 When you started as the Attorney General, it was just a few days after the President had been inaugurated. You were appointed by former Governor Jerry Brown. I'm curious, did you anticipate that so much of this job would be centered around fighting with the administration? Was that part of your frame and your calculation in taking this position? Jose will just say to you and your colleagues at the New York Times and to everyone who's taken the time to be with us. I knew it would be interesting. I certainly knew that I'd get to do some things of significance. I get to make a big difference. That's why I left 24 years in Congress. And sure enough, it's come to pass. And as you mentioned, 61, we were talking about 62 lawsuits because we'll be filing one more tomorrow against this administration. Breaking news, everybody. And it is what it is because we're defending what has made California the economic engine for this country. We graduate more people from college, any other state in the nation. We create more jobs than any other state. We're number one in, well, high technology, everyone knows that, but we're also number one in manufacturing. We're number one in clean energy, just as we're number one in agriculture. We're number one in hospitality as we are in entertainment. And we become the fifth largest economy in the world. And that's because we do things. We don't sit back and spectate. And so it's my job to defend those people, our values and those resources that let us become the fifth largest economy in the world. This position has brought you a lot of visibility, both among progressives, but also just nationally. And I'm curious if you have come to relish the position of being an antagonist or perhaps a foil to the Trump administration. Is this something that you think about? Is it something that you have been frustrated by? What's the feeling dealing with being a very visible actor in this movement? We're not out there going to pick a fight. We're ready. Take on anyone who would like to stop us. We do best. And so we have filed this number because it's crucial to defend what's made California successful. 61 lawsuits, most of the time we've had victories. There are very few occasions when I can tell you we have not won in court. None of these lawsuits are frivolous. And so they're all necessary. And I would say that I would be happy not to be so litigious if the Trump administration would be happy playing by the rules and obeying the law. You know, I think the desire for a battle on the left, it's an understatement to say it's tangible. We've mentioned the 61 lawsuits. My guess is there are more to come 62 tomorrow. The president certainly appears to be thinking a lot about California. You know, this event is so timely given the last few weeks. But I'm curious if you ever worried about whether there was any danger in inviting the anger and the ire of the president. I wonder if you've ever worried that you're inviting punishment by escalating these fights. A very dear friend, a civil rights icon, Congressman John Lucas from the state of Georgia. He used to always tell us in our Democratic caucus meetings when we had a major vote or a challenge in front of us. If you want to make progress, you want to really make change. You've got to get in the way. You've got to get into trouble. Good trouble. I believe that as the 33rd general of the state of California, I'm going to get in the way. I'm going to get into a lot of good trouble. And so far, most of the time, that good trouble is resulted in victories in court. It's not just a matter of fighting. You know, every time folks talk about the resistance or the part of the resistance or leaping the resistance, I don't look at it that way. I look at it as fighting because I want to make sure that if another kid like me was a son of immigrants, the first in his family to have a chance to go to college, whose parents have been walking to restaurants because of the signs that said no dogs or Mexicans allowed, never has to face that. And so I'm going to fight for everything California does to make people understand that if you card in this country, this state, and so it's not just about fighting. It's about fighting and winning. At the same time though, you know, at the same time when you have a lot of fans in this audience, I don't know if you can hear the applause or not, but it's coming. You know, isn't it the case so on emissions, on homelessness? You know, it particularly feels in the last few weeks, especially that the president has been targeting California in a way that is putting billions of dollars at stake in federal funding and is frankly just tying up a lot of the state's resources and litigation. And I'm just curious what you say to constituents because there are conservatives in California. What you say to constituents who say that, you know, instead of fighting with the administration, you should be trying to figure out ways to work with them. And by the way, that's a comment that came from some of our readers who were writing in with these questions. Actually, I agree with them that we should be working with federal administration. And every day we are. In fact, my department of justice, I can tell you right now every day we're working with ICE. And even though I have lawsuits against this administration, we are working day in, day out with ICE because a lot of folks are trying to import drugs into this country. We're involved in international sex trafficking. We're doing everything we can to go after them. And we need our partners at the federal level to work with us. So we are going to do everything we can. But when Donald Trump tries to stop us from doing what we must, what has made us successful, we're going to stand up. We sued Donald Trump for trying to impose a question about citizenship in the U.S. census form, which would probably reduce the participation of families who were afraid to answer some of the questions. We did it not because we wanted to prove Donald Trump's eye. It's because we want to make sure California calls resources that are based on the form that's derived the census numbers that we pay to the federal treasury in our taxes. And we wouldn't lose a congressional seat because of an undercount in the U.S. census because too many people did not participate. And if Donald Trump thought that we could not challenge his unlawful order trying to stop for law enforcement agencies for cops on beat to stand simply because he didn't like the way we did participate in his deportation force, then no, we're not going to stand for it. That's why we were able to get to 20 million, win a case to say that those 29 million dollars for our community policing must come to the state of California. Folks may not want me to sue, but you're going to give up 29 million dollars in those law enforcement funds and you can give up billions of dollars that we've lost with the census gone the wrong way. So we're going to fight. And what about something like SB 27, the bill that is sorry, the law now that requires presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to appear on the California ballot? Governor Jerry Brown vetoed this precise law once before in anticipation that it would be deemed unconstitutional. What is the value of using state resources and state lawyers to fight for something like this when it's not clear if anything is really going to come out of it? So there's the first question that I'm going to probably have to be a little prescribed in what I say because we're the attorneys in that case and we were asked by our client, state of California governor and our state agency clients, Secretary of State, to defend that law that was signed by Governor Newsom. All I can tell you is that we are going to defend California's laws. That's my job as Attorney General to defend the laws of the state of California. And it will be as vigorous as we can defending that law as we are in defending ourselves against the federal government's attacks. And so let me ask then about this admissions fight, which has gotten a lot of attention lately. I never in my life thought that we'd be talking about admissions in such a dominant way. I'm hoping that you can maybe walk the audience through some of the calculations that your office has to make when things like this pop up, right? My guess is that you guys aren't taking a swing at everything that comes across your desk. This, it feels like maybe you guys had no choice but to take on. And so can you walk us through what sort of mechanisms the state's Department of Justice has to fight back against this effort to prevent the state of California from setting its own admissions standards? What is next in that fight? Can you lay that out? Yeah, so I'm going to take you through 60 years in really fast effect. And can you do it in 30 seconds please? Yeah, we start regulating our admissions back in the early 60s, 1960s, way before there was even a Clean Air Act. The reason California has been granted a waiver over the years by Congress in the California in the Clean Air Act is because California was doing this before the federal government thought about it. And because California must, one in every four kids in the Central Valley, for example, has asthma. And we need to fight and we did air. So we've always been the cutting edge when it comes to trying to clean our air. Well, all of a sudden the Trump administration wants to not only can do what California has done to be aggressive in cleaning our air, but they want to undo the national standards because we're defending the national standards, just defending California standards. We're saying we must do this because California is the absolute necessity for a kid. But at the same time, there are a whole bunch of other states that are joining us. And now those standards have become national with the blessing, by the way, of the auto industry. And so now Donald Trump jumps, he wants to backslide again. Let him try to backslide. The law is the law. We've got the facts and the science behind what we're doing. We're going to defend not just California's right to set standards, but also the national standards that are in place. Now, I understand that the Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into whether, you know, the agreement between these four automakers was, you know, perhaps illegal or whatever phrase they want to use. I'm curious if you and your office have acted on this yet, if you've received any information from the DOJ about the nature of this investigation. I haven't been able to get any information about it. So I'm curious, you know, they've given you any heads up. They're making these file claims about antitrust violations and having auto companies talk about trying to move towards clean standards for their vehicles. If that's the loose antitrust collusion, well, I'll let them try to prove that. I also have a saying, we'll say, I don't listen to Donald Trump and his people say, I react based on what they do. And until they decide to file some frivolous case on antitrust grounds, I'm not going to worry too much about it. We're going to continue to defend California's ability to set its standards, high emission standards, so we can keep the air as clean as possible. And by the way, what the Trump administration announced yesterday, that's now making the news about how EPA is accusing California of not doing enough to clean its air, it hopes to make our case why we have maintained clean car standards because we want to do more. And so there's kind of, it's a predict, I'm not sure which one to attack, which one agree with. That point for the record is well taken in this room, just based on the audience reaction. Before I let you go, because we're running out of time here, I do want to talk about the news of the day, which I think has been, everybody's been following the impeachment drama that's unfolding on Capitol Hill. I mean, let me just ask you, what made you think that the president should be impeached? You know, I'll say I often get asked, so do you wish you were still a member for Congress? I was chairman of the Democratic caucus. Today, I probably wish I could have been the chairman of the Democratic caucus to be in the conversation was taking place. Here's what I'll tell you, not, not being aware of all the facts that my congressional colleagues, former colleagues have, I will tell you this, we have a right to follow the facts wherever they take us. In fact, we have an obligation to make sure we follow those facts. Clearly, what we're reading and hearing certainly leads to a presumption that there has been obstruction of justice. And at the same time, a violation, a clear violation of the law and this use of presidential power. But the facts help that. And so I feel confident that if we let the facts take us down that road, we'll know what to do. And so do you think that he should be impeached? And so do you think that he should be impeached? I believe they're doing the right thing and moving forward with the inquiry. Impeach means you take a vote in the House and declare that this president should be out of office. That is done only after you've seen all the facts. We need to get the facts. The White House has to stop Stonewall. They have to let the facts speak for themselves. This is 2019, not 2020. And as a former member of Congress, representing the LA region for more than 20 years, but you know how Washington works, probably better than most of the people in this room. And so I'm just wondering if you think that Nancy Pelosi, who of course represents San Francisco, I'm wondering if you feel that she should have been less reluctant in getting to this point. This is a position that a lot of folks on the left have taken, for example, that she should have acted more decisively. How do you feel about that? So you have to understand that I served with Nancy for 24 years. I worked under her in the leadership as a chair of the caucus. I served before that. I know her fairly well. I will tell you this. I respect her. And I think you're going to go down in history as the speaker, House of Representatives, if you're seeing. And I understand what she's doing. She's trying to make sure the facts speak to the actions of the House because she had gone faster, slower. That's not for me to decide because I'm not in the rooms to see all that she does. But I will tell you this. There is no one who gets to Nancy Pelosi's when she's decided what she's doing. She's going to do it. And until someone figure out a better way, I think Nancy's going to chart course, which I hope will lead to the facts that determine we do with Presidents of the United States. And the last question today, you know, I think a lot of your constituents here in California who are following this news are wondering if the the sheer prospect of impeachment changes some of the calculations that you and your office are making and pursuing some of these legal battles against the administration. Do the battles, you know, between the Newsom administration and between your office at DOJ just disappear in the hypothetical case that the president is impeached? Or does this go sort of, you know, beyond the man himself? I hate to tell you this. The impact Donald will far surpass his days in Oval Office, whether it's because of the lifetime judicial point that he has made to the Supreme Court and the federal bench, or whether it's some of these decisions that move us out of the climate accords. And there will be a lasting effect. We will be trying to undo just the civility that it's gone where people think they have a license to be racist. And so we're going to have to work really hard as a nation as people to undo that. Listen, at the end of the day, we're going to do what we must to defend our state of California with or without Donald. All right, so they're applauding for you. I can't tell if you can hear or not. Thank you so much, Mr. Attorney General for making time for us today. We'll see you tomorrow in Sacramento. And take care. Thanks so much. So let's just get to the news today, you guys. Everybody's talking about impeachment. Everybody's reading about impeachment. Okay, gotta talk louder. I'm curious, Jenny, just to start with you. Jenny's a political reporter for us. Why do you think Nancy Pelosi waited as long as she did to get to this place? Was it strategic? Was it, what was it? Well, I don't do a lot of reporting. I'm a national reporter on our politics desk and cover primarily presidential campaign right now. And I don't do any reporting myself on Congress on Capitol Hill. So I don't want to pretend like I'm talking about something I know when I don't. I think polls have made it very clear that there's a lot of mixed messages from the public on impeachment. And when I go out and talk to people both in California and in Nevada and in South Carolina, impeachment tends not to be the first thing on people's minds. I'd actually be curious if I could do a very unscientific survey by a show of hands. How many people watch Nancy Pelosi's announcement today? I mean, this is not a, this is a crowd that I would expect to have watched it. And even here, it looks like roughly half the people. So I think there's a lot of, it's a place where you can see a lot of disjointment between the rest of the world and Washington. And so maybe she was aware of that. You know, I'm curious, the sheer size of California's congressional delegation makes it a force to be reckoned with in Washington. But it's also ideologically quite diverse. I'm curious, how do you imagine the delegation playing into this? Do you, do you think that the, do you think that the Democratic members of Congress from California will have a role to play in this fight? Do you see them falling in line just based on the last few days? I think California congressional members have already played a huge role. Adam Schiff probably being the most prominent example, congressman from Southern California. But you have on the judiciary committee, I was just looking before we came here, there's a handful of California congressional members on the judiciary community committee. And certainly Kevin McCarthy will play the antithesis to Adam Schiff and any other Democrat who wants to impeach the president. In so many ways, it feels like the debates that can and do happen within California end up playing out across the country as well. You know, if we had to pick two of the central issues of the Trump era, its immigration and its climate change, and so much of those arguments was, was and sort of is to some extent been fought here in California. To ground this, you know, a little bit away from the Washington drama and maybe into something a little bit more tangible, I'm curious Ivan, what your thoughts are on the on the climate and energy ban battles that are happening here between California and the federal government. And you know, to begin, maybe tell us whether impeachment at all has any role in that and then take it from there. Sure. Obviously, the national discussion changed today. And one of the issues now is whether impeachment and impeachment inquiry will so overshadow what we have now 61 lawsuits and an impending one to join that. Will these issues end up getting lost in an impeachment inquiry? So we have the admissions debate that escalated as California offended the Trump administration by, by getting four automakers to align with with California's standards. You don't have just that issue, though. There are there are a series of issues that the impeachment inquiry may have an impact on. One of those is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. So there are two vacancies there. Will those vacancies remain down until after November 2020? There are issues that California has before FERC and significant ones dealing with climate change. So what is the impact on the lawsuits, regulatory issues with appointees that are out there? And then, as the Attorney General mentioned, you know, there are areas where the state is working with the federal government. And and one of those significant one, offshore wind, does the impeachment inquiry affect the state's efforts to get to develop offshore wind because that's in federal waters? On on emissions, when I was first reading about this this deal or agreement struck between the four automakers, I was very surprised by that. I didn't realize that that was something that could happen. And I'm curious, you know, can you give us the long history? How unprecedented is something like that? Why was it a big deal? And does the administration have a legitimate case that there was something either improper or wrong about about that agreement? Well, and again, we heard from the Attorney General that that whole waiver issue that California received dates back to to the 1960s. And actually, a lot of the the climate change emissions efforts were put forward by two Republican governors of California. The 1967 was Ronald Reagan. And then, and that's not only was that when he entered the governorship, but that is the point where the push for that waiver actually began. And then in 2006, while Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, you had AB Assembly Bill 32, which established the cap and trade the the cap and trade issue that we have in California. So you have two Republican governors that actually are at the heart of two of the major pieces of all of this. So so now that's sort of how it developed. But the the argument, whether there's a case to be made, well, the the the basis then in 1967, the issues in 2006 were California's geography, were the smog issues in Los Angeles, which is was a major driver for Ronald Reagan. And and so you have those issues that remain not just back then, but they remain today. And you're you're obviously continuing to report on this. What are you hearing from, you know, from the automakers from some of these either energy adjacent companies or energy companies about the broader implications of this battle that is happening between the federal government and California? Well, well, this this is significant. I mean, because look, California, it's portrayed as the leader in many areas and clearly on clean energy it is. The most of the electric vehicles in the country are in California. Most of the solar power in the country is in California. The energy storage is in California. And because of that, that has driven a lot of the the development of electric vehicles in the country. It has driven the price drops in solar power. It has driven the price drop in in energy storage. So everything from the electric grid to transportation, they're they're all being affected by this. And when you look at the the players in it, the automakers, and even the the energy sector, they see the amount of money that can be made. And no one is is balking at that. But you do have the opponents. If you're going to go clean energy, that's going to affect even, you know, you have a company based here in in the Bay Area and well in San Ramon used to be in San Francisco in Chevron. So California itself has always had its own struggle with dealing with clean energy and fossil fuels, but sort of crystallized in the Central Valley. So you've got a lot of oil refinery, a lot of oil development in in the Central Valley. And then ironically, you have some of the largest solar farms in the Central Valley as well. So it's so California as a state has also grappled with what do we do with all of this stuff? And how do we when you have a company that has 48,000 employees around the world in Chevron? I mean, how do you how do you deal with that at a time when you're also trying to push for a clean transportation system and a clean electric grid? There's pushback from different quarters. Part of what has struck me just intellectually about this battle is that progressives are sort of making a state's rights argument. In a lot of cases, not just on emissions, but plenty of other issues that have become really big. And Jenny, you had a really great point the other day comparing California to Texas. California is Trump's California is to Trump what Texas was to the Obama administration. Can you elaborate on that a bit? Yeah, I think I think the Attorney General is for sure the embodiment of this. And he began adopting this sort of tact the moment he started, which was he's doing what Greg Abbott did as the Attorney General in Texas filing one lawsuit after another after another. I was really struck to hear him say that that he or the state is not picking a fight with the Trump administration. I think that is I do not agree with that. I would not reuse that language. I think that it is exactly what the state is doing is picking in a fight with the administration. They're counting the number of lawsuits. Right, and I'm not making a judgment. That's not to say that these lawsuits aren't necessarily by their point of view or that they're not accomplishing anything, but they are certainly picking a fight. And it is certainly the same kind of arguments that Texas was making under the Obama administration that this is within our right to do so. And the thing about California is that it had done so as I just alluded to, it had done so for a very long time. Back in under the Obama administration, I can't remember exactly what year the state legislature started passing all sorts or trying to pass all sorts of laws that kind of changed the way citizenship was conceived of in California, allowing immigrants to serve on government committees, allowing undocumented immigrants to serve on those committees. It was this whole sort of redefinition of what citizenship was, and that was under Obama, not under Trump. You know, Jose, and the irony is too about Texas. So Texas is one of the leaders in wind power and is projecting to be one of the top five, if not in the top one or two, well, two or three, because California is far ahead in solar. So here you have this oil state, natural gas state, but no one is raising any issues about their wind and solar. You know, in the Trump era in the last three years, this idea of California as a foil to not just Trump but to the right has, I think, become really dominant nationally. But we know living in California that there is a lot of ideological diversity here, and I'm just curious, Jenny, you grew up here, you have a long history here. Has this, you know, image of California as a sort of progressive oasis always been the case? Has that changed? Did it accelerate under Trump? What's the trend there? So the thing that comes to mind for me most obviously, partly because of what I cover and partly because of where I'm from is immigration. And I grew up, I was in high school or middle school maybe when Proposition 187 made its way and was approved. And it was at the time the most anti-immigration, anti-immigrant ballot initiative that the country had ever seen. And I grew up in Riverside, California, which at the time, part of the city that I grew up in was overwhelmingly Mexican. And nobody would have described it as a progressive oasis, I think to use the phrase that you use. And now that district is a pretty democratic place. But the shift that we've seen in my lifetime, and I'm not that old, between the state being this place where there is overwhelmingly an anti-immigrant sentiment to where we are at now, is very dramatic. But it also differs so much, as you just said, from one part of the state to another. If you go to parts of the Central Valley or parts of inland Southern California, it is a totally different world than the one we live in in San Francisco or in sort of coastal Los Angeles. And I think that is something that is very hard for people on the East Coast to understand and probably hard for us on the coast of California to understand. And so at this point, I have been checking the clock. I want to make sure that we have enough time for people in the audience to ask us questions. How are we going to do this? There are microphones. Okay, we're going to have a microphone, and I think they are going to, if you raise your hand, you will be picked, but not by me. By the person holding the microphone. Don't be shy. Don't be shy. And please just remember that questions end with a question mark, all right? I was concerned with your little study from the audience saying who had watched. You were trying to make a point that the public isn't behind the impeachment or pro impeachment enough and justifying taking time to get to this point. And you had asked the audience to raise your hand if you had viewed the Nancy Pelosi's announcement today. And it concerns me because of the recent issues of like false equivalency. So let me, I'm happy to clarify what I meant. So tell me your question and I'll try to clarify. Well my question is, that seems like you drew a judgment from how many people who watched something that many of us were at work and could not watch. And that was in response to a question on waiting, taking time to wait, justifying it by seat. Only half the people watched it. And then later there was another subject you mentioned was my question is, I'm, are you conscious of the New York Times reporting and even in this small little get-together of utilizing false equivalency to get certain points across or to hide from certain points? I'll sort of split the question into two parts. And first I want to clarify what I meant by what, I really don't, I cannot pretend for one moment to know what Nancy Pelosi is thinking. The Attorney General who worked with her many years didn't do that. I wouldn't presume to do that either. The point I was trying to make is that when I am out on the campaign trail talking to people in other states, that tends not to be the first thing on most people's minds. People are very concerned about health care. People are very concerned about immigration. People are very concerned about education, about the economy. The, the question of impeachment tends not to be the thing that is on many, many people's minds. And the question I was genuinely curious because I was walking around, my flight landed and the Pelosi speech came on and I was rushing around trying to find a place where I could see it, not on my phone. And was just fascinated to be in San Francisco and Nancy Pelosi's district and see that many people are not glued to the TV and not glued to the, their phones worried about this announcement, which is what I think a lot of people in DC, political reporters included, political leaders included kind of presume that people are. So that was the only point that I was trying to make to your question about false equivalency. I think that is absolutely something that we all think of all the time. We are all consciously, constantly and consciously trying to test our own assumptions, talking to lots and lots of different people and not drawing conclusions without having evidence for any conclusions that we're making. Thanks for the great panel. Was just wondering, should religious fundamentalist Mike Pence succeed Trump? What new threats for California do you see and what steps perhaps we should take? I'm going to also pass a hard pass on what steps California should take. Thankfully, I decided not to get into policymaking and only get into journalism. I think that's a great question though. And I think, but I think that we're probably a long way off before getting there. I think that's, and it'll be an interesting question to see how the Democrats try to answer that. One thing that I would add, I covered the 2016 election. I was on the road for nearly two years, one of which I was following the Trump campaign. Like, I remember very vividly telling friends, you know, friends, family members, you know, I actually think that Trump could win based on the energy that I see behind him. And I remember people being like, no, that couldn't happen. And it did. He has genuine support in the United States. And I suspect that people in San Francisco are confused by that, but that doesn't make it any less real. I would add that the enthusiasm for Governor Pence hasn't been tested because Donald Trump was at the top of the ticket, voters elected Trump. And so, you know, even if we run through the hypothetical of what happens with President Pence, what his priorities are, it's unclear whether there would be the public sentiment that he would need as a new president to really make significant moves. And also the election is a year away. Really, a year is not a whole lot of time. So I would just say one hypothetical after the other sort of leads to a dark tunnel that doesn't have many answers. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna head for somebody in the back. Hi, thank you. So this might be a little in the weeds, but I wanted to ask a little bit about SB1 that Newsom is supposed to veto, that I feel like is very much pushing back on what we're talking about and pushing back on federal regulations. Could you talk a little bit about your thoughts on Newsom vetoing SB1? I've done a little bit of reporting on SB1. My understanding is that the governor feels that trying to be diplomatic. My understanding is that there is a there are a lot of people and policymakers who feel like that law or that bill is imperfect. And there are a lot of folks who just believe that both on the left and on the right that this is a reaction to the Trump administration and not something that is thoroughly thought out. And so we're gonna have to wait and see whether the governor vetoes this or not. We're gonna have to wait and see what public officials say about this. And we're gonna have to wait and see whether it comes up again during the next session. If I remember correctly SB1 is, now I'm panicking because you put me on the spot. Can you remind me? I have not been following the legislature, so I don't have anything to add about it. Oh my god, I am so like, yeah. And the argument is basically that new scientific information isn't being taken into account in the policy. And so basically it is the belief that environmental regulations that would be frozen in, which were brought up during the Obama administration are not up to date and that locking in those policies would be a mistake. She's coming with the microphone for the next question. I wanted to follow up on something the Attorney General said and that is that he said whenever, paraphrasing him, whenever Donald Trump leaves the Oval Office, the impact that he has had is going to be with us for a long time. And I'm curious, you each have slightly different beats. What do you think 10 years from now is gonna be the impact that we're most gonna be like, oh my god, that we're still dealing with this fallout from 2018 when Trump was president? I mean, I would, it's really hard to predict and I think I had, as I said before, I tried not to get into business predictions. But I think one of the things that strikes me as a non-environmental reporter is how much we have backed out of various environmental accords. That is for sure one thing. If you listen to our former Governor Jerry Brown, that is the thing that he is most alarmed and animated by. And I think two, and the Attorney General alluded to this, but the sort of coarseness in our general dialogue and political dialogue specifically, it's hard for me to imagine going back to what seemed like much more civil. I mean, yes, I don't even know that I would have used the word civil, but at least people weren't using the F-bomb on the campaign trail all the time. Like just general decorum, we seem to have moved far away from that. Whether you want to blame that on the Trump administration or not, it's hard for me to imagine going back to where we once were. And I think to just to put one other one out there, other things on immigration, there's a lot of things that cannot be undone by the stroke of a pen. So we will be seeing the impact of that for a long time. And I didn't, I guess I failed to say too, so I'm principally the energy correspondent for the New York Times for the business section. And what I, your question raises a lot of issues that many people really aren't paying attention to. One at one is energy efficiency, which has largely on the federal level at the moment been gutted. And I hear from the environmental side, you know, we need to build windmills and solar panels and but energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit. It's not even a question whether you build a wind farm or a nuclear plant or a coal plant. Questions, do you need to build anything? And so if you eliminate energy efficiency, when you look at the economic crisis, at 2008 we peaked in energy usage and then it fell and it went flat. A lot of that was because we became energy efficient. Better appliances, plus people putting solar panels on their roofs and so we're using less power from the grid. So if you gut all of that, that's a significant impact. And I would just add also, I mean, on climate change specifically, regulatory standards can be so difficult to keep track of and to even conceptualize and to pay attention to. I think that the, some of the most aggressive changes that the administration has enacted have been in environmental policy. And most of it is done through the bureaucracy, not through lawmaking. And it's just really difficult for, I mean, journalists, but the public just broadly who does not have the time at work all day long to be keeping track of all of this stuff as it's changing. And I think, you know, whether the Trump administration is reelected or whether we have a Democratic president, it'll take a long time for us collectively to sort through what sort of happened in environmental policy and to reach a consensus about what is next. And the judiciary is, can't be understated to. So my question, you had raised the concern about impeachment as the new shiny object, distracting the media from the myriad of other issues present. So my question to you is, how are you going to keep the focus on the environment, on healthcare, on the Democratic candidates for office, et cetera, as we go forward? Because that seems to be, I mean, there's even speculation that Trump has raised this whole Ukrainian thing as a, you know, sort of red herring. So it's up to you bring us back to what's going to be important in the future. So how are you going to do that? Was that to me? All of you, all of you, because we're going to need every reporter in the New York Times. I will just speak for myself as a campaign reporter. And I was talking with colleagues over text and email today. It is certainly the new cycle for now and probably the rest of the week. I don't know how, if it's the rest of the year or the rest of the election. And I certainly take very seriously. I mean, I'm sort of being tongue in cheek at the moment, but in all seriousness, to go back to your question, there's no question to me that our responsibility is to not just be focused on that one thing and to go back to these very issues that we were alluding to before. We have to do both. We have to do all of the above. And we'll try and you should keep us accountable when we do. Yeah, one of the main reporting threads that I've been following this year is on clean drinking water access in California. And I mean, you say that phrase to people in their eyes sort of glaze over, but I mean, it's crucially important. There are a million people in California who don't have access to clean drinking water. And one thing that I've found in that reporting is that if you can bring human stories into policy reporting, if you sort of tell a story and make the human consequences and the sort of human stakes clear, that is the way that you reach an audience. Political reporting and I was a political reporter for many years is, you know, sexy. It's immediate. It's something that people want to talk about. And I really do think that it's incumbent upon all of us to find ways to make these maybe granular or stories that seem sort of granular in the weeds to really bring out the stakes at play and to echo Jenny, I mean, you guys really should be holding us accountable on this stuff and email us if you see a story that we should be covering that you just haven't seen us writing about. Yeah, like, like Jose is saying, because I, part of my challenge, I cover poles and wires. And, and I had a, I had a friend who said, Ivan, I love you, but I don't care about what you write about. So, you know, the part of the challenge is, is constantly getting people to care about issues. I mean, look, everybody's got an electric bill. Even if you've got solar and a battery in your garage, you still are tied to the grid. There's hardly anybody in this country that is not tied to the grid. So you have some kind of electric bill, no matter how much it is. And I try to get people to understand that, you know, you ought to care about your power company because they're the one entity that always takes some kind of money out of your pocket every month. But it's hard to get people to pay attention to poles and wires. I agree with what you were saying earlier to the young lady in the middle about the concern around the nation is about health care, it's a big issue, jobs are a big issue. But to piggyback on what the other young lady right here in the front just asked, I mean, there's so many issues that are coming up from this administration that they throw out all these little bugs, so to speak. You know, like if you think of it in advertising terms, it's like one week it's all natural, then the next thing it's organic. So you don't know which one to go to. You're jumping all over the place and everybody's jumping all over the place. So when you look at us as a nation, you know, California is what the population of over 38 million people. But in most places like Wyoming and Montana and the Dakotas and other places, the population isn't even the Bay Area. So most people don't understand, I've traversed this entire country. And the truth is people are concerned with this administration's false narratives and things. And the media, you guys, have to jump out there and run to every little pellet that he drops. And everybody sits around and goes, oh, that's the new shiny thing. What do we got to do? We got to follow that. We got to fix this. And so we can't get any hold on anything. And yes, we do need to hold you accountable and everybody else. You know, most of the country is sitting around calling Fox News. It's not news. I hear your point very seriously. And I think that is something that we are all grappling with every single day from people like myself, you know, the little soldiers in the fight and people all the way up to our publisher in terms of this very question of what is truth? And they gave away buttons about the truth is, I forget which slogan it's on there, but the truth is more important than ever. And you can't underestimate that. And I think that is something that we all take incredibly seriously every single day. It's no doubt a huge issue. This is more of an energy policy question. But I figure what we have the opportunity to ask someone who covers poles and wires. So I think earlier this week or last week, Three Mile Island just shut down. And obviously nuclear power is an area where the U.S. and kind of the broader world has kind of had a checkered relationship with that. California, of course, had three plans now just as one. Do you see, especially with climate change emissions, all that stuff, do you see nuclear power coming more into the fold being something that's more plausible or practical going forward? How much time do we have? Well, I'll try very quickly to answer your question. Here's the difficulty for nuclear power in the United States. If you look at the one plant that is actually going forward, the Vogel plant in Georgia, that plant was supposed to cost about $14 billion or less. The price tag on it is $24 billion now. And the only way that it's going forward is that the current administration has given it federal loan guarantees to make it happen. So here's the essence of the problem because most people point to China, they've got like 21 or however many nuclear units coming online. The difference is that you have the national government in China that's putting the nuclear plants online. In the United States, our plants are built by utility companies that have a guaranteed rate base that's usually maybe a few million, maybe seven million people. It's not enough people to build a $24 billion nuclear plant. So that's the problem. It's an economic one and I know there are all the environmental arguments and all of that, but before you even get there, where's the money? Where are you going to get the money from if you're a utility company that does not have the finances and a base to be able to draw it from unless the state or federal governments intervene and help and the taxpayers pay for it. That is your biggest problem. So one last thing, so there's modular reactors. They're small. You can add to them. They're cheaper because you can build them piece by piece. Well, they haven't been formally approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yet, so that's not a viable option even just right off the bat yet anyway. So those are your issues. The question was what about public sentiment? What I suggested was that there are all the environmental questions that get raised, but before you even raise the environment, where are you going to get the money to do it to begin with? So in Florida there was a nuclear project that Governor Jeb Bush allowed to the utility company to charge customers in advance to start the project. They never finished, but they cost the rate payers $1.5 billion. They got environmental studies done, so the question was how are you going to pay for it? That was the first question, and then you can start environmental issues, but the first question, how are you going to pay for it? I just want to make one point to go back to this young man's question before about in-depth. As Ivan just so perfectly illustrated, we are covering topics in New York. I know I'm preaching in the choir, but the New York Times and some other media outlets, but the New York Times is who we can speak for, are covering issues in-depth, day in and day out. There are many of us covering California. There are many of us covering the campaign. There are many people covering the environment and climate change, so that is something that we do all the time. What's that? A colleague of mine, John Schwartz, who covers climate change, tweets every so often, people say that climate change needs to be on the front page and then shows images of stories that are climate change stories on the front page. It's certainly every week, at this point, nearly every day. We are supposed to be wrapping up, but I'd love to get one more question in if we're allowed. Yes? All right. Thank you for teaming up my question so well. The New York Times does a great job covering the state of California, but obviously you're an international news organization, so as reporters who have a close eye on California and in a room of people who want to know more about this state, what do you recommend we're reading in addition to the Times coverage of California? I love that question, and I could answer it for a long time. Cal Matters has some stuff out there which you should take a look at. It's a great source of information. I think a lot of the public radio stations are doing incredible work and support your local newspaper. I mean, really, whatever you feel about media, there is no doubt that local newspapers are really struggling all over the country, including California, and so I would really encourage you to read them and write to them if you don't like, if you don't think what they're covering are the right things to be covering. Yeah, local news all the way. I mean, we just as a national publication cannot keep track of everything that's happening in every municipality in California. I would also add California Sunday Magazine is a phenomenal source for long form about California in the West. There's no shortage of great media actually in California right now. But if you subscribe to The New York Times' California Today newsletter, you will find links to many of the other publications as well, so please subscribe to The New York Times' California Today newsletter. Thank you guys so much for joining us. We're going to be up here for a little while if you want to come and chat, but I've been told that we all have to be out of here by 7.45, so just keep that in mind. If you don't get a chance to pull us aside for a conversation, find our email addresses online, email us story ideas, harass us, yell at us. We love hearing from our readers, okay? And if anybody wants to quiz me on any more Senate bills, I'm up here. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.