The Brief

In a major victory for gig-work companies, the California Supreme Court today upheld a voter-approved law that allows Uber and other app makers to treat their drivers and delivery workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

About the decision

The decision on Proposition 22 was unanimous. Approved by 58% of California voters in 2020 and enacted the same year, Prop. 22 gave app-based gig workers some benefits but not full worker protections because the ballot initiative — which gig companies spent more than $200 million to pass — ensures they are not considered employees.

More than 1.4 million Californians are app-based gig workers for companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, according to the industry’s latest estimates.

The court was not considering the pros and cons of the gig economy. During oral arguments in May in San Francisco, justices zeroed in on whether Prop. 22 was incompatible with California law, which gives the Legislature responsibility over a complete workers’ compensation system. By declaring gig workers independent contractors, Prop 22 made them ineligible for workers’ comp benefits. SEIU California, the Service Employees International Union that had sought to overturn the law on behalf of four gig workers, argued that this made the law unconstitutional.

Prop. 22 “does not preclude the electorate from exercising its initiative power to legislate on matters affecting workers’ compensation,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote.

What's next for gig worker advocates

Advocates for gig workers said the ruling was a blow.

“This is a really tragic outcome,” said Veena Dubal, a law professor at UC Irvine who focuses on labor and inequality. “But it’s not the end of the road.” Dubal speculated that labor advocates could put together a proposition of their own, or municipalities and the state could adopt ordinances and laws that are more worker-friendly — such as making it illegal to set different wages for similar work based on algorithmic formulas.

Gig companies backed Prop. 22 in 2020 to win themselves an exclusion from a new state law known as Assembly Bill 5, which would have upended their business models by requiring them to consider their drivers and delivery workers as employees. Last month, Uber lost a legal battle to overturn AB 5 — meaning only Prop. 22 stood in the way of forcing ride-hailing and delivery app companies to comply with it.

What you should know about Prop. 22

Under Prop. 22, gig workers are promised guaranteed minimum earnings of 120% of minimum wage, health care stipends, occupational accident insurance and accidental death insurance. Many of the benefits come with stipulations:

• The guaranteed earnings are based on time on a “gig” and don’t include time workers spend waiting for a ride or delivery.
• The health care stipends are for certain eligible workers only, excluding those who qualify for public assistance, including Medi-Cal.
• The occupational accident insurance has a $1 million limit
• Gig workers are reimbursed for their mileage, although at less than the IRS-mandated rate employees receive — currently 35 cents a mile vs. 67 cents a mile. But this amount is included in the minimum earnings guarantee — it is not in addition to it.
• Because Prop. 22 will stand, app-based platform workers will continue to be ineligible for benefits such as sick pay, a minimum wage for all time worked, unemployment insurance and more.

Molly Weedn, spokesperson for the gig industry group Protect App-Based Drivers + Services, called the ruling “an overwhelming victory for voters’ rights and the integrity of our state’s initiative system.”

Gig workers vowed not to give up.

“We’ll continue to fight until we have justice for drivers and all workers,” said Nicole Moore, president of Los Angeles-based Rideshare Drivers United. Moore added that this ruling could mean “app companies are coming for all of our jobs, whether it’s in health care, construction, entertainment.”

More than a year and a half into President Donald Trump’s second term, immigration attorneys critical of the administration say political pressure has transformed immigration courts across the country from neutral arbiters to a de facto “deportation machine.” Supporters of stricter immigration laws say that’s by design.

The clearest indication of this transformation is seen in the way immigration judges are handling requests for bond. An analysis of data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review reviewed by LAist shows that immigration judges nationwide are granting fewer bond requests. The judges denied about 43% of bond requests in 2025, up from about 36% in 2024, according to the data. The denial rate continued to rise, reaching about 55% in the first three months of 2026.

This shift is especially visible at the immigration court at Adelanto, the privately run detention facility about 90 miles northeast of downtown L.A. in San Bernardino County. Between Jan. 1, 2024 and Nov. 10, 2025, immigration judges there denied about 39% of bond requests, the data analysis shows. Since Nov. 10, 2025, Adelanto judges have denied just over 57% of bond requests.

Nov. 10 marks an inflection point in the data that immigration attorneys based in Southern California have tied to an internal email containing new instructions to immigration judges. They’ve filed a lawsuit seeking unredacted versions of emails after a Freedom of Information Act request returned messages with the contents redacted.

Federal officials returned almost entirely redacted emails in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by advocates for immigrants.

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One in a series of redacted emails returned following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by advocates for immigrants.

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When bonds are granted, the data shows the amount set in each case is thousands of dollars higher than before — a big change for detainees who often have limited resources. Again, Adelanto saw an especially large shift. Nationally, median bond amounts increased from $7,500 between Jan. 1, 2024, and Nov. 10, 2025, to $9,211 after that date. At Adelanto the median is now $10,000.

As a result, people are sitting in detention while their immigration cases move through the system. The analysis of federal data concluded that favorable results of appeals decided on merits, meaning results that favor the immigrant appealing their deportation orders, are “essentially zero.”

The change in the bond adjudication follows a series of instructions from the administration to immigration judges, including a September 2025 decision issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals, or BIA, to deny bond hearings to the vast majority of people who entered the country illegally.

Trump officials have argued this direction complies with federal immigration law. The Department of Justice, which houses the Executive Office For Immigration Review, responded to LAist’s request for comment with an unsigned email statement.

“The Executive Office for Immigration Review is restoring integrity to the immigration adjudication system, and Board of Immigration Appeals decisions reflect straightforward interpretations of clear statutory language,” the statement said, in part.

“The argument that Trump 2 makes is that, for the first time in 30 years, we are applying the law as Congress wrote it,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that says it advocates a “pro-immigrant, low immigration” stance.

Immigration advocates disagree. They say the current administration has abdicated the responsibility to make fair and impartial decisions about an individual’s right to stay in the United States or be deported.

Stacy Tolchin, an immigration attorney based in Pasadena, is part of a group of attorneys using federal immigration court data in habeas corpus filings, which challenge the legality of continued detentions.

“The laws are dictated to be fair and consider people's circumstances, how long they've been here, whether they've committed crimes, whether they pay taxes, have any family ties here,” Tolchin said. “They're complicated and they're meant to consider all of these equities and we're just losing consideration of all of that.”

One case among more than 360,000 

Hundreds of people protested conditions at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement Processing Center in San Bernardino County in March.

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In Trump’s second term, his administration’s wave of immigration enforcement includes more than 360,000 new immigration court cases initiated in the 2026 fiscal year, as of May, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization at Syracuse University.

Immigration cases can be complex and take years to fully adjudicate, even after an individual has received removal orders from an immigration judge.

As the volume of immigration cases has increased, so too has the volume of bond requests. Those requests more than doubled from 34,845 in 2024 to 80,130 in 2025, according to Executive Office for Immigration Review data. As the volume rose, the data shows the rate of approval declined nationally, especially at Adelanto.

Israel Uriarte had lived in the U.S. for 33 years when immigration officers arrested him in January in his longtime Cypress Park neighborhood. The 70-year-old street vendor has no criminal record. Two of his children and his brother are U.S. citizens. He is trying to gain legal status through his family ties.

Not long ago, immigration attorneys say, people like Uriarte — someone with deep roots, no record, and family in the country — would have almost certainly been released on bond. That has changed.

“He’s very hard working,” said Uriarte’s 33-year-old daughter, Karla Robles, who spoke on behalf of her father. “The community knows him as the street man around here because he’s always working and, if you catch him outside, he’s never in a bad mood. I mean, at least you’ll never notice it because he always says good morning to everyone he sees.”

Three times, Uriarte asked an immigration judge at Adelanto to release him on bond while his case moved through the courts. Three times, Judge Patrick C. Barrett said no.

Officials with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which is based in Los Angeles and represents day laborers and migrants, said they noticed their clients were struggling to get released on bond at the end of last year.

According to immigration advocates, the practice of denying bond requests puts pressure on people to give up on fighting their cases and accept deportation.

“There's two sides of it,” said Caleb Soto, a workers’ rights director for the organizing network. “You either are railroaded into giving up your rights or you're let to sit there for as long as you can stomach being in these facilities, which have horrific conditions.”

Soto said he could think of at least two cases where clients gave up their cases and accepted voluntary deportation, but that outcome is probably much higher among individuals who don’t have access to legal representation.

How we got here

President Donald Trump ran on a platform promising to deport millions of people from the U.S. Last summer, masked ICE officers were out in force in L.A. before wide-scale operations in Minneapolis and Chicago made international headlines. By then, changes were underway in immigration courts.

At the core of this change is a September 2025 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which held that people who entered the country illegally are subject to mandatory detention and that immigration judges lack authority to hold bond hearings.

“When you’re talking about individuals who have entered illegally, they have already shown they are willing to violate the law to remain in the United States,” said Arthur, of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“In my opinion the statute clearly mandates their detention,” he added.

Prior to that, the law was interpreted to mean that detention was discretionary, meaning an immigration judge could choose to hold a bond hearing and release individuals who could prove they were not a danger to the community and were not a flight risk.

District Court Judge Sunshine S. Sykes of the Central District of California vacated the September decision this past February, but the government appealed the orders and the Ninth Circuit issued a stay pending appeal in March. Immigration attorneys said they expect the case to land before the Supreme Court later this year. Until then, that leaves people in every jurisdiction but California’s Central District, where Sykes’ decision was issued, subject to mandatory detention.

Mandatory detention reverses decades of precedent and violates fundamental rights to due process, according to Chloe Dillon and other immigration attorneys.

Dillon now heads San Mateo County’s criminal immigration defense for the Private Defender Program. Before that, she was an immigration judge in San Francisco — a court the Trump administration effectively shut down when it fired her and other judges there.

“It’s not just that, they cannot get bond, not just that they will ultimately not be released,” Dillon said, “but that they can’t even have a hearing on whether or not they should be released, where they could present facts and say 'this is why I think I should be released.'”

Dillon said the Executive Office for Immigration Review data shows the impact of policy changes like this.

“I don’t think that it is a stretch to say that this administration has said in writing what their objectives were,” said Dillon, who had a rate of approving asylum requests more than 90% of the time. “I also think that there’s an argument that this is what they at least believe they were elected to — whether that is true or not — which is to deport as many people as possible.”

What changed in November? 

In March 2026, Angelenos journeyed to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in the Mojave Desert to protest conditions at the facility. Before leaving, they created an altar for immigrants who've recently died in custody.

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The analysis of Executive Office for Immigration Review data shows a clear inflection point in November of 2025 where bond releases became more rare in immigration courts across the country.

Attorneys with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said they noticed this shift at Adelanto almost immediately, before the data was released.

“We were seeing from one week to the next, this jump, this complete change in how immigration courts and immigration judges were deciding and issuing bonds,” said Lauren Michel Wilfong, a lawyer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

In early December, the network filed a Freedom of Information Act request after hearing that immigration judges at Adelanto and other immigration courts received guidance instructing them to justify any granted bond requests to their superior in writing.

In response to the FOIA request, the Executive Office for Immigration Review turned over a series of emails from mid-November. Those emails are almost entirely redacted. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network then filed a lawsuit, with representation by Tolchin, in January seeking to compel the Trump administration to release unredacted emails. That case is yet to be decided.

Wilfong said the intent of the lawsuit is to “expose the current policies and practices of immigration courts and how decisions are made.”

She said they want the unredacted records because they believe “this document will show, or at least show in part, the fundamental unfairness of how these decisions are being made.”

Soto said he has seen immigration judges pause bond determination hearings to seek guidance from the federal government about bond amounts.

“They essentially negotiate that,” Soto said. “That just seems so bizarre, and like we’re saying, describes a system that doesn’t actually confer any rights to the person that is sitting there in that room.”

Unlike federal and state court judges, immigration judges are employed by the Department of Justice and can be reassigned or fired. Former immigration judges said this means they are less independent than other types of judges. An August 2025 memo issued by the DOJ cautions that “independence and impartiality" was “not a license to ignore a clear directive from a proper appellate authority.” The memo goes on to say if a judge’s record was found to be an outlier it could indicate “systematic bias or failure to adhere to applicable law that warrants close examination and potential action.”

“That’s a problem,” Soto said. “It’s like an outside system under the DOJ that theoretically is supposed to be separate, civil, non-criminal, is really having these incredible life-altering consequences, and it has less due process than almost any other court that I’ve ever seen.”

Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, who served as an immigration judge in York, Pennsylvania, said that’s “a fixture, not a bug of the system.”

“[Immigration judges] work for the Attorney General and the Attorney General sets the rules,” said Arthur.

District court intervention in Uriarte’s case

Like others detained by ICE, Uriarte, the L.A. street vendor arrested in January, looked outside immigration court for help.

Barrett, the immigration judge at Adelanto, initially denied Uriarte’s request for a bond hearing on Feb. 17, 2026. He cited the September 2025 Board of Immigration Appeals opinion stating that people who entered the country illegally are not eligible for a hearing.

Federal judge John D. Early ordered the immigration court to hold a bond hearing for Uriarte on Feb. 27 because his case is in the Central District of California, and therefore subject to the partial stay on the BIA decision.

At that February hearing, Barrett determined Uriarte could not prove he was not a flight risk and denied his bond request for three reasons: That Uriarte entered the country illegally in 1992, that he worked without proper authorization, and because his brother (a U.S. citizen) was not a valid sponsor.

Tolchin represented Uriarte as he filed a habeas corpus petition on April 7, arguing that Barrett did not deny his bond request for valid reasons.

Intervention like this has become common under Trump’s second administration, as an unprecedented wave of habeas corpus filings — nearly 60,000 since January 2025 — has hit federal courts across the country. According to data gathered by ProPublica and analyzed by LAist, the annual average over the previous 15 years was fewer than 1,000.

Dillon, the former San Francisco immigration judge, said that while the federal data shows immigration judges are releasing fewer people on bond, the data doesn’t capture cases like Uriarte’s where bond releases only happened because of intervention by another court — including by judges in what she called “deep red pockets of the United States who have ruled that a bond hearing is necessary for fairness and due process.”

“The data does not show the people who only got bond hearings because a federal court judge ordered them to get a bond hearing,” she said, “that would otherwise not have gotten a bond hearing if it was left to the administration alone without the intervention of a federal judge who works for the federal judiciary.”

Robles said her father began to contemplate ending his case and accepting deportation to Mexico shortly after his second bond request was denied.

“I remember that night, and he said ‘there is nothing that I have to go to, no one that I can go to. I would be stepping out of what was familiar into something unknown because it's been over 30 years, everything has changed,’” Robles said.

Early granted Uriarte’s petition on April 14 and ordered Adelanto to release Uriarte or give him another bond hearing. Early said a new hearing must comply with federal law by considering the unique circumstances of Uriarte’s case.

On April 21, Barrett, held another bond hearing and denied it again.

“They kept denying him for (being a) flight risk, which is ridiculous because we provided all the courts enough information and proof that we wanted to try if there was any way to adjust his status,” said Robles of her father’s case.

In June, Early determined Uriarte’s previous bond hearings did not comply with federal law and ordered ICE to release him from Adelanto. In his decision, Early wrote that the court violated his rights to due process by relying on the fact that he came to the country illegally and worked without authorization, since that logic would lead to an automatic denial of bond in all cases, since those factors are true for anyone with an ongoing immigration case.

In his decision, Early quoted another case that found such an automatic denial “fails to comport with due process.”

Early ordered Uriarte’s release from detention on June 2. Robles said the court date for Uriarte’s immigration case has been postponed until 2028. He is required to check in with ICE until then.

“I still at times have trouble grasping the fact that he’s actually released and here with us,” Robles said, ”because I know there're many families that unfortunately don’t have the same circumstances.”

It's a summer of extreme heat around much of the world.

I know what that feels like. In Uttar Pradesh, India, where I grew up, temperatures easily soar upward of 120 degrees in May and June. But few people have access to an air conditioner. With a per capita income of around $1,000 a year, many people in this part of the country can't afford to buy an AC unit or pay the power bills that come with using one.

So how do people keep cool?

People in India and other countries across the Global South have long figured out ways to deal with horrible heat. I'd like to share a few tips I've learned from my elders back home in India. Some of the advice is just what you'd think — drinking lots of liquids and staying out of the sun. Other strategies might surprise you.

I know that each of these tips on its own may seem trivial. But as a heat wave researcher, I can tell you that done together, they can really help the body cool down. The key is to be mindful of the power of heat — and be prepared to prevent its adverse effects.

And remember, upon seeing any signs of heatstroke — like fever, headache, nausea, confusion or weakness — call an ambulance ASAP and get medical help. Use ice packs while waiting to be treated at the hospital. Seriously, folks, don't delay. Heatstroke can be fatal.

(Also: We want to hear from you! Scroll to the end of this story to find out how to share tips from your culture on how to cope with heat.)

Drink lots of liquids — it doesn't have to be water!

One of the childhood lessons seared into my head was to always be aware of your hydration status. And drink water, even in small sips, as soon as you do any physical activity. Carrying a water bottle when going out is not just common sense but is lifesaving.

Some of the drinks that are popular in India can help replenish the electrolytes lost in sweat, as well as keep your body hydrated.

We quench our thirst with fruity drinks like sugarcane juice, coconut water and a tangy and raw mango juice called aam ka pana. Made from boiled and blended tart raw mangoes, aam ka pana replenishes electrolytes lost in sweat. Premade mix is available from online vendors and in ethnic grocery stores. Just add chilled water and enjoy!

In India, we also like cooling, milk-based drinks like lassi, a yogurt beverage popular in the summertime, and buttermilk.

And eat something!

Another lesson was to never go out on an empty stomach — always eat something. A cucumber (which contains dissolved electrolytes) or a pineapple snack will do the trick. In India, we'll sprinkle black salt on a cuke, adding to its restorative powers.

Shower power

If you feel hot, take a cold shower or at least periodically splash water on your face and hands and douse your head in water — that'll bring down body temperature.

You can also play with water. When I was a kid in India, I'd have water balloon fights with neighborhood kids. Or we'd fill a tub with water and splash it on each other in the backyard.

Find a cool spot to chill out

Seek out the coolest parts of the building where you live and make that the place where you sleep or hang out. Because heat rises, lower floors in a multistory house are cooler. Verandas are shady and airy. During the day, block out the sunlight with heavy curtains. Turn on any fans you have. And don't be afraid to move furniture around in your quest for coolness. Back in Uttar Pradesh, we used to scoot our beds closer to the windows so we could catch a breeze while we slept.

If it becomes impossibly stuffy indoors, move outdoors and lie in a hammock. Air created from swinging helps cool the body down. As a kid, I remember that mango orchards were the best for hanging out. The dense foliage provided maximum shade coverage. The shade is your friend!

Take inspiration from architecture

Among many architectural innovations is a building design called jaali (meaning simply a net in Hindi and Urdu). Think of the Taj Mahal. It's basically a way of turning a stone wall into a latticed screen by carving geometric patterns with a series of small openings rather than a solid wall. This stone screen blocks direct sunlight and also causes air to speed up as it passes through the holes.

Now, it's true there's no way you can rebuild your house in the style of the Taj Mahal.

But you can take inspiration from another architectural ploy. Some buildings have a small body of water outside — like the Hawa Mahal (the Wind Palace) in Jaipur. Wind enters the palace through the jaali holes in the thousand windows and picks up moisture from the courtyard water body. The humid wind then moves toward the palace's thousand windows and cools down the inside air.

A nifty trick to bring in cool, humid air is to hang a curtain woven from grass on the door. Sprayed with water, it converts the hot air into a cool breeze. A special fragrant grass called khus is used for this purpose in India. I've also seen curtains made of fine bamboo — offering protection from direct sunlight — with a fine wet cloth added on the inside for cooling. Or a heavy, dampened cloth curtain will do the job.

The swamp cooler effect

The ubiquitous swamp cooler works best in low-humidity settings. Also known as an evaporative cooler, this electrical device passes a room's air over water-saturated pads, which cools down the air, then blows that air back into the room. These devices are cheaper than air conditioners and use less energy. You can even make one yourself.

Wear airy and light-colored clothing

Rabari people (a nomadic tribe in western India) and many other tribal communities use small mirrors on their clothes to reflect sunlight.

Besides the use of cotton and linen fabrics for their clothing — both materials are cooling because they have big pores in their woven threads that allow for air circulation — their choice of color in their clothes is ingenious. They cleverly make use of the fact that black not only takes in heat faster than white but that it also gives off heat much faster than white. Due to the nature of their work, women frequently go in and out of their tents while men grazing livestock stay out for longer durations. Therefore, to stay cool, it makes sense for women to wear darker colors (these hues cool down fast as soon as women go indoors) and men to wear lighter colors (which heat up more slowly than darker colors during prolonged outdoor stays).

Cover your head or neck

In the summers, covering one's head is an age-old practice. Whether it was the nobles wearing a pagdee (a turban) or the commonfolk using a wet rectangular piece of traditional cotton cloth called gamcha for men and dupatta for women. A variation of a white wet towel, it is almost universal in the countryside and even seen in cities.

Or take a light towel, called a gamchha in Hindi, dampen it and wear it around your neck or on your head like a scarf. This wet garb is omnipresent among men in the hinterlands and small towns.

Even our erstwhile British colonial masters fended off the sun with pith helmets — made of an extremely lightweight, dried, milky-white, spongy plant material that could be pressed into various shapes.

Avoid the noonday sun

During the hottest parts of the day, try not to burn energy or exhaust yourself by going out, exercising or standing outside, because the scorching sunlight and hot air will make you hotter. Instead, do what I did in Uttar Pradesh: chill at home or take an afternoon siesta. If you have to work and have a flexible schedule, try to perform your duties in the cooler hours of the day. Farmers in my state, for example, toil in the early mornings and late evenings. And markets close in the hot afternoons but remain open until late in the night.

Embrace the shade

Whether you are working outdoors or walking down the street, stay in the shade provided by trees. The actual air temperature is the same as in the sun, but your skin won't absorb the sun's rays and cause your body to heat up. Thanks to our forefathers for planting trees for us! And we return the favor by planting trees now, even when we know we aren't going to enjoy that shade in our lifetime. Our kids will. And that's what makes us a civilization.

Your turn: Share tips on how to cope with the heat

Did you grow up without an air conditioner in a hot place? How did you deal with the heat? Email us at globalhealth@npr.org with the subject line "Heat hacks," and we may feature your story on NPR.org. Please include your name and location. Submissions close on Monday, July 20. 

Dr. Gulrez Shah Azhar is a Seattle-based Aspen New Voices fellow who researches the health impacts of heat. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, a policy researcher at the RAND Corp. and an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A contentious bill lawmakers are debating this year has them asking the question: Should Californians have the right to sue if a company is using unfair tactics to strangle its competition?

Assembly Bill 1776 would expand California’s antitrust law to allow people and businesses that claim they’re harmed by a company’s attempts to stifle competition to sue in state court.

Under longstanding California law, such cases typically can only be brought when two or more parties are suspected of working together to smother competitors. Federal law allows for single-party enforcement, but proponents of California’s COMPETE Act say federal courts have watered down antitrust law to the point the state needs to chart its own course.

The fight is pitting some of the state’s biggest political spenders — labor unions and trial lawyers — against the lobbying might of California’s business and tech industries. Combined, the groups fighting over the bill have given at least $106 million to lawmakers’ campaigns since 2000, according to the CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

Proponents say the measure would give consumers a way to fight to keep independent grocery stores and pharmacies open, prevent supply chains for farms and restaurants from being controlled by single firms and give patients more options for their medical care.

The measure’s author, Democratic Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, told the Senate Judiciary Committee late last month that more than 75% of U.S. industries have experienced consolidation since the late 1990s.

“When companies gain that much power and abuse it, that means higher prices, less choice, fewer opportunities for job creators to start small businesses and suppressed wages for working families,” said Aguiar-Curry, who represents the Davis area.

Business groups say if the measure were signed into law it would open up a new way for predatory law firms to shake down companies. Business owners have complained for years about California laws allowing activists and a cottage industry of lawyers to bombard them with cash demands and lawsuits over disability access, product warning labels, labor complaints and consumer privacy.

The California Chamber of Commerce was so alarmed by this latest attempt to increase companies’ legal risks, its lobbyists placed billboards near the Capitol earlier this year. They targeted Aguiar-Curry by name.

“Cecilia, prices are high enough already,” one billboard read. “Don’t make life more expensive for California consumers.” Chamber spokesperson John Myers declined to discuss the billboards.

Moderate Democrats remain leery

If the group’s goal was to pressure lawmakers to drop the measure, it may have backfired.

The rare public attack on a popular, high-ranking Democrat appears to have galvanized support for the bill, despite concerns from several moderate Democrats that the legislation could make it harder to do business in California.

At least one antitrust expert says those concerns are valid.

Babette Boliek, a law professor at Pepperdine University and a former chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission, argues the bill is so vague it would “invite judges to pick winners and losers based on subjective sympathies rather than measurable harm.”

She likened it to having “a speed limit that no one knows exists.”

Aguiar-Curry’s team has been receptive to some concerns. After pushback, she added an exemption intended to protect small, independently owned California businesses, provided they have no more than 100 employees and averaged $10 million or more in gross annual receipts over the previous three years.

Ben Golombek, an executive vice president at Cal Chamber, said thousands of California businesses would still be vulnerable to costly litigation, including from their competitors.

“This unprecedented and massive legal liability for businesses of every size — small, medium, and large — that this bill creates is why we’re so opposed to it,” he said.

Mark Ramos, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council, said the legislation would ensure consolidation doesn’t drive down wages while raising the price of goods for workers. As grocery chains merge, it’s also been harder for his members to bargain for living wages that once allowed workers like him to afford their own homes, he said.

“With that consolidation has come the larger challenge of not … being able to negotiate a contract that allows our members to kind of thrive in their local economy because these grocers no longer have to compete against each other,” he said.

Some Democrats, notably Sen. Tom Umberg, the Democratic chairperson of the judiciary committee, are leery.

A major sticking point for Umberg is whether private citizens and businesses could sue in what’s known as a “private right of action.” Umberg told the committee that he wants only local prosecutors and the California attorney general to have that authority for now.

“We want to make sure that we are not stifling competition by virtue of the threat of lawsuits,” Umberg told the committee.

Aguiar-Curry said she would make most of Umberg’s requested changes, but she wouldn’t commit to limiting enforcement to just prosecutors. She said she’d continue work on making “it harder to bring a meritless suit” in the next version of the bill.

Will measure act as a deterrent?

The bill passed the committee with only Republicans voting against it, but Umberg did not vote when it was his turn, which counts the same as voting “no.”

Not voting is a common tactic California lawmakers use to express discomfort with a bill while avoiding a firm “no” that could anger powerful interest groups or legislative colleagues. Umberg was joined by 15 other Democrats who did not vote when it narrowly passed the Assembly.

The COMPETE Act will next be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee when lawmakers return from their summer recess in early August.

Supporters hope the final version doesn’t end up preventing Californians from suing a company over anticompetitive behavior.

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopolization activist group, said it’s imperative that ordinary Californians have the right to pursue legal action.

Otherwise, he said, wealthy corporations will use their lobbying cash and political clout to pressure politicians and regulators into giving them a free pass.

“The private right of action is a critical backstop to the politicization of antitrust enforcement, which threatens the entire project of policing markets for fairness,” he said.

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

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will deliver a primetime address this week that he says will include a focus on elections, suggesting he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. The speech comes as he's escalated calls for Republicans to pass tighter federal voting rules for November's midterm elections.

The Republican president has been guarded about what he plans to say in the 9 p.m. Thursday speech, scheduled as he confronts a collapsing deal to end the war with Iran. He also faces numerous domestic issues, including recent deadly shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Asked for a preview of the speech on Tuesday, Trump offered scant detail but said he has "really big news."

"It doesn't get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country," Trump said in the Oval Office. He refused to go further, saying he wanted to "save it" for the moment, though he also hinted he would be talking about a hodgepodge of issues.

"We'll be discussing other things, too," Trump said, without elaborating. "It's going to be a very big announcement."

Trump has used the power of the primetime presidential address — typically reserved for milestones — to deliver politically charged speeches before, including one in December when he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats. But Thursday's address seems poised to go even further, using the moment to amplify election lies before an audience of millions in an effort to boost Republican prospects before midterms that threaten to hobble Trump for the remainder of his term.

On Monday, when asked about the speech, Trump repeated baseless claims of voter fraud in the Los Angeles primary race for mayor. During the interview with conservative outlet Newsmax, Trump said Republican Spencer Pratt lost his primary bid because of fraud, citing in part California's slow vote count.

Federal prosecutors said they were opening fraud investigations in the state last month after Trump drew attention to the claim.

The president's preoccupation with voting fraud and election security dates back at least to 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton. After he won, he convened a voting integrity commission to support his claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote, though the commission disbanded without uncovering any such evidence.

Four years later, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump again claimed cheating and zeroed in on the Democrat's narrow win in Georgia. Trump called the state's secretary of state and pressured him to "find 11,780 votes," just enough votes to overturn Biden's victory in the state. He, along with than a dozen allies, was indicted in the state though the charges were later dropped.

Repeated audits and reviews -- many run by Republicans, including Trump's own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

Before winning in 2024, Trump was again laying the groundwork to claim cheating if he lost. After returning to office, he stocked his administration with officials who back his false claims of 2020 election fraud.

Trump made voting regulation central in this term

Frequently declaring that he won the White House "three times," Trump has made voting regulation a core issue during his second term, demanding legislation that would require voter ID and sharply limit mail-in voting. Facing midterm races that will decide control of Capitol Hill, Trump has stirred new claims to cast doubt on election results that could challenge his power in Washington.

Earlier this year, FBI agents raided elections offices in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing materials from the 2020 election. Tulsi Gabbard, then Trump's director of national intelligence, traveled to Atlanta to oversee the execution of the search warrant.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, campaigning in Georgia for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and governor's candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, smiled Tuesday when asked about Trump potentially rehashing the 2020 election in his national address.

He called it a strategy "for losers."

"I think people are exhausted by having conversations about elections that happened six years ago, that we have the answer to," Moore said. "He continues to bring this up because he cannot get out of his mind that he actually could have lost."

Beyond Georgia, Trump has widely taken aim at states that allow voters to submit ballots by mail. Trump said he called a U.S. attorney in California and demanded scrutiny of the governor's primary last month as votes were being counted.

Last week, Trump ousted the remaining members of the federal Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan panel that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.
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