Newsletters

From CalMatters’ homelessness policy reporter Marisa Kendall: California cities want more money to tackle homelessness.  That was the main takeaway from a rally Wednesday where about 100 city officials made a big ask of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and the Legislature: They want $3 billion a year in guaranteed homelessness funding from the state.  That […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]