Tag: california

Gavin Newsom Wants California To Have More Restrictive Drug Laws Than Florida

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed strict new rules on intoxicating substances derived from hemp. The crackdown would give the Golden State more punitive drug laws than even Florida.

Newsom, who was floated as a potential replacement for Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket, announced new “emergency regulations” on Friday. Under the new rules, any “industrial hemp final form food product intended for human consumption” must contain “no detectable amount of total THC,” and “each package shall have no more than five servings.” The new regulations would also prohibit anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing any hemp-derived food products.

Newsom sold the new regulations as necessary to protect children from accessing intoxicating products. “The industry bears full responsibility for not policing itself for the proliferation of these intoxicating products that are hurting our children,” Newsom said at a press conference announcing the new regulations.

THC is the psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in cannabis. Typically, this refers to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which creates the “high” from smoking marijuana, though there are other variations as well: Delta-8-THC occurs in hemp—derived from the same plant as marijuana—and presents a similar, though milder, response compared to delta-9.

In the 2018 farm bill, Congress legalized industrial hemp by defining it as a cannabis byproduct with “not more than 0.3 percent” delta-9-THC concentration. As a result, an entire industry emerged in which companies manufactured intoxicating products containing delta-8, which could be synthesized from hemp.

But Newsom’s “emergency” rules define THC to include both delta-8 and delta-9, as well as numerous other cannabis byproducts. While federal law allows a hemp-derived substance to be up to 0.3 percent delta-9, Newsom would prefer the limit be zero percent, and he would make manufacturers “provide documentation that includes a certificate of analysis from an independent testing laboratory to confirm the amount of total THC…does not exceed the total THC per serving size limits.”

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Beer Industry Trade Group Applauds California Governor’s Crackdown On Hemp Products With THC

A major alcohol trade association is applauding California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) newly proposed emergency regulations to outlaw intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids and require all CBD products be completely free of THC.

The head of the Beer Association, which represents American brewers, importers and industry suppliers, touted its “longstanding commitment to responsible drinking” in comments issued Monday morning and said Newsom’s proposal will close “an unintended loophole” created with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp federally.

“The Beer Institute thanks Governor Newsom for his leadership in closing an unintended loophole that has enabled the proliferation of unregulated intoxicating hemp products,” Brian Crawford, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Intoxicating hemp products are being sold as food and beverages, despite not being deemed safe for the U.S. food supply by federal regulators, and in some cases without age restrictions.”

“The beer industry is proud of our longstanding commitment to responsible drinking,” added Crawford, “and to operating in full compliance with a multitude of state and federal regulations.”

The Beer Institute said in an email that its position “aligns with a bipartisan coalition of 21 state attorneys general” who wrote a letter in March urging Congress to amend federal law so that intoxicating cannabinoids are not included in the federal definition of hemp.

More broadly, the Beer Institute has kept its distance from marijuana. It says on a policy page that while members “strongly believe voters should determine whether their state should legalize the sale of marijuana,” the group itself remains neutral on legalization. It further argues that it’s “misleading to compare marijuana to beer.”

“Beer is distinctly different, both as a product and as an industry,” the trade association contends. “Americans welcome beer at nearly every occasion because beer’s moderate alcohol content means it can be enjoyed sensibly. Brewers and beer importers are committed to responsible consumption, advertising, community service and working with law enforcement to promote public safety.”

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Two Border Patrol Agents Arrested, Accused Of Working With Unnamed Drug Cartel

Two officers with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations have been working with an unnamed drug cartel for a number of years, federal prosecutors have alleged.

According to court documents, the officers allegedly allowed the organization to move large amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin through their inspection lanes on the southern border.

Jesse Clark Garcia and Diego Bonillo have been named as the two CBP officers referenced in an indictment filed by the U.S. Southern District of California. The two agents are accused of drug trafficking and drug trafficking conspiracy, and both men have been in custody since May.

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Court Blocks Parts of California’s Social Media Law in Free Speech Clash

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has granted a partial preliminary injunction in the X Corp. v. Bonta case, which concerns some provisions from California’s online censorship (“moderation”) law, AB 587.

In explaining the ruling, the court said that X Corp. is “likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment.”

The law, introduced by 10 Democrats and one Republican in the state legislature and later adopted, mandates that large social media companies must report to California’s attorney-general regarding the details of their “moderation” apparatus. These companies are required to submit “Content Category Reports” twice a year.

The reports should include statements regarding whether the companies’ terms of service define hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference; if that is the case, the authorities want to know what those definitions are.

The irony of many laws dealing with the same subjects failing to properly define these categories aside, but the court of appeals judges found that this was one of the provisions that likely violated the First Amendment, therefore granting an injunction against it, and several other portions of AB 587 (under section 22677).

Another part of the law that saw the same fate relates to large social media platforms submitting a detailed description of their “moderation policies, and information about flagged content” when it comes to the same categories of speech (hate speech, racism, etc.)

The Ninth Circuit in this way reversed a previous decision by a district court not to grant a preliminary injunction – which is a temporary block until the courts decide on the merits of the case.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

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University of California Rolls Out New Free Speech Policies To Curtail Pro-Palestine Protests on Campus

The term ‘Orwellian’ is rapidly losing its gravitas with how often we make recourse to it in trying to explain global society’s piecemeal tumble into neofascism (same as the old fascism), but a recent batch of policy changes at the University of California, Los Angeles, rolling out this fall in retaliation for students and faculty’s pro-Palestine, anti-genocide protests last spring, truly deserves the epithet.

Reeling in the wake of frequent anti-genocide protests, rallies, and marches last year, the occupation of Royce Quad by a pro-Palestine student encampment in April, and three major graduate student strikes since 2019 (this one, which was at UC Santa Cruz but threatened credibly to spread to UCLA, this one, and the most recent one), UCLA administration is scrambling to enact new campus-wide policies aimed at preventing student movements, activism, protests, and other forms of free expression and free association from taking place on campus, which is public land owned by the State of California.

The most desperate change takes the form of sweeping updates to the (also Orwellian-sounding) Time, Place, and Manner Policies, reported on today by the student paper, the Daily Bruin. Under the new regulations, campus administration redefines “​​publicly accessible spaces” (on a publicly-owned campus on public land with no gates or physical barriers to entry from the street) to include just two locations: a thin strip of walkway known as Bruinwalk, colloquially known by some as “the gauntlet” of leafletters, solicitors, canvassers, and undergraduate clubs seeking to boost their membership; and the area outside Murphy Hall, the main administrative building on campus. According to Daily Bruin, “Separate rules exist for events that receive administration approval 10 days in advance,” such as marches, rallies, and using a megaphone. Other heinous acts that students are no longer allowed to commit include ordering food delivery between midnight and 6a.m., walking outside during the same timeframe, and refusing to identify oneself to campus staff.

Next, a new, ironically stupid “Workplace Violence Prevention Plan” that is to be imposed on all campus employees this fall could have been in the works since before the pro-Palestine spring uprising, but the timing of its release is at best pure bureaucratic tone deafness and at worst another mechanism designed to clamp down on freedom of speech and association on campus. This is especially true because in the legal code to which it refers, ‘violence’ is defined broadly to include threats that result in ‘psychological trauma’. No matter what the boomers say, mental trauma is a genuine form of harm, so there is no issue there. The problem here, as with many of the University of California’s reactionary new policies, lies in the potential for – the likelihood of – selective enforcement. Furthermore, the concept of psychological harm was weaponized by Zionist counterprotesters last spring, led by their on-campus posterboy, who actively antagonized peaceful anti-genocide protesters and then was quoted in this Times of Israel article saying the encampment made him feel ‘not safe’.

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California Governor Unveils Emergency Rules To Ban Hemp Products With Any ‘Detectable Amount’ Of THC

Six years after Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp at the federal level, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is attempting to rein in the proliferation of products that contain intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids. While many support the aims of the proposal, some stakeholders contend it could ultimately limit access to federally legal CBD products.

Newsom announced new emergency regulations on Friday that would outlaw hemp products with any “detectable amount of total THC.” Hemp products that don’t have THC would be further limited to five servings per package, and sales would be restricted to adults 21 and older.

The proposal comes less than a month after the state legislature effectively killed a governor-backed bill that would have imposed somewhat similar restrictions on intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids.

Newsom said in a press conference that he expects the new rules to take effect after a “very short” administrative process.

Standing next to a table piled with largely unregulated products containing hemp-derived cannabinoids, including beverages and gummies, Newsom expressed disgust that they’re now widely sold at grocery stores, gas stations and convenience stores. Hemp-derived THC-infused sparkling water, he lamented, can be found—including by minors—alongside more benign products like La Croix.

“It’s a disgrace and it’s a shame,” the governor said, “and the industry bears full responsibility for not policing itself, for the proliferation of these intoxicating products that are hurting our children.”

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California’s New AI Law Proposals Could Impact Memes

California’s state legislature has passed several bills related to “AI,” including a ban on deepfakes “around elections.”

The lawmakers squeezed these bills in during the last week of the current sessions of the state Senate and House, and it is now up to Governor Gavin Newsom (who has called for such laws) to sign or veto them by the end of this month.

One of the likely future laws is Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, which aims to regulate how sites, apps, and social media (defined for the purposes of the legislation as large online platforms) should deal with content that the bill considers to be “materially deceptive related to elections in California.”

Namely, the bill wants such content blocked, specifying that this refers to “specified” periods – 120 days before and 60 days after an election. And campaigns will have to disclose if their ads contain AI-altered content.

Now comes the hard part – what qualifies for blocking as deceptive, in order to “defend democracy from deepfakes”? It’s a very broad “definition” that can be interpreted all the way to banning memes.

For example, who’s to say if – satirical – content that shows a candidate “saying something (they) did not do or say” can end up “reasonably likely” harming the reputation or prospects of a candidate? And who’s to judge what “reasonably likely” is? But the bill uses these terms, and there’s more.

Also outlawed would be content showing an election official “doing or saying something in connection with the performance of their elections-related duties that the elections official did not do or say and that is reasonably likely to falsely undermine confidence in the outcome of one or more election contests.”

If the bill gets signed into law on September 30, given the time-frame, it would comprehensively cover not only the current campaign, but the period after it.

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Illegal Migrants Try to Board / Hijack School Busses With Children On-Board

In a troubling turn of events, migrants have twice attempted to board school buses in the San Diego area, raising alarm among parents and school officials.

The Jamul-Dulzura Union School District reported that on two consecutive days, groups of migrants tried to either stop or enter buses carrying children.

The first incident occurred on a Tuesday afternoon when three men stepped into the road, forcing a school bus to swerve around them.

The situation escalated the next morning when about 20 migrants attempted to board a bus at an elementary school stop.

Quick action by parents and the bus driver prevented the migrants from entering the vehicle.

One parent, Nicole Cardinale, shared her son’s unsettling experience. “He was really confused. He said these adults, they weren’t kids, they had backpacks on and they tried to get on our bus. And there were a lot of them,” Cardinale told local media.

The backpacks suggest these individuals had recently crossed the border illegally.

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Gavin Newsom to Decide After CA Democrats Pass $150,000 Home Loans for Illegal Aliens

California Governor Gavin Newsom will make the final decision on a bill that would make illegal aliens eligible for $150,000 in home loans for first-time buyers, after the State Assembly passed a final version of the bill on Wednesday.

Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) helped lead Republican opposition to the bill, but Democrats passed it by a three-to-one veto-proof majority, sending it to the governor’s desk — and drawing attention to the party’s pattern of creating incentives for illegal migration by heaping taxpayer-funded benefits onto people who are not supposed to be in the country at all.

As Breitbart News has reported, the loan program expands an existing program that does not require a down payment or interest payments, but instead requires borrowers to repay the principal and a percentage of the appreciation of the value of the home.

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California Senate Passes Law Banning Voter I.D. in Local Elections, Paving Way For Illegals Voting

California lawmakers has passed a law banning voter idenficitation in local elections as Democrats seek to shore up their supermajority in the state.

Legislation SB1174 was passed after the City of Huntington Beach, which remains one of the few areas of Los Angeles that leans Republican, approved a voter ID requirement for municipal elections from 2026.

Sadly for the people of Huntington Beach, this legislation will override their sensible policy.

According to the bill’s author bill, State Sen. Dave Min, an “overwhelming body of evidence proves that voter ID laws only subvert voter turnout and create barriers to law abiding voters.”

“To register to vote in California, voters are already required to provide their driver’s license number, California identification number, or the last four digits of their social security number,” he continued.

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