Rising antisemitism is causing immense harm to American Jews
'A Sacramento rabbi speaks out about rising antisemitism,' (sacbee.com, May 24)
Rabbi Reuven Taff's article resonated with me. He expressed the painful reality Jewish people are experiencing across California and around the country, facing violent hate crimes at schools and synagogues and Jewish communal facilities, like the Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.
Callous indifference appears to be mounting to abuses and expressions of bigotry and discrimination against Jews. Anti-Jewish sentiment is widespread in America, and it is causing immense harm to Jewish Americans as individuals, as families and as a community. People of conscience need to step up as allies and speak out in defense of freedom, equality and safety for Jews and in defense of the rights and welfare of Americans of all backgrounds and identities.
Noam Schimmel
Lecturer, UC Berkeley
'California updates track meet rules after Trump threat,' (sacbee.com, May 27)
California state law correctly protects the rights of all public school students, including trans students, to be free from discrimination while participating in school-sponsored activities.
To the extent that the President of the United States and California State School Superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw, who is running on an anti-trans platform, think they have the power and/or ability to restrict California's students simply because they don't like our non-discrimination laws just goes to show what despicable bullies they truly are.
The 16-year-old trans student and her mother who are now caught in the eye of this storm are real-life heroines for not only standing up to the bullies holding positions of power in federal and local government, but also to hate-mongering individuals screaming at them from the track meet stands.
Like the state of Maine, I have no doubt that Attorney General Rob Bonta will legally challenge any unlawful action taken by the federal government against California and our students.
Wendi Ross
Roseville
'US Senate votes to overturn California bid to ban gasoline-powered vehicles,' (sacbee.com, May 22)
Congratulations to Congress for blocking California's unprecedented and short-sighted attempt to ban gas-powered vehicles by 2035. In a stunning defeat for Gov. Gavin Newsom, this move restores some policy sanity to the once 'Golden State.'
In a state leading the nation in poverty, with some of the highest costs of living, Newsom seems determined to remake the state into a haven for only the wealthy.
Michael Pruden
Sacramento
'California waives the rules for wildfire rebuilding projects,' (sacbee.com, Jan. 29)
Safeguarding communities from wildfires is imperative, but the Fix Our Forests Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla, isn't the answer.
The bill ignores decades of science-backed research and promotes reckless backcountry logging that fails to keep people or communities safer. It doesn't mitigate fire behavior in extreme wind-driven wildfires and may even worsen fire risk because forest floors will experience increased exposure to the sun's drying heat, and windbreaks will be lost.
We deserve legislation protecting forests and providing real defense against wildfires, not the faux fix of this bill.
Jennifer Normoyle
Hillsborough
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Fast Company
16 minutes ago
- Fast Company
NYC pension funds want asset managers like BlackRock to have legitimate net-zero plans—or lose their business
As the Trump administration funnels money into fossil fuels and the country largely retreats on climate efforts, New York City is trying to ensure its pension funds take the climate into consideration. In 2021, New York City officials announced that the city's pension funds divested an estimated $4 billion from fossil fuel companies, a landmark move in the effort to divest money from polluting industries. But divesting directly from these companies only covers a small portion of how the markets support the continued development of oil, gas, and coal. Major asset managers like BlackRock still invest in fossil fuels; so if a pension fund is invested in BlackRock, it's still essentially funneling money into oil, gas, and coal. Now, those asset managers will have to show the city that their investments align with New York's climate goals, or they could risk losing the pension funds' business. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander recently announced new climate standards for pension fund asset managers, including clear net-zero goals that decrease their scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Asset managers have until June 30 to submit their climate strategies to the city. Officials will evaluate those net-zero plans to ensure that they're 'real and actionable.' If an asset manager's plans fail to meet those climate standards, they'll be sent to a 'rebid' process, meaning they'll have to bid again for the pension funds' business, and the funds could then move their money to a different, cleaner asset manager. As part of any new bidding process, Lander will recommend evaluating an asset manager's corporate-level climate behavior as well. 'What we're doing is getting the New York City pension funds to use their buying power to shift money from dirtier money managers like BlackRock, who are bad on climate, to cleaner money managers,' says Pete Sikora, climate campaigns director with New York Communities for Change, a nonprofit that campaigned for these new standards. Activists hope that by taking business away from the less climate friendly asset managers, those companies will be forced to clean up their portfolios in order to get back the pension funds' business. New York City's five pension funds have nearly $300 billion worth of investments, with a few hundred asset managers. The largest is BlackRock, which holds nearly $60 billion of the funds' investments. (In total, BlackRock has more than $11 trillion in assets under management.) The city's pension funds include the New York City Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS), Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), and Board of Education Retirement System (BERS), which have all historically been progressive on climate action; TRS is also the largest investor with $109 billion in assets. (The other two funds are the New York City Police Pension Fund and the New York City Fire Pension Fund.) Already, since 2019, New York City's pension system has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 37%. It aims to be net-zero by 2040. This move to require climate plans from asset managers—and to stop investing with them if their climate plans aren't strong enough—is crucial to reaching that goal, Sikora says. It's a more impactful move than just divesting directly from fossil fuel companies, he notes, 'because it pushes the entire financial industry' to be cleaner. 'There's no way to stave off global climate catastrophe unless finance as a whole flees from oil, gas, coal, and deforestation,' he says. The move is also a direct response to the Trump administration's efforts to funnel money into the fossil fuel industry, and to push back the entire country's climate progress. 'We will not retreat from our strong climate action, a position that remains consistent with our fiduciary duty. Climate risk is financial risk,' Lander said in a statement. 'Some may cave to the Trump administration and reverse their climate commitments, but we will not be deterred from jointly prioritizing our climate goals and financial responsibilities.' (Lander is running to be the Democratic candidate in New York City's mayoral race, and has made ' standing up to Donald Trump ' a tenet of his campaign.) New York Communities for Change has been advocating for these climate standards for years, Sikora says, and was talking to Lander about the possibilities before he was even elected as comptroller in 2021. Before that role, Lander was on the city council, where he sponsored a resolution calling on BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, and other financial institutions to stop lending to and investing in the fossil fuel industry. That hinted to activists that he would be supportive of these efforts. Though this effort was years in the making, it's becoming more urgent as the financial industry backslides on climate commitments at large. In January 2025, weeks before Trump took office, six major banks left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a group that was setting net-zero targets for the financial world. Still, some funds are trying to hold banks to account. In February, the People's Pension, one of the United Kingdom's largest pension funds, said it was 'prioritizing sustainability' by pulling a majority of its money out of State Street; the fund moved £20 billion to a different asset manager, Amundi, which it says has stronger climate standards. Changes to New York City's pension funds won't happen immediately, though. After asset managers submit their climate plans to the city, officials have to review them before they make recommendations on whether to put the business up for rebid; those recommendations will likely start to happen in the summer or early fall. New York City's move to divest its pension fund from fossil fuels did face a lawsuit from oil and gas companies in 2023; in 2024, the city won. These additional climate requirements may also face criticism or legal pushback, particularly from the Trump administration, but Sikora is confident it will hold up in court. Investing in fossil fuels is no longer a sure route to profitability; thousands of oil and gas assets are at risk of becoming stranded —meaning they would be unprofitable or forced to shut down years before planned—because of the impacts of climate change. 'New York City pension funds have an interest in a healthy world,' he says. 'You don't have New York City pension funds in a dead New York City that is submerged under rising seas. . . . On a basic, prudential level, you shouldn't be furthering your own destruction with your investments.'
Bloomberg
21 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Inflation Expectations Are Now Just Tariff Expectations
As early signs emerge that tariffs will drive up prices, the Federal Reserve faces a crucial question: Will tariff-induced inflation be short-lived, as the level of prices adjusts to the higher tariffs, or will it persist, as a series of feedback loops lead to further price increases? One feedback loop that the Fed is always on guard for is longer-run inflation expectations becoming 'unanchored' — that is, the rate is not expected to remain stable. If businesses and consumers expect higher inflation over the next several years, they may adjust their behavior now in setting prices, negotiating wages and making purchasing decisions. This would help make persistently higher inflation a reality, requiring the Fed to do more to reduce inflation to its target of 2% by keeping interest rates higher or even raising them.
New York Times
22 minutes ago
- New York Times
Trump's Foreign Policy, Explained
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that's been on my mind is that we've not been covering Israel and Gaza or Ukraine and Russia nearly as much as we did in 2023 and 2024, frankly, as much as I think we should be. There have been two reasons for that. One has been that President Trump's second administration has felt, in many ways, like a domestic emergency, and it has pulled much more of our focus here. The other is that often, when we're covering these conflicts, what we're really covering — implicitly or explicitly — is the American position on them: How are we going to use our might, our money, our weaponry, our leverage to bring them to some kind of close or settlement? And early in Trump's second administration, he basically filled me with despair. He seemed to have little interest in Gaza, except for potentially building hotels there. Beyond that, he seemed perfectly happy to let Israel annex whatever it wanted. On Ukraine, he was at odds with Volodymyr Zelensky, and his main interest seemed to be his relationship with Vladimir Putin. But things have been changing a bit. Other parts of his 'America First' foreign policy have been coming into more focus. So what is Trump's foreign policy? What, at this point, can we say about it? How has it been evolving over the course of his still young second term? To help me think that through, I wanted to bring Emma Ashford back on the show. She is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. She's the author of the forthcoming book 'First Among Equals,' and she's a foreign-policy analyst who is more of a realist. She's in fundamental ways more sympathetic to some of the motivating impulses of Trump's foreign policy, even if she doesn't always agree with how that's carried out. So I thought she'd be a good person to help me steel-man what the administration is doing and think through whether that's working or has a real chance of working. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
