California voters have turned down Proposition 40, which would have made the state the first in the nation to tax the net worth of billionaires, after a bitter ballot campaign that drew enormous spending from tech leaders determined to block the tax.

The Associated Press determined Monday that the "no" side had secured enough votes to win. Because most Californians vote by mail and ballots postmarked by Election Day are counted if they arrive within a week, close contests in the state often take days or weeks to resolve.

What the measure would have done

Proposition 40 would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of California residents worth more than $1 billion. Most of the revenue was earmarked to offset federal cuts to healthcare funding, with 10% directed to education and food-assistance programs. SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the union behind the measure, argued the money was needed to make up for an estimated $100 billion in federal healthcare funding the state is expected to lose over five years.

The proposal was the most significant test so far of a long-standing progressive goal: taxing the ultra-rich on their investment holdings, the main source of their wealth, rather than on wages from work.

A lopsided money fight

Opponents outraised supporters by roughly 10 to 1. Building a Better California, a political action committee funded largely by billionaires, raised more than $333 million to defeat the tax and also backed rival ballot measures designed to cancel it out. Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone contributed more than $100 million, close to a third of the committee's total.

The defeat is also a victory for Democratic leaders who opposed the tax, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a possible 2028 presidential candidate. Critics warned that the measure would have driven ultrawealthy residents out of California.

Supporters plan another attempt

The measure drew backing from progressive figures outside California, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who held rallies across the state in the final weeks of the campaign.

The Yes on 40 campaign said its goal was to protect healthcare for Californians and pledged to return with a tax measure in 2028 if patients are not protected. In a statement Monday, proponents said that buying an election is not the same as winning the debate, and called the result only the first round of the fight.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday asked a federal court to dismiss its own lawsuit seeking to stop California from counting about 20,000 ballots that the department claimed were sent to noncitizens, until the voters' immigration status could be confirmed.

The request came days after Republicans suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections and roughly a week before a scheduled hearing at which a court-appointed special master was to review the accuracy of the government's list of alleged noncitizens. California officials have argued that the list is outdated and includes eligible voters, a view the presiding federal judge also expressed in a sharply worded order rejecting the government's request.

Ballots already counted

The lawsuit was filed in mid-October, after ballots had been mailed to all 23 million registered voters in the state and hundreds of thousands had already been processed. Once processed, ballots are fully anonymized.

As of early Friday, state election officials reported about 9 million ballots processed, with nearly 5 million still to be counted. In its motion, the Justice Department said that by the time of the hearing, the challenged ballots would already be irreversibly mixed with valid ones, leaving the relief it sought no longer available and making voluntary dismissal necessary.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, named the special master in late October, shortly after allowing California to move forward with its election as planned. In his order, Carter wrote that separating ballots at such a late point could disenfranchise citizens and would cause serious disruption to the midterm elections. The special master was also set to examine whether California election officials actually had a way to separate the ballots.

Department vows to keep pursuing cases

The case had been a centerpiece of the Trump administration's push to exert more control over elections run by the states. President Donald Trump has claimed, without offering evidence, that noncitizen voting is widespread, while available data shows such cases are extremely rare.

Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels repeated the department's earlier claim that California chose to protect illegal voters by refusing to set the ballots aside, and asserted that thousands of likely noncitizens remain on the state's voter rolls and cast ballots in the 2026 elections. In a Friday evening statement, the department said it would continue to pursue suspected election law violations through other cases.

The department also moved to support a separate lawsuit, filed in May, alleging that California violates federal voting laws by failing to adequately remove ineligible voters from its rolls. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said the effort is part of a broader commitment to use every available civil and criminal tool to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens vote.

The Justice Department is still involved in litigation with several immigrant and voting rights organizations seeking to restrict how it uses its list of suspected noncitizens. Separately, California prosecutors have arrested more than 30 noncitizens in recent weeks on charges of illegally registering to vote, and some are also accused of voting in past elections.

A Hong Kong court on Thursday handed prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong an additional 10-year prison term under the national security law imposed by Beijing, a ruling critics say reflects the sweeping crackdown on the city's once-vibrant democracy movement.

Wong, 30, rose to prominence as a teenage leader of student protests and later campaigned internationally for Hong Kong's democracy movement. He was already serving a sentence of four years and eight months after pleading guilty in the city's largest national security case, and had been scheduled for release in January.

Collusion charge under 2020 security law

In 2025, Wong was hit with a new charge of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security, an offense created by the 2020 security law. He pleaded guilty earlier this year.

Judge William Tam found that Wong and fellow activist Nathan Law worked with foreign officials and other overseas actors to seek measures against China and Hong Kong. The judge cited Washington's revocation of Hong Kong's preferential treatment as a special administrative region, along with U.S. sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials, as examples of the hostile steps the two had sought.

"The punishment must fit the gravity of the crime committed," Tam wrote, adding that the court also needed to convey the community's strong condemnation of the collusion.

Tam said he began with a 13-year starting point before reducing the term in light of Wong's guilty plea and mitigating factors. The remaining two months of Wong's first national security sentence will run concurrently with the new term.

U.S. condemns the sentence

The United States sharply criticized the ruling and called for Wong's immediate release. In a statement, the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong said Wong had been unjustly held since late 2020 and that the case showed how far Beijing is willing to go to silence advocates for fundamental freedoms in the city.

Supporters fill the courtroom

Wong, dressed in a dark shirt at the High Court, nodded to supporters and pro-democracy activists in the public gallery before the hearing began. He remained composed as the judge delivered the sentencing remarks and thanked supporters as he was led out.

Seating was limited, and dozens of people lined up outside the court for a place in the gallery, some arriving as early as Tuesday, with attendees taking turns inside. Tiffany Chin, a former member of Scholarism, the now-disbanded student group Wong once led, was in tears after the sentence was announced. A resident named ET Wong said the activist had taken a hard road for Hong Kong's future, human rights and the student movement, and should never have been imprisoned.

Wong's statement

In a statement written from prison, Wong said he had believed he was acting lawfully and was not directly calling for sanctions when he shared other people's social media posts or urged foreign companies to consider ending business with the Hong Kong police. He said he later came to see that his judgment had been wrong.