Politics
Proposition 32 was just rejected. In blue California, why did the minimum-wage boost fail?
Californians, who have historically supported efforts to raise the minimum wage, were not swayed this time around.
After two weeks of postelection uncertainty, Proposition 32, the initiative to increase the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour, was defeated by a narrow margin.
The rejection was “a pretty poignant sign of the times in a state like California,” said John Kabateck, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which had urged voters to vote no. “It is certainly sending a message that Californians across the political spectrum are fed up with higher costs and greater uncertainty on Main Street.”
Proposition 32 was declared defeated after falling just short, with 49.2% voting “yes.” The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday evening.
The outcome was the latest indication of a rightward shift in the reliably blue state, which saw a number of surprising results from the Nov. 5 election. Voters overwhelmingly supported a ballot measure to undo a decade of progressive criminal justice reform, and rejected an initiative that would have banned forced prison labor.
Opponents and economists said that by striking down the proposed minimum-wage increase, voters signaled that they were nervous about businesses raising prices to offset their added labor expenses. The prospect of paying more for consumer goods was especially unappealing after years of high inflation, which has led to a persistent feeling among many people that they’re on shaky financial footing.
“Arguments about the minimum wage are always very emotional,” said Till von Wachter, an economics professor at UCLA. “Economic issues are top of mind right now, and that can lead to a rejection of a higher minimum wage.”
Voters were closely divided on the proposition, which would have raised the minimum wage to $17 an hour immediately for larger employers and to $18 an hour starting in January. Smaller employers with 25 or fewer employees would have been required to do the same but at a slower rate: $17 an hour next year and $18 an hour in 2026.
The initiative received support in counties including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and all nine that make up the San Francisco Bay Area. Higher-income counties were more likely to have voted yes, according to a Times review of voter results, although Orange and San Diego counties voted no.
California already has one of the highest minimum wages in the country, trailing just the District of Columbia and Washington. The state’s minimum wage has doubled since 2010, most recently increasing to $16 from $15.50 in January.
Many cities — including Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Pasadena — have even higher minimums. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 for 15 years.
As such, voters might have felt that another wage hike was unnecessary, said Chris Thornberg, an economist who founded Beacon Economics, a research and consulting firm in Los Angeles. The outcome was in part a reflection of the overall swing to the right nationwide, he said, and also about a sense of “fairness.”
“As you continue to push the minimum wage up, people are less empathetic,” he said. “The California public is at that point where they think this is just not fair to the rest of us.”
“Enough is enough. The state’s voters continue to support so-called progressive policies, but are drawing the line when it impacts their cost of living or quality of life.”
— Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn.
In practice, the effects of raising the minimum wage on inflation and on unemployment are complex and hotly debated.
Supporters of Proposition 32 argued that increasing the minimum wage stimulates the economy, improves the standard of living for lower-income workers and reduces employee turnover. A new standard, they said, was necessary to cope with the state’s exorbitant cost of living.
The campaign estimated that more than 2 million California workers stood to benefit from the measure, which was spearheaded by millionaire investor and anti-poverty activist Joe Sanberg.
“The fight for higher wages and economic dignity for millions of California workers doesn’t end here — we’ll continue until every California worker earns enough to live and thrive,” Sanberg said in a statement Tuesday evening. “While today’s outcome was not what we expected, we are hopeful for the work ahead.”
Opponents said the measure was bad for consumers — and for workers. They worried companies would pass on the extra labor costs to customers through higher product prices, and would try to save money by laying off staff, slashing employee hours and replacing workers with automation.
“It was a very easy call to vote no on it,” said Bill Bender, 70, a restaurant operations consultant from San José. “It’s too much, too fast for the industry to absorb.”
California had a recent real-world case study in raising the minimum wage to consider, which may have factored into voters’ decision-making: In April, the state’s fast-food workers saw their pay jump to a minimum of $20 an hour, an increase established by Assembly Bill 1228.
Many cashiers, line and prep cooks, counter attendants and baristas saw as much as a 25% raise overnight thanks to the new law, which applies to California fast-food workers employed by any chain with more than 60 locations nationwide, and covers corporate-owned and franchised locations.
Even before it kicked in, fast-food giants including Chipotle, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Jack in the Box and Shake Shack warned that they were planning to raise menu prices as a result, leaving customers to eat the cost.
“Fast-food consumers are very frustrated by the price increases that they’re seeing,” said Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn., which opposed Proposition 32. “They were just connecting the dots and saying, ‘This $18-an-hour minimum wage is going to increase prices across the board.’”
A McDonald’s in Azusa. The company warned it would raise prices after California’s fast-food minimum wage hike took effect in April.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Michaela Mendelsohn operates six El Pollo Loco locations in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. She believed that raising the state’s minimum wage would have led to a jump in prices, but said she supported Proposition 32 because it would have narrowed the gap between what she and other fast-food operators are required to pay their employees and what non-fast-food companies pay.
Since the state moved to $20 an hour for fast-food workers, Mendelsohn said transactions at her six stores are down 5% to 8% from a year ago and she has trimmed total labor hours by 8% to 10%.
David Neumark, a UC Irvine economist and national expert on minimum wages and their economic effects, said he was surprised by the outcome and that it was hard to pinpoint a single factor for the measure’s defeat.
His research over the years has shown there’s an economic tradeoff in pushing up the minimum wage: Some lower-income workers benefit from increased pay, but overall jobs are reduced as employers cut back due to higher costs, which hurts the financial well-being of the working poor and those with fewer skills.
Although it’s a commonly accepted theory that a boost in the minimum wage could lead to job loss, von Wachter of UCLA said that isn’t always the case.
“The argument that higher wages lead to lower employment does not have a lot of evidence going for it,” he said. “Instead, in situations where employers have some market power, higher minimum wages can raise employment.”
California voters are heavily Democratic and a high minimum wage generally aligns with left-wing values, but voters on both sides of the aisle didn’t adhere to typical party-line trends when it came to Proposition 32.
Randy Jeffs, a Republican from Irvine, said he didn’t vote for a presidential candidate last week. But he did vote yes on Proposition 32 after calculating that a worker paid at the higher rate would still only make $37,440 a year on a full-time, 40-hour-a-week schedule.
“If prices rise a little to pay for an $18-an-hour minimum wage, so be it,” Jeffs, 70, said. “If the wealth is to be spread about, what better way than to those willing to learn [and] work?”
But in the end, most voters decided that “enough is enough,” Condie said.
“The state’s voters continue to support so-called progressive policies,” he said, “but are drawing the line when it impacts their cost of living or quality of life.”
Politics
Rubio sanctions Cuban groups with ties to US nonprofit network funded by communist donor Neville Roy Singham
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio put U.S. organizations on notice: they can no longer do business with a key Cuban organization that has spent over six decades – since the launch of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in 1959 – cultivating relationships with U.S. activists and groups, many of them now funded by communist American tycoon Neville Roy Singham.
The sanctions target the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym ICAP, an organization founded by Castro in 1960 to spread Marxist ideology and support for Cuba. Long ago, U.S. officials and intelligence assessments concluded ICAP is a key component of Cuba’s intelligence apparatus.
“For decades, Cuba has been the world capital for radical left-wing terrorism,” Rubio said. “The regime in Havana has recruited, trained and backed violent Marxist and third-worldist movements across our hemisphere and beyond.”
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Marco Rubio moves to put sanctions on a group that Fidel Castro established in 1960 to spread Cuba’s communist influence in the world. (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, ICAP worked with U.S. nonprofits, including the People’s Forum, Progressive International and CodePink, to organize a March “convoy” that included controversial Marxist streamer Hasan Piker landing in Cuba to support Cuba’s communist party.
The trip has since attracted federal scrutiny, with CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin confirming she received questions from federal officials about the trip, investigating whether she violated sanctions.
Late last month, Fox News Digital published a three-part series, reporting that federal investigators are examining Cuba’s alleged malign foreign influence operation in the U.S., investigating a network of 145 groups with collective revenues of about $1 billion, promoting Cuba’s agenda and communist ideology.
“Today, we are targeting the network that enables and funds Cuba’s subversive and radical operations,” Rubio said.
The groups working closely with ICAP include the People’s Forum, CodePink, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental, funded by Singham, a Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai. As reported, Singham has pumped $285 million into nonprofits since 2017 that have built very close relationships with ICAP and the communist government of Cuba.
Singham is married to CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans.
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ICAP is today led by Fernando González Llort, one of five former Cuban intelligence officers, known as the “Cuban Five,” convicted in the U.S. years ago on espionage-related charges and released after spending time in jail.
Critics say ICAP acts as a gateway for revolutionaries from around the world to get embedded in the propaganda, organizing tactics and strategic goals of the Communist Party of Cuba. ICAP has denied wrongdoing and says it’s a civil society organization.
ICAP was one of five entities that Rubio designated as off-limits under sanctions authorities established by President Donald Trump’s Cuba executive order. The sanctions also target Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), Minera La Victoria S.A. and the state-run tourism company Amistur Cuba S.A., which has arranged trips to Cuba with U.S. nonprofits in the Singham network.
Experts said the move signals that the Trump administration is focused not only on the Cuban government but also on U.S. institutions that U.S. officials believe help project Cuban influence internationally.
A declassified CIA report from the Cold War era, “Cuba: Castro’s Propaganda Apparatus and Foreign Policy,” described Cuba’s international propaganda and influence activities as a central component of Castro’s foreign policy strategy. The report named ICAP among organizations that act as important instruments for cultivating sympathetic political movements abroad and extending Cuban influence beyond the island.
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One of the most notable examples was the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuba solidarity program established in 1969 that brought generations of American activists to the island through exchanges organized with Cuban authorities and institutions including ICAP.
The program became one of the most visible pipelines connecting American activists to the Cuban revolutionary government.
Today, the Venceremos Brigade operates as a fiscally-sponsored project of the People’s Forum.
Lawmakers and federal authorities are examining whether organizations funded by Singham have acted on behalf of foreign interests without properly registering and have helped amplify messaging favorable to the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Cuba.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel (C) listens to Progressive International’s general coordinator, David Adler, during an event at the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) in Havana, on March 21, 2026. (Ernesto Mastrascusa/AFP via Getty Images)
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During the recent convoy in March, Progressive International co-founder David Adler appeared alongside Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and ICAP President González at an official event hosted by ICAP.
Years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass participated in Venceremos Brigade trips, a connection that her mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt resurfaced during her campaign. Bass has denied any wrongdoing.
Supporters of such exchanges describe them as educational and humanitarian programs intended to foster international understanding. Critics argue they function as political influence operations designed to build support for the Cuban regime and its ideological objectives.
The Cuban government condemned Rubio’s sanctions shortly after the announcement.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel accused the United States of escalating economic pressure against Cuba and attempting to intensify tensions between the two countries.
Hasan Piker, a Democratic Socialists of America member, and CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans meet in Havana, Cuba, as part of a “United Front” supporting the communist regime. (CodePink via Storyful)
“The Treasury Department has added new names of Cuban leaders, organizations and companies to an illegitimate sanctions list,” Díaz-Canel wrote on social media. “They are aimed at reinforcing the blockade measures and the scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States.”
Rubio’s warning extended beyond the sanctioned entities.
The action signals that the administration is increasingly focused on the networks, partnerships and influence channels that U.S. officials believe have helped advance Cuban interests abroad long after the Cold War officially ended.
“Anyone providing services to these sanctioned actors is at risk of sanctions themselves,” he said. “Foreign banks and other companies that provide services to these entities should freeze those activities.”
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Fox News Digital’s Reagan Schroeder contributed to this report.
Politics
Commentary: No, Mr. Hilton, our elections are not ‘a joke.’ It’s time for you to stand up to Trump
Well, that didn’t take long.
A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.
“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.
Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.
California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.
That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.
The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.
But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.
And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.
So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.
This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”
Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”
On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.
“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.
“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.
“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.
Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.
To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.
But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?
I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.
I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.
Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.
If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?
new video loaded: Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
transcript
transcript
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, now works for an office responsible for uncovering and defending against terrorism plots at the Pentagon.
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“Full pardon or commutation?” “Full pardon.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 4, 2026
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