What Lil Nas X has to do with a debate over CA mental health law

In the battle over whether to change a California crime law, both supporters and critics are waging their campaign not only through crime statistics but also by invoking harrowing anecdotes — including one involving American rapper Lil Nas X.

As Gagandeep Singh for CalMatters explains, legislators are advancing a bill that would lower the threshold a judge could use to deny mental health diversion for people accused of certain crimes. 

The bill would tweak a 2018 law that currently allows judges to block diversion if they find the defendant poses “an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety.” But by changing the standard to “a substantial and undue risk,” which the bill proposes, it would make it easier for judges to reject diversion and send defendants to prison instead.

Proponents, which include police unions and law enforcement leaders, argue that it closes a loophole that allows violent offenders to walk free. In his support of the measure, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho cites multiple cases from Sacramento County in which suspects committed serious offenses after being granted diversion.

The most recent case occurred last year, when deputies arrested 40-year-old Jordon Murray for allegedly stabbing another person to death in Fair Oaks. Murray was previously released from jail under a mental health diversion.

But public defenders and civil liberties organizations say the 2018 law is working as intended, and that judges already wield enough power to limit access to diversion. In illustrating the success of diversion, the California Public Defenders Association points to Lil Nas X, a prominent music artist whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill.

In 2025 police found Hill, nearly naked, wandering the streets of Los Angeles. Officers said Hill charged at them, and he faced four felony counts and up to five years in prison. A judge granted him diversion, saying at the time, “When treated, he is much better off and society is much better off.”

• Kate Chatfield, executive director of the association, in an April press release: “Diversion is not a loophole. … It is a promise that the system will respond to human beings as human beings, that treatment is possible, that a crisis does not have to define a life.” 

The Senate’s Appropriations Committee will decide on Thursday whether the bill moves forward.

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If your wallet is already hurting at the pump, things may get even worse in the next few weeks, reports CalMatters’ Alejandro Lazo.

At a recent legislative oversight hearing, Siva Gunda, the vice chairperson of the California Energy Commission, said the state’s fuel supplies look stable for the next six weeks. After about mid-June, however, it’ll cost California — and consumers, in turn — a lot more money to secure more oil and gas.

As of this week, Californians pay an average of $6.15 a gallon — the highest in the country. But if the conflict in Iran drags on, the average in California would likely settle “under seven, more like $6.50,” Gunda said.

Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley energy economist who was also at the hearing, has a more pessimistic view: If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed another 60 days, the price of crude could increase by another $40 to $80 a barrel, he said. Each $40 increase adds about another $1 per gallon at the pump.

• Borenstein: “I know we all hope that doesn’t happen and that the flow of oil resumes, but the reality is we are on borrowed time as we run down inventories.”

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As California schools assess the fallout from the major Canvas cyberattack, at least one state lawmaker wants answers.

Teachers use the popular academic software Canvas to give tests, communicate with students, post grades and more. Last week a hacker group claimed to obtain sensitive data through Canvas and demanded a ransom. 

Canvas’ outage hit California especially hard — likely affecting more than 1 million of the state’s university students, write CalMatters’ Colin Lecher and Mikhail Zinshteyn. The hack has raised serious questions about whether schools should be so dependent on centralized solutions for their online education tools. Though these services enable schools to easily manage everything on a single platform, a security breach of one company also leaves vulnerable the data of numerous institutions.

The outage prompted Sen. Melissa Hurtado to seek a legislative audit into California’s heavy reliance on Canvas. 

• Hurtado, a Bakersfield Democrat: The “breach exposes the growing risks of concentrating massive amounts of student records … into a single platform.”

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Following a 2025 investigative series by CalMatters’ Anat Rubin that exposed the systemic failures of California’s public defender system, lawmakers introduced a bill that would require counties to report basic information about their public defender services, such as how many cases attorneys handle. Read more.