California Today

The best of our readers’ love letters to California.

By Soumya Karlamangla

There are only a few states where Covid is spreading more.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Vice President Kamala Harris’s credentials are already well-known. But Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has deep connections to the Golden State, too.

By Soumya Karlamangla

During my time on the newsletter, I had a goal to report from all of the state’s 58 counties. Readers came through with plenty of ideas.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Our California-focused newsletter will feature a curated collection of New York Times articles about the state.

By Soumya Karlamangla

There isn’t much science to it.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Some 207,000 acres have burned so far this year, more than five times the average.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Here are readers’ choices for some of the books published since 2000 that are most representative of the state.

By Soumya Karlamangla

An enormous overpass in Southern California is “more than just a bridge,” an official said.

By Soumya Karlamangla

In many places, a scorching Independence Day led into an even hotter weekend.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Fireworks touch off blazes in California that cause millions of dollars in damage each year.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Several cities in the state will top 110 degrees over the next few days.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The budget includes $12 million for reparations measures for the state’s Black residents.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The county is investing $5 million to partner with a nonprofit and wipe out $500 million in debt for residents. The program is expected to start later this year.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Subjects include safety at work and in bars, and the cost of renting a home or buying a gun.

By Soumya Karlamangla

My colleague Emily Cochrane takes us behind the scenes of the hotline, which receives as many as 3,000 calls and messages a day.

By Soumya Karlamangla

New hobbies, graduation ceremonies and more.

By Soumya Karlamangla

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and some states banned abortions altogether, many Americans began crossing state lines to get one.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Businesses are fuming and cities are exhaling after the State Supreme Court blocked a ballot measure at the heart of a big fight in Sacramento.

By Shawn Hubler

More than two dozen wildfires have ignited in California this week, and experts warn of an extreme season ahead.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The strange “no U-turn” signs along Griffith Park Boulevard in Silver Lake were erected in the 1990s to ward off gay men.

By Jill Cowan

The State Assembly passed a bill banning colleges from considering family ties to donors or alumni in admissions decisions.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Some lawmakers are trying to carve out an exception for restaurant owners, who say simply raising prices without context would hurt their business.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The state’s various programs enroll 10,000 service members a year.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Big birthdays, new family members and spectacular adventures.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The young writer came across a tale in the Sierra Nevada foothills that would bring him national attention.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Dos Rios, near Modesto in the Central Valley, offers new green space in a part of the state that has little of it.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A judge dismissed some state charges against the assailant who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house in 2022, but he still faces life in prison if convicted.

By Soumya Karlamangla

California lawmakers are considering a bill that would require all new cars to be equipped to signal drivers when they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 m.p.h.

By Soumya Karlamangla

City officials decided to block testing of an experimental technology to fight global warming, even though experts hired by the city found that it posed no health risk to residents.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Inland parts of the state are expected to reach triple-digit temperatures this week.

By Jonathan Wolfe

Graduate teaching assistants and researchers plan to walk off the job at U.C. Santa Barbara, U.C. San Diego and U.C. Irvine, a week before final exams.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Officials of the conservancy that owns most of the island say they will try other ways to remove nonnative deer that are harming the ecosystem.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The answer is probably yes.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The New York Times mapped where and how the number of fatal shootings in the United States has grown since 2020.

By Soumya Karlamangla

We’re adding love letters and cautionary tales to our Golden State reading list.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A tug of war in San Francisco over whether to teach algebra in eighth or ninth grade gets at wider national questions about serving all students fairly.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Gene Block is scheduled to be among the latest group of university leaders to be grilled about antisemitism on campus.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Black and Latino families whose neighborhood was razed in the 1960s are seeking compensation from the city.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Some elected officials in California are rethinking public office in the face of increasing harassment.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The student workers’ union says the University of California’s handling of Israel-Hamas war protests may soon prompt walkouts at several campuses.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Looking for a movie to watch this weekend? Here are your recommendations.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The famed chapel in Southern California closed this year because of severe damage from a landslide. Leaders now say it will be disassembled until a new site is found.

By Douglas Morino

Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised spending plan to close a $27.6 billion gap, touching off what will probably be weeks of negotiations.

By Shawn Hubler

The W.N.B.A.’s 13th team, the first new franchise to join the league since 2008, will be called the Valkyries and will play at Chase Center in San Francisco starting next year.

By Heather Knight

A legislative package aimed at reducing retail crime includes a requirement for much closer supervision of self-checkout in stores.

By Soumya Karlamangla

If you’re looking for a way to enjoy the lovely weather, we’re here to help.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The view from Richmond, the diversity of Los Angeles and the stunningly green hills in spring are a few reasons to call California home, readers say.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Three leaders of major public school systems will appear before members of a House committee looking into claims of antisemitism in schools.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Why the state’s tourism agency ditched its “Dream Big” slogan after more than a decade.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The writer Franz Linz explores a federal plan to protect the spotted owl.

By Soumya Karlamangla

As U.S.C. and U.C.L.A. pick up the pieces, the two universities present dueling case studies in crisis management.

By Shawn Hubler

The Bay Lights installation, spanning 1.8 miles on the region’s workhorse bridge, has been off since March 2023. A bigger version will take its place.

By Heather Knight

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on the November ballot in California after securing a presidential nomination from the American Independent Party.

By Soumya Karlamangla

State demographers are optimistic that the population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

By Shawn Hubler

A special section of The New York Times on museums highlights art across the state.

By Soumya Karlamangla

We’ve added six books for young readers to our growing list of titles that reflect life in the Golden State.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Mayor Fred Keely likened trying to shore up the erosion-threatened West Cliff Drive to changing a tire while the car is still moving.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Our playlist reflects the breadth and diversity of the Golden State.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A challenge to a small Oregon city’s law that imposes fines on homeless people for sleeping outdoors could have big implications for the Golden State.

By Soumya Karlamangla and Shawn Hubler

The town threw a party for the opening of a $1.7 million public restroom.

By Heather Knight

Disney plans to spend at least $1.9 billion to develop and reimagine the park over the next decade.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Readers submitted small ways that the pandemic shifted their thinking for the better, or introduced a new joy into their life.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Probably because of a griffin-riding warrior queen.

By Soumya Karlamangla

“Harold and Maude,” “The Grapes of Wrath” and more.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The murder trial of O.J. Simpson was a defining part of a turbulent era in Los Angeles.

By Jill Cowan and Shawn Hubler

The appointment comes as Berkeley and college campuses across the country are facing turmoil over free speech, racial and political diversity, and affordability.

By Jill Cowan

Visitors make Hollywood Boulevard one of their first stops in Los Angeles. But when they arrive, the reality may not match the fantasy.

By Jill Cowan

Wildflowers are beginning to spring to life across the state after another wet winter.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The popularity of the Cornish pasty, a meat pie eaten by hand like a sandwich, is a legacy of the gold rush.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The Major League Baseball team says it will move to the capital region from Oakland for at least three years.

By Ryan Lillis

Around Camelback Ranch, the Dodgers’ spring training home in Phoenix, fans of all backgrounds were wearing Ohtani jerseys and many spoke Japanese and Spanish.

By Jill Cowan

It’s been a rainy winter, but that won’t necessarily mean fewer wildfires.

By Soumya Karlamangla

They now must be paid at least $20 an hour, near the top of what minimum-wage earners make anywhere in the country.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Readers have been writing in about some of their favorite things about California, including the biodiversity and the sense of community.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Before the season officially ends on Sunday, another storm is headed for the California coast.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A conversation with the Times reporter who wrote about Mayor Karen Bass’s flagship program to solve homelessness.

By Soumya Karlamangla

We’ve updated our ever-growing Golden State reading list.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A first-in-the-nation committee hopes to figure out how to make the Golden State a joyous place.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A much-anticipated start to baseball season was marred by theft allegations against the interpreter for Shohei Ohtani.

By Jill Cowan

Often called “the world’s smallest mountain range,” the Sutter Buttes are an unlikely and beloved landmark in one of the flattest parts of the state.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Opera and Los Angeles Philharmonic will all be getting new musical directors in the next two years.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Readers have been writing to me about ways that, despite all the tragedy, Covid brought something unexpectedly positive into their lives.

By Soumya Karlamangla

None of the proposals introduced since January include the direct cash payments to Black Californians that the state’s reparations task force recommended.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The Middletown Art Center in Lake County has turned into a “focal point for the area’s resilience and growth,” one resident said.

By Soumya Karlamangla

“The Big Lebowski,” “American Graffiti” and more classics are among the new choices.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The celebration of March 14 began as a weird Bay Area tradition.

By Soumya Karlamangla

San Jose and San Francisco had the highest E.V. adoption rate among major U.S. metropolitan areas last year.

By Nadja Popovich

The Golden State’s jobless rate remains stubbornly high.

By Kurtis Lee

In a city known as a progressive bastion, voters resoundingly passed two conservative-leaning ballot measures this week, on police authority and drug screening.

By Heather Knight

Representative Adam Schiff and the former M.L.B. player Steve Garvey will face off in November for a U.S. Senate seat.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The nominees for president and many other offices will be decided today, Super Tuesday, as voters in California and 14 other states head to the polls.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The state recently adopted some of the most lax Covid guidance in the nation.

By Soumya Karlamangla

A conversation with Robin Pogrebin, a Los Angeles-based arts writer for The New York Times.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The water-wars thriller “Chinatown” was recommended most by readers.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The Bok Kai Temple, honoring a water god, has stood in Marysville, 40 miles north of Sacramento, since the 1800s.

By Soumya Karlamangla

The state has invested $15 million to improve research and public education on Black history at more than two dozen California state park sites.

By Soumya Karlamangla

We’re adding Amy Tan’s San Francisco classic “The Joy Luck Club,” John Steinbeck’s early novel “Tortilla Flat” and more.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Voters will choose nominees for president and weigh in on state and local contests that could have big ramifications.

By Soumya Karlamangla

In Dana Point, three cliffside mansions teeter on the edge of beauty and peril after storms seemed to weaken the ground beneath them.

By Vik Jolly