Despite reports, widespread belief, and general perception to the contrary, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has been cooperating with the federal government in efforts to effectuate the arrests and deportation of individuals present in the country illegally, according to members of the department and documentation obtained by the Sentinel.
Immediately after Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, his administration began gearing up for an aggressive enforcement of U.S. immigration law. That effort included Tom Homan, who had served as the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency during Donald Trump’s first term in office, taking charge of the former agency he headed as well as orienting himself with regard to all aspects of the function of the Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the Department of Justice. Those federal agencies were involved in rounding up illegal aliens, and were to be instrumental elements that Homan intended to wield in his appointed role, announced by President-elect Trump in November 2024, of “border czar.”
By February, Homan and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security hand initiated action in Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington. Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Tennessee, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio, which ranked as the states with the second through the nineteenth largest number of undocumented foreigners living within them. Less intense, what were referred to as “token” efforts were taking place in Oregon, Indiana, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Montana.
Prior to raids being initiated in those states, as had traditionally been the case with regard to the operations of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, going back generations, elements within the individual state governments were made aware, either through direct contact with federal officials or indirectly through resource coordination efforts, of what was coming.
Holman held off on launching what he and President Trump intended to be the largest, most energetic and ultimately most comprehensive illegal alien roundup, Operation Alta California, targeting the Golden State where the largest number of illegal aliens in any single state, estimated at 2.7 million, were residing.
Along with other members of the Trump Administration, Holman anticipated that California officials would prove less than cooperative, indeed obstructive, toward the effort to arrest and deport on a massive scale the illegal immigrants living in California.
In the California Assembly 22 of its 80 members are Hispanic and 60 are Democrats. Eighteen of California’s 40 state senators are Hispanic, while 30 are Democrats. One of the state’s two U.S. senators is Hispanic and 12 of the 52 members of the House of Representatives from California are Hispanic and 43 are Democrats.
In 2017 the state legislature passed into law and then-Governor Jerry Brown signed California Senate Bill 54, commonly known as the “California Values Act” which prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies. Senate Bill 54 The bill was passed in response to Executive Order 13768, an initiative in the early stages of the first Trump Administration to oppose neutralized the creation of sanctuary cities, a large number of which had cropped up in California, declaring themselves jurisdictions outside the reach of federal immigration authorities while simultaneously codifying ordinances, regulations and restricts and creating policies that prevented public employees from assisting federal authorities in the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Homan and other Trump Administration officials recognized that the resistance and active obstruction of Operation Alta California would likely result in substantial inefficiencies and, more problematic, the perception that the policy was failing. They scheduled the initiation of Operation Alta California while they endeavored to secure cooperation from a handful of key state and local authorities and made arrangements to bypass officials, channels and normal processes that were traditionally a part of immigration enforcement operations.
The normal policy of both practical and courtesy forewarning to state and local officials of the raids that were to take place which was observed in other states was not part of the planning and operational procedure in California. Instead, Homan and senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol approached those individuals in positions of authority at local levels within the State of California in an effort to secure their assistance with what it hoped to pull off.
Within California there were jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions which elements among the Trump Administration’s leadership were confident would prove amenable to Operation Alta California, consisting, primarily, of fewer than a dozen areas of the state where the Democrats did not predominate politically. Los Angeles or more accurately the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area – essentially Los Angeles County and its periphery – was that area of the state with the highest population and concentration of unregistered aliens, accounting ro approaching one-third of all illegal aliens in the state. Kicking off Operation Alta California there, however, was problematic, however, for a host of reasons, not the least of which was that the governmental structure therein, at virtually every level, was controlled by the Democrats and/or close allies of Governor Gavin Newsom. It was thought that the best course of action would be to seek the assistance and cooperation of one, two, three or four of those areas which were led by Republicans who would not be hostile to the brewing federal action and would be willing to stand up to and perhaps even defy the state’s power elite in Sacramento.
Two of those GOP bastions were San Bernardino County and Riverside County, California’s fifth largest and fourth largest counties in terms of population, respectively. Each had tremendous concentrations of undocumented aliens, with something on the order 127,681 undocumented foreigners in San Bernardino County and roughly 145,882 in Riverside County. In both, the county sheriffs were hard-nosed, no-nonsense Republican lawmen, Shannon Dicus in San Bernardino County and Chad Bianco in Riverside County, indefatigable champion of law enforcement and the principles of rectitude they associated with it, above all, adherence to the law. In the case of Bianco, he had already thrown his hat in the ring as a candidate for California governor in 2026, and he was leading the pack not only as the favorite at that point of capturing the Republican nomination but in the race overall, as his polling numbers were greater than any single one of the half dozen declared Democrat hopefuls in the race. Highly secretive back-channel discussions were taking place between Homan’s ICE designees and either personages close to Dicus and Bianco or Dicus and Bianco themselves.
The Trump Administration was optimistically hopeful that it could dispatch 7,000 ICE agents – more than one-third of its customs division workforce – and repurpose another 2,000 border patrol agents, comprising nearly one fifth of those normally stationed along the country’s periphery, into the Inland Empire, making a lightning set of raids over the course of less than a month at a clip of 4,000 detainments per day to effectuate the arrests and carry out the deportations of approaching or exceeding 100,000 individuals in the country illegally within just those two counties. That sort of success in the Golden State would establish that the federal government was not only determined to enforce immigration law but would be relentless in doing so, precluding any realistic prospect that Trump’s political opponents in California could mount any effective resistance to the federal enforcement effort. Successfully removing that many undocumented aliens from two of the counties to the east of Los Angeles would form the basis of an equally aggressive program in Los Angeles County, where there was n even richer mix of foreigners defying U.S. immigration law, federal officials believed.
California State officials were not without their pipelines of information. Through various means and personages, Sacramento signaled to San Bernardino County and Riverside County authorities – not just those in the sheriff’s departments but throughout the governmental structure, including the boards of supervisors, those counties’ top administrators and their district attorney’s offices – that they were hip to what was being hatched at the federal level and that the federal action was anticipated to be in coordination with San Bernardino County and Riverside County officials and agencies, to include their sheriff’s departments and at least some of police departments. At once, San Bernardino County and Riverside County authorities found themselves under tremendous pressure to renounce any intent to coordinate with the federal government with regard to the mass deportations of illegal aliens within it jurisdiction. Several tense days followed, as reports spread that hundreds of immigration raids within the Inland Empire were imminent.
On March 25, Sheriff Dicus put out a statement on Instagram, informing the community, “We understand that many in our community have concerns about immigration practices in San Bernardino County as they relate to the Sheriff’s Department. I want to assure everyone that our primary duty is to protect all community members, regardless of immigration status. As sheriff of San Bernardino County, my commitment is to public safety and the rule of law. Collaboration with our federal partners plays an essential role in addressing crime and protecting our communities. California Senate Bill 51 currently governs how state and local law enforcement agencies interact with federal immigration authorities. It limits cooperation between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) As a law enforcement agency, we are committed to upholding the laws of California.”
Dicus’s statement continued, “If someone is a victim of a crime, their legal status does not affect our response. We are here to help. We do not ask about immigration status or require proof of citizenship to file a report or initiate an investigation. Our focus is on ensuring safety and justice for everyone in our community. I have been meeting with community members to listen to their concerns and ensure that we address any issues affecting their safety and wellbeing.”
In the same time frame, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who over the years had established as highly critical of Sacramento’s liberal approach to governance and social order, put out a similar if only slightly more equivocal statement than Dicus’s, betraying that Trump Administration officials were seeking the cooperation of Riverside County in moving forward with its immigration policy but that despite his previous statements of discontent with the State of California’s laissez-faire law enforcement, he wasn’t going to buck the California system by joining in with federal government to bring the illegal immigration crisis the nation faces under control.
Dicus’s and Blanco’s withdrawal of support sent the Trump Administration’s plans for intensified immigration law enforcement in California, starting in the Inland Empire and then mushrooming outward as the 2025 calendar progressed, required that the Trump Administration alter its previously well-thought out Operation Alta California game plan, having to restrategize on the fly.

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF:
ESTHER TORREZ Case NO. PROVA2500798
To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both of ESTHER TORREZ A PETITION FOR PROBATE has been filed by Matthew Torrez in the Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority., Matthew Torrez be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.
THE PETITION requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority.
A hearing on the petition will be held in Dept. F1 at 09:00 AM on 11/19/2025 at Superior Court of California, County of Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino Fontana Division, , San Bernardino, 17780 Arrow Boulevard, Fontana, California 92335, Fontana Division
IF YOU OBJECT to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney.
IF YOU ARE A CREDITOR or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under Section 9052 of the California Probate Code.
Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law.
YOU MAY EXAMINE the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk.
TAYLOR D FENNEL ESQ:
545 N. MOUNTAIN AVE STE 111 UPLAND CA 91786
Telephone No: 213-346-0033
Published in the SBCS on:
11/07/2025, 11/14/2025, 11/21/2025

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Yucaipa has settled upon Sean Moore as its next city manager.
He is to replace, perhaps as early as next week, Jennifer Crawford, who has filled the role of interim city manager since April, shortly after the departure of Chris Mann, who was city manager for slightly over two years.
Moore has been the last four years the city manager of the Los Angeles County city of Lawndale. While Lawndale, at 1.97 square miles, is less than one-fourteenth the size of Yucaipa geographically, it’s population density of 14,733 per acre makes it far more urbanized than Yucaipa, with its population density of 1,982 per square mile.
It is the collective hope of the Yucaipa City Council that bringing Moore in as the city’s top administrator, making him the fourth person to hold the post in less than three years, will bring the curtain down on the most chaotic and unstable period in the 36-year history of Yucaipa.
The question at this point is whether Moore’s relatively uneventful tenure in the previous governmental posts he has held has adequately prepared for the vicissitudes of conflicting interests in Yucaipa, where the majority of residents want to maintain a slower-paced lifestyle in a semi-rural community while deep-pocketed developers and landowners of large swaths of property are focused on the opportunity they see to transform the city from the home of 56,293 residents to a community more in keeping with the likes of Fontana and Corona with a mix of subdivisions with wall-to-wall houses, complimentary commercial strip malls and a mix of warehouses that will zoom the population to upward of 100,000.
For the first 34 years of its existence as a municipality, Yucaipa proved out to be one of the most stable of San Bernardino’s cities, with only occasional changeover on its city council, while it experienced a moderate degree of growth and population increase. Ray Casey, who had been hired as the city engineer in 2003, became the city manager in 2008. Neither aggressively in favor of nor opposed to development, Casey nevertheless insisted that if development were to occur, the cost of the infrastructure that would need to be built to accompany it be built at the expense of the landowners, builders, developers and financiers who were to profit as a consequence of the residential, commercial and industrial expansion rather than the city’s existing residents and taxpayers. In October 2022, the Yucaipa City Council, as it was then composed, voted unanimously to extend Casey’s employment contract as city manager to the end of June 2024, into what was to be its sixteenth year. The following month, two newcomers – Chris Venable and Matt Garner – were elected to the council, supplanting two of its longtime members – David Avila and Greg Bogh – who had opted against seeking reelection. Garner, who was professionally involved in the building industry, immediately upon coming into office joined forces with two of the incumbents on the council, Bobby Duncan and Justin Beaver, to depose Casey. Duncan, a real estate professional, and Beaver, much of whose political backing came from the development industry, were intent on seeing Casey removed as city manager. This was at least in part because Garner and Duncan considered it to be in their personal financial interest, and because Beaver felt it to be in his political backers’ financial interest, to transfer the cost of constructing the infrastructure that needed to be built to accommodate the construction of residential and commercial subdivisions to the city’s taxpayers as opposed to exclusively to the landowners of the property to be improved and the developers and financiers paying to undertake the development.
In January 2023, in an abrupt move that came only slightly more than two months after Venable and Garner were elected, only a month after they were sworn into office, the troika of Beaver, Duncan and Garner forced Casey to resign and replaced him with Chris Mann, who was both the then-city manager of Canyon Lake in Riverside County and the principal in Mann Communications, a company that represents developmental interests in California, Arizona and Nevada. It was believed that upon being installed as city manager, Mann would bring to a halt Casey’s development neutral philosophy and approach to municipal operations and institute a more accommodating attitude toward development at City Hall, including having the city share with developers or defray entirely the cost of building infrastructure – roads, sidewalks, curbs, gutters, storm drains, sewers, schools and the like – needed for that development.
The normally sedate citizenry of Yucaipa erupted in outrage, both at the sacking of Casey and the prospect of what Mann’s takeover of City Hall presaged, which large numbers of Yucaipa residents interpreted as round upon round of accelerated development in the city, which was to include the permissible density on land zoned for residential development being doubled, tripled and in some cases quadrupled. In a way that neither Beaver nor Duncan nor Garner nor Mann anticipated, substantial numbers of Yucaipa residents objected, first, in strong verbal terms and other forms of public expression over what had occurred and was in the further offing, and then by creating a civic interest group, Save Yucaipa, which initiated the process of recalling Beaver, Duncan and Garner from office.
As Save Yucaipa’s members were circulating recall petitions, Ana Sauseda, who had worked with Mann in Canyon Lake and was brought in to serve as city clerk in Yucaipa shortly after he became city manager there, at Mann’s direction hired the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm to challenge language contained in the narrative circulated by the proponents with the recall petition. That ploy interrupted the recall petition circulation effort to prevent the proponents from succeeding in getting the requisite number of signatures within the 90-day deadline.
Thus, Beaver, Duncan and Garner were spared being subject to a recall, but the tactic used by Mann and Sauseda to protect their political masters embittered a substantial number of Yucaipa residents. Some of those initiated legal challenges/counterchallenges of their own to Sauseda’s legal action, asserting their constitutional rights to seek redress of their grievances through the electoral process had been abridged. A complaint was made to the San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury with regard to the way the council had unanimously committed to extending Casey’s contract by 20 months in October 2022 only to reverse itself less than three months later by forcing his resignation.
One of those legal challenges succeeded. The Grand Jury made a finding that based on the way Casey had been forced out, Mann had been hired and the tactics used to keep the recall effort from playing out “the Yucaipa City Council has developed a reputation among many residents of ignoring the concerns of the public and of fostering an atmosphere of mistrust, disdain, anger, resentment, lack of transparency and appearances of conflicts of interest.”

As the calendar rolled over from 2023 to 2024, Beaver and Duncan, who supported Casey’s sacking, and Jon Thorp, who had voted in vain against accepting his resignation, were due to stand for reelection in November. The forces that had sought to recall Beaver, Duncan and Garner but had been thwarted by Sauseda’s maneuvering remained committed to getting rid of the trio. The renewed the recall effort against Garner, who was not due to stand for reelection until 2026 and began gearing up to campaign against Beaver and Duncan in the upcoming election. This time around, without Sauseda or the Sutton Law Firm’s interference, Save Yucaipa qualified as recall election against Garner. Duncan, surveying the number of his constituents that were prepared to vote against him, opted out of running for reelection.
In the November 2024 election, Garner was recalled. Judy Woolsley prevailed in a three-way race to replace Duncan. Beaver managed to fight off the substantial show of disfavor among his constituents, as 1,833 or 38.24 percent of the 4,793 voters in Yucaipa’s District 4 voted for his strongest opponent, Kristine Mohler, and another 503 of District 4’s voters cast their ballots in favor of Gordon Renshaw. Still, Beaver was able to poll 2,457 votes or 51.26 percent to remain in office.
Shortly after the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters confirmed the outcome of the November race, including that Garner had been removed from office, the city council voted to replace him with District 1 resident Bob Miller, who was a member of Yucaipa-Calimesa School Board and the former Colton police chief.
Earlier this year, Mann found himself in the uncomfortable position of occupying the administrative suite in a city where only one of the members of the city council had supported his controversial hiring some two years before. Throughout January and into February and then March, secretive backroom discussions were held about what terms he could be offered to simply go away. What was worked out was he was provided with a severance of $279,045 as part of a negotiated separation agreement between him and the city council. Shortly thereafter, Crawford, who started with the city as a management analyst in 1999, was promoted to director of general services/city clerk/mobile home rent administrator in 2004 and then was made deputy city manager/city clerk/mobile home rent administrator in 2015 prior to being designated as the assistant city manager in 2020, was chosen to fill the city manager gap until such time as a replacement for Mann could be found.
There was talk for a time about bringing Casey back as city manager and there was some consideration of simply moving Crawford into the top administrator’s post.
The city instead undertook a recruitment, ultimately settling upon Sean M. Moore, who has been since 2001, the city manager of Lawndale. Documentation shows that Moore began with the City of Lawndale in 2016 as its director of community development. He remained in the community development director post into and through 2017, 2018, 2019, 2010. At some point in 2021, while he was still serving in the capacity of community development director with Lawndale, he left that city to take on the community development director position with the City of Rialto. In February 2022, he was brought back to Lawndale, this time in the capacity of city manager.
Despite Moore’s status as a primary public figure, some degree of mystery attends him. He was the planning division manager with Imperial County in 2012. There is no record of his having been employed by a public agency in 2013. He was the director of planning with Tehama County in 2014 and 2015.
At present, he has just 20 years of service as a public agency employee. In addition, his work history includes a stint with the City of Indio.
Moore uses the title “Dr.,” but there is nothing in the public record that is readily available identifying where he received his PhD, in what discipline or from which institution of learning.
While in Lawndale, Moore has, at least ostensibly, conducted a public information campaign that places a premium on transparency. He regularly posts to YouTube, short videos under the title A Minute Moore with Lawndale City Manager Sean Moore. Examples of the topics covered in these briefings are fireworks and municipal regulations relating to them, development projects, planned or recent openings of commercial businesses, the city’s Youth Development Center, what is to be featured at the city’s Blues Festival, an amnesty program for unregistered and unpermitted structures, the need to obtain permits for improvement projects involving construction or additions to structures.
In May 2025, the City of Yucaipa undertook a survey of residents to ascertain what they want in a city manager. Thereafter, based in part on the input from the community in the form of 471 responses to the survey, the city undertook to recruit a successor to Mann and Casey. The city has made a fuller disclosure of the process of recruiting an executive headhunting firm to carry out the recruitment of the city manager than it has with regard to the actual recruitment of the city manager. According to the city, it solicited bids from 71 executive search firms on July 29 and received 11 responses by the August 18 deadline. City officials then interviewed representatives of three of those responding firms, and on August 25 selected HR Dynamics & Performance Management, Inc. to conduct a nationwide search for the city’s next top administrator. In consultation with city officials, HR Dynamics & Performance Management, Inc. on September 10 “opened a recruitment window,” which was shut on October 10. The city has not disclosed how many applicants responded to the invitation to compete for the Yucaipa city manager job.
On October 13, 2025, HR Dynamics & Performance Management, Inc. presented a summary of the candidates in a matrix format to the city council, “categorized by most highly qualified, qualified and not qualified.” Without disclosing whether the council restricted itself to those deemed most highly qualified, according to a staff report, “The council then identified the finalists to panel interviews and on October 30, 2025, the city council conducted closed session interviews with the finalists, with HR Dynamics facilitating the process.”
According to the staff report, which was authored by City Attorney Stephen Graham Pacifico, “As a result of this competitive, multi-month process, the city council identified Dr. Sean M. Moore as the top candidate and directed staff and the city attorney to negotiate a city manager employment agreement for council consideration in open session. HR Dynamics also performed reference checks and coordinated comprehensive background checks using a third-party firm (USA Fact), including verification of educational degrees, employment history, credit and criminal and civil case records nationwide.”
According to Graham Pacifico, “Dr. Moore is an experienced municipal executive with an extensive background in city management, public administration, budgeting, and organizational leadership. Over his career, he has served in key management roles in California local government agencies, including positions involving oversight of city operations, financial stewardship, and community-focused service delivery. His background reflects a strong commitment to ethics, transparency, and collaborative leadership, aligning with the community priorities identified through the city’s survey and council’s direction during the recruitment process.”
By relocating to Yucaipa, Moore will realize a handsome raise in pay. Whereas in Lawndale, he was provided with an annual salary of
$218,824.41 some $4,831 in perquisites and pay add-ons, and 77,824.20 for $297,129.61 in total annual compensation, in Yucaipa he will receive a base salary of $290,000 annually along with $20,565 in perquisites and pay add-ons, and $87,090.20 in benefits for a yearly total compensation package of $397,655.20

Making a commitment that locks San Bernardino County and its taxpayers into an essentially unbreakable arrangement for the next twentieth of a century and beyond the guaranteed tenures of any of its current members, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors earlier this month extended County Chief Executive Officer Luther Snoke’s employment contract by more than five years, until 2031.
Snoke, who moved up from the position of county chief operating officer in 2023 to become chief executive officer following the forced departure of Leonard Hernandez as the county top staff member, has cemented a positive relationship with his political masters on the board of supervisors in a little over two years.
Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe has been chairwoman of the board of supervisors since January 2023. She had been from the outset of her time as board chairwoman highly dependent upon Hernandez for guidance with regard to not just the day-to-day operations of the county but policy initiatives and the hallmarks of governance during her chairmanship that were to hopefully be her legacy as a major county politician. The San Bernardino County Charter confers upon the board of supervisors chairperson substantial authority by which the chairperson and the top county staff member, formerly referred to by the title county administrator and now known as the chief executive officer, are almost but not quire coregents of the county, though the full extent of that power is infrequently used.
As it would turn out, fate would bind Rowe and Hernandez together in a way that could not have been predicted ahead of time.
Already dependent on Hernandez, a major test of Rowe’s mettle and performance as a governmental leader came about less than two months into her term as chairwoman, with the
2023 San Bernardino Mountains Snow Disaster. which lasted 16 days from February 22 of that year until March 10. The communities of Crestline, Blue Jay, Lake Arrowhead, Cedar Glen, Sugarloaf, Big Bear, Big Bear Lake were buried in snow and the roads leading into the mountains closed down. Some 20,000 people were snowed in, buildings collapsed, people were isolated, with individuals and families cut off from food, medicine and fuel. There were power outages and at least 13 people died. For more than a week, governmental agencies, including the county sheriff’s department and the county fire department and local public safety agencies were unable to reach those in need. Given Rowe’s and Hernandez’s respective roles in leading the county, the brunt of blame or criticism was vectored their way. Their prospect of emerging from beneath that contretemps was partially based on each having the back of the other. Continue reading →

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a legal action against Governor Gavin Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber in an effort to intervene and prevent the State of California’s newly adopted redistricting plan enacted with the passage of Proposition 50.
If the legal action by the federal government succeeds, it would obviate the effort by the California Legislature and Governor Newsom to rearrange the boundaries of California’s 52 congressional districts in a way that was calculated to produce an outcome in the 2026 mid-presidential term election such that five of the 12 Republicans now representing California in Congress would be replaced by Democrats. The cost to California’s taxpayers to hold the special Proposition 50 election, which was hastily arranged to be held in what in California is an election off-year after the Democrat-dominated legislature in Sacramento resolved to respond in kind to a similar move in Texas aimed at favoring the GOP. The cost sustained by California taxpayers to hold the Proposition 50 election is estimated at roughly $282.6 million, which includes the state’s administrative costs to schedule and carry out the balloting, along with reimbursement to counties for polling services.
Democrats and anti-Donald Trump political forces aligned with them expended $121 million on top of that in promoting Proposition 50, motivated in large measure by the goal of preventing the Republicans from retaining their current thin 219 to 213 seat majority in the House of Representatives in the November 2026 election. That was countered by approximately $44.5 million in spending by Republicans and their allies in a campaign opposing Proposition 50. Continue reading →

China’s strategic business decision earlier this year to radically restrict the export of the rare earth element yttrium, making a substance necessary in the manufacture of a number of modern, high tech products hard to come by as global supplies of the scarce metal dwindle, is accelerating the comeback of the Mountain Pass Mine, located in the extreme northeast corner of San Bernardino County.
On April 4, 2025, China imposed export controls on scandium, yttrium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium and lutetium, causing significant disruption to global supply chains for industries reliant on those materials.
In the case of yttrium, it is an indispensable component in certain speciality alloys.
A specialty alloy is a metal mixture designed to have specific, enhanced properties, extending to superior strength, corrosion resistance, or heat tolerance generally unavailable in standard alloys. In the case of yttrium, the speciality alloys created from it have application in the aerospace industry, the production of renewable energy, in making semiconductors and in certain types of engines. Thin metal composed of yttrium alloys fashioned into turbine blades is able to function and maintain its integrity in high temperature environments. Yttrium is also a key component in coatings that shield against high temperatures.
Because of the Chinese export restrictions, a shortage in yttrium resulted in an escalation in its cost, whereupon the production of certain products have ground to or toward a halt.
On October 31, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Busan, South Korea, at which time Trump, placed into a position of weakness by the situation, had to gingerly inquire about China’s readiness to end, or at least reduce, the restrictions, so to restore the flow of the rare earth metals to many segments of U.S. and international industry. Jinping’s responses, while cordial, were less than encouraging, and a resolution of the supply chain hold-up was not arrived at. Meanwhile, certain specialized U.S. industries are bracing for an extended shutdown until an alternative source of rare earths can be established. Continue reading →

Less than a month since Jashanpreet Singh plowed his Freightliner into the backs of multiple vehicles on the 10 Freeway west of the I-215 Interchange, killing three and injuring four others, California officials are preparing to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses the Golden State had granted immigrants and then previously extended in defiance of a federal mandate that the licenses be rescinded.
There has been rancorous partisan bickering between Republicans and the supporters of President Donald Trump, on one side, and Democrats and the supporters of California Governor Gavin Newsom, on the other, over the substantial surge of foreign-born truck drivers in the United States in the last quarter century. At present, roughly 18 percent – 639,000 – of the 3.55 million truck drivers in the United States migrated to the United States. That 639,000 figure is more than twice that of the roughly 310,000 truck drivers from outside the country who were employed as commercial transporters in 2000.
Figures are inexact, but anecdotal information and data extrapolated from incomplete statistics compiled by 21 of the 49 states in North America indicate no more than 22 percent of those drivers – 140,580 – have become naturalized citizens and that approaching 41 percent of those truck drivers – 261,990 – are in the country illegally or as undocumented aliens, as a mere 37 percent of the drivers, other than the ones who have naturalized, roughly 236,430, have visas allowing them to be in or remain in the country.
According to the federal government, three states in particular – California, Washington and New Mexico – have proven to be too lenient in granting foreigners commercial truck driving licenses.
Beginning in May, the Trump Administration’s Transportation Department, under the leadership of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, took steps to enforce a requirement that truckers speak and read English proficiently. According to the Transportation Department, achieving minimal literacy on the part of truck drivers was a necessary element in a program to improve road safety following incidents in which drivers’ ability to read signs or speak English may have contributed to traffic deaths.
In August, three people were killed when the driver of a semi-truck, Harjinder Singh, attempted to perform an illegal U-turn on the Florida Turnpike in St. Lucie County. Harjinder Singh, who is not believed to be of blood relation to Jashanpreet Singh, like Jashanpreet Singh entered the U.S. illegally and obtained a commercial driver’s license from California, according to the U.S. Marshals office.
A nationwide commercial driver’s license audit by the federal government initiated the following week determined that licenses were issued improperly in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas and Washington.
Subsequently, the State of Florida sued the states of California and Washington over their issuance of commercial drivers licenses to Harjinder Singh. Continue reading →

San Bernardino County this week found itself claiming another title of unwanted distinction, as a Texas-based personal injury law firm’s completion of statistics of traffic mishaps nationwide over the last three years found that the span of Interstate 15 within the county qualifies as the most dangerous stretch of highway in the United States.
Dallas-based Angel Reyes & Associates performed a comprehensive examination of the most recently available data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to determine which highways in America have had the highest number of fatal crashes over a 36-month period. It has now released a list of the top 100 highways ranked in descending order based upon the number of deaths.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Fatality Analysis Reporting System, the 80 deaths on I-15 in San Bernardino County, a primarily desert route over which, on average, 207,811 Southern California residents travel to Las Vegas every week, with nearly two-thirds of those on Fridays and weekends, amidst constant freight hauling trucks and heavy passenger vehicle traffic on the weekends, makes it far and away the most dangerous highway in America.
I-15 stretches from San Diego at its southern end moves northward through San Diego and Riverside counties and then makes a 189-mile run through San Bernardino County to Nevada, cutting through a 29-mile tip of Arizona and then stretching northward through Utah, Idaho and Montana, terminating upon crossing into the Canadian province of Alberta. Continue reading →