CalMatters

After a years-long battle reignited in recent months by controversies over misunderstandings of critical race theory, California students will soon be required to take ethnic studies to graduate high school. 

A new cough. The beginnings of a fever. A note from your boss about a COVID case at work. 

California’s clean-air regulators on Tuesday unveiled a far-reaching proposal requiring a ramp-up in sales of zero-emission cars, culminating in a ban on new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. 

Hospitals are at capacity. COVID-19 infections are at record highs. Testing lines stretch for hours. Yet even as the omicron variant batters the state, only 38% of vaccinated Californians have gotten a booster shot.

The first two months of 2022 are shaping up to be the driest January and February in California history, prompting state officials to warn of dire water conditions ahead. 

California is flush with cash — the state has an estimated budget surplus of $21 billion — and, separately, gas prices are way up. 

Today, as COVID-19 case rates in California have jumped to their highest levels yet — more than six times the peak of the delta variant wave — updated workplace rules are kicking in to better help protect workers vaccinated against COVID-19.

Recessions in California tend to widen the gap between rich and poor. The sharp pandemic downturn of 2020 followed this pattern with low-income workers suffering the most. But unprecedented government relief kept millions from falling into poverty, and demand for labor boosted wages when businesses reopened.

Vowing to be smarter after lessons learned over the past two years, the Newsom administration yesterday gave a glimpse of what the next few months — and potentially years — may look like in California with COVID-19 likely to stick around.