California Insider

Paid signature gatherers are operating inside homeless encampments in San Francisco to collect ballot petition signatures for California’s November 2026 propositions. Video evidence captured on the street shows signers being offered payment and instructed by gatherers to use other people’s names and addresses, and the operation was still running the next day at a different location. When something goes wrong at street level, who is actually responsible?

In this episode, we sit down with JJ Smith, the San Francisco videographer who filmed the operation firsthand; James A. Kus, Fresno County clerk and registrar of voters; and Susan Shelley, editorial writer at the Southern California News Group, to examine how the legal market for paid signature gathering creates the economic conditions for this kind of fraud. They break down the per-signature price spike driven by the November ballot deadline and why the subcontractor chain behind commercial signature gathering makes accountability difficult to trace.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

A large share of police calls in Los Angeles can be traced back to homelessness, at a time when departments are already short on officers. Behind each call is a mix of mental health crises, addiction, and conditions that rarely change after a single intervention. Why do so many people return to the same situation, even after contact with outside services?

In this episode, LAPD Commander Blake Chow talks about his decades of experience on the ground and what he learned about why these situations persist and what begins to shift when the response moves beyond isolated fixes.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California’s water, land, and fire systems are, in many cases, driven by federal court orders from litigation decided decades ago, before current conditions existed. That distance between today’s challenges and the decisions governing them may explain more about California’s long-term planning struggles than most coverage admits.

In this episode, Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of Natural Resources, sits down to discuss what the state is doing to change that, its conservation plan, its water infrastructure, and the conditions behind the Los Angeles fires.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California’s push to phase out fossil fuels has accelerated the closure of the refineries that still supply fuel to its military bases, airports, and 40 million drivers. If the plan is to move away from oil, what happens to everything that gets made from it before it ever reaches a gas pump?

In this episode, Ronald Stein, author, columnist, and founder of PTS Advance, and Deborah Sivas, Luke W. Cole professor of Environmental Law at Stanford, examine what refinery closures actually mean for California’s fuel supply and whether the transition plan accounts for all the oil produced beyond gasoline.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

Crime in California is at some of its lowest levels in decades. So what explains what people are still seeing on the street every day? In this episode, Siyamak sits down with Magnus Lofstrom, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, to look at what the data actually shows and where it stops being able to answer that question.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California’s gasoline supply was already under pressure before the Strait of Hormuz developments complicated things even more. With refinery closures accelerating and import sources drying up simultaneously, how much runway does the state actually have?

In this episode, Skip York, chief energy strategist at Turner Mason & Company, explains why California is structurally isolated from the relief valves the rest of the country relies on, without the pipeline connections, surplus capacity, and flexible fuel specifications that protect other states.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

A state audit found that a Southern California school district issued California high school diplomas to students in China who never set foot in the state and never attended a single class. The scheme ran for years before it surfaced. How does something like that go undetected?

In this episode, Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School Board, walks us through what the audit uncovered and what an ongoing investigation still needs to answer. Epoch Times reporter Joshua Philipp explains how this case connects to larger concerns about foreign influence in American schools.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

California produces only 25% of the crude oil it consumes and has no pipelines bringing refined fuel into the state. When global fuel supply tightens, where does a state that depends on imports turn? In this episode, Jodie Muller, President and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association, explains how California's shrinking refinery base and dependence on imported fuel affects what consumers pay at the pump and whether the state's fuel supply is as stable as it appears. Skip York, Energy and Oil Fellow at the Baker Institute, adds context on what global market pressures mean for a state already running on thin supply margins.

*Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

LA hosted the Olympics in 1984 with 23 events. In 2028, it's committing to more than double that, and the city carrying that weight today is a fundamentally different place. In this episode, Artin Sodaify, LA County Commissioner, walks through what's actually being built and contracted right now to get the region ready. The question of whether those preparations outlast the games is one LA residents will be living with long after the torch goes out.

California's post-production workforce, the people who edit, score, and mix every film and show you've ever seen, has been losing work to other states and countries for years. How does an industry this embedded in a state end up competing for its own survival? In this episode, we speak with a panel of post-production professionals about the economic forces driving work elsewhere, and about the bill in Sacramento they believe could change that.

Featuring:

1. Marielle Abaunza, president of the California Post Alliance
2. Ben Urquhart, vice president of post production and integration at Universal Pictures
3. Brian Ralston, film music composer and producer
4. Dennis Dreith, media composer
5. Amélia Rolland, singer-songwriter, composer, and vocalist.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.