Alice Wong, a visionary disability justice advocate whose writing helped people understand what it was like to live with a disability, died of an infection Friday at a San Francisco hospital. She was 51.
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More than 500,000 Californians demand voting overhaul, back ‘straightforward’ ID law
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FIRST ON FOX: More than 500,000 California voters have signed a petition to amend the state’s constitution to enforce voter ID laws for all elections, leaders of a coalition called Californians for Voter ID told Fox News Digital.
“We had a dog that voted in the last couple elections in Costa Mesa,” Republican California state Sen. Tony Strickland told Fox News Digital in a Wednesday phone interview about California’s persistent voter integrity concerns. “We don’t clean up our voter rolls. There are so many times where people move, college kids go out of state, or people move and they don’t clean up the voter rolls. And we mail out to everybody, and so you have a lot of live ballots with ballot harvesting.”
“Our initiative will now clean up the voter rolls throughout the state,” he added.
Strickland, who represents a district that includes portions of Orange and Los Angeles counties along the Southern California coast, is helping lead the charge to collect more than one million petition signatures from California voters in order to force the issue on the ballot for the 2026 election. The signature collection kicked off Oct. 1, meaning the group collected support from more than half-a-million voters in a one-month span.
CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS LAUNCH VOTER ID BALLOT PUSH, NEED 875K SIGNATURES BY DEADLINE
More than 500,000 California voters have signed a petition to amend the state’s constitution to enforce voter ID laws for all elections. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Californians for Voter ID initiative specifically would amend California’s constitution and require voters to present government-issued IDs before casting a ballot in all future elections in the state.
California voters would be required to present a government-issued ID before voting in-person, or provide the last four-digits of a government ID if voting by mail. Election officials, under the initiative, would be required to verify a voter’s citizenship to ensure only legal residents register to vote or receive ballots.
Democrats historically have opposed voter ID laws over claims it disenfranchises minority voters, while conservatives argue it will ensure only legal residents are able to cast ballots and further bolster voter integrity. Thirty-six states have voter ID laws already on the books, though such laws vary and have some exceptions.
Californians for Voter ID leaders, however, say the issue is not a partisan one, but an effort to protect democracy for all Americans.
The lead strategist for the effort, Ryan Erwin, told Fox News Digital that recent polling shows 70% of Californians across the political spectrum support elections requiring IDs to vote, while underscoring the outpouring of support that has led to more than 500,000 signatures already secured.
“We are on pace to qualify for the ballot faster than any measure in the history of California,” Erwin said. “Voter ID is a commonsense way to build trust in the election process by requiring election officials to use government data to verify citizenship and voter eligibility, while also requiring identification for every vote counted.”
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“Californians of all political stripes are eager to improve trust in the system by eliminating abuse and errors while protecting every eligible vote,” he continued. “The volunteer effort is overperforming, we have signatures from all 58 counties, and are on pace to qualify well ahead of our goal.”
The group needs a total of 874,641 in order to land the initiative on the 2026 ballot in the Golden State, but is aiming to secure 1.2 million signatures to ensure the support is certified by county officials who will go through the data before it is permitted to land on the ballot. Organizers have until March to secure the needed signatures before potentially getting on the ballot — with Strickland reporting he’s confident they will get the needed support.
State Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican from California, is confident they will get the needed support to get the voting initiative on the ballot. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“You have to be a citizen in order to register to vote,” Strickland said of the nuts and bolts of the amendment itself, calling it “very straightforward.”
“You have seven forms of documentation, you get to choose what form of documentation that you use in terms of the last four digits of whatever the documentation is,” he said. “When you go to the polls, you show your ID, and if you mail in your ballot, you show that proof of the documentation of the last four digits that you choose.”
“The other part of this initiative is we have a mandatory audit (to) all 58 counties of their election rules after every election,” he added.
Strickland is no stranger to voter ID efforts in the deep blue state, including championing a voter ID ballot initiative in Huntington Beach, California, in 2024, when he served on the city council. Voters approved the amendment forcing voters to show their ID when casting ballots in local elections, but the California Court of Appeals struck down the law in November.
If the statewide voter ID effort is approved by voters on the ballot in 2026, local lawmakers will be compelled to comply with voter ID laws set forth in the initiative.
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Strickland said the massive amount of support the initiative already has received is on par with a 1978 initiative, Proposition 13, “when the legislature was out of touch with the people, the people rose up” and passed the ballot measure that fundamentally changed how property taxes were assessed and limited in California.
Strickland also compared it to the successful recall of former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 — California’s first and only successful recall of a governor. Strickland was the first legislator to endorse Davis’ recall as energy and economic woes rocked the state.
If the California voter ID effort is approved by voters on the ballot in 2026, local lawmakers will be compelled to comply with voter ID laws set forth in the initiative. (Gary Leonard/Getty Images)
“Speaking around the state of California, I would equate what’s going on today with voter ID and voter integrity to those two movements in California,” he said.
The California state senator also praised California Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio and his group, Reform California, for their ongoing efforts championing voter ID laws in the state, describing DeMaio’s work as “relentless.” Strickland and DeMaio are joint authors of the voter ID push and have teamed up to meet with voters at various events to rally support, including a recent event in Santa Barbara, where the people couldn’t get through the door because it was so packed, he said.
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California’s voting laws have fallen under the Trump administration’s critical eye just this week, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posting to X Tuesday that the Golden State has the “WORST laws for securing elections in the entire nation.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that California is facing a “very serious legal and criminal review” over claims the state’s special election to redraw congressional district lines was mired in corruption. Voters passed the measure to redistrict on Tuesday, with Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrating
“California doesn’t require voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot – despite nearly 90% of Americans supporting photo ID laws,” Leavitt posted in a lengthy message detailing issues she sees with the state’s election process. “California uses universal mail-in-balloting, which we know is extremely vulnerable to fraud and abuse. In the 2024 election alone, California mailed nearly 10 million mail-in ballots that were never returned.”
The Heritage Foundation keeps a database compiling cases of known voter fraud — namely cases that have led to criminal convictions — and found California has at least 68 cases of voter fraud since 2001. The examples include individuals who fraudulently used absentee ballots for duplicate votes, non-resident voting and fraudulent voter registration.
The database shows other states, such as Illinois and Texas, have more instances of confirmed voting fraud, at more than 100 cases each, while other states such as Nebraska have seen only at least three instances of confirmed voter fraud in recent years.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt takes a question from a reporter during the daily briefing at the White House on Nov. 4, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Newsom has countered the claims, arguing California’s elections are fair and secure while slamming Trump over his remarks.
“He also announced today, right when polls were opening, that this election was rigged. Of course, those are familiar words. It’s exactly what Donald Trump said after Jan. 6, that day of love, where he tried to light democracy on fire, he tried to wreck this country,” Newsom said Tuesday after polling showed the state passed Proposition 50 to redistrict.
“I hope it’s dawning on people the sobriety of this moment,” Newsom continued. “What’s at stake. Tonight, as I said, is an extraordinary moment for our party, but again, it’s an extraordinary moment affirming those principles. Our Founding Fathers did not live and die to see the kind of vandalism to this republic and our democracy that Donald Trump is trying to perpetuate.”
A ballot initiative championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redistrict California’s congressional lines passed in a special election Nov. 4, 2025. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
For Strickland, he championed that the voter ID initiative will move ahead with the help of grassroots efforts and a little “homework.”
“I’m going to speak to two groups today, and I give them homework assignments, just saying, ‘Please take those packets. We’re planning to go get 50 signatures, go get 100.’ And I use a sports analogy. I say, in baseball, if you hit two times out of every 10, you’re barely making the major leagues. You’re probably going down the minor leagues. But if you get three hits every 10, you’re an all-star. And I’m asking everybody to get that extra hit in life,” Strickland said.
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California voters pass congressional redistricting proposition in victory for Newsom, Democrats
Obama pushes Newsom’s Proposition 50 ahead of Election Day
Paul Gigot hosts a ‘Journal Editorial Report’ panel to discuss California’s upcoming special election to vote on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Prop 50, which some criticize as gerrymandering, and the upcoming Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice retention vote.
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California voters have passed a ballot initiative that will have a huge impact on next year’s battle for the U.S. House majority.
According to the Fox News Decision Desk, voters in California approved Proposition 50, which would dramatically alter the state’s congressional districts, putting the left-leaning state front and center in the high-stakes political fight over redistricting that pits President Donald Trump and the GOP against the Democrats.
“Donald Trump poked the bear. And the bear roared back,” two-term Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender and who spearheaded the push to pass the proposition, said.
Approval of the ballot initiative in the nation’s most populous state will temporarily sidetrack California’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democrat-dominated legislature.
The effort in California, which could create five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts, aims to counter the passage in the reliable red state of Texas of a new map that aims to create up to five right-leaning House seats. Failure to approve what’s known as Proposition 50 would have been a stinging setback for Democrats.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan for a special election to seek voter approval for a new congressional map Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“If we lose here, we are going to have total Republican control in the House, the Senate and the White House for at least two more years,” Newsom emphasized in a recent fundraising appeal to supporters. “If we win here, we can put a check on Trump for his final two years.”
HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING, ANALYSIS, ON 2025 ELECTIONS
The push by Trump and Republicans for a rare mid-decade redistricting is part of a broad effort by the GOP to pad its razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House Oct. 6, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“California voters have sent a strong and clear message that they will not stand by while Republicans try to rig the 2026 election,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene argued in a statement. “By overwhelmingly voting to pass Proposition 50, Californians are fighting back against the GOP’s disastrous record of raising costs and ripping away health care from millions, all to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy.”
But Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the rival National Republican Congressional Committee, charged that “no matter how Democrats redraw the lines to satisfy Gavin Newsom’s power grab, they can’t redraw their record of failure, and that’s why they will fail to take the House majority. Even under this new map, Republicans have clear opportunities to flip seats because Californians are fed up with Democrat chaos.”
Missouri last month joined Texas as the second GOP-controlled state to pass congressional redistricting ahead of next year’s elections. The new map in Missouri is likely to give the GOP another right-leaning seat.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature also passed a new map likely to score another congressional seat for the GOP. Republican-controlled Indiana is on deck, with a special legislative session getting underway this week.
But, unlike those states, California voters needed to weigh in before giving redistricting power back to the legislature in Sacramento.
“Heaven help us if we lose,” Newsom said in a fundraising pitch. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for Democrats.”
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Proponents and opponents of Proposition 50 raised hundreds of millions of dollars, with much of the money being dished out to pay for a deluge of ads on both sides.
One of the two main groups countering Newsom and the Democrats labeled its effort “Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab.”
Getting into the fight was former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican governor of California.
Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes the move by Democrats to suspend the state’s non-partisan redistricting panel. (Tristar Media/WireImage)
During his tenure as governor, Schwarzenegger had a starring role in the passage of constitutional amendments in California in 2008 and 2010 that took the power to draw state legislative and congressional districts away from politicians and placed it in the hands of an independent commission.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA VOTERS WEIGH IN ON PROP 50 REDISTRICTING FIGHT
“That’s what they want to do is take us backwards. This is why it is important for you to vote no on Prop 50,” Schwarzenegger said in an ad against Proposition 50. “Democracy — we’ve got to protect it, and we’ve got to go and fight for it.”
But as Election Day neared in California, supporters had raised dramatically more than opponents of the proposition, and public opinion polling indicated majority support for the proposition.
Even before Trump initiated his redistricting push, Ohio was under court order to redraw its maps. That could boost Republicans in a one-time battleground state that now leans right.
Republicans in GOP-dominated Florida are also mulling congressional redistricting. And Democrats in heavily blue Maryland are weighing a redistricting push, while the Democrat-controlled legislature in Virginia is already pushing redistricting.
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Other states considering altering maps are Democrat-dominated Illinois and red states Kansas and Nebraska.
Meanwhile, Democrats could possibly pick up a seat in Republican-dominated Utah due to a new, more competitive map, mandated by a judge.
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Alice Wong drinks out of a paper cup at a cafe in San Francisco in 2019. Wong opposed the elimination of single use cups, noting that ceramic mugs were heavy and could be difficult for some people to hold.
“I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist and more,” Wong wrote in a posthumous message on social media. “We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment.”
Wong was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and a breathing device and said doctors had not expected her to live past 18.
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Her early experiences navigating medical and social barriers shaped her life’s work — turning personal struggle into a public campaign for equity, visibility and change.
Rooted in San Francisco’s vibrant disability justice movement, Wong pushed to reshape how the Bay Area — and the nation — understood equity, spotlighting barriers to access in the city’s universities and restaurants.
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When Bay Area coffee shops moved to ban paper cups, Wong told the Chronicle how the decision would burden those in the disabled community with limited mobility or decreased sensation in their hands. For them, glass and ceramic mugs were often too heavy and slippery.
Alice Wong drinks out of a paper cup at a cafe in San Francisco in November 2019. Wong wrote of the hardships faced by people with disabilities as they navigated everyday life — and campaigned for change.
Wong also worked to establish accessible resources for disabled students at UCSF, where she earned a master’s degree in medical sociology in 2004 and later worked as a staff researcher for more than a decade.
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She had moved to San Francisco in 1997 to attend the university, which at the time, she said, didn’t have any accessible places for her to live. The university built her a one-room unit in the garage of a professor’s house, Wong said in her memoir, “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life.” She worked with UCSF’s Office of Student Life to change access for disabled students.
Wong said she struggled at university and pushed off work for her classes. Around 2001, she stopped being a student before returning to finish her degree. Years later, Wong said one of her professors apologized, saying he was sorry the department hadn’t done more to support her.
“Disabled people have resisted for millennia efforts to eliminate us and erase our culture,” Wong said in 2024 during an alternative communication research summit. “Doctors told my parents I wouldn’t live past 18, so I grew up never imagining what grownup old ass Alice would look like, and this is why visibility, being able to tell our stories and controlling our own narratives, is why I do what I do.”
Disability rights activist Alice Wong, shown at Rutherford Hill Winery in Napa County, has died at age 51.
The founder of the Disability Visibility Project, which collects oral histories of Americans with disabilities in conjunction with StoryCorps, Wong has been at the forefront of chronicling how COVID and its unparalleled disruption of lives and institutions have underscored challenges that disabled people have always had to live with.
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Though Wong often jokingly described herself as an “angry disabled Asian girl,” she brought sharp humor and insight to her activism. In “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century,” she edited authors exploring inequities within the disabled community and how society values certain bodies over others.
“There is a cyborg hierarchy,” disability activist Jillian Weise wrote. “They like us best with bionic arms and legs. They like us Deaf with hearing aids, though they prefer cochlear implants. It would be an affront to ask the Hearing to learn sign language. Instead they wish for us to lose our language, abandon our culture, and consider ourselves cured.”
Wong wrote about her own experience transforming into what she calls a cyborg in an article for Literary Hub.
“Doctors advised me to get spinal fusion surgery when I was around twelve, but I was too freaked out by the thought of it because it was a serious-ass procedure,” Wong wrote. “By eighth grade my parents told me I was near the final window for this surgery, which could improve my breathing and alleviate the deep fatigue I experienced every day. I relented — with no idea how it would turn me into a cyborg inside out.”
Wong’s achievements brought national recognition. In 2013, then-President Barack Obama selected her for a two-year seat on the National Council on Disability, which advised Congress and the president. In 2024, she received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation genius grant.
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It was also the year, after decades of sharing a home with her parents, she moved into her own apartment in San Francisco with her cats, Bert and Ernie, according to the New York Times.
Wong is survived by her father, Henry, and her mother, Bobby, both immigrants from Hong Kong, as well as her sisters, Emily and Grace Wong.
Two win streaks collided in the Twin Cities this weekend. Something had to give.
In the end, it was Minnesota’s four-game surge that snapped. The Nuggets were too much to overcome, even without starters Christian Braun and Cam Johnson. With a 123-112 victory on Saturday, they’ve won seven in a row, including three straight on the road.
Denver (10-2) hosts the Chicago Bulls on Monday before hitting the road again.
Without Braun and Johnson
In their first game navigating what will be at least a six-week absence for Braun, the Nuggets had to replace two starters, not one. David Adelman went with Peyton Watson and Tim Hardaway Jr., and both contributed in their own ways.
Hardaway reached 20 points for the second time this season, punctuated by a contested corner 3-pointer while falling into Minnesota’s bench as Denver pulled away in the fourth quarter. Watson had a fairly erratic night offensively, but Denver doesn’t need much from him at that end of the floor when he plays with the starters. His defensive effort will determine how he fills the Braun void, and it was largely up to standard in Minnesota.
The Nuggets started the game in their 2-3 zone defense, which was effective at forcing turnovers and above-the-break 3s early, then Watson was the primary matchup on Anthony Edwards when they played man-to-man. The star guard struggled to make shots as Denver played solid team defense against him. Watson was at the head of the snake, and behind him, his teammates tried to show Edwards a crowd.
The short-handed Nuggets played Spencer Jones and Julian Strawther to patch together a nine-man rotation. How they approach Braun’s spot in the lineup whenever Johnson returns will be fascinating. Hardaway has been stellar all season, but the starting unit might call for more of a defense-first player against opponents with an elite guard.
The Aaron Gordon factor
The Nuggets have tweaked how they prefer to use Gordon under Adelman. He’s working out of the dunker spot less often in the early part of the season. He’s handling the ball more and playing in a lot of three-man actions with Jokic and Jamal Murray (or other combinations).
Adelman staggered Gordon along with Murray on the second unit and managed to win the non-Jokic minutes by a sturdy margin. Gordon hit a pair of key shots during a fourth-quarter run, first from the midrange off the dribble, then from the 3-point line off the catch.
His defense has also been living up to his preseason promise to “turn up.” Opponents are shooting 43 for 113 (38.1%) with Gordon defending, and it’s a testament to his value that Denver’s coaching staff feels comfortable enough with him guarding Edwards to switch Gordon onto him when Watson or another primary defender gets screened.
Appointment viewing Christmas Day
This rivalry is alive and well. Even the Nuggets’ newcomers are embracing it. After Jonas Valanciunas battled Naz Reid for a feisty offensive rebound Saturday, they got in each other’s faces and Reid earned a technical foul.
In the second half, Rudy Gobert picked up a flagrant for bulldozing through a cross-screen set by Hardaway under the basket — Hardaway had words for Gobert after the foul. The Nuggets didn’t even have time to inbound the ball for the ensuing play because Gordon and Julius Randle were grappling for positioning. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for the nearest official to call a rare double tech, trying to get a chippy game under control.
This was a physical, messy, awesomely competitive game that should portend more popcorn entertainment on Christmas, when the Wolves visit Ball Arena in prime time. The two franchises are fittingly trading blows in an increasingly layered rivalry. They’ve both taken a playoff series from the other. Minnesota swept the season series last year. Now, the Nuggets have already stolen both head-to-head matchups in Minneapolis this season.
Former coach Michael Malone used to be reluctant to label Nuggets vs. Timberwolves as a rivalry. But it’s abundantly clear these teams don’t like each other.
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