California leaders negotiate major policy changes in secret as legislative session ends
CALMatters, YUE STELLA YU: "California’s top Democrats entered the final stretch of the legislative session with an ambitious list of priorities: Pass some of the state’s most consequential climate and energy reforms, hash out a $750 million transit loan, and dampen the impact of federal funding slashes.
But with days left, details are murky on nearly all of it."
Alex Padilla is mulling a run for California governor. Why would he want to?
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: "If you haven’t been paying attention to California’s 2026 governors race, you haven’t missed anything yet. So far, the highlights have been two people — former Vice President Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis — saying they don’t want the job.
But now it’s starting to get interesting."
AB 325: Does it hurt or help consumers?
Capitol Weekly, ACSAH LEMMA: "Rent, grocery prices, ride-sharing apps, electronics and more – what do these all share? These are just a few of the consumer goods that can be affected by a common pricing algorithm.
Many common pricing algorithms, some using artificial intelligence, allow businesses – even those in competition with one another – to adjust the prices of their products based on market trends, cost of production and other economic factors."
SB 660: Health data sharing underpins California’s health goals
Capitol Weekly, TIMI LESLIE: "California has ambitious goals to make health care more effective, efficient, and affordable. But there’s a hard truth: none of these goals are achievable without a clear, coordinated path for sharing necessary patient information across health and social care systems. Today’s fragmented health care system severely limits the ability to connect qualified providers and patients to vital information for health and well-being. For our most vulnerable populations, provider access to relevant data can be the difference between reaching life-saving care, housing, food, and other essential services or going without.
Despite this clear need, meaningful participation in the CalHHS Data Exchange Framework (DxF), which mandates safe and secure data sharing, remains limited. Although more than 4,400 health care entities, county agencies, and social service organizations have signed a common agreement, many more are eligible to participate."
Let’s seize opportunity to fix CEQA
Capitol Weekly, ELIZABETH REID-WAINSCOAT: "Sacramento gets a bad rap for its slow bureaucracy. But when it comes to dismantling environmental protections, it can operate at lightning speed.
Early this summer a proposal to gut the California Environmental Quality Act was publicized on a Friday morning and by Monday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law."
As D.C. retreats, California must lead on affordable clean energy
Capitol Weekly, JOSH BECKER: "As the federal government turns its back on the clean energy transition—gutting decades of progress with the passage of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”—California now stands alone at a critical crossroads. With federal incentives slashed and funding for renewable projects drying up, the burden of clean energy leadership has shifted squarely onto Sacramento.
The Governor, State Legislature, and the renewable energy industry, now face perhaps their most consequential challenge yet: to deliver clean, affordable, and resilient energy for California in a time of growing national retreat and global uncertainty. We have many tools available to us. Just one opportunity – leveraging batteries and smart thermostats that are already in people’s homes — could create $13.7 Billion in energy savings in California, according to a Gridlab Study. The question is whether we will rise to meet this moment and set an example for the rest of the nation or let it pass us by."
Sacramento's most powerful puppet master is causing climate chaos
Politico, ALEX NIEVES and CAMILLE VAN KAENEL: "Kip Lipper is a name rarely uttered outside inner circles of Sacramento, but the powerful Senate adviser is at the center of this session’s climate logjam — and people are ready to point fingers if Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers’ ambitious package doesn’t get done.
Lipper, who’s served as the top climate and environment whisperer for decades’ worth of Senate leadership, counts groundbreaking laws like the California Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and AB 32, which established the state’s carbon emissions trading program, among his achievements since joining the legislature in 1976. His power was once so pronounced that lobbyists, activists and even lawmakers referred to him as the 41st senator of the 40-member upper chamber."
California has a strict vaccine mandate. Will it survive the Trump administration?
LAT, JENNY GOLD: "A series of federal actions aimed at pressuring states to allow parents to opt out of school vaccine mandates for religious or personal reasons threatens to undermine California’s ironclad ban on such exemptions.
California is one of just five states that bans any non-medical exemptions, the result of a landmark 2015 law passed in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak. Connecticut, New York, Maine, and West Virginia have similar statutes."
California lawmakers could bail out Bay Area oil refinery to stave off closure
The Chronicle, ALDO TOLEDO: "California could pay hundreds of millions of dollars to cover maintenance costs at Valero Energy Co.’s refinery in Benicia in an effort to stave off the plant’s closure, according to Bloomberg.
The outlet reported Tuesday that California legislators are in talks to spend between $80 million and $200 million in state funds on the facility, which was built in 1968 and is the sixth-largest refinery in California."
COVID vaccine chaos: Even pharmacists are confused, but here’s who can get one
The Chronicle, JESSICA ROY: "Just weeks after the federal government dramatically reduced eligibility for COVID-19 vaccinations, people trying to get an updated booster shot in California are reporting confusion and frustration, with access, policies and availability all over the map.
Christopher Pederson, 62, of San Francisco said Tuesday he recently wanted to get an updated COVID vaccine before an upcoming trip. He decided to call his insurance company to make sure the shots were still covered. The customer service representative told him they only covered COVID shots given at a doctor’s office. So he called his doctor’s office at UCSF Medical Center to schedule an appointment. They told him they wouldn’t have the new shots in until October."
California faces federal funding cuts for special ed teachers; DEI targeted
EdSource, VANI SANGANERIA: "California is about to lose federal funds used to train special education teachers after the U.S. Department of Education announced it will cancel over two dozen grants nationwide. The state will lose roughly $3.5 million in the coming year in special education teacher preparation grants for underserved communities.
Trump administration officials terminated four California programs under Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, based on “project activities” that reference diversity, equity and inclusion, which “conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education,” according to a list of cancellations obtained by Education Week."
HHS secretary unveils new MAHA strategy to improve children’s health
EdSource, VANI SANGANERIA: "U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week the “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy” report, a plan to reverse chronic childhood disease, according to a press release.
“A lot of these 128 recommendations are the things that I’ve been dreaming about,” Kennedy said during a briefing on Tuesday. The report mentions nutrition, vaccines, drugs and exercise, among other health topics, but does not include recommendations to regulate what Kennedy calls the “corporate capture of public health.”"
Seven years after California’s deadliest fire, schools — and kids — are still recovering
CALMatters, CAROLYN JONES/MEGAN TAGAMI/SHARON LURYE: "Nearly seven years after Paradise was ravaged by wildfire, the foothill town smells like pine trees again. New homes are sprouting up on once-scorched lots. Construction trucks rumble through neighborhoods. An ice cream shop recently opened around the corner from the newly rebuilt high school.
But in the town’s classrooms, recovery has been more complicated — and much slower. Even as Paradise gradually rebuilds schools lost to California’s 2018 Camp Fire, officials have found getting kids on track academically — and recreating a tight-knit, thriving school community — is a lot tougher than just flipping on the lights at a new campus."
Latest national test results for student proficiency are already being politicized. Here’s why
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "The latest national test scores in reading, math and science landed with a loud clank across the country Tuesday, as education leaders and politicians once again denounced the post-pandemic declines, this time in eighth and 12th grades, issuing another urgent call to action.
National scores released Tuesday showed 31% of eighth graders were proficient in science in 2024, down four percentage points from 2019. Among 12th graders, 33% were proficient in math and 37% proficient in reading, a drop of two percentage points in each category. State scores were not included in the release."
California thunderstorms: Downpours, hail and lightning possible in these regions
The Chronicle, GREG PORTER: "An upper-level low-pressure system will reach peak strength Wednesday as its center drifts over the Bay Area, triggering a broader round of storms across Northern California. The Sacramento Valley and Sierra foothills east of Highway 99 face the greatest risk for widespread showers and thunderstorms, while strong cells are also likely to flare over the Mendocino National Forest. Some of that activity could slip south into Sonoma and Napa counties, bringing brief downpours, gusty winds and lightning to the Bay Area’s northern edge.
Storms will spark more easily on Wednesday for two reasons: the low itself will be stronger, and skies will feature more breaks in the clouds, allowing surface temperatures to climb higher than Tuesday. That extra daytime heating, combined with a pocket of cold air aloft, will steepen lapse rates — the kind of vertical temperature drop that primes the atmosphere for convection. With the system’s center parked over the Sacramento Valley by afternoon, ingredients will finally line up for more widespread and robust thunderstorm development."
First onshore wave energy project in the U.S. launches in Los Angeles
LAT, HAYLEY SMITH: "Along a rocky wharf at the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday, seven blue steel structures bobbed in the gentle wake of a Catalina Island ferry. The bouncing floaters marked a moment for clean energy — the first onshore wave power project in the country.
The floaters belong to Eco Wave Power, a Swedish company behind the pilot project located at AltaSea, a nonprofit ocean institute at the port. They harness the natural rise and fall of the ocean to create clean electricity 24 hours a day."
The rotten egg smell at the Salton Sea isn’t just a nuisance. It can make people sick.
CALMatters, DEBORAH BRENNAN: "Residents around the Salton Sea have long complained of respiratory ailments from particulate pollution that wafts from its shoreline.
Now UCLA researchers have identified another air pollutant that could be sickening people in communities near the inland lake: hydrogen sulfide."
Budget carveout appears to stymie apartment construction in powerful Democrat’s district
CALMatters, BEN CHRISTOPHER: "Earlier this year California lawmakers delivered an historic victory for champions of more housing construction by exempting most urban apartment developments from the California Environmental Quality Act, a 50-year-old statute that Yes In My Backyard advocates and the building industry have long blamed as an impediment to building more homes.
A bill proposed Monday night, just days before the end of the legislative session, would punch a very small hole in that landmark law that appears to apply to just one proposed apartment building in California — in the district represented by the incoming leader of the state Senate."
Twice as many California homes could survive major wildfires by doing this
The Chronicle, JACK LEE: "A new study led by UC Berkeley scientists reports that wildfire mitigation measures like creating defensible space and hardening homes can more than double the share of homes that survive a major blaze.
“It is possible to make a big difference,” said author Michael Gollner, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley."
LAPD touts 2024 dip in police shootings, but officers already firing more this year
LAT, LIBOR JANY: "The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday released a report touting a decline in shootings by officers in 2024, even as officials acknowledged this year’s numbers show the trend reversing with a major uptick in incidents of deadly force.
LAPD officers opened fire on 29 people last year, compared with 34 in 2023 — a sign, the report’s authors maintained, that the department’s efforts to curb serious uses of force are having an effect."
How Paul McCartney and Elton John begged to be in ‘Spinal Tap’ sequel
The Chronicle, G. ALLEN JOHNSON: "Rob Reiner may be the son of comedy genius Carl Reiner, but he has carved a distinguished acting and directing career of his own, with rock ’n’ roll has been a constant presence in his creative life.
“I’m the first generation that grew up on rock ’n’ roll,” Reiner told the Chronicle by phone from Los Angeles. “In the ’60s, I went to the Fillmore in San Francisco. I saw Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Doors, I went to school with two of those guys, (lead singer) Jim Morrison and (keyboardist) Ray Manzarek, so I went to see them on the Sunset Strip.”"