In the News

Silicon Valley has long preferred to remain aloof from national politics, but the Trump era has altered that stance.

In recent months, tech luminaries have repeatedly clashed with the president, criticizing his executive order on Muslim immigration, his ban on transgender troops, his "many sides" equivocation on white supremacists and his Tuesday announcement that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lets young undocumented immigrants remain in the country.

President Trump was quick to toss away the hottest of political issues Tuesday, telling Congress it's now up to lawmakers to decide the fate of the nearly 800,000 young people who could face deportation with the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

"Congress, get ready to do your job — DACA," Trump tweeted early Tuesday, hours before Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the program established in a 2012 executive order by former President Barack Obama "is being rescinded."

A messy, public brawl over a Google critic's ouster from a Washington think tank has exposed a fissure in Democratic Party politics. On one side there's a young and growing faction advocating new antimonopoly laws, and on the other a rival faction struggling to defend itself.

To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the United States' tax burden is a major impediment to economic growth. In a speech in Springfield, Missouri, on Wednesday, Trump framed his plan to dramatically lower corporate and individual tax rates as a coup for ordinary Americans, whose pay has stagnated in the past four decades.

In fact, the evidence suggests that Trump's tax cuts would line corporate CEOs' pockets, while depleting the Treasury and doing little, if anything, to boost working class Americans' bottom line.

While Republicans were trying and failing to repeal Obamacare, Democrats in Congress were quietly lining up behind a single-payer health plan that, as written, would fundamentally reshape American health care for every single person in the country.

That plan has now gained the backing of 60 percent of House Democrats, the most support a single-payer plan has ever enjoyed in Congress, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is planning a national campaign for a similar proposal in early September.

It was standing room only at a town hall meeting at the Berryessa Community Center in San Jose.

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna was asked about health care, the possibility of a government shutdown, and the Iran Deal.

One woman asked a timely question about historical statues.

She asked the congressman if the Washington Monument would have to be taken down because George Washington owned slaves.

Republicans have said a lot about how they want to reform the tax code this year ― repealing taxes on large inheritances, cutting the number of tax brackets, and reducing tax rates for businesses.

But they haven't said a thing about what they want to do with a tax break for working-class Americans that, as of 2015, reached more than 28 million low-income households: the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC. Unlike tax breaks that reduce the amount of taxes a person owes, the EITC actually gives people money directly.

Plunging his hand into an opened computer chassis, Vichon Ward sorted through a mess of colorful cables, fans and motherboards. The 28-year-old served eight years as a mechanic in the Air Force, repairing massive jet engines at military bases around the world — but before starting a tech training course here last month, he had never seen the inside of a computer.

"I've fixed planes my whole life," said Ward, pulling out a hard drive. "This is brand new."