Tag: california

DOJ Joins Lawsuit Challenging California’s Redistricting Maps

The Department of Justice has sued California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber for the State of California’s newly adopted redistricting plan enacted with the passage of Proposition 50. 

The suit alleges that the plan mandates racially gerrymandered congressional districts in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”

Proposition 50 amends the California Constitution, allowing the legislature to draw a new congressional-district map. Substantial evidence, including that in the legislative record and public statements, indicates that the legislature created a new map in which Latino demographics and racial considerations predominated, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Prop 50,” said Jesus A. Osete, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. “Californians were sold an illegal, racially gerrymandered map, but the U.S. Constitution prohibits its use in 2026 and beyond.”

The 20-page document was filed in California’s district court and claims that the proposition used race as a proxy to advance political interests. 

Keep reading

California DMV Admits to Illegally Issuing 17,000 Commercial Licenses to “Dangerous Foreign Drivers”

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has confessed to illegally handing out 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses (CDLs) to dangerous foreign drivers who have no business operating massive semitrucks or school buses on American roads.

According to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy, the discovery came as part of an ongoing audit by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

According to the Department of Transportation, each of the 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders has been issued notice that their license will expire within 60 days, as it no longer meets federal requirements.

FMCSA is now requiring the California DMV to hand over a full audit of all non-domiciled CDLs to verify that every unlawfully issued license is revoked and that the state corrects the systemic failures that allowed this fraud to occur.

Federal auditors found that over one in four foreign driver records sampled in California failed to comply with federal law, including CDLs that extended beyond the expiration of a foreign worker’s visa, a blatant violation of federal safety regulations.

Keep reading

Newsom’s Former Chief of Staff Indicted on Public Corruption Charges

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was indicted by a federal grand jury on 23 charges related to public corruption, according to a Nov. 12 statement from the Department of Justice.

U.S. Attorney Eric Grant alleged that Williamson, 53, of Carmichael, California, committed bank and wire fraud, conspired to defraud the government and obstruct justice, filed false tax returns, and made false statements to investigators.

“This is a crucial step in an ongoing political corruption investigation that began more than three years ago,” Grant said in the statement. “As it always has, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to protect the people of California from political corruption.”

According to the charges, Williamson allegedly helped divert about $225,000 in funds from a “dormant political campaign” to an associate’s personal account using a money laundering scheme to fund a “no-show job” between February 2022 and September 2024.

She is also charged with conspiring to create illegitimate, backdated contracts to thwart a federal investigation into Paycheck Protection Loans made to a business he owned.

Williamson also allegedly filed false tax returns, deducting luxury purchases of home goods and handbags, as well as private jet flights and hotel stays, according to the indictment.

Keep reading

DISQUALIFIED! — Congressman Eric Swalwell Names Washington DC Home as ‘Principal Residence’ and Has No California Address

California Representative Eric Swalwell has faced a barrage of controversy in recent years, from his alleged ties to the Chinese spy “Fang Fang,” to his removal from the House Intelligence Committee over national security concerns, to his infamous on-air mishap during a 2019 interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Now, a new revelation raises even more serious questions about Swalwell’s integrity and eligibility to serve in Congress.

Despite serving as a Congressman from California’s 15th District and claiming Hometown: Livermore on his official House profile, Swalwell has declared his Washington, DC property as his “principal residence.”

A public Deed of Trust for Swalwell’s DC home at 209 S Street NE, dated April 18, 2022, confirms the property is designated as his “principal residence” as a condition of the loan.

Keep reading

Dem-run city hires inspectors to snoop in residents’ garbage cans to make sure they’re recycling properly

Residents in a California city can expect to see trash inspectors lifting their garbage cans in the early morning hours as the city continues to crack down on recycling. 

Officials are sending teams of Compliance Officers or ‘lid lifters’ to walk through neighborhoods before trash collection and monitor whether residents are properly sorting their trash and recycling. 

The initiative in San Diego was launched following the passage of a law in the California State Senate (SB 1383), which established a new organic waste recycling program. 

The city will not issue citations to those who violate the recycling rules, but instead will place an ‘oops’ tag on the bin, notifying the owner that they made a mistake. 

Some bins may have a ‘do not collect’ sticker on them, which requires homeowners to sift through their trash and call the city for a new pickup.  

The lid lifters won’t be sifting through garbage cans and are only tasked with inspecting what they can see after looking inside the bins. 

City Waste Reduction Program Manager Alexander Galasso told local ABC affiliate, KGTV: ‘Waste doesn’t end when you come to the trash can.’

‘There is a life after waste and we want to make sure that these are sorted correctly, because not only does it impact our staff and trucks, but it impacts what goes into our landfill.’

Keep reading

DOJ Launches Investigation into UC Berkeley over Antifa ‘Mob Violence’ at TPUSA Event

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, a day after “mob violence” from Antifa protesters occurred outside of a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event.

In a post on X, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon shared a letter that was addressed to UC Berkeley Police Chief Yogananda Pittman. In the letter, Pittman was asked to “preserve all records” in her possession that are “relevant to the agency’s preparation, execution, and response to the Turning Point event held” at the campus on Monday, along with related protests.

“The @CivilRights Division, under @AGPamBondi’s leadership, has asked UC Berkeley Police to preserve all records regarding their response to the mob violence at UC Berkeley’s TPUSA event,” Dhillon said in her post. “Every American has the right to speak at and attend events without fear.”

The letter stated, in part, that the situation at TPUSA’s event “may implicate the University of California’s commitment to provide adequate security”:

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division has recently become aware of concerning incidents occurring on your campus at the University of California (UC), Berkeley on or about November 10, 2026. These events may implicate the University of California’s commitment to provide adequate security pursuant to a 2018 settlement agreement in Young America’s Foundation, et al. v Napolitano et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 17-02255. Our office previously opened investigations of the University of California System for potential violations of Title VI and Title VII based on other events. We will determine whether the events of November 10 should also be included in those investigations. We are also determining whether recent events provide a basis for additional investigation of violations of federal rights, including, without limitation, violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Dhillon’s letter also explained that the request to preserve all records related to the response to the violence at the TPUSA event, included but was “not limited to” all written or electronic communications from UC Berkeley Campus Police regarding the incident or TPUSA, “generally in the last year,” along with “minutes and communications of any pre-event planning either internal or with outside groups” relating to the event, among others.

Keep reading

They Did It Again! CBS Affiliate Gets Scorched for Calling TPUSA Event Violently Disrupted by Antifa “Mostly Peaceful” Before Showing Footage of What Actually Happened

The corporate media literally copied their playbook from the BLM riots back in 2020 and applied it to last night’s TPUSA event in Berkeley, California, which Antifa terrorists invaded.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, a bloody fight broke out at a TPUSA event at UC Berkeley after Antifa terrorists crashed the gathering on Monday night. Antifa terrorists and other far-left protestors turned the TPUSA event into a war zone.

The confrontation erupted at around 4:30 PST. During one brawl, two men were seen fighting each other, one of whom had blood gushing from his face.

Local police had difficulty containing the agitators and were seen putting on shield masks and gathering batons.

In another fight, Antifa terrorists ripped the shirt off pardoned J6 protester Jon Mellis and burned his MAGA Hat while cops stood by and did NOTHING.

CBS News Bay Area reporter Amanda Hari, though, had a different take on what occurred last night.

She remarked on how “lively” agitators were while assuring viewers that the protest was “mostly peaceful.”

If this rings familiar, it should. While covering a BLM riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, CNN’s Omar Jimenez called </> the incident “fiery, but mostly peaceful” while standing in front of burning cars set ablaze by the rioters.

Keep reading

Brave black lesbian instantly silences baying woke mob while confronting Democrat senator about encounter with trans creep in female locker room

A lesbian singer banned from her LA gym for complaining about a transgender woman in the female locker room eloquently silenced a woke mob while grilling one of California‘s most powerful Democrats.  

Tish Hyman confronted state senator Scott Wiener, who represents parts of San Francisco, about the alleged encounter in the women’s locker room at Gold’s Gym in Beverly Hills.

The dispute gained national attention after a video of her screaming about ‘grown men with big d**ks’ in the gym’s locker room went viral.

She was referring to Alexis Black, a 32-year-old trans woman who told the Daily Mail that she still has male genitalia and previously went by the name Grant Freeman.

Hyman spoke to Wiener, who is gay, because he is running for Nancy Pelosi‘s seat in the House of Representatives. If he wins, he would have more power to legislate on the issue of women’s safety in female-only spaces.

‘I want to support you. I have millions of people behind me, watching this right now and we want to know, are you going to protect women?’ she asked. ‘Not trans women. Women. Women and trans women are a different thing.’

When an audience member interjected that ‘trans women are women’, Hyman dared to step on the third rail and declare: ‘No they are not, they are men.’

As the crowd began to boo and jeer, she stood up and stood her ground, shouting: ‘He broke his wife’s jaw so bad she needed reconstructive surgery’, referring to Freeman’s criminal history. 

Keep reading

California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Hike Is Killing Jobs

In 2023, California adopted a law that raised the minimum wage to $20 per hour. It also created a Fast Food Council with the power to further increase wages by dictate every year. Twenty bucks an hour is a nice, round number which is probably why state lawmakers picked it—though it’s not clear why they stopped there. After all, if you’re going to create prosperity by command, why not shoot for the moon and make all the Golden State’s fry cooks millionaires? But it’s just as well that they didn’t go further—that hike to $20 per hour is killing jobs as it is.

One Law Kills 18,000 Jobs

“On April 1, 2024, California raised its minimum wage from $16 to $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide,” Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards, and Jonathan Meer write in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that was first addressed by Reason‘s Peter Suderman in the November print issue. “Our median estimate suggests that California lost about 18,000 jobs that could have been retained if AB 1228 had not been passed.”

The authors initially calculate that “employment in California’s fast-food sector declined by 2.7 percent between September 2023 and September 2024 relative to fast-food employment elsewhere in the United States.” But they make the point that, prior to the passage of A.B. 1228, the bill hiking the minimum wage, fast-food employment was rising faster in the state than elsewhere in the country. Allowing for that, and for changes in the overall labor market, they estimated the real decline in California’s fast-food employment at 3.6 percent to arrive at 18,000 lost jobs.

That’s a lot of missing opportunities for Californians to get a foothold in the work world, make money, and pay their bills. It also squares with other estimates of the attempt to legislate prosperity.

In September, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) drew on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data to estimate “15,988 fast food jobs lost since the law went into effect in April 2024.” The group added, “California’s fast food job loss rate (-3.3% of jobs lost) more than doubled the losses in fast food restaurants nationally (-1.6% of jobs lost) since September 2023.”

That EPI memo built on a November 2024 study that found “more than 4,400 California fast food jobs have been lost since January,” based on federal data. That study also found “10.1 percent menu price increases by April 2024 since the law’s passage in 2023.”

A February 2025 paper from the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) found the fast-food sector “lost 10,700 jobs (-1.9%) between June 2023 and June 2024.” The researchers added, “this decline sharply contrasts with the sector’s historically compounded annual growth rate of 2.5% and marks the only December year-over-year decline in fast food employment this century–excluding the Great Recession (2009) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020).” That report also found that “menu prices at California’s fast food restaurants increased by 14.5% between September 2023 (the month AB 1228 was signed into law) and October 2024, nearly double the national average (8.2%).”

Keep reading

Forget Pelosi, Here’s Why You Should Fear Her Likely Successor

It was a good day this week when Nancy Pelosi announced her intention to retire at the end of this term. There has been speculation for years that she would retire soon, and it is finally happening. The problem? Her replacement may actually be much, much worse than her.

The man who has been looking to replace her in Congress in State Sen. Scott Weiner. His record is so radical that we’ve actually discussed him many times here at PJ Media. He checks all the boxes for the radical left: fanatically obsessed with climate change lawsuits, a champion for “trans refuge” policies that upend families and public safety, and always eager to line up with the most extreme social experiment the Sacramento swamp can devise.

Pelosi’s announcement that she won’t seek reelection has all but cleared the path for Wiener, whose campaign website is already up and running, and features a pride flag as part of his branding.

Earlier this year, Wiener authored legislation giving wildfire victims a blank check to sue oil companies for “climate change-related damages.” Instead of holding the real culprits accountable for California’s wildfire crisis — years of mismanagement, neglected forests, and feckless bureaucracy — Wiener wants to let trial lawyers loot Big Oil in the name of justice. The bill does a neat job of distracting from government failure, while inviting a legal circus that rewards people for blaming anyone but the inept officials actually responsible.

Wiener’s zeal for legislating the culture war is unmatched. In 2023, he pushed AB 957, rewriting California’s Family Code so that if a parent doesn’t “affirm” his or her child’s “gender identity,” a judge could deny the parent custody of their child during divorce proceedings.

This isn’t Wiener’s only foray into pushing the sexual boundaries that the left favors. He’s the architect of SB 145, dubbed the “pro-pedophile” bill, which essentially decriminalizes sex with certain minors under the guise of “equity” for the LGBTQ community.

Keep reading