Over the past decade, California's K–12 enrollment has fallen by hundreds of thousands of students. Less than half of those still in the system can read at grade level. If fewer students are in the system and outcomes are not moving, what is the money doing?

Gloria Romero, a former California state senator and longtime education reform advocate, joins the show to walk through how the state funds its schools and why the outcomes have been so difficult to move.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Trucking companies that have served the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for decades are closing. Family-owned operations that built their businesses one truck at a time are being squeezed by compressed freight rates and high diesel costs, and some in the industry say compliance has become a cost that not everyone is paying.

What is happening to the companies that tried to follow the rules is a different story from the one playing out in public.

Robert Loya, chief executive officer of the Harbor Trucking Association and a 30-year industry veteran, joined the show to walk through how California’s regulatory environment is playing out for the trucking companies that serve the ports, and what he believes is coming next.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California's women's prisons house just under 4,000 people, and since the state's Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act (SB 132) took effect, 48 men have transferred into those facilities, a policy decision that is now the subject of a federal investigation.

A criminal case out of Madera County is moving through the courts, and women who have raised concerns about their housing conditions have faced institutional consequences. What did the transfer criteria actually require?

Amie Ichikawa, executive director of Woman II Woman, joins the show to walk through the transfer criteria, the committee process, and what the women inside can and cannot say.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Catalina Island’s deer have been part of the island long enough that most residents have never known it without them. The Catalina Island Conservancy, which manages most of the island’s land, says the deer are non-native and are damaging the habitat that native species depend on. Their position is that removing every deer from the island is the only way to restore it.

Not everyone agrees that zero deer is the answer. A coalition of residents, hunting groups, and conservation organizations is now contesting the permit the state issued to authorize the plan, arguing that a decision this permanent deserved a more thorough public process before it was approved.

In this episode, Ben Myhre, owner of Wildlife West, Inc. and a Catalina hunting guide since 1998, and Wendy Hernandez, founder of the Coalition to Save Catalina Island Deer, walk through what the conservancy is trying to accomplish, why opponents believe there is a better path, and what is now before the courts.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Los Angeles property owners have until June 2 to vote on an assessment that would nearly quadruple what they currently pay for streetlights, a decision cities across California are increasingly facing. As the ballot goes out, the city council is simultaneously advancing a proposal that would change how street-level enforcement works across LA neighborhoods.

How well do we understand the full picture before we vote?

In this episode, California policy observer Jon Fleischman walks through the mechanics behind LA’s streetlight assessment, the enforcement proposal moving through the city council, and what both decisions together reveal about how local government sets its priorities.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Eileen Wang's guilty plea reads like a local story. The mayor of Arcadia agreed to her federal charges of acting as an illegal foreign agent for China.

Joshua Philipp, senior journalist for The Epoch Times, said it is something else. One visible point in a pattern of China's influence that has been running at scale for decades.

Philipp has covered federal investigations into CCP operations across the country. What he described is not a collection of isolated cases but a documented strategy aimed at placing aligned figures inside the American government, business, and media. The question he raised is not whether this is happening in California. It is how much of it has not yet reached a courtroom.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was designed to give people with disabilities equal access to public life. In California, home to more ADA lawsuits than any other state, a legal loophole has turned that law into a settlement machine, targeting small businesses, many already in compliance. While the cost to businesses is real, the benefit to people with disabilities is far less clear. Who is the law actually protecting?

In this episode, we sit down with Taha Saleh, owner and operator of T.A. Saleh, on what a single lawsuit threat cost him to resolve; Victor Gomez, executive director for California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), on who is being targeted and whether the current system is actually serving people with disabilities; and Roger Niello, state senator, on the reform bill that passed the Senate with nearly no opposition and what it would take to change it.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Is California’s mail ballot system as exposed as critics suggest, or is the real story more complicated than what either side suggests?

Every election cycle, the same concerns resurface: ballots getting lost, signatures going unchecked, and results taking weeks to finalize. But the operational reality inside a county registrar’s office tells a different story.

In this episode, Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page, who has been overseeing elections since 2018 and runs one of the largest county operations in the state, breaks down the mechanics of California’s vote-by-mail system, the certification timeline, the upcoming voter ID initiative, and what petition signature fraud looks like from inside the office responsible for catching it.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California cities are weighing taxes on non-primary homes to address housing shortages and mounting budget deficits. San Diego’s Measure A is one of them, with a vote coming this June and a $121 million deficit driving the conversation. What does the measure actually require of homeowners, and what happens after it passes?

In this episode, Shane Harris, CEO and founder of S Harris Communications, examines what enforcement would demand of the city and why he believes San Diego’s fiscal challenges call for a different approach.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

The avocado most people buy at the grocery store was born in a Southern California backyard a hundred years ago. The industry that grew around it may not survive there much longer.

California avocados are losing ground to imports from Michoacán, Mexico, where cartel organizations have moved beyond extorting farmers to seizing their land outright. For California growers already competing against lower labor and environmental costs, the pressure has no simple answer.

In this episode, Gary Gragg, president of Golden Gate Palms & Exotics Inc., and Katarina Szulc, LATAM freelance reporter, examine how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened California’s avocado market to foreign competition it was never built to absorb, and what that has meant for local growers trying to stay in business under some of the most demanding farming regulations in the country.

*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.