California in Focus

California is proposing that landlords accept pets for tenant residencies, a change that landlords warn will result in higher rents required to offset the cost of pet damages and limits on security deposits to one month’s rent. AB 2216 was introduced by Assembly member Matt Haney, D-San Francisco as a spot bill with limited information to be fleshed out later on in the legislative process. While t...

California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing ahead with $1.9 billion in state spending on a public electric vehicle charging network as EV sales plummet. The state aims to build 40,000 chargers, compared to the just over 10,000 EV fast chargers it currently has. Should the state spend the allocated $1.7 billion out of the $1.9 billion on 30,000 chargers, each charger will cost nearly $60,000. Hoste...

The California legislature introduced a proposal to require gun owners in the state to pay an annual tax and register each gun they own. Failure to register and pay the tax would carry up to a $250 fine. Given that the state can provide personal identifying information of California gun owners to “researchers” of “gun violence, " this measure would effectively create an accessible registry of all...

Credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings said California Governor Gavin Newsom’s newly proposed budget could “weaken fiscal resilience” in future downturns. These include concerns that the governor is utilizing “a combination of structural and temporary budget adjustments, a number of which are more typically used in a downturn” to address what it says is “unusual in a slower, but still growing economy...

California lawmakers re-introduced a proposal to mandate universal healthcare and ban private healthcare. Experts say this would cost $391 billion per year — or $100 billion more than the entire 2024-2025 state budget and reduce the overall availability of healthcare as doctors flee to higher-paying states that allow private care. According to Politico, Assembly member Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, will...

A new California bill requiring social media companies to determine if users are minors threatens anonymity and free speech online, warn experts. With the world’s major social media companies headquartered in California, this bill, sponsored by the state’s attorney general, would likely take effect nationwide. SB 796, otherwise known as the Protecting Youth from Social Media Addiction Act, would b...

Citing crime and robberies of workers, Kaiser Permanente directed its employees at its downtown Oakland headquarters to stay in their buildings for lunch. Kaiser is the fourth-largest healthcare provider in the United States and the largest private employer in Oakland. Earlier this month In-N-Out announced it would be shutting down its profitable Oakland location due to crime against customers and...

In-N-Out Burger announced it is closing its profitable Oakland location in its first-ever permanent store closure, due to unrelenting crime and violence against customers and employees. Meanwhile, soon after Safeway shared it would be closing its supermarket location in the historically black Fillmore District of San Francisco, mayor London Breed announced the store would remain in business after...

A California city is suing one of the governor’s Homekey homeless-to-homeless-shelters projects, claiming the state constitution requires local residents to have the opportunity to vote on publicly-funded low-income housing. Should the court side with the city, billions of dollars of projects across the state could be put on hold as they are faced with new requirements for costly ballot measures. ...

 California attorney General Rob Bonta led a 21-state coalition demanding that the Biden administration ban menthol cigarettes, claiming they are disproportionately consumed by black smokers, LGBTQ smokers and smokers with mental health problems. The White House Office of Management and Budget is currently reviewing a Food and Drug Administration rule proposed in 2022 that would ban menthol as a f...

A new California community college pre-faculty training program was marketed as only available to non-white graduate students, leading to calls of discrimination. In a program hosted at Compton Community College in partnership with the University of Southern California, a “Faculty Prep Academy” for “students of color” will prepare 30 currently enrolled master’s and doctoral students of color and p...

 A new analysis from The 74 found over 1,400 California K-12 schools lost more than 20% of their students since the pandemic, highlighting struggles relating to the state’s low birthrate, high outmigration, and parents pulling their students out of the public school system. Of the over 1,400 schools with a decline of 25% or more, 125 are in Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second...

California governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $292 billion state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, driving economists to wonder why he plans only $8.5 billion in real spending cuts against what the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says is a projected $68 billion deficit. Newsom hit back against the LAO, claiming the state’s deficit is only $37.8 billion. Join Skillshare today: skillshare...

In 2024, as the possibility of a Donald Trump/Joe Biden presidential rematch looks more and more possible, the University of California system will take on a prominent role in national politics, not for cutting edge political science research, legal theories or technology, but as a cash cow. In the 2016 presidential cycle, according to federal records compiled by  OpenSecrets.org , University of C...

After national outrage over California providing billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants, one state legislator introduced a bill to “revoke all taxpayer funding for health care for illegal immigrants in the California State Budget.” According to State Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R–Woodcrest, California provision of taxpayer-financed healthcare to illegal immigrants...

Los Angeles Police Department’s oversight committee approved new guidelines allowing illegal immigrant police officers to be armed at all times. In 2022, California passed a law allowing those authorized to work under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order for those who entered the country illegally as minors to become police officers. LAPD graduated its fi...

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against California’s wide-ranging ban on concealed carry users bringing their weapons to a number of public and private places ranging from public transit to parks, stadiums and banks. SB 2, passed in 2023, bans concealed carry permit holders in California from bringing their firearms to 26 places, including, hospitals, public transportation, places...

In response so the state’s looming $68 billion deficit, California Senate Republicans urged governor Gavin Newsom to make immediate changes to the ongoing year’s budget beyond the already-initiated budget freeze, claiming “Failing to act now will lead to increased instability in future budgets and impact the functions and services the state provides.” After the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Anal...

California Republican legislators are urging the nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission to analyze retail theft and how Proposition 47, which largely decriminalized drug use and reduces theft under $950, even for serial offenders, to a misdemeanor, impacts retail theft, and recommend policy solutions. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, reported shoplifting increased 61% from 2019 through...

A “professional tenant” in Los Angeles with four evictions over 12 years who was finally evicted from her apartment after accumulating over $100,000 in unpaid rent and driving the landlord to engage in 9 months of litigation, highlighting the current balance of tenant-owner relations in California. When one roommate in a three-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica 10 blocks from the beach departed, th...

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the state will have a $26 billion revenue shortfall for the 2022-2023 fiscal year and announced the state entered into a recession in March of 2023. State Republicans blame Newsom and California Democrats for nearly doubling the state’s budget over the last six years and called for reductions in government programs to protect critical governmen...

Planned pro-Palestine protests attended by an estimated two hundred people appear to have driven California governor Gavin Newsom to hold the state capitol’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony online, highlighting a growing divide between moderate, pro-Israel Democrats and pro-Palestine progressives. Further demonstrating this divide, following the Oakland teachers union’ statement of solidarity wit...

As California governor Gavin Newsom claims to have cleaned up 5,679 homeless encampments from state property, Republicans wait for the results of a 5,000 hour audit of the state’s homelessness programs, and point to rising homelessness and their observation homeless populations are merely being shuffled as a “political hot potato” instead of getting off the streets. Newsom’s announcement emphasize...

According to a new analysis from the U.S. Census Bureau, California had the lowest inter-state immigration rate in the United States in 2022, coming in at just 11.1%. In their analysis, immigration rates are the ratio of people moving into the state of all those moving into or out of the state. The North Dakota inter-state immigration rate is higher. Meanwhile, Texas had the lowest outmigration ra...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced an expansion of the “retail theft blitz” operation in which hundreds of alleged thieves have been arrested and charged as part of the city’s new wave of anti-crime policies. Police secured over 300 arrests over 40 operations at local retailers, according to the mayor's office, with many of those arrested already having been charged by the district attorne...