Former Vice President Kamala Harris could have a serious uphill climb, even within her own party and among Democratic donors, should she decide to run for president once again in 2028.

ABC News surveyed 15 top donors and Democratic politicos, and just judging from the responses, Kamala should have some serious doubts about her viability as a presidential candidate going forward. And what she probably should have done was run for governor of California.

That would have been Willie Brown's advice, as he tells ABC News now, and he says he was "surprised" Harris declined to pursue the governor's office, because now she's at a disadvantage compared to her likely rival in the 2028 race, Gavin Newsom.

"I would have advised her to be elected governor, so that she would be in the same identical position, if not better than for electability nationally than Newsom," Brown says. "If she was in the category of being on January 8, 2027, the governor of California, the dialogue would be about her candidacy, not about anybody else's."

Brown adds, "When you embrace somebody for the job [of President], you really want to embrace a winner, and Newsom would be what you would have to say at the moment is a winner."

One anonymous fundraiser who raised money for Harris's 2024 campaign tells ABC News, "I think the electorate is going to be extremely hungry for a new, fresh, younger voice with a different perspective, and who can effectively articulate an agenda for the future. ... I don't believe that Kamala is the right person for this moment by any stretch of your imagination."

And an anonymous Democratic donor who gave to Harris's 2020 campaign is even more forthright, saying, "I really have not heard anybody say that they want her to run. In fact, it's the opposite."

Should Newsom and Harris end up in primary fight together, they can likely expect deep-pocketed donors, especially those in California, to be splitting up their money, and Newsom could hold a heavy advantage not being the "most recent loser," as Brown puts it.

Other politicos sound a bit more supportive, speaking to ABC News, though another points out that voters' "Biden fatigue," and Harris's association with Biden, could still harm her as a candidate.

Harris's camp issued a statement to ABC News saying, "The Vice President is grateful to the supporters who have stood with her. Right now, as Americans look for leadership in the fight against the rollback of their fundamental rights and freedoms — including the Supreme Court's devastating gutting of the Voting Rights Act — she is focused on electing Democrats up and down the ballot in the midterms and building up state parties for the critical fights ahead."

Harris will be delivering a keynote address at a major Democratic fundraising gala in Louisiana in August, during which she is expected to focus on the Voting Rights Act and strategies for counteracting the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

Previously: Kamala Harris Says 'I'm Thinking About It' With Regard to 2028 Run

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The early frontrunner in the primary for Eric Swalwell's former East Bay congressional seat next term appears to be State Senator Aisha Wahab, who currently represents roughly half the district, with former Dublin mayor and BART director Melissa Hernandez trailing behind.

State Senator Aisha Wahab appears to be in the early lead for the June 2 election — the first of two elections some East Bay voters will face this month to replace former Representative Eric Swalwell. As SFist reported previously, Swalwell resigned from Congress in April after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.

According to ABC 7, out of the nearly 47% of ballots counted Tuesday night, Wahab received 34% of the vote, while former Dublin mayor and BART director Melissa Hernandez was in second with 16%.

Tuesday’s primary election was for the full two-year term beginning in January 2027, while a separate June 16 special election will determine who serves out the remainder of this year. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two in each race will advance to separate elections in August (the run-off for the current term) and November (to serve in the next term), as Bay Area News Group reports.

Wahab, the first elected Afghan-American Muslim woman in the state Senate, entered the race with backing from the California Democratic Party, former state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, and several members of California’s congressional delegation. As previously reported, Wahab rejected calls for candidates to rally behind a caretaker representative for the remainder of the current term, arguing that she already serves much of the district and intends to continue representing it.

“This vote shows that we’ve been able to work with so many people and our message makes sense to people. Good policy is good policy,” Wahab said, speaking to the News Group. “I represent this district, I grew up in this district and I will continue to fight for this district, regardless of what the outcome is.”

One of Wahab’s main rivals was Fremont small-business owner Rakhi Israni, who reportedly contributed more than $1.2 million to her own campaign and spent the closing days of the race attacking Wahab over her unsuccessful 2023 anti-caste discrimination bill.

Several voters told Bay Area News Group that they supported Wahab because they viewed her as a progressive candidate who would advocate for working people and bring a fresh perspective to Congress.

Several candidates in the race for the full term, including Wahab, Hernandez, Israni, and Wendy Huang, are also running in the June 16 special election.

Previously: Four Democrats Rally Behind Caretaker Candidate to Fill Swalwell’s Seat Until End of Term

Image: State Senator Aisha Wahab/Facebook

Saikat Chakrabarti is the subject of many headlines today calling out the massive amount of personal money he spent coming in a distant third in Tuesday's primary for California's District 11 House seat. And rather than wait for more numbers to come in, he is bowing out of the race today.

We already saw the initial numbers come in, in this very low-turnout primary election, showing that Scott Wiener and Connie Chan were almost definitely going to be the top two vote-getters barring some bizarre flood of Chakrabarti votes. And given that Chakrabarti did not take one single precinct in the city according to the early vote tally, that is even less likely.

So, as KRON4 reports, Chakrabarti conceded the race as of Wednesday around noon.

"I want to congratulate Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Connie Chan on their victories and thank everyone who participated in this election," Chakrabarti said in a statement. "While this wasn’t the outcome we hoped for, I’m incredibly proud of what we built together."

Wiener currently has 41.3% of the vote, with Chan getting 28.6%, and Chakrabarti getting 14.9%.

As we discussed earlier, Chan, given her fairly progressive track record, stands to gain many of the voters who supported Chakrabarti. But Wiener likely stands to gain many of the Republican and moderate-leaning voters who opted for other candidates, and the November race could very well be a tight one.

Chan is likely to continue to benefit from House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi's endorsement and support — and it was clear from this interview last week that Pelosi intends to dismiss Wiener's qualifications any chance she gets, which could have its own effect.

All told, Chakrabarti's considerable campaign efforts, which included funds from small individual donations and around $8.8 million of his own wealth, still could not overcome his lack of name recognition in San Francisco and his obvious lack of local political cred.

His campaign was said to have been paying canvassers $45 per hour to go door-knocking on his behalf — did they knock on your door? They knocked on mine! At least twice!

And they likely spent millions on those TV and web ads in which average folks repeated his name in an effort to drill some recognition into the minds of voters. Though the big blunder there was emphasizing Chakrabarti's ties to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom he worked for as chief of staff for the first seven months of her Congressional career in 2019, only to apparently be fired over some tweets insulting the Democratic Caucus, and then AOC herself awkwardly declined to offer her endorsement of her former staffer.

A last-ditch effort in recent days to try to tie Chan to a pro-Israel PAC also did not do much to improve his chances.

Will Saikat Chakrabarti continue trying to run for office in San Francisco? Or will he prove his critics right and move elsewhere, trying his hand in some other district in the future? We shall see.

Related: SF Election Turnout Looking Historically Low, and Why Does No One Vote on Election Day Anymore?

Mid-year special elections and primaries aren't often huge draws when it comes to voter turnout, but San Francisco has a major decision to make about a Congressional seat that could be held by the same person for decades. Was that not enough of a motivator?

The California governor's race was clearly not inspiring nor motivating to any Democratic voters statewide, and Xavier Becerra's quick rise to the top of the pack in the last two months, following the abrupt end of Eric Swalwell's campaign and political career, still feels surprising.

But in San Francisco, we also had the primary for Nancy Pelosi's House seat, and the last time the race for this seat was competitive, you stil had to go to a video store to rent VHS tapes for entertainment, the internet barely existed, and Bill Clinton was still just a governor from Arkansas.

And the last time the race for this seat was wide open was the year Pelosi won, in a mid-year special election in 1987.

Centimillionaire Saikat Chakrabarti appears to have lit $10 million of his personal wealth on fire in a bid to be the progressive choice for the seat on the November ballot. While an updated vote count on Thursday may change the picture slightly, Chakrabarti appears to have been trounced by Supervisor Connie Chan, thanks in part to an endorsement from Pelosi herself. (And thanks to that awkward non-endorsement situation with AOC, who is his only real link to congressional politics.)

With about half of the votes counted, Chan's margin appears to be double that of Chakrabarti, with Chan at 28.6% and Chakrabarti at 14.9%. Wiener has a commanding lead at 41.3%, but it's not hard to see how this could become a very close race in November, if all or most of Chakrabarti's supporters shift over the Chan, which they likely will. Just adding the preliminary totals together, Chan would have around 47,000 votes to Wiener's 44,500 votes, though its possible that many of the 15,000 or so votes that went to lesser-known candidates could shift over to Wiener.

Republican candidate David Ganezer pulled in around 6,000 votes as of the early count, and Republican-turned-moderate-Democrat Marie Hurabiell got around 5,100 votes, and it's hard to see any of those votes going to Chan.

On the topic of voter turnout, the current percentage of registered voters who cast ballots is at a dismal 23.44%. And only about one-fifth of the total votes so far were cast in-person on Tuesday, or around 24,000.

At my polling place, as of 2 pm Tuesday, I was only the 18th person to cast a ballot, according to the ballot scanning machine. Similarly, New York Times SF Bureau Chief Heather Knight noted that she was just the 11th person to cast a ballot at her polling place as of 11 am.

Obviously, many people in San Francisco have embraced mail-in voting, and 100,000 registered voters in the city have had their mail-in ballots counted already. But we still don't know how many went out late, or were dropped off in ballot boxes at polling places on Tuesday.

Mission Local reports that a polling place at City Hall was a ghost town for much of the day, and one "longtime city politico" tells the publication, "I can’t remember a quieter election day."

Has apathy just fully set in, lo these 16 months into Donald Trump's second term? Do the majority of San Franciscans just assume that whoever's governor and whoever's our congressperson it just won't matter?

Turnout may end up being the low 40s, percentage-wise, in this election, but we'll have to wait and see.

Turnout in November's special election with Prop 50 on the ballot was 55.6% in SF, and turnout in the November 2024 general election was at a whopping 79%, so we know that local voters turn out when they want to say something. But, somehow, not so much this time.

Related: Wiener and Chan Look Likely to Be Headed to November Ballot For SF's Congressional Seat

We will still be getting updated vote counts over the coming days and the final tally is not yet in, but as of election night, state Senator Scott Wiener and SF Supervisor Connie Chan were in solid first and second places in the race to succeed Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi was right when she suggested in an interview last week that her chosen candidate to succeed her, Connie Chan, would do better than people expected. "I talk to people. Spend your time with the public," Pelosi said, speaking to KQED's Scott Shafer.

Of course, Pelosi seemed to be implying that Chan would prevail over frontrunner Scott Wiener, which is not the case. But polls had shown a much closer race for second place than we see so far in the election results.

Wiener holds a strong lead with 41.3% of the vote, with about half (49.5%) of votes counted. And Chan pulled in 28.6%, nearly double the votes for Saikat Chakrabarti, who stands at 14.94%.

KTVU has already called the race for Wiener and Chan, but a new tally after more votes are counted will arrive at 4 pm Thursday.

"Tonight the people of San Francisco sent a clear message," Wiener said in a Tuesday night victory speech. "The message has been received. San Franciscans are ready for bold leadership, for real results... and a new generation of leaders ready to take on the hardest issues facing our country."

Wiener spoke about Trump's "disaster of a regime," and said that "the people are demanding" that Democrats get them out of office.

"But once we get them out, we can't go back to the pre-Trump status quo," Wiener said. "That is not gonna work. That is what got us into this in the first place. We have to act boldly, as Democrats, to solve these problems. The time for small thinking is over."

Chan held her victory event in the heart of the Mission District Tuesday, at El Rio, as Mission Local reports. And referring to Chakrabarti's massive, self-funded primary campaign budget, Chan said, "San Franciscans! How does it feel to beat $10 million?!"

As the crowd chanted, "Yes we Chan!", she said, "This, this tonight, is a start for many, many people to see the billionaires, all not just in San Francisco, but across the nation. We’re coming for you. We will win on November 3rd!"

Certainly this was the outcome Pelosi was hoping for when she offered her last-minute endorsement, making sure that Chan at least took second place in what had been looking like a tigher race.

We can now expect the campaign budgets to grow as this becomes a two-person battle for Pelosi's seat — and as Chakrabarti's voters, likely, will shift over to supporting Chan, who is the more progressive choice.

Update: Chakrabarti has bowed out of the race.

Related: Pelosi Finally Says What She Thinks About Chakrabarti and Wiener In Race to Succeed Her

Top image: Left: San Francisco Supervisor and congressional candidate Connie Chan smiles at a "Get Out the Vote" rally on May 29, 2026 in San Francisco, California. U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has endorsed San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan to fill her seat representing California's 11th Congressional District. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images); Right: Senator Scott Wiener speaks during the CDP State Convention - Tax Fairness for All Families on May 31, 2025 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for Economic Security Project, Inc.)

In addition to the two bigger primary fights on the ballot today in San Francisco, for governor and for Nancy Pelosi's Congressional seat, two moderate incumbent SF supervisors are fighting to hold on to their seats.

There are special elections today in Districts 2 and 4, where two mayoral appointees — one appointed by London Breed on her way out the door, and one appointed recently by Daniel Lurie following a gaffe over a different appointee — are hoping to stay on the board through the end of the year. (Both special elections are just to complete their predecessors' previous terms, and they'll be back on the ballot again in November to compete for full four-year terms.)

In District 2, Supervisor Stephen Sherrill hopes that some recent bad press relating to his appointment doesn't give a boost to a more progressive challenger, neighborhood activist Lori Brooke. Brooke has been the most vocally opposed to the controversial, 25-story proposed residential project on the Marina Safeway property — something that fits into Mayor Daniel Lurie's upzoning plan, but the scale of which is objectionable to many neighbors.

Lurie has spoken out against the specific design of the proposed project, and Sherrill has done the same, but both have tried to be careful not to anger the YIMBY crowd by dismissing the redevelopment proposal outright.

Supervisoral elections can swing by tiny margins of votes, particularly in low-turnout special elections like this one looks likely to be. So the recent revelations by former aides alleging that former Mayor London Breed only gave Sherrill the job in December 2024 as a favor to Michael Bloomberg — who in turn, allegedly, was supposed to set her up with a gig — could cost Sherrill just enough votes to matter. And just two weeks ago there were anonymous reports that the FBI was "making inquiries" into the matter, so there still could be more to come on that front.

Sherrill, while being a Breed appointee, has become a strong ally of Lurie, and is part of the currently dominant moderate bloc on the Board of Supervisors that includes supervisors Bilal Mahmood, Danny Sauter, Matt Dorsey, and often Myrna Melgar, Rafael Mandelman, and Chyanne Chen.

Also part of that bloc is District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong, whom Lurie appointed last fall following the embarassing kerfuffle over his first pick, Beya Alcaraz, who resigned after just seven days.

Wong, who is a vocal opponent of the closure of the Great Highway to create Sunset Dunes Park, is likely to benefit from the small margins of a special election like this, given the ongoing fervor among those in the district who hate the highway was closed. They are likely to get out the vote on this issue alone, even if a second citywide ballot measure on the closure is not likely to go their way, if it even qualifies for the November ballot.

Running against Wong with quite a bit of financial support behind her is progressive candidate Natalie Gee, who has neighborhood cred having attended Lowell High School and SF State and has worked in City Hall. Gee has not one but two of the top-spending independent committees backing her campaign, which together have spent nearly $700K.

And Gee also supports the part-time reopening of the Great Highway on weekdays, and she backs the November ballot measure that would codify this.

Should both Brooke and Gee prevail in today's election, the balance of power could shift on the Board of Supervisors back in the direction of progressives — or it would, at least, level the playing field.

The former progressive bloc on the board, which included Aaron Peskin, Connie Chan, Shamann Walton, Dean Preston, and Hillary Ronen was diminished when Peskin and Preston were both replaced by moderate-backed candidates Danny Sauter and Bilal Mahmood in 2024. Ronen, who was termed out, was replaced by the even more progressive Jackie Fielder representing the Mission District and Bernal Heights.

Up until 2024, progressives had enjoyed a solid majority on the board for many years, as the Chronicle documented last fall. These days, they need to rely on supervisors Melgar, Mandelman, and Chen who only sometimes vote with them, to get legislation passed.

Depending on how today goes, that could noticeably change.

Previously: Allegations Resurface That Supervisor Sherrill Got Appointed In Backroom Deal to Benefit London Breed

Similar to what happened last year, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie had City Hall workers with an announcement about sweeping layoffs, only to later announce far fewer layoffs would actually be occurring.

With the submission of his proposed $17 billion budget, Mayor Daniel Lurie has pulled back on the number of jobs that need slashing, saying that the 127 layoffs that were initiated in April will be the end of them, per the Chronicle.

"This administration has worked to minimize impacts for city workers while safeguarding San Francisco’s long-term financial health," Lurie said in a statement.

In total, staffing costs are being cut by $130 million in the budget blueprint, and a total of 550 City Hall positions are being elimated, but the majority of those, around 370, are currently vacant.

Lurie's proposed budget now heads to the Board of Supervisors for the input and ultimate approval.

The budge blueprint still leaves a shortfall for the city, however it will be down to around $600 million from the $1 billion that had been projected, and that will be over two years. That deficit is largely being caused by Trump administration cuts to federal health and food stamp programs.

Lurie says he has allocated $98 million to a reserve fund to protect homeless services from federal cuts, an additional $90 million is allocated to getting homeless individuals into emergency housing, and $34 million is allocated to preserve local enrollment in food stamps and Medi-Cal programs.

Also, the proposal includes $120 million to programs intended to prevent people from falling into homelessness, including rental assistance and legal services.

As the Chronicle notes, Lurie heard the pushback about possible cuts to immigrant legal services and LGBTQ organization grants, and those cuts aren't happening.

Previously: Mayor Lurie Says He’s Laying Off 500 SF City Hall Employees, Which Will Not Endear Him to the Labor Unions

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

There appears to have been some last-minute maneuvers happening over the weekend by supporters of Saikat Chakrabarti, and Chakrabarti himself, in an effort to tie Connie Chan to a political action committee that is pro-Israel.

It seems like an odd last-minute maneuver, but Saikat Chakrabarti and his campaign have amplifying this Drop Site story that published on Saturday, which reports that money from a pro-Israel group, AIPAC, has been supporting Connie Chan's campaign via a "circuitous route."

Essentially, the report points to money donated by AIPAC and its offshoot Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) to another PAC called Elect Democratic Women (EDW) Action Fund. And AIPAC's own United Democracy Project PAC has also been giving money to EDW Action Fund, and then on May 1, EDW Action formed a new PAC called Pro-Choice Majority Action, which has now spent $475,000 on ads to support Chan's campaign.*

Chan has publicly pledged not to take money from AIPAC, and has been vocally supportive of Palestine along with SF's other progressive supervisors. And EDW Action Fund, as Mission Local points out, has also supported other progressive women candidates who are pro-Palestine, including Oakland Rep. Lateefah Simon, and Portland Rep. Maxine Dexter.

A spokesperson for Chan's campaign, Julie Edwards, called the story "a desperate attempt from our opponent to undermine our campaign because we have momentum to win on June 2."

In a statement, Edwards continued, "The notion that Connie Chan — whose support of the Block the Bombs Act and the end of military aid to Israel, condemnation of the Gaza genocide and advocacy for Palestinians are public record — would somehow be carrying water for AIPAC is absurd and laughable."

Support for Israel is, of course, a major ding against a candidate in many circles in San Francisco, however state Senator Scott Wiener, who continues to have a commanding lead in the race, has been vocally supportive of Israel while also trying to toe the line and condemn the Israeli government's actions in Gaza.

When asked at a January candidate forum whether the war in Gaza was "a genocide," Chakrabarti and Chan both emphatically held up "Yes" signs while Wiener demurred — something that he clearly recognized was going to be a problem for his still nascent campaign for Congress.

Within days, Wiener issued a statement condemning the war and saying he now considered Israel's actions a genocide, and two weeks later, given his change in stance, he stepped down from a leadership role in the legislature's Jewish Caucus.

Chakrabarti now seems to want to shift that stink over to Chan, at a moment in the race, after the endorsement by Pelosi, when Chan is looking to be more competitive in Tuesday's primary when it comes to second place.

Writing on Xitter Sunday morning, Chakrabarti says, "AIPAC wants to keep me out of the top two for a simple reason: Of the three leading candidates, I am the only one who named the genocide in Gaza and called for a full arms embargo on Israel from the start, and I have a decade-long record to prove it is not just talk."

Except, it seems like Chan has been pretty pro-Palestine all along, so attempting to say he was the only one calling out the genocide "from the start" seems disingenuous.

And as 48 Hills' Tim Redmond wrote on Sunday, "If AIPAC somehow thinks they are getting an ally by giving money to a PAC that gives money to a PAC that gives money to a PAC that supports Chan, they got the wrong woman."

More likely, if there was a direct motivation on the part of AIPAC, that motivation is to promote a candidate who is more likely to lose against Wiener in November, as some have pointed out.

There has been no official poll released since Pelosi made her late-in-the-game endorsement of Chan, and the last poll, taken between May 3 and May 7, had Wiener at 38%, Chan at 22%, and Chakrabarti at 21%.

Related: Pelosi Finally Says What She Thinks About Chakrabarti and Wiener In Race to Succeed Her

Top image via Connie Chan for Congress

*This post has been corrected to show that Pro-Choice Majority Action has not donated directly to Chan's campaign, but has paid for ads supporting the campaign.

One week out from the primary, and one week after she finally came out and endorsed Connie Chan to succeed her, Nancy Pelosi has taken the gloves off and tells us how she really feels about the other main candidates in the race.

We don't know why House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi took so long to endorse Connie Chan, after months of implying that she was her chosen successor for her congressional seat. But now we get more of a sense of why she'll never endorse either of the other two main Democratic candidates, who may end up being the two on the ballot in November unless Chan pulls out a surprise second place next week.

In a new snippet of an interview with KQED's Scott Shafer, which was recorded as part of a larger podcast project Shafer is working on about Pelosi's congressional legacy, Pelosi is no longer dancing around the subject.

First off, we already knew she had no particularly positive feelings about Saikat Chakrabarti, who worked for seven months as an aide to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and managed to make a name for himself in that time — as most aides do not — for all the wrong reasons. A former staffer of Pelosi's relayed the story a few weeks ago of how Chakrabarti angered many Democrats with some petulant tweets during his tenure working for AOC, which likely led to his being fired/forced to resign from her office.

And, perhaps tellingly, AOC has not offered any endorsement of him as he runs to become one of her peers on the Hill.

Pelosi tells Shafer that she's never met Chakrabarti, and that basically he's a carpetbagger.

"I don’t have any idea who he is," Pelosi says in the interview, which is excerpted on the Political Breakdown podcast today.

"I’ve never seen him at a homeless shelter, or a food bank, or an an immigration center. I've never seen him in the community," Pelosi adds.

When Shafer turns to Wiener, who is leading in the polls to succeed Pelosi, she sounds clearly pissed off that this is the case.

"Are you part of their campaign?" she snipes at Shafer after he offers some praise of Wiener's legislative record. And, she adds, regarding the Chronicle's endorsement of him, "You sound like the SF Chronicle, which is totally irrelevant, along with the Examiner. Nobody cares about endorsements from the newspapers."

Of the idea that Wiener is a "master legislator," Pelosi dismisses that, first saying she had no legislative experience when she took the job, and adding, "I've never heard anyboy say that anybody is a master legislator who's part of this race."

"I talk to people. Spend your time with the public," Pelosi says, implying that the public isn't so behind Wiener as the polls show.

She also adds that she was "very excited" that Chan decided to run, and "Being a mom is very important to voters, because it says that we have a shared experience. So I want someone there who faced the challenges I faced, being a working mom."

Welp, now we know that Wiener probably can't expect a Pelosi endorsement even if he's left in the race with Chakrabarti. Though she's been known to change her mind.

Previously: Former Pelosi Staffer Says Chakrabarti Was Fired From AOC's Staff

Photo via Getty Images

In the latest bit of symbolic and theatrical pushback on California's redistricting plan, which is intended to take five Republican-held seats in Congress and hand them to Democrats, two inland counties in Northern California are taking votes on a new secession plan.

The plan, being pushed in part by state Assemblyman James Gallagher, would take California's 35 inland counties, which tend to vote more conservatively, and form a new state that would be separate from the 23 counties nearer to and on the coast. Gallagher, who is from Yuba City, has pushed for county supervisors in Yuba and Sutter counties to take votes to approve the plan — which will obviously go nowhere if it ever reaches the Democrat-controlled legislature for an actual vote.

"This morning, I’m saying, ‘Gavin, let my people go.’ We would like a better way forward, and we can no longer abide a government that gives us no voice," Gallagher said at a press conference announcing the plan, per the California Post.

Gallagher is now running for Congress.

The secession push dates back to a legislative resolution that Gallagher first introduced in August 2025, which argued that California's sheer size in comparison to other states is a good reason to divide it into two states.

The text of the resolution also adds a "whereas" that says, "The citizens of northern California and inland regions have long been frustrated at being subjected to laws and regulations that they and their representatives have overwhelmingly opposed, but were nonetheless passed and authorized by the more populous coastal regions of California."

This resolution predated and perhaps foreshadowed the passage of Prop 50, which passed overwhelmingly in November, and which will temporarily dilute the political influence of many of the state's less populated inland areas.

Previous secession movements, like the push to establish the State of Jefferson in northern California and southern Oregon, date back decades but have failed to get off the ground.

Voicing his support for the secession resolution, Yuba County Supervisor Andy Vasquez Jr. tells the Post, "If you look at the funds Governor Newsom has wasted, both on the train to nowhere… homelessness… the amount of corruption in this state is unbelievable. We’re ruled by San Francisco, Los Angeles. We don’t have any choice."

Supervisors in Yuba and Sutter counties were expected to pass the symbolic resolution this week, and it's not clear whether any other inland counties will follow suit.

Related: Republicans Sue to Try to Stop Prop 50 From Taking Effect

After 18 months on the job, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie's chief of staff, Staci Slaughter, has announced she will be stepping down from the job in June.

It may not qualify as a shakeup in City Hall, but a major power player in Mayor Daniel Lurie's administration is taking her leave midway through his second year in office, citing a desire to return to private life. Staci Slaughter, 59, will be leaving the chief of staff post in "late June," per the Chronicle, and her replacement has not been selected yet.

"By every measure, the City is moving in the right direction and, for the first time in a very long time, San Franciscans feel the city is on the right track," says Slaughter in a statement. "With that foundation in place, I feel this summer is the right time to return to retirement and hand the reins over to our talented Mayor’s Office team, who will keep moving San Francisco forward."

Mayor Daniel Lurie issued a statement of appreciation for Slaughter, saying, "When I took office last year, we reimagined the structure of the Mayor’s Office, brought in senior leaders with experience outside government, and built our team around common sense and a commitment to delivering results. Staci Slaughter took our priorities and mapped out the plan. She helped assemble and mentor a team of leaders to implement that plan. And she reset the tone in City Hall, fostering a culture of collaboration that the second floor hadn’t seen in years, to help turn that plan into reality."

Slaughter came out of retirement to work in the newly formed Lurie administration in December 2024, having previously retired in 2022 from the San Francisco Giants organization where she spent 26 years in roles including executive vice president and senior advisor to the CEO.

As the Chronicle notes, Slaughter previously worked in City Hall in the 1990s, serving as press secretary to Mayor Frank Jordan.

Shortly after being elected, Lurie laid out, under Slaughter's advisement, a new model for managing the web of city departments by creating four new deputy roles who answered to Slaughter and who could each manage a set of related city departments and agencies. These include a Chief of Public Safety, a Chief of Housing and Economic Development; aChief of Infrastructure, Climate and Mobility; and a Chief of Public Health and Wellbeing.

Slaughter is also credited with encouraging Lurie's highly active, boostery social media presence, touting each accomplishment and expressing an endlessly positive attitude about the city itself.

While Lurie is enjoying some notably high approval numbers right now, the challenge ahead will be to keep those numbers up and keep the momentum going in terms of the public's perception of street safety, cleanliness, housing development, and homelessness above all.

Lurie praised Slaughter for "invest[ing] the time to give the current and future leaders of our city the tools to succeed and grow."

"I am no exception," Lurie adds. "Staci has been an incredible partner and an even better friend. Like so many others, I will continue to benefit from her support in the months and years to come. But thanks to Staci, our team is ready now to seize the opportunities and tackle the challenges our city faces."

Related: Lurie Taps Former Giants Executive as Chief of Staff, Announces Other New Hires

Photo by Noah Fetz

Some drama erupted this past week over a deal, seemingly backed by a broad swath of city leaders, to hand over operational control of a beloved Fillmore neighborhood community center to a nonprofit without seeking community consensus.

A lease was ready to be signed last week with a respected local nonprofit to oversee management and programing at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Fillmore, with the mayor and multiple city supervisors in support. That nonprofit is Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, which is based nearby in Lower Pac Heights, and which already has multiple contracts with the city.

Ella Hill Hutch Community Center is a 30-year-old community hub that provides youth services, healthy food assistance programs, and summer and afterschool programs for neighborhood children. Last year it became a casualty of a scandal involving the former leader of the city's Dream Keeper initiative, Sheryl Davis, and her romantic partner/housemate James Spingola, who were both criminally charged in March for a raft of alleged felonies including self-dealing and the personal use of nonprofit funds — and Spingola was the head of a nonprofit, previously run by Davis, called Collective Impact, which had a contract with the city to operate Ella Hill Hutch.

The fallout from the scandal appears to have created rifts in the Fillmore neighborhood, which has historically been a center of Black cultural life for San Francisco, and has accumulated a growing set of grievances over the city's inhumane redevelopment efforts five and six decades ago, the trauma of which has been compounded in recent years by benign neglect. The most recent grievance: the closure of the neighborhood's only supermarket, a Safeway that was built with redevelopment funds over 40 years back, and which is now slated for demolition and another redevelopment as mostly market-rate housing.

The Chronicle reported last week on pushback from community leaders over the management contract for Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, which included a quote from longtime neighborhood elder statement, the Reverend Doctor Amos C. Brown. Speaking for others in the community, Brown pointed to the director of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, former Davis ally and former Human Rights Commissioner Shakirah Simley, saying, "She aspires to this position in the community, but she is not connected with it. She has not communicated with people nor demonstrated a sense of the history of this community or any knowledge of the collective values that truly make for strong minority communities."

So, now, just days after that Chronicle report, the city has reversed course, per the Chronicle, and that no-bid lease with Booker T has been scrapped. The Recreation and Parks Department is going to be temporarily taking over Ella Hill Hutch while community stakeholders have a chance to give input on a future operator to the city.

A spokesperson for Mayor Daniel Lurie tells the paper that while Booker T remains a "valued partner to the city," they will be pursuing a more competitive process with "thoughtful community engagement" for the next lease.

"We are ensuring our kids remain safe and no family or child is left without access to services and support this summer," the spokesperson said, regarding the temporary Rec & Parks takeover.

The board of Booker T. Washington Community Service Center also issued a statement saying, "We share a deep commitment to the Fillmore community and to ensuring that every family, senior and child in this neighborhood has access to the services and support they deserve... We believe the path forward requires a broader, more deliberate process that includes additional community input."

The neighborhood remains upset by the now seven-year vacancy at the Fillmore Heritage Center, a product of redevelopment that was completed in the mid aughts and promised to revitalize a long dormant corridor in the Fillmore — and to bring jazz music back to the neighborhood as well via a San Francisco branch of Yoshi's, the famed Oakland jazz venue and sushi restaurant. A decade later, both Yoshi's and the other restaurant in the center, 1600 on Fillmore, had closed, and the process to find new tenants for the spaces has now dragged on for nearly another decade after that.

The scandal involving Davis, who also formerly led the Human Rights Commission during the London Breed administration, cast a pall over the Dream Keeper initiative at large, which had been a racial equity effort in 2020 and 2021 to redirect city funds from law enforcement to Black-led nonprofits. It came to light in 2024 that Davis, in addition to allegedly misusing funds, had directed $1.5 million in city grants to Collective Impact in an apparentconflict of interest, given that it was run by her live-in partner, Spingola.

A city audit later found that the total amount of questionable and/or frivolous spending by Davis, via the Human Rights Commission, was around $4.6 million.

Previously: Fillmore Residents Say They Feel Ignored By City Over Deal to Keep Community Center Open

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a groundbreaking executive order calling for expanded protections for workers and small businesses as artificial intelligence disrupts a wide range of industries.

Newsom signed the order Thursday, which directs the state to develop new tools to track AI’s impact on employment, including a report on early warning signs of workforce disruption, a public dashboard monitoring changes across sectors, and expanded business input in monthly jobs reporting, according to a news release.

As the New York Times reports, it also calls for broader job training programs focused on occupations expected to be affected by automation, including roles in customer service, software development, marketing, and sales. The plan includes examining concepts such as universal basic capital, which would give residents a stake in assets like stocks, bonds, or public wealth funds.

The order also directs state agencies to build a framework for responding to potential workforce disruption, including expanded training and transition support, worker ownership models, small business AI adoption support, and stronger workforce development programs. Officials are also directed to examine updates to unemployment insurance, severance standards, and other safety net policies.

The order requires state agencies, labor experts, universities, and industry leaders to develop policy recommendations, improve workforce data collection, and identify emerging risks to employment while ensuring workers benefit from AI-driven productivity gains.

Newsom said traditional protections like unemployment insurance will not be enough to address the scale of disruption expected from AI, citing warnings from AI industry leaders that entire job categories — particularly white-collar roles — could be eliminated in the coming years, per the Times.

The order does not directly change tax policy, but Newsom has raised concerns that companies benefiting from automation and tax breaks could widen inequality if workers continue to shoulder tax burdens without similar gains in wealth.

“California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us — and we won’t start now,” said Newsom in his statement. “But we must think bigger. This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future.”

The governor’s office points to California’s prior AI actions, including a 2023 executive order directing responsible state use of generative AI and risk assessment, and Senate Bill 53 (Wiener), the nation’s first state frontier AI transparency law, which was informed by expert recommendations and later used as a model in other states.

It also references additional state protections covering deepfakes, AI watermarking, digital likeness rights, child safety, and robocalls, along with a 2026 executive order expanding civil rights, privacy standards, and AI use in government services.

The new order directs officials to explore expanded worker supports such as severance standards, unemployment insurance updates, transition assistance, worker ownership models, and job training programs, and includes a statewide platform for residents through Engage California.

Related: In Final State of the State Address, Gov. Gavin Newsom Contrasts Himself With Trump, Calls DC 'Carnival of Chaos'

Image: Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images

Supervisor Connie Chan held a hearing Wednesday where community members urged the Board of Supervisors to prevent Mayor Lurie from cutting a program by 30% that offers cash grants to low-income students through City College’s "Free City” program.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new budget proposal, due June 1, will include a 30% cut to “Free City Cash Grants,” a component of City College’s “Free City” program, as the Chronicle reports. The cash grants program provides low-income City College students with funds matching their $46-per-credit fees, which the state had already covered, for expenses like housing, food, and books.

Lurie’s proposed cuts, which would not impact the main Free City program, would reduce funding for cash grants from $9.3 million to $6.4 million. According to 48Hills, the cash grants program, which benefitted 6,000 low-income students last year, would violate a longstanding Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the school.

As SFist reported at the time, former Supervisor Jane Kim introduced the proposal to create the Free City program back in 2016, which was approved in February 2017 by former Mayor Ed Lee.

At the hearing Wednesday, dozens of students, alumni, and staff urged the Board of Supervisors Budget and Appropriations Committee to protect the full funding for the program, which has been under threat for at least the past two years.

“Free City is the reason I can afford to attend City College,” said Angelica Campos, a student-elected representative on the College’s Board of Trustees, speaking to 48 Hills. “I am working, studying, and building a life in San Francisco, and even small costs can decide whether I can stay enrolled or need to drop out. These cuts tell students like me that our education is optional. But my future is not optional.”

Much of the Budget and Appropriations Committee reportedly said at the hearing that they wanted to keep the full funding for the program, including committee chair Supervisor Connie Chan, as well as Supervisors Chyanne Chen and Matt Dorsey. Per 48 Hills, Chan is also a member of the Free City oversight committee and a former City College staff member.

Related: San Francisco City College Once Again In Trouble Over Its Financial Status

Image: CCSF

SF leaders proposed a new charter amendment that would double the city’s Housing Trust Fund with the aim of accelerating the construction of affordable housing, with one caveat — the inclusionary rate will be significantly reduced for at least three years.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a proposed charter amendment Tuesday that would more than double the city’s Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing construction, with funding tied to future property tax growth.

If approved by voters in November, the measure would increase annual funding from $52 million to more than $125 million and extend the program through 2058, potentially generating up to $3 billion over the next three decades.

The proposal still needs support from at least six supervisors to qualify for the ballot, as KRON4 reports, and Supervisors Shamann Walton, Danny Sauter, Stephen Sherrill, and Matt Dorsey have confirmed their support of the measure so far.

According to Mission Local, Melgar said she spent the past year working with nonprofit and affordable housing groups on the proposal after pushing for guarantees that increased upzoning efforts would also produce more low-income housing. The city’s current inclusionary rate requires 15% affordable units in most new housing projects, though a city committee recently recommended lowering it to 5% for at least three years. Developers can also reportedly meet the requirement through fees, land dedication, or off-site affordable units.

The proposal would also allow the Housing Trust Fund to back revenue bonds and other financing tools to accelerate affordable housing projects. Lurie and Melgar additionally announced plans for a separate $70 million revenue bond next year focused on preserving existing affordable housing and converting private rental units into permanently affordable housing through the city’s Small Sites Program.

In exchange for the expanded Housing Trust Fund, many affordable housing advocates are backing away from opposition to the temporary inclusionary reduction, which officials hope will encourage more market-rate housing construction, as Mission Local reports. Melgar said the proposed charter amendment is intended to capture some of the increased property value created through upzoning and redirect it toward affordable housing over the next 30 years.

Melgar also said the proposal comes as affordable housing developers face mounting financial pressure from the pandemic-era economy and cuts to state and federal housing funding, as KRON4 reports. Lurie called the measure “the most significant affordable housing investment in San Francisco’s history,” adding that the city’s housing shortage has increasingly pushed out families, young adults, seniors, and public workers.

“Right now, housing is simply not getting built at the pace we need, and the consequences are all around us,” said Lurie. “This will give San Francisco something dependable — stable local dollars that allow us to plan ahead and keep affordable housing projects moving to ensure these dollars get put to work immediately.”

Lurie said the expanded Housing Trust Fund would provide a more stable local funding source for affordable housing projects at a time when housing production has slowed across the city.

San Francisco voters originally approved the Housing Trust Fund through a 2012 charter amendment intended to support affordable housing construction, rehabilitation, and homeownership programs. The current proposal was shaped in part by past fights over housing funding, including a 2020 real estate tax measure introduced by former Supervisor Dean Preston that voters approved as Proposition I, Melgar tells Mission Local.

While the tax was widely understood as a way to support affordable housing, the revenue ultimately went into the city’s general fund without guarantees on how it would be spent — and former Mayor London Breed later declined to direct the money toward affordable housing despite pressure from the Board of Supervisors, prompting Melgar to pursue a charter amendment that would legally dedicate the new funding stream to housing projects.

Related: Construction Begins on 100% Affordable ‘Marvel in the Mission’ Development

Image: Daniel Lurie/X