It's Thursday. More women are expected to be elected to the California Legislature than ever before. Plus, fallout from major layoffs at Meta. |
 | | The lights of the State Capitol glowing into the night in Sacramento.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press |
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The first women in the California State Legislature were elected in 1918, before most American women had gained the ability to vote. Here in the Golden State, women got the right to vote in 1911, making California one of the earliest states to adopt that change. |
Of the historic November 1918 election, The Associated Press wrote at the time: "California is perfectly willing that her daughters should vote, but she is somewhat dubious about the advisability of putting them in office, as was shown by Tuesday's election, in which only four out of 12 women candidates were elected. These four all were Republicans, and all were elected to the Assembly." |
And, seemingly added as an afterthought: "Also, they were the first women ever sent to the California Legislature." |
Despite these early gains, California has since fallen behind many states in electing women to office. Before Tuesday's election, 32.5 percent of our legislative members were women, a smaller fraction than in 22 other states, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. By contrast, in nearby Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico, women account for 43 percent of state legislators in each state, while they comprise 59 percent in Nevada, the data show. |
But the number of women holding California's elected offices is likely to shoot up. Women competed in 65 Assembly and Senate races on Tuesday, and had already won or were leading in 44 of them as of Wednesday night, according to election returns. Another six women already serving as state legislators were not up for re-election this year and will continue in their positions, meaning that a total of 50 women could be in the State Legislature next year. |
Anything more than 39 women, the current figure, would be record-breaking for California, said Susannah Delano, executive director of Close the Gap California, a campaign to achieve gender balance in the California Legislature by 2028. Gender parity in the California Legislature, where there are 40 seats in the Senate and 80 in the Assembly, would require 60 women in office. "It's looking a lot more real," Delano told me on Wednesday. |
The current share of women in the California Legislature is similar to that of the U.S. Congress (28 percent), but Delano said that it's "counterintuitive" that progressive California's share isn't higher. She speculated that the high cost of mounting a campaign in the state, driven in part by the size of the population, may compound the hurdles here for women trying to break through. |
"To be perfectly honest, there's no good answer," she said. "We should be doing better." |
This year, an unusually large number of state legislative seats in California were open, with incumbents who sought other offices instead or who chose not to run for re-election. That gave new candidates more opportunity than usual to jump into the fray. Though Delano's group exclusively supports progressive candidates, several Republican women were on Tuesday's ballot as well, and in a number of high-profile state legislative races, both of the candidates were women. |
And though the Los Angeles mayor's race is currently too close to call — and will probably stay that way for days, if not weeks — if longtime Representative Karen Bass wins, she would be the first woman to serve as mayor of Los Angeles, America's second biggest city. (California has never had a female governor.) |
Voters nationwide elected candidates and backed ballot measures on Tuesday in support of abortion rights. While the issue has long rallied Republicans, Democrats seized on it in the midterms in ways they had not before, my colleagues Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias reported. |
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who won re-election on Tuesday, said it was "a point of pride" that abortion was now protected in the California Constitution. |
"It's a point of principle and it's a point of contrast," he said, "at a time of such mixed results all across this country." |
Erika James, 27, who lives in Berkeley, said she felt heartened that so many states had voted in favor of abortion access. James, who works in health care, said she voted in almost every election, but wasn't always confident that voting is the answer. |
"But in this election, so many people voted to keep abortion rights or to not ban abortion, that it gave me a little more faith in the process," she said. |
Holly Secon contributed reporting. |
For more on the election: |
 | | The Sonoran Desert toad is primarily found in the Sonoran Desert in parts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico.Adam Riding for The New York Times |
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- Sonoran Desert toad: The National Park Service has warned Californians to not lick the Sonoran Desert toad, which lives in parts of Imperial and Riverside Counties, and is known for secreting a psychedelic chemical but has toxins that could make people severely sick, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
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- Investigation: The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into whether Sheriff Alex Villanueva violated state law when he solicited campaign donations from deputies, The Los Angeles Times reports.
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- Former army base: Federal health officials are conducting a study to determine whether veterans stationed at a now-shuttered central California military base were exposed to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing toxins, The Associated Press reports.
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- Meta: The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp reduced its work force by 13 percent — laying off more than 11,000 people — and extended a hiring freeze through the first quarter of next year.Plus, tech companies, including Meta and Twitter, created more workplace transparency, but are now seeing their own tools used to critique them.
- Alleged stalker: On the last day of a preliminary hearing, the lawyer for an alleged serial stalker in San Francisco said his client's actions were because of mental illness, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
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 | | Michael Kraus for The New York Times |
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 | | Mendocino Coast Botanical GardensLucille Lawrence for The New York Times |
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"We used to visit the Gardens every year on our wedding anniversary and moved to Fort Bragg several years ago. The Gardens' mild maritime climate makes it a garden for all seasons, attracting gardeners and nature lovers. With manicured gardens, a dense coastal pine forest, native flora and habitats, fern-covered canyons, camellias, rhododendrons, magnolias and conifers, heaths and heathers and flower-filled coastal bluffs overlooking the Pacific, the garden is a jewel on the Northern California coast." |
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We'll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter. |
Have you visited any of the travel destinations that we've recommended in the newsletter? Send us a few lines about your trip, and a photo! |
We'd like to share them in upcoming editions of the newsletter. Email us at CAToday@nytimes.com. Please include your name and the city in which you live. |
 | | Myra Melford outside of Thayer Hall at the Colburn School of Music in Los Angeles.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York Times |
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And before you go, some good news |
If you were to draft up a list of today's most inventive and respected players in improvised music (or creative music or free jazz), you'd inevitably name the players in the pianist Myra Melford's Fire and Water Quintet. |
"It's wonderful to play with them," Melford, 65, said in late October in a video interview from her home in the Bay Area, where she is a music professor at U.C. Berkeley. "Each is such an important individual voice, and I love to hear what discoveries they make." |
Melford's respect and admiration for her bandmates is mutual. If it weren't, crucial elements of improvised music would prove impossible. |
Thanks for reading. We'll be off tomorrow, but will be back in your inbox on Monday. Enjoy your weekend. — Soumya |
Isabella Grullón Paz and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com. |
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