Gavin Newsom confronts $18B budget disaster
he helped create
Posted By: Mercedes44, 1/8/2026 7:44:31 AM
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is waking up to a $18 billion budget hangover — and fixing it won’t be pretty. After years of surpluses, the Golden State is facing staggering deficits that could balloon to $35 billion in the coming years, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst, after a years-long spending spree combined with federal funding cuts and a struggling economy. Newsom — who’s expected to launch a 2028 presidential bid — unveils his plan to stanch the bleeding in a major speech Thursday. In it, he’ll posture as presidential while aiming to reassure cash-strapped Californians that he’s leaving leave the state in tiptop shape in his final year in office.
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Federal prosecutors have launched a new criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James over financial transactions with her longtime hairdresser, Iyesata Marsh.
The New York Times and CBS reported that the new investigation, which is still in the early stages, is being led by the Northern District of New York and the Western District of Louisiana.
Marsh was indicted by a grand jury in the Western District of Louisiana in December on charges of bank fraud and identity theft related to the purchase of a Land Rover.
U.S. labor productivity accelerated sharply in the third quarter of 2025, rising at a 4.9 percent annual rate as workers contributed more output per hour worked, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.The figure substantially exceeded economist expectations of 3.6 percent and marked the strongest quarterly gain in two years. Combined with an upwardly revised 4.1 percent increase in the second quarter, the back-to-back performance suggests American businesses are adapting to tighter labor markets by investing in efficiency rather than pursuing the low-cost labor strategies that dominated much of the past two decades.
President Donald Trump has outfoxed Senate Republican obstructionists yet again, blowing past Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) for his refusal to schedule a confirmation hearing for his appointee for religious freedom ambassador by just appointing pastor and former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker (R) to a similar position that does not need Senate confirmation.As Breitbart News reported in December, Risch refused to schedule a confirmation hearing for Walker—subsequent reporting from other outlets like NBC News confirmed that it was because of quiet opposition from other North Carolinians like Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC) and Thom Tillis (R-NC),
President Donald Trump said that having Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds would drive mortgage rates and monthly payments down as the administration works on affordability.The 47th president wrote that his decision during his first term in office not to sell the companies allowed them to amass $200 billion.
He wrote, “Biden ignored the Housing Market, and instead was immersed with High Crime, Open Borders, runaway INFLATION, the Afghanistan Disaster, and a Military that he left in Chaos and Confusion. Everything was broken, but I, as President of the United States, have already fixed it!”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a football fan — he played in college, supports the Miami Dolphins, and his son is a running back for the University of Florida Gators. Now, he is quarterbacking President Donald Trump’s foreign policy team as it navigates particularly turbulent times, notably in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America, longtime core interests of the child of Cuban immigrants and former Florida senator.
As the Trump administration has alarmed much of the world with its stunning military operation that captured now-former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and its threats to potentially annex Greenland by force, Rubio has emerged as a voice of relative calm.
For years, California’s tech elite talked about leaving. Few actually did.
That calculus appears to be changing — fast — as a proposed California ballot initiative targeting billionaires sends some of the world’s richest founders scrambling to establish new roots, with Miami emerging as their landing pad.
Sources tell The Post tech founders from major companies like Netflix, WhatsApp and the payment system Stripe are among the latest looking to flee the Golden State for Florida in recent months.
The measure, which voters will decide on in November, would impose a one-time 5% tax on fortunes exceeding $1 billion and would retroactively apply to anyone deemed a California resident.
Finally, the United States will follow through on its NATO commitments.
That’d be the cheeky interpretation of President Donald Trump’s announcement, via Truth Social, that he wants a US defense budget of $1.5 trillion next year.
This would represent a stunning 50% increase over the current budget, and put US spending right around 5% of GDP — the target level that NATO counties recently adopted at Trump’s insistence.
The details and follow-through will matter, but on its own terms, the Trump declaration is of epic significance.
Such a historic defense build-up would meet the moment — it’s never made sense for United States to enter a period of heightened risk —
Radical leftist groups, including one financed with $7.8 million from progressive billionaire George Soros, are behind the anti-ICE protests in Minnesota, The Post has learned.
Indivisible Twin Cities, which describes itself as a grassroots group of volunteers, has led many of the protests against ICE raids in Minnesota, where Renee Nicole Good was shot dead Wednesday after allegedly trying to mow down an ICE agent with her vehicle.
Indivisible is an offshoot of the Indivisible Project in Washington DC, which bills itself as a movement to defeat the “Trump agenda,” and received $7,850,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2018 and 2023, according to public records.
The day after elite U.S. forces captured wanted narco-terrorist and former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist movement Hezbollah will no longer have operations in the South American state.The Iranian regime-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization is responsible for both the bombing of the U.S. embassy, which killed 63 people, and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, when 241 U.S. military personnel were killed.
Awful but Lawful
10 replies
Somehow it just had to happen in Minneapolis. Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts have been waiting for their martyr, and now they have one.At about 9:40 a.m. local time, ICE officers were engaged in enforcement activity and driving south in the 3300 block of Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis. When a protester, later identified as Renee Nicole Good, pulled her Honda Pilot SUV into the path of the agents’ vehicles and prevented them moving forward, two agents stepped out of their pickup truck, which was unmarked but had its low-profile emergency lights activated.
The woman fatally shot while allegedly attempting to ram her vehicle into Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis on Wednesday found out what “FAFO” means.
Marxist Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey should also face consequences in the form of swift prosecution and arrest for inciting violence against the federal law enforcement agents he just told to “get the f– out” of the city he appears prepared to turn into 2020 2.0. Same with disgraced Democrat Gov. Tim Walz.The Department of Homeland Security confirmed a “violent rioter” was shot after she “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”
A new video angle of the deadly shooting by an ICE agent in Minneapolis appears to show the driver of the SUV strike the the officer with her car before he opened fire through the open window.
The wide-angled footage, which appears to have been filmed from a second-story window or rooftop directly across the street from the shooting, shows the deadly use of force from a different perspective as the local officials slammed the agency as “reckless.”The driver of the Honda Pilot, identified only as a 37-year-old woman, crashed her vehicle into a white car parked about 100 feet away after the shots rang out.
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‘Jeopardy!’ host Ken Jennings says
2028 candidate who vows to prosecute Trump
‘regime’ ‘has my vote’ 32 replies
2028 candidate who vows to prosecute Trump
‘regime’ ‘has my vote’ 32 replies
“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings appeared to take a swipe at President Donald Trump and his administration, saying he’d support a candidate who vows to prosecute the current “regime.”
Jennings took to the liberal social media platform Bluesky Wednesday during a news cycle dominated by the ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis.
“The ‘prosecute the former regime at every level’ candidate has my vote in 2028,” Jennings wrote.
On Tuesday, he appeared to knock Trump’s policy on Venezuela, writing on Bluesky, “America is always like ‘ok but the NEXT regime change will work,’ like when I ‘cut out carbs’ briefly every January.”
“I've issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed, if necessary," Democrat Minnesota Governor Tim Walz threatened Wednesday, denouncing the federal government’s efforts to enforce U.S. immigration law in his state.
Gov. Walz made the apparent threat during a press conference following the death of a Minnesota anti-immigration enforcement protester who was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent as she, according to video of the incident, drove her vehicle into the agent.
“[O]fficers tugged at the driver's side door handle and the woman began
Renee Nicole Good was Minneapolis ‘ICE
Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to
resist feds before shooting 26 replies
Watch’ ‘warrior’ who trained to
resist feds before shooting 26 replies
MINNEAPOLIS — Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was killed by a federal agent after veering her car toward him, was an anti-ICE “warrior” and was part of a group of activists who worked to “document and resist” the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, The Post can reveal.
Good, who moved to the city last year, linked up with the anti-ICE activists through her 6-year-old son’s woke charter school, which boasts that it puts “social justice first” and “involving kids in political and social activism,” multiple local sources said.
“She was a warrior. She died doing what was right,” a mother named Leesa, whose child attends the same school, told The Post
Hochul announces lofty socialist plan
to offer ‘free’ child care — that
could cost up to $15B a year 19 replies
to offer ‘free’ child care — that
could cost up to $15B a year 19 replies
Gov. Kathy Hochul rolled out broad strokes of a multi-billion-dollar plan Thursday to offer “free” child care for all two-year-olds in New York City, while expanding pre-K and early child care programs in the rest of the Empire State — with no tax increases, at least this year. The Big Apple already has universal Pre-K and 3K programs, and Hochul said she will partner with new Mayor Zohran Mamdani to age down and fully fund the program to cover 2-year-olds. “This is getting on a roadmap to continue what has already started in the city with four-year-olds and three-year-olds,” Hochul said on MS-NOW Thursday morning previewing the proposal.
It’s the story dominating headlines across America Wednesday night: an anti-ICE activist refused to heed law enforcement personnel’s orders to exit her vehicle — which was blocking the road in an attempt to impede a federal operation — and instead jammed the accelerator and struck an officer. He fired back, killing her.
The opposing views on what went down are stark: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the deceased driver, now identified as 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good, a “domestic terrorist” and said ICE agents were entirely justified in their actions. Meanwhile, leftists like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz decided not to run for reelection amid the massive Minnesota fraud scandal, Fox News said that his political demise “puts the Harris campaign judgment under scrutiny.”
But that misses the bigger and more troubling issue. Namely, the media’s culpability in letting Walz get so close to being a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Instead of due diligence, the press went into spasms of joy about Walz’s supposed appeal to Middle America. He was an “authentic guy,” “folksy,” with a “great record.” He had “psyched up the Democratic base,” and has “been inundated with supporters professing their love for him.”
Forget January 6. It turns out January 7 might go down as the date when insurrection really arrived in America — not from the MAGA right, but from the anti-Trump left.
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis of a woman who appears to have tried to ram an ICE agent with her vehicle, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced at a press conference that he had issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize to “protect Minnesotans” from “rogue ICE agents.”
When asked if the National Guard would be deployed against federal agents, or if anything like that has ever happened before, Walz said,
18-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to Murdering
His Mom and Stepdad to Fund His Trump
Assassination Plot 15 replies
His Mom and Stepdad to Fund His Trump
Assassination Plot 15 replies
A deeply unsettling story from Waukesha, Wisconsin, reveals that a teen murdered his parents — with a greater goal of killing President Donald Trump.
According to local Fox station WITI-TV, 18-year-old Nikita Casap admitted and pleaded guilty to murdering his own mother and stepfather in their home.
That alone is horrific, but Casap’s reason for the monstrous act is raising even more eyebrows. The Associated Press reported that Casap killed his parents with an intent to steal their money to help fund a plot to assassinate President Donald Trump.
“The killing of his parents appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means
A Democrat lawmaker contended during a hearing on Wednesday about alleged widespread fraud in Minnesota that her colleagues should focus on crimes perpetrated by “white men” and American citizens instead of demonizing Somalis.
During the U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA) used her time during the questioning of Republican Minnesota state Rep. Kristan Robbins to launch off on a tirade about white men and Jan. 6 “insurrectionists,” Fox News reported.
“What percentage of sexual assaults in the United States are committed by White men?” Randall asked Robbins. “Fifty-seven percent.”
Randall went on to cite dozens of people she described as “Jan. 6 insurrectionists”
This is factually a much bigger deal, a bigger win, than most will initially appreciate.
As many deep political followers well understand, the 66 organizations that President Trump has just withdrawn from represent a large network of sanctioned government organizations that structurally support the globalist agenda.
President Trump has issued an executive order [SEE HERE] “Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States.” These institutions, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, are mechanisms that exist to underpin globalist objectives.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is retiring from Congress after serving 45 years in the lower chamber.
“I did not want to be one of those members who clearly stayed, outstayed his or her ability to do the job,” Hoyer, 86, told The Washington Post in an interview published late Wednesday. The Maryland Democrat said on social platform X he would be making an announcement on Thursday morning on the House floor, which is anticipated to be when he’ll officially announce his retirement.
Hoyer is the latest House Democrat to announce he’ll be forgoing reelection and his announcement is notable—
The ICE agent who opened fire Wednesday in Minneapolis was dragged 100 yards by an illegal migrant in Minnesota last June after his arm was trapped inside the vehicle during a traffic stop, the Post can reveal. (snip) The suspect then sped away with the ICE agent's arm caught between the seat and the door frame, according to the Justice Department. Prosecutors said he was violently dragged 100 yards as the suspect weaved back and forth in an attempt to shake him loose from the car. The agent was hospitalized with significant injuries to his arm and hand but made a full recovery (snip.)