As 2023 comes to a close, here are some of The Bee’s most-read political stories of the year

Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!

FIRST UP — This is the last A.M. Alert of 2023. Thank you for reading. We’ll return on Tuesday, Jan. 2.

From start to finish, 2023 was anything but a slow year. Here’s a rundown of some of the most-read stories of the year.

META VS THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE

Two of the most-read stories of the year involved the ongoing dispute between social media giants Meta and Google and the Legislature over AB 886, the bill to establish a monthly “journalism usage fee” that those platforms would be required to pay.

While that bill ultimately was made a two-year bill, meaning it won’t be taken up again until next year, there was some high drama surrounding the legislation, starting when Meta threatened to pull news from its platform should the bill become law.

Despite that threat, the Assembly called Meta’s bluff, voting in June to pass the bill and send it on to the Senate.

IS THE SACRAMENTO SHERIFF VIOLATING STATE LAW?

Readers swarmed to a story about how the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, under Sheriff (and former Assemblyman) Jim Cooper, is sending automated license plate reader data out of state, including to states hostile to abortion rights.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation found out with a public records request, the Sheriff’s Office is one of many California law enforcement agencies to send that data to states like Texas and Alabama, which have passed laws criminalizing abortion.

California law actually prohibits that. Cooper himself voted for that law when he was still in the Assembly.

Cooper has denied violating state law, and also accused the EFF of “protecting child molesters, fentanyl traffickers, rapists and murderers.”

CALIFORNIANS SUPPORT PROP. 1

Californians won’t vote for Proposition 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bond measure to fund behavioral and mental health services and also tackle homelessness in the state, until next year.

But a new survey shows that they are ready to do so, and by a large margin. As we reported in this newsletter earlier this year, the Public Policy Institute of California released a survey showing two-thirds of state voters are a “Yes” on Prop. 1.

NEWSOM PUSHES BACK AGAINST BOOK BANS

Newsom hasn’t been shy when it comes to the culture wars.

California’s Democratic governor has slammed conservative states’ efforts to ban books and curricula, often doing so in those very states.

Back home, Newsom fought that fight by signing AB 1078 into law, which bans school boards from banning books, instructional materials or curricula that are labeled as inclusive or diverse.

“Remarkable that we’re living in a country right now in this banning binge, this cultural purge that we’re experiencing all throughout America, and now increasingly here in the state of California, where we have school districts large and small banning books, banning free speech, criminalizing librarians and teachers. And we want to do more than just push back rhetorically against that, and that’s what this legislation provides,” Newsom wrote in a tweet after signing the bill into law.

INVESTIGATE RON DESANTIS?

Newsom nemesis Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has made a hobby of causing mischief in the Golden State.

Earlier this year, he sent dozens of South and Central American migrants from the border in Texas to Sacramento via private jet.

Unsurprisingly, this infuriated many California lawmakers, including Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Silicon Valley, who called for DeSantis to be the subject of a criminal investigation for his actions.

ESSAYLI MAKES HEADLINES AND CAUSES A STIR

In 2023, one Republican lawmaker has stood out as being particularly pugnacious about culture war issues.

Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, started the year off by authoring a bill to require schools to inform parents if their child is transgender, regardless of whether that would endanger the wellbeing of the child. That bill died without a committee hearing, but was used as model legislation by school districts across the state to enact similar policies at the local level.

And when Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights investigation into one of those school districts (that later turned into a lawsuit), Essayli challenged the decision, demanding that Bonta provide a legal justification for doing so

Then, in a tweet promoting the letter, Essayli wrote that “children belong to their parents, not the government.”

That tweet didn’t go over with some people, one of whom tweeted in response, “Children don’t belong to anyone. It’s not the 19th Century, children aren’t possessions.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“One reason transphobia is so sticky within elite institutions is any given example of it is likely to generate controversy but trans people ourselves lack any real institutional power to challenge it, so it’s a useful means of generating attention without any real risks to the institution itself.”

- ACLU communications strategist Gillian Branstetter, via Bluesky.

Best of The Bee:

▪ Starting in 2024, California will have the second highest statewide minimum wage behind Washington, which is more than double the stagnant $7.25 an hour federal limit, via Brianna Taylor.

▪ Rather than pay delivery drivers $20 an hour — under a new California law set to go into effect in April 1, 2024 — Pizza Hut franchisees in Sacramento and elsewhere in the state are laying them all off, via Andrew Sheeler.