By SOPHIE AUSTIN, Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife made between $1.7 million and $2 million annually from 2022 through 2024, and they paid about half a million a year in federal and state taxes, according to tax returns released by his office.

The Democrat's office released more than 700 pages of tax filings spanning four years for reporters to review, offering a window into Newsom's finances as he prepares to leave office and considers a 2028 presidential bid. Newsom’s office did not release returns for 2025, because the couple filed for an extension and will complete those returns in October.

The returns show the Newsoms' income has remained relatively consistent since when he took office in 2019, when the couple reported $1.7 million in annual income. The exception was in 2021, when the family sold a house for nearly $6 million in Marin County, making roughly $800,000 from the sale. That year, they made $4.2 million and paid more than $1 million in federal and state taxes. They earned roughly $2 million in 2022.

The release of the couple's tax filings comes as their finances have been under scrutiny after the U.S. Justice Department launched investigations into the Newsoms, the governor announced last month. Newsom has blasted the probes as politically motivated.

It was the first time Newsom released returns since 2022.

Newsom made nearly $200,000 annually from serving as governor, but most of his income comes from winery and restaurant businesses that he put in a blind trust when he took office. The returns don’t name each individual business, making it impossible to know which ones gained and lost money.

The PlumpJack Group, a company he owns that includes a suite of wineries and restaurants, is now run by his sister and cousin.

His wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a film director, lost money most years from Girls Club Entertainment, a production company she founded. The business produced “Miss Representation,” a 2011 documentary about disparaging portrayals of women and girls in media, and two other films.

The Newsoms paid between roughly $14,000 and $44,000 a year for childcare for three of their four children, according to the tax filings.

They gave between $40,000 and $65,000 in gifts to charity each year, mostly through monetary donations. They also donated thousands of dollars worth of clothing, toys and other items to thrift stores and nonprofits, including in 2022, when they gave away Armani business wear they originally bought for $45,000 to a racial justice organization in Oakland.

By ERIC TUCKER and AMY TAXIN, Associated Press

The Justice Department has moved to dismiss its criminal case against a labor union leader who was arrested while protesting the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in California.

The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles filed a motion Monday to dismiss its case against David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California, which has more than 750,000 members including janitors, security officers and other workers. The government will seek to have the case permanently withdrawn within weeks if Huerta continues to comply with the terms of his pretrial release and stays out of trouble, prosecutors said.

Huerta said in a statement that he was tackled, pepper-sprayed and detained for exercising his constitutional rights to protest and cast the case against him as part of a broader “weaponization of the judicial system.”

“There was never a real case, only an attempt to punish and silence me for exercising my constitutional rights,” he said in a statement. “I will keep exercising my constitutional rights and protest every abuse this administration commits, and I will keep working to build a country that treats immigrant families and all workers with the dignity they deserve.”

The case will be dismissed by the end of August if compliance continues

The Justice Department had earlier reduced the felony obstruction charge to a misdemeanor, and in moving to dismiss it entirely, is now backing away entirely from a prosecution that had been announced with fanfare on social media after Huerta's arrest more than a year ago. It's the latest courtroom setback for a department that has struggled, in offices across the country, in its prosecutions of people accused of assaulting or hindering federal officers while protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles signaled in its own statement that law enforcement was justified in arresting Huerta, noting that he was charged with interfering with a judicial search warrant and asserting that the Justice Department does not arrest people for simply peacefully protesting. The office also said that Huerta has complied with the terms of his bond for more than a year and was prepared to dismiss the case if he continues to do so.

“Pursuant to an agreement entered into with our office, if Mr. Huerta continues to comply with his pretrial release terms, we expect the criminal case against him to be fully dismissed by the end of next month,” the statement said.

Huerta was arrested in June 2025 while protesting outside a business in Los Angeles where federal agents were investigating suspected immigration violations. The incident occurred amid widespread protests over the federal immigration crackdown that drove Trump to take the extraordinary move of deploying the National Guard to the nation’s second-largest city.

Authorities said Huerta sat down in front of a vehicular gate and encouraged others to walk in circles to try to prevent law enforcement from going in or out, and he pushed back when an officer told him to leave and put his hands on Huerta to move him out of the way of a vehicle.

According to a copy of a letter laying out the terms of Huerta’s diversion agreement, Huerta and the government agreed to a stipulated set of facts, including that he arrived at the search warrant location, positioned himself in the driveway outside the front gate “to oppose the policies and tactics of the enforcement activity he observed and encouraged others to do the same” and that, as a result, “at least one federal agent” who participated in the search warrant “credibly believed he was unable to enter the front gate.”

Huerta’s arrest brought pushback from advocates and senators

Union leaders and immigrant advocates rallied in cities across the country demanding Huerta's release, and he became the face of the pushback against the Republican president's effort to drive up immigration arrests. Top Democrats also fired back. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and California’s two Democratic senators wrote a letter to federal officials demanding answers regarding Huerta’s arrest. California Sen. Adam Schiff attended Huerta’s bond hearing.

“It is deeply troubling that a U.S. citizen, union leader, and upstanding member of the Los Angeles community continues to be detained by the federal government for exercising his rights to observe immigration enforcement,” the senators wrote.

Federal prosecutors initially charged Huerta with felony obstruction, with Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, saying that it didn't matter who was protesting "if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted.” In October, prosecutors reduced the charge against Huerta to a misdemeanor.

Huerta’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, said in a statement that the case against their client had no legal basis.

“This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration’s improper immigration actions. Today’s filing is proof that David and other critics will not be silenced,” the lawyers said.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to clear the way for an executive order from President Donald Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Justice Department asked the justices to halt for now lower court decisions blocking the sweeping changes in nearly half the country.

The request comes shortly after Trump delivered a primetime address elevating his yearslong push to raise doubts about the legitimacy of elections, and could be one of several voting-related challenges before the court ahead of the high-stakes midterm contest.

Trump ordered the government in March to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters and deliver mail ballots only to people on that list.

Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia sued, saying the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election rules, not the president. Their attorneys have said Trump's proposed changes are ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.

A judge in Massachusetts blocked the executive order for the plaintiff states, and a divided 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel left her ruling in place over the weekend.

The executive order calls for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to send state officials federal citizenship lists to determine eligible voters. It tells the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on the lists.

The order also calls for ballots to have secure envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking. Federal funding could be withheld from states and localities that don’t comply.

The appeal argues that Trump's order lays out “general policy guidance” and doesn’t directly dictate how states run their elections. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the high court to freeze the judge's order as lawsuits play out, calling it indefensible.

“And the injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” Sauer wrote.

He urged the high court to move quickly, arguing that any new policies would have to be in place as soon as August to be effective for the November elections. A response to the appeal is due Aug. 3.

Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, even as he has used the method to cast his own votes. He has blamed it for his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and has claimed without evidence that it opens the door to fraud. He returned to that theme Monday during an appearance at a General Motors facility in Michigan as he was making an appeal for Congress to pass his voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill.

“And hopefully there will be no mail-in ballots,” he said, calling them 'inherently corrupt."

Using mail ballots has become increasingly popular with voters of both parties, with about 30% of all ballots cast that way during the 2024 presidential election, according to federal data. The process also is secure. A 2025 Brookings Institution study found only about four cases of fraud out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.

The Supreme Court has ruled against the Trump administration before on mail-in ballots, finding in June that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Trump has promoted the proposed changes in his executive order as safeguards to keep non-U.S. citizens from voting. He's also repeatedly pressed for the passage of the legislation that requires proof of citizenship to vote.

Noncitizen voting has been shown to be rare, and is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, agreed in June to halt implementation for the Nov. 3 elections.

Her ruling differed from that of another federal judge based in Washington. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Trump, found in May that it was too early to block the order because it had not yet been implemented.

The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading the lawsuit for the states, did not immediately comment on the Trump administration’s appeal. New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office declined to comment.

The Postal Service also would not discuss its plans regarding implementing Trump’s order or its rule, citing the ongoing litigation. In Kansas, Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab’s office said it has not heard from the Postal Service about plans going forward.

___

Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this story.

California regulators approved changes to the state’s cap-and-invest program in May meant to limit increases in fuel and electricity costs. But climate advocates warned the decision could reduce funding for key climate programs paid for through the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, many of which also address affordability issues. 

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted to revise the cap-and-invest program, which requires large polluters to purchase allowances for their emissions through the state. Proceeds from allowance auctions are used to fill the fund. But with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 85% by 2045, the number of allowances — and fund dollars — have been steadily reduced, or capped, by the state’s climate goals. 

Those dollars have already helped fund new transit improvements and affordable housing in Sacramento. Spokesperson Jessica Gonzalez said the grants have helped Sacramento Regional Transit, or SacRT, expand its rail service, purchase new light rail vehicles and build transit-oriented housing. 

Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program

The Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program is one of several that uses state climate dollars to support projects connecting affordable housing with public transit and pedestrian infrastructure. The program has awarded billions of dollars across the state since it launched in 2014.

Gonzalez said SacRT has received roughly $67 million over the past decade to fund 10 projects supporting the construction of 3,000 affordable housing units with housing partners planning another 10,000 near existing and future transit corridors and stations. 

In its latest report to the legislature, CARB detailed how billions of fund dollars have already been spent to create more affordable housing and improve access to transit, among other things. The report also indicates that some funding is  yet to be implemented, and an additional $8 billion in proceeds is expected to be generated by cap-and-invest by 2030. However, at an estimated rate of $2 billion per year, that’s still less than what the fund has generated in the past and about half the amount needed to fully fund critical transit, affordable housing and clean air and water programs. 

A recently completed project is a new light rail station in the Sacramento Railyards that will soon connect the region to Sacramento’s new soccer stadium, which is currently under construction. 

“It’s bringing better service to our community and that grant funding really goes a long way,” Gonzalez said. “It actually is able to bring way more money into the region than just that grant alone.” 

The grants allowed SacRT to recently purchase four new light rail vehicles as it continues to replace its aging fleet. 

“If anyone’s riding our Blue Line right now, you can see these are 35-year-old trains,” Gonzalez said. “They’re past their useful lives and we’re just keeping them chugging along until we can get these new trains.”

Gonzalez said reduced climate funding would have significant consequences for housing and transit.  She added that SacRT and its housing partners have already identified six additional projects requesting nearly $60 million in future AHSC funding. 

“We have lots of college students using our transit [and] we know our state workers need transit — they can’t necessarily afford to pay for parking downtown and they also don’t want to fight the traffic that it takes to come in,” Gonzalez stressed. “We get one fifth of a penny of local sales tax compared to our peers that are getting [a] penny, a penny and a half. So we’re really relying on a lot of our grant funding that we’re getting to spread that money and really make Sacramento the best transit service possible.” 

Climate advocates argue projects like these highlight what’s at stake if California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund brings in less money than expected over the next several years. 

Climate advocates warn of a funding shortfall

Jonathan Cole, Transit and Rail lead for Climate Action California, said updated revenue projections show the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund may not generate enough money to support all of the climate programs that rely on it. 

“It looks like the projections for income are going to be low enough that some of these what are called Tier 3 programs like the affordable housing, clean air and water and transit programs may not receive any funding at all,” he said.

The California Air Resources Board recently approved changes that will likely reduce future auction revenue flowing into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Lawmakers also made changes to how dollars are allocated in last year’s budget creating a three-tier funding system that gives funding priority to Tier 1 and Tier 2 programs — mainly utility and industry dollars. That leaves many affordable housing, transit and other climate programs in Tier 3 more vulnerable if revenues fall short.

CARB staff argued that increasing the number of allowances available to electric and natural gas utilities will help keep fuel and electricity prices down for consumers as Californians continue struggling through an affordability crisis. 

Budget analysts with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office also warned that projected Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund revenues may not be enough to fully fund all Tier 3 programs. State law requires funding for those programs to be reduced proportionally if revenues fall short. 

During the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the state raised $3.4 billion in auction proceeds for the fund, fulfilling only about 70% of the dollars needed to fully support Tier 3 programs. 

That’s why lawmakers recently introduced a budget trailer bill that expresses the Legislature’s intent to fully fund all three tiers up to $5.8 billion annually — with a stipulation that only legally required expenditures, like Cal Fire and emergency services, be funded if the bill is rejected. Cole said the bill is meant to get Governor Gavin Newsom to return to the bargaining table on how the state will fund climate programs long term. 

“It’s a way of kind of forcing negotiations between the governor and the Legislature trying to find a different and better way to fund these programs,” he said. 

Even some CARB members acknowledged the funding challenge extends beyond the regulations they approved. 

Lawmakers disagree on funding strategy

Democratic State Senator Henry Stern, of Los Angeles, served on the board and said the state has become too reliant on the fund to pay for ongoing climate programs.

“I don’t think it’s smart to address the operating budgets of major departments with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund,” Stern said during a late May board meeting. “We don’t think that’s a wise idea. The Senate rejected that idea. We need the other two parties to come to the table with a similar baseline of understanding.” 

Stern was referring to negotiations between the Senate, Assembly and Governor Newsom over how California should pay for its climate priorities after lawmakers approved last year’s budget. Senate Democrats have argued the state should rely less on volatile cap-and-invest revenue to fund climate programs long term.

In Sacramento, Gonzalez said investments in public transit benefit more than just the people who ride buses and trains. 

“We’re helping to reduce cars in front of you,” she said. “We see what the highways are looking like and to take just a few cars off the road is going to help you get from point A to point B, so it really should be something that everyone should be invested in.” 

A CARB spokesperson said the changes are still scheduled to take effect in September. The new regulations will affect future auctions while lawmakers continue negotiations on how to fund climate programs in the future. 

This story was produced by the Climate Solutions Studio, a project of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative and its partner newsrooms. CapRadio is a founding partner.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the new actions — which come after previously announced Medicaid funding deferrals in those states — are part of the administration’s strategy to “stop the fraud before it happens” rather than claw back problematic spending after bad actors are prosecuted, as previous administrations had done.

“We have a duty to stop the payments, demand answers and then follow the evidence wherever it leads,” Kennedy told a news conference.

The tactic is part of the administration’s sweeping campaign to show it’s cracking down on fraud and saving taxpayers money when rising healthcare costs and other economic stressors have made affordability a top voter concern in November’s midterm elections.

In March, Vice President JD Vance launched a new anti-fraud task force at the request of President Donald Trump, bringing together officials from various departments to use data and technology to identify and investigate suspected wrongful use of federal dollars.

“Today’s actions show that the federal government is acting again in unprecedented and punitive ways as part of their war on Medicaid and its recipients,” he said in a statement. “Partnership — not politics — is required to stop criminals and protect services for the people who need them.

Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz suggested the Republican administration was deferring the funds to pay for Trump’s tax cuts to wealthy Americans. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the administration of targeting it for political reasons.

The Trump administration intensified anti-immigration efforts in Minnesota earlier this year, sending in a robust force of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers whose actions there caused weeks of counterprotests and included the shooting deaths of two civilians. Trump himself has frequently denounced California as a badly governed state.

States are facing obstacles because of the actions

The strategy has led to some false starts and headaches for states.

In April, for example, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services acknowledged to The Associated Press it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe in New York. Last month, California’s Medicaid director told a congressional committee that CMS had not yet provided “any instances of fraud, waste or abuse” to the state in its justification of a $1.3 billion Medicaid funding deferral announced in May.

And in Minnesota, state officials have been executing a thorough corrective action plan to defray CMS concerns that have led the agency to defer some $260 million in federal money and to threaten future cuts.

“We have cooperated in good faith and proactively engaged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to first raise the alarm on fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid program, to effectively investigate fraud and to institute further safeguards against future misuse of funds,” Connolly said.

Oz also highlighted a fast rate of growth in California’s home care program as a reason for concern. California officials have disputed that idea, explaining that the state’s home care program has grown because of an intentional strategy to keep people out of more expensive nursing homes.

Kennedy and Oz said states could restart the flow of federal funding by providing documentation proving the payments in question were legitimate.

A representative for California’s Medicaid program didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Officials in the state have previously acknowledged they are working with the federal government to provide the requested information.

Oz said Minnesota had already returned documents to the federal government and they were being “reevaluated very carefully.”

Kennedy also suggested Tuesday that he would extend the power to exclude providers from Medicaid, Medicare and other federal health programs to CMS. In the past, that authority has rested solely with his department’s Office of the Inspector General.

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

In one big way, Gov. Gavin Newsom is tougher on public employee unions than his Republican counterpart in Texas: Making state workers show up in the office.

After facing strong opposition from workers, it took Texas Gov. Greg Abbott three months to reverse his 2025 ban on remote work for state employees. But Newsom, whose return-to-office mandate has been in effect since July 1, shows no signs of backing down. 

It’s a stance that has upset — and at times befuddled — some state workers who are calling for the governor to scrap the four-day-a-week in-office policy as they hammer out new labor agreements.

Typically, they’re allies to the Democratic governor. They helped him fight off a recall in 2021, and they encouraged their members to vote for him against his Republican opponents.

More importantly to them, they maintain they’re just as effective at home, which they say they proved when Newsom ordered them to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“It’s confusing to people when they think that they’ve done a great job to be told, ‘Well we don’t think it’s good enough and you should incur going back into the office,’” said D’Arcy McLeod, chairperson of the Professional Engineers in California Government’s bargaining team.

Roughly 108,000 of California’s more than 245,900 state employees are affected by the mandate, according to the state human resources department. The others generally already are required to work at a specific location five days a week, including prison, firefighting, law enforcement, and custodial employees.

Service Employees International Union Local 1000, California’s largest state worker union, represents 96,000 employees and is in contract negotiations. It argues that remote work saves taxpayers and employees money, reduces traffic and lowers emissions — all without affecting productivity.

Newsom’s mandate allows exemptions on a case-by-case basis, including for those who live 50 miles or farther from their worksite, or who conduct work outside the office, such as telehealth providers and inspectors. Public transportation costs for commuting are also reimbursable.

But that isn’t enough for SEIU, which in May filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board. It also threw its support behind a bill that would give state agencies more authority to shape their hybrid work policies.

“A blanket mandate does not work for all the jobs that our workers do,” said Anica Walls, the union’s president. “Let the departments decide.”

California exceptionalism?

States have taken different approaches to calling workers back to the office since the pandemic. Republican-led Nevada and Democratic-led New Mexico require state employees to be in the office five days a week, for example. Utah with a Republican governor wants them at the office twice a week. 

But Newsom’s blanket policy appears to be an outlier among other blue states with robust public employee unions: Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington state still embrace remote work in some capacity. It also differs from Texas, a Republican-led state that Newsom has contrasted with California. 

A few months after President Donald Trump began his second term and called for federal employees to return to the office, Abbott banned remote work for Texas state employees. But following a multi-agency survey that found that telework did not curb productivity and helped reduce turnover, Abbott walked back the move.

Newsom “is a man who has talked about the importance of innovation, wrote an entire book about government adapting to technology and providing services in a more cost-effective way,” said Ted Toppin, the executive director of the engineers union.

“It strikes me as interesting and ironic that Texas would have a more modern, flexible and efficient take on state employee telework.”

Despite a state audit that concluded that telework could save California as much as $225 million a year, Newsom moved forward with his March 2025 executive order directing workers back into the office at least four days a week.

In May during a state budget presentation, Newsom told reporters that he is “empathetic to change,” but that returning to the office helps build a sense of community. The governor has also contended that in-person work fosters collaboration, accountability and helps boost small businesses. 

McLeod said he’s surprised Newsom remains resolute to the mandate even after the audit found that remote work proved successful during and after the pandemic.

“Every single Newsom appointed official that testified for the state auditor indicated that … the work that was being delivered during telework was substantially of higher quality and more efficient,” said McLeod of the engineers union. 

The CalPERS Sacramento Regional Office in downtown Sacramento on July 15, 2026.Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters

What unions wanted from Newsom

In some ways the rift echoes labor disputes from California’s last two governors. 

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came out swinging against public employees with unsuccessful ballot measures that were designed to cut their influence. He later imposed unpaid furloughs on public employees during the Great Recession.

Then Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown battled with unions over pensions, passing a law that curbed retirement benefits and required workers to chip in more for their benefits. He had a reputation for being stingy with raises, too.

Public employee unions were optimistic about Newsom. He offered concessions when he asked workers for temporary pay reductions during the pandemic, gave one-time bonuses to many employees and negotiated contracts that often included goodies for workers in hard-to-fill positions even if the deals didn’t please everyone.

Then came the fight over returning to the office. 

Besides union leaders, Newsom’s steadfast commitment to in-person work has baffled Steve Maviglio, a Democratic political consultant who has worked with public employee unions on pension issues. For Newsom, a Democratic politician who is likely eyeing a bid for the presidency, “it’s political malpractice to come across as anti-labor,” said Maviglio.

“The only thing you’ll be able to say is that ‘I stood up to state workers,’ which isn’t particularly helpful in a Democratic primary where labor is the key constituency nationwide for Democrats.”

But for Will Swaim, chief executive of the libertarian think tank California Policy Center, Newsom’s fight with the unions signals something larger than remote work. Rather, it is a “policy disagreement that has turned into a foundational challenge to democracy,” said Swaim.

SEIU 1000 has donated at least $2 million to current members of the Legislature, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. In addition to its contract, the union is pushing for more flexible telework policies through a legislative proposal currently in the state Senate.

Through its campaign donations and labor talks, SEIU is attempting to wrest control from Newsom, a publicly elected official, over who gets to shape policies over government work, according to Swaim.

“That’s simply undemocratic,” said Swaim. “I don’t know anybody out there who believes that in their jobs they could tell their boss, ‘I’m not coming to the office, no matter what you want.’ It just doesn’t fly.”

But bosses should work to accommodate current employees, according to SEIU president Walls — especially if they have presumably bigger ambitions to oversee even more workers.

“As a state employee I would have trouble voting for someone who would be the boss of federal employees when I know he hasn’t shown to be a stellar employer to state employees,” said Walls.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to halt their $81 billion merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court.

Twelve states, led by California, sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week— alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the U.S.

The states’ top prosecutors called on Warner and Paramount to not close the transaction until after a court had time to “fully evaluate” their claims. And when the companies refused, they filed for a temporary restraining order — which is what District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted on Monday. That opens the door to a potential preliminary injunction that the states are also seeking to effectively block the deal.

“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement following Monday's order. “History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people.”

A Warner-Paramount tie-up would bring together two of the five last legacy studios in Hollywood — as well as host of TV networks, titles filling streaming libraries and news operations. That would include Warner’s HBO Max, fan favorites like “Harry Potter” and even CNN coming under the same roof of Paramount-owned CBS, movies like “Top Gun” and the Paramount+ streaming service.

Paramount did not immediately comment on Monday's order. But the company, which was bought out by Skydance just last year, has vowed to “vigorously defend” its Warner acquisition. Paramount previously called the states’ complaint “wrong on both the facts and the law,” maintaining that a merger would instead strengthen competition against bigger entertainment rivals. And it touted regulatory greenlights the deal has received elsewhere, including from the administration of President Donald Trump last month.

The temporary restraining order granted Monday halts the deal from progressing for at least 14 days, although the pause could be extended for up to 28 days. The court has set Aug. 3 as a date for a hearing on the states' preliminary injunction motion, although that schedule could also be pushed back.

The clock is ticking. Many were previously bracing for Paramount and Warner to try closing their deal as soon as later this week. And ahead of Monday’s decision, the companies proposed wrapping up a preliminary injunction hearing by the end of August, leaving time to make a possible appeal by Sept. 30 — a date on the top of Paramount’s mind because it’s pledged to pay shareholders added “ticking fee” compensation amounting to about $7 million per day if the deal isn’t closed by then.

But the states called such a timeline unprecedented and unfair. They maintain that money Paramount might have to incur after Sept. 30 was the risk of a decision the company made on its own — and argued in a hearing held Friday that commencing a trial in April 2027 would allow enough time to for discovery and presenting proper evidence.

Including billion of dollars in debt, Paramount’s proposed purchase of Warner is currently valued at nearly $111 billion based on outstanding shares.

Beyond California, states joining Monday’s lawsuit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. And others — including the Writers Guild of America — are also suing to block the merger.

By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters

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

California bars utilities from cutting off power to customers who fall behind on their bills when it’s dangerously hot outside – a basic safety protection. Losing power in some rural areas can also mean losing water, and in cities, having no way to cool down can be dangerous, even deadly, when hot weather spans several days. 

California regulators concluded more than a year ago that rules protecting delinquent customers from power shutoffs during heat waves weren’t strong enough. They ordered the state’s largest utilities to come up with better safeguards. 

When the utilities unveiled their plan in December, their proposals barely changed anything, the commission concluded on Thursday, finding their proposal “does not offer sufficient health protections for ratepayers.”

The commission had set a May 1 deadline for the new rules. Utilities missed it, and consumer advocates filed emergency motions to force action.

As another stretch of dangerous heat gripped the state, the California Public Utilities Commission wrote stronger rules itself. In a 4-0 vote, the commission lowered the temperature at which utilities must stop shutting off power to delinquent customers, from 100 to 90 degrees, and ordered utilities to adopt a more protective, region-specific heat standard within six months.

A battle to define extreme heat 

During a record heat wave two years ago — the hottest July in California history  — The Utility Reform Network, a consumer group, asked the utilities commission to revisit its definition of extreme heat. The group’s emergency request argued that “heat kills more people directly than any other weather-related hazard.” 

The rules already barred electric utilities from disconnecting residential customers for nonpayment if forecasted temperatures soared above 100 degrees within 72 hours.

But a single statewide threshold, the group argued, didn’t account for how differently Californians experience heat depending on where they live.

Regulators declined to treat the request as an emergency, but ordered the utilities to come up with a plan for changing the 100-degree threshold by working with advocates and others.

The utilities proposed using CalHeatScore, a newly created state tool that scores heat by ZIP code – from Level 0  to 4 –  using local health data and historical impacts, taking into account data on nearby cooling centers, as well as the number of children and seniors, who can be more susceptible to extreme heat.

The problem: the utilities proposed setting the cutoff threshold at Level 3 – a higher bar than advocates wanted – and keeping 100 degrees as the backstop when the index wasn’t available.

Advocates filed protests seeking a wider safety net, arguing for a lower Level 2 index score and a 90-degree backup threshold.

Utilities said they could not meet the deadline because CalHeatScore’s own data system, run by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, was not yet ready to support them. Advocates countered that the utilities offered little evidence for sticking with the higher 100-degree threshold. 

By May, with utilities still behind schedule, The Utility Reform Network joined with the San Diego-based Utility Consumers’ Action Network, the National Consumer Law Center and the Center for Accessible Technology, asking the commission to intervene. 

The commission sides with advocates

This week the commission rejected the utilities’ proposal, siding with advocates. The path the utilities were proposing would be “no different” than prior practice. The resolution noted the extreme heat threshold is already below 100 degrees in 41 of California’s 58 counties. 

A 90-degree day might be routine in dry, inland cities such as Bakersfield or Fresno, but such temperatures could be atypically dangerous in coastal or mountainous communities where fewer homes have air conditioning and people are less acclimated to the heat.

San Francisco, for instance, defines heat as extreme when temperatures climb above 85 degrees. In the far northwest county of Del Norte, extreme heat means anything above 76.8 degrees, the commission said.

“A single threshold temperature level needs to be more protective of residents in areas of the state that are not accustomed to high temperatures,” the commission wrote in its resolution.

Utilities move to comply 

While the utilities had wanted a narrower safety net for customers, they are now stressing they will comply with the more protective standard.

Last December, the major investor-owned utilities had together argued that extending protections to consumers at lower heat scores would halt disconnections too often, deepen unpaid balances, and add costs without a comparable health benefit. In a January filing, according to a PG&E spokesperson, the utilities argued that the 90-degree threshold was “overbroad.”

The protections would apply only to shutoffs for unpaid bills. They would not prevent outages caused by equipment failures, wildfire-prevention shutoffs, or other emergencies. Nevertheless, advocates say the changes are important.

“When electricity is shut off to a home, it can have a sort of a cascading effect of problems on tenants,” said Jason Zeller, an attorney with the Utility Consumers Action Network. “If tenants don't have electric service, they can be subject to eviction; if they have children, they can lose child custody.”

Reached ahead of the vote, all three utilities said they were prepared to comply with the commission’s new rules. Edison said the resolution would strengthen protections during extreme heat and that it was ready to change its disconnection policies. SDG&E said it supported the added safeguards and would implement the commission’s final requirements.

“Disconnection is a last resort at PG&E, only after multiple attempts to contact customers and offer payment plans and assistance programs,” said PG&E spokesperson Adrienne Moore. The region-specific standard is expected to be implemented within six months.

The commission’s independent Public Advocates Office had pressed for stronger protections throughout the process, formally opposing the utilities’ plan. Director Linda Serizawa the vote would provide consumers with “protection that takes effect when they need it most.”

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

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The University of California will still evaluate the role of the SAT in undergraduate admissions, despite media reports indicating that the revered public university system suspended those deliberations.

The confusion comes at a time when a growing chorus of professors and media commentators are pushing the UC to reinstate the SAT for undergraduate admissions, which the UC Board of Regents removed from the admissions process in 2020. That board decision overruled the UC Academic Senate’s recommendation that the UC keep its then-policy of relying on the SAT and the ACT. The regents’ vote was unanimous. 

The latest whiplash began last month, when the academic senate said it would launch a review of standardized tests in admissions and the high school classes that students must take to be minimally eligible for UC admissions. Monday afternoon, several news stories reported that an academic senate committee that oversees admissions decided to scrap that review.

However, two key officials at the UC said a new evaluation of the role of standardized testing in admissions is still on the table. One of those officials is the chair of the academic senate, Ahmet Palazoglu.

“The Academic Senate is not rescinding its commitment to a comprehensive review of standardized testing in admissions,” he wrote in a statement Monday night on the UC Office of the President website. He said the senate is merely revising its original timeline for a full review of the admissions process.

At a Tuesday meeting of the UC Board of Regents, the new board chair, Maria Anguiano, said the academic senate will finish its review by “no later than the end of this academic year,” which means around June 2027.

That speeds up the original timeline. An academic senate document issued last month said its final report and recommendation to the regents would come sometime in fall 2027.

Palazoglu clarified in an email Tuesday that the June timeline pertains only to the question of standardized tests in admissions. The academic senate will meet July 22 to decide on a separate approach to reviewing the high school courses students must take for UC eligibility. 

While the academic senate has considerable power at the UC, it cannot unilaterally return the SAT to undergraduate admissions. Only the board of regents can. Procedurally, the board must first hear least one informational item that’s on the agenda and then vote on any proposed policy at a subsequent meeting.

Students again oppose SAT use

The UC Student Association sent a letter to the regents this week opposing a return to the SAT. The association, which represents 237,000 undergraduate students at the UC, “does not believe SAT/ACT will result in better prepared students.” The letter notes that racial and ethnic diversity at the UC increased after 2020 while the system posted no decline in graduation rates.

“The role of public education is to ensure all students can access their right to a robust, quality learning experience, and the UC must not limit the number of students able to enter its halls,” the students wrote.

Students in 2020 urged the regents to remove standardized tests from admissions. The regents reaffirmed their ban on exams for admissions in 2021.

At the meeting, Anguiano hinted at her discomfort with the current discourse over the role of tests in admissions. “Recent public conversations have focused on admissions and standardized testing, too narrowly, in my opinion,” she said Tuesday.

Why faculty want the SAT back

More than 2,000 UC professors in science, technology, engineering and math have signed a petition urging the UC to reinstate the SAT or ACT as requirements for undergraduate admissions for STEM majors by fall 2027. Nearly 1,000 additional professors in other disciplines signed a similar letter to fully reinstate the SAT or ACT in the admissions process.

The petition from STEM professors said high school grades alone are not a sufficient measure of college readiness, pointing to increasing grade inflation and the growing number of students relying on artificial intelligence to complete assignments. That means some students aren’t prepared for the rigors of a UC education, they say.

Mina Aganagic, a physics and math professor at UC Berkeley, spoke Tuesday in favor of returning the SAT. “Without the SAT, our introductory courses are forced to reteach elementary and middle school material. This wastes opportunities, misallocating resources rather than increasing access,” she said.

But the leader of an influential nonprofit that advocates for increased access to the UC said focusing on the SAT is the wrong move.

“This is absolutely the wrong solution to an undefined problem,” said Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity. “What we know, based on the UC Office of the President’s own research, is that since going to test-free (admissions), our retention rates have remained stable and graduation rates have also increased.” 

She continued: “If, in fact, we want to address college preparation, we should be looking not at becoming more selective, but being more supportive to students across the state. Working with our K-12 partners to improve preparation, not slamming the door on thousands of students.”

Critics of the SAT maintain that the test is unfair to low-income students, who are less likely to be able to afford test preparation services to boost their scores. 

Standardized tests were just one factor in how campuses decided whom to admit. Other considerations included the quality of courses students take, how that courseload compares to students from the same high school, an applicant’s special talents or achievements and the location of their high school. 

Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday permanently establishing California’s Farm to School program into state law ensuring public schools continue to receive locally sourced, farm-fresh produce.

“California is leading the nation in supporting children’s health by serving nutritious, locally grown school meals and providing food education that equips students with lifelong healthy habits,” Newsom said in a press release. “Supporting California farmers, local communities, and the health of California’s children remains a top priority, which is why we have secured permanent funding for California’s nation-leading Farm to School Program.”

The signing follows an announcement from Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom last month that nearly 3.5 billion free school meals have been served since the implementation of the state’s “first-in-the-nation” universal school meal program in 2021. 

According to the food advocacy group Nourish California, more than 2 million children in the state live in households that struggle with food insecurity. 

“California’s kids deserve access to school meals that are locally sourced and full of nutrients to help them reach their full potential and thrive,” Siebel Newsom said. “Our Farm to School Program has been a lifeline for children across the state, not only providing free, healthy meals but strengthening local economies through food worker training and supporting California farmers and producers.”

Before now, funding through the Farm to School Incubator Grant Program was a cycle-by-cycle endeavor. The bill now locks in $24.6 million dollars in next year’s budget. The goal being to strengthen regional food systems and expand nutrition education.

“It’s hard to overstate how important this step is,” said Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), which administers the program. “It will guarantee some certainty of market so that many small farms and local farms will have opportunities to grow a certain market as opposed to planting crops and hoping you can find outlets to sell it.” 

According to CDFA, 100% of the farmers funded by the program to date are small, mid-size, or socially and economically disadvantaged producers using climate-smart, organic, or regenerative practices. Every $1 invested, the incubator grants generate $2.10 of localized economic activity.

To bridge the gap between farmers and nutritional directors, Ross says CDFA employs 16 "regional navigators" across the state who act as “matchmakers”, helping schools identify local crops within 50 to 100 miles.

“By putting this kind of stability into a program, to say that this is at the level at which we can continue to grow this program, our goal is to reach 100% of the school districts,” she said.

The Farm to School Incubator Grant program, administered by CDFA, has directed $86 million dollars into 375 regional projects since 2021, reaching 49% percent of all public schools in the state, according to the Governor’s office.

Through Farm to School, Ross says farmers have seen increases in opportunities to get their produce into more food hubs, community food hubs, and aggregation sites.

Local Farmers benefit

Randy Stannard runs Root 64, a small one-acre urban farmstead in the Tallac Village neighborhood in Sacramento. He started it with his partner, Sarah McCammon, in 2017 and sells a wide variety of produce to local restaurants and through the Midtown Farmers Market. Root 64 also has a farmstand that sells every Saturday April through November.

The first grant Stannard ever wrote was a $20,000 proposal through the Farm to School program to acquire several commercial sized caterpillar tunnels—shade cloth coverings that can protect crops and extend seasons. 

“[That’s] a lot of money for us and a lot of really critical infrastructure that helped us make a big jump,” Stannard said.

Stannard now sells bulk produce directly to the Sacramento City Unified School District’s Central Kitchen, located just over a mile from the farm and to the Davis-based SPORK Food Hub, which serves over 40 school districts and is another beneficiary of Farm to School.

Being able to deliver healthy, nutrient-dense food to students in his own backyard evokes a sense of pride for Stannard.

“You just can't get higher quality produce than what they're able to get through us. And that feels great," Stannard said. “We have a son that goes to a Sacramento City Unified School. It's all kind of connected and it helps enhance our connection to the community.” 

For small and mid-sized farmers struggling against rising inflation and climate change, the permanent backing of the program represents more than just financial relief.

Kyle Forrest Burns runs Burns Blossom Farm, an organic, family-owned farm in Chico, with his wife, Mel Burns. He calls the job fulfilling, but it can also take its toll.

“As a farmer, you suffer from a lot of burnout, you suffer from depression, it's a pretty tough job,” Burns said. “Farming in the Central Valley where temperatures exceed 100 degrees, I often go ‘is this going to work?’ Seeing the government back projects like this helps me realize that with support we can make this work.”

Burns received a $306,000 grant from the program in 2023 which enabled him to build a new insulated wash and pack barn facility. He called Farm to School funding “instrumental” to the success and growth of his farm.

“Such a huge game changer to be able to have an insulated building in our climate as well as a giant shade structure to grow organic blackberries and raspberries in the Central Valley,” Burns said.

The funds went towards purchasing a Kubota tractor as well which allowed them to scale up and mechanize their farming. 

Burns Blossom Farm vendor tent at a farmers' market.Courtesy of Burns Blossom Farm

Taking the classroom outside

Both Burns and Stannard have leveraged their farms to not only feed school children healthy food but educate students about where that food comes from. 

As part of the Farm to School grants, Stannard’s expanded operations includes providing “experiential and educational opportunities” through the Urban Agriculture Academy (UAA) at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento. 

The academy explores sustainable agriculture while focusing on impacts food justice, health, and nutrition can have on diverse urban communities, according to the Sacramento City Unified School District website. Root 64 uses its resources to help build up the school’s own on-site market garden and work with the school's internship program. 

“It's a food system,” Stannard said of supporting schools' agricultural programs. “Strengthening that creates resilience. It really builds a lot of strength in our regional economy. I think that's valuable.”

Burns has opened his farm to students, showing the importance of the connection to one's food by hosting hands-on food education through field trips and taste testing events.

“We had second graders out and I pulled the radish out of the ground in front of them, and they squealed with delight and shock. They had never seen a vegetable come out of the ground,” Burns said. “It's so exciting to just see this shiny gem unearthed out of the soil.” 

Burns finds that while the day-to-day grind of operating an organic farm can be grueling at times, he says being able to send food to school districts and educate children has been an "amazing" lifestyle. 

"I find a lot of gratification in sharing, and the fact that I get paid to share beautiful produce with people and children and schools is even more exciting.” Burns said. “If kids can witness that and see it, I believe they will share it with their parents and their friends, and it just continues to ripple outward."

School children on a field trip to Burns Blossom Farm to learn about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.Courtesy of Burns Blossom Farm

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is taking aim at California’s Medicaid program for providing housing assistance, food, and other social services to high-need, low-income patients who tend to rack up big healthcare costs and, he argued, strain taxpayer funds.

The Republican blasted California during back-to-back political attacks in May, saying the heavily Democratic state is committing “outrageous fraud” and “stealing” by spending state and federal Medicaid money meant for basic medical treatment on unconventional services such as housing and nutrition assistance, gym memberships, and even tribal prayers and, he claimed, exorcisms.

“The California Medicaid program will pay for herbal medicines, meal deliveries. They’ll pay for housing,” Kennedy said. “I don’t know what housing has to do with healthcare.”

“California, they’re just setting all kind of records,” he added. “They’re wild people.”

Despite criticism from congressional Republicans and growing scrutiny from the Trump administration, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat considering a presidential run, said he’s proud of California’s spending on social services in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. It’s a multibillion-dollar experiment to help medically frail patients meet their housing, food, and other social needs that Newsom says is not only legal but also a more cost-effective and evidence-backed approach to providing healthcare for Californians with complex health conditions. He counters that investing in services outside clinical settings can help people avoid emergency rooms and hospital admissions, improve their long-term health, and ultimately save taxpayers money.

“It’s about whole-person care,” Newsom said, adding that he hopes President Donald Trump’s administration sees California’s leadership and agrees with the “reforms we’re advancing as national best practices.”

Now one of the governor’s marquee health initiatives is at the center of an intensifying partisan battle with Republicans in Washington, D.C., who have moved to rein in billions in healthcare spending on low-income and disabled people across red and blue states. It’s a philosophical divide: Conservatives say social services are a financial strain on Medicaid and shouldn’t be considered healthcare, while liberals argue that investing in prevention ultimately saves money. While experiments proliferated across the country under President Joe Biden, the Trump administration has rescinded federal policy encouraging state Medicaid programs to address health-related social needs.

The Medicaid fight is putting patients in limbo.

Lucy Rodriguez teaches Mexican folk dancing in the town of Hollister, in California’s Central Coast region. She said her life turned around this year once an intensive case manager with Titanium Healthcare, which contracts with health insurers to provide services, began helping her manage her chronic diseases and stay on top of her medical appointments and prescriptions, even picking up free food boxes for her. The 73-year-old is on Medicare and Medi-Cal, which offers more extensive benefits. The low-income health program has helped pay her utility bills, and she was recently approved for home-delivered meals.

“This has been a godsend,” said Rodriguez, who has diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. “I was getting so stressed out and depressed. It’s really hard when you’re on a fixed income. Groceries are so expensive, and with summer, electricity gets even more expensive. But this is really improving my life.”

She worries the Trump administration will cut benefits to low-income older people.

Lucy Rodriguez, an enrollee in California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, has benefited from social services the program covers, including a care manager who helps her manage her diabetes and kidney diseaseAngela Hart/KFF Health News

Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services warned states that federal funding for social services would be determined on a case-by-case basis. CMS spokesperson Christopher Krepich said the agency is not ending current agreements, known as waivers, that grant states temporary permission to provide social services, which are paid for with state and federal dollars. But future applications, for new services or to extend existing initiatives, could be at risk if they veer too far from traditional healthcare.

“Moving forward, CMS will work with states on innovative waivers that address core healthcare needs, as consistent with evidence-based approaches tied to clinical diagnoses and services, to the goal of ultimately improving health outcomes in the Medicaid population,” Krepich said in a statement.

In a further escalation, the Justice Department put out a recent memo allowing states to institutionalize people with disabilities and severe mental illness instead of providing community-based care. Republicans have also targeted states, mostly blue ones, for what they say is a failure to go after waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid. In May, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz stood alongside JD Vance as the vice president announced the deferral of $1.3 billion in Medicaid money to California over suspicions of fraud.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Republicans are simply trying to score political points while ignoring the healthcare needs of poor people. “The federal government wants to politicize fraud,” Bonta said, “and use it, unfortunately, as a bludgeon and a cajole to beat up on blue states.”

Social healthcare

Health policy researchers say roughly 80% of health outcomes are linked to socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral factors, such as housing instability, homelessness, food insecurity, and exposure to violence, whereas 20% is associated with medical care delivered in hospitals and clinics. That evidence fueled the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle social services.

At least 24 states use their own money while drawing federal Medicaid funds for social healthcare experiments. Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania are among those that provide housing and nutrition assistance.

As the Trump administration pulls back on social services, states are rethinking how to fund benefits that have improved preventive care for low-income people. Some have launched new benefits under what’s known as a state plan amendment, a mechanism states use to modify their Medicaid programs that doesn’t need federal waiver approval. Michigan and Minnesota, for example, use this to add recuperative care for homeless patients after hospitalization. These short-term care facilities offer people the opportunity to recover, bridging the gap between hospital discharge and independent living.

This approach “has the advantage of establishing a permanent, statewide benefit that does not require ongoing federal renewals, offering greater stability and predictability,” said Lynn Sutfin, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Other states, meanwhile, rely on federal waivers, which require renewal every five years, to provide social services. Arizona officials said the state intends to submit a request by the end of September to continue its program to provide housing and other services to homeless patients, or those at risk of homelessness, with a serious mental illness and a chronic health condition or recent incarceration.

“When members have access to stable housing and supportive services, they are more likely to engage in ongoing care and less likely to experience avoidable emergency department visits and inpatient admissions,” said Roberta Harrison, interim director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

California, which has been the most aggressive state in adopting social services, has taken a two-pronged approach to keep its vast offerings funded past this year. The state is using its authority to make most of its existing social services and benefits permanent in Medi-Cal managed-care coverage. That regulatory maneuver bypasses federal waiver approval — a move that could attract further Republican scrutiny.

But not everything the state offers can be funded without permission from the federal government. As some services are made permanent, the Newsom administration is seeking new waivers to continue other social services, while also adding more.

It’s an ambitious approach that would expand California’s social healthcare experiment. Newsom said he’s worried that the federal government will decline the latest waiver request. “How could you not be with this administration?” he said. “I’m always concerned.”

Rodriguez tests her blood sugar to help manage her diabetes. Conservatives say that spending healthcare funds on nontraditional services such as housing and nutrition assistance is inappropriate, but liberals say it saves money in the long run.Angela Hart/KFF Health News

New front in healthcare

California offers most of its health-related social services under Biden-era waivers within Medi-Cal, which has a proposed budget of $217 billion. Although there are more than 14 million residents on Medi-Cal, the state has been selective about who gets help from 15 types of social services in its program, called California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal, or CalAIM. Patients with complex needs can also receive help navigating their health and social needs from specialized social workers under a benefit known as enhanced care management.

Since 2022, California has been offering social services, spending nearly $12 billion in joint state and federal money, with the hope of reducing long-term Medi-Cal spending by keeping enrollees out of costly institutions including emergency rooms, jails, nursing homes, and mental health crisis centers.

CalAIM had provided social services to more than 528,000 patients as of September 2025, the most recent state data available. And nearly 453,000 low-income Californians have received intensive case management. Some patients receive both services.

Among the services California is making permanent: Homeless patients can get help finding an apartment, with Medi-Cal paying rental security deposits and six months of rent. Patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease are eligible for home-delivered meals. Asthmatic patients can get mold removed from their homes to control flare-ups. Low-income seniors with disabilities can get a wheelchair ramp installed free of charge. And inmates leaving jail or prison can be connected immediately with primary care, mental health, and substance use treatment.

The social services — especially housing, food assistance, and home modifications — are already demonstrating success in stabilizing the health of the most complex patients, while achieving savings for Medi-Cal through reductions in emergency room visits and hospitalizations and less reliance on institutional care such as nursing homes, according to the state Department of Health Care Services.

In the Central Valley, for instance, Health Plan of San Joaquin CEO Lizeth Granados said CalAIM has helped place homeless patients who were routinely hospitalized into housing. And patients with uncontrolled diabetes saw their blood sugar drop after receiving nutrition counseling and home-delivered meals.

Overall, Granados said, the health plan has seen major improvements in chronic disease management and reductions in hospital stays, dropping to 44 inpatient hospitalizations per 1,000 members since it launched in 2022, down from 61 per 1,000 before CalAIM.

In Orange County, officials with CalOptima Health credited CalAIM housing services for contributing to a nearly 27% drop in unsheltered homelessness. “We’ve been able to expand our street medicine programs, too,” said Yunkyung Kim, the insurer’s chief operating officer.

Around the state, Medi-Cal health insurers said they’re optimistic that CalAIM will continue to save money and improve patient health. Yet, the fate of some services will be decided by the Trump administration.

California has asked CMS to continue enrolling jail and prison inmates in Medi-Cal 90 days before their release to maintain consistent treatment for substance use, mental disorders, or physical conditions, a CalAIM service still in its early stages.

The state has also proposed a new job assistance benefit that counties could opt into to help patients find and retain work in response to upcoming federal work requirements imposed by congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Trump last summer.

And the state wants to continue its array of traditional healers and natural helpers for Californians with tribal affiliations, including music therapy, dancing, drumming, and referrals to sweat lodges for mental health treatment and substance use recovery. While it covers spiritual services, such as ceremonies, rituals, and herbal remedies, state officials said Medi-Cal does not cover exorcisms.

Already, the Trump administration’s positioning has forced the state to eliminate room-and-board benefits, which is threatening local efforts to provide recovery beds.

The state is cutting short-term post-hospitalization housing, which was meant to prevent hospitals from dumping homeless patients or those at risk of homelessness onto the streets. The CalAIM service providing up to six months of temporary housing and ongoing care is ending at the close of this year. And the state is cutting recuperative care benefits, no longer paying for beds for patients to recover from illness or injury, instead offering only wraparound services.

In San Francisco, these beds have been crucial in reducing overdose deaths, helping transition homeless people off the streets and into housing, and reducing hospital bed usage, said Neal Sheran, a medical director with the city’s Department of Public Health. The city’s health plan operates a sobering center, and recuperative care facilities where patients can recover from hospitalizations.

“We’re concerned,” Sheran said. “Funding for the overnight piece of these programs is really crucial to their success.”

Cuts on the horizon

Even without federal threats, state budget pressures have strained CalAIM financing. Newsom has proposed reducing funding for social services by $68.3 million this fiscal year. The cut will deepen next year and remain at $150.2 million per year beginning in 2028.

Providers worry that Medi-Cal patients will lose access. And services, such as home-delivered meals and housing assistance, will be further restricted.

“It’s moving us back to the old days where our healthcare system is more expensive and reactive, instead of investing in prevention,” said Anwar Zoueihid, a vice president and the chief strategy officer at the Los Angeles-based Partners in Care Foundation, a CalAIM provider. “It’s contradictory to Make America Healthy Again.”

To save money, the state is tightening eligibility to limit services and reduce inappropriate use. For instance, Medi-Cal patients with food insecurity would no longer be eligible for home-delivered healthy meals without a qualifying condition like diabetes. And a homeless patient would get capped at six months for help finding an apartment.

Some of the biggest providers of CalAIM say services should be continuously evaluated and curtailed if health plans were too permissive. In some cases, food and housing services were given to low-income patients who didn’t necessarily qualify as the highest-need.

“It’s important everybody takes a look with a very sober view at whether we’re truly benefiting people so we’re spending money in the right places,” said Charlie Robinson, the chief health equity officer at L.A. Care, one of the state’s largest Medi-Cal health insurers.

Dorothy Seleski, the Medi-Cal president for Health Net, said the health insurer isn’t deterred by state and federal cuts.

“Regardless of what happens at the federal level, we are committed,” she said. “This is a significant transformation of the healthcare system, and we are already seeing major reductions in avoidable emergency room trips, avoidable hospital admissions, and we’ve closed gaps in preventive care.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hundreds of economists say in an open letter that institutions “must act now” to address how artificial intelligence could transform the economy and could put many people out of work.

The statement released Monday was signed by top economists, along with computer scientists and some executives at tech companies including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

“AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years,” says the letter organized by Stanford University's digital economy lab. “This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.”

The letter, which has only four sentences, says leaders must “build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.”

The Stanford lab says the letter has so far been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 winners of a Nobel Prize.

Computer scientist and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio was among the signatories and said in a separate statement that based on the trajectory of AI development, “it is highly plausible that AI will drastically transform our economies.”

“We must be intentional and make collective, democratic choices, rather than letting market forces play out and risking leaving most citizens behind,” wrote Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal.

By Emily Zentner, Lisa Pickoff-White and Marnette Federis, The California Newsroom

In April 2023, the FBI discovered that Rafael Silva, an officer with the Delano Police Department in California’s Central Valley, had made violent threats against transgender people on TikTok.

Under a pseudonym, Silva posted several comments that the FBI found imminently dangerous. One read, “You ain’t safe. We finna change your pronouns soon. Was/were.” Another said that Silva’s “AR will track y’all down.” And yet another read, “The only power you’ll see is the one from a barrel and a 9mm,” according to investigative documents.

Silva is one of the 148 California law enforcement officers who engaged in explicitly biased conduct between 2014 and 2024, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Records show the officers used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; mocked transgender people; made violent comments about Black people; and demeaned members of the public, co-workers and incarcerated people, records show.

Yet only about 12% were fired because of their conduct. Silva was not one of them. After leaving Delano, he went on to work for police departments in Avenal and Wasco.

The news organizations reviewed thousands of pages of internal affairs investigations, disciplinary records and court filings obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement and oversight agencies. The records show that some officers accused of overtly biased behavior often faced limited consequences, such as a letter of reprimand or training.

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, determines whether to decertify officers, barring them from working in law enforcement in the state. However, the responsibility to investigate misconduct and impose discipline generally falls to individual agencies and local oversight boards, according to POST.

An investigation of California law enforcement records found officers accused of racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ conduct often remained employed. (Alex Emslie/KQED)

Despite that system, more than 40% of officers identified by the news organizations still work in California law enforcement, excluding corrections officers.

Silva did not respond to requests for comment. The Delano Police Department confirmed that Silva worked there until 2023, but declined further comment.

Attorneys, law enforcement officials and academics said the behavior erodes public trust, raises questions about officers’ credibility in court and undermines efforts to recruit and retain diverse police forces.

Law enforcement officers stand guard during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Ethan Swope/AP Photo)

Law enforcement officers should be held to a high standard, said Vida Johnson, a Georgetown University law professor who has testified before Congress on white supremacy and policing.

Johnson said people who express explicit bias have no place in law enforcement.

“With such an important job, if someone is exhibiting any type of bias against a member of their community, I just don’t think they should have that job,” she said.

How biased conduct can undermine public trust and the courts

When officers exhibit explicit bias, it erodes trust between law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect.

“It undermines our cohesion as a country when you have different perceptions of who our institutions work on behalf of,” Johnson said.

Experts said bias against protected groups — including Black people, LGBTQ people and immigrants — sends a clear message to those communities: We are not here to serve you.

A billboard put up by the Orange County District Attorney’s office that reads, “crime doesn’t pay in Orange County. If you steal, we prosecute,” stands on the southbound 710 Freeway near Del Amo Boulevard in Long Beach, California, on March 11, 2024. (Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

In a 2022 case, Orange County District Attorney’s Office investigator Eric Franke called a security guard who had asked him to leave a building an “angry Black lady.” In a separate incident, he remarked that Mexican people drink excessively. He received a letter of reprimand and still works for the DA’s office.

In separate cases in 2015 and 2018, Los Angeles Police Officer Armando Magana and San Diego Police Officer Alan Dyemartin ridiculed people for not speaking English. Both received letters of reprimand and kept their jobs.

The LAPD declined to comment on the incident for this story. Spokespersons for the Orange County DA’s office and the San Diego Police Department said the agencies take prejudiced behavior seriously and noted that both employees were disciplined. Franke did not comment. Magana declined to comment, and Dyemartin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The distrust created by explicitly biased behavior can have real-world consequences, experts said.

When people believe police are prejudiced against them, they are less likely to call 911 or seek help from law enforcement, according to Stefan Vogler, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Vogler and other experts refer to this as the “overpolicing, underprotection paradox,” a phenomenon they say is common in communities of color and LGBTQ communities.

“They’re not getting the services that they’re promised by the state,” Vogler said.

Explicit bias can also undermine trust in the courtroom.

“You become concerned about using their testimony without corroboration,” said Richard Drooyan, former Los Angeles police commissioner. Drooyan recalled the O.J. Simpson case, when defense attorneys used audio recordings and witnesses to discredit an officer who had been a key witness.

Under the Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, defense attorneys have a right to any information that impacts the credibility of officers who are called to testify.

For justice to be served, it’s imperative that information affecting an officer’s credibility makes its way before the court, said Joseph Trigilio, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and executive director of the Loyola Project for the Innocent.

“A fact finder should look at all that and consider it,” he said. “A jury should hear all of that and ask that question.”

Reporters requested lists of officers whose records must be disclosed to the defense if they’re called to testify, commonly called Brady lists, from every district attorney’s office in counties where the investigation found cases of biased behavior. One office — the Madera County District Attorney’s Office — said it does not maintain such a list. Several district attorneys said they could not locate Brady material on the officers in question, while most declined to say whether the officers appeared on their lists.

Bias extended beyond the public to incarcerated people and fellow officers

The investigation also revealed dozens of instances of biased behavior against Black people, including 23 officers who were disciplined for using the n-word.

“In our profession, there’s no room for us to be able to do that,” said Sheryl Victorian, the chief of police in Waco, Texas, who advocates for strong relationships between police and the communities they serve.

The cases include a number of officers who made comments or shared images mocking George Floyd in the wake of his murder by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Two weeks after Floyd’s death, an officer shared a meme congratulating Floyd on being “2 weeks drug free.” Another shared a photo of Floyd being held on his stomach with a photoshopped image of a naked man sitting on him.

Two children view a mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Friday, as a Hennepin County court weighed the sentence to impose on former police officer Derek Chauvin. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, said negative bias is especially troubling because of the vast power given to police officers. He described officers as “street-level bureaucrats” with the capacity to use force, arrest people and put them in jail.

“The idea that these decisions that are really high stakes might be influenced by things like racism, sexism, homophobia — those should raise really serious concerns for everyone,” he said.

More than half of the 61 correctional officers identified by the investigation were still employed at the end of 2024, according to state controller data. CDCR, which employs more law enforcement officers than any other state agency, did not confirm whether the officers remain employed after requiring dates of birth that had been redacted from the records it provided.

In two cases at Pelican Bay State Prison, officers made casual comments about killing or shooting at Black people, and both received reprimands. At the California Men’s Colony, an officer taunted a transgender inmate to put lipstick on before going out to the yard, and the officer’s salary was temporarily reduced.

A California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officer works at San Quentin in 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In response to questions from The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, a CDCR spokesperson said the agency takes corrective and disciplinary action when appropriate and that it has “implemented new staff misconduct regulations, designed with the goals of eliminating bias, increasing transparency and improving staff accountability.”

Correctional officers wield immense power over incarcerated people, who depend on them for their basic needs and access to programs that can help them successfully reenter society, said James King, program director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a criminal justice reform organization.

“It becomes much deeper than mere words because there’s so much power and authority behind those words,” King said.

Witnessing prejudiced behavior, even when it happens between officers, undermines rehabilitation, he said.

James King stands for a portrait outside the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, on June 9, 2026. King, who is formerly incarcerated, is now Director of Programs at the Ella Baker Center.Juliana Yamada/KQED

“If we are really committed to creating a safer world for all of us, then it starts with how we treat people, even as they are incarcerated and preparing to return to society,” he said.

Most of the cases we analyzed — 79% — involved comments or actions between police officers and other members of the criminal justice system, including fellow officers, court clerks, civilian employees and even a judge while court was in session.

In the case files, officers described how explicit bias in the workplace impacted them.

In the Southern California city of Orange, a Black officer reported applying to a different law enforcement agency due to Orange Police Sgt. Darrin Hall’s use of racist jokes and homophobic slurs in the workplace between 2020 and 2022. Hall received a letter stating that he would be demoted and retired later that month.

The Orange Police Department declined to comment on the incident, as it was a personnel matter.

A Los Angeles police officer wears an AXON body camera. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Drooyan, the former L.A. police commissioner, said prejudiced behavior can create difficult working relationships between officers, leading to a morale problem, and even physical danger in high-risk or volatile environments.

“When they get into a tough situation, if they can’t trust each other, I think it becomes problematic,” he said.

Grunwald said fraught relations among law enforcement officers pose an existential problem as law enforcement leaders are trying to diversify their ranks.

“At a time when police departments are really struggling to retain good officers, and especially at a time when [departments] are struggling to attain officers of color, you’d think that this could be an important area of policy,” he said.

Uneven discipline allowed many officers to remain on the job

Despite the seriousness of explicitly biased behavior — and the fact that it can get an officer decertified — discipline varied across the 148 officers in the investigation.

Of these officers, 39% were demoted, suspended or had their pay reduced. About 20% received a letter of reprimand or were ordered to undergo training — discipline that may not permanently remain in their personnel files.

Experts said the cases uncovered by the investigation likely represent only a fraction of incidents involving explicit bias.

“We have every reason to believe that most of these types of incidents go unreported,” Johnson, the Georgetown law professor, said. “The Blue Wall of Silence. The fact that people are fearful of police. Making a police complaint isn’t easy.”

Even with those barriers, people filed more than 19,600 complaints alleging prejudiced behavior by California law enforcement officers between 2016 and 2024, according to data submitted to the state. Agencies sustained just 349 of those complaints. The figures do not include racially biased traffic stops.

California lawmakers approved a temporary lifeline for hundreds of small farmers after the Trump administration ended a federal program that helped connect local farms with schools, food banks and other community organizations. 

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a state budget that includes $15 million to keep the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program operating for another year. The Biden-era program helped schools, food banks and other organizations buy fresh food directly from small farms before it was eliminated earlier this year. 

The Trump administration said it ended the program because it was considered as a temporary pandemic-era initiative that no longer aligned with current priorities.  

The state funding replaces the lost federal dollars for one year while advocates push Congress to restore long-term funding in the next federal farm bill. 

The program has become an important way for Yolo County farmers to keep locally grown food in the community. 

From the fields to local classrooms 

Jim Knight never planned on becoming an apricot farmer. 

He was told the apricot trees on his property were dead when he moved to Esparto several years ago. They turned out to be Royal Blenheim apricots, which are a rare heirloom variety prized for its flavor but too delicate to survive shipping to most grocery stores. 

The Polestar Farm owner now sells much of his harvest to nearby schools. 

“You can’t get ripe apricots anywhere except on a farm stand because you have to pick it too green to really have that taste,” he said. “So they call me and I can pick it a day or so before and get it to them and they use it within three days. So the kids are getting all this fresh fruit and it’s amazing. And that wouldn’t happen without the support.” 

Polestar Farm owner Jim Knight Monday, June 29, 2026, in Esparto.(Chris Felts/CapRadio News)

Knight said his farm has also helped teach students valuable life skills. He has several local high school students pick fruit early in the morning during harvest season. 

The former educator said one student even used her earnings to fund a Future Farmers of America livestock project.

“It’s enjoyable to be able to work with the high school,” he said. “Being an administrator and a teacher, I love bringing the school into it.” 

Knight worries losing a program like LFPA could mean fewer opportunities like these as small farms operating on tight margins continue to disappear. 

“We’re losing small farms right and left,” he said. “The federal support is not what it could be.” 

A recent USDA report found that California lost 400 farms last year alone. 

A lifeline for small farmers 

Beth Smoker is the policy director for the California Food and Farming Network and said one of the program’s biggest benefits was giving farmers the confidence to plan future crops. 

“They were able to do very real crop planning knowing that they would then have a market to buy that produce,” Smoker said. “So it was really stable.” 

Smoker said the program strengthened regional food systems by helping farmers, food banks and schools rely less on national supply chains and more on food grown nearby. 

One example she highlighted was Hmong farmers growing culturally familiar produce that were able to reach Hmong community members through local food banks.

“Food is more than just calories,” Smoker said. “It is nutrients that feed you culturally as well.” 

Jamie Fanous with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers said the program’s impact extends beyond agriculture, noting that every dollar spent on a small farm generates roughly two dollars in the local economy. 

“They’re spending money at the local hardware store, they’re buying boxes down the street for packing these weekly food boxes,” she said. “So it does have a tremendous impact on rural economies that you don’t really see with many programs and that’s what really made this special.” 

Fanous said over 800 California farmers participated in the program helping supply food to roughly 50 food banks across the state. 

Food insecurity remains high 

The program also became an important source of fresh food for Californians experiencing food insecurity. 

Smoker said food banks continue serving high numbers of families years after the pandemic and that she expects demand to increase as federal changes reduce access to food assistance programs. 

“Hundreds of thousands of people are being unenrolled from CalFresh due to those cuts and they’ll still be hungry,” Smoker said. “So they’ll be turning to their local food banks.” 

A 2024 Yolo County Food Bank survey found roughly one in three county households experience food insecurity with higher rates in rural communities like Esparto. 

Yolo County Supervisor Angel Barajas said the county continues investing in food bank partnerships to help families in need. 

“That’s been a partnership for many years and it’s continuing,” he stressed. “So we’re still investing some funding for those families in great need.” 

A temporary solution 

Stephen Gordon’s Cadena Farm in Esparto grows citrus, almonds, corn and other crops. He said roughly 5% of his annual production is sold through LFPA partnerships with local food hubs. 

But Gordon said losing that reliable income makes it much harder for small farms to compete. 

“If I have all this citrus and I’m already moving that much weight in one year and then I have the same amount the next year and we can’t move the same, then where is it supposed to go?” Gordon said. “If we’re not pushing it locally then we’re pushing it commercially, which is not nearly as much as far as your bottom dollar is concerned. We can’t compete with that.” 

Earlier this year, Gordon joined small farm advocates at the State Capitol to ask lawmakers for three years of replacement funding after the federal program ended. 

He met with Democratic Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, whose district includes Esparto. Gordon said she warned them that securing multiple years of funding would be difficult given the state’s ongoing budget challenges. 

“I think Ms. Curry kind of prepared us for that before we left her office,” Gordon said. “That this was a temporary band-aid to a future fight.” 

Advocates say Newsom’s budget provides an important bridge but they hope Congress restores permanent federal funding in the next farm bill. 

But Gordon said the uncertainty around future funding — at the state or federal level — makes it difficult for small farms to plan beyond the next growing season. 

“I can go down to the Capitol all I want, but at the end of the day, is my voice being heard enough and loud enough?” Gordon said. “I don’t know. In the meantime, we’ll just keep trying.”

This story was produced by the Climate Solutions Studio, a project of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative and its partner newsrooms. CapRadio is a founding partner.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Twelve states challenged Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday, filing a lawsuit that argues the $81 billion mega merger would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and threaten jobs across the industry.

The office of California’s attorney general, who is leading the case, said the states are asking Warner and Paramount to not close their merger “until after the judicial process concludes” — and if the companies do not agree, the coalition will then file a temporary restraining order.

“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

The additional states joining the suit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Skydance-owned Paramount said Monday's lawsuit “distorts settled antitrust law” and maintained its merger would create a "stronger competitor against dominant streaming and technology platforms who have harmed the market for theatrical exhibition and jobs in the entertainment industry.”

The company vowed to “vigorously defend” the transaction. Warner deferred to Paramount for comment.

Where Paramount's takeover of Warner stands

A Paramount-Warner combo would mean putting HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like “Harry Potter” and even CNN under the same roof with CBS, “Top Gun” and the Paramount+ streaming service.

The states’ lawsuit could throw a wrench in those plans, at least for now. The antitrust case arrives at a pivotal time for the Paramount-Warner transaction — which, after months of what became a very public bidding war with Netflix, received shareholders’ stamp of approval in April and then a blessing from the Trump administration just last month.

The U.S. Justice Department isn’t challenging the deal — and instead released an unusually lengthy statement in support, maintaining a Paramount-Warner combo would “increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem, with benefits for American consumers and workers.”

Paramount has touted additional regulatory clearances it says it’s received in a handful of other countries, including China, Canada and Australia. But other reviews remain in progress, including in the European Union and the U.K. — which has separately suggested it may intervene.

Paramount and Warner previously said they hoped to close their deal sometime in the third quarter of this year, signaling recently an effort to complete process in the coming weeks. The clock is ticking. Paramount pledged to give shareholders some compensation if the acquisition doesn’t close by Sept. 30 — in the form of a 25-cent per share “ticking fee” for every quarter past that date. It’s also agreed to a regulatory termination fee of $7 billion.

Including debt, Paramount’s proposed purchase of Warner is valued at nearly $111 billion (or $31 per share) based on current outstanding shares.

Critics of the deal, and Paramount's response

Warner and Paramount argue that merging will be good for growth in the industry and give consumers access to more content, particularly if HBO Max and Paramount+ libraries are combined. But critics have decried what further consolidation could mean in an industry already controlled by just a few major players.

Thousands of actors, directors, writers and other industry professionals have voiced “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount deal, arguing that further consolidation will lead to job losses and fewer choices for filmmakers and movie goers. Meanwhile, Paramount on Monday argued that delaying the merger "will only harm entertainment workers who have already suffered over recent years as technology has disrupted their livelihood and cost California tens of thousands of entertainment jobs."

Questions of political influence have also piled up. Democrats in particular have expressed skepticism about whether regulators working under President Donald Trump would scrutinize the deal as heavily.

The Justice Department maintained that politics would not play a role in the regulatory process — but Trump himself has publicly waded into Warner’s future at times, despite backpedaling on what he once suggested his personal role would be. The Republican president also has a close relationship with the Ellison family, particularly Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who is putting billions of dollars on the table to back the bid for his son’s company.

Many eyes are on CNN, a network that has long attracted ire from Trump and his allies. Paramount’s CBS has already seen significant turmoil and shifts in editorial leadership since coming under Skydance ownership last — and if Warner merger goes through, the reach of that could grow. Several Trump administration officials have been far from shy from sharing their hopes for CNN under Paramount ownership, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth telling reporters in March that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Update 2 p.m. Friday July 10.

The California Department of Education (CDE) building in Sacramento will get a full treatment for bed bugs at the request of State Superintendent Tony Thurmond following over a month of complaints from employees.

Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Abel Guillén sent an email to CDE staff July 9 at 3:36 p.m confirming the Department of General Services (DGS), which manages the building, has agreed to a full pest control treatment to  “ensure that any infestations are eradicated.”

DGS has contracted EagleShield, which had only recommended a localized treatment, to begin treating the full building as soon as Friday, July 10. 

“The treatment process is anticipated to take approximately one day per floor, and the entire building will need to be vacated during treatment,” the email read.

Another independent pest control vendor, All Day West, has been contracted to do additional inspections and treatment recommendations. Both vendors will utilize a variety of inspection methods including dogs which have already indicated more treatment is needed. 

In the email, Guillén noted to staff additional treatments would not guarantee bed bugs from being reintroduced in the future. Employees are expected to work remotely until July 27 at the earliest. 

Original story:

Bed bugs continue to be a problem for employees at the California Department of Education (CDE) who say the building at 1430 N St. in Sacramento has been infested.

“I saw with my own eyes at least 50 bugs,” said Gina Garcia-Smith, an education programs consultant at CDE. 

Garcia-Smith said what began as an isolated incident in one area of the building has now spread to multiple floors, causing widespread anxiety about working conditions among staff, forcing them to work entirely remotely until at least July 13. It comes as state workers are beginning to return to the office following Governor Gavin Newsom’s mandate, which has been met with intense pushback.

The department isn't under the RTO mandate and is still hybrid, coming into the office only two days a week. But a recent bill pushed through the legislature placing CDE under the Governor’s control could change that, potentially exposing more workers.

“When you are a leader, you have a responsibility to make sure that your employees are safe in the office and not be on their hands and knees with a flashlight,” Garcia-Smith said. 

Service Employees International Union Local 1000 (SEIU), which represents 96,000 state workers, released a statement saying exposure to bed bugs risks workers having to replace their belongings or pay out of pocket to fumigate their own homes.

“California's affordability crisis is already crushing state workers, and now unsafe worksites threaten to pile on more unexpected costs,” said Anica Walls, SEIU Local 1000 President.

In a statement to CapRadio, the Department of General Services (DGS), which manages the building, acknowledged the presence of bed bugs but denied there was an infestation.

“When DGS was notified of the presence of bedbugs at the building, we acted immediately,” the statement said. “The building was closed to allow for a thorough inspection and implementation of industry standards by subject matter experts that help with the eradication of the bed bugs. All areas were inspected, and areas were treated as recommended by the subject matter experts.”

On June 3, two bed bugs were seen in an employee’s cubicle on the third floor. CDE leadership was immediately notified, according to Garcia-Smith. 

An internal email was sent later that day asking all employees to work remotely for the rest of the day out of an abundance of caution “given the past history of the building.” The CDE headquarters had previously been the site of a possible infestation back in 2024.

The next day on June 4, staff were informed by DGS that a contracted pest control inspector determined that “no bed bug activity was detected” but a deep cleaning would be done, and the situation would continue to be monitored.

But on June 23, more bed bugs were spotted in a conference room, the same location as the previous sightings back in 2024. Garcia-Smith said it was 15 ft from where the two bugs had been seen weeks prior.

“[Employees] moved the table and pulled up the cord cover and bugs just scattered. Swarms. It was disturbing,” Garcia-Smith said. 

Garcia-Smith described the bugs as a reddish-brown color and “plump.”

“These are bed bugs that have been eating the human blood of my colleagues who have unknowingly been sitting in these chairs, in meetings, and being bitten,” Garcia-Smith said. 

Emily Ingram, an education programs consultant at CDE, said working in a building with bed bugs has taken a toll on everyone’s psyche.

“It kind of gets to your head a bit,” Ingram said. “You start to worry that maybe during the two weeks in June that they told us we had to come back to the office two days a week and that everything was all clear. Well, clearly it wasn't, so did I bring something home during that time?”

The union SEIU Local 1000 filed a formal complaint and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond sent a request to DGS to treat the entire building which hasn’t been done. Ingram and Garcia-Smith said they felt disrespected and betrayed that they are being allowed to work in this environment while DGS “refuses” to treat the building.

DGS stated their pest management consultants didn’t recommend treating the whole building after inspection. 

“Bedbugs are generally pesticide resistant, there is no way to simply spray/fumigate a building – the methods used to treat an office building are more complicated,” DGS said. "We are working with the Department of Education on next steps."

While DGS denies bed bugs are present in other state buildings, workers have highlighted multiple agencies that have other hazardous conditions including the presence of legionella bacteria in the tap water, asbestos, and rats, according to the union.

In 2024, CalMatters reported legionella bacteria, which can lead to pneumonia and cause Legionnaires Disease, had been found in 37 buildings since it began testing in June 2022

“State workers keep California working, and they never should have been forced into offices with unsafe or unsanitary conditions in the first place,” Walls said.