Santa Clara County’s 11th hour sales tax measure is moving forward — but the fate of its public hospitals might come down to several words.

A judge has ordered county officials to strike President Donald Trump’s name from the ballot language as a reason for approving a five-eighths cent sales tax hike for the county hospital system. Superior Court Judge Carol Overton’s Friday ruling also requires other edits to language that taxpayer advocates challenged as misleading and biased.

For instance, county leaders agreed to revise a line originally framing the tax as “protecting” against unprecedented Trump administration funding cuts. It will now say the tax would “address” those cuts. The ballot language’s mention of Trump will be replaced with “the President.”

County leaders are lauding th

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