Tag: california

Grand Jury INDICTS Three Women for STALKING ICE Agent and Livestreaming His Address

A federal grand jury has indicted three women accused of targeting a ICE agent in California, following him home from work and broadcasting his private information online. 

The case exposes the dangerous escalation of anti-ICE activism, where harassment and intimidation of law enforcement officers are now celebrated on social media.

According to the indictment, the three defendants—Ashleigh Brown, 38, of Aurora, Colorado; Cynthia Raygoza, 37, of Riverside, California; and Sandra Carmona Samane, 25, of Panorama City, California—face charges of conspiracy and illegally disclosing the personal information of a federal law enforcement officer. 

Prosecutors allege the women deliberately stalked the ICE agent on August 28, trailing him from his workplace in downtown Los Angeles all the way to his residence.

During the pursuit, prosecutors say, the women livestreamed the chase on Instagram. The streams were shared across multiple accounts with names such as “ice_out_of_la,” “defendmesoamericanculture,” and “corn_maiden_design.” 

By the end of the broadcast, the women had posted the agent’s home address online, essentially turning him and his family into targets.

This is not protest—it is criminal intimidation of a federal officer. 

The indictment reflects a growing problem: left-wing activists using digital platforms to expose and endanger law enforcement officers. 

The trend mirrors the tactics of extremist groups who claim to fight for “justice” but resort to doxing, harassment, and threats against those tasked with enforcing America’s immigration laws.

Federal prosecutors have made it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated. 

Publishing the personal address of a federal law enforcement officer is a felony, one intended to prevent exactly this type of reckless endangerment. 

The three women could face years in prison if convicted.

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Trump administration orders federal authorities to ignore California mask law

The Trump administration ordered federal authorities Friday to ignore new legislation in California banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks to conceal their identity. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last Saturday signed the bill — which is slated to take effect Jan. 1, 2026 — making face coverings of local, state and federal officials a misdemeanor crime and imposing a civil penalty against officers for “tortious conduct.”

“Governor Newsom is confused about his role under the U.S. Constitution,” Bill Essayli, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a Friday post on social platform X. “He oversees California, not federal agencies. He should review the Supremacy Clause.”

“California’s law to ‘unmask’ federal agents is unconstitutional, as the state lacks jurisdiction to interfere with federal law enforcement. I have directed federal agencies to disregard this state law and adhere to federal law and agency policies,” Essayli wrote in the post, which also featured a screenshot of his letter to agency heads. 

Essayli wrote in the letter that any official or individual who attempts to impede or interfere with operations will be prosecuted by his office.

The Hill has reached out to Newsom’s office for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security also publicly rejected Newsom’s bill on Monday in a social media post.

Trump officials and Newsom clashed over the summer after the president sent National Guard soldiers and Marines to quell Los Angeles’s protests against deportation tactics.

A series of targeted raids and arrests have been carried out throughout the Golden State, which local lawmakers have said are sparking fear for families of color about their future in the United States.

Newsom said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are using masks in an effort to be “hidden from accountability” alleging that face coverings prevent “transparency” for citizens and hinder “oversight.” 

“Unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing. No due process, no rights—no rights in a democracy where we have rights, immigrants have rights,” Newsom said Saturday. 

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Secret Service now on case of bloodthirsty California man who proudly called for murder of Donald Trump

The Secret Service said it is looking into a video of a California man who openly called for the murder of President Donald Trump on camera. 

The shocking clip was shared by Shane Ginsberg, who runs The Street Poller, to his X profile showing his interaction with the unknown man. 

‘F*** Donald Trump, he’s racist and he’s a pedophile’, the man said to Ginsberg who  informed him that Trump would remain in power for the next three years. 

Unfazed, the man shockingly continued: ‘We already killed his friend, and the next one is Donald Trump. You’ll be next to for doing that weird a** s***.’

The crass remark about his friend clearly referred to conservative debater Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this month in Utah.  

The unidentified man walked away from the camera, and when asked to return continued on his way while he lobbed threats at Ginsberg. 

The camera man then said: ‘you walk away buddy’, causing the man to turn around on the spot and walk back towards him – again making verbal threats. 

‘You want to get your a** kicked? I have a gun license to protect myself, I’ll beat your a** up bad.’

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Fired women’s coach saw male player ‘wink’ at opponent after endangering female teammate: lawsuit

San Jose State University committed employment and sex discrimination and retaliation by firing women’s volleyball associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose for exposing a secretly recruited male on the team, according to a new lawsuit by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign on her behalf against the California State University system.

“Punishing coaches for raising concerns about the fairness and integrity of women’s sports not only harms the individual advocate but also undermines the enforcement of Title IX’s mandate and has a chilling effect on those who seek to protect sex equality in collegiate athletics,” the suit says.

Batie-Smoose was suspended, then fired “not based on her job performance” – the suit includes her Feb. 28, 2024, reappointment letter – but “in direct retaliation for her opposition to sex discrimination and her advocacy for the fairness and equal access to programs, services, and activities for female athletes.”

She has “suffered and continues to suffer lost wages, loss of professional reputation and opportunities, emotional distress, and other damages,” and seeks reinstatement, back pay, compensatory and punitive damages.

Batie-Smoose also wants an injunction against CSU to stop future, possible Title VII and Title IX violations and implement policies, training and monitoring to “protect advocacy for the statutory rights of female athletes” and prevent retaliation against employees for raising concerns about sex-based discrimination.

The university declined to comment other than acknowledging the lawsuit.

It’s been a long and winding journey for the ex-coach, whose home was shot at days before she spoke at a state Capitol rally in February for legislation pitched as protecting girls, women and parental rights, shortly after her firing. CPRC’s Vernadette Broyles told Just the News at the time “the wheels are spinning rapidly in this process” of litigation preparation.

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These 2 Terrible Tech Bills Are on Gavin Newsom’s Desk

The California state Senate recently sent two tech bills to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. If signed, one could make it harder for children to access mental health resources, and the other would create the most annoying Instagram experience imaginable.

The Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act prohibits “making a companion chatbot available to a child unless the companion chatbot is not foreseeably capable of doing certain things that could harm a child.” The bill’s introduction specifies the “things” that could harm a child as genuinely bad stuff: self-harm, suicidal ideation, violence, consumption of drugs or alcohol, and disordered eating.

Unfortunately, the bill’s ambiguous language sloppily defines what outputs from an AI companion chatbot would meet these criteria. The verb preceding these buckets is not “telling,” “directing,” “mandating,” or some other directive, but “encouraging.”

Taylor Barkley, director of public policy for the Abundance Institute, tells Reason that, “by hinging liability on whether an AI ‘encourages’ harm—a word left dangerously vague—the law risks punishing companies not for urging bad behavior, but for failing to block it in just the right way.” Notably, the bill does not merely outlaw operators from making chatbots available to children that encourage self-harm, but those that are “foreseeably capable” of doing so.

Ambiguity aside, the bill also outlaws companion chatbots from “offering mental health therapy to the child without the direct supervision of a licensed or credentialed professional.” While traditional psychotherapy performed by a credentialed professional is associated with better mental health outcomes than those from a chatbot, such therapy is expensive—nearly $140 on average per session in the U.S., according to wellness platform SimplePractice. A ChatGPT Plus subscription costs only $20 per month. In addition to its much lower cost, the use of AI therapy chatbots has been associated with positive mental health outcomes.

While California has passed a bill that may reduce access to potential mental health resources, it’s also passed one that stands to make residents’ experiences on social media much more annoying. California’s Social Media Warning Law would require social media platforms to display a warning for users under 17 years old that reads, “the Surgeon General has warned that while social media may have benefits for some young users, social media is associated with significant mental health harms and has not been proven safe for young users,” for 10 seconds upon first opening a social media app each day. After using a given platform for three hours throughout the day, the warning is displayed again for a minimum of 30 seconds—without the ability to minimize it—”in a manner that occupies at least 75 percent of the screen.”

Whether this vague warning would discourage many teens from doomscrolling is dubious; warning labels do not often drastically change consumers’ behaviors. For example, a 2018 Harvard Business School study found that graphic warnings on soda decreased the share of sugar drinks purchased by students over two weeks by only 3.2 percentage points, and a 2019 RAND Corporation study found that graphic warning labels have no effect on discouraging regular smokers from purchasing cigarettes.

But “platforms aren’t cigarettes,” writes Clay Calvert, a technology fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “[they] carry multiple expressive benefits for minors.” Because social media warning labels “don’t convey uncontroversial, measurable pure facts,” compelling them likely violates the First Amendment’s protections against compelled speech, he explains.

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$2.2 billion solar plant in California turned off after years of wasted money: ‘Never lived up to its promises’

Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream.

Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but.

The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build.

Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy.

In 2011, the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, hailed it as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”

But ultimately, it’s been more emblematic of profligate government spending and unwise bets on poorly conceived, quickly outdated technologies.

“Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government subsidized energy schemes,”Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News via statement this past February. It “never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected, while relying on natural gas to stay operational.”

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California Bans Most Law Enforcement, Including Federal Agents, From Wearing Masks

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed a bill that would prohibit most law enforcement officers—including federal agents—from wearing masks during official operations in the state.

The first-of-its-kind law, which would go into effect in January 2026, was immediately criticized by Trump administration officials, who have instructed federal agents to ignore it. That sets the stage for a showdown in court.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—who are most involved in carrying out President Donald Trump’s deportation operations—have taken to wearing masks while carrying out their jobs.

During the Sept. 20 bill-signing event, Newsom said the state was “pushing back against the authoritarian tendencies in action this administration.”

“The impact of these policies all across this city, our state, and nation are terrifying,” Newsom said. “It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie. Unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing. No due process, no rights in a democracy where we have rights.”

The administration has defended the use of masking by federal agents, who officials say are facing increased threats and violence related to their work.

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COLLAPSIFORNIA: California tied with Louisiana for nation’s highest poverty rate in 2024

In a stark juxtaposition that defies its sun-drenched, affluent image, California has officially tied Louisiana for the highest poverty rate in the United States. A new analysis reveals that in 2024, a staggering seven million Californians, which makes up 17.7 percent of the state’s population, were living below the poverty line, a figure that mirrors the deep economic distress long associated with the Deep South.

This alarming parity, drawn from a report by the California Budget and Policy Center, uses the Census Bureau’s supplemental measure that provides a more realistic picture by factoring in crushing local costs of living, medical expenses and family size.

While the two states now share this grim title, their paths leading up to this point are a study in contrasting American crises: one of exorbitant urban wealth, the other of persistent rural need.

A tale of two poverty crises

For Louisiana, a 17.7 percent poverty rate is a familiar reality. The state has perennially ranked among the nation’s poorest, grappling with job shortages in rural areas and a legacy of economic stagnation.

For California, however, this ranking is a monumental policy failure. The state is an economic powerhouse, home to some of the world’s most valuable companies and richest individuals. Yet, its prosperity is a mirage for millions of its residents.

The report points directly to the expiration of pandemic-era aid as the catalyst for a nationwide surge in poverty, the largest in over fifty years.

In 2021, expanded child tax credits, boosted food assistance and eviction protections had slashed California’s poverty rate to a record low of 11 percent. As that lifeline was severed, the fall was precipitous and painful.

The primary engine of California’s poverty crisis is not a lack of jobs, but a suffocating cost of living, with housing as the lead weight. The state is a nation of renters in peril; their poverty rate is a devastating 27.1 percent, more than double the 11.1 percent rate for homeowners.

In major cities, the median rent routinely exceeds $2,000 a month, forcing low-income families to dedicate more than a third of their income solely to keeping a roof over their heads.

This creates impossible choices between paying rent, buying groceries, or covering medical bills. The consequences are visible in the state’s sprawling homeless encampments and in the overcrowded apartments where multiple families “double up” to survive.

For many, the California dream has been reduced to a government-dependent existence where quality of life is dictated by the level of public assistance one can secure.

The crisis is not felt equally. Children and seniors experience poverty rates above 20 percent.

Black and Latino residents see rates roughly ten points higher than their white neighbors, a glaring inequity driven by wage gaps and a dire shortage of affordable childcare.

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Eerie final message daughter sent her mom before vanishing on road trip

A frantic search for a Florida woman is underway after she sent an eerie last message to her mom before vanishing on a road trip in California.

Ganna Kovrizhnykh, 38, lost contact with her family on July 5 while on a cross-country road trip near Potrero, near the border with Mexico. 

Kovrizhnykh, who also goes by the name Angel Volnaya, was reported missing on July 12 by a friend, according to the San Diego Sheriff’s Office. 

The Florida native left her mother an eerie final message including a photograph of a letter and GPS coordinates from Potrero. 

The letter told her mother to take possession of her personal assets, according to a National Missing and Unidentified Persons System post.

One week later, Kovrizhnykh’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and camper trailer were found abandoned in Potrero. 

‘We believe she was just kind of touring the country and she left her vehicle in Potrero and never came back to her vehicle,’ Sergeant Jacob Klepach told KNSD. 

‘We don’t really have any belief one way or another at this point if there is foul play involved or if she just strictly voluntarily left.’

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Guess Which Billionaire Just Dropped $10 Million to Help Gavin Newsom’s Redistricting Crusade

Democrats’ favorite billionaire is funneling oodles of cash into helping California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan.

Newsom has raised a shocking amount of money in a short period of time to push Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would redraw California’s congressional districts in a way that would give Democrats more seats in the House of Representatives. The New York Times reported that Newsom “has raised rougly $70 million in less than two months.”

And guess who’s shelling out the big bucks? You guessed it: George Soros.

The Times noted that Soros has poured about $10 million into the redistricting effort, which makes the Soros family the largest single backer of the initiative. This development comes as President Donald Trump is calling for an investigation into the family.

In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump insisted that George, and his son and heir Alex, “should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”

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