On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1418 by Senator Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside), a bill that directly improves defenses against election interference in California. SB 1418 builds on Senate Bill 73, which the Governor signed into law earlier this year, by extending many of the chain-of-custody protections for voted ballots in that bill to other forms of election records. To provide these protections for the November midterm elections, SB 1418 includes an urgency clause that allows its provisions to take effect immediately. California Attorney General Rob Bonta sponsored the bill.

The California Voting Rights Act of 2026 (CVRA 2026), authored by Senator Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside), was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday. CVRA 2026, which includes Senate Bills 1164 and 1360, provides stronger protections against vote dilution and voter suppression and expands language access assistance to more limited-English proficient (LEP) voters. CVRA 2026, a long-needed update to the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, also strengthens defenses against other forms of voter discrimination that Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited before the unfortunate U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

SACRAMENTO – Sen. Catherine S. Blakespear, D-Encinitas, on Friday issued the following statement regarding the Governor’s decision to veto SB 954, legislation she authored to rein in overly broad CEQA exemptions:

Senator Jesse Arreguin celebrates the approval of vital funding after campaigning to convert the former horse racetrack into a regional park

SB 936 prohibits the sale of nitrous oxide, except as needed for industry uses, to limit its widespread use as a recreational drug
SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed legislation by Sen. Catherine S. Blakespear, D-Encinitas, aimed at preventing the widespread abuse of nitrous oxide as a recreational drug by limiting its sale to specific uses in certain industries. 

SB 955 increases the locations where consumers can take bottles and cans to get their deposits returned, eliminates recycling ‘dead zones’
SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed legislation by Sen. Catherine S. Blakespear, D-Encinitas, to boost bottle recycling by ensuring communities have the capacity to take back and recycle 100 percent of the bottles sold by stores in their area.  

State Sen. Jerry McNerney today applauded Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order, fast-tracking the implementation of McNerney’s SB 813. This landmark law establishes a first-in-the-nation framework for independent, third-party assessments of potential safety risks posed by artificial intelligence systems.

Senator Wiener authored legislation requiring kill switches in 2024 and worked with the Governor to pass SB 53, the nation’s first AI safety law, in 2025.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Governor Newsom issued an executive order to strengthen the state’s response to recent rogue AI attacks, including the Hugging Face attack. The executive order advances, among other things, a proposal to require AI companies to build “kill switches,” or emergency shutdowns, into advanced AI models in case something goes wrong.

SACRAMENTO – Thousands of licensed mental health professionals have signed a letter (attached) urging Governor Gavin Newsom to sign Senate Bill (SB) 903, authored by Senator Steve Padilla. This bill would protect individuals seeking therapy or psychotherapy services by prohibiting the advertisement of AI chatbots as “therapy” and setting common sense guardrails for AI use in mental health treatment. SB 903 passed the Senate unanimously and the Assembly with bipartisan support by a vote of 71 to 4 and now awaits Governor Newsom’s signature into law.

SACRAMENTO, CA — California State Senator Dave Cortese (D-San José) announced that Governor Newsom has signed Senate Bill 1392, also known as “Jay Leno’s Law,” into law. The measure will now protect classic car owners and collector vehicles from unnecessary smog inspections while preserving California’s commitment to clean air.