Tag: california

Entire Board of CA English School for Afghan Migrants Resigns After $180 Million Fraud Report

The entire school board for a Sacramento school that teaches English to adult migrants resigned after a state audit revealed mismanagement, fraud, and illegal use of education funding.

The entire board of directors for Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools (HCCTS) resigned on Monday after a 171-page audit alleging massive fraud was released by the California State Auditor’s office.

The report found that the school took some $180 million in state education funding that it either never qualified for, or qualified for but misspent.

The school opened in 2014 to help adult migrants, especially Afghans, return to school to earn equivalent high school diplomas to allow better employment opportunities in the U.S., the Sacrament Bee reported

During Monday’s board meeting, the trustees first voted to remove board member Sonja Cameron for hiring her unqualified daughter to serve as Highlands’ Director of Attendance and Admissions, a position that pays a $145,860 annual salary, according to KXTV-TV.

However, on the tail of that vote, the remaining six board members immediately tendered their own resignations, with three of the six vowing to stay on until replacements can be arranged.

The auditor’s report alleged that the school board engaged in nepotism in hiring Cameron’s daughter, inflated the number of students to get more funding, purposefully avoided providing financial transparency reports to the state, spent money on repair bills for cars owned by board members, paid for luxury items such as food and travel, approved consulting contracts to friends and family members, modified test results, and committed a slew of other violations.

Some of the fraud concerned admissions to the school. The state charter only allows the school to admit migrants aged 22 and up and who don’t already have high school diplomas. However, the audit found that it was admitting students younger than the target age and also students who already had high school diplomas.

State officials allege these violations occurred to grow the school’s attendance numbers to boost the school’s state funding which was based on average daily attendance and the total number of students enrolled, the Sacrament Bee reported.

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California Moves to Ban Hemp Wellness Products — And the Weed Nuns Are Fighting Back

California’s Department of Public Health is pushing a new rule — and the timing couldn’t be worse.

A proposed regulation, known as DPH-24-005, would dramatically restrict access to hemp-derived wellness products across the state. The rule aims to prohibit the sale of any hemp topical, capsule, or tincture with more than trace amounts of THC (including naturally occurring Delta-9), even if federally legal and non-intoxicating. Critics say it would wipe out entire categories of hemp products — from calming balms to sleep aids — and gut small, community-driven businesses in the process.

One of the most vocal opponents? The Sisters of the Valley — better known as the “Weed Nuns” — a group of spiritual, feminist cannabis growers based in Merced County.

A Ban That Hits Small Operators Hard

“This is the Public Health Department caving to the dispensary lobby and consolidating the market further than they already have. This is a direct hit to small farms and small operators,” the Sisters warn.

According to the Sisters, the rule would criminalize their signature offerings: non-intoxicating, CBD-rich salves and oils crafted by hand in their small-scale, women-run operation. They argue that DPH-24-005 threatens not just their livelihood, but also consumer access to safe, plant-based alternatives.

They’re not alone. Dozens of California hemp farmers, herbalists, and activists are mobilizing to oppose the measure, saying it caters to the interests of cannabis corporations looking to eliminate competition from the hemp side of the market.

A Moment to Speak Out

A public hearing on the rule will be held via Zoom on Sunday, July 28, 2025, at 10:00 AM Pacific. Anyone in California — and beyond — can participate, and written comments will be accepted until July 30.

The Sisters have launched a campaign urging Californians to show up, speak out, and submit public comments before it’s too late.

“We ask our customers and fans to stand with us,” they wrote. “Not because we need more sales. But because the people’s medicine should not be outlawed by corporate lobbying.”

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How Much Slavery Is in Cali? GOP Probe Aims to Find Out After ICE Raid Uncovers Child Labor Abuse

Republican leaders in the House are investigating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on two California cannabis farms from earlier this month after unaccompanied minors were discovered working as laborers there by federal agents.

The joint operation — carried out earlier this month by ICE and CBP officers — focused on two marijuana growing facilities.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom originally commented on the raid and was heavily critical of the federal government. This led CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to break the news to him that they found 10 juveniles, eight of whom were alone.

The Daily Caller News Foundation first obtained letters sent by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, to the Department of Homeland Security — and the Department of Health and Human Services — about a congressional investigation into the matter.

“The discovery of these juveniles at a marijuana facility, and in the presence of at least one dangerous illegal alien previously convicted of child molestation, highlights the continuing consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s open-border policies,” Jordan wrote.

Jordan was joined by Rep. Tom McClintock, a Republican from California, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. Both lawmakers cited failures by the Biden administration as the reason for such negligence.

“The discovery of UACs [Unaccompanied Alien Children] at a California marijuana farm raises questions about [Office of Refugee Resettlement] ORR’s placement of UACs — particularly during the Biden-Harris Administration — and the sufficiency of sponsor vetting,” the lawmakers added. “Pursuant to the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to conduct oversight of federal immigration policy and procedures.”

The Judiciary Committee is requesting more information from DHS and HHS about where the minors are being held, their case history, family background, and other details. They also want a response by Aug. 7, the DNCF reported.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the president of Glass House of Farms — the company that owns and operates the raided marijuana sites — has a history of donating large sums to Democrats.

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Researchers quietly planned a test to dim sunlight. They wanted to ‘avoid scaring’ the public.

A team of researchers in California drew notoriety last year with an aborted experiment on a retired aircraft carrier that sought to test a machine for creating clouds.  

But behind the scenes, they were planning a much larger and potentially riskier study of salt-water-spraying equipment that could eventually be used to dim the sun’s rays — a multimillion-dollar project aimed at producing clouds over a stretch of ocean larger than Puerto Rico.

The details outlined in funding requests, emails, texts and other records obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News raise new questions about a secretive billionaire-backed initiative that oversaw last year’s brief solar geoengineering experiment on the San Francisco Bay.

They also offer a rare glimpse into the vast scope of research aimed at finding ways to counter the Earth’s warming, work that has often occurred outside public view. Such research is drawing increased interest at a time when efforts to address the root cause of climate change — burning fossil fuels — are facing setbacks in the U.S. and Europe. But the notion of human tinkering with the weather and climate has drawn a political backlash and generated conspiracy theories, adding to the challenges of mounting even small-scale tests.

Last year’s experiment, led by the University of Washington and intended to run for months, lasted about 20 minutes before being shut down by Alameda city officials who objected that nobody had told them about it beforehand.

That initial test was only meant to be a prequel. Even before it began, the researchers were talking with donors and consultants about conducting a 3,900-square-mile cloud-creation test off the west coasts of North America, Chile or south-central Africa, according to more than 400 internal documents obtained by E&E News through an open records request to the University of Washington. 

“At such scales, meaningful changes in clouds will be readily detectable from space,” said a 2023 research plan from the university’s Marine Cloud Brightening Program. The massive experiment would have been contingent upon the successful completion of the thwarted pilot test on the carrier deck in Alameda, according to the plan. The records offer no indication of whether the researchers or their billionaire backers have since abandoned the larger project.

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Single US Water Utility Receives 6 Million China-Based Connection Attempts In 1 Week: Security Report

A single water utility in California has received more than 6 million hits from China-based addresses within a week, pointing to the Chinese communist regime’s ongoing efforts to scan for U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, according to security experts.

The South Coast Water District (SCWD) blocked these connection attempts between July 15 and July 23.

It revealed the figure in a July 23 industry webinar hosted by the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center, showing a firewall dashboard by security company ThreatSTOP.

SCWD provides potable water, recycled water, and wastewater services to about 40,000 residents, 1,000 businesses, and 2 million visitors annually in Orange County, California.

During the webinar, ThreatSTOP CEO Tom Byrnes and chief scientist Paul Mockapetris, who invented the Domain Name System, advised water industry professionals to tailor who is allowed access to their servers and said that there are some obvious limits one can set.

“If you’re a water district in southern California, you probably don’t have any customers in China,” Mockapetris said.

A ThreatSTOP case study on its website shows that as far back as 2011, even a school district’s network printers in West Memphis, Arkansas, were receiving regular access attempts from China.

Byrnes stated that the 6 million figure had increased overnight from 5 million, demonstrating that critical infrastructure, such as water systems, is constantly being scanned for vulnerabilities.

SCWD’s ThreatSTOP firewall dashboard also showed more than 34,000 blocked connection attempts originating from Bulgaria and more than 21,000 from Iran.

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Report: California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Led to 18,000 Fewer Jobs

California’s new $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast food workers has resulted in a significant decline in employment in that sector, leading to 18,000 fewer jobs than would have been the case otherwise.

That’s according to a new paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) this month, which said:

We analyze the effect of California’s $20 fast food minimum wage, which was enacted in September 2023 and went into effect in April 2024, on employment in the fast food sector. In unadjusted data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, we find that employment in California’s fast food sector declined by 2.7 percent relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States from September 2023 through September 2024. Adjusting for pre-AB 1228 trends increases this differential decline to 3.2 percent, while netting out the equivalent employment changes in non-minimum-wage-intensive industries further increases the decline. Our median estimate translates into a loss of 18,000 jobs in California’s fast food sector relative to the counterfactual.

HR Grapevine added:

The Employment Policies Institute estimated that “non-tipped restaurant workers [lost] 250 hours of work annually,” translating into up to $4,000 in lost income. That drop equates to seven weeks of work each year per employee.

The California Globe reported that “thousands of fast food jobs were shed by companies in anticipation for the higher costs,” including 1,200 drivers at Pizza Hut. Once the law took effect on April 1, 2024, “restaurants automated what they could to avoid the higher wages,” and “some fast food restaurants also closed.”

By June 2024, Stanford University data indicated “over 10,000 fast food jobs were already lost.” While the Governor’s office disputed the figure, saying fast food jobs had increased, it “stopped by the fall when it became apparent that federal data wasn’t on their side.”

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California High-Speed Train Boondoggle Reveals Collusion of Blue Government and Environmentalists

Socialists and Communists love trains for the masses.  They go where they are told, and Citizens do not have the freedom to change their mind and go somewhere else.  Cars and Freeways allow too much freedom.  The utopia of passenger trains in America was supposed to be the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with over 800 miles of tracks.  From 1981 to 2008 plans were made and a vote to proceed was approved by Californians with funding via a state bond plus Federal Funding.  In 2015 the initial construction commenced.

Fortunately, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and President Trump brought an end to this insanity and announced on July 16 that the Federal Railroad Administration was terminating and clawing back approximately $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s High-Speed Rail debacle.

Secretary Duffy’s announcement said, “After 16 years and roughly $15 billion spent, not one high speed track has been laid by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA). The $135 billion projected total cost of the project could buy every San Francisco and LA resident nearly 200 roundtrip flights between the cities.

Secretary Duffy went on, “This is California’s fault. Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget.  It’s time for this boondoggle to die.”  Governor Newsom recently appeared on the Shawn Ryan show and lied about all the progress on the CHSRA project.

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Billionaire at Bohemian Grove told staff to clean his underwear by hand, lawsuit says

The famous Bohemian Grove encampment, which draws some of the richest and most powerful American men to the Sonoma County redwoods every July, recently settled a wage theft lawsuit brought by three of its employees, but not before some embarrassing allegations came to light. 

Three Bohemian Grove employees sued the nonprofit Bohemian Club and related companies in 2023 for allegedly violating California labor laws, such as by not providing meal breaks and not paying the minimum wage during the event, which is restricted to men. The nearly 150-year-old party is shrouded in mystery, but it takes place in a 2,700-acre camp outside Monte Rio along the Russian River and lasts about three weeks before ending with a rumoured burning of a human effigy and a giant owl. 

The three employees — Shawn Granger, Anthony Gregg, and Wallid Saad — said they were forced to work close to 100 hours per week during the event but were instead instructed by their employers to only clock in 40 hours, according to a November 2023 filing. Gregg also said he was mocked by club members “for complying with a request from famous billionaire William Koch to hand wash his underwear.” 

William “Bill” Koch is a billionaire industrialist and the twin brother of David Koch, a fellow billionaire and Republican megadonor. Both men inherited part of their father’s company Koch Industries, although William sold his shares in the 1980s. Forbes currently estimates William’s net worth to be $2 billion.

Brad Goldstein, a spokesperson for William Koch, denied the allegations regarding underwear washing in an interview with SFGATE Friday. He said that it was likely just an attempt to pressure the club’s owners into paying a settlement. 

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As Newsom Campaigns, California Has Highest Unemployment Rate in U.S.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has already started his 2028 presidential campaign — but his state has the highest unemployment rate in the United States.

As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, Newsom left California in the midst of over a dozen wildfires to travel to rural South Carolina, testing the waters for a presidential run in the state Democrats have promoted to the first in the list of primary contests.

However, while Newsom has led Democrats in criticizing President Donald Trump and other Republicans, his performance in office is a drag on his prospects. Last month, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the state had the highest unemployment rate in the nation:

California’s unemployment rate rose slightly, by 0.1 percentage point, to 5.4% in June, tying Nevada for the highest rate in the U.S., according to new federal data released Friday.

The state lost a net 6,100 jobs, including 9,900 layoffs in business and professional services. Health care and government saw job gains, but other sectors all shrunk.

…

California’s May jobs gains were also revised downwards to a 11,700 increase, down 6,000 jobs compared to a preliminary estimate of 17,700.

5.4% is not historically high; it is below the 5.5% that economists once believed was the “Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment” (NAIRU), the lowest rate possible before inflation would begin to rise.

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Newsom’s Office Brags About Beautiful CA Locations, Then Uses Pic from Different State

When you’re running one of the largest economies in the world into the ground, you probably don’t have time to fact-check your vacation photos.

On Tuesday, the official Governor Newsom Press Office account tried to clap back at a critic on social media platform X. Instead, it ended up showcasing Nevada.

Newsom had posted a video of his interview with podcaster Shawn Ryan, in which he defended and in some cases downplayed his record of gun control.

A user named “One Bad Dude” replied, “FACT: Democrat run states are sh**holes.”

Rather than respond to that policy criticism with, say, facts or statistics, the Newsom Press Office fired back with four scenic photos and a caption that simply read: “sh**hole.”

Because when you’ve got nothing else, just say “nuh uh!” and post a couple of pretty landscapes.

There’s just one problem: one of the images — specifically the lower left one — wasn’t even from California.

It was from Sand Harbor. That’s not a California location. It’s the main beach of Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park.

Yes, Nevada. As in, not California.

To be fair, Lake Tahoe does straddle the state line. But Sand Harbor is clearly and entirely within Nevada’s borders.

So if you’re keeping score at home: Newsom’s team tried to prove California isn’t a “sh**hole” by promoting a different state.

This is the same governor who’s been in office for nearly six years. (I observed open-air drug use myself in a large homeless encampment in Los Angeles just months ago in broad daylight on a Tuesday.)

In any event, who posts state tourism photos and forgets to check which state they’re actually from?

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