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This edition of The Essentials coincides with the close of California’s 2025 legislative session and summarizes the most significant employment-related bills enacted this year. We have highlighted key provisions of the new laws taking effect in 2026 and one related to the use of artificial intelligence that took effect in October 2025.

Since returning to office in January 2025, President Trump has made broad assertions of executive authority, including the power to fire independent agency heads at will. For almost a century, these officials have been protected by law from such “without cause” removals, enjoying insulation from direct presidential control. That status quo—rooted in the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States—is on the verge of transformation. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes major changes to the Internal Revenue Code’s clean energy tax provisions, particularly to the provisions that were extended, expanded, and established as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

In many ways, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC or Commission) Fiscal Year 2026 Examination Priorities (Priorities), published on 17 November 2025 by the Division of Examinations, track the priorities of prior years, making clear that the Commission remains focused, as ever, on monitoring for risks to the investing public.