California's Halfway Point: Which Bills Are Actually Making It Past the Capitol?

It’s crunch time at the California Capitol. This Friday marks the“House of Origin”deadline—the moment when lawmakers have to fish or cut bait on hundreds of bills still swimming through the legislative process. For those tracking what’s happening in Sacramento, this is the real halfway point: Assembly bills need full Assembly approval, Senate bills need full Senate approval, and anything that doesn’t make the cut gets shelved until next year.

So what’s actually moving forward? The list tells you a lot about where California’s political energy is focused right now—and it’s not exactly one thing.

Immigration and federal authority take up significant real estate. AB 1896 would block federal immigration officers and Trump administration workers from being hired as California state employees. AB 2230 requires federal agents to get warrants before they can hang around polling places or enter childcare centers. AB 2624 extends protections for immigration support service workers, shielding their home addresses and making it illegal to post their photos online with intent to incite harm. AB 2393 makes it easier for people wrongfully detained by immigration authorities to sue for damages. AB 1650 sets transparency requirements when immigration authorities rent cars in the state. These aren’t scattered proposals—they’re a coordinated pushback against what Sacramento sees as federal overreach.

On the labor side, AB 2646 raises the minimum wage for farmworkers to $19.75 an hour starting January 2027—a significant bump that reflects California’s ongoing effort to boost protections for agricultural workers.

Then there’s the anti-monopoly angle. AB 1776 makes sweeping changes to the state’s antitrust laws, giving California more tools to crack down when a single company gets too powerful. Business groups are already nervous: critics warn this could open the floodgates to lawsuits against tech giants and other corporate titans.

There’s also AB 1652, which takes aim at government transparency by making it a crime for the governor and state officials to sign non-disclosure agreements during lawmaking—a direct shot at the secrecy that sometimes surrounds how taxpayer dollars get spent.

What won’t make it past Friday? Hundreds of bills. That’s how the process works. But what does move forward tells you something real about what Sacramento is prioritizing in 2026. And right now, it’s immigration enforcement limits, worker wages, and keeping big business in check. Whether any of these actually become law still depends on the second half of the legislative cycle—but at least we know which ideas have enough support to keep moving.