Newsletters

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 […]

From CalMatters’ new reporter covering homelessness, Marisa Kendall: Despite growing frustration over California’s massive homeless encampments, Republicans didn’t get very far Tuesday in their attempt to crack down on camping in certain public spaces.    Senate Bill 31, introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego, would ban people from sitting, lying or sleeping […]

From CalMatters’ politics reporter Alexei Koseff: The California Assembly handed Gov. Gavin Newsom a long-awaited win on Monday, approving his revised proposal to punish alleged price gouging by oil companies and sending the measure to his desk for a signature, nearly six months after he first called on state lawmakers to take action on record […]

In some ways, there are two Californias.  Depending on your values and political views, the state is either a bastion of diversity and inclusion, or a treacherous place for minorities and marginalized groups. On one side, many in California embrace its diversity with open arms. Today, advocates and lawmakers will kick off the Transgender Week […]

From 2018 to 2021, 109 Native Americans took their own lives in California. Can the new national hotline help save some lives? This week in Sacramento, Assemblymember James Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe who is the first Native American to be elected to the state Assembly, partnered with Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services […]

From CalMatters’ politics reporter Alexei Koseff: Whatever lingering concerns legislative Democrats may have about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently revised proposal to punish oil companies for high gas prices, they seem ready to pass it anyway — and fast. The bill sailed through its first committee hearing Wednesday, a week after Newsom’s office announced major changes […]

Patients who were already victimized once by California’s forced sterilization program — and who are running out of time to claim state compensation — were nearly victimized again. This time, it’s because of a data breach that exposed their personal and medical information. Last December, a researcher looking into the sterilization of thousands of female […]

From CalMatters state Capitol reporter Sameea Kamal:  It’s become a key part of the big business playbook: If an industry doesn’t like a California law, it uses the referendum process to try and overturn it.  Already on the November 2024 ballot: the oil industry qualified a ballot measure to kill a law that bans new […]

It’s no surprise that California has an affordable housing crisis. It has squeezed 500,000 people out of the state and forced tens of thousands onto its streets.  But there’s an oft-overlooked group of Californians — 1.6 million of them — who live in mobile home parks. They tend to be older and poorer than the […]

In March 2019, as one of his first major decisions in office, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on executions. He later dismantled the lethal injection chamber at San Quentin State Prison — a move that garnered plenty of criticism despite the fact that California has not executed anyone since 2006.  Today — on Day […]