Bill Clinton and Gavin Newsom are on stage in San Francisco. Bill and Hillary Clinton talk about how they got to where they are now, and why California is the best place in the country to be a politician. They also talk about what it's like to be the first black mayor of a major U.S. city.
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00:04:22.300So I'm going to start with something that is easy, but I think it's important because it's amazing that a lot of people don't know anything about California.
00:04:39.060Except a lot of people don't know anything about California, except a lot of people don't know anything about California, except a lot of the stuff that's said.
00:05:03.140And what I found was it was hundreds and hundreds of small towns in the cities and certainly beyond.
00:05:17.360I've been to the town of America that has the largest percentage of Japanese Americans.
00:05:22.360I went to a town campaigning for Hillary where the mayor, this little town in Northern California, the mayor was the son of the local judge in Fayetteville, Arkansas,
00:05:39.520when Hillary and I got married and went there to teach in the law school.
00:05:44.260And the old judge was a crusty old guy who let Hillary bring students into the legal aid program for the first time.
00:05:53.260And I'm standing in Northern California with the mayor.
00:05:56.480There's somebody there from everywhere.
00:06:50.800I say that because it needs to be said, and you reinforce it here today.
00:06:55.460It's in that diversity that we have achieved so much strength.
00:07:00.660We dominate in every critical industry.
00:07:03.300Yes, we're the fourth largest economy in the world, $4.1 trillion a year.
00:07:07.200But we dominate with more engineers, more scientists, more Nobel laureates, more venture capital, the finest system of higher education, public higher education in the world, in business startups, number one in two-way trade, number one in direct foreign investment.
00:07:20.940In every category, the dominant manufacturing state, the dominant farming state, the dominant state as it relates to hunting jobs.
00:08:00.800It's decisions, not conditions that determine our fate and future.
00:08:03.840And I think that mindset is the thing that defines the game played in California versus the game played in many other parts of the country.
00:08:15.080How have you used that to deal with the fires and the aftermath of it?
00:08:24.800It depends which fire you're referring to.
00:08:28.260You know, I was thinking of you coming 29 times.
00:08:33.040I'm just glad Trump has only come one time.
00:08:39.860Look, as it relates to fires, you know, we talk about the future happens in California first where America's coming to traction.
00:08:46.020Well, that definitely relates to what's going on around us as it relates to the hot's getting hotter, the dry's getting drier, the wet's getting wetter.
00:08:53.760This notion that, you know, we're dealing with extreme heat, extreme weather.
00:08:58.600And as a consequence, the challenges that were presented as it relates to large-scale wildfires.
00:09:03.860And California had one of its most devastating wildfires earlier this year in the middle of winter.
00:09:11.080And I just want to remind people, in the middle of winter in Los Angeles, in the most resourced region in the United States of America,
00:09:20.600more firefighters per capita in L.A. County than any other part of the globe,
00:09:24.760in a state that has the largest civilian fleet of aircraft for fire suppression anywhere in the world,
00:09:35.160in a state where I've doubled the budget in terms of the state, fire investments,
00:09:39.860and 10x the investments in forest management and vegetation management,
00:09:43.840and yet still we lost 16,000 structures, homes and buildings,
00:09:48.720because we had a fire that was attached to 100-mile-an-hour winds in the middle of winter in Southern California.
00:09:57.040And so I take that issue very seriously.
00:10:00.400Places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map.
00:10:05.340If you don't believe in science, you've got to believe your own eyes.
00:10:09.040And this notion, you talk about small towns in California,
00:12:26.080It's a challenge for Ron DeSantis in Florida, for governors in most states.
00:12:31.900But it's not, I think, top of mind, and we need to be more focused on it.
00:12:44.460Well, what do you think should be done about it?
00:12:48.300I mean, I'm not trying to get you into a different job right now.
00:12:52.500People didn't come here to talk about insurance, but I, you know, we just put out our sustainable insurance strategy.
00:13:01.360We just had four of our admitted market come back in in the last, in fact, two days ago, we had our fourth come back in.
00:13:08.060We had a lot of folks who were leaving the market simply said we can't insure folks here.
00:13:11.560It's too expensive, and the losses are too significant.
00:13:15.040We had to address the reinsurance market.
00:13:17.060We had to address the capital needs of these companies.
00:13:20.400And we also had to address the fact that California, and you wouldn't know this, is among the most affordable insurance markets in the country because the voters initiated a framework on regulation that denied significant rate increases.
00:13:37.940As a consequence of that, people started exiting the market.
00:13:41.140And the reforms we've just put into place allow for more rapid rate increases, and that's the pressure point now.
00:13:50.920As we move from about average to below average in our rates, we're now starting to see those tick up.
00:13:57.460But the benefit of that now, part of the strategy, is a requirement to come into California market and also to insure in what we refer to as the WUI, which is the wildlife and urban interface, and to cover 85 percent of the WUI in return for those rate increases.
00:14:15.980That is not something that on the macro is the solution from the U.S. prism or the global perspective, but at the state level is advancing our reforms.
00:14:25.940But this insurance issue is favoring, facing every state in one form or another in the globe.
00:14:34.520I mean, it's just, it's not sustainable.
00:14:38.280I mean, there's no Republican, no Democratic thermometer.
00:14:41.780I heard, you know, and forgive me, I didn't come up here to take cheap shots, but it's pretty remarkable what was said by the current president yesterday at the U.N. about climate.
00:15:08.080I mean, the vandalism, what this guy has done, look, I live in a state, and Mr. President, you'll appreciate this, you know, former presidents, you know well.
00:15:15.380For me, one of them was a governor, Ronald Reagan, established the modern environmental movement in 1967, year of my birth with the California Air Resources Board.
00:15:25.160And he did so because of the smog in Los Angeles was a business-driven decision.
00:15:29.860Business community said we simply can't do business in L.A., Mr. Governor.
00:15:34.020And he established the Air Resources Board.
00:15:36.400Three years later, it was Richard Nixon that codified that under the Clean Air Act and gave California a waiver that allowed us to pursue aggressive environmental policy.
00:15:47.380And that's why California has dominated the national debate in this space.
00:15:51.240What this president has done in eight months is jaw-dropping.
00:15:58.620What he has done to the EPA, what he's done to California's leadership, he's neutralized, he's eliminated under that Clean Air Act our authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.
00:16:10.860What he continues to do in terms of trying to stop California's global leadership as it relates to our partnerships around not only the country at a subnational level, but around the globe in relationship to our cap and trade program, in relationship to our other partnerships that we've established as it relates to carbon capture and direct air capture and the technology in the space, cannot be understated.
00:16:40.200And so we are, you know, we're the last, we're the only game in town right now as it relates to large-scale environmental leadership.
00:16:50.320We have six times more green collar jobs, green tech jobs, than we do fossil fuel jobs.
00:16:55.400We're on the other side of the debate.
00:16:57.480And I think this is a point that should be emphasized.
00:17:00.820You talk about California more than I emphasize it.
00:17:04.22067% of our electricity grid is completely green and clean.
00:17:08.480And we have run, which is not bad, but get this, nine out of 10 days in 2025, we've run the fourth largest economy in the world at 100% clean green energy.
00:18:41.340It was because of the regulations, because of those signals and the subsidies, over $3.2 billion direct subsidies that Tesla received, just in my state alone, that built this market.
00:19:01.760Over a quarter of all new car purchases in California are alternative fuel vehicles.
00:19:05.760What Trump has just done, and with respect to some of the automobile manufacturers, is they've ceded this to China.
00:19:12.980They've ceded our competitiveness to China.
00:19:16.300And it's not just the electric vehicles.
00:19:18.340It's the tech stack that's part of these electric vehicles.
00:19:21.880It's the mobility space more broadly defined.
00:19:24.720It is an act of vandalism on an economic basis, not just an environmental basis, that is deeply alarming.
00:19:33.180And I hope people wake up to how China is just flooding the zone globally in this space.
00:24:14.260But on the inside, Lee Harris finds an ally in his celly, Robert, who swears to tell the truth about what happened to Lee and free his friend.
00:24:24.380If you're with me, your goal is to, I'll take care of you.
00:24:43.580Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, Here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself?
00:24:53.540You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host.
00:25:03.960Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture.
00:25:09.060And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions.
00:25:13.920Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08?
00:26:30.860Back to this conveyor belt for talent, the UCs and the CSUs and Caltech and Stanford University, research and development, the Lawrence Livermore Labs and Sandia Labs and all the investments we're making in science.
00:26:42.540And so it's happening there because the human capital's there.
00:26:46.200It's why, you know, Elon talks a big game about Texas, but all his folks are in the Bay Area.
00:27:15.980And as a consequence of having so much leadership residing in such a concentrated place, California, we have a sense of responsibility and accountability to lead so we support risk-taking but not recklessness.
00:27:29.200From a regulatory frame, we're pretty much the only game in town as well.
00:27:34.160You're seeing what they're trying to do federally to preempt states from regulating.
00:27:39.960Ted Cruz a few days ago doubling down on that, that California needs to be neutered, he says, in this space, even though we're dominating in this space.
00:27:49.100And so we have worked with Fei-Fei Li, the godmother of AI, we're working with Stanford, MIT, we've worked with Berkeley, and we put out a comprehensive white paper that really analyzed where we were from a regulatory frame.
00:28:03.440We've signed dozens, I've signed dozens of bills in this space, did the first executive order in the country in this space, but in relationship to the unwinding of President Biden's leadership in this space and the new focus on just let it rip coming out of the White House that David Sachs and others are promoting.
00:28:22.620And we have a bill, forgive me, that's on my desk that we think strikes the right balance.
00:28:29.960And we worked with industry, but we didn't submit to industry.
00:28:35.760We're not doing things to them, but we're not doing things necessarily for them.
00:28:40.780And we're trying to answer that question from a policy perspective and find that right balance where we can continue to dominate in this space, continue to support the ecosystem, at the same time address that peril and the concerns that legitimate people have.
00:28:56.120I want to change the subject a minute.