Politics

President Trump appears to be dramatically softening his tone regarding a popular program for immigrant children, telling ABC News that the program’s participants “shouldn’t be very worried” about deportation.

There is already a ban in place that prohibits additional federal leasing off California's coast until 2022. But Obama declined to make that permanent, even as he ruled out energy exploration in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The Trump administration’s response is a big unknown.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles reports it has issued more than 792,000 licenses to undocumented drivers. Now California is preparing for the possibility that the administration of President-elect Donald Trump—who campaigned on a promise to deport at least 2 million people—might demand access to various state databases that would reveal the names and locations of undocumented immigrants, such as the one maintained by the DMV. But in a state where Democrats hold the governor’s office and supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, lawmakers say if the Trump administration does come knocking for such state data, their answer will be a vociferous “no.”

The President signed his first executive order to begin the repeal of the Affordable Care Act just hours after he was sworn into office. The broad order instructs federal agencies to roll back or waive provisions of the law within their purview. That means agencies can change, delay or bypass parts of the Act.

Back before the internet made it so easy to find a celebrity’s age, a 29-year-old actress landed the role of a 17-year-old girl—and helped propel “Beverly Hills 90210” into a hit TV show in the 1990s. That was the story actress Gabrielle Carteris told state lawmakers last year as she lobbied for a bill to […]

There are more white men named Jim in the California Legislature than black and Asian-American women—combined. And that’s not even including another white James. Or a Latino Jimmy. California’s new legislative session begins in earnest this week, and a fresh class of legislators will influence everything from how bad your commute is to the quality […]

“I made the worst mistake of my life.” “I had a drug and alcohol problem.” “I was just a kid with low self esteem and felt hopeless.” Those are the words people convicted of felonies in California wrote to Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years, asking him to pardon their crimes. Their clemency applications describe […]

As the Legislature opened a new two-year session this month, staffers lined up before 9 a.m. to hand freshly-written bills to the clerk, who assigns them an all important number. Whether a bill lives or dies won’t be known for many months, but the work to nab the right bill number starts the minute the […]

As they suit up for battle against the Trump administration, Democrats who dominate California’s Legislature vow to unleash one of the superpowers of holding a supermajority: the ability to enact laws immediately.An underplayed consequence of the fact that they won two-thirds of the seats in both houses last month is that—if they stick together—California Democrats […]