Lawmakers in the state Senate took the final vote on these taxes on Thursday morning, sending them to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk where he's expected to sign the legislation before the end of the month. One proposal involves an increase in taxes on health plans, which experts say will raise rates for individuals with private health insurance by an average of $100 per year. This tax is expected to generate $2 billion annually to help fund Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for low-income residents. The second tax increase would impose a new sales tax on digital software, including programs like Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, Slack, and Workday. This tax, starting at 7.25%, could vary depending on the region of California where the software is purchased or used. The measure is projected to bring in approximately $900 million annually for the state's general fund. Read more
Guess dumping in all the hydrogen peroxide, AKA paint stripper, was a bad idea.
President Donald Trump and his team had several red lines that they used to justify the US war against Iran. At a press conference on Wednesday, Trump largely brushed them aside.
Former US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama arrive at the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois, on June 18, 2026.
Moscow has come under the largest Ukrainian attack since the start of the full-scale war, with close to 200 drones hitting targets around the Russian capital and setting columns of thick smoke billowing high into the sky. Seventeen people were wounded in the Moscow region, according to local governor Andrei Vorobyov. Almost 1,000 drones and four Ukrainian cruise missiles were intercepted and destroyed across the country in 24 hours, Russia's defence ministry was quoted as saying. An oil depot was struck in the southern Rostov region, where one person was killed. Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had once again hit the Moscow region with "long-range sanctions" - a euphemism for Ukrainian long-distance strikes on Russia.
Officials altered their views on the economy, raising their outlook on inflation for 2026 to 3.6% on headline and 3.3% for core, which excludes food and energy. At the last update in March, committee members anticipated 2.7% rates for both measures. They also slightly lowered their projection for gross domestic product growth to 2.2%, down 0.2 percentage point from March, and cut the unemployment projection to 4.3%, down 0.1 percentage point.
For years, the Chinese auto industry has employed a hostile price war to kneecap global competitors. Armed with massive state subsidies, cheap raw materials, and an aggressive "scale-first" business model, Chinese automakers flooded the market with electric vehicles priced so low that legacy manufacturers stood no chance to compete. How did they do it? Simple, they couldn't. They did it anyway. Reports from CarNewsChina show that Chinese automakers have been selling vehicles at a loss until a recent law passed by the Chinese government banned below-cost sales of new vehicles. Read more
Jackson Lahmeyer, a pro-Israel MAGA pastor who inveighs against "Sharia law" and wants Jews to accept Jesus, dropped out of the race for Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District after a Sexting scandal exposed him as the hypocrite and fraud that he is. Dummkopf Trumpf quickly rescinded his support for the phony Christian leader of "Pastors for Trumpf."
America is choc-a-bloc full of phony Christians, child molesters, and sexual deviants. Who knew?
Well-funded and heavily-armed by the hard-working American taxpayer, Amnesty International reports the Israeli Death Forces (IDF) are committing unlawful mass evacuation' orders in Lebanon, displacing and putting 1.4m people into crisis. Since 7 October 2023, the US sent a staggering $22.76bn in support of Israel's Muslim-killing operations in the Middle East and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
The Democratic Party paid a steep, incalculable price on Tuesday 5 Nov 2024
The presidents of the US and Iran have signed an initial peace deal aiming to end the war, allowing it to immediately take effect.
GLAAD reports AI systems are replicating the same anti-LGBTQ bias and misinformation problems that have long plagued social platforms. One example: Meta's updated Llama 4 model recommends conversion "therapy" in response to queries and moderation systems that wrongly suppress legitimate LGBTQ content.
Fight hatred and intolerance
Jesse Welles - 3 hours ago
Because the Trillionaire Thread was closed.
A hearing in Luigi Mangione's state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was postponed until Wednesday after prosecutors said they failed to inform his jailors that he was needed in court. Read more
JD Vance's appearance on The View is raising eyebrows -- but not for his heated political debate with Ana Navarro or his admitting to being a "conspiracy theorist" about the Epstein files. Instead, people who tuned into the ABC daytime talk show episode Tuesday to see the vice president discuss his new book, Communion, were shocked by his bold TV makeup. Vance, 41, came on the show appearing to wear eyeliner -- which his wife, Usha Vance, has said in the past is not makeup, but actually his thick eyelashes -- and a heavy amount of orange bronzer. Read more
FBI Director Kash Patel prematurely announced details of an investigation into an alleged terror plot targeting last weekend's White House UFC event, sources told MS NOW on Tuesday. Ken Dilanian, the network's justice and intelligence correspondent, wrote on X that Patel's disclosure on social media compromised the sealed investigation because it came before another 10 suspects or so could be apprehended.
This article argues that Trump's claimed Iran deal is vague, politically inflated, and dangerously built on Iran's unreliable promises while allowing him to take credit for easing a crisis his own actions helped create.
