Tag: california

‘Please Sir, May I Have Another?’ California High Speed Rail Asks for $7 Billion More

Helen Kerstein, a representative from the California Legislative Analyst Office, had the unenviable task of appearing before California lawmakers and giving them the bad news about the high-speed rail system currently under construction somewhere north of Los Angeles.

Kerstein admitted to lawmakers that the project needs another $7 billion by June 2026 or work will grind to a halt.

She said there was “no specific plan to meet that roughly $7 billion gap” and added that there is “some risk that that gap could grow.”

“Some risk” = drop-dead certainty.

“This isn’t a way out in the future funding gap. This is a pretty immediate funding gap,” she said. 

Phase 1 of the project was originally estimated to cost $33 billion. Current estimates are north of $128 billion, and with this latest ask, projected costs are useless in any realistic sense.

The first phase will be from Merced to Bakersfield. That initial construction was chosen because it is the easiest to build topographically. It’s relatively flat, and some existing tracks can be used.

About $23 billion has been spent to date, with the total cost of the Merced-Bakersfield stretch to hit $35 billion and be completed in 2033. Since nothing relating to this project has ever come in on time or under budget, you have to wonder why they even bother guessing.

Keep reading

Have California Democrats Finally Gone Too Far?

California has reached a new level of insanity. A proposed ballot initiative in the state is named after Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But here’s the kicker: Democrats couldn’t even spell his name right.

The so-called “Luigi Mangioni Access to Health Care Act” aims to make it more difficult for insurance companies to deny medical treatment claims. 

That’s right — these people are trying to turn an accused killer into some kind of folk hero to push their radical agenda. You can’t make this stuff up.

The Luigi Mangione Access to Health Care Act submitted to the California Attorney General’s Office would make it illegal for an insurance company to “delay, deny or modify any medical procedure or medication” that is suggested by a licensed physician in the Golden State where there could be serious consequences such as “disability, death, amputation, permanent disfigurement, loss or reduction of any bodily function,” the document states. It was filed by Paul Eisner, a longtime Los Angeles-based attorney.

The terms “delay” and “deny” were made popular by the healthcare book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About.” The words “delay, deny, and depose” were reportedly inscribed on the casings of the bullets that killed Brian Thompson on Dec. 4.

“What” Rob Pyers, research director for California Target Book, posted on X.

“A proposed ballot initiative has been filed in California entitled “The Luigi Mangioni (sic) Access to Health Care Act.” Actually,” Los Angeles-based conservative activist Elizabeth Barcohana said.

It’s sick the way Democrats celebrate evil people.

Keep reading

Former Congresswoman Explains CCP’s Hidden Influence In California

As awareness grows of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence in the United States, a former congresswoman from California is shedding light on the regime’s reach in the state, across the country, and around the world.

Michelle Steel, who served in Congress from 2021 to 2025 and sat on several committees dealing with China-related issues, raised concerns about the CCP’s influence on the U.S. higher education system in a recent interview with EpochTV’s “California Insider.”

“Universities were the worst one. We have a prominent university in California called UC Berkeley … and they received $220 million from China,” Steel said.

Under the Higher Education Act of 1965, universities must report to the Department of Education every six months any foreign gifts or contracts—either individually or combined—valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year.

Steel alleged the university never reported the money.

The allegations surfaced in 2023 when Education and Workforce Committee chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and then Select Committee on China chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) stated in a letter to University of California–Berkeley officials that the university failed to report investments from the Chinese municipal government—$220 million of which was intended to fund a campus in Shenzhen, China—for the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, a joint research initiative.

Tsinghua University, one of China’s top institutions, is governed by the country’s Ministry of Education.

In exchange for the money it received, the university allegedly provided exclusive tours of advanced semiconductor research facilities to Chinese delegations, including senior Chinese regime officials, according to another letter to the National Science Foundation from House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Research and Technology Subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.).

“Allowing adversarial nations to access research facilities at the leading edge of semiconductor design is unacceptable, especially when that access is given by a U.S. research institution that receives over $700 million annually in funds from the Federal government,” the pair said in the letter.

Keep reading

California and Its Collapsing Blue-State Democrat Model

While the media and the new Democrat Party grow hysterical over the Trump counter-revolution, they are missing some of the most revolutionary and insidious changes in American society of the last century.

Much has been written about the collapse of the old orthodox Democratic Party, along with the growing irrelevance and dysfunction of the legacy media, elite universities, and state and federal agencies. But their growing unattractiveness is all related and was not just the result of top-down development.

Rather, current Democrat Party radicalism, street theater, and violence were merely reflections of its own preexisting cultural antipathy toward the middle class. The party is now a pyramidal coalition of the very wealthy and professional classes comprising the capstone, resting atop a vast, expanding bottom of the subsidized and working poor, strapped pensioners and retirees, angry indebted students, 30s-something urban wannabees, impoverished immigrants—including perhaps 30 million here illegally—and, increasingly, trapped residents of a dystopian big-city America.

The collapse of the blue-state/blue-city model and those who work within and promote it reflects the radical environmentalism of the college-educated, as well as an array of high taxes, high crime, endless government regulations, housing shortages, massive homelessness, illegal immigration, critical-legal-theory prosecutors, ethnic and racial chauvinism, defund-the-police city councils, and, most importantly, chronic budget deficits and vast, unfunded pension liabilities and obligations.

In response to this progressive implosion that accounts for Democrat Party unpopularity, under the radar are historic demographic shifts. They reflect two insidious phenomena.

One, the blue-state, urban/professional/college-educated profile has become antithetical to fertility.

No one knows exactly the contributory relative roles to childlessness played by the progressive embrace of abortion on demand or secularism and atheism. Certainly, the fixations on higher education certification, massive student loan debt, years of student limbo, prohibitive housing prices, and a cultural value system that places status, titles, careers, and degrees over children all further promote a declining birthrate.

But in the end, the cause of asymmetrical fertility does not matter: red-state, traditional populations are simply growing, while blue-state fertility remains stagnant.

Keep reading

Red States Are Paying For California’s Illegal Aliens’ Health Care

In 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proudly made California the first state to offer medical care for people who entered the country illegally and reside in the Golden State. However, the cost, estimated at almost $8 billion, is being paid by all taxpayers, not just Californians.

Do people in Texas, North Carolina, and hyper-taxed Illinois want to fund California’s 700,000 illegal immigrants? They don’t have a choice. Newsom is using Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid safety net program, and the federal government matches the state’s funding, using American taxpayers’ money. Yet illegal immigrants are prohibited by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act from enrolling in Medicaid.

Federal Funding of States’ Medicaid

All state Medicaid programs are funded jointly by the state and federal government using a formula called Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP). Poorer states such as New Mexico and Mississippi get as much as three federal dollars for every one they budget, while rich states like California get one federal dollar for every state dollar.  

The FMAP formula provides an incentive for states to increase spending because as they spend more state dollars, they get more dollars from taxpayers nationally.  

Newsom is budgeting $42 billion for Medi-Cal in 2025-26.

In Newsom’s budget estimate last year, the cost of insuring illegal immigrants was estimated at $6.5 billion, but it has been revised to $9.5 billion “and is expected to grow even higher,” according to the L.A. Times. In fact, Newsom is now seeking a loan of an additional $3.4 billion to cover the increased costs.

Newsom’s Fraud

By law and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rules, illegal immigrants are prohibited from enrolling in Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). By allowing illegal immigrants to enroll, Newsom directly contravenes federal rules and takes matching Medicaid funds that he should not. He acquires the money in several fraudulent ways. 

Paul Winfree of Economic Policy Innovation Center and Brian Blase of Paragon Health Institute recently exposed a money laundering scheme that Newsom uses. California put a tax on insurers that increases “costs” to Medi-Cal. This forced Washington to contribute more taxpayer dollars to California. The state then approves higher rates for the insurance companies, which compensates them for the additional tax. California gains federal dollars. The only losers are taxpayers and the rule of law. 

Keep reading

Report: Chinese Nationals Use Loophole in California Law for ‘Rent-a-Womb’ Scheme

As President Donald Trump is battling to end birthright citizenship, Chinese nationals are reportedly using the largely unregulated surrogacy industry in the United States — specifically California— to rent the wombs of American women to have babies and take them back to China, NewsNation reported. 

It’s a practice that it dubbed “concerning,” not “not illegal,” unlike another underground industry in the state, where Chinese nationals work with “baby brokers” to bring pregnant Chinese women into the country so their babies are born U.S. citizens, according to the report.

When wealthy Chinese couples “rent a womb,” and pay an American woman to be the surrogate, the resulting child is automatically a U.S. citizen, even if the family immediately returns to China.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Joseph McNally told the outlet the practice is gravely concerning, and pointed to a case in Irvine where a baby born to a Chinese national and ended up joining to Chinese military but still had a U.S. passport. 

“That provides a real national security asset to China. And a real problem to the United States,” McNally said.

Keep reading

California Supreme Court Rules Federal Prohibition Doesn’t Block Marijuana Businesses From Transporting Products

California’s Supreme Court delivered a victory for the state’s marijuana program, rescinding a lower court ruling in a case that suggested federal prohibition could be used locally to undermine the cannabis market.

The case in question concerns a lawsuit filed by a company in Santa Barbara County that objected to the use of an easement, which is a right to use another person’s property, for the transportation of state-legal cannabis products. A state appellate court sided with the company, ruling in January that federal law preempted the state’s and that the easement could not be utilized for marijuana transport.

But the highest court in the state has now reversed that decision, rescinding the ruling.

“We are pleased the Court agreed to address that Court of Appeal decision at the Department of Cannabis Control’s (DCC) request, supporting California law and its legal cannabis industry,” DCC Director Nicole Elliott said in a press release on Thursday.

While the case—JCCrandall v. County of Santa Barbara—was specific to the company and county, DCC said that the appeals court’s original decision “suggested more broadly that California’s cannabis regulations were unlawful because cannabis is federally illegal.”

Without an intervening decision from the state Supreme Court to rescind the opinion, that could have opened the state up to litigation challenging other parts of its marijuana laws.

Keep reading

California’s Gavin Newsom is quietly giving rich residents secret cell phones to call him whenever they want

Governor Gavin Newsom has sent major California business owners secret cell phones with his direct number programmed on them.

Approximately 100 leaders of state-headquartered companies received packages containing the phones and personal notes from the Democrat governor in recent months.

‘If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away,’ said one note received by an unnamed tech CEO obtained by Politico.

Newsom’s office confirmed they sent out the phones, but did not specify who has received them.

‘This was the governor’s idea to connect more directly with business leaders in the state. The feedback has been positive, and it’s led to valuable interactions,’ Izzy Gardon, the governor’s communications director, told KCRA.

Gardon claimed the gift is meant to show Newsom’s support of the California business community, maintaining the state’s global economic dominance, creating jobs and expanding industries. 

The California State Protocol Foundation, a non-profit organization that has helped cover costs for the governor’s ceremonial events, paid for the phones.

The Golden State has been hemorrhaging its prized millionaires amid soaring living costs, unrelenting wildfires and a bitter political climate.

Keep reading

Police Chief Defends Use Of Lies And Torture To Obtain False Confession

A police chief in California has taken to social media to defend detectives who forced a man on medication for stress, depression and high blood pressure to confess to his own father’s murder — which never actually happened — through the use of what a federal judge called “psychological torture.”

“Were we perfect in how we handled the situation? Nobody ever is,” wrote Fontana Police Chief Michael Dorsey in a Nov. 7 statement posted to the department’s X account. “In situations like these, it is acceptable and perfectly legal to use different tactics and techniques, such as ruses, to elicit information from people suspected of potential criminal activity. That was done in this case in order to gain resolution.”

The problem: detectives were looking to gain resolution for a homicide that didn’t exist.

Thomas Perez Jr. was interrogated for 17 hours by the Fontana Police Department over the disappearance of his 71-year-old father in 2018, according to a civil rights lawsuit that he settled earlier this year with the city and an interview with CNN. He reported him missing on Aug. 8 of that year and was questioned that evening and the following day.

Detectives David Janusz and Kyle Guthrie claimed in a 2023 deposition for the civil case filed by Perez against the City of Fontana that their lieutenant had told them “something to the fact that they believed Thomas — or Mr. Perez — had killed his father.” The detectives both admitted that they had “a feeling” that Perez murdered his father but couldn’t prove it.

The pair allegedly took Perez to a coffee shop and drove him around town for hours while “berating” him about his dad’s disappearance and looking for places where he might have dumped a body, his suit said. They also allegedly denied requests by Perez to let him take medication he is prescribed for his stress, depression, high blood pressure and asthma.

At one point, the detectives even claimed to have recovered his dad’s remains, saying, “He has a toe tag on him,” according to the suit. Interrogation footage also shows them saying, “You know you killed him. You did.” A third cop, Detective Robert Miller, was also said to have been involved.

The City of Fontana wound up settling with Perez — paying him nearly $900,000 — after a federal judge in California’s Central District ruled in favor of letting his case move forward following a review of police footage from the interrogation.

“Perez’s mental state, among other factors, made him a vulnerable individual,” wrote Judge Dolly Gee, referring to the detectives’ interrogation tactics as “unconstitutional psychological torture” in her ruling.

“He was sleep deprived, mentally ill, and, significantly, undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications,” Gee said. “He was berated, worn down, and pressured into a false confession after 17 hours of questioning. (The officers) did this with full awareness of his compromised mental and physical state and need for his medications.”

In his X statement, Chief Dorsey explained that while the City of Fontana was ready to end its beef with Perez and put his case to rest after half a decade, he was not.

“Our police department recently settled a lawsuit that generated misleading, one-sided headlines, telling the story from the point-of-view of the plaintiff’s attorney,” Dorsey said.

Keep reading

Court blocks California law on children’s online safety

A federal judge said California cannot enforce a state law meant to shield children from online content that could harm them mentally or physically.

U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled on Thursday that the trade group NetChoice deserved a preliminary injunction because it was likely to show the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act violated its members’ free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment.

NetChoice said the law would turn its 39 members including Amazon.com (AMZN.O), Google (GOOGL.O), Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), Netflix (NFLX.O) and Elon Musk’s X into state-deputized censors, and “censor the internet under the guise of privacy.”

The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, which defended the law, did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.

Ambika Kumar, a lawyer for NetChoice, called the law “a breathtaking act of unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, content-based censorship. We are pleased to see it enjoined.”

Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2022, California’s law required businesses to create reports addressing whether their online platforms could harm children, and take steps before launch to reduce the risks.

It also required businesses to estimate ages of child users and configure privacy settings for them, or provide high settings for everyone. Civil fines could reach $2,500 per child for negligence and $7,500 per child for intentional violations.

Keep reading