West
California Senate candidates spar over Dem's proposal for $50 minimum wage: 'Do the math'
A Monday night debate in California between several candidates vying for an open Senate seat included a question about raising the minimum wage to $50, an idea that one Democrat candidate has floated.
“In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way that came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by,” Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Lee said when asked to defend her previous support of a $50 minimum wage and explain how it would be “sustainable.”
“Another survey very recently, $104,000; for a family of one, barely enough to get by, low income because of the affordability crisis.”
Lee has previously called for a $50 minimum wage, which would amount to around $104,000 per year of income. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and ranges from $16 to $20 in California.
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Rep. Barbara Lee (Fox News Digital)
“Just do the math. Of course, we have national minimum wages that we need to raise to a living wage,” Lee continued. “We’re talking about $20, $25 — fine. But I have got to be focused on what California needs and what the affordability factor is when we calculate this wage.”
Former baseball star Steve Garvey, the only Republican on the stage, told the moderators that the minimum wage “is where it is and should be.”
“If you look at what California has done to fast-food franchises right now, increasing the minimum wage to $20, and what’s going to happen,” Garvey said. “That’s going to increase costs for hardworking Californians to go to a franchise to get a Big Mac for $9, it’s going to be $15.”
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Rep. Adam Schiff (Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Demand Justice)
Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff took issue with Garvey’s statement and said that so many people are living on the street because they are being paid “poverty wages.”
“Try to find a house anywhere in California when you’re earning minimum wage,” Schiff told Garvey. “We have to raise people’s incomes.”
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California Senate candidate Steve Garvey (Steve Garvey)
Schiff and fellow Democrat candidate Katie Porter have floated support for minimum wages ranging from $20 to $25 per hour.
California passed legislation last fall that will require a $20 per hour minimum wage at all restaurants with at least 60 locations nationwide, though the law includes an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread.
Several major fast-food franchises, including McDonald’s and Chipotle, have already signaled that prices will have to rise in response to the increased labor costs.
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As businesses consider passing costs on to consumers, Fat Brands Chair Andy Wiederhorn recently said that “someone’s got to pay” for the jump in wages.
“The consumers who are voters must have known what they were getting into by promoting this legislation to raise the minimum wage from $15 to $20 and on its way to $25,” Wiederhorn told Fox Business this month.
“Everyone wants their employees to make more money, but it just costs. And someone’s got to pay for it. And the restaurant operators don’t have the margin for that. So, prices are going to go up.”
Rep. Katie Porter (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A 2021 Harvard Business Review study found that raising the minimum wage actually leads to lower compensation for employees.
In addition to companies being forced to raise prices, many economists have also warned that companies will be forced to cut jobs, which often ends up disproportionately hurting low-wage income earners, the very group supporters of raising the minimum wage are aiming to help.
“Apologists for the minimum wage routinely claim that increasing it will help low-income workers and have no negative effects,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow in regional economics with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, told FOX Business about raising the minimum wage last year.
“They often cite corporate greed as the only reason for relatively low wages in places like the fast-food industry. In reality, raising the minimum wage reduces employment and causes the higher cost of labor to be passed on to customers. Because low-income workers disproportionately buy fast food (like McDonald’s), they disproportionately bear the cost of not only the more expensive labor but also the lower employment levels.”
Antoni continued, “That fact exposes the reality that the true minimum wage is, and always has been, zero. For the worker that loses his or her job because of a higher minimum wage, they now have no income and higher food prices.”
Fox News Digital’s Madeline Coggins contributed to this report.
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KALISPELL, Mont. — Two app development teams from Code Girls United won the Congressional App Challenge in both Montana districts.
A team with Lily Kirkaldie, Charlie Kotthoff, and Danica Sabo from Great Falls won with their app ‘Cursive Create’.
The app helps teach cursive writing, which the team said is important since cursive is no longer taught in schools.
Three senior students from Browning High School, Aiyahna Green, Kalani Sun Rhodes, and Keesha Guerrero-Gobert, won with their app ‘Sspomo’.
This app provides awareness and resources for people facing mental health challenges, and was inspired by the Blackfeet tribe.
“They were really thoughtful about their community and what was affecting the people that they knew on the reservation, and what they could actually do to help them,” said Code Girls United CEO Marianne Smith.
“What they were seeing in the community was depression and other mental health issues, so they specifically wanted to create an app that would be able to help people that were in that same situation,” said Smith.
Both teams will travel to Washington D.C. for the National Science Fair’s ‘House of Code’, where they will showcase their apps in the U.S. Capitol.
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The event is scheduled for April 21 and 22.
Nevada’s population growth slowed dramatically last year, according to new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
New figures from the government agency showed Nevada grew 0.9 percent, which put it in the top 10 states for percentage growth (9th) from July 2024 to July 2025. However, this is down from July 2023 to July 2024 when the state grew by 1.7 percent.
In July 2024, Nevada had 3,253,543 residents, and in July of last year it had 3,282,188. From July 2023 to July 2024, Nevada was the sixth fastest-growing state in the country, which meant it dropped three spots for the time period of July 2024 to July 2025.
Nevada expanded from 3,214,363 residents in July 2023 to 3,267,467 in July 2024, which turned out to be the fastest year-over-year growth rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, since before the pandemic in 2019. However, all of these growth rates are below the time frame of 2015 to 2018 when the state saw unprecedented population growth.
Overall, U.S. population growth slowed “significantly” from July 2024 to July of last year with an increase of only 1.8 million people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the lowest population growth for the country since the early days of the pandemic when the population grew only 0.2 percent in 2021 year-over-year.
This population slowdown across the country follows a “sizeable” uptick in the growth rate in 2024 when the U.S. added 3.2 million people and grew 1 percent, the fastest annual population growth rate since all the way back in 2006.
“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, the assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the U.S. Census Bureau. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today.”
The population growth drop was felt across the country as all four census regions (West, Midwest, Northeast and the South) and every state except Montana and West Virginia saw growth slow or a decline in acceleration.
Five U.S. states experienced population decline from July 2024 to July 2025: California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia.
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.
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