Facing possible recall, Newsom under fire from fellow Democrats over COVID-19 response
Taryn Luna and Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
Jan. 31, 2021
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LOS ANGELES There s an unspoken rule in politics: Don t publicly criticize your party s leader.
But more California Democratic lawmakers and allies of Gov. Gavin Newsom are beginning to break it as frustration grows nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. It s like he s putting us out to die, said Sandra Díaz, vice president and political director of SEIU United Services Workers West, which represents janitors, security personnel and other essential workers who were recently removed from the state s vaccine priority tiers by the Newsom administration. It s more important for us as a union to see this get better, no matter who that upsets.
Incarcerated Californians will soon be able to apply for federal Pell Grants to pay for higher education, a move with support across the political spectrum. The change was tucked into the omnibus spending bill signed into law in late December.
Pell Grants, which are the largest source of federally-funded college aid, have been off limits to incarcerated students since 1994, part of the crime bill that also led to mass incarceration.
The change is incredibly exciting, said Keramet Reiter, who directs a new UC Irvine program that will offer the University of California s first bachelor s degree for incarcerated students. She started teaching in prisons in the late 1990s, when the end of Pell Grants led to a drastic decline in higher education offerings for incarcerated people.