Hi, this is your host up in Bhartiya and welcome to another episode here for a let's talk and today we have with us once again Neeraj Tholia See you and co-founder of Elsian Neeraj is great to have you on the show. So I'm gonna let us so great to be back Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's my pleasure We used to talk, you know when you want to cast and and then it was you know acquired By a VM and if I'm not wrong VM is Investing 21 million series a in Elsian So there's so much to talk about but I would start with the basic which is that after the after you know cast and Of course, you took a break and then you led to this new company talk a bit about what was still the pain point There are so many to be honest within the space that you wanted to address That led to the creation of Elsian and also what is the story behind our name? The story behind the name, right? So just you know, we've spoken earlier, but for your listeners that might not be aware I am very passionate about data protection worked on that in graduate school and then ever since that multiple companies That's what I've been working on. I think it's a big issue for customers in the enterprise And that's why we started Elsian again. I'll talk about why exactly in a second but from the name, I think the name is quite apropos because it is comes from Greek mythology and Halcyon supposed to be the seven days Within winter where no storms happen. It's like a safe harbor in a period of adversity and a Time of peace and calm. So given what we do. It was a great name. Now the Greek domain name was taken so we went for the Spanish version of it and that's why it's Elsian and In particular Elsian at AI, which is actually a great segue to your next question Which was why start another company? No, it wasn't in the books at all But right at me when we started talking to people Backup disaster recovery always a requirement But what people started getting more concerned about as you've spoken about on some of your other episodes is The threats that we see from Attackers out there when we talk about ransomware malware people getting impacted and What we quickly discovered doing bolt-on solutions to existing products would not be feasible So really that's why and we started before the chanjee pretty craze took off But we knew AI was going to be only fundamental way that we would solve these data Protection challenges where it range from backup and disaster recovery all the way to security in the form of ransomware Malware XDR integration broader security ecosystem You could only do it with a green slate a clean slate rather first of all as you rightly said This is kind of a problem like security. That is always going to be there. This is not. Hey, we saw this problem Let's move to the next phase number two is that it's also kind of sticky market once you move to a player you stick to that So talk a bit about with this Elsian are you at this point targeting a specific market? Of course you came up with Microsoft 365 support. It's a market and also how you're planning to deal with this stickiness of this space So it's another rate. Love your questions, but another great question So the way I look at it is right for Microsoft 3 as you said, right? We are looking at data protection to start with with Microsoft 365 the reason why we like it which addresses some of the stickiness part It's a growing market It is slightly underserved not enough people have backup, but people are becoming more aware for the need for backup I think Microsoft released data that hundreds of petabytes of data added every month to SharePoint This is business critical data that people have and so how do you protect that as raised? The priority has gone up as people have moved more to on from on-prem Right, which COVID accelerated to a cloud model where you have data and SaaS services Where you had SharePoint exchange on print all of them in the cloud different API surface different attack vectors different concerns But everyone's using it more So you think that was a great intersection point for us to go start this business in the space because as this need There's an opportunity and we could do something new and is the scope of Elsian going to Kind of limited to you know office 365 like offering or of course We are going to grow we started Microsoft 365 our immediate focus for a while and we we came out of Stealth a few months ago as you know, we announced a 21 million dollar raise for series a couple months ago and What we've really seen is customer feedback. We have a wide diversity of customers everything from construction firms IT finance Private bodyguard companies. Everyone needs the data protected sports boards right one of the world's cricket board is our customer so we're seeing a wide diversity in our customer base here and we are and They are telling us where to go next To answer a question because we protected 365 and now they're saying look We love what you do for solving these SaaS services in the way other vendors are not being able to can you also do this for X and Y for me So we have you know, don't want to commit to something on the show But we are actively exploring how we're gonna expand and for us. It's always been customer driven Can you just give a quick overview of your core products or services? What do they look like our tagline is AI driven data protection from Microsoft 365? So today if you have data in exchange and we surprise how many small businesses still run on email Even though they're one drive in SharePoint So how do you protect critical data in exchange in one drive in SharePoint? Which are the document libraries for people in the ecosystem and then more recently even teams because Microsoft teams We sometimes Silicon Valley everyone's using Slack as an example But when you look at the install basis is so much business happening in across Microsoft teams protecting the data there becomes important to So for across these portfolio of products that Microsoft provides How do you back up the data for backup disaster recovery by the main use case tends to be Security related where how do you detect ransomware happening and how do you do that using AI? How do you do malware detection? How do you detect anomalous behavior apart from your accidents and things of that sort? We also predict against you know for people that have compliance requirements and then people that also have Rate threats about malicious insiders some companies see a lot of churn So how do you protect against that? So that's where customers are coming to us from but I'm not sure it's very simple We use AI and we never mix customers data or customers model But we use AI to protect our customers data when we talk about AI we have been leveraging and using AI for a very long time It's only that genetic AI HIV. They kind of Rekindled interest in AI talk a bit about what what are the thoughts on genetic AI will you also be offering services to? So let's look at it data production or disaster or data recovery for genetic AI at the same agility AI for LCM so right now most of the users in that sense internal Our goal is the we not we focus on security We focus on AI and then focus on ease of use and how these three intersect with each other So our goal is to use this extensively internally so that customers aren't Overloaded by some of this work that we do when it's a lot of complexity We have a great blog on how we do ransomware detection using AI multiple models on a poor user basis which and a poor file basis generally none of our competitors are doing so we're gonna recommend people check that out on a company blog but Really when I look at the use of AI today for us It is Internal that we expose to customers as security incidents Hmm now to go back to your other question wait How do you protect some of these other emerging category of applications? It is something we're definitely keeping an eye on Hmm and how you protect some of the models of source data, etc Especially when you're using third-party services using open AI's infrastructure as an example So some of that will come up but not an immediate focus right now I think that market is just a little nascent that the ecosystem still needs to shake out a little bit more before you can focus on it Let me look at LCN. Of course There are a lot of incumbents which were born in the cloud cloud native era Then there are a lot of vendors which we call traditional or Lexi vendor How do you set yourself apart from these two different breeds? So I think the way we look at ourselves is the big thing and I will use my customers What's to tell you about this? It is ease of use, right? So as a technologist I'm very proud of what we built where we have an entirely serverless system that scales down to zero for a you know Multiple petabyte and hopefully in the near future exabyte scale system. This is what we've designed for we scale down to zero So my technical perspective, it's great Customers what they care about is how easy do you make it to get my job done which in this case protecting my data how can I sleep better at night and The constant thing that shows up is look you have all these amazing features You don't overload us with security warnings. It makes it easy to get my job done I see multiple are sometimes a week from using a system and Ease of use is the biggest thing customers have told us and right you can never customers never wrong there So there's all this great technology under the hood Presented in such an easy to consume manner, which has differentiated us definitely from the legacy vendors All right, and then from when we talk about born in the cloud companies again What we've done for what is a complex product is how we also go to market So we are adopting what people call product blood growth and a lot of our customers come up There's a free trial. There's no hand-holding. There's no sales person. We are there. The sales team is there if you need help But really it's about how users can self-drive their experience as we see with any modern software product Which again is hard to find in the industry and especially in the data protection industry today Which is tended to be complex and therefore they want someone hand-holding you we said no You shouldn't need that in a modern world. What kind of market opportunities are there of course as we discussed earlier of course data backup is more or less like having a Seat belt or airbag or brakes in the car, you know, it had it's very very critical piece so it's not even companies could think about it, but Complications busy market a lot of players and then let's also look at maybe you're also looking at some emerging use cases That you feel LCN can target better than others I think you hit the analogy right that's up now when you talk about airbags, right? You think of airbags somewhat like insurance You don't need on a daily basis, but when you need it, you're really grateful to have them, right? So that is obviously we covered that but I think we've moved it to something For more active things think of it as a gas and break that you use more often that you're using on a constant basis in your car Right or moving forward self-driven cars the software engine that drives that self-driving So what we've looked at is and that's why we use the word protection dot backup We use the word that is more what we try to do is a lot more active again Compared to write some of the competitors you talked about going to the current analogy if you look at a Tesla That's constantly looking at how do you avoid other cars? How do you stay in your lane? How do you make sure the passengers are safe no matter what else is happening in the world around you? We think of it as something similar because some for some customers hundreds of times a day We're checking the state of the system as to is there security attack that something change Can you pull data in from other third-party systems to build a better security posture for you? So it's not just about the airbags that are passive based sensor based things But we pulled it in safe example from other XDR system So if a company's safe example there VMs under attack or the laptops under attack We will take more defensive actions because we can see around us. What's changing? So we've switched from not just including that insurance side of the house when moving over to the more active day-to-day usage of our system For our customers today data production is kind of moving in developers pipeline where they Instead of just having an insurance. They also use it for a lot of different active You know, they're CI CD pipeline. So can you talk about what role data production can or is playing there in that space to enable developers? So I think a couple things there's a lot of definite focus on the whole shift flip the shift left part of it Wait, and we see that happening today where How do you bring this early sometimes it's for data copies for testing in? Testing outside of production as an example Sometimes it is about how do you ensure especially with the growth of microservices and some of those applications as they move From inception to production at every stage the right best practice of the militant So suddenly you don't discover when you're deploying This has happened in some outages recently that oops. I didn't build this out in a highly reliable manner So where there's obviously from the broader perspective that happens in our ecosystem today, the world is shifted So it's not the great traditional developers building microservices But we see in the Microsoft ecosystem the power apps power automate developers Microsoft is extremely rich Ecosystem that's low code. No code. So we are exploring that in some sense We see these SharePoint admins that again responsible for multiple petabytes of data and then how do they manage that in a secure way because the cost of getting making changes is Massive So how do you help those and when they're adding apps to their ecosystem? So we see some of that equal and play out that you've seen in the cloud native ecosystem I just coming off other conference in the coupon recently We sing that show up in some of these other more traditional IT ecosystems because shift left is powerful. Can you also talk about? Some of the use cases is there any specific vertical that you're targeting or it really doesn't matter Which whoever needs data prediction you are there for them You know, there is what you start off with and we said look You know, we think because of a modern cloud first nature We'd initially attract more traditional IT firm startups, etc But the short answer is no our customers. We are right now. We have global Customers, so we are we have data centers in Australia in EU in the US and we make sure for Regulatory reasons data metadata never leaves those regions But we have not only customers that are global but across vertical as I mentioned earlier So IT is a fraction of our business, but we see Great finance firms accounting firms, and we have a bunch of great case studies on our website Raids sports Organizations construction I'm just trying to read rather love Electrical supply houses the folks that supply breakers and panels trucking companies So the good thing is so even and we have a wide diversity and also size of customers from small to very large And we see this to a even small companies now know the importance of protecting the data Right, I mean my part from personal experience contractors We know have gotten fish and ransom bed and it's business disrupting for them And so these smaller companies have woken up to the fact that the business depends on being online And so how do they protect that data? So we are very happy to see this broad diversity of customers that have Selected us and decided to go with us. I want to talk about Of course the previous company cast and that was acquired by Vm now Vm is once again investing 21 million series a in LCN. What does it mean for LCN? What does it mean for Vm? What does it mean for casting? So Vm's a big supporter Between us and now your viewers Taking money from a strategic at an early stage of the company is not something out of traditionally thought about doing But Vm was an exception. There's obviously I have a deep history with them I really like the company and the leadership there. I've known them for many years right now So big fans of that there's some overlap in the market But not as much as you would think because of just how we position being cloud force Vm is traditionally being a product first company which is installed on prem We say how do we take this complexity away focus on newer use cases such as ransomware malware? So there's that but at the end of the day away, there is our box is still independent Vm is an investor in our term sheets and our funding documents if you took Vm's name out and replace it with someone else Who would look just the same? So from their perspective, it is also a financial investment here And our goal is to be independent We see a Very I am very optimistic about the future in front of us based on what the last few months have shown us So I am super excited about building out a large company here What kind of threats you're seeing in this space now? We can talk about the whole traditional ransomware all those things But either we can look at new kind of either that you are looking at or because of the emergence of new workload New kind of social injuring where it's less about the threat but more about hate because of this use case This is and also if you can talk about which industries do you think are going to be more vulnerable? Two or three important things to talk about right when we go look at threats I think some of the attacks are first exchange where For example, we just you know ran through this until the other company traditionally ransomware would come They'll attack your storage system. They'll attack your file or your vm That's all on prem with the growth of these SaaS services You don't even need to be within a company's network perimeter There's an API surface you can access from externally and then you can ransom with the entire thing So your traditional things that might be looking at network flow of data or suddenly so much data started flowing through our systems Aren't effective because it's no longer. You don't see any edge traffic We also see both read and then we focus on ransomware a lot But there's just some it's not a it's an umbrella term is the way I look at it because It is there's so many different kinds of attacks that are happening right now Some that in only partial files to prevent detection Some that are slow moving some that are fast moving some that replace files from that don't So we've deployed multiple models per user To go and that learn online user behavior. No other wheel. We are doing it You can deploy models once a month and figure that one out So we've done a lot of those things To be able to capture these new emerging Threats that people don't think about but going to a second question about who is going to get impacted the most unfortunately, I have Sad news in that sense where ransomware is indiscriminate We have seen them impacting small teams For example, targeted attacks against finance teams. We've seen them attacking more traditional industries Electrical as an example small regional stores So We it is unfortunately there. It's a spray and pray approach for them It's a volume game for them Where they will try and ransomware as many folks as they potentially can and then see who can pay who cannot And with the growth of if you've been read if some of your readers have been looking after this is the growth of ransomware as a service So it's just one of these things where it is truly indiscriminate So I think anyone that is using online services today, which is pretty much everyone out there today In terms of companies and enterprises need to be worrying about this It's not like suddenly anymore finances or large firms are going to be the prime target Indiscriminate attacks is what we see. Of course, you have solutions for them. But what advice do you have for them? So These solutions can go only so far They need to we have talked about the importance of culture as well or having a holistic approach towards, you know Beta backup security, you know or data protection. What advice do you have for them? So here's the other thing talking about the innovative in habitability of ransomware My recent surveys have shown that 80 percent of server respondents have been attacked by ransomware and the joke goes The other 20 percent might just not know it yet Um, and it is again an unfortunate state of affairs, but it's a reality We live in so the advice I give people is obviously first of all explore state of the art We talked about sticking us earlier in our conversation But sometimes the solution that you had five years ago is not the best protection solution for the next five years So explore what the state of the art is Have game days where you look at recovery how recovery happens. So how what's the preparation for this? Um, how do you protect? Your data, how do you tear and categorize later? Do you know where your most important data is that is What do you need to bring your business back online? How quickly can you do that? So have game days have your playbooks run through it sometimes it seems like an investment of time But if you've done this well recovery is going to be great because it's going to Not just bring your business back faster going to cost you less money You won't have to pay ransom attackers Where the number of features we also have built in to make this easier so we don't allow synchronous backup deletions So someone couldn't compromise it an admin. They can't go delete backups Um, but and to be able to go through this checklist will really pay off for customers out there Can you also talk about what is the importance of open source for lg and of course it was quite important for casting But let's talk about lc and asville, you know, I find it very interesting that the data protection industry Unlike some other ecosystems is very little open source in them in a meaningful way There'll be scripts around the product or a dashboard with gaffana But nothing core and we've decided to change that up where we have a very active project called corso And a lot of what we provide as a service today The core of that is you know, uh, you can find it at course of backup.io Back up from xf365 we released completely free and open source. It's under the apache license today And we don't see any we don't have any plans of that changing active community people using us to back up very large systems People are very helpful in the community. You can come find us on discord there And so our belief is my fundamental belief is like sometimes there might be a price issue with paying a SaaS provider You go take this for free I mean it will provide benefit make sure you're protected Once things once budgets change, etc come talk to us But we'd rather have you be protected if you can if it doesn't fit in your budget this year And so and just to be clear the open source course is what we use in our product We layer security and a bunch of other things on top of that when we talk about ransomware malware When the core backup restore functionality is free for our customers today uses object storage So very efficient very cheap to run of course Companies let you know there are a lot of things that you folks are working on a lot of things you cannot talk about but Just just give us a teaser a glimpse of what to expect from you folks. We will be doing in the next couple of months Very very interesting things we focus on security continues But our focus is now you know now that our core foundations in place How do we focus on making our stores much faster? How do we have better tools to the admin to say how do you recover quickly from widespread attacks? How do you do detection faster? So there's a lot of these things that are going to make the admins life easier when when they're under pressure And so those are some of the things that we're working on that I think when it comes out It's going to be you know, fairly interesting somewhat unique in the market Nidaj, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about else And as I can clearly see there are so many things in the pipeline. So I would love to chat with you again soon Thank you Thank you so much for having me swap now to you and your listeners for hearing us out today As always it was exciting chatting with you


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.  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 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.  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.  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?  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.  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.  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 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.  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?  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.


Hei what's up you guys, welcome back to my channel if you're new here. Hi, hello, I'm Nidia. Hello, I'm in the middle of videos here on YouTube, and today I'm doing a new life update video. I wrote yesterday, I wrote and saw a psychiatrist, and I asked if I could come off another plan. I'm also half off my hella peradol, so now I don't take hella peradol in the morning, I only take it in the evening. My cast of hand dose has been decreased starting whenever my GP decides to start decreasing. So that's one big thing that's going on, and another thing is I've gone back to uni and came up with this in the last two videos. I don't really have much more to update you on other than I'm getting a yoghurt on. Nidia yoghurt! I've got to update you guys on, and if you have any questions you want to ask me, ask them in the comments down below. Thanks for watching and I'll see you guys in my next video. Peace.


After over a year of silence, Kevin Spacey has made an official response to his accusations, and it was a Christmas surprise that no one expected. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Matt Rogers. Just when you thought you'd seen the last of President Frank Underwood, he goes and pulls a typical Frank move, breaking the fourth wall and doing something like this. Obviously, he's not entirely in character though, switching back and forth between vaguely referring to the events of the show and also the accusations that have kept him in media darkness for 14 months. However, back at the end of 2017, Spacey's brother Randall Fowler made a statement saying, And in reality, he was a monster. So who knows, maybe there's not too much difference between Spacey and Underwood after all. Aside from putting on his sentinel ring, he does use Frank's South Carolina accent, which is obvious straight away. Since his questionable statement at the end of 2017, Spacey has not posted a single thing on any of his social medias. And as bizarre as this video response is, I was at least glad to see his take on the final season of House of Cards, all but discrediting the events of the sixth season. And as I've had more time to think back and reflect on that season, I'm more ready to believe that it's not, as they say, canon. Anyway, all this presumption made for such an unsatisfying ending, and to think it could have been such a memorable send-off. What surprised me most though was the general reaction to this video. At the time of filming this, the video has almost three times the amount of likes as dislikes. With almost nine million views in a week, which is more than the House of Cards trailers ever got. The general consensus of the comments is firstly shock, but then appreciation for Spacey as an actor, despite the horrible accusations he's facing, which I totally agree with. But of course, some people are upset, which even he expected. Of course they're gonna say I'm being disrespectful, not playing by the rules, like I ever played by anyone's rules before. My opinion on all this, I see what he was trying to do, but similar to the accusations that surrounded him and Anthony Rapp, he was trying to distract the media with him coming out as gay and doing this sort of thing never will go as smoothly as I think he thinks. This video came out as if to shape the narrative as moments after this was posted, it was announced that he is getting officially charged for allegedly shoving his hands down an 18-year-old's pants in a resort in Nantucket back in July of 2016, and apparently there's even proof of the events posted on Snapchat. The Academy Award-winning actor is due to face court on January 7th, so watch this space. But it sounds like he's sticking to his guns as just today, him and his lawyers announced that he's pleading not guilty and has even requested to not show up in court as it would quote, amplify the negative publicity already generated in connection with the case. It sure makes you think how the shamed actors from the Me Too movement should respond to all of their accusations and even if they should respond at all. Actress Judy Dench recently spoke on the matter asking the question, should we scratch Spacey from Entertainment History just because of some terrible things he's done in the past? And it's a good question, but what do you think? What was your reaction to this highly irregular video response? And do you miss him? I'll be chatting with you guys in the comments and I'll be keeping you updated with any events surrounding the charges, so stay tuned for that. But until next time, thanks so much for hanging out. If you had a good time, then spank that like button and if you subscribe during this video, then walk on the board. This is Matt Rogers and that is all.


Kevin Sheehy, why a partnership with CFA? Why is that important to the S&M Football Club and the Geelong Football Club? I think from the game point of view and with the country and the farmers to me, I think the defence of basically the properties and lives around the countryside of not only Victoria but also Australia needs to have more recognition. I think that when I look back and all of what I've seen happen over the last 20, 30 years, I reckon that the CFA have been sensational. I think that they're very courageous. The volunteers from all over the country, towns and cities have been always there backing each other up and obviously also going helping Tasmania when needed. So I think it's a great partnership opportunity there for both the game. Of these two clubs obviously, the cats and the bombers and the group that holds a significant amount of courage because you have to be very courageous to go into the areas where they need to be to protect a lot of people's homes and properties and lives. So you're getting 250 volunteers to march around the G. That's a big honour for our people. Why did you do that? Well I think that is over. I mean I'm only trying to do things and put things in place on behalf of the S&M Footy Club to make our society look at how we do live, all the things that are necessary to have it safe and safe workplace for our families. The people that actually do that will be the people that will be marching. We can't get everybody out there, obviously otherwise the MCC groundsman would complain. But I think in the end we know that the great opportunity presents itself like Anzac Day and Dream Time at the G is that this is another area where we need to have a look at what the pillars of our society are and that is that if we work together we have a safer country to live in and I think that that's what some of these games can really do. They can actually get people together, educate our young people to understand that it takes a hell of a lot to run an island like Australia. It tells us a bit about the country game. I mean a lot of, well the CFA comes from the country a lot of good footy players that come from the country. Why is it important that you have this country game to recognise the country and regional rural Victoria? I think for so long they haven't been recognised. I think to myself you know if you want to pick your greatest countryside out of Victoria I've been over in South Australia trying to pick theirs and it is very very difficult. Right at this moment we've just had a three hour selection pick an essence greatest ever team out of the country for our fans to go on the website to actually pick their best side. I mean obviously you look at Dan Hurth family you look at obviously John Coleman, Roger Merritt these sorts of great players Wayne Gideon, Michael Long all over Australia. We have a lot of magnificent country players come out and play here at the MCG a lot of them actually sort of built the game to what it is and we should actually thank those clubs the football and netball clubs right around the whole of Australia for helping produce that standard like the greatest goal kicker ever to only lock it country. That sort of Hayden Button and Hayden Button Jr. won more San Navas and Brownlow medals than anybody else in the whole of Australia from Albury. I mean so I think we've got to pay that respect to a lot of these clubs and the best way to do it is I think it's to celebrate a game. And just finally who's going to win? I think it's a fair chance you're really going to really push Essendon to get there and we'll just jump out of them in the last quarter. Kevin Chetty thank you very much.