SACRAMENTO—All state and local court employees would receive a paid holiday in celebration of California Native American Day instead of Columbus Day if a bill introduced today is approved by the Legislature and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Assemblymember James C. Ramos (D-Highland) said his measure, AB 855, makes California Native American Day, on the fourth Friday of September, a judicial holiday. Ramos’s bill swaps the present paid holiday on Columbus Day for California Native American Day. “For more than 20 years, I have worked to help create a day that recognizes the state’s first

SACRAMENTO— Assemblymember James C. Ramos (D-Highland) today introduced a measure to replace the statue of controversial Franciscan friar Junipero Serra, overturned by protestors on July 4 during demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. Because the sculpture was created pursuant to legislation, it will take another law to create a successor monument. Ramos is the first California Native American elected to the Legislature.

The bill is sponsored by six Indian tribes who live in the Sacramento region and whose ancestors populated the land where California’s capitol is located.

“It is

SACRAMENTO—Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) and Assemblymember James C. Ramos (D-Highland) today denounced the Trump administration’s-transfer of a tract of Arizona land known as Oak Flat, sacred to Apaches and numerous regional tribes, to the Anglo-Australian mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. The transfer was conducted at an accelerated pace by Trump’s U.S. Forest Service, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The text of the Rendon and Ramos letter follows:

This trade of the 2,422-acre parcel known as Oak Flat represents a betrayal of the Apache people who