Caused by wildfires, smoky orange clouds hover over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo: Benny Marty, via Shutterstock)More wildfires. Hotter days. Drought. Sea-level rise. Those conditions are an increasing reality in California, which is steadily becoming an altered state. But if the grimmest predictions of experts about our state and climate change become true, the conditions will become far worse.
Assemblyman Mike Gipson (D) represents the 64th Assembly District, which includes communities that are among some of those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic: Carson, Compton, Gardena, South Los Angeles, Torrance and Watts. Gipson is the chair of the committee on Infectious Diseases, and introduced AB1038, a bill to create a $180 million California Health Equity Fund that would address health and social inequities that have been exacerbated by COVID-19.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California during impeachment proceedings for former President Donald Trump. (Photo: AP)The latest Berkeley IGS Poll finds that for the second time in four months more of the state’s registered voters disapprove than approve of Dianne Feinstein’s job performance as U.S. Senator. In a statewide poll completed last week 46% of voters said they disapproved of the job Feinstein was doing, while just 35% approve. Another 19% have no opinion. The poll’s late January measure showed similar results.
Evangelina, a former 'bubble baby,' plays inside a giant plastic bubble. (Photo: Stem Cellar Report, CIRM)Little Evangelina Padilla-Vaccaro is more than a poster girl for the $12 billion California stem cell agency. She embodies a big bet by the agency that its efforts will conquer at least a few of the terrible diseases that are currently incurable. In the case of Evie, as the eight-year-old is known, she was born with what has come to be described as the bubble baby syndrome, a rare genetic mutation that crippled her immune system to the point that she would have died if left untreated.
A poster in Yorba Linda from the supporters of the recall campaign against Gavin Newsom. (Photo: Matt Gush, via Shutterstock)A Sacramento-area resident has challenged the legitimacy of the recall drive against Gov. Gavin Newsom, telling a state appellate court that a Superior Court judge violated the California constitution when he gave recall proponents more time to gather voter signatures.
Gov. Gavin Newsom shown at an earlier Capitol briefing. (Photo: AP/Rich Pedroncelli)Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled an unprecedented $100 billion economic recovery package for California that taps state and federal money, while providing a new round of $600 stimulus checks to most Californians and covering missed payments for millions of renters.
We are joined this episode by Lande Ajose, chair of the Governor’s Council for Postsecondary Education – a big job as California colleges prepare to reopen campuses to students, post-pandemic. Ajose helped prepare the recently-released “Recovery With Equity” roadmap for California’s postsecondary systems to come back from the pandemic more financially resilient and positioned to more equitably serve California students.
A student in class during the pandemic. (Photo: Siday Productions, via Shutterstock)PPIC: One year after the state’s schools halted in-person learning due to COVID-19, more than eight in ten Californians think children are falling behind academically during the pandemic. Most Californians approve of how Gov. Newsom is handling the state’s K–12 public education system, though six in ten are concerned that California’s K–12 schools will not be open for full-time in-person instruction this fall.
An illustration of several Big Tech companies on a cell phone display. (Photo: Koshiro K, via Shutterstock)Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced Silicon Valley tech companies and health care industry titans in response to the covid-19 pandemic like no other governor in America — routinely outsourcing life-or-death public health duties to his allies in the private sector. At least 30 tech and health care companies have received lucrative, no-bid government contracts, or helped fund and carry out critical public health activities during the state’s battle against the coronavirus, a KHN analysis has found.
When we invited freshman Assemblymember Alex Lee (D – San Jose) to come on the podcast we planned to discuss his ambitious policy proposals, like Universal Health Care, a Wealth Tax, and a ban on corporate donations to political candidates. What we didn’t expect was that those discussions would all be in the past tense.