Politics
California could boot thousands of immigrants from program that aids elderly and disabled
In Bell Gardens, Raquel Martinez said she has relied for nearly three years on a program that pays an assistant to help her make it safely to her frequent appointments at the MLK Medical Campus.
Martinez, 65, is blind and has cancer. If she did not have the help of her support worker, Martinez said, she would struggle to navigate the elevators and find the right office. Her assistant also helps her with groceries and other daily tasks such as housekeeping, she said, tending to her 21 hours a week.
“I was in need of a lot of help,” Martinez said in Spanish.
As budget cuts squeeze the state, California could yank such assistance from elderly, blind or otherwise disabled immigrants who have relied on the state’s In-Home Supportive Services program.
IHSS pays assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking; provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional; and accompany them to and from doctor’s appointments. It aims to help people remain safely in their own homes, rather than having to move into nursing facilities or suffer without needed care.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed cutting immigrants in the country illegally from the IHSS program, estimating it would save California nearly $95 million as the state stares down a $44.9-billion budget deficit.
The proposed cut has outraged groups that advocate for immigrants and disabled people, which argued it would be a shortsighted move that would jeopardize Californians who need day-to-day support, put them at increased risk of deportation and ultimately drive up costs for the state.
At a recent hearing in Sacramento, Ronald Coleman Baeza called it “indefensible” for Newsom to propose “to eliminate these services for a population for no reason but for their immigration status.”
“It’s right out of Donald Trump’s playbook,” said Baeza, managing director of policy for the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “Without IHSS, these individuals will need costly and preventable hospital and nursing home care, and family caregivers will go without pay,” perpetuating “a generational cycle of poverty.”
In California, IHSS is open to blind, disabled and aged people on Medi-Cal, the California Medicaid program. Medi-Cal has expanded over time to include immigrants here illegally, beginning with children and eventually covering Californians of all ages. State officials emphasized that if the cut goes through, immigrants without legal status would remain eligible for Medi-Cal.
“The IHSS benefit for the undocumented population was an expansion of services,” H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the Department of Finance, said in an email. “None of these solutions were made easily or lightly. The overall goal was to maintain core programs and base benefits” such as Medi-Cal, “in particular, Medi-Cal services regardless of citizenship status.”
The California Department of Social Services said nearly 3,000 immigrants without legal status had been authorized for IHSS. Budget officials said more than 1,500 were receiving such benefits as of earlier this year.
At a California State Senate subcommittee hearing, a Department of Social Services representative said the state agency was working with the Department of Health Care Services to see what other benefits people being jettisoned from IHSS might be able to access “to mitigate any negative impacts.”
Most of the affected people getting such assistance are 50 and older, but the program also serves children with disabilities who might otherwise need to live in facilities, advocates said.
Advocates fear that if the proposed cut is approved by state lawmakers, people in the country illegally could lose such support as soon as July. The Department of Social Services said it would issue notices at least 10 days in advance to people being cut off. Martinez, who is here illegally, hadn’t heard that IHSS could be yanked away until a reporter mentioned it.
Blanca Angulo, 62, who helps others through the local group Inmigrantes con Discapacidades — Immigrants with Disabilities — said rolling back the benefits would be “a terrible blow.”
“They don’t know the life of a disabled person because they’re not walking in our shoes,” she said in Spanish. “So for them it’s very easy to take away these services without thinking about it.”
Booting people from the program could also have reverberating effects on families, advocates said. In many cases, relatives are the ones being paid to provide care under the program. Anthony Wright, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Health Access California, called it “a double whammy.”
If a caregiver “loses income and has to potentially find other work, then who does the caregiving?” he asked. “Or they continue the caregiving, but then they have no means to meet basic needs.”
In the Hollywood area, Jose Villasana Moran worries about what losing the program would mean for his family. His husband took a pay cut from working as an assistant manager at a restaurant to serve as the IHSS caregiver for his 63-year-old mother, who is here illegally and has Alzheimer’s disease.
“My mom needs help 24/7,” Moran said. “I don’t know what we will do. … We have to dress her. We have to comb her hair, clip her nails, make her food because she cannot cook anymore.”
Putting her in a nursing home “would be the last resort,” if they could even afford it, Moran said. His late father had needed more care than they could provide and had endured shoddy care at a dirty facility, he said.
“I would not want my mom to go through that.”
Being jettisoned from the program would mean losing the income his husband had been receiving for her care, now capped at 195 hours a month, he said. Moran was determined that somehow, between the two of them, “we’re going to try to take care of my mom, even if we don’t have the money.”
But he fears other vulnerable people who are in the country illegally may be left alone without help, putting themselves and others at risk, “because family members are forced to leave the house and work.”
In Contra Costa County, Norma Garcia has been attending to her 67-year-old mother, who has dementia and needs constant care, through the IHSS program. If her mother is cut off from the program, and Garcia is no longer paid to care for her, “how am I going to buy food? How will I keep paying the bills?” she asked.
“My spouse works, but it’s not enough,” she said in Spanish. Finding another job outside their home in El Sobrante is impossible when her mother needs so much help, Garcia said.
“I can’t leave her alone for even a minute.”
Hagar Dickman, a senior attorney with the advocacy group Justice in Aging, called it “a really big inequity issue.”
“It forces a targeted population, which is the individuals who are undocumented, to either seek institutional care … or to increase impoverishment of their families,” Dickman said.
Critics also argue that any savings from ejecting people here illegally from IHSS could be outstripped by the expense of putting more of them into nursing facilities. Attorneys with Disability Rights California pointed out that the state has estimated a nursing home costs an average of $124,188 annually — far more than the average cost of roughly $28,000 for people in the country illegally on IHSS, they said.
“This looks like a classic example of ‘a penny wise, a pound foolish,’ ” Wright said. Even if only a fraction move into nursing homes, “it would still cost more money, because nursing home care is so much more costly.”
Dickman added that being pushed into a nursing facility could put immigrants at risk of losing their shot at legal status. Under the “public charge” rule, people can be blocked from getting a green card or citizenship if they are likely to become “primarily dependent” on government aid. Medi-Cal benefits do not usually factor into those decisions — but they can if someone is institutionalized for long-term care at government expense.
As it stands, Angulo said many immigrants here illegally are already afraid to use IHSS services for fear of possible consequences. “The laws are always changing,” she said in Spanish, “for good or for bad.”
At a recent hearing, a representative of the Western Center on Law & Poverty warned that the advocacy group believes the cuts would violate state and federal law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, and said it was “exploring litigation options.”
Palmer said Newsom “respects that there will be disagreement over many of these proposals, and that other alternative approaches may be put forward in the weeks ahead as discussions with the Legislature continue.”
Politics
California beach ‘Resist!’ protest pushes ‘kindness’ while calling to ‘86 47’ in anti-Trump message
Nearly 1,000 people gathered at Main Beach in Santa Cruz, California, on Saturday for a Pride Month protest aimed squarely at President Donald Trump.
Participants formed a massive human banner that spelled out “Resist!” in rainbow colors as part of a demonstration organized by Indivisible Santa Cruz County.
The 220-foot-wide display, with letters reaching 70 feet high, was designed by longtime left-wing activist Brad Newsham.
Organizers described the event as a peaceful act of resistance and a show of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.
SEATTLE MAYOR ACCUSED OF LYING AFTER BLAMING CHRISTIAN RALLY FOR PARK VIOLENCE
Left: Protesters hold signs reading “Peace,” “Love,” and “Freedom.” Right: Beachgoers gather near coastal homes along the cliffs at Main Beach in Santa Cruz, California. The area was the site of a large-scale protest against President Donald Trump organized as part of the city’s Pride celebration. (iStock and Getty Images)
“It’s very important, the more people [who] can show our neighbors, our politicians in the world, that nonviolent resistance is the way to express our dissatisfaction with the way our country’s going,” said event organizer Becca Moeller to Lookout Santa Cruz.
But just above the colorful banner was a very different kind of message: “86 47,” a phrase many interpreted as a call to “get rid of” the 47th President of the United States.
In slang, “86” typically means to cancel, eliminate, or even destroy. Combined with “47,” the number now associated with President Trump’s second term, the phrase has raised alarms among critics who say it crossed a line.
Earlier this month, former FBI Chief James Comey posted a similar message in the sand, but instead of kelp, they were shells. He has since removed the post after widespread criticism and action by law enforcement.
SEATTLE MAYOR BLAMES CHRISTIAN RALLY FOR INSPIRING VIOLENT ‘ANARCHISTS’ WHO ‘INFILTRATED’ COUNTER-PROTEST
Beachgoers enjoying a sunny day with tents and umbrellas along the coastline, houses situated on the cliff in the background, Santa Cruz, California, June 22, 2024. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
“We don’t need a king. We want to go back to the way we were. We want to make America kind again,” said protester Beth Basilius to Lookout Santa Cruz.
While the event promoted “kindness” and inclusivity, the imagery told a more conflicted story.
“They claim they want to make America ‘kind’ again, but then they spell out ‘86 47’ in the sand. That’s not kindness — that’s a coded call to eliminate someone they disagree with. It’s hypocritical,” said Mike LeLieur, chair of the Santa Cruz County Republican Party to Fox News Digital.
LeLieur said local conservatives face growing hostility from the political left.
“We’ve had vehicles vandalized, tires slashed, and windows broken. I was forced off the road and attacked just for having a Trump sticker. At our State of the Union watch party, we were swarmed by angry protesters. It’s been nonstop hostility — and these are the same people who call themselves the ‘Party of Peace.’”
Aerial view of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with various amusement rides and beachgoers on a sunny day, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa Cruz, California, June 22, 2024. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
Just 8.5% of voters in the city of Santa Cruz are registered Republicans, according to the most recent data from the California Secretary of State.
Supporters of the protest claimed that “86 47” was a symbolic rejection of Trump’s agenda, not a literal threat. But critics say that argument falls flat in a political climate where coded language carries real-world consequences.
“In California — and especially in Santa Cruz County — the left is creating a political environment of non-acceptance and persecution,” said Daniel Enriquez, a representative of the California Republican Assembly. “It’s consistent with the goals of socialist movements throughout history.”
Jenny Evans, co-leader of Indivisible Santa Cruz County, defended the event.
“When a great number of people come out to do something like this, it just is one more thing to show that we’re not all saying, ‘Fine, fine. We’ll go along with whatever you want,’” she said to Lookout Santa Cruz.
The event was also part of Santa Cruz’s 50th Pride celebration. Participants were instructed to dress in matching rainbow colors, coordinated with fabric laid out across the beach starting at 7 a.m.
The protest was peaceful, but critics say calling for kindness while displaying “86 47” sent a message that was anything but.
Indivisible Santa Cruz County did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Politics
‘Our own doing’: California Democrats try to figure out how to win national elections again
In the aftermath of Democrats’ widespread electoral failures last year, party activists in California who gathered for their annual convention this weekend struggled with balancing how to stick to their values while also reconnecting with voters who were traditionally part of their base — notably working-class Americans.
California’s progressive policies and its Democratic leaders were routinely battered by Republicans during the 2024 election, with then-vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris taking the brunt of it. Harris ultimately lost the election to Trump, partly because of shrinking support among traditional Democratic constituencies, including minorities and working-class voters.
“We got to be honest in what happened, because losing elections has consequences,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, during a rousing speech Saturday afternoon. “We’re in this mess because some of it’s our own doing. … None of us can afford to shy away from having hard conversations about what it’s going to take to win elections.”
Walz, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said Democrats don’t need to retreat from their ideals, such as protecting the most vulnerable in society, including transgender children. But they need to show voters that they are capable of bold policy that will improve voters’ lives rather than delivering incremental progress, he said.
“The Democratic Party, the party of the working class, lost a big chunk of the working class,” he said. “That last election was a primal scream on so many fronts: do something, do something, stand up and make a difference.”
California is home to the most Democrats in the nation as well as a large number of the party’s most deep-pocketed donors, making the state a popular spot for presidential hopefuls from across the country.
In addition to Walz, another potential 2028 White House candidate who addressed the 4,000 delegates and guests at the Anaheim Convention Center was New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Booker argued that Democrats must remember the courage of their ancestors who fought for civil and voting rights and created the social safety net for the most vulnerable Americans as they try to fight Trumpism.
“Real change does not come from Washington. It comes from communities. It comes from the streets,” he said in a Saturday morning speech. “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.”
Harris, who is weighing a 2026 gubernatorial run and is also viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, addressed the convention by video. Gov. Gavin Newsom, also viewed as a possible White House contender, did not appear at the convention.
Delegate Jane Baulch-Enloe, a middle school teacher from Pleasant Hill in the Bay Area, said she wasn’t sure that California’s particular brand of liberalism will sell on the national stage.
“I don’t know if a California Democrat can win a presidential election,” she said as she and her daughter sorted through swag and campaign fliers in the convention cafe. “California is thought of as the crazy people. … I don’t mean that in a bad way — though I know some people do — but we do things differently here.”
She said she learned from President Obama’s memoir, “Audacity of Hope,” that most, if not all, Americans “want the same things,” but talk about them differently and have different approaches for getting there. California Democrats, Baulch-Enloe said, “need to get people on our side and help them understand that we aren’t just wacko liberals, and teach people that it’s okay to want things” like healthcare for all and high union wages.
But the 2028 presidential race was not the focus of this year’s California Democratic Party convention. Delegates were more concerned about last year’s presidential and congressional losses — though California was a rare bright spot for the party, flipping three districts held by the GOP — and preparing for next year’s midterm elections. Delegates hope Democrats will take control of Congress to stop Trump from enacting his agenda.
Aref Aziz, a leader of the party’s Asian American Pacific Islander caucus, said the party needed to sharpen its messaging on economic issues if they want to have a chance of victory in coming elections.
“When it comes to the affordability issue, when it comes to economics, those are the things that across the broad spectrum of our coalition, all those things matter to everybody,” Aziz said. “And what really is, what really is important is for us to focus on that economic message and how we’re going to improve the quality of life for everyone in these midterm elections and future presidential elections.”
He noted he was in France on his honeymoon recently, and was strolling through a grocery store and buying half a dozen eggs for 1.50 euros (the equivalent of $1.70) when the news broke that California’s economy had grown to the fourth largest in the world.
“When you look at a lot of our economies, California and New York, by all accounts, GDP, the numbers that you look at, they’re doing great,” he said. “But when it comes to the cost that consumers are paying in these places, they’re so high and so far above other countries that we end up diminishing whatever value there is in our GDP, because everything’s so expensive.”
Some Democrats questioned the impact of the weaponization of California’s liberal policies, including defending transgender rights, on voters in battleground states in 2024.
But delegates and party leaders largely argued that the state needs to continue to be on the vanguard of such matters.
“People like to point a finger somewhere, and I think California is an easy target, but I disagree,” said delegate Melissa Taylor, president of Foothill Community Democrats. “Because I think that California is standing up for values that the Democratic Party believes in, like we believe in labor, we believe in healthcare, we believe in women’s rights, we believe in rights for LGBTQ people.”
Jodi Hicks, the president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said issues such as reproductive healthcare access also have an economic impact.
“We have to walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said, adding that the party’s 2024 losses were likely prompted by multiple factors, including Harris’ being the Democratic nominee for a little over three months after then-President Biden decided not to seek reelection.
“We’re going to be analyzing 2024 for a very long time,” Hicks said. “It was such unique circumstances.”
Times staff writer Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.
House Republicans eked out a win in May with their advancement of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” filled with negotiations and compromises on thorny policy issues that barely passed muster in the lower chamber.
Next week, Senate Republicans will get their turn to parse through the colossal package and are eying changes that could be a hard sell for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who can only afford to lose three votes.
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President Donald Trump listens to a question during an event to present law enforcement officers with an award in the Oval Office at the White House on May 19. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Congressional Republicans are in a dead sprint to get the megabill — filled with Trump’s policy desires on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt — onto the president’s desk by early July.
Trump has thrown his support behind the current product, but said during a press conference in the Oval Office on Friday that he expected the package to be “jiggered around a little bit.”
“It’s going to be negotiated with the Senate, with the House, but the end result is it extends the Trump tax cuts,” he said.
“If it doesn’t get approved, you’ll have a 68% tax increase,” the president continued. “You’re going to go up 68%. That’s a number that nobody has ever heard of before. You’ll have a massive tax increase.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has an identical margin to Johnson, and will need to cultivate support from a Senate GOP that wants to put its own fingerprints on the bill.
Senators have signaled they’d like to make changes to a litany of House proposals, including reforms to Medicaid and the timeline for phasing out green energy tax credits, among others, and have grumbled about the hike to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap pushed for by moderate House Republicans.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks during a news conference following the Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on March 11. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Thune said many Republicans are largely in favor of the tax portion of the bill, which seeks to make Trump’s first-term tax policy permanent, and particularly the tax policies that are “stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy.”
Much of the debate, and prospective tweaks, from the upper chamber would likely focus on whether the House’s offering has deep enough spending cuts, he said.
“When it comes to the spending side of the equation, this is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House and an opportunity to do something meaningful about controlled government spending,” Thune said.
The House package set a benchmark of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
Some in the Senate GOP would like to see that number cranked up marginally to at least $2 trillion, largely because the tax portion of the package is expected to add nearly $4 trillion to the deficit, according to recent findings from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
“There’s just so many great things in this bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News Digital. “The only thing I would like to do is try to cut the spending, and I would love to take a little bit from a lot of places, rather than a lot from just one place.”
SPEAKER JOHNSON CLASHES WITH RAND PAUL OVER ‘WIMPY’ SPENDING CUTS IN TRUMP’S BILL
Sen. Ron Johnson talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., after the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on May 22. (CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Others, like Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., want to see the cuts in the package return to pre-pandemic spending levels, which would amount to roughly a $6 trillion slash in spending.
Johnson has remained unflinching in his opposition to the current bill, and warned that “no amount of pressure” from Trump could change his mind.
“President Trump made a bunch of promises,” Johnson said at an event in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “My promise has been, consistently, we have to stop mortgaging our children’s future. OK, so I think there are enough [Republicans] to slow this process down until the president, our leadership, gets serious about returning to a pre-pandemic level.”
Others are concerned over the proposed slashes to Medicaid spending, which congressional Republicans have largely pitched as reform efforts designed to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the program used by millions of Americans.
The House package would see a roughly $700 billion cut from the program, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and some Senate Republicans have signaled that they wouldn’t support the changes if benefits were cut for their constituents.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., warned in an op-ed for The New York Times last month that cutting benefits was “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.” Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, raised concerns about what proposed cuts to the program would do to rural hospitals in her state.
“I cannot support proposals that would create more duress for our hospitals and providers that are already teetering on the edge of insolvency,” she said.
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