Lobbyists crowd around video screen to watch the floor votes on the last night of the Legislature's session. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP)The final curtain fell early Thursday on a legislative session that coursed through a pandemic, bolstered reproductive rights, saw a speaker nearly dispatched by his own caucus and drew the national spotlight to a governor who had survived an effort to recall him from office.
A march for women's rights on San Francisco's Market Street. (Photo: Sundry Photography, via Shutterstock)It’s deeply concerning that a health care labor union in one of the most progressive, pro-choice states in the nation is pushing a ballot measure that could provide new ammunition to anti-abortion zealots in their quest to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.
Robert Klein, who spent six years as the state stem cell agency's chairman, addresses issues related to the November ballot initiative. (Photo: David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report)The folks who are trying to save the $3 billion California stem cell agency from financial extinction are using a well-worn technique that goes back to ancient Egypt, at least by some accounts. It is expensive, depending on what you are peddling, and generates a return as low as 1 percent. It is direct mail, but with a significant twist.
A laboratory stem cell researcher uses a laptop in conjunction with a microscope. (Photo: moreimages, via Shutterstock)A small firm in Menlo Park, Ca., is probably the only company in the nation that is named after the number of a particular human protein. It is a small number too, only 47. But it has large implications for California’s financially strapped state stem cell agency.
Federal Judge Thelton Henderson in his chambers shortly before retiring. (Photo: Screen capture, Capitol Weekly)As the judge climbed the watchtower stairs in Pelican Bay prison, he heard muffled gunshots below. When he reached the top, he looked into the prison yard and saw bodies lying in the dirt. One was his law clerk, spreadeagled on the ground in his suit, alongside dozens of inmates. Guards stood over them, guns aimed. “My clerk was thinking he’s gonna die and this is his last day on earth,” Judge Thelton Henderson recalled.