California Senate

California’s card room industry spent over $3 million targeting four lawmakers as payback for their votes on a gambling bill. Three of the lawmakers lost.

Few bills fail in the Legislature because lawmakers publicly vote “no.” Instead, most bills die when they are shelved, without lawmakers having to take tough votes.

In California, Democrats rarely criticize organized labor, one of their biggest and wealthiest allies, so it’s remarkable that Democrats have harsh words against a union for attacking a vulnerable Democratic senator in a close race.

As a gasoline reserve bill faces a final vote today, labor advocates say the bill’s safety measures don’t go far enough.

If you want to try to influence California legislators, there are lots of ways: Nice dinners, fundraisers, campaign contributions, one-on-one conversations. You can also take them on trips to exotic places around the globe. That’s how the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy likes to roll.  As CalMatters’ politics reporter Alexei Koseff and […]

In response to calls for greater police accountability, California passed laws to make police misconduct records more accessible to the public and placed the state Attorney General’s office in charge of investigating police killings of unarmed civilians. Following the 2018 Sacramento police shooting of Stephon Clark, who was unarmed, lawmakers now require law enforcement agencies […]

In some ways, there are two Californias.  Depending on your values and political views, the state is either a bastion of diversity and inclusion, or a treacherous place for minorities and marginalized groups. On one side, many in California embrace its diversity with open arms. Today, advocates and lawmakers will kick off the Transgender Week […]

Low-income patients who need specialized cancer treatment often struggle to get it. Advocates say a new law is a small step toward improving services for those patients.

The importance of protecting our teens from harmfully early school start times has not changed and has never been more urgent.

It’s an old script with an all-too-familiar storyline: The unqualified man benefits from the political machine, bypassing the qualified woman.