United Public Workers for Action
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REPUBLICANS SNEAK NONPROFIT KILLER BILL INTO THE TAIL END OF TRUMP’S 389-PAGE TAX PLAN
theintercept.com/2025/05/12/trump-nonprofit-killer-tax-cuts/
It would give the Trump administration the power to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems a “terrorist-supporting organization.”
Noah-Hurowitz-Photo.jpeg
Noah Hurowitz
May 12 2025, 7:31 p.m.
TOPSHOT – US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, DC, on May 5, 2025. Trump signed several health care-related executive orders, according to a White House statement. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski / AFP) (Photo by ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump signs executive orders in the White House, in Washington, D.C., on May 5, 2025.Photo: Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
TO ADVANCE PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cuts, House Republicans on Monday unveiled a proposal that could hand him a powerful new tool to go after his political enemies.
The House Ways and Means Committee will meet Tuesday for a mark-up session of the 389-page draft plan, a massive bundle of draft amendments central to the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that aims to cut trillions of dollars in government spending.
Among those amendments, buried on page 380 of the draft, is a section that would enable Trump’s secretary of the Treasury to denounce any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip it of its tax-exempt status.
“This seems to just give the president a tool to go after his political enemies and fulfill some of the darker elements of the Project 2025 agenda,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council.
House GOP Moves to Ram Through Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power to Kill Nonprofits
A previous version of the clause — dubbed the “nonprofit killer bill” — was introduced in 2023. Critics viewed that legislation as a bipartisan expression of pro-Israel policy and opposition to pro-Palestinian speech.
The first version of the bill passed the House easily, before languishing in the Senate. But when it reappeared in November — following Trump’s reelection — many Democrats who had backed the bill dropped their support in the face of reporting from The Intercept and a flurry of anger from the party’s base.
President Donald Trump speaks before Steve Witkoff is sworn as special envoy during a ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, in Washington, with a portrait of former President Ronald Reagan in the background..jpeg
“I Don’t Know.” Trump’s Go-To Response to All Sorts of Questions
Nick Turse
A prison officer guards a cell at maximum security penitentiary CECOT (Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism) on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador..jpeg
CECOT Is What the Bukele Regime Wants You to See
Jonah Valdez
At the time, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups warned that the bill would be used by Trump to make good on his campaign promise to crush his political enemies.
Among House Democrats, opposition was marshaled by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.
“Authoritarianism is not born overnight — it creeps in,” Doggett said during a discussion on the House floor on November 21. “A tyrant tightens his grip not just by seizing power, but when he demands new powers and when those who can stop him willingly cede and bend to his will.”
“Authoritarianism is not born overnight — it creeps in.”
That bill, known as H.R. 9495, or the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, ultimately passed the House 219 to 184, with just 15 Democrats voting in favor. The bill moved on to the Senate, then under Democratic control, where it sat until the end of the lame-duck term.
The language included in the House Republicans’ tax package closely mirrors H.R. 9495.
In the months since inauguration, Trump and his Cabinet have found other means of cracking down on political speech — particularly speech in favor of Palestinians — by deporting student activists and revoking hundreds of student visas. He has already threatened to attempt to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, part of his larger quest to discipline and punish colleges.
But the nonprofit clause of the tax bill would give the president wider power to go after organizations that stand in his way.
Republicans control the House and hold the Senate by a narrow margin. Democrats will have the opportunity to attach amendments in committee, giving them a shot to nix the nonprofit clause. But so long as the Republicans remain unified in supporting Trump’s tax plan, they can strike down objections from the opposition.
The reconciliation process is often used as a vehicle for bringing to life policy objectives and previously stalled zombie legislation while sidestepping a potential filibuster in the Senate. The current draft includes a number of clauses intended to offset tax cuts while also securing key policy objectives, such as a provision allowing the taxation of the endowments of private universities and a rollback of access to tax breaks by undocumented immigrants.
Once the Ways and Means Committee settles on an amended version of the current draft, it will move on to the House for debate, further amendment, and a vote, before heading to the Senate.
Republicans Sneak Nonprofit Killer Bill Into the Tail End of Trump’s 389-Page Tax Plan
theintercept.com
It would give the Trump administration the power to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems a “terrorist-supporting organization.”
Mayor Lurie’s plan to add new treatment beds removes 97 current ones
Health department confirms 82 residents of San Francisco General center will be displaced and moved to new homes
missionlocal.org/2025/05/sf-behavioral-health-center-add-remove-beds-department-public-health/
A person with long dark hair smiling outdoors, wearing a light blue shirt. Trees and sky are in the background.
by XUEER LU
May 13, 2025, 12:36 pm
SEIU workers and others rallied outside the Behavioral Health Center on Aug. 22, 2019. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.
The city is converting dozens of long-term residential treatment beds at the Behavioral Health Center on the campus of San Francisco General Hospital into secure “locked” beds for patients with more severe conditions. This proposal has induced nurses to protest the displacement of patients who have been living at the center for up to over a decade.
The move was announced by Mayor Daniel Lurie on Monday morning as an addition of “73 new treatment beds” to count towards the mayor’s 1,500-bed goal.
But the math requires explanation: Sixteen of the beds will be residential beds added to the Seventh Street Dual Diagnosis residential treatment program. The remaining 57 will be the new so-called “locked” beds at San Francisco General for hospital patients who need 24/7 intensive psychiatric care.
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Those 57 “locked” beds will replace 97 treatment beds at the Behavioral Health Center, 82 of which are presently occupied by long-term patients.
“They are playing numbers games now,” said Jennifer Esteen, a psychiatric nurse at the Department of Public Health and the vice president of organizing for SEIU 1021. Esteen spearheaded the successful fight to keep the city from closing the Behavioral Health Center back in 2019.
To swap out the beds at the Behavioral Health Center, Lurie is using $21.3 million in state funding to undertake the necessary “critical renovation,” according to the Department of Public Health.
FAMSF AUDIO
A two-story brick and concrete building with large windows and teal accents, featuring a whale tail sculpture and yellow bollards in front.
Behavioral Health Center. Photo by Xueer Lu. May 13, 2025.
Nurses at the Behavioral Health Center have highlighted that this swap is done at the expense of moving the current 82 residents elsewhere.
In a May 9 letter sent to the 82 current residents of the Behavioral Health Center, a three-story board-and-care facility that treats seniors and adults suffering from mental health issues, the Department of Public Health confirmed that they “will move to a new home.”
“The Department of Public Health is planning to change the first and second floors of the [Behavioral Health Center] into a different type of care program called locked subacute treatment,” read the letter from Angelica Almeida, chief integrative officer of the hospital administration. “This change means that you, or your loved one, will move to a new home.”
Tracy Piper
Many of the residents staying at the center at their assigned beds don’t have the capacity to cook their own meals or take their own meds, nurses say. Nurses at the center also warn that, if moved, “vulnerable” residents who receive long-term, intensive and round-the-clock care at this board-and-care facility will be at high risk to become homeless, fall back into drug use, or simply “decompensate and die.”
The letter acknowledges “leaving a place that has been your home” can be “hard,” and assures the residents, in bold-face writing: “You will not lose your housing.” Residents will only be moved “when a new home that meets your needs is found.”
The letter underscored that there are options elsewhere in San Francisco, including in the Sunset, Mission, Richmond, Bayview and Hayes Valley — but nurses are skeptical that these will offer the same level of care as at the Behavioral Health Center.
May 12-17
The 82 current residents of the center will be displaced within the next four to five months, according to a letter sent by the CIO of San Francisco General Hospital on May 6 to the center’s staffers. Nurses who attended the meeting say that the city promised that they will not lose their jobs.
When asked where the displaced residents will be housed, a mayoral spokesperson referred the inquiry to the Department of Public Health. The health department said it “will work closely with current [Behavioral Health Center] clients to relocate to another facility and will ensure that all of their care needs are met.”
The Department of Public Health called the creation of new “sub-acute” beds a “rare opportunity … to serve our most complex clients” because “locked treatment facilities are incredibly difficult to acquire or construct.”
Entrance to a brick and concrete building with the street number 837 above the door, signs posted on the door, and a green information sign to the left.
Behavioral Health Center. Photo by Xueer Lu. May 13, 2025.
But nurses are unsatisfied. “They didn’t give us any concrete answers,” one nurse recalled of a May 6 meeting with representatives from human resources at the hospital regarding the proposed closure. “They don’t have any concrete plan,” said another.
It would be challenging for private board-and-care facilities to take in these residents, nurses say. Some residents have conditions that private facilities can’t tend to, while others have no families; some are undocumented. Many are long-term Behavioral Health Center residents.
Half of the adults living on the first floor at the Adult Rehabilitation Facility have lived there for more than seven years, according to Esteen. Half of the seniors have lived there for more than five years, she added.
About 19 out of the center’s 82 residents have lived there for more than 10 years, Esteen said.
A nurse said the location of the center is also ideal for the residents, especially the seniors: The emergency room, urgent care, doctor’s appointments, and grocery stores are just blocks away. There’s even a Ross clothing store up Potrero Avenue for shopping.
“They are familiar with the neighborhoods,” the nurse added. “And the staff is almost like family to them.”
The nurses’ union is planning to meet on May 14 to talk about its next steps. “We are preparing to take some actions,” Esteen said. The city has another community meeting at the center on May 29, according to the department’s letter to the residents. And, in June, the city will “begin meeting one-on-one with every resident to learn about your needs and wishes.”
More than 70 residents have signed a letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors and leadership at the Department of Public Health, pleading with them not to close the center.
“We are not just clients on a roster, we are human beings, and we are finally beginning to thrive because of the environment and care we receive here” the residents’ letter read. “Please, we ask you with compassion and urgency: do not take this away from us.”
Mayor Lurie's plan to add new treatment beds removes 97 current ones
missionlocal.org
San Francisco health department says 82 residents living at the city’s Behavioral Health Center will be displaced and moved into new homes.
Freedom for Ahmad and Afiaddin! End tyranny in Azerbaijan!
docs.google.com/forms/d/1GpD8m4txDmxGhBYetBa_zvndylARs69S7HSqp_u_vPI/viewform?edit_requested=true
Freedom for Ahmad and Afiaddin! End tyranny in Azerbaijan!
In Azerbaijan, the Aliyev regime tortured and imprisoned Ahmad Mammadli—a leftist journalist, unionist, and human rights activist—on fabricated charges of "intentional injury" on May 7. Additionally, Afiaddin Mammadov has been sentenced to eight years in prison based on false allegations.
We, the undersigned organizations, demand the immediate release of Ahmad Mammadli and Afiaddin Mammadov, along with all political prisoners.
Mammadli had been under open and intense pressure for a long time. Mammadli’s family draws attention to the danger of being held in prison for a long time under the pretext of being tried in pretrial detention, as is the case with many dissidents, and reminds that Mammadli’s close comrade Afiaddin Mammadov was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison. The Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan employs tactics such as portraying opposition members as criminals for drug, extortion, and injury, thus both slandering and silencing their voices. Mammadli was also arrested on charges of “intentional injury.”
The decision to continue the detention of opposition leader Tofig Yagublu, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison and has been on hunger strike since April 1, was made at the hearing on May 6. It is known that Tofig Yagublu has been unable to even drink water recently. It is unclear whether Tofig Yagublu will survive until the next hearing on May 20. The government, which is extremely disturbed by Yagublu being on the public agenda, detained journalists Ahmed Mammadli and Ülviyye Ali late at night on May 6 after they followed Yagublu's hearing.
Ahmad Mammadli has been an opposition figure who has been fighting for years in Azerbaijan, first with the student movement and then with workers' rights, and who became the general chairman of the D-18 party, which dissolved itself in 2023. He had also had his share of the increasing pressure in Azerbaijan for years, with bans on traveling abroad and detentions. The Aliyev regime, which has vowed not to leave any light in the country, is now trying Ahmad Mammadli for a serious crime. The crime of "intentional injury" was alleged regarding Mammadli, who was detained illegally by the police. It is alleged that Mammadli stabbed a person in the stomach because of a problem they had in a taxi. After his detention, Mammadli was tortured with electric shocks because they wanted to get his phone password, and was not given food for 3 days, his lawyer and family announced.
A 4-month detention decision was made for Ahmad Mammadli in court. This practice is a kind of psychological torture of the Aliyev regime. During the months of detention, the oppositionists who are brought to court have their trials postponed and are held without an indictment for months or even years.
Previously, Afiaddin Mammadov, one of the left leaders of the D-18 party, was also arrested on false charges of “stabbing” in 2023 and sentenced to 8 years in prison. At the same time, leading workers of the "Workers' Table" union, which Ahmad Mammadli and Afiaddin Mammadov founded together, were also sentenced to 3 years in prison, along with Afiaddin Mammadov. The union had organized motorcycle couriers in Azerbaijan and organized strikes. During the Karabakh war, Mammadov and Mammadli had been kidnapped, detained, and imprisoned for opposing the expulsion of the Armenian people from the region and chauvinist war policies.
Azerbaijan, which has been under the rule of the Aliyev dynasty, can only govern with chauvinism and oppression. In the impoverished country where corruption is at its peak, the pressure on the opposition has increased significantly, especially since the Karabakh war in 2020. There are more than 350 political prisoners in the country. The regime, which has been conducting a serious witch hunt, especially against the press, in the last two years, has raided many independent media institutions and arrested many journalists and activists.
We hear the voice of the Azeri people who are groaning under the tyranny of Aliyev, whose rich resources are being plundered by the oligarchs, and who are left alone in deep poverty! The severe repression faced by the Azerbaijani people and dissidents is orchestrated solely for the benefit of a select group of wealthy elites and authoritarian rulers.
Ahmad and Afiaddin must be released without delay, and the baseless accusations against these courageous young fighters who stand for the interests of the working class must be retracted!
Immediate freedom for Ahmad and Afiaddin!
Down with the tyranny in Azerbaijan!
Freedom for Ahmad and Afiaddin! End tyranny in Azerbaijan!
docs.google.com
Freedom for Ahmad and Afiaddin! End tyranny in Azerbaijan! In Azerbaijan, the Aliyev regime tortured and imprisoned Ahmad Mammadli—a leftist journalist, unionist, and human rights activist—on fabr…
Netflix's Fear City Hints at Trump's Mob Connections. The Real Story Goes Even Deeper.
www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a33350476/fear-city-new-york-mafia-donald-trump-tower-mob-ties-e…
donald trump mob ties
President Donald Trump is always hunting for snitches, he's quick to retaliate against perceived disloyalty, and loves to reward his associates when they refuse to turn state's witness. As his critics often point out, the president behaves a lot like a mob boss. He even received an endorsement from former Gambino family underboss Salvatore " Sammy the Bull" Gravano, who said that America "doesn't need a bookworm as president, it needs a mob boss."
Netflix's new documentary miniseries, Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia, isn't about political figures with mob-like tendencies—it's about the real-life mafia, which exercised huge power over New York in the 1970s and '80s, and the efforts by the FBI and the US attorney's office (then helmed by future Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani) to take it down. The series makes extensive use of the FBI's secret recordings from bugs planted in mob homes, cars, and hangouts, and on one tape, Trump's name comes up in relation to a construction deal.
As Fear City points out, doing business in broad swaths of New York's economy when Trump was a young man meant doing business with the mob. But Trump's main industries—development, casinos, and luxury real estate—were particularly infested with organized crime. And what makes him notable is that he sometimes appeared to do more business with the mafia than was strictly necessary. According to biographer Wayne Barrett, "he went out of his way not to avoid" contacts with the mafia, "but to increase them."
Trump had a personal connection to some of the city's most powerful mobsters through his friend, mentor, and lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn, who's these days remembered as one of the most malignant figures in 20th century America, was an attorney for mafia leaders including "Fat Tony" Salerno, Carmine Galante, and Paul Castellano, bosses in the Genovese, Bonanno, and Gambino crime families, respectively.
When the future president's now-famous 5th Avenue Trump Tower was being built in the late '70s and early '80s, most high rises were constructed out of steel. But Trump opted to build with ready-mix concrete, at a time when Salerno and Castellano controlled the concrete industry and its associated labor union.
Ready-mix concrete dries quickly, which can leave developers vulnerable to expensive worker slowdowns, a common tactic from mob-controlled construction sites. While other developers were urging the FBI to take down the mafia, Trump bought its concrete at artificially high prices. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who's known and covered Trump for 30 years, Trump received in exchange a smoothly-operating worksite from the construction union.
According to a former Cohn employee, Trump and Salerno met face-to-face at Cohn's townhouse. Trump has denied the meeting ever occurred, but Salerno was later indicted on racketeering charges for an $8 million concrete deal made for a Trump development.
And the construction of Trump Tower is far from the only endeavor in which Trump has been accused of striking deals with organized crime. He reportedly bought the land on which he built his Atlantic City casino for twice the amount the lot was worth from a Philadelphia mafioso who was the son of Philip "Chicken Man" Testa, who's known to music fans from the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City." When Trump attempted to build a casino in Australia, that nation's authorities blocked his efforts on the grounds of his "mafia connections."
Trump hasn't denied knowing organized crime figures. During a 2013 appearance on David Letterman's late night show, he admitted to having met mobsters "on occasion."
"They happen to be very nice people," he said. "You just don't want to owe them money."
<p>Netflix's 'Fear City' Hints at Trump's Mob Connections. The Real Story Goes Even Deeper.</p>
www.esquire.com
For years, the president did business in industries with strong mafia ties.
The Attacks On UCLA Encampment By Zionists, the UC Police, LAPD & Governor Newsom's Highway Patrol
youtu.be/hQmX9KOM2sU
In May 2024 at an encampment for Palestine at UCLA was violently attackedby Zionists and their supporters with no action by the UCLA police and security guards. The UCLA police and numerous UCLA contract security guards refused to protect the students, faculty and staff and on the following night the UC police, LAPD and Highway Patrol under Governor Gavin Newsom violently attacked the encampment.
Los Angeles civil rights attorney Thomas Harvey and other attorneys have recently filed a lawsuit against the UC management for allowing this attack and violating the rights of the encampment participants. He was interviewed at a tribunal called The UC People's Tribunal On Palestine.
Additional Media:
UC People's Tribunal On Palestine
www.ucpeoplestribunal.org
Unmasking counter-protesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html
Production Of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
USPS’ new postmaster general is a FedEx board member and former Fortune 500 CEO. But union leaders say he’s the ‘last type of person’ who should be in charge
fortune.com/article/usps-postmaster-general-steiner-fedex-fortune-500/
BYSUSAN HAIGH AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 9, 2025 at 2:36 PM EDT
David Steiner is poised to take over control of the U.S. Postal Service, becoming the nation’s 76th postmaster general.
David Steiner is poised to take over control of the U.S. Postal Service, becoming the nation’s 76th postmaster general.
JOSHUA ROBERTS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
David Steiner, a former CEO of the nation’s largest waste management company who currently serves on the FedEx board of directors, is poised to take over control of the U.S. Postal Service, becoming the nation’s 76th postmaster general.
The announcement of Steiner’s appointment, which heightened concerns from postal unions over possible efforts to privatize the USPS, was made Friday by Amber McReynolds, chairperson of the USPS’ Board of Governors, during a meeting of the independent group that oversees the service.
“We anticipate that Mr. Steiner will join the organization in July, assuming his successful completion of the ethics and security clearance processes that are currently underway,” McReynolds said.
Friday’s announcement by the the Board of Governors comes as President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have raised the idea of privatizing the nearly 250-year-old Postal Service, which has faced financial challenges amid a changing mail mix and other issues.
The choice of Steiner has been seen by the postal unions as a harbinger for possible privatization of some or all of the venerable quasi-public institution, which is largely self-funded and has a mission to serve every address in the country — nearly 167 million residences, businesses and post office boxes.
Postal unions have held protests throughout the country over potential privatization, job cuts and possibly ending the universal service obligation.
Brian L. Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said Steiner is not just any executive from the private sector but someone who sits on the board of one of the Postal Service’s top competitors.
“His selection isn’t just a conflict of interest — it’s an aggressive step toward handing America’s mail system over to corporate interests,” Renfroe said in a statement. “Private shippers have been waiting to get USPS out of parcel delivery for years. Steiner’s selection is an open invitation to do just that.”
Renfroe’s union represents 205,000 active city letter carriers and around 90,000 retirees.
Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 220,000 USPS employees and retirees, likened the appointment of Steiner to a fox guarding a hen house.
“FedEx has a very different agenda than the public postal service. And they’re a major competitor of the United States Postal Service,” he said. “I’m not talking about any attributes of an individual, but to me, that’s the last type of person you will put in charge of the public institution as the anchor of the mailing package industry in the country.”
Steiner, who will leave the FedEx board, said in a written statement that he admires the public service mission of the USPS and called it “an incredible honor to be asked to lead the world’s greatest postal organization.”
“I believe strongly in maintaining its role as an independent establishment of the executive branch,” said Steiner, who served as CEO of Waste Management Inc. from 2004 through October 2016.
In a written statement, McReynolds called Steiner “the right person to lead the Postal Service at this time to ensure this magnificent and historic organization thrives into the future.”
“Dave is a highly regarded leader and executive with tremendous vision, experience and skill that can be applied to the long-term mission and business needs of the Postal Service,” she added. “Our Board looks forward to working with Dave as he takes on the core mandates of providing universal and excellent service for the American public and doing so in a financially sustainable manner.”
The Postal Service is in the midst of a 10-year modernization and cost-cutting plan that began in 2021 under Postmaster Louis DeJoy, who resigned in March. The plan is an attempt to stop losses at the agency, which has a budget of about $78 billion a year and is mostly self-funded, including through stamps and packages.
Known as “Deliver for America,” the initiative has received markedly mixed reviews. While postal officials contend it has led to major efficiency improvements, some members of Congress have criticized it for leading to mail delays, unsustainable postage increases and declines in business.
Besides privatization, there’s also been talk of possibly moving the USPS under the control of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The choice of Steiner was first reported by The Washington Post.
fortune.com
David Steiner is poised to take over control of the U.S. Postal Service, becoming the nation’s 76th postmaster general.
Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html
By Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken, Allison Gordon, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Em Steck, Daniel Medina, Kyung Lah and Anna-Maja Rappard, CNN
Published 11:06 AM EDT, Thu May 16, 2024
CNN
—
A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
An image from Fox 11 Los Angeles posted on Facebook by Sharon On-Siboni shows her son, Edan On, with a white hoodie throwing an object into the encampment created by pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA. On-Siboni highlighted the image.
An image from Fox 11 Los Angeles posted on Facebook by Sharon On-Siboni shows her son, Edan On, with a white hoodie throwing an object into the encampment created by pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA. On-Siboni highlighted the image. From Fox 11
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
Video footage shows the young man in a white hoodie, identified as Edan On, striking at the barrier around the pro-Palestinian encampment. William Gude
From Social Media
In this still taken from a video posted on social media, Edan On removes his mask. From Social Media
On, a local high school senior, was captured on video striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole.
On, a local high school senior, was captured on video striking a pro-Palestinian protester with a pole. From Social Media
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
“We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
The footage appears to show Edan On, in the white hoodie, and others striking at a pro-Palestinian protester on the ground. Key News Network
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself. His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator is beaten by counterprotesters attacking a pro-Palestinian encampment set up at UCLA's campus. The man in the maroon hoodie is among the attackers, which include Malachi Marlan-Librett (beige cap) to his right.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator is beaten by counterprotesters attacking a pro-Palestinian encampment set up at UCLA's campus. The man in the maroon hoodie is among the attackers, which include Malachi Marlan-Librett (beige cap) to his right. Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
A counterprotester, identified by CNN as Malachi Marlan-Librett, pushes a pro-Palestinian protester in the barrier of the UCLA encampment.
A counterprotester, identified by CNN as Malachi Marlan-Librett, pushes a pro-Palestinian protester in the barrier of the UCLA encampment. Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Marlan-Librett is seen throwing the bottom of a broom at a pro-Palestinian protester. William Gude
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Journalist Dolores Quintana is pepper-sprayed by the man in the maroon hoodie and other counterprotesters. William Gude
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Dolores Quintana pictured shortly after being pepper-sprayed while covering the protests at UCLA in early May.
Dolores Quintana pictured shortly after being pepper-sprayed while covering the protests at UCLA in early May. Dolores Quintana
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
Tom Bibiyan is seen throwing a water bottle at a protester. William Gude
Tom Bibiyan is seen rushing the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA. William Gude
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. Boosinger requested CNN obscure a portion of this image over privacy concerns following recent developments.
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. Boosinger requested CNN obscure a portion of this image over privacy concerns following recent developments. Courtesy Thistle Boosinger
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment | CNN
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Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
In America’s ‘salad bowl,’ farmers invest in guest worker housing, hoping to stabilize workforce
www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-10/california-farmers-invest-in-h2a-housing-to-stabilize…
Migrant workers head into a field to harvest plump romaine lettuce under cloudy skies.
Migrant workers head out to harvest romaine lettuce in Salinas, Calif.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
By Melissa Gomez and Rebecca Plevin
Photography by Genaro Molina
May 10, 2025 3 AM PT
SALINAS, Calif. — Every year, farmers in this fertile valley dubbed the “salad bowl of the world” rely on tens of thousands of workers to harvest leafy greens and juicy strawberries. But with local farmworkers aging — and the Trump administration’s determined crackdown on the illegal workers who have long been the backbone of California’s agricultural workforce — more growers have been looking to legal channels to import foreign workers.
Under the federal H-2A visa program, agricultural employers can hire workers from other countries on a temporary basis, so long as they show that they were unable to hire sufficient numbers of domestic workers. Employers are required to provide the guest workers with housing, food and transportation.
But in Monterey County, one of the more expensive regions in the nation, the obligation to provide an exploding number of guest workers with suitable housing was exacerbating a regional affordable housing crisis. Growers and labor contractors were buying up single-family homes and motels — often the residence of last resort for people on the verge of homelessness — making housing even more scarce for low-wage workers living in the region year-round.
Migrant workers pick and sort romaine lettuce.
Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, pick romaine lettuce in King City.
For some large farming companies in the county, the solution has been to privately fund the construction of new housing facilities for H-2A workers. Since 2015, local growers have invested their own capital and often their own land to build at least eight housing complexes for thousands of guest workers.
These are not akin to the crude barracks used to house the Mexican guest workers known as braceros decades ago, nor are they the broken-down trailers associated with abuses of the H-2A program. Rather, many of the new housing developments here are built along the lines of modern multi-family townhomes, outfitted with recreational areas and laundry facilities. County leaders, eager to support the agricultural industry and increase the overall housing supply, have thrown their support behind the effort, expediting the permitting processes for such developments.
Some community members are skeptical of this approach. Neighbors have raised concerns about the impacts of building large housing developments primarily for single men. Some advocates say it is a grave injustice that growers are building housing for foreign guest workers, while farmworkers who settled in the region years ago often persist in substandard and overcrowded buildings.
A farmworker tends to his two sons in a tidy home in Salinas.
Israel Francisco, with sons Gael and Elias, is among the longtime farmworkers in Monterey County who crowd into homes with extended family and roommates because of the lack of affordable housing.
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“The growers are building housing for H-2A workers, because they have the power, because they have the land, and because they have the money,” said Nidia Soto, an organizer with Building Healthy Communities Monterey County.
Domestic farmworkers — many of whom emigrated decades ago, started families and put down roots — don’t directly benefit from that development, she said: “Even though they are breaking their backs every day to bring food to the table, they are not worthy of housing.”
County Supervisor Luis Alejo agreed there is a dire need for more affordable housing for local farmworkers, but called the grower-funded H-2A housing developments a “win-win for the community.”
“When we’re providing housing for H-2A workers, it is not exacerbating the housing crisis elsewhere in our community,” he said.
A key issue in the discussion is that many of the longtime farmworkers who live in Monterey County are in the U.S. without authorization, as is true across California. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced research.
Elena is a mother of three and grandmother from Chiapas, Mexico. She plans to return to Mexico.
CALIFORNIA
More immigrants opt to self-deport rather than risk being marched out like criminals
April 18, 2025
With the Trump administration’s focus on upending America’s immigration system and deporting undocumented immigrants, California growers are scrambling to stabilize their labor supply through legal avenues such as the H-2A visa program.
For years, farmworker advocates have voiced concerns about the H-2A program, saying it is ripe for exploitation because a worker’s permission to be in the country is tied to the employer. And, as long as their labor supply was sufficient, many growers were reluctant to scale up the program, because it requires them to invest in federally compliant housing and, in many cases, to pay higher wages to meet a federal requirement of nearly $20 an hour.
But with the Trump administration vowing mass deportations — and a growing number of undocumented immigrants considering “self-deportation” — the sufficiency of the workforce is suddenly in question.
Two men talk in a field, while behind them farmworkers line up at hand-washing stations.
Steve Scaroni, right, founder of Fresh Harvest, speaks with foreman Javier Patron, as workers line up to wash their hands before going back to work harvesting lettuce in King City.
“If we get immigration enforcement, there’s going to be crops rotting in the field,” said Steve Scaroni, founder of Imperial County-based Fresh Harvest, one of the largest enterprises in the country for importing guest workers.
Could Monterey County offer a solution for the rest of the state?
In 2015, Tanimura & Antle, one of the region’s largest agricultural companies, recruited Avila Construction Co. to build housing for 800 H-2A workers in the community of Spreckels outside Salinas.
The grower wanted the project built within one year, which was “kind of unheard of,” because getting housing approved that quickly was nearly impossible, according to Mike Avila, the construction company owner. But Tanimura & Antle faced a dire situation: They couldn’t hire a stable domestic workforce, and risked having crops go unharvested if they didn’t invest in a plan to hire guest workers.
Some local residents opposed the proposed development, citing the dangers of having hundreds more men living in the area and raising concerns about road congestion. But the Board of Supervisors ultimately pushed the project forward.
“We’ve been very, very fortunate that these projects have been built and those fears don’t end up coming to fruition,” Avila said. He noted that employers are required to provide H-2A workers with transportation by bus or van, reducing the number of cars on the road.
After a day of work, farmworkers return to a motel-style housing complex for H-2A guest workers.
After a day of work, migrant farmworkers return to a housing complex for H-2A guest workers in the city of Greenfield in Monterey County.
Tanimura & Antle’s complex pioneered a new model of guest worker housing in the region, and also gave the company an edge. Once Tanimura & Antle built the complex, it was able to recruit migrant farmworkers from other states, Avila said. It wasn’t until recently that the company began housing H-2A workers in the facility.
Avila, meanwhile, has become the go-to construction company for grower-funded employee housing. The company typically builds dormitory-style townhomes on land owned by growers. Today, the company averages a project a year.
Migrants relax on black couches in a large community room at an H-2A guest housing site.
Migrant workers relax in the community room at a converted H-2A housing site operated by Fresh Harvest in King City. The site features dormitory-style rooms that sleep up to 14 workers.
A man walks through a dormitory-style bathroom lined with stainless steel sinks.
Fresh Harvest converted a tomato packaging plant in Monterey County into clean, livable housing for about 360 migrant farmworkers.
The number of H-2A visas certified for Monterey County has ballooned since that first grower-funded housing development went up.
The federal Labor Department certified more than 8,100 H-2A visas for the county in 2023, a nearly 60% increase from 2018, according to a report from the UC Davis Labor and Community Center of the Greater Capital Region. Compared with other California counties, Monterey had the highest number of visa certifications by several thousand.
More than a dozen migrant workers harvest and bag romaine lettuce.
Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, harvest and bag romaine lettuce in Salinas.
Some agricultural employers have had to get creative to meet the housing requirements.
Fresh Harvest houses anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 guest workers across the U.S. But one of Scaroni’s favorite projects is in King City in a shuttered tomato packaging plant that sat empty until he asked officials about converting it into farmworker housing in 2016.
“The city thought we were crazy,” he recalled. “But there was something in me that said, ‘I think we can make it work.’”
Today, Fresh Harvest’s Meyer Farmworker Housing has space for about 360 workers. The company turned the so-called ripening rooms, where tomatoes once were stored, into dorm rooms that hold 14 workers each.
The dorm rooms are lined with lockers and bunk beds, which workers decorate with colorful blankets. The shared bathroom features a long row of stainless steel sinks and showers, and workers can relax in a community room lined with couches, laundry machines and a TV.
Company officials also tout their impact on King City’s downtown. Broadway Street had defunct storefronts when Fresh Harvest began leasing the property. Now, a La Plaza Bakery opens before sunrise and caters to workers headed to the fields, and restaurants line the streets.
Cristina Cruz Mendoza recently relocated her store, Cristina’s Clothing and More, to Broadway. She sells an array of clothing and gear worn by farmworkers, and says the workers who live nearby have made a big difference to her sales.
A man stands inside a dormitory room lined with bunk beds.
“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” Julio Cesar said of the guest workers taking part in the H-2A visa program through Fresh Harvest in King City.
Julio Cesar, who has worked with Fresh Harvest for six seasons, said he likes the Meyer facility because of its cleanliness and how cool it stays. He and the other workers who live there often head downtown after working in the broccoli fields.
“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” he said. “We sometimes go to the stores, do some shopping. Sometimes we go for a walk to relax.”
Even as Monterey County celebrates its successes in building model housing for H-2A guest workers, housing for the thousands of longtime farm laborers who are not part of the visa program continues to stagnate.
A 2018 report from the California Institute for Rural Studies found communities across the Salinas Valley in Monterey County and Pajaro Valley in neighboring Santa Cruz County needed more than 45,000 new units of housing to alleviate critical overcrowding in farmworker households. But building such developments without grower investment requires local governments to cobble together financing, which can be difficult for rural communities.
That’s left many farmworker families struggling to afford rent while earning minimum wage, $16.50 an hour. The situation is especially acute in Salinas, where the City Council recently voted to repeal a short-lived ordinance that capped annual rent increases on multi-family residences built before February 1995.
Amalia Francisco, a 32-year-old immigrant from southern Mexico, shares a three-bedroom house in Salinas with her three brothers and other roommates. It often takes at least three or four families to cover the monthly rent of $5,000, she said.
Francisco makes about $800 a week picking strawberries — that is, if she’s lucky to get a full 40 hours. Her last paycheck was just $200, she said. She feels like she never has enough money to cover her portion of the rent, along with food and other expenses.
A man enters a darkened home through a sliding glass door.
Israel Francisco enters the Salinas home that he shares with his sister, Amalia, and other roommates to help cover the $5,000 monthly rent.
Farmworker Aquilino Vasquez pays $2,400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife, three daughters and father-in-law. They have lived there for a decade, but over the past two years Vasquez said he has grown frustrated with the way the property is managed.
When black mold appeared on the ceiling, he said, he was told he was responsible for cleaning it. He said he had to complain to the city to get smoke detectors installed, and that rats have chewed through walls in the bathroom and kitchen.
Vasquez, an immigrant from Oaxaca, said it is unjust that his family’s well-being is at risk, while guest workers are being provided with quality housing.
“They’re building, they’re always building, but for the contract workers,” he said.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.
In America's 'salad bowl,' farmers invest in guest worker housing, hoping to stabilize workforce
www.latimes.com
In Monterey County, growers are building lodging for thousands of guest workers coming in on H-2A visas. Some advocates say it is an injustice for the farmworkers who’ve lived here for years, many in …
STATE OF INEQUALITYThe Unkindest Cut: Slashing Medicaid Threatens the Medically Vulnerable
Are California’s in-home caregivers on Republicans’ chopping block?
capitalandmain.com/the-unkindest-cut-slashing-medicaid-threatens-the-medically-vulnerable
Published on May 8, 2025
By Mark Kreidler
For Maria Paredez, the slashing of Medicaid funding is no political football, or some abstract argument emanating from Republicans in Congress about the size of government. It hits her where she lives: a small house in a small town in Tulare County, where she struggles to get from one month to the next.
Paredez is not a victim, though — she’s an employee. She has for the past three years cared for her grandmother, who’s now 88, through a program exclusive to California called In Home Supportive Services (IHSS). The IHSS pays people to take care of Medi-Cal eligible Californians who are elderly, blind or disabled, allowing those folks to hire their caregivers, 70% of whom are relatives. They can thus remain in their homes or with family rather than being funneled into costly care centers or nursing facilities, for which the state would have to pay.
The work is difficult and the compensation is minimal. Paredez, who told me she is in her 40s, makes $17.10 an hour, a wage set by Tulare County officials. Despite, she said, being with her grandmother day and night after the elderly woman suffered a stroke and began requiring constant care, Paredez is paid for only 116 hours per month — a little less than $2,000, before taxes. She took a part-time second job to make ends meet.
“Our family wants to care for Grandma, and I was the best person to do it,” Paredez said. “But it’s been hard to make it all work. It’s not easy.”
It could get harder. If the GOP follows through on its resolution to cut Medicaid spending by $880 billion over the next decade, California’s budget for Medi-Cal (the state’s version of Medicaid) could take a heavy hit. For In Home Supportive Services, which uses federal dollars to fund more than 50% of its program, the result might be a reduction in services — and in hours for people like Paredez.
And should Paredez, who has the auto-immune disease lupus, become ill herself, it would be a double whammy. “I also use Medi-Cal for my own health needs,” she said. “If they cut Medi-Cal services, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
* * *
Paredez is not alone. According to research by the University of California, Berkeley, Labor Center, more than half of all state home health care workers rely on Medi-Cal for their own health coverage.
That is perhaps not surprising, considering what they earn. Using the MIT Living Wage Calculator as a guide, the Labor Center found that none of California’s 58 counties pay home health care workers enough to afford basic living expenses. The hourly wage ranges from the state minimum of $16.50 in Siskiyou County to $22 in San Francisco County, and it’s negotiated on a county-by-county basis.
A bill by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), currently making its way through the California Legislature, would enable IHSS workers to bargain on a statewide basis and seek uniform wages and health care benefits based upon the state itself becoming the employer of record. The bill is co-sponsored by two unions that represent IHSS workers, United Domestic Workers and the Service Employees International Union. (Disclosure: UDW and SEIU are both financial supporters of Capital & Main).
The Berkeley Labor Center estimates that, depending upon the timing and mechanisms for slashing the program, California could lose between $10 billion and $20 billion per year in federal Medi-Cal funds. Laurel Lucia, the center’s Health Care Program director, said the next several weeks should bring some clarity about how Republicans plan to carry out the massive cuts. Lucia said the center estimates job losses of between 109,000 and 217,000 in the state.
“If federal Medicaid spending is cut,” Lucia said, “it would affect health care providers and health care jobs.” Less funding means less service, fewer providers getting paid, and/or those providers’ rates for service being slashed.
The loss is multiplied for businesses that support Medi-Cal, which serves roughly 15 million Californians, about a third of the state’s population. An overall shrinking of Medi-Cal, for example, would hit food and laundry services and other contractors that work with hospitals and care facilities. Health care workers, Lucia said, could also find themselves with less to spend at local restaurants and retail stores.
* * *
There’s still plenty unknown about what Congress will do. It is also not clear how Gov. Gavin Newsom and his staff will try to account for potential Medicaid cuts in their revision of the proposed 2025-26 state budget, which is due within the next week.
Lucia said the state can’t just absorb the range of federal cuts that the Labor Center is predicting. Even the lower end of its $10 billion to $20 billion projection is nearly what the state budgets over a full year for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ($13.9 billion).
The numbers are huge. Their effect, though, is local. In Yreka, in Siskiyou County, 30-year-old Alice Demers is caring for her partner, who has a rare skin condition that requires constant care, and who, she said, has been in declining health for years.
Demers is paid $16.50 an hour under IHSS, but the program has authorized only 80 hours a month for her partner’s care. She drives about 30 minutes to care for another client a couple of days a week, but Demers said she and her partner were still forced to move into Section 8 low-income housing several months ago.
In past times of budget stress, the state has cut hours for IHSS workers across the board. Such cuts now would mean less income for Demers, but she has another concern: A Medi-Cal patient herself, she’s been putting off needed surgery to repair a nerve issue that causes shattering pain in her face. She relies on the program for the medications that help with the pain so that she can put in her hours as a caregiver.
“All of my partner’s health care comes from Medi-Cal, and mine — and in a way our income does too,” she said. “We could really get screwed over here.”
The Unkindest Cut: Slashing Medicaid Threatens the Medically Vulnerable
capitalandmain.com
Are California’s in-home caregivers on Republicans’ chopping block?
The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes
www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-semis-started-regular-routes?Date=20250501&Profi…
By Alexandra Skores, CNN
Updated 8:41 PM EDT, Thu May 1, 2025
151 comments
Interior of one of Aurora's driverless trucks.
Courtesy Aurora
Washington, DCCNN —
Driverless trucks are officially running their first regular long-haul routes, making roundtrips between Dallas and Houston.
On Thursday, autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, which delivers time- and temperature-sensitive freight. Both companies conducted test runs with Aurora, including safety drivers to monitor the self-driving technology dubbed “Aurora Driver.”Aurora’s new commercial service will no longer have safety drivers.
RELATED ARTICLEDriverless rides on Uber now challenging Elon Musk’s Tesla in its backyard
“We founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly, said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora, in a release on Thursday. “Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads.”
The trucks are equipped with computers and sensors that can see the length of over four football fields. In four years of practice hauls the trucks’ technology has delivered over 10,000 customer loads across 3 million miles with human supervision. As of Thursday, the company’s self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck.
Aurora is starting with a single self-driving truck and plans to add more by the end of 2025.
One of Aurora's trucks on the road.
Self-driving technology continued to garner attention after over a decade of hype, especially from auto companies like Tesla, GM and others that have poured billions into the tech. Companies in the market of autonomous trucking or driving, tend to use states like Texas and California as their testing grounds for the technology.
California-based Gatik does short-haul deliveries for Fortune 500 retailers like Walmart. Another California tech firm, Kodiak Robotics, delivers freight daily for customers across the South but with safety drivers. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, had an autonomous trucking arm but dismantled it in 2023 to focus on its self-driving ride-hailing services.
However, consumers and transportation officials have raised alarms on the safety record of autonomous vehicles. Aurora released its own safety report this year detailing how its technology works.
Unions that represent truck drivers are usually opposed to the driverless technology because of the threat of job loss and concerns over safety.
Earlier this year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rejected a petition from autonomous driving companies Waymo and Aurora seeking to replace traditional warning devices used when a truck broke down with cab-mounted beacons. The Transport Workers Union argued the petition would hinder safety.
The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business
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Driverless trucks are officially running their first regular long-haul routes, making roundtrips between Dallas and Houston.