California’s 84 rape crisis centers are in a funding crisis. While California has experienced a steady rise in the number of reported rapes (over 5% per year since 2015), the state’s annual General Fund contribution to rape crisis centers over the past decade has been a miniscule $45,000.
Students at a graduation ceremony at Santa Monica City College. (Photo: American Spirit, via Shutterstock)In an effort to reassure thousands of worried young people, leaders of California’s enormous system of public and private higher education are setting it on a potential collision course with the incoming Trump administration. The California defiance has intensified and become more formalized since Donald Trump indicated he will appoint Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, an avowed hard-liner on immigration, as his attorney general.
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton at a May 5 East Los Angeles College rally, Monterey Park. (Photo: Joseph Sohm)As speculation grows about Hillary Clinton’s choice for a VP running mate, one name keeps popping up, at least in California – Congressman Xavier Becerra, 58, who was born and raised in Sacramento.
Photo: GongTo, via Shutterstock.A new battlefront has emerged in the nation’s struggle over gun control: a proposed firearm violence research center at the University of California. In a move being closely watched by advocates on both sides, California lawmakers are pushing for the state to study gun violence, taking over a job the federal government dropped 20 years ago.
School workers at a labor rally in Bakersfield. (Photo: Richard Thornton, Shutterstock)A union coalition contends that a proposed initiative is being falsely portrayed as only a potential cut in pensions for new employees, when in fact it could cut or eliminate pensions earned by current employees for work done in the future. One of the initiative authors, former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, disagrees with the union reading of the proposal. But it’s a key pension reform issue that could lead to another disputed initiative title and summary.
A youngster gets his vaccination shot. (Photo: Luiscar74, via Shutterstock) Gov. Brown today signed one of the strictest laws in the nation requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren, saying “science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious diseases.” The new law bars parents from invoking religious or personal beliefs in order to keep their children from being vaccinated, but it does allow for an exemption with the approval of the child’s doctor.
SB277 removes the right of informed consent from California parents. It slid through the Senate Floor on a Democratic Party line, and paused briefly at the Assembly Health Committee Hearing June 9th, drawing over 5,000 people in protest to the Capitol stairs and hallways of Sacramento. Its next stop, this week, the Assembly Floor Vote.
An aerial view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.State water officials today ordered cuts in water to dozens of growers and ranchers, limiting supplies to farmers who have had rights to the water for more than a century. The cutbacks mark the first time since 1977 — also a severe drought year — that such reductions have been ordered.
As rush hour approaches, traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo: Frontpage)Gov. Jerry Brown, who got nailed for parking in a yellow zone, is pushing an amnesty program for millions of California drivers caught in what he called a “hellhole of desperation” from spiraling legal fines and fees. Some 4.2 million California motorists – one in six drivers across the state – have suspended licenses because they can’t afford the fines, according to a recent study. Hardest hit are low-income drivers.
The Mokulumne River. Photo: Mountain Counties Water Resources Association)A provision in California’s landmark 2014 Water Bond Act, Proposition 1, might lead California into overspending on water, something that has drawn concerns from the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal adviser.