WhatMatters

The end of a temporary exemption to a state law requiring many employers to classify their independent contractors as employees is leading some nail technicians to say they are being targeted by a policy that lawmakers intended to protect them, writes CalMatters’ Jeanne Kuang. California has over 6,000 nail establishments, and from 1987 to 2023, […]

Following the shooting death of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker in June, Assemblymember Mia Bonta wants to beef up a state law that would allow elected officials and candidates to spend an unlimited amount of campaign funds toward private security. The Oakland Democrat is introducing legislation today that would temporarily remove through 2028 the $10,000 lifetime […]

Scheduling note: WhatMatters is celebrating the Fourth of July and will return to your inboxes on Monday. Faced with steep budget cuts, phone lines that provide free mental health support to tens of thousands of residents across California have begun layoffs and the elimination of crucial services, reports CalMatters’ Jocelyn Wiener. These so-called “warm lines” […]

The number of homeless students in California has risen in the last year. As CalMatters’ Carolyn Jones explains, schools are required by federal law to count their homeless students. In the most recent data published in June, the state had 230,443 homeless students — a 9.3% increase from the previous year. For the purposes of […]

Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a state budget deal with the caveat that the Legislature would also advance trailer bills intended to speed up housing development in California. The governor signed those measures Monday (more on that later), signaling a major change in the state’s 54-year-old environmental law.  The California Environmental Quality Act, or […]

Find out what happened to three men who were arrested in California and deported. Also: Marines at the border, the political and economic toll of the immigration raids and why Gov. Gavin Newsom is suing Fox News.  CalMatters events: Join us on July 30 in San Francisco for a two-part conversation on how artificial intelligence […]

A year after the U.S. Supreme Court granted cities more authority to clear homeless encampments, how much has California’s homelessness crisis changed?  As CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall explains — along with Lisa Halverstadt from Voice of San Diego and Aaron Schrank from LAist — the landmark Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling allowing local authorities to arrest […]

To identify student work written by artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, many California colleges and universities rely on Turnitin, a plagiarism detection service. But the company’s tools aren’t always accurate, and when it falsely flags work done by humans as AI-generated, students are caught in the crossfire. As CalMatters’ Tara García Mathewson explains, in […]

California courts have failed to report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles over the past five years, allowing deadly drivers to improperly keep their licenses, a CalMatters investigation has found. Drivers like Marvin Salazar. Salazar was convicted in May 2023 for felony vehicular manslaughter after a crash that killed […]

Honey bees across the country are under attack from tiny, eight-legged parasitic mites. These mites burrow between the segments of the bees’ adult bodies or invade their larvae and infect them with viruses — deforming their wings and leaving them flightless. That’s not only problematic for the bees — whose entire colonies can collapse from […]