California residents watched election night results flip over the days that followed. Why does that keep happening?

The shift doesn’t happen the same way everywhere. It happens in California in ways that are specific, legal, and largely invisible to the people watching the results come in.

Mike Gatto is a former California state assemblymember who voted against ballot harvesting when the law was first proposed. He joins the show to explain what’s actually driving California’s post-election shifts, and why the trust problem may be harder to fix than the fraud question.

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

Across California, homelessness among older adults is rising, and it increasingly includes seniors who don't fit the public image of who becomes homeless. Some are losing housing for the first time late in life, after decades of steady work and stable housing.

A citizen petition is trying to put a sweeping property tax exemption for homeowners age 60 and older on the statewide ballot, while San Diego County has tested a much smaller rental subsidy aimed at the same problem locally. One reaches for a sweeping fix, the other for something narrower, and neither has been tried at full scale yet.

Rishi Kumar, a Silicon Valley tech executive and former Saratoga City Council member, is leading the signature drive for the statewide petition. San Diego County Supervisor Joel Anderson helped advance the county's rental subsidy pilot for older adults at risk of homelessness. Both explain what is pushing these seniors toward homelessness, and how hard either fix is to deliver.

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

Long COVID patients in California are waiting up to six months to see a specialist, if they can find one still accepting new patients. Clinics across the state are full. This is despite a 2024 state law.

In September 2024, Bill AB 3119 cleared both chambers of the California Legislature without a single dissenting vote and was signed into law.

This law requires the Medical Board of California, the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the Board of Registered Nursing, and the Physician Assistant Board to consider including, in their continuing education requirements for the licensees specified above, a course on infection-associated chronic conditions, including, but not limited to, long COVID.

The California Medical Board has not publicly discussed the issue since the bill was enacted into law.

Its position: Each physician should choose the continuing education appropriate to their patients. For patients who cannot work, cannot sleep, and cannot find a trained provider, that position has a cost.

In this episode, we sit down with Susanna Zaraysky, the California resident who pushed AB 3119 through the Legislature after spending months unable to find a doctor trained to treat her. We also discuss with Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of Medicine at UCSF, what it would take to close the treatment gap.

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