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I do love making bar charts that go _way_ up and to the right

Tech giants are spending more than ever to shape California politics. See how much Tech giants involved in AI and cryptocurrency spent $39 million last year to influence lawmakers and policy. It's the start of what could be a spending blitz in the upcoming election.

Last year, Meta and Google spent tens of millions of dollars to buy influence in Ca. politics by contributing to campaigns, lobbying, and making payments to nonprofits on behalf of sitting officials.

Why? Mostly to fight AI regulation. My latest for @calmatters.org

calmatters.org/politics/202...

Makes me think about how much worse all of this is going to be as "AI" video generation becomes more lifelike, allowing them to lie alongside synthetic videos that align with their talking points

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Tellingly, the people with power to do something about the rising death toll don't want to talk to reporters about it. From today's piece:

"Gov. Gavin Newsom declined an interview request." and DMV chief "Steve Gordon... declined or ignored CalMatters requests for an interview."

15 DUIs, still driving: California's failure to take repeat drunk drivers off the road As alcohol-related roadway deaths spike across the state, a CalMatters investigation finds California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the country.

Part 3 was published at the end of October and documents how California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the country even as deaths spike.

Robert and Lauren write: "California’s DUI enforcement system is broken. The toll can be counted in bodies."

calmatters.org/investigatio...

They were convicted of killing with their cars. No one told the California DMV. A CalMatters investigation found that courts didn’t report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the DMV, prompting officials to belatedly take many drivers’ licenses.

Part 2 from June focuses on the failure of the state courts to report vehicular manslaughter convictions to the DMV, allowing roadway killers to improperly keep their driver's licenses.

calmatters.org/investigatio...

Why California’s dangerous drivers get to keep their licenses The California DMV routinely allows deadly drivers to operate on our roadways, a CalMatters investigation has found.

The whole series is very much worth your while so I'm going to thread the other three pieces.

Here's the first one by Robert in April about how the DMV routinely allows dangerous drivers to keep driving, even after they kill. Sometimes more than once.

calmatters.org/investigatio...

40,000 people died on California roads. State leaders looked away As driving deaths have skyrocketed across the state, the governor, legislators, the courts and the DMV have failed to act.

My @calmatters.org colleagues Robert Lewis and Lauren Hepler published the fourth piece in their 🔥 investigative series about how state leaders, elected and appointed, have done little to address the mounting death toll from drunk drivers on California roads.

calmatters.org/investigatio...

A bar graph showing that Proposition 50 has been the subject of more independent expenditures than any previous ballot measure

As election day approaches, nonprofits, political parties and a billionaire have spent nearly $26 million on ads and other communications in an effort to convince voters to support or oppose Prop. 50 – the most of any ballot measure in recent state history. bit.ly/47l7aI4

📊 @jeremiak.com

A flyer reads "Celebrating investigative journalism means giving journalists the protections we deserve."

Four people wearing ProPublica Guild buttons and shirts pose for the camera near the entrance to an event.

Several people hand out flyers near the entrance to a building. A man in a suit accepts a flyer and shakes hands with one of the people.

Our members handed out flyers and buttons at the @IRE.org gala tonight! Our message is clear: We deserve a fair contract now! Support us by signing our petition. actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

A campaign finance report showing a $10,000,000 contribution from Charles Munger, Jr. to the No on Prop 50 campaign committee

Looks like Charles Munger Jr. is in for another $10 million, bringing his total contributions to California's Prop 50 opposition $30 million. So it's basically him and $5 million from a Republican SuperPAC

cal-access.sos.ca.gov/PDFGen/pdfge...

Good luck! Yall got this ✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻

How State Farm's emergency rate hike approval in California will affect you State Farm can raise homeowner and other rates starting next month, becoming the first insurance company to win approval to do so on an emergency interim basis in California.

Dicey indeed!

@levisu.bsky.social has been _on_ this! The Insurance Commissioner and State Farm have been negotiating about insurance for months now. Here's some of her recent, previous reporting:

calmatters.org/economy/2025...

calmatters.org/economy/2025...

More on calmatters.org too!

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of…

An excerpt from "For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper":

But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?

poets.org/poem/student...

And then like anything else in the attention/cable news economy, Trump is in a league of his own.

Chart of the number of minutes various terms were displayed on cable news chyrons. The terms visualized are "antisemitism", "Epstein", "Intifada", "Mamdani" (which also includes "Zohran") and "Musk" (which also includes "Elon"). Mamdani was far and away the most displayed chyron of the bunch.

Used the Internet Archive's news chyron data to get a sense for how much MSNBC, CNN, Fox and the BBC were talking about different topics.

Increase for Epstein, lots of discussion of Zohran after his primary win, Musk flits in and out, not nearly as much as I expected to see for "Intifada"

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Support @calmatters.org independent journalism today so we can keep covering California for another 10 years

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A woman whose house burned down in the Eaton Fire earlier this year couldn't cash a ~$900k check from State Farm because, as somebody in the check-hold department of her bank said, the insurer's account had a negative balance.

The largest property insurer in the state. A negative balance.

Posted and deleted this like three times because I got the mention wrong and then forgot (??) to put in the URL. Geez, I'm even worse at social media today than normal

Gavin Newsom ordered state workers back to the office. Why he backtracked Newsom argued state employees needed to boost productivity and rebuild public trust by working in-office nearly full-time. Why delay? Politics, critics say.

Was Gov. Newsom's return to office mandate a ploy for contract negotiations? @mayacmiller.bsky.social looks into it for her first story @calmatters.org

calmatters.org/politics/202...

Which, you know, might be a good reason for high ranking government officials to not conduct business on commercial platforms like Signal? Maybe?

Among other things (record retention laws, adding journalists into the chat, etc)

Turns out it’s not always bad news! Hope you get some good results too

I know I’m old because one of the best emails I got today was from my doctor letting me know my cholesterol is way down. Hell ya

Masked, Armed, Forceful: Finding Patterns in California Immigration Raids YouTube video by Evident Media

New 3-minute documentary from @calmatters.org @sergioolmos.bsky.social @bellingcat.com @evidentmedia.org show comprehensively how widespread the immigration raids in the Los Angeles area have been.

Doc geotagged/verified 100+ videos of raids
These occurred at:
-15+ Home Depots
-Private farmland

Here's a timeline of the catastrophic Texas floods NPR has compiled a timeline of when local, state and federal officials posted warnings on social media as well as the timeline of events as presented by local officials.

And as somebody who lives near the American River, this is _terrifying_:

“The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within 45 minutes”

More than 6 inches a minute…

www.npr.org/2025/07/05/n...

The disaster in Texas is so sad for the families and communities who lost somebody or are still searching for them.

May their memories forever be blessings 🙏

A (super) negative downstream effect of election map-based coverage and descriptions like “deep red state”

Gross idea even before you consider that kids died and kids can’t vote in the US

Bond financing is a morass (or at least seems like one) that I haven’t dug into much… yet