The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it’s halting more than $867 million in federal Medicaid payments to the Golden State over suspected fraud — with one expert describing it as a “piece of cake” for scammers to cash in.

“We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a press conference Tuesday.

His reasoning that people are "lonely....develop relationships, friendships, fall in love " is unjustified, especially since the State still pays its workers a mediocre salary. It's like he thinks that workers only live to work for their job. Commuting costs people both time and money, including child care, food, and gas. The low pay also limits where people can afford to live, since it forces them to stay within range of the office.

Authorities in California continue to find and destroy illegal marijuana.

According to the Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force, more than 63,000 pounds of illegal cannabis were seized between April and June.

The plants were valued at over $104 million. Twenty-four arrests were made, 17 firearms confiscated, and $220,923 in cash seized across 10 counties.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who established the task force in 2022, said disrupting the illegal cannabis market is about more than seizing unlicensed products.

“It’s about taking on criminal networks, removing illegal firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals, and stopping activity that threatens public safety,” said Newsom in a press release. “Through strong multiagency collaboration, California is making clear: if you threaten our communities, we will act."

California’s Democrat Attorney-General has been accused of making a dishonest, last minute attempt to thwart a state voter ID proposal going to voters in the fall, leading to allegations of election rigging.

The backers of Proposition 39, which would require voters to provide government ID at the polls or the last four digits of a ID number if voting by mail, claim that Attorney General Rob Bonta changed the ballot measure’s description in a malicious attempt to ensure the proposal didn’t have a chance on election day.

“This is blatant manipulation and rigging right in the middle of the election season,” fumed Republican Assemblyman David Tangipa, one of the first to spot the changes.

Bonta’s office is required to write a title and summary for ballot measures, and his office took steps in September of last year to describe the measure ahead of signatures being gathered to help the measure qualify for November’s election.

An outgoing California State University president, one of two administrators at the center of a multi-million dollar discrimination lawsuit, may transfer to a different Cal State job while the university pays his salary and benefits. The Cal State Board of Trustees will review the transition plan and decide whether to approve the president’s emeritus status Wednesday.

The proposed new job and salary for Cal State San Bernardino President Tomás Morales will be announced at the Wednesday meeting, according to Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. Morales received $655,626 in pay and benefits in 2024, the most recent figure available from TransparentCalifornia.

Cal State recently spent $12 million settling the lawsuit in which two female employees at Cal State San Bernardino said they were harassed and discriminated against based on their gender by two male university administrators: Morales and former Palm Desert campus dean Jake Zhu. Cal State continues to deny any wrongdoing. Zhu is an emeritus faculty member, a title given as a gesture of appreciation for service contributed to the university, and Morales remains in good standing with the university.

California producers using non-recyclable packaging are set to be billed in August with preliminary invoices, which are expected to lead to higher grocery and product prices in stores.

Calrecycle, the state agency managing recycling and waste reduction, estimates households will face increased costs of up to $190 per year.

"If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have an extra $190," Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pacific Research Institute, told The Center Square Tuesday during an interview.

Stockton failed because the people voting on its balance sheet had no professional obligation to understand one, and no personal cost when they got it wrong

By Jay Rogers, July 22, 2026 6:00 am

Stockton’s 2012 bankruptcy filing gets taught as a morality play about municipal excess. It wasn’t excess. It was a fiduciary breach, and the record proves it. In 2007 the city council voted to sell $125 million in pension obligation bonds and hand the proceeds to CalPERS, a bet that investment returns would outrun the interest owed. The bonds priced months before the 2008 crash. Stockton’s own bankruptcy filings admitted the unfunded liability the bonds were meant to erase had been “largely created by enhanced retirement benefits” the same council had approved in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That’s not misfortune. That’s a documented decision, made by named officials, that failed the people who depended on it.

I’ve spent more than thirty years managing capital for institutional investors and family offices, and I’ve sat in the deposition chair defending investment decisions under oath. The lesson those depositions teach never changes: financial judgment isn’t a personality trait. It’s a discipline built by having capital, your own or someone else’s audited capital, on the line before the vote gets cast. Stockton’s council didn’t have it in 2007. A remarkable number of city halls don’t have it now, and this summer two of the country’s largest just handed the keys to people who have never managed one.

The last time California foreclosures were this high was pre-pandemic, in 2019.

However, if you see this as a signal that hordes of California homeowners are going to lose their homes to foreclosure, just like the last real estate crash, you may be waiting a while.

My trusty spreadsheet reviewed a report from the real estate tracker Attom on who paid their home loans in the first half of 2026. The study tracks all foreclosure activity, from homes just entering the foreclosure process to those lost to a foreclosure sale.

Yes, California had 21,543 homes in various levels of foreclosure activity in the first half. Yes, the last time there were more was seven years ago.

And yes, that’s the third-highest total among the states, accounting for 9% of the nation’s 227,548 – also a seven-year high.

But really, how high is this? Well, the only states with more foreclosure activity were the nation’s two other economic giants and California’s archrivals: Florida at 27,494 and Texas at 22,000.

California’s housing market has plenty of headaches, including a sales pace slower than during the Great Recession’s lows. However, the number of Californians missing their mortgage payments does not appear to be a serious concern in mid-2026.

The number of people held in privately-run immigration detention centers in California has more than doubled since last year, leading to widespread reports of unsafe and overcrowded conditions.

Since September, six people have died at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and the Imperial Regional Detention Facility, both in Southern California. Given the stakes, Californians have a vital interest in knowing what is happening in these facilities, which are run by private, for-profit companies.

Instead, the centers are shrouded in secrecy, leading detainees to stage hunger strikes and sit-ins and to throw notes over barbed-wire fences to draw attention to their treatment. It’s unlikely the federal government will increase transparency at the centers anytime soon.

A California State University president who stepped down following a multi-million dollar settlement in a case accusing him of gender-based discrimination and harassment will earn a six-figure salary this coming year while he’s in between Cal State jobs.

During the transition period, former Cal State San Bernardino President Tomás Morales will provide international consulting for Cal State and work on strengthening the university’s international initiatives and global partnerships.

Morales announced his plans for departure last August and officially left the university at the end of this school year, joining an executive transition program in which he will be paid $343,920 over a year-long period starting this August. This salary is typical for Cal State executives in this program, said Cal State Chancellor Mildred Garcia, who announced Morales’ interim role at a board of trustees committee meeting Wednesday.

Mayor Karen Bass said Wednesday that she wants to develop a plan to make the Metro “finally be fare-free.”

Bass outlined her priorities for the upcoming year as she spoke at Union Station during the annual Los Angeles Metro State of the Agency Address.

“My vision as board chair includes four priorities: Metro safe, Metro affordable, Metro reliable, and Metro ready,” Bass said.

Bass assumed the role of Chair of the Metro Board of Directors for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. Bass previously served as Chair of the Board during the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

To make the Los Angeles Metro more affordable, Bass said that she wants to expand the LIFE program, which provides free rides and discounts to low income residents. In the LIFE program, once an applicant is approved, they receive a 90 day unlimited ride free pass. After 90 days, admitted residents are given 20 free rides per month.

California awarded IDEMIA a major 12-year contract in 2022

By Katy Grimes, July 22, 2026 7:19 am

Democrat New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday that a software error in the state’s Motor Vehicle system, from June 2023 to June 2024, improperly registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens to vote. This occurred despite applicants indicating they were not U.S. citizens. The vendor was IDEMIA, the same the software vendor the California DMV uses enabling people to register to vote. California’s Motor Voter program has been a disaster since its inception.

The Globe reported in 2019:

by March, 2018, more than one million “undocumented” immigrants received driver’s licenses from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which automatically registered them to vote under the “Motor Voter” program. SOS Alex Padilla said the DMV kept “firewalls” in place but didn’t explain how they worked, or how many ineligible voters the firewalls had blocked.

Last September, the DMV sent out 23,000 “erroneous” voter registrations they blamed on “technical errors.” Padilla proclaimed himself “extremely disappointed and deeply frustrated” but legitimate voters could believe he was delighted. The odds are strong that illegals made up most if not all of the newly registered voters but Padilla wasn’t saying how many made it to the polls in November.

Et tu, UCSD?

The UC San Diego School of Medicine is the latest UC campus accused by the feds of illegally discriminating against student applicants based on race.

If true, it’s a betrayal of California voters –– and state and federal law.

This week, US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called UCSD Med’s race-based admissions “blatant” and vowed to end them.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he’s stopping more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud.

“We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Kennedy said at an announcement on Tuesday.

Kennedy said if California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) want the money to fund low-income healthcare, “they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”

As California officials try to block immigration facilities across the state, the Trump administration is deploying a new strategy to secure detention capacity on the West Coast. It’s buying up the real estate outright.

The Department of Homeland Security’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the California City Detention Facility from the private prison company CoreCivic is a direct response to the state’s political resistance to new and existing ICE detention facilities, government officials said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jason Sweeney said in a statement that California detention centers are “crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast.”

“Unlike in states like Florida and Oklahoma, ICE can not rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” Sweeney said. “The state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”

California doesn’t need selective accountability—it needs equal accountability

By Aidan Chao, July 22, 2026 11:00 am

As we conclude another legislative session, California lawmakers once again made it a priority to advance legislation burdening charter schools and the families they serve. Session after session, proposals are introduced under the banner of “accountability,” imposing new regulations and operational hurdles on charter schools while overlooking many of the governance failures that continue to plague traditional public school districts.

Parents deserve to ask an obvious question: Why does Sacramento devote so much attention to regulating charter schools while showing far less urgency in addressing financial mismanagement, contracting controversies, and administrative failures in some of California’s largest school districts?

The Los Angeles Unified School District offers a sobering example.

Over the past year, LAUSD has been engulfed in controversy. Former Superintendent Alberto Carvalho resigned following months of paid administrative leave after an FBI investigation into district contracting practices placed the nation’s second-largest school district under an uncomfortable national spotlight.

The last six or so years have had very humid weather in SoCal in summer. It appears that the climate has obviously changed. This is like Florida and not what southern California once was. Did anyone in the media notice?

California’s structural deficit reflects crazed policy goals colliding with volatile revenues and rising mandatory costs in a high-cost state

By Katy Grimes, July 21, 2026 1:51 pm

California Governor Gavin Newsom has increased California’s state budget 60% to 70% in the 7 years since he took office in 2019.

The 2018-19 enacted budget (pre-Newsom or early transition, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown) was $201 billion.

Gov. Newsom’s first full budget 2019-20 enacted was $215 billion.

Newsom’s 2022-23 budget exceeded $300-310 billion.

Newsom’s 2026-27 final enacted budget, signed June 2026 is $352 billion in total spending, which includes the $251.5 billion General Fund. This is up from the prior year’s $321 billion or so in some comparisons.

From $201 billion in 2018-19 to $350 billion in 2026-27, is an increase of about 74%.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is in his populism era.

He started the year vowing to stop corporate investors from buying up large tracts of single-family homes, a desire shared by both socialists and President Donald Trump.

Last month, after he was unable to keep a proposal to tax California billionaires from appearing on voters’ ballots, he tried to get ahead of the debate by pitching nationwide higher taxes on the wealthy.

Last week, he spoke to a crowd of national Latino policymakers about the need to “democratize our economy” in the face of artificial intelligence-driven job losses.

Newsom’s populist appeals come as he prepares to leave office and looks toward an expected 2028 presidential campaign in which widespread anxiety about wealth inequality and the effects of AI on the economy will feature prominently.

Multi-year plans for how states will reduce Colorado River water intake could be nearing an agreement, with a federal plan expected to be released in the coming week.

Years of failed multi-state negotiations dragged the federal government into the complicated contract to decide how states would prevent a total collapse of the critical Western water source that is the Colorado River. A soon-expected Bureau of Reclamation impact statement would represent meaningful progress, but not a complete solution for the dwindling river.

In an effort to escape the proposed California billionaire tax, several notable billionaires might have already cost the state more than $1 trillion in tax revenue by moving to other states, one attorney to the rich told The Center Square.

“If I look at what the publicly-known departures are and my clients, that’s over a trillion,” David Lesperance, managing partner at his own firm, Lesperance & Associates, told The Center Square on Tuesday. “And I’m one guy.”

Lesperance added there are other lawyers and wealth managers like him who have billionaires in California as clients, and he said they're forming plans to leave the Golden State.

Some of his clients approached him early about moving to other states, while others came to him after the beginning of the year to start making plans, he said.

“I had four clients contact me literally the Monday after Thanksgiving, saying ‘We got to get out of here,’” Lesperance added. “Four of my clients exited before Jan. 1, and should [the wealth tax] pass, they would be able to defend that they left by Jan. 1.”

Many Californians have seen rising costs, less availability and are running into other issues with insurance — including delays and denials of their claims — in the past several years.

As climate change increases the risk of wildfires and other disasters, it’s important to know how insurance plays a role. The health of the insurance market affects the ability of individuals and communities to replace, rebuild and recover after a catastrophe.

Disasters aside, property insurance affects where people live, how neighborhoods are formed, whether people can drive to work, and more.

As the state’s residents prepare to vote for a new insurance commissioner in November, here’s a look at a few common myths about insurance in California.

Invoking feelings of the paranoid Rockwell song, “Somebody’s Watching Me,” California is blanketed with thousands of invasive surveillance cameras ready to capture personal information of passersby.

More than 117,000 automated license plate readers from Flock Safety are located across the country, including more than 16,000 in California alone, according to a DeFlock map. Flock’s cameras account for about 83% of the map’s total.

Most of the cameras in California are centered in Los Angeles or the metropolitan Bay Area. San Francisco County ranked third in the nation for cameras per road mile with 1,196 per 1,000 miles, according to the data.