In the News
WATSONVILLE >> On break from Capitol Hill, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, hosted a series of town hall meetings this week to hear from constituents and build momentum for the upcoming midterm election.
The freshman congressman met with about 100 people in Watsonville on Wednesday for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on immigration, agriculture, the Pajaro River, affordable housing, student loans and a contested flight path. Erica Padilla-Chavez, CEO of Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance, moderated the event.
You can hardly blame California's farmers, growers and vintners for feeling like pawns in President Donald Trump's reckless and self-destructive trade war.
His tit-for-tat tariffs with China are already hurting agriculture in the Central Valley and across the state, and the pain is only going to get worse.
A California delegation in Congress has requested a major disaster declaration for the state's wildfires, according to a statement from Congressman Jimmy Panetta released Tuesday.
The statement reads as follows:
Seaside >> Dennis Lewallen, a retired U.S. Army infantryman, was searching the internet from his Kansas home recently for information on a man he had served with who had been killed in Vietnam.
The name Laszlo Holovits pulled in a Monterey Herald story from 2015.
"I am trying to decide if there would be any benefit to Mrs. Holovits in contacting her," he emailed the reporter.
Monterey >> The United States and Russia are closer to a nuclear exchange than at any time since the Cold War, warned former Defense Secretary William Perry recently at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.
Congressman Jimmy Panetta (CA-20) joined Central Coast veterans for a "Vet into Your Sanctuary" Cruise on board the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Fulmar.
President Donald Trump's trade war is unifying a large chunk of California's congressional delegation on behalf of farmers.
But notably absent from the coalition is House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who represents Kern County, one of California's and the nation's top agricultural producers.
Valley Republicans David Valadao, Devin Nunes, and Jeff Denham, and Democrat Jim Costa are among the lawmakers asking the Trump administration not to overlook California's specialty crop growers when it comes to providing aid for those hurt by retaliatory tariffs.
More than 80 Congressmen, in a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, are voicing opposition to "unacceptable" changes to the transferability policy for the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill.
Read the letter here.
LOS ANGELES – President Donald Trump's trade war is pitting Republicans in California against their brethren in the Midwest.
One week after Trump announced a $12 billion plan to soften the blow of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. farmers, several Republican House members from California — in addition to several Democrats — are appealing to the Trump administration not to overlook the state's massive specialty-crops markets.