California fast food restaurants strike back

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Jeanne Kuang: 

When California lawmakers, Gov. Gavin Newsom, fast food corporations and the Service Employees International Union announced an agreement to raise fast food workers’ wages, all sides seemed to accept the deal. 

Except, that is, independent franchised restaurant owners — the ones who have to pay the raises, who said they were left out of the dealmaking. Now, they’re organizing. 

In person and over Zoom, franchise owners packed a meeting of the state’s new fast food council on Wednesday, urging it not to adopt any further increases in the industry’s minimum wage after the April hike from $16 to $20 for limited-service restaurants — a 25% increase. Fast food workers are seeking an inflationary adjustment for 2025. 

The restaurant owners said since the wage hike, they’ve cut back hours, slowed growth and reduced certain benefits. Price increases, they said, have also driven a decrease in sales. Several were accompanied by managers and employees who also spoke against further wage increases. 

The franchise owners sought to relate their experiences to those of their workers, highlighting one dynamic that has occasionally surfaced during years of political battles over fast food wages: As lawmakers and unions pushed the regulation to benefit a low-wage workforce that is predominantly Latino and Black, business groups have sought to display their own diversity. Many of the restaurateurs at Wednesday’s hearing said they were immigrants, with some having arrived in the U.S. as refugees. Some had started out themselves as fast food workers and praised the franchise model as a bridge to minority business ownership. 

The testimony is sure to further inflame debate around the state’s fast food law, which industry groups and Republicans have lambasted Newsom for. 

The two sides have spent months issuing competing press releases about whether fast food jobs have grown or declined in California. The reality, according to seasonally-adjusted federal employment data, is that it’s been basically flat for about a year. 

In other Capitol news: Assembly Republicans unveiled seven bills Wednesday for Gov. Newsom’s special session on gas prices, headlined by a proposed $100 rebate to drivers, financed by cap and trade revenue. Other measures include suspending the state gas tax (which increased to 59.6 cents per gallon on July 1) and proposals to speed up approvals for oil drilling and gas storage projects.

• Assembly GOP leader James Gallagher, in a statement: “This special session is just one more attempt by Newsom to distract from his role in driving up gas prices. While Democrats fall in line behind a scheme that Newsom’s own administration says could increase gas prices, Assembly Republicans have a common-sense plan to give drivers relief.”

The only other bill so far is Newsom’s proposal to empower the state Energy Commission to require refineries to keep reserves of gasoline, which he says will prevent price spikes. The first bill hearing in the Assembly is set for Sept. 26, followed by a floor session on Oct. 1.

More on jobs: With a bill to restrict warehouse locations and truck routes sitting on Gov. Newsom’s desk, businesses groups and city leaders urged him Wednesday to veto the legislation, says CalMatters Inland Empire reporter Deborah Brennan. 

The League of California Cities joined Inland Empire mayors and business leaders who say the bill would hamstring cities’ land use authority. Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, a bill co-author and San Bernardino Democrat, says the bill is a first step toward improving environmental health in communities near warehouses. 

Focus on Inland Empire: Each Thursday, Deborah surveys the big stories from that part of California. Read her latest newsletter and sign up here to receive it.

From CalMatters politics reporter Yue Stella Yu:

Will artificial intelligence be the doom of political integrity? Or will it help promote election law compliance?

Depends on who you ask, according to a panel of tech and campaign finance experts Wednesday at the state Fair Political Practices Commission’s 50th anniversary event in Sacramento.

The independent nonpartisan commission — California’s campaign finance watchdog agency — was created by the Political Reform Act in 1974 to ensure transparency in state and local politics after the Watergate scandal. The agency of about 100 employees regulates lobbying, conflict of interest, campaign finance and ethics violations. 

Wednesday’s event featured former and current commissioners, campaign finance attorneys and state legislators, including former commission chairperson Ann Ravel, Political Reform Act co-author Bob Stern and state Sen. Steve Glazer, an Orinda Democrat. Gov. Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown both appeared on the screen in pre-recorded footage.

One of the panels — moderated by commission chairperson Adam Silver — discussed the role of AI in elections. While the proliferation of deep fakes concerns him, the technology could help bolster the agency’s enforcement efforts on campaign finance violations and educate officials on compliance, Silver said.

Scott Morris, a senior strategic client executive at Microsoft, deemed the technology “the steam engine of the fourth industrial revolution.” 

Assembly Elections Committee Chairperson Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat and former local elections official for nearly three decades, said AI could also help answer voter questions, monitor cybersecurity threats, optimize voting locations and even redraw districts.

But Drew Liebert, initiative director at the nonprofit California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, warned of the abuse of AI in elections.

• Liebert: “We have to be very careful as we study these enormous learning machines out there scooping up … all of the information on the internet. I think we have to approach AI with a great deal of caution.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter Wednesday, putting top social media and AI companies on notice. He reminded executives at Alphabet, Meta, OpenAI, X and others that California law bans certain types of voter intimidation and deception, and these laws may apply to misleading content posted on social media sites and content generated by AI. 

Bonta also said companies have either “eased or eliminated” their content-moderation policies, despite a “dramatic increase” of misinformation on social media during the 2020 general election.

• The letter: “Millions of Californians rely on social media and artificial intelligence services to obtain news and information about upcoming elections, and it is paramount that the platforms, products, and services offered by your companies not be misused to deceive voters about their constitutional right to vote.”

The Legislature has passed a handful of election-related AI bills that now await Newsom’s decision, including a measure to require platforms to remove or label deepfakes, and ban users from creating deceptive AI content within 120 days of an election in California.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in 2022, California’s Democratic lawmakers moved to expand reproductive health care access. They swiftly passed a 12-bill package to strengthen protections and protect patient privacy, then persuaded voters to amend the state constitution to guarantee abortion rights. In May, Gov. Newsom signed into law a measure to allow Arizona doctors to provide abortion services for their patients in California through the end of November.

But if former President Donald Trump is elected president, the implementation of a conservative playbook for the next Republican president known as Project 2025 could undo some of the state’s long-standing abortion protections, explains CalMatters investigative reporter Monique O. Madan.

Project 2025 — which was crafted by Trump allies and leaders in his first administration, though he continues to distance himself from it — calls for states to track and report abortion data to the federal government. If they do not comply, they risk losing billions in Medicaid funding.

California is one of three states that currently do not report abortion data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asserting that it is not required to do so. Project 2025’s requirement runs directly counter to the state’s patient privacy laws and could be used to penalize in-state and out-of-state people seeking reproductive health services.

It was a prospect that Vice President Kamala Harris zeroed in on during Tuesday night’s debate against Trump to highlight both candidates’ differing approaches to reproductive health policy.

• Harris: “Understand in his Project 2025 there would be … a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages.”

Learn more about how Project 2025 could impact abortion policy in Monique’s story.

More on Harris: CalMatters has several pieces on Harris’ record, including her stance on abortion, her career as a prosecutor, her fundraising ties to the state and the ways California has shaped her political career. We also took a deep dive comparing Harris and Trump on health care for Californians.

Following protests over the Gaza war, University of California regents passed a policy regulating what political opinions faculty can express on university websites. CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on Mikhail’s story on reactions to the policy as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.