California Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics

California's Attorney General sued to block a $111 billion media merger — then settled it after Newsom, Bass, and Becerra personally pushed him to fold. The deal is being sold as a win for California jobs. It doesn't actually require a single one of those jobs to be in California.

This episode: the fine print behind the Paramount-Warner Bros. settlement and what it really protects; why Nithya Raman's 11-point lead over Karen B...

Three stories this week, one pattern: public money and public land moving to insiders through systems with almost no oversight.

First — a Los Angeles nonprofit took in $118 million in public funds to house homeless people. Prosecutors say $12 million of it went to a nightclub, luxury travel, and vintage cars. But the detail that doesn't make the headline: some of the people the system reported as "housed" were fabricated. Fake...

Voter ID has passed in 36 states. California could be next — and the measure on this ballot is trailing in the polls even though the same policy wins by a landslide almost everywhere else in the country. Orange County GOP Chairman Will O'Neill joins Phil and Camille to make the case for Prop 39 (voter ID and citizenship verification) and Prop 5, a recall reform written by the one state legislator who's actually lived through ...

LA County set aside $10 million specifically for fire victims. A revised board motion, passed months later with little public notice, cut that fund in half — the same year the county filed a lawsuit publicly branding itself as fire survivors' defender.

This episode also covers the one Napa winery that's been paid back after a 2025 fire that destroyed dozens of others' harvests — co-founded by the governor.

California's s...

In 2012, California voters approved Proposition 30 — officially titled "Temporary Taxes to Fund Education." The new tax brackets were written to expire in 2018. Voters extended them in 2016. This November, Proposition 3 asks whether to remove the expiration entirely.

Phil and Camille go through what those fourteen years actually produced. Funding did rise: per-student spending increased 14% after inflation, and California clim...

A California Assemblyman named his own nonprofit "Nonprofit of the Year" — three weeks before it received a $6 million line item in the state budget he helped pass. In this episode, we pull that exact page of the budget and show what else is on it: a group tied to last year's Los Angeles riots that helped write the law shielding organizations like itself from public scrutiny, and a grant program with a documented history of f...

Los Angeles pays a qualifying mayoral candidate six dollars in public money for every one dollar an individual donates — and in the current mayor's race, challenger Nithya Raman has drawn more of that taxpayer match than Karen Bass.

Phil and Camille break down how the public matching-funds program actually works, why the "isn't it a First Amendment violation to fund a candidate I oppose?" objection reached the Supreme Court t...

California's billionaire tax is on the ballot this fall — and almost nobody fighting over it is who you'd expect. The state's own nonpartisan analyst won't back the $100 billion revenue number the sponsors are citing. A 1979 law from the same tax revolt that gave California Prop 13 has been rewritten as a legal kill switch aimed squarely at this measure. And the single largest donor bankrolling the opposition moved his reside...

In 2024, Governor Newsom hired a new CEO to run California's high-speed rail and said the state would "begin to lay track, design and build stations, and buy trains." Two years later: the trainset procurement line in the state's own 2026 Business Plan is blank. No trains have been bought. We pull the paperwork.

We also get into California's Democratic Party convention — where the party endorsed the billionaire tax on the Novem...

Gavin Newsom said his administration's diaper deal with Baby2Baby — a nonprofit tied to his wife's own foundation — was competitively bid. California's own contract database says it wasn't.

This week: the receipts on the $6.2 million diaper contract, Newsom's affair resurfaces, Sheng Thao crime story continues to expand, and why the Attorney General's rewritten ballot title for the voter ID initiative has people on both ...

Gavin Newsom says he'll campaign for any Democratic nominee heading into 2028 — but his team went quiet when asked if that includes candidates from a self-described "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" caucus. This week: what Newsom actually said, what he wouldn't answer, and what it means for his national ambitions.

Also on the show: Katie Porter was a frontrunner for governor a year ago. She just finished fifth with 4.4% of the vote &m...

This week, Phil is joined by guest co-host Randy Wang of KABC Radio for three stories out of Sacramento and LA that all come down to the same question: who's actually accountable when the numbers don't add up?

First, the documented timeline behind the FBI's investigation into Gavin Newsom's former chief of staff, Dana Williamson — including new reporting that an informant was recording conversations inside Newsom's political c...

California's proposed billionaire tax says it will raise $100 billion for healthcare, food assistance, and education. New research from Stanford's Hoover Institution puts the real number closer to $40 billion — and argues the measure could leave the state worse off once billionaire departures are factored in.

This week, Phil talks with Hoover Institution research fellow Benjamin Robert Jaros, co-author of that research, about...

Spencer Pratt is calling Karen Bass "Karen Basura" over the Boyle Heights warehouse fire — and while his delivery is pure reality TV, the documented $17.6 million fire department budget cut he's pointing to is real. We dig into the permit history, the budget records, and why the firefighters' union is now bypassing City Hall to ask voters directly for funding.

Then: Gavin Newsom wants a national billionaire tax as part of his ...

Democrats have held this San Bernardino County Assembly seat since 2022. This week, theRepublican trying to flip it joins us to make his case.

Greg Abdouch advanced to the November general election in California's AssemblyDistrict 45, and he's betting he can do what no Republican challenger has managed inthis district in years. We sit down with him to find out how — pushing past thecampaign talking points to get specifics on p...

Federal agents are knocking on the doors of Governor Gavin Newsom's family friends and former employees. Newsom says Trump ordered the investigation to derail his 2028 presidential run. The LA Times says the probe started under Biden — launched by whistleblowers in Sacramento, not directed from Washington. Tonight Phil and Camille separate what's confirmed from what's spin, and get into the documented financial questions abou...

California held its primary election a week ago and we still don't have a governor or a Los Angeles mayor. Here's why — and why none of it is as simple as either side is telling you.

This week Phil and Camille break down everything happening with California's election system in real time. How does counting actually work in the largest voting state in the country, and why does it take so long? What are "ballot dumps" — an...

California just voted — and the governor's race is shaping up as a matchup nobody fully predicted: Steve Hilton, former Fox News host and Trump-endorsed candidate, leading with roughly 28% in early returns, and Xavier Becerra, Biden's HHS secretary, holding second at around 25%. With ballots still being counted through June 9, the second-place slot isn't fully locked — but the likely November choice for California's nex...

One week before the June 2nd California primary, we brought in five guests across the political spectrum to break down every race that matters.

The governor's race is in chaos. Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress in April — his name is still on the ballot — and Democrats are splitting their vote five ways while Republicans have largely consolidated behind two candidates. There's a real scenario where no Democrat makes i...