u/coinfanking

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According to filings, Brin donated a total of $102 million to the group Building a Better California, a PAC and political advocacy organization opposing the state’s billionaire tax and supporting other pro-business policies and housing and infrastructure affordability. Campaign filings show efforts to block this tax have exceeding $187 million, making Brin the largest sole contributor to the effort. Contributions supporting the bill have meanwhile reached about $32 million.

Proposition 40, which will be on the ballot in November, would impose a one-time, 5% tax on California’s 200 billionaires, with 90% of the revenue from the proposed measure going toward the state’s health care program and 10% going toward education, food assistance, and administration. Brin, with a net worth of nearly $260 billion, could owe about $13 billion as a result of the tax.

California, the most populous state, has become the epicenter of the conversation around the K-shaped economy, or the diverging fortunes of those with wealth and those without it. While the Golden State has a $4 trillion GDP, making its economy about the same size as the United Kingdom’s, it also has 18% of its residents living below the poverty line, the highest in the country, in part because of its high cost of living.

The ballot measure has caused an uproar among some of California’s wealthiest individuals such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, both of whom have donated to organizations against the measure. Brin compared the proposal to his socialist Soviet upbringing.

“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place,” he told the New York Times in a statement in April.

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Why doesn’t high speed rail work in America?

American railroads were once the envy of the world and the engine of its industrial age. But that hasn’t been the case for more than half a century.

Brightline, founded in 2012, wanted to change all that. The Florida private rail company ran yellow trains at near high speed between Miami and Orlando. It has big plans to launch another line with true high speed 200 mph trains making the 200-mile trip between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California, just outside of Los Angeles.

Then it filed for bankruptcy last month after not making enough money to cover its debts. But the railroad is still operating its Florida service and moving ahead with plans for the true high speed trains between Las Vegas and Southern California.

lection Day is Nov. 3, 2026, in the United States. Held midway through each four-year presidential term, midterm elections give voters a chance to choose local representatives, weigh in on state issues, and determine which party controls Congress.

Figuring out how to strategize paying down your debts while also saving for emergencies and big goals is a common dilemma for many.

Douglas Boneparth, a certified financial planner and founder of Bone Fide Wealth, tackles that quandary head on in this week's Ask the Expert for CNN's Savings Challenge.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday removed obstacles to the Trump administration deporting certain immigrants to “third countries” where they have no connections.

The justices, with the court’s three liberals dissenting, granted an emergency request filed by the government seeking to block an appeals court ruling that said the current process is unlawful because the affected people are not given a proper chance to raise concerns about safety risks in violation of federal immigration law.

In the brief unsigned order, the court also said it would hear oral arguments in December and issue a definitive ruling on the legal questions raised in the litigation.

“A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike. It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home,” James Percival, general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

The Supreme Court last year allowed the policy to move forward after it was blocked by lower courts at an earlier stage of the litigation. It also later clarified its decision, at the request of the Trump administration, making it clear it applied to eight men the government wanted to send to South Sudan.

Since Trump’s second term began in January 2025, thousands of people have been sent to third countries, including South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda.

FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau is expanding its global hunt for sprawling scam compounds that prey heavily on Americans, telling Fox News Digital that Operation Blackout has seized roughly $17 billion tied to the schemes.

"At 71 years old, I'm old enough to know that people my age are certainly often targeted because of our unfamiliarity with certain new technologies. Thanks so much for looking out for us," one victim told the FBI.

Skydivers watch plane vanish from sight, make split-second decision to jump.

A group of professional skydivers who witnessed a plane crash took an extraordinary route to the scene — jumping from their own aircraft to reach the victims.

The men, all experienced skydivers with Skydive Milwaukee, were preparing for a jump when they spotted a small plane near East Troy Municipal Airport on Sunday, according to the Town of East Troy Police Department.

John Bechtel, one of the skydivers, told local outlet WSMV the plane appeared to be flying unusually before disappearing behind a line of trees.

OpenAI and Anthropic staff privately questioned whether oversight matched their models' growing capabilities.

OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed agents breached outside systems, sometimes unnoticed for months.

IPO ambitions and fundraising prospects helped sustain the breakneck release cycle.

For years, the race to build ever-more powerful artificial intelligence followed a well-worn Silicon Valley principle: move fast and break things.

But in a series of cascading events over a 10-day stretch, the largest AI labs found themselves reeling as their own creations threatened to break humanity itself.

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Iran’s proxy money machine: How the Houthis built a multibillion-dollar network despite US sanctions.

The Houthis’ rapid advance toward one of the world’s most important shipping chokepoints is putting fresh scrutiny on the sprawling financial network that has helped transform the Iran-backed group from a Yemeni insurgency into a heavily armed regional power capable of threatening global trade.

The group has seized new territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the strategic port city of Mocha, and expanded toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The waterway connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries a significant share of global maritime trade and energy shipments.