Nicky Woolf

Controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel will be a member of Donald Trump’s transition team, the campaign has confirmed. Thiel’s involvement in a Trump Administration has been the subject of frenzied speculation in Silicon Valley, where the businessman was the sole prominent advocate for the divisive Republican candidate. Thiel said that he would not move to Washington or seek a seat on the supreme court, but said: “I’ll try to help the president in any way I can.” It is not known what role Thiel will play in the transition team. It is likely that he will be expected to help the president-elect build bridges with Silicon Valley, a place where President Barack Obama is hugely popular and where many people regard President-elect Trump with either distrust or outright disdain.

San Francisco (CA) has voted against a proposal known as the “tech tax” which would have forced the area’s biggest technology firms to fund initiatives to provide affordable housing and tackle the city’s homeless problem. The tax, which would have been on the ballot in the city in November, would have imposed a 1.5% payroll levy on technology companies that generate more than $1 million in revenues a year, including Uber, Google, Twitter and Airbnb. It was proposed in June by supervisors Eric Mar, Aaron Peskin and David Campos. Supporters said the measure would have raised an estimated $140m every year, which would have been used to build affordable housing and shelters for homeless people. But it failed after it was rejected by the budget committee of the board of San Francisco’s supervisors.

“As a city, I don’t think we should subscribe to the politics of Donald Trump and the Republicans that they are saying certain people are not welcome here in San Francisco,” said Mark Farrell, one of two who voted to block the measure in the three-person committee, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Partly because of the technology boom, San Francisco has become one of the most unequal cities in the US, with its share of homes worth more than $1 million growing from 19.6% in 2012 to 57.4% in 2016. That has caused friction between the city’s richest residents and its poorest, as the city which is the locus of America’s most booming industry struggles to cope with the hundreds of people living in tented encampments on its streets.