Special interests poured more than half a billion into California lobbying last year
CALMatters, JEREMIA KIMELMAN: "Lobbying groups spent more than half a billion dollars to influence the state government in 2024, the most ever, according to a CalMatters analysis of data recently filed with the secretary of state. Lobbying by Google, oil companies and utilities in the third quarter appeared to drive the sharp spike in spending.
Companies and organizations reported roughly $540 million in lobbying expenses to push their point of view to California officials, including legislators, on hundreds of bills between January and December of last year — and that’s up by more than 10% from $485 million in 2023."
A Fox News host? A sheriff? Is there a Republican who can finally win statewide in California again?
CALMatters, ALEXEI KOSEFF: "After more than a decade being exiled from the governor’s office in California, Republicans are eyeing growing voter frustration with the dominant liberal politics of the state as a launching pad for a comeback next year.
Though lacking the statewide profiles of a deluge of Democratic contenders, a pair of GOP hopefuls with devoted conservative followings has jumped into the open 2026 gubernatorial race in recent months, hoping to persuade voters that only a radical shakeup can fix California’s problems."
LAT, STACY PERMAN: "Just days before beginning his second term as president, Donald Trump called Hollywood “a great but very troubled place.”
Then, with his usual aplomb and bombast, he named Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson to be his “special ambassadors.” The actors would be his “eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform."
Gov. Gavin Newsom under fire for calling deported man’s case a ‘distraction’
Sac Bee, LIAN RUSSELL: "For almost a week, Gov. Gavin Newsom has come under fire from his fellow Democrats for dismissing the fervor around a wrongly deported Maryland man as a “distraction” while distancing himself from other Democrats who have sought to unify the party around the ongoing legal battle.
At a Wednesday news conference in Modesto, this reporter asked Newsom about whether he thought a federal judge’s contempt finding over the Trump administration’s refusal to return a wrongly deported Maryland man would make it easier for deportees like Andry Hernandez Romero to be returned to the United States. The governor had earlier asked Homeland Security to return the Venezuelan gay makeup artist who was deported last month to a notorious Salvadoran prison after seeking asylum in San Diego last year."
READ MORE -- Southeast Asians in L.A. region are being detained, deported at routine ICE check-ins -- LAT, MELISSA GOMEZ
Bass proposes laying off about 1,650 city workers, a quarter of them civilians at LAPD
LAT, DAVID ZAHNISER/JULIA WICK: "Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released a proposed budget on Monday that would eliminate a nearly $1-billion financial gap by cutting more than 2,700 city positions — about 1,650 of them through layoffs.
The $14-billion spending plan, which covers the 2025-26 fiscal year, would provide funding for scores of new hires at the Fire Department, three months after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people."
Jeff Pearlman brings “The Truth” to Orange County (PODCAST)
Capitol Weekly, STAFF: "Jeff Pearlman has been a sportswriter for three decades, and is the best-selling author of ten books on sports, including Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, which was adapted as the HBO series Winning Time. In February 2025 he turned his attention to the ultimate contact sport: politics.
His new Substack newsletter, The Truth OC, digs deep into Orange County politics, skewering what he refers to as “the crazy people” in many Orange County local governments. If he is unabashedly partisan, he brings the receipts, sharing photos, videos and other documents of officials behaving badly – or at least strangely."
Strengthening California while creating a more sustainable future (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, MARYBEL BATJER: "As the former President of the California Public Utilities Commission, a former member of the cabinets of Governors Newsom and Brown and a lifelong advocate for advancing clean energy goals, I understand the paramount importance of maintaining a reliable and affordable electric grid for the citizens of California.
The state is facing a real affordability crisis, exacerbated by severe weather and climate events that make it harder than ever to keep the lights on. All the while, rising costs for essential materials, supply chain disruptions and federal permitting hurdles continue to create obstacles for clean energy development."
Two friends started a California secession movement. Now they’re fighting each other
The Chronicle, RAHEEM HOSSEINI: "Seated in his Fresno home office, Marcus Ruiz Evans, wearing a gray vest over a blue dress shirt and blue patterned tie, looked into the eye of his laptop camera and attempted to resurrect a political revolt.
It was Jan. 31 and Evans, president of CalExit LLC — the corporate front for a radical idea — told his audience why he believes now is the time to cleave California from the United States: President Donald Trump is ascendant, the Resist movement is “dead” and California can only save itself."
California to cap price of overdose reversal medication at $24, Gavin Newsom says
Sac Bee, LIA RUSSELL: "Californians can now purchase over-the-counter naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversing medication, for $24 a carton, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
The California Department of Health Care Access and Information last year announced that it had contracted with Amneal Pharmaceuticals to buy naxolone at the same price point."
READ MORE -- Steeply discounted overdose-reversal medicine now available to any Californian -- CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG
Trump is dismantling the education department. How that might harm special education
CALMatters, CAROLYN JONES: "President Donald Trump has promised to keep special education intact, even as he dismantles the federal department that has overseen it for nearly a half century. But some experts and parents in California fear Trump’s policies will imperil the program on multiple fronts, and undoing decades of progress for disabled students.
“Students in special education are equally as important as students who aren’t, but that hasn’t always been the case. The disability community has fought hard for where we are now,” said Gina Gandolfi, a former special education teacher in San Bernardino County whose 10-year-old son has Down syndrome. “What if those services are taken away? Kids with disabilities will go back to being second-class students.”"
Do California college students regret their chosen majors?
EdSource, CSJC: "A wave of actions impacting higher education since President Donald Trump took office in January has many college students on edge about their chosen fields.
Employee and program cuts to federal agencies ranging from the National Park Service to the IRS, along with funding reductions and cancellations in grants to university research projects, leave students wondering if jobs will be available post-graduation or if their majors will continue to exist."
A new program trains college students for jobs helping homeless Californians. Can it survive?
CALMatters, MARISA KENDALL/ADAM ECHELMAN: "With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in its shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them.
Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It heralded the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to many of the same challenges that have long stymied progress on homelessness in California, including unreliable funding, high attrition rates and political turmoil."
Chino Valley Unified seeks federal support in banning transgender athletes
EdSource, STAFF: "The Chino Valley Unified School District has plans to send the Trump administration a letter requesting that it intervene on matters concerning transgender athletes following a unanimous vote from the school board, according to Spectrum News.
“The Chino Valley Unified School District is committed to protecting girls’ sports, ensuring parental rights and following federal law,” the agenda item states."
These are the most competitive S.F. public schools — and the hardest ones to get off the waitlist
The Chronicle, NAMI SUMIDA: "On Monday, the San Francisco Unified School District offered spots at coveted schools to 750 families on the district’s waitlists.
These offers went to families who chose not to accept their assigned schools during the main round of assignments in mid-March and instead opted to wait for openings at schools they preferred more."
Zuckerberg-funded school for low-income families in Silicon Valley to shut down
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "The Primary School, a tuition-free private school backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative serving low-income families in Silicon Valley, announced Monday it will close at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
The school, founded in 2016 by Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and the wife of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was designed to integrate education, health care and family services under one roof."
We used to agree on Earth Day. Political division has changed the environmental priorities
LAT, HAYLEY SMITH: "This year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, but rather than enjoying its golden years, the planet is facing a new kind of peril. In recent weeks, the Republican party — the same party that oversaw the creation of the eco-conscious holiday back in 1970 — has delivered considerable blows to the environment, including taking steps to undo critical Nixon-era policies that protect the nation’s air, water, natural lands and threatened species.
President Nixon presided over the first Earth Day, founded in large part as a reaction to a devastating oil spill off the coast of California. Nixon and his wife, First Lady Pat Nixon, planted a tree on the White House lawn to commemorate the occasion."
‘Freaking out’: California businesses are feeling the burn from Trump’s tariffs
The Chronicle, KO LYN CHEANG: "A supermarket in San Francisco’s Chinatown suffered plummeting sales due to rising prices of Chinese imports. A Bayview auto repair shop paid more for batteries and brakes. An almond farmer in the Central Valley has seen Chinese export demand for his goods evaporate.
California, the nation's biggest importer from and second biggest exporter to China, is already seeing the effects of President Trump’s new 145% tariffs on Chinese imports and China’s retaliatory levies on U.S. exports."
Should California businesses get a tax credit for cleaning up after homeless?
Sac Bee, KATE WOLFFE: "Sacramento Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen, D-Elk Grove, highlighted a new bill Monday that would give a tax credit to business owners who say they have to spend money cleaning up after people who camp out on or near their properties.
One of those business owners is Little Saigon’s Tina Nguyen, who joined Asm. Nguyen Monday for the bill’s announcement at her popular Vietnamese lunch spot, Pho Xe Lua, along Stockton Boulevard in South Sacramento."
Taylor Swift loses youngest self-made woman billionaire title to San Francisco AI founder
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "San Francisco tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo has officially been named the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, according to Forbes.
The 30-year-old co-founder of Scale AI surpasses music superstar Taylor Swift, 35, who held the title since 2023."
We must preserve funding for services that prevent crime (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, TINISCH HOLLINS: "Earlier this year, local and state officials met to discuss implementation challenges for Proposition 36 which voters passed in November. There have been many challenges, but the most prominent is that Prop 36 not only provided no funding for its promised drug treatment programs, it also effectively defunds the programs that are providing effective mental health and drug treatment right now.
In the last decade, California built one of the most effective infrastructures for substance use disorder treatment, mental health treatment, housing support, and treatment for victims. These programs received funding through a novel approach outlined in Prop 47: California right-sized the sentences for certain low-level, non-violent felonies and then invested the savings in new services for treatment, victims services, and crime prevention. Proposition 36 rolls back some of these changes, and turns many offenses into new felonies that require incarceration for longer periods. The result will mean less cost savings and up to $100 million less in annual funding for organizations offering these services. Californians deserve to see these smart safety solutions scaled up to meet the needs of the community so every Californian can feel safe and thrive, not scrapped to pay for packed prisons."
No idea is too bold as S.F.’s Muni stares down $322 million deficit
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "As Muni stares down a $322 million budget deficit that’s projected to grow, transportation officials are considering anything — and everything — to keep the system going.
It seems that almost no idea is too imaginative, too bold, or too much to ask of San Francisco voters. Parcel and sales taxes are on the table, along with Sunday parking meters, bus service cuts and higher fees for residential parking permits. Transportation officials may claw back a policy of waiving fees for people whose vehicles are stolen and towed. (They have said private insurance should foot the bill.)"
Pope Francis’ funeral to be held Saturday, with public viewing starting Wednesday
LAT, NICOLE WINFIELD/COLLEEN BARRY: "Pope Francis will be laid to rest Saturday after lying in state for three days in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the faithful are expected to flock to pay their respects to history’s first Latin American pontiff.
The cardinals met Tuesday in the Vatican’s synod hall to chart the next steps before a conclave begins to choose Francis’ successor, as condolences poured in from around the world. According to current norms, the conclave must begin between May 5 and 10."
READ MORE -- Sacramento Catholics mourn death of Pope Francis: ‘It’s like we lost our father’ -- Sac Bee, ROSALIO AHUMADA