Hard Truths is a monthly newsletter about national, state, and local issues, with some sassy personal updates from the author – Heather Schmidt, M.PA – Public Policy Consultant, Political Analyst, and Mom of Three. Beginning in Spring 2025, this newsletter will be available in audio, video, or digital print versions. Please subscribe for newsletters and other updates!
Hard Truths
January 2025
Welcome to Hard Truths: a newsletter about national, state, and local issues. It will of course include some sassy personal updates as well.
It feels as though it’s been a millennia since I last wrote a newsletter, and that isn’t a statement of me falling behind on writing this monthly post, rather how long this grueling month has lasted. In any event, it’s almost over, so let’s wrap up the month.
National Nonsense
Trump was inaugurated just a short week and a half ago, and it has been astounding (to say the least) to see the rate at which his administration is moving after four years of Joe Biden.
Irrespective of your feelings about Biden and Trump (I care for neither), Biden’s incrementalism and slowness to action never sat well with me. To make matters worse, he impressively spent a whopping 40% of his time in office on vacation. Now I’m not saying Trump is any better, I’m fairly certain he’s already gone golfing twice since the inauguration just over a week ago. Nevertheless, this pace of action and executive order has felt head spinning by comparison.
Naturally, with change has come a lot of emotion on both sides of the aisle, while I just sit and think: I told you so. And while Democrats who have spent the last four years blissfully brunching on the sidelines, making excuses and blacklisting anyone that pushed back on the Biden administration’s “status quo,” it’s interesting – at best – to see them now suddenly take stands on things they should have been speaking up on all along.
One great example is on the issue of ICE enforcement and immigration. Both Biden and Obama – the two Democratic presidents that preceded two, respective terms – deported incredible amounts of individuals here illegally, albeit less so for Biden. Obama was so effective at deportation he was named the “Deporter in Chief,” and it seems as though no on is aware that Trump’s new Border Czar was – wait for it… Obama’s as well.
Immigration – at its core – is a complicated and difficult situation to resolve. I understand fully the fear and pain families feel when they are here and then ripped apart, or deported together. But it speaks volumes when you begin to look into the immigration and asylum requirements for other Western nations, such as Canada, and learn their borders are more tightly controlled, their approvals to migrate in far more stringent than the United States’. Perhaps the first step to resolving immigration problems here in the US is to begin by electing and appointing people into government with qualifications and evidence and ideas, rather than partisan talking points and reactionary responses to news influencers that simply went viral peddling plagiarized news and misinformation.
From the Greatest State in the Nation
This last weekend, Southern California finally saw a two-day rain storm that soaked the southland and – hopefully – brought an end to our extended fire season. This was, of course, a blessing after weeks of red flag conditions, unbelievably strong Santa Ana winds, and fires the likes of which the country has never seen.
The devastation of the Palisades, Eaton, and other fires still continues to unfold. What also will unfold is the fall out: toxic ash is now settled into the ocean and our groundwater, and lawsuits have begun to hold utilities accountable – for which there is incontrovertible evidence were at fault.
My biggest concern around those fires, however, is the impact it will have on the food sources grown in and around the areas impacted by the various fires. Unlike wildfires (which are toxic in and of themselves), the vast majority of these fires burned through televisions, vehicles, fireplaces, cleaning supplies, shower curtains, clothing… What will the impacts be to the fruits and vegetables, and farm animals and farm workers, that the ash and smoke reached? Moreover: what is being done to protect the food supply from those impacts?
Just Local Stuff
Here in Oxnard, we are heading into the end of January, which means it’s time for local elected officials and candidates to file their end of year campaign statements – which will include the final bits of donation and spending prior to their elections late last year. I filed mine, and intend to provide an analysis of all campaign filings that occurred in the city. Though I will warn anyone reading this from Oxnard: I’ve already found some eye popping discrepancies and have several… questions…
But we’re also heading in to the second month in which the new city council in Oxnard has moved at a snail’s pace to address pressing issues impacting residents. Housing and homelessness in particular seems to have grown exponentially in recent weeks. Today, alone, I saw numerous tents crop up in my own neighborhood and commercial area adjacent to it, while the Commission on Homelessness continues to go unfilled. This commission has such a dearth of public interest that it hasn’t met in years due to a lack of a quorum; but I wonder if the city even wants the commission to meet because I (heavily qualified) applied and never heard back.
Councilmembers seem more concerned with bickering with each other, this making news in the Ventura County Star at least twice already. My new council representative – Councilman Aaron Starr – brings heavy drama to the new council, and seems intent on dismantling the city and leaving us in complete dysfunction and chaos. Just two months in and he’s already taken on a personal witch hunt as well of a former felon living and working at a sober living facility in our neighborhood. He’s given out the individual’s home address to dox him to people, demanded an area ordinance prohibiting felons from working in certain environments in Oxnard, and even made up stories and fabrications that open the city to liability. That situation has gotten so out of hand I even wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper; though am unsurprised to learn that it appears they’ve chosen to not print it… (I will paste it below)
Just a Bit On Me
My January has been a combination of hellish, sluggish, and stressful. Two kids are currently sick, another went into anaphylaxis the other day and we still don’t know why. This has thrust me back into trying to navigate our woeful healthcare system, where private equity has made everything more expensive and getting an appointment nearly impossible. Other than that, as the horrors persist, so do I.
Just a few more days to February. Cheers to us all for making it!
The unprinted letter:
As people are fixated on national politics, in Oxnard we have a growing issue: a city council member who seems intent on creating chaos.
Councilman Aaron Starr has been distributing flyers tantamount to a witch hunt of an individual who resides and manages a sober-living facility in our neighborhood. As a mother and resident, I share some of the concerns about this individual and his past; however, I feel the tactics Starr is taking are inappropriate. Starr – in his flyer – asked residents to come to city hall demanding an ordinance to bar violent felons from living and operating sober-living homes. Studies, however, show these are the best people to work with those trying to re-enter society. Does Councilman Starr not believe in evidence based policy making?
We were offered no facts or details about the man’s parole. We have been given no information about his life since prison.
Starr also shared the home’s address – grossly inappropriate and unethical, and something he repeated in person at the East Village Neighborhood Council meeting the following night. At that same neighborhood meeting, Starr boldly lied to an entire room of people, claiming the individual in question had come to the city council meeting, “lurked around,” and that Starr himself had to be escorted to his car in fear for his life. I was at that city council meeting, and the man was in fact not.
He was, however, at that neighborhood council meeting, and sitting right in front of Councilman Starr. Starr seemed unaware and unphased. The man was polite, signed in as all residents do, and left before the meeting ended.
A sitting council member who is a representative of the city should approach these issues with decorum, sensitivity, facts, and honesty. Not lies and chaos.
Heather Schmidt Consulting Services 
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