Angel Foster had a backup plan.

It was the first weekend in May. A federal appeals court had just made it illegal to mail mifepristone, a pill that’s part of the most widely used abortion method in the U.S.

But Foster, a doctor who specializes in reproductive health, was prepared. As leader of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which ships abortion pills to some 3,500 patients a month nationwide, including in states with abortion bans, she told patients they had three options.

They could get a refund. They could wait to see if the legal situation changed. Or she could ship them only misoprostol — a second drug already used in most medication abortions. Combined, mifepristone and misoprostol are considered the “gold standard.” Misoprostol can be taken alone to induce an abortion, but some studies have suggested it’s less effective, Foster warned patients. Plus, it can make the process longer and more painful, with more side effects, such as nausea and vomiting.

Still, the vast majority of patients said the same thing: Just send it.

“They didn’t care,” Foster said. “Their response was: ‘Whatever can get to me the fastest.’”

Two developments often get lost in the public’s perception of the abortion wars. One is that the number of abortions in the U.S. has increased dramatically year over year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to the Society of Family Planning’s latest #WeCount report. By December, 29% of abortions were through telehealth. The second is that, because the mailing of abortion pills has become so widespread in the post-Dobbs era, abortion opponents may simply be unable to stop it.

Massive legal battles are being waged by states with abortion bans, seeking to block the shipment of mifepristone across their borders. In a suit brought by Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court recently restored telehealth access to mifepristone while a lower court hears the case. And abortion opponents continue their push to get the Trump administration to crack down on the pills’ availability, either through a Food and Drug Administration safety review or more drastic measures.

But many telehealth experts who help patients get abortions aren’t too worried.

“We like to say the genie is out of the bottle,” said Elisa Wells, who co-founded and is the access director at Plan C, which provides information about accessing abortion pills online.

“Now that people know that they can get safe, fast, effective, affordable care through the mail, there's no going back,” Wells said.

If mifepristone is restricted, many telehealth groups will immediately switch to using only misoprostol instead, they say.

Misoprostol is approved by the FDA to treat ulcers and is also widely used off-label to manage miscarriages, induce labor, and end pregnancies. And while states could individually ban misoprostol, the FDA doesn’t typically regulate how a drug is used off-label, according to David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University and national expert on abortion law.

“There would have to be some finding that it is not safe or effective for ulcer treatment, something that there’s no argument anyone could possibly show,” Cohen said.

Some telehealth companies already used that alternative back in 2021, when the Supreme Court temporarily reinstated a requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person. Carafem, a company that provides telehealth abortion, switched to using only misoprostol during that period “and has been prepared for this possibility ever since,” said Melissa Grant, a co-founder of the company and its chief operating officer.

Other organizations are already directing patients to mifepristone from outside the U.S., through groups such as Aid Access and online pharmacies in places like India.

Even if the Trump administration tried to enforce the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that bans the mailing of obscene matter and anything intended to produce an abortion, it would be extremely difficult to stop the flow of pills, Cohen said.

“We’ve had the ‘War on Drugs’ for what, half a century, maybe longer?” he said. “And everyone, if they wanted, could find illegal drugs within minutes, and have it probably delivered to their doorstep within hours.”

Abortion pills were called “the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world” in the Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and abortion opponents are increasingly vocal about their frustration with the Trump administration over them.

“People's patience is at an end on this point,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life of America. The group recently met with the Department of Justice to discuss priorities of the anti-abortion movement, such as enforcement of the Comstock Act.

The ability to use telehealth to circumvent state abortion bans is a key target of Louisiana’s lawsuit, which a federal appeals court is currently weighing. The suit, which has the backing of 21 other states, argues that the FDA under the Biden administration acted illegally when it allowed mifepristone to be prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor. Without that change, “activists in New York and California could not blanket pro-life states like Louisiana with mifepristone by mail,” the suit argues.

But because medication abortion is now the most common form of abortion in the U.S., restricting mifepristone would have a wide impact even in states without abortion bans.

“Stopping the FDA’s unlawful mail-order mifepristone scheme will surely decrease the number of chemical abortions across the country,” said Gabriella McIntyre, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which partnered with Louisiana in its suit.

And there are signs the administration may be feeling the pressure, even if it’s tempered by worries that further abortion restrictions could hurt Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections.

For one, it looks like the FDA’s safety evaluation of mifepristone — which abortion opponents have long pushed for — may be moving forward, potentially allowing the administration to restrict the drug’s use. It’s too soon to tell, said Hamrick, who refers to the long-promised evaluation as a “unicorn.”

“It feels mythical,” she said. “I look forward to seeing it. But it’s taking too long.”

And if mifepristone is restricted and providers switch to misoprostol-only regimens, abortion opponents say they're ready to highlight the risks.

“We call it the new coat hanger,” said Hamrick. Providers will prescribe it, she said, “knowing it fails more often, knowing that the complications are worse, because they're so committed to online distribution of pills for the purpose of abortion.”

Telehealth providers agree that patients need to be informed about what to expect with any medication abortion. “Our experience globally suggests that if you continue to give additional doses of misoprostol, you can get comparable success rates,” Foster said.

Foster said her practice didn’t have to mail patients the misoprostol-only packages that weekend in May because the Supreme Court put the lower court’s ruling on hold while the case plays out. But if needed, the pills would have gotten to patients, she said.

The group has seen a recent spike in demand, especially from patients in Louisiana. Foster thinks all the media coverage is reaching people who didn’t know they could get abortion pills online. “Maybe this is the first time you've been exposed to that,” she said.

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

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

By Kate Wolffe and Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California Forever, the tech billionaire-backed group that hopes to build a city from scratch on farmland in the outer San Francisco Bay Area, is lobbying state leaders to fast-track a massive shipbuilding deal that would kick-start its development after years of local opposition. 

The billionaires behind the project are seeking a deal to expedite environmental reviews of the development and, if necessary, bypass county restrictions on building by being absorbed into Suisun City boundaries. They’ve hired former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg — Democratic architects of landmark environmental laws — to make their case, and are using the prospect of luring a major shipbuilder to California to accelerate the dealmaking.

California Forever has pursued its project for nearly a decade, though the vision has shifted: At first pitched as a walkable city with cottages, bike lanes and even a water park, the plan then added a major shipbuilding operation and, last summer, a manufacturing hub. 

California Forever’s proponents, led by the state’s powerful building trades union along with realtors, peace officers and pro-housing groups, argue the latest proposal would boost the state’s economy and bring an estimated half a million jobs to California. And now, a prospective tenant has emerged: Defense company Saronic Technologies, Inc., which builds autonomous vessels for use in national security, is deciding between California and Texas for its next factory. The state must fast-track the development or lose the deal, supporters argue.

The developers are seeking the state’s permission to use an 18-year-old environmental impact report for the shipyard development, limit any legal challenges to the project to 270 days, and allow Suisun City to annex their land if needed, according to Steinberg and Hertzberg. 

“In short, if legislation is not approved, California will lose billions of dollars in investments and tens of thousands of jobs this summer to Texas and other states,” proponents wrote in a joint letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders this week.

But some locals and lawmakers are skeptical, arguing that details about the project remain scarce. The proposed development would convert vast farmlands into factories and risk harming the surrounding ecosystem, they said, which deserves rigorous environmental review under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act that proponents are seeking to expedite. 

State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon during a Senate floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Feb. 20, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

“For a project this scale in this location, it is what the (law) was designed for,” said Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Napa Democrat who represents the area. “A central question for the people of Solano County is: Is this going to be for the community or is this a conversion project that leaves them behind?”

Opponents also slammed California Forever for pursuing relief behind closed doors with state leaders and circumventing local opposition. Since 2018, the group has secretly bought up agricultural land, shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to court local residents and spent at least $330,000 lobbying the governor and legislative leaders for favorable legislation.

“I think they know that the only way this actually happens is under cover of darkness, by trying to essentially get the governor to work this plan for them,” said Jordan Grimes, legislative director at Greenbelt Alliance, which has advocated for streamlined environmental reviews for housing projects.

Secretive beginnings foment distrust

For residents of Solano County, an agricultural community on the outskirts of the Bay Area that includes coastal areas next to a deep-water shipping lane, the suspicion around California Forever has been hard to shake. 

The group’s subsidiary, Flannery Associates, started buying up farmland in 2018, eventually acquiring 62,000 acres while routinely refusing to answer questions about its backers. Some farmers later alleged the company used strong-arm tactics to get them to sell. 

In 2023, Flannery’s backers were unmasked as a group of wealthy venture capitalists including the founders of LinkedIn and Netscape, all led by former Goldman Sachs trader and real estate developer Jan Sramek. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, holds investments in both California Forever and Saronic, the defense company eyeing California. Andreessen’s firm did not immediately return a CalMatters inquiry for comment.

Despite rocky beginnings, California Forever needed the majority of Solano County voters on its side due to a 1984 “orderly growth” law that requires voters to approve development on unincorporated land. 

In 2024, the company debuted the East Solano Plan to rezone 17,500 acres of agricultural land for a dense, 400,000-person city. The proposal was set to go before voters that year, but its backers pulled it following powerful grassroots opposition, poor polling and a county assessment that found holes in the plan. Sramek acknowledged the group likely moved too fast and said the initiative would go back before voters in 2026. 

Instead, the group has pivoted. The East Solano Plan has become the Suisun Expansion Plan and the Solano Shipyard. In January 2025, Suisun City’s city council directed its manager to explore expanding the city’s limits through annexation, which is now underway, although it could take years.

State Route 113 runs through land where California Forever plans to put its new city in Solano County on Feb. 16, 2024. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

“The annexation and the ship building have been a clear way to work around the need for voter support in Solano County,” said Nate Huntington, a member of the grassroots group Solano Together, which formed in response to the secretive land purchases. Huntington pointed out that California Forever hasn’t even submitted a proposal for a shipbuilding facility to the county. 

“All of this has been happening in backrooms of Sacramento, and it's not been publicly available.”

Seeking state environmental relief

California Forever is now selling the development to the state as a major incentive to lure manufacturers and shipbuilders to California — and the subsequent need for housing to accommodate the promised jobs. 

The company wants the governor and state lawmakers to cut red tape for the development and require enough housing for the new jobs. Steinberg and Hertzberg told CalMatters they are contemplating legislation to that end, but only after California Forever signs a lease with a manufacturer or shipbuilder. 

Their plan would allow the governor to designate construction on company land as “environmental leadership development projects,” which would effectively require any litigation to be resolved within 270 days. Steinberg authored the state law streamlining that process in 2013.

State law requires government agencies to prepare a report for any project that might have a significant impact on the environment. Instead of assessing the impact of the proposed shipyard, Steinberg and Hertzberg’s proposal would use a 2008 report, which designated the area where the shipyard would go as “water-dependent industrial usage.” Most of California Forever’s 7,500-acre planned footprint does not have that designation.

Steinberg told CalMatters the report is sufficient since the site has changed little.

“The state and county need the ability to say yes now to these numerous opportunities,” he said in a text. A new report, he said, “would require years of additional delay and lost opportunities.”

But the report is outdated, Cabaldon argues.

“This is completely different,” he said. “Just the notion that you would just say, ‘We are not going to do any assessments at all and we’ll just rely on this old one’ — that is not consistent with what the public interest is.” 

Steinberg and Hertzberg also want the state to require enough housing in the area, but to allow surrounding cities and Solano County to permit local housing developers to build first. 

But if local governments aren’t willing to or cannot build enough housing within the timeline the manufacturer or the shipbuilder wants, Steinberg and Hertzberg’s proposal would allow Suisun City to annex adjacent California Forever-owned county land into its city boundaries — a controversial idea that has drawn fierce local opposition. The move would be a “last resort,” Steinberg and Hertzberg stressed repeatedly.

The annexation would effectively bypass the county’s orderly growth initiative, which requires voters to have a say in development. 

“The shipbuilders and manufacturers need certainty on a much faster timeline,” Steinberg said.

Cabaldon said the pitch to build new housing to accommodate theoretical jobs is “fantastical,” noting that Saronic, the proposed ship-builder, is a leader in automation. 

“There’s no indication that this is going to generate on an ongoing basis that many jobs, and certainly not more jobs than we have housing for even today without building a single additional unit,” he said.

Historic union agreement prompts support

In January, California Forever announced it had signed a 40-year deal with the Napa/Solano Building Trades Council and Northern California Carpenters Union to use union labor to build its development. The agreement was an important political alliance for CEO Sramek, bringing more influential advocates to the table. 

According to Digital Democracy, both the Building Trades Council and the Carpenters Union have given roughly $10 million in direct donations to legislative candidates since 2000. 

Those advocates made themselves heard over the past few weeks, following a Texas county court approving significant tax incentives to lure Saronic to Brownsville. In a statement, Saronic said its nationwide search is still “active and ongoing.”

The California Alliance For Jobs, an alliance of influential construction companies and workers, drafted two letters in quick succession calling for legislative leaders to streamline the California Forever expansion and shipyard. 

“We champed at the bit to go all in to get this project moving, and to get legislation through Sacramento this session,” said Joshua Arce, the CEO of the alliance.

Suisun City Councilmember Princess Washington, who has consistently been the sole vote on the council against the annexation plan, said she feels organized labor is being used as “political pressure” to win approval. 

“Processes are slow, but they're done that way through government to ensure that it's being done correctly, that all parties of interest are being treated fairly, and there's checks and balances,” Washington said. 

“It's unheard of for a project to be done as quickly as they want it to be done.”

In a statement, California Forever spokesperson Jim Wunderman said any shipyard project will comply with all California environmental and land use laws. He said county supervisors already approved using the 2008 impact report, and that legislation would allow the group to “meet prospective employers' timelines.”

He said by pursuing expansion within Suisun City, California Forever is following the community’s preferences by channeling new growth into existing cities.

An ongoing presence in the Capitol

Since 2024, California Forever has spent at least $330,000 lobbying the Legislature and governor’s office on bills and other actions, according to campaign finance records. 

Steinberg and Hertzberg told CalMatters they were hired in April as “special counsel,” not lobbyists, meaning they are spending less than a third of their time talking with public officials. 

Grimes, who said he respects Steinberg for leading landmark environmental land use reforms in the Legislature, said he’s disappointed in his advocacy for California Forever, “a project that is antithetical to all of this.”

Sheep graze on land where California Forever plans to build its new city in Solano County, on Feb. 16, 2024. Photo by Loren Elliott for CalMatters

California Forever reported spending $90,000 lobbying the governor’s office and the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, GO-Biz, last year on “federal shipbuilding activities and California business attraction and retention activities.” 

"GO-Biz has discussed relevant state incentive programs with Saronic and explained how they operate," said GO-Biz spokesperson Willie Rudman. He said the agency does not offer incentive packages to specific companies.

Last fall though, GO-Biz helped organize a bid for Saronic to settle in Solano County. County staff reported during a board meeting that GO-Biz supported a legislative effort to override the county’s “orderly growth” law. 

County supervisors rushed through a proposal to change the boundaries of the Solano Shipyard to comply, but with just days remaining before the end of the legislative session, Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat from Suisun City, said there wasn’t time to introduce legislation. 

Since then, Wilson said, the proposal has been on the table, but “nothing’s been requested” of her office by California Forever. 

The company also urged lawmakers to act fast or risk losing the shipbuilder to Texas last year — a negotiating tactic common in economic development, Cabaldon said. 

But Cabaldon argued that Saronic will decide where to place its shipyard based on “defense needs of the United States of America” instead of state incentives.

“We have to negotiate with our eyes open.”

This story was updated to add that GO-Biz says it does not offer incentive packages to specific companies.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

California has invested heavily in career technical education, earmarking $300 million annually since 2021 to help schools prepare students for jobs in fields such as healthcare, public safety and engineering. 

Yet, over the past five years, more than $115 million of that funding — an average of $23 million per year — never reached schools.

District leaders, advocates and legislators say the shortfall stems from the state’s allocation formula that does not fully distribute the career technical education, or CTE, funds.  

Lawmakers are advancing Assembly Bill 1590 to ensure all available CTE funding makes it to districts going forward. Some relief may come even sooner; districts that applied for funding for the 2026-27 school year will see all of the money distributed.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, D-Stockton, said the current formula for allocating CTE money has left many schools unable to support career education programs. 

“It makes everybody scale back; that makes them have fewer certification programs, fewer learning opportunities and, then, fewer pathways,” Ransom said. “To me, that’s something that needed to be corrected.”

Why millions of dollars don’t make it to districts 

The CTE funding program requires school districts to provide a 2-to-1 match, meaning for every dollar they receive from the state, they must contribute $2. A district seeking $1 million in state funding, for example, must provide a $2 million local match. 

But if districts are unable to meet the match, the money reverts to the state’s General Fund rather than back into the pool of CTE funding where it can be redistributed to districts that could use it. 

That is problematic, some educators and advocates say, because it leaves money on the table even as many other districts have available matching funds for career education programs.

For example, in 2025, Merced Union High School District in the San Joaquin Valley applied for $6.7 million in CTE funding but received $1.7 million — $5 million less despite having the matching funds.

California Department of Education officials said districts often receive less than they request because demand exceeds available funding, the number of applicants changes each year, and the allocation formula, itself. 

It’s a formula that’s been debated many times since CTE money became an ongoing funding source in 2018. The department told EdSource it was determined to be the “most equitable and efficient mechanism” for maximizing CTE funds. 

Educators and advocates, however, say the formula disadvantages smaller districts. The formula recognizes very small districts through its first two funding categories, but once a district exceeds an Average Daily Attendance of 550 students, it is grouped into the largest category, said Nicole Newman, president of the Small School Districts Association. 

Districts with an ADA of 550 to 2,500 face the same challenges as smaller school systems and must compete with a broader range of districts. These districts often have limited administrative staff, a lack of grant-writing resources, difficulty recruiting CTE teachers, minimal access to industry partners and postsecondary institutions, and smaller local tax bases, Newman said. 

“A district with 600, 1,200 or 2,000 students competes within the same funding category as some of the largest school systems in the nation,” Newman said. 

The allocation formula, established by the state superintendent and State Board of Education, distributes 70% of funding based on district size, measured by ADA of students in grades 7-12. The remaining 30% is distributed using factors such as the number of vulnerable student populations, higher than average dropout rates and an area’s high unemployment rate, among others. 

Limited opportunities when funding is left on the table

With CTE grant funding, not only do funds remain unallocated, the money going to districts is not consistent each year. 

In Contra Costa County, located in the East Bay, a consortium of 10 school districts has built a robust CTE network offering about 300 classes and early childhood education apprenticeships, said Hilary Dito, director for college and career readiness at the county education office. In 2025, the consortium received $6.2 million, about $500,000 less than the year before. 

As a result of the drop, the county education office imposed a 17% reduction across the board. The county won’t be able to offer 300 classes next school year. At the district level, some school systems will not hire for positions vacated by retiring CTE teachers. There will be cuts to robotics, culinary arts and digital photography programs.

Dito worries those cuts will limit opportunities for students to figure out what they want to pursue. 

“One of our students from last year, senior year, got into a digital recording arts class,” she said. “Before that, (they) had no clue what they wanted to do. Now they’re at the community college with the same teacher. Without that class, I don’t know if that student would’ve found that path. These are the programs that can change someone’s life.” 

When funding is uncertain or inconsistent, districts struggle to sustain program offerings and create and scale industry partnerships, dual enrollment, internships and job shadowing opportunities, educators said. 

“Stability matters just as much,” said Newman, who is also superintendent of Wheatland Union High School District in Yuba City. “High-quality CTE programs take years to develop.”

Newman said her 1,200-student district would like to expand its agriculture pathway with updated facilities, new equipment and more livestock, but roughly $300,000 in state funding is barely enough to sustain existing programs.  

Immediate, but temporary, relief in sight

Ransom’s bill would require the state to revise the allocation formula so that all CTE money is distributed to eligible districts.  

Districts may see some immediate relief. For the 2026-27 funding cycle, all $450 million available, a one-time increase of $150 million for CTE grants this year, will be distributed to districts. State officials have not explained how that will happen. In previous years, the state has done two rounds of award allocations that still left money untouched. The $450 million is expected to be allocated in a single round. 

“If the dollars are available,” Ransom said, “we want them to reach the programs.” 

By Levi Sumagaysay, Marisa Kendall, Kristen Hwang and Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

State leaders are feverishly negotiating with special interests behind a few high-profile measures ahead of a Thursday deadline to withdraw them from the November ballot. Top Democrats have already announced an agreement between Uber and the state’s trial lawyers to pull rival initiatives they had each spent tens of millions of dollars promoting.

It’s a dance that happens every election cycle: Interest groups seeking policy changes spend big on voter initiatives, using them as leverage in exchange for favorable deals from state leaders, who often prefer to reach compromises to kill controversial proposals rather than take their chances with voters. 

Legislative leaders can also place measures on the ballot. By Monday, they had already agreed to an affordable housing bond. They are also expected to approve a proposal to increase the cap on deposits into the state’s rainy day fund by Thursday. 

Here are the highlights:

A deal between Uber, trial lawyers

Uber and California’s trial lawyers have likely avoided an expensive battle ahead of the November election by going through the state Legislature instead of voters.  

Uber had collected enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would have capped attorney contingency fees and limited how much California crash victims could recover for medical costs — and not just those injured while riding in an Uber. Attorney groups had qualified a competing initiative to increase the ride-hailing company’s liability for sexual misconduct against riders and drivers. 

The company and the attorneys reached a compromise in Senate Bill 623, which would cap medical cost recoveries in cases that involve medical liens, which allow crash victims to get medical treatment without paying upfront while their case is pending. It would not restrict lawyers’ contingency fees as Uber had proposed in its ballot measure, which critics said would have made it harder for crash victims to get legal representation. It will be limited to crashes that occur in an Uber or other ride-hailing service.

The legislation would also prohibit attorneys from recommending medical providers with whom they have direct ties. 

Meanwhile, Uber will have to tighten its driver background checks and renew them every year, including rejecting drivers who have been convicted of certain violent offenses or those found guilty of driving under the influence, in the past seven years.

A group of medical providers that spent money against Uber’s initiative did not return multiple requests for comment about the deal. Likewise, the Consumer Attorneys of California, which  had raised about $77 million  for its initiative — almost as much as the $78 million Uber had allocated for its campaign, which also declined to comment beyond a statement it had agreed on with the company. 

It reads in part: “This agreement protects patients from unnecessary treatment or getting overcharged, ensures access to medical care and legal representation, and strengthens safety measures.”

Consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog had also opposed Uber’s ballot measure but said the deal “strikes a fair balance.” 

The bill “doesn’t do harm to the average Uber rider (who has health insurance),” Jamie Court, president of the group, told CalMatters. 

If lawmakers pass the bill and send it to the governor, it would take effect next year.

Affordable housing bond

A record-breaking $11.25 billion affordable housing bond appears headed to the California ballot this November. 

The governor, Assembly and Senate agreed on the language of Senate Bill 417, known as the Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026, which would have Californians borrow $10 billion to pay for the construction, rehabilitation, acquisition and preservation of affordable housing, plus another $1.25 billion to help veterans buy homes. 

If approved by voters, the bond should help more than 40,000 people buy a home, help create or preserve tens of thousands of affordable units and support high-paying construction jobs, according to the Newsom administration.

“California’s future depends on whether people can afford to put down roots, raise a family, and build a life here,” the governor said in a news release. 

A recent report found nearly 40,000 planned units of affordable housing in California are ready to be built but are stuck waiting for funding.

The bond is not officially a done deal. The Legislature still needs to pass the bill by Thursday and the governor must sign it before the housing bond appears on your ballot.

What’s happening with the billionaire tax?

The state’s largest health workers union appears poised to bring its high-profile billionaire wealth tax before voters despite Newsom’s late-hour efforts to strike a deal to remove it from the ballot. 

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West has proposed a one-time 5% wealth tax on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires. If approved by voters, the tax would generate roughly $100 billion primarily for healthcare with some money reserved for schools and food programs, according to SEIU-UHW. 

The union says the money is needed to backfill federal healthcare cuts that forced California to cut its Medi-Cal health insurance program for low-income residents and people with disabilities.

Newsom, who emerged as an early opponent of the tax, steadily ramped up pressure against the union over the past week, joining forces with other labor groups such as the California Teachers Association and healthcare powerhouses like Planned Parenthood and the California Medical Association, which ran digital ads against the tax. Billionaires and Silicon Valley moguls also oppose the tax, which they argue would decrease state revenue in the long term by driving wealthy Californians out of the state.

Last week, SEIU-UHW called on Newsom to accept a 2% version of the tax in lieu of the original 5%, but Newsom swiftly rejected that proposal, calling  it “poorly designed.” 

In a recent interview with The Lever, SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan said Newsom could “pull some rabbit out of the hat” to reach a compromise, but he had doubts. “We’re prepared to go forward, and we will be on the ballot in November.”

Rainy day fund reform

Lawmakers are expected to vote this week to send a proposed constitutional amendment to voters  to increase how much money the state can save in a good financial year.

Currently, the state cannot deposit more than 10% of its general fund tax revenue into its rainy day fund. The proposal, titled “Save for California’s Future Act,” would double that amount and allow the state to use some excess revenues to pay down its $20 billion federal unemployment insurance debt acquired during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proposal comes as California faces a multi-year budget deficit despite growing revenue, prompting state lawmakers and Newsom to search for long-term solutions to stabilize the state’s finances. California is heavily dependent on income tax and capital gains of its wealthy residents, making the state vulnerable to economic downturns.

CHICO, Calif. (AP) — A shooting at a library in Northern California left two people dead and an 18-year-old suspect has been arrested, police said Tuesday.

Police responded to a 911 call soon after 5 p.m. Monday. Chico police Chief Billy Aldridge said gunshots and screams could be heard on that call from the Chico branch of the Butte County Library. Chico, a city of about 100,000 people, is 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

The suspect fled out the back of the library as officers entered, but additional law enforcement personnel behind the building took the suspect into custody, Aldridge said during a news conference.

“The incident this evening was obviously very sad, traumatic for a lot of people. Very traumatic for our community,” Aldridge said.

The streets around the library were closed temporarily and a family reunification center was set up for the people who were inside the building.

A child was also taken to the hospital with a minor injury.

Police later determined the suspect acted alone and identified him as Bradley Scott Sayer of Chico. He was booked into the Butte County Jail on suspicion of two counts of murder. There was no indication he had any prior relationship with or connection to the victims, police said in a statement. Authorities have not released their names.

A police department dispatcher early Tuesday did not know if Sayer has a lawyer and no one could be immediately reached at the jail. A search of Butte County court records did not show his name and a phone number could not be found for him.

Police said the Butte County Sheriff's Office and the FBI are assisting in the investigation.

All Butte County library branches will be closed Tuesday, officials said.

In a Facebook post, the county offered its “deepest condolences to everyone affected, including the victims, their loved ones, library staff, and all those impacted by this heartbreaking incident.”

It wasn't the first act of violence at a U.S. library.

A man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting a man in a library and another man in a convenience store in 2023. In 2020, a suspect was sent to a mental health facility after he pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing a library security guard in Spring Valley, New York. A teenager who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting two public library employees in Clovis, New Mexico, in 2017 was also sentenced to life in prison.