What connects Californians deported under Trump, Eisenhower

I last visited the California Museum in downtown Sacramento as a chaperone for an elementary school field trip. The kids crowded around a statue of Mickey Mouse for photos and elbowed each other to control an educational video game. 

This week the museum is taking on a more controversial theme with a special exhibit looking back at the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, the 1950s Operation Wetback. The exhibit is called “Help Wanted/Leave Now,” a title meant to capture wild swings in immigration policy. 

That includes today’s crackdown on unauthorized immigrants. It features video testimonies from people who were deported in 1954 alongside people who were detained and deported just last year.

• Vilma Palacios, an exhibit participant who came to the U.S. at age 6 and was deported last year: “It was just one person stopping me that changed my whole life.”

Visitors will be struck by the parallels between President Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign and President Donald Trump’s policies today, including the racially charged language used by immigration agents.

One big difference: How state leaders responded to federal enforcement. Then California Gov. Goodwin Knight backed the Eisenhower-era mass deportation and characterized it as important to securing jobs for California citizens. “We congratulate you and we are happy to have been of service during your wetback drive,” Knight’s employment department director wrote to the Eisenhower administration in 1954. 

That is obviously not the Newsom administration’s stance on Trump’s deportation effort. 

Pablo Espinoza, a California Museum trustee, noted the exhibit will show at a time when the president is challenging the Smithsonian’s depiction of historical events, especially ones tied to racism.

• Espinoza: “I think it’s fantastic that California is leading the way to bring transparency and accountability.” 

Read more here and check out photos from the exhibit preview.

In the race to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco voters have a choice between two Democratic candidates who both tout themselves as progressives. So what’s the dividing line between San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and state Sen. Scott Wiener? It comes down to housing, writes CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller.

Wiener believes the state should ensure that local governments build new housing. As a key figure in the YIMBY movement, he wrote legislation that eliminated hurdles for certain building permits. He also channeled billions of dollars toward affordable housing as chairperson of the Senate budget committee.

Chan, meanwhile, has largely opposed new housing and development projects. Citing the city’s “urban renewal” of the Fillmore district from the 1950s through 1970s that displaced San Francisco’s Black community, Chan says she prioritizes tenants and small businesses that could be affected by construction.

Read more.

A former Los Angeles Unified superintendent is fighting a bill he says undermines a measure voters approved of in 2022 that sets aside $1 billion a year for the arts in schools, reports CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones.

Austin Beutner, who wrote Proposition 28, opposes Assembly Bill 2440. Beutner argues that the proposal guts Prop. 28 by giving schools too much leeway on how they spend the arts money. 

But proponents of the bill say it would help clarify some longstanding confusion schools had with Prop. 28, such as the fact that its definition of an arts class isn’t the same as the state’s. Some officials have also said they’re afraid of getting sued if they don’t use Prop. 28 money properly. Beutner himself sued L.A. Unified last year, accusing the district of cutting existing arts funding and backfilling it with Prop. 28 money, which is prohibited.

Read more.