The Brief

Susan Bustamante isn’t giving up.

The formerly incarcerated 71-year-old woman has repeatedly made the long trip from Orange County to Sacramento to urge lawmakers to pass legislation she believes would help her fellow domestic abuse victims facing criminal charges.

Each time, lawmakers seemed supportive — and then killed her bill in secret.

She hopes the fourth year in a row will be different.

Bustamante is again pushing for a measure, which police and prosecutors oppose, that would allow survivors of human trafficking and intimate partner or sexual violence to cite their abuse as a legal defense when facing charges for violent crimes, with the exception of most murder cases.

Those already convicted could also petition a judge to vacate their convictions. If the judge approves, their arrests and convictions would be treated as though they never happened. Their case files would be sealed and destroyed. Any fines and unpaid restitution to victims would be waived.

“I’m willing to fight for those who are not in the position that I am right now to be able to open my mouth and … fight for this,” she told CalMatters in an interview on Friday.

In 1987, Bustamante was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors alleged she hired her brother to kill her husband, Steven Bustamante, and helped dispose of his body for a $100,000 life insurance payout she split with her sibling.

Bustamante said she wasn’t allowed to tell jurors in her two-day trial about how her husband beat her and repeatedly threatened to kill her. She said she only asked her brother for help.

“The idea that he would kill Steven never occurred to me,” she told lawmakers last month. “Later, he called me to say that Steven was dead. He threatened to call the police and say I planned it. He blackmailed me for Steven’s insurance. I was afraid of having my daughters taken from me, so I gave in.”

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown commuted Bustamante’s sentence in 2017 after learning her story and reviewing her spotless prison record. Bustamante was freed the next year after three decades behind bars.

Bustamante said she would not qualify to have her case vacated under the measure.

California law already allows defendants to cite abuse they experienced and call in expert witnesses who can explain how their suffering affected their behavior. Judges also can factor in a defendant’s history with human trafficking and domestic violence during sentencing. This bill takes it further by allowing them to cite their abuse as a legal defense when charged with a violent crime.

California law also allows those charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses to petition courts for similar legal relief.

Appropriations committees kill bills

In the years since her release, Bustamante got involved with nonprofits that help people such as her navigate their past abuse and incarceration as they seek to reintegrate into life outside of prison.

Bustamante first testified before the Legislature about the need for the bill in 2023.

Since then, each year at least one of the Legislature’s two public safety committees approved similar legislation before an appropriations committee killed it.

Twice a year, the Legislature’s two appropriations committees meet to quickly and with no debate kill hundreds of bills.

As CalMatters has reported, powerful special-interest groups, the governor’s office and state agencies secretly lobby the committees to kill bills. Legislative leaders also use the committees to kill politically touchy measures that lawmakers prefer not to go on record voting against in public hearings.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to hear Oakland Democratic Assemblymember Mia Bonta’s abuse bill next month.

Riverside Democratic Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, the new chairperson of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declined to comment through a spokesperson.

Why DAs and police oppose

Law enforcement officials fear Bonta’s Assembly Bill 910 would allow violent criminals, including rapists, kidnappers and child molesters, to burden California’s backlogged judiciary system with a rash of petitions to vacate their convictions.

They say it’s an especially troubling example of how progressive Democrats keep trying to water down penalties for dangerous criminals, with little thought to their victims.

“To basically allow them to walk away from a violent crime in terms of accountability is just absurd policy,” said Greg Totten, a former Ventura County district attorney who heads the state’s DA association.

Totten noted that defendants already have the right to argue they were abused or trafficked during sentencing hearings.

Bonta didn’t return an interview request, but she told the Senate Public Safety Committee last month that “AB 910 is a second chance bill, a dignity bill.”

“Survivors should not spend their lives paying for abuse they endured,” she said.

At least 17 organizations, including ACLU California Action and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, support the bill, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

Supporters argue hardly anyone convicted of violent crimes actually would qualify under the proposed new law.

For the few who do, advocates say it would be much cheaper to allow abuse victims to reintegrate into society without their felony convictions being used against them as they look for jobs, housing and other support.

“If even one person is granted relief under this bill, it will pay for itself,” said Leigh LaChapelle, director of policy and advocacy at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Inglewood Mayor James Butts and Councilmember Gloria Gray are prepared for a runoff, each said after the first set of results came in for the city’s mayoral race Tuesday night.

Early results showed Gray with 34.51% and Butts with 29.88%, though counting will continue over coming days. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, Inglewood will hold a runoff.

Butts sat down to address supporters just after 9:30 p.m. at his election night watch party on Market Street.

He said that with more votes being counted, the election is far from over — but he’s ready for a possible showdown between himself and Gray, the leading challenger.

“If it is a runoff between myself and Ms. Gray, we’re going to crush her,” he said.

At her campaign headquarters on Crenshaw Boulevard, Gray told a crowd “it’s not done until it’s over.”

“But when you see the numbers,” she said, “we have a great chance because the mayor is very vulnerable.”

A possible runoff comes as Butts has led Inglewood for 15 years, presiding over what he has described as a renaissance that has brought world-class stadiums and venues to the city, which previously faced a financial crisis. Yet some question whether that development is actually helping longtime residents and business owners, and whether Butts and other city officials are being transparent in their decision-making.

This election season has been marked by big money from the stadiums — who gave Gray a $25,000 donation and whose relationship with Butts has soured — and a billboard company that’s working with the city. Most recently, an Inglewood High School student filed a claim alleging that Butts inappropriately touched her, which Butts has denied and said is part of the “political warfare” he’s facing.

Whoever ultimately wins the office will lead the city when the Olympics come to town in 2028 and will be responsible for reconstructing the city’s tattered financial relationship with SoFi Stadium. 

Butts said that Inglewood’s stadiums have spent the election season trying to take control of the city and pointed to the combined millions they’ve spent on ballot measure campaigns and the mayor’s race.

“They are so condescending. They’ve come to believe of us that all they have to do is drop six pieces of mail on your doorstep and you’ll vote against yourself,” he said.

Butts’ own campaign has pulled in support from billboard companies and developers.

Patsy Nimmers, an Inglewood resident and supporter of Butts, said it’s still too early to tell how the race will shake out. She said some voters are worried about change, but that she believes Butts has done a terrific job guiding the city.

“Nobody has done what Mayor Butts has done,” she said.

Meanwhile, Gray’s supporters cheered and clapped as she arrived at campaign headquarters, sharing the early results with her.

“You’re on your way,” one woman told her.

The post Inglewood mayor and the leading challenger say they’re ready for a runoff appeared first on LA Local.

Midterms coverage: Live results | What to know | Stories around the country
All the signs were pointing in Democrats' direction heading into election night.

But nothing indicated quite this level of a romp.

Democrats won the House and the Senate, and while that outcome was always a possibility, the depth and breadth of the Democratic victories were jaw-dropping.

Tuesday night was a reminder that the pendulum of American politics continues to swing, and politics is never permanent.

Here are six takeaways about what happened, why it happened and what it all means going forward:

1. President Trump wanted this election to be about him. It was, and that hurt Republicans

President Trump leaves after speaking at a midterm election campaign rally at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa on Oct. 22.

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President Donald Trump's unpopularity has been a glaring warning sign for the Republican Party heading into election night. Since the Iran war, Trump's approval ratings slid from 48% to as low as 36% in an average of the polls.

A whopping 62% of voters in this election disapproved of his job as president, according to the voter poll commissioned by the broadcast networks and the Associated Press, which mixes pre-Election Day polling of early voters and Election Day exit polls.

Three-quarters of voters said they are either angry or dissatisfied with the direction of the country. A plurality said the economy was the most important issue, and two-thirds said Trump's policies have made economic conditions worse.

In addition to the economy, corruption rose as an issue in the last several months. The voter poll showed that 62% said Trump prioritizes his own interests more than the country's.

For all of the things that will be written about this election, the bottom line is that Trump waged the kind of war he said he wouldn't get into — one that is dragging on, raising gas prices and piling on people who were already feeling the pinch — and now he is paying the price.

If Trump was supposed to be the kingmaker in the 2028 Republican presidential primary, think again. These midterms will have heavy reverberations for the presidential election. It will likely mean more GOP candidates will enter the race, and they will be more likely to present a wider view of what the direction of the party could be — rather than simply trying to carry the Trump torch.

2. Republicans tried to insulate themselves with redistricting, but it didn't work

The fundamentals of this election seemed to mirror the 2006 midterms amid the Iraq War — the last time the Democrats won back both the House and Senate. Democratic gains in this election, though, were seen as possibly being limited by structural disadvantages — primarily through Republican efforts to tilt the playing by redistricting.

Trump strongly encouraged conservative-led states to redistrict over the last year, hoping to gain more Republican seats in the House — but that backfired, particularly in south Texas. There was always the possibility that incidentally weakening safe districts could make them competitive. Now that that's happened, it's a true cautionary tale of the "dummymander."

3. Latinos are a true swing group in America now

The reason Texas Republicans' efforts to gerrymander didn't pay off is because Latinos did not vote in this election the way they did in the 2024 presidential election.

In 2024, Trump only lost the group by 5 points. It moved toward Trump at the time, in large measure because they were upset with inflation and believed Trump would bring down prices.

Not only did that not happen over the last two years, Trump also angered many in the community because of aggressive deportation tactics that targeted more than just hardened criminals, as Trump promised.

In a real indictment of the Trump deportation policies, roughly 60% of respondents in the voter poll said they disapproved of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics disapproved of how ICE is handling its job.

To be clear, Latinos are not a monolith. Latinos in South Florida have different backgrounds and priorities than those in South Texas or those in California or New York. But the fact that the largest-growing group in the country swung strongly away from the president and Republicans makes them very important electorally — a true swing group in the country that is underrepresented at the polls and has a lot of power.

4. Are Texas and other red states in play for Democrats, or was this election a giant asterisk?

Texas Democratic Sen.-elect James Talarico speaks during a midterm election night event at the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin on Tuesday.

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Democrats won in a lot of red states. That is important for the party heading into the 2028 presidential election. To have a real chance at expanding the presidential map, they need to figure out how to appeal to red-state and rural voters. They showed in this election they can do that, but they won't have Trump as their rocket fuel in this next presidential election.

The Lone Star State, for example, has been a majority-minority state for a while, and that demography had previously given Democrats false hope. So is Texas the new Georgia, or will it revert to its conservative roots?

The breadth of Democratic victories in Texas in this midterm is undeniable. They won up and down the ballot — Democrat James Talarico won by roughly 12 points, or 1.1 million votes, the first time Texas is sending a Democrat to the Senate since 1988; incoming Gov. Gina Hinojosa won by 7 percentage points, or almost 700,000 votes; they flipped two congressional districts, both of which were won by Trump in 2024 by at least 14 points; they won lieutenant governor; attorney general; railroad commissioner and more.

As they say in Texas, they beat 'em like a rented mule. But are Democrats renting power in the state or is it something bigger? There is going to be a lot of money spent in 2028 to see if the blue gains in Texas are more permanent. And a lot is on the line, because Texas has 40 electoral votes, and putting it in play legitimately for Democrats would reshape the electoral map in a way that would only be rivaled by the earthquake of a shift that was California going for Democrats starting in 1992. (Yes, California used to be a reliably Republican state, going for the GOP in all but one election between 1952 and 1988.)

By the way, a bonus lesson from this election is that money isn't everything. Republicans spent more than $413 million on the Texas Senate race — and lost.

5. The results of this year's elections don't mean the country is enamored with the Democratic Party

Voters cast their ballots in the Kern County Elections Office in Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday.

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Democrats have the opportunity to show they can authentically represent their states and try to hold onto these inroads they made in lots of red states and districts.

They were handed the keys to Congress, and people are going to expect results. New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the once majority leader who may want to be in the job again, victoriously promised overnight that "relief is on the way."

But how? Even if Democrats have serious policy ideas to help fix economic problems in the country, they can't wave a magic wand. They won't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and they are unlikely to have an eager negotiating partner in congressional Republicans or Trump. Just before midnight on election night, Trump put out an image on his social media platform of a big red hat with the word "VETO" on it.

So Democrats are in danger of overpromising and underdelivering, which has become all too common in politics, and leads to voters becoming jaded. Democrats have to be careful with their messaging and how they govern. There will undoubtedly be more investigations and oversight of the Trump administration. But how far will they go? Another Trump impeachment attempt, for example, could be politically fraught.

No doubt, the GOP was soundly rejected Tuesday night, but Democrats aren't much better liked. The voter poll showed Republicans underwater with a 41% favorable and 59% unfavorable rating. Democrats were 47%-53%. Democrats had lower approval ratings earlier in Trump's second term, mostly because of disaffected Democrats. They rallied together to win in these midterms, but fissures on the left are simmering below the surface and are about to become far more apparent in the 2028 presidential Democratic primaries.

6. The polls got the direction right. If anything, they underestimated Democratic support

For a decade, polls have underestimated Republican support. In these elections, that was not the case. In fact, in some places they underestimated Democratic support.

For example, the national generic congressional ballot — the question of who people would vote for if the election was held the day of the poll — favored Democrats by about 8 percentage points. The voter poll looks like it turned out to be at least +18.

It's important to understand that it's hard to poll when the country has been going through as significant a political realignment as it has been in the Trump era.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The state of California has agreed to accept $1.4 billion in federal funding to bring broadband internet access to 270,000 people while simultaneously challenging conditions attached to the funding.

Those conditions would stop the state from enforcing broadband laws that reduce costs and guarantee equal access for internet destinations.

California is the last state to accept money from a broadband program created in 2021 as part of an infrastructure bill passed during the Biden administration.

Under terms updated by the Trump administration one year ago, states that accept funding from the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment program must stop enforcing net neutrality rules, which ensure equal connection speeds for every app and website, as well as any rules that influence broadband internet costs. California enjoys the strongest net neutrality laws in the nation.

In recent weeks, digital access advocates argued that if the state accepts the money without meaningfully challenging the terms, it could endanger communities reliant on internet access for emergency services and raise costs for low-income Californians who receive internet subsidies. Through 2040, accepting the terms could cost Californians up to $16 billion, according to an estimate from open internet advocacy group Public Knowledge.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said it is both taking the federal money and maintaining its access rules. In a written statement shared with CalMatters, Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for the governor, said that “Connecting these communities is the goal, and so is protecting them. California's laws, including our net neutrality protections, still stand."

The president of the California Public Utilities Commission, the agency chosen by Newsom to administer the program, provided the federal agency that administers the program with both a signed notice that California will accept the funding and a letter that calls the terms vague and outside of the commission’s legal authority. The letter sent Monday also acknowledges that the state will not distribute program funding to companies like Comcast, Pacific Bell, SpaceX, and Verizon until disagreements about the terms are resolved.

“The CPUC cannot be bound by any terms or conditions that are unconstitutional or not authorized by law and it expressly does not waive or concede any arguments or challenges concerning the legality, interpretation, or applicability of any term or condition,” wrote CPUC president John Reynolds in the letter.

Stephen Yusko, a spokesperson for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the Department of Commerce, responded to the letter today by saying that the terms and conditions of the award constitute the entire agreement between his agency and the utilities commission.

“No part of the letter outlining CPUC’s concerns is incorporated into or made part of the award,” he said in a statement provided to CalMatters.

Last month, a group of law professors who work on issues related to internet freedom and access urged the utilities commission and governor’s office not to accept the money without challenging the terms in court. Stanford University professor Barbara van Schewick told CalMatters that “only a court, or NTIA agreeing in writing, can take [the access terms] out of California’s award, and neither has happened.”

But she said she’s happy to see the letter makes clear that the state will not sign agreements with companies getting the federal broadband funding until the utilities commission and federal government resolve their disagreement over the terms. It also preserves a strong legal argument that the utilities commission lacks the authority to prevent other state entities from enforcing the law.

“The real test comes the first time a BEAD provider blocks a competitor’s app, throttles firefighters, or walks away from a price commitment,” she told CalMatters. “If the state enforces its laws when that happens, the letter will have protected Californians.”

She added: “If the state looks the other way, [the terms] will have worked exactly as the providers intended, without a single court ever ruling on it.”

Phil Grosse is a member of the California Democratic Party Rural Caucus. In recent weeks, Grosse and dozens of community leaders along the Russian River in Sonoma County urged the governor to challenge the broadband funding terms in court before accepting the money. He believes the terms would end phone service guarantees and backup battery power for cellular towers, endangering the lives of rural Californians.

“We can’t accept the money without all kinds of poisoned pills attached to it, and I’m glad the CPUC acknowledged that, and that they are bound to follow state laws and regulations,” he said, adding that he anticipates the whole ordeal will end up in court. “I’m hopeful the Trump administration will see the wisdom in the CPUC’s letter but I’m rather doubtful.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Millions of dollars of settlement money from the largest known methane leak in the United States are now available to affected residents to replace gas-powered appliances with electric ones. Organizations involved in distributing the money say it will help create safer and cleaner homes.

The announcement makes available the first $20 million in incentive funding from the Aliso Canyon settlement to help home and building owners impacted by the 2015 Los Angeles-area blowout. In total, the program will make $40 million available to help people install heat pumps that cool and heat homes, electric stoves, water heaters and other appliances.

Evan Kamei is the director of TECH Clean California, a state program helping distribute the settlement money. He said the incentives “will help create healthier homes, lower energy costs, deliver cooling, and create local jobs by replacing aging gas appliances with efficient electric appliances.”

Anyone in the affected area with a single-family home will be eligible for the incentives, and certain income-qualifying residents will be eligible for extra funding. Access for multi-property owners will come later.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak took nearly four months to control, sickened thousands of families and forced them from their homes near the San Fernando Valley to escape a sulfurous stench and maladies including headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

The natural gas storage well failed and uncontrollably released nearly 100,000 tons of methane and other substances into the atmosphere for more than 100 days. Methane is a potent, heat-trapping gas that contributes to extreme weather events worldwide through climate change. The natural gas facility involved in the blowout temporarily closed and later reopened at reduced capacity after being deemed safe to operate.

In 2021, thousands of families reached a settlement of up to $1.8 billion with the Southern California Gas Co. and its parent company, Sempra Energy. Some 35,000 plaintiffs were compensated after complaining of personal injury and property damage to their homes. SoCalGas spent more than $1 billion on the blowout, with most of the money going to temporarily relocate 8,000 families.

Weldon Kennedy is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Copper, a California startup that sells electric induction stoves and ovens. He said his company got involved with the program to distribute settlement money after the group Energy Solutions highlighted how hard it would be to get people to switch their cooking appliances from gas to electric.

“People have a cultural attachment to gas when it comes to cooking,” Kennedy said. The kind of appliances Copper sells may help mitigate that attachment because they can be plugged into a regular outlet without the expense of rewiring that is usually associated with switching from gas-powered appliances to electric ones.

Cooking with electricity comes with health benefits. Gas stoves, which 47 million Americans use, release pollutants like nitrogen dioxide that’s been linked to asthma and cancer-causing benzene.

Products like electric appliances are one way to address the significant amount of pollution driving climate change that comes from cooking, heating and cooling living spaces and providing hot water in buildings.

Income-qualified residents affected by the Aliso leak are eligible for up to $31,800 worth of incentives to cover the cost of electric installations in their homes.

Switching from gas to electricity can save energy and lower bills.

Carol Kamei, Evan Kamei’s 72-year-old mother, has lived for 46 years near the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Facility and was one of the plaintiffs in the case against SoCal Gas. She remembers smelling gas and getting nose bleeds. When she read in the news that the leak was also spewing cancer-causing benzene, she knew it was time to go.

Carol Kamei said her nose bleeds went away after moving in with her sister in Hollywood for three months. She recently participated in a health study by the University of California, Los Angeles and found out she has diminished lung capacity, one of the health impacts researchers look for, she said.

“I do know some people that have died from blood-borne illnesses, cancer since then,” Carol Kamei said.

Kamei hopes to use the incentive funding to replace her oven with an electric one. “I’d rather not use gas,” she said.