Results for “california voters”

Juan Vargas, a congressman, says he’s working to reunite the third-grader with loved ones Relatives of an eight-year-old Haitian boy who was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities in California are unable to locate the child, according to a Democratic lawmaker who described the case as “despicable”. Video obtained by NBC News shows the boy being led away by three armed officials after he was summoned to what his family said was a routine immigration appointment in San Diego on 4 November. Continue reading...

A local hospital says runners had "unusual" symptoms after racing on an atypically hot day.

California saw the most expensive opposition campaign in its history as funding of political campaigns broke records in the US midterms In the hours after polls closed on election day, tech industry players began praising Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, on social media. “Huge thanks to Sergey Brin here,” wrote Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator. Venture capitalist Ilya Sukhar posted : “God bless Sergey Brin.” And David Marcus, a crypto entrepreneur, simply wrote : “Hero.” Continue reading...

California voters have rejected a first-in-the-nation tax on the net worth of billionaires following a contentious ballot fight that generated huge spending by some prominent tech leaders eager to stop their taxes from going up. The measure would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of Californians whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. FRANCE 24's correspondent in Los Angeles Loic Pialat has more.

The proposed measure would have imposed a one-time 5 percent tax on Californian billionaires to fund healthcare.

California voters have rejected a proposed 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires, handing a victory to tech leaders who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into defeating the measure. The defeat of Proposition 40 also marks a setback for progressives seeking to tax the wealth of the ultra-rich.

Campaign over Prop 40, as measure was known, was most expensive in state history, flush with Silicon Valley dollars California billionaires won a contentious ballot measure campaign, defeating a proposed one-time tax on their wealth. The bruising campaign over Proposition 40 was the most expensive in state history and witness to back-and-forth dealing from tech billionaires and democratic leaders, including Gavin Newsom, the governor, who steadfastly opposed the measure. While supporters of Prop 40 cast it as a solution to drastic healthcare cuts from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, opponents led by prosperous billionaires mounted an influential campaign saying the billionaire tax was instead “an everyone tax”. Continue reading...

Lawsuit also alleges agents followed Carlos Jimenez to a hospital and ‘interfered’ in his care, with bullet fragments still lodged near lung A US citizen who was shot by an immigration officer in southern California has filed a $25m lawsuit against the federal government, alleging he was wrongfully shot and arrested, then subjected to a “malicious prosecution”. Carlos Jimenez, a father of three from Ontario, a city east of Los Angeles, was on his way to work at a food pantry on 30 October 2025 when he drove by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carrying out an operation. It was around 7am, and Jimenez approached officers “calmly and slowly” to inform them that children in the neighborhood would soon be arriving at an adjacent bus stop, according to his complaint filed in federal court on Friday. Continue reading...

France's multiple Olympic judo champion Teddy Riner announced on Monday he would run in next year's presidential election, after expressing concern about the "rise of the far right". "My name is Teddy Riner and today, I am telling you face to face: I am a candidate in the 2027 presidential election," the 37-year-old said in a surprise announcement on social media. Riner, one of the greatest judokas in history, said in the two-minute-37-second video that he feared France could soon become deeply divided, appearing to cast himself as a candidate for voters unwilling to choose between two political extremes -- the far right and the hard left. FRANCE 24's Mark Owen speaks with Yves Sintomer, Professor of Political Science at Université Paris VIII.

Calley Means claims officials abandoned Maha agenda and took money from sugar industry leading up to midterms A former top Trump administration health adviser accused Susie Wiles, whom Donald Trump removed as the White House chief of staff last week, of stalling the so-called “ Make America healthy again ” (Maha) agenda by prioritizing special interest groups and fundraising before the midterm elections. Calley Means, who resigned two weeks ago from his job advising Robert F Kennedy Jr, blamed Wiles and other Trump staffers for dropping the ball on the Maha agenda to take money from the sugar industry to fuel the midterms – which Republicans ultimately lost. Continue reading...

The African National Congress party in South Africa faces growing dissatisfaction and an exodus of supporters

Black women and girls represent an outsized share of LA homicide victims – frustrated with police and legislators’ failures, they’re stepping up and speaking out to stop the violence As a child, Tioni Theus was a ball of energy. After school she liked to play golf and dance. On weekends, she’d go to the movies and the mall with her older cousin. Driving back home at the end of the day to her family’s apartment in South Los Angeles, California, she’d ask: “What are we doing next?” Everything changed when Tioni was 13. Her mother was hit by a car and critically injured, leaving her unable to take care of her daughter. While her mom recovered, Tioni lived with other family members. But the accident left Tioni angry, her older cousin Nafeesah Kincy said, and she struggled to understand that her life had permanently changed. Continue reading...

Trump concedes some voters were unhappy with his administration's controversial deportation drive.

Trump said his deportation policy may be one of the reasons the Republicans lost so much ground in the midterm elections.

The two have business ties going back decades, and White has helped Trump reach out to younger voters.

Nationwide, voters elected at least 75 Native women or non-binary candidates in Tuesday’s elections, report says The US midterm elections saw voters elect a slew of historic representatives – from the country’s first Muslim senator to the first Black female governor – but among the most significant gains were those for Native American women. On Tuesday, voters elected the first Native American woman governor, senator and leaders of two tribal nations. Nationwide, voters elected at least 75 Native women or non-binary and Two Spirit candidates in the November midterms, according to Advance Native Political Leadership and the news site ICT . Continue reading...

Man taken to hospital after falling off Royal Caribbean ship in Pacific Ocean, with Coast Guard investigating incident A pianist for a Royal Caribbean cruise ship is expected to survive after two Newport Beach, California , fishermen discovered him treading water in the Pacific Ocean nearly 20 miles (32km) offshore on Friday. The unidentified man was taken to the hospital after the rescue, according to the US Coast Guard, which is now investigating how he went overboard from the cruise ship. Continue reading...

In Tuesday’s US midterm elections, voters weighed in on more than 40 local measures on data centres, and sided against them in all but one. With Democrats taking control of Congress in January and new governors in Texas and Georgia calling for moratoriums, the AI building boom faces its toughest political test yet.

More people recognize opioid overdoses, but education about stimulant overdoses hasn’t been as clear-cut Overdoses involving stimulants are on the rise in many parts of the country, according to recently available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but experts say recognizing and responding to them is more complex when compared with opioid overdoses. “The rate of overdose decline was not nearly what we expected” in California, said Dr Taylor Nichols, an emergency and addiction medicine physician based in Sacramento. Continue reading...

President claimed to have ushered in a ‘golden age’ even as prices soared and war dragged on – and midterm voters did not buy his looking-glass narrative A new “golden age of America” is under way, Donald Trump repeatedly declared in his final pitch to voters before the US midterm elections. The war in Iran was not really a war, because “we’ve done very little fighting”, the US president stressed. The stock market had hit 88 all-time highs. “They’re saying,” he said, that on his watch the US has become “the hottest country anywhere in the world”. Continue reading...

With a decisive rejection of Trumpism, US voters have given Democrats one more chance — they better not blow it.

The African National Congress, the party of late Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela, slumped to its worst-ever result in South Africa's municipal election. The voters blame the ANC for water and electricity shortages.

Sunshine state emerged as the lone flag bearer of the Maga agenda, but even there, the GOP finds itself on the defense After the dust settled on Tuesday night’s near-annihilation of the Republican party nationwide, a single red flag fluttered defiantly in Florida, now a last bastion of the Maga movement that has dominated politics in the US for a decade. Voters in the Sunshine state bucked the national trend, just barely, to elect two close allies of Donald Trump into office: congressman Byron Donalds as its first Black governor, and Ashley Moody to the US Senate. Continue reading...

There’s not much they can do over the next couple of years to alleviate angry voters’ stress over prices It was the economy, again. Although Donald Trump largely ignored it, voters’ acute concerns over the rising cost of living fuelled a political upheaval for the ages that is likely to deliver the biggest swing toward Democrats since Watergate, granting them the largest House majority in nearly four decades alongside their biggest edge in the Senate since 2008. Still, having come to power promising to restore affordability, the new crop of Democrats are soon to discover that there is not much they can do over the next couple of years to alleviate angry voters’ stress over pricey gas and groceries, exorbitant mortgages and unaffordable healthcare. Eduardo Porter is a journalist focused on economics and politics. He writes the newsletter Being There on Substack Continue reading...

While U.S. voters largely oppose the trade war with Canada, many Democrats and their supporters have protectionist leanings.

Early results after polls closed in New Zealand show the two main parties neck-and-neck. The country has strict election-day laws on political reporting to prevent voters from being swayed at the last minute.

Economic concerns dominated in the lead-up to the election on Saturday, in which there was no clear front-runner and smaller parties were expected to wield greater influence.

Early results after polls closed in New Zealand show the race is too close to call. The country has strict election-day laws on political reporting to prevent voters from being swayed at the last minute.

Voters rejected data centre development in all but one of the 41 measures addressing the issue in Tuesday's midterms.

US voters repudiated mass deportation campaign, but choice of new chief of staff shows Trump doesn’t care On Tuesday, voters resoundingly rebuked Donald Trump and his brutal mass deportation campaign that sent military tanks and masked agents though residential streets. But on Friday, the president doubled down. He named Stephen Miller – the architect of the administration’s most aggressive immigration policies – as his chief of staff. Continue reading...

More than half of New Zealand’s voters cast early ballots in the tightly contested race.

In the lead-up to an election in which economic concerns dominate, there was no clear front-runner. Minor parties will most likely determine who governs.

Democratic and Republican lawyers and groups trade sharp legal letters about procedures for counting ballots in tight race Democrat Scott Colom is on the verge of winning a Senate seat in Mississippi in a stunning upset, but ballots are still being counted in a close race where Colom holds a lead of just under 2,000 votes over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Losing ruby-red Mississippi would be the final straw for Republicans after a midterm sweep by Democrats that turned Texas and South Carolina blue. A possible legal fight is also brewing, as both sides trade sharp legal letters about the procedures for counting remaining ballots. National voting groups and attorneys have descended upon the magnolia state, joining the local groups that worked to mobilize voters. Democratic and Republican groups, including Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and Democratic election attorneys from the Elias Law Group, have deployed hundreds of volunteers and lawyers to all the state’s 82 counties to oversee the final rounds of counting. Continue reading...

Voters in Providence, Rhode Island called for for the city to stop its investments that support genocide.

Federal authorities allege Thomas Markle had a stash of explicit photos in two storage units in California.

California's governor Gavy Newsom announced Thursday that he will commute all death sentences in the state to life without the possibility of parole. He said that "capital punishment is morally wrong." The state Supreme Court will have the final say in hundreds of those cases.

In Israel, Gadi Eisenkot emerged on Thursday, November 5, as the frontrunner to be tasked with forming a government. This comes after one of the two main parties representing ultra-Orthodox Jewish voters – a longtime ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition – declined to recommend any candidate for the task. FRANCE 24's correspondent in Jerusalem Noga Tarnopolsky reports.

Operation Black Vote chair says Tory leader’s claim that Britain should not apologise has caused ‘hurt and disbelief’ The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, has caused “profound anger, hurt and disbelief” among many black voters with her comments about transatlantic slavery, according to the chair of Operation Black Vote (OBV), who urged the prime minister, Andy Burnham, to apologise for Britain’s involvement without delay. David Weaver, a former government adviser, said the Labour and Tory leaders risked alienating black voters with their handling of the issue of a state apology for slavery, while saying Badenoch’s remarks showed a “troubling absence of moral leadership”. Continue reading...

Former liberation movement’s share of national vote almost 14 percentage points below 2021 result The African National Congress is on course to suffer a bruising defeat in South Africa’s local elections, with the once dominant party of Nelson Mandela falling to under a third of the vote nationally with more than 80% of ballots counted. Wednesday’s fragmented vote marks another stage in the decline of the ANC, which has led national governments since the end of white minority apartheid rule in 1994. High unemployment, crime, corruption and poor local service delivery have all contributed to voters turning away from the party . Continue reading...

Following the Democrats' sweeping victory in Tuesday's US midterm elections, Republicans are facing a moment of reckoning. With Donald Trump now a "lame-duck" president, the party must find a way forward after a historic electoral setback. The GOP faces major questions about how to win back voters and who will lead the party, with the next presidential election just two years away.

A Nigerian court Thursday declared invalid the nomination of Atiku Abubakar as the presidential candidate for the opposition African Democratic Congress, just two months before the country's elections. The party, which accused the ruling All Progressives Congress of involvement in the lawsuit, will appeal, its spokesman said – but the ruling creates legal headaches for Abubakar and uncertainty for voters with the January 16 vote around the corner.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday, November 5, he was commuting all death sentences across the state to life imprisonment, in a move that will affect over 500 prisoners. FRANCE 24's correspondent Wassim Cornet reports.

Texas business owner says he expected ICE raids to focus on those with criminal records not his relatives and employees Tuesday night’s explosive rout of the Republican party was supercharged by the fury of Hispanic Americans who turned out in record numbers in key battlegrounds to protest the Trump administration ’s anti-immigrant assault on their communities. “Trump went against us,” said Benny Melendez from Weslaco, Texas. “He made us the target of ICE operations, so we decided to punish him by voting against his party. That’s what happened.” Continue reading...

European shares tumbled on Friday as global investors grappled with uncertainty over AI stocks, following the Democrats’ sweeping victory in the US midterm elections. The drop is partly due to fears that Democrats could curb the development of AI data centres, which are widely unpopular among US voters. Follow our liveblog for all the latest updates. 

BBC Verify examines whether US voters were influenced by the data centre boom - and the impact anti-AI sentiment could have on the industry.

Gavin Newsom cites state values and flaws in the legal system as he grants largest mass clemency in US history.

Law bans social media platforms from providing minors features such as autoplay that lead to compulsive use Google, Meta and TikTok sued California to block enforcement of ⁠a new state law intended ⁠to limit the risk ​of addicting children under 16 to social media platforms. The law, known as Assembly Bill 1709, prohibits such platforms from offering underage children “psychologically exploitative features” that could lead to compulsive use, such as providing ⁠personal recommendations and sending videos through autoplay features. It also requires the deletion of children’s accounts with those features. Continue reading...

California has historically had the largest population of death row inmates in the US.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and a rumored presidential candidate, moved to commute the death sentences of 548 inmates in California for one of his last acts as governor.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday said he would commute all 548 death sentences in the state to life in prison without parole, marking a major step away from capital punishment as he prepares to leave office after eight years.