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JERRY FROM COLUSA ON LINE 1: Jerry Brown is never far away.
The former governor has emerged in Capitol hearings as a concerned citizen. He called into a Senate Education Committee hearing this morning to support a bill to solidify the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, a pet project he launched after leaving office in 2019. Yesterday, he
Who is Yashar Ali?
For those who have never heard of Ali, he is a 41-year-old American journalist who grew up in Oak Park, Illinois in an Iranian family. He later moved from Illinois to Los Angeles, where his career took off.
Interestingly, Ali is not Yashar s last name but his middle name, while Hedayat is his surname. He adopted Yashar Ali as his pen name because he comes from a rich and politically connected family, who faced persecution in Iran. According to a profile on him done by Buzzfeed in 2017, the adoption of the pen name was also in the effort to obscure his previous career, which included being a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and an aide to former San Francisco mayor and current California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom.