CONCORD, N.H. — President Trump’s administration wants to be dropped from a lawsuit in which two New Hampshire teens are challenging their state’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports and the president’s executive order on the same topic.
Parker Tirrell, 16, and Iris Turmelle, 14, became first to challenge Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order when they added him to their ongoing lawsuit over New Hampshire’s ban in February. A federal judge has ruled that they can try out and play on girls sports teams while the case proceeds.
In a motion filed Friday, attorneys for the government say the teens are trying to “drag the federal government into a lawsuit well under way not because of an imminent injury, but because of a generalized grievance with policies set by the President of the United States.”
Deputy Associate Atty. Gen. Richard Lawson argued that the government has done nothing yet to enforce the executive orders in New Hampshire and may never do so.
“Plaintiffs lack constitutional standing and their stated speculative risk of future injury is not close to imminent and may never become ripe,” wrote Lawson, who asked the judge to dismiss claims against Trump, the Justice and Education departments, and their leaders.
Trump’s executive order gives federal agencies wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX — which prohibits sexual discrimination in schools — in alignment with the Trump administration’s view of a person’s sex as the gender assigned at birth.
Lawyers for the teens say the order, along with parts of a Jan. 20 executive order that forbids federal money to be used to “promote gender ideology,” subjects the teens and all transgender girls to discrimination in violation of federal equal protection guarantees and their rights under Title IX.
In its response, the government argues that the order does not discriminate based on sex because males and females are not similarly situated when it comes to sports.
Transgender people represent a very small part of the nation’s youth population — about 1.4% of teens ages 13 to 17, or around 300,000 people. But about half of the states have adopted similar measures to New Hampshire’s sports ban, with supporters arguing that allowing transgender girls to play is unfair and dangerous.
In interviews this year, neither New Hampshire teen said they feel they hold any advantage over other players. Tirrell says she’s less muscular than other girls on her soccer team, and Turmelle said she doesn’t see herself as a major athlete.
“To the argument that it’s not fair, I’d just like to point out that I did not get on the softball team,” Turmelle recalled of her tryout last year. “If that wasn’t fair, then I don’t know what you want from me.”
Not only lawmakers, but the Legislature’s nonpartisan, independent chief policy analyst.
The Legislative Analyst‘s Office has recommended that legislators hold off voting on what the governor seeks because they’re being pressed to act without enough time to properly study the complex matter.
Delta towns and farmers, environmental groups and the coastal salmon fishing industry are fighting the project and the governor’s latest move to expedite construction.
If there are any supporters at the state Capitol outside the governor’s office for his fast-track proposal, they’re not speaking up.
“Nobody’s told me they’re excited about it,” says state Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton), an East San Francisco Bay lawmaker who is co-chairman of the Legislative Delta Caucus. The 15-member bipartisan group of lawmakers who represent the delta region strongly oppose the tunnel — calling it a water grab — and are fighting Newsom’s bill.
The black mark on the governor’s proposal is that he’s trying to shove it through the Legislature as part of a new state budget being negotiated for the fiscal year starting July 1. But it has nothing to do with budget spending.
The tunnel would not be paid for through the budget’s general fund which is fed by taxes. It would be financed by water users through increased monthly rates, mainly for Southern Californians.
Newsom is seeking to make his proposal one of several budget “trailer” bills. That way, it can avoid normal public hearings by legislative policy committees. There’d be little scrutiny by lawmakers, interest groups or citizens. The measure would require only a simple majority vote in each house.
“We’re battling it out,” says Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), the Delta Caucus’ co-chair whose district covers the delta as it enters San Francisco Bay.
“This is not about the project itself. This is about how you want to do things in the state of California. This [fast-track] is comprehensive policy that the budget is not intended to include,” says Wilson.
Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek issued a report concluding: “We recommend deferring action … without prejudice. The policy issues do not have budget implications. Deferring action would allow the Legislature more time and capacity for sufficient consideration of the potential benefits, implications and trade-offs.”
The analyst added: “In effect, approving this proposal would signal the Legislature’s support for the [tunnel], something the Legislature might not be prepared to do — because it would remove many of the obstacles to move forward on the project.
“Moreover, even if the Legislature were inclined to support the project, some of the particular details of this proposal merit closer scrutiny.”
Newsom tried a similar quickie tactic two years ago to fast-track the tunnel. And incensed legislators balked.
“He waited now again until the last moment,” Wilson says. “And he’s doubled down.”
She asserts that the governor is seeking even more shortcuts for tunnel construction than he did last time.
“There are some people who support the project who don’t support doing it this way,” she says. “The Legislature doesn’t like it when the governor injects major policy into a budget conversation. This level of policy change would usually go through several committees.”
Not even the Legislature’s two Democratic leaders are siding with the Democratic governor, it appears. They’re keeping mum publicly.
Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) has always opposed the tunnel project. So quietly has Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), I’m told by legislative insiders.
McGuire and Rivas apparently both are trying to avoid a distracting fight over the tunnel within their party caucuses at tense budget time.
Newsom insists that the project is needed to increase the reliability of delta water deliveries as climate change alters Sierra snowpack runoff and the sea level rises, making the vast estuary more salty.
He also claims it will safeguard against an earthquake toppling fragile levees, flooding the delta and halting water deliveries. But that seems bogus. There has never been a quake that seriously damaged a delta levee. And there’s no major fault under the delta.
The tunnel would siphon relatively fresh Sacramento River water at the north end of the delta and deliver it to facilities at the more brackish south end. From there, water is pumped into a State Water Project aqueduct and moved south, mostly to Southern California.
“A tunnel that big, that deep, is going to cause a lot of problems for agriculture and tourism,” says McNerney. “One town will be totally destroyed — Hood. It’s a small town, but people there have rights.”
Newsom’s legislation would make it simpler to obtain permits for the project. The state’s own water rights would be permanent, not subject to renewal. The state would be authorized to issue unlimited revenue bonds for tunnel construction, repaid by water users. It also would be easier to buy out farmers and run the tunnel through their orchards and vineyards. And it would limit and expedite court challenges.
“For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay. We’re done with barriers,” Newson declared in unveiling his proposal in mid-May.
But lawmakers shouldn’t be done with solid, carefully reasoned legislating.
On policy this significant involving a project so monumental, the Legislature should spend enough time to get it right — regardless of a lame-duck governor’s desire to start shoveling dirt before his term expires in 18 months.
WASHINGTON — When he first ran for office, Donald Trump appeared to be a new kind of Republican when it came to gay rights.
Years earlier, he overturned the rules of his own Miss Universe pageant to allow a transgender contestant to compete. He said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom at Trump Tower that she wanted. And he was the first president to name an openly gay person to a Cabinet-level position.
But since returning to office this year, Trump has engaged in what activists say is an unprecedented assault on the LGBTQ+ community. The threat from the White House contrasts with World Pride celebrations taking place just blocks away in Washington, including a parade and rally this weekend.
“We are in the darkest period right now since the height of the AIDS crisis,” said Kevin Jennings, who leads Lambda Legal, a longtime advocacy organization. “I am deeply concerned that we’re going to see it all be taken away in the next four years.”
Trump’s defenders insist the president has not acted in a discriminatory way, and they point to public polling that shows widespread support for policies like restrictions on transgender athletes.
“He’s working to establish common sense once again,” said Ed Williams, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives.
Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said, “the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people.”
“The president continues to foster a national pride that should be celebrated daily, and he is honored to serve all Americans,” Fields said.
Presidential actions were widely expected
Trump made anti-transgender attacks a central plank of his campaign reelection message as he called on Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and pledged to ban hormonal and surgical intervention for transgender minors. He signed an executive order doing so in January.
His rally speeches featured a spoof video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. Trump has since banned them outright from serving. And although June is recognized nationally as Pride month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Trump has “no plans for a proclamation.”
“I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” she added, making no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Williams described Pride activities as a progressive catch-all rather than a civil rights campaign. “If you’re not in the mood to protest or resist the Trump administration,” he said, “Pride is not for you.”
Trump declined to issue Pride Month proclamations in his first term, but did recognize the celebration in 2019 as he publicized a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality headed by Richard Grenell, then the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and the highest-profile openly gay person in the administration. (Grenell now serves as envoy for special missions.)
“As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Trump posted on social media.
Times have changed where Trump is concerned
This time, there is no celebrating.
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump named himself chairman of after firing members of the board of trustees, canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.
Trump, who indicated when he took up the position that he would be dictating programming, had specifically said he would end events featuring performers in drag. The exterior lights that once lit the venue on the Potomac River in the colors of the rainbow were quickly replaced with red, white and blue.
Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues.
Inside the White House, there’s little second-guessing about the president’s stances. Trump aides have pointed to their decision to seize on culture wars surrounding transgender rights during the 2024 campaign as key to their win. They poured money into ads aimed at young men — especially young Hispanic men — attacking Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” including one spot aired during football games.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the narrator said.
Jennings flatly rejected assertions that the administration hasn’t been discriminatory. “Are you kidding me? You’re throwing trans people out of the military. That’s example No. 1.”
He points to the cancellation of scientific grants and funding for HIV/AIDS organizations, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “petty and mean” order to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, which commemorates the gay rights activist and Navy veteran.
Jennings also said it doesn’t help that Trump has appointed openly gay men like Grenell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to high-profile positions: “I would call it window dressing.”
Less tolerance for the issues as time passes
Craig Konnoth, a University of Virginia professor of civil rights, compared the U.S.’ trajectory to that of Russia, which has seen a crackdown on gay and lesbian rights after a long stretch of more progressive policies. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism.
Williams said Trump has made the Republican Party more accepting of gay people. First lady Melania Trump, he noted, has hosted fundraisers for his organization.
“On the whole, we think he’s the best president ever for our community. He’s managed to support us in ways that we have never been supported by any administration,” Williams said. “We are vastly accepted within our party now.”
Trump’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights comes amid a broader shift among Republicans, who have grown less tolerant in recent years.
While overall support for same-sex marriage has been stable, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized as valid with the same rights as traditional marriage dropped to 41% this year. That’s the lowest point since 2016, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and a substantial decline from a high of 55% in 2021.
There’s been a similar drop in the share of Republicans who say that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable, which has dropped from 56% in 2022 to 38% this year. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage and say that same-sex relations are morally acceptable.
An AP-NORC poll from May also found that Trump’s approach to handling transgender issues has been a point of relative strength for the president. About half (52%) of U.S. adults said they approve of how he’s handling transgender issues — a figure higher than his overall job approval (41%).
Douglas Page, who studies politics and gender at Gettysburg College, said that “trans rights are less popular than gay rights, with a minority of Republicans in favor of trans rights. This provides incentives for Republicans to speak to the conservative side of that issue.”
“Gay people are less controversial to Republicans compared to trans people,” he said in an email, “so gay appointees like Secretary Bessent probably won’t ruffle many feathers.”
Megerian and Colvin write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. Linley Sanders and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — When a fire erupts in California, it is a lab across the country, at the University of Maryland, that works together with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to determine where the smoke is going. Those unsung scientists help warn the people downwind of dangerous air quality levels.
And it is the National Weather Service, working with buoys at sea and satellites in orbit, figuring out the risks of increased winds and dryness that could prompt devastating fires in highly populated areas such as Los Angeles.
It is not just meteorologists and technicians being forced out of their jobs en masse, jeopardizing the standards of those programs, said Craig McLean, a 40-year veteran of NOAA who served as the agency’s assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist until his retirement in 2022.
The Trump administration proposes to go further, seeking to eliminate the entire research team that provides forecasters with tools to make their assessments. The Satellite Operations Facility has been hit with deep layoffs. Contracts for the buoys, and other equipment, are on hold while under review by the Commerce Department.
It is a cascade of delays and setbacks that could become evident to the public sooner rather than later, McLean said.
“The forecast risk is apparent upon us,” he told The Times. “I think it’s ridiculous to assume that it’s not — whether it’s for the fire season and the hydrology, whether it’s for the atmospheric rivers and the inundation and deluge, or whether it’s just for the high wind.”
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Trump seeks cuts both to forecast and response
Workers put up a sign as wildfire victims seek disaster relief services at a FEMA center in Pasadena in January.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The Trump administration’s cuts to NOAA, which have resulted in roughly 600 employee departures, or an about 15% of its workforce, appear to involve across the entire agency, based on self-reporting from employees and the National Weather Service Employees Organization. But the agency itself has provided few details to the public on the extent of its reductions.
“When the voluntary early retirement separation initiative was put up, in one day, NOAA lost 27,000 person years of experience, which is extraordinary in an agency of what was 12,000 personnel,” said Rick Spinrad, who served as administrator of the agency under President Biden.
“So much of what is done at NOAA is interpretive,” he added. “At the end of the day, when your weather forecast office or your local sea grant extension agent is informing you of what might happen, there’s a lot of interpretation of the environment, of local geography, local roads. That experience is gone.”
But if NOAA and the National Weather Service are ill-prepared for hazardous weather events — entering fire season in the West and hurricane season in the East — the Federal Emergency Management Agency may be worse off, having lost nearly a third of its employees since January. This week, Reuters reported that President Trump’s acting FEMA chief, David Richardson, told staff that he wasn’t aware the country had a hurricane season.
Trump has already raised concerns that he is rejecting disaster relief to states for political reasons. In the first three months of his presidency, Trump issued conditions on disaster aid to California after fires ravaged Los Angeles and rejected requests for disaster relief from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, both Democrats.
Californians may find themselves more vulnerable to other natural disasters, as well. FEMA announced this month it would cancel $33 million in grants for Californians to retrofit their homes to gird against earthquakes, sparking “grave concern” among state officials. “This move must be reversed before tragedy strikes next,” Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California wrote to the agency.
More disruption for ports and fisheries
Each year, before fishing season begins, NOAA issues a series of scientific reports surveying fish populations and environmental conditions, a basic precaution to prevent permanent damage and overfishing along America’s coasts.
But this spring, staff cuts to NOAA forced the agency to take emergency action on the East Coast so that fishing could begin by May 1. And in Alaska, it took the state’s two Republican senators to plead with the White House to take action to allow fishing to resume.
“The federal government has to do two things: They need to do robust surveys for accurate stock assessments and timely regulations to open fisheries. That is it. When the federal government does not do that, you screw hardworking fishermen,” GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said at a hearing in May. “To be honest, right now, it is not looking good, and I am getting really upset.”
Their challenges don’t stop there. Fishing ships will not able to sail on time without reliable forecasts from the National Weather Service, likely resulting in a reduction of the number of days out at sea and, in turn, leading to fewer profits and staff members.
Americans are already being told to expect higher seafood prices, due to Trump’s tariff policies driving up duties on seafood imports by 10% to 30%, according to a new United Nations report.
“A fisherman who goes out to collect their lobster pots or go fish for tuna needs a reliable weather report,” said Mark Spalding, president of the Ocean Foundation. “Everybody who works with NOAA, from fishermen to shipping, to other businesses that rely on weather and the predictability of currents and storms, are going to feel less secure if not operating blind.”
Similar problems are facing the country’s largest ports, which rely on government experts in ocean monitoring that have left their jobs.
“At the ports of Long Beach and L.A., the systems used to optimize the ships coming in and out of the ports — the coastal ocean observing systems — are being compromised,” Spinrad said. “The president’s budget threatens to eliminate a lot of that capability.”
Vulnerabilities across the Pacific
In Singapore over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that a Chinese assault on Taiwan “could be imminent” and would threaten the entire Pacific region, including the United States. He touted U.S. partnerships across the region on maritime security — an acknowledgment that any conflict that might arise in the Pacific would be a fight at sea.
Cuts to NOAA could threaten U.S. readiness, McLean said.
“Because we have territories throughout the Pacific, NOAA is responsible for providing weather forecasts in those areas,” he said. “The defense community doesn’t operate completely dependent on NOAA in military conflicts — they have meteorologists in the Air Force and the Navy. But they are using NOAA models and are heavily guided by what the NOAA forecasts are offering, certainly for bases, whether it’s in Guam or Hawaii.”
The military, for example, uses data produced by thousands of buoys deployed and tracked by NOAA — called the Argo Float Network — that are considered the gold standard in ocean monitoring. The program faces cuts from the Trump administration because of its affiliation with climate change.
“There is a national defense component here,” McLean said. “The defense community is dependent upon what NOAA provides, both in models and in research.”
Reporting from Sacramento — When California updated its equal pay law in 2015, there was no shortage of fanfare. Women’s rights groups called it one of the toughest in the country. Gov. Jerry Brown, in a symbolic flourish, signed the new measure at a Richmond park named after feminist icon Rosie the Riveter.
But a state report released last fall underscored how far California has to go before its rhetoric matches reality when it comes to paying state workers. According to its findings, there is a 20.5% disparity in pay between female and male state employees — a wider gap than in the federal civil service and the private sector in California and nationwide.
The focus on the public sector pay gap is just one way the equal pay debate continues to reverberate through the state Capitol. Several measures this year offer new approaches to bring women’s earnings to parity with wages earned by male counterparts — in state government and the workforce as a whole.
“We are frankly at an ‘equal pay 2.0’ moment,” said state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), author of the 2015 law.
As lawmakers plumb deeper into the pay gap debate, the challenge before them becomes more daunting. While the mantra “equal pay for equal work” sounds straightforward, experts say lagging female earnings are rooted in unconscious bias and persistent undervaluing of jobs held by women — phenomena not easily solved by legislation.
The effort to shrink the pay gap for California state workers illustrates how thorny the issue can be.
At a February legislative hearing on the gender pay gap in civil service, Richard Gillihan, the director of the California Department of Human Resources, offered a blunt assessment.
“We know we have work to do; we know we need to do a better job,” Gillihan said, adding, “20.5% is unacceptable to all of us.”
We are frankly at an ‘equal pay 2.0’ moment.
— State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara)
The report by California’sDepartment of Human Resources, which surveyed state worker pay in 2014, estimated that California wouldn’t close its gender pay gap until 2044.
Assemblyman Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) has offered one solution: Make sure California’s equal pay laws apply to the public sector. He’s pushing a bill that would make public employers subject to existing law, including a 2015 update that expanded its purview to “substantially similar” work, not just identical jobs.
“If it’s good enough for the private sector, it should also be good enough for the public sector,” Cooper said.
Cooper’s measure was inspired by pay discrepancies he saw working in the Legislature, which is exempt from the rigid salary classifications that apply in most state work. A Sacramento Bee investigation in 2015 found women working in the state Assembly made 92 cents for every dollar men made; in the state Senate, it was 94 cents on the dollar. The findings prompted the Senate to give raises to more than 70 employees last year to close the gap.
“Female chiefs of staff make less than their male counterparts — that’s just plain wrong,” Cooper said.
It’s not entirely clear whether Cooper’s proposal is necessary; the state labor commissioner is currently reviewing claims filed by government employees under the Equal Pay Act. Supporters nonetheless cheer the proposal as eliminating any doubt that public sector jobs will be covered.
But for state workers outside the Capitol, the problems run deeper than men and women being paid unequally for doing the same job. State government jobs are classified into more than 3,500 positions, which strictly spell out salary.
“The issue that presents itself here is not as much one of disparate pay, but an unequal distribution of gender throughout the classification system,” said Joe DeAnda, spokesman for the California Department of Human Resources.
Women tend to work in sectors with lower salary ranges, such as administrative support or social work, while men tend to hold jobs with higher pay — particularly public safety jobs such as California Highway Patrol officer or firefighter. More than 61% of men in state government make more than $70,000, according to the Human Resources Department, while just 39% of women do.
Maia Downs, who works in Monterey Park as a state adoption specialist finding homes for neglected or abused children, said the salary range for her profession, which requires a graduate degree and is dominated by women, is significantly lower than those for jobs predominantly held by men.
“It’s sanctioned discrimination,” said Downs of the low salary ranges for female-dominated positions.
DeAnda said negotiations related to salary and benefits are hashed out during the collective bargaining process. Downs said attempts by her union, AFSCME Local 2620, to use gender as a reason for higher salary ranges were unsuccessful.
“California should be leading by example. And they are imposing these equal pay laws on private industry, all the while hiding behind the excuse of collective bargaining,” Downs said. “And then they wonder why their gender pay gap is so high.”
To close the gap, the state says it’s focused on recruiting women into higher-paid jobs and encouraging upward mobility to help women scale the salary rungs.
But overhauling the pay classifications to ensure women’s work is better compensated is a thornier matter. It means reexamining long-held customs that place a greater value on certain professions — particularly high-risk public safety jobs.
“Getting there is not just a matter of legislation,” said Lauri Damrell, an employment lawyer and the co-chair of the state’s Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. “It’s a matter of getting our cultural norms to catch up.”
That hasn’t stopped lawmakers from trying to tackle the pay gap issue — in both the public and private sectors. One bill this year by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) would require large employers to make aggregate pay data publicly available, such as the differential between the mean salaries paid to men and women by job classification.
Another, by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), would bar employers from seeking salary history from job applicants. Proponents argue that women often enter the workforce with lower salaries and are disproportionately hurt when prior compensation is used to determine their next job’s pay.
“One thing that bakes in inequity is when we base somebody’s salary on what they previously made,” she said.
Eggman, who was among the legislators who convened the hearing on state worker pay this year, said she hopes to tackle the lingering pay gap affecting jobs predominately held by women.
“We are certainly looking at if there is some way that we can get to a root of that,” Eggman said. “Clearly we have a lot more work to do.”
SACRAMENTO — This just seems wrong: Californians overwhelmingly approved an anti-crime ballot measure in November. But our governor strongly opposed the proposition. So he’s not funding it.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders, however, are now under pressure to fund the measure in a new state budget that’s being negotiated and must pass the Legislature by June 15.
A core principle of democracy is the rule of law. A governor may dislike a law, but normally is duty- bound to help implement and enforce it. Heaven save us if governors start traipsing the twisted path of President Trump.
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But this isn’t the first time for Newsom. Voters twice — in 2012 and 2016 — rejected ballot measures to eliminate the death penalty. Moreover, in 2016 they voted to expedite executions. But shortly after becoming governor in 2019, Newsom ignored the voters and declared a moratorium on capital punishment.
Nothing on California’s ballot last year got more votes than Proposition 36, which increases punishment for repeated theft and hard drug offenses and requires treatment for repetitive criminal addicts.
It passed with 68.4% of the vote, carrying all 58 counties — 55 of them by landslide margins, including all counties in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area.
“To call it a mandate is an understatement,” says Greg Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Assn., which sponsored the initiative. Big retailers bankrolled it.
“It isn’t a red or blue issue,” adds Totten, referring to providing enough money to fund the promised drug and mental health treatment. “It’s what’s compassionate and what’s right and what the public expects us to do.”
Rolled back Proposition 47
Proposition 36 partly rolled back the sentence-softening Proposition 47 that voters passed 10 years earlier and was loudly promoted by then-Lt. Gov. Newsom.
Proposition 47 reduced certain property and hard drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and arrests plummeted, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found.
Proposition 36 was inspired by escalating retail theft, including smash-and-grab burglaries, that were virtually unpunished. Increased peddling of deadly fentanyl also stirred the public.
The ballot measure imposed tougher penalties for dealing and possessing fentanyl, treating it like other hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. But the proposition offered a carrot to addicted serial criminals: Many could be offered treatment rather than jail time.
Newsom adamantly opposed Proposition 36.
“We don’t need to go back to the broken policies of the last century,” the governor declared. “Mass incarceration has been proven ineffective and is not the answer.”
Newsom tried to sabotage Proposition 36 by crafting an alternative ballot measure. Top legislative leaders went along. But rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers rebelled and Newsom abandoned the effort.
The Legislature ultimately passed 13 anti-theft bills that Newsom and Democrats hoped would satisfy voters, but didn’t come close. Totten called the legislative product “half measures.”
Proposition 36 was flawed in one regard: It lacked a funding mechanism. That was part of the backers’ political strategy. To specify a revenue source — a tax increase, the raid of an existing program — would have created a fat target for opponents.
Let the governor and the Legislature decide how to fund it, sponsors decided.
“We didn’t want to tie the hands of the Legislature,” Totten says. “The Legislature doesn’t like that.”
Anti-crime measure won’t work without funding
Without funding from Sacramento, Proposition 36 won’t work, says Graham Knaus, chief executive officer of the California State Assn. of Counties.
“We believe strongly that if it’s not properly funded, it’s going to fail,” Knaus says. “Proposition 36 requires increased capacity for mental health and substance abuse treatment. And until that’s in place, there’s not really a way to make the sentencing work.”
There’s a fear among Proposition 36 supporters that if treatment isn’t offered to qualifying addicts, courts won’t allow jail sentencing.
“That will probably get litigated,” Totten says.
“Counties can’t implement 36 for free,” Knaus says. “Voters declared this to be a top-level priority. It’s on the state to determine how to fund it. Counties have a very limited ability to raise revenue.”
The district attorney and county organizations peg the annual cost of implementing the measure at $250 million. State Senate Republicans are shooting for the moon: $400 million. The nonpartisan legislative analyst originally figured that the cost ranged “from several tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars each year.”
Newson recently sent the Legislature a revised $322-billion state budget proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1. There wasn’t a dime specifically for Proposition 36.
The governor, in fact, got a bit surly when asked about it by a reporter.
“There were a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it,” the governor asserted. “So this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it.”
One supervisor I spoke with — a Democrat — opposed Proposition 36, but is irked that Newsom isn’t helping to implement it.
“It’s disappointing and immensely frustrating,” says Bruce Gibson, a longtime San Luis Obispo County supervisor. “Voters have spoken and we need to work together with the state in partnership.”
In fairness, the governor and the Legislature are faced with the daunting task of patching a projected $12-billion hole in the budget, plus preparing for the unpredictable fiscal whims of a president who keeps threatening to withhold federal funds from California because he doesn’t like our policies.
“I am quite concerned about adequately providing the necessary funding to implement Proposition 36,” says state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, a strong Democratic supporter of the measure.
He’s fearful that the Legislature will approve only a token amount of funding — and the governor will veto even that.
Under California’s progressive system of direct democracy, voters are allowed to bypass Sacramento and enact a state law themselves. Assuming the statue is constitutional, the state then has a duty to implement it. To ignore the voters is a slap in the face of democracy.
World Boxing says Algerian gold medallist must get genetic screening to compete in future events, including Olympics.
Algeria’s Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif must undergo genetic sex screening in order to participate in upcoming events, the sport’s governing body said, as it introduced mandatory sex testing for all boxers in its competitions.
World Boxing announced the new policy on Friday and specifically mentioned Algeria’s Khelif, who won the women’s welterweight gold at the Paris Olympics last year and prompted a gender-eligibility row.
“Imane Khelif may not participate in the female category at … any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes genetic sex screening in accordance with World Boxing’s rules and testing procedures,” the organisation said in a statement.
“World Boxing has written to the Algerian Boxing Federation to inform it that Imane Khelif will not be allowed to participate in the female category at the Eindhoven Box Cup or any World Boxing event until Imane Khelif undergoes sex testing,” it added.
World Boxing is responsible for organising bouts at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, after being granted provisional recognition by the International Olympic Committee.
Under the new policy, all athletes above the age of 18 who want to participate in a World Boxing-owned or sanctioned competition will need to undergo a PCR, or polymerase chain reaction genetic test, to determine what sex they were at birth and their eligibility to compete.
The PCR test is a laboratory technique used to detect specific genetic material, in this case the SRY gene, that reveals the presence of the Y chromosome, which is an indicator of biological sex.
The test can be conducted by a nasal or mouth swab, or by taking a sample of saliva or blood.
National federations will be responsible for testing and will be required to confirm the sex of their athletes when entering them into World Boxing competitions by producing certification of their chromosomal sex, as determined by a PCR test.
Reuters news agency reported that Khelif could not be reached for comment, while the Algerian Boxing Federation did not immediately respond to questions about the development.
Khelif said in March: “For me, I see myself as a girl, just like any other girl. I was born a girl, raised as a girl, and have lived my entire life as one.”
“I have competed in many tournaments, including the Tokyo Olympics and other major competitions, as well as four World Championships,” she said at the time.
“All of these took place before I started winning and earning titles. But once I began achieving success, the campaigns against me started.”
The 26-year-old is targeting a second gold medal at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles after her triumph in Paris.
Her Olympic success, along with that of Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, led to a raging gender eligibility debate in Paris, with high-profile figures such as United States President Donald Trump and Elon Musk weighing in.
In February, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Khelif said she would not be intimidated by Trump as she is not transgender.
WASHINGTON — A Starship spun out of control in suborbital flight on Tuesday, failing to meet critical testing goals set by SpaceX in its plans for a mission to Mars. A poll released last week showed the national brand reputation for Tesla, once revered, had cratered. And later that same day, House Republicans passed a bill that would balloon the federal deficit.
It has been a challenging period for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who not long ago thought he had conquered the private sector and could, in short order, do the same with the federal government. That all ended Wednesday evening with his announcement he is leaving the Trump administration.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform.
The mission of the program he called the Department of Government Efficiency “will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.
Musk’s departure comes on the heels of a ruling from a federal judge in Washington on Wednesday questioning Musk’s initial appointment as a temporary government employee and, by extension, whether any of his work for DOGE was constitutional.
“I thought there were problems,” Musk said in a recent interview with the Washington Post, “but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
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Growing conflicts with Trump
Musk’s role as an omnipresent advisor to President Trump began to wane weeks ago, amid public backlash against DOGE’s cuts to treasured government programs — from cancer research to the National Park Service — and after Trump bucked Musk’s counsel on economic policy, launching a global trade war that jolted supply chains and financial markets.
But the entrepreneur has grown increasingly vocal with criticism of the Trump administration this week, stating that a megabill pushed by the White House proposing an overhaul to the tax code risks undermining his efforts to cut government spending.
Musk responded to a user on X, his social media platform, on Monday lamenting that House Republicans “won’t vote” to codify DOGE’s cuts. “Did my best,” he wrote.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk explained further in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” later in the week. “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would increase border security and defense spending, renew tax cuts passed in 2017 and extend a new tax deduction to seniors, while eliminating green energy tax benefits and cutting $1 trillion in funding to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Despite the cuts, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add so much money to the debt that Congress may be forced to execute cuts across the board, including hundreds of billions to Medicare, in a process known as sequestration.
Hours after the CBS interview aired, the White House appeared to respond directly to Musk with the release of a press release titled “FACT: One, Big, Beautiful Bill Cuts Spending, Fuels Growth.” And Trump responded directly from the Oval Office, noting Democratic opposition and the challenges of unifying a fractious GOP caucus. Negotiations with the Senate will result in changes to the legislation, Trump said.
“My reaction’s a lot of things,” Trump said. “I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”
“That’s the way they go,” he added. “It’s very big. It’s the big, beautiful bill.”
Cuts in question
It is unclear whether Musk succeeded in making the government more efficient, regardless of what Congress does.
While the DOGE program originally set a goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, Musk ultimately revised that target down dramatically, to $150 billion. The program’s “wall of receipts” claims that $175 billion has been saved, but the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service has documented an increase in spending over last year.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said in the Post interview this week. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk had been brought into the Trump administration designated as a special government employee, a position limited to 130 days that does not require Senate approval.
But the legal case making its way through the Washington courtroom of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is questioning the entire arrangement.
The White House attempted to “minimize Musk’s role, framing him as a mere advisor without any formal authority,” Chutkan wrote, while granting him broad powers that gave him “unauthorized access” to “private and proprietary information,” like Social Security numbers and medical records. Those actions, Chutkan added, provide the basis for parties to claim Musk inflicted substantial injury in a legal challenge.
‘I think I’ve done enough’
Musk was scheduled to speak on Tuesday after SpaceX’s Starship test launch, setting out the road ahead to “making life multiplanetary.” But he never appeared after the spacecraft failed early on in its planned trajectory to orbit Earth.
The SpaceX Starship rocket is launched Tuesday in Texas. It later disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, officials said.
(Sergio Flores / AFP / Getty Images)
Starship is supposed to be the vehicle that returns Americans to the moon in just two years. NASA, in conjunction with U.S. private sector companies, is in a close race with China to return humans to the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.
But none of Musk’s endeavors has suffered more than his electric car company, Tesla, which saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December. An Axios Harris Poll released last week found that Tesla dropped in its reputation ranking of America’s 100 most visible companies to 95th place, down from eighth in 2021 and 63rd last year.
The reputational damage to Tesla, setbacks at SpaceX and limits to his influence on Trump appear to be cautioning Musk to step back from his political activity.
“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk told Bloomberg News on May 20, during the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a middle-school student’s claim he had a free-speech right to wear a T-shirt stating there are “only two genders.”
Over two dissents, the justices let stand a ruling that said a school may enforce a dress code to protect students from “hate speech” or bullying.
After three months of internal debate, the justices decided they would not take up another conservative culture-war challenge to progressive policies that protect LGBTQ+ youth.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed a 14-page dissent joined only by Justice Clarence Thomas. He said the case “presented an issue of great importance for our nation’s youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech because it expresses a viewpoint the schools disfavor.”
Liam Morrison, a seventh-grader from Massachusetts, said he was responding to his school’s promotion of Pride Month when students were encouraged to wear rainbow colors and posters urged them to “rise up to protect trans and gender-nonconforming students.”
Two years ago, he went to school wearing a black T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.”
A teacher reported him to the principal, who sent him home to change his shirt. A few weeks later, he returned with the word “censored” taped over the words “two genders” and was sent home again.
The T-shirt dispute asked the Supreme Court to decide whether school officials may limit the free expression of some students to protect others from messages they may see as offensive or hurtful.
In March, the court voted to hear a free-speech challenge to laws in California and 21 other states that prohibit licensed counselors from using “conversion therapy” with minors.
That case, like the one on school T-shirts, arose from appeals by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group. It has already won free-speech rulings that allowed a cake maker and a website designer to refuse to participate in same-sex weddings despite state laws that barred discrimination based on sexual orientation.
On April 22, the court sounded ready to rule for religious parents in Montgomery County, Md., who seek the right to have their young elementary children “opt out” of the classroom use of new “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks.
The T-shirt case came before the court shortly after President Trump’s executive order declaring the U.S. government will “recognize two sexes, male and female,” not “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.”
Although the Supreme Court has yet to rule on T-shirts and the 1st Amendment, lower courts have upheld limits imposed by schools.
In 2006, the 9th Circuit Court in a 2-1 decision upheld a move by school officials at Poway High School in San Diego to bar a student from wearing a T-shirt that said “Homosexuality is shameful.” The appeals court said students are free to speak on controversial matters, but they are not free to make “derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students’ minority status such as race, religion and sexual orientation.”
Other courts have ruled schools may prohibit a student from wearing a Confederate flag on a T-shirt.
In the new case from Massachusetts, the boy’s father said his son’s T-shirt message was not “directed at any particular person” but dealt with a “hot political topic.”
In their defense, school officials pointed to their policy against bullying and a dress code that says “clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”
Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom sued on the student’s behalf and argued the school violated his rights under the 1st Amendment. They lost before a federal judge in Boston who ruled for school officials and said the T-shirt “invaded the rights of the other students … to a safe and secure educational environment.”
The 1st Circuit Court agreed as well, noting that schools may limit free expression of students if they fear a particular message will cause a disruption or “poison the atmosphere” at school.
The Supreme Court’s most famous ruling on student rights arose during the Vietnam War. In 1969, the Warren court ruled for high school students who wore black armbands as a protest.
In Tinker vs. Des Moines, the court said students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. … For school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, [they] must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”
The justices said then a symbolic protest should be permitted so long as it did not cause a “substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities.”
The attorneys for Liam Morrison contended he should win under that standard.
“This case isn’t about T-shirts. It’s about public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from their own,” said David Cortman, an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney in the case of L.M. vs. Town of Middleborough.
SACRAMENTO — The big question in California politics is, “Will Kamala Harris run for governor?” But that’s the wrong question. Far more important is, “Should she?”
And that’s not a question to be answered based strictly on her prospects for winning.
Rather, the answer should be determined based on what strengths, goals and ideas she would bring to the table — her specific plans for fixing California’s enormous problems, her eagerness to fight even political allies to achieve her objectives and her own desire to lead the state’s comeback.
She shouldn’t view the job as a consolation prize after losing the presidential election to Donald Trump. Voters would smell that and, anyway, Harris would be miserably bored in the state Capitol dealing with budget minutiae and relatively inexperienced legislative leaders.
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So far, since returning from Washington to her native state, Harris, 60, has displayed none of the above criteria that California needs in its next governor.
But neither did she previously in any noteworthy way as a U.S. senator or — particularly — state attorney general. As attorney general, Harris refused to take positions on important ballot measures, including those dealing with her role as California’s so-called top cop — propositions to stiffen criminal sentences and both abolish and expedite the death penalty.
Harris has a record of being overly cautious about taking positions that could alienate interests she deems important to her political career.
But, look, you don’t need to be a gubernatorial candidate to express concerns about your state. Any resident who’s conscious should be alarmed.
“Home prices have skyrocketed as supply slumped over the past three decades,” the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California noted in a report last week.
California’s median home price in March was $884,000 — very tough if not impossible for many middle-class families. The housing shortage is largely due to over-regulation, tangled red tape that slows issuance of building permits and abuse of California’s environmental protection laws.
There’s a strong move in the Legislature to ease regulations, but it’s highly controversial. Does Harris have a thought on this?
Homeowner insurance rates are rising fast in the aftermath of wildfires. And in many fire-prone regions, traditional policies are impossible to obtain. The next governor needs to fix this.
California’s poverty rate is the nation’s highest when the cost of living is considered, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Despite our spending many billions of dollars and regardless of ugly finger-pointing at each other by Newsom and local officials, 187,000 Californians are homeless — a 35% increase in 17 years. That’s the highest in the nation — only partly because we’ve got the largest population.
Gasoline prices are roughly $1.60 a gallon higher in California than the U.S. average. And two oil refineries are planning to shut down, invariably hiking pump prices even higher.
We’re a high-tax state, a fact Newsom is in denial about. We lean too heavily on the wealthy for tax revenue and that produces roller-coaster budget deficits and surpluses depending on the stock market. It’s ridiculous. State taxes should be modernized. But no politician has the guts to attempt that.
Then there’s California’s historic problem of not enough water for its thirst.
Does Harris have anything to say about any of this? She hasn’t so far.
Of course, the seven leading announced Democratic candidates have been practically mute themselves on matters that risk aggravating party interest groups.
One exception is former Los Angeles Mayor and state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who has been bolder than most of his rivals.
Harris has said she’ll decide by the end of summer whether to run for governor in 2026. Maybe she’ll seek the presidency again in 2028 or retire from politics and make a bundle in the private sector.
But Villaraigosa already is taking shots at her — including last week for allegedly helping to cover up former President Biden’s cognitive decline while in the Oval Office. Villaraigosa included in the attack another gubernatorial candidate: former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.
Harris is a lot more vulnerable than Becerra on the issue.
But it’s a cheap shot. How many people would publicly accuse their boss of being mentally incompetent? And Harris would have instantly been blasted for being self-serving by plotting to push the president aside so she could grab the Democratic nomination.
Harris could help herself and California’s voters, however, by occasionally voicing some anxiety about her home state.
The little we’ve heard from her this year are attacks on Trump. She also has been lending her name to anti-Trump fundraising appeals by the Democratic National Committee.
But the last thing California Democrats need is another politician — especially a potential governor — telling them that Trump is an evil, ignorant con artist. They’re fully aware of that. They need someone who can tell them how their state can be fixed.
If she ran, Harris would be the initial favorite because of her broad name recognition, past election successes in California and fundraising ability. Some current candidates would probably drop out.
But there doesn’t seem to be a public clamoring for her to run.
Harris needs to start showing people why she should even consider seeking the job. Because, so far, she’s sounding more like a 2028 presidential retread.
Mexico’s femicide crisis is back in the headlines after beauty influencer Valeria Marquez was murdered on a live stream.
The world was shocked when a gunman shot and killed Mexican influencer Valeria Marquez while she livestreamed herself at a beauty salon. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government says it will investigate the murder as a possible case of femicide. Will it mark a turning point for a nation that has long struggled with staggering levels of gender-based violence?
WASHINGTON — How can Congress cut Medicaid without explicitly cutting Medicaid?
That has been a years-long dilemma facing fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party who have sought cuts to the country’s deficit-driving social safety net programs, including Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare, without generating political fallout from the tens of millions of Americans who will suffer the consequences.
Now, GOP lawmakers have settled on a strategy, outlined in legislation expected to pass the House in the coming days amid ongoing negotiations over the package that President Trump is calling his “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Rather than lowering the income eligibility limit for coverage — an old policy proposal that would cut off Americans at the higher end of the eligibility range — Trump’s bill will instead require applicants to provide proof of their work hours and apply for specific exceptions, creating new barriers for individuals to maintain insurance.
House passage of the bill is far from assured, and the Senate will still have its say. But if it does become law, the policy would affect more than 71 million of the poorest Americans, more of whom live in California than any other state.
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Barriers to entry are the point
If everyone eligible under the new work requirements were to apply for and receive Medicaid coverage, the cost savings to the government would be minimal. But the barriers themselves are the point, making it more likely that people with a right to Medicaid won’t ultimately receive it, experts said.
“If you want to make a substantial cut to the program, how do you do that in a systematic way?” said Matt Bruenig, founder of People’s Policy Project and a former lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board.
“With the work requirements, the number of people who seem to be actually ineligible because of it is quite small — so if it actually is perfectly administrated, you’re not going to see a whole lot of savings,” Bruenig said. “But if it’s not well administrated and it creates all these problems, then you could see significant savings.”
Existing government programs, such as Social Security, unemployment and supplemental nutrition assistance for women, infants and children, determine eligibility for those benefits based on an individual’s income. But creating a new set of criteria for Medicaid based on hours worked will require a new reporting system that is not outlined in the bill.
“We have all these systems that are based around making sure people have the earnings that they can report to all these agencies, but you don’t really report hours in any context,” Bruenig added. “Monthly hours — that’s just not a thing. And it’s not clear how that’s going to work, at all.”
Who counts as ‘waste, fraud and abuse’?
Trump and members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of Republican fiscal hawks, have argued for a strict hourly work requirement to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid by cutting off unproductive individuals from government benefits.
But exemptions suggested in the draft legislation — parents caring for young children or elderly parents, individuals dealing with health issues, those between jobs — reflect the range of reasons why Medicaid recipients may fall below the proposed hourly requirement. And each time an exception arises, individuals will have to refile, increasing the likelihood they will simply let their coverage lapse.
It also will force working individuals who would otherwise be eligible — such as Americans working gig jobs for DoorDash or Uber, for example — to account for hours worked transiting between jobs that don’t generate receipts.
“They just are not finding very much at all,” said John Schmitt, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, when asked whether ineligible individuals are routinely receiving Medicaid.
“The real problems are not with individuals taking advantage of Medicaid,” Schmitt added. “It is with healthcare providers taking advantage of Medicaid, in the sense of the way they bill and provide services to people. And that is not going to be changed in any way, whatsoever, by imposing a work requirement.”
The Congressional Budget Office said it is these Medicaid recipients who will either fall behind or grow fed up with the paperwork, resulting in 7.6 million losing coverage under the plan and saving the federal government roughly $800 billion.
California will be hit hardest
The effects of Medicaid cuts will be felt nationwide, but most pointedly in states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. On that score, Democratic states such as California lead the way.
A state assessment published Sunday found the GOP bill would “cause serious harm to California’s health care system,” possibly resulting in up to 3.4 million residents losing coverage.
No state has more workers on Medicaid than California, where 18% of its workforce receives benefits from the program, according to a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“Millions will lose coverage, hospitals will close, and safety nets could collapse under the weight,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We must sound the alarm because the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
But the political stakes are high for Republicans as well.
Stephen K. Bannon, a former campaign aide and White House strategist to Trump, warned in recent days that the party has “gotta be careful” with Medicaid, given its widespread use among low-income GOP voters.
“A lot of MAGAs are on Medicaid, I’m telling you,” Bannon said on his podcast. “If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong.”
Trump, for his part, seems of two minds on the matter. Cuts to Medicaid, as well as to food stamp programs and green energy tax benefits, will be required to get the bill passed with support from the Freedom Caucus, which says the renewal of tax cuts initially passed in the first Trump administration must be offset with savings elsewhere.
“Here’s what I want on Medicaid: We’re not touching anything,” Trump said Tuesday, taking questions from reporters on Capitol Hill. “All I want is one thing. Three words. We don’t want any waste, fraud or abuse. Very simple — waste, fraud, abuse.”
But in a private meeting with GOP lawmakers, his guidance was sharper. “Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” the president reportedly said.
SACRAMENTO — When the top Democratic candidates for governor took the stage at a labor forum last week, the digs at Gov. Gavin Newsom were subtle. The message, however, was clear. Newsom’s home stretch as California governor may be a bumpy ride.
Newsom hopes to end his time as governor in an air of accomplishment and acclaim, which would elevate his political legacy and prospects in a potential presidential run. But the Democrats running to replace him have a much different agenda.
“Lots of voters think things are not going well in California right now. So if you’re running for governor, you have to run as a change candidate. You have to run as ‘I’m going to shake things up,’ ” said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) at UC Berkeley. “In doing that, you’re at least implicitly criticizing the current governor, right?”
Not only must Newsom swim against that tide until his final term as governor ends in less than two years, he’s being buffeted by the perception that he’s moving rightward to broaden his national appeal in preparation for the 2028 presidential race.
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Newsom faced criticism for showcasing conservative activists on his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” especially when he agreed with Trump loyalist Charlie Kirk that it was “unfair” for trans athletes to compete in women’s sports.
But he also pushed back against Kirk and others during the interviews. He said from the outset that he intended to engage with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, but that did not blunt the criticism he received. Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego), the chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said he was “profoundly sickened and frustrated” by Newsom’s remarks about trans athletes.
“The big problem for Newsom is that most people see him as focused outside of California at a dire time,” Mora said. “So all his moves that he’s making, whether this is truly him being more educated and coming to the middle, are seen through that lens.”
And a healthy dose of dissatisfaction about the tough economic times facing many Californians. Notably, Newsom had just a couple of weeks before he celebrated California’s rank as the fourth-largest economy in the world; for years he has boasted of the state’s innovative and thriving economy.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa didn’t appear that impressed, saying California also has the highest cost of living in the nation.
“We love to say we’re the fourth-largest economy in the United States, what we don’t say is we have the highest effective poverty rate,” Villaraigosa said to a hotel ballroom packed with union leaders. “So let’s deal with the issues that are facing us here in California.”
Former Controller Betty Yee offered a similar assessment.
“In California, we are the fourth-largest economy in the world, but when you peel that back, how’s that working for everybody?” she asked.
Six of the seven Democratic candidates said they would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers. Villaraigosa was the sole candidate who expressed reservations. Newsom vetoed a bill in 2023 that would have provided such coverage, saying it would make the state’s unemployment trust fund “vulnerable to insolvency.”
Afterward, Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, complained that labor leaders “can’t even get a conversation out of Gavin Newsom” about regulating AI.
Barbs from labor aren’t a new experience for Newsom. Union leaders have at times clashed with the ambitious governor over legislation he opposed that supported pro-union labor agreements with developers and regulating Big Tech.
Gubernatorial candidates taking direct or indirect shots at the incumbent, even those who belong to the same party, also is nothing new. During a candidate debate in 2018, Newsom took a subtle jab at then-Gov. Jerry Brown for the state’s response to the homelessness crisis.
To this day, Newsom says he is the only California governor to launch a major state effort to address the crisis.
Knives out during tough budget times
Newsom also faces the difficult task of having to wrestle with an additional $12-billion state budget shortfall next year, a deficit caused mostly by state overspending Newsom says is being exacerbated by falling tax revenues due to Trump’s on-again-off-again federal tariff policies.
The governor’s proposed cuts drew criticism from some of his most progressive allies and again stirred up rumblings that he was trying to recast himself as a moderate.
To save money, Newsom proposed scaling back his policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants. The governor’s budget also proposes to siphon off $1.3 billion in funding from Proposition 35, a measure voters approved in November that dedicated the revenue from a tax on managed care organizations to primarily pay for increases to Medi-Cal provider rates.
Jodi Hicks, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, called the governor’s proposed budget cuts “cruel.”
Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), co-chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, said members would oppose Newsom’s Medi-Cal cuts, and rallies against Newsom’s proposal are planned at the Capitol this week.
During his budget news conference on Wednesday, Newsom also took aim at California’s cities and counties, blasting them for not doing enough to address the state’s homelessness crisis. Newsom also renewed his call for cities and counties to ban homeless encampments.
“It is not the state of California that remains the biggest impediment,” Newsom said. “The obstacle remains at the local level.”
Carolyn Coleman, executive director of the League of California Cities, returned fire, saying Newsom’s proposed budget “failed to invest” adequately in efforts by cities to not only alleviate homelessness, but also improve public safety and address climate change.
Under the headline “Gavin Newsom Sits Down For Podcast With Serial Killer Who Targets Homeless,” the fake article mocks both the governor’s podcast and efforts to address homelessness and purports that Newsom asked the killer what Democrats could learn from his tactics.
WASHINGTON — Markets rejoiced this week over news that the Trump administration, after six weeks of maximalist rhetoric, had struck a preliminary deal with China to lower tariff rates between the two countries. Tech stocks led the rally, with investors hopeful that President Trump had finally retreated from plans for a protracted trade war with a vital trading partner.
But the celebration may be premature, industry insiders, foreign diplomats and market experts said, telling The Times that Silicon Valley will face strong headwinds in the months ahead — the makings of a perfect storm of uncertainty that could still tip the U.S. economy into recession.
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Investigation at Commerce
Wall Street reacted with similar exuberance last month on word that tech products, such as smartphones and computers, would be exempt from Trump’s 145% tariffs on China — a figure that was reduced in the deal struck on Monday to 30%, marking a significant reduction, but still far higher than tariffs have ever been on Chinese imports.
And yet the April 12 White House announcement outlining exemptions was widely misunderstood as a walk-back. In fact, those tech products, including the iPhone, are exempted from existing tariff rates only temporarily, because the Commerce Department is conducting an ongoing review of whether to impose separate import duties on the sector over specific national security concerns.
The investigation, under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, is progressing, with the Commerce Department recently ending its acceptance of public comments. The department, led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, could issue findings anytime in the coming months, alongside a tariff rate of unknown size that may severely affect Silicon Valley companies.
The review is causing uncertainty in its own right. But Lutnick has indicated that action is forthcoming. He has repeatedly advocated for the iPhone to be manufactured in the United States — a process that would require a large, skilled workforce in high-tech manufacturing produced by the very universities being targeted by the Trump administration, and would substantially increase the price of computing products for American households.
Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary who has earned greater confidence than Lutnick from the business community, is the one leading trade negotiations with China, where many of those products are made. That has Silicon Valley executives questioning which one of them is in charge, and whom they should be speaking with, according to one tech executive, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
“The core issue for Silicon Valley lies in the uncertainty and potential cost disruption these bring to critical technology components, especially semiconductors,” said Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay, a professor of information systems and operations management at the University of Florida.
“While ostensibly about national security, the application of these investigations can introduce significant volatility into supply chain planning and investment decisions. Companies might hesitate to commit to certain sourcing strategies if there’s a persistent threat,” he added. “All of which is to say that there will be quite a bit of turbulence ahead for strategic planners of Silicon Valley firms.”
Looming battle with Europe
Announcing the reduction in trade tensions with China on Monday, Trump turned his attention to the European Union, another major trading partner, and levied a threat.
“The European Union is in many ways nastier than China,” the president said. “They’ll come down a lot. You watch. We have all the cards. They treat us very unfairly.”
But the Europeans believe they have some cards, as well.
Trump’s focus on trade with Europe has been on tangible goods, such as agricultural products, manufactured items, pharmaceuticals and cars — a grouping of products that on their own would show a significant U.S. trade deficit with the continent. But European officials use different math. They want to account for European use of U.S. digital services to level the playing field.
One European official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the taxation of digital services — such as online advertising, social media platforms and streaming services — is expected to be a “significant” component of the upcoming negotiations.
“Silicon Valley should be very concerned,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The U.S. really stands to lose if there are certain tariffs that are brought to services, and I think people in the U.S. understand that, and would try to prevent it from happening.”
Targeting the U.S. digital sector offers Europe potent leverage in negotiations with the Trump administration, not only because it represents such a large portion of the American economy, but also because it applies acute pressure on Trump’s political allies in Silicon Valley — a tactic that could ultimately persuade him to cave.
“Trump blinked on the China tariffs at least in part because China aggressively retaliated,” Strain said. “That will be interesting to watch if other trading partners modify their strategy: learning that punching the bully in the nose is the right thing to do.”
Rates remain high on China
One of Trump’s first calls on Monday morning after announcing his temporary truce with China was to Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook. “He’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple,” Trump said. “We look forward to that.”
Apple can’t build them fast enough. Although it committed $500 billion in investments over the next four years in U.S. production, including new plants and a manufacturing academy, uncertainty in the interim will force the company to make hard decisions on its product lines.
Despite some protection from the exemptions in place as the Commerce investigation proceeds, the California tech giant still faces hurdles from the tariffs that remain high across supply chains — not just in China, where rates remain at 30%, but also elsewhere in Asia, including India and Vietnam, which face 10% import duties. In the most recent earnings call, before the China deal was announced, Cook estimated that Apple could incur a $900-million hit from tariffs.
“For companies like Apple, and indeed much of Silicon Valley, this overall environment isn’t just about weathering a storm; it’s about fundamentally rethinking global operations,” Bandyopadhyay said. “We’re already witnessing the strategic pivots.”
To offset the costs of tariffs, Apple could increase the prices of iPhones in the fall. But the company also has to walk a fine line both politically and financially. The Trump administration has been critical of companies such as Amazon that have considered showing consumers the impact of tariffs.
“This is all sort of a game of poker, and also remember, Tim Cook is 10% politician, 90% CEO,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst who covers the technology sector.
Ives said the upcoming iPhone 17 could cost $100 more than the current model, but his firm estimates that could reduce demand by 5%, delaying consumers’ purchases of new devices. Other analysts said it is tough to say if prices will increase, with the smartphone maker keeping prices relatively stable in recent years.
The debate over Apple’s fate has proved to be a sensitive point in U.S. negotiations with Beijing. Last month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry recirculated a video from a visit Cook made to China in 2017, in which he explained why Silicon Valley companies find themselves so reliant on the Chinese supply chain.
“The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I am not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being a low-labor-cost country many years ago,” Cook said at the time. “The reason is because of the skill, the quantity of skill in one location, and the type of skill it is.”
“The products we do require really advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with materials that we do are state-of-the-art,” he added. “If you look at the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill a room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”
Times staff writer Queenie Wong in San Francisco contributed to this report.
