Locator: 48673CA.
I think there's a bigger story here than simply "California is broke."
Medi-Cal:
- one-third of Californians qualify for Medi-Cal:
- more than half of California children are enrolled in Medi-Cal
- link here.
The US House last month approved a Republican budget plan that could shrink Medicaid spending by $880 billion over 10 years, only partially paying for an extension of expiring tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term, plus some new ones he has promised, totaling as much as $4.5 trillion.
What cuts could mean for California: A spending cut of that magnitude would have a huge impact in California, with nearly 15 million people — more than a third of the population — on Medi-Cal (which is California's name for its Medicaid program). More than half California's children are covered by Medi-Cal. And over 60% of Medi-Cal’s $161 billion budget comes from Washington.
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Racial Quotas
In a motion in federal court in Kentucky, the Justice Department said the Transportation Department’s longstanding Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (DBE) violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. This is the program that sets aside federal contracts for women and minorities. The DBE program doles out some $37 billion in contracts over five years.
The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), which sued the federal government in 2023 on behalf of Mid-America Milling and Bagshaw Trucking. The companies say they were denied contracts because they weren’t minority- or woman-owned. In September 2024 federal Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove issued an injunction and said the case was likely to succeed on the merits.
Race and gender quotas have warped government contracting since the early 1980s, and the DBE requirements were most recently authorized by the Biden Administration. They required states to administer a federal formula that set aside roughly 10% of contracting dollars for everyone from architects and engineers to companies that lay the asphalt and provide the steel.
In many cases that raised costs for taxpayers. According to an MIT study of California, the cost of state-funded contracts fell 5.6% relative to federally funded projects after the state passed Proposition 209 that ended racial preferences in state contracts.
Wednesday’s change follows through on President Trump’s January executive order to “terminat[e] illegal discrimination in the federal government.” The impact of the change shouldn’t be underestimated. DBE contracts cover American infrastructure from roads in Alaska to airplanes from Boeing. WILL’s Dan Lennington says about 10% to 15% of U.S. GDP flows through government contracting.
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Never Served In The Military,
Still Thinks He Understands Warrior Spirit
