Financial inequality, homelessness and the highest unemployment in the nation — for all its riches, California still has some big problems for lawmakers to address in 2026.
Capital & Main’s video reporting reached millions of viewers in 2025, expanding our coverage of the most pressing issues facing our readers.
A selection of some of our most memorable, revealing and impactful journalism of the year.
As he heads into his final year in Sacramento — and mulls a presidential campaign — some in the Golden State have gained access to more care, others not so much.
Trump and Republican lawmakers want steep funding cuts, while new eligibility rules from HUD would imperil housing for millions of people.
A president with strong Christian support is driving an aggressive crackdown on immigrants who are disproportionately Catholic. How is this playing out in the pews?
In ways subtle and extreme, the warming climate is hitting those with the least the hardest.
The actor-director-producer’s legacy includes succeeding in passing a tax on tobacco products to bolster early childhood development in California.
California prohibits the use of credit history to reject applicants with housing assistance without considering pay stubs and other alternatives. Big landlords keep doing it anyway.
In October, Michigan home care workers formed a statewide union of 32,000. Experts say it’s a template for protecting rights in 2026.
Apartment hunters with rental assistance were not welcome at many Jamison buildings, in apparent violation of California law, a Capital & Main investigation found.
We have to call out the increasingly blatant bigotry of the right — like President Trump’s calling Somali Americans “garbage” — or risk accepting it as the new normal.
Health insurance costs will skyrocket for millions of Americans if certain tax credits expire. Small business owners and the self-employed will be hit especially hard.
San Jose is delivering low-cost tiny homes for people living on the streets of California’s third-largest city — as long as the state continues to fund it.
A two-part series investigating California’s failure to protect underage farmworkers won the December Sidney Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
Many migrants who were hoping to reach the U.S. are now stuck in a backlog with Mexico’s refugee agency; others are going home.
The Japanese American National Museum stands out among cultural institutions by refusing to bend to President Trump’s attacks on diversity, history and the truth.
State agencies to join forces to crack down on child labor violations after Capital & Main found enforcement breakdowns.
Three million care workers, many of them Black and Latina women, could be classified as “companions” instead of professionals.
Tariffs, extreme weather events and the president’s funding cuts are contributing to increasing rates, sometimes by double digits.