Tag: california

Sanctuary State California Protected Illegal Alien Now Accused of Murdering His 6-Year-Old Son

An illegal alien accused of murdering his 6-year-old son last week had been shielded from federal immigration enforcement thanks to California’s sanctuary state policy backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and elected state Democrats.

Briant Reyes Estrada, a 27-year-old illegal alien, has been arrested by the Paso Robles Police Department and charged with second-degree murder and willful harm to a child in connection with the death of his 6-year-old son.

According to police, on May 10, Reyes Estrada allegedly left his young son in his vehicle in the Paso Robles Inn parking lot for several hours. Reyes Estrada found his son, who sustained life-threatening heat-related injuries, and took him to Twin Cities Hospital where he died.

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow has since revealed that Reyes Estrada should never have been in the United States and, even more, would have been turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency weeks ago if not for California’s sanctuary state policy.

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Thousands of enormous holes discovered on the seafloor, evenly-spaced with “eerie regularity”

The central California coast hides a dimpled and pockmarked seafloor region that is roughly the size of Los Angeles – five hundred square miles of soft‑edged pits stretching from Big Sur to Morro Bay.

For decades ocean scientists assumed these round depressions – a whopping six‑football‑field stretch from rim to rim and about 16 feet deep – were scars left by bubbles of methane burping up through the mud.

That tidy explanation raised eyebrows once plans for an offshore wind farm landed on the same patch of continental slope between 1,600 and 5,200 feet below the waves. If methane were still leaking, could turbine anchors stay put?

Curiosity turned urgent when more than 5,200 of the formations, known as pockmarks, appeared to be distributed with “eerie regularity.”

The pattern suggested an active force was sculpting and preserving the craters even today.

To settle the debate, a research team rolled out a fleet of high‑tech robots and a mountain of sensors – and overturned a favorite myth about how the seafloor breathes.

Seafloor full of large pockmarks

Autonomous underwater vehicles zipped barely yards above the bottom, beaming back sonar so sharp it mapped individual ripples of sand.

The survey refined ship‑based maps and revealed that most pockmarks sit almost perfectly spaced apart, each nearly circular and averaging 656 feet across.

Back at mission control aboard the research vessel, experts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and Stanford University watched the topography scroll across their monitors at one‑foot resolution.

The robots also carried a CHIRP sub‑bottom profiler, a sound cannon that peeks some 25 feet beneath the mud.

Instead of pockets of gas, profiles showed neat layers: thin bands of fine silt interrupted by coarser sand sheets. Those buried sand sheets hinted at something far more dramatic than gentle gas seepage.

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California Expands Digital ID Programs for Public Services, Despite Privacy Concerns

California is accelerating its push into digital identity, with officials launching new pilot programs designed to streamline how residents access public services. But while the state promotes the convenience and efficiency of these efforts, the broader implications for privacy and data control remain a growing concern among advocates for digital rights.

Jonathan Porat, California’s chief technology officer, said the state’s Department of Technology is moving ahead with new collaborations following initial efforts that included the mobile driver’s license launched last fall and a single sign-on pilot through Login.gov tied to transportation benefits.

That project, run through the Cal-ITP platform, lets eligible residents access transit discounts using a contactless payment system linked to their identity. Seniors, veterans, and others were able to verify eligibility for reduced fares without presenting physical documentation. According to Porat, the project’s success in Monterey County and Santa Barbara led the state to explore expanding the system to more than a dozen other local transit agencies.

But while the state touts these pilots as progress toward modernizing access to benefits, the increasing reliance on digital credentials has sparked important questions about surveillance, data sharing, and long-term risks.

California’s approach differs from other states that have focused on digital IDs primarily for age or identity verification. Porat explained that the state wants to use these tools to confirm eligibility across a range of public services. “We’re proud as a state to have [a mobile driver’s license] as well, but we’re really thinking about, how can we digitize the way that we validate residents’ identities and eligibility for different programs,” he said.

That vision includes broader partnerships, including with federal agencies like the VA and CMS. “What we’re doing now is trying to expand the breadth of those different benefits programs,” Porat said. “So we started by looking at a couple of simple things, like age-related discounts, and now we’re going so far as to have agreements with the federal VA and CMS, the group that manages Medicare and Medicaid, so that if you receive disability, if you are above a certain age, if you have a certain status, you can get those discounts automatically, just by paying with your wireless payment.”

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Gavin Newsom Scales Back Plan to Provide Illegal Aliens With Free Healthcare as California’s Financial Crisis Deepens

California Governor Gavin Newsom is scaling back his ludicrous pledge to offer free healthcare to all illegal aliens in the state.

His 2025–26 budget proposal, released Wednesday, includes a freeze on new Medi-Cal enrollments for adults without legal immigration status and imposes a $100 monthly premium for those already enrolled.

The freeze would begin in 2026, affecting new applicants over the age of 19.

According to Newsom’s office, the change will not impact those currently enrolled or those receiving limited emergency or maternity coverage.

The new premium would apply starting in 2027 to all adults with what the administration calls “unsatisfactory immigration status,” a term that includes both illegal aliens and certain legal residents ineligible for federal Medicaid.

Newsom’s office says the revised policy is necessary due to a $16 billion shortfall in state revenue, driven in part by ballooning Medi-Cal costs linked to his earlier expansions.

Rather than his own failings and the mismanagement of Democratic authorities, Newsom cited Trump’s decision to impose tariffs as justification for the shortfall.

“California is under assault,” Newsom said. “The United States of America, in many respects, is under assault because we have a president that’s been reckless in terms of assaulting growth engines.”

However, Newsom insisted that he was not cancelling the program altogether.

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Dating app killer whose cover-up of grisly crime led to one of the worst fires in California history thrown behind bars for life

An online date that led to murder, arson, deceit, more deaths and one of the worst fires in California’s history has finally ended with a guilty verdict and prison sentence.

Victor Serriteno, 33, was convicted Friday in the 2020 killing of a single mom he had met through a dating app — as well as the murders of two additional victims who burned to death in a fire he set to cover his tracks, according to KSW Action News.

Serriteno, of Vacaville, was found guilty of multiple counts of murder and arson in Solano County Superior Court and sentenced to 73 years-to-life in state prison, according to the district attorney’s office.

He had pleaded no contest.

The convicted killer met his victim, Priscilla Castro, a 32-year-old mother from Vallejo, on the evening of Aug. 16, 2020, after arranging a meeting through a dating app.

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DHS Probes Whether California’s Noncitizen Handout Program Is Paying ‘Ineligible Illegal Aliens’

The Trump administration is investigating whether California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), a program that pays state money to noncitizens who are not eligible for Social Security benefits because of their immigration status, is paying “ineligible illegal aliens.”

Noncitizens who are over 65, blind or disabled, and are ineligible for Social Security benefits — specifically Supplemental Security Income and State Supplementary Payment — due to their immigration status alone, can receive CAPI benefits. Those eligible can typically receive up to $1,206.94 a month, according to California Disability Benefits 101.

U.S. citizens are not eligible to receive CAPI. In July 2024 alone, CAPI paid 16,852 recipients, a state report shows.  

CAPI benefits are purportedly reserved for eligible noncitizens who are legally present in the U.S. or meet refugee criteria. However, ICE Homeland Security Investigations served a subpoena Monday to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers CAPI, to “determine if ineligible illegal aliens received Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from the Social Security Administration” from January 2021 to present.

According to the DHS, the subpoena requests applicant information, including name and date of birth, application copies, immigration status, and proof of ineligibility for benefits from the Social Security Administration.

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Congress advances $3.5 billion cut for CA for covering illegal immigrant health care

A new Congressional budget proposal would cut federal payments to California by $3.5 billion for allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in the state’s taxpayer-funded health care program.

California largely does not get federal reimbursements for illegal immigrant health care, though it is reimbursed for emergency care under a federal law requiring hospitals receiving federal funding to treat anyone in need of emergency medical attention.

The budget proposal would cut the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage to states that “use their Medicaid infrastructure to provide health care coverage for illegal immigrants under Medicaid or another state-based program.” The cuts would not impact emergency care reimbursements.

California has spent $9.5 billion this year on illegal immigrant health care and is reportedly set to face a $10 billion budget deficit the coming fiscal year.

According to an analysis Monday morning from California Policy Center Visiting Fellow Marc Joffe, cutting the federal reimbursement share from 90% to 80% would reduce California’s federal funding by $3.5 billion.

While the federal government does not reimburse the state for non-emergency care for illegal immigrants, other federal health care reimbursements enhance the state’s available resources for fully state-funded health care programs, such as coverage for illegal immigrants.

Joffee also noted the $3.5 billion cut equates to roughly the cost of coverage of five million beneficiaries at $7,000 per year.

In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested a $6.4 billion emergency bailout for Medi-Cal. He said that while benefits for illegal immigrants had a “partial” impact, ending benefits for such individuals was not on his “docket” and that he believes in “universal healthcare.”

With an estimated 1.9 million illegal immigrants and $9.5 billion spent by Medi-Cal on their health care, the state is spending approximately $5,000 per illegal immigrant on health care this year.

Working illegal immigrants in California earn a median wage of $13 per hour — well below the state’s $18 per hour minimum wage — and thus pay up to $1,846 per year in state taxes, assuming all income is property reported and taxed, and all non-rent, post-tax funds are spent at businesses collecting sales tax.

That’s well short of the average of $5,000 spent on each illegal immigrant’s health care — not including other state programs — leaving the program highly reliant on other state revenue, including indirectly via federal funding, for support.

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California Gov. Newsom calls on cities to ban homeless encampments on public property

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday pushed cities to ban homeless encampments or sleeping rough on the streets — and is using state funds to force the issue.

Escalating his push to eradicate scores of encampments across the Golden State, the Democrat called on cities and towns to effectively prohibit tents from being erected on sidewalks, parks, bike paths and other public properties.

People will also be prohibited from sleeping on the streets with a sleeping bag, blankets or any other materials for more than three days in a row, according to the state-issued guidance.

“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets. Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered,” Newsom said in a statement.

“Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”

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Highest Tax State of California Bracing for Budget Shortfall of Ten Billion or More

The state of California is currently looking down the barrel of a possible budget shortfall of ten billion dollars, or possibly more than that.

This news comes just weeks after it was reported that their state-run healthcare plan, which covers illegal aliens, is over budget by billions. The state is also dealing with a massive recovery effort after wildfires ravaged a huge area in the southern part of the state earlier this year.

It’s incredible that some Democrats and people in media think Governor Gavin Newsom would be a good candidate to run for president in 2028. What has he done besides drive his state into poverty and population loss?

Breitbart News reports:

Gavin Newsom, California Face Another Budget Shortfall; $10-$20 Billion

California Governor Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers are bracing for a $10 billion budget shortfall — even before federal spending cuts undertaken by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Newsom and the Democrats took a near-$100 billion surplus in 2022– partly fueled by federal coronavirus funds under the Biden administration — to a near-$50 billion deficit in 2024.

Earlier this year, the state was forced to borrow $6.2 billion to fund Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which Newsom and his party expanded to cover illegal aliens.

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Gas prices could top $8 in California by 2026 due to refinery closures, report warns

According to a new report, gas prices in California could increase up to 75% by the end of 2026 as the state prepares to lose nearly one-fifth of its oil refining capacity.

The scheduled closure of the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles, along with Valero’s planned shutdown of its facility in Northern California, represents a potential 21% reduction in California’s refining output over three years, according to a report by Michael A. Mische of USC’s Marshall School of Business.

“The estimated average consumer price of regular gasoline could potentially increase by as much as 75% from the April 23, 2025, price of $4.816 to $7.348 to $8.435 a gallon by calendar year end 2026. We can expect retail prices to be even higher in counties such as Mono and Humboldt,” Mische wrote.

California currently consumes more than 13.1 million gallons of gasoline daily. With the state producing just under 24% of its crude needs, the loss of refining capacity could create a deficit of 6.6 million to 13.1 million gallons per day.

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