A new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas working paper estimates the record surge in illegal immigration during the Biden administration boosted employment while causing 30% of home price increases and 20% of rent increases.
The paper combined immigration court records with government administrative data to create the first ever calculation of how a wave of 7 million illegal immigrants from 2021 through 2024 affected local labor and housing markets.
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A new congressional bill proposal seeks to prevent pregnant women who are noncitizens from entering America.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in Trump v. Barbara, struck down a President Donald Trump executive order that sought to outlaw birthright citizenship. With this ruling, noncitizens who give birth in America will continue to have their children become American citizens regardless of whether they have any ties to the country.
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Rental prices for the 46 million Americans who rent their homes are finally reversing, and there’s speculation President Donald Trump’s border security and deportation policies are a driving factor. With over three million illegal aliens either voluntarily leaving the country or deported since President Trump took office according to the Department of Homeland Security, rental homes are freeing up for U.S. citizens across major metro areas.
According to the latest Apartment List National Rent Report released May 27, rental prices are down 1.5 percent nationally compared to one year ago. This is the lowest year over year rent increase since 2017. For comparison, the year over year rent growth in 2022 during the Biden Administration was 17.7 percent.
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Metro Nashville on Tuesday told The Tennessee Star that Metro estimates it will need until July 10 to provide documents justifying the nearly $1.5 million in grants awarded to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TNJFON) in the fiscal year (FY) 2027 budget passed earlier this month.
The response from Metro came six business days after Metro confirmed receipt of the public records request on June 12, at which point the request had been sent to the Metro Department of Finance, the law department, the mayor’s office, and the Metro Council.
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Somewhere in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a small steel-town school district of about 1,400 kids, a school board member is looking at a budget line that didn’t exist a decade ago. In 2014, the district had approximately seven English Learner or “EL” students. In 2024, that number crossed 200.
Charleroi is a small story with a national plot. Over the past decade, the number of students who require extra support with English or multilingual education has exploded nationwide. From Georgia to Ohio and from Texas to Colorado, we are seeing the same thing: as the share of students needing English language services has gone up, the share of the budget going to core classroom instruction has gone down.
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Civil rights attorney Ben Crump on Saturday claimed Tennessee’s new law requiring those applying for a driver’s license to demonstrate their lawful residence status in the country and take an English proficiency exam has the potential to undo “30 years of progress” in the Volunteer State.
Crump made the comments on social media while sharing an article about House Bill (HB) 1708, the legislation signed into law by Governor Bill Lee earlier this year. Once effective in January 2027, it will require those applying for a Tennessee driver’s license to submit documentation providing citizenship, and to complete an English proficiency exam.
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Amid federal scrutiny and concerns about commercial driver’s licenses being in the hands of unqualified drivers, Ohio is cracking down on CDLs for those drivers not born in the United States. The CDLs of 1,200 foreign-born drivers will be downgraded to a Class D by the state for failing to adequately meet standards proving they are in the United States legally.
Ohio Department of Public Safety spokesman Bret Crow confirmed the downgrade to The Center Square last week. “Those receiving this notice who believe their documents do meet the updated federal standards may request a hearing with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to dispute the downgrade and/or submit additional documentation to BMV to prove their eligibility,” he said.
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The 2022 proposal by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors (TNJFON) confirms the pro-illegal alien nonprofits sought more than $3.5 million to provide immigration legal services in Davidson County.
Attached as an exhibit to the June 2022 resolution appropriating Biden-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to “expand critical immigrant legal services” in Nashville, the document confirms the nonprofits proposed using the funding to help immigrants obtain “protections from deportations.”
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Metro Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell included more than $700,000 in his annual budget for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), a nonprofit supporting illegal aliens living in Tennessee.
TIRRC partnered with the city last year to provide relief for those impacted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was asked by the Biden administration to support the release of aliens into Tennessee’s interior, and whose affiliated political action committee endorsed O’Connell during his successful 2023 race for mayor.
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Budget constraints are forcing a growing number of blue states to cut back on their “free” healthcare programs for illegal aliens, due to a reduction in federal subsidies and Medicaid cuts.
Breitbart reports that a number of liberal-leaning states including California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia are unable to replace the federal health benefits for illegals with their own state tax dollars.
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U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw omitted key evidence from his Friday ruling dismissing the federal human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, including reporting by The Tennessee Star that was seemingly referenced during testimony, revealing the “Biden-era FBI” directed Tennessee authorities to release Abrego Garcia during a 2022 traffic stop despite suspecting human trafficking. Instead, the Obama-appointed judge sided with the foreign national, ruling the Trump administration failed to overcome a presumption of vindictive prosecution.
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The Justice Department has filed a complaint against New Jersey laws that provide in-state tuition and financial assistance to illegal immigrants.
The laws discriminate against U.S. citizens who aren’t granted the same tuition rates, scholarships and other subsidies, which is unconstitutional, according to the complaint.
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Members of the House Freedom Caucus say they are going to reject any legislation they see as granting mass amnesty to illegal aliens.
In statements made to The Daily Signal on Wednesday, three members of the caucus said they will not allow such a bill to be enacted.
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Illegal immigrants in Tennessee who fail to leave the state after being issued a final federal deportation order may be charged with a crime for not leaving the state.
The Tennessee Senate passed Senate Bill (SB) 1779, which would create a misdemeanor crime for illegal immigrants who stay in the state after a final federal deportation order is issued against them.
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President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will attend a Supreme Court hearing Wednesday on the consitutionality of his Birthright Citizenship executive order.
The case centers on Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to interpret the 14th Amendment as excluding birthright citizenship to the children of illegal migrants and tourists.
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A House subcommittee will examine whether the Supreme Court’s decision that states cannot deny the children of illegal aliens access to taxpayer-funded K-12 education incentivized more aliens to come to the U.S. illegally.
The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government will hold a hearing Wednesday on the Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe (1982), Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal Friday. The Supreme Court allowed illegal alien children to enroll in public schools, ruling that state laws preventing their enrollment violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
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At first blush the Trump administration’s deportation numbers reflect an unparalleled effort to remove vast numbers of illegal immigrants. However, internal data — and the delayed release of the administration’s annual enforcement report — tells a more complicated story.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted slightly over 35,500 deportations from Oct. 1, 2025 to late February, according to internal figures obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Unlike publicly available figures that conflate deportation with border turnarounds and voluntary departures, the internal data only pertains to deportations of foreigners under an order of removal by an immigration judge.
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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill on Monday to increase reporting of migrant crime nationwide.
Under the Migrant Crime Reporting Act (MCRA), the federal government would provide states with grant funding to gather and review data from state law enforcement agencies on the number of migrants charged or convicted of a crime in the previous year.
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In one year, illegal border crossings dropped by 96% at the southwest border, an historic shift from record highs during the Biden administration.
In January, 34,626 illegal border crosser apprehensions were reported nationwide, up from numbers hovering around 30,000 in October, November and December.
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President Donald Trump and his allies are launching a double-barreled U.S. census strategy that could eliminate a big electoral and federal funding mechanism for blue states: illegal immigrants.
Missouri Attorney General Katherine Hanaway said her office is asking the courts to bar the federal government from counting immigrants living in the country illegally when determining congressional representation and federal funding, a move she argued could shift political power among the states for decades.
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A group of conservative organizations is launching a coalition to push the Trump administration to take its deportation agenda to the next level.
The Mass Deportation Coalition, to be officially unveiled on Wednesday, calls on President Donald Trump to fulfill his campaign promise of executing the largest deportation operation in history by focusing on the removal of most illegal migrants from the country. The group is pledging to release a comprehensive plan on how to achieve at least one million deportations throughout 2026.
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Maryland legislation cracking down on police cooperation with immigration officials will put violent aliens back on the streets, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) captured sex offenders, a murderer and an MS-13 gang member in Maryland while ICE partnerships were active, a DHS spokesperson said in a Monday statement. Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed his party’s bill on Tuesday, banning contracts known as 287(g) agreements, a once-obscure tool that the Trump administration used to build law enforcement alliances across the country. The change could make future ICE arrests of dangerous people harder, the department said.
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The Tennessee House Departments and Agencies Subcommittee advanced a bill on Tuesday that would require schools to track students’ immigration status. House Bill (HB) 1711, sponsored by State Representative Elaine Davis (R-Knoxville), now heads to the House State & Local Government Committee. HB 1711 expands reporting requirements in Tennessee for illegal immigrants. Schools would need to keep track of students’ immigration status so the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration can make a report on how much illegal immigrants in public schools are costing the state annually. Besides schools, prisons, hospitals, and social service agencies would be required to keep track of people’s immigration status to create a report to determine the annual financial effect illegal immigrants have on these services. The bill proposal would mandate law enforcement agencies to submit quarterly reports to the Tennessee Department of Safety, to include information about illegal activities committed by illegal immigrants, criminal gang activity, violations of federal law, and illegal immigrants arrested or detained for federal immigration laws. Law enforcement would need to report legal residents and illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes or convicted of crimes, the bill proposal states. A government official or employee who fails to file…
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The Tennessee House Judiciary Committee will hear a bill on Wednesday attempting to create a criminal charge for an illegal immigrant who fails to leave Tennessee after a final deportation order.
The state House Criminal Justice Subcommittee passed House Bill (HB) 1704 on a 6-2 vote last week.
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Democrats are demanding federal agents obtain judicial warrants before arresting illegals on private property, a move experts liken to a Trojan horse that would irreversibly weaken American immigration enforcement for years to come.
Judicial warrants have become a flashpoint in immigration enforcement, with sanctuary jurisdictions increasingly claiming that administrative warrants are not enough and a judge’s signature should be a prerequisite to any type of cooperation. Capitol Hill Democrats have seized on the issue, threatening to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if judicial warrants — along with body cameras and uniform requirements — aren’t mandated for personnel on the ground.
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Tennessee had 11,344 reports of suspected illegal immigrants who were charged or convicted of a crime in 2025, according to a new report.
The Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference (TDAGC) released a report last week, examining crimes committed by potential illegal immigrants last year.
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Two Tennessee contractors at a Knoxville construction site face criminal charges for their alleged actions during a federal immigration raid.
Authorities charged Tyler Shane Wells, 33, and Alexander Bonilla-Servin, 18, last week with harboring illegal immigrants for financial gain and using force or intimidation to interfere with federal agents performing their duties.
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Spain’s socialist government announced Tuesday it will provide amnesty to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country without authorization.
Spain’s Council of Ministers announced that it will use an expedited decree to amend existing immigration laws, providing illegal migrants with one-year residency permits and the right to work legally. Estimates suggest the measure could benefit roughly 500,000 people, though some studies place the number closer to 800,000, according to the AP.
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A federal judge has ordered acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons to appear in court over detained illegal immigrants allegedly not receiving hearings.
Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, for the District of Minnesota, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, on Monday ordered Lyons to personally appear in court over the Trump administration’s handling of bond hearings for detained illegal immigrants, according to the Associated Press.
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Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s return to office for his second term, and the country is nearly unrecognizable from the way it looked under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
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An annual report released earlier this month by the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America, the nation’s largest construction union, found that nearly one-third of construction companies in Tennessee lost workers over immigration enforcement in the last six months, including 9 percent who reported that immigration authorities conducted enforcement operations at their construction sites.
The AGC 2026 Construction Outlook report for Tennessee, released on January 8, found that 9 percent of responding firms in the Volunteer State reported that a federal immigration official visited a job site or construction office in the last six months.
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As the magnitude and complexity of Minnesota’s Somali immigrant welfare fraud scandal come into clearer focus, Republicans in Congress are more boldly talking about it being part of a larger scheme by Democrats to use illegal immigrants and purported refugees to hijack federal elections and manipulate apportionment that determines Americans’ congressional representation and federal funding.
The Republicans’ argument goes like this: Democrats reversed Donald Trump’s related first-term executive orders and ensured that noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, were counted into 2020 U.S. Census. Then-President Biden opened the southern border so that millions of illegals could flood the country in just a few years.
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I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but we’re being manipulated. By “we,” I mean all of us—you, me, anybody who is exposed to any media at all, but especially social media. We’re not being lied to, exactly, but we’re being force-fed a version of the truth that is intended to control our emotions, influence our reactions, and direct our behavior. The powers that be—and this is very much a part of the rupture between the ruling class and the country class—want to encourage specific social and political responses from us and are doing everything they can to make them happen.
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Maine is set to become a de-facto sanctuary state for illegal immigrants in the final year of Democratic Governor Janet Mills’ term.
Mills, a two-term governor vying to defeat Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins during November’s midterm elections, declined to veto a bill limiting local law enforcement’s collaboration with federal immigration authorities in December. Republicans and law enforcement groups argued the sanctuary state proposal will keep dangerous criminals on the street by shielding illegal immigrants from federal immigration enforcement.
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Two illegal migrant truck drivers accused of hauling millions in cocaine across the country had obtained their commercial driver’s licenses in California.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has lodged detainer requests for 25-year-old Gurpreet Singh and 30-year-old Jasper Singh, both of whom are Indian nationals living unlawfully in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Indiana State Police arrested the two men after they were allegedly caught hiding over 300 pounds of cocaine inside a semi-truck in Putnam County on Saturday.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy accused Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom of lying, saying the state could lose nearly $160 million in federal funds if it fails to comply with a Jan. 5 deadline to revoke foreign trucker licenses.
A group of immigrant truckers sued California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) days before Christmas, alleging the agency violated workers’ rights by planning to revoke thousands of unlawfully issued licenses. With the original deadline set for Jan. 5, the DMV released a statement Tuesday announcing the deadline would be extended to March 6.
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President Donald Trump has completely secured the southern border, with just 108,361 border encounters since he took office on January 20, the latest data through November from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows.
That compares to more than 10 million such border encounters the entire time former President Joe Biden was in office from 2021 to 2024, averaging more than 2.5 million a year.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit accusing Virginia of unlawfully granting illegal aliens in-state resident discounts on college tuition.
The state’s education code classifies illegal immigrants as Virginia residents, qualifying them for reduced in-state tuition costs, the lawsuit claims. This policy therefore allows illegals to access benefits not available to most other Americans, making it “not only wrong but illegal,” the DOJ stated.
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The Department of Homeland Security has tripled its offer for illegal migrants to voluntarily leave the U.S. by the end of the year.
The payout for the so-called “exit bonus” is now $3,000, up from the initial $1,000, according to CBS News. Applicants must register with the federal government to be eligible to receive the money.
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Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The Tennessee Star that the new Republicans’ bill proposal would send money back to Americans rather than to insurance companies.
Last week, Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) introduced the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act of 2025.
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A Chinese married couple in Tennessee pleaded guilty last week to harboring illegal immigrants and employing them.
Xue Rong Wu, 44, and Xiong Wei Yang, 44, who live in Elizabethton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor aliens for the purpose of commercial advantage and private financial gain, as well as aiding and abetting the practice and pattern of hiring for employment aliens not authorized to be employed in the United States.
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The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear the case over President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to interpret the 14th Amendment as excluding birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens and tourists, CBS News reported.
Trump imposed the order as a means of combating the practice of birth tourism and the creation of “anchor babies”, intended to present an obstacle to deportations.
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The Knoxville County Board of Education is considering opposing a bill that would require Tennessee schools to keep track of students’ immigration status.
On Thursday, the board of education will vote on its 2026 legislative priorities, including one that asks the General Assembly to oppose “requiring school districts to collect or monitor student immigration status.”
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All of the Tennessee National Guardsmen returned to the state after completing their 12-month deployment helping secure America’s southern border.
The guardsmen began returning home at the end of October, with the last group returning to Tennessee on Monday.
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President Donald Trump’s overall approval rating took a hit this month, but one area where the President’s efforts have paid off already is his massive turnaround of the illegal immigration crisis. With illegal border encounters at their lowest number since the 1970’s according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data Americans have a lot to celebrate, and President Trump to thank for a significantly more secure country.
President Trump’s refusal to accept a porous border open border and move to deport illegal criminals is his most popular policy to voters. In the latest Cygnal survey from Nov. 5-6, voters strongly credit Trump for his work to quell the illegal immigrant crisis, support deportation, and say immigration is being resolved but needs more work to be completely solved.
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A Democrat senator has fired a staffer accused of impersonating an immigration attorney to help facilitate a criminal illegal migrant’s release from custody.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday accused Edward York — then employed as a constituent outreach coordinator for Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth — of falsely claiming to be the lawyer of a 40-year-old illegal immigrant to federal officials in order to gain access to the individual and push for his release from custody. Duckworth on Monday confirmed that her office had no prior knowledge of the incident and has since terminated York’s employment, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials set a record this week for most suspected illegal migrants held in detention – 66,000.
The previous record was set during President Donald Trump’s first administration – 56,000 people in 2019, according to CBS News.
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Nashville’s Homeland Security Task Force has charged 38 people, including eight Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang members, with crimes related to drug trafficking, firearms, assault, and immigration.
President Donald Trump’s executive order, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” led to these arrests and criminal charges. The executive order established a Homeland Security Task Force attempting to eliminate cartels, foreign gangs, transnational organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking operations in America.
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The federal government entered a partial shutdown a record-breaking 37 days ago after Senate Democrats blocked a short-term funding bill passed by House Republicans, demanding instead a one-month measure that would restore and expand federal health care benefits for non-citizens — a $1.5 trillion package that Republicans say funnels taxpayer money to illegal immigrants.
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California expects to spend 28 times more on health benefits for illegal aliens than on state police in the 2025-2026 budget period.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final budget allocates $348 million to law enforcement while the state’s own budget experts in an October report estimate the tab for giving full health benefits for illegal aliens amounts to $10 billion. The new report by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reveals a 35% higher figure than the $7.4 billion cost Newsom estimated in his January 2025 budget proposal.
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