DELETE me in California. Your weekly non-Beltway political stories

These are your weekly non-Beltway political stories. We’ve written a lot about Israel’s war with Hamas — and we’ll be back on the conflict next week — but for today we opted to stick with this weekly feature, where we bring you a mix of pieces with significant local, national or international importance.

But we need your help to know what we’re missing! Please keep sending your links to news coverage of political stories that are getting overlooked. (They don’t have to be from this week, and the submission link is right under this column.) Make sure to say whether we can use your first name, last initial and location. Anonymous is okay, too, as long as you give a location.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a law enabling residents to get data brokers to delete their personal information with just one request, rather than the multiple asks they had to make before. The law is known as the Delete Act.

At the Los Angeles Times, Queenie Wong noted it’s “tough for consumers to know which data brokers have their personal data, and businesses might deny a deletion request.” The law directs the California Privacy Protection Agency to make the single-request approach possible by January 2026.

“Data brokers include businesses that gather and sell people’s personal data such as addresses, spending habits and employment status. Roughly 500 data brokers are registered in California, and these businesses include everything from people-search sites to analytic firms that work with political campaigns,” Wong reported.

The politics: There are many dimensions to this, but one is that law enforcement has increasingly gone to data brokers for information they might have needed a warrant to get otherwise — but that people willingly (or unknowingly) give the brokers. Thanks to the anonymous reader who flagged this.

Weed never guessed this could happen

Vermont farmer Sam Bellevance started growing hemp — basically marijuana without the high — in 2018. Last year, after Vermont legalized the regular kind of cannabis, he planted that crop.

But then, in March, things went sideways, according to this account in Seven Days Vermont by Rachel Hellman, when he got an email from someone in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s hemp production program.

“[T]he agency representative wrote that ’regulations don’t allow for a hemp-licensee to also be producing marijuana, even if licensed to do so by a state program.’ The email said Bellavance would need to surrender either his federal hemp license or his state recreational cannabis license.”

The politics: This is a classic federalism problem. More and more states have legalized a product that remains on the same federal banned list as heroin or LSD. And complications ensue — usually financial ones.

From Colin Campbell at WUNC comes this report about North Carolina’s legislature exempting itself from the public transparency law that will still apply to the governor, mayors across the state, and agency leaders. (Thanks to reader Minta P for flagging this.)

“North Carolina law allows the public to obtain a variety of documents from state government and its elected officials. Anyone can get copies of emails sent to an elected official or access their calendar to see when they met with lobbyists,” Campbell wrote. But now “the lawmakers themselves can decide what to make public — and which documents to delete or toss in the shredder.”

The politics: Ugh, who doesn’t love less government transparency? Freedom of information laws — both federal and at the state level — are a powerful tool for unearthing bad behavior. This is a retreat from the public’s right to know.

Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, Ozempic

My colleagues Daniel Gilbert and Laura Reiley took a fascinating look at how drugs that cause weight loss, like Ozempic, “could precipitate seismic shifts not only in how Americans eat but which clothes they buy and even how much they weigh down passenger airplanes.”

“Some companies say they are already noticing a difference in how takers of these drugs shop. A Walmart executive told Bloomberg last week that the giant retailer found people taking GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy bought slightly less food than other customers. Shares of Mondelez International, maker of popular snacks like Oreos and Ritz crackers, fell 7.7% during the following two days. The Hershey Co. and PepsiCo also saw their stocks slide,” they reported.

The politics: Where economic interests are threatened — or greatly improved — you can expect to find interesting political fights. These will be worth watching for. 

See an important political story that doesn’t quite fit traditional politics coverage? Flag it for us here.

Israel says 1.1M residents must leave north Gaza Strip; Hamas says to stay

“Israel called on the entire population of the northern Gaza Strip — about 1.1 million people — to move south within the Palestinian territory within 24 hours. Israeli strikes are pounding the densely populated enclave and troops are massing nearby, ahead of an anticipated ground incursion after Hamas militants staged one of the deadliest attacks in Israeli history. Hamas described the Israeli evacuation warning as psychological warfare and urged people not to comply,” our colleagues report.

House still in search of a speaker after Scalise drops out

“House Republicans are scrambling again to find a nominee for House speaker after Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) dropped out of the race Thursday night as he struggled to round up the necessary 217 votes to get elected by the full chamber,” our colleagues report.

Follow The Post’s live coverage of the speaker search here

Lunchtime reads from The Post

How 91 felony charges boosted Trump’s standing in the GOP

“After Trump was charged with 91 felony counts in four separate cases for allegedly mishandling classified information, obstructing justice, conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and falsifying business records in connection to hush money paid to an adult-film star, the Republican Party seems more wedded to him than ever before. Trump also faces an ongoing civil trial in New York over alleged business fraud by him and his company,” Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles, Isaac Arnsdorf and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report.

• “Instead of voters turning on him because they are appalled by his behavior, fearful he would not be electable or exhausted by his perpetual drama, the indictments have boomeranged to his favor among Republicans, according to voters, polls, strategists in rival campaigns and Trump advisers.”

AI voice clones mimic politicians and celebrities, reshaping reality

“Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have made it easy to generate believable audio, allowing anyone from foreign actors to music fans to copy somebody’s voice — leading to a flood of faked content on the web, sewing discord, confusion and anger,” Pranshu Verma and Will Oremus report.

• “On Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators announced a draft bill, called the No Fakes Act, that would penalize people for producing or distributing an AI-generated replica of someone in an audiovisual or voice recording without their consent.”

How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington

“An organization backed by Silicon Valley billionaires and tied to leading artificial intelligence firms is funding the salaries of more than a dozen AI fellows in key congressional offices, across federal agencies and at influential think tanks,” Politico’s Brendan Bordelon reports.

• “The fellows funded by Open Philanthropy, which is financed primarily by billionaire Facebook co-founder and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, are already involved in negotiations that will shape Capitol Hill’s accelerating plans to regulate AI. And they’re closely tied to a powerful influence network that’s pushing Washington to focus on the technology’s long-term risks — a focus critics fear will divert Congress from more immediate rules that would tie the hands of tech firms.”

The crypto exchange moving money for criminal gangs, rich Russians and a Hamas-linked terror group

“The U.S. last year sanctioned a Moscow-based crypto exchange to stymie Russian efforts to evade the financial blockade imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. A year on, the exchange is booming,” the Wall Street Journal’s Angus Berwick reports.

• “Despite its place on the U.S. blacklist, which restricts transactions with sanctioned entities, Garantex has become a major channel through which Russians move funds into and out of the country, according to trading data and people familiar with the firm. It has also been a vehicle for Russian cybercriminals to launder their earnings, U.S. authorities say.”

U.S., Qatar agree to stop Iran from tapping $6 billion fund after Hamas attack

“U.S. officials and the Qatari government have agreed to stop Iran from accessing a $6 billion account for humanitarian assistance in light of Hamas’s attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House Democrats on Thursday, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private remarks,” Jeff Stein and Jacob Bogage report.

Biden team launches organizing pilot project in Wisconsin and Arizona

“President Biden’s reelection effort will launch a pilot test of its 2024 organizing strategy in Wisconsin and Arizona next month, hiring about two dozen staffers and opening a Milwaukee office with a new focus on digital and in-person outreach that aims to directly leverage the personal relationships of volunteers,” Michael Scherer reports.

The inflation rate, visualized

“The road to lower inflation remains a bumpy one, with prices rising 3.7 percent in September over the year before, challenging the Federal Reserve’s work to tame an overheated economy,” Rachel Siegel reports.

North Carolina was an abortion access point. Now, procedures have dropped by 30 percent.

“Abortions performed in North Carolina, once a critical access point for abortion in the South, dropped by 31 percent this past July, after the state began enforcing its 12-week abortion ban this summer, per data from the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute,” the 19th’s Shefali Luthra reports.

• “The data is the first analysis of the ban’s impact. Passed in May and enacted in July, North Carolina’s law banned most abortions for people after 12 weeks of pregnancy and added new requirements for patients, including that they make two in-person visits to a clinic separated by 72 hours.”

Trump watches while his party implodes

“Donald Trump, by all appearances, was more in sync with Rep. Jim Jordan, an outspoken Trump backer from Ohio, to be the next House Speaker. But he did not make any vigorous effort on his behalf. When the Republican conference instead gave a tepid nomination to Rep. Steve Scalise, a go-along, get-along Louisianian, Trump could have shown his clout and put Scalise in his debt by telling the GOP it was time to close ranks, especially amid war in Israel,” Politico’s John F. Harris writes.

At 12:40 p.m., Biden will depart the White House for Joint Base Andrews. He will arrive at Andrews at 1 p.m. to fly to Philadelphia.

Biden will arrive in Philadelphia at 1:45 p.m.

At 2:20 p.m., Biden will participate in a tour of Tioga Marine Terminal, where he’ll discuss his economic agenda.

Biden will depart Philadelphia, arriving in New Castle, Del., at 4:30 p.m. He will return to the White House at 8:50 p.m.

7:55 p.m.: Biden will depart New Castle, arriving at the White House at 8:50 p.m.

Hallmark, you know what you need to do

Thanks for reading. See you next week.