Daily Business Report: Monday, June 2, 2025
Sacramento Report: Revised California Budget Projects a $12 Billion Gap
By Deborah Sullivan Brennan | Voice of San Diego
Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised state budget this month, and it reflects a bleaker outlook than his January spending plan.
The updated California budget projects a $12 billion deficit, driven by rising health care costs, drops in international tourism and what Newsom called the “Trump sump,” the economic fallout from President Donald Trump’s chaotic tariff policy.
“California is under assault, the United States of America in many respects is under assault, because we have a president that’s been reckless in terms of assaulting those growth engines and has created a climate of deep uncertainty,” Newsom told reporters.
Brandeis Center Taking Aim at Organizations Behind Pro-Hamas Mobs at UCLA
By Evan Gahr| California Globe
UCLA is already being sued for allowing pro-Hamas mobs to block Jewish students’ access to parts of campus.
Now, the Brandeis Center is taking aim at the organizations behind the pro-Hamas mobs at UCLA.
They recently filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Jewish UCLA students, a medical school professor and campus rabbi against a slew of organizations that engineered the encampments in what the complaint says was a calculated conspiracy. All the plaintiffs were blocked from free access to campus by members of the encampment. The UCLA doctor and medical school professor, Nir Hoftman, was even assaulted by members of the encampment.
The lawsuit says that National Students for Justice in Palestine, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network, American Muslims for Palestine, the UC Divest Coalition and the WESPAC Foundation took part in “a coordinated campaign of egregious acts of racial exclusion, intimidation and assault” against “Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
EDD Updates Continue With Modernized Disability Benefits Application
By Evan Symon | California Globe
The Employment Development Department (EDD) released a new online application for disability benefits this week, modernizing the agency following years of complaints over the previous longer, more complicated system.
Since the beginning of the decade, the EDD has rapidly modernized their systems and applications. During the pandemic, the EDD lost around $55 billion thanks to fraud permeating the Department when it was slammed by so many new claims. Being so overburdened during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, older systems failed to handle over 1 million new claims coming within two weeks. Traditional fraud checks also failed in unemployment, disability insurance, and other areas. While backlogged cases finally began to go down in the fall of 2020, more and more cases of fraud began to be discovered.
By February 2021, the fraud amount stood at $11.4 billion. As a result, the EDD swiftly made changes. Chipped benefit cards were introduced later in 2021. EDDNext was also created to modernize the department. By 2024, direct deposit for benefits was introduced to help cut down fraud. This was followed up a few months later by a new unemployment benefits form, giving fewer questions and making it simpler to understand. This week, the EDD opted to have a new disability benefits form much like the new unemployment form be introduced as a further way to reduce fraud and help with ease of use.
