
Waymo Limits Service in San Francisco as Immigration Protests Spread
After protesters set fire to five Waymo robot taxis in Los Angeles on Sunday, the company on Monday began preemptively limiting rides to areas of San Francisco where people were expected to gather to show their opposition to President Trump's immigration policies.
Waymo declined to say where in San Francisco it would suspend its service or for how long. Its robot taxis are popular in the city and have become a tourist attraction. The vehicles, which are electric Jaguar I-Paces and include dozens of cameras and sensors, cost around $100,000 each.
'We're aware of potential protests and will not be providing service in the areas protesters may be gathering out of abundance of caution,' a company spokeswoman said in a statement.
The robot taxis have become a way for some protesters to display resistance to the tech industry's close ties to the Trump administration, said Elise Joshi, an activist in San Francisco who attended rallies on Monday.
'Waymos don't have human drivers, they're devoid of humanity,' she said. Destroyed robot taxis are 'symbolic of the attempts, throughout the history of this country, by the tech industry to strip us of community.'
Waymo's actions in San Francisco followed the burning of its self-driving cars in Los Angeles on Sunday, where hundreds of people have demonstrated in recent days against the Trump administration's escalating immigration enforcement activity. Images of burned Waymos — including one protester with a Mexican flag posing for photos above the scorched cars — quickly spread online. Elon Musk and right-wing influencers then shared the image and others like it as emblems of the supposed dysfunction in Los Angeles.
Waymo cut its service off in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday evening, in coordination with the Los Angeles Police Department, a company spokeswoman said. She said its vehicles were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and added that the company did not know if the damaged vehicles were hailed by protesters with the intention of being destroyed, or if they were just dropping off riders in the area.
Waymo announced in November that its service was 'open to all in Los Angeles.' In 2023, Mayor Karen Bass sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission highlighting several incidents with self-driving taxis and arguing that more testing was needed. Other groups, including disability rights organizations, have argued that autonomous taxis can help their constituents.
In May, Waymo said it was providing more than 250,000 paid robot taxi rides a week in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Associated Press
11 minutes ago
- Associated Press
California governor says 'democracy is under assault' by Trump as feds intervene in LA protests
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Calling President Donald Trump a threat to the American way of life, Gov. Gavin Newsom depicted the federal military intervention in Los Angeles as the onset of a much broader effort by Trump to overturn political and cultural norms at the heart of the nation's democracy. In a speech Tuesday evening, the potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate said the arrival of National Guard and Marine troops in the city at Trump's direction was not simply about quelling protests that followed a series of immigration raids by federal authorities. Instead, he said, it was part of a calculated 'war' intended to upend the foundations of society and concentrate power in the White House. 'California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next,' a somber Newsom warned, seated before the U.S. and California flags. 'Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived.' As head of the heavily Democratic state known as the epicenter of the so-called Trump resistance, Newsom and the Republican president have long been adversaries. But the governor's speech delivered in prime time argued that Trump was not just a threat to democracy, but was actively working to break down its guardrails that reach back to the nation's founding. ″He's declared a war. A war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself,' Newsom said. 'He's delegitimizing news organizations, and he's assaulting the First Amendment.' Newsom added that Trump is attacking law firms and the judicial branch — 'the foundations of an orderly and civil society.' 'It's time for all of us to stand up,' Newsom said, urging any protests to be peaceful. 'What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.' His speech came the same day that Newsom asked a court to put an emergency stop to the military helping federal immigration agents, with some guardsmen now standing in protective gauntlet around agents as they carried out arrests. The judge chose not to rule immediately, giving the Trump administration several days to continue those activities before a hearing Thursday. Trump has activated more than 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines over the objections of city and state leaders, though the Marines have not yet been spotted in Los Angeles and Guard troops have had limited engagement with protesters. They were originally deployed to protect federal buildings. Newsom's speech capped several days of acidic exchanges between Trump and Newsom, that included the president appearing to endorse Newsom's arrest if he interfered with federal immigration enforcement. 'I think it's great. Gavin likes the publicity, but I think it would be a great thing,' Trump told reporters. Over the years, Trump has threatened to intercede in California's long-running homeless crisis, vowed to withhold federal wildfire aid as political leverage in a dispute over water rights, called on police to shoot people robbing stores and warned residents that 'your children are in danger' because of illegal immigration. Trump relishes insulting the two-term governor and former San Francisco mayor — frequently referring to him as Gov. 'New-scum' — and earlier this year faulted the governor for Southern California's deadly wildfires. Trump has argued that the city was in danger of being overrun by violent protesters, while Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have called the federal intervention an unneeded — and potentially dangerous — overreaction. The demonstrations have been mostly concentrated in the city's downtown hub. Demonstrations have spread to other cities in the state and nationwide, including Dallas and Austin, Texas, Chicago and New York City, where a thousand people rallied and multiple arrests were made. Trump left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. It's one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president. 'If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see,' he said from the Oval Office.


Washington Post
13 minutes ago
- Washington Post
A federal appeals court is set to hear arguments in Trump's bid to erase his hush money conviction
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump's quest to erase his criminal conviction heads to a federal appeals court Wednesday. It's one way he's trying to get last year's hush money verdict overturned. A three-judge panel is set to hear arguments in Trump's long-running fight to get the New York case moved from state court to federal court, where he could then try to have the verdict thrown out on presidential immunity grounds. The Republican is asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene after a lower-court judge twice rejected the move. As part of the request, Trump wants the federal appeals court to seize control of the criminal case and then ultimately decide his appeal of the verdict, which is now pending in a state appellate court. The 2nd Circuit should 'determine once and for all that this unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former and current President of the United States belongs in federal court,' Trump's lawyers wrote in a court filing. The Manhattan district attorney's office, which prosecuted Trump's case, wants it to stay in state court. Trump's Justice Department — now partly run by his former criminal defense lawyers — backs his bid to move the case to federal court. If Trump loses, he could go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denies her claim and said he did nothing wrong. It was the only one of his four criminal cases to go to trial. Trump's lawyers first sought to move the case to federal court following his March 2023 indictment, arguing that federal officers including former presidents have the right to be tried in federal court for charges arising from 'conduct performed while in office.' Part of the criminal case involved checks he wrote while he was president. They tried again after his conviction, arguing that Trump's historic prosecution violated his constitutional rights and ran afoul of the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling , which was decided about a month after the hush money trial ended. The ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president's unofficial actions were illegal. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied both requests, ruling in part that Trump's conviction involved his personal life, not his work as president. In a four-page ruling, Hellerstein wrote that nothing about the high court's ruling affected his prior conclusion that hush money payments at issue in Trump's case 'were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.' Trump's lawyers argue that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision, and that prosecutors erred by showing jurors evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how Trump reacted to news coverage of the hush money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018. Trump's former criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche is now the deputy U.S. attorney general, the Justice Department's second-in-command. Another of his lawyers, Emil Bove, has a high-ranking Justice Department position. The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, rejected Trump's requests to throw out the conviction on presidential immunity grounds and sentenced him on Jan. 10 to an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction intact but sparing him any punishment. Appearing by video at his sentencing, Trump called the case a 'political witch hunt,' 'a weaponization of government' and 'an embarrassment to New York.'


Digital Trends
15 minutes ago
- Digital Trends
Tesla's robotaxi service is almost here, but it's not the car you want to see
Tesla chief Elon Musk has said that the automaker is aiming to launch its robotaxi service on June 22, in Austin, Texas. 'Tentatively, June 22,' Musk said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding: 'We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift.' Recommended Videos But take note, the vehicle used for the upcoming robotaxi service won't be the futuristic Cybercab — sans steering wheel and pedals — that Musk unveiled at Tesla's flashy We, Robot event in October last year. Instead, the company will deploy regular Model Y vehicles using a version of the automaker's Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology. A team will monitor the fleet remotely, checking for anomalies as the cars make their way around the streets of Austin. Earlier on Tuesday, the Tesla boss shared a video clip taken in the Texas city that showed a Model Y vehicle being tested without a human safety driver behind the wheel. Lettering on the side of the car reads: 'Robotaxi.' Electrek reported that the video shows a second Tesla vehicle right behind the driverless car, 'likely with a remote teleoperator ready to take control or activate a kill switch.' Tesla has only been operating its cars without a safety driver since the end of May, raising concerns among some about a lack of testing time before taking paying passengers later this month … if Tesla hits its target date, that is. According to comments made by Musk in a recent interview with CNBC, Tesla will begin its robotaxi service with between 10 and 20 vehicles. The company has yet to reveal how folks interested in jumping inside a Tesla robotaxi will be able to do so. During Tesla's proposal stage toward the end of last year, the company worked with the authorities in Austin to establish safety regulations prior to testing. Preparation included training the city's first responders on how to interact with vehicles that may be empty when they show up. When Tesla's robotaxis hit the streets of Austin, they could find themselves driving alongside other autonomous vehicles operated by Alphabet-owned Waymo and Amazon-owned Zoox. Both have been testing their driverless cars on the city's roads for some time, with Waymo now offering rides to paying customers. The robotaxi market is a highly competitive one, with a number of prominent players — Cruise and Argo AI among them — being forced to drop out due to various pressures. With that in mind, Tesla is keen to get off to a good start so that it can build out its service in a timely fashion. Safety will be key. One slip-up and the project could face serious delays.