindling classrooms, and has been forced to combine courses once enrollment dipped too low.

That was why initially, the district had proposed cutting one language from each of its five high schools, a change that would have culled the number of campuses offering Japanese programs from all five campuses to just two. After reviewing enrollment data this fall, however, the district said Lynbrook had “sufficient student sign ups” in all four language offerings for the programs to be maintained — and students like 12th grader Maya Swaminathan have been able to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Japanese is really what makes Lynbrook strong,” said Swaminathan. “Of course, we have the computer science and STEM departments. But what really makes Lynbrook stand out is Japanese.”

For years, Lynbrook and other high schools in the district have competed at the Japan Bowl, a national competition where students battle over Japanese language, culture and history. Since 2013, there have only been two years that a Fremont Union High School district team hasn’t won first prize in at least one of the competition’s three levels. And even in those missing years, Cupertino or Lynbrook high schools took every second prize except for one.

Last spring, students at Cupertino High took home first place in two of three of the Japan Bowl’s levels. Lynbrook earned second place in all three.

“Without a Japanese program at Cupertino, those students will be hard-pressed to participate in the Japan Bowl in the future,” said Andy Tsai, a former Japanese student at Lynbrook. “In an increasingly competitive admissions environment, it’s removing one avenue by which students can differentiate themselves and demonstrate academic and extracurricular excellence.”

Still, that decision isn’t final. The proposed, secondary plan is “tentative,” district spokesperson Rachel Zlotziver said, and pending verification of next year’s enrollment projections in December. The following month, the district will then inform schools of their course offerings for the next academic year.

Despite the letdown of losing Japanese at Cupertino and Monta Vista, Ann Jordan, a retired Japanese language teacher in Los Gatos, said she felt like the district had taken the concerns of the community seriously.

“I don’t think they were expecting the level of scrutiny that came upon them (after the phase-out was first announced in April),” said Jordan. “But I do think they listened to the public and tried to come up with a less drastic solution.”

SAN FRANCISCO  — Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.”

“We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples,” Xi said Wednesday during a dinner speech with business leaders.

The gesture came at the end of a day in which Xi and President Joe Biden held their first face to face meeting in a year and pledged to try to reduce tensions. Xi did not share additional details on when or where pandas might be provided but appeared to suggest the next pair of pandas are most likely to come to California, probably San Diego.

The bears have long been the symbol of the U.S.-China friendship since Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo in Washington in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. Later, Beijing loaned the pandas to other U.S. zoos, with proceeds going back to panda conservation programs.

The National Zoo’s three giant pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji, eight days ago began their long trip to China. After their departure, only four pandas are left in the United States, in the Atlanta Zoo.

“I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas, and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi said in his speech. He added that he learned the San Diego Zoo and people in California “very much look forward to welcoming pandas back.”

Xi is in California to attend a summit of Indo-Pacific leaders and for his meeting with Biden. He made no mention of the pandas during his public remarks earlier in the day as he met with Biden.

But relations showed signs of stabilization as Xi traveled to San Francisco to meet with Biden. The two men met for about four hours Wednesday at the picturesque Filoli Historic House & Garden, where they agreed to cooperate on anti-narcotics, resume high-level military communications and expand people-to-people exchanges.

The National Zoo’s exchange agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association had been set to expire in early December and negotiations to renew or extend the deal did not produce results.

The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year.

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Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this report.

Its iconic status is especially evident in Southern California, where it is known by several names as it runs through the heart of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, carrying 300,000 vehicles a day.

To those who continue the region’s tradition of naming roadways, it’s the Santa Monica Freeway. Traffic reporters refer to it as “The 10.” At one time, there was even a serious movement for Christopher Columbus – before, of course, the explorer became politically incorrect.

By any name, I-10 is an important artery for a region that still depends on autos and trucks to carry people and goods. Its vital role makes it, from time to time, a political lightning rod.

The freeway’s biggest political brouhaha erupted in 1976, when the pavement of one lane in each direction was marked with diamond-shaped symbols and reserved for cars carrying at least three passengers — the state’s first experiment discouraging single-occupant driving. The immediate result was traffic chaos both on the freeway and on nearby surface streets and countless angry drivers.

Although the so-called diamond lanes experiment had been planned during Republican Ronald Reagan’s governorship, Jerry Brown was governor when Caltrans made the switch, just as he was launching his first campaign for president.

Nevertheless, it reflected Brown’s philosophy. “Obviously,” he said that year in a speech, “the ethic of unlimited freeways that attempt to pour cement from one end of the state to the other is over and it takes a while for people to adjust to that.”

Adriana Gianturco, an old college friend of Brown’s who had been an urban planner in Boston, became Caltrans director the same day and had nothing to do with the project, but immediately became its much-despised symbol.

Five months after the diamond lanes experiment began, a judge ruled that it had not undergone a needed environmental impact review and with opposition still raging, the Brown administration quietly dropped it.

Eighteen years later, in 1994, I-10 once again became the center of political attention when the Northridge Earthquake seriously damaged the elevated structure. Although many other public facilities were also damaged, I-10’s central role made repairs a priority.

Then-Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency and the state hired a construction firm from the Sacramento area, headed by a larger-than-life builder named C.C. Myers, to rebuild the freeway with huge financial incentives for rapid completion. Myers’ crews worked around-the-clock and finished repairs 74 days ahead of schedule, earning a reported $200,000 a day bonus. The tab doubled from $14.9 million to $30 million, but it was worth it since closure of the freeway was costing the local economy an estimated $1 million a day.

The fire put Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on the spot to get the freeway fixed and back in operation as quickly as possible. During a Monday press conference, with workers in the background shoring up scarred pillars, both pledged to do so and on Tuesday Newsom estimated that repairs would take three to five weeks.

Newsom and Bass deflected suggestions that the homeless camps next to the pallet yards might have been responsible for the fire but the suspicion adds to the already raging public anger over such camps.

The I-10 countdown begins again.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

Instead, while some of the small growers who characterized the illegal business have been licensed, the new market has quickly become dominated by a handful of huge corporate farmers. Hoping to save the small growers from extinction, the California Legislature is considering rolling back some of the very environmental guardrails that were supposed to make the legal industry more sustainable.

This is a big mistake. While the intent of proposals like Senate Bill 508, introduced by John Laird, D-Monterey, may be laudable, removing environmental safeguards would set a bad precedent, and it won’t save the beleaguered growers who are struggling to survive in the new market.

In fact, it will probably hasten their demise.

The state’s environmental regulations are not to blame for the struggles of small farmers. County permitting decisions, the local political climate in places where there is opposition to the industry, and the inability of law enforcement to completely eradicate illicit cultivation have been much bigger hurdles.

But the largest obstacle has been simple economics.

Cannabis prices have fallen rapidly since the product became legal, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. Prior to legalization, about 80% of the cost of producing weed came from trying to avoid law enforcement, according to a RAND Corporation report. With that huge cost of production gone, larger growers entered the market and were able to use technology and other efficiencies to lower their costs.

The result is a glut of supply that has driven down the price, making it nearly impossible for small farmers in the remote forested mountains of Northern California, who once dominated the industry, to compete.

Changing the environmental rules wouldn’t change this economic reality. Instead, it would punish the small growers who navigated the permitting system and are playing by the rules. And it would give still another advantage to the large corporate farmers who have had little trouble creating and expanding their operations.

The state should focus on changes that would actually help small growers. Increasing law enforcement spending against illicit producers for at least five years would send a clear message.

Limiting the size of farms, which would give small growers a chance to compete while they establish their businesses, would also help. This was part of the original intent of Prop. 64, but the state created a loophole that allowed larger farms to be created and dominate the market.

California needs to make it easier for small growers to reach their customers. Large farmers have the resources to build vertically integrated businesses where cultivation, processing and distribution are all under one umbrella, while small growers currently lose much of their revenue to middlemen.

When voters agreed to legalize marijuana for recreational use, they were told they were helping both small farmers and the environment. The state can and should continue to pursue each of these goals, instead of retreating on both.

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula is a professor of health policy, economics and law at USC and former president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. Michael Sutton is former president of the California Fish and Game Commission. They wrote this commentary for CalMatters.

Yes, both men are unpopular, remarkably so. Only one-third of Americans view President Joe Biden favorably, and two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want to nominate someone else for the presidency (no one in particular, just someone else, please). Trump is the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, but his overall approval rating is lower than Biden’s. And while 60% of voters don’t want to put Trump back in the White House, 65% don’t want to hand Biden a second term, either. The one thing on which Americans seem to agree is that we find a Biden-Trump 2024 rematch entirely disagreeable.

This disdain may reflect the standard gripes about the candidates. (One is too old, the other too Trump.) But it also may signal an underlying reluctance to acknowledge the meaning of their standoff and the inescapability of our decision. A contest between Biden and Trump would compel Americans to either reaffirm or discard basic democratic and governing principles. More so than any other pairing, Biden versus Trump forces us to decide, or at least to clarify, who we think we are and what we strive to be.

Trump is running as an overtly authoritarian candidate; the illusion of pivots, of adults in the room, of a man molded by the office is long gone. He is dismissive of the law, except when he can harness it for his benefit; of open expression, except when it fawns all over him; and of free elections, except when they produce victories he likes. He has called for the “termination” of the Constitution based on his persistent claims of 2020 electoral fraud, and according to The Washington Post, in a new term, he would use the Justice Department as an instrument of vengeance against political opponents. We know who Trump is and what he offers.

Biden’s case to the electorate — for 2020, 2022 and 2024 — has been premised on the preservation of American democratic traditions. In the video announcing his 2020 campaign, he asserted that “our very democracy” was at stake in the race against Trump. In a speech two months before the midterm vote last year, he asserted that Trump and his allies “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our Republic.” And the video kicking off his 2024 reelection bid featured multiple scenes of the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “The question we are facing,” Biden said, “is whether in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom.” That is our choice in 2024.

Rather eat glass

Like so many others, I also wish we could avoid that choice or at least defer it. As journalist Amy Walter has put it, “Swing voters would rather eat a bowl of glass than have to choose between Trump and Biden again.” Well, it may be time to grab a spoon and unroll the gauze. When half the country believes democracy isn’t working well, when calls for political violence have become commonplace, when the speaker of the House is an election denier, it is time to face what we risk becoming and to accept or reject it. We have no choice but to choose.

Even if some combination of poor health and legal proceedings somehow pushed Biden and Trump aside — and some blandly likable generic candidates took their places — we could not simply rewind the past eight years and return to our regularly scheduled programming. America would still face the choices and temptations that Biden and Trump have come to represent; the choice would not change, even if the faces did.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll that shows Trump leading Biden in five battleground states also asked registered voters which candidate they trust on key questions. Trump won on the economy, immigration and national security; Biden received higher marks on just two issues. The first was abortion, a core priority among Democratic voters and one that proved powerful in last year’s midterms and the off-year elections and ballot initiatives last Tuesday in states like Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.

The second issue on which Biden commands greater trust? By a slim margin, it is democracy. This advantage is pronounced among Black voters, who trust Biden over Trump by 77% to 16% on democracy, and Hispanic voters, who prefer Biden by 53% to 38%. (White voters, by contrast, sided with Trump 50% to 44% on that issue.) The protection of American democracy offers a potentially resonant message for Biden, precisely among parts of the Democratic coalition that he can ill afford to lose.

They need each other

Of course, we already faced this choice — and made it — in 2020. Why insist on a do-over? Because a country approaching its 250th birthday does not have the luxury of calling itself an experiment forever; this is the moment to assess the results of that experiment. Because Jan. 6 was not the final offensive by those who would overrun the will of voters. Because a lone Trump victory in 2016 could conceivably be remembered as an aberration if it were followed by two consecutive defeats, but a Trump restoration in 2024 would confirm America’s slide toward authoritarian rule and would render Biden’s lone term an interregnum, a blip in history’s turn. And we must choose again because the fever did not break; instead, it threatens to break us.

Carlos Lozada is a New York Times columnist.