Dan Walters

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's brags about the state's economy, but its unemployment rate is still the highest in the nation. The fund that pays unemployment insurance benefits also faces an immense deficit.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and fellow Democrats in the Legislature tend to govern by decree, a habit they've criticized in former President Donald Trump.

California's initiative process casts voters as judges of political policy issues. Sometimes they're parsing competing measures on the same topic.

Three of Los Angeles County's five supervisors are supporting a major overhaul of county governance that would almost double the board's size and establish an elected county executive, which would arguably become California’s second-most powerful office.

Many new towns have been created to handle California's population growth. Now the state is losing population, and its latest new town project has stalled.

As California struggles to address its housing shortage, the sky-high costs of housing projects minimize the bang for its bucks.

While Gavin Newsom serves out the last two years of his governorship and possibly awaits a chance to run for president, the field of would-be successors is growing.

If Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic nominee for president, former President Donald Trump will use images of homelessness, illegal immigration and other California problems against her in the swing states.

A chronic highway bottleneck between Sacramento and Davis plagues a portion of Interstate 80, one of the nation's most important transcontinental routes. Environmental groups are trying to derail a project to address it.

The battle between two very flawed presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, symbolizes the nation's polarized and dysfunctional politics.