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Gavin Newsom Threatens to Block California Tax Payments to Federal Government

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) threatened Friday that his state would stop tax payments to the federal government, after news reports suggested President Donald Trump was thinking of cutting funds to the state.

As Breitbart News noted earlier in the day, reports emerged suggesting that the Trump White House was considering cutting federal funding to California due to its challenges to, and defiance of, federal policy.

Breitbart News reported:

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering ways to pull more federal funding from the State of California, as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) continues to defy White House policies, despite needing money.

California is suffering a large budget deficit for the second year in a row, with the state’s Medicaid program borrowing money to stay afloat. Newsom has also asked the federal government for $40 billion in fire relief.

But Newsom is also enthusiastically suing the Trump administration over many of its policies, often seeking the kinds of nationwide injunctions that would stop those policies everywhere, not just in California.

…

Trump had already threatened California’s federal sports funding after the state defied a federal transgender policy that bars biological males from competing in girls’ sports. And this week, the U.S. Department of Transportation suggested the administration could claw back billions of dollars in federal spending wasted on the state’s troubled high-speed rail project.

But Democrats have argued that California should be allowed to oppose federal policies while benefiting from federal spending, especially given the state’s large contributions to federal revenues. And they have pushed back against the idea of conditioning fire aid on policy changes.

It is not clear what constitutional authority Newsom has to withhold federal taxes on behalf of individuals, businesses, and other entities within the state. Trump’s authority to withhold funding is far clearer.

A tax revolt by California would recall the “nullification” doctrine popular in some Southern states before the Civil War. It could also trigger a tax revolt by Californians against their own state taxes, which are very high.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.



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Basic universal income: Testing a weapon against economic insecurity



Basic universal income: Testing a weapon against economic insecurity – CBS News










































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Even if your job isn’t being replaced by a robot, there is plenty of economic insecurity today, with many people just one paycheck away from disaster. To fight economic hardship, the City of Stockton, Calif., is launching a pilot program to test the benefits of a basic universal income (BUI) – giving $500 a month to impoverished residents, no strings attached. Lee Cowan hears from Mayor Michael Tubbs about his effort, funded by the Economic Security Project, and talks with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and University of California, Berkeley professor Laura Tyson about the costs and benefits of “free” money. (This story originally aired on April 15, 2018)

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Reddit sues Anthropic over alleged

Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Wednesday, alleging that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of millions of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude.

Reddit claims that Anthropic has used automated bots to access Reddit’s content despite being asked not to do so, and “intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent.”

Anthropic said in a statement that it disagreed with Reddit’s claims “and will defend ourselves vigorously.”

Reddit filed the lawsuit Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Francisco, where both companies are based.

“AI companies should not be allowed to scrape information and content from people without clear limitations on how they can use that data,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement Wednesday.

Reddit licensing agreements

Reddit has previously entered licensing agreements with Google, OpenAI and other companies that are paying to be able to train their AI systems on the public commentary of Reddit’s more than 100 million daily users.

Those agreements “enable us to enforce meaningful protections for our users, including the right to delete your content, user privacy protections, and preventing users from being spammed using this content,” Lee said.

The licensing deals also helped the 20-year-old online platform raise money ahead of its Wall Street debut as a publicly traded company last year Among those who stood to benefit was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who accumulated a stake as an early Reddit investor that made him one of the company’s biggest shareholders.

Claude and Alexa

Anthropic was formed by former OpenAI executives in 2021 and its flagship Claude chatbot remains a key competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft, Anthropic’s primary commercial partner is Amazon, which is using Claude to improve its widely used Alexa voice assistant.

Much like other AI companies, Anthropic has relied heavily on websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit that are deep troves of written materials that can help teach an AI assistant the patterns of human language.

In a 2021 paper co-authored by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei — cited in the lawsuit — researchers at the company identified the subreddits, or subject-matter forums, that contained the highest quality AI training data, such as those focused on gardening, history, relationship advice or thoughts people have in the shower.

Anthropic in 2023 argued in a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office that the “way Claude was trained qualifies as a quintessentially lawful use of materials,” by making copies of information to perform a statistical analysis of a large body of data. It is already battling a lawsuit from major music publishers alleging that Claude regurgitates the lyrics of copyrighted songs.

But Reddit’s lawsuit is different from others brought against AI companies because it doesn’t allege copyright infringement. Instead, it focuses on the alleged breach of Reddit’s terms of use, and the unfair competition, it says, was created.

——

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

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Arrest in connection with Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing made at New York’s JFK airport

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A person was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City overnight related to the investigation into last month’s bombing outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation told CBS News.

The individual may have provided material support for the bombing, but it isn’t clear if they knew about the bombing. The bomber, identified by officials as 25-year-old Guy Bartkus, died in the blast. Four other people were injured in the explosion.

Police in Palm Springs said the bomber backed his Ford Fusion into a parking spot outside the clinic and the powerful explosion left a crater on the morning of May 17. The explosion could be felt more than a mile away from the blast zone, the FBI said.

Detectives believed Bartkus acted alone at the site but said they were scouring his online chats to learn whether anyone helped him buy parts or refine the design of the bomb.

Investigators said the blast pattern shows that the device was far more damaging than a low-grade explosive such as fireworks.

The FBI said Bartkus had access to a large quantity of commercially available chemical products that could be combined to create a homemade explosive device.

Bartkus was a resident of Twentynine Palms, California, home to a large Marine Corps base about an hour’s drive from Palm Springs. He stated in writings or recordings that he was against bringing people into the world against their will, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

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Disney lays off hundreds of employees across film, TV and other units

Walt Disney Co. is laying off hundreds of employees as part of a cost-cutting measure, CBS News has confirmed. 

“As our industry transforms at a rapid pace, we continue to evaluate ways to efficiently manage our businesses while fueling the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney,” a spokesperson said in an email to CBS News. “As part of this ongoing work, we have identified opportunities to operate more efficiently and are eliminating a limited number of positions today.”

Disney did not confirm the exact number of employees being dismissed, but indicated the cuts will be across several of the entertainment giant’s units, including film and television marketing; TV publicity; casting and development; and corporate financial operations. 

“We have been surgical in our approach to minimize the number of impacted employees,” the spokesperson said.

— This is a developing story and will be updated

Mary Cunningham

Mary Cunningham is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. Before joining the business and finance vertical, she worked at “60 Minutes,” CBSNews.com and CBS News 24/7 as part of the CBS News Associate Program.

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White House Blasts California Councilman for Calling Ice Agents ‘Terrorists’

A San Diego city councilman drew the ire of viewers on social media and condemnation from the White House after posting a photo of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents with the word “terrorists” written in red.

In doing so, councilman Sean Elo-Rivera upped his attacks on ICE agents from his previous name-calling, which included epithets such as “cowards,” “criminals,” and “jackbooted thugs,” Fox News reported.

On Saturday he took to Instagram with the show-and-tell version, claiming ICE is a purveyor of “state sponsored terrorism.” The photo was accompanied by the Rage Against the Machine song “Bulls On Parade.”

“Look at this photo. This isn’t a war zone — it’s a neighborhood in our city,” Elo-Rivera wrote in the post. “In San Diego, they’ve targeted parents dropping off their kids at school, people following the law inside courthouses, and workers just doing their jobs at local restaurants.”

Stephen Miller, firebrand White House aide, hit back with a post on X, showing the councilman’s doctored photo and stating the real terrorism was coming from the left wing.

The raids are part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on alien criminals who have rap sheets ranging from rape to murder, Homeland Security authorities have said. Elo-Rivera disagreed.

“These are federal agents carrying out raids under the false pretense of ‘safety,’” he said. “This isn’t safety. It’s state-sponsored terrorism. And anyone who cares about freedom — and true safety — should be fighting back.”

Prior to the post Friday night, Elo-Rivera shared a series of Instagram stories criticizing ICE action in the city. Fox News quoted one of them:

They’ve targeted parents outside schools in my district. They’ve targeted people following the law at courthouses. Tonight, they targeted hard working folks in South Park and tomorrow it could be anyone in any neighborhood in San Diego. The only way we put a stop to it is by not looking away and demanding that it end.

After the councilman’s most recent rant was shared by Los Angeles-based Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin on Saturday afternoon, Elo-Rivera doubled down on his photo post.

WATCH — ICE Agent: Biden Administration Immigration Policies Put the Public at Risk:

“A Fox ‘News’ correspondent has called attention to my choice of words,” Elo-Rivera wrote. “I said what I meant and meant what I said.”

He followed with a screenshot from Cornell Law School’s website that lists the “common elements” of terrorism, before calling dozens of critical Instagram users “fascists.”

The posts came not long after Patricia Hyde, the head of ICE Boston, said sanctuary city officials are escalating their activities against immigration enforcement, and an ICE spokesman told Fox News there has been a 413-percent increase in assaults against agents.

“I think the lack of cooperation is getting worse and worse, and it’s putting law enforcement lives in danger,” Hyde told Fox.

Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.



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Where to Sip Natural Wine in Los Angeles

Over the last decade, the natural wine movement has gained major traction as consumers continue to shift toward a more organic way of living, eating and drinking. To put it simply, natural wine is basically untouched, fermented grape juice, and it is known for having a funkier profile with yeasty notes on both the nose and palate. In addition to being made with little-to-no additives or pesticides, natural wines also have a lower alcohol volume and fewer sulfites, and since it is virtually unregulated, trust in the winemaker is essential. Though traditionalists tend to prefer conventional wines, natural wines are vibrant, unique and less likely to leave you with an unforgiving hangover.

In Los Angeles, several bars and restaurants have embraced the shift toward low-intervention vino by working with organic purveyors from all across California, Italy, France and beyond. In addition to actual natural wine bars like Good Clean Fun and El Prado, restaurants such as Coucou, Crudo e Nudo and Dudley Market have also curated their wine offerings to showcase the beauty and diversity of naturally-produced varietals. Whether you’re looking to pair fresh seafood with a bottle of biodynamic rosé or want to enjoy a tangy orange inside Echo Park’s coolest Euro-esque watering hole, we’ve got you covered on where to sip natural wine in Los Angeles.



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Mexican Band Grupo Firme Cancels U.S. Appearance over Visa Processing

May 31 (UPI) — A popular Mexican band named Grupo Firme was scheduled to play the La Onda Fest on Sunday, but it has canceled due to work visa-processing issues.

The festival is being held in Napa Valley, Calif., but the Tijuana-based band said its work visas are in an “administrative process” that won’t enable its members to participate in the festival, Billboard reported on Saturday.

“The visas of Grupo Firme and the team of Music VIP are in an administrative process by the U.S. Embassy, a situation that makes it impossible for Grupo Firme to perform at La Onda Fest as planned,” the musical group posted on social media.

“We regret any inconvenience this may cause,” the band said. “We appreciate your understanding and, above all, the love from our fans in the U.S.”

The band intends to perform again in the United States, but the visa-processing issue is stopping it from doing so at the moment.

A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Mexico told Billboard that visa records are confidential and staff cannot and will not discuss individual cases.

The band is not the only Mexican musical act to encounter visa issues.

Singer Julion Alvarez postponed a sold-out show scheduled May 24 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, USA Today reported.

His band, Julion Alvarez y su Norteno Banda, sold nearly all of the 50,000 tickets for the concert.

Alvarez, 42, learned his visa had been canceled, and it would be impossible to perform the next day.

Promoter CMN and the Copar Music record company said they will reschedule the concert.

Ticketholders have the option of getting a refund or using their tickets if the event is rescheduled.

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Hollywood industry faces headwinds in California



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In the wake of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes in 2023, film and television production in California has struggled mightily. The state lost roughly 40,000 film and TV jobs that year alone, according to federal data. Carter Evans examines whether the industry can rebound in California as it faces competition from across the globe.

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Concern grows over whether Hollywood’s film and TV industry can survive in California

Los Angeles — For years, Phil Mangano made a good living as a film and television editor in Los Angeles.

“It was just job after job after job,” Mangano told CBS News. “…Very consistent work.”

But after Hollywood writers and actors went on monthslong strikes in 2023, production ground to a halt. 

California lost roughly 40,000 film and tv jobs that year alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“When that finally settled, we were like, OK, great, things will come back,” Mangano said. “And there has been no significant increase in job opportunities.”

Since its peak in 2021, television production in the greater Los Angeles area has decreased by 58%, according to the nonprofit group FilmLA, which handles film permitting for the city and county of Los Angeles. The number of shoot days for television fell from 18,560 in 2021 to 7,716 in 2024.

And in the first quarter of 2025, on-location production in L.A. declined by 22.4% from the same period last year, per numbers from FilmLA.

“Right now, it’s a triage situation. The patient is dying and you need to bring it back to life,” Matthew Belloni, who covers show business for Puck News and hosts the popular podcast “The Town,” told CBS News.

Belloni says Hollywood productions, and hence the jobs, have gone to other U.S. states and other countries who are willing to offer generous tax incentives.

“Some European countries that are offering up to 40% back on these productions,” Belloni said. “And that’s incredibly influential.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to stop the bleeding by more than doubling the state’s annual film and TV tax credits from $330 million to $750 million.

“Film and film making, pre and post-production, it’s on life support,” Newsom told reporters earlier this month. “L.A. County and L.A. city are struggling.”

But is the proposal too little too late?

“The sad reality is that California has sat on this issue for 30 years,” Belloni said.

Belloni is unsure if California can provide enough tax credits to offset the high cost of working in the state.

“Other jurisdictions have done their own aggressive cuts to that bureaucracy,” Belloni said. “Is California willing to do that? Don’t know.”

In the meantime, Mangano and thousands of others in Hollywood are looking for whatever work they can find.

“I applied for a job at Costco a couple months ago,” said Mangano, who adds that he cannot hold out “much longer.”

“I have a little savings left,” he adds. “We’re hoping that’ll float us for a few more months. And then we have to start making some hard decisions…Whether or not we can keep the house.”

Carter Evans

Carter Evans has served as a Los Angeles-based correspondent for CBS News since February 2013, reporting across all of the network’s platforms. He joined CBS News with nearly 20 years of journalism experience, covering major national and international stories.

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