California Legislature OKs proposal to freeze health care access for some immigrants
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers on Friday approved a budget proposal to freeze enrollment in a state-funded health care program for immigrants without legal status to help close a $12 billion deficit.
Their plan is a scaled-back version of a proposal Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced in May. California, with the largest state budget in the country, is facing a deficit for the third year in a row. This year's budget shortfall has forced Democratic leaders to start cutting back on several liberal policy priorities, including to the landmark health care expansion for low-income adult immigrants without legal status.
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Toronto Star
26 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Democrats squaring off in Virginia primaries say one name a lot: Trump
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Two Virginia Democrats are battling Tuesday to be their party's nominee for attorney general. Yet, the name mentioned most in their campaigns is not that of their opponent, but rather a man who lives just over the Arlington Memorial Bridge: President Donald Trump. The barrage of changes Trump has wrought to American culture in the first few months of his second White House residency has ignited the campaigns of Virginia Democrats Jay Jones and Shannon Taylor as they appeal unrelentingly to the most devout swaths of their base ahead of down-ballot primary elections. The primary will also determine the party's nominations this year for lieutenant governor and some contested seats in the House of Delegates. In one of only two states electing governors in November — the other is New Jersey — the caustic anti-Trump rhetoric could be a hint of what voters nationwide will hear from Democrats in next year's midterm elections, when the stakes will be higher. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Virginia's nominees for governor have been settled by default. Democrat Abigail Spanberger became her party's nominee after running unopposed, and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears was the only contender who gathered enough signatures to be on the ballot. The other statewide races are for attorney general and lieutenant governor, and Democrats in both contests seem to be vying to top each other with anti-Trump rhetoric and caustic ads. Republicans are not hosting statewide primaries this year, so only Democrats will pick a nominee for lieutenant governor. It's a part-time position that pays about $36,000 a year but is often a stepping stone to higher office. Six Democrats want the job, and most of them have pushed ad after ad on the airwaves and online about their commitment to taking on Trump if elected to the mostly ceremonial role. In the contest for attorney general, Jones and Taylor are competing in much the same way. Turnout is likely to be sluggish, which means firing up base voters is widely seen as the way to go. The last time a left-wing candidate for governor ran unopposed, roughly 142,000 Democrats voted for an attorney general nominee compared with more than 485,000 this past election cycle. Still, the AG's race has been spicy, more so when the candidates' criticism isn't directed at each other. Jones and Taylor have lambasted the White House and argued that the administration's actions should be litigated in court. When they are not lamenting Trump, their attacks are directed toward incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is seeking reelection. In their respective campaigns, the Democrats argue that Miyares submits to the president by not suing him. They say that sets him apart from more progressive attorneys general across the United States, who are going to court over such things as birthright citizenship and elections. Their main message: A Democrat will take the White House to trial when Miyares won't — and saving democracy starts there. 'The job is to protect Virginians, to fight for them, to work for them, to keep us safe,' Jones said while campaigning in June in Falls Church, Virginia, adding, 'I don't understand why he is not going after them.' ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Last month, Taylor told a room full of Democratic voters that Miyares would enable Trump's overreaches in Virginia, and potentially double down on institutions that don't comply with the president. Either way, 'the result is the same for Virginians: getting hurt,' she said. In a wide-ranging interview in May, Miyares said he identifies as a balls-and-strikes Republican. The former Virginia Beach state delegate, elected top prosecutor in 2021, worked to reduce violent crime. He sought settlements from Big Pharma. When he felt President Joe Biden's administration overstepped, he went to court. But as Trump was ushered into office for a second term, Miyares entered new political terrain. Unlike most other states, Virginians will elect their attorney general this November, nearly a year after the country voted for the president and his consequential agenda. Miyares has waded into the political arena. He often spars on social media with progressive prosecutors throughout Virginia for being too lenient in prosecuting criminal cases. Still, Miyares rebuffed the notion that suing Trump is his top concern. He said the Democrats looking to replace him fail to understand the nature of his position. The attorney general touted meaningful work his office has shouldered: holding listening sessions for crime victims, designating resources to support law enforcement and beefing up his office's prosecutions of child support cases. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW He flashed his law enforcement badge, tucked within a leather wallet, and described the emblem as a guidepost for being an effective people's prosecutor. 'They seem very obsessed with Donald Trump, whereas I'm obsessed with how am I going to keep Virginians safe?' Miyares said. ___ Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Read more on the U.S. Election at
Winnipeg Free Press
32 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Protests, parades and Pride: One week in June 2025 is drawing stark American fault lines
WASHINGTON (AP) — On the first weekend: a vision of the nation built upon inclusivity and the tenets of liberalism — a conception of country that incorporates generations of fights for equity, for compassion, for expanding what it means to be an American. On the second weekend, in the same town: a public show of strength and nationalism constructed on a foundation of military might, law and order, a tour de force of force. And on the days in between: a city 2,000 miles from the capital locked in pitched battles over the use — abuse, many contend — of federal power and military authority to root out, detain and oust people who the current administration says do not belong. Today's United States — its possibility, its strength, its divisiveness, its polarization and fragmentation — is encapsulated in a single week in June 2025, its triumphs and frictions on vivid display. As events both planned and chaotically spontaneous play out, many Americans are frantically and sometimes furiously pondering assorted iterations of two questions: What is this country right now? And what should it be? Pride, protests and parades Consider two quotes from recent days from two very different Americans. The first came last weekend, during World Pride in Washington, when a 58-year-old gay man from Philadelphia named David Begler summed up what many were messaging in the days leading up to it after months of Donald Trump's increasing attempts to target the LGBTQ community: 'I want us to send a message to the White House to focus on uplifting each other instead of dividing.' The second came days ahead of the military parade planned Saturday for the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, from the mouth of the president on whose 79th birthday it will be held: 'If there's any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,' Donald Trump said. 'I haven't even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.' Among the competing visions of America in 2025: the desire to protest and seek a redress of grievances against the government vs. the desire for control, order — and a respect for the government and for authority. The volatile combination of demonstrations and the U.S. military is a potent one, with its most recent roots in the protest movement of the 1960s against the Vietnam War. A young generation that would later be known as baby boomers regularly squared off against police and sometimes the military over U.S. involvement in what was framed as a war against communism in Southeast Asia. Historians give those protesters a fair bit of the credit for that war ultimately ending in 1975. President Jimmy Carter ultimately pardoned more than 200,000 people who had dodged the draft for that conflict. Then, as now, many in the establishment criticized protesters bitterly, saying they were undermining a nation to which they should be grateful. Questions of loyalty and betrayal were thrown around. The role of the military in quelling civilian protests was bitterly contested, particularly after Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire and killed four students during antiwar protests in May 1970 at Kent State University. There are echoes of that this week, not only in Los Angeles but now in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of 5,000 state National Guard troops ahead of the 'No Kings Day of Defiance' against the Trump administration's ongoing immigration raids. And as protesters in Los Angeles taunt the military and say guardsmen should be 'ashamed' to face off against what they call a just cause, it's easy to wonder: How can patriotism and protest coexist? Washington at the epicenter Democracy has always been messy and resistant to consensus. That's part of why the national slogan of the United States is 'e pluribus unum' — 'out of many, one.' And Washington, D.C., as the nation's capital, has long been the place where the many have come to make themselves known as part of the one — and to be noticed. It was where the 'Bonus Army' of World War I veterans marched in 1932 to demand their promised postwar payments and be heard in a demonstration that ended violently. It was where the first National Boy Scout Jamboree was held on the National Mall in 1937. It was where the 'March on Washington,' a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, ended with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s renowned 'I Have a Dream' speech. It was where, in 1995, the 'Million Man March' was held to address concerns of the American Black community, and where hundreds of thousands of women came to Washington largely in protest of Trump, just a day after his first inauguration. It is also the place where Americans remember, where the memorials to World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War sit. It is where the country erected stone shrines in various shapes and sizes to the presidents it most admired — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is the site of museums containing some of the most distilled expressions of culture — from the Holocaust Museum to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to the National Museum of African American History. Is it so hard to believe, then, that two events as opposite as World Pride and a military parade unfold here, within blocks of each other, within a week's time? At a politically fractious moment when some families can hardly break bread without political arguments erupting over Trump, Gaza and Israel, immigration and LGBTQ rights, isn't it possible that the weird and downright uncomfortable juxtaposition of these two starkly different events might be the most American thing of all? Walt Whitman, one of the most famous poets in American history, had this to say about the the diversity of America when he wrote 'I Hear America Singing' to underscore that its citizens all contribute to the nation's song: 'I am large. I contain multitudes.' And in one week in June, at a time when the fate of the United States is being discussed in every direction we turn, the capital of Whitman's nation has become a showcase in displaying those messy democratic multitudes to the world. For better or for worse. ___ Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990.
Winnipeg Free Press
32 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Democrats squaring off in Virginia primaries say one name a lot: Trump
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Two Virginia Democrats are battling Tuesday to be their party's nominee for attorney general. Yet, the name mentioned most in their campaigns is not that of their opponent, but rather a man who lives just over the Arlington Memorial Bridge: President Donald Trump. The barrage of changes Trump has wrought to American culture in the first few months of his second White House residency has ignited the campaigns of Virginia Democrats Jay Jones and Shannon Taylor as they appeal unrelentingly to the most devout swaths of their base ahead of down-ballot primary elections. The primary will also determine the party's nominations this year for lieutenant governor and some contested seats in the House of Delegates. In one of only two states electing governors in November — the other is New Jersey — the caustic anti-Trump rhetoric could be a hint of what voters nationwide will hear from Democrats in next year's midterm elections, when the stakes will be higher. Virginia's nominees for governor have been settled by default. Democrat Abigail Spanberger became her party's nominee after running unopposed, and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears was the only contender who gathered enough signatures to be on the ballot. The other statewide races are for attorney general and lieutenant governor, and Democrats in both contests seem to be vying to top each other with anti-Trump rhetoric and caustic ads. Republicans are not hosting statewide primaries this year, so only Democrats will pick a nominee for lieutenant governor. It's a part-time position that pays about $36,000 a year but is often a stepping stone to higher office. Six Democrats want the job, and most of them have pushed ad after ad on the airwaves and online about their commitment to taking on Trump if elected to the mostly ceremonial role. In the contest for attorney general, Jones and Taylor are competing in much the same way. Turnout is likely to be sluggish, which means firing up base voters is widely seen as the way to go. The last time a left-wing candidate for governor ran unopposed, roughly 142,000 Democrats voted for an attorney general nominee compared with more than 485,000 this past election cycle. Still, the AG's race has been spicy, more so when the candidates' criticism isn't directed at each other. Jones and Taylor have lambasted the White House and argued that the administration's actions should be litigated in court. When they are not lamenting Trump, their attacks are directed toward incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is seeking reelection. In their respective campaigns, the Democrats argue that Miyares submits to the president by not suing him. They say that sets him apart from more progressive attorneys general across the United States, who are going to court over such things as birthright citizenship and elections. Their main message: A Democrat will take the White House to trial when Miyares won't — and saving democracy starts there. 'The job is to protect Virginians, to fight for them, to work for them, to keep us safe,' Jones said while campaigning in June in Falls Church, Virginia, adding, 'I don't understand why he is not going after them.' Last month, Taylor told a room full of Democratic voters that Miyares would enable Trump's overreaches in Virginia, and potentially double down on institutions that don't comply with the president. Either way, 'the result is the same for Virginians: getting hurt,' she said. In a wide-ranging interview in May, Miyares said he identifies as a balls-and-strikes Republican. The former Virginia Beach state delegate, elected top prosecutor in 2021, worked to reduce violent crime. He sought settlements from Big Pharma. When he felt President Joe Biden's administration overstepped, he went to court. But as Trump was ushered into office for a second term, Miyares entered new political terrain. Unlike most other states, Virginians will elect their attorney general this November, nearly a year after the country voted for the president and his consequential agenda. Miyares has waded into the political arena. He often spars on social media with progressive prosecutors throughout Virginia for being too lenient in prosecuting criminal cases. Still, Miyares rebuffed the notion that suing Trump is his top concern. He said the Democrats looking to replace him fail to understand the nature of his position. The attorney general touted meaningful work his office has shouldered: holding listening sessions for crime victims, designating resources to support law enforcement and beefing up his office's prosecutions of child support cases. He flashed his law enforcement badge, tucked within a leather wallet, and described the emblem as a guidepost for being an effective people's prosecutor. 'They seem very obsessed with Donald Trump, whereas I'm obsessed with how am I going to keep Virginians safe?' Miyares said. ___ Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
