Lynn La

Newsletter Writer

Lynn La is the newsletter writer for CalMatters, focusing on California’s top political, policy and Capitol stories every weekday. She produces and curates WhatMatters, CalMatters’ flagship daily newsletter with more than 150,000 subscribers.

In the newsletter, Lynn analyzes the state’s policy issues for a broader audience, through original reporting and by summarizing and compiling stories from CalMatters and other news sources. Recently, she has reported on bills to address California’s worsening fentanyl epidemic, tackle retail theft and legislate happiness. She also reveals more about lawmakers by interviewing them for an occasional series on first-term legislators in 2023 and new committee chairpersons in 2024.

Through WhatMatters, Lynn also plays a crucial role in CalMatters election coverage, helping to keep track of daily developments in key campaigns, including legislative and congressional races and ballot measures.

Prior to joining CalMatters in March 2023, she wrote for the education technology startup Guild and was a senior editor at CNET. She also covered public health at The Sacramento Bee as a Kaiser media fellow and was an intern reporter at Capitol Weekly.

Lynn is based in the Bay Area. She graduated from UC Davis and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Other languages spoken: Vietnamese (basic)

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Latest Stories

WhatMatters

California Legislature tackles food chemicals, facial recognition, transgender kids and more

The Legislature is back this week from spring recess and already things are getting busy. CalMatters’ Julie Cart reports that a bill that would outlaw five chemicals in food products passed the Assembly health committee Tuesday after a robust debate — and a little snacking. The so-called Skittles Bill prompted both a freewheeling discussion of […]

Lynn La

• April 12, 2023

WhatMatters

What Kounalakis gets to do as acting California governor

Monday, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis issued a proclamation honoring labor activist Dolores Huerta on her 93rd birthday. But it was Gov. Gavin Newsom who announced the state has secured an emergency stockpile of as many as 2 million Misoprostol pills in response to a federal judge suspending FDA approval of another abortion pill on […]

Lynn La

• April 11, 2023

WhatMatters

Police videos don’t always tell the whole story

In response to calls for greater police accountability, California passed laws to make police misconduct records more accessible to the public and placed the state Attorney General’s office in charge of investigating police killings of unarmed civilians. Following the 2018 Sacramento police shooting of Stephon Clark, who was unarmed, lawmakers now require law enforcement agencies […]

Lynn La

• April 10, 2023

WhatMatters

Newsom’s threat to Walgreens fizzles

On March 6, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent the policy world into a frenzy when, without any notice, he tweeted that “California won’t be doing business with Walgreens,” because of the company’s decision to not distribute an abortion pill in states that banned the medication. But it turns out that Walgreens won’t lose that much state […]

Lynn La

• April 7, 2023

WhatMatters

Why it’s tougher for California press to inform the public

In response to the COVID pandemic, many workplaces shifted from in-person to virtual communications, including state government offices. But as the impact of COVID-19 continues to wane, CalMatters’ politics reporter Alexei Koseff found that officials and their media offices in some ways remain just as inaccessible to the press. Before the pandemic, reporters could attend […]

Lynn La

• April 6, 2023

WhatMatters

Can California public transit recover?

Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco’s MUNI, Los Angeles Metro and transit agencies across the state are struggling to keep afloat. Public transit ridership in California hasn’t recovered since plummeting during the pandemic. And since then, transit agencies have been anticipating a “fiscal cliff” — a steep drop in revenue combined with the end of […]

Lynn La

• April 5, 2023

WhatMatters

California backlog persists on illegal guns

From CalMatters criminal justice reporter Nigel Duara: California’s first-in-the-nation program to take guns away from people prohibited by courts from owning them continues to tread water: A backlog of cases numbering between 23,000 and 24,000 people has stubbornly persisted, even as Attorney General Rob Bonta insisted on Monday that the program is making progress. “That’s […]

Lynn La

• April 4, 2023

WhatMatters

California mental health funding may get overhauled

With little notice given to those working closely with the Californians who would be most impacted, a proposal announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom is once again leaving advocacy groups shocked and worried. During his State of the State tour in March, the governor announced that he plans to reroute money from the 2004 voter-approved Mental […]

Lynn La

• April 3, 2023

WhatMatters

The California bills on a business ‘kill list’

From CalMatters economy reporter Grace Gedye: The California Legislature, with its Democratic supermajority, is known for passing first-in-the-nation laws that ramp up labor and consumer protections — often in the face of intense opposition from business groups. At the same time, the California Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group, has honed a specific […]

Lynn La

• March 31, 2023

WhatMatters

Should teachers in high-poverty California schools get more pay?

It’s difficult to exaggerate just how much impact a great teacher can have on a student’s life. Experienced and qualified educators can increase their students’ lifetime earnings and reduce their chances of incarceration. But in California, schools serving more students living in poverty generally have fewer experienced teachers. In the first in a series of […]

Lynn La

• March 30, 2023