Newsom Said Men in Women's Sports is 'Unfair.' This Week An OC GOP Lawmaker Upped the Ante

Good morning, Happy Friday, and thanks for opening the latest edition of the OC Conservative Brief!

Today we’re taking a look at how an up-and-coming Orange County Republican lawmaker took the fight over women’s sports straight to Gavin Newsom after his recent comments that the issue is “unfair.” We also have a video of Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes exposing just how insane California’s sanctuary law shielding criminal illegal immigrants from deportation is. Plus, a new study making the rounds blows a massive hole into the Democrats’ favorite talking point on sky-high prices.

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Now let’s dive in…

SACRAMENTO SPORTS SHOWDOWN Orange County GOP lawmaker Kate Sanchez upped the ante against California Democrats this week over allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports with a high-profile hearing on her bill that would prohibit it, just weeks after Gavin Newsom’s comments on his podcast that he believed the issue was “deeply unfair” for female athletes.

➡️ THE BACKSTORY: Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, who’s 71st District covers the Mission Viejo area and a portion of Riverside County, introduced AB 89, which would “prohibit a pupil whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls’ interscholastic sports team,” back in January. Newsom’s comments last month, which irked his fellow Democrats, sparked hope that the political ground might be shifting and turned Sanchez’s bill into a rallying cry.

• NEWSOM’S QUOTE: "Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that. It's deeply unfair … So that's easy to call out the unfairness of that … There's also a humility and a grace… these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well."

• A NY Times poll from last month found that a whopping 79% of Americans oppose biological men competing in women’s sports, including 67% of Democrats. A California poll from the end of 2023 found that 59% of Californians oppose it.
  

• The bill even caught the eye of the Trump Administration. Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent Newsom a letter last month warning that California was at risk of losing federal education funds if it continued to violate Title IX by allowing men to compete in women’s sports, and urged Newsom to support Sanchez’s bill.

The highly-anticipated hearing in the Arts, Entertainment, Sports, & Tourism Committee was a media spectacle, as the room - which the committee chairman said was the biggest the Capitol had - was packed to the brim with supporters and opponents, while a massive line of people waiting for public comments snaked through the halls outside.

Adding to the stakes, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who does not even serve on that Committee, made a surprise appearance, sitting in for an absent member.

Sanchez presented her opening remarks (video below) to the Committee in support of her bill, along with short speeches from two female high school athletes who came with her to the hearing.

• "It's not about hate,” Sanchez said. “It's not about fear. It's not right-wing talking points. This is entirely about fairness, safety and integrity in girls competitive high school athletics. That's it. It's long past time we've said that out loud."

After over an hour of public comment from California voters briefly declaring their support or opposition to the bill - including many self-described lifelong Democrats - the committee members then began their own debate.

Multiple Democrats tried to sidestep the issue all together by arguing that, because so few women are affected, it’s a non-issue. Sanchez countered by referring to a UCLA study that determined there are roughly 122,000 trans athletes participating in high school sports nation-wide.

• Speaker Rivas pivoted to talking about DOGE, Trump, and abortion: “Women do face threats today, but not from the very small number of transgender kids playing sports. The real threat is the Trump Administration taking away abortion access.”

One Democrat on the Committee compared the bill to the rise of Nazi Germany. 

🎂 THE CAKE WAS BAKED: All seven of the Democrats sitting on the committee voted against the bill while the two Republicans voted for it, killing it as expected. But this issue isn’t going away. California could lose billions in federal funding, public opinion is against the Democrats, and Republicans in Sacramento, albeit their minimal numbers, are up for a fight. The reactions from both Newsom and Rivas afterwards suggest they know it:

1. Rivas was caught on video as he left the hearing refusing to answer any questions from reporters about the vote or the federal funding threat for an agonizing minute as he walked through the halls - even seemingly pretending to be on a phone call at one point - before fleeing into his office.
   

2. Newsom, who had refused to comment on the bill in the weeks leading up to the hearing, told a reporter the next day that he ‘didn’t pay attention’ to any of it, which is extremely hard to believe given what’s on the line.

The bill is dead for now, but a decision from Washington to cut the funding cord could trigger a new wave of politicking in Sacramento. In the meantime, kudos to Orange County’s own Assemblymember Sanchez and her allies for fighting for her bill, assembling an impressive army of activists to swarm Sacramento to defend it, and reminding us how extreme on this issue Democrats continue to be.

I’ll leave you with this juicy nugget. Remember that Speaker Rivas was there to fill in for an absent member? That member was his friend, Orange County Democrat Avelino Valencia, who, according to Politico, was actually present in the Capitol that day, making his absence “inexplicable.” Politico’s theory: Rivas covering for him “spared Valencia the tough vote as he campaigns” for an Orange County state Senate seat.

Nothing like hiding from votes in your current office to help you campaign for a higher one.

NEWSOM’S ‘PRICE GOUGING’ OBSESSION GETS GOUGED Gavin Newsom and the Democrats have had one unified, repetitive response during his administration on why gas prices in California are so damn higher than the rest of the country: price-gouging by greedy Big Oil.

They made it more than just a talking point in 2023 when they passed a new law requiring oil companies to submit their accounting books to the state while giving the California Energy Commission power to cap excessive profits and levy penalties.

A new study from the USC Marshal School of Business that made the rounds this week poked a massive hole in Newsom’s argument. The study, which analyzed nearly fifty years of California gas price data, concluded that the state’s higher gas prices are the “result of directed policies and a litany of regulations, taxes, fees, and costs.”

• “There is no evidence of price gouging, either by gas station owners or refiners or oil producers in the state — at least widespread,” the study’s author told KTLA.

According to the study, issues for California abound. The gas tax is high. The unique green “blend” of gas the state requires isn’t massively produced in the U.S. and has to be imported from the Middle East. The state’s Cap-and-Trade program puts heavy costs on oil producers that get passed to consumers. California has less than a dozen refineries in the state, with more set to close in the coming years due to the state’s hostile environment, reducing capacity.

• One expert told KTLA: “These are costs only associated with California. California has done a terrific job chasing [refineries] out of the state and suddenly wondering why they don’t have enough gasoline or why prices skyrocket.”
  

• CASE IN POINT: Just 72 hours after Newsom signed another law in October requiring refineries to hold extra inventory of gas to use during shortages, Phillips 66 announced it was closing its massive refinery in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, as the Sacramento Bee notes, the government has not posted any of the data it receives from oil companies about their profit margins under Newsom’s price-gouging law, despite being required to do so, since April 2024 and has yet to penalize a single company over alleged price-grouging.

• As president of the Western States Petroleum Association Catherine Reheis-Boyd said, “The reason that they don’t publish the data anymore is because it doesn’t prove it.”

As we discussed in the last newsletter, Democrats had a chance in March to address some of this by repealing a new strict regulation requiring even “greener” gas that is predicted to add over 60 cents a gallon to the sticker price. They unanimously voted to keep it.

Gas prices are already surging in California again, spiking over twenty cents in just a week. Keep these facts in mind next time you hear someone blame the ‘greedy oil companies.’

OC SHERIFF SKEWERS SANCTUARIES Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes addressed the county Board of Supervisors last week to give an update on the department’s law enforcement activities related to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and called for the repeal of California’s sanctuary law.

In his remarks, a portion of which you can watch below, he painted a stark picture of hundreds of illegal immigrants who were arrested in Orange County for crimes, including molestation of a child, but were let go due to California’s strict sanctuary law, only to be rearrested months later.

🤔 HOW A SANCTUARY LAW WORKS: When state or local law enforcement arrest and process an illegal immigrant for a crime (say theft), ICE may flag it and issue a “detainer” asking them to hold the alien for up to 48 hours so they can come and take them into custody to begin deportation proceedings.

• ICE has limited capacity and doesn’t issue a detainer for every arrested illegal alien. Instead, they prioritize aliens they believe have probable cause to be ultimately be deported and when they believe the alien is a public safety threat.
  

• As ICE argues and as Sheriff Barnes argues in the video above, the detainer process is not only more efficient, but much safer than the alternative, which is ICE entering homes or businesses for enforcement actions that can turn violent and often lead to bystanders who weren’t initially targeted getting swept up.

However, California’s “sanctuary” law, passed in 2017 in the wake of Trump’s first election, prohibits state and local law enforcement from using any resources on behalf of federal immigration authorities. This means law enforcement cannot legally honor ICE detainers (except in violent cases such as rape or murder) and hold onto illegal immigrants arrested for crimes for ICE to take custody of, even if they want to and can.

As Sheriff Barnes expresses in the above video, the law is maddening to law enforcement officials who want to see threats to public safety removed from the streets but are trapped in a dangerous cycle of catch-and-release.

Democrats who defend sanctuary laws will conjure up visuals of local police enforcing immigration law on the streets, but that is not how it works. Likewise, Orange County Democrat Congressman Dave Min recently made a point that there are no laws that prohibit federal authorities from enforcing immigration laws in sanctuary jurisdictions … but again, that’s not the problem with sanctuary cities.

• As Barnes concluded, “We have no desire to enforce immigration law. We never have will and we never will. But we must have the ability to communicate and share threats and the removal of criminal offenders who prey upon our community, often within the immigrant communities in which they reside.”

Maybe Congressman Min should listen.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🇨🇳 Gavin Newsom is asking China, Mexico, and other countries that import California products in the wake of Trump’s new tariffs to exempt California from their own retaliatory tariffs.

📣 Democrat Dave Min hosted his first town hall event last week at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach with a crowd consisting largely of cheering supporters.

🐔 A new Chick-fil-A in Costa Mesa that has been in the works for over a year finally opened its doors this week.

🗳️ Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former state Attorney General and Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary, announced his campaign for governor of California this week. 

🔥 Orange County authorities officially closed their investigation into the Tustin hangar fire without finding any cause more than a year after the incident.