By admin 
From a governor’s surprising 2028 concession to a Meadowview school renaming and a statewide tax fight, Sacramento Bee readers had plenty to weigh in on last week. Here are the top stories that drew the most comments on sacbee.com from Sept. 14-20, 2026.
Read more Newsom signs bill to restructure Sacramento homeless policy, but county could sue
Newsom says he’d bow out of 2028 race for Harris
Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN he won’t run for president if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the race, citing overlapping donor and supporter bases. “I know her base of supporters. I know her friends, the Venn diagram on that is just pure crossover,” Newsom said during a fly-fishing interview with anchor Jake Tapper on a Montana river. Both Californians have signaled interest in 2028.
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Newsom vetoes state worker telework bill
The governor rejected AB 1729, which would have required state agencies to justify in-person mandates and pushed telework toward becoming the default. Newsom wrote that the measure “takes the state’s telework policy in the wrong direction.” Assemblymember Alex Lee, D-San Jose, authored the bill after Newsom’s four-day return-to-office order took effect July 1. The Legislature could still override the veto with a two-thirds vote in each chamber.
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Sacramento City Unified starts Cesar Chavez Elementary renaming
The district approved a roughly three-month process to rename the Meadowview school after a New York Times investigation detailed sexual misconduct allegations against the labor and civil rights leader. “Recent information, unfortunately, has come out around Cesar Chavez’s personal conduct that definitely is not consistent with that standard,” said Nathaniel Browning, the district’s facilities director. Officials aim to select a new name by December and complete rebranding by June 2027 at a cost of up to $12,000.
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Proposition 43 would raise the bar on local taxes
The November ballot measure would amend the state constitution to require two-thirds voter approval for citizen-initiated local special taxes — the same threshold already applied to taxes placed on the ballot by local governments. It would also generally prohibit new local taxes based on property values. Supporters, including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, call it a loophole fix. Opponents, including the California Democratic Party, say it would make California the hardest state in the country to raise local revenue.
Read more Newsom signs bill to restructure Sacramento homeless policy, but county could sue
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The lasting legacy of 9/11
In an opinion piece, UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky argued that post-9/11 policies — the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the Patriot Act and indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay — carried steep costs. He cited estimates of more than $8 trillion in military-related spending and more than 900,000 lives lost in the wars that followed, along with what he called the loss of America’s moral standing through the use of torture.
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This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own originally reported, written and published content. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.
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