With the primaries officially underway, election workers put the first batch of test ballots through Orange County’s voting system on Thursday, Feb. 8. Inside the spacious and drafty warehouse at the Orange County Registrar of Voters headquarters in Santa Ana, around 10 workers, each with multiple stacks of test ballots, fed them one by one through the ballot scanning devices.

Related: Orange County Register’s March 5, 2024 Primary Election Voter Guide

By the end of the day on Friday, the 40 machines that had been tested this week were deemed to be working properly, according to the Registrar’s Office.

“We’ve never had any discrepancies in the vote count,” said Registrar of Voters Bob Page.

Thursday officially kicked off the testing of all ballot scanning devices that will be used in the primary election. It is called, according to the Secretary of State, the “logic and accuracy test,” mandated by the state to “ensure that every device used to tabulate ballots accurately records each vote.”

Accuracy testing of Orange County’s voting system started with the preparation of test ballots and will continue until all devices have been included in the test, said Page. The Registrar’s Office wants to ensure every device accurately counts ballots before they are put into use, he said.

If a device, during testing, is found to be counting ballots inaccurately, it won’t be put to use, Page said.

As in years past, voters have several ways to vote, Page said. Ballots can be mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, dropped off at a ballot box or delivered in person at a vote center. Voters can also vote in person at any vote center.

The 406 test ballots used in the “logic and accuracy test” this week cover every scenario in which a voter could submit a ballot, whether it’s a pre-printed ballot that is mailed out to voters or ballots created by marking devices at a vote center, Page said.

Test ballots were marked to replicate how voters could vote, and election workers fed them through the ballot scanning devices, called Hart InterCivic Verity Voting. When the ballot is inserted, the screen shows the message: “Please wait, the device is processing your ballot.”

Once the ballot has been processed, the device chimes, and the screen shows a blue background with an American flag.

At the end of the logic and accuracy test, about 400 machines will have gone through testing, said Page. There will be two ballot scanning devices at each of the 183 vote centers in the county — 37 of which will open on Feb. 24, followed by another 146 on March 2 — and at least 20 extra just in case.

Hart machines, used by 12 other California counties, allow voters to either fill out their ballot by hand or digitally and then scan and cast their ballot using a touch-screen operated ballot scanning device.

The test, along with other election activity, is open to the public to observe. Being transparent about election activity to the public allows people to see for themselves that the elections system works accurately, Page said.

“This has always been part of the process,” he said. “We will continue to make sure that conduct transparent elections.”

A lack of confidence in the election system and whether votes will be counted correctly is a concern many Republican voters hold, according to a December poll by The Associated Press – NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll found that about three in 10 Republicans nationwide have a “moderate” amount of confidence and three in 10 have “only a little” or “none at all.” On the other hand, 72% of surveyed Democrats said they are confident their votes will be counted correctly.

Starting in this election, Page said, voters could return their vote-by-mail ballot at a vote center and have it “processed and counted like a nonprovisional ballot cast in person,” according to legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.

Page said the greeter at a vote center will ask every voter who comes in to deliver a vote-by-mail ballot whether they would like to simply drop off the ballot or vote it as an in-person ballot. If the voter chooses the latter, their status will be changed from a vote-by-mail voter to an in-person voter, and they will be required to sign the roster for the voting location. After, they will be given a secrecy folder and directed to a ballot scanning device, Page said.

To ensure voters know where their ballot is, the Registrar has a tool that allows voters to track their ballot. Voters can sign up at ocvote.gov/track to receive notifications about the different steps in the process, Page said. Those who are signed up now will receive a notification when their ballot has been mailed. A notification will also be sent when ballots are returned to the Registrar, and when ballots are accepted for counting, the system will notify voters who have issues with their ballot, for example, forgetting to sign the envelope.

The City Council on Friday approved a motion aimed at addressing an abandoned luxury skyscraper development in downtown Los Angeles, after more than 25 floors were tagged with spray paint.

Council members voted 14-0 to instruct city departments to begin an abatement process to secure the site and restore the sidewalks should the property owners fail to respond by Feb. 17, and remove all graffiti and debris, and securely fence the property on their own accord.

The planned $1 billion multi-use complex, known as Oceanwide Plaza, began construction some years ago, but stalled since 2019 when Beijing-based developer Oceanwide Holdings could no longer finance it.

With recent events at Crypto.com Arena such as the Grammy Awards and the statue unveiling of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna, who died in a helicopter crash in 2020, worldwide attention has fallen on the tagged complex as well.

“We confront a challenge that undermines the very character of our neighborhoods — that is both blight and criminal vandalism,” Councilman Kevin de León said prior to the vote, who represents the 14th District where the development is located.

He added, “Last week, the eyes of the world turned toward our vibrant city where we hosted the Grammy Awards. Yet, I missed the excitement. We could not ignore the blight across the street on the building of a private development that failed to be completed.”

While he noted graffiti art has its place, it should not be on public or private property, where it defaces city streets and diminishes a sense of security.

“Let me be clear, defacing this property or any public property is not the fault of the city or due to neglect by the city,” de León said. “That responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the developer. There’s no ifs, ands or buts.”

According to the councilman, the city notified the property owners in several different ways, such as email, phone calls, fax and messages through social media platforms.

“(They) have to get their act together,” de León said.

He noted that if the property owners do not act within the legal amount of time, the city will take action. The Bureau of Street Services will ensure the removal of all obstructions blocking sidewalks and streets, including K-rail and scaffolding.

The councilman took a moment to address criticism from L.A. residents, who did not approve of the Los Angeles Police Department spending time on “security” for the complex or for spending resources because it’s abandoned. Some housing advocates have said the time and money spent could be used to address the city’s homelessness crisis.

“LAPD belongs to the people of the city of L.A., and the constituents,” de León said. “Their efforts should not be diverted to protect for-profit developers.”

LAPD Central Division, which oversees Downtown L.A. and other areas, reported at least seven individuals have been arrested on suspicion of vandalism, trespass, burglary and other crimes, according to recent statements. Central Division detectives were also placed to investigate crimes committed at the site.

On turning the complex into housing, de León said it was easier said than done.

“It’s not that simple because we don’t have a billion dollars lying around right now to buy this three-tower development,” he said.” That’s just the current value, if you will, more or less on the actual abandoned building. It will take another billion dollars, at least, and I’m that conservatively, to actually complete and finalize this building.”

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez supported the motion, adding “This circumstance is one of exploitation and criminal activity.”

She referred to the building as a “huge black eye” and a “red flag” about how the city needs to be vigilant and obstruct these activities from occurring.

Councilwoman Imelda Padilla said she was shocked by how much people wouldn’t stop talking about the tagged complex.

“At the end of the day, the only reason why we’re talking about it is because it’s just so gigantic,” she added. “But we have these all over Los Angeles. I can think of at least four buildings that are mini versions —what (it is) is neglect from property owners.”

House Republicans last year were the least unified party bloc on legislation in more than four decades, CQ Roll Call’s annual Vote Studies analysis of congressional data found.

And that’s the case even without the multiple ballots it took to pick a speaker at two different points in the year, though those fights were certainly symptomatic.

The data show Republicans had only a 63.7 percent success rate on “party unity votes” or roll calls on bills, amendments and resolutions in which majorities of the two parties were on opposite sides of roll call votes. The metric ignores votes where both parties were overwhelmingly for or against a bill to identify cases where a member’s vote had the most potential to tip the scales one way or another.

The last time a majority party lost more unity votes was when Democrats presided in 1982, the second year of President Ronald Reagan’s first term, and prevailed just 63.5 percent of the time.

‘Stymied’ by hard-liners

There are parallels between 1982 and 2023, notes Princeton University politics professor Frances Lee. In both cases, the House was controlled by the party that did not control the Senate and the White House.

But, Lee explained, “A key difference between the 1982 Democrats and the 2023 Republicans is that the 2023 Republicans have been repeatedly stymied by a hard-line bloc, whereas the 1982 Democrats had to contend with a swing moderate/conservative contingent who wanted to work with the Reagan White House.”

In this Congress, spending fights have been an ongoing flashpoint within the GOP majority, and divisions reached a head with the historic Oct. 3 ouster of California’s Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair after a faction moved to punish him for calling a vote on a short-term spending extension to prevent a government shutdown.

In 2023, many of the party unity votes that drove down the GOP’s success rate came on floor amendments to appropriations bills. Those votes included a slew of salary reduction amendments aimed at individual executive branch employees, as well as broader efforts to reduce funding for federal programs.

Of the 515 House party unity votes, 54 of them (more than 10 percent) were on measures to reduce salaries for officials ranging from the White House press secretary to the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Those votes tended to follow a pattern, with all Democrats present voting “no” and between 45 and 75 Republicans crossing over to join the opposition.

“The American people should not be forced to pay the salary of an individual who dispenses bold-faced lies to the American people,” Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., said during floor debate in November after seeking to reduce the salary of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to $1.

Like others, that amendment was not adopted, with the final tally being 165-257.

Seven of the votes came on amendments to reduce appropriations for regional commissions funded through the Energy and Water Development spending bill.

The commissions, like the Denali Commission in Alaska and the Appalachian Regional Commission, are favorite agencies of some lawmakers who see them as providing economic development funding and services to their constituents.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., offered separate amendments to reduce funding for several of the commissions and faced similar defeats in each case, running up the score in terms of party unity votes. All told, the House took seven roll call votes on amendments to reduce commission funding that all proved unsuccessful for the GOP position.

The data show, therefore, that one concession McCarthy made to the most conservative faction in the caucus helped drive down the unity rate.

Leaders usually do not call for votes they know will not pass, but McCarthy agreed to a much more robust amendment process on spending bills than Democrats and even some of his GOP predecessors allowed when they had the majority. The change led to conservative members being able to force amendment votes that had no chance of success.

Speakers of the recent past, in contrast, would routinely consider appropriations measures under more restrictive rules and closed processes.

Rules defeated

Arguably, the most significant losses for Republicans, however, came on rules themselves. Rules votes, which set the framework for how long debate can take and what amendments are allowed, effectively give the majority its power to set the agenda. They traditionally get near-unanimous support from the ruling party, even if members plan to vote later against the underlying legislation. Until July 2023, no rule had been defeated on the House floor since November of 2002.

Two of the year’s most significant successful House votes completely divided the majority party, with Republican unity rates slightly above 50 percent against the December measure that expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., and a September vote on Ukraine security assistance.

Republicans started the year with a 222-213 majority, meaning leaders could afford to lose only four GOP votes and still prevail if every Democrat voted “no.” That was the same split then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had in 2022, however, when Democrats won 91.4 percent of party unity votes that year, their lowest majority win rate since 2010.

“House Republicans have contended with similar difficulties under other recent leaders dating back at least to Boehner,” Lee said in an email, referring to GOP Speaker John Boehner who held the gavel from 2011 through 2015. “Their problems were more severe in 2023 given the party’s narrow margin of control and hard-liners’ newfound willingness to withhold support for the party’s procedural control of the House.”

Senate trend continues

Senate unity rates for 2023 were more in line with recent trends. Roughly 81 percent of the roll call votes cast in 2023 were unity votes, with the majority Democrats prevailing 91.5 percent of the time. Most of the unity votes were on nominations or on procedural votes to set them up, meaning essentially duplicate votes boosted the average. All told, 208 of the 284 Senate unity votes in 2023 were on nominations.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were the only three Republicans to vote the opposite way from most their GOP colleagues more than 100 times, with Collins leading the way at 186.

All three are senior appropriators, but the bulk of the votes in question were nominations. For instance, of the 124 times that Graham broke, 119 (96 percent) were on nominations.

The results have been basically the same since Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York started setting the agenda in 2021, operating with the narrowest of margins.

Twelve of the 24 times that Senate Republicans prevailed on party unity votes came on votes related to overturning regulations adopted by the executive branch or the District of Columbia municipal government. These measures were able to get up-or-down votes because they were not subject to the 60-vote threshold normally needed to end debate on legislation. But they were also subject to President Joe Biden’s veto, which he used nine times and was not overriden.

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Physician groups and other advocates for overhauling the Medicare payment system will lose three of their biggest Capitol Hill supporters to retirement next year, raising questions about next steps for long-term changes to the Medicare payment program.

Republican Reps. Larry Bucshon of Indiana, Michael C. Burgess of Texas and Brad Wenstrup of Ohio, all members of the GOP Doctors Caucus, have been vocal in pushing for changes to the way Medicare pays physicians.

The current system has been fraught with controversy, with doctors complaining their rates don’t keep up with inflation and with requirements that payments be budget-neutral, resulting in cuts to doctor pay. Meanwhile, a near decadelong push to embrace value-based care has not panned out.

Burgess, Bucshon and Wenstrup, who are all doctors, have become well-known on Capitol Hill for translating wonky Medicare policies and communicating the needs of fellow physicians to their colleagues, carving out a particular niche issue in Medicare physician payments. Burgess and Wenstrup co-chair the GOP Doctors Caucus with Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.

“They’ll really be missed,” said Margaret C. Tracci, chair of the advocacy council at the Society for Vascular Surgery.

Burgess, who came to Congress in 2003, is a former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, and Bucshon currently is the vice chair. They, along with Wenstrup, who came to Congress in 2013, owned or worked in private practice and came to the job with experience of not just treating patients but running small businesses and working with Medicare.

Tracci said their experience helped them translate the “very complex issue” of Medicare payment, easing the burden for doctors pressed to explain the complications of the payment system to laymen. “It really creates a lot more work for physicians and for physician advocacy groups to climb that hill again of trying to translate what the needs are,” Tracci said.

But now, the lawmakers’ retirements might leave a long-term overhaul unfinished, with Congress instead pursuing other priorities and distracted by an election year.

“It’s going to be hard, but I think we’re just going to try and lay some of the groundwork,” Bucshon said, referring to hoped-for changes to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, commonly called MACRA, which aimed to stabilize physician payments and reward quality instead of volume.

The road to MACRA

Bucshon came to Congress in 2011, when doctors were fighting a similar Medicare payment problem: the sustainable growth rate, which also resulted in cuts to physician pay year after year, with Congress stepping in on an ad hoc basis to avert those cuts.

Viewing those short-term fixes as ultimately unworkable, Burgess led the effort to get Congress to pass MACRA, which repealed the sustainable growth rate formula while providing new frameworks to shift payments toward value instead of volume.

But it hasn’t quite worked out that way, doctors say.

The new law’s budget neutrality requirement has typically meant that pay increases for one specialty, like primary care doctors, have resulted in cuts to others.

Since 2020, Congress has stepped in to avert cuts triggered by the law’s budget neutrality requirements. But lawmakers haven’t acted on the issue this year, and cuts took effect Jan. 1.

“MACRA, in many respects, has outlived its usefulness,” said Susan Dentzer, president and CEO of America’s Physician Groups. “It was very important at the time and got us out of a rut that the system was in around a prior formula for setting payments. But it [MACRA] was enacted in 2015 and it’s been 10 years.”

While Bucshon, Burgess and Wenstrup are pushing for short-term fixes to the most recent cuts in the next spending package, the prospects for long-term change are murky.

Other options

One bill, sponsored by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, and co-sponsored by Burgess, Wenstrup and Bucshon, would lift the budget neutrality threshold from $20 million to $53 million per year.

Currently, if the fee schedule increases spending by more than $20 million, cuts are triggered. Raising the threshold would provide more breathing room in the fee schedule, but the American Medical Association has pushed for a $100 million at least, paired with other changes.

“These are significant steps and the urgency cannot be overstated,” Burgess said on the House floor last month, referring to the legislation.

But floor action is unclear at this point. Negotiators are working on including some kind of “doc fix” in the spending package due in March. Broader, long-term changes will take time.

“It’s clear that we need to do some reforms to MACRA, and we clearly need to change the physician fee schedule, but it’ll be hard,” Bucshon said.

Bucshon also co-sponsors a bill, sponsored by Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., that would require that physician payment updates be tied to inflation, a concept also supported by AMA and other physician groups. That bill hasn’t received committee consideration.

“There used to be a greater opportunity for them [retiring members] to get something on their way out the door,” said Rodney Whitlock, vice president at McDermott+Consulting and a former GOP aide. “I’m not too certain that I’m as big of a believer in that as I used to be, but once you decide you won’t be here, you fight like hell to get something done on the way out, and I wouldn’t expect any less of these guys.”

Other problems

Also among disappointing aspects of the 2015 law, doctors say, are the pathways it set up for doctors to be graded and paid for delivering value-based care.

Nearly 10 years after the bill’s passage, the committee that advises Congress on Medicare policy has recommended that one of those pathways, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, should be eliminated because it imposes a significant reporting burden on providers, exempts more physicians than will participate and results in small bonuses for those who do.

Meanwhile, participation in the other pathway, alternative payment models, and the savings it was intended to generate haven’t been as high as was originally hoped.

Physician practices had complained that the models available were not applicable to them. One of the main types of models, accountable care organizations, worked best for integrated health systems and not small independent practices, doctors say.

Those problems are harder to fix. And the loss of institutional knowledge from lawmakers like Burgess, who helped draft the law and knows in depth how it works and what was intended, is not a small thing, said Anders Gilberg, senior vice president of government affairs for the Medical Group Management Association.

“The comprehensive fix to what we’re dealing with — the aftermath of MACRA reform — would be helped by many of the physicians in Congress that unfortunately are retiring this year,” he said.

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. Visit at rollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday slammed the report by a Justice Department special counsel into Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents that raised questions about the president’s memory, calling it “politically motivated” and “gratuitous.”

The report from Robert Hur, the former Maryland U.S. Attorney selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden found evidence that Biden willfully held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information, but laid out why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, including a high probability that the Justice Department would not be able to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

The report described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.” It noted that Biden could not recall defining milestones in his own life such as when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.

Taking a question from a reporter at the conclusion of a gun violence prevention event at the White House, Harris said that as a former prosecutor, she considered Hur’s comments “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate.”

She noted that Biden’s two-day sit-down with Hur occurred just after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, where more than 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage — including many Americans.

“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Harris said, saying she spent countless hours with Biden and other officials in the days that followed and he was “on top of it all.”

She added that “the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”

Harris concluded saying a special counsel should have a “higher level of integrity than what we saw.”

Her comments came a day after Biden insisted that his “memory is fine.” and grew visibly angry at the White House, as he denied forgetting when his son died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Friday that he will run for U.S. Senate, giving Republicans a prominent candidate who is well-positioned to run a competitive campaign for the GOP in a state that hasn’t had a Republican U.S. senator in 37 years.

The decision marks a surprise turnaround for Hogan, a moderate who had considered a presidential bid. During Hogan’s tenure as governor, he became a national figure as one of the rare Republicans willing to criticize Donald Trump. Last month, Hogan stepped down from the leadership of the third-party movement No Labels.

“My fellow Marylanders: you know me,” Hogan begins in a video released by his Senate campaign. “For eight years, we proved that the toxic politics that divide our nation need not divide our state.”

The former governor added that he made the decision to run for Senate “not to serve one party, but to try to be part of the solution: to fix our nation’s broken politics and fight for Maryland.”

“That is what I did as your governor and it’s exactly how I’ll serve you in the United States Senate,” Hogan said.

GOP leaders are eager to pick up the seat as they try to wrest control of the Senate from Democrats, who hold a slim majority and are defending more seats than Republicans in 2024.

In 2022, Hogan rebuffed an aggressive push from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans to run against Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen.

When he announced his decision not to run for Senate two years ago, Hogan expressed confidence he could win. “But just because you can win a race, doesn’t mean that’s the job you should do if your heart’s not in it. And I just didn’t see myself being a U.S. senator,” he said then.

The former two-term governor who left office early last year will be running for an open seat due to the retirement of Sen. Ben Cardin. Hogan made his Senate bid known just hours before Maryland’s filing deadline.

Hogan announced in March that he would not challenge Trump for the GOP’s White House nomination. Last month, he squelched speculation of a third-party presidential run and endorsed former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination for president.

The rarely open Maryland Senate seat already has drawn U.S. Rep. David Trone into the Democratic primary, as well as Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County in the suburbs of the nation’s capital. Trone, the wealthy founder of a chain of liquor stores called Total Wine & More, has poured $23 million of his own money into his campaign so far.

Seven Republicans have filed to enter the GOP primary, but none is as well known as the former governor. Hogan was only the second Republican governor to ever win reelection in Maryland, a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1.

He won his first term as governor in 2014 in an upset, using public campaign financing against a better-funded candidate. Running on fiscal concerns as a moderate Republican businessman, Hogan tapped into voter frustration over a series of tax and fee increases to defeat then-Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.

Hogan, who had never held elected office before, focused on pocketbook issues from the outset. He lowered tolls, an action he could take without approval from the General Assembly, long controlled by Democrats. But he also faced challenges, including unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015. Hogan sent the National Guard to help restore order.

In June of that year, Hogan was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma but continued working while receiving treatment. He has been in remission since November 2015.

Maryland’s last Republican U.S. senator was Charles Mathias, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1987. Mathias was known as a liberal Republican who often clashed with his party over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights.

SAN DIEGO — The pop-pop-pop of gunfire cracked just as the rain started to fall in grisly synchronicity. Then the screams began.

Within moments, civilians lay strewn across the ground, some lifeless, others writhing in pain. Blood flowed in streams that pooled with the rainwater on the muddying ground littered with shell casings.

Three gunmen quickly opened fire on a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department armored BearCat truck arriving in response. It crawled along an alleyway. Half a dozen SWAT members pointed rifles into open doorways or fired back from behind corners.

One assailant, wearing black gloves and a graying black beard, stood on a third-floor apartment balcony and, as deputies came closer, threw a Molotov cocktail at two white cars parked below. The explosion sent a blast of heat and sound, its boom punctuated by the gunman’s AK-47.

“Help me!” bellowed a man rolling on the ground, blood shooting from his severed leg. Another man groaned next to him, hidden by smoke billowing around the cars.

It seemed like something out of an action movie. And, in a way, it was.

The rounds were blanks, the Molotov cocktail wasn’t lit, the smoke came from a machine. The explosion was controlled, the victims and gunmen were actors, and the blood was fake. However, the deputies, firefighters and doctors from across the region were real.

They were in the middle of a simulation on a Saturday afternoon in mid-January in a commercial lot on the north end of San Diego, conducted by Strategic Operations, a local company run by former Hollywood producers and military combat veterans.

First responders and law enforcement agents have for decades used simulations to train for mass casualty events such as shootings or natural disasters, especially after the Columbine school shooting in 1999. But in recent years, as mass shootings have become increasingly common in the United States, the simulations have become more and more realistic. Now they feature visceral sound effects, trained actors, pyrotechnics and even virtual reality. The trainings also have become more and more expensive for public agencies.

But hyper-realistic simulations are essential for learning how to respond to an active shooter, triage mass casualties and coordinate among departments in a chaotic environment, said Sgt. Colin Hebeler, who works in the Infrastructure Security Group within the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The department has two facilities where deputies go through similar simulation training.

“If we can provide these trainings that are as close to the real-life event as possible, you will actually induce that same kind of stress and the reaction that you might have during a real-life incident,” he told Stateline.

Stop the killing, stop the dying

Training has evolved in Hebeler’s 16 years in the department, expanding well beyond both the classroom and limited simulations that involved plastic pieces that looked like guns and shouts of “Bang, bang.” Although expensive, simulated mass shootings are far more intense, realistic and frequent now, he said.

“If it does happen, we’re going to be prepared,” Hebeler added. “We don’t want this to be one of those catastrophic events that comes out on the news, and everyone says, ‘Well, the law enforcement messed up.’”

Law enforcement agencies continue to face public scrutiny over how they respond to mass shooting events — highlighted by last month’s scathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice on the response to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 people dead, all but two of them elementary school children.

First responders are trained to focus on two things in a mass shooting event: Stop the killing and stop the dying. By waiting 77 minutes outside the fourth grade classrooms where the active shooter was before confronting and killing him, Uvalde law enforcement failed to follow protocols and that cost lives, the federal report found.

Uvalde showed “layer upon layer upon layer of failures,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. Simulations highlight the sights, sounds and smells of an active shooter event in a controlled environment so the failures seen in Uvalde don’t occur, she said.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re the first officer or by yourself or there’s 20 of you, you go in and you stop the shooter, and then you start trying to help the people who’ve been injured,” she said.

“Simulations are really about acclimating you to what you might encounter on that given day, so that you are able to maintain that focus and subsequently your safety as best as possible.”

But she wanted to be clear about one point: This kind of training should never be used in schools among children. It is far too traumatic.

Simulation’s increased use

Seventeen miles east of downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, Wake Technical Community College is building a 60,000-square-foot facility with an 8-acre driving pad that is dedicated to reality-based simulation training for police, fire and emergency medical workers.

From the outside, observers wouldn’t realize the massive gray complex is full of buildings and streets, with spaces designed to mimic the commercial, jail, residential and school spaces first responders would experience in their communities. Trainees can drive into the facility, pull up to a specific location inside and respond to the simulated event — a school shooting, for example, or a fire inside a supermarket.

During mass shooting simulations, trainees will experience the disaster through all their senses: It could smell like smoke, there might be flashing lights and sirens, role players may act as screaming victims or use simulated munitions filled with paint. The $60 million facility, which is slated to open this spring, was funded by a bond that Wake County voters approved in 2018.

For officers, simulation training is much more effective than shooting at a line of paper targets, or simply going over shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios, said Jamie Wicker, provost of public safety education at Wake Tech. Training for mass shooting events has developed over many years with the help of veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, she added.

“It’s one thing to describe chaos. It’s completely different to experience chaos,” said Wicker, who has been in law enforcement for more than 20 years, in part as a trainer. “This is managed chaos.”

This approach has been backed up by researchers who have studied the effectiveness of simulation training for first responders.

When officers respond to a mass shooting, they’re running, maybe up a flight of stairs or while carrying people. They will see victims who are injured or dead. They will be worried about the shooter’s location. Meanwhile, parents may be rushing to the scene, along with additional first responders from agencies across the region who might not have interacted with one another before.

While an increased heart rate can produce positive reactions such as adrenaline and sharpened senses, it can quickly turn negative, leading to tunnel vision, auditory exclusion or impaired judgment, Dolly said.

“You want to, at some level, induce that in a training environment,” he said. “It conditions the officer to inoculate them from being overwhelmed by all that when the time comes.”

For the past decade, federal law enforcement has viewed the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, known commonly as the ALERRT Center, as the national standard for active shooting simulation training. Hundreds of thousands of police officers have received training from the center, which was formed in the wake of Columbine and has been housed at Texas State University since 2002.

Funded by a line item in the Texas state budget and federal grants, ALERRT is mandated to train 80,000 Texas officers every two years at its facility in San Marcos — a city between Austin and San Antonio. But center experts also go to all 50 states to spread their training, going to schools during breaks and to businesses, at no cost to trainees or their agencies.

Sometimes they use local drama students to play victims, wearing makeup and moulage, simulating a wound. “They love it,” said Larry Balding, external resources director with the center.

For the training, ALERRT likes long hallways and T intersections — stress points for law enforcement responding to an active shooter. Beyond learning how to stop the shooter, trainees focus on getting victims to an operating table. Gunshot victims only have around 30 minutes before it’s too late, said Balding, who used to be in the fire service.

“Nobody will ever be 100% ready,” he said. “But if you can get a new officer, get him trained, trying to get the mindset right, that’s what we want to do.”

When asked where simulation training is heading in the field of first responders, Balding didn’t hesitate: virtual reality.

Training in the virtual world

The floor of the San Diego Convention Center was filled with lifelike mannequins — bleeding, blinking, moving and able to be poked and prodded and to respond to questions. Some were even pregnant, with a baby ready to squirm out when prompted.

Among the 140 health care presenters last month at a conference organized by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, a membership nonprofit that seeks to promote simulation training to reduce errors in medical care, were companies that want to take the industry in a whole new direction with virtual reality.

Whether first responders use Oculus headsets to learn how to interact with patients in an emergency room or use lifesaving tools at the scene of a shooting, localities are turning more to virtual reality training for first responders, said Dr. Barry Issenberg, president of the society.

“It’s the reduction of errors, safer care, safer way of training,” said Issenberg, who is also the director of the Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education at the University of Miami. “What we’re doing is not just a cool idea, but ultimately going to make an impact for their constituents.”

The society worked with the Hollywood-style facility, which organized the simulation for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and other local first responders who participated the day before. Around 100 visiting academics and health care workers in town for a conference were among the onlookers.

While researchers have found in several studies that virtual reality can add some benefits to health care training, there is still some skepticism.

Dolly, at the National Policing Institute, sees “some promise” with virtual reality for training police officers. It can be a cost-effective alternative to in-person simulations and can help officers train in shoot/don’t-shoot scenarios.

However, he does see limitations with not being able to run around and experience viscerally the confusion of a mass shooting, which can be fully felt with an in-person simulation.

Back at the San Diego shooting simulation, screams still pierced the air.

Gunfire continued for another minute, as the seven deputies dashed from room to room in the complex of buildings. They killed the shooters, then carried some of the wounded down flights of stairs.

After the shots finally stopped, the screams of victims were nearly drowned out by the wail of ambulance sirens.

Firefighters and emergency medical technicians rushed bloodied victims in stretchers to nearby pop-up emergency and operating rooms, where Navy doctors tried to keep their footing on floors slippery with blood and worked to close victims’ wounds.

Wearing blue scrubs and shoe coverings, doctors turned victims on their side and searched for exit wounds. One demanded O negative blood.

An hour after the first shots rang out, the simulation ended. The first responders gathered in the ER in a semicircle. An instructor quieted the room, asked for the beeping heart monitors to be shut off and turned to the participants.

“So, what did we learn?”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The state’s homelessness crisis is closely intertwined with its shortage of affordable housing. About 90% of unhoused Californians cite the cost of housing as the main reason they cannot escape homelessness, according to UCSF’s report, California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness.

Politicians have long tried, and failed, to stymie the growth of the state’s unhoused population, which now numbers more than 170,000.

So, how would the four leading senate candidates — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), former Dodger Steve Garvey, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) — address homelessness?

Schiff, who is currently leading the polls with about 25% of the vote, released a detailed affordable housing and homelessness plan on Friday . It calls for a $100 billion increase in federal funding for people experiencing homelessness, a dramatic expansion of Section 8 Housing vouchers for renters and tax incentives to build more housing.

Garvey, on the other hand, does not want to start by doling out more money to solve the problem. He seeks to begin with an audit of all federal homelessness programs to gauge how efficiently money is being spent, he told the Daily News in an interview. He calls for investing in proven affordable housing, mental health and substance use solutions.

The sole Republican out of the top four candidates is tied with Porter for second place and has approximately 15% of the vote, according to recent polls.

Porter sees the state’s homelessness crisis as a direct result of its housing crisis and released a ten point plan on Wednesday outlining how she would rapidly build more homes, lower rent costs and increase homeownership opportunities.

Lee seeks to invest more than $1 trillion in the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund to build millions of affordable units, offer assistance for first-time home buyers and provide rent relief for lower-income renters, according to her campaign website. The Oakland congresswoman currently trails the other three candidates with 8% of the vote.

Here is a closer look at each of the top four candidates’ plans:

Rep. Adam Schiff calls for rapid housing production, rental subsidies

Dramatically increasing the supply of affordable units is Schiff’s top priority for addressing homelessness, he said in an interview with the Daily News.

“There’s no way we’re going to solve the problem of affordability when people can’t afford to live anywhere near where they work, or that of homelessness when people are can’t afford any home whatsoever,” he said.

He seeks to dramatically expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit enabling developers to rapidly produce 230,000 affordable homes. He also hopes to create federal low-interest loans for building multifamily housing projects. Lastly, he calls for converting unused government land into housing and funding studies on faster, cost-effective building techniques.

“We can’t take four years to build housing if we’re ever going to solve this problem,” he said.

Schiff also wants to see greater investment in preventing homelessness.

He wants to make the Federal Section 8 Housing program an entitlement program, meaning that every low-income household eligible for a rental subsidy voucher would automatically receive one. He also seeks to establish a tax credit to assist renters who are paying more than 30% of their income toward housing.

“Keeping people housed is also part of the solution,” he said. “With rents going up as dramatically as they are and most renters getting no help with their rent — that’s a prescription for disaster.”

When it comes to getting people off the street he believes in the “housing first” model, meaning the first step is putting a roof over their heads and the second step is providing them with mental health, substance use and job assistance services.

Steve Garvey wants more efficient spending on homeless services

While Steve Garvey is a political newcomer, he has been studying the homelessness crisis by visiting encampments and talking to people about the barriers they face in getting back into housing, he told the Daily News in an interview.

“It really is the mental illness and drugs that put most of them in this situation,” he said. “Do they need a roof over their head? Absolutely, but if you don’t get to the real crux of the issue, then you don’t get that person on a pathway back into society.”

A 2023 state report found that California spent about $10 billion over three years to halt homelessness. Garvey wants to know exactly where that money went.

If elected, his first step to address homelessness would be to order an audit of all federal spending on homelessness.

“Let’s find out first where all that money went to and find out how it has been wasted,” he said, “And how we can best put government money to use to help these people get off the streets.”

After the audit is complete he wants to drive investment into affordable housing, substance use and mental health programs that have a track record of successfully keeping people off of the streets, he said. He also wants to engage private sector business leaders as philanthropic funders of these programs.

Lastly, Garvey calls for a crackdown against drug dealers, saying the widespread availability of street drugs is part of what traps people in cycles of addiction and homelessness.

“Let’s start with crime on the streets and get the drug lords, so to speak, away from influencing these people,” he said.

Katie Porter seeks to solve homelessness with housing

Similar to her Democratic competitors Schiff and Lee, Porter believes that building more housing is the most important step to solving the homelessness crisis.

“I don’t want my kids to leave California just because they can’t afford to live here. As California’s senator, I’ll shake up the Senate and get Washington focused on California’s housing challenges,” she said in a statement on her plan to tackle California’s housing affordability crisis.

Porter wants to create a select committee in Congress focused on increasing housing and reducing costs.

She hopes to incentivize the production of multifamily housing developments with tax credits and government loan guarantees. She seeks to keep renters housed through rental vouchers and government-backed leases for seniors and college students.

In addition, she wants to lower the barriers to homeownership by offering federal assistance with down payments.

Porter also supports investments in permanent supportive housing and in mental health and substance use disorder treatment, including funding more treatment beds, Lindsay Reilly, a spokesperson for her campaign, said.

Barbara Lee calls for funding affordable housing, mental health

Lee is the sole candidate who has lived homeless. After fleeing an abusive marriage, she was unhoused for a period and “knows how bad it can get.”

“That is why it is a top priority for me to solve California’s homelessness crisis,” she said in a statement provided to the Daily News. “It’s going to take a multi-pronged approach—investing in affordable housing, defending renters’ rights, prioritizing mental health care, and fighting for greater affordability and economic equity across the board.”

She is currently fighting to pass the the Ending Homelessness Act, which would provide $10 billion in federal funding to construct affordable housing nationwide. She supports converting government-owned land into housing developments.

Her plan also calls for providing Californians with federal assistance for home down payments and apartment security deposits. In addition, she seeks to raise the federal minimum wage so working people can afford housing.

“At the same time, we have to get to some of the other root causes of homelessness,” she said. “We need to fight for affordable health care that includes mental health care.”

Lee is a proud supporter of Medicare for All and said she will continue to push for it in the Senate.

“I have been a voice for renters, working people, and unhoused people my entire career,” she said, “and I will be their strong advocate in the Senate.”

All four leading Senate candidates will have another opportunity to present their policy platforms on Monday during KTLA’s televised U.S. Senate debate from 7 to 8 p.m.

Vote by mail ballots have already been sent to registered voters and early vote center will open on Feb. 24. The top-two vote getters in the March 5 primary will proceed to a runoff in the November General Election.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed over a dozen people overnight and into Thursday in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas’ cease-fire terms and vowed to expand the offensive into the southern Gaza town.

More than half of strip’s population has fled to Rafah, on the mostly sealed border with Egypt, which is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid. Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.

The overnight strikes killed at least 13 people, including two women and five children, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. At the scene of one of the strikes, residents used their cellphone flashlights as they dug through the rubble with pick-axes and their bare hands.

“I wish we could collect their whole bodies instead of just pieces,” said Mohammed Abu Habib, a neighbor who witnessed the strike.

Israel’s four-month-old air and ground offensive — among the most destructive in recent history — has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation.

Netanyahu has said the offensive will continue and expand until “total victory” over Hamas, which started the war by launching a wide-ranging attack into southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage.

Israel has also vowed to bring back the over 100 captives still held by Hamas after most of the rest were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

But both of those goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas re-emerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and suffered widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.

ALARM GROWS AS ISRAEL EYES RAFAH

Netanyahu said preparations were underway to expand the offensive into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people who fled from other areas are crowded into squalid tent camps and overflowing U.N.-run shelters.

The Palestinian death toll from four months of war has already reached 27,840, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures but says most of the dead have been women and children.

International aid organizations have warned that any major operation in Rafah would compound what is already a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged coastal enclave.

“If they aren’t killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men will be at risk of dying by starvation or disease.” said Bob Kitchen, of the International Rescue Committee. “There will no longer be a single ‘safe’ area for Palestinians to go to.”

Outside the hospital where bodies from the overnight strikes were brought, relatives wept as they said farewell to their loved ones. Warda Abu Warda said she felt helpless.”Where do we go after Rafah? Do we go to sea?” she asked.

GAPS REMAIN IN TALKS OVER CEASE-FIRE AND HOSTAGE RELEASE

The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker another cease-fire agreement to ensure the release the remaining hostages. But Hamas has demanded an end to the war, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.

But visiting Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an agreement was still possible and that negotiations would continue, the latest sign of a growing divide between the two close allies on the way forward. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Thursday for more negotiations.

Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from families of the hostages and the wider public to bring them home, even if it requires a deal with Hamas. At least one senior Israeli official has acknowledged that saving the captives and destroying Hamas might be incompatible.

Hamas is still holding over 130 hostages, but around 30 of them are believed to be dead, with the vast majority killed on Oct. 7. The group is widely believed to be holding the captives in tunnels deep underground and using them as human shields for its top leaders.

Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip and Chehayeb from Beirut.

What you can’t use is a plastic bag issued by Trader Joe’s. The store doesn’t give them out.

A bill two local lawmakers introduced Thursday, Feb. 8, in Sacramento would apply the Trader Joe’s policy statewide, banning stores from offering customers any sort of plastic film bags at checkout.

If you’re thinking “didn’t we already do that?” the answer is yes and no.

A decade ago, California legislators approved the nation’s first ban on the flimsy single-use plastic bags then commonly offered at most stores. Plastic bag manufacturers fought back, with the question put to voters in 2016. More than 53% of Californians voted to uphold the ban, which kicked in the next day.

But that law included a carveout that lets stores sell thicker plastic bags, typically at 10 cents each, since those are deemed “reusable.” And Jenn Engstrom, state director for the public interest advocacy group CALPIRG, said plastic bag companies have taken advantage of that loophole by mass producing thicker plastic bags that are sometimes now the only option for shoppers who don’t bring their own reusable tote.

The problem, data shows, is that most people still aren’t taking those bags back to grocery stores. The thicker bags also are just about impossible to recycle, since they need to go to special facilities. So while Californians are using fewer plastic bags, and those bags aren’t showing up as often during coastal cleanup days, data shows residents are actually producing more plastic bag by weight per person now than they did before the ban took effect.

The weight of plastic shopping bags thrown away by Californians in 2004, for example, was 147,038 tons, or roughly 8 pounds per person, according to CalRecycle. In 2021, plastic bag waste weighed 231,072 tons, or roughly 11 pounds per person.

Such spikes aren’t happening in places that don’t have loopholes allowing for thicker bags.

A dozen states and more than 500 cities have some sort of plastic bag ban in effect, per data in a report last month by CALPIRG and the Environment California Research and Policy Center.

The advocacy groups studied how full bans on all plastic film shopping bags have played out in five places: New Jersey; Vermont; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; and Santa Barbara. (Such local bans on plastic grocery bags were superseded by California’s less stringent policy in 2016, though cities and counties can still ban plastic bags in retail shops and restaurants.) Researchers found strong bans eliminate an average of roughly 300 single-use plastic bags per person per year.

“Plastic bag bans work — just not the way California does it,” Engstrom said.

To help California catch up, state Sens. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, introduced identical bills in the state Senate and Assembly that would make it illegal for stores to offer plastic film bags to customers starting in 2026. Instead, proposed Senate Bill 1053 and Assembly Bill 2236 would allow stores to provide 100% recycled paper bags or let consumers use their own reusable bags.

“If you have been paying attention – if you read the news at all in recent years – you know we are choking our planet with plastic waste,” Blakespear said. “A plastic bag has an average lifespan of 12 minutes and then it is discarded, often clogging sewage drains, contaminating our drinking water and degenerating into toxic microplastics that fester in our oceans and landfills for up to 1,000 years. It’s time to improve on California’s original plastic bags ban and do it right this time by completely eliminating plastic bags from being used at grocery stores.”

The California Grocers Association is backing the bill, as it did with the original ban in 2014.

In a press conference Thursday morning — flanked by plastic bag ban supporters wearing sea turtle and “plastic monster” costumes and carrying signs with messages like “leave plastic to Barbie” — Daniel Conway, a spokesman for the trade group, said California’s first ban was “revolutionary” when it passed.

“Like most good laws, you have to take a look and you have to adapt to changes in the world we live in,” he said.

Asked whether the lawmakers are concerned about this bill facing the same sort of pushback from plastic bag companies as the previous ban did a decade ago, Blakespear noted there has since been consolidation within the industry, with many of the same companies now producing paper and plastic bags. So she hopes they’ll simply get on board with shifting to providing more paper bags.

The lawmakers said they also hope that California strengthening its ban will spur others to follow suit, as happened when the state passed regulations around vehicle emissions.

“As the fifth or fourth largest economy in the world, depending on how you count it, we know that what we do here really does end up having ripple effects globally,”  said Allen, who chairs the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

“We’re not just on our own when we make these decisions. We’re making decisions that end up impacting markets and have global implications.”