u/GeneralCarlosQ17

A new law taking effect next year will give affordable housing owners more options in avoiding foreclosure.

Assembly Bill 2020, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino, will allow the California Department of Housing and Community Development to permit owners to transfer money produced by their affordable housing units to another property to prevent the latter's foreclosure.

The law is meant to keep affordable housing units on the market in California and protect taxpayers’ investment in the state’s affordable housing market, according to the bill analysis.

“California’s affordable housing developments currently operate on razor-thin margins,” Gabriel told The Center Square via email on Tuesday. “We cannot afford to lose units that took years and significant public investment to create – especially to a foreclosure that could have been prevented. Preserving what we’ve built is far more cost-effective than starting over.”

According to supporting statements submitted as part of the bill analysis, affordable housing developments in California operated with very narrow margins, and they're dependent on carefully structured financial reserves and operating income to stay viable. Insurance costs, the cost of maintaining the property and other operating expenses created financial strains for many of these properties, according to supporters of AB 2020.

“When these developments experience operating deficits, the risk of financial distress or foreclosure increases, putting critical affordable housing units, and the residents who call them home, at risk,” Enterprise Community Partners Inc. wrote in comments supporting the bill earlier this year. “This flexibility enables developers to stabilize struggling properties using existing portfolio resources, helping ensure the long-term viability of affordable housing developments.″

There was no opposition to AB 2020, according to the last version of the bill analysis. The state’s bill tracking tool shows that no legislator voted against the bill, either in committee hearings or on the Assembly and Senate floors.

According to a housing report published by California Housing Partnership, an organization formed to preserve affordable and sustainable homes, California’s taxpayers paid for the construction of 23,000 new affordable housing units in 2025. But the organization said that only amounts to 20% of what the state needs to pay to meet its affordable housing goals.

No one from California Housing Partnership responded to The Center Square's request for comment on Tuesday.

Wayne Winegarden, an economist at Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute, told The Center Square on Tuesday that while he thinks AB 2020 is a good bill, he believes a better solution to addressing the state's affordable housing problems involves reducing regulatory delays and costs.

"I think it's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound when you talk about housing affordability issues," Winegarden said. "While this is helpful, it's not getting to the crux of the problem. It's a good bill; he should sign it. It will help some people, but we shouldn't be thinking this is the solution."

Metrolink has announced its first fare increase in 13 years across Southern California, raising one-way tickets for its passenger trains an average of 14%.

The rare price increase has drawn pushback from frustrated passengers grappling with financial strain, especially amid high gas prices and ongoing calls to curb carbon emissions. The hike left policy experts warning of structural pitfalls in California’s public transit model.

The SoCal Day Pass went from $15 to $19 on weekdays and $10 to $12 on weekends and holidays.

The increase took effect Monday for the train system, which serves Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties.

“This is Metrolink’s first systemwide fare increase in 13 years,” said Metrolink in an FAQ section on its website announcing the increase. “During that time, the cost of operating and maintaining regional rail service has continued to rise, while post-pandemic ridership and fare revenue remain below previous levels.”

Metrolink added that the updated fares support Metrolink’s “long-term financial outlook and the sustainability of regional rail service while preserving a simplified fare structure and valuable discount programs.”

Programs such as the $5 L.A. Zone Pass and existing discounts for students, seniors, veterans, low-income customers and other eligible groups remain in place.

State Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, told The Center Square Tuesday that while fare increases are rarely legislative decisions, they put operators in a difficult financial corner. With fare boxes historically covering only a fraction of operating costs — typically around 10% — relying heavily on fare hikes can trigger unintended consequences, Cortese cautioned.

"Whenever you do a fare box increase in any large transit district, you really risk a death spiral for the agency," said Cortese, drawing from his background with the Valley Transportation Authority. Cortese chairs the California Senate Transportation Committee.

While energy, power and labor costs surge for transit agencies just as they do for everyday citizens, Cortese cautioned that raising prices without matching service value risks pushing systems toward insolvency or forcing a retreat in ridership.

Steven Greenhut, director of the Free Cities Center at the Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute, made similar comments about the economic realities facing public transit. While Greenhut acknowledged that it is not inherently unreasonable to adjust pricing after 13 years, he argued that government-run systems fundamentally struggle due to a lack of market competition.

"In the U.S., we kind of treat transit as a welfare program rather than a transportation program," Greenhut told The Center Square on Tuesday.

Greenhut added that when public systems face budget shortfalls, their standard playbook of raising fares, cutting service routes or seeking new taxes, often accelerates a downward spiral. Instead of relying on routine price hikes or aggressive messaging aimed at shaming drivers out of their cars, Greenhut suggests agencies should focus on aggressive cost-cutting, overhead reform and better marketing to make systems genuinely appealing.

Prop. 40, the Los Angeles mayor’s race and three Bay Area presidential hopefuls show the party’s civil war is already on this November’s ballot

By John Feliz, October 6, 2026 4:37 pm

Washington pundits talk about the coming fight between the Democratic Party’s socialist insurgents and its establishment as if it were a 2028 event. Californians don’t have to wait. The fight is on our ballots right now, and early voting has already begun.

Start with the rest of the country. This year the left has had its best primary season in a generation. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician running on Medicare for All, won Michigan’s Democratic Senate nomination. Democratic socialist Melat Kiros ousted 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver. Three House candidates endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their primaries, knocking off two incumbents. The establishment has notched wins of its own. In Texas, party leaders’ preferred candidate, James Talarico, beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett. But the momentum has belonged to the insurgents.

Now look at California.

Proposition 40 would impose a promised one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of Californians worth more than $1 billion, largely to backfill federal cuts to fraud riddled Medi-Cal. Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes Prop 40. So does Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee to succeed him. So do the California Teachers Association and the California Professional Firefighters. Yet in August the DSA dominated California Democratic Party endorsed it anyway, siding with its socialist base over its elected leaders. As early voting opened, Bernie Sanders came to California to campaign for Prop 40 alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, who calls himself Newsom’s “polar opposite” on the Prop 40 taxing question and has challenged the governor to a debate.

Consider the lineup. On one side are the liberal governor, the party’s nominee for governor, and a large share of organized labor. On the other are the left-learning Democratic state party, the SEIU health care workers’ union bankrolling the measure, and two of the left’s most prominent national figures. Opponents have raised more than $252 million, much of it from billionaires; Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone has put in $102 million. Supporters have raised about $32 million. And still the measure leads, 52 percent to 46 percent among likely voters in the latest liberal Public Policy Institute of California survey.

The same split runs through Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass, a pillar of the party’s progressive mainstream, trails socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman 39 percent to 28 percent in a UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. In June, three of the six candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America for citywide office won outright, and the incumbent city attorney became the first in nearly a century to lose in a primary.

Hovering over all of it is 2028. Three of the Democrats most often mentioned for president, Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Khanna, come from the Bay Area. Khanna is building a Sanders-style populist campaign. Newsom has rolled out a “Project 2029” policy framework and says he would not run if Harris does. Prop. 40 has become their first proxy fight, and it is being waged with California’s budget.

Here is the uncomfortable truth for both wings of the party: Californians are not choosing between them out of affection for either one. They are choosing out of frustration.

Newsom’s job approval has fallen to 42 percent among registered voters, with 55 percent disapproving, in a recent Berkeley-Politico poll. Sixty-five percent of voters told PPIC that a candidate’s position on affordability is “very important” in choosing a governor. The left’s surge here is not mainly an ideological conversion. It is a verdict on results: on housing costs, gas prices, homelessness and a state government that has been entirely in Democratic hands since 2011. When the people who run everything cannot make the state affordable, voters start listening to people who promise to make someone else pay.

That is the Democrat establishment’s problem in a one party state. It owns the record. It cannot run against Sacramento because it is Sacramento. Becerra is likely to be the next governor. He leads Republican Steve Hilton in every public poll. But he would take office with his own party’s apparatus on record against him on the defining tax question of the year.

The left has a different problem: a target is not a plan. The liberal nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Prop. 40 would raise “tens of billions of dollars” spread over several years. It also warns the measure could reduce state income tax revenue by “hundreds of millions of dollars or more” every year if billionaires leave. A one-time levy cannot permanently fund an ongoing obligation, and Medi-Cal is about as ongoing as obligations get. Even the governor, who says he supports taxing extreme wealth, argues it has to be done nationally, where the wealthy cannot simply move to Nevada or Texas.

There is a lesson here that reaches well beyond our borders. Nationally, the left’s insurgency has been strongest where Democrats are already dominant: New York City, Denver, the Bay Area, Los Angeles. Those are places where the establishment has governed long enough that voters hold it responsible for everything. Where Democrats are the challengers, as in Texas, the party’s less left wing still holds the upper hand. The real test of the left’s electability will come in Michigan, where DSA endorsed El-Sayed is narrowly ahead in a race that will show whether a “Medicare for All” candidate can win in an industrial Midwest swing state.

California, then, is not a preview of the national Democratic Party. It is a warning to it. A party that controls everything for long enough eventually ends up running against itself.

For the millions of Californians who are not Democrats, and for the many Democrats who are simply tired, the takeaway is straightforward. Do not mistake this fight for a debate about whether California’s problems get solved. It is largely a debate about who gets blamed for them. One faction of the failing Democrat party is defending a record it struggles to justify; the other socialist wing is promising a windfall that the Legislature’s own state analysts say will not last.

Whatever happens to Prop. 40 on Nov. 3, both wings of the Democratic Party owe Californians the same answer. Not who should pay more but why has so much money bought so little.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic frontrunner in the California gubernatorial race, is being accused of “immigrant stolen valor” after a viral social media post poked holes in his campaign’s family origin story.

Conservative Latino activists and organizations are blasting Becerra over his repeated description of himself as the son of immigrants who arrived in the US with $12 — despite his father having been born in Sacramento before bouncing back and forth between Mexico and California.

“Latino Free Minds” podcast host Daniel Reyes, who called the Dem’s narrative about his father “stolen valor” in a reference to the term for military frauds, accused Becerra of exploiting immigrant hardships to win votes.

He’s trying to get a vote, so he took his dad’s hard work and that success story, and just turned it into some pandering statement just for votes,” Reyes told the California Post. “That’s the embarrassing part.”

Becerra’s Republican rival, Steve Hilton, is scheduled to deliver “The Case Against Xavier Becerra” Wednesday, attacking the former President Joe Biden health secretary for “campaigning as if the job is already his,” according to a Hilton press release.

Hilton is expected to hammer Becerra over his limited campaigning, alleged political indifference and his handling of the border crisis, which Hilton claims forced children into overcrowded facilities, The Post learned.

Hilton also took shots online over Becerra’s “immigrant” claims.

Becerra’s campaign has defended itself against accusations of lying to voters. However, in remarks the night of the June primary election, Becerra described his parents’ coming-to-America story as “two immigrants, $12 and a dream.” His campaign website still uses the same description.

Jesse Holguin, a former Los Angeles-area gang leader from La Puente who founded Latinos Exiting the Left, accused Becerra of using his parents’ story to manufacture a connection with Latino voters.

“That’s why he tried to act like his parents were from over there because he’s trying to pander to the Latinos,” Holguin said. “He just thinks that’s gonna make him sound more Latino to them, and they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s a real Latino, and he’s really for us.’”

One San Fernando Valley family got a brutal reminder that staying cool in Los Angeles can come with a scorching price tag.

Micah Reed was stunned when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sent him a September utility bill totaling about $3,300.

Reed, who lives with his wife and two sons, said in a social media video that he kept the thermostat at 74 degrees Fahrenheit during August so that his “family wouldn’t melt.”

“Am I powering the entire crypto mining grid of the San Fernando Valley, or did LADWP just decide that I pay my mortgage twice this month?” Reed questioned.

The video racked up nearly a million views and thousands of responses from Angelenos who said they had similar concerns.

Reed then launched a petition to “demand an independent audit and summer rate relief.”

He argues that keeping homes cool during Valley summers, when temperatures can soar past 100 degrees, is a basic health and safety necessity.

“Yet, because of LADWP’s aggressive tiered pricing system and opaque pass-through charges, residents are effectively penalized with a massive ‘Heat Tax’ just for trying to avoid heatstroke,” he wrote.

The petition calls on City Controller Kenneth Mejia to conduct a public, independent audit of LADWP’s rate calculations, tiered pricing and pass-through charges, including the Energy Cost Adjustment and Incremental Reliability Cost Adjustment.

“Living in Los Angeles is already unaffordable enough. Running an air conditioner shouldn’t force families into debt,” Reed added.

The petition also calls for higher Tier 1 and Tier 2 electricity-use thresholds from July through September, “so households aren’t pushed into top-tier penalty rates for essential cooling during triple-digit heat waves.”

Reed is also seeking flexible monthly billing, limits on sewer and sanitation add-ons during peak heat and interest-free payment plans for residents hit with extreme summer bills.

The petition also calls for a halt to utility shutoffs for residents struggling with sky-high summer bills.

Two managers at the California State Controller’s Office were the subject of an audit released this month outlining improper actions after they regularly teleworked from out of state. The finding prompted auditors to recommend the Legislature clarify remote work policies in state law.

The allegations come after the California Department of Human Resources sent a notice in February 2022 outlining that departments cannot approve employee requests to regularly work from out-of-state locations. The State Controller’s Office’s policy also restricts employees from relocating to an area that “preclude their ability to return to an assigned work location within (a) normal commute time.”

One manager worked from Idaho for at least five years, starting in November 2020 when he moved to the state. Auditors found the employee owned property in Idaho and had a driver’s license issued by the state.

“Despite living and working in Idaho for approximately five years, (the manager) did not disclose to anyone at the SCO his actual location,” the California State Auditor report disclosed. “In each of the telework plans that (manager) signed in 2023, 2024, and 2025, he said that his telework address was in California.”

Another manager was found to work from both Alabama and Tennessee without disclosing that information to the Controller’s Office, according to the audit report.

“IP address log‑in data showed that she accessed the internet from Alabama about half of her work time and from California the other half from June 2025 through September 2025, and her access during October 2025 and November 2025 was exclusively from Alabama,” the audit report states. “We also identified IP address data that shows she logged in for work from Tennessee.”

» The State Worker newsletter: The news state workers need to know

Auditors obtained a court order from 2024 that identified the second manager as a Tennessee resident. In her 2023 tax documentation, according to the audit report, this manager listed a Tennessee address as her home residence. The state worker also expressed plans to move to Alabama in an email reviewed by auditors.

The auditor’s report also questions the Controller’s Office, saying “the SCO could have provided better guidance and stronger internal controls to ensure compliance with CalHR’s 2022 guidance and to detect or prevent the long‑term out‑of‑state telework in which both employees engaged.”

Both employees didn’t provide the Controller’s Office with accurate information about where they worked, the agency said, resulting in the “office’s inability to identify the issue sooner.” The Controller’s Office also said it discovered the telework pattern before the auditors.

Auditors reported there was no explicit language in the Controller Office’s telework policy that required employees generally conduct telework from California. Both employees told auditors such policies were unclear.

Additionally, staffers in the agency’s information technology and human resources divisions said the Controller’s Office generally doesn’t monitor where employees telework. Without such policies and completed investigations, the audit report states it could cause a tax problem.

“Without such a process in place, the SCO risks withholding incorrect payroll taxes for employees because living in or working extensively from another state could trigger changes to employees’ tax liabilities,” the report states.

Going forward, the audit asks the Legislature to amend state law to provide clear instruction that prohibits state workers from regularly teleworking outside of California. That change requires a bill be introduced and approved this coming legislative session before its fate is determined by governor’s office.

The audit also asked the Controller’s Office to impose corrective actions on the two managers, update policies and implement a process to periodically monitor where employees telework — including possibly reviewing where agency-issued mobile devises are used. Both managers no longer work for the controller’s office.

“The SCO has fully implemented the auditor’s recommendations prior to the release of the report,” the Controller’s Office wrote in a statement.

Six months ago, in a historic land conservation deal, a San Francisco environmental group signed an agreement to purchase Golden Gate Fields — the site of a famous horse racing track from 1941 to 2024 — and preserve it as a landmark new waterfront park.

The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization, secured an option to pay $175 million to buy the 161-acre property west of Interstate 80 in Albany and Berkeley from the Stronach Group, a Canadian company that has owned it since 1999. The plan received a major boost this summer when Gov. Gavin Newsom included $125 million in his final state budget to help pay for it.

But now comes the hard part: Tearing down the buildings and coming up with a plan for the property’s future.

There are countless opinions, visions and dreams that members of the public, state officials, city leaders, and managers at the East Bay Regional Park District, which will own the site, are already starting to voice. They’ll have to find compromises in the coming months and years in what many leaders are calling a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape the East Bay’s waterfront.

Map of Golden Gate Fields“Look at the view. It’s just amazing,” said Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, during a tour of the property Monday. “People are going to want to be here.”

From the aging, shuttered track, a stunning panorama was visible across San Francisco Bay: the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Tamalpais, Alcatraz Island, the Bay Bridge and San Francisco’s iconic skyline.

Wicks said she hopes that the property’s one mile of bayfront property will become a new public beach, and that much of the land can be restored as a public park. She’d also like to see parts set aside for youth soccer and baseball fields, adding to those at Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex on the property’s southern edge, which are always in demand.

“It’s going to go through an extensive public process,” she said. “We’ll see what comes out the other end. But this is a gold mine of an opportunity. It’s a long journey and we are just starting.”

A number of significant challenges are already beginning to surface.

On Dec. 15, the Trust for Public Land plans to exercise its option, putting down $1.75 million and starting a 30-day escrow period, said Guillermo Rodriguez, the group’s state director. By Jan. 14, the trust expects to close escrow, take title to the land and transfer it that day to the East Bay parks district.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed several bills in recent days, tackling issues ranging from education to criminal justice, tax breaks and accountability.

Four bills in particular affect taxpayers in California. They would have given tax breaks to those who experienced man-made disasters, instituted accountability measures for community programs, allowed CalGuard and CalFire employees to defer retirement, and required health insurance regulators to include affordability considerations when eyeing health insurance rate increases.

Here are some of the bills Newsom vetoed. Assembly Bill 760

This bill, authored by Assemblymember Tri Ta, R-Westminster, would have made settlements nontaxable from lawsuits filed by survivors of the chemical link in the Orange County city of Garden Grove. The May 21, 2026 incident was caused by a chemical leak from a tank at GKN Aerospace, a company that manufactures cockpits and airplane windshields. Residents who lived in the area were evacuated from their homes by local officials, according to incident updates on the city of Garden Grove’s website.

Ta said in comments included as part of the bill analysis that many of the 50,000 people evacuated from the area suffered loss of income, interruptions to their businesses and increased transportation costs. Approximately 44 lawsuits were filed because of the chemical leak, Ta wrote, and the settlements from those lawsuits are meant to help those families recover from an incident that disrupted their lives.

“AB 760 will help these victims be fully compensated by following California precedent for previously declared emergencies that made settlements non-taxable,” Ta wrote. “These funds should not be considered income. Taxing these settlements would diminish the relief available to affected residents and reduce the resources available to help them rebuild and move forward.”

Ta was not available for an interview before publication time on Tuesday.

In a veto message, Newsom wrote that while he supported the bill's intent, he could not sign it because he wanted such a bill to be included in the Legislature’s budget process. Not taxing settlements from lawsuits arising from a disaster has implications for the general fund – essentially the state government’s main checking account – and similar bills passed in years past were included in proposed budgets, according to the Democratic governor.

“I strongly encourage the legislature to include this proposal in next year’s budget framework,” Newsom wrote.

Newsom’s office did not comment beyond his veto messages for this story. Assembly Bill 1039

This bill by Assemblymember Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, would have required California state agencies that award taxpayer-funded grants and contracts to pay up to 25% of the money to nonprofits that win those grants or contracts, according to a bill analysis.

Current state law allows an advance of grant and contract money for taxpayer-funded projects. But many underserved communities across California often don’t apply for those grants or try to compete for contracts because of a lack of uniform policy regulating cash advances on contracts and grants given to nonprofits, Hart said in comments included as part of the bill analysis.

“By ensuring nonprofits can secure a percentage of contracted funds up front for all new funding opportunities, AB 1039 will improve the nonprofit sector's capacity to provide quality services to communities and carry out state-funded priorities,” Hart wrote. “The bill also supports stronger transparency about a funding opportunity's terms, including clearer indication of the available percentage of advance pay.”

Hart did not respond to The Center Square before publication time on Tuesday.

Newsom wrote in his veto message for this bill that state agencies need to maintain discretion about when and how to advance grant and contract money to nonprofit organizations.

“While I appreciate the author’s goal of reducing financial barriers for nonprofits and tribes, imposing a new statewide requirement would severely limit the state’s oversight and protection of public funds,” Newsom wrote. Assembly Bill 1054

This bill by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, D-Gardena, would have allowed employees of certain state agencies to opt in to a Deferred Retirement Option Program, which would have been available to employees who work for the California Military Department, also known as CalGuard, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire.

Under a deferred retirement option plan, public employees who reach retirement eligibility can choose to continue working while freezing their taxpayer-funded pension calculation. That would allow an employee to continue working, earning an income and contribute to retirement and delay receiving pension payouts until full retirement, according to the bill analysis.

Gipson said he introduced the bill to entice long-standing employees of CalGuard and CalFire with decades of experience and institutional knowledge to continue working at a time when both departments have experienced employee shortages. In comments included in the bill analysis, the legislator said that would allow those agencies time to hire and train new employees while still employing those agencies’ most experienced officers and firefighters.

“This bill seeks to address this shortage by establishing a voluntary [deferred retirement option program] within CalPERS for eligible employees,” Gipson wrote. “This program is intended to retain experienced personnel while supporting long-term recruitment and training efforts.”

Gipson declined to comment for this story.

In his veto message, Newsom wrote that he believed the bill had merit, but that financial considerations kept him from signing the bill.

“A [deferred retirement option program] could create significant long-term fiscal and administrative pressures on departments by altering employee tenures and retirement costs,” Newsom wrote. “Both the design and establishment of a [deferred retirement option program] are more appropriately handled through the collective bargaining process.” Senate Bill 1037

This bill by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, D-San Diego, would have instituted new accountability measures for state regulators who set rates for health insurance plans across California.

Increases in health insurance rates would have to be calculated with considerations of affordability in mind for Californians, according to the bill analysis. Specifically, health insurance regulators would have to look at prior reviews of medical trends and cost-sharing requirements reported by health plans.

“More has to be done in all health care sectors to control health care costs and health insurance premiums,” Weber Pierson wrote in comments included as part of the bill analysis. “This bill will require health insurance regulators to focus their reviews of proposed rate increases with an eye toward affordability for Californians.”

Weber Pierson was not available for an interview before publication time on Tuesday.

Newsom wrote in his veto message regarding this bill that the Office of Health Care Affordability, which is tasked with tracking health care costs and keeping them from becoming too high, has not had enough time to do its work because the agency was established in 2022.

“There has not been sufficient time for enforcement or to determine the impact of the statewide cost targets,” Newsom wrote. “This bill approach is premature, but the intention to address rising health care costs could not be more timely.”

Paramount Skydance has officially closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing two of America’s oldest movie studios together under one company now known as Skydance.

The deal, finalized on Tuesday, marks one of the largest media and entertainment transactions ever. While the equity value of the deal stands at $81 billion, the total acquisition cost reaches $111 billion when factoring in billions of dollars in debt. The deal puts Paramount Pictures in Hollywood in the same company with one of its longtime rivals - Warner Bros. in nearby Burbank, Calif.

Paramount Skydance won a federal judge’s approval Sept. 30 to proceed with the deal. U.S. District Judge Martínez-Olguín in Oakland approved Paramount Skydance’s settlement with Democratic attorneys general from 12 states, who sued in July to stop the merger.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the coalition and argued the deal was illegal, likely to lessen competition, and threatened viewers with higher prices and reduced content variety. At a July press conference in Southern California with the famous Hollywood sign behind him, Bonta said movies and television programs are not run-of-the-mill commodities.

“The film and entertainment industry doesn't exist just to buy and to sell them,” Bonta continued. “It exists to tell stories, to spark ideas and spark curiosity, to inspire and sometimes to inform, to open our eyes to new perspectives we may have never considered before, to expose us to the things we don’t know we need to be exposed to.”

The resulting settlement, which resolved the antitrust lawsuit originally scheduled to go to court in 2027, includes strict court-enforceable guardrails. For example, Paramount Skydance agreed to an annual film release commitment spanning a five-year term, releasing 30 films a year (including 20 wide releases) in the first two years and 32 films a year (with 21 wide releases) in years three, four,and five.

This 30-films promise was made before the legal dispute and settlement, but was written off as an “old, stale promise” by the coalition of state attorneys general.

The company also commits to releasing at least four independent films annually, with any failure to meet these output requirements triggering a $30 million penalty per missed film — directed toward union health and retirement trust funds — and a mandatory divestiture of Miramax Studios.

Additionally, Paramount will boost domestic production by spending at least an additional $1.5 billion over five years above 2025 U.S. spending levels, with production requirements scaling higher if federal and state film tax credits are passed in California or New York.

Further supporting the industry, a total $25 million independent film fund ($5 million annually for five years) will be operated for purchasing independent films. For labor, a $47.5 million Workforce Fund will support training and career development for displaced workers, alongside commitments to honor collective bargaining agreements.

Finally, the agreement introduces key cable and editorial guardrails requiring Paramount to negotiate basic cable channels independently for five years to keep consumer prices competitive, maintain a free streaming service like Pluto TV, and establish a News Editorial Independence Board to safeguard CNN and CBS, which are now both owned by Skydance.

***California HSR is one of the absolute biggest Fraud Issues in Our State.------------------------------------/

Fraud could cost federal taxpayers as much as $521 billion annually, according to a Foundation for Government Accountability report citing a federal estimate.

The report estimates that improper payments by the federal government have totaled about $3 trillion since 2003.

Liesel Crocker, the report’s author and senior research fellow at FGA, spoke with The Center Square in an exclusive interview regarding the findings.

“Fraud against federal programs now runs about $521 billion a year, or seven percent of everything Washington spends. Only five federal agencies have bigger budgets than that,” Crocker said. “And that's just the fraud we know about. Of more than 2,200 federal payment programs, only 64 are reviewed for improper payments each year.”

Much of the fraud is funneled through federal programs like Medicaid, food stamps, Medicare, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and a “pandemic grant for concert venues,” Crocker explained.

“They have a lot in common. Each one frequently fails to double-check applicant information, hands the paperwork to state and county offices, and pushes huge volumes of money out fast,” Crocker said. “Fraud shows up where the checks are easiest to get.”

While the FGA, a nonpartisan think tank, applauded President Donald Trump’s War on Fraud and other antifraud efforts, it said more needs to be done—both by states and the U.S. Congress.

“The bottom line: Congress and states should build on President Trump’s efforts to crack down on fraud and corruption and save taxpayers billions,” the report said.

So far, there are more than 8,000 fraud cases being prosecuted by attorneys general across the country, which the report called just a “small fraction” of the fraud that is being perpetrated.

Crocker added to that claim, pointing to Minnesota as a particular area of concern, while the report also highlighted California, Illinois, Colorado, Maine and New York.

Those states were among 21 states that refused to cooperate with federal efforts to vet their food stamp programs for fraud. In the 29 states that did cooperate, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered 186,000 dead enrollees and half a million people collecting benefits in two states at once.

“Food stamp trafficking is estimated to cost as much as $4.7 billion a year,” Crocker said. “Every dollar that goes to someone abusing the system is a dollar taken from the truly needy.”

She is hopeful the federal government's efforts are a step in the right direction though.

“This is not hopeless. We can fix this," Crocker said. "For 20 years, Washington never had a meaningful answer to rampant fraud. President Trump is finally treating stealing from the taxpayer like the crime it is. If this much turned up in the states that cooperated, we can only imagine what's hiding in the states that refuse.”

The report encouraged the uncooperative states to work with the federal government on ending “widespread fraud.” It also recommended:

• The Office of Management and Budget encourage more agencies to vet for fraud.

• OMB collaborate with the Treasury Department's Do Not Pay system.

• All programs better verify eligibility, evaluate high-risk providers, and investigate allegations of fraud.

**Common Sense would be You should be using some Type of Certified Breathing apparatus when working around This Industry.-------------------------------------/

California is looking to ban the creation or installation of man-made quartz amid cases of a fatal lung disease that increasingly affects workers who carve the material to make kitchen countertops.

California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is expected to pass the emergency regulation for man-made quartz in October, indicating a growing concern over the preferred alternative to granite and marble.

The ban would be for manufactured stone that contains more than 1 percent of crystalline silica.

The state is expected to review the regulation before it becomes law.

This can, in turn, affect the lungs, which react with an aggressive immune response. Scar tissue forms, leading to the killing of the lung.

Once patients begin suffering from silicosis, they often need a single or double lung transplant.

The number of Californians suffering from the disease has surged in recent years, jumping from 31 cases in 2019 to a staggering 631 as of mid-August, one study found.

Nearly all of the victims have been men, with about half of them in Los Angeles County, the report said. Their median age is 52.

One of those victims is Enrique Gonzalez, a San Fernando Valley stone worker who has been unable to work for the past two years after developing silicosis from years of working in granite and stone manufacturing.

Gonzalez’s family previously told the California Post his disease left the family struggling to cover medical expenses and everyday costs.

His daughter, Edith Gonzalez, 30, said that her father’s health started improving only after the lung transplant he received this summer.

“He has recovered really well from the lung transplant. His body took it really well. He is showing signs of improvement, like right away,” Gonzalez said. “Before he got his lung transplant, he got really, really bad. Like his condition was very bad, where he got intubated because he couldn’t breathe, even just a little bit.”

Fortunately, Gonzalez said, her father was already on the transplant list by the time his condition became critical. The family had initially been warned that finding donor lungs could take years.

“So thankfully, when his condition got really bad, he had that lung transplant,” she said.

Before the procedure, even walking short distances had become extremely difficult. Gonzalez said her father used a cane and often needed a wheelchair to get from the car to medical appointments or the emergency room. Even while using supplemental oxygen, he would frequently become short of breath.

Now, his life looks dramatically different.

“Right after he got his lung transplant, obviously yes he had some help with walking and support, but now he doesn’t need a cane. He doesn’t need a wheelchair,” Gonzalez said. “He’s able to do his morning and evening walks. He’s like a new person.”

His daughter described him as a quiet, family-oriented man who spent much of his life working and was the household’s primary breadwinner.

“He’s always just been at home, gone to work, and back home,” she said.

The transplant marks a major turnaround for Gonzalez, but his recovery is far from over. His daughter said he remains under significant restrictions and spends much of his time attending medical appointments, undergoing physical therapy and following up with doctors.

“He can’t really be outside. He can’t go to a lot of places,” she said. “So right now it’s all been about his recovery of just staying home and going to the doctors.”

The National Transportation and Safety Board released its preliminary findings Tuesday in the Chatsworth news helicopter crash.

The September NBC LA helicopter crash killed a news reporter, the aircraft’s pilot, and a bystander. It shocked the local news community, who mourned longtime air news crew Eliana Moreno and George Marciniw.

NTSB investigators did not make a definitive conclusion as to the cause of the crash in the report but released specifics about how the aircraft crash unfolded. Live video from the helicopter provided valuable evidence to investigators, and they cited it throughout.

The report says the chopper departed Whiteman Airport in Pacoima on Sept. 15 to conduct a news-gathering flight for a fatal traffic accident, an SUV-on-bus collision, at around 5:24 p.m.

It flew west about 9 miles to Chatsworth at an average altitude of 1,600 feet to cover the crash, the report says. The heli maneuvered in the vicinity of the crash for about an hour and 24 minutes. During the final minute of flight, the aircraft was only around 800 feet above ground level and had just 6 knots of speed.

Investigators cite live video from the helicopter that showed “ambient helicopter noise that included sounds from both the main rotor and engine.”

Most of the recording, four minutes and 21 seconds in length, showed normal operation, the report said. But in the last 29 seconds, “the recording captured the helicopter noise as it changed frequency, along with intermittent and continuous horns, consistent with the helicopter’s main rotor high rpm, low rotor rpm and other aural advisories.”

Investigators cite ADS-B data showing the helicopter “began a rapid descent while turning right” with the last data point showing the aircraft plummeting towards the ground at 38 knots or around 44 miles per hour.

The heli then impacted a metal storage container, and a post-accident fire erupted, the investigation said.

NTSB investigators examined the crash site and observed a 30-foot debris field with the helicopter lyying partially on its right side. Most of the helicopter remained attached to the fuselage, but the fire heavily damaged the aircraft.

“All major components remained attached to the fuselage or remained within the small debris area,” the report says. “The fuselage, in its entirety, was mostly reduced to ash and thermally damaged metal.The tailboom separated but remained next to the fuselage. Both main and tail rotor assemblies remained attached at their respective mounting assemblies.”

A fourth person was also minorly injured, the report said.

A final report could take up to 18 months to be released.

A gym in the right district got $29 million because someone made a phone call

By Jose Navarro, October 6, 2026 9:30 am

Somewhere in Sacramento, a gym is getting $29 million. A farmers market is getting $13 million. A fund for retired MMA fighters is getting $1 million. None of it went through a grant application, a scoring rubric, or a public hearing where a citizen could ask why. It went in because a legislator asked for it, in the final 48 hours before the budget passed, with no name attached to the request.

That is the mechanism behind the $1.3 billion in earmarks CalMatters identified in this year’s state budget, and as a financial controller, the dollar figure is not what stops me. What stops me is the process that produced it. California’s Legislature allows individual lawmakers to submit private funding requests, capped by leadership, that get folded into budget bills introduced days before the session ends. The requester’s name is not published. The review is not public. By the time anyone outside the building can ask a question, the money is already appropriated.

Some of what came out of that process is defensible on its face. Turning a defunct Alameda County horse track into $125 million of public parkland is the kind of project a normal grant process might also fund, just with more paperwork and more time. But defensible outcomes reached through an indefensible process are still a process problem, because the process is what determines which $125 million projects get funded and which ones with equal merit get nothing.

The distributional pattern makes that concrete. Los Angeles County pulled in more than $300 million. Tulare County, similar in population but represented by the opposing party, received $200,000. Seventeen counties got nothing at all. That is not what a merit-based allocation looks like. It is what a system organized around who has a seat at the table looks like, and the seats at that table are not evenly distributed by population, need, or even party control of the chamber — they are distributed by who chairs which committee and who negotiates with whom in the final 48 hours.

Look at where the earmarks landed geographically and a second pattern appears. Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón’s Santa Barbara district picked up $83.7 million in projects, on top of the $29 million gym. Governor Newsom’s home region picked up the $13 million farmers market and food hub. I am not suggesting either dollar was illegally directed. I am pointing out that a process with no public attribution of who asked for what will, predictably and every single time, favor the people who hold the most leverage in the room where the list gets finalized. That is not a scandal. It is arithmetic.

Eighty-six million dollars went to arts and culture organizations — museums, dance troupes, a mime company. Twenty-five million went to a UC Berkeley genomics institute. Twenty million went to a Holocaust education center. Each of those, evaluated individually, might well be exactly the kind of public investment California should be making. But “might well be” is precisely the judgment a transparent, competitive process exists to make with evidence, not the judgment a closed-door earmark list makes by default. Julie Baker of California for the Arts, whose sector benefited from $86 million of this money, still called the process “done all behind closed doors” and “somewhat inequitable.” When an advocate for the winning side says that on the record, the process problem is not a partisan complaint. It is a description.

Geoff Green, who runs CalNonprofits, put his finger on the real cost to everyone who plays by the rules that supposedly govern state grantmaking: organizations that spent months on standard grant applications watched $1.3 billion move through a side door in 48 hours, and were left asking, in his words, why they’d bothered spending all that time and energy at all. That is the actual price of an earmark process like this one. It is not just the money. It is the message it sends to every nonprofit, every city, every county that followed the rules and got nothing, while a gym in the right district got $29 million because someone made a phone call.

The fix does not require abolishing earmarks, which exist in some form in every legislature in the country and occasionally fund things a formal grant process would miss. It requires attribution and daylight: publish every earmark request with the requesting legislator’s name attached, publish it before the vote rather than after, and give the public the same three-to-five days of scrutiny that a normal grant application has to survive. A controller reviewing any organization’s books would flag $1.3 billion in unattributed, last-minute disbursements as a finding, not a footnote. Sacramento should hold itself to the same standard it would demand of any agency it audits.

Too good to be True.

Celeb-backed clean eating restaurant True Food Kitchen announced this week that they are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy — citing $42 million in debt.

The staple of tony Southern California shopping malls and downtowns abruptly shrank its local footprint — suddenly shuttering stores in Century City, El Segundo and San Diego.

Other locations in Miami; Chicago; New Orleans; Bethesda, Maryland; Edison and Hackensack, New Jersey; Garden City, New York; Columbus, Ohio; and Reston, Virginia are gone as well, a spokesperson confirmed to the California Post.

Sunday, October 4 marked the last day of operation for those locations.

“True Food Kitchen is a pioneering brand with a distinctive position in wellness-driven dining, a loyal community of guests, and a mission that is more relevant than ever,” said Jeff Chandler, Chief Executive Officer of True Food Kitchen, in a written statement released on Monday.

“This process is the best path forward to simplify the business and focus on what we do best: delivering craveable, health-forward food and genuine hospitality. We are confident this step will help us build a stronger True Food Kitchen for the future.”

The trendy chain was founded in Arizona in 2008 and has been backed by Oprah Winfrey, who invested an undisclosed amount into the business in 2018.

True Food Kitchen told FOX Business that Winfrey remains a minority investor in the business — but does not have a representative on the company’s board, nor is she involved in True Food Kitchen’s management.

Just four years ago, the business raised $100 million from health-conscious investors including MannaTree Partners and Human Co., which is backed by Nick Jonas and wife Piryanka Chopra.

True Food Kitchen is now seeking a buyer “with the resources and mission alignment to support the brand’s future.”

An Arcadia couple responsible for more than 20 children who were born through surrogates and kept under constant surveillance at a sprawling mansion were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit child abuse early Tuesday morning, authorities said.

Guojon Xuan, 65, and his wife, 38-year-old Sylvia Zhang, were both arrested Tuesday morning, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Members of the agency’s Special Victims Bureau, which investigates child abuse, could be seen early Tuesday outside the gated nine-bedroom multimillion-dollar mansion where the children were kept.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman is expected to hold a news conference discussing the arrests later on Tuesday.

An attorney for Xuan declined to comment. It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether Zhang was represented by a lawyer.

The arrests marked the end of a yearlong probe that started after Arcadia police officers searched the couple’s West Camino Real Avenue residence as part of a child abuse investigation and found 15 children living there, almost all between the ages of 1 and 3.

Zhang said she was the biological mother of 22 children with Xuan, whom she married in 2021, according to an affidavit written by an Arcadia investigator and other court records. All but two of those children were delivered through surrogates, some of who have since claimed they felt duped after learning they were part of a mass delivery of newborns for the couple.

Xuan, described by some as a wealthy investor who runs a real estate company, had been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2021 after an El Monte property he owned was found to be operating as an illicit casino, then a marijuana stash house, then a grow site for psychedelic mushrooms.

Police zeroed in on the Arcadia mansion after Zhang brought their 2-month-old son to Children’s Hospital in East Hollywood with a head injury. Doctors determined the baby was suffering from bleeding in his brain and retina, and called police.

A nanny who worked for the family, Chunmei Li, was charged with assault likely to cause death in connection with the boy’s injuries earlier this year, but she fled to China before she could be arrested, according to court records and a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of an ongoing case. The official said Li smashed the child’s head against a desk multiple times.

Police described the mansion as a “home school type atmosphere,” with many of the rooms used for classes. Six live-in nannies cared for the children, each of whom had an identical buzz cut, according to an Arcadia police search warrant. In Xuan and Zhang’s bedroom was a large monitor that showed footage from about 25 cameras posted throughout the home, according to the affidavit.

Prosecutors believed the nannies carried out the physical abuse of the children, but Xuan and Zhang were aware of it and failed to intercede, according to the law enforcement official. Li and the other five caregivers fled the country before they could be arrested, the official said.

In a search warrant affidavit made public last year, detectives said the video footage showed multiple instances of physical and emotional abuse, including a nanny striking a child, then forcing them to hold a squatting position. Another showed a nanny striking a child in the face, the document said.

Zhang previously told the Wall Street Journal she wanted to have a large number of children in the U.S. due to China’s one-child policy, a population-limiting government measure that was enforced until 2015 limiting each household in the country to one birth. Xuan’s attorney recently told ABC News that his client believed it was righteous to have a large number of children so he could raise several significant contributors to society.

“He is not a man who is self-indulgent. Some who are wealthy might spend on jewelry or cars, but he is actually spending his resources to help his children become educated so that they can be the philosophers, the physicians, the researchers and the inventors that help society,” attorney Mitchell Krems said of Xuan.

Most days, the California’s secretary of state’s tasks include overseeing business filings, historic documents and notaries public. But come election time, the state agency becomes a conductor in a symphony of activity essential to democracy.

Leading the orchestra is Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who thinks California’s elections are secure. Hoping to take her baton in the Nov. 3 general election is Don Wagner, who supports requiring voters to show identification before they cast ballots.

The secretary of state sets standards, enforces laws and certifies results in federal, statewide and state legislative elections in partnership with election officials in 58 counties. This includes overseeing how elections are conducted, from approving voting technology and setting deadlines to determining the order in which candidates’ names appear on ballots.

Weber first got her job through a round of political music chairs. Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her to the role in 2020 after picking then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill the U.S. Senate seat held by Kamala Harris until she became vice president.

Elected to a four-year term in 2022, Weber, a Democrat and former state assemblymember who served on San Diego’s school board, is seeking reelection in November for an office that pays about $184,000 annually.

Opposing her is Wagner, a Republican and Orange County supervisor. Weber and Wagner advanced to the general election by finishing first and second, respectively, out of four candidates in the June primary.

Nationally, debate rages about whether U.S. elections are secure. Studies show voter fraud is exceedingly rare and nowhere near the level that would change an election’s outcome, but President Donald Trump continues to push for voting restrictions while repeating false claims that he won the 2020 election.

California’s elections “are free and fair,” Weber, 78, said in response to a Southern California News Group voter guide questionnaire.

“The best thing that could happen to reassure voters would be for the president to stop lying,” she said. “But that seems unlikely to happen given his temperament.”

“Absent that,” Weber added, “I will continue to be transparent and fair — our office investigates any claims of election irregularities, and we work tirelessly to get it right.”

A former Irvine mayor who also served in the Assembly and as a community college trustee, Wagner, 65, noted that he sued the secretary of state to clear what he said were more than 870,000 “ghost voters” from the voting rolls.

“That is not to say that the fraud is so rampant as to affect elections,” Wagner wrote responding to the questionnaire. “But those facts, and much else, makes it legitimate, even inevitable, for voters to question the integrity of our system.”

If elected, Wagner said he would start reforms “to count ballots faster, to actually do what state and federal law permit the secretary of state to do to clean the voter rolls of those who have moved, passed away, or have no right to vote, and by implementing a chain of custody for ‘harvested’ ballots.”

Ballot harvesting is a term, often used derisively by conservatives, referring to the legal practice of one person dropping off multiple ballots, each cast by an individual voter.

Wagner and Weber also differ on voter ID. Wagner supports Proposition 39, a November ballot measure that would mandate the practice.

“Most states have some form of voter ID, and those laws have been proven not to depress turnout or deny voting rights to anyone,” he said.

A new report has named Sacramento the “Asthma Capital” of the West.

The 2026 report by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America ranks the largest 100 cities in the contiguous United States by how challenging they are to live in when you have asthma.

California ranked No. 10 on the national list and topped the list of cities in the West, the foundation said.

“Asthma is greatly influenced by where someone lives,” the organization said.

The report ranked cities by asthma rates, emergency room visits and deaths. Why did Sacramento rank so highly?

Risk factors for Sacramento and California’s Central Valley include poor air quality, few asthma specialists and low RSV vaccination rates, which can lead to higher asthma rates and emergencies, the report said.

The Sacramento Bee meteorologist Sean Macaday said the city’s location in the “bowl” between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges is also to blame. During sunny and warm summer days, the atmosphere becomes incredibly stable, Macaday said, and in turn traps pollutants from car exhausts, ground-level ozone and pollen in the bowl. How did other California cities rank?

Fresno ranked No. 2 in the West and No. 12 on the national list, the foundation said.

Other California cities making the list include San Francisco, Stockton, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Jose, Oxnard and Riverside. What are the top ‘Asthma Capitals’ in the nation?

Allentown, Pennsylvania, ranks as the “Asthma Capital” of the United States, followed by Detroit, Rochester, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Lakeland, Florida, Syracuse, Harford, Charleston and Sacramento.

Overall, Pennsylvania ranked the worst for people with asthma.

Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente hospitals across California announced Monday morning that they have successfully won an arbitration agreement mandating Kaiser pay stolen wages dating back to at least 2021.

More than 1,000 nurses will be awarded a sum in the tens of millions of dollars.

“Unfortunately, Kaiser wants to normalize stealing from nurses,” said Michelle Gutierrez Vo, a registered nurse in adult/family medicine at Kaiser Fremont Medical Center and a president of the California Nurses Association, representing more than 25,000 nurses at 22 Kaiser facilities.

“They changed their payroll system, messed it up, and let the mistake steal millions of dollars from nurses. When we called them on it, their fancy lawyers fought us tooth and nail for every single dollar. Nurses wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we won back millions of dollars in stolen wages, and we went above and beyond Kaiser’s earlier attempts to settle for less.”

The CNA was first notified by Kaiser nurses several years ago of issues with wage theft following a change in Kaiser’s payroll system dating back to at least early 2021. Because the union does not have direct access to Kaiser’s payroll system, the organization said it took years of nurses working together to piece together the true scale and extent of the problem, which Kaiser repeatedly tried to minimize and obscure. The organization believes the final sum could total in the tens of millions.

Nurses announced in a news release that they remain outraged that “Kaiser spent years and untold sums in legal expenses in their effort to avoid paying the wages they had stolen, which, while substantial, were still only a fraction of the organization’s billions of dollars in profits.”

“This entire experience has been a reminder for us that Kaiser would rather pay lawyers to fight nurses than pay nurses to take care of our patients,” said Vo. “It is another disgusting reminder of this company’s priorities. And, for us, it’s also another powerful reminder of what’s possible when nurses work together to demand what we’re owed from companies like Kaiser.”

During the past year, nurses have picketed across the state, including two recent protests in Solano County — at Vallejo and in Vacaville – that were part of 22 in California representing more than 25,000 Kaiser nurses represented by California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. Kaiser was protesting Kaiser Permanente’s role in safe staffing and AI protections.

Registered nurse and Quality Liaison for Kaiser Vacaville, Cristina Stathopoulos, said at a recent protest that hearing car horns showing support from people passing by felt good.

“The support from the community has been wonderful,” Stathopoulos said in September. “I think a lot of the people honking are members here (Kaiser) so they see us working really hard and try to give the best support we can under the really short staffing that Kaiser has been providing them.”

However, Kaiser Permanente disagreed, saying in September that its nurses are “among the best-paid in California and the country.”

“A typical CNA Staff Nurse II in Northern California earns over $100 per hour, before overtime or premium pay, roughly 7 percent above the market for comparable roles at other health systems,” said Meghan Kielty-Swinford, the Regional Chief Nurse Executive, Kaiser Permanente, last month. “At our Los Angeles Medical Center, a typical CNA Staff Nurse RN earns roughly 21 percent more than comparable roles. In Fresno and Sacramento, pay for a typical CNA Staff Nurse RN is approximately 15 percent above market. Ninety-five percent of our CNA-represented nurses in Northern California and 93 percent at our Los Angeles Medical Center choose to remain at Kaiser Permanente year after year — one of the highest retention rates in the industry.

Republican Steve Hilton calls the no-show pathetic; Independent reporter Anthony Cabassa says Becerra did not want to be asked why he lied about his family’s history

By Megan Barth, October 5, 2026 3:38 pm

Democrat Xavier Becerra has pulled out of a scheduled Los Angeles Times debate with Republican rival Steve Hilton, Hilton announced Monday, a retreat that comes on the heels of independent reporter Anthony Cabassa’s exposure and challenge of Becerra’s claim that his parents arrived as immigrants with twelve dollars in their pockets.

Hilton posted the announcement on X Monday afternoon, calling the withdrawal a break from a pledge Becerra made in August to participate in multiple debates.

“Becerra PULLS OUT of tomorrow’s LA Times debate,” Hilton wrote. “The move comes after a new poll found CNN debate viewers favored Hilton 74% to 20%. In August, Becerra promised MULTIPLE debates. Now after losing the first, he’s back in hiding—taking voters for granted. Pathetic!”

The only televised matchup between the two nominees so far was CNN’s California gubernatorial debate on Sept. 30 in Burbank. During that hour, Becerra repeatedly tied Hilton to President Donald Trump. Hilton answered that the Democratic nominee was offering “more of the same” after years of one-party rule in Sacramento.

On that same stage, Hilton charged that as Health and Human Services secretary, Becerra was responsible for hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and had weakened the vetting of the sponsors who took them. Hilton said thousands were sent to sex and labor traffickers and that many children the department placed are still missing. Becerra brushed the charge off as a Trump talking point. Hilton shot back that the reporting came from the New York Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Cabassa, whose Oct. 4 thread on the family story drew tens of thousands of engagements, connected the cancellation directly to that reporting. “Following my viral report that Xavier Becerra LIED about his family’s immigrant story, Xavier Becerra has abruptly CANCELLED his debate with @SteveHiltonx tomorrow with @latimes,” Cabassa wrote Monday evening. “I guess he didn’t want to be asked why he lied to millions about his family’s history.”

The timing is hard to separate from the claim Becerra repeated on the CNN stage.

Cabassa’s original reporting found that Becerra told debate viewers his parents “came to this country with $12,” a line he has used throughout the general-election campaign. Cabassa traced the wording to an April 2, 2025, Contra Costa News press release issued the day Becerra announced for governor: “My parents came to California with $12 in their pockets. They built a life they were proud of.”

His review found no earlier recorded use of the line in Becerra’s years in Congress, as California attorney general, or as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden.

The paper trail Cabassa published does not match Becerra’s pitch. An obituary for Becerra’s father, Manuel Guerrero Becerra, who died in 2020, states that he was born in Sacramento on July 14, 1928—in California, not Mexico—the eldest of eight children.

The same obituary says the family later moved to Tijuana and that Manuel returned to California as a young teenager, not as an adult immigrant arriving with a wife and a few dollars. It further states that he worked on the railroad for several years before marrying a woman he met in Jalisco, Mexico, bringing her to California, and that the couple purchased a home soon after the wedding.

Cabassa reported that he contacted Becerra’s campaign press team and that staff declined to comment after asking which outlet he represented.

Becerra finished first in the June 2 top-two primary with about 28%of the vote. Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by Trump, took the second spot with roughly 25%, ahead of Democrat Tom Steyer. A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted Sept. 15–20 and sponsored by the Los Angeles Times still showed Becerra leading Hilton 58% to 33% among likely voters.

Hilton’s campaign has pointed to post-debate viewer surveys and its own polling as evidence the race tightened after the CNN broadcast.

Hilton has spent the general election casting Becerra as the “ultimate career politician” and arguing that California’s highest-in-the-nation costs are the product of the Democratic machine Becerra has served for decades.

Monday’s announcement frames the next week as a test of whether Becerra will face those attacks, and Cabassa’s questions about the origin story, on a debate stage, or keep running on the lead public polls still give him while avoiding reporters.

Challenge Becerra journalists, and make him answer your questions

By Katy Grimes, October 5, 2026 3:00 pm

Breaking news today: Xavier Becerra PULLS OUT of tomorrow’s LA Times debate, the Hilton campaign reported. “The move comes after a new poll found CNN debate viewers favored Hilton 74% to 20%.”

This makes us question what should voters expect from candidates applying for the job of California Governor?

Ideologically, this goes beyond Steve Hilton or Xavier Becerra.

The Governor’s job is uniquely important, and can improve and advance, or harm and destroy a state. Voters should never treat the race and election lightly.

California has one of the largest economies in the world. The governor oversees a massive state government: approximately 570,200 total state employees, in 158 state agencies, plus in higher education.

The governor makes decisions affecting nearly 40 million residents, in a state that encompasses 163,700 square miles.

If you are applying for that job, shouldn’t voters expect you to show up, answer questions, defend your record, and explain what you would actually do?

Let’s look at the two current gubernatorial campaigns.

For the past year, there has been a Steve Hilton media advisory, press release or press event every day. Steve regularly does three or four events in a day, crisscrossing the state. He talks to reporters constantly. He gives reporters his cell phone number. He calls them himself. He answers questions, including the uncomfortable ones.

Hilton has accepted 12 debate invitations and several forums.

He is running like someone who actually wants to earn the job.

Compare that with Xavier Becerra.

Becerra promised Californians multiple debates. With less than 30 days remaining, will these debates take place?

There are no California debates currently on the calendar. The one debate he agreed to was with CNN, a national news organization using its national moderators rather than a California news organization and California journalists.

Why?

If Becerra is running to lead California, why isn’t he willing to debate his opponent before California reporters, with broadcasting on California local news stations?

The contrast extends beyond debates.

Reporters regularly call Steve Hilton directly and quote him in stories. With Becerra, his communications staff frequently answers for him.

Hilton holds events and takes questions. Becerra has held few traditional press conferences and has been seen leaving events without taking questions.

This doesn’t mean reporters should go easier on Steve – quite the opposite. But Becerra should receive the same attention:

Challenge him.

Question his numbers.

Scrutinize his advertisements.

Ask him how he will accomplish what he is promising.

That is exactly what political reporters are supposed to do, and Steve Hilton has been challenged, questioned, scrutinized and had his policy positions dissected.

Shouldn’t the same standard apply to Xavier Becerra?

There are serious questions about Becerra’s record that deserve answers. His tenure as President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary, and the government’s handling of unaccompanied migrant children, which has been the subject of extensive investigative reporting, including by The New York Times. Migrant children are still missing and legacy media doesn’t seem too interested.

Whatever Becerra’s explanation is, shouldn’t California voters hear it directly from him?

House Oversight Chairman James Comer recently accused Xavier Becerra when he was HHS Secretary of potentially hiding Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era diary and cellphone from Congress — documents that contained references to “COVID-19,” “gain-of-function,” and “Wuhan” that Republicans specifically requested in November 2023. Becerra either intentionally withheld the materials or failed to conduct an adequate search, according to Comer.

Becerra already had his own troubles in D.C. as he was up to his eyeballs in the House Democratic Caucus Awan Brothers Congressional IT Scandal. Then-Rep. Xavier Becerra was the caucus chairman when he gave a fake server to the cops in order to obstruct their investigation.

Crickets on that issue.

What about the debates Becerra promised?

What specifically would he do differently from the Newsom administration that has governed California for the past eight years, and the Brown administration eight years before that?

What does he think California government has gotten wrong? Or right?

What would he change? What does he like about California government?

Where does he disagree with Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Democrats?

What does he think he personally got wrong – or right – during his decades in public office? Why does he deserve to be governor?

Those aren’t Center Right or Center Left questions. They are basic questions for someone applying to be governor.

There is also a larger media question worth examining.

Are we seeing the “Karen Bass effect,” when she declared that the governor’s election is over and Xavier is the next governor of California? Because if everyone assumes a Democrat will win, the Republican candidate risks being covered as the challenger who must prove everything, while the Democratic candidate is treated almost like an incumbent who merely has to avoid mistakes. And hide in the basement.

That would be a disservice to voters.

A campaign strategy of minimizing risk may be politically smart. But journalists aren’t obligated to accommodate it.

If a candidate won’t hold a press conference, he needs to be asked why.

If a candidate promised debates and isn’t doing them, he needs to be asked why?

If campaign staff answers questions instead of the candidate, reporters need to keep asking for the candidate, and only for the candidate.

If there are difficult questions about a candidate’s record, ask them. Voters deserve answers.

And if one candidate is doing three or four public events a day while the other is maintaining a dramatically lighter public presence, that contrast itself is worth examining.

There is something refreshing about a candidate actually campaigning, and one so accessible.

Steve Hilton knows this is an uphill race. He knows reporters are going to challenge him. He shows up anyway, and answers the questions asked of him.

That is what running for office is supposed to look like.

You don’t have to agree on everything with Steve Hilton. You don’t have to like all of his policies. Journalists certainly shouldn’t give him a pass.

But Xavier Becerra shouldn’t get one either, and it appears the California press are providing him that pass.

California voters deserve to see both candidates questioned, challenged, and forced to defend their records and their plans before Election Day.

The governor’s office is too important for anything less.

The story isn’t that the media should be nicer to Steve Hilton.

The story is much simpler: Why isn’t Xavier Becerra being required to work for the job he wants?

This is about legacy media not doing their job. Why? Do they support Xavier? Shouldn’t they be intellectually curious enough to want to know how Becerra will govern? What his policies are?

They never fail to write about how Steve said this and Steve did that, and they scrutinize ads by Steve, discussing on social media who favors it and who opposes it. But shouldn’t that same level of scrutiny apply to Xavier Becerra?

Just because Becerra is mostly MIA doesn’t mean journalists shouldn’t ask the same questions of him they ask of Steve Hilton. And if they get crickets, report the crickets.

Why give him a pass?

Is Becerra just applying this absence as a campaign strategy to avoid holding events, avoid screwing up, or showing how unqualified he is?

Challenge him, and make him answer your questions. Make all politicians and candidates answer all of your questions.