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Politico
3 days ago
- Business
- Politico
California Democrats stage internal war over Gavin Newsom's late push to build more housing
SACRAMENTO, California — Gavin Newsom thought he could push an ambitious housing proposal through California's Democratic-controlled Legislature. Instead, he ran into a wall of resistance from should-be allies angrily comparing his plans to Jim Crow, slavery and immigration raids. Hours of explosive state budget hearings on Wednesday revealed deepening rifts within the Legislature's Democratic supermajority over how to ease California's prohibitively high cost of living. Labor advocates determined to sink one of Newsom's proposals over wage standards for construction workers filled a hearing room at the state Capitol mocking, yelling, and storming out at points while lawmakers went over the details of Newsom's plan to address the state's affordability crisis and sew up a $12 billion budget deficit. Lawmakers for months have been bracing for a fight with Newsom over his proposed cuts to safety net programs in the state budget. Instead, Democrats are throwing up heavy resistance to his last-minute stand on housing development — a proposal that has drawn outrage from labor and environmental groups in heavily-Democratic California. 'Anyone who believed this would not cause a giant explosion — they were living in la-la-land,' said Todd David, a San Francisco political consultant who has worked for state Sen. Scott Wiener and housing-focused groups. For Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, it was a striking show of resistance from a flank of his own party over housing. A priority of the Democratic governor, Newsom had put his political capital behind an attempt to strong-arm the Legislature by making the entire state budget contingent on passing a bill to speed housing development by relaxing environmental protection rules. A spokesperson for Newsom pointed to a statement Tuesday night emphasizing partnership with lawmakers in reaching a budget deal while noting that 'it is contingent on finalizing legislation to cut red tape and unleash housing and infrastructure development across the state — to build more, faster.' The fault lines on display this week run deep. Construction unions and the statewide California Labor Federation have long resisted housing bills they see as eroding wage standards, often packing hearing rooms with members who urge lawmakers to vote no. Democrats have at times decried their union allies' hardball tactics. But Newsom's unprecedented intervention — and the forceful response from union foes — pushed the conflict into a whole new realm. 'To have legislation that is this large and this significant be forced through at the 11th hour … seems pretty absurd to me,' Democratic state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez said at the hearing. 'I just cannot begin to explain how incredibly inappropriate and hurtful this is.' Scott Wetch, a lobbyist representing the trade unions, contended that this could be the first time since the Jim Crow era that California is 'contemplating a law to suppress wages.' Pérez, who represents a Los Angeles district, said the proposal was 'incredibly insensitive' amid immigration raids targeting mostly 'blue-collar workers who are Latino.' And Kevin Ferreira, executive director of the Sacramento-Sierra's Building and Construction Trades Council, told lawmakers the bill 'will compel our workers to be shackled and start singing chain gang songs.' In a sign of the stakes, the fight quickly spilled beyond California as North America's Building Trades Unions — an umbrella group covering millions of workers across the United States in Canada that rarely intercedes in state politics — sent Newsom a blistering letter warning the bill would 'create a race to the bottom.' Environmental groups piled on late Wednesday, with around 60 of them, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, blasting the proposal in a letter as a 'backroom Budget Trailer Bill deal that would kill community and environmental protections, even as the people of California are faced with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.' Unions warned the governor was betraying his Democratic base. Gretchen Newsom, a representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Newsom's stance was baffling to people 'looking at the Democratic Party and wondering what comes next for the governor.' 'I see this as a complete debacle and devastating to workers all across California,' said Newsom, who is not related to the governor. Labor leaders were once again at one another's throats, with many opponents faulting carpenters' unions who have backed streamlining efforts. Danny Curtin, director of the California Conference of Carpenters, said the scale of housing woes in California, where the price for the median home now tops $900,000, demanded an aggressive solution. 'The housing crisis is the most politically, socially, economically destabilizing crisis in California,' Curtin said. 'I would give the governor credit for trying to cut through another year of arguing.' In the broader budget negotiations, Newsom had largely capitulated to pushback from lawmakers over the steepest cuts he had proposed making to the state's Medicaid program, particularly for undocumented immigrants. Now, he is putting his political capital behind affordability proposals. But in a sign that Newsom's influence may be waning, lawmakers on Wednesday delayed a vote over wage provisions tucked into a separate budget bill. The proposal would allow developers to set a minimum wage standard for construction workers on certain affordable housing projects that could be lower than what union workers currently command. 'It's not a simple thing around the edges,' said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat. 'It is a massive change. It challenges the role of collective bargaining in this state that has never been done before.' Wiener, a state budget negotiator who for years has fought to remove obstacles to denser housing development in California, defended the proposal at the hearing as setting a 'floor, not a ceiling' for wages. But he admitted that the swift and ferocious opposition led him to delay the vote. 'It's always appropriate for people to say, 'This needs to be changed, that needs to be changed. This wage is too low, that wage is too low,' Wiener said. 'That's always appropriate.' The governor was markedly less aggressive this year in his efforts to wring a budget deal out of lawmakers. Newsom did not attend caucus meetings in person to make his case for the housing legislation, as he has with previous proposals, although he has been in touch with some lawmakers via text message. Some of that was a matter of timing: Newsom has been preoccupied by the White House launching sweeping immigration raids and then deploying federal troops to Los Angeles, fomenting a standoff that overlapped with budget negotiations. Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Southern California who chairs an Assembly budget committee on human services, said that while he wasn't privy to Newsom's involvement in discussions, California needs a governor who is '24/7 going to be focused' on the state. 'Because our issues are that complicated,' Jackson said. 'And the number of crises that come up in California, as you've seen, will continue to happen every year.'
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
R.I. Governor McKee won't sign the $14.3b state budget, citing tax hikes. But he won't veto it, either.
He noted the budget includes a 2-cent increase in the gas tax, an increase in the real estate conveyance tax beyond what he had proposed, and new sales tax on parking. 'We could have done things that would've been better for the taxpayers and the people who live in the state of Rhode Island without raising that cost,' he said. Advertisement McKee's press conference came four days after the General Assembly wrapped up the 2025 Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up And it came as McKee is gearing up for Related : In a letter Wednesday, McKee wrote to Shekarchi, a Warwick Democrat, saying, 'I cannot support the budget act because the proposed tax and fee increases would make it even harder for Rhode Island families to afford everyday life — at a time when inflation is still top of mind and affordability remains their top concern." Advertisement McKee said that if he had line-item veto authority, he would have eliminated taxes and fee hikes in the budget. 'Lacking that authority, I am allowing this bill to become law without my signature as a clear and deliberate statement of my strong opposition to the cost increases it imposes on Rhode Islanders,' he wrote. Speaking to reporters, McKee acknowledged his veto would likely have been overridden if he had sent the budget back to the Democratic-controlled Assembly, which passed the budget with veto-proof majorities. Shekarchi has said McKee's proposed budget left big holes to fill because some ideas were unlikely to generate savings or produce immediate revenue. For example, McKee proposed closing the state's minimum security prison, but his administration later scrapped that idea. And Shekarchi said McKee's proposed 10 percent tax on digital advertising revenues was too speculative, noting only Maryland has tried that and it's facing lawsuits. But McKee said the May revenue estimating conference showed the state had $67 million more than expected, and he said the Assembly could have used that money to close any budget gaps without raising more taxes. He objected to the 2-cent increase on the gas tax, saying Rhode Islanders already pay more at the pump than drivers in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He objected to a new $48 annual fee on health insurers for every person they cover, saying that would mean $200 more each year for a family of four. And he objected to increasing the real estate conveyance tax on sales under $800,000, saying that would add more than $1,300 in fees on the sale of a median-price home. During the legislative session, advocates had called for Rhode Island to Advertisement When asked about taxing the rich, McKee said, " There may come a time when there's a reason to to support tax increases, but this is not the time." He said, 'Let's see what happens in Washington. Let's see what comes our way. And there may be a time that you need to discuss that.' While the governor said the Legislature could have passed a balanced budget without raising taxes, he did not lay out exactly which spending items he would have cut. 'Budgets are about choices,' said Brian Daniels, McKee's state budget director. 'We're not going to go line-by-line ... because the ship has sailed.' Daniels did point to an increase in funding for the Typically, the budget is negotiated behind closed doors between the House speaker, Senate president and governor before the amended version comes out of the House Finance Committee. But McKee suggested he was cut out of those budget talks at a certain point, telling reporters he did not find out about changes – including the gas tax increase – until the amended budget was made public by House leaders on June 10. 'The issues I'm talking about today were not privy to me until they were privy to you,' McKee said. Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Abortions continued rising in 2024 despite state bans: Report
More women were able to access abortion care in 2024 than the previous year despite state bans, reflecting a continued increase in the three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a report issued Monday. The latest report from the #WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion access, found there were about 1.14 million abortions provided by licensed clinicians across the U.S. in 2024, compared with 1.06 million in 2023. The report was released a day before the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision ended the nearly 50-year constitutional right to an abortion. #WeCount began after Roe was overturned and has been tracking abortions since 2022. However, the 2022 numbers don't include January through March, when abortions are traditionally at their highest. In-person care at brick-and-mortar clinics represented the majority of abortion care, even though the number of abortions has fallen to near zero in states that enforce bans. The number of abortions using medication prescribed and delivered through telehealth has continued to increase since April 2022 and now makes up 1 in 4 procedures. Prior to the Dobbs ruling, about 1 in 20 abortions were accessed through telehealth. About half of the telehealth abortions last year were facilitated by the shield laws in some Democratic-controlled states. Shield laws protect medical providers and others from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions regarding abortions and gender-affirming care. An average of 12,330 abortions per month were provided under shield laws by the end of 2024, the report found. The report's findings show abortion bans haven't stopped people from seeking care, Alison Norris, #WeCount co-chair and professor at Ohio State University's College of Public Health, said in a statement. 'As care shifts across state lines and into telehealth care, what's emerging is a deeply fragmented system where access depends on where you live, how much money you have, and whether you can overcome barriers to care,' Norris said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Despite moves by Indiana lawmakers, Illinois' borders are unlikely to change. Here's why
CHICAGO - Don't hold your breath, Hoosiers. The nearly three dozen Illinois counties where a majority of voters in recent years have expressed their desire to leave the Land of Lincoln won't be joining their neighbor to the east anytime soon - or probably ever - regardless of any recommendation from a bistate commission Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed off on last month to study the issue. While the measure creating the commission sailed through the Republican-dominated Indiana statehouse on its way to the GOP governor's desk, a companion proposal from one of Illinois' most conservative state lawmakers went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly before it adjourned its spring session. The disparate responses in Indianapolis and Springfield to the proposed creation of an Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission, described by supporters as a conversation starter but decried by critics as a pointless political stunt, are emblematic of the yawning political divide between the states despite their deep geographic and economic ties. Here's a look at how we got here and what comes next. Constitutional requirement When it comes to changing existing state boundaries, the U.S. Constitution is fairly clear. Article IV Section 3 reads: "No new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress." In plain English, that means the 33 Illinois counties that have had successful - though nonbinding - referendums seeking secession can't join Indiana without the approval of each state's legislature and of Congress. And if they wanted to form their own new state, the counties still would need lawmakers in both Springfield and Washington, D.C., along with Illinois' governor and the president, to sign off. Such changes aren't entirely unprecedented. Kentucky, for example, joined the Union in 1792 after its breakaway from Virginia was approved in the state legislature and Congress. Similarly, Massachusetts lawmakers gave their approval for Maine to become its own state, a move that Congress formalized in 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise, which also admitted Illinois' southwestern neighbor as a slave state. One state, however, did manage to carve itself out of an existing state without strictly adhering to the process laid out in the Constitution: West Virginia. But that move came amid the Civil War, after Virginia seceded from the Union and its capital became the seat of the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the state of West Virginia in 1863. After Virginia was readmitted to the Union, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld West Virginia's statehood. Secessionist sentiments Regional animosities have existed in Illinois since before it was admitted to the Union in 1818 as the 21st state and only grew stronger with Chicago's rise as an economic powerhouse in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to a 2022 report from the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. After the state narrowly voted in 1860 to send Lincoln from Springfield to the White House, Confederate sympathies lingered in some areas. Union troops were stationed in the southern Illinois town of Olney to enforce the draft, and a deadly clash between Union soldiers and pro-slavery Copperheads broke out in Charleston, now home to Eastern Illinois University, in 1864. Over the 160 years since the Civil War ended, the urge to separate has bubbled up from time to time. The Chicago City Council in 1925 passed a resolution to look into secession over concerns about the city's representation in Springfield; residents of western Illinois in the 1960s and '70s created the tongue-in-cheek Republic of Forgottonia; and the state Senate in 1981 approved a Democratic legislator's facetious resolution urging Congress to make Chicago and the rest of Cook County "New Illinois," the 51st state. In the Donald Trump era, as Democrats have firmly consolidated their control of Illinois government, some on the political right, largely downstaters, have picked up the "New Illinois" mantle, pushing unsuccessful state legislation and successful but legally weightless countywide resolutions seeking to cleave the state in two. Most recently, in November voters in seven downstate counties - Iroquois on the Indiana border and Calhoun, Clinton, Greene, Jersey, Madison and Perry near the Missouri state line - approved ballot measures calling for a divorce from Chicago and Cook County. Indiana's invitation The recent rumblings from downstate Illinois have caught the attention of lawmakers across the border in Indiana, where dominant Republicans are eager to position their state as a low-tax, low-regulation alternative to deep-blue Illinois. In the only bill he introduced during the spring session, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston called for the creation of a bistate commission "to discuss and recommend whether it is advisable to adjust the boundaries between the two states." "These people (in downstate Illinois) literally went and voted. They have spoken," Huston told the Post-Tribune in January. "Whether Indiana is the right solution or not, they've expressed their displeasure. We're just saying, if you've expressed your displeasure, we'd love to have you." Originally calling for equal representation from each state, the measure was modified as it became clear Illinois Democrats weren't having it. The final version Braun signed into law, opposed by Democrats and a few Republicans in his state, gives Indiana a one-seat majority on the panel, allowing it to meet without any input from Illinois. Under the Indiana law, Braun must appoint six members to the commission, notifying Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker of his selections, and schedule its first meeting by Sept. 1. Illinois' response When the Indiana proposal made headlines early this year, it quickly became clear, if there was ever any doubt, that Illinois Democrats had no interest in playing along. "It's a stunt. It's not going to happen," Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference in January. "But I'll just say that Indiana is a low-wage state that doesn't protect workers, a state that does not provide health care for people in need, and so I don't think it's very attractive for anybody in Illinois." Even those pushing hardest for an Illinois breakup don't appear overly eager to be subsumed into Indiana. "Our goal is the constitutional formation of a new state separate from Illinois," G.H. Merritt, who leads the group New Illinois, told Indiana lawmakers at a hearing in February, the Post-Tribune reported. Nevertheless, in the Illinois House, Republican Rep. Brad Halbrook of Shelbyville, a member of the ultraconservative state Freedom Caucus who in the past has filed resolutions calling for Chicago to become its own state, in January filed a proposal for Illinois to join Indiana in creating the boundary commission. But Halbrook's proposal was never given a hearing or even assigned to a committee this spring. At a statehouse news conference during the closing days of the legislative session in late May, Halbrook and some of his Freedom Caucus colleagues bristled when asked how they hoped to move the conversation forward in Illinois when Democratic leaders won't let the proposal see the light of day. The real question, Rep. Blaine Wilhour of Beecher City said, is why the counties that have voted in favor of secession "want out of Illinois so bad?" "That's the question that you need to be asking," Wilhour said. "But nobody asks it. They want out of Illinois because they're not being respected by their government. Their government continues to push policies that drives away every one of their opportunities." Tacitly acknowledging the futility of the effort, Halbrook said, "We don't need a new state; we need a new governor, and that's the bottom line." Illinoisans will have a chance to elect a new governor next year. Pritzker, who has won two terms by double-digit margins, has yet to say whether he'll seek a third. ____ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
NDTV
5 days ago
- Health
- NDTV
Abortions In US Rose In 2024 Due To Telehealth Prescriptions: Report
The number of abortions in the US rose again in 2024, with women continuing to find ways to get them despite bans and restrictions in many states, according to a report out Monday. The latest report from the WeCount project of the Society of Family Planning, which supports abortion access, was released a day before the third anniversary of the US Supreme Court's ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended nearly 50 years of legal abortion nationally for most of pregnancy. Currently, 12 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy - often before women realize they are pregnant. While the total number of abortions has risen gradually over those three years, the number has dropped to near zero in some states, while abortions using pills obtained through telehealth appointments have become more common in nearly all states. Pills are used in the majority of abortions and are also prescribed in person. The overall number of abortions has risen, but it is below historic highs The latest survey, released Monday, tallied about 1.1 million abortions nationally last year, or about 95,000 a month. That is up from about 88,000 monthly in 2023 and 80,000 a month between April and December of 2022. WeCount began after Roe was overturned, and the 2022 numbers don't include January through March, when abortions are traditionally at their highest. The number is still well below the historic peak in the US of nearly 1.6 million a year in the late 1990s. The Society of Family Planning relies primarily on surveys of abortion providers and uses estimates. Pills prescribed by telehealth now account for one-fourth of US abortions WeCount found that in the months before the Dobbs ruling was handed down, about 1 in 20 abortions was accessed by telehealth. But during the last three months of 2024, it was up to 1 in 4. The biggest jump over that time came in the middle of 2023, when laws in some Democratic-controlled states took effect with provisions intended to protect medical professionals who use telehealth to prescribe pills to patients in states where abortion is banned or where there are laws restricting telehealth abortion. WeCount found that about half of the telehealth abortions last year were facilitated by the shield laws. The number of telehealth abortions also grew for those in states without bans. WeCount is the only nationwide public source of information about the pills prescribed to women in states with bans. One key caveat is that it is not clear how many of the prescriptions result in abortion. Some women may change their minds, access in-person abortion or be seeking pills to save for future use. The WeCount data could help explain data from a separate survey from the Guttmacher Institute, which found the number of people crossing state lines for abortion declined last year. Anti-abortion efforts are focused on pills Anti-abortion efforts are zeroing in on pills, along with barring federal funds for Planned Parenthood and undoing ballot measures that provided for abortion access. Three states have sued to try to get courts to limit telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone, one of the two drugs usually used in combination for medication abortions. President Donald Trump's administration last month told a judge it does not believe the states have legal standing to make that case. The US Supreme Court last year found that anti-abortion doctors and their organizations didn't have standing, either. Meanwhile, officials in Louisiana are using criminal laws, and there is an effort in Texas to use civil penalties against a New York doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to women in their states. Louisiana lawmakers have also sent the governor a bill to further restrict access to the pills. SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said on a call with reporters Monday that it's a priority for her group to keep pushing US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials to investigate the safety of abortion pills - and to require that they be dispensed only in person.
