Tag: california

House Republicans Release Damning Report After Investigation of ‘FireAid’ Scandal in California

It has been a year since the wildfires in southern California and the almost total lack of rebuilding is not the only related scandal.

Back in July, an independent journalist looked into the celebrity-filled ‘FireAid’ concert and found that none of the victims of the fire had received any funds, despite claims from participants in the event that aid would go directly to the victims.

What she found was that the money had gone to a number of non-profit organizations, some of which have absolutely nothing to do with disaster recovery.

Republicans who control the House Judiciary Committee investigated and have just released their findings. It’s not good.

CBS News reports:

House Republicans release report on FireAid fund distribution

Organizers of last January’s FireAid benefit concert are once again facing accusations that the $100 million in donations did not directly help victims of the Los Angeles fires, after House Republicans published findings from their investigation on Tuesday.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who helped launch the investigation, claimed the “report highlights where the funds were not used in the way that the donors would likely have wanted them to be used.”

In its report, the House Judiciary Committee stated money went to “left-leaning pet projects, illegal aliens, and the administrative costs related to running non-profit organizations.”

“You had examples of funds used for voter outreach efforts, towards political advocacy groups, towards podcasters, fungus planting, those examples are pretty troubling,” Kiley said. “I do want to be clear, there were many organizations that got funds, nonprofits that are certainly very worthy nonprofits.”

FireAid organizers denied the claims made in the report. They stood by their original promise that all money raised during the concert would go to well-known, vetted nonprofits serving residents of Altadena, Pasadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

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California Family Loses Custody Of Daughter After Refusing To Medically “Affirm” Her Transgender Identity

A Ukrainian family in California says Child Welfare removed their teenage daughter from their home and placed them on the child abuse registry after they declined to “affirm” her transgender identity. Speaking to Reduxx under the condition of anonymity, the parents say the removal followed a report filed by their daughter’s psychiatrist without their knowledge.

The mother, who will be referred to as Ellie, told Reduxx that a social worker from Shasta County Child Welfare Services arrived at the family’s home on June 3, 2024, without prior notice. According to Ellie, the worker accused the parents of emotional abuse and demanded access to their daughter, who will be referred to as Maya, without presenting a warrant or court order.

“She just kept saying, ‘You’re emotionally abusing your child,’” Ellie said. “But she had nothing in her hands. No paperwork. Nothing.”

The removal was a dramatic climax following years of instability that Ellie says began in early childhood. After the family immigrated to the United States in 2007, Maya began experiencing anxiety, anger issues, attention difficulties, and emotional dysregulation. Her mental health concerns, which once resulted in a temporary placement in a psychiatric facility, were made worse by the persistent bullying she experienced at school starting in first and second grade. She said the bullying came not only from other students but also from indifferent teachers, and that repeated complaints to school administrators were dismissed.

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Fed prosecutor warns more arrests coming after ‘massive’ fraud found in California homeless services: ‘We followed the money’

A federal prosecutor probing corruption in California’s homeless services promised that more arrests are coming after two real estate executives were busted for allegedly bilking taxpayers out of millions.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli told The Post a coalition of federal agencies has uncovered wrongdoing on a staggering scale as he blasted Democrats as “colossal failures” for letting corruption fester for years.

“We followed the money and very quickly we uncovered massive amounts of fraud,” Essayli said.

The recent indictments of housing executives Cody Holmes and Steven Taylor were just the tip of the iceberg, as the duo face accusations that they pocketed state funds intended for homeless housing, the prosecutor said.

“That’s just beginning to scratch the surface,” Essayli said. “We have dozens of other investigations ongoing and we expect to bring more charges this year, and perhaps this month.”

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Viral video shows trans male masturbating in women’s bathroom at California Planet Fitness

A trans gymgoer was found masturbating in a California Planet Fitness bathroom in a video that went viral over the weekend. The video, taken by a witness of the incident also showed multiple men confronting the trans-identified male in the women’s locker bathroom after being caught.

Grace Hutson, who posted the video online, claims she encountered the male masturbating in the bathroom stall last May, with the footage having recently gone viral. The clip was originally posted to TikTok, where an unidentified person appeared to be pleasuring themselves in the bathroom stall. 

“At the end of the day, whether you’re transgender or not, you should not be stroking your sh*t in the women’s bathroom,” Hutson said in a TikTok video posted on Sunday after the footage went viral online.

At the time of the incident, the young woman alerted gym employees, who did not know how to handle the situation. Hutson’s boyfriend ultimately was the one to confront the trans gymgoer. Looking back, Hutson says she wished she had done more to address the situation.

“I was just really uncomfortable and, honestly, I kind of just wanted to say my piece and get the f*ck out of there. Looking back, I do have regrets, like I should have done more. I should have called the cops,” she said. “I thought about it, but I was like there’s no way anything is gonna come of this. People are just gonna say I’m transphobic.”

The clip has come to light after other incidents last year in various gyms where trans-identified males have been confronted about being in the women’s bathroom. In one instance, LA Fitness terminated a woman’s membership after she complained about a man using the women’s locker room.

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Trump judges blast peers for letting California impose ‘state-sanctioned groupthink’ in medicine

The federal government’s refusal to register a supposedly offensive trademark for the Asian-American rock band The Slants prompted the Supreme Court to issue a sweeping precedent that protected First Amendment rights from the government-speech doctrine.

Now eight years later, that ruling is center stage again as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extended the doctrine that steamrolls individual speech under the banner of government speech to validate California medical training. And some dissenting judges nominated by President Donald Trump on that court are raising deep concerns.

A majority of the full appeals court, whose jurisdiction stretches from the Pacific to the Rockies, refused to rehear a challenge to California’s imposition of “implicit bias” training in continuing medical education, which doctors must receive to keep their licenses, leaving intact a three-judge panel’s ruling that deemed the private courses to be government speech.

The 9th Circuit has become less liberal with Trump’s 11 nominees but Democrat nominees still dominate the largest federal appeals court, which has 29 active judges. The rehearing denial doesn’t specify the vote count.

“A proper analysis—as prescribed by the Supreme Court, our own court’s prior cases, and our sister circuits—reveals that California’s prior CME regulations did not meaningfully express or shape messages through CME courses” before the Golden State made implicit-bias training a statutory requirement in 2019, the first dissent from refusal to rehear said.

Physicians in CME courses would also be “unlikely to perceive the instructor’s message as the government’s” and the Medical Board of California’s “regulations otherwise exert very little control over CME instructors’ messages,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote.

He was joined by Judges Patrick Bumatay and Eric Tung, the latter only confirmed in November.

The Trump appointees blasted the “improperly anemic governmental speech analysis” by the panel, which relied on the “mere scope of California’s regulatory scheme” to conclude that “CME attendees perceive instructors as relaying the government’s views,” at odds with the “well-pleaded allegations” of the challengers.

Tung also wrote a dissent, joined by VanDyke and Bumatay, that scolded the panel for rebranding private instructors as government agents and sidestepping the scientific debate over the validity of implicit bias, which the California law asserts with no evidence is responsible for healthcare “outcome disparities” by race and sex.

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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Strikes Down California’s Ban on Open Carry – Trump Judge Issues Scathing Opinion

A US Appeals Court on Friday in a 2-1 decision struck down a California law banning people from openly carrying firearms.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cited a 2022 Supreme Court ruling and said California’s ban on open carry is unconstitutional.

US Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion and blasted the state of California for banning open carry for 95% of its population.

California banned open carry on all counties with populations greater than 200,000 – which is 95% of the state.

In 2019, Mark Baid filed a lawsuit against the California Attorney General challenging the state’s ban on open carry.

Judge VanDyke, a known gun enthusiast, said California’ ban on open carry is unconstitutional.

“For most of American history, open carry has been the default manner of lawful carry for firearms. It remains the norm across the country—more than thirty states generally allow open carry to this day, including states with significant urban populations,” VanDyke wrote.

VanDyke said many states allow open carry and California has a history of open carry.

“Similarly, for the first 162 years of its history open carry was a largely unremarkable part of daily life in California. From 1850, when California first became a state, until the Mulford Act of 1967, public carry of firearms in California (open or concealed) was entirely unregulated. And when California first deviated (or considered deviating) from this practice, its reasons for doing so were less than morally exemplary,” VanDyke wrote.

“In our Nation’s history and tradition, open carry was widely recognized as being central to the Second Amendment right,” VanDyke added. “A ban on that which is at the core of the Second Amendment is not a ‘minimal burden’ on the Second Amendment right.”

Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California’s ban on large-capacity magazines.

The en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court (a decision from the court’s entire slate of judges) sided with California’s radical Marxist Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who grew up in Bozeman, Montana, angered a lefty judge on the court after he released a highly unusual video dissent demonstrating him handling several different firearms.

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Eric Swalwell Vows to Arrest ICE Agents, Revoke their Driver’s Licenses if Elected Governor of California – “You Have to Go on Offense”

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said on Tuesday that he plans to “go on offense” against federal agents in California, charging them with crimes and preventing them from driving in the state. 

If elected governor in November, “what I’m going to do is make sure that they take off their masks and show their faces, that they show their identification, and if they commit crimes, that they’re going to be charged with crimes,” Swalwell said on MS NOW’s All In.

“I also think if the governor has the ability to issue driver’s licenses to people in California,” he continued, “if you’re going to wear a mask and not identify yourself, you’re not going to be eligible to drive a vehicle in California.” Yet, they’ll still allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

However, Swalwell may not even be eligible to run for Governor of California, given his lack of a California residence for the past five years.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, despite being an elected representative for the state of California, Swalwell does not have a home in California and has listed Washington, DC as his primary residence. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for mortgage fraud.

Still, Swalwell’s current plan is to fight off federal officials to protect illegal aliens and criminals, who he describes as “the most vulnerable in our community.”

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Major change to California highway speed limit law comes into effect

New Year, new laws.

California drivers are being warned to be on high alert as possible changes to highway speed limits come into effect from Thursday.

A new speed enforcement law, which will be enforced from Jan. 1, allows the Department of Transport to reduce the limit on highways by 5mph across the Golden State.

Currently, the speed limit on the state’s highways is set at 65mph unless otherwise posted.

It wasn’t clear which highways would be immediately effected but signage is expected to be updated on the roadways that will now see the reduced 60mph limit.

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INSANITY: Newsom’s California Delays Revoking 17,000 Commercial Driver’s Licenses Until March Following “Dangerous Foreign Drivers” Legal Challenge

California Governor Gavin Newsom has backed down on federal enforcement of commercial driver’s license revocations, announcing a delay in the cancellation of 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) issued to immigrant drivers — now postponed until March 6, 2026.

The move comes only after immigrant advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit and secured a temporary reprieve against the state’s efforts to comply with federal safety and immigration rules.

The Gateway Pundit reported in November that California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had confessed to illegally handing out 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to dangerous foreign drivers who have no business operating massive semitrucks or school buses on American roads.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blasted California for “illegally issuing 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses” to individuals whose credentials did not meet federal requirements, even threatening to withhold up to $160 million in federal highway funds if the state refused to act.

“After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed. Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses.”

Each of the 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders has been issued notice that their license will expire within 60 days, as it no longer meets federal requirements.

FMCSA is now requiring the California DMV to hand over a full audit of all non-domiciled CDLs to verify that every unlawfully issued license is revoked and that the state corrects the systemic failures that allowed this fraud to occur.

Federal auditors found that over one in four foreign driver records sampled in California failed to comply with federal law, including CDLs that extended beyond the expiration of a foreign worker’s visa, a blatant violation of federal safety regulations.

Now, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) confirmed that the previously scheduled cancellation, originally set to begin in early January, will now be deferred while legal challenges play out in court.

This stunning reversal follows a wave of legal filings by organizations such as the Asian Law Caucus and the Sikh Coalition, who rushed to court arguing that the state’s actions threatened the livelihoods of thousands of “hard-working” immigrant truck drivers and bus operators.

Their lawsuit claimed that the DMV’s enforcement actions were unlawful and violated due process, alleging that drivers were not financially or legally equipped to respond to abrupt cancellation notices.

Newsom’s announcement provides additional breathing room for the state, which had been under immense pressure from the Trump Administration — and the U.S. Department of Transportation — to clean up a disastrous licensing program that federal auditors found had issued CDLs beyond the lawful terms of the drivers’ immigration status.

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Newsom’s Massive Fraud Scandal No One Is Talking About

Everybody’s buzzing about that Minnesota Medicaid mess with Gov. Tim Walz. Some are even calling it the largest fraud scandal ever. If only.

Blue-state fraud is undoubtedly a problem, and Walz should be held accountable if he did indeed look the other way. But what happened in the land of 10,000 lakes is tiny compared to the fraud in California under Gavin Newsom.

Heck, it makes Minnesota look like pocket change.

A fresh 92-page bombshell from the California State Auditor lays it all out.

“This latest report was issued by the state auditor, and that’s a nonpartisan position; that state auditor now puts eight state agencies on the high-risk list of agencies to watch out for, for things like fraud and mismanagement as well as waste,” Newsmax correspondent Heather Myers revealed last week.

“Here’s a look at that 92-page report. Newly added to the high-risk list is California’s food stamp program. If the state doesn’t get the improper payments under control, it could cost an extra $2.5 billion. Also on there is the Department of Finance, which was tasked with giving out COVID relief funds. Critics say $32 billion of that was taken by fraudsters. Then there are infrastructure issues like California’s deteriorating dams, and also the high-speed train that’s already cost taxpayers 18 billion without a single section of track complete.”

But wait, there’s more!

“Other reports cite $24 billion spent on the homeless issue that critics claim the state lost track of. More recently, there’s a report that says California cell phone users paid a surcharge for years to upgrade the state’s 911 system,” she added.

Tallied all up, California taxpayers lost $70 billion to fraud.

But here’s where things get really interesting. While pressure is on in Minnesota to get to the bottom of the state’s fraud, California seems to be under the radar.

Now get this. Right in the middle of the fraud apocalypse, a new ballot initiative seeks to impose a one-time 10% wealth tax on billionaires’ assets.

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