Senate Floor

Secretary, please call the role.

[Roll Call]

Members, a quorum is present with the Members and the guests. Beyond the rail and in the gallery. Please rise. We will be led in prayer this afternoon by our chaplain, Sister Michelle Gorman. After which, please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance to our flag.

So let us bring ourselves into God's presence again. And into the presence of each other, gracious and merciful creator. As we begin this new year, we recall the words of Howard Thurman. When the song of the angels is stilled. When the star in the sky is gone. When the kings and princes are home. When the shepherds are back with their flocks. Then the work of Christmas begins. To find the lost. To heal the broken. To feed the hungry. To release the prisoner. To rebuild the nations.

To bring peace among the people. To make music in the heart. Loving God, we ask your presence with us. As we ponder the deepest needs of our people. And dedicate all that we have to the work of justice and peace. Amen.

Members, please join me in the pledge of allegiance to our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag... Members under. First, let me wish everybody a happy new year. Welcome back. Under privileges of the floor. It is with great pleasure that we welcome leaders from the Design Build of America Western Pacific Region who are visiting in the gallery today. If you would please stand up. Please join me in providing a warm Senate welcome. Messages from the Governor will be deemed read. Messages from the Assembly will be deemed read. Reports of Committee will be deemed read.

And amendments adopted under motions, resolutions and notices seeing none. Introduction and first reading of bills. Mr. Secretary, please read.

[Reading of the Bills]

Members, we're going to return to motions and resolutions. And this is the time to address the adjourn in memory. Motions from Senators. Senator Wiener.

Thank you very much. Madam President and colleagues. With great sadness, I rise to ask that we adjourn in memory of Senator Diane Feinstein. A visionary leader whose impact on our nation and on our state is profound and enduring. Senator Feinstein's legacy stands tall above all of us. She was just a true trailblazer, serving as San Francisco's first female mayor, California's first female Senator, and the first Jewish female Senator. She is our nation's longest serving woman in the Senate in the entire history of the United States.

She was a true inspiration, a hero, and a role model to so many people, but particularly to young women who could see in Diane Feinstein someone who was able to truly move to the pinnacle, one of the most powerful and impactful elected officials in the entire nation in modern American history. Dan Feinstein was a leader who met the moment in 1978, a very traumatic time period in San Francisco, when our mayor and supervisor Harvey Milk, Mayor George Musconi, were assassinated in city hall.

Senator Feinstein became mayor at that point, and she really helped a city that was reeling restore a sense of self and a sense that there was hope for the future. So Senator Feinstein's tenure in elected office was marked by many things, but one that stands out is her relentless advocacy for gun safety measures. She led the successful enactment of the federal assault weapons ban in 1994. She never stopped fighting for public safety.

And in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, when children were killed in school, she again pushed to reauthorize that assault weapons ban and to ensure that such horrific acts of violence would never happen again. She was a champion for civil rights. She advocated for full equality for women for LGBTQ people.

I will also just say that when she was mayor of San Francisco in the early 1980s, when HIV began to cause a mass dieoff of primarily, not only, but primarily gay men, we had a Federal Government that completely ignored HIV, that ignored the fact that so many people were dying and that did nothing to help our community and to help save people's lives. Diane Feinstein. Under her leadership, San Francisco became the model of how to fight HIV.

There was a point in time when San Francisco was spending more to address HIV than the entire Federal Government was spending, and that's because of amazing advocacy in the community. But it would never have happened without the support and leadership of Diane Feinstein in the 1980s. She was ahead of her time. Diane Feinstein is just a true hero for so many of us. I had the honor of knowing her, of having her support as someone. No one knew who I was.

But Senator Feinstein took a chance on me and supported me, and I will never forget that. And so many in our community will never forget what she contributed to San Francisco, to California, and to our entire country. May she rest in peace. And I ask that we adjourn in the memory of this great leader.

Thank you, Madam President. And I don't want to repeat what was said by my colleague from San Francisco, but there is so much you can say. I did want to share a little bit more of a perspective from San Diego. I remember when she was the US Senator and San Diego was a little bit more conservative than it is today. I served on a City Council that was majority Republicans, but I will tell you, she focused on regions of California.

She was from San Francisco, and she could represent San Francisco, but she could represent San Diego. And I know my colleagues here remember when she would come down at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce and would have lunches with us to hear what our issues were across the spectrum in San Diego. A person who could take intractable issues and try to find solutions. Water issues around agriculture and clearly issues around support for the LGBTQ plus community.

Gun control, really a pillar and a role model for women at every level of government. This was a representative that could balance so much and really represent California. The vastness of California, the demographics, the issues, the stakeholders. And I think she deserves our full recognition today for all of that. But a funny story I will never forget.

When I was the speaker in waiting and Speaker Perez decided I needed to go to Washington, DC in December while we were out of session, and I didn't make it, the airport shut. Couldn't. I was stuck in the middle of the country. But Speaker Perez was in DC, and he had a long list of meetings for us, one of which was to go in and talk with Senator Diane Feinstein. Every single meeting was canceled but one, and that was Senator Feinstein. She was there. The snow.

There was. Offices were shut down. It was snowing. And Speaker Perez called me and said, I said, I'm so sorry. You went for no reason. He said, zero, I didn't go for no reason. Senator Feinstein met with me and put me through all of the issues. Water. What are we doing on this? What do you need? Help. The litany. So her office was the only one there that day. And since then, I was able to go a number of times, both as speaker and pro tem.

And I would tell you you needed to know what you were going to talk to her about. You needed to know at a very deep level the issues, because she would have questions and she wanted to know your take on it from every perspective. So I would tell you we were well served in California by this great, great woman, this great representative. And I think it's right that we do this today as soon as we possibly could.

And I want to thank the Senator from San Francisco, for bringing this forward so quickly so that we could pay tribute and honor to an incredible, incredible person. Adjourn in her memory. And I know that you all have your own stories and your own thoughts, but it's right that we do this today. So thank you.

Madam President, Members, I thank the Senator from San Francisco and our pro tem, the Senator from San Diego, for their great comments. And I had the opportunity to be at San Francisco City hall to pay my respects to her. For 15 years, I was a county supervisor in Napa County, and I was just totally amazed by the capabilities of Senator Diane Feinstein. Certainly long before I got into politics, her reign as the city, county supervisor and mayor of San Francisco were legendary.

But when I had the opportunity to work with her icon, the Napa County flood control project, very complicated project, and we wanted the Army Corps of Engineers. It was about $650,000,000 we were trying to get for a small county like Napa from the Federal Government. And she came in and I think to the point that the pro tem made, she was well dialed in. She knew more about our project than the mayor of Napa, and I did. It was not really embarrassing.

It just showed me what great staff work it is, too. But the same thing. When I was chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, we'd come in and she would have her list of things that she wanted to cover. And I had the opportunity. I was very proud to get her support over the years and her friendship. But more importantly, I think I never once saw her phone it in and worked hard all the way to the end.

It was unfortunate what happened to her at the end. But at the end of the day, all I have, my memories of Senator Feinstein will always go down as very, very positive.

Thank you, Senator Bradford.

Thank you, Madam President. And I'm honored to stand and adjourn the memory as Vice Chair of the legislative black Caucus and pay tribute to Senator Diane Feinstein. Quite simply stated, she dedicated her life to public service. And as the longest serving woman in the Senate, she was a true trailblazer who served the state with strength, with vision, and always with compassion. And I remember one of my first meetings to DC as an Assembly person. We met with Senator Diane Feinstein.

And as stated, she provided herself directly, not staff. She met with us directly and really engaged us on what was important for California. And I really appreciate that conversation and that dialogue. As stated, her career was forged through the horrible tragedy of the violence that took the life of Mayor Moscone. And Supervisor Harvey Milk. And this tremendous loss came to define her path. It fueled her unwavering resolve to pass groundbreaking gun control laws. And ban assault weapons here in this country.

Senator Feinstein was an unwavering supporter of BayPAC, the Black American Political Action Committee. That was Association of, California, I should say, which was founded by one of her former staffers. And her good friend and a mentor of mine, the late Percy Pingney. Diane Feinstein's support and commitment to inclusion. Inspired many African Americans to not only get involved in public service, but also to run for office. A true giant has left us Members. I joined with my colleague from San Francisco in paying tribute.

In recognizing and expressing my deep gratitude and admiration. For this California icon, for our lifelong service and our leadership that made our nation better, safer, and stronger. And one of my most cherished possessions is a piece of art. A lot of folks don't know she did art. And in one of my visits, she gave me a frame piece of art that she had done. So I'm honored to have that and cherish that. And will hold on to it internally. So I also add my voice and ask us that we adjourn in memory of Senator Diane Feinstein.

Senator Umberg.

Thank you, Madam President, colleagues. And thank you, my colleague from San Francisco, for bringing this forth. I was an admirer of Senator Feinstein, then Council Member, then Mayor Feinstein. Since I was in law school and the assassination happened. I ran right over to city hall. And saw her strength, her passion, her dedication to the people of San Francisco. And following on her dedication to the people of California. Had personal interaction with her quite frequently.

Some of you know, I did drugs in Washington, DC for three years. I should rephrase that. I was in the Drug Czar's office. I was the Deputy Drugs Czar for three years. And Senator Feinstein was very much engaged in that issue. Very much engaged in that issue. And she was quite critical of the Clinton Administration, wherein I served. And we were going to have a hearing on the relationship between Mexico and the United States in terms of our mutual drug efforts.

And she was critical of both countries. And I was the administration's representative to testify. So the day before, I went to her office to sort of have a conversation about it. And she was as passionate as she always was and as dedicated, although we had known one another for a long time. And at the end she said, young man, you had better gird your loins. Which was a bit ominous for the next day. And so I appeared the next day.

My loins were girded but she definitely was passionate, tough on both countries. But that was emblematic of Senator Feinstein. Senator Feinstein was tough. She was passionate. She was dedicated because she was devoted to the people of the State of California. And it was my honor to serve in the Administration and interact with Senator Feinstein. She did come up afterwards and said, I hope you didn't take that personally. No, I didn't, Senator, that you told me to gird my loins, and then you took advantage.

But in any event, we are fortunate to have had her service for as long as we had. We in California owe a great deal to Senator Feinstein, and I join with others in urging that we adjourn her memory.

Senator Niello.

Thank you, Madam President. I knew Diane Feinstein not well, but I had many occasions to visit Washington, D.C. With our local Chamber of Commerce. She always met with us, didn't always agree, but as a measure of a person and as a measure of character and as a measure of a representative of the people, she was truly top rate. My nephew actually worked for her in the district, and for the time that he worked for her, he was her chauffeur. So he got to know her.

And I can tell you from that perspective, he could not have had a better and more responsive and kinder boss than Senator Feinstein. And I can back that thoughtfulness up with a personal experience on one of the trips that I took back to Washington, DC, way back in the 90s when we were working here to try to save McClellan as an air force base. And by the way, parenthetically, I think we've been better off with that as a private sector development.

But nonetheless, I was going to meet with her staff people. This was when Richard Nixon had passed away and everybody was leaving town for his funeral. And I entered her office, and the receptionist was there, and I introduced myself, so she was going to let the staff member know. And then she left the office for a short period of time. So I was in the reception area by myself.

The Senator came rushing through with a couple of other staff people, clearly in a hurry, and I knew why, and just walked through and disappeared into the back offices, about which I didn't think anything in particular. But a couple of minutes later.

She came back out into the reception area by herself and walked up to me and she said, are you being helped? Now, that tells me a measure of a person's concern about another person. I told her, no, the receptionist just is out for a moment. I'm meeting with one of your staff people. Thank you very much. But as I say, that's a measure of a person who cares. And I join my colleagues in adjourning in her memory today.

Thank you very much, Madam President. I want to rise and also add another woman's voice to the conversation. So I rise on behalf of the women's caucus and just say, as a person who grew up in Northern California, Diane Feinstein has long been an icon. And I just want to talk about how representation matters.

People have said, heard me talk about my family are immigrants from Mexico, and my mother was the first to register to vote and talked the rest of the family into registering to vote so they could vote for JFK because he was a Catholic. And I can tell you when Diane Feinstein was in San Francisco and during that horrible 1978 and then became mayor, it was so iconic for my mom, who was of her age, to be able to look and see a woman representing us.

And I think we can't underplay enough how much representation matters on all aspects of ourselves, on all parts of our identity, that if somebody can look to us and know that there's hope and there's representation in their own democracy, and they're reflected in some kind of way, and that they do that with strength and dedication and compassion and caring, I just think that truly what it means to be a public servant. So I thank her for her service and for her inspiration, and maybe we adjourn in her memory.

Seeing no further comments. Thank you all for your additions. And if you can, please bring her name forward to the desk so that she may be appropriately memorialized by the Senate. Senator Laird.

Thank you, Madam President. I rise to adjourn in the memory of my mother, Dorothy Laird, who passed away in November, and she had just had her 99th birthday in August. She lived a long and rich life that had many chapters. She was born in rural South Dakota and was depression era and dust bowl. Her grandfather lost his savings when the bank went under.

She would tell the story of her mother when the dust clouds would roll in, how her mother would put sheets that were wet over the windows, and they would see the dust materialize around the window sill and try to keep it out of the house. It was hard for those of us, her sons that were raised in California, understand some of the stories.

She talked about how her father would go down to the Missouri river at the end of winter and with his family Members, chop up Ayes blocks and bring them back and put them in the root cellar and the Ayes would last through the summer. We couldn't understand that and there was a time when I said to her, mom, because you took us to the lutheran church when we were really young, and then we switched to the Methodist church. I said, well, you won for a while.

And then dad won. And she said, zero, no, I was mostly a Methodist growing up. And I said, how is that true? Your grandfather was an immigrant Norwegian lutheran minister. Your father was in a family of 10 kids that were raised in the church. And she said, well, we were a town of 300, and we had one community church, and we would get whatever minister we could ever get. And so we would mostly get Methodists.

So I was mostly a Methodist growing up, which was hard to fathom. She graduated. She came to California. She came to Glendale. She wanted to stay in the YWCA. She wasn't 18. They wouldn't let you do it. So she had to live with relatives till she could check in. She was a receptionist. She was always proud of the fact that the founder of Bob's big boys came into her medical office, and she got to know him.

And after a few years, a friend of hers said, I'm going back to South Dakota. I'm going to go to the University. Why don't you come? And she went, and fortunately for me, because within a year, there was a returning GI from the war in Europe on the GI Bill, and she met him, and the rest was history. But the sad thing that happened at that time is whenever people got married, the woman generally dropped out and supported the man, and that is what she did.

And they moved to California so my dad could start teaching and had three sons, and she was a stay at home mom. And, of course, we benefited. And I remember these amazing times. I mean, starting teachers didn't have much money, so she thought we would never know. She would buy a quart of whole milk and get a quart of powdered milk and mix them together and convince us we were having wonderful milk.

And when we had the measles, she would sit by us at night with a pan of cold water and make sure we weren't getting too feverish. And one of the interesting things was, when she passed away, we heard from a lot of the neighborhood kids that we grew up with, and that she really meant something to them as being sort of a stabilizing force in the neighborhood.

This friend of mine that I'm still in touch with reminded me that he was from a struggling family, and somehow my mom had figured out how to afford an encyclopedia, which was a big deal then. And he would come and knock on the door when my mom was the only one home and ask if he could read it. And there were times that I would get home and he would be sitting on the living room floor reading the encyclopedia.

She was doing things around the house, and some of these friends that got in touch, one of them referred to her, and I'm sorry for you younger people, for the cultural reference, as a June cleaver without the pearls. And I think that that really fit her. She had a rough time because she had three rather rambunctious sons.

And I recall the time that, I think I was in junior high school, and the daily paper had a contest where you tried to guess which of 25 college football teams would win that day, and I would enter for all five Members of my family and adjust it and try to game the system. And they always announced the winners on the front page. And lo and behold, my mom swept it once. And I don't think she knew a name of the team or a player.

And she had to bluff it with all her friends who said, I didn't know you were that smart. I didn't know you had that knowledge. She was mortified, but that was sort of what came with the territory. And she did PTA and went to the games and did things, but she got restless, and she worked as a teacher's aide, and then she was determined to race me through college, and she did. And then she taught kindergarten and first grade until she retired.

And it was interesting because my aunt that lived in Glendale was very gregarious. And I remember one time I went to the grocery store, and my aunt was chatting up people she didn't know in the aisle and chatting up the Clerk. And my mom was mortified. She said, that's not her, and look at her do that. And then she became that person. She was the greeter at the church. She loved everybody. She did things.

And I remember when she retired and she was in all these bridge groups, one time I stopped to see her and I said, what's going on? She says, zero, we're all learning email. We were all in the bridge group today. We said, we learned to forward. Have you learned to forward? And she was having fun as she sort of moved on and did that. And then she did her best to engage in our lives as her kids.

I mean, when my brother and his wife had the first grandchild, she got to the hospital before they did. And for me, it meant trying to get involved in some way in just sort of, as I did public service career. And when I first ran for the City Council. Years and years ago, she and my dad came to the kickoff, and there were a few hundred people there, and I was sort of amazed. She walked around and she introduced herself to everybody, and I sort of.

This is you're surprising me. And she says, just like Rose and Joe Kennedy. And I always remember my dad saying, Joe Kennedy's dead, dear, in the way that they played off of each other for many years. He would also say to me at times your mother's done a horrible thing. And I knew that generally meant he loved whatever it was. So he came to me once, and he said, your mother's done a horrible thing, and what is it?

Well, we were at a reception with Willie Brown, and she walked up and she said, do you know my son? And he didn't appear to. And so she said, well, you will. And my dad says, isn't that horrible? And I thought I was the only one that really thought it was horrible. When I ran for the Assembly the first time, it was 30 years ago last year, it would have been a history making event.

There had not been an open LGBT person elected to the state Legislature in history. And as a result, that was an issue in the election. And I had an opponent, ironically, my Democratic opponent, and a progressive local elected official that started to be pictured with his family in all the pictures, which he had not done previously in his career. And so the newspaper had a front page story on how this was a family values thing. This was because of me.

And I totally forgot that my mother was subscribing to the newspaper to follow the campaign. And one day, I'm in the campaign headquarters, and she walks in because she lived an hour away. I said, what are you doing here? And then I realized she had an armful of pictures of the family, and she said, where do they think you came from? And you had to love it. And then when I got to the Assembly, she realized we were broadcast, that these sessions were broadcast.

And so she would start to watch, and I would get emails. She would say that was a nice tie, or what a lively debate, or, that person will talk on everything from the mouth of a babe. And in those days, she was on the teacher's retirement system, and in those days, the Legislature had to affirmatively put the cost of living increase in.

We had to put a 2% increase in where the teachers didn't get anything, and there was one year of a bad budget, and all these alerts went out. They're not going to give us an increase. And I get this alert in the mail from her with a note written across the top saying, is this true? And lo and behold, we negotiated it. We got the 2% in.

I had to present the Bill on the floor, and I presented the Bill on the floor, and then I looked up at the camera and said, mom, if you're watching, this addresses your issue. And she was watching. And I could do no wrong for a period of time. But I think the most memorable moment from that had to do with legislative voting practices. As you all know, we are not required to vote. We can so called lay off.

We can just sit in the chambers and not vote. And the San Francisco Chronicle went on a campaign against non voting, and they particularly focused on the Assembly. I was front page for a number of days, and I was one of a small group of people that just voted on everything. I just didn't do that. And so, lo and behold, I'm reading the Chronicle one Morning, and I get to the letters section, and there's a letter with a headline on it that says, my son votes.

And I'm thinking, what is this? And I look down, and it is signed by my mom. My mom has written a letter to the editor about legislative voting practices. And so I called her up, and I said, mom, did you think if you were going to publicly get in the middle of my business, you might want to give me a heads up?

And she very earnestly says, well, I a parent, and I was a teacher, and you always worked to model things, and you just didn't call out the behavior that you were trying to change. You actually praised people that were modeling the behavior you were trying to do, and you vote all the time. They didn't mention you or your colleagues. And I thought, hard to argue.

And then that afternoon, the Sacramento bee has a breaking news alert, and it says on the dot, because she signed the letter dot layered, and you opened it up, and it said. It just repeated the letter for the Sacramento b circulation area, in case anybody hadn't seen it already. And it was just something that afterwards, I treasured in the moment. It was a moment. And as things moved on, I was lucky. She lived between here and Sacramento.

I stopped for many times to see her in the last couple of years. It was tough as she started to fail, but she played bingo every day, and the prize for bingo was a Hershey chocolate bar. And it was always so exciting to get there and see Hershey chocolate bars on her table. I thought, zero, cognitive victory. This is great. And then I would always walk out with one. And on some days. And she said, here's one for John.

And so I would always get these Hershey bars. Well, in the cycle of life, in what turns out to be, I think, three days before she passed away, my nephew and his wife visited her and let her know that she finally was going to become a great grandmother. And she had a flash of recognition, which was a wonderful thing. So she leaves three sons, spouses, three grandchildren, many friends.

And as I said at the beginning, she had a life of many chapters, and it was long and it was rich. But we will miss her every day. So I ask that we adjourn in her memory.

Senator, please accept our deepest condolences, and please bring her name to the desk so that she can be appropriately memorialized. Members, we're going to move on to motions, resolutions, and notices. Senator Wiener, on condition of the file.

Yes. Thank you, Madam President. Colleagues, I rise as co chair of our 19 Member legislative Jewish Caucus. To be honest with you, I wish I did not have to make these remarks today, but I do, because about three weeks after we were all together for the last time before today on this floor, three weeks later, the world changed for jews here and around the planet.

On October 7, the terrorist organization Hamas, which runs Gaza, infiltrated southern Israel and engaged in what can only be called a massive pogrom. A pogrom, for those who don't know, is when a country or a community or other population violently targets Jews with the aim of exterminating or expelling those Jews. Mass organized violence against Jews has been happening forever. My great grandparents left Eastern Europe and Russia to come to the US because of those pogroms.

Because of that violence, we have colleagues whose ancestors came here for the same reason. Violence against Jews in Iraq and other Middle Eastern and North African countries helped drive nearly a million Jews out of those countries to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. The most well known pogrom in history, of course, is crystal knocked, a prelude of what happened during the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews, half of all Jews on the planet, were industrially exterminated in factories.

In the 1940s, Hamas terrorists entered various Israeli communities and a music festival and began to butcher as many people as they could. When all was said and done that day, Hamas had massacred 1200 people, mostly Israelis and mostly Jews, but also people of other nationalities, including Americans, people from Thailand, from Nepal, France, Britain, and other countries. But Hamas did not just kill. Hamas killed parents, massacred parents in front of their children. Hamas massacred children in front of their parents. Hamas killed elderly people.

And Hamas engaged in a mass campaign of sexual violence, brutally raping Israeli women, using forms of violence during those rapes that I do not feel comfortable describing on the floor of the Senate. This sexual violence can really only be described as extreme sexual torture, and that's what it was. Hamas kidnapped several hundred Israelis and others, taking them into Gaza as hostages. More than 100 of them remain in Gaza today. These hostages range in age from 10 months old to 86 years old. Yes, they kidnapped babies.

October 7 was the largest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust. It's hard to overstate the trauma that this massacre inflicted on Jews worldwide. Overnight, Jews felt deeply at risk. Hate crimes against Jews were already on the rise, with a majority of all religious based hate crimes in the US directed at Jews, who constitute approximately 2% of the US population.

Immediately after October 7, we saw a spike in violence against Jews around the world, including attacks on synagogues in the US, Europe, and North Africa, a wave of vandalism and bomb threats against synagogues and other Jewish institutions in California and elsewhere. Jewish owned businesses being vandalized. But these violent attacks were just the start. Equally disturbing was the reaction by many, including some so called progressives, who many in the Jewish community have always considered allies, a reaction to the Hamas attack that was horrifying. Immediately. Immediately.

Within hours after the Hamas massacre, within hours and before Israel set foot in Gaza, we saw rallies in our cities, on our UC and CSU campuses and elsewhere, not condemning the Hamas attack, but glorifying it. Not condemning Hamas, but rather condemning Israel even before it set foot in Gaza and calling for Israel's annihilation. We heard in California, leaders and organizers celebrate the Hamas murder, rape, and kidnapping of Jews as legitimate, quote unquote, resistance, as a, quote unquote historic win, as a quote unquote extraordinary day.

We heard lots of references to from the river to the sea, which whatever some say they mean by it, is absolutely being used to mean the elimination of the State of Israel. At UC Berkeley, protesters made that crystal clear when they chanted, in addition to from the river to the sea, they chanted, quote, we don't want no two states. We want all of 48.

And we also saw certain organizations, including some who regularly advocate in this building, remain silent when Jews were being slaughtered and raped on October 7, and then quickly pivot to being quite vocal in condemning Israel and even calling for the destruction of Israel's economy and for Israel and the destruction of Israel itself.

We've seen some of these organizations pass resolutions condemning Israel while either ignoring or giving the most minimal lip service to what happened on October 7 or the fact that there continued to be hostages in Gaza. We saw the UC ethnic Studies faculty council issuing a statement referring to October 7 as, quote, part of the Palestinian freedom struggle and criticizing UC for calling the attack terrorism. CSU ethnic studies faculty issued a statement stating their agreement with their UC colleagues.

We saw a teach in in Oakland Unified School District, which was endorsed by the Oakland Educational Association, that taught straight up hatred of Israel and Jews by teaching just flat out falsehoods about Jews in Israel, saying that Jews were not in Israel before 1948.

They've been there for thousands of years, that Israel was only for white Jews when most Jews in Israel are not of European descent, and glorifying the word intifada, which, whatever the dictionary definition of intifada is in the context of Israel, means killing Jews. We're aware of teachers in other school districts who are similarly teaching this nonfactual history of Jews in Israel.

All of this has created a poisonous and hostile environment for Jewish students in some of our k through 12 schools and on UC and CSU campuses. Members of our Jewish caucus, over the recess, have been meeting with students on these campuses, and it is horrifying to hear what they are dealing with on school the absolute hatred and harassment. We've also seen public comment at various city councils, including in Oakland and in Long Beach, public comment says, asserting anti semitic tropes. Sadly, none of this is new.

Anti Semitism has long been described as, quote, the oldest hatred. Jews have been subjected to violence, expulsion, and attempted extermination for millennia, and anti Semitism spans the political spectrum. We've seen it on the left. We also see it on the right.

Whether it's the chant of Jews will not replace us at the Unite the right rally in Charlottesville, the massacres by right wing extremists at synagogues in Pittsburgh, or Poway, or nationalist anti Semitism by people like Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, or Elon Musk promoting the great replacement theory. We have a responsibility to call this out wherever it happens. Finally, colleagues, I want to express our caucus's horror at the absolute devastation that we are seeing in Gaza.

Hamas must be removed from power in Gaza, and its ability to massacre Israelis must be degraded. But we know that the vast majority of Gaza residents did not commit violence on October 7. A huge number of Gazans, including so many children, have died and are dying. Gaza is suffering, and Israel must take steps to avoid civilian death. Members of our caucus have been intensely critical of the Netanyahu government, which, in our view, in my view is not committed to a viable, independent Palestine.

We need Israel to be committed to full peace and to a two state solution, just as we need the West bank and Gaza and the governments there to be committed to not destroying Israel and killing Israelis. Colleagues, I want to just thank so many of you on behalf of our Jewish caucus. So many of you in the Senate and also in the Assembly reached out to Members of our caucus immediately after October 7. And we are so deeply grateful.

You have spoken out, you have met with Jewish community in your districts, and we want to thank you. We look forward to working with you over the course of this year, and I thank you again.

If there is no other business, Senator Atkins, the desk is clear,

Madam President. Thank you so much, colleagues, welcome back. We have a year ahead of us for sure. But our next floor session, which is ahead of us, is scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, January 4th 2024 at 09:00 a.m. Thank you, Members.

The Senate will be in recess until 03:30 p.m. At which time the adjournment motion will be made. We will reconvene tomorrow, Thursday, January 4, at 09:00 a.m. Happy New Year.