Newsletters

I’m CalMatters Capitol reporter Sameea Kamal subbing for Lynn. Remember when California’s transit agencies were barreling towards a “fiscal cliff’?  In June, the Legislature and governor agreed to a $5 billion lifeline in the budget as transit agencies’ ridership slowly recovered from the COVID shutdowns. You might also recall that the deal took some convincing […]

Yes, the headline race in California’s 2024 election is the first open U.S. Senate seat in 30 years.  But voters should also pay attention to the U.S. House: California helped flip control to Republicans in 2022 (and the speakership went from Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco to Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, until he was deposed […]

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Alexei Koseff:  As he toured a wind turbine factory in China’s Jiangsu province last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the owner showed him a video of the famous wind farm in Livermore’s Altamont Pass. It was what had inspired the man to get into the turbine business, according to the governor […]

From CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn:  The faculty union of California State University overwhelmingly approved a strike authorization, giving its leadership the green light to pull as many as 29,000 instructors from educating the more than 400,000 students in the nation’s largest public four-year university system.  The California Faculty Association said Monday that 95% […]

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Sameea Kamal:   Normally an election to set up a fire district and fill one school board seat in a county with just 112,000 registered voters wouldn’t get statewide attention.  But the Nov. 7 election in Shasta County is far from normal and will be closely watched — including by the Secretary […]

From CalMatters state Capitol reporter Alexei Koseff: Coming soon to California: a diversity reporting mandate for venture capital firms. Not coming soon to California: a diversity reporting mandate for Gov. Gavin Newsom. As the bill signing period wrapped up earlier this month, Newsom approved a measure that will force venture capital firms operating in California […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s trip overseas this week has had its share of twists: First a surprise visit to Israel, followed by a surprise meeting a few days later with Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday in Beijing to discuss trade relations, climate change and even fentanyl. Newsom isn’t the first California governor to visit China — […]

The question of whether the state can make college debt-free for all Californians — or just some — is a particularly fraught one.  Take for instance, California’s Middle Class Scholarship program, which launched in 2022. In the last academic year, about 300,000 students received an average of $1,970 more toward their college education through the […]

Though Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a handful of laws earlier this month to address the state’s mental health crisis — including a measure to loosen rules about who is eligible for involuntary treatment and another that gives voters the opportunity to decide on a multi-billion dollar bond measure to add thousands of treatment beds statewide […]

The California Energy Commission isn’t necessarily an agency that the public, or even reporters, follow for its every twist and turn. But it does have a wide-ranging purview and its decisions can affect people’s daily lives, not to mention the industries being regulated. For example, last week, it voted to begin proceedings for two key […]