California

The fiery debate about a proposed ballot measure to tax California’s billionaires has sparked some soul-searching across the state.

While the idea of a one-time tax on more than 200 people has a long way to go before getting onto the ballot and would need to be passed by voters in November, the tempest around it captures the zeitgeist of angst and anger at the core of California. Silicon Valley is minting new millionaires while millions of the state’s residents face the loss of healthcare coverage and struggle with inflation.

Supporters of the proposed billionaire tax say it is one of the few ways the state can provide healthcare for its most vulnerable. Opponents warn it would squash the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs from the state.

The controversial measure is already creating fractures among powerful Democrats who enjoy tremendous sway in California. Progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) quickly endorsed the billionaire tax, while Gov. Gavin Newsom denounced it .

The Golden State’s rich residents say they are tired of feeling targeted. Their success has not only created unimaginable wealth but also jobs and better lives for Californians, they say, yet they feel they are being punished.

“California politics forces together some of the richest areas of America with some of the poorest, often separated by just a freeway,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “The impulse to force those with extreme wealth to share their riches is only natural, but often runs into the reality of our anti-tax traditions as well as modern concerns about stifling entrepreneurship or driving job creation out of the state.”

The state budget in California is already largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.

The tax proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it on the November ballot.

Supporters say the revenue is needed to backfill the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that President Trump signed this summer. The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, rural hospitals could shutter and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.

On social media, some wealthy Californians who oppose the wealth tax faced off against Democratic politicians and labor unions.

An increasing number of companies and investors have decided it isn’t worth the hassle to be in the state and are taking their companies and their homes to other states with lower taxes and less regulation.

“I promise you this will be the final straw,” Jessie Powell, co-founder of the Bay Area-based crypto exchange platform Kraken, wrote on X. “Billionaires will take with them all of their spending, hobbies, philanthropy and jobs.”

Proponents of the proposed tax were granted permission to start gathering signatures Dec. 26 by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

The proposal would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets, such as businesses, art and intellectual property, valued at more than $1 billion. There are some exclusions, including property.

They could pay the levy over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs and the remaining 10% would be spent on food assistance and education programs.

To qualify for the November ballot, proponents of the proposal, led by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, must gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24.

The union, which represents more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients and healthcare consumers, has committed to spending $14 million on the measure so far and plans to start collecting signatures soon, said Suzanne Jimenez, the labor group’s chief of staff.

Without new funding, the state is facing “a collapse of our healthcare system here in California,” she said.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) spoke out in support of the tax.

“It’s a matter of values,” he said on X. “We believe billionaires can pay a modest wealth tax so working-class Californians have the Medicaid.”

The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.

The debate has become a lightning rod for national thought leaders looking to target California’s policies or the ultra-rich.

On Tuesday, Sanders endorsed the billionaire tax proposal and said he plans to call for a nationwide version.

“This is a model that should be emulated throughout the country, which is why I will soon be introducing a national wealth tax on billionaires,” Sanders said on X. “We can and should respect innovation, entrepreneurship and risk-taking, but we cannot respect the extraordinary level of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility that is currently being displayed by much of the billionaire class.”

But there isn’t unanimous support for the proposal among Democrats.

Notably, Newsom has consistently opposed state-based wealth taxes. He reiterated his opposition when asked about the proposed billionaires’ tax in early December.

“You can’t isolate yourself from the 49 others,” Newsom said at the New York Times DealBook Summit. “We’re in a competitive environment. People have this simple luxury, particularly people of that status, they already have two or three homes outside the state. It’s a simple issue. You’ve got to be pragmatic about it.”

Newsom has opposed state-based wealth taxes throughout his tenure.

In 2022, he opposed a ballot measure that would have subsidized the electric vehicle market by raising taxes on Californians who earn more than $2 million annually. The measure failed at the ballot box, with strategists on both sides of the issue saying Newsom’s vocal opposition to the effort was a critical factor.

The following year, he opposed legislation by a fellow Democrat to tax assets exceeding $50 million at 1% annually and taxpayers with a net worth greater than $1 billion at 1.5% annually. The bill was shelved before the legislature could vote on it.

The latest effort is also being opposed by a political action committee called “Stop the Squeeze,” which was seeded by a $100,000 donation from venture capitalist and longtime Newsom ally Ron Conway. Conservative taxpayer rights groups such as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and state Republicans are expected to campaign against the proposal.

The chances of the ballot measure passing in November are uncertain, given the potential for enormous spending on the campaign — unlike statewide and other candidate races, there is no limit on the amount of money donors can contribute to support or oppose a ballot measure.

“The backers of this proposed initiative to tax California billionaires would have their work cut out for them,” said Kousser at UC San Diego. “Despite the state’s national reputation as ‘Scandinavia by the Sea,’ there remains a strong anti-tax impulse among voters who often reject tax increases and are loath to kill the state’s golden goose of tech entrepreneurship.”

Additionally, as Newsom eyes a presidential bid in 2028, political experts question how the governor will position himself — opposing raising taxes but also not wanting to be viewed as responsible for large-scale healthcare cuts that would harm the most vulnerable Californians.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if they qualify the initiative. There’s enough money and enough pent-up anger on the left to get this on the ballot,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor who teaches at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley.

“What happens once it qualifies is anybody’s guess,” he said.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, called Newsom’s position “an Achilles heel” that could irk primary voters in places like the Midwest who are focused on economic inequality, inflation, affordability and the growing wealth gap.

“I think it’s going to be really hard for him to take a position that we shouldn’t tax the billionaires,” said Gonzalez, whose labor umbrella group will consider whether to endorse the proposed tax next year.

California billionaires who are residents of the state as of Jan. 1 would be impacted by the ballot measure if it passes . Prominent business leaders announced moves that appeared to be a strategy to avoid the levy at the end of 2025. On Dec. 31, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel announced that his firm had opened a new office in Miami, the same day venture capitalist David Sacks said he was opening an office in Austin.

Wealth taxes are not unprecedented in the U.S. and versions exist in Switzerland and Spain, said Brian Galle, a taxation expert and law professor at UC Berkeley.

In California, the tax offers an efficient and practical way to pay for healthcare services without disrupting the economy, he said.

“A 1% annual tax on billionaires for five years would have essentially no meaningful impact on their economic behavior,” Galle said. “We’re funding a way of avoiding a real economic disaster with something that has very tiny impact.”

Palo Alto-based venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya disagrees. Billionaires whose wealth is often locked in company stakes and not liquid could go bankrupt, Palihapitiya wrote on X.

The tax, he posted, “will kill entrepreneurship in California.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office this week described 2025 as “the year that would not end.” But it has, and in its aftermath comes a slew of new laws passed that year that will affect the lives of almost every Californian.

The governor signed nearly 800 bills last year, including legislation that caps the cost of insulin, streamlines California State University admissions and temporarily allows sexual assault claims that are past the statute of limitations. He also approved legislation banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks to hide their identities during operations — a law that’s already being challenged in court by the Trump administration.

Some of the new state laws were passed years ago and are just now taking effect.

“These new laws reflect who we are: a state that protects workers, respects students, puts people before politics, and isn’t afraid to hold powerful interests accountable,” Newsom said in a Tuesday statement.

Most of the laws listed below take effect on New Year’s Day. As in years past, the list mostly reflects the interests of the Democrats who hold a supermajority in both the state Senate and Assembly and hold every statewide office in California, including the governorship.

Here are a few notable laws going into effect:

Health

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Fertility treatments: Large employer health plans will be required to cover infertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization, for everyone, regardless of marital status, gender identity or sexual orientation. “California is a proud reproductive freedom state — and that includes increasing access to fertility services that help those who want to start a family,” Newsom said after signing the bill in 2024. The governor later pushed to delay implementation of state Senate Bill 729 until 2026. IVF costs Californians an average of $24,000 out of pocket, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Newsom delivers a major announcement to lower prescription treatment costs at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in October.

(Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)

Cheaper insulin: Large group health plans must cap the out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 for a 30-day supply under SB 40. Roughly 3.5 million adults have diagnosed diabetes in California, according to the American Diabetes Assn. “Many Americans with diabetes have made the difficult decision to ration this lifesaving medication to pay for other necessities, such as groceries or rent,” said Christine Fallabel, the association’s state government affairs director, in a news release. “This legislation will provide much-needed financial relief.” California will also start selling $11 insulin pens through the state’s prescription program, CalRx, on Jan. 1.

Privacy for providers: Healthcare providers and employees affiliated with gender-affirming services can have their residential addresses withheld from certain public record requests. Assembly Bill 82 allows these providers to submit applications for increased privacy to the California secretary of state if they are experiencing harassment or violent threats due to the nature of their work. California already allows those working in reproductive healthcare to apply.

Protection for immigrants: Healthcare officials are prohibited from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace and from giving immigration authorities access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics without a search warrant or court order. The protections under SB 81 are among new laws to protect immigrants in California, Newsom said, from the “secret police” of President Trump and Stephen Miller, the White House advisor who has driven the second Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement in Democratic-led cities.

Law enforcement and legal rights

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Mask ban: Law enforcement officers must visibly display their name or badge number during operations and are also banned from wearing masks that conceal their identities while on duty, with some exceptions. SB 805 and SB 627 were introduced in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in Southern California, which in many cases were conducted by masked agents in unmarked cars. Newsom has said it’s unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets. The U.S. Department of Justice is suing California over the new laws, arguing both are unconstitutional and could put officers in danger.

Sexual assault reporting: A two-year window is opening to report sexual assault claims — cases that previously would have been barred because of the statute of limitations — against private employers or institutions that engaged in a “cover-up.” The time frame starts Jan. 1 and expires Dec. 31, 2027. AB 250 applies to those who were assaulted after age 18. The state already created an extension for child sexual assault victims in 2020. “AB 250 gives those who’ve been silenced by intimidation, shame, or institutional cover-ups another shot at justice, because survivors deserve to be heard, believed, and supported,” Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) said in October.

Amicable divorce: California couples seeking an amicable dissolution of their marriage will now have an easier, less costly way to go their separate ways. Under SB 1427, which passed in 2024, couples will be allowed to file a joint petition for dissolution of their marriage or legal separation. Until now, filing a joint petition was permitted only in limited circumstances, including when the couple had been married for fewer than five years and where their community property assets were worth less than $25,000. In all other cases, the couple had to navigate a more onerous legal process.

Consumer protections and laws

Buh-bye plastic bags: Plastic bags at grocery store checkout stands are banned under a law that was passed in 2024. Stores can offer recycled paper bags or customers can bring in their own bags. The change under SB 1053 comes almost a decade after California voters passed a statewide ballot measure that banned single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts. At many stores, those were replaced with thicker plastic carryout bags that were considered reusable and could be recycled. But in reality, many customers used them just once and tossed them.

Stanley Tang, co-founder and head of DoorDash Labs, during an unveiling event at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Sept. 29.

(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Food delivery: Food delivery services including Uber Eats, DoorDash and Postmates will be required to provide a full refund to customers if their order is not delivered, or if the wrong order is delivered. Under AB 578, food delivery services also must provide customer service support, staffed by actual people, to help resolve requests for refunds.

Rental car estimates: Rental car companies will be required to provide customers with a good-faith estimate of the total charges, including taxes and fees, when providing a price quote for a reservation. Under AB 1374, the companies also must disclose whether the vehicles are gas-powered or electric or use another fuel source.

Volume control: Video streaming services under SB 576 will be prohibited from airing advertisements that are louder than the shows or other video content they are providing. Federal law already bans that practice on broadcast stations and cable channels.

Overdraft fees: State-chartered credit unions are prohibited from charging overdraft fees exceeding $14 or the amount set by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whichever is lower. SB 1075 was passed and signed into law in 2024.

Business, workers and technology

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Minimum wage increase: The state minimum wage increases from $16.50 to $16.90 on Jan. 1. Some counties and cities, including Los Angeles, already have higher local minimum wage requirements. Workers paid less than minimum wage can file a wage theft claim with the California labor commissioner’s office. The state’s labor laws apply to workers regardless of immigration status.

New state holiday: Diwali, also known as the “Festival of Lights,” has been added to California’s official list of statewide holidays. This means public schools can close and state employees can elect to take the day off. Diwali typically occurs in late October or early November and is celebrated by members of the Hindu, Sikh and Jain faiths. It symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. AB 268 makes California the third state to recognize the holiday, following Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Deleting social media: Major social media platforms are required to provide users with a button in the account settings that allows them to delete their account — and make that button accessible on any format used to access the platform, including cellphones, computers and tablets. AB 656, passed in 2025, also requires social media platforms to delete the personal information in a user’s account when they cancel.

Protecting kids from AI: Artificial intelligence companies are required to notify users younger than 18 at least every three hours to take a break and that the chatbot is not human. They are also required to implement “reasonable measures” to prevent companion chatbots from generating sexually explicit content. SB 243 was enacted to prevent the production of suicide or self-harm content and put in protections, such as referring users to a suicide hotline or crisis text line.

AI and public safety: Large artificial intelligence companies will be required to publicly disclose their security protocols and reports of critical safety incidents. SB 53 will require companies to disclose their safety and security protocols and risk evaluations. It mandates reporting of critical incidents — such as cyberattacks or unsafe behavior by autonomous AI systems — to the state’s Office of Emergency Services. Violations of the new law can bring civil penalties of up to $1 million against companies.

Less red tape for restaurants: The approval process for independent restaurants that want to retrofit spaces is being streamlined under AB 671. “For too long, opening a restaurant in California has meant endless hurdles and frustrating delays,” said the bill’s author, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), in October. “We’re making it easier for small restaurateurs to turn their ideas into reality.”

Lyft and Uber drivers can unionize: Hundreds of thousands of ride-hail drivers can unionize and bargain collectively while still being classified as independent contractors. Wicks, who co-authored AB 1340 with Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), previously said this will allow drivers to ”bargain for better pay and protections, and help build a future where the gig economy works for the people behind the wheel.” The law was a compromise between labor groups and Silicon Valley gig economy companies.

More oil: Oil production can ramp up in Central California. SB 237 will allow up to 2,000 new wells annually in Kern County, effective through 2036. The law, which drew ire from environmentalists, is intended to prevent a spike in gas prices amid refinery closures.

Education

Cal State Fullerton in 2023.

(Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times)

Direct admissions: Public high school students who meet the California State University’s minimum eligibility requirements will be automatically admitted and able to enroll at one of 16 CSU campuses. SB 640 is intended to encourage students who are unsure about college to attend. “Being able to get that message that says, ‘Hey, you’re admitted, and you just need to submit some paperwork,’ I think it’s going to be a big boost for a lot of students,” Adrian Huerta, an associate professor and college access scholar at the USC Rossier School of Education, has said.

Gender-neutral bathrooms: All public schools in California will be required to provide at least one all-gender bathroom starting July 1. The legislation expands a decade-old law that requires K-12 schools to allow students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. SB 760 was passed in 2023. “These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities,” Newsom said in a statement when he signed the bill.

Cellphones in classrooms: Public schools are required to adopt a policy by July 1 to prohibit or limit the use of smartphones by students when they are on campus. AB 3216 leaves it up to local K-12 schools whether students should be banned from using cellphones altogether. But the law requires public schools to restrict phone use in order to “support pupil learning and well-being.”

Immigration raids: Federal immigration agents are barred from nonpublic areas of public schools unless they have a judicial warrant or court order. Under AB 49, school districts also are prohibited from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant. SB 98 also requires school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.

Antisemitism: A state Office for Civil Rights will be created to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination in California schools. AB 715 was among the most hotly contested education-related measures, spawning from dissatisfaction, largely among a coalition of Jewish groups, with the way ethnic studies have been taught in some California classrooms. On Wednesday, a federal judge in San José rejected a lawsuit filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on behalf of a group of educators and students, who challenged the law, clearing AB 715 to take effect.

Animals

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Official snake: The giant garter snake is recognized as the official snake of California. Advocates hope this recognition from SB 765 will raise awareness about the threatened species, which is found in the Central Valley and has experienced large-scale habitat destruction due to urban and agricultural development.

Paws need claws: Declawing a cat in California is now illegal unless the surgery is medically necessary. AB 867 bans the procedure, which entails amputating the first bone in each of a feline’s toes or severing the tendons. Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), the bill’s author, previously called the practice “barbaric” and inhumane.

Housing

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Faster construction: Various infrastructure projects are now exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act’s lengthy review process. This reversal from AB 130 and SB 131 has outraged environmentalists, who say it removes crucial protections for the state’s most vulnerable wildlife and communities. Proponents of the legislation argue construction must be faster and cheaper to address the state’s housing crisis.

Renter rights: Landlords must provide working stoves and refrigerators for tenants as part of new lease agreements. AB 628 also requires landlords to replace these items within 30 days if the manufacturers issue a recall. This expands on a previous law requiring buildings with dwelling units to maintain adequate heating and hot water.

Reporting from Lincoln, Calif. — Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore was riding high from his party’s recent Senate election victory in Massachusetts when he bounded into the town library here. The meeting of the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots was already buzzing over Scott Brown’s win in one of the bluest of blue states, and DeVore tried to convince them that with his consistent conservative credentials, he could take incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer.

“A sleeping giant has been awakened,” he said. “Some of you are scared. Some of you are mad as hell. . . . Times are different and we can win!”

If any major candidate should be able to marshal that sentiment in California it is DeVore, a lifetime conservative rumbler whose policy positions dovetail perfectly with the mojo of the nation’s guerrilla movement of the moment. Almost a third of Californians, according to a recent poll, identify with Tea Partiers like those at this gathering about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento; Republicans here and across the nation are salivating over the possibility of defeating their long-time Democratic nemesis, Boxer.

But serious questions remain about whether DeVore, 45, can survive the GOP primary. He has the fiscal and social credentials desired by the conservative party voters most likely to turn out in June. But, despite campaigning for more than a year, his candidacy is something of an apparition. Outside party circles and his home base of Orange County voters generally have no idea who he is, and he ended 2009 with a net $140,000 in the bank.

In a state as big as California, recognition does not come cheap. Primary opponent Carly Fiorina, a multimillionaire, has already lent her campaign $2.5 million, and former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, who jumped into the race last month, is much better known to voters because he has been in the public eye for two decades.

DeVore is counting on hard work and persistence to make up for money and name identification. Since announcing his candidacy in November 2008 he has logged more than 50,000 miles by car and air to meet with nearly 40,000 Republican voters at 239 stops up and down the state. (The candidate, an admitted wonk, logs every visit, mile and voter on a spreadsheet when he gets home to Irvine).

“Whatever the polls say four months before the primary, the strength of the volunteers backing us, the lack of any skeletal remains in my closet are going to allow me to prevail in this primary and to ultimately vanquish Barbara Boxer,” DeVore said at the January meeting of the West Valley Republican Women Federated at a diner in San Jose.

He tells voters that politicians in both parties have forgotten their duty, which he believes should be limited to securing citizens’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — “not making up new rights.”

“They make it up as they go along because they don’t have a core philosophy that guides their decisions,” DeVore said. “I have a core. It’s the Constitution, it’s the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. I don’t vary from that.”

The retired National Guardsman, Reagan White House appointee to the Pentagon and longtime legislator relishes political combat. Referring to the Senate hearing in which Boxer rebuked a brigadier general for addressing her as “ma’am” rather than “Senator” — she told him she worked hard to win her seat — DeVore pledged to call her “ma’am” every chance he could during debates.

If she objects, he told the women’s club, he will reply, “Well, then, Senator, you can call me Colonel because I worked a hell of a lot harder for that title!”

While mocking Boxer, he also criticizes his GOP primary opponents. At gatherings across the state, he paints Fiorina as a dilettante whose spotty voting record alone undermines her candidacy, and who has shifted her positions to the right on policies such as the federal economic stimulus package. He faults Campbell, who is campaigning as a fiscal conservative, for supporting temporary tax increases in recent years.

“I would argue it’s important to have some consistency in the people we trust with our vote,” DeVore said in Lincoln.

At each event, DeVore takes question after question, and he doesn’t always tell the voters what they want to hear. In Lincoln, one man said he was tired of congressional Republicans arguing they could accomplish nothing because they are in the minority. He asked DeVore how he would achieve more.

“I’m going to challenge you a bit on this, sir,” DeVore replied, before booming: “The first order of a senator is not to do something. It’s to follow the Constitution!”

DeVore’s supporters believe he is the lone candidate who would stop what they see as a growing threat to the nation’s future: ever-expanding government, deficit spending, debt to China. Their frustration that their leaders have stopped listening to them, and acting in their best interest, is palpable.

“I trusted my government,” said Ruth Crone, a Fair Oaks mother of four who attended the Lincoln Tea Party. The registered Republican said she has grown increasingly disillusioned with both her elected representatives and her party, and she supports DeVore because he understands what’s at stake. “Our individual liberties are imperiled by the financial irresponsibility” of the federal government, she said.

Zeal, however, is no guarantee of momentum.

DeVore sees a path to victory. Once primary voters tune in to the race later this year, he said, they will be turned off by the other candidates’ pasts: Campbell’s support for tax increases and Fiorina’s controversial tenure as chief of Hewlett-Packard. When he wins the primary, DeVore said, he believes the national conservative movement will financially back him much as it did Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

“Once you get past the June primary, the notoriety we’ll generate by defeating the better-known and presumably better-financed Republican — one perceived rightly as the pick of the establishment, the other a moderate who has been in favor of tax increases — I think that’s going to put us on the map,” DeVore said. “Frankly, I need that.”

While analysts predict, and polls thus far confirm, that the other candidates match up better against Boxer in the general election, he argues that Republicans would coalesce behind him because of their interest in defeating her. “That’s going to motivate a lot of people,” he said.

In every step DeVore takes, however, lies confirmation that his situation is dire.

He urges followers to attach bumper stickers to their car, noting that each one is worth $200 in paid ads. Campaign signs and T-shirts are stored in his Sacramento apartment. DeVore knows which car rental firm near the state Capitol offers the cheapest rates should he drop the car off in another city.

DeVore’s campaign staff is tiny and volunteer-driven, a shadow of Fiorina’s assembly of pollsters, media advisors and political consultants. The silver lining: The lack of bureaucracy allows DeVore’s circle to be nimble. As Brown gained steam in Massachusetts, DeVore directed his volunteers to call voters there the weekend before the election on Brown’s behalf; Campbell and Fiorina merely put out statements on election day. On Thursday, DeVore jumped on an opportunity to ambush Fiorina on a popular Southern California radio show, where he accused her of flip-flopping on the issues and tried to goad her into committing to a debate.

DeVore used to drive himself to campaign events, until his staff decided his time would be better spent in other ways, such as phone calls, interviews, Facebooking and chatting with voters on Twitter.

“I don’t know if this is going to be a waste of time at the end of the day in a state of 37 million people, or whether, relative to the large numbers of voters that we’re dealing with, whether this is a good investment of time. But what other choice do I have?” he asked. “I’m not a millionaire, and I’m not a celebrity.”

seema.mehta@latimes.com

When Virginia Guevara moved into a studio apartment in Orange County in 2024 after nearly a decade of homelessness, she needed far more than a roof and a bed.

Scattered visits to free clinics notwithstanding, Guevara hadn’t had a full medical checkup in years. She required dental work. She wanted to start looking for a job. And she was overwhelmed by the maze of paperwork needed simply to get her off the street, much less to make any of the other things happen.

But Guevara had help. The Jamboree Housing Corp., an affordable-housing nonprofit that renovated a former hotel in Stanton that Guevara now calls home, didn’t just move her in — it also provided her a fleet of wraparound services. Jamboree counselors helped Guevara navigate the healthcare system to see a doctor and a dentist, buy a few things for her apartment, and get training to become a caregiver.

“I was years on the street before I got the kind of help I needed so I could help myself,” said Guevara, 68.

Amid the Trump administration’s apparent opposition to using Medicaid funding for such social services, staffers at Jamboree and similar affordable-housing providers in California have feared losing federal money. The experimental waivers that provide the primary funding for the program expire at the end of 2026. But as it turns out, the state had the foresight several years ago to designate certain nonhousing social services — such as mental health care, drug counseling and job training — as a form of Medicaid spending that will continue to be reimbursed.

Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed that California’s use of the “in lieu of services” classification for these wraparound programs is allowed under federal regulations.

“It is starting to sound positive that we will, at the very least, be able to continue billing for these services after the waiver period,” said Natalie Reider, a senior vice president at Jamboree Housing.

During President Trump’s first term, states were permitted to use Medicaid money for social support services not typically covered by health insurance. But the second Trump administration is reeling that policy back in, saying that the intervening Biden administration took the supportive services process too far. Howden said in a statement that the policy “distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans.”

Through CalAIM, a five-year experimental build-out of the Medicaid system, programs such as Jamboree were able to leverage federal funding to offer the kinds of nonhousing social services that experts contend are essential to keeping people permanently housed.

However, these wraparound services are only one component of the CalAIM initiative, which is attempting to take Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, in a more holistic direction across all areas of care. And when CalAIM launched, California officials gave the programs the Medicaid “in lieu of services” designation, known as ILOS, in effect putting them outside the waiver process and ensuring that even when CalAIM sunsets, money for those social initiatives will continue to flow.

“California has tried to future-proof many of the policy changes it has made in Medi-Cal by including them in mechanisms like ILOS that do not require federal waiver approval,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “That allows these policy changes to continue, even with a politically hostile federal administration.”

The designation allows these social services to be funded through Medicaid managed-care plans under existing federal laws because they are cost-effective substitutes for a Medicaid service or reduce the likelihood of patients needing other Medicaid-covered healthcare services, said Glenn Tsang, policy advisor for homelessness and housing at the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The state could not provide an estimate of the annual funding for these wraparound services because they are not distinguished from other payments made to Medicaid managed-care plans.

“We are full steam ahead with these services,” Tsang said, “and they are authorized.”

Although California was the first state to incorporate the designation for such housing and other health-related social support, Tsang said, several other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York and North Carolina — are now using the mechanism in a similar fashion.

Paul San Felipe, senior program manager for Jamboree, speaks during a meeting at Clara Vista in Stanton on Dec. 29, 2025.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Early results suggest such support saves on healthcare spending. When Jamboree, MidPen Housing Corp. in Northern California, RH Community Builders in the Central Valley and other permanent supportive housing providers employ a holistic approach that includes social services, they reported higher rates of formerly homeless people remaining in housing, less frequent use of costly emergency health services, and more residents landing jobs that help them pay rent and stay housed.

At the nonprofit MidPen Housing, which serves 12 counties in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly 40% of the units in the program’s pipeline are earmarked for “extremely low-income” people, a group that includes those who are homeless, said Danielle McCluskey, senior director of resident services.

CalAIM reimbursements help fund the part of MidPen that focuses on supportive services across a wide range of experiences, such as chronic homelessness, mental health issues and those leaving the foster care system. McCluskey described it as one leg of a three-legged stool, the others being real estate development and property management.

“If any of those legs are not getting what they need, if they’re not funded or not staffed or resourced, then that stool is kind of wobbly — off-kilter,” the director said.

A recent state evaluation found that people who used at least one of the housing support services — including navigation into new housing, healthcare assistance and a deposit to secure an apartment — saw a 13% reduction in emergency department visits and a 24% reduction in inpatient admissions in the six months that followed.

Documenting those outcomes is crucial because the department needs to show federal officials that the services lessen the need for other, often costlier Medicaid-covered care — the essence of the classification.

Advocates for the inclusion of supportive services argue that the American system ultimately saves money on those investments. As California’s homeless population has soared in recent years to more than 187,000 on a given night — nearly a quarter of the U.S. total — Jamboree has been allocating more of its resources to permanent supportive housing.

Founded in 1990 in Orange County, Jamboree builds various types of affordable housing using federal, state and private funding. Reider said about a fifth of the organization’s portfolio is dedicated to permanent supportive housing.

“They’re not going back out to the streets. They’re not going to jail. They’re not going to the hospitals,” Reider said. “Keeping people housed is the No. 1 outcome, and it is the cost-saver, right? We’re using Medicaid dollars, but we’re saving the system money in the long run.”

Guevara spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. Now she also has found work as a caregiver.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Guevara, who wound up on the streets after a falling-out with family in 2015, spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. There, she was paired with a specialist to help her figure out how to get and see a doctor, and to keep up with scheduling the battery of medical tests she needed after years spent living in temporary shelters.

“I also got a job developer, who helped me get this job with the county so I can pay my rent,” Guevara said of her position as a part-time in-home caregiver. “Now I take care of people kind of the same way people have been taking care of me.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Reporting from Washington — Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) will not run for a 10th term in Congress, he announced Wednesday morning, becoming the second California Republican to retire this week as Democrats strive to retake control of the U.S. House.

On Monday, Republican Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton also announced he would not seek reelection.

Beyond shaking up the California political landscape, the two retirements are a signal that the GOP fears a Democratic wave election that could sweep them from power this fall.

Royce and Issa represent districts that are changing, with more Latino and Asian voters, and where Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Democrats have made clear their path to reclaiming the U.S. House majority must pass through Southern California, and open-seat races could make that task a bit easier. On the other hand, Republicans could recruit strong and experienced candidates who might fare better against a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, many of whom are seeking office for the first time.

With Issa’s announcement, more than 30 House Republicans have announced plans to leave Washington, and Democrats need to secure just 24 more seats to retake control.

Without incumbents in those races, it also will be more difficult for the Democrats to deploy their national strategy of tying the Republican candidate to Trump, who is widely unpopular in California.

In contrast to most of his California GOP colleagues, Issa showed a willingness to moderate his stances to placate invigorated Democrats, but perhaps found it wasn’t enough to offset his reputation as a conservative bulldog in an increasingly liberal district.

Issa, former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, won reelection in 2016 by just over half a percent — about 1,600 votes — and was widely considered the most vulnerable Republican in the House going into this year’s election. In Issa’s northern San Diego and southern Orange County district, nearly 38% of registered voters are Republicans, with 31% registered as Democrats and 26% not registered with any political party, who often lean Democratic at the polls in California.

Still, the announcement was a surprise. A source close to Issa said he was talking about his reelection campaign with friends as recently as Tuesday night. Issa’s statement on Wednesday did not say why he decided to retire, just that he had the support of family in making the decision.

“I am forever grateful to the people of San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties for their support and affording me the honor of serving them all these years,” Issa said. “Representing you has been the privilege of a lifetime.”

The richest man in Congress, Issa, 64, already had drawn a handful of well-funded Democratic opponents, including his 2016 challenger, Doug Applegate, Orange County environmental lawyer Mike Levin, San Diego real estate investor Paul Kerr and Sara Jacobs, who has drawn the endorsement of Emily’s List. Issa had $852,028 in cash on hand as of September. Levin has led in fundraising with $530,326 in the bank. Applegate and Kerr each had a bit more than $200,000.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Issa’s retirement “means we are in a strong position to elect a Democrat to the 49th District this fall.”

But the National Republican Congressional Committee said Democrats are setting themselves up for an internal fight in Issa’s 49th District, adding, “We look forward to facing whoever limps out of the Democrats’ battle royale: black and blue, and broke.”

Hours after Issa’s announcement, GOP Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside announced he would run for the seat. Other Republicans who could run in Issa’s place include Diane Harkey, chair of the state Board of Equalization and a former assemblywoman, and GOP Senate leader Pat Bates. All three represent significant portions of Issa’s district.

Analysts for Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics quickly changed their appraisal of the race from a toss-up to the “leans Democratic” category, saying Issa’s close 2016 win showed voters may be more willing to consider a Democrat. The 39th District remains a toss-up because Royce won by 15 percentage points in 2016, Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik said. At least one other prognosticator moved Royce’s district to “leans Democratic” as soon as he announced his retirement on Monday.

As chairman of the committee charged with overseeing the executive branch, Issa was known as President Obama’s toughest critic because of his aggressive pursuit of alleged fraud and abuse by the administration. It made him a hero in conservative circles, and before his narrow 2016 win, Issa had gotten at least 58% of the vote in his eight previous campaigns.

But Issa walked a shakier line with the new administration. He appeared to moderate some of his rhetoric last year. Though he insisted he had not changed, he was more willing to buck his party on important votes. He voted against the tax bill in December, saying it would harm his constituents.

For a year, hundreds of activists have appeared weekly outside Issa’s Vista office to protest. At first, Issa regularly engaged with them on the street and in town halls, but his frustrations with the ongoing protests grew and he stopped talking with them.

On Tuesday, activists with a local Indivisible group huddled under umbrellas outside Issa’s office for a premature “retirement party” for the congressman, complete with festive signs and a cake shaped like a Hawaiian shirt. The song they sang seem ominous in retrospect: “Issa, you’ll retire, your situation’s dire, we will soon replace you, never fear. Now we must report, now your time is short, Issa you’ll retire this year.”

Born in Cleveland as the second of six children in a Lebanese American family, Issa dropped out of high school at 17 to join the Army. While there, he got his GED and went on to earn degrees from Kent State University and Siena Heights College before returning to the Army as an officer.

Issa bought a struggling Cleveland electronics business in 1980 and within a decade transformed it to produce the popular Viper automobile anti-theft device, with Issa’s famous voice as the warning to would-be thieves to “stand back.” In 1986, he and his wife, Kathy, moved the business to Vista, where it continued to grow. His net worth was estimated at more than quarter of a billion in 2015, according to financial disclosures.

After years participating behind the scenes in local politics, Issa’s first foray as a candidate came in 1998 when he spent $9.8 million in the Republican primary for the chance to challenge Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat, but lost to Matt Fong. He was elected to the House in 2000 with 61% of the vote, and three years later, he spent $1.7 million to get signatures for the recall election of then-Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. He had hoped to replace Davis himself, but abruptly quit during a tearful news conference when Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race, saying he had been assured a quality candidate was running.

Assistant managing editor Christina Bellantoni contributed to this report.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

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ALSO:

California could flip the House, and these 13 races will make the difference

Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

2:50 p.m.: This article was updated with Assemblyman Rocky Chavez’s announcement that he will run for Issa’s seat.

1:30 p.m.: This article was updated with additional biographical details.

11:15 a.m.: This article was updated with more information about Issa’s district.

9:40 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information about Issa and the battle for control of the House.

This article was originally published at 8:20 a.m.

State regulators ordered Southern California Edison to identify fire risks on its unused transmission lines like the century-old equipment suspected of igniting the devastating Eaton wildfire.

Edison also must tell regulators how its 355 miles of out-of-service transmission lines located in areas of high fire risk will be used in the future, according to a document issued by the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety on Dec. 23.

State regulations require utilities to remove abandoned lines so they don’t become a public hazard. Edison executives said they did not remove the Eaton Canyon line because they believed it would be used in the future. It last carried power in 1971.

The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety said Edison must determine which unused transmission lines are most at risk of igniting fires and create a plan to decrease that risk. In some cases that might mean removing the equipment entirely.

While the OEIS report focuses on Edison, the agency said it also will require the state’s other electric companies to take similar actions with their idle transmission lines.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Monday that the company already had been reviewing idle lines and planned to respond to the regulators’ requests. He said Edison often keeps idle lines in place “to support long-term system needs, such as future electrification, backup capacity or regional growth.”

“If idle lines are identified to have no future use, they are removed,” he said.

Johnson said that since 2018, Edison has removed idle lines that no longer had a purpose seven times and provided a list of those projects.

The investigation into the cause of the Eaton wildfire by state and local fire officials has not yet been released. Edison has said the leading theory is that the dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon briefly reenergized on the night of Jan. 7, sparking the fire.

Unused lines can become energized from electrified lines running parallel to them through a process called induction.

The Eaton wildfire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes and structures in Altadena.

After the fires, Edison said it had added more grounding equipment to its old transmission lines no longer in service. The added devices give any unexpected electricity on the line more places to disperse into the ground, making them less likely to spark a fire.

The OEIS issued its latest directives after Edison executives informed the agency they had no plans to remove any out-of-service lines between now and 2028, the report said.

State regulators and the utilities have long known that old transmission lines can ignite wildfires.

The Times reported how Edison and other utilities defeated a state regulatory plan, introduced in 2001, which would’ve forced the companies to remove abandoned lines unless they could prove they would use them again.

In its report the OEIS noted it would require Edison and other electric companies to provide details of how often each idle line was inspected and how long it took to fix problems found in those inspections.

Edison has said it inspected the unused line in Eaton Canyon annually before the fire — just as often as it inspects live lines. The company declined to provide The Times with documentation of those inspections.

In the OEIS report, energy safety regulators said they expect to to approve Edison’s wildfire mitigation plan for the next three years despite the problems they found with the approach.

For example, the report noted that Edison is behind in replacing or reinforcing aging and deteriorating transmission and distribution poles. The regulators said the backlog “includes many work orders on [Edison’s] riskiest circuits.” A circuit is a line or other infrastructure that provides a pathway for electricity.

Officials said the company must work on reducing that backlog. They also criticized Edison executives for not incorporating any lessons they learned from the Jan. 7 wildfires into the company’s fire prevention plans.

Johnson, Edison’s spokesperson, said the company already improved the backlog of pole replacements. He said the company also planned to tell regulators more about the lessons it learned after the Eaton fire.

Under state law, the OEIS must approve a utility’s wildfire mitigation plan before it can issue the company a safety certificate that protects the company from liability if its equipment ignites a catastrophic fire.

The OEIS issued Edison’s last safety certificate less than a month before the Eaton fire — despite the company having had thousands of open work orders, including some on the transmission lines above Altadena, at the time.

Edison is offering to pay for damages suffered by Eaton fire victims and a handful already accepted its offers. The utility says that because it held a safety certificate at the time of the fire it expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments by a $21-billion state wildfire fund.

If that fund doesn’t cover the damages, a law passed this year enables Edison to raise its electric rates to make up the difference.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers passed laws to create the state fund and safety certificate program to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their equipment starts costly wildfires. Critics say the laws have gone too far, potentially leaving utilities financially unharmed from fires caused by their negligence.

Edison is fighting hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims of the Eaton fire. The company says it acted prudently in maintaining the safety of its system before the fire.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, told The Times this month that he believed the company had been “a reasonable operator” of its system before the fire.

“Accidents can happen,” Pizarro said. “Perfection is not something you can achieve, but prudency is a standard to which we’re held.”

SACRAMENTO — Many low-income Californians prescribed wildly popular weight-loss drugs will lose their coverage for the medications in the new year.

Health officials are recommending diet and exercise as alternatives to heavily advertised weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, advice that experts say is unrealistic.

“Of course he tried eating well and everything, but now with the medications, it’s better — a 100% change,” said Wilmer Cardenas of Santa Clara, who said his husband lost about 100 pounds over two years using GLP-1s covered by Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid.

California is joining several other states in restricting an option they say is no longer affordable as they confront soaring pharmaceutical costs and steep Medicaid cuts under the Trump administration, among other financial pressures. Despite negotiated price reductions announced in November that the White House said would “dramatically lower cost to taxpayers” for the drugs and enable Medicaid to cover them, states are going ahead with the cuts, which providers say may undermine patient health.

“It will be quite negative for our patients” because data show people typically regain weight after stopping the drugs, said Diana Thiara, medical director of the UC San Francisco Weight Management Program.

Although California and New Hampshire will not cover GLP-1 prescriptions for obesity beginning Jan. 1, they will continue to cover the drugs for other health issues, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic kidney disease.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Wisconsin are planning or considering restrictions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s most recent survey of state Medicaid programs.

That reverses a trend that saw 16 states covering the medications for obesity as of Oct. 1. Interest in providing the coverage “appears to be waning,” the survey found, probably because of the drugs’ cost and other state budget pressures. North Carolina pulled back GLP-1 coverage in October, but Gov. Josh Stein reinstated it in December, bowing to court orders despite a lingering budget shortfall.

Catherine Ferguson, vice president of federal advocacy for the American Diabetes Assn. and its affiliated Obesity Assn., said it’s unclear how states will adjust to the White House plan to lower the cost of several of the most popular GLP-1s through TrumpRx, an online portal for discounted prescription drugs. The price of Wegovy, for example, will be $350 per month for consumers, versus the current list price of nearly $1,350, and Medicare and Medicaid programs will pay $245, according to the plan.

“Many states are facing budgetary challenges, such as deficits, and are working to address the impacts of the changes to Medicaid and SNAP,” Ferguson wrote, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “As more details become available for the Administration’s agreements, we will see how state Medicaid responds.”

The Department of Health and Human Services referred questions to the White House, which did not respond to requests for comment on states’ termination of Medicaid coverage for the weight-loss drugs.

California projected its costs to cover GLP-1s for weight loss would have more than quadrupled over four years to nearly $800 million annually if it didn’t end Medi-Cal coverage for that use. Medi-Cal has covered weight-loss drugs since 2006, but use of GLP-1s soared only in recent years. By 2024, more than 645,000 prescriptions were covered by Medi-Cal across all uses of the medications. The California Department of Health Care Services could not readily provide a breakdown of whether the drugs were for weight loss or other conditions.

When asked whether the state would reconsider its plans in light of the announced price cuts, Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer said it had no plans to do so. California’s cut is written into the state’s budget law.

California officials would not say how much it could save under the TrumpRx plan, citing federal and state restrictions on disclosing rebate information.

Healthcare providers don’t expect the Trump administration’s negotiated price cuts to make much difference to consumers, because pharmaceutical companies already offer discounts.

“The out-of-pocket costs will still be very cost-prohibitive for most, especially individuals with Medicaid insurance,” Thiara said.

New Hampshire will also end its coverage Jan. 1. Officials with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

About 1 in 8 adults are taking a GLP-1 drug for obesity, disease or both, up 6 percentage points from May 2024, according to KFF poll results released in November. More than half of users said their GLP-1s were difficult to afford, and many who had stopped the treatment cited the cost.

Public and private payers have been trying to wean patients off of the drugs to save costs. California health officials said Medi-Cal members and their healthcare providers should consider “other treatment options that can support weight loss, such as diet changes, increased activity or exercise, and counseling.” That echoes advice from the New Hampshire Medicaid program.

California Department of Health Care Services spokesperson Tessa Outhyse said in an email that the official advice to try those other approaches now “is not meant to dismiss any past efforts, but to encourage Medi-Cal members to take a renewed, proactive, and medically supported approach with their healthcare provider that may appropriately include these additional options.”

But that may be unrealistic, said Kurt Hong, founding director of the Center for Clinical Nutrition at Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“We definitely want patients to do their part with the diet and exercise, but unfortunately, and from a practical standpoint, that itself frequently is not enough,” Hong said, adding that usually by the time patients see doctors, they have failed at achieving results through those means.

Hong understands why Medicaid programs, as well as private providers, want to cut back on covering the drugs, which can cost thousands of dollars per patient per year. However, they can produce twice the weight loss as the medications typically used previously, he said.

A school of medical thought supports people gradually ending their use, but Hong said obesity is generally considered a chronic condition that requires indefinite treatment.

“Once they reach their target weight, a lot of people will try to see whether or not they can wean off,” Hong said. “We do see a lot of patients — when they try to get off, unfortunately, then the weight comes back.”

Medi-Cal members younger than 21 will remain covered for purposes including weight loss, California officials said, citing a federal requirement.

Medi-Cal members will be able to keep their GLP-1 coverage if they can demonstrate it is medically necessary for purposes other than weight loss, the Department of Health Care Services said. Members who are denied coverage can seek a hearing, the department said in a letter to members.

Members will still be able to pay for the prescriptions out of pocket and may be able to use various discounts to lower costs. Another option is new pills to treat obesity, which will be cheaper than their injectable counterparts. The Food and Drug Administration approved a pill version of Wegovy on Dec. 22, which probably will cost $149 a month for the lowest dosage, and similar weight-loss pills are expected to be available in the first half of the year.

Although Cardenas said his husband, Jeffer Jimenez, 37, uses GLP-1s primarily for weight loss, Jimenez’s prescription is for diabetes, so the couple hoped to continue receiving coverage through Medi-Cal.

“He tried a thousand medications, pills, natural teas, exercise program, but it doesn’t work like the injections,” Cardenas said. “You need both.”

Thompson writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF.

The mother of a local tennis star joined Los Angeles County prosecutors on Monday in calling for stricter DUI penalties in California after they say her son was killed by a two-time drunk driver.

Braun Levi, an 18-year-old South Bay tennis standout, was struck and killed by a car in the early-morning hours of May 4 in Manhattan Beach.

According to Los Angeles County prosecutors, 33-year-old Jenia Resha Belt was behind the wheel, speeding while driving on a suspended license and with a blood alcohol level almost twice the legal limit. Belt, prosecutors say, has a previous conviction for driving drunk.

“California’s current DUI laws are broken and weak and fail to protect families like ours, and it’s devastating,” Braun’s mother, Jennifer Levi, said at a news conference Monday. “His death haunts my every breath, every day.”

Although his parents were proud of his athletic and academic achievements, they were most proud of how he treated other people, Levi said. “He had a smile for everybody. He had a heart for everybody. I miss him so much.”

In light of her son’s death, Levi said she would work with state Sen. Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera), whose granddaughter died after being hit by a drunk driver last year, to write and pass a bill that will restructure the state’s DUI penalty laws and requirements, she said.

“The feeling, the sight, the smell of identifying our son’s body will never leave my mind, body or soul, so I will not be silent,” she said.

The SoCal athlete, who died a month before his high school graduation after entering the top national ranks in boys tennis, is part of a larger trend of DUI-related deaths over the last 15 years, according to a CalMatters investigative series that L.A. Dist. Atty. Nathan J. Hochman referenced.

Roadway deaths have been steadily rising since 2010, partially due to repeat drunk drivers and people driving over the speed limit, CalMatters reported. Alcohol-related deaths have increased by 50% over the last decade, according to the investigation.

“Braun should be home right now from his first semester at UVA, spending the holidays with his family, their first as a family still displaced by the Palisades fire,” said Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes Pacific Palisades.

“He should be planning his future, not being remembered for the way his life was taken from him.”

California’s DUI laws, although considered to be nation-leading in the 1980s, have fallen behind the curve, Hochman said.

Hochman warned drivers, especially ahead of the New Year’s Day holiday, that his office would continue to charge them — and potentially those who over-serve alcohol at bars or parties — with serious crimes.

“We are here to prevent crimes and send crystal clear messages to would-be drunk and drug drivers, to people who want to engage in excessive speed on our roads: We will come after you,” Hochman said, calling the issue a “fight for people’s lives.”

Belt is charged with second-degree murder, felony gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and a misdemeanor count of driving with a suspended license after a DUI. She is being held on $2-million bail and faces life in prison if convicted.

Belt’s arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 13.

Reporting from Washington — A bank has seized a Tulare County dairy farm owned by Rep. David Valadao and his family to resolve more than $8 million in loans that have not been repaid, according to court documents.

In November, agriculture lender Rabobank sued Triple V Dairy in Fresno County Superior Court alleging failure to repay loans for cattle and feed totaling about $8.3 million. The Republican congressman is named in the suit along with his wife, four other family members, two other farms and 50 unnamed defendants. Also listed in the suit is a separate farm owned by the family, Lone Star Dairy, in which the congressman has no stake.

Both sides agreed March 28 to hand control of the farm over to the bank until it is sold. The bank appointed a local business owner to oversee the daily operations of the farm and began to sell off livestock and farming equipment to settle the debt.

“Like so many family dairy farms across the country, burdensome government regulations made it impossible for the operation to remain open,” Valadao said in a statement. “While this has been an especially difficult experience, I remain hopeful that sharing my story will help those going through similar situations.”

The next court session in the case is scheduled for July 16.

House rules prohibit Valadao from having an active role in the day-to-day operations of the farm, which was largely managed by his brothers. Valadao lives near Hanford on the property of Valadao Dairy, which is managed by his father and is not involved in the lawsuit.

According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s annual summaries, almost 36% of dairy farms in California shut down between 2001 and 2017. In the last five years, at least 50 dairies in Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties have closed.

Valadao grew up in the dairy business and in 1992 became a partner in the family’s Central Valley dairy. Working on local agricultural interests through the California Milk Advisory Board and the Western States Dairy Trade Assn. spurred an interest in politics, and Valadao was elected to Congress after serving in the state Assembly.

Valadao’s stake in the Triple V and Valadao dairies has consistently made him one of the poorest members of Congress. According to his annual financial disclosure report, Valadao’s stake in each dairy is worth between $1 million and $5 million, but lines of credit against the farms and equipment give him an estimated net worth of negative $17.5 million.

Valadao is currently seeking a fourth term representing the 21st Congressional District, which stretches across rural portions of Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties.

The latest from Washington »

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WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of federal immigration judges in California have been fired, retired or quit since the start of the Trump administration.

The reduction follows a trend in immigration courts nationwide and constitutes, critics say, an attack on the rule of law that will lead to yet more delays in an overburdened court system.

The reduction in immigration judges has come as the administration scaled up efforts to deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump administration officials have described the immigration court process, in which proceedings can take years amid a backlog of millions of cases, as an impediment to their goals.

Nationwide, there were 735 immigration judges last fiscal year, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that houses immigration courts. At least 97 have been fired since President Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges.

California has lost at least 35 immigration judges since January, according to Mobile Pathways, a Berkeley-based organization that analyzes immigration court data. That’s down from 132. The steepest drop occurred at the San Francisco Immigration Court, which has lost more than half its bench.

“A noncitizen might win their case, might lose their case, but the key question is, did they receive a hearing?” said Emmett Soper, who worked at the Justice Department before becoming an immigration judge in Virginia in 2017. “Up until this administration, I had always been confident that I was working in a system that, despite its flaws, was fundamentally fair.”

The administration intends to fill some judge positions, and in new immigration judge job listings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere seeks candidates who want to be a “deportation judge” and “restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”

The immigration judges union called the job listings “insulting.”

Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that he was elected to “remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that.”

“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he added.

The National Assn. of Immigration Judges said it expects a wave of additional retirements at the end of this month.

“My biggest concern is for the people whose lives are left in limbo. What can they count on when the ground is literally shifting every moment that they’re here?” said Amber George, who was fired last month from the San Francisco Immigration Court. “Our government institutions are losing their legitimacy.”

Because immigration courts operate under the Justice Department, their priorities typically shift from one presidential administration to the next, but the extreme changes taking place have renewed longtime calls for immigration courts to become independent of the executive branch.

The Trump administration recently added 36 judges; 25 of them are military lawyers serving in temporary positions.

This summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice. That took place after the department changed the requirements for temporary immigration judges, removing the need for immigration law experience.

The Department of Justice did not respond to specific questions, but said judges must be impartial and that the agency is obligated to take action against those who demonstrate systemic bias.

Former judges say that, because terminations have happened with no advance notice, remaining court staff have often scrambled to get up to speed on reassigned cases.

Ousted judges described a pattern: In the afternoon, sometimes while presiding over a hearing, they receive a short email stating that they are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. Their names are swiftly removed from the Justice Department website.

Jeremiah Johnson is one of five judges terminated recently from the San Francisco Immigration Court.

Johnson said he worries the Trump administration is circumventing immigration courts by making conditions so unbearable that immigrants decide to drop their cases.

The number of detained immigrants has climbed to record levels since January, with more than 65,000 in custody. Immigrants and lawyers say the conditions are inhumane, alleging medical neglect, punitive solitary confinement and obstructed access to legal counsel. Requests by immigrants for voluntary departure, which avoids formal deportation, have surged in recent months.

Many of those arrests have happened at courthouses, causing immigrants to avoid their legal claims out of fear of being detained and forcing judges to order them removed in absentia.

“Those are ways to get people to leave the United States without seeing a judge, without due process that Congress has provided,” Johnson said. “It’s a dismantling of the court system.”

A sign posted outside the San Francisco Immigration Court in October protests enforcement actions by immigration agents. The court has lost more than half of its immigration judges.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

The judges in San Francisco’s Immigration Court have historically had higher asylum approval rates than the national average. Johnson said grant rates depend on a variety of circumstances, including whether a person is detained or has legal representation, their country of origin and whether they are adults or children.

In November, the military judges serving in immigration courts heard 286 cases and issued rulings in 110, according to Mobile Pathways. The military judges issued deportation orders in 78% of the cases — more often than other immigration judges that month, who ordered deportations in 63% of cases.

“They’re probably following directions — and the military is very good at following directions — and it’s clear what their directions are that are given by this administration,” said Mobile Pathways co-founder Bartlomiej Skorupa. He cautioned that 110 cases are a small sample size and that trends will become clearer in the coming months.

Former immigration judges and their advocates say that appointing people with no immigration experience and little training makes for a steep learning curve and the possibility of due process violations.

“There are multiple concerns here: that they’re temporary, which could expose them to greater pressure to decide cases in a certain way; and also they lack experience in immigration law, which is an extremely complex area of practice,” said Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at UCLA.

Immigration courts have a backlog of more than 3 million cases. Anam Petit, who served as an immigration judge in Virginia until September, said the administration’s emphasis on speedy case completions has to be balanced against the constitutional right to a fair hearing.

“There are not enough judges to hear those cases, and this administration [is] taking it upon themselves to fire a lot of experienced and trained judges who can hear those cases and can mitigate that backlog,” she said.

Complementary bills introduced in the U.S. Senate and House this month by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) would prevent the appointment of military lawyers as temporary immigration judges and impose a two-year limit of service.

“The Trump administration’s willingness to fire experienced immigration judges and hire inexperienced or temporary ‘deportation judges,’ especially in places like California, has fundamentally impacted the landscape of our justice system,” Schiff said in a statement announcing the bill.

The bills have little chance in the Republican-controlled Congress but illustrate how significantly Democrats — especially in California — oppose the administration’s changes to immigration courts.

Former Immigration Judge Tania Nemer, a dual citizen of Lebanon and the U.S., sued the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi this month, alleging that she was illegally terminated in February because of her gender, ethnic background and political affiliation. In 2023, Nemer ran for judicial office in Ohio as a Democrat.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, seen here at the White House in October, has dismissed complaints by a former immigration judge who alleged she was fired without cause.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Bondi addressed the lawsuit in a Cabinet meeting.

“Most recently, yesterday, I was sued by an immigration judge who we fired,” she said Dec. 2. “One of the reasons she said she was a woman. Last I checked, I was a woman as well.”

Other former judges have challenged their terminations through the federal Merit Systems Protection Board.

Johnson, of San Francisco, is one of those. He filed his appeal this month, claiming that he was not given cause for termination.

“My goal is to be reinstated,” he said. “My colleagues on the bench, our court was vibrant. It was a good place to work, despite all the pressures.”

Reporting from Sacramento — As a new poll found a majority of California voters want to repeal increases to the state’s gas tax and vehicle fees, Gov. Jerry Brown has begun campaigning to preserve them, arguing the sacrifice is needed to fix long-neglected roads and bridges and improve mass transit.

Repeal of the higher taxes and fees was supported by 51% of registered voters in the state, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll.

The survey found 38% of registered voters supported keeping the higher taxes, 9% hadn’t heard enough to say either way and 2% said they wouldn’t vote on the measure.

The results bode well for a measure that Republican members of Congress hope to place on the November statewide ballot that could boost turnout of GOP voters by offering the chance to repeal the gas tax increase, said Bob Shrum, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

“If it qualifies for the ballot it will be, I suspect, very hard to sustain it,” Shrum said of the tax. “It’s almost dead.”

At issue is Senate Bill 1, approved by the Legislature and governor in April 2017. It raised the gas tax by 12 cents per gallon, boosted the diesel fuel tax by 20 cents per gallon and increased vehicle fees. The new charges will raise $5.4 billion annually for road and transit projects.

In launching a campaign to preserve the taxes, Brown has come out swinging, calling the proposed repeal initiative “devious and deceptive” in a speech Friday to Southern California transportation leaders.

“The test of America’s strength is whether we defeat this stupid repeal measure, which is nothing more than a Republican stunt to get a few of their losers returned to Congress, and we’re not going to let that happen,” Brown told the transportation officials at Union Station in Los Angeles.

The California Transportation Commission has so far allocated $9.2 billion for transportation projects throughout California as a result of SB 1.

The governor’s comments drew a sharp rebuke as “disgraceful name-calling” from Carl DeMaio, a Republican leader of the initiative drive who is a former member of the San Diego City Council.

The poll results are encouraging, he said.

New poll finds a volatile race for second place »

“It just goes to show you that in order for Gov. Jerry Brown and his backers to prevail in keeping the tax in place they are going to have to pull out all stops, and the level of dishonesty is going to be breathtaking,” DeMaio said.

The governor and other supporters of the tax “might have a chance” to succeed, Shrum said, if they make the question about safe bridges, fixing the state’s crumbling roads and boosting the economy.

That is the tactic that seems to be emerging.

Caltrans officials held a news conference Tuesday in Oxnard to announce $68.6 million in SB 1 funds to build an overpass for Rice Avenue over busy rail tracks.

The project will end delays as cars wait for trains to pass and make safer an intersection that has been identified as one of the most dangerous in the state, officials said.

Brown had planned to attend the Oxnard event, but his flight from Sacramento was delayed. The governor plans similar events throughout the state, aides said, and he made his case to reporters in a conference call.

“It’s great to recognize this, one of many projects that SB 1 is going to finance,” Brown said. “It’s going to save lives. It’s going to make commuting and traveling easier and safer.”

That supporters of the tax are addressing voters outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco is also noteworthy. The poll found only 44% of voters in Los Angeles want to repeal the tax, but the number goes to 55% in the suburbs, 56% in the state’s Central Valley and 64% in Orange and San Diego counties and the Inland Empire.

Shrum said supporters of the tax should be concerned about the level of opposition by voters, including the poll findings that half of Latino voters want to repeal the taxes. “That’s not a promising number, given you have to use a Democratic base” to mount a campaign to keep the tax, he said.

“If Democrats are going to save this they are going to have to spend a lot of money,” Shrum added.

Coverage of California politics »

Hoping to boost turnout of GOP voters, Republican leaders providing major funding of the repeal initiative include House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, who, because he is poised to be the next speaker, has a lot on the line when it comes to who controls Congress.

The campaign against the initiative is backed by a coalition of deep-pocketed big businesses that often align with Republicans to fight higher taxes, and it also has support from labor, law enforcement and cities.

The “Fix Our Roads” coalition fighting repeal includes the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the Bay Area Council, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the League of California Cities, the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California and the California Assn. of Highway Patrolmen.

A political committee set up to fight any attempt to repeal the gas tax has raised more than $1 million so far.

The poll did not shake the confidence of anti-repeal coalition leader Michael Quigley, executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs.

“This campaign will be about whether voters want to rip away thousands of local projects, whether they want unsafe, congested roads, and whether they want to let partisan politicians take us backward,” Quigley said.

The governor’s leading role could help to keep the gas tax on the books, but his ability to assist is limited, said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist and consultant to the poll. “The governor’s numbers aren’t what they used to be.”

The poll found that 48% of voters approved of the job Brown has done and 40% disapproved.

The online survey was conducted from April 18 to May 18 and included 691 registered voters. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Jill Darling, survey director of the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research, contributed to this report.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Twitter: @mcgreevy99

UPDATES:

10:15 a.m.: This article was updated with revised figures from state officials who reported that the California Transportation Commission has allocated a total of $9.2 billion from SB 1 funds for transportation projects.

This article was originally published at 12:05 a.m.

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc.

ALSO

Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

2 p.m.: This article was updated to clarify that Fight Back California is targeting 30,000 voters in each of the seven districts.

This article was originally published at 3 a.m.

What comes next is a mystery, but I’d like to share a note of appreciation as 2025 fades into history.

If you came to Greater Los Angeles from Mexico, by way of Calexico, Feliz Navidad.

If you once lived in Syria, and settled in Hesperia, welcome.

If you were born in what once was Bombay, but raised a family in L.A., happy new year.

I’m spreading a bit of holiday cheer because for immigrants, on the whole, this has been a horrible year.

Under federal orders in 2025, Los Angeles and other cities have been invaded and workplaces raided.

Immigrants have been chased, protesters maced.

Livelihoods have been aborted, loved ones deported.

With all the put-downs and name-calling by the man at the top, you’d never guess his mother was an immigrant and his three wives have included two immigrants.

President Trump referred to Somalis as garbage, and he wondered why the U.S. can’t bring in more people from Scandinavia and fewer from “filthy, dirty and disgusting” countries.

Not to be outdone, Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem proposed a travel ban on countries that are “flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.”

The president’s shtick is to rail mostly against those who are in the country without legal standing and particularly those with criminal records. But his tone and language don’t always make such distinctions.

The point is to divide, lay blame and raise suspicion, which is why legal residents — including Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo — have told me they carry their passports at all times.

In fact, thousands of people with legal status have been booted out of the country, and millions more are at risk of the same fate.

In a more evolved political culture, it would be simpler to stipulate that there are costs and benefits to immigration, that it’s human nature to flee hardship in pursuit of better opportunities wherever they might be, and that it’s possible to enact laws that serve the needs of immigrants and the industries that rely on them.

But 2025 was the year in which the nation was led in another direction, and it was the year in which it became ever more comforting and even liberating to call California home.

The state is a deeply flawed enterprise, with its staggering gaps in wealth and income, its homelessness catastrophe, housing affordability crisis and racial divides. And California is not politically monolithic, no matter how blue. It’s got millions of Trump supporters, many of whom applauded the roundups.

But there’s an understanding, even in largely conservative regions, that immigrants with papers and without are a crucial part of the muscle and brainpower that help drive the world’s fourth-largest economy.

That’s why some of the state’s Republican lawmakers asked Trump to back off when he first sent masked posses on roundups, stifling the construction, agriculture and hospitality sectors of the economy.

When the raids began, I called a gardener I had written about years ago after he was shot in the chest during a robbery attempt. He had insisted on leaving the hospital emergency room and going back to work immediately, with the bullet still embedded in his chest. A client had hired him to complete a landscaping job by Christmas, as a present to his wife, and the gardener was determined to deliver.

When I checked in with the gardener in June, he told me he was lying low because even though he has a work permit, he didn’t feel safe because Trump had vowed to end temporary protected status for some immigrants.

“People look Latino, and they get arrested,” he told me.

He said his daughter, whom I’d met two decades ago when I delivered $2,000 donated to the family by readers, was going to demonstrate in his name. I met up with her at the “No Kings” rally in El Segundo, where she told me why she wanted to protest:

“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said.

Mass deportations would rip a $275-million hole in the state’s economy, critically affecting agriculture and healthcare among other industries, according to a report from UC Merced and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

“Deportations tend to raise unemployment among U.S.-born and documented workers through reduced consumption and disruptions in complementary occupations,” says a UCLA Anderson report.

Californians understand these realities because they’re not hypothetical or theoretical — they’re a part of daily life and commerce. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s residents believe that immigrants benefit California “because of their hard work and job skills,” says the Public Policy Institute of California.

I’m a California native whose grandparents were from Spain and Italy, but the state has changed dramatically in my lifetime, and I don’t think I ever really saw it clearly or understood it until I was asked in 2009 to address the freshman convocation at Cal State Northridge. The demographics were similar to today’s — more than half Latino, 1 in 5 white, 10% Asian and 5% Black. And roughly two-thirds were first-generation college students.

I looked out on thousands of young people about to find their way and make their mark, and the students were flanked by a sprinkling of proud parents and grandparents, many of whose stories of sacrifice and yearning began in other countries.

That is part of the lifeblood of the state’s culture, cuisine, commerce and sense of possibility, and those students are now our teachers, nurses, physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs and tech whizzes.

If you left Taipei and settled in Monterey, said goodbye to Dubai and packed up for Ojai, traded Havana for Fontana or Morelia for Visalia, thank you.

And happy new year.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Justice Department counterpart from “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses across Northern California, teeing up an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial deportation tactics.

“This circumstance presents noncitizens in removal proceedings with a Hobson’s choice between two irreparable harms,” Judge P. Casey Pitts wrote in his Christmas Eve decision.

“First, they may appear in immigration court and face likely arrest and detention,” the judge wrote. “Alternatively, noncitizens may choose not to appear and instead to forego their opportunity to pursue their claims for asylum or other relief from removal.”

Wednesday’s decision blocks ICE and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review from lying in wait for asylum seekers and other noncitizens at routine hearings throughout the region — a move that would effectively restore pre-Trump prohibition on such arrests.

“Here, ICE and EOIR’s prior policies governing courthouse arrests and detention in holding facilities provide a standard,” the judge said.

Authorities have long curbed arrests at “sensitive locations”— such as hospitals, houses of worship and schools — putting them out of reach of most civil immigration enforcement.

The designation was first established decades ago under ICE’s predecessor agency, Immigration and Naturalization Services. ICE absorbed the prohibitions when the agency was formed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Courts were added to the list under President Obama. The policy prohibiting most courthouse arrests was suspended during the first Trump administration and reinstated by President Biden.

Internal ICE guidance from the Biden era found “[e]xecuting civil immigration enforcement actions in or near a courthouse may chill individuals’ access to courthouses and, as a result, impair the fair administration of justice.”

Nevertheless, the agency’s courthouse policy was reversed again earlier this year, leading to a surge in arrests, and a staggering drop in court appearances, court records show.

Most who do not show up are ordered removed in absentia.

Monthly removal in absentia orders more than doubled this year, to 4,177 from fewer than 1,600 in 2024, justice department data show.

More than 50,000 asylum seekers have been ordered removed after failing to appear in court hearings since January — more than were ordered removed in absentia in the previous five years combined.

“ICE cannot choose to ignore the ‘costs’ of its new policies—chilling the participation of noncitizens in their removal proceedings —and consider only the policies’ purported ‘benefits’ for immigration enforcement,” Pitts wrote in his stay order.

That ruling likely sets the San Francisco case on a collision course with other lawsuits seeking to curb ICE’s incursions into spaces previously considered off-limits. This suit was brought by a group of asylum seekers who braved the risk and were detained when they showed up to court.

One, a 24-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker named Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, was spared detention only because her breastfeeding 11-month-old was with her in court, records show. Administration lawyers told the court ICE would almost certainly pick her up at her next hearing.

Such arrests appear arbitrary and capricious, and are unlikely to survive scrutiny by the courts, Judge Pitts ruled Wednesday.

“That widespread civil arrests at immigration courts could have a chilling effect on noncitizens’ attendance at removal proceedings (as common sense, the prior guidance, and the actual experience in immigration court since May 2025 make clear) and thereby undermine this central purpose is thus ‘an important aspect of the problem’ that ICE was required, but failed, to consider,” Pitts wrote.

A district judge in Manhattan ruled the opposite way on a similar case this fall, setting up a possible circuit split and even a Supreme Court challenge to courthouse arrests in 2026.

For now, the Christmas Eve decision only applies to ICE’s San Francisco Area of Responsibility, a region encompassing all of Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield.

The geographic limit comes in response to the Supreme Court’s emergency decision earlier this year stripping district judges of the power to block federal policies outside narrowly-tailored circumstances.

The administration told the court it intends to appeal to the 9th Circuit, where Trump-appointed judges have swung the bench far to the right of its longtime liberal reputation.

Dec. 24 (UPI) — High winds, torrential rains and localized river flooding could make the Christmas holiday particularly challenging across much of Southern California.

A storm system is forecast to bring between 4 and 7 inches of rainfall to valleys and coastal areas located south of Santa Barbara County’s Point Conception on Thursday and Friday before dissipating on Saturday, KTLA reported.

Further east in San Bernardino County, heavy rainfall caused flash flooding and debris fields early Wednesday.

The potential for heavy rainfall and localized flooding caused the National Weather Service in Los Angeles-Oxnard to issue a flash flood warning for Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties from 4:02 a.m. to noon PST on Wednesday.

“Turn around, don’t drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles,” NWS forecasters said. “Be especially cautious at night when it is harder to recognize the dangers of flooding.”

NWS forecasters also advise holiday travelers and others to be aware of their surroundings and to avoid driving on flooded roads.

“In hilly terrain, there are hundreds of low water crossings, which are potentially dangerous in heavy rain. Do not attempt to cross flooded roads. Find an alternate route,” NWS forecasters advised.

Small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses are particularly vulnerable to flash flooding, according to the NWS. So are low-lying areas and others with poor drainage.

“Some locations that will experience flash flooding include: Santa Barbara, Lompoc, Santa Ynez, Montecito, Point Conception, Carpinteria, Solvang, Isla Vista, El Capitan State Beach, Refugio State Beach, Highway 101 through Gaviota State Park, Summerland, Rincon Point, La Conchita, Goleta, Buellton, Lake Cachuma, Highway 154 over San Marcos Pass, Santa Barbara Airport and Hope Ranch,” NWS forecasters warned.

Areas north of Point Conception are expected to get between 2 and 4 inches of rainfall in coastal and valley areas and between 4 and 7 inches in foothills and mountains through Friday.

Those south of Point Conception are expected to see heavier rainfall amounts of between 4 and 7 inches in coastal and valley areas and between 6 and 14 inches in foothills and mountains through Friday.

Heavy rainfall would become especially dangerous and destructive in local burn areas, where flooding and debris flows are more likely.

The rainfall could be accompanied by strong and gusty southeast and south winds on Wednesday and Thursday, with gusts of between 60 and 80 mph predicted across Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, in the Ventura and Los Angeles mountains and Antelope Valley.

Winds gusting to between 35 and 55 mph are predicted in other areas, and high wind warnings and wind advisories remain in effect until the storm system passes on Saturday.

Last February, I climbed into a Jeep and rumbled up a rocky shelf road that took me high above a breathtaking corner of the Mojave National Preserve. At the top was an old gold mine where an Australian company had recently restarted activities, looking for rare earth minerals.

The National Park Service had been embroiled in a years-long dispute with the company, Dateline Resources Ltd., alleging that it was operating the Colosseum Mine without authorization and had damaged the surrounding landscape with heavy equipment. Dateline said it had the right to work the mine under a plan its prior operators had submitted to the Bureau of Land Management decades before.

President Trump had taken office just weeks before my visit. Environmentalists told me the conflict posed an early test of how his administration would handle the corporate exploitation of public lands.

At the time, observers weren’t sure how things would shake out. Conserving public lands is one of the rare issues that’s popular on both sides of the political aisle, they pointed out.

Almost a year later, it’s clear that the Trump administration has sided with the corporations.

Trump directed the Department of Interior to inventory mineral deposits on federal lands and prioritize mining as the primary use of those lands. He instructed officials to dramatically fast-track permitting and environmental reviews for certain types of energy and critical minerals projects — and designated metallurgical coal a critical mineral, enabling companies that mine it to qualify for a lucrative tax credit.

His budget bill lowered the royalty rates companies must pay the government to extract coal, oil or gas from public lands and provided other financial incentives for such projects while reducing the authority of federal land managers to deny them.

Under the president’s direction, the DOI has opened up millions of acres of federal land to new coal leasing and moved to rescind both the 2021 Roadless Rule, which protects swaths of national forest lands from extractive activities by barring most new road construction, and the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which puts conservation and restoration on par with other uses of BLM land like mining, drilling and grazing.

The administration is seeking to roll back limitations on mining and drilling for specific pieces of public land, including portions of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the watershed feeding the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and a buffer surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers overturned management plans limiting energy development on certain BLM lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Altogether, the Trump administration and its legislative allies have taken steps to reduce or eliminate protections for nearly 90 million acres of public land, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. That figure rises to more than 175 million acres if you include the habitat protections diminished by the administration’s moves to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the organization notes.

“All of these things represent in some ways the largest attack on our public lands and giveaway to large multinational mining corporations that we’ve seen probably since the 19th century,” said U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, who likened the level of resource exploitation to “something like what happened during the robber baron era when there was no regulation or protection for our communities or the environment.”

Stansbury has introduced legislation that would increase the fees mining companies must pay to sit on speculative claims on federal lands and require those funds be used for conservation. She told me it’s just a tiny contribution to a larger effort to push back against the administration’s approach to initiate extraction on public lands, which she described as so frequent and pervasive that “it’s a bit like whack-a-mole.”

“So much damage has been done, both administratively and legislatively, over the last 11 months since Trump took office,” she said.

As for the Colosseum Mine, the DOI sided with its operators back in the spring, saying Dateline Resources did not have to seek authorization from the Park Service to keep mining. The announcement was followed by public endorsements from Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The company’s stock value soared, and by September, it had kicked off a major drilling blitz.

The company has already uncovered high-grade gold deposits. It’s taking a break for Christmas, but is expected to resume drilling in the new year.

More recent land news

The Pacific Forest Trust returned nearly 900 acres of land near Yosemite National Park to the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation in a transfer partially financed by the state, reports Kurtis Alexander of the San Francisco Chronicle. Members of the Indigenous group were forced off their ancestral lands during the California Gold Rush, when state-sponsored militias undertook efforts to exterminate them. Some now hope the new property will bolster their decades-long push for federal recognition.

California State Parks is violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing offroaders to drive over dunes that are home to western snowy plovers, a judge recently ruled in a long-running legal case over the use of Oceano Dunes State Recreation Area along the Central Coast. Edvard Pettersson of the Courthouse News Service reports that State Parks will need a federal “take” permit to continue to allow offroading at the popular beachside spot.

California lawmakers introduced legislation to conserve more than 1.7 million acres of public lands across the state, in part by expanding the Los Padres National Forest and the Carrizo Plain National Monument, according to Stephanie Zappelli of the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The federal public lands grazing program was created as a bulwark against environmental damage but has been transformed into a massive subsidy program benefiting a select few, including billionaire hobby ranchers and large corporations, according to an investigation by ProPublica and High Country News. The three-part series also found a loophole allowing for the automatic renewal of grazing permits has led to less oversight over the health of these lands.

A few last things in climate news

President Trump’s media company is merging with a nuclear fusion energy firm in a $6-billion deal that some analysts have described as a major conflict of interest, my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reports.

House Republicans pushed through a bill that would overhaul the federal environmental review process in a way that critics say could speed up the approval process for oil and gas projects while stymieing clean energy, report Aidan Hughes and Carl David Goette-Luciak of Inside Climate News.

The iconic chasing-arrows recycling symbol is likely to be removed from California milk cartons, my colleague Susanne Rust reports. The decision exposes how used beverage packaging has been illegally exported to East Asia as “recycled” mixed paper, violating international environmental law.

Wind energy is again under attack from the Trump administration, which this week ordered all major wind construction projects to halt. As The Times’ Hayley Smith notes, the White House has been consistent in slowing down clean energy development in 2025, but offshore wind has been a particular bête noire for the President.

We’ve published a comprehensive collection of stories looking back on the wildfires that burned though Altadena and Pacific Palisades last January and all that’s happened since, which columnist Steve Lopez calls “one of the most apocalyptic years in Southern California history.” Check out After the Fires here.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Four years ago, California startup Theta Labs’ cryptocurrency was soaring, and its future appeared bright when it landed a partnership with pop star Katy Perry.

The Bay Area company had built a marketplace for digital collectibles known as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, and had teamed up with Perry to launch NFTs tied to her Las Vegas concert residency. Its THETA token jumped by more than 500% in early 2021, reaching a peak of more than $15, making it one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies. Later in the year, the spotlight shone on the company when it announced the Perry partnership.

“I can’t wait to dive in with the Theta team on all the exciting and memorable creative pieces, so my fans can own a special moment of my residency,” Perry said in a June 2021 news release.

Today, like many cryptocurrencies, THETA is 95% off its 2021 peak. It took a hit this week after former executives accused it of manipulating markets to dupe consumers into buying its products. On Tuesday, it was trading at less than 30 cents.

Two former executives from Theta Labs sued the startup, alleging in separate lawsuits that the company and its chief executive, Mitch Liu, engaged in fraud and manipulated the cryptocurrency market for his benefit. Liu retaliated against them after the employees refused to engage in deceptive business practices and raised concerns, the lawsuits say.

Some of the alleged misconduct involved placing fake bids on Perry’s NFTs, engaging in token “pump and dump” schemes and using celebrity endorsements and “misleading” partnerships with high-profile companies such as Google to deceive the public, according to the December lawsuits filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Perry is not accused of any wrongdoing in the suit, and Theta denies the charges.

The lawsuits against Theta Labs are the latest controversy to rattle an industry beset by scandals.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed, and its founder, Samuel Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 after being found guilty of multiple fraud charges. Binance founder and former Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao also got prison time after he pleaded guilty to violating money laundering laws, but President Trump pardoned him this year.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission previously charged celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and Ne-Yo for promoting crypto without disclosing they were paid to do so.

Theta Labs created a network that rewarded people with cryptocurrency for contributing spare bandwidth and computing power to enhance video streaming and lower content delivery costs. The company describes Theta Network as a “blockchain-powered decentralized cloud for AI, media and entertainment.” The network has two tokens: THETA, used to secure the network, and TFUEL, used to pay users for services and power operations.

The whistleblowers suing Theta Labs are Jerry Kowal, its former head of content, and Andrea Berry, previously the company’s head of business development.

“Liu used Theta Labs as his personal trading vehicle, perpetrating fraud, self-dealing, and market manipulation,” said Mark Mermelstein, Kowal’s attorney, in a statement. “His calculated ‘pump-and-dump’ schemes repeatedly wiped out employee and investor value. This suit is about demanding accountability and proving no one is above the law.”

Theta, Liu and its parent company, Sliver VR Technologies, deny the allegations and “intend to prove with evidence the fallacy of the stories being told in the lawsuits,” according to Kronenberger Rosenfeld, the law firm representing the defendants. The lawsuits are an attempt to paint the company in a negative light in hopes of securing a settlement, a lawyer for the firm said.

Kowal has sued his former employers before. In 2014, he accused Netflix of spreading false claims that he stole confidential information and Amazon of wrongful termination.

The latest lawsuits allege that Liu profited from buying and selling THETA tokens using insider knowledge about partnerships with celebrities, studios and others in the entertainment industry.

“Liu’s true motive in pursuing such partnerships was not to develop a sustainable content business but to generate publicity that could be used to artificially inflate token prices for Liu’s personal gain,” Kowal’s lawsuit says.

Kowal worked for Theta from 2020 to 2025.

In 2020, Liu traded and sold tokens knowing that the company would close a content licensing deal with MGM Studios, according to the lawsuit. After the deal’s announcement, THETA token’s market capitalization increased by more than $50 million in just 24 hours, the lawsuit says.

When NFTs started to take off in 2021, Kowal closed deals with high-profile partners such as Perry, Fremantle Media and Resorts World Las Vegas for the startup’s NFT marketplace.

As part of the deal with Perry, the singer received $8.5 million and additional warrants for the right to license her image and likeness for the NFTs.

To inflate the price and demand for these digital collectibles, Liu allegedly made bids on NFTs and directed employees to do the same. This led to people overpaying for the Perry NFTs.

Representatives for Perry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Multiple examples of alleged manipulation are outlined in the lawsuits. In one instance from 2022, the startup launched a new token called TDROP that employees also received as part of a bonus.

Liu gained control of 43% of the supply of the cryptocurrency, according to Kowal’s lawsuit. When the TDROP token reached a high, he then sold the token, and its price collapsed by more than 90% within months.

Berry’s lawsuit also alleges that Theta Labs announced “misleading” or fake partnerships with high-profile companies such as Google and entities including NASA to pump up the value of the THETA token. Theta paid for Google Cloud products but claimed it was a partner when it was a Google customer, according to the lawsuit.

California milk cartons may lose their coveted recycling symbol, the one with the chasing arrows, potentially threatening the existence of the ubiquitous beverage containers.

In a letter Dec. 15, Waste Management, one of the nation’s largest waste companies, told the state the company would no longer sort cartons out of the waste stream for recycling at its Sacramento facility. Instead, it will send the milk- and food-encrusted packaging to the landfill.

Marcus Nettz, Waste Management’s director of recycling for Northern California and Nevada, cited concerns from buyers and overseas regulators that cartons — even in small amounts — could contaminate valuable material, such as paper, leading them to reject the imports.

The company decision means the number of Californians with access to beverage carton recycling falls below the threshold in the state’s “Truth in Recycling” law, or Senate Bill 343.

And according to the law, that means the label has to come off.

The recycling label is critical for product and packaging companies to keep selling cartons in California as the state’s single-use packaging law goes fully into effect. That law, Senate Bill 54, calls for all single-use packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. If it isn’t, it can’t be sold or distributed in the state.

The labels also provide a feel-good marketing symbol suggesting to consumers the cartons won’t end up in a landfill when they’re discarded, or find their way into the ocean where plastic debris is a large and growing problem.

On Tuesday, the state agency in charge of waste, CalRecycle, acknowledged Waste Management’s change.

In updated guidelines for the Truth in Recycling law, recycling rates for carton material have fallen below the state threshold.

It’s a setback for carton manufacturers and their customers, including soup- and juice-makers. Their trade group, the National Carton Council, has been lobbying the state, providing evidence that Waste Management’s Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station successfully combines cartons with mixed paper and ships it to Malaysia and other Asian countries including Vietnam, proving that there is a market. The Carton Council persuaded CalRecycle to reverse a decision it made earlier this year that beverage cartons did not meet the recycling requirements of the Truth in Recycling law.

Brendon Holland, a spokesman for the trade group, said in an email that his organization is aware of Waste Management’s decision, but its understanding is that the company will now sort the cartons into their own dedicated waste stream “once a local end market is available.”

He added that even with “this temporary local adjustment,” food and beverage cartons are collected and sorted in most of California, and said this is just a “temporary end market adjustment — not a long-term shift away from historical momentum.”

In 2022, Malaysia and Vietnam banned imports of mixed paper bales — which include colored paper, newspapers, magazines and other paper products — from the U.S. because they were so often contaminated with non-paper products and plastic, such as beverage cartons. Waste Management told The Times on Dec. 5 that it has a “Certificate of Approval” by Malaysia’s customs agency to export “sorted paper material.” CalRecycle said it has no regulatory authority on “what materials may or may not be exported.”

Adding the Sacramento facility to the list of waste companies that were recycling cartons meant that the threshold required by the state had been met: More than 60% of the state’s counties had access to carton recycling.

At the time, CalRecycle’s decision to give the recycling stamp to beverage cartons was controversial. Many in the environmental, anti-plastic and no-waste sectors saw it as a sign that CalRecycle was doing the bidding of the plastic and packaging industry, as opposed to trying to rid the state of non-recyclable, polluting waste — which is not only required by law, but is something state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is investigating.

Others said it was a sign that the Truth in Recycling law was working: Markets were being discovered and in some cases, created, to provide recycling.

“Recyclability isn’t static, it depends on a complicated system of sorting, transportation, processing, and, ultimately, manufacturers buying the recycled material to make a new product,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste.

He said this new information, which will likely remove the recycling label from the cartons, also underscores the effectiveness of the law.

“By prohibiting recyclability claims on products that don’t get recycled, SB 343 doesn’t just protect consumers. It forces manufacturers to either use recyclable materials or come to the table to work with recyclers, local governments and policymakers to develop widespread sustainable and resilient markets,” he said.

Beverage and food cartons — despite their papery appearance — are composed of layers of paper, plastic and sometimes aluminum. The sandwiched blend extends product shelf life, making it attractive to food and beverage companies.

But the companies and municipalities that receive cartons as waste say the packaging is problematic. They say recycling markets for the material are few and far between.

California, with its roughly 40 million residents, has some of the strictest waste laws in the nation. In 1989, the state passed legislation requiring cities, towns and municipalities to divert at least 50% of their residential waste away from landfills. The idea was to incentivize recycling and reuse. However an increasing number of products have since entered the commercial market and waste stream — such as single use plastics, polystyrene and beverage cartons — that have limited (if any) recycling potential, can’t be reused, and are growing in number every year.

Fines for municipalities that fail to achieve the required diversion rates can run $10,000 a day.

As a result, garbage haulers often look for creative ways to deal with the waste, including shipping trash products overseas or across the border. For years, China was the primary destination for California’s plastic, contaminated paper and other waste. But in 2018, China closed its doors to foreign garbage, so U.S. exporters began dumping their waste in smaller southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and Vietnam.

They too have now tried to close the doors to foreign trash as reports of polluted waterways, chokingly toxic air, and illness grows — and as they struggle with inadequate infrastructure to deal with their own domestic waste.

Jan Dell, the founder and CEO of Last Beach Cleanup, released a report with the Basel Action Network, an anti-plastic organization, earlier this month showing that the Sacramento facility and other California waste companies were sending bales of carton-contaminated paper to Malaysia, Vietnam and other Asian nations.

According to export data, public records searches and photographic evidence collected by Dell and her co-authors at the Basel Action Network, more than 117,000 tons or 4,126 shipping containers worth of mixed paper bales were sent by California waste companies to Malaysia between January and July of this year.

Dell said these exports violate international law. A spokesman for Waste Management said the material they were sending was not illegal — and that they had received approval from Malaysia.

However, the Dec. 15 letter suggests they were receiving more pushback from their export markets than they’d previously disclosed.

“While certain end users maintain … that paper mills are able to process and recycle cartons,” some of them “have also shared concerns … that the inclusion of cartons … may result in rejection,” wrote Nettz.

Dell said she was “pleased” that Waste Management “stopped the illegal sortation of cartons into mixed paper bales. Now we ask them and other waste companies to stop illegally exporting mixed paper waste to countries that have banned it.”

In 2013, before the Affordable Care Act helped millions get health insurance, California’s Placer County provided limited healthcare to some 3,400 uninsured residents who couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

For several years, that number has been zero in the predominantly white, largely rural county stretching from Sacramento’s eastern suburbs to the shores of Lake Tahoe.

The trend could be short-lived.

County health officials there and across the country are bracing for an estimated 10 million newly uninsured patients over the next decade in the wake of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The act, which President Trump signed into law this summer, is expected to reduce Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over that period.

“This is the moment where a lot of hard decisions have to be made about who gets care and who doesn’t,” said Nadereh Pourat, director of the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at UCLA. “The number of people who are going to lose coverage is large, and a lot of the systems that were in place to provide care to those individuals have either gone away or diminished.”

It’s an especially thorny challenge for states such as California and New Mexico where counties are legally required to help their poorest residents through what are known as indigent care programs. Under Obamacare, both states were able to expand Medicaid to include more low-income residents, alleviating counties of patient loads and redirecting much of their funding for the patchwork of local programs that provided bare-bones services.

Placer County, which estimates that 16,000 residents could lose healthcare coverage by 2028, quit operating its own clinics nearly a decade ago.

“Most of the infrastructure that we had to meet those needs is gone,” said Rob Oldham, Placer County’s director of health and human services. “This is a much bigger problem than it was a decade ago and much more costly.”

In December, county officials asked to join a statewide association that provides care to mostly small, rural counties, citing an expected rise in the number of uninsured residents.

New Mexico’s second-most populous county, Doña Ana, added dental care for seniors and behavioral health benefits after many of its poorest residents qualified for Medicaid. Now, federal cuts could force the county to reconsider, said Jamie Michael, Doña Ana’s health and human services director.

“At some point we’re going to have to look at either allocating more money or reducing the benefits,” Michael said.

Straining state budgets

Some states, such as Idaho and Colorado, abandoned laws that required counties to be providers of last resort for their residents. In other states, uninsured patients often delay care or receive it at hospital emergency rooms or community clinics. Those clinics are often supported by a mix of federal, state and local funds, according to the National Assn. of Community Health Centers.

Even in states like Texas, which opted not to expand its Medicaid program and continued to rely on counties to care for many of its uninsured, rising healthcare costs are straining local budgets.

“As we have more growth, more people coming in, it’s harder and harder to fund things that are required by the state Legislature, and this isn’t one we can decrease,” said Windy Johnson, program manager with the Texas Indigent Health Care Assn. “It is a fiscal issue.”

California lawmakers face a nearly $18-billion budget deficit in the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to the latest estimates by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently acknowledged he’s mulling over a White House run, has rebuffed several efforts to significantly raise taxes on the ultrawealthy. Despite blasting the bill passed by Republicans in Congress as a “complete moral failure” that guts healthcare programs, the Democrat this year rolled back state Medi-Cal benefits for seniors and for immigrants without legal status after rising costs forced the program to borrow $4.4 billion from the state’s general fund.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Finance, said that the Newsom administration is still refining its fiscal projections and that it would be premature to discuss potential budget solutions.

Newsom will unveil his initial budget proposal in January. State officials have said California could lose $30 billion a year in federal funding for Medi-Cal under the new law, as much as 15% of the state program’s entire budget.

“Local governments don’t really have much capacity to raise revenue,” said Scott Graves, a director at the independent California Budget & Policy Center with a focus on state budgets. “State leaders, if they choose to prioritize it, need to decide where they’re going to find the funding that would be needed to help those who are going to lose healthcare as a result of these federal funding and policy cuts.”

Reviving county-based programs in the near term would require “considerable fiscal restructuring” through the state budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in an October report.

No easy fixes

It’s unclear how many people are enrolled in California’s county indigent programs, because the state doesn’t track enrollment and utilization. But enrollment in county health safety net programs dropped dramatically in the first full year of Affordable Care Act implementation, going from about 858,000 people statewide in 2013 to roughly 176,000 by the end of 2014, according to a survey at the time by Health Access California.

“We’re going to need state investment,” said Michelle Gibbons, executive director of the County Health Executives Assn. of California. “After the Affordable Care Act and as folks got coverage, we didn’t imagine a moment like this where potentially that progress would be unwound and folks would be falling back into indigent care.”

In November, voters in affluent Santa Clara County approved a sales tax increase, in part to backfill the loss of federal funds. But even in the home of Silicon Valley, where the median household income is about 1.7 times the statewide average, that is expected to cover only a third of the $1 billion a year the county stands to lose.

Health advocates fear that, absent major state investments, Californians could see a return to the previous patchwork of county-run programs, with local governments choosing whom and what they cover and for how long.

In many cases, indigent programs didn’t include specialty care, behavioral health or regular access to primary care. Counties can also exclude people based on immigration status or income. Before the ACA, many uninsured people who needed care didn’t get it, which could lead to them winding up in emergency rooms with untreated health conditions or even dying, said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.

Rachel Linn Gish, interim deputy director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group, said that “it created a very unequal, maldistributed program throughout the state.”

“Many of us,” she said. “including counties, are reeling trying to figure out: What are those downstream impacts?”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF, the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

California joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia Monday in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being defunded and closed by the Trump administration.

The legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore. accuses Acting Director Russell Vought of trying to illegally withhold funds from the agency by unlawfully interpreting its funding statute. Also named as defendants are the agency itself and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“For California, the CFPB has been an invaluable enforcement partner, working hand-in-hand with our office to protect pocketbooks and stop unfair business practices. But once again, the Trump administration is trying to weaken and ultimately dismantle the CFPB,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a press conference to announce the 41-page legal action.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established by Congress in 2010 after the subprime mortgage abuses that gave rise to the financial crisis, the agency is funded by the Federal Reserve as a method of insulating it from political pressure.

The Dodd-Frank Act statute requires the agency’s director to petition for a reasonable amount of funding to carry out the CFPB’s duties from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to this year that was interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s gross revenue. But an opinion from the Department of Justice claims that should be interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s profits, of which it has none since it has been operating at a loss since 2022. The lawsuit alleges the interpretation is bogus.

“Defendant Russell T. Vought has worked tirelessly to terminate the CFPB’s operations by any means necessary — denying Plaintiffs access to CFPB resources to which they are statutorily entitled. In this action, Plaintiffs challenge Defendant Vought’s most recent effort to do so,” the federal lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the agency will run out of cash by next month if the policy is not reversed. Bonta said he and other attorney generals have not decided whether they will seek a restraining order or temporary injunction to change the new funding policy.

Prior to the second Trump administraition, the CPFB boasted of returning nearly $21 billion to consumers nationwide through enforcement actions, including against Wells Fargo in San Francisco over a scandal involving the creation of accounts never sought by customers.

Other big cases have been brought against student loan servicer Navient for mishandling payments and other issues, as well as Toyota Motor Credit for charging higher interest rates to Black and Asian customers.

However, this year the agency has dropped notable cases. It terminated early a consent order reached with Citibank over allegations it discriminated against customers with Armenian surnames in Los Angeles County.

It also dropped a lawsuit against Zelle that accused Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks of rushing the payments app into service, leading to $870 million in fraud-related losses by users. The app denied the allegations.

Monday’s lawsuit also notes that the agency is critical for states to carry out their own consumer protection mission and its closure would deprive them of their statutorily guaranteed access to a database run by the CFPB that tracks millions of consumer complaints, as well as to other data.

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to reduce the size and power of the federal bureaucracy during a second Trump admistration. In February, he ordered the agency to stop nearly all its work and has been seeking to drastically downsize it since.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest legal effort to keep the agency in business.

A lawsuit filed in February by National Treasury Employees Union and consumer groups accuses the Trump administration and Vought of attempting to unconstitutionally abolish the agency, created by an act of Congress.

“It is deflating, and it is unfortunate that Congress is not defending the power of the purse,” said Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, during Monday’s press conference.

“At other times, Congress vigilantly safeguarded its authority, but because of political polarization and fear of criticizing this President, the Congress is not doing it,” he said.

Nothing but dirt and dry, brown chaparral rolled beneath skis and snowboards dangling from a chairlift at Big Bear Mountain Resort on Friday, as forlorn adventure seekers joked they should rename the place “Big Bare.”

Unseasonably high temperatures even left the impressive array of high-tech artificial-snow makers below mostly useless, their fans spinning idly in the warm breeze.

“The word I’ve been using is “abysmal,” said Cameron Miniutti, 29, who was riding the lift in a light cotton shirt, with the hot sun glinting off his ski goggles. “This is, for sure, the toughest start [to a season] I’ve seen.”

Similarly bleak panoramas can be found at ski areas across the American West so far this year, but especially in California, where a wet November gave way to one of the driest Decembers in recent memory.

People visit Big Bear Village on Sunday, with no snow in sight.

As of Friday, the state had only 12% of the snow that’s normal for this time of year, and only 3% of what water managers hope for in an average year, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Which is why water managers — and skiers — are hoping for a Christmas miracle as an enormous atmospheric river takes aim at California this week. The soaking rains may threaten coastal cities with flash floods and nightmarish traffic, but they promise sweet relief for snow-starved thrill seekers from Lake Tahoe to the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California.

Mammoth Mountain, the tallest commercial ski resort in California, could get up to 7 feet of snow this week, according to On the Snow, a website that tracks conditions at ski areas.

Resorts on the north end of Lake Tahoe could see up to 5 feet, and even Big Bear could get 3 feet, assuming the temperature stays below freezing, according to the website.

That’s important to everyone, even nonskiers, because roughly a third of the water California relies on each year for drinking, farming and fighting wildfires accumulates as snow in the mountains during the winter and then gradually melts through the spring and summer, when the state can otherwise be bone dry.

Many California ski areas were forced to delay opening this year, and even those that got the lifts spinning have had to confine skiers to only a handful of runs, often on man-made snow.

That has been this case at Big Bear, where a thin strip of artificial snow snakes from the 8,440 top of the Bear Mountain Express chairlift to the base at just over 7,000 feet. While crews worked diligently to rake the fake snow over exposed rocks and patches of bare dirt on Friday, skiers and boarders scraped by like traffic on the 405 Freeway.

“It’s crazy,” Miniutti said, “I mean, I can’t even imagine what this is like on a weekend.”

And the range of abilities of people crammed onto the same run creates its own, unique kind of “obstacle course,” Miniutti said.

You have to concentrate on not crashing into people in front of you — many of whom are absolute beginners, tumbling to the snow for no apparent reason — while praying the very good skiers and snowboarders you can hear racing up behind you will somehow avoid mowing you down.

People ski and snowboard at Big Bear Mountain Resort on man-made snow on Sunday.

“There’s, like, the best snowboarders in the world and people on their first day right next to each other,” Miniutti said.

But under the circumstances, Miniutti had nothing but admiration for the mountain staff for keeping the run open despite the seemingly impossible weather.

“I’m still having a blast,” he said, “it’s absolutely worth coming up.”

Devon James, 24, from Pasadena, felt the same way. He was warm in long sleeves, which he took to wearing after wiping out in short sleeves a week ago and “getting cut up.”

One day lift tickets at Big Bear cost more than $150 this season. At fancier resorts, like Mammoth Mountain, they can easily climb to more than $200 per day. So most serious skiers buy season passes for just under $1,000 that are good at many mountains across the country and around the world.

But that means they feel compelled to get their days in, no matter the conditions.

“I mean, that’s kind of the whole game, right,” James laughed. “I’ve got to get at least eight or nine days to get back to even.”

Skiers and snowboarders navigate bare areas at Big Bear Mountain Resort.

Miniutti, who is originally from Massachusetts, and learned to snowboard on the freezing, icy hills of New England, still prefers the alpine experience on the West Coast.

Even when there are legitimate winter conditions at Big Bear, he loves hopping in his car at the end of the day and driving home to Los Angeles, where it’s seemingly always 70 degrees and sunny.

“I can’t really beat that,” he said, “I’m not complaining.”

SACRAMENTO — I’ve got a wish list for Santa and it’s topped by this urgent request: a remodeled president with at least an ounce of humanity and humility.

Maybe a Ronald Reagan type. I’m not referring here to ideology or policies. Just common decency, someone who acts presidential.

I know, forget it. That’s beyond Santa’s reach. It would require a miracle. And that’s not likely to happen with President Trump, who seems increasingly to be auditioning for the devil’s disciple.

But you’d think as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, America could be led by a president who at minimum doesn’t publicly trash the newly deceased.

Someone who follows the basic rules of good behavior and respect for others that our mothers taught us.

For Trump, the Golden Rule seems to be only about cheapening the historic Oval Office with tasteless gilded garnishments, turning it into an extension of his Mar-a-Lago resort. That’s what you’d expect from someone who would pave over the lovely Rose Garden.

But I’ve gotten off the point: the despicable way our unhinged president treats people he deems the enemy because they’ve criticized him, as we’ve got a right and often a duty to do in a democratic America.

What our president said about Rob Reiner after the actor-director-producer and his wife Michele were brutally stabbed to death in their Brentwood home, allegedly by their son Nick, should not have shocked us coming from Trump.

After all, this is a guy who once said that the late Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over North Vietnam, tortured, maimed and held captive for five years, was “not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured.”

He also once mocked a disabled New York Times reporter at a campaign rally, saying: “The poor guy, you ought to see this guy.” Then Trump jerked his arms around imitating someone with palsy.

He frequently attacks female reporters for their looks.

Recently, he called all Somali immigrants “garbage. … We don’t want them in our country.” As for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a onetime Somalian refugee, “she’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

But even with Trump’s sordid history of insults and insensitivity, what he disrespectfully said about Reiner was stunning. He implied that the Hollywood legend was killed by someone angered by Reiner’s criticism of Trump. Again, everything’s all about him, in this egotistical president’s mind.

Trump said the Reiners died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

Then the next day, he doubled down, telling reporters that Reiner “was a deranged person. … I thought he was very bad for our country.”

Topping off the holiday season for Trump, he orchestrated the renaming of Washington’s classy John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself. From now on, it’s to be called the Trump Kennedy Center.

What’s next? The Washington National Cathedral?

OK, next on my Santa’s wish list is a governor who spends his last year in office trying to improve California rather than his presidential prospects. Actually, he could do the latter by doing the former: making this state a better place to live and proving his ability to sensibly govern.

Too many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s projects fall flat, collapse or are a waste of energy and dollars.

One recently announced Newsom venture particularly is questionable. He seems to be using state resources and tax money to expand his overdone war with Trump rather than helping Californians with their everyday lives.

The governor unveiled a new state-run website that tracks what his office calls Trump’s “criminal cronies.” It catalogs major criminal convictions that were followed by Trump pardons — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business tycoons.

Yeah, well, so what? I suppose some people may be interested in that. But at taxpayers’ expense? Will the information lower gas prices? Make it easier to buy a home? Pay for childcare?

Here’s just one example of a Newsom program that failed miserably:

Early in his administration the governor announced with great fanfare that he was increasing fees on telephone service to pay for upgrading California’s 911 emergency communication system. The state spent $450 million, couldn’t make the new stuff work and abandoned the project, the Sacramento Bee reported after a lengthy investigation. Now they’re apparently going to start all over.

A little hands-on supervision by the governor next time could help.

Also on my wish list: A Legislature that doesn’t hibernate through the winter and wait until late spring before starting to push bills.

They’d need to change legislative rules. But Democrats with their supermajorities could do practically anything they wanted — even work earnestly during the cold months.

Either that or just stay home.

Included in the gift package: Legislation focused more on quality and less on quantity. This year, the Legislature passed 917 bills. My guess is that 100 meaty measures would have sufficed.

There’s one more item on my Santa list that all of America needs: A new casual greeting to replace “How ya doing?”

Nobody really wants to hear how most people are doing and they probably don’t want to candidly say anyway — not in an elevator, on the sidewalk or in a restaurant.

“Bad stomach flu,” I might honestly answer. You really want to hear that while chomping on a hamburger.

So, what do we replace it with?

Maybe simply: “Good morning.” Or “Go Dodgers.”

Or “Go Trump” — far away out of earshot.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Ronald Reagan biographer, legendary California journalist Lou Cannon dies
The TK: Newsom taps former CDC leaders critical of Trump-era health policies for new initiative
The L.A. Times Special: In a divided America, Rob Reiner was a tenacious liberal who connected with conservatives

Until next week,
George Skelton

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