The Brief

Nearly four years after California voters approved better wages and health benefits for ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers, no one is actually ensuring they are provided, according to state agencies, interviews with workers and a review of wage claims filed with the state.

Voters mandated the benefits in November 2020 when they approved Proposition 22. The ballot initiative was backed by gig-work companies that wanted to keep their workers classified as independent contractors and were resisting a 2019 state law that would have considered them employees. Prop. 22 stipulated that gig workers would remain independent contractors but be treated better.

The state Industrial Relations Department, which handles wage claims, now tells CalMatters it does not have jurisdiction to resolve those related to Prop. 22, citing a July 25 California Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law and therefore maintains that gig workers are not employees. That effectively passes enforcement responsibility on to the state attorney general, whose office was noncommittal when asked about its plans, saying that it does not adjudicate individual claims but does prosecute companies that systematically violate the law.

The lack of enforcement leaves in limbo workers who in many cases have already been waiting for months or years for the state to resolve their complaints. Workers have filed 54 claims related to Prop. 22 since it went into effect in December 2020. At least 32 of them are unresolved, state records obtained by CalMatters show, although at least two of those are due to workers not following through.

Of the unresolved claims, one goes back to 2021, several are from 2022 and 2023, and about half are from this year, through May.

Emails included with the claims show that the Industrial Relations Department told one worker it was severely understaffed, and seven others, starting in 2022, that it did not have jurisdiction to help them since they were independent contractors rather than employees.

Although the number of claims filed with the state represent just a fraction of the more than 1 million gig workers in California, they give a glimpse into what happens when workers turn to the state for help instead of the companies that backed Prop. 22.

What gig workers are complaining about 

Workers say in the claims, and in interviews with CalMatters, that companies such as Uber, Lyft and Instacart failed to provide higher wages and health care stipends under the law, and that the companies’ representatives sometimes act confused or take a long time to handle their requests for Prop. 22 benefits. The gig companies have touted the law as something that has boosted pay and benefits, and have said it has helped gig workers hang on to work they can do whenever they want.

Laura Robinson is among the workers who have had to aggressively pursue what they believe they’re owed under the law. For the past year, she has filed claims with the state and fought two different gig-work companies for different benefits promised under Prop. 22.

She was making a delivery for Instacart a year ago, she said, when a driver making a U-turn hit her, totaling her car. Now, she said, she has lingering back pain, and has only been able to make a total of a few deliveries over the past several months.

Robinson, who lives in Irvine, tried to get Instacart to retroactively provide her with occupational accident insurance as required under Prop. 22.

When she first contacted Instacart about the collision, “four or five different (representatives) told me on chat ‘we don’t provide insurance,’ but I told them this is California,” Robinson said. “Finally someone said ‘oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about.’ ” Robinson had some difficulties documenting the accident, because, she said, the responding Torrance Police Department officer rode away on his motorcycle without writing a report. But after about seven months, she finally heard back from Zurich, Instacart’s insurance provider. She received a lump sum, and monthly payments for the time that she has been largely unable to work, according to bank statements and emails from Zurich to her, which she shared with CalMatters.

Instacart spokesperson Charlotte Healow said all the company’s shopper support agents should know about “shopper injury protection” and that there is information in the app about how to go about filing claims. But Robinson showed CalMatters several screenshots of her chats with support agents who either thought she was asking about health insurance or who told her someone would email her back about her situation — which eventually happened, though it took a few tries.

Robinson said she had also struggled to get a smaller gig platform, food delivery app Curri, to comply with the law. Under Prop. 22, ride-hailing and delivery gig companies are supposed to pay her 120% of minimum wage for the time she spends driving, making up for any shortfall in the pay she receives, but Curri had not done so, she said. Not knowing where to turn, she asked a few different state agencies for help, including the attorney general’s office. She even lodged a complaint with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Consumer Complaint Database. After several months, the Industrial Relations Department scheduled a hearing for her case for Aug. 29. Last week, the department told her the company decided to settle and pay her what it owed, according to emails and a release she signed that she shared with CalMatters. Curri’s marketing director referred CalMatters to the company’s legal department, which did not return three emailed requests for comment.

Robinson saw the upside of Prop. 22 after it passed. She liked being able to continue setting her own hours and saw a bump in her earnings delivering for Grubhub due to the law. But she is now frustrated about how tough it was to figure out who’s supposed to be upholding it.

“It’s not helpful if it’s not enforced or applied,” she said.

Robinson said the deputy labor commissioner she was in touch with throughout the process of pursuing her claim against Curri told her last week that because Prop. 22 was upheld by the state Supreme Court — effectively ensuring gig workers cannot be considered employees — the department would no longer be handling similar cases because it does not have jurisdiction over independent contractors.

What do gig workers want?

The Prop. 22-related wage claims reviewed by CalMatters were part of a larger set of nearly 200 claims that gig workers filed with the Industrial Relations Department since the law took effect in December 2020. Citing the California Public Records Act, CalMatters sought all wage claims in that timeframe involving gig companies, but the state did not provide any claims against DoorDash, which is one of the biggest of the app-based gig companies. A department spokesperson could not explain why.

Most of the claimants sought delayed or unpaid wages, including adjustments owed under Prop. 22. Others sought health care stipends required under the gig-work law, and one driver said he sought occupational accident insurance but did not receive it.

The claims also shed light on the mechanics of how app companies are allegedly withholding wages. In them, some gig workers claimed that they were deactivated — kicked off or fired by the app — before receiving all their wages.

The records also indicate the state had trouble holding app companies to account in a timely fashion. In emails about the claims, some workers frequently asked for updates about their cases and complained about limited communications from the state. This prompted one supervisor in the Industrial Relations Department’s San Francisco office to respond by email on May 30, 2024, seemingly noting that gig workers’ complaints were just a fraction of the array of worker complaints the state fields: “I am working with 40% staff shortage. There are over 3,000 cases, most of which are older than yours, and only seven people (total) to handle them.” The department did not respond to requests for comment on whether this shortfall persists.

Monetary wage claims ranged from about $2 to nearly $420,000. Most — 54% — were against ride-hailing and delivery giant Uber and 25% were against its rides competitor Lyft. There were 17 claims against grocery-delivery app maker Instacart, seven against food-delivery platform Grubhub, four against Target-owned delivery service Shipt and three against UPS-owned delivery service Roadie.

The Industrial Relations Department has long tried to resolve gig workers’ wage disputes. The labor commissioner, who heads the department’s Labor Standards Enforcement Division, still has pending wage-theft lawsuits against Uber and Lyft that it filed in 2020 on behalf of about 5,000 workers with wage claims going back to 2017.

Those cases predate Prop. 22, originating during a period when gig workers were misclassified and should have been considered employees under California law, the labor commissioner argues in the wage-theft suits. After Prop. 22 passed, opponents challenged it and the case ended up before the California Supreme Court, which upheld the law in July, effectively affirming that drivers are independent contractors, not employees. A department spokesperson, Peter Melton, said the ruling means the department can no longer handle claims about missing wage adjustments under the earnings guarantee, unpaid health care stipends or other aspects of the law.

Department representatives made similar statements to workers even before Prop. 22 was upheld, the claims records show. An email response, dated March 26, 2024, from the department to an Uber driver stated: “The Division of Labor Standards Enforcement enforces employment law. We cannot enforce Prop 22 earnings because they aren’t ‘wages’ earned by ‘employees’.”

This echoes the position lawyers for Uber and Lyft took in some of the records when responding to wage claims. They asked the state to dismiss such claims, writing in one email: “As of December 16, 2020, drivers using Lyft’s platform are considered independent contractors by statute and, thus, cannot seek relief under the Labor Code.”

Now that the department has disavowed responsibility for Prop. 22 claims, the question remains: Who will enforce the law?

Scott Kronland, the attorney for Service Employees International Union California who unsuccessfully argued before the state Supreme Court that it should throw out Prop. 22, told CalMatters: “I’ve also heard from drivers that they’re not getting the things they’re promised by Prop. 22.”

Kronland said their recourse, after the ruling, is to press local prosecutors or the attorney general, who have the ability to hold companies liable for unlawful business practices under the state’s Unfair Competition Law. Still, he said “enforcement is something the Legislature could clarify.”

In an unsigned email response to CalMatters’ questions after the state Supreme Court decision, including whether it planned to pursue Prop.-22-related cases against gig-work companies, the attorney general’s office said gig workers can submit complaints at oag.ca.gov/report. The email added: “Although the Attorney General does not represent individual workers or adjudicate individual complaints by holding administrative hearings like (the Department of Industrial Relations), DOJ brings lawsuits to hold accountable companies that systematically break the law, for example through widespread violations of wage and hour standards. Reports or complaints of employer misconduct are an important part of our work.”

When CalMatters previously asked the attorney general’s office for copies of any wage complaints it had received from gig workers thus far, a spokesperson responded that the office was representing the state in its effort to defend Prop. 22 before the California Supreme Court — and referred CalMatters back to the Industrial Relations Department.

What gig companies share about Prop. 22’s impact

Gig companies have said that, due in part to the initiative’s earnings guarantee, workers now make more than $30 an hour. But a May study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that, for California ride-hailing drivers, average earnings after expenses, not including tips, is about $7.12 an hour, and for delivery workers, $5.93. With tips, drivers’ average hourly earnings are $9.09 an hour, and $13.62 for delivery workers, the study found.

To better understand the impact of Prop. 22, CalMatters asked each of the four largest gig companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart — the following:

• How much they have spent on delivering on each of Prop. 22’s four main promises:
  
  • 120% of minimum wage earnings guarantee
  • Health care stipends
  • Occupational accident insurance 
  • Accidental death insurance
• How many gig workers have received each of the promised benefits. 
• Whether they have passed on costs to consumers, and if so, where they account for those customer fees in their public financial filings. 
• How they handle complaints or issues related to their promises.

Lyft said 85% of California Lyft drivers who have driven for the company since Prop. 22 went into effect have received at least one wage “top up” — the additional money drivers receive under the earnings guarantee — through the end of the fourth quarter of 2023, though spokesperson Shadawn Reddick-Smith would not provide specific numbers of Lyft drivers in the state. None of the other companies would give any information on their delivery of the wage guarantee.

Instacart spokesperson Healow said the company has paid out about $40 million in health care subsidies to its delivery workers, which she said number in the tens of thousands in the state. She also said about 11% of California shoppers have become eligible for a health care stipend since Prop. 22 took effect, and that 28% of those eligible shoppers have redeemed their subsidy.

To qualify for the health care stipends, workers must work at least 15 hours a week each quarter, and be enrolled in health insurance that is not provided by an employer or the government. Because the gig companies won’t share how many workers have received the stipends, CalMatters asked the state health insurance exchange, Covered California, if it had data that might help shed some light. Seven percent of the 1.6 million people who used Covered California reported doing gig work in a 2023 survey, said a spokesperson for the exchange, Jagdip Dhillon.

DoorDash spokesperson Parker Dorrough said that just 11% of eligible couriers used the health care stipend in the fourth quarter of 2023 but that 80% of DoorDash’s delivery workers had health care coverage through another source, such as their full-time job or spouse.

None of the other companies would give any information on their delivery of the stipend. Lyft’s Reddick-Smith said 80% of California Lyft drivers already have health care coverage, including 13% who bought their own coverage (this second group is the set of drivers who qualified for the stipend).

None of the four companies provided the numbers of workers who have used occupational accident or accidental death insurance.

None of the companies would disclose how they account for the fees they charge customers for Prop. 22 expenses, nor are the fees included in their publicly available financial filings. Instacart said it does not charge customers for expenses associated with Prop. 22. Lyft said its per-ride service fee includes a 75-cent “California Driver Benefits Fee.” Uber charges customers a “CA Driver Benefits” fee for each ride and delivery in the state and spokesperson Zahid Arab said the company has “invested more than we collected in fees.”

Uber published a blog post after CalMatters’ questions, saying it has “invested” more than $1 billion in Prop. 22 benefits. Arab would not break down these benefits further.

As for complaints related to the promises, each of the companies said workers should contact support agents, whom they can usually get in touch with in the app; an Instacart spokesperson said workers can make some claims directly in the company’s app.

Accounting and enforcement

Ride-hailing driver Sergio Avedian last year helped raise public awareness of the lack of Prop. 22 enforcement. Specifically, he homed in on one narrow issue: Under the law, gig-work companies were supposed to adjust for inflation each year the reimbursement they pay to drivers for mileage. Avedian said no such adjustment had taken place for two consecutive years. And as a podcaster and contributor to the Rideshare Guy, a popular gig-work blog, he had a high profile. Avedian and a fellow eagle-eyed driver started pestering the state’s treasurer’s office, which had not published the adjusted rates as stipulated under Prop 22. The office eventually did so and, the Los Angeles Times reported, put the state’s gig workers on track to get back pay for the mileage expenses — pay potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, a year later, Avedian is curious about gig-company math again. He has asked Uber some of the same questions CalMatters did — including how the company accounts for the driver-benefits fee it adds on to each ride or delivery. The company’s response to him was similar — it provided few specifics.

Besides his concern about the issue as a driver, Avedian said “as a consumer who is paying into the Prop. 22 fund on every trip or delivery, I would like to know the accounting of where my money is going.”

When the gig companies were campaigning for Prop. 22, they implored voters to “help create a better path forward for drivers.”

But Avedian and other gig workers in California say their paths have not changed much. Many still complain about low wages, little transparency from the companies and lack of worker protections.

Yasha Timenovich said he has worked as a ride-hailing driver for a decade, first with Uber, now with Lyft.

“I work 12, 13, 14 hours a day,” said Timenovich, who drives in the Los Angeles area. “But the time I sit and wait at LAX is not accounted for.” He said he has to work long hours to try to make sure he has enough earnings. “We’re not completely independent contractors. We’re not employees. We’re sort of a hybrid model of theirs. We’re pretty much nobody.”

He also said he must obtain health insurance through Medi-Cal, California’s health care coverage for low-income residents — which in turn means he doesn’t qualify for the health care stipend. He said every driver he knows “is on Medi-Cal because they can’t afford health insurance. I don’t know anyone who has (the stipend).”

Many drivers voted for Prop. 22, he said. But “what we were told was a lie.”

On a Friday afternoon on a quiet suburban block in Lakewood, the only sign that something special is happening is a small handwritten chalkboard with a small Peruvian flag and an American flag placed nearby, listing the day's specials — Papa Rellena, Aji de Pollo, Lomo Saltado. This is Lomo Fuego, a fully licensed Peruvian restaurant operating out of a family home, and it's part of a quietly growing movement reshaping how Los Angeles defines a restaurant.

The only sign you'll find outside Lomo Fuego — a handwritten chalkboard on a quiet Lakewood lawn

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Since launching in January 2019, L.A. County's Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) program has issued more than 200 permits, transforming residential kitchens into licensed restaurants.

Lomo Fuego's founder is Heidi Randolph, a Peruvian immigrant and former interior designer who left her career to be closer to home. With a new mortgage and no income, she found an unlikely business partner in her brother — a trained chef who had just arrived from Peru — and an idea: turn the backyard into a restaurant. Her husband, William Armando Rios, a truck driver, had his doubts, but Randolph pushed forward anyway.

Randolph wanted to do things right, so she called the city of Lakewood. They told her it was impossible. She kept researching anyway and eventually found MEHKO.

What Is MEHKO?

MEHKO — short for Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation — is a program administered by the L.A. County Department of Public Health that allows residents to run licensed food businesses from their primary residences. No commercial kitchen required, no landlord to answer to. Operators are capped at 30 meals a day and $100,000 in gross annual revenue — guardrails designed to keep the businesses appropriately scaled to a residential setting, but also the kind that make brick-and-mortar the natural next step for a thriving operation.

The permit process, she says, was surprisingly accessible.

Her total startup investment came in under $2,000 — a fraction of the $30,000 to $40,000 it typically costs to open even a modest commercial kitchen.

"My savings from my previous job helped me, and my husband supported me in everything — in the beginning, he was like, what are you doing? But he believed in me."

Luis, Fritz, and Heidi Randolph — the family behind Lomo Fuego in Lakewood.

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Finding their footing

Starting a restaurant is never easy, especially when it’s in your backyard.

Randolph said the early days were filled with uncertainty, when she'd find herself cooking only to have nobody come, leftovers piling up, credit cards creeping toward their limits, social media posts going largely unnoticed. She pushed through anyway.

Luis, Heidi Randolph's brother and head chef, along with their mother Fritz, preps for service in the Lomo Fuego kitchen

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"You just have to be patient — posting on Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, TikTok. Little by little, it started getting somewhere," she said.

The turning point came from an unexpected source. Cook Alliance, a nonprofit that works alongside the county to support MEHKO operators, reached out and offered to connect Randolph with an influencer. The creator, from the account LA OC Eats, came out and shot a video.

Overnight, everything changed.

"It was a line of people outside — way outside," she said.

Neighbors, to Randolph's relief, couldn't have been more supportive.

Behind the scenes, it's a true family affair — Randolph's brother handles the bulk of the cooking while her mother, Fritz, who still works as a housekeeper at the VA on her days off, pitches in wherever she's needed. The family has since brought on additional kitchen and waitstaff to keep up with demand. It's exactly the kind of scene Randolph had always envisioned.

The Jungle, the Germans and Aji amarillo

To understand Lomo Fuego’s menu, you have to understand where Heidi Randolph comes from.

Randolph grew up in Oxapampa, a small town in Peru's high jungle — tucked into the Pasco region about five hours east of Lima, where the Andes begin their descent toward the Amazon — founded by German and Austrian immigrants in the mid-1800s. It helps explain why the menu at Lomo Fuego includes schnitzel and a plantain-based strudel alongside the lomo saltado.

Lomo Saltado Pobre at Lomo Fuego — the dish that started it all, served with rice, fries, fried plantains, and a fried egg.

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Peruvian cuisine has long absorbed outside influences — Chinese laborers brought the wok and soy sauce that make lomo saltado possible, and the stir-fried noodle dish Tallarín Saltado is essentially Peru's answer to lo mein, so deeply rooted in Chinese cooking it belongs to its own culinary tradition known as Chifa.

Being the ever-curious food writer that I am, I passed on many of the well-known dishes and went straight for the daily specials, landing on the Aji de Gallina — a stewed chicken dish built around ají amarillo, the foundational "soul" of Peruvian cuisine. Alongside garlic and red onion, it forms what many cooks consider the holy trinity of Peruvian cooking. The pepper itself is deceptively complex — fruity, vibrant, and slightly sweet, with tropical notes and a moderate heat that never overwhelms. In Randolph's version, it announces itself immediately through its creamy textures, highlighted by the savoriness of the stewed chicken with chunks of boiled potatoes and white rice.

Seco de Res con Frijoles at Lomo Fuego — tender beef braised in chicha de jora and cilantro, served with canario beans and white rice.

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I also tried the Seco de Res con Frijoles, which tells a different story — tender beef braised in chicha de jora, an ancient Andean corn beer once consumed ceremonially during Inca religious festivals. With a sauce built on cilantro and ají amarillo, it’s served over white rice and canario beans, a Peruvian staple prized for its creamy, buttery texture. It's a dish that wears its history openly, with Spanish, African, and Indigenous traditions folded into every bite.

Pull up a chair

One of the things I noticed about dining at Lomo Fuego was its intimacy — eating in someone's backyard has a way of softening people. I arrived right when they opened, and soon thereafter, families of all ages stopped by, along with coworkers grabbing lunch and a neighbor checking in on an upcoming catering order.

Aji de Gallina at Lomo Fuego — shredded chicken in a creamy aji amarillo sauce, topped with a hard boiled egg

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"Seeing the people excited when they have that first bite — that's what motivates me every day," she said.

Outgrowing the Backyard

Lomo Fuego has grown beyond what Randolph ever imagined when she was cooking in a void in those early days. She's now pursuing a loan and scouting locations for a brick-and-mortar restaurant — the natural next step for a MEHKO kitchen that has outgrown its backyard. But she's clear about what she's taking with her.

"I hope in the future people can say, this still tastes like food from home."

Federal agents searched Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and the San Pedro home of Superintendent Alberto Carvalho Wednesday morning, the Department of Justice confirmed.

The reason for the searches is unknown. A DOJ spokesperson said the agency has a court-authorized warrant, but declined to provide additional details. The FBI told our media partner CBS LA that the the underlying affidavit remained under court-ordered seal.

Neighbors told LAist they first noticed officers at Carvalho's home around 6 a.m. One of them, John, said an officer told him to stay in his home. LAist agreed not to publish his last name out of fear of reprisal.

At LAUSD's downtown headquarters, multiple district staff members told LAist they were unaware of the raids until they saw the media gathered outside.

Carvalho has been superintendent of LAUSD since 2022, and the board renewed his contract in 2025.

Carvalho and the district’s elected board have expressed unanimous support for immigrant students, staff and families since President Donald Trump was elected to a second term. The superintendent has also spoken openly about his own journey as a former undocumented immigrant.

The district's first major conflict with the administration began in February 2025, when agents from the Department of Homeland Security attempted to enter multiple LAUSD schools, but were rebuffed.

The DOJ also recently petitioned to join a lawsuit alleging the district discriminates against white students.

Consumers likely won't see cheaper prices at the grocery store or shopping mall, economists say, despite the Supreme Court striking down many of President Donald Trump's tariffs.

There are a couple reasons why: For one, the president has many tools to impose tariffs and the court decision last week only deemed one of them unconstitutional.

Within hours of the ruling, Trump said he was using a different law to reimpose taxes on global imports.

"The administration's made it very clear that they are not turning away from tariffs," says Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The second reason is a little more complex, a concept known as "price stickiness."

Here's what to know about why shoppers won't see price reductions anytime soon.

Presidential tariff tools

"The legal tool to implement it, that might change, but the policy hasn't changed," U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told ABC over the weekend.

The Supreme Court struck down Trump's authority to impose tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which no president had used to implement tariffs before. But, it's worth noting that these tariffs only accounted for about half of all the import taxes the government had been collecting.

Now that imposing tariffs under the law has been outlawed, the administration has quickly moved ahead with alternatives, even though they don't offer the sweeping power that Trump claimed to have under the IEEPA.

By Saturday, Trump said he was using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to implement worldwide tariffs of 15%, after initially saying he would impose them at 10%. He claimed in a social media post that this tariff level was "fully allowed, and legally tested."

"For a consumer, it doesn't really matter what authority that the president calls on to impose the tariff," says Carola Binder, an economics professor at the The University of Texas at Austin School of Civic Leadership. "Some particular tariffs might go down. And so that would mean that prices of particular goods could go down, but the overall level would remain pretty high."

Goldman Sachs analysts seem to agree.

"We estimate that the further impact on consumer prices will be minor from here," the analysts wrote over the weekend, noting that the "bulk" of companies passing on extra tariff costs to consumers has already occurred.

Similarly, analysis from the Peterson Institute said tariff rates "are set to be similar overall to their level prior to the court ruling, so consumers will continue to feel this tax increase. Prices will likely be higher at the store because the longer tariffs last, in whatever form, the more their costs are passed through to consumers."

Tariffs under Section 122 technically have a 150-day limit. But, Binder says, "after 150 days, if Congress doesn't extend the tariffs, it seems that the president could just let the first set of tariffs expire and then declare a new set again." Lawsuits over this are likely and this could end up at the Supreme Court again.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows tariffs in response to "unfair trade practices" of foreign countries, while Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 allows tariffs on certain national security grounds. (Section 301 tariffs on China have been in place since Trump's first term.)

There's also Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a never-used authority to use tariffs to retaliate against foreign discrimination against American goods.

Imposing tariffs under these laws all have stipulations and limitations attached and the administration's rationale could be challenged in court.

Still, "we're not going to see tariff relief in the longer run, and businesses know that," Lovely of the Peterson Institute says.

Stuck prices

Another reason customers are unlikely to see substantial price changes at the store is that in general, prices take time to adjust. It's a concept of "sticky prices."

It happens when "prices change more slowly than the underlying fundamental factors that go into pricing," Lovely says. A common example involves restaurants: if the price of one ingredient goes up, the restaurant might want to wait a bit before printing new menus that show a higher price for the dish, just in case the cost of ingredients changes again.

Prices can be sticky in either the high or low direction. But in this case, tariffs have led to higher prices for consumers, and they could stay that way.

The companies that have raised prices in response to tariffs are finding out whether consumers were willing to pay more for stuff all along. The tariffs have essentially been "a broad set of experiments, which will reveal to suppliers if their previous prices were profit maximizing or too low," marketing professor emeritus at Harvard Business School Robert Dolan told NPR last year. Suppliers may keep prices high if people keep paying, tariffs or not.

Also, many businesses, especially medium-size businesses, are still catching up to tariffs and adjusting how much of the cost they are passing on to customers, Lovely says. Some had stockpiled inventory ahead of tariffs.

"They haven't been able to pass it through completely yet, waiting to see what would happen," she says. "So they're going to be highly reluctant to roll back when they're still in the process of catching up."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger blasted President Trump's policies and invoked a civic call for Americans to push for better leadership, in a rebuttal to the State of the Union that offered a preview of how Democrats plan to message against the GOP in this year's midterm elections.

"In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does, he lied, he scapegoated and he distracted, and he offered no real solutions to our nation's pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse," Spanberger said.

Speaking from Colonial Williamsburg as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the recently sworn in governor structured her address around three questions: "Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?"

Spanberger, who previously served in Congress for six years, became the first woman elected governor of Virginia in November, flipping control of the office from Republican to Democrat. Prior to her career on Capitol Hill, she served in the CIA.

Her gubernatorial race was under the national spotlight as one of the first major indicators of voters' political leanings during the second Trump administration. Spanberger focused her campaign on affordability, a message Democrats continue to embrace ahead of the midterm elections and one that featured heavily in her roughly 13-minute speech.

"As I campaigned for governor last year, I traveled to every corner of Virginia and I heard the same pressing concern everywhere: costs are too high — in housing, health care, energy and child care," she said, underlining that Democrats "across the country are laser focused on affordability."

She slammed what she called Trump's "reckless trade policies."

"Americans are paying the price," she said, "and even though the Supreme Court struck these tariffs down four days ago, the damage to us, the American people, has already been done."

She also spoke about the violence from federal immigration enforcement officers in American streets.

"Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed, not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities," she said.

She also centered a portion of her speech on the theme of corruption within the Trump administration — which she called "unprecedented."

"There's the coverup of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation's capital," she said. "This is not what our founders envisioned."

The rebuttal to a president's State of the Union is considered an honor, given the high-profile nature of the speech. The selection tends to reflect what party leaders see as top policy priorities and which rising star they regard as the best spokesperson to deliver that message to the public.

"National Democrats want people to think about folks like Abigail Spanberger as core to the Democratic message," said Joel Payne, a longtime Democratic strategist. "Spanberger was one of the big Democratic success stories of 2025. She comes from a state that represents lots of parts of the Democratic coalition, a state that's purple, that's relevant in national politics — and that had a big political moment in the last year when they responded to Trump's agenda around DOGE."

Democrats are eager to replicate Spanberger's political success during this election cycle. She was part of a blue wave of Democrats in 2018 who flipped control of the House. She's considered a more moderate voice within the party.

She's recently faced criticism from conservatives who allege she is veering left after leading a more centrist campaign.

A tough gig 

The job of delivering the official response to the State of the Union can be tough.

Take then-Sen. Marco Rubio (now secretary of state), who delivered a response in both English and Spanish in 2013. His speech is mainly remembered by a singular moment when he went off camera to get a water bottle.

More recently, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., was mocked for her speech's intense tone and the choice to deliver the response against the backdrop of her kitchen.

"It's very hard to match the pomp and circumstance and to match the bully pulpit of the president on a night where most of the country is paying attention to him," Payne said. "Spanberger acquitted herself very well, not only because of the content, which really spoke to the frustration of millions of Americans but in temperament, sounding like a grown up."

Payne said the simplicity of the message and the clarity of the delivery made for an effective speech.

"She talked about very crisp, easy to grasp themes," he said. "She offered very clear questions, clear points of contrast and offered specific examples of how Trump is falling short."

The Spanish language Democratic response

California Sen. Alex Padilla, a key figure in his party's fight against the administration's immigration policies, gave Democrats' Spanish language response to Trump's speech. Last summer, Padilla was thrust into the center of the debate over enforcement after he was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference while attempting to question Secretary Kristi Noem.

Padilla relived the moment in his speech.

"They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up," the California Democrat said in Spanish. "As our parents taught us, if you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting. And I know you are still standing and still fighting too."

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., speaks during the ICE Out for Good protest at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office on Jan. 13 in Washington, D.C.

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Jemal Countess

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The son of Mexican immigrants said the administration had weaponized federal immigration officers, forced the increase of grocery and housing prices and is threatening to interfere in the November midterm elections.

Padilla, the first Latino to represent California in the Senate, was appointed to the seat in 2021 after the seat was vacated by Kamala Harris. He won his first six-year term the following year.

Some Democrats were absent from the chamber 

As has been the case during previous Trump addresses to Congress, some Democrats chose to skip the speech entirely and engage in counter-programming.

Temperatures were below freezing on the National Mall, where a stage was set up with the illuminated U.S. Capitol dome as the backdrop. The "People's State of the Union," sponsored by the progressive advocacy groups MoveOn.org and Meidas Touch, featured upwards of 30 members of Congress who skipped Trump's speech.

Among the lawmakers who addressed the crowd was Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

"I am not at the State of the Union speech tonight, because Donald Trump is making a mockery of this great institution, and he doesn't deserve an audience," said Murphy. "These are not normal times, and Democrats have to stop behaving normally."

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., speaks during the "People's State of the Union" on the National Mall on Tuesday night.

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Ken Cedeno

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AFP via Getty Images

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The event not only featured remarks from lawmakers but from community leaders as well. Payne, who serves as chief communications officer for Move On, said the intention was to shine a spotlight on constituents.

"We wanted to make sure that those folks were the stars of tonight — whether it's people who've been impacted by DOGE cuts, people who've been impacted by the priorities that were laid out in Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' or people who've been impacted by this immigration regime," Payne said.

One such speaker was Dr. Jenna Norton, a whistleblower who was placed on administrative leave from the National Institutes of Health last fall after voicing alarm about funding and staffing cuts at the agency.

"The Trump administration put research participants and public health at risk when they abruptly terminated NIH studies," said Norton. "By halting these studies, they also wasted taxpayer resources. When you halt a $5 million study four years in, you don't save a million dollars, you waste $4 million."

Lawmakers reiterated calls for significant changes at the Department of Homeland Security, following the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota by immigration agents last month. As Trump delivered his State of the Union address, DHS remains shut down.

NPR's Claudia Grisales and Don Gonyea contributed to this report. 

Read Spanberger's Democratic response to President Trump's State of the Union address

ABIGAIL SPANBERGER: Good evening. Good evening and welcome to Historic Williamsburg. We are gathered here in the chambers of the House of Burgesses. In 1705, the people of the Virginia Colony gathered here to take on the extraordinary task of governing themselves. Before there was a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution or a Bill of Rights, there were people in this room.

The people who served here ultimately dreamed of what a new nation unlike anything the world had ever seen could be. The United States was founded on the idea that ordinary people could reject the unacceptable excesses of poor leadership, band together to demand better of their government and create a nation that would be an example for the world.

[Applause] And this year, as we celebrate 250 years since America declared our independence from tyranny, I can think of no better place to speak to you as we reflect on the current state of our union. Tonight, as we watched our nation's lawmakers gather for a joint session of Congress, we did not hear the truth from our president.

So let's speak plainly and honestly and let me ask you, the American people watching at home, three questions. Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you? As I campaigned for governor last year, I traveled to every corner of Virginia and I heard the same pressing concern everywhere, costs are too high, in housing, health care, energy and child care.

And I know these same conversations are being had all across this country. Because since this president took office last year, his reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs. Small businesses have suffered. Farmers have suffered, some losing entire markets.

Everyday Americans are paying the price and even though the Supreme Court struck these tariffs down four days ago, the damage to us, the American people, has already been done. Meanwhile, the president is planning for new tariffs, another massive tax hike on you and your family. And Republicans in Congress, they remain unwilling to assert their constitutional authority to stop him.

They're making your life harder. They're making your life more expensive. They're even making it more difficult to see a doctor. Rural health clinics in Virginia and across the country are already closing their doors, thanks to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, championed by the president and Republicans in Congress.

And tonight, the president celebrated this law, the one threatening rural hospitals, stripping health care for millions of Americans and driving up costs in energy and housing, all while cutting food programs for hungry kids. But here in Virginia, I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the Commonwealth more affordable.

[Applause] And it's not just me. Democrats across the country are laser focused on affordability in our nation's capital and in state capitals and communities across America. In the most innovative and exceptional nation in the history of the world, Americans deserve to know that their leaders are focused on addressing the problems that keep them up at night, problems that dictate where you live, whether you can afford to start a business or whether you have to skip a prescription in order to buy groceries.

So I'll ask again, is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? We all know the answer is no. I grew up in a house of service. My mother was a nurse and my father was a career law enforcement officer. I began my career by following in my father's footsteps as a federal agent, working money laundering and narcotics cases.

I worked side by side with local and state police to keep our community safe and to uphold and enforce the law. Law enforcement officers across the country know that it is a unique responsibility to do the serious work of investigating crimes, comforting victims and making arrests. It's about building trust and that requires an abiding sense of duty and commitment to community.

And yet, our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans, and they have done it without a warrant. They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children, a little boy in a blue bunny hat, children, to far off detention centers and they have killed American citizens in our streets.

And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability. Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings. Our president told us tonight that we are safer, because these agents arrest mothers and detain children?

ABIGAIL SPANBERGER: Think about that, our broken immigration system is something to be fixed, not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities. [Applause] After working in law enforcement, I continued my career of service as a CIA officer, working undercover to protect the United States and our allies from global threats, terrorism, nuclear weapons and the aggression of adversarial nations around the globe.

But as the president spoke of his perceived successes tonight, he continues to cede economic power and technological strength to Russia, bow down to — to China, bow down to a Russian dictator and make plans for war with Iran. Here's the truth, over the last year through DOGE, mass firings and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation's most serious positions, our president has endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.

So I'll ask again, is the president working to keep Americans safe both at home and abroad? We all know the answer is no. In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does; he lied, he scapegoated and he distracted and he offered no real solutions to our nation's pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse.

He tries to divide us, he tries to enrage us, to pit us against one another, neighbor against neighbor. And sometimes he succeeds. And so you have to ask, who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he's pushed through this Republican Congress? Somebody must be benefiting.

He's enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There's the cover up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation's capital. This is not what our founders envisioned, not by a long shot.

[Applause] So I'll ask again, is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no. But here's the special thing about America. On our 250th anniversary, we know better than any nation what is possible when ordinary citizens like those who once dreamed right here in this room reject the unacceptable and demand more of their government.

We see it in the determination of students organizing school walkouts all across the country, whose voices are becoming so powerful that the governor of Texas seeks to silence them. We see it in the bravery of Americans in Minnesota standing up for their communities, from peacefully protesting in subzero temperatures to carpooling children to school, so that their immigrant parents are not ripped away from them in the parking lot.

As a mother of three school-age daughters, I am inspired by their bravery, but I am sickened that it is necessary. And Americans across the country are taking action. They are going to the ballot box to reject this chaos. With their votes, they are writing a new story, a more hopeful story. In November, I won my election by 15 points.

[Applause] And we won 13 new seats in our state legislature. [Applause] Because voters decided they wanted something different. Our campaign earned votes from Democrats, Republicans, independents and everyone in between because they knew as citizens, they could demand more, that they could vote for what they believe matters, and that they didn't need to be constrained by a party or political affiliation.

This is happening across the country. New Jersey elected Mikie Sherrill as governor in a double-digit victory. [Applause] Democrats flipped state legislative seats in places like Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi and Texas. The list goes on and on. Ordinary Americans are stepping up to run in the spirit of our forefathers.

They are running to demand more and to do more for their neighbors and communities. I know the story well. I first ran for office in 2018 alongside dozens of other Democrats who did the seemingly impossible, flipping 41 seats in Congress. In my case, I was the first Democrat elected in 50 years, swinging our district 17 points.

Those who are stepping up now to run will win in November because Americans, you at home, know you can demand more and that we are working to lower costs. We are working to keep our communities and our country safe and we are working for you. [Applause] In his farewell address, George Washington warned us about the possibility of, quote, cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men rising to power.

But he also encouraged us, all Americans, to unite in a common cause to move this nation forward. That is our charge once more and that is what we are seeing across the country. It is deeply American and patriotic to do so, and it is how we ensure that the state of our union remains strong, not just this year but for the next 250 years as well, because we the people have the power to make change, the power to stand up for what is right, the power to demand more of our nation.

[Applause] May God bless the Commonwealth of Virginia and may God bless the United States of America. [Applause]

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