benefit

Gustavo Dudamel’s farewell to Los Angeles will also function as a benefit for his homeland of Venezuela, which suffered catastrophic losses from twin earthquakes in late June.

Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced Monday that the beloved composer’s final Hollywood Bowl performance as the orchestra’s music and artistic director, originally programmed as “Celebrating Gustavo at the Bowl: A Musical Legacy,” will instead be called “A Concert for Venezuela.” Still scheduled for Aug. 23, the show will raise funds for communities affected by the earthquakes.

“Venezuela will always be my home, and every moment, my thoughts are with the families whose lives have been forever changed by this tragedy,” Dudamel said in a statement. “The suffering is immense, but so is the strength and resilience of our people. This concert at the Hollywood Bowl is an invitation to stand together and transform our compassion into action.”

A full program and special guests will be announced later. Dudamel and the musicians will contribute their time and services free of charge.

Donations will benefit Dudamel’s Earthquake Recovery to Support Venezuelan Communities fund, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean fund. The L.A. Phil will contribute $50,000 to the fund, announced President and Chief Executive Kim Noltemy.

“In moments of profound need, our responsibility as an institution extends beyond the stage,” she said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to provide direct financial support to relief efforts for communities in Venezuela with a $50,000 charitable donation and to stand alongside Gustavo in bringing this concert to life at the Bowl.”

Twin earthquakes on June 24 devastated Venezuela, with more than 3,300 deaths and more than 30,000 people reported missing. As international rescue teams depart and locals are left to search through rubble, Venezuelans abroad, including L.A. restaurants, have looked for ways to send support.

Dudamel, who was born and raised in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, wrote in a 2015 op-ed for The Times that he is a “product” of El Sistema, the country’s government-funded youth music program. He has been the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra since 1999.

U.S. Navy sailor Chase Humes is moving back to his dad’s house in Texas.

Last month, the 25-year-old was notified that his “voluntary separation” from the Navy, which he’d applied for in May 2025, had been approved — he would be released from service. He and his wife must be out of their military housing in San Diego by mid-July.
Humes, a transgender man who’s been taking testosterone for seven years, was among at least 1,000 service members who chose to leave on their own terms rather than face involuntary separation following the military’s February 2025 ban on transgender service members. By choosing a voluntary separation, he’s been approved for an “honorable discharge,” which preserves access to benefits like Veterans Affairs healthcare that others worry they might not have access to.
Humes is one of about 4,200 transgender service members the Department of Defense estimates have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and could be subject to the policy. Advocates say the transgender service member population could exceed 15,000, according to a UCLA study from 2014.
A new California bill, Assembly Bill 1775, is intended to assist people who don’t have the certainty of Humes’s honorable discharge and worry about their future prospects if they were forced out of the military. Proponents say the bill, by San Diego Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward, could help people who are given less than honorable discharge for hiding their transgender identity by helping them restore access to services.

In the meantime, service members like Humes are scouting their next move. The sailor and his wife have been searching for jobs near his dad’s house outside Houston. They can’t afford to start their life in San Diego, despite having fallen in love with the city’s accepting atmosphere.
“The whole reason I joined was for a better future for myself and my family, and it just got torn away,” Humes said of the separation.

Over a year in limbo

Among the flurry of executive orders President Trump issued at the start of his second term was the Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness order.

It rescinded President Biden’s policy permitting transgender people to openly serve in the forces, and asserted that gender dysphoria and using pronouns different than one’s biological sex at birth were inconsistent with the country’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.”

What followed the Jan. 27, 2025 order was a series of legal challenges, some of which are still ongoing. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military was likely unconstitutional, allowing a group of 28 plaintiffs from across the country to continue serving while their case proceeds.
Transgender troops were faced last spring with the choice of either voluntarily leaving the military, and in some cases receiving separation pay, or saying nothing and hoping they were not found out and “involuntarily separated” from the forces.

Humes is choosing to voluntarily leave the Navy after the Trump administration announced a policy banning transgender troops.

(Adriana Heldiz / CalMatters)

Kat Koehlmoos, who was in active duty for eight years and is now in an inactive Army Reserve status, said the military chain of command does not know she is transgender.
“Anyone could use my testimony today to report me to the Army Reserves here, and they would be required to take action to involuntarily discharge me from the U.S. military,” she told lawmakers during a hearing on the legislation last month.
Koehlmoos is a board member for SPARTA Pride, which advocates for transgender service members and co-sponsored the legislation. She said the bill came about in part because supporters are concerned the federal government might replicate the actions it took during its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gay, lesbian and bisexual troops to serve if they concealed their sexual orientation. Some 2,000 troops were given less than honorable discharges in connection to the policy, and were shut out of some veterans’ benefits, according to a class-action lawsuit that was settled in 2025.

Koehlmoos said the group anticipates some people who are “involuntarily separated” under the 2025 transgender ban will be punished by the Department of Defense for not complying with the law.

“They may pursue other charges: accusing them of falsifying records or lying on federal documents, and attempt to get them a less than honorable discharge because of that,” she said, although SPARTA Pride does not know of any such cases so far.
If that happened in California, Ward’s bill would help those people qualify for expedited professional licensing in civilian careers like contracting and nursing and prioritize them for discharge upgrades as well as housing and support services.

Ward said he believes the benefits of all service members should be secured, whether they leave voluntarily or involuntarily.

“They have served honorably, and this was a separation that was involuntary, and they would deserve the full benefits that they otherwise would have been due had they been cisgender,” he said.

Unknown number affected

It’s unclear how many people could be affected by the legislation. Ward has repeatedly told fellow lawmakers that 2,900 of the federal government’s estimated 4,200 transgender troops — 69% — are either from California or are currently stationed in California. In an emailed statement in response to a question from CalMatters, Ward said the figures were mistakenly adopted after conversations with veterans’ advocates, and he would no longer use them to describe the number of affected California service members.
The bill would also require the state’s Department of Veterans Affairs to create a new housing and supportive services grant for veterans, which Ward said would fill a gap in existing housing support for veterans experiencing imminent homelessness. But the budget Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Monday does not include funding for that program.
Instead, it directs $2 million toward the state’s existing Veteran’s Military Discharge Upgrade Grant Program, which provides legal assistance for veterans fighting for a discharge upgrade.
As Humes prepares to leave San Diego, Ward’s bill is still pending in Sacramento. The legislation has cleared policy committees in both houses and awaits a hearing in the Senate appropriations committee.
Koehlmoos said the moment is stressful for most transgender troops — those being removed voluntarily, who have few options; the people who haven’t notified the chain of command, who may be living in fear; and the service members who will delay their transition, or never transition, because of the federal government’s ban on transgender troops.

“For me that’s heartbreaking, because that really is putting your life on hold,” she said.

Kate Wolffe writes for CalMatters.

The federal government can’t block benefits from the nation’s largest food aid program from being used to buy candy, soda and other sugary drinks, a judge ruled.

Monday’s ruling scuttles restrictions now in place or planned for the federally funded and state-run Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 23 states. President Trump’s administration has not said whether it will appeal to a higher court.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sits in Washington and was nominated to the bench by former President Obama, said in her opinion that the ruling was because the federal government did not follow its own definition of “food.” She said it wasn’t a comment on whether the restrictions are a good idea.

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” she wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

The restrictions are part of the Make America Healthy Again campaign

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have encouraged states to limit what the food aid can be used to buy as part of the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

They reason that soda and candy fuel obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemics — and taking them off the menu would encourage healthier food choices.

The Agriculture Department has given 23 states so far permission to implement restrictions. Some have been implemented already, while others are queued to take effect in the coming months and years.

At least one state that was set to limit soda and candy purchases changed course earlier this year. Colorado’s human services board voted against implementing the ban after a March hearing in which SNAP beneficiaries and advocates said people would face stigmas if they mistakenly tried to use the benefits on prohibited items. They also said the rules were confusing because they would have allowed buying drinks with at least 50% fruit or vegetable juice, but not those with less.

While the goals are similar, the exact rules vary by state. Some wanted to ban both sugary drinks and candy, while others only sought to ban sugary beverages.

A legal challenge to the candy and soda ban — which includes items such as sports drinks in some states — was filed by SNAP beneficiaries in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Judge says government ignored a definition of food

Jackson said the main legal misstep in restricting what SNAP benefits could buy came because it ran contrary to Congress’s definition of “food.”

Under the law, SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — can be used for “any food or food product for home consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, hot foods or hot food products ready for immediate consumption.”

The government can waive requirements, but limiting use of the benefits to improve nutrition isn’t listed as a reason to do so. Yet when states asked the Agriculture Department to let them restrict purchases, their requests included using alternate definitions of “food.”

This may not be the final word

The Agriculture Department has not said whether it intends to appeal the ruling.

The case is among scores of challenges to Trump administration policies that hinge on whether the administration has the authority to change policies without congressional approval.

While it’s a big program helping nearly 39 million Americans — about 1 in 9 — buy groceries, SNAP is normally relatively low-profile. That’s been different since Trump returned to office last year.

Under his big tax and policy law signed last year, more recipients are subject to work requirements and states are being required to pay a larger share of administrative costs — and could be on the hook for benefit costs if their error rates are too high.

During a government shutdown last year, courts blocked the administration from cutting off benefits. Meanwhile, Rollins has said that there’s rampant fraud in the program.

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

San Francisco, United States – Greer Dove’s days are packed with studying business and finance, as well as doing administrative work at college, along with caring for her eight-year-old daughter with special needs. But once a week, Dove, a single mother, makes sure to drop in at the food bank in California’s Marin County to pick up vegetables, fruit and other food. Along with the federal government’s food benefits, they keep her housing running.

“We need this so we can keep functioning at a high level,” she says. “She loves fruit, so I make sure to get it,” she says of her daughter.

Dove, who is also looking for a full-time job, has worked in restaurants, event management, retail, television shows, office administration and payroll over the years. But she has been on the federal government’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) for six years, and with the food bank, for more than three years. Before she got food benefits, Dove fed her daughter all she had and skipped meals or looked around for snacks in the offices she worked at to get her through the day.

United States President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed in June, cut SNAP benefits by more than $186bn over the next 10 years to make up for extending cuts to income tax. This could lead to more than 3 million people nationwide, and 665,000 recipients in California, losing such food benefits, according to estimates.

“This will bring a series of cuts that collectively present an existential threat to food benefits,” says Andrew Cheyne, managing director of government relations and public affairs at the County Welfare Directors Association of California.

California’s proposed billionaire tax, which seeks to impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the assets of the state’s more than 200 billionaires to make up for the funding gap created by the OBBBA, got more than 1.5 million signatures in April. It is likely to be on the ballot for the November midterm election.

While most of the nearly $100bn expected to be raised through the tax will go towards filling the gap in health insurance created by the OBBBA, 10 percent will be used to make up for the retrenchment in food benefits.

In California, where more than 5.3 million people, more than any other state, receive food benefits, the impacts of the cuts began to be felt in April when 72,000 immigrants started losing benefits. June onwards, nearly 600,000 recipients will be screened for work eligibility. Recipients, including those who are homeless, seniors, foster youth and veterans, will have to work, study or volunteer to receive food benefits. Failing the screening to meet work requirements for three months will lead to their food benefits being cut.

Brian Galle, professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the tax measure’s authors, says that in California, the state that introduced gig work, “jobs are increasingly precarious. You may find enough work or not. You may get tips or not. But nutrition needs are steady.”

Making impossible choices

On a recent Friday morning, new members lined up to enrol at a whitewashed, bunting-festooned La Ofrenda food bank in San Francisco’s Mission district. The food bank doles out fresh vegetables, fruit and bread that have been donated by large grocery stores once those products neared expiration date.

Gladys Lee had taken a 45-minute train ride after a friend told her about it. Lee worked at downtown San Francisco’s Hyatt hotel as a room cleaner for three decades until a back injury meant she could not push the heavy cleaning carts any more and had to leave. After seven years of struggling to find work, food was getting scarce, and Lee found her way to La Ofrenda. She packed what she could into a carton and held it in her arms for the train ride back.

Food benefit rolls have shrunk by more than 3.3 million nationally in the six months from July 2025, when the OBBBA was enacted, to January 2026.

In California, the rolls of Calfresh, as food benefits are known in the state, shrank by 288,000 or 6 percent from July 2025 to February 2026, according to analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, DC-based think tank. This reduction in rolls happened even before the OBBBA cuts began.

Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, wrote in a recent essay that the shrinking of SNAP rolls reflected an ebullient economy and buoyant job growth.

“The drop in SNAP recipients affirms that many Americans are moving from welfare to work,” she wrote. “It is no secret that Trump’s massive tax cuts and deregulation efforts are unleashing robust, private sector-led economic growth, which are fueling trillions in investments, booming wage growth”.

But unemployment remained stable at about 4.4 percent since July 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, while SNAP rolls shrank.

“This last time we saw such a steep, quick decline, other than during natural disasters, is three decades ago when welfare reform was enacted,” says Dottie Rosenbaum, senior fellow and director of  Federal SNAP Policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Nationally, SNAP rolls shrank by 8 percent, while in California, they shrank by 5.5 percent, in part because the work eligibility requirements were delayed until June, while some other states have already implemented them.

At La Ofrenda, Roberto Alfaro, executive director of the nonprofit Homey, says he started the food bank when food costs went up during the pandemic. They have stayed high, he says. Now he sees people doing day jobs and night jobs and coming for food when they have paid rent.

“People are making impossible choices,” says Keely O’Brien, a policy advocate at the Western Center for Law and Poverty.

While California is the world’s fourth-largest economy, growth has come with a soaring cost-of-living crisis.

“With rising housing and utility costs, few households can dedicate that much of their income towards food,” O’Brien says.

The OBBA has also shifted the administrative cost of meeting work eligibility requirements to states, and beginning next year, part of the cost of SNAP will also fall on states.

“To make requirements more stringent, you are creating more government, more bureaucratic logjam,” says Jaren Sorkow, state director for the Children’s Defence Fund.

This has already led to a 51 percent drop in SNAP rolls in Arizona, which has begun implementing the OBBBA cuts, according to data by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Making something from nothing

Several measures to counter the $100bn gap in funding for health insurance and food benefits created by the OBBBA have been floated in California. The biggest of these is the one-time 5 percent tax on those with assets of more than a billion dollars. The tax will raise $100bn, its authors estimate.

As it seems set to be voted on in the November election, it faces mounting opposition from the state’s tech entrepreneurs who have funded measures to undercut the tax.

Tech entrepreneurs have called it an economic 9/11, saying taxing their assets, including shareholding in startups, will lead to a flight of capital and innovation from the state. Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google Inc, now spends a week in Nevada and a week in his Bay Area offices and has spent more than $57m on opposing the billionaire tax. He has backed two measures that undercut the billion tax, which have also received 1.4 million and 1.5 million signatures and are also set to be on the ballot for the November election.

One of these measures prohibits future taxes on personal property, including financial assets, savings and retirement accounts, as well as intellectual property. The other would increase audits of taxpayer-funded programmes, and includes language that would essentially invalidate the billionaire tax.

In a recent statement to The New York Times, Brin said, “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”

The coalition of unions backing the billionaire tax is bracing for the fight ahead. “We expect to be outspent,” says Kris Cuaresma-Primm, director of partnerships for the coalition that is backing the billionaire tax. “We will keep communicating to people that there is a tidal wave of pain coming from the cuts, and we want to reclaim the losses from the OBBBA.”

Giulia Varaschin, senior tax policy adviser at the International Tax Observatory, who recently coauthored a study on wealth taxes, says there is little academic evidence that such taxes cause the wealthy to leave at a notable scale. “There is only a marginal flight with very little, if any, economic impact,” she says.

The study, coauthored with the economist Gabriel Zucman, who supports the California billionaire tax, did find that wealth taxes had not raised as much revenue as estimated in several European countries and became less popular as a result.

Varaschin says this was because these taxes were levied on a larger set of the wealthy, which included homeowners or small businesses, rather than the ultra-rich or billionaires. The taxpayers could hardly afford to pay it, and the government made exemptions instead. These taxes also did not touch assets, where much of the wealth of the ultra-rich lies, Varaschin says.

The California tax remedies this by taxing only billionaires and taxing assets, including shares in companies.

Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry professor of taxation at New York University, says, “Traditionally, these taxes can be hard to enforce because tax administration don’t want to go after these people.”

Even if it passes, “The governor could just say this is not a high priority for him and not enforce it,” Shaviro says, referring to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has opposed the tax.

But Primm says, “The governor is out of touch with Californians on this”.

Newsom is in the last year of his last term as governor. However, nearly all the candidates running for the June 2 primary for governor, except billionaire Tom Steyer, who is running as a progressive Democrat, also oppose this measure. While some have said this will lead to a flight of capital, others say the spending plan does not include expenses for education, which was not cut in the OBBBA.

Greer Dove, who gets food through Calfresh and the San Francisco Marin Food Bank for herself and her daughter, says the looming food benefit cuts are worrying. “The anxiety of it all is adding up. I could be next.”

The world’s longest suspension bridge is currently in Turkey but a new record could be held if the government in Italy gets its way and the Messina Bridge project is completed by 2033 as planned

The world’s longest suspension bridge was given the green light last year – and it could be of serious interest to Brits. In 2025, the Italian government’s plans to build the longest suspension bridge in the world was approved. If it becomes a reality, it would connect the mainland region of Calabria to Sicily.

However, a lot has happened since then. The controversial Messina Bridge project, which would cost a staggering £11.7bn, faced a setback last November, meaning it was put on hold again.

If the bridge ever gets built along the Strait of Messina, as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni still intends, it would be a hugely ambitious infrastructure challenge that has been talked about in Italy for decades.

Pietro Salini, chief executive of Webuild, the engineering group leading the project, said it would be “transformative for the whole country” and he promised that it would “stimulate growth, employment, and lawfulness across southern Italy”.

The colossal bridge, consisting of two towers stretching 400-metres (1,300 feet), would span an incredible 3.3km (2.05 miles). Three lanes of traffic would sit either side of two railway lines in the middle.

It would be particularly welcomed by Brits travelling in Italy, because it would cut their journey to Sicily to just ten minutes, compared to taking the ferry, which can take a lot longer than the 30 minutes crossing when you factor in the immense queuing at peak times.

Speaking last year, Meloni said: “It is not an easy task but we consider it an investment in Italy’s present and future, and we like difficult challenges when they make sense.”

Transport minister Matteo Salvini spoke in August that the goal was to have it built between 2032 and 2033. He also boasted that 120,000 jobs a year would be created, something he said would bring economic growth to the poor regions of Sicilia and Calabria, which is on the tip of Italy’s boot.

Rome was given the approval for the project in August after years of the plans being scrapped. One of the biggest reasons plans have been halted historically was concerns of mafia fraud, including worries about taxpayers’ money being siphoned off by the Sicilian and Calabrian gangsters.

Other concerns have repeatedly been raised about environmental damage, cost and safety, and given the region is one of the most seismically active areas in the Mediterranean, designers promised the Strait of Messina Bridge would be able to withstand earthquakes.

However, in November, yet another setback was reported, after an Italian court ruled the bridge would go against EU environmental and tender rules.

The Court of Auditors ruling concluded: “The assumptions regarding the various ‘reasons of public interest’ are not validated by technical bodies and are not supported by adequate documentation.”

But the Italian government is refusing to give up and has vowed to review the ruling carefully and continue with its ambitions of making the bridge a reality.

As well as still having to convince the Italian Court of Auditors and both national and EU environmental agencies, there would also be pushback from the 4,000 residents who live either side of the Strait.

Their homes would be at risk of demolition and this could mean legal challenges regarding having to abandon their properties.

As it stands, the current world’s longest suspension bridge is the 915 Canakkale Bridge in Turkey – which connects Asia to Europe and takes six minutes to cross.

Construction across the passage of water (Dardanelles Strait) started in 2017 and it only became open to the public three years ago. Journey times have been cut by up to 93%.

This means 90-minute ferry trips can be avoided by using the bridge that starts in Gelibolu, Turkey, which is based on the European side of the country, to the Asian town of Lapseki.