A nonprofit advocacy group, Social Equity LA, organized with local cannabis business owners to oppose the measure in letters to Mayor Karen Bass.
Luis Rivera, executive director of the nonprofit, said Measure CB risks legitimizing the illegal cannabis industry while linking city finances to the tax revenue the businesses would generate. The measure also would undermine Proposition 64, the state law that requires cannabis businesses to be licensed, he said. And amid the city’s struggles to track and close illegal cannabis businesses, Rivera said it will be difficult to force them to pay up.
“There’s no guarantee or mechanism to assure that illegal operators will pay the taxes or fulfill their obligations,” Rivera said.
Even if they pay taxes, illegal operators could undercut legal businesses by selling unregulated products and avoiding requirements, such as code inspections and safety tests for merchandise, that legal businesses must fulfill to keep their licenses, he said. For an already struggling industry, the answer isn’t taxing more businesses, he said — it’s lowering taxes.
Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro (C), son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, celebrates with members of Congress a vote that could reduce the sentences for coup attempts imposed on his father and others, in Brasilia, Brazil, on Thursday. Photo by Andre Borges/EPA
May 1 (UPI) — Brazil’s Congress approved legislation that could significantly reduce prison sentences for former President Jair Bolsonaro and several supporters convicted over the 2023 attempted coup.
Both chambers of Congress voted Thursday by wide margins to overturn a veto by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, allowing changes to how sentences are served for crimes linked to coup attempts.
Local media described the vote as further evidence of tensions between Lula’s government and a Congress dominated by conservative factions.
Newspapers, including Estadão and Folha de S.Paulo, said lawmakers dealt a “double blow” to Lula in less than 24 hours after the Senate also rejected, for the first time in 130 years, a presidential nominee for Brazil’s Supreme Court.
The legislation would directly benefit Bolsonaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for leading the alleged coup plot, as well as dozens of former officials and hundreds of demonstrators linked to the Jan. 8, 2023, assault on government institutions in Brasília.
After the congressional vote, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son and a presidential candidate, wrote on X that the decision “is the first step toward full justice for the political persecution victims of Jan. 8.”
“The defeat of the Workers’ Party is the victory of Brazil,” he added.
The measure focuses on changes to sentencing rules. By overturning Lula’s veto, lawmakers established that convicts would no longer serve cumulative sentences for each individual offense, such as criminal association or damage to public property.
Instead, courts would apply only the sentence tied to the most serious crime, sharply reducing total prison time.
In Bolsonaro’s case, the change would cut his sentence from 27 years to a maximum of 12 years. Under Brazilian law, inmates may qualify for legal benefits after serving part of their sentence, potentially allowing the former president to seek parole or the end of his house arrest within an estimated two to four years.
The law is expected to face challenges before the Supreme Federal Court on grounds that Congress may have overstepped judicial authority and violated constitutional principles by altering sentences tied to crimes against the state.
While the court reviews the measure’s constitutionality, judges could suspend its implementation, preventing any immediate reduction of Bolsonaro’s sentence until a final ruling is issued.
Bolsonaro, who has been under temporary humanitarian house arrest since March 27 after suffering bilateral pneumonia, was admitted Friday to DF Star Hospital in Brasília after authorization from Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, according to local outlet G1 Globo.
The 71-year-old former president is scheduled to undergo shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and related injuries.
The judicial developments come amid early campaigning ahead of Brazil’s October presidential election, where Flávio Bolsonaro is emerging as Lula’s main challenger. Several polls show the two tied in a potential runoff election.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Legislature approved a new congressional map intended to maximize Republicans’ advantage in the state as part of the national redistricting battle that President Trump launched ahead of this year’s midterms.
The vote came just two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled his proposal and the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The decision could make it harder for Democrats to challenge Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts in ways that limit the influence of nonwhite voters.
DeSantis’ map could increase Republicans’ advantage in Florida’s House delegation to 24 to 4, up from the current split of 20 to 8. The potential four-seat gain is the same as what Virginia Democrats expect from a recent redistricting referendum, which is being challenged in state court there.
Florida’s new districts are certain to face lawsuits as well, especially because the state constitution prohibits redistricting for explicitly partisan purposes. DeSantis and his aides believe those provisions will not be a legal barrier because they have been weakened previously by the Florida Supreme Court and again by Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Florida Republicans, comfortable in their supermajority in both legislative chambers, said little about the new districts during the whirlwind special session. The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R-Fort Myers), limited her remarks to careful answers about an “evolving legal landscape” as Democrats’ asked her about the redistricting effort.
“I believe that there is a likelihood that that map will be upheld against legal challenge,” Persons-Mulicka said.
Opposition was vocal but futile
Democrats, activists and some citizens to decried the process as a partisan power play to satisfy Trump, boost DeSantis’ future ambitions and hurt the majority of registered Florida voters who are not Republicans.
“Y’all are doing this because y’all’s daddy in the White House is injecting national political objectives into what should be a state-driven process,” Rep. Michele Rayner (D-St. Petersburg) told her Republican colleagues before an 83-28 vote in favor of the measure.
The Florida Senate later approved the plan in a 21-17 vote.
Rep. Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville Democrat, chided Republicans for yielding the redistricting process to DeSantis, whose second term expires in January.
“Last time I checked, we’re the ones who were supposed to be drawing the map,” she said, “and yet we are allowing y’all to continue to hold the water of the governor, who is a lame duck and just trying to figure out what his next job is going to be.”
Democrats diminished in metro areas
The new map reshapes districts in Democratic areas around Orlando, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area and in south Florida around Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. The changes could cost Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, among others, their seats.
DeSantis and his aides said before and during the session that new map is necessary to account for population growth in suburban and exurban areas since the 2020 census and to ensure Florida has a “race-neutral” congressional plan.
The proposal presumed the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wednesday decision, which specifically struck down a Louisiana congressional district drawn for the electorate to be majority-Black. Historically, Black voters have aligned more with Democrats, while a majority of white voters lean toward Republicans.
The changes in Florida include the effective elimination of one nearly majority Black south Florida district that was represented by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Black Democrat, until her resignation earlier this month.
Lawmakers fast-tracked the measures
From the session’s opening bell Tuesday morning, Republican leaders moved swiftly.
In one of just two committee hearings, Senate Rules Chair Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) said she wanted “everybody who has taken the time and effort to come to Capitol to have an opportunity to speak.” Then she declared each speaker would have 30 seconds.
“I know that doesn’t seem like a lot but it actually is, uh, if you’re concise,” she said.
Deborah Courtney drove more than two hours from from Jacksonville and noted that all citizen speakers expressed opposition.
“Why are you doing this redistricting now?” she asked senators. “I doubt that your phone have been ringing off the hook from your constituents going, hey, we need some new maps.”
Rob Woods came from the Tampa area, which under the new map could have no Democratic representation in the U.S. House. A Black man, Wood told senators he was a veteran who said he “bought in from elementary school” on notions of the U.S. as an equal-opportunity democracy.
Now, he said, “it seems as if we are back in that period of Reconstruction, moving back to Jim Crow.”
On the House floor, Persons-Mulicka sidestepped specifics about what factors went into the map. She repeatedly called it “race-neutral,” citing testimony from DeSantis aide Jason Poreda, who took sole credit for the map during the session and did not disclose the names of any architects. But asked about Poreda’s admission that he examined party affiliation and voting patterns, Persons-Mulicka balked.
“I cannot speak to the intent of the map drawer,” she said.
DeSantis unveiled the map on Fox News
Persons-Mulicka and Sen. Don Gaetz, who sponsored the map in the Senate, deflected questions about why DeSantis unveiled the plan on Fox News.
Gaetz, a Crestview Republican, confirmed he had no part in drafting the map and forwarded the governor’s proposal to other senators as soon as he received it late Monday morning.
There’s no guarantee that new maps across the country will play out the way two parties hope. For example, Texas based its revised lines largely on Trump’s performance in 2024, redistributing the president’s voters across more districts to pull them into the Republican column. But Trump’s popularity has waned since his reelection, including among Latino voters who figure prominently in the state.
Florida could face a similar conundrum. Creating more majority-Republican districts could leave margins thin enough to allow for Democratic victories, especially if there’s an anti-Trump backlash at the polls this year.
Some Republicans have expressed worry about that possibility, and a handful voted against the measure in the Florida Legislature.
The governor already took a hit because of the session. He had wanted lawmakers to adopt state regulations on artificial intelligence, ostensibly protecting minors from harmful material, while rolling back vaccine mandates for students in Florida’s public schools. House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Republican but not a DeSantis ally, spiked both ideas.
DeSantis called it “political shenanigans.”
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell (D-Tampa) lamented that Republicans still delivered DeSantis the big-ticket item that he wanted.
“On destroying our democracy, they’ve been aligned,” she said, “and that’s what we did here today.”
Supporters of a billionaire tax said Sunday that they had gathered nearly twice as many signatures as necessary to qualify the controversial proposal for the November ballot.
Opponents of the proposal argue that it already has driven wealthy Californians — crucial to funding the state’s volatile budget — to other parts of the nation. Advocates, however, say the proposed tax is critical to compensate for federal healthcare funding cuts that will harm the state’s most vulnerable residents.
“Most Californians and most billionaires recognize how reasonable and necessary this proposal is — both to keep emergency rooms open and to save California businesses from closing,” said Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff of the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the chief proponent of the effort. “A very small group of the most controversial billionaires on the planet tried to stop” this effort, she added, but when “our growing coalition files these signatures, David will have won the first round against Goliath.”
The union, which represents more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients and consumers, launched the effort to counter massive healthcare funding cuts that President Trump signed last year. The California Budget & Policy Center estimated that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, rural hospitals could shutter, and other healthcare services would be slashed unless new funding was found.
The proposal would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at more than $1 billion, with some exclusions, such as property. The levy could be paid over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs, and the remaining funds would be spent on food assistance and education programs. The proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it.
Supporters need to submit the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters to county elections officials by June 24. They say they have gathered nearly 1.6 million signatures.
Opponents of the measure, which has divided liberals — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) supports it while Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it — said the proposal would destroy California’s economy and budget, while doing nothing to address the state’s underlying financial issues.
“This wealth tax would have a devastating impact on our economy, state budget, and the cost of living for all Californians,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the bipartisan California Business Roundtable. “The measure doesn’t do anything to reduce the state’s $35-billion-plus budget deficit and does nothing to address the decade of overspending that led to the structural deficit. In fact, because the state relies so heavily on high-income-earner tax revenue, this measure could lead to reduced budget revenue in the long term as highly mobile wealthy individuals leave the state to avoid this new tax.”
He also argued that the proposal could result in higher taxes for all Californians.
“This is an everyone tax that is called a billionaire tax,” Lapsley said, “and we will ensure Californians understand the truth on the devastating consequences this initiative will have.”
SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification every time they vote in person, or use a special pin number when submitting mail-in ballots, has qualified for the November ballot, elections officials announced Friday.
The measure also would require election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, aligning with a Republican-led push for new restrictions on voters in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that undocumented immigrants are swaying elections by voting illegally.
Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego has been pushing the measure for several years, while Trump and Republicans also are seeking a similar initiative at the federal level.
If passed, the California ballot measure would require a voter to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a pin number, on their ballots matching the one generated when they registered to vote.
The pin would come from ID such as a driver’s license, or could be generated from the county. The vast majority of Californians mail in their ballots in elections.
Under the measure, election officials also must ensure that registered voters are U.S. citizens by using information from government records, which could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, and maintain accurate voter registration lists.
DeMaio said the measure is different than a federal proposal, known as the SAVE Act, which stalled out in the U.S. Senate this week.
DeMaio said the state ballot measure “does not do away with mail in ballots, because voters of all political backgrounds like the convenience of mail in ballots. So we want to keep that convenience.”
The ballot measure needs a simple majority to pass.
Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.
Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, told the Times that her group is committed to fighting the measure, arguing it would make it harder for people in the state to vote.
She said that people may forget to use a pin on their mail-in ballot, leading to their vote being disqualified. Similar changes in Texas, she said, led to a rise in rejected ballots due to technical errors.
“It doesn’t really weed out illegal voting,” which doesn’t actually exist, she said, “but it does cause more ballots to be incorrectly flagged and ultimately rejected.”
ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California also oppose the measure.
DeMaio filed for the ballot initiative in 2021 and 2023, but did not move forward with the signature collection process in order to fine-tune the ballot language.
He said his ballot measure wasn’t focused primarily about making sure that undocumented people don’t vote.
“That’s one element of concern that we’ve heard from some groups, but it really is making sure that, number one, we properly maintain our voter rolls,” he said.
California’s trial attorneys and Uber — longtime courtroom foes — are officially bringing their fight to the November ballot.
A coalition of lawyers and advocates announced Thursday that it has gathered enough signatures to ask voters to support a “first in the nation” law that would make rideshare companies legally responsible for sexual assaults that happen to a driver or customer during a trip. Uber has argued it’s not liable for assaults committed by drivers, who are considered independent contractors.
“We must hold Uber accountable today,” said Danielle Tudahl, who recounted being sexually harassed and chased by an Uber driver after ordering a ride through the app, at a Sacramento news conference. “Californians are finally demanding action to try and close some of these gaps and put people’s safety over corporate profits.”
Uber has described the ballot measure, which is sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, or CAOC, as retaliation for its own November ballot push to cap how much attorneys can earn in car crash cases in California.
“This ballot measure is a cynical ploy by billboard lawyers,” said Nathan Click, a spokesperson for A More Affordable California, an Uber-backed coalition. “CAOC didn’t spend millions to put this on the ballot to protect survivors — their goal is protecting billboard lawyer profits.”
The coalition that supports Uber announced last week it had gathered enough signatures for a measure that would cap attorney fees for car crash cases at 25%, among other changes.
Uber says its ballot measure will give victims a larger cut of their settlement money, rather than the payout getting siphoned off primarily to attorneys and doctors. Attorneys fire back that it will leave thousands of people with small or thorny cases without a lawyer because they won’t have financial incentive to sue.
Both sides are gearing up for an expensive fight. Uber has given more than $77 million. The Alliance Against Corporate Abuse, the CAOC-backed coalition pushing the sexual assault measure, has raised more than $68 million from law firms across the state, according to campaign finance records.
The money has helped pay for billboards that have sprouted across L.A. informing drivers that, according to the New York Times, Uber received a report of sexual assault or misconduct every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022. The company was the subject of a series of investigations by the paper into sexual assault by drivers. The company says it has invested billions in keeping riders safe and has “done more than any other company to confront” sexual violence.
The proposed sexual assault measure would require ride-share companies to let riders know if the person picking them up has a history of sexual misconduct and conduct yearly fingerprint and background checks for drivers.
The company is currently fighting more than 3,000 lawsuits from passengers who claim they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Uber drivers. Those cases are being coordinated by a federal judge in California.
The attorney coalition had also pushed an initiative aimed at nullifying Uber’s fee-capping measure if it passed. Alex Stack, a spokesperson for the campaign, said they were “pausing/withdrawing” the measure to “focus the fight on our sexual assault prevention measure and beating Uber’s initiative.”
Bruno Mars tickets running for $2,000 and ones for SZA costing $600 caught California lawmakers’ attention. They’re advancing two bills targeting the resale market.
Earlier this year, tickets to see SZA perform at the Crypto Arena in Los Angeles were selling for $600 the day before they officially went on sale at $35 a piece.
In San Francisco, tickets to see Sam Smith at the newly renovated Castro Theater went on sale for $120, only to be quickly snatched up by scalpers and resold for upwards of $600.
Those are some of the stories that California lawmakers are citing as they advance two plans to change the ticketing landscape. One caps the extent to which resellers can mark up the original ticket price while the other prohibits resellers from selling tickets they don’t yet own.
Democratic Assemblymembers Issac Bryan of Culver City and Matt Haney of San Francisco are each carrying bills that they say would protect consumers from fraudulent and deceptive ticket sales.
Both measures are backed by the ticket market’s dominant seller, Beverly Hills-based Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster. Its support has some worried that the bills will help the company crush its competitors and jack up prices.
A federal jury in New York this week found that the company illegally acted as a monopoly in a victory for, among others, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who with colleagues in other states sued the company two years ago and kept going after federal prosecutors settled. Live Nation is now awaiting penalties.
Despite these headwinds, the ticket bills are sailing through the Legislature.
Supporters say the legislation has nothing to do with the antitrust case against Live Nation and helps consumers. Opponents disagree.
“The state Legislature should really be standing up for consumers instead of advancing bills that are there to help a monopoly that has been caught on record calling its fans stupid and has bragged about robbing them blind,” said Jose Barrera, national vice president for the far west region at the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights advocacy group.
Ticketmaster’s competitors in the online resale market are lobbying against the measures, a sign that they view the proposals as a threat to their business.
Jack Sterne, StubHub’s head of policy communications, wrote to CalMatters, stating, “Passing laws that hand the Ticketmaster monopoly more power and don’t actually make tickets more affordable is the last thing California’s leaders should do.”
But Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, which is co-sponsoring the bills, argues that they will regulate the marketplace to better protect fans by limiting price gouging and encouraging the face value — or below face value — exchange of tickets.
“Ultimately, that is what these bills will do, in addition to making sure that the tickets are actually real,” he said. “That is a good thing for California consumers. It’s a good thing for artists and it’s a good thing for these small businesses and nonprofits that make up the independent stages across the state.”
A Live Nation spokesperson said in a statement to CalMatters, “The resale lobby constantly tries to change the subject by pointing fingers at Ticketmaster, even though it has less than 25% of the resale market. This has nothing to do with anyone’s monopoly, but rather is about protecting fans from scalpers and the resale sites that cater to them.”
The company has spent roughly $165,000 on lobbying efforts this legislative session, including to support Bryan’s bill.
‘Unlikely allies’
Bryan’s Assembly Bill 1349 would ban the sale of speculative tickets — or tickets that are not in the possession or ownership of the people who list them online. In an April hearing, Bryan said the bill protects consumers from predatory mark ups.
“This bill is so important that, after our introduction, it brought unlikely allies together,” Bryan said, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. “In fact, this bill brought the Giants and the Dodgers together, brought the National Independent Venue Association and Live Nation together. It brought Kendrick Lamar and Kid Rock together. It brought Isaac Bryan and Donald Trump together.”
Several secondary ticket sellers are fighting the measure, including StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats. The three companies have spent roughly $1.1 million dollars on lobbying efforts this legislative session, which included opposition to Bryan’s bill.
People watch fireworks during Bad Bunny’s halftime show from a parking garage outside Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Feb. 8, 2026. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters
Opponents including Robert Herrell, executive director for the Consumer Federation of California, argue that the bill strengthens Live Nation Ticketmaster’s grip on the ticketing and live entertainment industry. According to them, the measure would give Live Nation complete control over the ticket even after it has been purchased — meaning, for example, that consumers could lose the ability to sell it or give it away.
“There’s no consumer choice in the matter,” said Herrell. “They can keep people out of shows if they want to. There have been situations where, if you bought a ticket on the secondary market, you’ve been denied entry into a show.” Proponents say Herrell and other opponents are mistaken. They say they are not trying to prevent transferability but rather, they want to protect fans from speculative costs.
“We want those rooms full,” said Ron Gubitz, executive director of Music Artists Coalition, which is co-sponsoring both bills. “So you have to be able to transfer a ticket. We just want it to be in a way that’s safe, trustworthy and not creating this run on the market that exists now.”
Gubitz pointed to a recent Bruno Mars concert, where tickets were on StubHub for $400 to $2,000 before they were on sale through Ticketmaster.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “That’s a speculative ticket that Bryan’s bill is trying to stop. That shouldn’t happen. It’s not fair to anybody, except for the secondary (market). It seems great for them.”
Price caps in a free market
Haney’s Assembly Bill 1720, also known as the California Fans First Act, would put a 10% cap on resale event ticket markups, inclusive of the ticket fees. In other words, a reseller could not charge more than 10% higher than the original ticket price.
In an interview with CalMatters, Haney said artists, independent venues and downtowns are currently being “screwed over and exploited” by scalpers and brokers.
“We can’t allow the status quo to continue if we want to ensure Californians have access to affordable tickets to see their favorite artists or if we want independent venues or the broader landscape of musicians and artists to thrive in our state,” he said.
Haney rejected the idea that his bill would strengthen the Live Nation Ticketmaster monopoly, saying that the company is one of the biggest operators and profiteers of the secondary ticket market and would therefore be subject to the same restrictions as any other platform or broker.
“I don’t think it’s a free market to allow folks to come in and buy up all these tickets and then create scarcity and then you’re now required to buy your ticket at a much higher price from someone who had nothing to do with the event,” he said. “This is not something we would ever allow for airplane tickets or even dinner reservations.”
The bill has been criticized by opponents like Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy at Progressive Policy Institute, who said price caps notoriously distort the market, describing them as “anti-consumer, anti-competitive and anti-artist.”
“If you shut down the resale market with price caps then guess what? Ticket buyers have no place to go but right back to Ticketmaster,” said Moss. “If (Live Nation) succeed(s) in decimating the resale market, then they steer millions and millions of fans back to their own ticketing platform where they charge monopoly ticket fees and where fans are hostage to their glitchy online platform and all of their data, privacy and security concerns that we always hear about in the news.”
Those concerns didn’t stop the bill from passing out of the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism last week with a 6-1 vote. The bill also passed out of the Assembly Committee on Privacy & Consumer Protection on Thursday with a 9-4 vote.
Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow for CalMatters.
A Los Angeles City Council panel is pushing to ban electric bikes from most city recreational trails, saying the machines pose a threat to hikers and equestrians.
The council’s Arts, Parks, Libraries, and Community Enrichment Committee voted 3 to 0 in favor of the measure, which now goes to the council’s Transportation Committee before potentially advancing to the full City Council, which would have to approve the ban before it takes effect.
“When you have something that’s motorized traversing that same space, especially if it’s somewhat of a rugged space, for folks that have sensitivities — knees, ankles — you don’t want to create an intimidating situation,” councilmember Adrin Nazarian said.
Although he voted to support the measure, Nazarian said he was open to making changes such as restricting some classes of e-bikes instead of a unilateral ban.
The ban, proposed by councilmember John Lee, would still allow e-bikes on designated bikeways in the city, including some of those along the L.A. River and city beaches.
Regular bikes are already banned from anything designated as a “trail,” according to a city ordinance, but a spokesperson for Lee said e-bikes were a gray area that his proposal aims to address.
Supporters of the measure include Lisa Baca of the Monteverde Ranch Equestrian Center in the northeast San Fernando Valley, who said horses are animals that can easily be spooked by facing moving e-bikes.
“They panic and it becomes very dangerous” for both riders, she said in an interview. At the same time, Baca noted that enforcing any ban on remote trails would be difficult.
Eli Akira Kaufman, director of the nonprofit advocacy group BikeLA, criticized the proposed ban as a “blunt instrument” and said the city should instead engage in a public education campaign aimed at getting people to share space safely.
Michael Schneider, chief executive of StreetsForAll, said the main problem on trails comes not from e-bikes but from people riding more powerful motorcycles and motorized trail bikes that aren’t street legal.
Federal regulations around e-bikes are lenient; they are considered nonmotorized vehicles like regular bikes and don’t require riders to have driver’s licenses or insurance. Local regulations, such as the one proposed by Lee, can vary widely by jurisdiction.
Under California law, e-bikes and e-motorcycles are separately classified by motor power, top speed and whether the bike has working pedals. Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes don’t require licenses or insurance, while Class 3 riders need to be at least 16.
Catherine Lerer, a partner at law firm McGee Lerer Ogrin who has worked on dozens of e-bike accident cases, said accidents are more dangerous because riders — sometimes children — are moving faster than they would on a regular pedal bike.
“Minors riding e-bikes do not appreciate how fast that these bikes go, and they don’t know the rules that apply to riding an e-bike,” Lerer said. “It’s just a recipe for disaster.”
When the speaker of the Texas House recently outlined his priorities for the next legislative session, he mentioned tax relief, the development of data centers and a notion that sent many eyebrows skyward.
Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, directed the chamber’s governmental oversight committee to study the legal and economic implications of Texas absorbing one or more counties in eastern New Mexico.
The “conversation,” Burrows told the Dallas Morning News, “is ultimately about culture, opportunity and the right to choose a path that reflects the shared values of the Permian and Delaware basins,” a vast desert expanse awash in oil and natural gas.
Apparently, Texas lawmakers have time and money to burn.
The notion of the swaggering state swallowing a chunk of its resistant neighbor is completely far-fetched. Just four states have been carved from the territory of others: Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and West Virginia. And it’s been quite a spell since the last time that happened. West Virginia split off from Confederate Virginia in 1863.
Realistically, there is no end of hurdles — legal, political, practical — that would have to be surmounted for a partial Texas-New Mexico merger to occur. Both states would need to agree — New Mexico is a hard no — and Congress would also have to approve.
But the impulse to bust up, break away and move on is as old as America itself and, at the same time, as fresh as the latest provocation to pass the lips of the nation’s frothing commander-in-chief.
The notion being if you don’t like it, then leave.
Or, at least, make noise about doing so.
Eastern New Mexico — dry, desolate — looks and feels very much like an appendage of West Texas. Its residents have long been estranged from the rest of their state and, especially, the Democratic leadership in Santa Fe, the state capital. That is not to say, however, the slightest inch of New Mexico territory will be going anywhere anytime soon.
Earlier this year, two Republican state lawmakers introduced a measure to give voters a say on whether they wanted their counties to break away — or, as one of the legislators put it, “Get the hell out of New Mexico.” The constitutional amendment died without a hearing.
When Burrows renewed talk of a takeover, Javier Martinez, speaker of the New Mexico House, responded without equivocation. “Over my dead body,” he said.
But the notion has garnered Burrows plenty of attention in the Lone Star State, a place with no lack of self-regard. And it certainly hasn’t hurt his standing with Texas’ arch-conservative Republican base, which has sometimes viewed Burrows with suspicion.
“People in Texas have a lot of fun with the idea that Texas … is entitled to secede and that maybe it can restore lost lands in New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado and beyond,” said Cal Jillson, a longtime student of Texas politics at Southern Methodist University. “It [appeals to] the conservative base, but also to everyone who loves to chuckle.”
Serious or not, secession — or independence, as some prefer to call it — has long been the dream of dissenters, of the discontented and those who feel put upon or politically unrepresented. America, after all, was birthed by divorcing itself from Britain and King George III.
For the longest time, residents in the ruddy north of blue California have agitated for a breakaway state called Jefferson. In recent years unhappy conservatives in eastern Oregon have spoken of splitting from their Democratic state and becoming a part of Republican Idaho. (Lawmakers in Boise passed a measure in 2023 inviting Oregon to the negotiating table; Oregon has so far declined to show.)
Since 2020, voters in 33 rural Illinois counties have voted to separate from their state and its Democratic leadership, a move welcomed in a measure passed by the Republican-run Indiana Legislature and signed by the state’s GOP governor, Mike Braun. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the 2025 legislation as “a stunt.”)
Which, indeed, it appeared to be.
But Richard Kreitner said there is a certain logic behind secession movements, as governments from Washington to the statehouse are seen as increasingly unresponsive and dysfunctional.
“As people become more disenfranchised … more disillusioned from the political process, you’re going to start looking outside of the political process, the political structure, the constitutional structure, for a possible solution,” said Kreitner, who hosts a history podcast, “Think Back,” and has also written a book on secession. “If you’re going to do that in a country founded with a secessionist manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, at some point people are going to start thinking about that.”
Legitimate grievance grounded in serious concern is certainly worthy of attention. But exploiting that discontent to draw notice or score cheap political points — as Burrows seems to be doing in Texas — is something altogether different.
The chance of New Mexico ceding a part of itself to Texas is precisely zero, meaning the legislative study is less about “culture” and “opportunity” than the speaker and fellow Republicans evidently looking to troll their blue-state neighbor.
There are better, more productive ways for lawmakers to spend their time.
WASHINGTON — Buried in the fine print of the massive deficit-reduction bill is–of all things–a brand new social program.
The new program will cost $1 billion over the next five years–somewhat less than the Clinton Adminstration had requested, but still a substantial sum in this era of tight budgets.
Supporters, including Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, insisted that some provisions in the new program actually would save the government money in the long run. Even many of the program’s supporters questioned that assertion, however, although they insisted that the money is worth spending in any case.
The family preservation and support program–along with expanded spending for childhood immunization, tuberculosis prevention, food stamps, “empowerment zones” intended to help inner cities and the earned income tax credit for low-income workers–represents the flip side of the massive budget cutting and tax-raising efforts of the bill. All told, those social programs–aimed in large part at helping families with children–will receive an additional $29 billion from the bill.
“The President’s long-term investments for kids and families have been very well supported by this bill,” said Shalala.
The social-program funds not only were key to keeping some of President Clinton’s policy initiatives alive, they were crucial to winning support for the budget in the heavily Democratic House, where liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Black Caucus had threatened to vote against the budget bill unless it contained money to back up at least part of Clinton’s promise to “invest” in programs for the poor.
“There are a number of important features in this bill that represented the basis for many liberal and progressive Democrats to feel they could support the overall budget,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).
The survival of the family preservation program, which at several points during the long budget negotiations seemed likely to die, would mark the end of a long legislative road. The program would give money to the states for early intervention and support programs for troubled families. It has passed the House three times and was approved by both chambers last year as part of another piece of legislation ultimately vetoed by then-President George Bush.
Supporters of the program argued that, by intervening early, social workers can help troubled families before their situations deteriorate so much that the state has to place children in costly foster care programs.
Skeptics, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), argued that the ability of social workers to accomplish those goals has never been proven. At one point during budget talks, Moynihan derided the program as “welfare for social workers,” several participants said.
But other legislators argued that, even if the program does not save money by avoiding foster-care placements, it will provide badly needed help for children. “This creates early intervention to keep children from being abused,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who was the program’s chief sponsor in the House.
The program “has been pared down a good deal, but at least we got it,” Matsui said.
The birth of this new program is an object lesson in how legislators and Administration officials can use the arcane rules of the budget-cutting process to advance other items on the legislative agenda.
Over the years, Waxman has become a master at that art. This time around, he engineered a new $200-million program to expand the number of tuberculosis patients who can receive federal Medicaid benefits over the next five years. He also played a key role in winning money for the Administration’s proposed child immunization program, which would receive $585 million under the budget bill.
Although immunization has been a high priority for Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Waxman and other supporters of the program had to overcome opposition not only from congressional conservatives but from some White House officials who were willing to accept much lower dollar amounts for the program as they sought to hit their deficit-cutting goals, according to Administration and congressional sources.
Under the tuberculosis program, people who are poor but not otherwise eligible for Medicaid–primarily single men without children–and who have active tuberculosis can receive government-supplied out-patient services if the state they live in decides to participate. Public health officials said they hope that the additional money will reduce the rapid spread of the disease by targeting a group of people who often do not receive care.
The immunization program has two major components. The first part will provide $500 million over the next five years to pay for vaccinations for 2.6 million children whose families lack insurance. The money also will cover the 6.5 million children now covered under Medicaid, relieving the states of a financial burden.
The second part of the bill, which has drawn howls of outrage from drug manufacturers, would allow all states to buy vaccines in bulk at the price manufacturers provide to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–something 11 states now do. The CDC has negotiated steep discounts from the prices that drug companies charge private pediatricians.
SACRAMENTO — A new poll shows California voters are sharply divided over two brewing statewide ballot measures stirring up the nation’s partisan and economic divides: a one-time tax on billionaires to pay for mostly healthcare and a voter ID mandate that includes citizenship verification.
Support for the voter ID measure was more evenly split, with 44% of voters in support, 45% opposed and the remainder undecided.
The pair of statewide proposals, which have yet to qualify for California’s November ballot, emanated from opposite sides of California’s political spectrum. Organized labor and progressives are pushing hard for a new wealth tax in response to Republican cuts to federal healthcare programs, and the GOP-led call for additional voter restrictions comes in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Poll director Mark DiCamillo said he “was a little surprised” by the results given how much attention each measure has already received.
“Just from reading the press accounts of these initiatives, I thought they would both be well ahead. There’s been a lot of discussion about them and advocates seem to be very confident in their chances of passage, but the polls seem to indicate otherwise,” he said.
The divisions over each measure fell largely along partisan and ideological lines.
On the billionaire’s tax initiative, 72% of Democratic voters said they would support the measure if the election were held today — and the same percentage of Republicans oppose it. A slim majority — 51% — of voters who are unaffiliated or registered with another party support the wealth tax, while 30% said they oppose it, with the remainder undecided.
Republican voters overwhelmingly support the voter ID initiative, with 91% saying they would vote for it. More than two-thirds of Democratic voters, 68%, said they would oppose the measure. No party preference voters appeared evenly split.
Neither ballot measure has officially qualified for the November ballot thus far, though proponents of the voter ID measure said this month that they turned in 1.3 million voter signatures to elections officials, well above the 875,000 required to qualify. Proponents of the new tax on billionaires have until June 24 to submit signatures to elections officials.
The billionaire tax has generated national news coverage and widespread debate over whether it would benefit low-income Californians or end up hurting the state’s tax base as billionaires move out of the state to avoid paying it.
The proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 120,000 workers in California. Union leaders say that the tax would raise $100 billion to backfill steep cuts to federal healthcare programs under a sweeping tax and spending bill approved by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed in the summer by Trump.
The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California residents who are worth $1 billion or more, with options to pay it over multiple years.
According to SEIU-UHW, the new tax would apply to around 200 people in the state, though several wealthy tech leaders have made moves to change their residences and avoid paying the tax should it pass. In recent months, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and others have bought up lavish beachfront estates and new commercial office spaces in South Florida.
Some of those billionaires are also ponying up to defeat the measure. Brin, who according to Forbes is the world’s third-richest person, has contributed $45 million to a new ballot measure committee called Building a Better California, which is pushing an alternative statewide ballot measure that could scrap the billionaire’s tax.
Brandon Castillo, a veteran ballot measure campaign strategist who is not working on either of the two measures, said even though it’s currently polling above 50%, the billionaire’s tax is starting out “in a really shaky position.”
“This is not a very strong place to start,” he said. “That’s not to say they can’t keep this thing over 50%, but when you’re starting just barely above 50% and you have a tsunami of money and a huge campaign against you, it’s really hard to keep yourself at that level.”
Though previous public opinion polls at the state and national levels have shown broad support for requiring proof of citizenship to vote in elections, even among Democrats, the new Berkeley poll showed liberal voters are skeptical of the measure.
Proponents of voter ID contend that such laws prevent election fraud and, along with proof of citizenship mandates, prevent noncitizens from voting. Opponents say ID requirements threaten the fundamental constitutional rights of Americans who do not have the documentation readily available, and that the restrictions are unnecessary given that voting by noncitizens is rare and already outlawed in the U.S.
Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.
The poll showed that slim majorities of predominantly Spanish-speaking voters, voters who were born in another country and first-generation immigrants support the voter ID measure. A plurality of Latino voters also favor it, with 44% in support and 41% opposed.
But DiCamillo cautioned against reading too much into those numbers, noting that awareness of the measure is still relatively low.
“I’ve always seen in my history of measuring Latino voters’ support that they are relatively late deciders on most ballot measures,” he said. “How they break will be critical. I would say we’ll have to look at how they feel when we do our final preelection poll.”
Voter ID laws are also a top priority of Trump, who has pressured the Senate into taking up the SAVE Act, which would impose nationwide requirements for proof of citizenship to vote and already has passed the House of Representatives.
Castillo said Trump’s support could sway Democratic and liberal-leaning independents to vote against the measure.
Both DiCamillo and Castillo noted that with the November election still seven months away, voters are not paying much attention and those on either side of each ballot measure have not launched major campaigns yet.
“I suspect by the time election day comes around, these awareness numbers on the billionaire’s tax certainly are going to be much higher,” Castillo said. “You’re going to see 80-90% of voters familiar with it, just because they’re going to be inundated with advertising and earned media between now and November.”
The Berkeley IGS/Times poll surveyed 5,019 registered California voters online in English and Spanish from March 9 to 14. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.
