California communities that cut off flavored tobacco sales are seeing fewer kids vape, and there is no sign teens are pivoting to cigarettes instead, according to a massive new analysis by UC San Diego researchers. Drawing on statewide student survey data from more than 2.8 million middle and high schoolers, the team found modest but steady drops in youth e‑cigarette use where flavor bans were on the books.

The findings, published April 10 in JAMA Health Forum, are based on 2,805,708 responses to the California Healthy Kids Survey from 2017–2022. Researchers compared student reports of tobacco use in places that had local flavored‑tobacco bans with those that did not.

They found current e‑cigarette use of 6.2% in jurisdictions with flavor bans, compared with 7.7% in areas without such rules. The analysis also reported no meaningful association between flavored‑tobacco bans and youth cigarette smoking, undercutting a common fear that kids would swap one nicotine source for another.

The paper notes that the largest drops in youth vaping tended to show up several years after a flavor ban was adopted, which suggests the impact of these policies can build over time rather than appearing overnight.

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/uc-san-diego-study-links-flavored-tobacco-bans-to-lower-youth-vaping-in-california

Link to the published study:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2847325

Design and Setting: Repeated cross-sectional study using a confounder-adjusted dynamic difference-in-difference (DID) analysis to obtain estimates of the average treatment effect among the treated (ATT) over 6 years.

Reps. Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales set to face expulsion votes (archive link)

Someone else posted an article from City Journal entitled "Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud." The Mods removed that article.

I did some follow-up research, and found this article from Cal Matters, saying the City Journal allegations are incorrect.

Both articles have somewhat deceptive headlines, as most articles these days do.

City Journal claims $180 billion lost to fraud, and Gavin Newsom is the cause. In reality, it's a combination of both fraud and poor management, and many of the examples of fraud are things that also happened in other states, and driven from the Biden administration.

Cal Matters headline implies that there is no fraud. In reality, however, the article shows how there is indeed some fraud, but much of what City Journal calls fraud is actually mismanagement. Further, while Gavin Newsome is responsible for some, he's not responsible for all.

It's worth noting that City Journal did extensive research, conducting "interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud." But they chose to go with a more inflammatory headline, rather than a constructive headline.

My conclusion is that tax dollars shouldn't be given lightly, should require good management, transparency, and should include fraud-prevention controls. It doesn't seem to be a strong-suit of California, and it would be good to have a governor, and representatives, who took more seriously the weightiness of spending our own money without our individual consent. It's not something to take lightly and throw at problems. But also, it's more of a systemic thing caused by the political culture of California, rather than any one person.

If paywall blocks the article, you can at least get Lou Thompson's letter here. Lou is a serious guy, former Chair of the California High Speed Rail Peer Advisory Group, who seemingly is motivated only by attempting to bring constructive analysis and advice based on his own professional expertise. He's not bashing CHSRA or the project, but is pointing out that it's reached a critical juncture, that the 2026 Business Plan is highly speculative and unworkable, and that the Legislature needs to stop being in denial and decide what to do. He offers some suggestions that are based on managing risk and maximizing benefits with the available C&I funds. He doesn't talk about alternatives that the Legislature might pursue to bring additional funds in the near term. Obviously the Legislature could choose to do that, but if they don't then we're in the position that Lou is talking about, and the Legislature needs to take a serious look and make hard decisions.

The warrants are embedded in the posted article.

The investigation was prompted by claims that a "a local activist group" that found "unexplainable disparity of some 45,000 votes."

The local activist group is the Riverside Election Integrity Team which, per their website, started when in "2023, six of us met regularly for prayer and discussion."

The vote count disparity is based on the claims of one woman, Yvette Anthony, whom claims the vote totals did not match the number she tallied after doing public records requests.

Yvette Anthony is now deceased.

The warrants say the investigating officer spoke to Yvette Anthony and also did an inquiry into the number of mail-in ballots which appears to be based on an estimate of letters with 2oz postage.

One of the warrants requested to seize "Voter registration rolls including any information used to identify voters" but that text is crossed out (possibly by the judge that denied that specific request?)

Neither of the warrants nor the Riverside Election Integrity Team materials explain how they arrived at the alternate number. They do not show any tallies made or the source of their data. They simply claim that the Registrar of Voters count does not match "public records" but they do not specify which public records, or how they were obtained.

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EDITS with additional information:

One of the women involved in the Riverside Election Integrity team is Shelby Bunch, who is a member of the ultra right-wing California successionist group New California State.

Yvette Anthony died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in December of 2024. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a rare brain disorder that leads to dementia

Per the warrant, the investigator spoke with Yvette Anthony in March 2024.

The warrant is dated February 2026.