The Brief

California lawmakers on Thursday passed a 2024-25 budget that rejected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to cut in-home supportive services for low-income older, blind, and disabled immigrants lacking legal residency. However, the Democratic governor has not said whether he’ll use his line-item veto authority to help close the state’s $45 billion deficit.

The legislature, controlled by Democrats, passed a $211 billion general fund spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 by drawing more from the state’s rainy-day fund and reducing corporate tax deductions to prevent cuts to health and social services.

“Our legislative budget plan achieves those goals with targeted, carefully calibrated investments in safety-net programs that protect our most vulnerable,” said Assembly member Jesse Gabriel, chair of the Assembly’s budget committee, following voting in Sacramento.

Newsom and lawmakers are expected to continue talks.

“What was approved today represents a two-house agreement between the Senate and the Assembly – not an agreement with the governor,” said state Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer. “We’ve made good progress, but there’s still more work to do.”

Newsom had proposed eliminating the new in-home benefit for qualified immigrants to save nearly $95 million in the next fiscal year, with no plans to bring it back. Lawmakers not only rejected Newsom’s cut to the in-home services program; they also refused the governor’s proposal to slash $300 million a year from public health agencies. However, they accepted delaying food assistance to low-income older immigrants without legal residency.

The In-Home Supportive Services program helps low-income older, blind, and disabled individuals receive care in their homes, which helps keep them out of more costly nursing and residential facilities. The program works by paying $16 to $21 an hour to caregivers, many of them family members.

Advocates applauded lawmakers for rejecting the cut. They had urged the governor to adopt the legislature’s budget, arguing the state could end up paying more in the long run as Medi-Cal recipients tap nursing services. The state has estimated the annual per-person cost of nursing homes is $124,189, compared with the roughly $28,000 average cost for people without legal residency in the in-home services program.

“These individuals would need to essentially go into costly hospital or nursing care,” said Ronald Coleman Baeza, managing policy director at the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “It’s not only cruel for undocumented immigrants, but it doesn’t make sense as a fiscal decision either.”

The governor has said he’s trying to maintain fiscal discipline while preserving Medi-Cal benefits for immigrants. California was the first state to expand Medicaid eligibility to all qualified immigrants regardless of legal status, phasing it in over several years: children in 2016, adults ages 19-26 in 2020, people 50 and older in 2022, and all remaining adults this year.

“It’s a core of I think who we are as a state, and we should be as a nation,” Newsom said in May.

As part of the Medi-Cal expansion, the state authorized nearly 3,000 older, blind, and disabled immigrants without legal residency to access paramedical services and daily care, including meal preparation, bathing, feeding, and transportation to medical appointments. Advocates estimate 17,000 immigrants qualify.

“Fixing California’s deficit means making tough choices, so the Assembly came to these negotiations focused on preserving programs that matter most to Californians,” said Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Central Coast Democrat, in an earlier statement.

Lawmakers did agree to Newsom’s proposal to delay around $165 a month in food assistance to low-income immigrants without legal residency ages 55 and older. Lawmakers had approved the benefit two years ago, but the governor proposed delaying it by two fiscal years to 2027.

A union-backed proposal to tax California’s billionaires to fund health care has put some progressive lawmakers — and their labor allies — in a quandary.

Taxing the rich to backfill Trump-induced federal funding cuts might sound like a no-brainer policy for the party’s left flank, which counts wealth inequality among its top issues.

But despite a strong show of support from prominent national figures, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and liberal economist Robert Reich, the “2026 California Billionaire Tax Act” has become a hot potato for labor leaders.

The proposed initiative would levy a one-time tax of 5% on any resident of California whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, which applies to around 200 people, according to Forbes. That money would plug an estimated $100 billion hole left by federal cuts to Medi-Cal and other social service programs.

Publicly, prominent labor and progressive players have largely kept quiet, unlike Gov. Gavin Newsom who has aired his disdain loud and clear. Yet in private, some union leaders and their allies in the Legislature rail against the measure. Of the critics who spoke with CalMatters for this story — three union leaders and five members of the Legislative Progressive Caucus — only one lawmaker would criticize the measure openly.

Critics question its feasibility and whether the state even knows how to accurately appraise a billionaire’s total wealth, a crucial step to evaluating how much tax they would owe. They fear long-term revenue loss by driving wealthy people out of California. And some resent that the union sponsoring the initiative, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, designed the measure to predominantly benefit its members rather than boost the state’s general fund, where it could go to all budget needs.

“It's not that taxing billionaires in itself is wrong,” said Keely Martin Bosler, formerly the top state budget officer to Newsom and former Gov. Jerry Brown. She is now a Democratic consultant who has advised several of California’s most powerful labor groups, including the Service Employees International Union of California, the parent union of SEIU-UHW. “The way in which this tax specifically is constructed is problematic.”

Many progressive state lawmakers and Capitol heavyweights, such as Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and the powerful California Labor Federation, have sidestepped the question of whether they’d support it, declining for now to take a position on an initiative that has yet to officially qualify for the ballot.

“The Labor Federation won’t take it up for an endorsement until July,” said Lorena Gonzalez, the organization’s president, in a text message.

Yet if the tax lands on the November ballot, as it appears on track to do, progressive critics will be saddled with the tricky optics of opposing — or at least not supporting — a measure that embodies one of their base’s core tenets: taxing the rich.

Even the mere threat the measure could qualify for the ballot has already spurred a torrent of opposition spending — more than $50 million in total so far — from billionaires such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin and cryptocurrency mogul Chris Larsen. Brin’s group, known as “Building a Better California,” has also spawned three new competing ballot measures designed to undermine the billionaires’ tax.

Critics fear that if billionaires like Brin become even bigger perennial spenders in California politics, they could neuter the progressive agenda by bankrolling more business-friendly candidates and ousting left-leaning, labor-aligned legislators.

But the measure’s proponents say they are undeterred by the secretive detractors and challenge their critics to put their names behind their words.

Dave Regan speaks to the SEIU-UHW Leadership Assembly in 2013.

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Steve Yeater

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“What we have is a group of so-called leaders who are not reflecting the attitudes of their own constituents,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW and the de facto leader of the billionaire tax measure. “That’s why they want to be anonymous.”

Regan said he’s confident the initiative will amass enough signatures to qualify for the ballot before the end of April. Then, he said, “We believe a lot of those people are going to come around and change because this makes sense, because the public is supportive, because their own members are supportive.”

The case for, and against, the billionaires’ tax

So far, polling has shown the billionaire tax is relatively popular with voters. Recent surveys show just over half of Californians surveyed said they’re inclined to vote for it.

Critics point out that California’s existing state tax structure is entirely based on income, rather than net worth. The state would have to appraise each person’s assets, including real estate, art, automobiles and private and public businesses. The billionaires could pay in installments, handing over 1% of their wealth annually for five years.

Bosler said that with income tax filings, the Franchise Tax Board can use data from federal tax returns to verify its own analysis. Since there’s no federal wealth tax, California would be forging uncharted territory with no tax compliance support from any other source or agency — a risky move that could invite legal challenges.

“The state is not a miracle worker, like, they're not going to suddenly be able to do all of this like perfectly,” said Bosler. “I mean they will do their best, but I just think this is expertise that they have built up over 50-plus years. Like, none of this is in their wheelhouse at this point.”

But champions of the tax argue it is the only real solution on the table so far to save hospitals, health care jobs and, ultimately, patient lives they say are at risk due to federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal and food assistance programs.

Supporters note that the tax is not intended to solve California’s structural budget problems.

“It’s one-time funding to fill what we hope is a one-time hole,” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at UC Berkeley who helped craft the measure. Galle said only around 200 people would be subjected to the tax, so the extra burden on the Franchise Tax Board wouldn’t be too great.

“It's not like FTB is going to get a blizzard of tens of thousands of new returns that they're going to have to figure out a whole new data system for cracking,” said Galle.

Why some progressives aren’t on board

Those who have qualms with the initiative have largely kept their criticisms private.

One liberal state legislator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the infighting among the unions puts progressive lawmakers in a difficult position. While he empathizes with the urgency that health care workers feel, he and other Democrats are not convinced the policy could withstand legal challenges and worry about the wealthy employing savvy accounting maneuvers to skirt the tax altogether.

Some organizations that are synonymous with progressive politics in California, such as the Working Families Party, also haven’t taken a position, even as other unions such as the Teamsters and AFSCME California support it.

Even the powerhouse labor union SEIU California is choosing not to take a position on the measure, which is spearheaded by one of its local affiliates, SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, right, speaks with Assemblymember Chris Ward at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 12, 2025.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Assemblymember Chris Ward, a member of the progressive caucus, called the measure a “well-meaning effort by UHW,” but criticized the proposal for being just a one-time tax primarily benefiting the health care sector rather than boosting the state’s overall revenues. Regan said SEIU-UHW made the tax one-time to nullify the argument that it would push billionaires out of the state.

Ward noted that he and his colleagues are considering “superior” bills, such as one that would close a corporate tax loop to generate $3 billion per year, and another that would create a new tax on corporations that pay workers so little that they qualify for Medi-Cal and nutrition assistance.

Regan argued these measures would only make California more unaffordable, since businesses would pass their increased costs along to consumers.

Ward, the sole state lawmaker who would candidly share his concerns about the initiative with CalMatters, said he and his colleagues have heard pushback from “a number of other labor organizations that don't support that initiative,” primarily because its members would not directly benefit from any of the revenue. Uniting labor, he said, is the key to any successful revenue solution.

“There's a need to look at a wealth tax for a more broad range, including health care workers but other purposes that are state priorities,” Ward said, “and that will be left off of the table if this is the only question we're seeing.”

CalMatters' Nadia Lathan contributed to this story.

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

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Just a few blocks away from East L.A.’s Whittier Boulevard arch — a symbol of Chicano pride — Sounds of Music has served as a cultural hub for decades. 

The record store, which has specialized in Chicano soul, oldies and “souldies” since 1964, is now at risk of closing if sales don’t improve.

“I was going to close up in January,” owner Mario Reyes said. “We’re kind of month to month right now.”

Reyes inherited the store from his father, Carlos Reyes, who relocated to East L.A. from Montebello in 1967. Since then, it has been a destination for fans of soul, R&B, Chicano rap and oldies, offering vinyl records, cassettes, CDs and other merchandise. It’s something that other record stores in Southern California haven’t been able to emulate, Reyes’ wife, Adrianna, said. 

“It’s the vibe of our store,” she said. “We’re not like Amoeba Records. They’ll carry the regular Taylor Swift, Tupac, Sade and regular artists but they don’t carry oldies like the way we do.”

Preserving Chicano culture in East LA 

Outside the store, a Felix the Cat standee sporting Nike Cortez, a flannel shirt and slacks, invites shoppers to explore East L.A. culture. Inside, Aztec warrior statuettes sit next to Homies figurines.

Bandanas emblazoned with “East Los” and shirts featuring characters from “Blood In, Blood Out” celebrate local heritage. 

An original Silver Dollar Bar sign hangs in one corner, a nod to the building’s history as the site where Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar was killed by a tear gas projectile fired by an LA County sheriff’s deputy during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. (Sounds of Music moved into the building from across the street in 2018)

A plaque outside and images inside honor his memory. 

An original Silver Dollar Bar sign hangs in the store, referencing the site where Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar was killed during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium.

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Andrew Lopez

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But for many longtime customers, the music is what kept them returning. 

“Since 1993 I’ve been coming to Sounds of Music,” Ricardo “Ziggy” Lona said. “I was into oldies as a teenager in the 90s, and Sounds of Music was one of the only places you could get your Eastside Story, your Art Laboe… your favorite artists.”

Lona, who rode the bus from Commerce as a teenager, said he worries the store may follow the fate of other independent music stores.

“With the internet and music being the way it is, record stores just ain’t making it. Sounds of Music has made it this far from the support of the community. It’s more than just the music, it’s about what’s come out of it,” Lona said. 

Building alongside community

To raise funds for the longstanding store, Reyes and Lona recently organized a pop-up on the property. Artists sold custom clothing, vinyl records and other artworks while DJs played funk and oldies to a lively crowd in the parking lot behind the store. 

Boyle Heights resident Christina Fernandez said the store holds a special place in her heart. 

“My brother’s nina, we called her ‘Guera.’ She’s the one that introduced me to all of this,” Fernandez said. “She brought out all her records when I was little so that’s how I learned about all of the Eastside Story Records and I just fell in love with all of that.”

Fernandez even honors her ‘Guera’ with a forearm tattoo of her name stylized like an Eastside Story album cover.

“It’s just a part of our culture. The familiar sounds bring back memories of people who are no longer here with us and bring us back to that time,” she said. 

Records, cassettes, CDs and other merchandise are in stock at Sounds of Music. The store specializes in soul, oldies and Latin music over the decades.

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Andrew Lopez

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The LA Local

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Economic struggles as ICE raids shake East LA

Like many other Eastside small businesses, the Reyes family was affected by immigration raids.

“People weren’t buying at all because they didn’t want to shop because they were scared to come in,” Adrianna Reyes said. “It really affected our business and brought sales down.” 

Reyes added that sales haven’t returned to the pre-raids levels and is afraid they may never return. Mario Reyes had said his father had to loan him cash to keep the store afloat at the start of the year.

To keep the store alive, Reyes urges patrons old and new to stop by. 

“You don’t have to buy a lot, just buy something,” he said.

Sounds of Music is located near the arch in East LA.

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Alma Lucia

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Boyle Heights Beat

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The teenage birth rate in the U.S. fell by 7% in 2025, continuing decades of decline, according to a report published Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics.

"A 7% decline is really quite extraordinary," says the report's lead author, Brady Hamilton, a statistician demographer with the center, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, nearly 126,000 babies were born to mothers ages 15 to 19, according to the analysis of provisional data. The birth rate for that age group was 11.7 births per 1,000 females. By contrast, the teen birth rate in 1991 was 61.8 births per 1,000.

The report also explored other topics related to births in the United States. The overall birth rate fell 1% from the previous year, also continuing a long decline. The rate of preterm births was unchanged. And the cesarean delivery rate increased to 32.5% in 2025, which is the highest rate since 2013, continuing a slight upward trend.

Notably, the provisional report does not include an analysis of births by the mother's race or ethnicity, even though those were included in this report in the last few years. CDC told NPR in a statement that this year's report is "covering fewer topics than previous provisional birth reports," but also that race data is still available on CDC's WONDER online database.

This provisional report comes out every year in the spring based on more than 99% of registered births for the previous year. "It gives us basically a sneak peek at some key factors that we can expect when we get the final data for that year," Hamilton says. The final data is usually published in August.

The harder "why" question

While birth certificates provide a great deal of demographic, geographic and other kinds of detail about a birth, "the birth certificate does not allow us to address the question of why," Hamilton says.

Many factors are driving the 35-year decline in teen birth rates, says Bianca Allison, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

"What is actually affecting the birth rates are likely lower rates of teen pregnancy overall, which is in the context of higher use of contraception and lower sexual activity for youth, and then also continued access to abortion care," she says.

While there has been a lot of concern about the declining general birth rate in the U.S., the decline in teen births is harder to parse as a good or bad news story.

"I think it depends on who you're talking to and how they're positioned and looking at the data," says Allison, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, an advocacy group that favors abortion rights and supports health equity. "From my perspective, as somebody who specifically studies the provision of high-quality reproductive health care and access for young people, this should be celebrated as long as this is aligned with what people are actually wanting for themselves."

She adds that there are a lot of negative narratives associated with teen parenthood in terms of educational and career potential. "Many of those outcomes are due to the lack of societal, institutional and systemic supports that young people receive to parent, not their lack of ability to parent," she argues.

She hopes that the declining teen birth rate doesn't make people think this issue is gone. "We cannot get our foot off the gas pedal of continuing to invest in supports" for teen parents to help them reach their goals. They need educational, social and medical help to thrive, she says: "All those things are incredibly important."
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