Bay Area

The California Legislature has failed several times since 2022 to regulate technology for automatically tracking vehicles — even as examples of abuse mount. This year was no exception.

Privacy advocates raised alarms as California lawmakers voted to share driver license information with a national nonprofit database. Then, the Trump administration sought trucker records from the organization.

“We told you so.”  That’s what privacy and immigrant advocates are saying about a federal subpoena to a national clearinghouse of DMV records. This summer, they tried to warn Gov. Gavin Newsom that sharing data about California driver’s license holders could put noncitizens at risk. As CalMatters’ Wendy Fry and Khari Johnson explain, Newsom’s office,…

The typical U.S. home located in a highly rated school zone costs $580,000, which is 35% more than $430,000 for the typical home overall, regardless of its school zone.  A household would need to earn $159,157 per year to afford a home in a highly rated school zone, roughly $41,000 more than the $117,995 needed…

San Francisco, home to OpenAI and Anthropic, is seeing its housing market boom as AI employees put their money into the housing market. In Seattle, economic jitters in the tech space are dampening homebuying demand.  San Francisco and Seattle are two of America’s leading tech hubs, and for years, their housing markets have behaved like…

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new carbon market rules threatened climate funding for water, air and transit projects. A last-minute compromise between him and lawmakers provides some funding to narrow that gap.

The lame-duck governor’s penchant for pushing last-minute demands on California’s Legislature didn’t work out as it has in years past.

An analysis of defense contracts charts the rise of defense spending — often in heavily Democratic districts

For years, significant environmental policies under the Newsom administration have been decided behind closed doors, diminishing the public’s role in key state decisions.