California leaders have gradually expanded the services available to undocumented immigrants, expressing a sense of obligation to workers who toiled in fields and factories and contributed to the state’s prosperity.

Other Democratic-led states have done the same, with growing confidence that they were free from federal interference as long as they paid for the benefits themselves.

But President Trump and congressional Republicans are now using various levers to upend those efforts from Washington. And Democrats, including three possible presidential candidates who have proposed scaling back immigrant benefits for their own reasons, are left wrestling with how to respond.

Republicans are driven, some of them say, by a belief that benefits for immigrants entice people to enter the country illegally. Other Republicans also say they object to the idea that Americans’ tax dollars — no matter where they are collected — go toward undocumented immigrants.

“They can just come in here and sign up for health care, and we’re supposed to pay for it at the expense of some of our most vulnerable citizens?” said James Gallagher, the Republican leader of the California State Assembly. “I don’t think that’s a right use of our priorities.”

In liberal states, Republicans have newfound leverage from Washington after being powerless for years to block the expansion of immigrant services in their states.

Last month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order targeting state laws “that provide in-state higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-state American citizens.” This week, the Department of Homeland Security started an investigation of a California program that helps some impoverished older and disabled immigrants, warning that “the gravy train is over.”

Perhaps the biggest concern for Democratic states is the reconciliation bill that Congress is considering, which calls for penalizing states that use their own funds to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. That could cost states billions of dollars and make it financially untenable to continue those programs. It would also force states to decide between cutting some health care services for citizens or all services for undocumented immigrants, potentially creating a political wedge in Democratic states.

“They’re trying to create incentives and punishments for those states that provide benefits to undocumented people,” said Kevin R. Johnson, former dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis.

“The bigger picture is President Trump and his administration are dead set against immigrants, legal or undocumented, receiving any public benefits from the federal or state government,” he added.

Fourteen states provide health care to undocumented children from low-income families, and half of those also cover at least some undocumented adults, according to KFF.

Already, some of those states have begun retrenching on immigrant health care because of their own fiscal problems, even before Republicans in Congress approve the reconciliation bill. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers this week agreed to scale back health care benefits for undocumented adults to solve a budget gap, prompting outcry from progressive leaders. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed eliminating health care for undocumented middle-age adults.

And Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called this week for a freeze in undocumented enrollees in the state’s Medi-Cal program, as well as a $100 monthly charge for immigrants who continue to receive benefits.

Democratic leaders say their moves were driven by the realities of their budgets, not by a need to acquiesce to the wishes of Republicans in Washington. But the optics are unavoidable, and many on the left wondered this week if Mr. Newsom’s proposal was his latest attempt to moderate his image as he considers a presidential run in a nation less friendly to undocumented immigrants than it was several years ago.

The situation has already begun to split Democrats, with some saying that the party should fight for undocumented immigrants rather than retrench in the face of Mr. Trump’s moves.

“It’s always really easy to pick on immigrant communities,” said Lena Gonzalez, a Democratic state senator who leads the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

“We have seen this playbook time and time again,” she added. “We’re valued enough to be at work and be productive, but we’re not valued enough to be given a basic right, which I think is health care.”

In Vermont, legislators in 2021 overwhelmingly approved a plan to use state funds to provide health care for undocumented children and pregnant women.

“This is a population that is critical to the economics of the state,” said Alyssa Black, a Democratic state representative from Essex, Vt. “We love to tout our dairy industry, and our dairy farms survive on their labor.”

She specifically recalled the legislative testimony of one mother, an immigrant from Guatemala, who said that when both her sons were sick, she could take only one to the doctor — the younger boy, who was born in the U.S.

Ms. Black said she had learned on Wednesday of looming fiscal consequences for states providing benefits to undocumented residents. “My heart just broke,” she said. “How can the federal government come in and determine what states can do with their state dollars?”

Two dozen states allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges, and most of them also let those students apply for financial aid, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, which collects education data. They are mostly Democratic-led states like New York, but even a handful of Republican states like Texas and Utah provide such discounts. Florida, however, ended in-state tuition for undocumented students this year.

Six states provide cash assistance to some low-income immigrants who are older, blind or disabled but don’t qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income, according to the National Immigration Law Center. At least five states offer food assistance to some noncitizens.

Though the federal government doesn’t pay for these programs, they’re being scrutinized by Mr. Trump, who previously tried to deny green cards to immigrants who legally used any federal benefits such as food stamps and housing vouchers. He wanted to vastly expand the so-called “public charge” rule that has discouraged citizenship applicants from relying on public aid, an effort later rejected by courts.

“Any area where there’s public taxpayer dollars that are being used in a way that incentivizes lawbreaking is problematic and should be revisited,” said Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican of California.

Mr. Kiley spent years as a lawmaker in Sacramento, where he was in the political minority, routinely objecting to California policies but lacking the power to stop them. Now in Congress, he is part of a majority that is trying to change how states like California spend their dollars.

The Republican reconciliation bill, which conservatives blocked Friday to seek deeper spending cuts, would cut Medicaid funding to states that use their own funds to pay for health care for low-income undocumented immigrants. Under the legislation, 14 states stand to collectively lose $75 billion from 2028 to 2034 if they keep those programs in place, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

That approach amounts to “weaponizing federal funding,” said Xavier Becerra, who was President Joseph R. Biden’s secretary of health and human services. Mr. Becerra said he expected states to fight in court to stop the federal government’s interference.

“Much of what they’re doing ultimately will be overturned, especially if it starts to go into areas that the federal government doesn’t control,” said Mr. Becerra, a former attorney general of California who is now a Democratic candidate for governor.

Immigrant groups fear that the federal government may have other motivations for dipping into state affairs.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had subpoenaed Los Angeles County for records, including the identities of people who applied for the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants. The department said it was exploring whether the state had used federal funds to support ineligible noncitizens.

It was believed to be one of the first requests this year for state data on immigrants outside the criminal justice system.

The Trump administration’s attempt to collect “personal data, postal and sensitive data from people who are seeking benefits for which they are eligible, compromises their privacy and will chill access to critical services for California residents,” said Tanya Broder, senior counsel at the National Immigration Law Center.

If Democratic-led states thought they were on safe ground to provide their own benefits to immigrants without interference from Washington, it may have been because past Republican leaders believed in upholding states’ rights.

Mike Madrid, a “never Trump” Republican and former political director of the California Republican Party, said the federal government’s actions to disrupt how states serve their residents ran counter to longstanding conservative orthodoxy.

“This is unconscionable from a classically conservative position,” Mr. Madrid said, “and it just speaks to how much, not just the Republican Party has changed, but how much the country has changed.”

The post Republicans Push to End Immigrant Benefits in Democratic States appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Today, at least 25 cities and counties in California have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants by passing laws that limit how much they will cooperate with federal efforts to deport people.

Those policies could soon make California a greater target for the Trump administration as federal officials try to punish governments with sanctuary policies.

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday night directing federal officials to publish a list of all jurisdictions that have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants in the United States. It is unclear how Mr. Trump intends to use the list, but it is possible that he may try to cut funding or take legal action against the governments that are identified.

California has long been home to more undocumented immigrants than any other state and currently has about 1.8 million undocumented residents, according to the Pew Research Center. Amid threats of mass deportations during Mr. Trump’s first term, California declared itself a sanctuary state in 2017.

Here is how local policies in California are playing out during the second Trump administration:

What does it mean to be a sanctuary?

Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego are among the California cities that have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants.

There is no universal definition for what constitutes a sanctuary juisdiction, though generally it means limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials.

San Francisco, which first approved its sanctuary city policy in 1989, limits the situations in which city law enforcement officials can give U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers advance notice of a person’s release from jail. The city also prohibits cooperation with ICE detainer requests, known as ICE holds.

In January, Long Beach strengthened its sanctuary city law, which was passed in 2018, by allocating city funds to help provide legal services for people fighting deportation.

California’s statewide law, which was approved in 2017, prohibits cooperation with federal immigration authorities in most cases, except when undocumented immigrants are convicted of certain crimes — mostly felonies and violent offenses.

Two weeks after Mr. Trump won the presidential election in November, Los Angeles began preparing for his second term by reinforcing its sanctuary city status. The city is home to more than 3.6 million immigrants, including an estimated 800,000 who are undocumented.

Hugo Soto-Martínez, a Los Angeles city councilman who has pushed for immigrant protections, noted that the president had previously gone after California’s sanctuary status and failed. The first Trump administration sued California over its 2017 sanctuary state law, but the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in a 2019 decision.

“This is just another scare tactic to get us to follow this authoritarian agenda — but it’s not going to work,” Mr. Soto-Martínez said, referring to the executive order on immigration that Mr. Trump was expected to sign on Monday.

How is this playing out in 2025?

California leaders say that their sanctuary policies are intended to ensure undocumented immigrants can live in their communities without fear of deportation. Many jurisdictions have cited these policies in recent weeks amid actions by the Trump administration, including the arrest of a local judge in Wisconsin who was accused of obstructing justice when federal officials tried to arrest an undocumented immigrant in a courthouse.

After Mr. Trump took office in January, state and local officials in California reminded their communities of what their sanctuary laws allowed and prohibited. Those laws have not been tested much so far, but a notable case occurred this month at two elementary schools in Los Angeles.

Federal agents showed up unannounced to two campuses of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The agents were with the Homeland Security Investigations agency, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, and a spokeswoman said in a statement that the agency was conducting welfare checks on children who came across the border unaccompanied “to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused and sex trafficked.”

School officials ultimately denied the agents entry. Alberto Carvalho, the Los Angeles Unified superintendent, said he was “mystified” as to why Homeland Security agents would try to visit elementary school students.

Elsewhere, public agencies have tried to explain to employees where and when federal agents can conduct immigration enforcement. In February, the president of California State University, Sacramento, told employees that they should not voluntarily grant access to any nonpublic areas, such as residence halls or classrooms during instruction, and to immediately contact administrators if confronted.

How is the Trump administration forcing the issue?

On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that directed his administration to take any criminal or civil actions against sanctuary jurisdictions that interfere with immigration enforcement. He also threatened to block federal funding for sanctuary jurisdictions.

In February, the city of San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in response to such directives. The lawsuit was also brought by cities and counties across the country, including San Diego; Santa Fe, N.M.; Seattle; New Haven, Conn.; King County, Wash.; and nine others, representing a total of nearly 10 million residents.

Last week, Judge William H. Orrick of the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction order barring the Trump administration from withholding federal funds to the jurisdictions involved in the lawsuit.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration sued Rochester, N.Y., last week over the city’s rebuke of police officers who participated in an immigration enforcement action. Rochester, a sanctuary city, limits the extent to which its officers can participate in such enforcement. After city officers helped federal agents detain undocumented immigrants at a traffic stop, the officers faced scrutiny by the city of Rochester for possibly having violated the sanctuary law.

Is there pushback to sanctuary policies within California?

In January, the city of Huntington Beach, Calif., declared itself a nonsanctuary city after a unanimous vote by its City Council, all seven members of which are Republicans and have backed the MAGA movement in unique ways.

The Huntington Beach resolution specifies that police officers and other officials will coordinate and communicate with federal law enforcement, and that the city will defend itself against any possible state legal repercussions.

In Northern California, Oroville voted in March to also declare itself a nonsanctuary city for all criminals. Oroville, a city of nearly 20,000 people about an hour north of Sacramento, has a relatively small immigrant population. About 8 percent of people in Oroville were born outside the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

The Oroville resolution says that the city will commit to working with federal, state and local agencies to apprehend and prosecute criminals.

In Amador County, just east of Sacramento, Sheriff Gary Redman said in February that the county would take a “public safety first” approach toward undocumented immigrants in the area.

Sheriff Redman said that his deputies did not have the legal authority to enforce federal immigration law, but that his office would notify ICE about anyone in the county illegally who “poses a serious threat.”

In a statement that month, Sheriff Redman said that he wanted to be “perfectly clear” that his deputies would not conduct immigration roundups.

“This approach is strictly reserved for the most dangerous offenders,” Sheriff Redman said. “In good conscience, I cannot tarnish my badge by allowing violent offenders to be released back into the community.”

The post How California Sanctuary Policies Are Faring Under Pressure From Trump appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

But years passed without the dramatic reforms needed to reshape and unclog the legal pathways to U.S. citizenship. And in the months since President Trump started his second term, her American dream has imploded. She’s unnerved by the news images of undocumented immigrants being loaded onto planes, shackled like violent criminals, and returned to their native countries. The thought of being ripped from her home, without time to pack up her belongings or say goodbye to friends, shakes her to the core.

So, Celeste has made a tough decision: She will continue cleaning offices and saving money for just a few more months, and return to Peru by year’s end.

Even with a plan to leave, she feels vulnerable and exposed. She now avoids restaurants, her favorite dance spots, even trail hikes. She’s stopped enrolling in online classes, she said, because she’s apprehensive about registering her name or address.

“The fear that they could grab you is always there,” said Celeste, who asked that The Times not use her full name for fear of making her a target for immigration authorities.

Trump came into his second term promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. During the campaign, he focused his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. But shortly after he took office, his administration made clear that they considered anyone in the country without authorization to be a criminal.

In the months since, the new administration has used a variety of tactics — explicit and subtle — to urge immigrants to depart the country of their own accord.

The day he was inaugurated, Trump disabled the CBP One mobile app that the Biden administration had utilized since 2023 to create a more orderly process of applying for asylum from the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of migrants camped at the border had their asylum appointments abruptly canceled.

Instead, the Trump administration launched a replacement app, CBP Home, that allows immigrants to notify the government of their intent to leave the country. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Times’ request for data regarding the number of people who have used the app.

Last month, the agency launched an ad campaign urging people in the country without authorization to leave immediately. “If you don’t, we will find you and we will deport you,” agency Secretary Kristi Noem says in the ad. This week, Trump told Fox Noticias he’s formulating a plan to give a stipend and an airplane ticket to immigrants in the country illegally who opt to “self-deport.”

The administration isn’t just targeting undocumented immigrants. In recent weeks, Homeland Security has messaged migrants who entered the country using the Biden-era CBP One app, telling them their temporary legal status has been terminated and they should leave “immediately.”

And then there are the images of the migrants deported to a notorious El Salvador prison, shackled one behind the other in prison garb, their heads bowed and shaven. The administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove the Venezuelan nationals without due process, alleging they were all gang members.

“One of the impacts of the various Trump policy measures is to strike terror and fear in immigrant communities,” said Kevin Johnson, a professor of public interest law at UC Davis School of Law. “It’s designed to show immigrants, ‘We’re out to get you.’”

Three months in, it’s difficult to estimate how many people are making the grueling decision to leave the lives and families built here under more lenient enforcement policies to return to home countries that many have not seen for decades.

But even in liberal-leaning California, where undocumented immigrants enjoy greater access to social services than in many regions of the U.S., advocates say they are fielding more questions from people who fear being plucked up and deported and are considering leaving on their own terms.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said her staff members talk “daily” with folks who are considering leaving. Pummeled by the “constant attacks” on immigrants, she said, people are posing logistical questions: Can they take their cars? What happens to their kids’ education?

“What comes up a lot in the sessions is, ‘Prefiero irme con algo, que irme sin nada,’” Gallegos said. “I’d rather leave with something than leave with nothing.”

To significantly reduce the country’s unauthorized immigrant population, currently estimated at about 11 million, the administration and Congress would need to make dramatic changes, experts say. Rounding up and packing off millions of people across the country would require a massive deployment of resources and far more detention capacity. The extensive backlog of immigration court cases — there were more than 3.6 million cases pending at the end of March, according to TRAC Reports — also stymies such efforts.

“Given the current level of resources and the current strategies, you can’t remove 11 million people from the country,” said Johnson. “They need some people to just leave.”

That’s where the notion of encouraging self-deportation comes in. Mitt Romney proposed the idea during the 2012 Republican primary, suggesting his administration would make it so hard for undocumented people to get jobs that they’d leave for a country where they could legally work.

At the time, his embrace of the concept was widely viewed as a reason he lost among Latino voters in the general election. But more than a decade later, the strategy has gained traction.

NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization focused on immigration reform, says on its website that encouraging people to return to their home countries is “key” to reducing the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Requiring employers to use E-Verify to prove their employees can legally work is the “number one” way to give people an incentive to leave, said NumbersUSA director of research Eric Ruark.

Elena, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who has lived in the Inland Empire for nearly two decades, said she and her husband are among those who have decided to self-deport. They will move back to their homeland in the southern state of Chiapas by Christmas.

She was out shopping recently when a store employee told her she had seen an immigration agent nosing around the neighborhood. Don’t go out if you don’t have papers, the employee warned. A few months before, she was traveling along Interstate 8 near the southern border and passed an immigration checkpoint where she saw people detained and handcuffed.

“My heart hurt so badly,” said Elena, who also asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears coming to the attention of immigration authorities. “I saw workers and people traveling with their families, people who had made their lives here, and suddenly this happens and their dreams are destroyed.”

In recent years, the couple’s ability to work has been limited by age and illness. Elena, 54, has fibromyalgia and arthritis, and her husband, 62, has had a heart attack. Still, he has found work fixing cars and trucks; together they cater birthday parties and baby showers, providing large buffets of meat, rice, beans and salsas. In Chiapas, they have nearly five acres of land, where they hope to build a ranch, raise animals and grow crops.

“Many people have said that maybe I will feel more free there,” she said from the kitchen of her tidy home, “because here you feel chained up. You want to do many things, but you can’t.”

She has three adult children — two born in the U.S. — and two grandchildren in California. She chokes at the thought of being thousands of miles away.

“I think about my grandchildren, and I cry, I suffer,” she said. “I love them so much. Who is going to care for them like their grandmother?”

About 100 miles southeast, Maria, also an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said that after 30 years in the Coachella Valley, she, too, plans to return to her home country and try to forge a new life in the western state of Michoacán. Like the other women interviewed for this article, she asked to be identified only by a first name.

She lives with a paralyzing fear of being hunted down and deported without a chance to ensure her affairs are in order. She is hesitant to go to church, hasn’t visited a doctor in months, and can’t run errands with any peace of mind. The anxiety has, quite literally, sent her packing. Over the years, she has supported herself by selling enchiladas and tacos from a small food stand. She plans to bring her cooking equipment back with her to Mexico in hopes of making a living there.

She will be leaving behind three daughters and six grandchildren, but reuniting with two sons in Mexico.

“It’s as if I’m being divided into two parts,” she said. “I haven’t been happy here, and I won’t be happy there.”

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The last time Donald Trump was president, his health care policies chipped away at the Affordable Care Act and helped eliminate federal abortion rights, leaving states to fill the gaps. In his second term, experts predict Trump’s agenda to be similar and warn that health care will get more expensive and harder to access for millions of people. 

Congressional Republicans, newly empowered by Trump’s victory and the Senate moving to GOP control, have made it clear that they intend to try to implement long-standing conservative goals that include decreasing government spending on health care and further dismantling abortion rights, which are currently protected in about half of the country, including California.

Newly nominated Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also pushed erroneous claims about vaccine hazards and exaggerated the risks of water fluoridation that could have ripple effects across state public health efforts. 

The Democratic supermajority in the California Capitol, however, has spent the past several years passing laws to stymie future conservative administrations on health care, said Mia Bonta, chairperson of the Assembly health committee and a Democrat from Oakland. 

Legislators have protected insurance coverage of abortion and transgender care. They have expanded health insurance programs to low-income undocumented immigrants and paid for it with state funds. They have taken pieces of the Affordable Care Act and written it into state law, expanding the enrollment period and banning lifetime limits on coverage. And they’ve invested millions of dollars into public health after the system languished for a decade.

“We were able to be very deliberate in the past several years to Trump-proof our health system moving forward,” Bonta said.

Not all state lawmakers have been happy with California’s health care expansions. Senate Republican Minority Leader Brian Jones, for instance, said public insurance for undocumented immigrants, which as of this year is available to all income-eligible immigrants, is too expensive and should be “delayed or repealed entirely.”

But Democratic lawmakers and health care advocates say they are better prepared than the first time Trump took office — though they expect the new administration to put California’s new laws to the test.

“We have their playbook from 2017, and almost everything they tried to do, California helped stop through our advocacy … or through court cases,” said Rachel Linn Gish, communications director for Health Access California. “In that way we are in a much stronger position than before.”

Affordable health care at risk

During his first term, Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has said for his second term that he has “concepts of a plan” for the program that insures more than 21 million Americans. 

Republican lawmakers in general have shifted away from talking about eliminating the program entirely, but some leaders, including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance have suggested changes that would make insurance more expensive. Vance during the campaign said he wanted to increase choices for consumers and “make the health insurance marketplace function a little bit better.”

Eliminating the health insurance marketplace, which is also known as Obamacare, has grown deeply politically unpopular even among Republican constituents. Since Trump’s first term, the number of people enrolled has grown by more than 9 million nationally. That political leverage is something that California advocates believe will help protect the program. 

“More people are enrolled in (Affordable Care Act) marketplaces than ever before,” Linn Gish said.

But in many ways the state’s Achilles heel is federal funding. Federal spending on California health care programs is more than three times greater than the state’s share. That’s more than $117 billion from the federal government to support Medi-Cal and the Affordable Care Act compared to $35 billion from California’s general fund for all state health spending, which includes public health, state hospitals and social services.

And much of California’s policies can only be fully realized with sufficient money in the bank.

With the state grappling with a third consecutive deficit next year, the most immediate and likely federal health care cut will be difficult to prevent: financial assistance for middle-class families. 

Outgoing President Joe Biden approved two rounds of Affordable Care Act subsidies during his presidency, making assistance available to middle-class families for the first time. Those  subsidies will expire at the end of 2025, and Trump and congressional Republicans have signaled that they don’t want to renew them.

Without them, premiums will increase by an average of $1,000 annually for residents with insurance through Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act program. Premiums are already set to increase by about 8% next year, and without federal assistance other out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copays will most likely spike as well. 

Prior to Biden’s push to lower health care premiums, many Californians paid upwards of 18% of their income on health insurance, according to Covered California data. Federal assistance capped that expense at 8.5%.

“You’re talking about a world where we’re doubling how much people pay,” Linn Gish said.

In 2023, California lawmakers established a backstop of state funding to help more people afford health insurance, but those reserves can’t make up the gap if federal funding stops.

Health care for immigrants

Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program, offers expansive benefits to all low-income individuals regardless of immigration status.  The program could face uncomfortable cuts with a less-than-friendly federal administration. 

Federal dollars cover about 70% of Medi-Cal’s program costs, while the state invests approximately $30 billion in general fund spending. 

“The largest concern many of us have who have worked with our state budget is the resources we will be receiving from the federal government this upcoming year,” said Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat from Fresno who has focused on expansions for undocumented workers. “There are many who are struggling who need their government to help.”

About 7 million more Californians qualified for Medi-Cal after Affordable Care Act rules allowed the state to bump up income limits in 2014, and about 1.8 million undocumented immigrants have gotten Medi-Cal coverage after the state began expanding eligibility for them  in 2015.

Some California Republicans have strayed from the party platform when it comes to health care for undocumented immigrants. The Central Valley relies heavily on immigrant labor, and a handful of state Republicans from those communities supported expanded access to health insurance for undocumented residents. 

The state GOP, however, still officially opposes coverage for undocumented immigrants and several Republican lawmakers want the state to undo that health care expansion.

Gov. Gavin “Newsom and Democrat lawmakers insist on expanding free health care for illegal immigrants to the tune of $5 billion per year. In the midst of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, hospitals and maternity wards shutting down, and a massive influx of migrants illegally crossing our open border, we should not be expanding this costly government program,” Jones, a Republican from San Diego said.

Immigrants who came to the United States in their youth and who are protected by the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for the first time can enroll in Covered California thanks to expanded eligibility under the Biden administration.

Liberal lawmakers and policy advocates hailed the expansions as a long-sought-after victory, but they remain controversial among California Republicans. Many lawmakers and advocates expect these expansions to be challenged over the next four years. 

“Anything that has Biden’s fingerprints on it is going to be the first touched. The DACA expansion is going to be high on the list,” Linn Gish said.

This year a bill expanding Covered California to all undocumented immigrants, not just those who came to the U.S. as children, stalled in committee. That measure would have allowed immigrants who make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal to purchase insurance.

Arambula, who authored the bill, said those populations are “unjustly excluded” from buying insurance at full price even if they want to. He plans on reintroducing the measure, which could be implemented without federal approval. 

Family planning and abortion cuts

On the campaign trail Trump took credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who ended the national right to abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, but he said he would not support a national law banning abortion.  

Still, California Democrats aren’t taking any chances on abortion rights. They passed more than two dozen laws to protect access to abortion, contraceptives and gender-affirming services in the last three years.

In 2022, voters also protected abortion as a right in the state constitution. 

Democratic lawmakers say they have more work to do. 

Bonta said she plans on introducing bills to further protect reproductive rights on the first day of the legislative session. Those bills would require hospitals to provide emergency abortions, protect birth control for Medi-Cal recipients and ease the regulation of birth centers. Bonta said lawmakers are working quickly and she expects many of the bills introduced in December to have urgency clauses that allow immediate implementation.

“It’s going to be a huge change within the health care space,” she said.

The first time Trump was president, he also dismantled Title X regulations that fund the federal family planning network by instituting a “gag rule” prohibiting clinics from performing or referring for abortions. The clinics funded have historically provided contraceptives, abortion care, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, gynecology services and postpartum care. After the rule change, the number of people served by Title X clinics dropped 60% nationally as a result of clinics exiting the program, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent health policy research center..

In California the number of people served dropped from 1 million to fewer than 200,000, said Amy Moy, co-CEO of Essential Access Health, which administers the state’s Title X money. 

California dedicated $10 million to bridge the gap, but Moy said if there is another federal cut, clinics say to expect longer wait times and fewer providers.

“We will be having to test the bounds of our guardrails and see what we can do here, but we are committed to working with partners and state leaders to do everything possible,” Moy said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

The post How will Trump change health care? California braces for fights over insurance and abortion appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The measure passed on a 23-11 party-line vote in the State Senate. The proposed legislation has been sent back to the Assembly for its final vote of approval before being sent off to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The bill, formally known as AB 1840, would expand the eligibility requirement for the state’s first-time homebuyer loan program, the California Dream For All Shared Appreciation program, to allow undocumented immigrants who live in the state to use it.

The California Dream For All Shared Appreciation loan program launched in 2023 and helps qualified first-time homebuyers with down payments.

The program was initially created to help low-and middle-income individuals buy homes. Still, Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno), who introduced the bill, previously told KTLA that the program doesn’t address eligibility based on immigration status.

“The program hasn’t been clear about eligibility for undocumented individuals, and AB 1840 addresses that issue,” Arambula told KTLA in an emailed statement.

Republican California lawmakers have pushed back on the bill’s progression.

“This is outrageous. Democrat politicians care more about handouts for illegal immigrants rather than improving the quality of life for legal California citizens. I will strongly oppose this measure when it comes to the Assembly Floor this week,” Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) said in a statement.

GOP Assemblymember Joe Patterson, who represents a largely suburban district north of Sacramento, during a committee meeting this summer said that he “just can’t get behind using our limited dollars for people who are in this country undocumented,” Politico reported.

Democrats who support the bill have said that those applying for a loan must have a taxpayer identification or social security number, emphasizing that the loans won’t be given to just anybody.

The bill would need to be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom before it officially becomes law.

The current legislative session ends on Aug. 31 and Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign any bills passed by the Legislature.

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The governor’s proposed budget would cut one-time spending by $19.1 billion and ongoing spending by $13.7 billion through fiscal year 2025-2026, according to the fact sheet. It would enact a nearly 8% cut to state operations, eliminating 10,000 unfilled positions.

The sheet said the governor plans to balance the budget by “getting state spending under control — cutting costs, not proposing new taxes.” He also wants to do this by “reducing reliance on the state’s ‘Rainy Day’ reserves this year.”

The true deficit number may actually be closer to $45 billion, as the administration subtracted a $17.3 billion package of budget fixes Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, agreed to in April.

The administration acknowledged it had cut the $17.3 billion from the overall shortfall number in a fact sheet released just before the governor’s press conference Friday.

It was immediately unclear how exactly the administration calculated the deficit, aside from subtracting the legislative agreement.

Newsom pegged the spending gap at $38 billion in January, although the independent Legislative Analyst’s Office later suggested it could be as high as $73 billion.

California’s fiscal year-over-year revenues were $5.8 billion or 4% below Department of Finance forecasts as of March, indicating the overall deficit likely grew.

Budget-watchers had predicted Newsom’s strategy in advance, suggesting he may present a rosier shortfall number by incorporating a handful of previously planned fixes.

The governor’s revised budget announcement kicks off a month of negotiations involving his administration, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg.

The Legislature must pass a budget by June 15 for lawmakers to continue getting paid. The new fiscal year begins on July 1, meaning Newsom has to sign budget legislation by the end of the month.

Just two years ago, the governor was celebrating a budget with a large surplus. This allowed him to invest in a series of bigger policy initiatives, including transitional kindergarten, or pre-kindergarten, Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented immigrants and CARE Court to compel treatment for the seriously mentally ill.

The state in January enacted the final piece of its expansion of Medi-Cal — California’s version of the federal Medicaid program — allowing all those who income-quality to enroll, regardless of immigration status.

But the post-COVID-19 pandemic economy hit California hard. That’s because the state is heavily dependent on its highest-income earners due to its graduated tax structure, the tourist industry was hit hard and supply chains were disrupted.

Federal efforts toeaseinflation by raising interest rates have cooled industries sensitive to rate hikes. This has affected some activities, such as home buying and startup and tech investing.

Also hamstringing the state’s efforts to gauge the government’s economic condition, those involved in crafting the state’s 2023-2024 budget were unable to get the most accurate picture of the state’s finances until November, long after lawmakers and the governor had agreed to a spending plan.

The delay was caused by a large number of Californians who could delay filing their 2023 taxes until November due to deferrals the IRS granted to those affected by winter storms. The situation helped complicate the state’s financial outlook heading into 2024.

Newsom in 2023 and in January committed to some cuts while preserving his major initiatives and social safety net programs.

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