Politics

The reaction has been swift, viral and unrelenting. Shortly after Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky sentenced ex-Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner to only six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, the victim’s emotional 12-page court statement drew 13 million readers online, and a cyber-petition demanding the judge’s removal garnered well over a million signatures. […]

As a bill named in memory of his 6-year-old son heads to Gov. Jerry Brown, Tim Sears looks at his family’s foray into Sacramento politics with mixed emotions. “I’m both happy and proud of the amount of progress we’ve made and I think this bill will really help,” said Sears, whose son Caleb died last […]

One after another they stepped to the podium telling stories of liberation through transformation. There was the man, in suit and bowtie, who once played college basketball on a women’s team. There was the woman, in a red lace dress, who said attaining a female physique was like “holding a prize in my hand.” Gone […]

Gov. Jerry Brown has taken the national stage to tout California’s fight against global warming, telling cheering throngs at the Democratic National Convention that the state has “the toughest climate laws in the country.” Yet inside the state Capitol, the fate of the policy’s centerpiece—legislation to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions—is in peril. One ominous […]

As they come of age and register to vote, Millennials—that enormous generation born since 1981—are surging so fast they’re on the verge of overtaking the Baby Boomer behemoth as a share of the California electorate. And new evidence confirms that, so far at least, the GOP is losing them. Fewer than 1 out of every […]

Protracted policy questions. Big-money battles. Contradictory proposals that are difficult to discern. It’s shaping up to be an all-too-typical fall election—once again confronting  California voters with an unwieldy ballot. This wasn’t supposed to happen. After polls confirmed that California voters were frustrated by ballot overload, lawmakers two years ago made changes aimed at pre-empting at […]

As an AIDS activist 30 years ago, Michael Weinstein helped defeat an inflammatory ballot measure that could have quarantined Californians with the disease. Today, Weinstein has turned to the ballot to advance his own controversial vision for public health. President of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has clinics around the world, Weinstein is […]

Some of the outsized money spent on California legislative races this year came pouring through the mail slot of voter Michael Johnson’s home, arriving in the form of two or three glossy ads a day in advance of the June primary. Most of the ads weren’t from candidates. They were from interest groups that have business before […]

How much information should be available to the public in cases of severe child abuse? California lawmakers and the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown have been at odds over that question for the last two years. Legislators recently rejected a proposal to limit public access to reports on abuse so extreme that children nearly die. […]

In an era of increasingly polarized politics, Republicans and Democrats still manage to find enough common ground for romance—even marriage—though not very often. On the eve of the 2016 primary election, here’s an approximate look at California’s mixed political pairs. At least one study suggests such unions could have implications for Tuesday’s voting. The Marriage […]