Recent News
California’s premier environmental protection law was at the core of a fierce dispute between UC Berkeley and its surrounding neighborhoods — and the neighborhoods won. On Thursday, the state Supreme Court decided in their favor, saying that the university’s plan to build more student housing ran afoul of the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which requires projects to undergo extensive environmental and legal review before proceeding.
Recent News
Scores of California’s condemned prison inmates are being removed from their cells on San Quentin’s death row and sent to eight high-security lockups in the state’s sprawling penal system. The transfers follow an executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom halting executions in California. The governor also has vowed to remodel San Quentin’s death row, where executions have been conducted for generations.
Recent News
Decades of underinvestment in schools, culture battles over bilingual education, and dizzying levels of income inequality have pushed California to the bottom of the pile, making it the least literate state in the nation. Nearly 1 in 4 people over the age of 15 lack the skills to decipher the words in this sentence. Only 77 percent of adults are considered mid to highly literate, according to the nonpartisan data crunchers at World Population Review.
Recent News
OPINION: Amid the ongoing health crisis, California’s Medi-Cal Rx transition threatens the stability of over 1,300 community health centers that serve more than 7.2 million people throughout the state. In a noble attempt to discount rising prescription drug prices, a huge gap in savings is created for community health centers. Ironically, the transition disproportionately impacts the very same people it aims to help: California’s diverse population.
Podcast
These special episodes of the Capitol Weekly Podcast were recorded live on March 3, 2022 at California Crime, a discussion of Criminal Justice Policy, hosted by Capitol Weekly as part of our California Conference series.
Podcast
Twenty-seven Assemblymembers who were elected to seats in 2020 will not be returning to those seats in 2022. What is driving this exodus? We asked political data whiz Paul Mitchell to weigh in on what to make of this unexpected turnover.
News
The year 2021 was a long year battling COVID-19. As coronavirus restrictions ease under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s SMARTER Plan in 2022, we turn to the Golden State’s labor market. Is it on track to rebound to its pre-pandemic shape? Here are the employment numbers, then and now.
News
For at least the immediate future, single-payer health care in California seems dead. It died on Jan. 31, when its author withdrew legislation creating it from the Assembly floor, citing insufficient votes. But there are rumblings. And since nothing ever seems to die in the Capitol, the question now being asked is: After being sidelined in the Legislature, will single-payer make a comeback in California?
Podcast
Mike Madrid is a longtime Republican strategist; After a lifetime as a GOP stalwart, he denounced the party’s embrace of Trumpism in 2016, and cofounded The Lincoln Project. We invited him on the Podcast to talk about the recent flurry of recalls and whether this will be the “new normal” in California politics.
News
For two years now, Shasta County has been the center of a fight between moderate Republicans serving on the board of supervisors and local far-right activists and militia groups who have taken issue with the state’s public health restrictions. But what began as an intensely local political fight captured attention across the state, in part because others wonder whether a similar battle could come their way.
Students pass through Sather Gate, which leads from Sproul Plaza to the center of the UC Berkeley. (Photo: David A Litman, via Shutterstock)
