California Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics

One week before the election, here is where California actually stands, with no spin. We go through the governor's race, the Los Angeles mayor's race, Prop 39 (voter ID and citizenship verification) and Prop 40 (the one-time billionaire tax).The governor's race isn't close, so we look at the better question: how much ground the Republican nominee gains for future candidates, and why election night won't answer it. Prop 40 can win a majority of votes and still be cancelled, because Props 41 and 42 are written to override it. We read the Legislative Analyst's numbers against the $100 billion headline, and what Meta's SEC filing says about the tax. Prop 39 is called voter ID, but most of the change falls on mail ballots, and a federal lawsuit over 20,000 ballots is moving through the courts as we record. In Los Angeles, one voter in three hasn't picked a mayor.We don't recommend how to vote. We tell you what the documents say, what each side wants you to believe, and what we don't know yet.Sources: https://lao.ca.gov/ballot/2026/prop40-110326.pdf https://lao.ca.gov/ballot/2026/prop39-110326.pdf https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001326801/000162828026066710/meta-20261021.htm https://laist.com/brief/news/politics/9th-circuit-questions-doj-demand-to-set-aside-20-000-california-mail-ballotsPhil's book on California political dysfunction, The Gilded State: www.thegildedstate.com

play-by-play of the CNN debate between Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, candidates for California governor. Phil goes through the debate exchange by exchange, tracking whether each answer included something checkable, whether it ended at Trump, and whether the question was answered. Hilton's numbers get checked too. This is Phil's opinion, with the documents behind it.Nothing here is a voting recommendation. Check the documents and decide for yourself.For Phil's book on California government failures, The Gilded State: www.thegildedstate.com

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 Bass sits next to a City Council vote against LAPD Olympic security funding, and why a 36-to-1 outside-money advantage hasn't been enough to save Bass; and what a new Politico/UC Berkeley poll on 2028 Democratic enthusiasm reveals about Newsom's job approval, Harris's standing, and a governor whose PAC has bought its way onto bestseller lists before.California Underground covers the California stories the rest of the media ignores — the audits, the contracts, the budgets, and the officials responsible for outcomes that aren't matching the promises. No team. Just receipts.Get The Gilded State, Phil's book on California political dysfunction: thegildedstate.com

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 welcome letters, forged sign-in sheets, ghost clients created so a fraudster could bill for housing people who were never there. And the nonprofit at the center is now named in two separate LA political corruption cases — one involving a sitting city councilman on trial for 12 felony counts.Second — California's high-speed rail authority is already $93 billion over its original budget with zero track laid. This week its own inspector general found consultants billed for a nightclub, a cigar lounge, gym trips, and a $40 rideshare for a one-mile trip in downtown Sacramento. The firm that submitted the nightclub bill also employs the CEO's fiancée. When the IG told the agency to require justification for each trip, the agency said it didn't think it should have to. You're funding this project through California's cap-and-trade program — every time you buy gas.Third — 73% of Californians oppose AI data centers in their communities. This week we look at how those data centers are getting built anyway: through cash-strapped county fairgrounds, 100-year land leases, a six-month-old company whose own subsidiaries aren't registered anywhere, and a state official whose daughter works for the company making the pitch. We also connect a thread no outlet has reported: the rail authority's own revenue recovery plan involves leasing its public land corridor to AI data centers — the exact same play, running through two different arms of California government at the same time.We also talk about why fear of AI is legitimate, Murray Rothbard's argument from The Progressive Era that when big companies ask to be regulated it's usually to lock out competition, and what True Detective Season 2 got right about California ten years before any of this happened.California Underground is independent California accountability media. No corporate backing, no advertisers, no team. Just the documents.For deeper reading on how California got here: The Gilded Statewww.thegildedstate.comcaunderground.substack.com

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 a successful recall himself.We get into what Prop 39 would actually require at the polls and by mail, who's funding the campaign behind it, and why it's polling worse in California than nationally. Then we turn to Prop 5 — the mechanism problem it's solving, the irony of its authorship, and the structural objection Republicans have to how it would work in practice.No vote recommendations here — just the documents, the money, and the mechanism, so you can decide for yourself.Read more from Phil in The Gilded State, his book on California's political dysfunction.www.thegildedstate.com