“The landscape of California evolves through earthquakes. Sometimes its politics does as well,” wrote my colleagues David Lauter and Benjamin Oreskes.

“The confluence of events over the last week … combined to create a temblor that has reshaped both sides of the state’s political divide.”

I’m Laurel Rosenhall, The Times’ Sacramento bureau chief, and here’s what you need to know about this incredible week in California politics.

Remembering Feinstein

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with her husband Paul, pay respects to Sen. Dianne Feinstein with Feinstein’s daughter Katherine at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Feinstein will be honored Thursday with a memorial on the steps of San Francisco City Hall. Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are among those scheduled to speak at the grand event. Check latimes.com this afternoon for full coverage.

In the meantime, here’s a moving photo essay of San Franciscans paying tribute to Feinstein this week in the city where she spent a decade as the first female mayor. And here’s a gallery of photos from the last half-century capturing Feinstein’s trailblazing political career.

Don’t miss these lovely remembrances from Times columnists:

Will Butler shake up the race?

Laphonza Butler, left, with her wife Neneki Lee at her side, takes the oath of office, administered by Vice President Kamala Harris, in Washington on Tuesday to fill the remainder of the term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

(Anna Rose Layden / Getty Images)

In her first interview after being appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, California’s new senator Laphonza Butler spoke with Times reporter Taryn Luna about her whirlwind trip into history. Among the many fascinating nuggets: Butler said she was contacted by Newsom’s staff about the potential appointment just one day before his decision was publicly announced.

Butler’s appointment has thrust two crucial questions to the forefront of California’s political scene: Will Butler run for a full term in the Senate in next year’s election? And if she does, how seriously will she shake up the race that is well underway?

The first question remains unanswered. Butler said she has not decided. The second question has political experts divided, as reporters Benjamin Oreskes and Laura Nelson wrote.

Whether Butler will serve 15 months and then step down or enter the race herself has broad implications for the campaign strategies of the three prominent Democrats already running for Senate: Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam B. Schiff of Burbank. Butler has deep ties to organizations that could help her mount a serious fundraising operation.

Times columnists have some thoughts:

I talked with the “L.A. Times Today” TV show about Newsom’s decision to appoint Butler.

The fall of Kevin McCarthy

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) walks through a crowd in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall after he was ousted as speaker of the House on Tuesday.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Minutes before the vote that cost California’s Rep. Kevin McCarthy his job as speaker of the House, three Republican voters lunching in his hometown cursed the scorched-earth politics in Washington, Laura Nelson reports in this dispatch from Bakersfield.

The conservative women said McCarthy had been left with two bad choices in the days before his ouster: risk a revolt from the hard right and cut a deal with Democrats to pass a funding bill, or acquiesce to the hard-liners and shut down the federal government, wrecking the economy. Ultimately, they thought, McCarthy did the right thing — and paid the price.

The vote Tuesday to oust McCarthy was a humiliating and historic defeat that revealed the limits of his formidable powers of persuasion while further exposing an increasingly divided and rancorous Republican Party, reports Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman:

“McCarthy is a politician of affability and a master of fundraising. He is also a man of pliable principles and a tactician who can delineate the percentages and voting patterns of the most obscure legislative districts. He has never been about visions or grand ambitions to reshape America’s cultural and political order. That failing, at least in the eyes of those who led the revolt against him, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), is too detrimental in an era when politics is less about compromise than it is about intransigence and bloodsport.”

Check out these hot takes:

New laws and vetoes

Newsom is busy signing and vetoing hundreds of bills lawmakers sent him last month. Here are his notable decisions from the past week: