Jeremia Kimelman

How State Farm's emergency rate hike approval in California will affect you State Farm can raise homeowner and other rates starting next month, becoming the first insurance company to win approval to do so on an emergency interim basis in California.

Dicey indeed!

@levisu.bsky.social has been _on_ this! The Insurance Commissioner and State Farm have been negotiating about insurance for months now. Here's some of her recent, previous reporting:

calmatters.org/economy/2025...

calmatters.org/economy/2025...

More on calmatters.org too!

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of…

An excerpt from "For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper":

But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?

poets.org/poem/student...

And then like anything else in the attention/cable news economy, Trump is in a league of his own.

Chart of the number of minutes various terms were displayed on cable news chyrons. The terms visualized are "antisemitism", "Epstein", "Intifada", "Mamdani" (which also includes "Zohran") and "Musk" (which also includes "Elon"). Mamdani was far and away the most displayed chyron of the bunch.

Used the Internet Archive's news chyron data to get a sense for how much MSNBC, CNN, Fox and the BBC were talking about different topics.

Increase for Epstein, lots of discussion of Zohran after his primary win, Musk flits in and out, not nearly as much as I expected to see for "Intifada"

Donate to 2025 Anniversary Drive Keeping the public informed and the powerful in check for 10 years. Safeguard independent news for California’s future. https://giving.classy.org/campaign/696431/donate?c_src=social&c_src2=share

Reporting like this is only possible with lots (and lots) of donations

Support @calmatters.org independent journalism today so we can keep covering California for another 10 years

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A woman whose house burned down in the Eaton Fire earlier this year couldn't cash a ~$900k check from State Farm because, as somebody in the check-hold department of her bank said, the insurer's account had a negative balance.

The largest property insurer in the state. A negative balance.

Posted and deleted this like three times because I got the mention wrong and then forgot (??) to put in the URL. Geez, I'm even worse at social media today than normal

Gavin Newsom ordered state workers back to the office. Why he backtracked Newsom argued state employees needed to boost productivity and rebuild public trust by working in-office nearly full-time. Why delay? Politics, critics say.

Was Gov. Newsom's return to office mandate a ploy for contract negotiations? @mayacmiller.bsky.social looks into it for her first story @calmatters.org

calmatters.org/politics/202...

Which, you know, might be a good reason for high ranking government officials to not conduct business on commercial platforms like Signal? Maybe?

Among other things (record retention laws, adding journalists into the chat, etc)

Turns out it’s not always bad news! Hope you get some good results too

I know I’m old because one of the best emails I got today was from my doctor letting me know my cholesterol is way down. Hell ya

YouTube video by Evident Media Masked, Armed, Forceful: Finding Patterns in California Immigration Raids

New 3-minute documentary from @calmatters.org @sergioolmos.bsky.social @bellingcat.com @evidentmedia.org show comprehensively how widespread the immigration raids in the Los Angeles area have been.

Doc geotagged/verified 100+ videos of raids
These occurred at:
-15+ Home Depots
-Private farmland

Here's a timeline of the catastrophic Texas floods NPR has compiled a timeline of when local, state and federal officials posted warnings on social media as well as the timeline of events as presented by local officials.

And as somebody who lives near the American River, this is _terrifying_:

“The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within 45 minutes”

More than 6 inches a minute…

www.npr.org/2025/07/05/n...

The disaster in Texas is so sad for the families and communities who lost somebody or are still searching for them.

May their memories forever be blessings 🙏

A (super) negative downstream effect of election map-based coverage and descriptions like “deep red state”

Gross idea even before you consider that kids died and kids can’t vote in the US

Bond financing is a morass (or at least seems like one) that I haven’t dug into much… yet

Thanks for your continued support of what we’re up to at CalMatters :)

But the major similarity I see between the two states: neither of the two currently provides much transparency if it's not accompanied by substantial, subsequent reporting.

So if you read some nonprofit journalism that you like maybe throw that newsroom a few $$? I _promise_ you that they need it.

TX doesn't require lobbyists to disclose what bills or issues they talk about in private meetings. CA does - sort of. There's a spot on the form where the lobbyist can write the topics discussed and many write bill numbers but not all.

I've seen a filing with the bills all combined like "AB12345"

Differences I noticed between Texas and California's disclosure requirements?

TX has a daily threshold for reporting gifts, under which they don't need to be disclosed. CA has an annual gift limit ($590 last year) capping the amount an official can receive from a single source.

And since she's talking about Musk's companies: SpaceX, Tesla, and X all lobby California officials and last year they spent a combined total of nearly $660,0000, roughly the same amount for 2023.

Want to know who Elon Musk's lobbyists wined and dined? It's a Texas-sized secret. Musk's lobbyists spent thousands to wine and dine elected officials. But exactly how they accomplished Musk's goals is more of a mystery.

I spent a lots of time in (and complaining about) California's lobbying data so I _love_ to read about the deficiencies of other state's disclosures.

The latest from @lmcgaughy.bsky.social goes through what you can and can't learn from Texas transparency reports

www.kut.org/politics/202...

Even if you're not shomer shabbos, it's a mitzvah to refrain from lighting fireworks.

I used to live one block off of DeKalb Ave more than a hundred and twenty years later and sure do wish it had looked like this

According to the lawsuit, people are being held in an “ICE basement holding area in downtown Los Angeles” where conditions are “dungeon-like”

More reporting from @wendyfry.bsky.social and @sergioolmos.bsky.social on the immigration raids in California

Thanks! That's a good one since it also returns a boolean. I'll use that in the future, appreciate it

Incarcerated firefighters in California currently earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day and get an additional $1 per hour when deployed to an active emergency.

In 2026, the state will start to pay them $7.25/hour in line with the federal minimum wage. The state's minimum wage is $16.50/hour.

Just me or is it super annoying that the Javascript `.includes()` string method doesn't accept a regular expression?

big beautiful bill passing would make the budget for ice larger than most of the world’s militaries

A screenshot of "News Spectrum," a website that collections screenshots of news sources with different political biases, that shows the Combs verdict is the top headline on: The Huffington Post, NBC News, The Drudge Report, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, Fox News, NPR and the New York Post

I get that our society is obsessed with celebrities and the allegations (now convictions) against Combs are v. serious but it's THE headline for news outlets across the political spectrum on a day with a newly constructed Florida concentration camp and major legislation before the US House?