Tag: california

Kamala Jailed Black Woman For Daughter’s School Absences When Child Had Sickle Cell Anemia

Former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently shined a light on testimony from a California mother who was jailed by Kamala Harris after the woman’s sickle cell anemia-stricken daughter missed too many school days.

During Harris’ time serving as the District Attorney of San Francisco, she decided to punish parents for their kids’ truancy after learning the state was missing out on around one billion dollars in revenue due to the absences.

RFK Jr. explained video of the mother telling her Kamala story is going “absolutely viral” online.

In the viral clip, the mother explained her daughter was in the hospital for 60 days due to her ailment.

The mom, Cheree Peoples, was eventually arrested over her daughter’s 60-day hospital stay despite the fact she had already graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA.

Kennedy said, “Kamala Harris sent police to her house and handcuffed the mother and jailed her. She lost her job, she lost her home. She had to live in hotels thereafter. The police, when they arrested her she said to them, you can see her on the tape. She said, ‘Are you really going to handcuff me?’ She was wearing her pajamas. She was dragged out of bed, handcuffed behind her back. The police said, ‘If you want to complain, complain to Kamala Harris.’”

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Newsom Quietly Bans Voter ID Rules in California

In a controversial move that has intensified the debate over election integrity, California Governor Gavin Newsom has somewhat quietly signed legislation prohibiting local governments from implementing voter identification requirements at polling places. 

The new law directly challenges efforts by some municipalities to enhance election security measures, ZeroHedge reported.

The legislation, spearheaded by Democratic Senator Dave Min of Orange County, specifically targets a voter-approved measure in Huntington Beach that mandated photo identification at polling locations. 

This legislative action marks the latest development in an ongoing conflict between state Democratic leadership and conservative local governments over election administration.

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Life in Kamala’s California

It’s election season, and because California is a one-party state, we don’t see very many campaign ads for Kamala Harris. But ballot initiatives are another story. One hotly contested ballot initiative, Proposition 33, if approved by voters, will enable California’s cities and counties to impose rent control. How the rent control advocates make their case is typical. Greed and oppression against hapless, helpless, innocent victims. But the government is here to help!

Ads in favor of Prop. 33 are masterpieces in emotional imagery. One after another, a diverse collection of beleaguered tenants appear on the television screen, each of them repeating the phrase “The rent’s too high.” Another ad promoting a yes vote on Prop. 33 follows the same pattern, but this time, one after another, a collection of forlorn tenants asks, “Where will I live?” while superimposed on the screen is written, “Average Rent, $2,800.”

In both cases, viewers are advised to “vote for rent control.”

The naked dishonesty of these ads is lost on most Californians. They have been conditioned to believe that high home prices and high monthly rents are the result of price gouging by greedy landlords when in reality there is a housing shortage because the Democratic majority in the state legislature has passed countless laws that make it almost impossible to get permits to build homes. No wonder the median price for a home in California is $904,000.

Vote for Kamala Harris and the machine she represents, and watch this happen to the whole country.

If there were a competitive market for housing in California, such as there still is in most so-called red states, housing would be affordable for middle-income people to rent or buy. But it is government greed and overreach, not only at the state level but in every city and county, that has created the housing shortage.

The same phenomenon occurs with gasoline in California, where more than a third of the price per gallon goes to cover taxes, almost all of them for state programs. But instead of backing off of its regulatory war on refineries and in-state producers, the governor is holding hearings on “price gouging” by the refineries, alleging that they engage in deliberate shutdowns for maintenance in order to create shortages and high prices. Never mind that California’s gasoline price fluctuations track in precise alignment with fluctuations in the price of crude oil.

In every essential sector of California’s economy—starting with the fundamentals of energy, water, food, transportation, and housing—out-of-control government regulations have paralyzed investment and innovation. They have rendered the state unaffordable for low and middle-income households, and in response, the state expanded its aid programs and subsidies.

What has happened in California is going to happen to the entire nation if Kamala Harris is elected president, because she is a quintessential example of someone who is a product of the state’s Democratic political machine. What has happened in California is an alliance of unionized state bureaucrats with politically connected businesses seeking government subsidies. Other special interests also benefit—environmentalist lobbyists, social justice activists, public service NGOs, trial lawyers—but the core relationship is a partnership between a government that serves itself and crony businesses that have the economies of scale to withstand the punitive regulations and thrive on the subsidies.

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Student Wearing Black Paint On Face Isn’t Protected By First Amendment: Judge

A middle school student who wore black paint on his face during a California football game is not protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, according to a federal judge.

The student, dubbed J.A. in court papers, his parents, and his lawyers have not shown that wearing the black paint is expressive conduct shielded by the First Amendment, U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez said in a Sept. 30 ruling.

J.A. said he put on the paint during the game to show team spirit, but that doesn’t meet the bar established in other rulings, including a 2019 decision that found “First Amendment protection is only granted to the act of wearing particular clothing or insignias where circumstances establish that an unmistakable communication is being made,” Lopez wrote.

“Based on the current record, it is not likely that [the] plaintiff can prevail on the merits of his First Amendment claim, nor are there serious questions about it. It ‘is possible to find some kernel of expression in almost every activity a person undertakes,’ such as ‘walking,’ ’meeting one’s friends,‘ or ’coming together to engage in recreational dancing‘ and other sports, ’but such a kernel is not sufficient to bring the activity within the protection of the First Amendment,’” she added later, citing from other rulings.

J.A. was suspended for two days by Muirlands Middle School, which said he was wearing blackface despite the black paint being used often by athletes, and accused him or his friends of uttering racial slurs during the October 2023 game.

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Judge blocks California deepfakes law that sparked Musk-Newsom row

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a California measure restricting the use of digitally altered political “deepfakes” just two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law.

The ruling is a blow to a push by the state’s leading Democrats to rein in misleading content on social media ahead of Election Day.

Chris Kohls, known as “Mr Reagan” on X, sued to prevent the state from enforcing the law after posting an AI-generated video of a Harris campaign ad on the social media site. He claimed the video was protected by the First Amendment because it was a parody.

The judge agreed.

“Most of [the law] acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel,” Senior U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez wrote, calling it “a blunt tool hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas.” He carved out an exception for a “not unduly burdensome” portion of the law that requires verbal disclosure of digitally altered content in audio-only recordings.

Theodore Frank, an attorney for Kohls, said in a statement they were “gratified that the district court agreed with our analysis.”

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8 Years After Legalizing Pot, California Will Finally Allow Cannabis Cafés

When he endorsed marijuana legalization in Florida last August, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump emphasized the importance of regulations to protect bystanders from exposure to pot smoke. “We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of [cannabis] in public spaces,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities.” Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), has expressed similar concerns, saying “we haven’t quite figured out how this new regime coexists with not polluting our public spaces.”

Expanding the legal options for cannabis consumption outside the home, as California is finally doing eight years after legalizing recreational use, is one promising way to address such complaints. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year vetoed a bill that would have authorized Amsterdam-style cannabis cafés in California, signed a revised version into law. Assembly Bill 1775 allows dispensaries, with local permission, to sell hot food and nonalcoholic beverages along with marijuana products. Such businesses will also be allowed to host “live musical or other performances,” as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol routinely do.

State law previously allowed on-site consumption at specially licensed pot shops, but their culinary options were limited to prepackaged snacks and drinks. California marijuana merchants hope the new dispensation will help them compete against unlicensed pot dealers who do not have to collect taxes or comply with burdensome state and local regulations. “Cannabis cafés are going to be a huge part of the future of cannabis in our state and help to beat back the illegal drug market,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney (D–San Francisco), the bill’s sponsor.

California’s new flexibility is an important step toward solving a puzzle that was typically overlooked in the early days of legalization: Once people could legally buy marijuana, where could they legally consume it? The main answer was at home, which was not practical for visitors from other states, might not be allowed in rentals, and precluded consumption in many social settings. That gap inspired creative solutions, such as members-only clubs and cannabis-friendly bus tours, that in turn inspired crackdowns by disapproving local authorities.

Since then, early legalizers such as Colorado and Alaska have been gradually coming around, amending their rules to allow cannabis consumption outside of private residences. Some states that legalized marijuana later, such as Massachusetts and Illinois, at least notionally allowed on-site consumption from the beginning. But regulatory approval of specific businesses has been slow, and the options in most places remain few and far between.

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Mayor of California Charter City Defies Newsom’s Ban on Voter ID Laws ‘That Law Does Not Apply to Us’

A California mayor is defiant after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law in direct response to the city’s attempt to secure elections.

The saga began on March 5, when Huntington Beach voters weighed in and passed ballot measure 1, the Voter ID and Election Rules Amendment.

According to Ballotpedia, the charter amendment authorized the city to require voter identification for elections and allowed infrastructure to support the initiative.

In 2023, then-Mayor Tony Strickland supported the measure in the face of pressure from local and state Democrats seeking to torpedo it.

“Our democracy does not work if people do not have faith in the election results,” Strickland told Voice of OC. “Anytime you can put safeguards in I think it’s important to do so people have faith in our election outcomes.”

Huntington Beach voters passed the measure with 53.4 percent approving the measure and 46.6 percent rejecting it. The increased election security was set to begin in 2026.

After the initiative passed, state legislators were quick to react to Huntington Beach voter’s approval of the measure and moved to crush it entirely.

In April, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued the city over what it called an “unlawful” voter ID amendment.

The two officials said, without evidence, that the measure would hurt the poor, elderly and “people of color.”

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Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Barring Local Authorities from Requiring Voter ID

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Sunday that will bar local authorities from requiring photo ID to vote, which exceeds the state’s requirements.

California is one of 14 Democrat-run states that do not require any ID to vote, despite requiring it for many other purposes. Voters at polling places are checked off against voter rolls without further proof being required; voters who submit mail-in ballots must include their signatures on the envelopes that are checked by a machine against the signatures on file in voter registration records.

The City of Huntington Beach, one of the last conservative bastions in the state, which often opposes Democratic policies, planned to require photo ID for voting in 2024, after a ballot initiative passed to that effect in March.

The new law, SB 1174, “would prohibit a local government from enacting or enforcing any charter provision, ordinance, or regulation requiring a person to present identification for the purpose of voting or submitting a ballot at any polling place, vote center, or other location where ballots are cast or submitted, as specified.”

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The Babylon Bee Strikes Back: Lawsuit Takes on California’s Anti-Satire Laws

In a world where politicians crave safe spaces from jokes, California’s latest move to suppress satire might just take the cake. California has decided that it’s time to put an end to all that pesky “political humor.” Yes, the state that brought us Hollywood is now terrified of a few biting punchlines, and naturally, satire site The Babylon Bee and outspoken attorney Kelly Chang Rickert are not having it.

The champion of online irreverence has just slapped the State of California with a lawsuit that reads less like legalese and more like a desperate plea for common sense. They’re arguing, quite reasonably, that California’s new laws—AB 2839 and AB 2655—are a massive overreach, a heavy-handed attempt to quash their First Amendment rights and kill the punchline before it even has a chance to land.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

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California Governor Vetoes Bill To Let Marijuana Growers Sell Directly To Consumers At State-Run Farmers Markets

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has vetoed a bill to allow small marijuana growers to sell their products directly to consumers at state-organized farmers markets.

Ahead of a Monday deadline to act on legislation, the governor blocked final approval of the measure from Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D), saying that while he appreciates “the author’s intent to support small and equity cannabis cultivators,” he is “concerned that the bill’s broad eligibility, which extends to the vast majority of licensed cultivators, would undermine the existing retail licensing framework and place significant strain on the Department of Cannabis Control’s ability to regulate and enforce compliance.”

“I remain open to considering a more flexible and narrowly focused version of this bill next year that can better respond to market dynamics, without imposing a rigid monitoring and compliance framework,” Newsom wrote in a veto message. “Such policies must be considered within the broader context of efforts that are necessary to address the fundamental issues straining the legal cannabis market, such as competition from unregulated sources and improving access to regulated products.

“It is essential that we prioritize solutions that strengthen, rather than further burden, the existing regulated market,” he said.

While the governor supports cannabis legalization, he’s been notably reserved about various drug policy proposals in recent years, for example vetoing legislation to legalize psychedelics and allow safe consumption sites for illegal drugs.

Newsom has yet to act on a separate bill to legalize cannabis cafes from Assemblymember Matt Haney (D).

Newsom vetoed a prior version of Haney’s cannabis cafe bill, saying that while he appreciated that the intent was to “provide cannabis retailers with increased business opportunities and an avenue to attract new customers,” he felt “concerned this bill could undermine California’s long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.”

To that end, the measure as passed by the legislature contains changes to create separation between public consumption spaces and back rooms of businesses where food is prepared or stored in order to better protection the health of workers in line with the governor’s concerns.

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