The Brief

California will not become the first state to levy a wealth tax on its richest residents — at least not this election.

Voters rejected Proposition 40, a proposal to tax billionaires based on their net worth and financial holdings, by 52.8% to 47.2%, according to The Associated Press Monday. The measure had trailed behind for days before The Associated Press confirmed results.

Leaders for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union pushing the measure, seemed to concede the race minutes before the polls closed but vowed to try again in 2028 if California’s Legislature “fails to deliver a real solution” to fund healthcare hammered by recent federal law.

“That’s not a hypothetical. That’s our plan,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW.

Election Day was projected to be an all-around defeat for the union, known for aggressively pursuing ballot measures. Voters defeated union-backed Proposition 44, an effort to control how clinics spend money. Proposition 42, a billionaire tax countermeasure prohibiting future wealth taxes, was leading Monday evening by 51.6% to 48.4%. That measure could get in the way of SEIU-UHW’s future plans to try taxing wealth again.

The billionaire tax would have generated $100 billion for healthcare and education through a one-time, 5% tax on billionaires, according to SEIU-UHW. Opponents of the measure celebrated its defeat.

“Proposition 40 was a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy with little regard for the harms it would cause,” according to a statement from Evan Westrop, a campaign strategist for No on Prop. 40.

The opposition campaign, which was backed by wealthy tech investors and healthcare organizations, argued the measure had already driven billionaires from the state and permanently harmed income tax revenue. On Monday they said the state still faces “enormous pressure” to find other ways to fund healthcare hit by federal cuts.

Billionaire tax divided Democrats

From the outset, Prop. 40 revealed divisions among the Democratic Party and galvanized some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest executives to spend hundreds of millions to defeat it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom became one of its earliest opponents, attempting through backroom negotiations to keep it off of the ballot altogether. He endorsed the billionaire-backed counter measure, Prop. 42, designed to ban all wealth taxes in California and kill Prop. 40. Newsom, along with Democratic allies such as Planned Parenthood of California and California Teachers Association, argued a one-time tax would not solve the state’s fiscal woes and would drive wealthy residents out of state.

The California Democratic Party and California Federation of Labor Unions supported the initiative and opposed its counter measures, arguing the state needed more revenue to shield workers and everyday Californians from the effects of dramatic federal healthcare cuts expected to kick 2 million residents off of health insurance.

Lorena Gonzalez, former Assemblymember and president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said Prop. 40’s failure puts even more pressure on state and federal lawmakers to backfill federal Medicaid cuts.

Supporters of Prop. 40 blamed its loss on billionaires vastly outspending the Yes campaign, which raised $33.5 million.

“That is incredibly corrosive and corrupting to our democracy and our political system, and that's been dominating the discussion here in California,” Regan said.

Billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign to stop Prop. 40. Google co-founder Sergey Brin led the charge, publicly moving out of state and donating $102 million to Building a Better California, a political committee he founded to oppose the tax. The group has served as a passthrough for other billionaire donors to oppose Prop. 40, including by funding the counterpropositions 41 and 42. Collectively, ultra-wealthy opponents donated $378.4 million to oppose the billionaire tax.

In a statement, Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for Building a Better California, said the billionaire tax threatened to limit revenue for all services in California, including healthcare, by driving economic interests out of the state.

“It was a lose-lose for California, and voters clearly agreed,” Lunardini said.

Ultimately, opponents’ efforts succeeded.

Polling just ahead of the election indicated falling support for Prop. 40 despite growing sentiment for taxing billionaires more in general. According to a UC Berkeley Citrin-POLITICO poll, 45% of voters believed in taxing billionaires more to fund public services compared to 35% who believed the state should prioritize keeping billionaires in state because of the tax revenue and jobs they generate — but just 46% favored Prop. 40.

Infighting among Democrats could have also contributed to Prop. 40’s demise, said John Matsusaka, an economist and direct democracy expert at USC, ahead of the election. Research shows money doesn’t buy people’s votes or values on core issues like abortion, Matsusaka said, but it can exploit uncertainty.

“People these days are very tribal. When your tribe is arguing, people start to listen to the counterarguments,” Matsusaka said.

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.

After an hourslong, late-night standoff between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and community members outside Adventist Health White Memorial over the weekend, local leaders are demanding answers from hospital leadership. 

The hospital has previously faced scrutiny over claims that its administrators have allowed federal immigration agents to interfere in patient care. 

On Saturday, state Sen. María Elena Durazo marched with community members from Mariachi Plaza to the hospital to hand-deliver a letter to White Memorial President Daniel Fontoura. The letter, signed by elected officials and community leaders, calls for an end to any collaboration that may exist between the hospital and federal immigration agents. 

The night before, ICE agents clashed with protesters near the hospital and blocked the hospital’s ambulance entrance. According to White Memorial, ambulances were diverted for about two hours during the incident. Two U.S. citizens were also detained by federal agents. 

Federal immigration agents were at White Memorial Friday night because someone in their custody had been taken to the emergency room, according to hospital officials and the Los Angeles Police Department. 

“What happened last night was unacceptable,” Durazo told Fontoura in the parking lot of White Memorial, steps away from where ICE agents had been standing shoulder to shoulder just hours earlier. “It’s unacceptable that ICE would go into our healthcare facilities. But we also believe that White Memorial can and should do more.”

Fontoura told the group that the hospital has “no special relationship, no special contract” with ICE. “When they show up, they show up,” Fontoura said, referring to the federal agents. 

Fontoura said hospital staff took care of the person who was brought in by ICE and claimed they denied the agents’ request to “break protocol” and be in the same room as the patient and their physician. “We said no,” Fontoura said. 

Boyle Heights Beat asked White Memorial whether these privacy protections are standard practice and whether federal agents follow them while at the hospital. The hospital did not respond before publication. 

Last year, Adventist Health released a six-point statement outlining its policies to protect detained patients and support staff, but doctors and advocates at the time said it was not enough. 

Now Durazo and others are calling for more accountability and stricter guidelines from the hospital on how they respond to ICE activity. 

The letter requests a written response from hospital leadership by Nov. 21. It is signed by Durazo, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and other community leaders from Proyecto Pastoral, CHIRLA and more.

White Memorial has not responded to Boyle Heights Beat’s request for comment on the letter.

If the concerns remain unresolved, those who signed the letter say they will ask the California attorney general to review White Memorial’s compliance with state law.

“For ICE to show up the way they did, it takes a much higher level of consciousness and determination by the hospital to stop them from doing this,” Durazo told Boyle Heights Beat after the rally on Saturday. “We don’t have absolute power over ICE, we know that, but we do have some power over ICE.” 

Nithya Raman turned the tide in the L.A. mayoral race by winning over large swathes of the city that voted for Karen Bass in 2022, according to an LAist analysis of election data.

Bass was a favorite in many areas that voted for Rick Caruso when she faced him in 2022. She held onto a majority of voters across South L.A., but lost much of her previous support. She outperformed Raman in areas where Spencer Pratt, the third-place primary finisher, saw strong turnout in June.

The switchup came after Bass — a veteran in progressive politics — took a relatively-conservative approach on issues like policing and high-density housing developments compared to Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told its employees Friday to stop work, shut down their computers and stay off agency systems while it looked into “a potential security issue affecting our systems,” its chief executive confirmed to LAist.

That shutdown order was still in place Monday evening, according to a LAHSA official not authorized to speak on the record.

Gita O'Neill, the agency’s interim CEO, told LAist on Friday evening that the agency did not “yet have enough information to say definitively whether any sensitive or confidential personal information was accessed.”

She has not answered questions about whether or not services for unhoused people are disrupted.

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of LAHSA, speaks ahead of the annual homeless count on Jan. 20, 2026.

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Jordan Rynning

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LAist

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LAHSA holds highly sensitive information collected from people experiencing homelessness in the region. The agency oversees the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, which includes unhoused people’s names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and disabilities, as well as self-reported mental health and substance abuse history, income sources and domestic violence history.

In a statement Monday, LAHSA said it had taken its internal computer systems offline “as a precaution” and “engaged outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate the nature and scope of the incident.” The statement, sent on O'Neill's behalf by outside public relations strategist Trevor Daley, continued to call it “a potential cybersecurity incident.”

The agency is “taking steps to maintain essential operations,” the statement added, saying LAHSA “remains open” while the investigation continues. It said the agency is working with its technical and legal teams.

What staff were told

Friday’s email to "Team LAHSA" carried the subject line "URGENT: Log Off and Shut Down for the Week." LAist obtained a copy, and O'Neill confirmed by text message that she had sent it.

“As a precaution while we look into a potential security issue affecting our systems, we're asking all staff to stop work and take their machines offline for the remainder of today and through the weekend,” the email said.

It told employees to “Log off and shut down your LAHSA computer” and not to log back in or connect to LAHSA systems, including email, “until you receive an all-clear from us.”

The email also told staff to report anything “unusual” before shutting down, such as “files renaming on their own, unexpected pop-ups or messages.”

What LAHSA leadership has said

In a texted response to LAist on Friday evening, O'Neill said she asked staff to take their computers offline “out of an abundance of caution” while the agency’s IT team assessed the situation.

“Our IT team is actively reviewing the situation now and working to understand exactly what occurred and whether any information was affected,” she wrote. “Protecting people’s personal and confidential information is a top priority in that review.”

Leaders of three LAHSA-funded service providers told LAist on Monday afternoon that they had not received any communications from LAHSA about the potential cybersecurity issue. All three use the HMIS system that holds unhoused people’s personal details.

Previous attacks against another LA housing agency

Another L.A. housing agency was previously hit by cyberattacks. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles — a separate agency known as HACLA — has said hackers got inside its network in 2022 and may have accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, financial accounts numbers and medical information.

Two years later, HACLA was breached again, according to an official notice, with hackers potentially accessing names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and phone numbers.

LAist reporter Aaron Schrank contributed reporting to this story.