OAG Report: Gov. Cuomo Created the Covid Death Panel

During Novel Coronavirus Briefing, Governor Cuomo ...

Remember Andrew Cuomo was thought to be a good candidate for president of the United States?

Remember he wrote a book about his stellar job in dealing with the pandemic in New York?

Remember he received an award for his daily virus briefings?

Remember when he blamed President Trump?

Remember when the Mercy ship, the Javits Center and the Samaritan’s Purse built field hospitals and offered doctors and beds for several thousand patients?

Remember when he issued an executive order providing qualified immunity to all front line personnel and himself for wrongful death, malpractice and criminal malfeasance?

Opposition to Samaritan's Purse Central Park field ...

All true….but enter the New York Inspector General report, freshly released….

Frankly, this is the scandal of the decade…read on.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents by as much as 50%, the state’s attorney general said in a report released Thursday.

Attorney General Letitia James has, for months, been examining discrepancies between the number of deaths being reported by the state’s Department of Health, and the number of deaths reported by the homes themselves.

Her investigators looked at a sample of 62 of the state’s roughly 600 nursing homes. They reported 1,914 deaths of residents from COVID-19, while the state Department of Health logged only 1,229 deaths at those same facilities.

If that same pattern exists statewide, James’ report said, it would mean the state is underreporting deaths by nearly 56%.

An Associated Press analysis published in August concluded that the state could be understating deaths by as much as 65%, based on discrepancies between its totals and numbers being reported to federal regulators. That analysis was, like James’ report, based on only a slice of data, rather than a comprehensive look at all homes in the state. Full article here.

In part of the report summary:

Overview of Findings

The report includes preliminary findings based on data obtained in investigations conducted to date, recommendations that are based on those findings, related findings in pre-pandemic investigations of nursing homes, and other available data and analysis. Based on this information and subsequent investigation, OAG is currently conducting investigations into more than 20 nursing homes across the state. OAG found that:

  • A larger number of nursing home residents died from COVID-19 than DOH data reflected;
  • Lack of compliance with infection control protocols put residents at increased risk of harm;
  • Nursing homes that entered the pandemic with low U.S. Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) Staffing ratings had higher COVID-19 fatality rates;
  • Insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) for nursing home staff put residents at increased risk of harm;
  • Insufficient COVID-19 testing for residents and staff in the early stages of the pandemic put residents at increased risk of harm;
  • The current state reimbursement model for nursing homes gives a financial incentive to owners of for-profit nursing homes to transfer funds to related parties (ultimately increasing their own profit) instead of investing in higher levels of staffing and PPE;
  • Lack of nursing home compliance with the executive order requiring communication with family members caused avoidable pain and distress; and
  • Government guidance requiring the admission of COVID-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities and may have obscured the data available to assess that risk.

Undercounting of COVID-19 Deaths in Nursing Homes

Preliminary data obtained by OAG suggests that many nursing home residents died from COVID-19 in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes, which is not reflected in DOH’s published total nursing home death data. Preliminary data also reflects apparent underreporting to DOH by some nursing homes of resident deaths occurring in nursing homes. In fact, the OAG found that nursing home resident deaths appear to be undercounted by DOH by approximately 50 percent.

OAG asked 62 nursing homes (10 percent of the total facilities in New York) for information about on-site and in-hospital deaths from COVID-19. Using the data from these 62 nursing homes, OAG compared: (1) in-facility deaths reported to OAG compared to in-facility deaths publicized by DOH, and (2) total deaths reported to OAG compared to total deaths publicized by DOH.

In one example, a facility reported five confirmed and six presumed COVID-19 deaths at the facility as of August 3 to DOH. However, the facility reported to OAG a total of 27 COVID-19 deaths at the facility and 13 hospital deaths — a discrepancy of 29 deaths.

Lack of Compliance with Infection Control Policies

OAG received numerous complaints that some nursing homes failed to implement proper infection controls to prevent or mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 to vulnerable residents. Among those reports were allegations that several nursing homes around the state failed to plan and take proper infection control measures, including:

  • Failing to properly isolate residents who tested positive for COVID-19;
  • Failing to adequately screen or test employees for COVID-19;
  • Demanding that sick employees continue to work and care for residents or face retaliation or termination;
  • Failing to train employees in infection control protocols; and
  • Failing to obtain, fit, and train caregivers with PPE.

For instance, OAG received a complaint that at a for-profit nursing home located north of New York City, residents who tested positive for COVID-19 were intermingled with the general population for several months because the facility had not yet created a “COVID-19 only” unit. At another for-profit facility on Long Island, COVID-19 patients who were transferred to the facility after a hospital stay and were supposed to be placed in a separate COVID-19 unit in the nursing home were, in fact, scattered throughout the facility despite available beds in the COVID-19 unit. This situation was allegedly resolved only after someone at the facility learned of an impending DOH infection control visit scheduled for the next day, before which those residents were hurriedly transferred to the appropriate designated unit.

OAG received reports that nursing homes did not properly screen staff members before allowing them to enter the facility to work with residents. Among those reports, OAG received an allegation that a for-profit nursing home north of New York City failed to consistently conduct COVID-19 employee screening. It was reported that some staff avoided having their temperatures taken and answering a COVID-19 questionnaire at times when the screening station at the facility’s front entrance had no employees present to take that information or when staff entered the facility through a back entrance, avoiding the screening station altogether.

At yet another facility in Western New York, a nurse reported to OAG that immediately prior to the facility’s first DOH inspection in late April, a nurse supervisor had set up bins in front of the units with gowns and N95 masks to make it appear that the facility had an adequate supply of appropriate PPE for staff. The nurse alleged that the nurse supervisor came in to work unusually early the day of the first inspection and brought out all new PPE and collected all of the used gowns. Although the initial DOH survey conducted that day did not result in negative findings, DOH returned to the facility for follow-up inspections, issued the facility several citations, and ultimately placed the facility in “Immediate Jeopardy.”

 

Meet Julie Su, Biden’s Choice for the Labor Dept and the $11 Billion Scandal

The scandal is only valued at $11.4 billion and counting. Would anything over say $500,000 come to the attention of the Governor of California or for that matter anyone else responsible to protest taxpayer dollars and law? Anyone? Not so much in California.

Julie Su: We Are the Humanities - YouTube

Lil miss Julie Su is Biden’s pick to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor.

In part from the LA Times:

“There is no sugarcoating the reality,” Su said during a press conference Monday. “California has not had sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud, and criminals took advantage of the situation.”

California has paid out $114 billion in unemployment benefits since March 2020, when the state stay-at-home orders caused many businesses to close or reduce operations, putting millions out of work. Some 19 million claims have been processed by the agency.

In addition to the 10% of benefits confirmed to involve fraud, the state is investigating another 17% of benefits involving suspicious claims that have not yet been proven to be fraudulent — about $19 billion worth.

Officials said a large number of those claims could end up being fraudulent as well.

Su said part of the blame goes to the Trump administration, which she said failed to provide adequate guidance and resources to California to counter fraudulent claims, almost all of which were filed through a new federal program that provides unemployment benefits to gig workers, independent contractors and the self-employed.

The press conference was held on the eve of the release of a state audit that is expected to be critical of California’s delays in providing unemployment benefits.

“It should be no surprise that EDD was overwhelmed, just like the rest of the nation’s unemployment agencies,” Su told reporters during a conference call. “And we now know that as millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft.”

While other states have also been hit with fraud, California’s population and outdated system mean it has been hit particularly hard.

The claims still being investigated include those that were part of a New Year’s Eve announcement by EDD that it was freezing 1.4 million claims pending the verification of identities.

About 1.2 million of those claims were still suspended as of last week, when the EDD said the other claimants “are either being sent a questionnaire to complete to help EDD determine if they meet eligibility requirements for continued benefits, or are receiving a Determination Notice letting them know about a disqualification and their appeal rights.”

The agency hired a contractor, ID.me, to verify the identity of claimants online, and about 30% of claims filed between Oct. 1 and Jan. 11 were blocked for fraud. The firm said it identified some 463,724 fraudulent claims during the period, which would represent more than $9 billion if the EDD had paid $20,000 on each claim.

EDD officials are also warning about new fraud schemes.

“EDD has reports that individuals are impersonating EDD and ID.me to get individuals to divulge their personal identifying information,” the agency said in a statement last week. “Californians should be aware that EDD does not send representatives to homes and neither EDD nor ID.me will contact individuals via social media and other websites.”

Su and other state officials also said Monday that they are wrestling with a backlog of claims that have not been approved 21 days after they were filed.

In announcing a strike team to evaluate the agency in July, Newsom directed action to eliminate the backlog of some 1 million claims delayed longer than 21 days, many of which required additional information from claimants by the end of September.

EDD spokeswoman Loree Levy said Monday that 99.9% of the claims in that original backlog have been resolved, and the rest will be done by the end of this month.

“Of the remaining claims, most are either pending EDD’s assessment of a potential overpayment, which doesn’t prevent payment, or EDD is waiting on a certification from the claimant required for payment,” Levy said.

Still, hundreds of thousands of new claims have flooded in since September, and the backlog of claims was at 916,000 last week, according to the most recent report by the agency.

The state’s work in the future may be complicated by the loss of top officials involved in the process. Su, whose office oversees the EDD, is being tapped by President Biden to become the number two administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a report by Bloomberg Law.

Her resume includes:

Julie Su, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom, is the Secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA). The LWDA enforces workplace laws, combats wage theft, ensures health and safety on the job, connects Californians to quality jobs and career pathways, and administers unemployment insurance, workers compensation and paid family leave. LWDA oversees seven major departments, boards, and panels that serve California workers and businesses by improving access to training, promoting high road jobs, eliminating barriers to employment, and creating a level playing field for employers.

Su is a nationally recognized expert on workers’ rights and civil rights who has dedicated her distinguished legal career to advancing justice on behalf of poor and disenfranchised communities and is a past recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.

As California Labor Commissioner from 2011 through 2018, Su enforced the State’s labor laws to ensure a fair and just workplace for both employees and employers. A report on her tenure released in May 2013 found that her leadership has resulted in a renaissance in enforcement activity and record-setting results. In 2014, she launched the first “Wage Theft Is a Crime” multimedia, multilingual statewide campaign to reach out to low-wage workers and their employers to help them understand their rights and feel safe speaking up about labor law abuses.

Prior to her appointment as California Labor Commissioner, Su was the Litigation Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the nation’s largest non-profit civil rights organization devoted to issues affecting the Asian American community. Su is known for pioneering a multi-strategy approach that combines successful impact litigation with multiracial organizing, community education, policy reform, coalition building, and media work.

Frequently named to top-lawyer lists such as the Daily Journal’s “Top 75 Women Litigators” in California and California Lawyer’s “Super Lawyers,” she was the first Labor Commissioner to be included among the Daily Journal’s “Top 75 Labor and Employment Lawyers.” She has also been named one of the 50 most noteworthy women alumni of Harvard Law School and one of the 100 most influential people in Los Angeles in Los Angeles Magazine.

Su has taught at UCLA Law School and Northeastern Law School. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School and began her career with a Skadden Fellowship. Su speaks Mandarin and Spanish.

 

Suspension of the 1st Amendment

‘petition the government for a redress of grievances’….remember that part of the First Amendment? 45 words of freedom…no more.

Diogenes' Middle Finger: NYT Graciously Admits the 1st ...

So, from the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration… Notice it expires in 3 months….hummm

Summary

 

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration.  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

 

Duration

Issued:  January 27, 2021 11:00 am
Expires:  April 30, 2021 01:00 pm

Details

  • Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest activity.  DVEs motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities.
  • Long-standing racial and ethnic tension—including opposition to immigration—has driven DVE attacks, including a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people.
  • DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.
  • DHS remains concerned that Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist groups, who committed three attacks targeting government officials in 2020, remain a threat.
  • Threats of violence against critical infrastructure, including the electric, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, increased in 2020 with violent extremists citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for their actions.
  • DHS, as well as other Federal agencies and law enforcement partners will continue to take precautions to protect people and infrastructure across the United States.
  • DHS remains committed to preventing violence and threats meant to intimidate or coerce specific populations on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, identity or political views.
  • DHS encourages state, local, tribal, and territorial homeland security partners to continue prioritizing physical security measures, particularly around government facilities, to protect people and critical infrastructure.

The Biden inaugural address included much of this language and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may be nuts but she is telling us what is really going on….this is a full blown assault on white, conservative citizens across the country…70,80, 90, 100 million people perhaps?

Do you really know the reason the National Guard is still in Washington DC? It is not so much about securing the Capitol or guarding against further protests, it is a message to the nation that you are simply no longer trusted in any form.

Further, this site wrote about pending legislation in Congress that should terrify you beyond words. As a reminder:

There have been countless hearings on The Hill in various committees where Democrats assert the deadly threats of white nationalism and systemic racism. At no time is there tangible evidence except talking points concocted by progressive think tanks and isolated cases investigated by the FBI.

There is also the ever constant issue getting very little attention and that is ‘critical race theory’. Emerging from Harvard University in the 1980’s, critical race theory came from Derrick Bell, a tenured African-American professor.

In part from the Federalist:

As such, federal employees and those who work for corporations that do business with the federal government sucked into the poisonous vortex of critical race theory can thank President Trump for ordering a stop to the promulgation of critical race theory. Thanks should also be sent to scholar Christopher Rufo, whose diligence brought the critical race theory venom to the forefront of Trump’s attention, and Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who is working to root out members of the administrative state who defy that order.

It’s important to remember that because very few of its activists have shown much sincere desire to end racism, critical race theory should not be taken entirely at face value. If a majority of its supporters were sincere, they would be willing to have fruitful discussions in a civil society that supports civil discourse. Rather, critical race theory’s agitators are committed to tearing down civil society on the pretense that it is an incubator for “systemic racism.”

If you’ve any doubt about that, consider the Smithsonian display on “whiteness” that condemned all elements of civil society, including politeness, hard work, self-reliance, logic, planning, and family cohesion. None of those are “white” values, but critical race theory frames them just so. This sort of animus proves that critical race theory “arguments” are non-starters and merely serve as convenient pretexts for power grabs.

Doused with critical race theory, the Black Lives Matter organization and its related Antifa-infused mobs are organized for the same purposes as all cult recruits: to recruit more people and to implement the desire to divide and conquer. The phenomenon can be seen as they surround people in vehicles or restaurants, demanding their victims raise a fist and recite slogans under the intense intimidation and implications of violence.

Where do you go to redress grievances? Nowhere…just behave accordingly to the Democrats…

 

Biden Admin Anti-Israel, Pro Iran

First question is where is Trita Parsi, Ben Rhodes and Ploughshares….

Those answers may be related to –>

The Department of Justice charged a political scientist and frequent contributor to left-leaning foreign policy publications and mainstream newspapers with acting as an unregistered agent for Iran, according to an announcement from federal prosecutors.

Using the guise of a free-thinking academic, Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi has since 2007 been pushing regime propaganda in publications including the New York Times, Boston GlobeWashington Post, and the Nation magazine, as well as many academic journals. Afrasiabi was formally charged on Tuesday with “acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to an indictment unsealed in a Brooklyn federal court. More details here.

So, Breitbart has published an item that details several clues that the Biden administration will be more pro Iran and anti Israel and suggests much of that is already underway. It appears that Breitbart is accurate in this assessment when one also includes the fact that John Kerry is on the Biden team and Biden has chosen Wendy Sherman to be the #2 at the State Department. Sherman was John Kerry’s right hand person during the entire Iran nuclear deal. In fact Biden’s selections for key positions at the State Department are almost all Obama re-treads.

The Deal is for Real - Defense One

Gotta wonder if any of the White House press corps will even bother to ask some hard questions of Jen Psaki…

The Lincoln Project is Not Our Ally. | by Lauren ... source

Meanwhile, we know how disgusting and nefarious the members of The Lincoln Project are….but fair warning as it appears they are the newest version of Fusion GPS…opposition research. How is that related to Iran?

The experienced political grifters who founded the Lincoln Project aren’t going to let Donald Trump’s imminent departure or the end of the 2020 U.S. election cycle impede their cash flow.

Four founding members of the controversial super PAC, which recently parted ways with cofounder John Weaver after dozens of young men accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior, are taking their talents to Israel in an effort to make money by advising one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents in the Jewish state’s upcoming elections.

The Associated Press confirmed that Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, and Reed Galen were recently hired to advise Gideon Sa’ar, a Netanyahu rival who left the Likud Party in 2019 after an unsuccessful campaign for party leadership. Sa’ar, who founded the New Hope party in December 2020, has accused Netanyahu of being too conciliatory to Palestinian interests.

Israel’s legislative elections will take place on March 23.

***

Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken a very hard stance against the nuclear deal and his opposition has been more soft on the approach. There is another fact that barely made any headlines stating that Iran is the new defacto headquarters for al Qaeda. Remember them?

Analysis: 2 wanted al Qaeda leaders operate in Iran | FDD ... source

For 37 years, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Tehran sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

In 1998, an indictment issued by a U.S. district court stated that al Qaeda had “forged alliances” with the “government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

In 2011, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Tehran regime had provided support for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

From 2011 to 2016, the Obama administration repeated in formal terrorist designations and other official statements that the Iranian regime had a “secret deal” with al Qaeda that allows the group to “to funnel funds and operatives through” Iranian territory.

Under President Obama, the Treasury and State Departments described this network inside Iran as al Qaeda’s “core facilitation pipeline,” identified its leader as Yasin al-Suri, who had been allowed by “Iranian authorities” to operate inside Iran since 2005. This month, the State Department revealed that he is still working inside Iran.

Another document seized during that raid, but not released until 2017, states that al Qaeda operatives in Iran were given “everything they needed,” including “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.”

Then, two months ago, it was revealed that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, a planner of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, had been living comfortably in Tehran, permitted to maintain a false identity as a Lebanese history professor. He was about to go somewhere in his car when assassins — presumably dispatched by Israel — ended his career.

Which raised a question: To what extent are Iran’s rulers currently enabling al Qaeda? Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provided an answer.

For the past five years, he told reporters at the National Press Club, Iran’s rulers “have provided safe haven and logistical support — things like travel documents, ID cards, passports — that enable al Qaeda activity.”

AQ leaders in Iran also are allowed to “to fundraise, to freely communicate with al-Qaeda members around the world, and to perform many other functions that were previously directed from Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

He added: “As a result of this assistance, al Qaeda has centralized its leadership inside of Tehran.”

He named and announced sanctions on two such AQ leaders, and designated three members of an al Qaeda-linked group that, he said, operates on the border between Iran and Iraq.

Most media covered Mr. Pompeo’s remarks dismissively. The Associated Press told readers that “many in the intelligence community” found Mr. Pompeo’s charges regarding the Tehran-AQ link “overblown given a history of animosity between the two.”

The New York Times accused Mr. Pompeo of “demonizing Iran,” in order to make “any effort by Mr. Biden to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal more difficult.”

And, of course, those who sympathize with Iran’s rulers were outraged. Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), asserted that Mr. Pompeo has “leaked materials to the advocacy group Foundation for Defense of Democracies aimed at supporting the claim of Iran and al Qaeda ties.”

That’s false. Beginning in 2011, colleagues at FDD worked hard to persuade the U.S. government to declassify and release primary source documents retrieved from Osama bin Laden’s villa in Pakistan. Mr. Pompeo, as CIA director, did that in 2017.

These documents are key for understanding how al Qaeda operates — in Iran and many other countries. But, as noted, the fact that AQ had an “agreement” with the Iranian regime had been revealed by the Obama administration years earlier. Why NIAC would not want additional information released I leave for you to consider.

The Obama administration ended up transferring billions of dollars to Iran’s rulers in exchange for their promise to slow-walk their nuclear program. The money was used to develop missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, establish military bases in Syria, arm Houthi rebels, attack Saudi oil facilities, and similar purposes.

And while Iran’s rulers remained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) along with our European allies, they have repeatedly violated their obligations, for example announcing this past weekend that they were preparing to produce uranium metal, which they had agreed not to do for 15 years.

France, Germany and Britain urged the theocrats to “return to compliance with their JCPOA commitments without further delay.” A prediction: Iran’s rulers will promise to do that if the price is right. But they won’t keep their promise. Because they are not with us. They are with the terrorists — including those who attacked us on 9/11. source and hat tip

 

California, the Incubation State for Federal Policy/Law

  1. There are 20 counties in California that are sanctuaries for illegal aliens.
  2. Lawmakers passed SB10 abolishing cash bail, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law in August 2018. It was supposed to take effect in October 2019, but a challenge from the bail industry blocked it pending the results of Proposition 25, a referendum to uphold the new law. The measure failed.
  3. California’s high speed rail is bankrupt and it is years away from completion. ($9.98 Billion)
  4. California paid inmates $1 Billion in fraudulent unemployment claims.
  5. California bans gas-powered passenger cars and trucks beginning in 2035. Now Massachusetts is doing the same.

There is a several lack of housing options throughout the state. Of course there is the major homeless epidemic. We cannot begin to understand the full consequence of the fires much less the fact that there are brown outs and scheduled blackouts was Pacific Gas and Electric is bankrupt.

Op-Ed: Southern California has the resources to solve ...

Did we mention water shortages? Oh, there is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) is faced with a $100 billion shortfall.

California Power Provider PG&E Files For Bankruptcy In ...

See where this is going? Now with the Biden/Harris administration….the predictions are there as spelled out the a recent LA Times op-ed.

***

After four years of being relentlessly targeted by a Republican president who worked overtime to bait, punish and marginalize California and everything it represents, the state is suddenly center stage again in Washington’s policy arena.

California is emerging as the de facto policy think tank of the Biden-Harris administration and of a Congress soon to be under Democratic control. That’s rekindling past cliches about the state — incubator of innovation, premier laboratory of democracy, land of big ideas — even as it struggles with surging COVID-19 infections, a safety net frayed by the pandemic’s toll, crushing housing costs and wildfires, all fueling an exodus of residents.

There is no place the incoming administration is leaning on more heavily for inspiration in setting a progressive policy agenda.

The revival in Washington of the California model of governance was cemented by Democrats’ recent recapture of the Senate majority, and comes after a Trump-era hiatus during which the state was road-testing ambitious new policies. Another factor: California Sen. Kamala Harris is about to become vice president.

“California has never had a Democrat on a national ticket, much less a ticket that won,” said former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. “Kamala Harris will be in all the meetings and have the last word with the president after they are over. She’ll be sharing ideas, innovations and breakthroughs from California that might help solve problems on the national level.”

Other Californians will be doing the same from Biden’s Cabinet. Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra is nominated to run the massive Health and Human Services Department. The nominee for Treasury secretary, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, is a professor at UC Berkeley, as is the nominee for Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm. Longtime California resident Alejandro Mayorkas is the nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security.

And in Congress, of course, San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi will be running point on the California agenda as House speaker.

Not that Biden needs the nudge. He’s been pushing to nationalize some of the state’s pioneering efforts on climate action, workers’ rights, law enforcement and criminal justice, healthcare and economic empowerment since he was vice president in the Obama era. He continued to champion the cause while he and Harris were still rivals in the 2020 presidential race.

The incoming administration is embracing some of California’s most pioneering initiatives, such as programs for rapidly decarbonizing the electricity grid and tuition-free college, as well as more obscure, incremental policies. Also on the new White House agenda will be measures to ban mandatory arbitration clauses in employee contracts and a revival of a “Cash for Clunkers” program aimed at providing incentives to get polluting cars off the road — signature California policies.

Even some ideas that haven’t worked out so well in California are on the national agenda now. Biden is a fierce proponent of high-speed rail, as well as new protections for gig economy workers that California voters diluted in November.

“California has this mantle of leadership, but along with that can come the stumbles of being the first adopter,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael). “It’s an innovative and imaginative place that tends to set trends and blaze trails. It’s too big and too influential not to inform our country’s policy direction going forward.”

California’s influence will be felt in how Americans power their homes and cars, and even in how they save for retirement.

California is not just about pushing the envelope, it is about tearing it apart,” said former state Senate leader Kevin de León, who helped the state implement some of the innovative ideas the incoming administration wants to pursue. “The state is full of disruptors and malcontents who are impatient and have no problem challenging the status quo.”

De León worked for years to enroll all California workers in an “auto-IRA” program that would automatically direct a small share of their earnings to a 401(k)-style savings account. He was motivated by the experience of his aunt, a housekeeper and one of the millions of Californians who was toiling in a low-wage job without any retirement safety net beyond Social Security.

“This was a woman, salt of the earth, who always worked fingers to bone,” De León said. “Yet I am her IRA, I am her pension plan. Her story is not unique. You have millions of Californians and tens of millions of Americans who are retiring into poverty.” The CalSavers program that De León was able to help create in California is a template for Biden’s agenda on retirement security.

California’s plan to remove carbon-emitting power sources from its electricity grid entirely by 2045 also inspired the incoming administration. Biden is proposing an even more aggressive timeline, looking to move the grid to zero emissions nationwide by 2035.

The state’s plan was the most ambitious of its kind when it was approved in 2018, a snub at Trump’s unrelenting push to revive demand for fossil fuels. It moved several other states to push up their decarbonization timelines. “My thinking was we had to be a beacon of hope and opportunity while Trump was trying to undo all of our policies at the national level,” De León said.

When Trump moved to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, California committed to meeting its objectives regardless, and launched a successful crusade to persuade 23 other states to do the same. Biden is now preparing to reenter the accord. California’s landmark tailpipe emissions standards that the Trump administration worked furiously to erode are again central to that effort, helping to push the nation’s vehicle fleet toward electrification.

An environmental task force set up last year with members across the Democratic Party’s spectrum — co-chaired by former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, since appointed to Biden’s Cabinet as climate envoy — urged the incoming administration to seek counsel from California. “Immediately convene California, due to its unique authority, and other states with labor, auto industry, and environmental leaders to inform ambitious actions,” the group’s report advised.

Biden’s agenda will also be informed by California’s setbacks.

The rolling blackouts the state recently endured pointed to the need for more innovation, public investment and oversight to keep pace with green-energy goals. The state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gases fell short in curbing pollution in marginalized communities, triggering protests that may have cost California’s chief air regulator a post in Biden’s Cabinet as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Likewise, the disastrous delays in delivering unemployment relief checks during the pandemic, and associated rampant levels of fraud, scuttled the Cabinet prospects of California’s labor secretary. (Biden did pick an official from the state government, Isabel Guzman, to run the Small Business Administration.)

The national movement to protect gig economy workers was dealt a damaging blow when California voters in November sided with ride-hailing companies and other technology firms, which were eager to carve big loopholes into the state’s landmark law meant to protect those workers.

Supporters of the policies say the setbacks in California are part of the road-testing. They signal to federal leaders what tweaks are needed before a national rollout.

One California policy Biden promises to replicate aims to reduce the high rate of Black women who die while giving birth or within a year of it. Though the program helped the state make significant progress driving down the overall maternal mortality rate, it didn’t narrow the racial gap. Black women still account for 40% of deaths. The Biden camp says it will propose additional actions to confront racial inequities in healthcare.

In the case of the gig worker rules California created — and which Biden favors — activists in the state are looking to the president-elect to revive protections like those undermined by Proposition 22. Robert Reich, Labor secretary in the Clinton administration, said in an email that Biden could potentially preempt California’s industry-backed initiative with federal action, a move he said would be “vitally important.”

Whether Biden will go that far is unknown. Either way, the incoming administration has made clear it is looking to California as it moves to overhaul labor rules. The state has “the nation’s foremost set of laws to protect workers,” Reich wrote. Those laws, he said, give employees more rights than anywhere else in the country on issues that include overtime, employer retaliation, wage theft, discrimination and protection from sexual harassment.

“We’ve shown you can have progressive policies and enjoy economic growth,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley.

Khanna recently touted those policies on a podcast hosted by progressive filmmaker Michael Moore. The title of the episode was notable considering that Moore savaged the Bay Area in his 1989 film “Roger and Me” as a hornet’s nest of self-indulgent liberals.

He called last month’s show “Make America California Again!”