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 Advisor and Mom of Three.

Hard Truths

July 2025

I just posted the June newsletter about a week and a half ago, and yet it seems as though we cannot wait another minute to get into everything going on in the world and life.

National Nonsense

I fear many of you may stop at this part, because “Hard Truths” are exactly what I am about to serve.

For those tuned in to national news and media the last week or so, you know that much debate went on over Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Perhaps the most egregious part of the bill is the fact that it will increase the deficit exponentially over the next ten years, rather than what DJT campaigned on (lowering the deficit). Though, unlike the previous 5 years of spending bills, it is unlikely that it will have an overly burdensome impact on inflation given the fact that it avoids flushing the market with cash quite in the same way Cares, Cares II, and the American Rescue Plan did.

And like it or not, costs are coming down. I keep seeing politicians tweet and scream on the television that prices are up – “what does such and such have to do with the price of eggs!” and all that jazz. But inflation remains below 3% – albeit not to the Federal Reserve’s target rate just yet – and costs have come down a bit. Maybe not as much as people would like – certainly not as much as I would like; but they have stabilized and reduced in many sectors.

Even the cost of eggs.

The BBB does create a number of spending priorities that seem to check boxes on Trump’s campaign promises list, though we will see how that plays out in the next election cycle. Notably, it imposes work requirements for some recipients of welfare programming, and will cut a pretty sizable number of people off Medicaid and SNAP. But it is disingenuous – at best – to pretend like this is some new thing happening, because it’s not. If anything, it is more of the same and the cuts that happened over the last several years are what led us to this moment… laid the groundwork, you might say…

Just last year, and prior to the Trump Administration, some 25 million recipients of Medicaid lost their benefits.

During negotiations for the FY 2023-24 year budget, the Biden Administration negotiators conceded to an unprecedented number of presidential impoundments from the Inflation Reduction Act, as well. That’s because presidential impoundment is actually very legal, very valid (another lie being spewed in the media and by mainstream politicians is that impoundment is “illegal”… it is, in fact, not in some circumstances…). Many of the funds impounded – in the millions – were relative to climate change and investments from the IRA.

And this doesn’t account for many of the other downwind impacts of the Biden Administration’s terrible negotiations tactics and use of legislative appropriations to create slush funds for his construction buddies. Millions of people between 2021 and 2024 lost SNAP benefits as a bargaining chip for the CHIPS Act. Millions more became homeless due to an abject failure to provide housing protections when negotiating the Build Back Better. After lifting children and families out of poverty with the expanded Child Tax Credit for exactly one year, the Biden Administration failed to secure any renewal of that expansion – even having the majority of both houses.

I could go on.

Joe Biden isn’t the president now though, and the problems we will see in the months and years to come as a result of some – not all – of the provisions of the Big Beautiful Bill will likely cut more deeply. Some positives of the bill – like no taxes on tips OR overtime, and a six year expansion of the Child Tax Credit – may balance the scales a little. Though probably not enough to halt the further decline of the middle and working classes through out the country. It seems that was bound to happen, no matter who was in charge.

My frustration with this all really comes, though, from those of you clutching your pearls and shrieking on the Internet about THESE cuts, whilst you stayed SILENT when the SAME EXACT THINGS happened under Biden. I don’t mean to be rude, but if you are one of those folks, YOU are the problem. This again harkens back to the issue of the sign at the No Kings protest that went viral and said something to the effect of “If Kamala were president, we’d be at brunch.” Yes. You would, but people would still be suffering while you enjoyed your charcuterie plate. For many, many people, since COVID, things have just continued to get worse. The failure to recognize and validate that is why we are where we are.

From the Greatest State in the Nation

Has anyone seen our governor? Newsom seems to have forgotten he’s still got a job to do here until late next year…

Moreover, what in the world is going on with Newsom’s communications team? A couple weeks ago, they started posting some of the craziest stuff on the Internet, and while it’s toned down a little since, they still fit as many jabs in as they can, wherever they can.

The funniest were the videos that came out during the protests, riots, and ICE backlash in Los Angeles last month. Newsom’s team started posting bizarre Tik Tok videos and Tweets, including one where they read Trump’s Truth Social posts with the voice over of an evil Star Wars voice. Talk about bizarre.

We’ve all known for a long time that Trump is a master troller of the Internet, and it’s looking as though Newsom seems to have followed his lead.

Just Local Stuff

Just some snippets of local updates to share this time around:

• While the average job in Ventura County pays just $52,000 annually, the county board of supervisors decided a few weeks back to give themselves a pay hike to over $195,000.

• The City of Ventura recently passed their CARE Policy, which essentially reiterates that the city council expects the city policy and city organization to comply with state laws relative to immigration enforcement, reproductive rights, and the rights of the trans community.

• And, the Ventura County Star has still not published my letter to the editor about violations of campaign finance law here in Oxnard during last year’s elections. It’s been almost two months since I sent it to them, so evident they have no intention of publishing it. So, I guess I will share it here:

It has been six months since the new Oxnard City Council took office, including a new mayor and some elected city staff. These folks work for over 200,000 residents of our great city, and in part oversee the annual spending of millions and millions of dollars ($761.7M in FY 24-25 alone).

And still – six months in – several of them have failed to comply with state campaign finance laws, both during their elections and continued to this day.

Our new City Clerk – Lourdes “Luly” Lopez – beat the incumbent, winning 46.58% of the vote. One of the clerk’s chief tasks during the election season is to review and file campaign finance filings, and yet Lopez -herself – has yet to file the 2024 year end campaign finance requirement (Form 460), which was due this past January. 

Our new mayor – Luis McArthur, who won with 43.17% of the vote – has numerous errors over several campaign finance disclosures. An amendment filed October 31, 2024, covering the period 9/22/2024-10/19/2024, lists on 10/12/2024: “CHECK LUMP SUM -INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS” in the amount of $3,150. This is an egregious violation of campaign finance law, which requires itemization with names and amounts of each donation. This violation appears elsewhere for cash donations as well. That filing is missing several figures, but we can deduce from what is disclosed that McArthur had around $8,412 cash on hand as of that filing. The year end filing, however – which would cover any money raised or spent through the end of 2024 – states $0 received, $0 spent, and fails to disclose what cash is on hand or year end totals. 

Good governance begins with following campaign finance laws, and being transparent about who and how money was received and spent.

A Bit on Me

I don’t have many personal updates to share beyond the fact that this last week, I published a White Paper on Road Rage and recommendations for mitigation policies. If you’re into that kind of stuff, you may download and read it HERE.

To the real personal stuff though…

Many of you know I’m not just a writer, a political junkie, and a policy advisor, but my most important job of all is: Mom of 3. My oldest kids are getting older, and my youngest is still a little guy, but old enough now that the bits and pieces of postpartum that take far longer than a year or two to wear off are finally dissipating. I noticed a while ago that I no longer get phantom kicks – when a gas bubble moves around in your gut and it feels like little baby kicks. My skin is clearing up and I’m finally sleeping through the night as well (sometimes).

The really exciting update though is about my eyebrows. About a month after my now-8 year old was born, the majority of my eyebrows simply disappeared. My hair is naturally blonde already as is, so what remained were just some very light, blonde bits where once my thick, well-shaped eyebrows had been. For eight, long years, I agonized over the loss of those things, until one day earlier this summer. I was putting on some makeup for a meeting, the first day I’d worn makeup in literal weeks… and there they were. Out of nowhere, my eyebrows had returned.

Of all the things my body has managed to do in 43 years, returning my eyebrows after all these years was perhaps the most amazing.

Have a safe 4th of July!