Yousef Baig
@yousefbaig.bsky.social
California Voices Editor @calmatters.org | NorCal ATLien | journalistic master of none | (good) views are better shared
Over the past year, @evidentmedia.org and @calmatters.org gained rare access inside St. John's Community Health in Los Angeles, tracing the human toll as patients and doctors fight to hold on to Medicaid funding. Watch the full documentary at the link below. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY2C...
Inside California's Fight to Fund Health Care
YouTube video by Evident
youtube.com
U.S. senators and others used Dr. Anthony Fauci’s newly released diary entries to claim that what he told the public at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was different from what he knew and thought privately. The claims are largely unsupported, PolitiFact found. www.poynter.org/fact-checkin...
Did Fauci's private diary contradict what he told the public? - Poynter
PolitiFact compared Anthony Fauci's private writings with what he said publicly about COVID's origins, school closures and masks
poynter.org
Kevin McCarty has been a lousy mayor for Sacramento. He’s passed a wildly regressive budget, lost control of council meetings and delivered nothing policy-wise. I don’t know what made him think he had the presence and leadership skills for this job but I have little faith he can turn it around.
How would you feel if it’s likely that an $8 billion bond measure is chiefly benefiting one nonprofit, and that nonprofit’s major donor is also a top funder of the effort to pass the bond? I spent weeks on this story connecting the many seeming dots surrounding Proposition 38.
Is this proposition a $4 billion giveaway to a billionaire’s LA research center?
Proposition 38 will award $4 billion to one unnamed research center. Under the very specific criteria, only one center seemingly qualifies.
calmatters.org
It’s really telling how cooked we are when a man like Elon Musk is rewarded to trillionaire status…yet relentlessly pollutes our internet, democracies, planetary atmosphere and now our moon (!) with his bullshit.
The Associated Press@apnews.com · 5d agoA SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers last year.
We need to be clear-eyed that these publicized hacks are not just warnings to the public but also covert ads for their cybersecurity models, part of their pre-IPO strut. Going “rogue” signals how powerful these tools have gotten. None of this is a coincidence www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/t...
Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations
The disclosure followed OpenAI’s report last week that its own artificial intelligence had hacked into the network of an online library.
nytimes.com
There is an almost overwhelming amount of absurdity in the news these days, but it’s hard to get over Mitch McConnell probably being dead and the nation getting gaslit for the foreseeable future. We just keep finding new lows in our politics.
My latest: L.A. fire survivors, consumer advocates and the insurance industry — strange bedfellows — are slamming what looks like last-minute political maneuvering that could help utilities reduce their costs for wildfires they cause.
CalMatters@calmatters.org · 6d agoThe groups are speaking out against the purported bill package, which appears to align with the goals of Wildfire Survivors First, a campaign funded by utilities that, despite its name, has no wildfire survivors groups among its supporters. cal.news/4bW1x4X 📸 David McNew
Just a stunning investigation from @calireporter.bsky.social on Assemblymember Anamarie Ávila Farías, who sits on her chamber’s eldercare committee, and the seemingly disqualifying issues from her personal life, one culminating in her mom getting a restraining order calmatters.org/investigatio...
Lawmaker told court her mom had dementia in family property battle. Not so, said doctors
Records show Assemblymember Anamarie Ávila Farías also faced a temporary restraining order for elder abuse.
calmatters.org
You think California lawmakers and politically appointed air quality regulators will start changing their tune on carbon capture now? Or will we still keep pretending we don’t know the truth?
ProPublica@propublica.org · last wk.BP execs were deeply involved in shaping a highly influential climate science paper. The authors not only discussed ideas with the oil company but, in a departure from academic norms, passed drafts back and forth and welcomed extensive feedback. with @drilledmedia.bsky.social
One of the disastrous miscalculations that Californians could one day pay for is how Newsom impeded or straight vetoed AI regulations “to not stifle innovation” when we had a chance to keep pace with this technology & place guardrails that shaped its development techcrunch.com/2026/07/27/o...
OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach has reignited the debate over alignment and control | TechCrunch
OpenAI's Hugging Face breach has reignited debate over AI alignment and control, exposing competing views on whether increasingly capable AI should be better aligned, better contained, or both.
techcrunch.com
This may be unsurprising to some degree, but it's still shocking when you read the quotes and see how casually federal agents speak like this @wendyfry.bsky.social @sergioolmos.bsky.social calmatters.org/justice/2026...
‘Pretty sure he’s wet:’ Immigration agents used racial slurs during LA sweeps, court records show
Records released as part of a lawsuit challenging racial profiling show that immigration agents used slurs to refer to Latino targets.
calmatters.org
There are questions about whether the controversial leader of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West intended for the billionaire tax to go on the ballot, or if it was designed as a leverage play to expand his union. www.latimes.com/california/s...
In a surprising role reversal, at least in image, the traditionally plodding L.A. County government looks more urgent and creative than L.A. City Hall. cal.news/45o22RB
The more time that passes, the more palatable it sounds for California to actually use a Trump maneuver and threaten withholding its tax money. This sort of moronic partisan warfare is popular with no one except Heritage Foundation stooges www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.
nytimes.com
A new scoop on my expanded beat: I was able to take a look at a working draft of California's developing reforestation strategy — and the outlook is staggering. calmatters.org/environment/...
California is losing its forests faster than it can replant them — and no one has enough seeds, staff, or money to catch up
California needs to ramp up reforestation to keep pace with wildfires — instead, funding and staff keep shrinking.
calmatters.org
Several senior Biden officials told David Kirkpatrick that they’d privately pushed to get Netanyahu to clarify Israel’s objectives in Gaza. Netanyahu refused to spell them out—and Biden and his advisers all but gave up on pinning him down. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/4a8YB3
How Biden Enabled Israel’s Aggression Toward Gaza—and Iran
Top officials from the previous Administration now express regret over their failure to rein in Netanyahu.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
A federal judge ordered major changes to conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, granting a preliminary injunction that requires federal immigration officials provide people with clean drinking water and adequate medical care. W/ @wendyfry.bsky.social calmatters.org/justice/2026...
Judge demands immigrants at Adelanto get clean water and medical care
A federal judge on Thursday ordered sweeping changes to reported conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County
calmatters.org
He should be sacked, as they say over there.
Jason Concepcion@netw3rk.bsky.social · 3w agoTuchel went defensive too early
'Psychological war’: Inside California’s expanding use of jailhouse stings He thought his cellmates were gang members. They turned out to be undercover agents.
'Psychological war’: Inside California’s expanding use of jailhouse stings
He thought his cellmates were gang members. They turned out to be undercover agents.
cal.news
The University of California is still going to consider whether to bring back the SAT. My story: calmatters.org/education/hi...
University of California professors want the SAT back. Here’s a timeline of how that might happen
Several University of California professors want the system to bring back the SAT for admissions. UC eliminated the test in 2020.
calmatters.org
This from @noupside.bsky.social is sadly relevant again since Trump is going to broadcast his lies and distortion for the entire country (and world) to hear: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/five... He is following a playbook to steal the midterms. I don't know if we're prepared for the aftermath.
Five Foreign Election Conspiracy Theories Making the Rounds Again
Conspiracy theories about 2020 fraud are being dredged up again as pretext for consolidating federal control over elections.
lawfaremedia.org
If our work has been useful for you this year (or ever), now is a good time to consider supporting our newsroom. As we like to say, CalMatters is free to read but not to produce. Every bit helps.
CalMatters@calmatters.org · 3w agoYour gift will fund independent, spin-free and actually free reporting. Please give today. cal.news/4bIs8ST
Congress is a club. The people who inhabit it pick their voters and hold on to power as long as possible. They serve themselves & their donors. It's why the way citizens talk about representatives and how representatives talk about each other is so different. Today has been a clear example of that.
A few words on the passing of South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who spent the last ten years of his life eagerly helping Donald Trump in his quest to destroy American democracy. youtu.be/z4HMequIiiY
What is there to say about Lindsay Graham?
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
youtu.be
Opinion | Reviving SAT requirements won’t fix California's university admissions problems In college admissions, the real quandary isn’t about requiring SATs. It’s about how to select applicants if they all seem to be exceptional.
Opinion | Reviving SAT requirements won’t fix California's university admissions problems
In college admissions, the real quandary isn’t about requiring SATs. It’s about how to select applicants if they all seem to be exceptional.
cal.news
Right now Newsom is in Nevada stumping for other Democrats. Khanna is in the occupied West Bank being confronted by armed settlers. It’s gonna be a long primary.
Alex de Soto@alexdesoto.bsky.social · 4w agoI’d rather see my federal government build bullet trains instead of financing foreign wars. It’s amazing how much faster we can pay private arms companies yet infrastructure is always victim to the ever-relentless ‘time+bureacracy=higher costs’ villain thenevadaindependent.com/article/brig...
Brightline off the rails? Financial woes, delayed loan lead to concerns for Vegas high-speed train - The Nevada Independent
With a $6 billion loan pending from the federal government, the Brightline West project keeps getting more expensive. What's going on?
thenevadaindependent.com