This story was originally published by CalMatters. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to counter President Donald Trump’s election gerrymander in Texas with his own redistricting play in California is on its way to voters. The California Legislature on Aug. 21 approved his proposal calling for a special election on a ballot measure that would suspend the state’s current congressional districts, […]
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California Police Misconduct Records Now Available in Public Database
The public can now search internal affairs documents and other police-misconduct records from nearly 700 California law enforcement agencies through a database created by UC Berkeley and Stanford University. The Police Records Access Project database, which contains roughly 1.5 million pages of records from 12,000 officer-misconduct and use-of-force cases, was jointly published Monday by CalMatters, The Los […]
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The Man Who Unsolved a Murder
On Aug. 28, 1976, sometime between 7:30 and 8 p.m., a 6-year-old boy named Willie Cook disappeared from the bed of his father’s pickup in Happy Camp, a secluded logging community in Northern California’s Klamath National Forest. Willie’s father, Bill Cook, had been working on his lawnmower at a repair shop in the center of […]
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Top Dems Say They Won’t Just ‘Trump-proof’ CA, They’ll Make it Affordable Again
The leaders of the state Legislature have a message for voters: We know you’re frustrated with how expensive California is — and we’re going to fix it. After a painful election that sparked recriminations and soul-searching among Democrats across the country, state Sen. President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas are returning […]
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2024 California Ballot Measures: What You Need to Know
Much is expected of the California voter. In any given election year, we may be asked to dust off our labor lawyer hats, brush up on oil and gas regulations, reacquaint ourselves with decades of tax policy, or analyze infrastructure funding. We may have to weigh the moral pros and cons of capital punishment, marriage equality or pig protection and — over and over again — oversee all things dialysis clinic. This November, […]
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Behind the ‘No Corporate PAC’ Pledge
From fundraising emails to debate speeches, it’s everywhere: The “No Corporate PAC money” pledge is front and center in the campaign for California’s next U.S. Senator. It is a promise shared by all three top Democrats, who hold largely similar voting records in Congress on a wide range of issues and who are trying to finish in the […]
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New State Laws Aimed to Streamline Home Building Take Effect in 2024
If California wants to build its way out of its long-term housing shortage, plenty of things stand in its way in 2024: high-interest rates, sluggish local approval processes and a persistent shortage of skilled construction workers, among others. But a slew of housing bills from the 2023 legislative session going into effect on Jan. 1 promise to […]
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‘Things Have to Change’
Arron Troy Hockaday leaned over the highway railing to peer into the water below, where the Scott River empties into the Klamath near the Oregon border. Beneath the bridge, dozens of threatened coho salmon rested on their journey back from the Pacific. It was the end of October, and they were waiting for rain to […]
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Newsom Signs ‘Overhaul’ of Mental Health System
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Oct. 10 announced he signed the first of a series of bills aimed to transform California’s mental health system. Depending on who you ask, this transformation represents a long overdue humanitarian response — or a worrisome step backward on civil liberties. The governor’s Oct. 10 signature loosens long-standing rules about who […]
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California’s Wildfire Smoke and the Climate Crisis: Four Things to Know
Wildfires and climate change are locked in a vicious circle: Fires worsen climate change, and climate change worsens fires. Scientists, including those at the World Resources Institute, have been increasingly sounding the alarm about this feedback loop, warning that fires don’t burn in isolation — they produce greenhouse gases that, in turn, create warmer and drier […]
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‘Staggering Solidarity’
In Los Angeles it’s rare to see actors and housekeepers standing shoulder to shoulder on picket lines, or TV writers standing behind UPS drivers fighting for better pay. Yet such signs of solidarity across social classes are prominent features of what some are calling a “hot labor summer” sweeping California. Strikes have ground Hollywood to […]
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CA Taxpayers on the Hook
The Klamath River begins in Oregon, draining the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains, and slices through the northwestern corner of California before flowing into the Pacific Ocean. The Colorado River begins in Colorado, at the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, before meandering southwesterly and emptying into Mexico’s Sea of Cortez — if there’s […]