A looming question confronts California counties: How will they pay for the uninsured?
LAT, CHRISTINE MAI-DUC/CLAUDIA BOYD-BARRETT: "In 2013, before the Affordable Care Act helped millions get health insurance, California’s Placer County provided limited healthcare to some 3,400 uninsured residents who couldn’t afford to see a doctor.
For several years, that number has been zero in the predominantly white, largely rural county stretching from Sacramento’s eastern suburbs to the shores of Lake Tahoe."
PG&E fully restores power in S.F. after massive outage, offers bill credits to customers
CHRONICLE, JESSICA FLORES: "Power has been restored to all San Francisco customers affected by the massive weekend outage, Pacific Gas and Electric Company said Tuesday.
Residential customers and businesses that were impacted will automatically receive a $200 and $2,500 bill credit, respectively, the utility said. The cause of the outage was under investigation."
Experts Expound: Christmas edition
CAPITOL WEEKLY, STAFF: "“Assemblymember Buffy Wicks gets a pony for her work on permitting and CEQA reform. Dana Williamson has to top Santa’s naughty list.”
“This is easy: Santa’s been good to Newsom all year — Prop. 50, and he still has his book drop in February— while the lump of coal goes to Kamala Harris. A dud of a book, and even a majority of CA Democrats tell pollsters they don’t want her to run for president again.”"
Lou Cannon: A personal remembrance
CAPITOL WEEKLY, RICH EHISEN: "I’ve been writing words for a living for many decades now, and I can’t think of any I have hated to write more than those in this next sentence.
Longtime journalist and noted Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon died last Friday evening from complications of a stroke he suffered a few weeks prior."
The Micheli Minute, December 22, 2025
CAPITOL WEEKLY, STAFF: "Lobbyist, author and McGeorge law professor Chris Micheli offers a quick look at what’s coming up this week under the Capitol Dome."
Capitol trivia masters, plus Sac State’s Luke Wood (PODCAST
CAPITOL WEEKLY, STAFF: "Brian Ebbert, Chris Micheli and Alex Vassar may not be household names to the average Californian, but in the Capitol Community, they are approaching celebrity status for their deep knowledge of legislative history and state government procedure. Putting that knowledge to good use, the trio has just published The California Capitol Cocktail Trivia Book, a lively and engaging collection of little-known facts, anecdotes, and curiosities drawn from the rich history of California’s state government. They joined us to talk about the project and shared stories from the book."
A California National Guard warned about Trump for years. Now she’s being forced out
CHRONICLE, RACHEL LEIBROCK: "Brynn Tannehill just wants to fly.
As a member of the California Air National Guard, she’s piloted Black Hawk helicopters on search and rescue and firefighting missions across the state since 2023, and more than a decade in the U.S. Navy before that."
California schools will have to do more to prevent sex abuse under new law
CALMATTERS, CAROLYN JONES: "Facing a mountain of lawsuits, California K-12 schools will have a system in place beginning this year to prevent teachers and other staff from sexually abusing students.
A new California law creates an array of measures to educate school staff, beef up reporting requirements and stop teachers credibly accused of abuse from getting jobs at other districts."
As he sat in ICE detention, a teen dreamed of finishing his senior year of high school in L.A.
LAT, BRITTNY MEJIA: "The baby-faced teen called his mom for the fourth time that November day. He was homesick, but he wanted her to know he was OK.
Benjamin Guerrero Cruz had recently turned 18, and he was farther from his mother and younger siblings than he’d ever been before."
Deadly winter storm arrives in Southern California, bringing widespread flood, travel risks
LAT, GRACE TOOHEY: "A major atmospheric river storm walloping the state with heavy rains, strong winds and major snow has made its way to Southern California, bringing what forecasters say may become the region’s worst Christmas storm in recent memory.
“This is a long-duration event, so we’re going to be having the cumulative effects of rain,” said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Oxnard office. He said there was a high potential for widespread, life-threatening flooding as well as dangerous rock and mudslides, among other risks."
Bay Area storm will bring damaging winds — and may rapidly worsen. Here’s what to watch
CHRONICLE, ANTHONY EDWARDS: "A storm is knocking on Northern California’s door, one that could meet the criteria for a bomb cyclone as it approaches on Tuesday night.
The worst impacts of the storm are expected to be from 7 p.m. Tuesday through 7 a.m. Wednesday, but it’s still a close call on whether the storm will meet bomb cyclone criteria, and there’s high uncertainty in the short-range forecast about the system’s strength. Tuesday night could end up as a strong but run-of-the-mill windstorm; however, there’s a chance for a much more powerful low-pressure system that causes destructive wind damage from San Francisco northward."
Waymo’s robotaxis couldn’t handle S.F.’s power outage. What happens when an earthquake hits?
CHRONICLE, KATE TALERICO: "In a city struggling to see its way through the dark, it became the prevailing sight of San Francisco’s worst blackout in years: Waymo robotaxis stalled on city streets.
As traffic signals went dark Saturday following a fire at a PG&E substation, dozens of Waymos came to a halt, blocking intersections and holding up traffic. Now officials are calling for answers over what caused the self-driving cars to stall out, and whether the system is prepared to handle a larger emergency like an earthquake."
An amateur codebreaker may have just solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac killings
LAT, CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD: "When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short — who became known as the Black Dahlia — he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with what detectives thought was surgical skill.
Margolis was on the list of suspects. He was a sullen 21-year-old premed student at USC, a shell-shocked World War II veteran who had expressed an eagerness to practice surgery. He was “a resentful individual who shows ample evidence of open aggression,” a military psychiatrist had concluded."
She goes to police calls in a Prius. It’s part of new approach to mental health emergencies
CALMATTERS, CAYLA MIHALOVICH: "Briana Fair, a mental health clinician with the San Mateo Police Department, received a dozen voicemails from the same distressed caller over a single weekend this month. She knew the voice. It was her client, saying that a celebrity has been hacking her phone, that she needed help moving into a different apartment and why was the process taking so long?
“Normally, she won’t call like this unless she’s starting to get towards a crisis,” Fair said."