TOUGH CROWD — San Francisco is cleaning up its streets for the thousands of CEOs and dignitaries attending APEC this week, and Newsom is taking heat for it.
A selectively-cut clip of Newsom talking about the cleanup went viral in conservative circles on Monday, with critics lambasting the Democratic governor for not ridding the city of the squalor that for years has frustrated Bay Area residents. “I know folks say ‘oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ that’s true. Because it’s true,” Newsom said in the clip, which was part of a Thursday press conference highlighting a state beautification project in San Francisco. Newsom later says cleanup conversations have been happening around the state for months, independent of APEC. Nevertheless, that acknowledgement brought a rash of criticism from his foes on the right, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “They can't clean up the city for Americans, but they can clean up for Xi Jinping? It shows all you need to know about who really runs the show,” he said on X. That elicited a response from the governor’s head of communications, Anthony York, who fired back, saying “Florida Man” doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Clean California launched in 2021 and has cleaned over 3,200 encampments and removed more than 2 mil cubic yards of litter from CA roadways,” York wrote. “Not surprising that facts get short shrift [from] this 3rd tier presidential wannabe.” Chief of Staff Dana Williamson also hopped to the governor’s defense, calling criticisms of the state’s homelessness approach “fake news.” NOT YOUR MOTHER’S JETSONS — Bradley Tusk, the political strategist who helped Uber win the regulatory fight in big cities across the U.S., believes flying cars are likely to win federal approval before autonomous vehicles. You'd think this is just a pitch for his new satirical novel, "Obvious in Hindsight," about a tech startup's quest to bring flying cars to market — but Tusk notes the Federal Aviation Administration is more innovative than its Department of Transportation counterparts. "The flying car stuff has moved really fast," he said in an interview, while there's been a "federal bottleneck" in Washington over self-driving vehicles. Both former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden have sided with the powerful Teamsters union against the land-based technology. The FAA gave testing approval to a California flying car company in July that aims to have the vehicles in the sky by 2025. And during his stop at a Tesla factory in Shanghai last month, Newsom predicted a close future of "driverless flying cars." The indefinite shutdown of I-10 in Los Angeles over a storage yard fire could hasten the cause. The ensuing gridlock is a ready-made advertisement for one of the several Silicon Valley companies racing to launch flying taxis. Join Tusk and Julia Marsh, POLITICO's Editorial Director for California, at Zibby's Book Shop in Santa Monica Thursday night to discuss how a fictional campaign to legalize flying cars captures the current zeitgeist. | 
