HeyJaredCalifornia Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics
Welcome to California Underground, the most trusted podcast for all things California politics. Each week, we tackle the pressing issues facing our state through engaging interviews and roundtable discussions with political candidates and passionate Californians.Join us for…
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
Voter ID and Recall Reform, Explained (opens the original)
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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 re
LA County Cut Fire Relief in Half (opens the original)
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LA County set aside $10 million specifically for fire victims. A revised board motion, passed months later with little public notice, cut that fund in half — the same year the county filed a lawsuit publicly branding itself as fire survivors' defender. This episode also covers the one Napa winery that's been paid back after a 2025 fire that destroyed dozens of others' harvests — co-founded by the governor. California's second attempt at a law nearly identical to one already tied up in federal co
Props 3 and 43: The Pension Math and the Author Voting No (opens the original)
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In 2012, California voters approved Proposition 30 — officially titled "Temporary Taxes to Fund Education." The new tax brackets were written to expire in 2018. Voters extended them in 2016. This November, Proposition 3 asks whether to remove the expiration entirely. Phil and Camille go through what those fourteen years actually produced. Funding did rise: per-student spending increased 14% after inflation, and California climbed from the high 20s to 16th nationally. But two years after Prop 30
Your Tax Dollars Fund Radical Nonprofits (opens the original)
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A California Assemblyman named his own nonprofit "Nonprofit of the Year" — three weeks before it received a $6 million line item in the state budget he helped pass. In this episode, we pull that exact page of the budget and show what else is on it: a group tied to last year's Los Angeles riots that helped write the law shielding organizations like itself from public scrutiny, and a grant program with a documented history of funding one of the country's most controversial advocacy organizations.
LA Taxpayers Are Funding Karen Bass's Campaign (opens the original)
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Los Angeles pays a qualifying mayoral candidate six dollars in public money for every one dollar an individual donates — and in the current mayor's race, challenger Nithya Raman has drawn more of that taxpayer match than Karen Bass. Phil and Camille break down how the public matching-funds program actually works, why the "isn't it a First Amendment violation to fund a candidate I oppose?" objection reached the Supreme Court twice and lost both times, and why California has banned public campaign
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