Newsletters

Gov. Gavin Newsom strong-armed the Legislature into making sure his signature mental health initiative stood alone on the March 5 statewide ballot. And now, he and his allies are raising orders of magnitude more money for the Proposition 1 campaign than the measure’s opponents to make sure voters approve it. As CalMatters’ health reporter Kristen […]

California’s homelessness crisis stares people in the face on the streets, and shows up as one of the biggest worries in poll after poll. This week, thousands of volunteers ventured across the state to find out how bad the problem is. The federally-mandated “point-in-time count” of the homeless population helps determine how state funds are […]

Perhaps the newest news from Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas on Wednesday: He and his wife are in the process of adopting a seven-month-old baby.  But in an hour-long conversation hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California, the Salinas Democrat who took over as speaker last June did address a wide range of topics of […]

California is home to more than 10 million immigrants, nearly one-fourth of the nation’s entire foreign-born population. The vast majority were born in Mexico, Latin America and Asia. In 2022, about 54% of California’s immigrants were U.S. citizens, compared to only 31% in 1990, according to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of […]

The four leading U.S. Senate contenders in California tried to use 90 minutes of free air time Monday night to solidify their pitches to voters — and also to set themselves apart from their opponents. But the biggest fireworks in their first debate happened when the three Democrats ganged up on Republican Steve Garvey, repeatedly […]

From CalMatters politics reporter Yue Stella Yu: Three Democrats and one Republican walk on to a stage. How well will they get along? It is one of many key things to watch at tonight’s U.S. Senate debate in Los Angeles — the first time top contenders Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff and […]

For the record: We have updated the headline of a Dec. 12, 2023 article and newsletter on a Los Angeles homeless housing program to better reflect what happened to displaced participants in the HOPICS rapid rehousing program. We use the terms “eviction” and “evicted” in the article and newsletter based on the common understanding of […]

From CalMatters politics reporter Yue Stella Yu: GOP U.S. Senate candidate Steve Garvey made his first campaign appearance in Sacramento Wednesday afternoon, visiting a homeless encampment north of downtown to highlight the state’s homelessness crisis. Squatting by a bag of abandoned brioche buns, Garvey — along with former Sacramento County Sheriff John McGuinness — asked […]

After Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his initial budget proposal last week, advocacy and interest groups decried many of his proposed cuts or delays in funding — including for climate change programs and healthcare wages. The governor deems these cuts necessary to plug the state’s $38 billion budget hole (or $58 billion if you go by […]

“Plausible, but optimistic.” Those are the words that the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office used to describe Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revenue projections in its analysis of his January budget proposal — a description that the Legislature will have to consider as it puts together its own budget by June. As CalMatters’s Mikhail Zinshteyn explains, the analyst’s […]