california

An integral part of whale watching, Capt. Rick Podolak explained as we zipped out of North San Diego Bay past Point Loma, is establishing trust.

That and a fast vessel, good timing and luck. All of which we hoped would align during a whale-watching excursion in late December, the month typically inaugurating an annual gray whale migration from the Arctic south to Baja California.

“We call them our Christmas whales,” said Podolak, of Adventure Whale Watching.

Grays endure an epic roundtrip journey of 10,000 miles or more, and California holds a prime seat through May. Along with being a migratory route for grays and humpbacks, this stretch of Pacific Coast from San Diego to beyond the Bay Area offers seasonal feeding grounds that attract a variety of whale species throughout the year.

“I would go so far as to boast that California has some of the best whale watching in the world,” said Ted Cheeseman, a Santa Cruz whale researcher and co-founder of Happywhale, a photo-based whale identification platform.

Tempering the enthusiasm Cheeseman and other researchers hold around current thriving whale populations are significant concerns about gray whales dying. Grays’ numbers along the Pacific Coast have plunged by half in the last decade, to about 13,000, due to climate change affecting their Arctic food supply.

“Last year was by far the lowest count we’ve ever had, and this year is even lower,” said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a marine biologist and whale researcher who coordinates an annual gray whale census out of Rancho Palos Verdes.

In December 2025, volunteers spotted 14 whales headed south to calving lagoons in Mexico. In December 2024, they counted 33. In December 2014, by comparison, there were 393.

With numbers like those rattling in my head and the clock ticking as Podolak piloted us north along the coastline, I grew increasingly doubtful about us witnessing the grays’ movement south. We were looking for backs or flukes (tails) breaking the water. Most telling is the spout — the condensed mass of water vapor and mucus that whales force from their blowholes as they surface.

After 90 minutes, we’d spied cormorants and pelicans galore, but little else. It was nearly time to head back.

Then, there it was. A spout, rising clearly against the coastline. Then another, just before the whale dove from sight. The captain identified it as a gray whale, with their distinct white patches of clinging barnacles.

This month, California tour operators have reported several gray sightings. As we watch for them and other cetaceans, this is one instance in which tourists can create positive change. Advocacy organizations outline how to select ethical tour operators and federal agencies are charged with maintaining safe distances (100 yards for most whale species) between vessels and marine mammals. Whale researcher Cheeseman says well-managed whale tourism raises public awareness and financially supports whale science and conservation.

“For some people, seeing a blue whale in the Santa Barbara Channel checks a box — it’s an Instagram post,” he said. “For others, it entirely transforms their view of the natural world.”

Starting in San Diego and moving north, here are some of California’s leading whale-watching spots.

SACRAMENTO — Two of the top Democratic candidates in the race for California governor are taking heat for their past votes to fund and support federal immigration enforcement as the backlash against the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota intensifies after the shooting death of Alex Pretti.

Fellow Democratic candidates are criticizing Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter for voting — in Swalwell’s case, as recently as June — to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and support its agents’ work.

Swalwell (D-Dublin) last year voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored resolution condemning an attack that injured at least eight people demonstrating in support of Israeli hostages, one of whom later died, in Boulder, Colo., and expressing “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.”

He was one of 75 Democrats, including nine from California, to cross the aisle and vote in favor of the resolution.

“The fact that Eric Swalwell stood with MAGA Republicans in Washington to thank ICE while in California masked ICE agents terrorized our communities — despite Swalwell’s notorious and chronic record of absenteeism from Congress, is shamefully hypocritical,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a rival Democrat running for governor, said in a statement.

Swalwell’s campaign dismissed the attack as a “political ploy” by “a desperate campaign” polling in single-digits.

“What Eric voted for was a resolution to condemn a horrific antisemitic attack in Boulder, CO that killed Karen Diamond, an 82-year old grandmother,” a campaign spokesman said in a statement. “The truth is no one has been more critical of ICE than Eric Swalwell.”

The exchange comes as Villaraigosa, Swalwell and other Democrats running to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his final year in office, struggle to differentiate themselves in a tight race that lacks a clear front-runner.

In a poll released in December by the Public Policy Institute of California, Porter led the field with support from 21% of likely California voters. She was slightly ahead of former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and conservative commentator Steve Hilton but had far from a commanding lead.

With the June 2 primary election fast approaching, the sparring among the candidates — especially in the crowded field of Democrats — is expected to intensify, with those leading in the polls fielding the brunt of the attacks.

The Trump administration’s immigration tactics face mounting political scrutiny after federal agents fatally shot Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse from Minneapolis, during a protest over the weekend.

Pretti was the second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis to be killed by immigration officers in recent weeks. Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, was shot in the head by an ICE officer Jan. 7. Federal officials have alleged it was an act of self-defense when Good drove her vehicle toward an officer — an assertion under dispute.

In recent days, Swalwell said that if elected, he would revoke the driver licenses of ICE agents who mask their faces, block them from state employment and aggressively prosecute agents for crimes such as kidnapping, assault and murder.

Tony Thurmond, another Democrat currently serving as California’s top education official, in an online political ad criticized Swalwell’s vote as well as several by Porter for bills to fund ICE and Trump’s border wall during the president’s first term.

Porter and Swalwell joined majorities of Democratic House members to support various spending packages in Congress, which included billions for a border wall and in at least one case, avoided a government shutdown.

“When others have stayed quiet, Katie has boldly spoken out against ICE’s lawlessness and demanded accountability,” said Porter campaign spokesman Peter Opitz.

Thurmond’s video touted his own background as a child of immigrants and support for a new law that attempts to keep federal immigration agents out of schools, hospitals and other spaces.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat also running for governor, said Tuesday that he supports abolishing ICE “as it exists today” and replacing it with a “lawful, accountable immigration system rooted in due process and public safety.”

Republicans blame Democrats and protesters

The two most formidable Republicans running for governor have generally supported Trump’s immigration strategy but have not commented directly on Pretti’s killing over the weekend.

Hilton, a former Fox News host, wrote in an email that “every sane person is horrified by the scenes of chaos and lawlessness in Minneapolis, and most of all that people are getting killed.”

But he linked violence to sanctuary policies in Democratic-run states and cities, including California, which prohibit local law enforcement from coordinating or assisting with federal immigration enforcement.

“The only places we’ve seen this kind of chaos are ‘sanctuary’ cities and states, where Democrat politicians are whipping people up into a frenzy of anti-law enforcement hate, and directly putting their constituents in harm’s way by telling them — from behind the safety of their own security details — to disrupt the enforcement of federal law,” Hilton said.

The conservative pundit said the “worst offender” is Newsom, whom Hilton accused of using “disgustingly inflammatory language designed to rile up his base in pursuit of his presidential ambitions.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s campaign did not respond to questions about events in Minnesota. Bianco has repeatedly criticized California’s sanctuary state policy but affirmed last year that his department would not assist with federal immigration raids.

On Sunday, Bianco posted on X that “Celebrities and talking heads think they understand what it’s like to put on a uniform and make life or death decisions,” an apparent reference to the encounter that resulted in Pretti’s death.

SAN FRANCISCO — Katie Porter’s still standing, which is saying something.

The last time a significant number of people tuned into California‘s low-frequency race for governor was in October, when Porter’s political obituary was being written in bold type.

Immediately after a snappish and off-putting TV interview, Porter showed up in a years-old video profanely reaming a staff member for — the humanity! — straying into the video frame during her meeting with a Biden Cabinet member.

Not a good look for a candidate already facing questions about her temperament and emotional regulation. (Hang on, gentle reader, we’ll get to that whole gendered double-standard thing in a moment.)

The former Orange County congresswoman had played to the worst stereotypes and that was that. Her campaign was supposedly kaput.

But, lo, these several months later, Porter remains positioned exactly where she’d been before, as one of the handful of top contenders in a race that remains stubbornly formless and utterly wide open.

Did she ever think of exiting the contest, as some urged, and others plainly hoped to see? (The surfacing of that surly 2021 video, with the timing and intentionality of a one-two punch, was clearly not a coincidence.)

No, she said, not for a moment.

“Anyone who thinks that you can just push over Katie Porter has never tried to do it,” she said.

Porter apologized and expressed remorse for her tetchy behavior. She promised to do better.

“You definitely learn from your mistakes,” the Democrat said this week over a cup of chai in San Francisco’s Financial District. “I really have and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how do I show Californians who I am and that I really care about people who work for me. I need to earn back their trust and that’s what campaigns are literally about.”

She makes no excuse for acting churlish and wouldn’t bite when asked about that double standard — though she did allow as how Democratic leader John Burton, who died not long before people got busy digging Porter’s grave, was celebrated for his gruff manner and lavish detonation of f-bombs.

“It was a reminder,” she said, pivoting to the governor’s race, “that there have been other politicians who come on hot, come on strong and fight for what’s right and righteous and California has embraced them.”

Voters, she said, “want someone who will not back down.”

Porter warmed to the subject.

“If you are never gonna hurt anyone’s feelings, you are never gonna take [JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon to task for not thinking about how his workers can’t afford to make ends meet. If you want everyone to love you, you are never gonna say to a big pharma CEO, ‘You didn’t make this cancer drug anymore. You just got richer, right?’ That is a feistiness that I’m proud of.”

At the same, Porter suggested, she wants to show there’s more to her persona than the whiteboard-wielding avenger that turned her into a viral sensation. The inquisitorial stance was, she said, her role as a congressional overseer charged with holding people accountable. Being governor is different. More collaborative. Less confrontational.

Her campaign approach has been to “call everyone, go everywhere” — even places Porter may not be welcomed — to listen and learn, build relationships and show “my ability to craft a compromise, my ability to learn and to change my mind.”

“All of that is really hard to convey,” she said, “in those whiteboard moments.”

The rap on this year’s pack of gubernatorial hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, as though the lack of A-list sizzle and failure to throw off sparks is some kind of mortal sin.

Porter doesn’t buy that.

“When we say boring, I think what we’re really saying is ‘I’m not 100% sure how all this is going to work out.’ People are waiting for some thing to happen, some coronation of our next governor. We’re not gonna have that.”

Gavin Newsom, she noted, was a high-profile former San Francisco mayor who spent eight years as lieutenant governor before winning the state’s top job. His predecessor was the dynastic Jerry Brown.

None of those running this time have that political pedigree, or the Sacramento backgrounds of Newsom or Brown, which, Porter suggested, is not a bad thing.

“I actually think this race has the potential to be really, really exciting for California,” she said. “… I think everyone in this race comes in with a little bit of a fresh energy, and I think that’s really good and healthy.”

Crowding into the conversation was, inevitably, Donald Trump, the sun around which today’s entire political universe turns.

Of course, Porter said, as governor she would stand up to the president. His administration’s actions in Minneapolis have been awful. His stalling on disaster relief for California is grotesque.

But, she said, Trump didn’t cause last year’s firestorm. He didn’t make housing in California obscenely expensive for the last many decades.

“When my children say ‘I don’t know if I want to go to college in California because we don’t have enough dorm housing,’ Trump has done plenty of horrible attacks on higher ed,” Porter said. “But that’s a homegrown problem that we need to tackle.”

Indeed, she’s “very leery of anyone who does not acknowledge that we had problems and policy challenges long before Donald Trump ever raised his orange head on the political horizon.”

Although California needs “someone who’s going to [buffer] us against Trump,” Porter said, “you can’t make that an excuse for why you are not tackling these policy changes that need to be.”

She hadn’t finished her tea, but it was time to go. Porter gathered her things.

She’d just spoken at an Urban League forum in San Francisco and was heading across the Bay Bridge to address union workers in Oakland.

The June 2 primary is some ways off. But Porter remains in the fight.

Thousands of middle-class Californians who depend on the state-run health insurance marketplace face premiums that are thousands of dollars higher than last year because enhanced federal subsidies that began during the COVID-19 pandemic have expired.

Despite fears that more people would go without coverage with the end of the extra benefits, the number enrolling in Covered California has held steady so far, according to state data.

But that may change.

Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, said that she believes the number of people dropping their coverage could increase as they receive bills with their new higher premiums in the mail this month. She said better data on enrollment will be available in the spring.

Altman said that even though the extra benefits ended Dec. 31, 92% of enrollees continue to receive government subsidies to help pay for their health insurance. Nearly half qualify for health insurance that costs $10 or less per month. And 17% of Californians renewing their Covered California policies will pay nothing for premiums if they keep their current plan.

The deadline to sign up for 2026 benefits is Saturday.

Here’s help in sorting out what the expiration of the enhanced subsidies for insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, means in the Golden State.

What expired?

In 2021, Congress voted to temporarily to boost the amount of subsidies Americans could receive for an ACA plan. The law also expanded the program to families who had more money. Before the vote, only Americans with incomes below 400% of the federal poverty level — currently $62,600 a year for a single person or $128,600 for a family of four — were eligible for ACA subsidies. The 2021 vote eliminated the income cap and limited the cost of premiums for those higher-earning families to no more than 8.5% of their income.

How could costs change this year for those enrolled in Covered California?

Anyone with income above 400% of the federal poverty level no longer receives subsidies. And many below that level won’t receive as much assistance as they had been receiving since 2021. At the same time, fast-rising health costs boosted the average Covered California premium this year by more than 10.3%, deepening the burden on families.

How much would the net monthly premium for a Los Angeles couple with two children and a household income of $90,000 rise?

The family’s net premium for the benchmark Silver plan would jump to $699 a month this year from $414 a month last year, according to Covered California. That’s an increase of 69%, costing the family an additional $3,420 this year.

Who else could face substantially higher health bills?

People who retired before the Medicare-qualifying age of 65, believing that the enhanced subsidies were permanent, will be especially hit hard. Those with incomes above 400% of the federal poverty level could now be facing thousands of dollars in additional health insurance costs.

How did enrollment in Covered California change after the enhanced subsidies expired on Dec. 31?

As of Jan. 17, 1,906,033 Californians had enrolled for 2026 insurance. That’s less than 1% lower than the 1,921,840 who had enrolled by this time last year.

Who depends on Covered California?

Enrollees are mostly those who don’t have access to an employer’s health insurance plan and don’t qualify for Medi-Cal, the government-paid insurance for lower-income people and those who are disabled.

An analysis by KFF, a nonprofit that provides health policy information, found that nearly half the adults enrolled in an ACA plan are small-business owners or their employees, or are self-employed. Occupations using the health insurance exchanges where they can buy an ACA plan include realtors, farmers, chiropractors and musicians, the analysis found.

What is the underlying problem?

Healthcare spending has been increasing faster than overall inflation for years. The nation now spends more than $15,000 per person on healthcare each year. Medical spending today represents about 18% of the U.S. economy, which means that almost one out of every five dollars spent in the U.S. goes toward healthcare. In 1960, health spending was just 5% of the economy.

What has California done to help people who are paying more?

The state government allocated $190 million this year to provide subsidies for those earning up to 165% of the federal poverty level. This money will help keep monthly premiums consistent with 2025 levels for those with an annual income of up to $23,475 for an individual or $48,225 for a family of four, according to Covered California.

Where can I sign up?

People can find out whether they qualify for financial help and see their coverage options at the website CoveredCA.com.

What if I decide to go without health insurance?

People without insurance could face medical bills of tens of thousands of dollars if they become sick or get injured. And under California state law, those without coverage face an annual penalty of at least $900 for each adult and $450 for each child.

SACRAMENTO — Amid a national uproar over the recent killing of a Minnesota man by immigration agents, the California Senate on Tuesday approved proposed legislation that would make it easier to sue law enforcement officials suspected of violating an individual’s constitutional rights.

Senate Bill 747 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) creates a pathway for residents to take legal action against federal agents for the excessive use of force, unlawful home searches, interfering with a right to protest and other violations.

The bill, which cleared a Senate committee earlier this year, passed 30-10, along Democrat and Republican party lines.

Other states, including New York and Connecticut, are weighing similar legislation following widespread anger over the actions during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns and raids.

Existing laws already allow lawsuits against state and local law enforcement officials. But it is much harder to bring claims against a federal officers. Wiener said his bill would rectify those impediments.

Several state law enforcement agencies oppose the legislation, arguing it will also be used to sue local officers.

Tuesday’s vote follows the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday by federal officials, who tackled him to the ground, appeared to remove his holstered handgun and then shot Pretti several times in the back. During the debate on the state Senate floor Tuesday, several Democratic lawmakers called Pretti’s death an execution or murder.

Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, was also shot and killed by agents earlier this month in Minnesota in what federal officials have alleged was an act of self defense when she drove her vehicle toward an officer — an assertion under dispute.

The deaths, as well as the government’s insistence that immigration agents don’t require judicial warrants to enter homes, have outraged Democrats leaders, who accuse federal officers of flouting laws as they seek to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants.

Wiener, speaking to reporters before Tuesday’s vote, said that his legislation would reform the law to ensure that federal officials are held accountable for wrongdoing.

“Under current law, if a local or state officer shoots your mom…or publicly executes an ICU nurse, you can sue,” said Wiener. “That’s longstanding civil rights law, but in the current law, it’s almost impossible to file that same lawsuit against the federal agent who does the exact same thing.”

During Tuesday’s debate on the senate floor, Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach) acknowledged the “chaos” in Minnesota, but criticized the bill as being about immigration politics. He urged his colleagues to focus on the state’s affordability crisis, rather than challenges to the federal government.

“We need to start focusing on California-specific issues like gas, gas prices,” said Strickland.

Strickland’s comments drew a rebuke from Sen. Susan Rubio, (D-West Covina) who said the bill wasn’t about immigration, but “about the egregious violation of people’s rights. and the murders that we are witnessing.”

“This is about equal justice under the law,” said Rubio, a one-time undocumented citizen.

Wiener’s bill now heads to the state Assembly. The senator, who is running to fill the seat by outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, told reporters that he didn’t know if Gov. Gavin Newsom supports his legislation or if he would sign it into law if it passes the full Legislature.

Wiener’s proposed law was put forth after George Retes Jr, a California security guard was detained following a July raid in Camarillo. Retes, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran, said he was held for three days without the ability to make a phone call or see an attorney.

Retes has accused Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin of spreading false information about him to justify his detention. The Homeland Security department said in a statement last year that Retes impeded its operation, which he denies.

Under U.S. Code Section 1983, a person can sue state and local officials who violate their constitutional rights. A state law also allows lawsuits against state and local officials for interfering with a person’s constitutional rights by force or threat.

When it comes to filing legal action against federal officials, lawsuits can be brought through the Bivens doctrine, which refers to the 1971 Supreme Court ruling in Bivens vs. Six Unknown Federal Agents that established that federal officials can be sued for monetary damages for constitutional violations.

But in recent decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly restricted the ability to sue under Bivens. Some Supreme Court justices have also argued that it’s up to Congress to pass a statute that would allow federal officers to be sued when they violate the Constitution.

Those opposed to Wiener’s law include the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which represents more than 85,000 public safety members. The group argues it would result in more lawsuits against local and state officials, essentially creating multiple paths for litigation.

President Donald Trump has announced an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without dealing with “unnecessary, dupicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements.

The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, claimed that local governments have failed to adequately process permits and were slowing down residents who are desperate to rebuild in the Palisades and Altadena.

“American families and small businesses affected by the wildfires have been forced to continue living in a nightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise as they remain displaced from their homes, often without a source of income, while state and local governments delay or prevent reconstruction by approving only a fraction of the permits needed to rebuild,” Trump wrote in the executive order, which he signed Friday.

The order called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “preempt” state and local permitting authorities.

Instead of going through the usual approval process, residents using federal emergency funds to rebuild would need to self-certify to federal authorities that they have complied with local health and safety standards.

The order comes as the city and county approach 3,000 permits issued for rebuilding. A December review by The Times found that the permitting process in Altadena and Pacific Palisades was moving at a moderate rate compared to other major fires in California. As of Dec. 14, the county had issued rebuilding permits for about 16% of the homes destroyed in the Eaton fire and the city had issued just under 14% for those destroyed in the Palisades fire.

While Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately provide comment, the executive order drew intense pushback from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

A spokesperson for Newsom, Tara Gallegos, called Trump a “clueless idiot” for believing the federal government could issue local rebuilding permits.

“With 1625+ home permits issued, hundreds of homes under construction, and permitting timelines at least 2x faster than before the fires, an executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, citing the number of permits issued solely by the city of Los Angeles.

Newsom said that the federal government needed to release funding, not take over control of the permitting process. The governor said that what communities really lack is money, not permits.

“Please actually help us. We are begging you,” Newsom wrote.

Instead of descending into the permitting process, Newsom called on the president to send a recovery package to congress to help families rebuild, citing a letter from a bipartisan delegation of California legislators that called for federal funding.

“As the recovery process continues, additional federal support is needed, and our entire delegation looks forward to working cooperatively with your administration to ensure the communities of Southern California receive their fair share of federal disaster assistance,” wrote the California legislators on Jan 7.

Some in the Palisades agreed that money was a bigger issue than permitting.

“When I talk to people it seems to have more to do with their insurance payout or whether they have enough money to complete construction,” said Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition.

Zar called the executive order “interesting” and said that it was fair of the president to call the recovery pace slow and unacceptable.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently proposed 2026-27 state budget included a pleasant surprise: a deficit of about $3 billion — significantly less than analysts had estimated. But when it comes to California state budgets, good news rarely lasts. Newsom’s own estimates warn that the deficit may reach $22 billion in the following fiscal year.

It is all too common for California’s budget to careen from year to year. Between 2022 and 2024 the state experienced a $175-billion swing from surplus to deficit. This time the crunch came because spending fueled by the post-pandemic economic recovery was not sustainable when revenue plummeted just a few years later — but the state budget has long gone through similar boom-and-bust cycles.

Although California’s leaders deserve their fair share of the blame for putting the state on this budgetary roller coaster, there are three underlying factors that make effective fiscal management in California uniquely challenging: an overreliance on the state’s personal income tax; mandatory spending commitments that limit policymakers’ discretion to address challenges; and a lack of accountability for the taxpayer money that is spent.

First, California has an outdated tax system. In the 2025-26 budget, for example, the personal income tax made up nearly 70% of general fund revenue. By comparison, personal income taxes account for 38% of total state tax collections nationally. The Golden State’s extreme reliance on the personal income tax means that when incomes are high in California, revenue collections are strong, but when the economy slows and incomes fall, state revenue weakens drastically too.

The outsize role that capital gains — income from certain investments — play in revenue makes the volatility worse. High earners tend to earn a larger share of their total income this way. In fact, the unexpectedly narrow deficit in Newsom’s 2026 budget was due to what California’s Legislative Analyst Office identified as a $42-billion tailwind created by a robust stock market, which led more Californians to earn more capital gains and pay more taxes on those earnings. But when equity markets aren’t performing well, collections take a major hit. Consider this contrast: In 2021, capital gains accounted for almost a quarter of the personal income tax liability in the state, compared with just 10% in 2023.

The reliance on personal income taxes means that as the highest earners leave, so does California’s revenue. In the 20 years leading up to 2023, the top 1% of income earners in the state were responsible for an average of 45% of total personal income tax liability. That’s why policies like the recently discussed “billionaires tax” could lead to capital flight from California, jeopardizing the state’s ability to fund basic services.

The second complicating factor in California’s budget process is the amount of money tied up in spending commitments over which policymakers have little discretion. Many of these restrictions have been imposed by voters over the last several decades in ballot initiatives that have passed with significant margins. Together, these provisions — while well-meaning and politically popular in many cases — create limitations that make budgeting a challenge in California.

For example, funding for the state’s public schools is largely guaranteed by Proposition 98, a state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1988 that establishes an annual minimum funding amount for public K-12 schools and community colleges. About 40% of the general fund budget in California, or nearly $90 billion in 2026, is committed without exception to K-14 schools through Proposition 98.

California voters have also approved tens of billions of dollars in borrowing over the last 20 years that the state’s constitution requires be paid back from the general fund. These bond authorizations create obligations to repay borrowing for priorities as wide-ranging as health facilities, water infrastructure and wildfire prevention. Repaying these “IOUs” requires policymakers to trim spending in other areas. Also, the state’s rainy-day fund, which is designed to insulate the budget from economic downturns, requires an annual set-aside of 1.5% of estimated general fund revenue.

Finally, California has no systematic way of providing accountability for and assessing whether any of its spending is producing promised outcomes. Governments at every level struggle with the concept of detailing what the “return on investment” is for public spending. But the situation in California is particularly dire. Thus, taxpayers are often stuck financing underperforming government programs riddled with waste and outright fraud, as was the case in the recent $30-billion scandal that afflicted the state’s unemployment insurance program.

In the mid-2000s, California commissioned a unified financial accounting and transparency system known as Fi$Cal that was supposed to replace several outdated systems. Over a billion dollars and several blown deadlines later, the platform still isn’t complete and won’t be fully operational until July 1, 2032. While the state auditor, an official appointed by the governor, does a credible job of analyzing state spending, recommendations for improvements are often not implemented. And the state controller — the elected chief fiscal officer who is responsible to voters for financial oversight of state spending — hasn’t produced California’s annual financial audit on time since 2017.

It’s hard for a state to properly manage its finances when there’s confusion over how much it’s really spending, or whether that money is achieving its intended purpose. But that’s become business as usual here.

Policymakers will have a tough time addressing California’s budget and fiscal challenges unless each of these three underlying factors is addressed. Our antiquated tax code should be reformed to reduce reliance on the personal income tax and raise revenue in a more predictable way. Californians must understand that there are long-term implications of borrowing to address challenges and warily approach future bond measures and other initiatives that tie the hands of policymakers today. And voters should elect politicians willing to provide them with the oversight that’s needed for the taxpayer money that Sacramento spends.

Without these changes, Californians are probably headed for more fiscal follies in the years ahead.

Lanhee J. Chen is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was a candidate for California state controller in 2022.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s promises on affordability in 2024 helped propel him to a second term in the White House.

Since then, Trump says, the problem has been solved: He now calls affordability a hoax perpetrated by Democrats. Yet the high cost of living, especially housing, continues to weigh heavily on voters, and has dragged down the president’s approval ratings.

In a poll conducted this month by the New York Times and Siena University, 58% of respondents said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy.

How the economy fares in the coming months will play an outsize role in determining whether the Democrats can build on their electoral success in 2025 and seize control of one or both chambers of Congress.

With housing costs so central to voters’ perceptions about the economy, both parties have put forward proposals in recent weeks targeting affordability. Here is a closer look at their competing plans for expanding housing and reining in costs:

How bad is the affordability crisis?

Nationwide, wages have barely crept up over the last decade — rising by 21.24% between 2014 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve. Over the same period, rent and home sale prices more than doubled, and healthcare and grocery costs rose 71.5% and 37.35%, respectively, according to the Fed.

National home price-to-income ratios are at an all-time high, and coastal states like California and Hawaii are the most extreme examples.

Housing costs in California are about twice the national average, according to the state Legislative Analyst‘s Office, which said prices have increased at “historically rapid rates” in recent years. The median California home sold for $877,285 in 2024, according to the California Assn. of Realtors, compared with about $420,000 nationwide, per Federal Reserve economic data.

California needs to add 180,000 housing units annually to keep up with demand, according to the state Department of Housing. So far, California has fallen short of those goals and has just begun to see success in reducing its homeless population, which sat at 116,000 unsheltered people in 2025.

What do the polls say?

More than two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll last month said they felt the economy was getting worse, and 36% expressed approval for the president — the lowest total since his second term began.

The poll found that 47% of U.S. adults now describe current economic conditions as “poor,” up from 40% just a month prior and the highest since Trump took office. Just 21% said economic conditions were either “excellent” or “good,” while 31% described them as “only fair.”

An Associated Press poll found that only 16% of Republicans think Trump has helped “a lot” in fixing cost of living problems.

What have the Democrats proposed?

The party is pushing measures to expand the supply of housing, and cut down on what they call “restrictive” single-family zoning in favor of denser development.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats plan to “supercharge” construction through bills like California Sen. Adam Schiff’s Housing BOOM Act, which he introduced in December.

Schiff said the bill would lower prices by stimulating the development of “millions of affordable homes.” The proposal would expand low-income housing tax credits, set aside funds for rental assistance and homelessness, and provide $10 billion in housing subsidies for “middle-income” workers such as teachers, police officers and firefighters.

The measure has not been heard in committee, and faces long odds in the Republican-controlled body, though Schiff said inaction on the proposal could be used against opponents.

And the Republicans?

A group of 190 House Republicans this month unveiled a successor proposal to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the sprawling tax and spending plan approved and signed into law by Trump in July.

The Republican Study Committee described the proposal as an affordability package aimed at lowering down payments, enacting mortgage reforms and creating more tax breaks.

Leaders of the group said it would reduce the budget deficit by $1 trillion and could pass with a simple majority.

“This blueprint … locks in President Trump’s deregulatory agenda through the only process Democrats can’t block: reconciliation,” said Rep. August Pfluger (R-Tex.), who chairs the group. “We have 11 months of guaranteed majorities. We’re not wasting a single day.”

Though the proposal has not yet been introduced as legislation, Republicans said it would include a mechanism to revoke funding from blue states over rent control and immigration policy, which they calculated would save $48 billion.

President Trump has endorsed a $200-billion mortgage bond stimulus, which he said would drive down mortgage rates and monthly payments. And the White House, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the two enterprises that back most U.S. mortgages — continues to push the idea of portable and assumable mortgages.

Trump said the move would allow buyers to keep their existing mortgage rate or enable new homeowners to assume a previous owner’s mortgage.

The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the Fed’s renovation costs, as Trump bashed him over “his never ending quest to keep interest rates high.”

The president also vowed to revoke federal funding to states over a wealth of issues such as childcare and immigration policy.

“This is not about any particular policy that they think is harmful,” Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) said. “This is about Trump’s always trying to find a way to punish blue states.”

Is there any alignment?

The two parties are cooperating on companion measures in the House and Senate.

The bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act seeks to expand housing supply by easing regulatory barriers. It passed the Senate unanimously and has support from the White House, but House Republicans have balked, and it has yet to receive a floor vote.

A bipartisan proposal — the Housing in the 21st Century Act — was approved by the House Financial Services Committee by a 50-1 vote in December. It also has yet to receive a floor vote.

The bill is similar to its twin in the Senate, with Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) working across the aisle with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). If approved, it would cut permitting times, support manufactured-housing development and expand financing tools for low-income housing developers.

There was also a recent moment of unusual alignment between the president and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who both promised to crack down on corporate home buying.

What do the experts say?

Housing experts recoiled at GOP proposals to bar housing dollars from sanctuary jurisdictions and cities that impose rent control.

“Any conditioning on HUD funding that sets up rules that explicitly carve out blue cities is going to be really catastrophic for California’s larger urban areas,” said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

More than 35 cities in California have rent control policies, according to the California Apartment Assn. The state passed its own rent stabilization law in 2019, and lawmakers approved a California sanctuary law in 2017 that prohibits state resources from aiding federal immigration enforcement.

The agenda comes on the heels of a series of HUD spending cuts, including a 30% cap on permanent housing investments and the end of a federal emergency housing voucher program that local homelessness officials estimate would put 14,500 people on the streets.

In Los Angeles County, HUD dollars make up about 28% of homelessness funding.

“It would undermine a lot of the bipartisan efforts that are happening in the House and the Senate to move evidence-backed policy to increase housing supply and stabilize rents and home prices,” Garcia said.

The president’s mortgage directives also prompted skepticism from some experts.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were pressed to get into the riskier parts of the mortgage market back in the housing bubble and that was a part of the problem,” said Eric McGhee, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

In the roiling debate over California’s proposed billionaire tax, supporters and critics agree that such policies haven’t always worked in the past. But the lessons they’ve drawn from that history are wildly different.

The Billionaire Tax Act, which backers are pushing to get on the November ballot, would charge California’s 200-plus billionaires a one-time, 5% tax on their net worth in order to backfill billions of dollars in Republican-led cuts to federal healthcare funding for middle-class and low-income residents.

Critics of the proposal have argued that past failures of similar wealth taxes in Europe prove they don’t work and can cause more harm than good, including by driving the ultra-rich out. Among those critics is San José Mayor Matt Mahan, a tech-friendly Democrat who is contemplating a run for governor.

“Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen a dozen European countries pursue national-level wealth taxes,” Mahan said. “Nine of them have rolled them back. A majority have seen a decline in overall revenue. It’s actually shrunk the tax base, not increased it, and it’s because it creates a perverse incentive and drives capital flight.”

Backers of the measure acknowledge such failures but say that they learned from them and that California’s proposal is stronger as a result.

Brian Galle, a UC Berkeley tax law professor and one of four academic experts who drafted the measure, said if it gets on the ballot, every voter in the state will receive a copy of the full text, a one-page explainer on what it does, and nearly two dozen additional pages of “rules for preventing wealthy people and their army of lawyers from dodging” it.

Many of those rules, he said, are based on historical lessons from places where such taxes have failed, but also where they’ve succeeded.

“If you understand the actual lessons of history, you understand that this bill is more like the successful Swiss and Spanish wealth taxes,” Galle said. “Part of that is learning from history.”

Warnings from Europe

Since the 1990s, several European countries have repealed net wealth taxes, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany.

A major example cited by critics of the California proposal is France, which implemented a much larger wealth tax on far more people, including many millionaires. The measure raised modest revenues, which fell as rich people moved out of the country to avoid paying, and the measure was repealed by the government of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017.

In a 2018 report on net wealth taxes, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found that European repeals were often driven by “efficiency and administrative concerns and by the observation that net wealth taxes have frequently failed to meet their redistributive goals.”

“The revenues collected from net wealth taxes have also, with a few exceptions, been very low,” it found.

Critics and skeptics of the California proposal say they expect California to run into all the same problems.

Mahan and others have pointed to a handful of prominent billionaires who already appear to be distancing themselves from the state, and said they expect more to follow — which Mahan said will reduce California’s “recurring revenue” beyond the amount raised by the one-time tax.

Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which analyzes the fiscal effects of public policies, said net worth taxes in other countries have “always raised quite a bit less revenue than what was initially projected,” in large part because “wealth is easy, as it turns out, to try to reclassify or move around” and “there’s all these tricks that you can do to try to make the wealth look smaller for tax purposes.”

A bus in London promotes a campaign by British millionaires advocating for an end to extreme wealth and inequality.

(Carl Court / Getty Images)

Smetters said he expects that the California measure will raise less than the $100 billion estimated by its backers because billionaire wealth in California — much of it derived from the tech sector — is relatively “mobile,” as many tech barons can move without it affecting business.

“Policymakers have to understand that they’re not going to get nearly as much money as they often project from a purely static projection, where they’re not accounting for the different ways that people can move their wealth, reclassify their wealth, or even just move out of the state,” Smetters said. “So far, we only know of a few people — with a lot of money — who have moved out of the state, [but] that number could go up.”

Kevin Ghassomian, a private wealth lawyer at Venable who advises rich clients, said he expects the administrative costs of enforcing the tax to be massive for the state — and much greater than the drafters have anticipated.

On the front end, the state will face a wave of legal challenges to the tax’s constitutionality and its retroactive application to all billionaires living in the state as of the end of 2025.

Moving ahead, he said, there will be litigation from wealthy individuals whose departure from California is questioned or who dispute the state’s valuation of their net worth or individual assets — including private holdings, which the state doesn’t have extensive experience assessing.

Valuating such assets will be “a nightmare, just practically speaking, and it’s going to require a lot of administrators at the state level,” Ghassomian said, especially considering many California billionaires’ wealth is in the form of illiquid holdings in startups and other ventures with fluctuating market valuations.

“You could be a billionaire today, and then the market plummets, and now all of a sudden, you’re a pauper,” he said. “It could really lead to some unfair results.”

Lessons from Europe

Backers of California’s proposal said they have accounted for many of the historical pitfalls with wealth taxes and taken steps to avoid them — including by making it harder for wealthy Californians to simply shuffle money around to avoid the tax.

“There are a lot of provisions that are designed based on what has worked well in other countries with wealth taxes in the modern era, especially Switzerland, and there are also provisions meant to shut down some of the holes in some of the earlier wealth tax efforts, especially the France one, that were viewed as not successful,” said David Gamage, a University of Missouri tax law professor and another of the proposal’s drafters.

Galle said the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development study found that many of Europe’s historical wealth taxes “hadn’t figured out how to solve the problem of what small businesses were worth,” so were more narrowly focused on publicly traded stock and real estate. “Over time, there was a lot of abuse where people shifted their assets to make them look privately held.”

The California proposal “tries to solve that problem” by including small businesses and other privately held wealth in their calculations of net worth, he said — and benefits from the fact that such wealth has gotten a lot easier to track and appraise in recent years.

Doing so would be a familiar exercise for many California billionaires already, he said, as it is hard to raise venture capital, for example, without audited financial statements.

Backers of the measure said it is harder for U.S. citizens to avoid taxes by moving abroad than it has been for Europeans, and that evidence from Switzerland and Spain suggests differing tax rates between a nation’s individual states do not cause massive interstate flight.

San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who might run for governor, opposes the proposed tax on California billionaires.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

For example, each state in Spain sets its own wealth tax rate, and Madrid’s is 0% — but that has not caused an exodus from other parts of Spain to Madrid, Galle said.

The risk of California billionaires avoiding the tax by simply moving to another U.S. state was further mitigated by the measure’s Jan. 1 deadline for avoiding the tax. Galle said the deadline “was intended to make it more difficult for individuals to concoct the kind of misleading, apparent moves that wealthy people have used in other places to try to avoid a wealth tax.”

Gamage said that “history shows if a tax on the wealthy can be avoided by moving paper around, claiming that you live in another location without actually moving your life there, moving assets to accounts or trusts nominally in foreign countries or other jurisdictions, you see large mobility responses.”

But when “those paper moves are shut down,” there’s much less moving — and “that’s the basis for the California model,” he added.

The outlook

Ghassomian, who said he has been “fielding a lot of inbound inquiries from clients who are just kind of worried,” said it is clear that the proposal’s authors “have done their homework” and tried to design the tax in a smart way.

Still, he said, he has concerns about the cost of administering the tax outpacing revenues, especially amid litigation. Residency battles alone with billionaires whose claims of departing the state are questioned could take “years and years and years” to resolve, he said.

“The revenue has to line up with expenditures, and if you can’t count on the revenue because it’s going to be tied up in courts, or it’s going to be delayed, then I think that creates some real logistical hurdles,” he said.

Smetters said predicting revenues from a tax on so many different types of assets is “really hard,” but one thing that has generally held true through history is that “most countries, even with less-mobile wealth, typically do not get the type of revenue that they were hoping for.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist and President Trump’s AI czar who decamped from California to Texas, said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that the measure was an “asset seizure” more than a tax, and that the state would be headed in a “scary direction” if voters approved it.

Darien Shanske, a tax law professor at UC Davis and another drafter of the proposal, said he and his colleagues did their best to “look at the lessons of the past, and apply them in a way that makes sense and is generally fair and administrable” — in a state where wealth inequality is rapidly growing and a wealth tax presents unique opportunities.

“Having a tax on billionaires does make particular sense in California because of the large number that live here and the large number who have made their fortune here,” he said.

Shanske said the proposed tax is designed to provide California a way to “triage” soaring healthcare premiums resulting from legislation enacted by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. The proposal asks for contributions from people who will quickly recoup what they are taxed given the exponential growth of their assets, he said.

Emmanuel Saez, director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at UC Berkeley and another drafter of the measure, said many of the repealed European taxes targeted millionaires while providing loopholes for billionaires to avoid paying, whereas California’s measure is “exactly the reverse.”

He said the measure will raise substantial revenue in part because California billionaire wealth more than doubled from 2023 to 2025 alone, and is “the innovative and first-of-its-kind tax on the ultra-wealthy that the moment requires.”

Thomas Piketty, a French economist and author of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” called California’s proposed tax “very innovative” and “relatively modest” compared with massive wealth taxes after World War II — including in Germany and Japan — and said it would not only improve healthcare in the state but “have an enormous impact on the U.S. and international political scene.”

“In the current context, with a deeply entrenched billionaire class, wealth taxes meet even more political resistance than in the postwar context, and this is where California could make a huge difference,” he said. “The fact of targeting the revenue to health spending is also very innovative and can help convince the voters to support the initiative.”

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.