Nonprofit & Nonpartisan News

Join us at the CalMatters Ideas Festival on May 21. 💡 Get your tickets now.

Avatar photo

Emily Hoeven

Contact Latest Stories

Emily Hoeven wrote the daily WhatMatters newsletter for three years at CalMatters . Her reporting, essays, and opinion columns have been published in San Francisco Weekly, the Deseret News, the San Francisco Business Times, the Flathead Beacon, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Mercury News. Emily graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English and French and studied English at the University of Cambridge, England as a Thouron Summer Prize fellow. She speaks French fluently and spent a year teaching English in Châteauroux, France.

Contact

Email X

Latest Stories

A row of tents under an overpass in east Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 2021.
WhatMatters
How California fails its most vulnerable residents
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. If the pandemic made one thing clear in California, it’s that the state often fails to protect its most vulnerable residents. That was the takeaway from an emotional eight-hour hearing […]
By • December 16, 2021
The windows of the Valentino store in Union Square in San Francisco were boarded up on Nov. 25, 2021. Videos on social media showed masked people running with goods from several high-end retailers in the storied shopping area. Photo by Samuel Rigelhaupt / Sipa USA
WhatMatters
California Democrats embrace tough-on-crime rhetoric
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. “It is time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city … come to an end. And it comes to an end when we take the steps to […]
By • December 15, 2021
A sign reminds people to wear a mask along the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica on Dec. 8, 2020. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
WhatMatters
Mask up: Statewide mandate returns
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. California’s statewide mask mandate is back after a six-month hiatus. Starting Wednesday, all residents will be required to wear face coverings indoors regardless of vaccination status, Dr. Mark Ghaly, the […]
By • December 14, 2021
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to the press during a visit to Ruby Bridges Elementary School in Alameda on March 16, 2021. Photo by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters
WhatMatters
Newsom fights Texas abortion law with assault rifle ban
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That appears to be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strategy for counteracting the U.S. Supreme Court’s Friday decision to let stand Texas’ ban on abortions […]
By • December 13, 2021
Mobile vaccination teams visited Los Angeles Unified school campuses to deliver first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, as students returned to in-person classes in Los Angeles on Aug. 30, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake
WhatMatters
Newsom: Schools should ‘fine-tune’ vaccine mandates to keep kids in school
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. Los Angeles Unified School District should adjust its vaccine mandate so the 34,000 students at risk of not meeting the January inoculation deadline won’t be kicked out of the classroom […]
By • December 10, 2021
People rally in support of abortion rights at the state Capitol in Sacramento on May 21, 2019. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
WhatMatters
Newsom: California should be a ‘sanctuary,’ helping out-of-state patients seeking abortion
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. Hundreds of thousands of women seeking abortions could soon flood into California, and the state should maximize access for both in-state and out-of-state patients by helping cover the cost of […]
By • December 9, 2021
Gov. Gavin Newsom at the California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento on Sept. 14, 2021. REUTERS/Fred Greaves
WhatMatters
Newsom book tour reveals priority: More dollars for dyslexia screenings
Give to CalMatters today and your gift will be doubled! Your support helps keep our nonprofit journalism free and accessible to all Californians. Donate now. Anti-crime initiatives won’t be alone in receiving “an exponential increase of support” in the budget proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom is set to send to state lawmakers in January. Dyslexia screenings […]
By • December 8, 2021
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-California, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 20, 2019. Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS
WhatMatters
Nunes resignation sparks massive political shakeup
It’s election season in California, and the resignations, announcements and endorsements are coming in fast and furious. The state’s political scene got a major shakeup on Monday, when Rep. Devin Nunes, a high-profile, powerful and controversial Republican who’s represented the San Joaquin Valley in Congress since 2003, announced that he plans to give up his […]
By • December 7, 2021
The San Francisco Unified School District Building in San Francisco on Dec. 2, 2021. Nina Riggio for CalMatters
WhatMatters
Vaccines, grades, tests, math: Equity becomes flashpoint in California schools
Equity. That’s one of the buzzwords that will likely dominate conversation in California’s capitol next month, when state lawmakers return to Sacramento to consider, among other things, possible legislation to remove the personal belief exemption from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s student COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Stressed school leaders have mixed feelings about that, with some warning it […]
By • December 6, 2021
A man living on the streets displays what he claims to be the synthetic drug fentanyl in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco on Feb. 27, 2020. Photo by Shannon Stapleton, Reuters
WhatMatters
Overdose epidemic plagues California: Fentanyl is driving uptick in deaths
As concern over the omicron variant mounts in California — with the state’s second case confirmed Thursday in Los Angeles County — another public health crisis is lurking in plain sight: the drug epidemic. A jaw-dropping report released Wednesday by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy found that nearly 1,500 people, the vast […]
By • December 3, 2021

Gift this article