So often, Newsom has described the president’s policies as standing in direct opposition to California’s values.

But instead, one of the most powerful politicians in the country quickly moved on from President Donald Trump and took aim at the legacy of a fellow Democrat: Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown.

“He dispatched Trump and Jerry Brown in very different ways,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. “In Trump’s case, he dismissed him.”

Newsom covered a lot of ground in his 43-minute address, from the graying of California to immigration to the blockchain.

So my colleague, Jennifer Medina, and I broke down some key takeaways. (We’ll explore more questions in the future; the state is vast and complicated, after all.)

Throwing the Brakes on High-Speed Rail?

Perhaps the most surprising news to emerge from the speech was a major reversal on one of Brown’s signature projects.

“Let’s level about high-speed rail,” Newsom said. “I have nothing but respect for Gov. Brown’s and Gov. Schwarzenegger’s ambitious vision. I share it. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.”

As an alternative, he called for finishing a bullet train route between Merced and Bakersfield. He also announced that Lenny Mendonca, his economic development director, would be the new chairman of the High-Speed Rail Authority.

“Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield and communities in between are more dynamic than many realize,” he said. “At the end of the day, transportation and economic development must go hand in hand.”

That left a lot to unpack. Initially, there was some confusion about whether Newsom was calling for abandoning the full LA-to-the-Bay route. Capital Public Radio reported that he was simply “reprioritizing.”

Regardless, Bill Whalen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who was a speechwriter for former Gov. Pete Wilson, said that in a certain way, the move was a show of the power of a leader in one of the safest political jobs in the country.

‘It was kind of, ‘Whether you like it or not,’ ” Whalen said.

And, Whalen added, charging forward on a segment of the route that has seen its share of controversy will also force Newsom’s administration to think more broadly about economic development in the Central Valley, a part of the state that hasn’t seen the kind of influx of business or wealth as cities like San Francisco or LA.

Water Fights

It wasn’t new that Newsom disagreed with his predecessor’s approach to moving water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and delivering it to users south — a complicated, controversial project involving twin tunnels.

But in Tuesday’s speech he dealt the plan a big blow.

“I do not support the twin tunnels,” Newsom said. “But we can build on the important work that’s already been done. That’s why I do support a single tunnel.”

Newsom went on to underscore the stakes by talking about access to clean drinking water, which has long been a struggle for many parts of the Central Valley, where wells that have served small, rural communities far away from larger water systems have been running dry for years.

“Just this morning, more than a million Californians woke up without clean water to bathe in or drink,” Newsom said. “This is a moral disgrace and a medical emergency.”

Housing Crisis

“California should never be a place where only the well-off can lead a good life,” Newsom said.

A nice sentiment, but as the governor pointed out, 61 percent of young adults in California say they can’t afford to live here, and housing is “perhaps our most overwhelming challenge right now.”

Placing the blame on local governments for not doing enough planning or outright refusing to build, Newsom said he was setting aside a $750 million incentive package for local communities to update their housing plans and revamp zoning procedures.

Last month the governor filed a lawsuit against the city of Huntington Beach, and Tuesday he said there were 47 other cities in the state that were not abiding by state requirements.

Whalen said that coming down on local governments — a tough proposition in a lot of states — is “a smart fight to pick.” The governor is a former mayor and is on the more popular side of that argument, he said.

Shifting Winds in Education

After Los Angeles teachers went on strike last month, attention turned to Sacramento. Now, the question is what the state will do to address what the governor called the underlying problems: “Understaffed schools, overcrowded classrooms, pension pressures, the achievement gap and charter school growth.”

“We’re still 41st in the nation in per-pupil funding,” he said. “Something needs to change. We need to have an honest conversation about how we fund our schools at a state and local level.”

But Newsom did not mention what many see as the root cause of the chronic funding crisis: Proposition 13, the state’s property tax law.

Listing charter schools among the problems was another departure from Brown’s views.

“Jerry Brown was much more favorable on charter schools,” Sonenshein said.

Newsom’s push back against charter schools aligns with a broader shift away from Democrats’ previous embraces of the charter school model.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.