California Legislature

For more than a decade the extravagant Back to Session Bash was a place to let loose. But with the Capitol reeling from accusations of sexual harassment and assault, the mood at the party this month was more subdued.

California's Legislature is strategizing about how to preserve expanded health coverage required by Obamacare: “Everything they are doing at the federal level, we are doing the opposite,” one legislator said.

Patty Lopez “is the unusual candidate who can go back out there and say… ‘I am one of you. I got elected to office, the big machine came and took me out, then look what happened to the big machine,’” said Eric Bauman, chair of the California Democratic Party.

Will 2018 change California's power equation?

Would California withhold clean car rebates from Tesla customers if the electric car maker doesn't meet the state's evolving labor standards?

The electorate is a politician’s ultimate boss. But in recent weeks, as a wave of sexual harassment and assault allegations hits politicians in California's statehouse and the nation’s capitol, another force is proving to be as powerful as the electorate: peer pressure.

And as women come forward with stories of being propositioned, groped and even assaulted by male colleagues in politics, an undercurrent of retaliation has begun rippling through the state.

It’s an example of how the The Legislature’s exemption from the Whistleblower Protection Act has garnered attention in recent weeks, as a groundswell of women complaining of pervasive sexual harassment in the state Capitol publicly call for such protections for legislative employees. But the whistleblower act isn’t the only area of the law in which the Legislature has demonstrated a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.

Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes’ tactical skills will be put to the test as she faces her first re-election campaign next year, a contest that could decide not only her own future in politics but also the balance of power in Sacramento.

As the oil industry worked to influence a landmark environmental policy in California this year, it had hired Democratic former legislators to lobby on its behalf.