In what is to be the most extensive use of drones in a law enforcement context yet in San Bernardino County, the Rialto Police Department will be incorporating an unspecified number of the pilotless aerial vehicles into its operations over the next few months.
On November 25, the Rialto City Council approved having the city enter into a nine-year, $14.3 million augmentation contract with Axon Enterprise Inc., which is also known as TASER International, to increase an existing contract it had for supplying the police department with surveillance, video, information processing and storage, software, and artificial intelligence technology. The package the city purchased, Axon’s Officer Safety Plan 10 (OSP 10), includes making upgrades to the body-worn and in-car camera system that has long been deployed by the department, the company’s next generation of digital information storage and retrieval system, automated video analysis, license-plate readers and the Rialto Police Department’s first Drone-as-First-Responder program.
While the Drone-as-First-Responder fleet is to consist of unmanned surveillance craft provided through the company’s Axon Air division, the department already had in place three drones as part of the department’s unmanned aircraft system, which has been referred to by using the nomenclature “UAS/Drone.”
According to the department, it has in its inventory a single DJI Mavic 2 PRO remote-controlled aircraft, purchased at a cost of $1,500, and two EVO 11 PRO remote-controlled aircraft, purchased for a total cost of $3,750, which are “utilized to enhance the safety of the community and officers.” Each of those drones, equipped with video cameras, have come into use, according to the department, “when its view would assist officers or incident commanders with the following situations, which include but are not limited to 1) major collision investigations; 2) search for missing persons; 3) natural disaster management; 4) crime scene photography; 5) SWAT [special weapons and tactics] tactical or other public safety and life preservation missions; 6) in response to specific requests from local, state or federal fire authorities for fire response and/or prevention.” Continue reading →

The Redlands City Council is venturing another $16.1 million in taxpayer money toward converting the former Citibank building into a new City Hall.
The $16.1 million in construction and professional service agreements it signed off on are $100,000 more than the $16 million it appropriated in June 2021 to purchase the six story structure, which was formerly known as Citrus Center, located at 300 East State Street.
Since acquiring the building at what city officials said was below-market price, city officials in the community development and public works departments and the building and safety and planning divisions have focused on the internal improvements to the building that will need to take place before the lion’s share of city departments migrate from their current offices at 35 Cajon Street onto the various floors of the 92,000 square foot structure, which was erected in 1982.
The city began renovations to the sixth floor in 2023 and was set to begin moving some offices into it that fall, but it has taken longer than expected to clear the existing tenants out than was anticipated. At that time, the city tentatively awarded a design contract on the conversion work to Miller Architectural Corporation and retained Tilden-Coil Constructors in 2024 to provide construction management services on the comprehensive conversion project.
In January 2024, the city council unanimously supported a termination agreement with Citibank to allow the company to leave the 300 East State Street address and relocate to 333 Orange Street. The city is reimbursing Property One, LLC $1,100,000 to facilitate tenant improvements for Citybank’s move, clearing the way to do the City Hall conversion. Continue reading →

“Imagine no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill and die for. And no religion, too.” –from John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”

By Phill Courtney
Like many people, I’ve always appreciated the messages contained in John Lennon’s seminal 1971 song, which was released just after I’d graduated from high school. In fact, it perfectly captured some of the feelings I’d had for some time, as it did for many other people as well.
Of course, we now know that this wasn’t and still isn’t a feeling shared by everyone, and, even today, the song—which some said insulted people of faith because of that line about “no religion”—remains controversial, with perhaps the most recent example of that being the ironic push-back it received after it was played at President Jimmy Carter’s memorial in January of 2025.
Yes, ironic is the word because it was one of the favorite songs of a man, it could be argued, who was perhaps one of the most—if not the most, religious of our U. S. presidents, and certainly more so than the man who currently occupies the White House.
But, sadly, despite this song being played endlessly on the way to its status as one of the most iconic of the 20th century—heard at countless memorials and services for those who have died or were killed in various tragedies, including his own—I suspect that John Lennon would trade all the tributes to its “greatness” in exchange for far more people embracing Imagine’s messages in a world still badly beset by blind allegiance to numerous and divisive fundamentalist religions, and to the malignancies of nationalism.
So, too, I suspect, would Martin Luther King, Jr., who would undoubtedly also trade all the speeches; the streets; the statues; as well as the holiday dedicated to his memory, in exchange for a world which actually listened to his words, and both remembered and then followed them. Continue reading →

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME
CASE NUMBER CIVSB 2534462
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner COCO LI filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
COCO LI to XIU MIN LI
THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: January 22, 2026 Time: 8:30 AM Department: S 30
The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, San Bernardino District-Civil Division, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Dated: 12/11/2025
Judge of the Superior Court: Gilbert G. Ochoa
Eilene Ramos, Deputy Clerk of the Court
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on December 12, 19 & 26, 2025 and January 2, 2026.

FBN 20250011396
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
GLOBAL INVESTMENTS [and] GLOBAL WEALTH BUILDERS [and] COREWISE ACADEMY [and] CORNERSTONE GROUP [and] ASPIRVISION [and] AFFLUENTOPIA 4195 CHINO HILLS PARKWAY, SUITE E-420 CHINO HILLS, CA 91709: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION INVESTMENTS, INC. 4195 CHINO HILLS PARKWAY, SUITE E-420 CHINO HILLS, CA 91709
Business Mailing Address: 4195 CHINO HILLS PARKWAY, SUITE E-420 CHINO HILLS, CA 91709
The business is conducted by: A CORPORATION registered with the State of California
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: N/A.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ ALISHA CHEN, CEO
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 12/08/2025
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K4616
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on December 12, 19 & 26, 2025 and January 2, 2026.

Continue reading →

Leaders who as the dregs… flow through public scorn as mud from a muddy spring, rulers who neither see nor feel nor know but leechlike to their ebbing power cling ‘til they drop without a blow … as a two-edged sword to all who wield.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley

With the close of 2025, the San Bernardino County Establishment finds itself on the eve of what is to due to play out in 2026 as a major test of its political credibility.
Embedded in the convoluted mishmash of competing principles and the self-interest of current officeholders is whether those who have the upper hand at the moment are going to reverse course and in spirit deviate from the principle their party has long stood for so they can extend their own personal control of the machinery of local government or whether they will stand down and pass the scepter to the next generation.
At the heart of the matter is the political machine that the county’s Republicans constructed some six decades ago and which remains to the present the dominant force on the San Bernardino County political scene. Of parallel importance is the concept of term limits, which originated in San Bernardino County and elsewhere in California as a means by which Republicans hoped to hold in check the growing influence, hold and hold and now the dominance and monopoly the Democrats have over politics in the Golden State. Through attentiveness and energy, hard work, determination and vigilance and, increasingly, sleight-of-hand and bareknuckled exploitation of the lack of coordination on the part of their counterpart Democrats, the Republicans have maintained their ascendancy in San Bernardino County.
In 1936, Harry Sheppard, a former railroad executive and the president and owner of the King’s Beverage Company of Los Angeles, at the age of 51 ran for Congress as a New Deal Democrat, defeating the Republican incumbent, Sam Collins in the race to represent the California’s 19th Congressional, encompassing the lion’s share of San Bernardino County. This shifted political control over San Bernardino County into the hands of the Democrats, who remained in charge for three decades. Sheppard served as San Bernardino County’s primary Congressman in the House of Representatives from January 1937 until January 1965, representing California’s 19th Congressional District in the 1930s, the state’s 21st Congressional District in the 1940s, its 27th Congressional District in the 1950s and the state’s 33rd Congressional District in the 1960s. He likely would have remained in office beyond that but for a major faux pas he engaged in during January 1964 when, over a two-day period, he made 27 separate $10,000 deposits into 27 different banks and savings and loan institutions in Washington, D.C., and communities surrounding the nation’s capital in Virginia and Maryland, in each case one cent below the mandatory IRS reporting threshold that banking institutions were bound by. Reports pertaining to the deposits reached the nation’s newspapers. He claimed that he was merely making prudent deposits of his life savings, which he had formerly kept in a safe deposit box and in his bedroom closet. Though he was at that point the dean of California’s Congressional Delegation, one of the two most powerful members of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee and considered the most influential member of the CIA Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, instantaneously he was no longer an asset to President Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats but rather a liability. On February 20, 1964, he announced he was retiring from Congress after the completion of that term. He was succeeded in January 1965 by another Democrat, Kenneth Dyal, but the financial scandal Sheppard had embroiled himself in greatly damaged the Democratic Party and in 1966, Dyal was replaced by Jerry Pettis a Republican, who came into office in the same election cycle when Ronald Reagan was elected governor.
Over the next four decades, San Bernardino County remained a Republican stronghold, even as by the dawning of the Third Millennium the state as a whole fell back under the sway of the Democratic Party. Despite the state’s leftward trend, right up until 2009, registered Republicans outnumbered registered Democrats in San Bernardino County. During the gradual GOP declension throughout the state, the Republicans had latched onto a number of approaches and strategies in an effort to remain, if not dominant, relevant politically. One of these included championing term limits, preventing New Age Democrats from becoming entrenched in office over the course of multiple decades in the way that Democrats such as Sheppard had in the middle of the 20th Century. Republican politicians such as Governor Pete Wilson and one-time Assemblyman and Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum campaigned vigorously for the passage of term limits on statewide office, while Democrats, perhaps most notably Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, opposed them. The Republicans’ calculation was that members of their party, supported by wealthy large corporate and smaller entrepreneurial interests, stood a better chance of being elected to office if they were not opposed by Democrats who could remain in office decade after decade while accumulating and compounding donations coming their way through the advange of incumbency.
In San Bernardino County, term limits were championed by County Supervisor Paul Biane, who acceded to both vice chairman and chairman of the board of supervisors while simultaneously serving as vice chairman and chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In 2006, Biane sponsored Measure P, which, while raising the salary members of the board of supervisors received by over $50,000 from $99,000 yearly to $151,000, imposed on them being limited to three four-year terms in office.
In 2009, the number of registered Democrats in San Bernardino County eclipsed the registered Democrats. In the more than 16 years since, the Democrats have widened that registration advantage. At present, 479,303 or 38.7 percent of the 1,238,861 total voters in the county are registered as Democrats, while 380,694 or 30.7 percent identify as Republicans, with 272,051 or 22 percent declaring on party affiliation and the remaining 8.6 percent registered with the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freed or other more obscure parties.
Despite the Democrats 8 percent registration advantage over the Republicans, Republicans remain as the dominant party in San Bernardino County politically. In California, all of the constitutional state offices from governor to lieutenant governor to attorney general to secretary of state to superintendent of public instruction to insurance commissioner to state controller in California are occupied by Democrats. In the state’s lower legislative house, the California Assembly, 60 of 80 members are Democrats. In the upper house, the California Senate, 30 of 40 members are Democrats. In California’s Congressional Delegation, both Senators are Democrats and of the state’s 52 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 43 are Democrats and nine are Republicans. San Bernardino County bucks the statewide trend significantly. While five of its eight state senators are Democrats, that is because large portions of three of those districts lie in neighboring counties dominated by the Democrats. Five of the district’s ten assembly members are Republicans. Two of the district’s four members of Congress are Republicans. In seventeen of the county’s 22 cities and two incorporated towns, Republicans hold a majority of the council seats. Four of the five members of the county board of supervisors are Republicans.
In 2017, the Red Brennan Group, a nonpartisan government reform committee, sought to place a series of reform initiatives relating to San Bernardino County government on the June 2018 ballot. The board of supervisors effectively used its control over the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters and the office of county counsel – the county’s stable of in-house attorneys – to administratively and legally block those initiatives, despite the Red Brennan Group having obtained a sufficient number of voters’ signatures to qualify the measures for a vote. Despite later determinations that the county’s bureaucratic maneuvering was legally invalid, the delays that were created as a consequence of the challenges succeeded in keeping the measures off the 2018 ballot because the printing deadline for the ballot had elapsed. Despite that setback, the Red Brennan Group redoubled its efforts and once again qualified another reform measure for the November 2020 election, one that redefined the county supervisors’ posts as part time ones, reduced the yearly total remuneration for the supervisor position to $60,000 and imposed on them a single four-year term in office. Despite legal and administrative efforts by the supervisors, the county’s administrators and the office of county counsel, the Red Brennan Group succeeded in gathering sufficient signatures to place the measure on the ballot. Designated as Measure K, it passed on November 3, 2020 with 516,184 votes or 66.84 percent in favor and 256,098 or 33.16 percent opposed.
Shortly after the measure passed, the board of supervisors took the extraordinary step of directing the office of county counsel and retaining three attorneys – Bradley Hertz, James Sutton and Nicholas Sanders of the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm – to file on its behalf a lawsuit against its own employee, Lynna Monell, who was the clerk of the board, in an effort to legally block Measure K from being implemented. The filing of the suit resulted in both the salary reduction and term limit provisions of Measure K being put on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
Then-County Counsel Michelle Blakemore and then-San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez arranged to have the lawsuit maneuvered into the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Don Alvarez, who was known to be both beholden and sympathetic to the county’s governmental hierarchy.
Judge Alvarez made a finding invalidating the entirety of Measure K on the grounds that its secondary provision limiting supervisors to a single four-year term was unconstitutional and that the term limitation element of the measure was not separable from its salary and benefit reductions. This, Judge Alvarez ruled, rendered Measure K unenforceable.
The Red Brennan Group appealed Judge Alvarez’s finding and obtained a ruling from the 4th District Court of Appeal in the summer of 2022 reversing his invalidation of the measure. The lawsuit challenging Measure K bought the board of supervisors two years of time, during which the county government placed on the November 2022 ballot what it represented as its own government reform initiative, Measure D, which restored each individual supervisor’s total annual compensation to roughly $255,000 to $275,000 – roughly 80 percent of what is provided to a Superior Court judge – while imposing on the supervisors term limits of three four-year terms, essentially equivalent to what had been the wage-scale and number-of-years-in-office rules that had been in place before Measure K’s passage. Measure D passed by a margin of 241,894 votes or 58.22 percent to 173,582 votes or 41.78 percent in the November 2022 election.
In the meantime, the county lodged an appeal of the 4th District Court of Appeal’s ruling validating Measure K. In 2023, the California Supreme Court let the Fourth District Court of Appeals’ ruling upholding 2020’s Measure K stand. Nevertheless, it was the position of the county board of supervisors and thus the county’s position that Measure D superseded Measure K and that not only was the remuneration level for the supervisors restored, but that the members of the board of supervisors were once again permitted to serve three four-year terms.
Given that Measure D, technically, is applicable going forward and is not retroactive, there are those who now take the position that the incumbents in place when it passed – Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, who was first elected to the board in 2014, reelected in 2018 and reelected in 2022; Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe, who was appointed to the board in 2018, elected in 2020 and reelected in 2024; First District Supervisor Paul Cook, who was elected to the board in 2020; and Fifth District Supervisor Joe Baca Jr, who was elected to the board in 2022 – are bound by the three term limitation only as of elections that occurred after 2022. In addition, according to those of this mindset, Second District Supervisor Jesse Armendarez, who was elected in the same November 2022 election in which Measure D passed but who ran for election before it passed, is likewise not subject to the three term limitation until after the term he is now serving ends. By this interpretation, Hagman is now at liberty to run for reelection in 2026, 2030 and 2034, such that he would be barred from seeking reelection in 2038. Further, Cook, Baca and Rowe would count the term they were elected to in 2024 as the first of the three terms to be counted under the term limit rule now in effect, such that they can seek reelection in 2028 and 2032 if they choose to, and Armendarez can, like Hagman, serve out his current term and then have the three four-year term limit kick in, allowing him to seek reelection in 2026, 2030 and 2034.
It is nonetheless, unclear as to exactly what restrictions currently apply on the terms to be served by the members of the county supervisors, as there exists a competing theory with regard to when the clock began to run on the three terms specified in Measure D. Under that alternate theory, Hagman’s first term in office, which initiated after his 2014 election, counts toward his three allotted terms, the term he served following his 2018 reelection counts as his second allotted term and his current term, to which he was elected counts as his final term in office. In applying this theory to the remaining members of the board of supervisors, Cook, Baca and Rowe are now serving the second of three terms they can be elected to and they are entitled to seek reelection in 2028 if that is their will, but all three would be barred from seeking reelection in 2032. Armendarez, under this interpretation can run for reelection in 2026 and in 2030, and would be termed out when his third term concludes the first week of 2035.
Of immediate focus is Supervisor Curt Hagman, as he is currently the longest serving supervisor and the term limit issue is therefore relevant to the upcoming June 2026 primary election. If the first interpretation is applied and Supervisor Hagman is permitted under the way in which the county applies the three term rule contained in Measure D to seek reelection next year, that will serve as the precedent to allow Cook, Rowe and Baca to remain on the board of supervisors, conditional upon their decision to do so and the willingness of the voters to sustain them in office, until January 2037 and Armendarez until January 2029.
Key to which interpretation will prevail is Laura Feingold, who was elevated to the position of county counsel last month after what was either the willing or forced departure of Tom Bunton earlier this year. If, indeed, Hagman opts to seek or at least attempts to seek reelection as 4th District supervisor in the June 2026 primary election, Feingold will be called upon, either by the board of supervisors or the public at large, to render a decision as to whether under the term limits imposed by 2022’s Measure D, Hagman is eligible to run for reelection.
When Curt Hagman was elected to the board in 2014, the restrictions of 2006’s Measure P were in effect. Under Measure P, he was eligible to serve three terms as supervisor and after being reelected in 2018 and 2022, ineligible to run for 4th District supervisor in 2026. Measure P, however, was rendered null and void by the passage of 2020’s Measure K. Measure K never went into effect and has been, apparently, superseded by Measure D, which became effective following the 2022 election and subjected the supervisors once more to three four-year terms.
The question has now become whether Measure D went into effect as of the certification of the November 2022 election such that it obviated any previous limitations on the terms of service and began the clock anew on how many terms the supervisors could serve post 2022. Feingold will be asked whether Supervisor Hagman, who had his three bites at the apple under Measure P, has also had three bites at the apple under Measure D and, as such, is to be termed out of office after the term he was elected to in 2022 ends. In addressing that question, Feingold will also be called upon to determine, simultaneously and conversely, whether Measure D erased all previous term limitation rules or considerations and is only applicable going forward and not retroactively, such that Supervisor Hagman is now eligible to run for reelection in 2026, 2030 and 2034.
This week, the Sentinel addressed questions to both Hagman and Feingold.
It sought from Hagman whether he intends to seek reelection as Fourth District supervisor next year.
The Sentinel inquired of Feingold which interpretation of the applicability of Measure D is correct and if, in her legal opinion and that of her office, Supervisor Hagman’s course as Fourth District supervisor will have run at the end of 2026, making him therefore ineligible to run for reelection in the June 2026 primary and November2026 general elections or whether he is at liberty to run for reelection as Fourth District supervisor in the 2026 election cycle and by extension in the 2030 election cycle and the 2034 election cycle.
Neither Hagman nor Feingold responded to the Sentinel by press time.
It is of some note that Hagman, a Republican who was formerly a councilman and mayor in Chino Hills, served six years in the California Assembly between 2008 and 2014, at which point he was termed out of office and ran for supervisor. Before doing so, he maneuvered himself into the position of chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In that capacity, he bought into and embodied the principles of the national and state GOP, which included support for term limits. At this point, as county supervisor, Hagman is provided with an annual salary of $193,555.79, further remuneration of $42,089.76 and benefits of $86,122.97 for a total annual compensation of $321,768.52.
To remain loyal to the Republican Party principle of embracing term limits he formerly espoused, as both an elected member of the California legislature, as a Republican Party member and the leader of the Republican Party in San Bernardino County, Hagman will need to forego that $321,768.52, subject to cost-of-living increases, he stands to make annually from, potentially, 2027 until the end of 2038, which would total $3,861,222.21, without those cost-of-living increases being calculated. Whether Hagman is going to live up to that principle when doing so would come at such a steep personal financial cost will become known on March 6, 2026, when the filing period for supervisorial candidates closes.
Just like Hagman has a lot of money riding on whether he will seek to remain in office as 4th District supervisor, Feingold has a personal financial interest in which way she renders her legal opinion how the term limit provision in Measure D should be interpreted.
As county counsel, Feingold serves at the pleasure of the board of supervisors. Unlike the two previous county counsels in San Bernardino County – Michelle Blakemore, who served four years as the county’s top staff attorney, and Bunton, who last likewise four years in the post before retiring – Feingold is nearly a decade younger than what her predecessors were when she assumed the position. Given her relative youth, she could remain as county counsel for as long as a decade. By rendering a legal opinion that would allow Cook, Baca and Rowe to begin counting the number of their permissible terms in office as of those they were elected to in 2024 and Hagman and Armendarez to begin the countdown on the number of terms they can be elected to as of the 2026 election, Feingold stands to accrue a degree of favor and ingratiate herself with those who are in a position to see that she remains for as long as they remain in office in a position which at present provides her with no less than $326,500 in annual salary, another $27,250 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $150,500 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $504,250.

A decade after Los Angeles agreed to return ownership of Ontario International Airport to the City of Ontario, an obscure debate is ongoing in the back halls of power throughout the county as to whether the change benefited or damaged the community.
While the ownership and management transition undeniably restored local control over what is arguably one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable, of San Bernardino County’s man-made assets, there is a case to be made that its placement into the hands of a consortium of provincial, less sophisticated, inexperienced and self-focused civic leaders has curtailed the facility’s growth potential over the next several foreseeable generations and obliterated the possibility of effectuating a rational approach to regional transportation operations and function.
Featured in that debate is the relative truth or falsity of the self-serving assertions of those who now hold sway over the airport that they are to be credited with having restored passenger levels at the medium hub facility to what they were 18 years ago, when, under the guidance of the political and administrative megalopolis to the west, the now 102-year-old aerodrome achieved its record ridership level.
Questions persist as to whether the reestablishment of local control over the airport has been and is a benefit to the city, its residents, the region, the airport itself or the flying public, as the change of title has resulted in expenses that have made it into one of the most costly airfields to fly out of on the West Coast, the country and, on a comparative basis, the world.
Among those close to the current situation and those who were once intimately involved in the airport’s operations when it was under the management of Los Angeles World Airports – the corporate arm of the City of Los Angeles which operated Los Angeles International Airport, Ontario International Airport and Van Nuys Airport – there are accounts of how the politicians who have been entrusted with overseeing the airport and the quasi-governmental, quasi-corporate entity which operates it have used their authority to “shake down” companies or entities with service franchises or vending, service provision or consulting contracts at the aerodrome for what are, in essence, kickbacks, which has resulted in no-bid or skewered-bidding contracting processes by which work is performed or goods and services provided at an increased cost. Continue reading →

Both the Donald Trump Administration and California’s senior politicians are anxiously awaiting a determination by Federal Judge Christina A. Snyder and Magistrate Judge A. Joel Richlin with regard to the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in November which seeks to block the enforcement of two state laws restricting federal agents from hiding their identities during immigration law enforcement operations.
In September, the California legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 627, known as the California No Secret Police Act, and Senate Bill 805, the No Vigilantes Act. Set to take effect January 1, 2026, the No Secret Police Act prohibits law enforcement officers in California, with the exception of the California Highway Patrol/California State Police from wearing masks or facial coverings that hide or obscure their identity while on duty. The act is intended to promote accountability, and grew out of concern over masked federal agents enforcing immigration law. Assembly Bill 627 makes it a crime for most local and federal law enforcement officers to wear concealing masks or facial garb such as ski masks while on duty with exceptions for those engaged in special weapons and tactics [SWAT] operations or undercover work and for medically-related purposes.
Senate Bill 805, the No Vigilantes Act, is set to go into effect on January 1, 2026 as well. It requires law enforcement officers, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Boarder Patrol agents in the state to visibly display clear identification, including their name and badge when not I uniform to prevent impersonation and enhance public trust. It further bans bounty hunters from participating in immigration enforcement operations.
In November, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against California, Governor Gavin Newsom, and Attorney General Robert Bonta challenging both the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act, saying they constituted unconstitutional attempts to regulate federal law enforcement officers.
“Both laws violate long-settled principles of the Supremacy Clause, under which states have no power to ‘in any manner control[] the operations of’ the federal government,” the lawsuit states, citing the Supreme Court’s 1819 decision in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland as well as the 1943 case of Mayo v. United States as precedent case on the matter.
Asserting the Supreme Court’s landmark language in the McCulloch case that “[T]he activities of the Federal Government are free from regulation by any state,” the lawsuit states, echoing the U.S. Supreme Court plurality opinion expressed in the 1990 North Dakota v. United States case that “The intergovernmental immunity doctrine is an outgrowth of this principle, and a state law violates intergovernmental immunity if it ‘regulates the United States directly or discriminates against the federal government or those with whom it deals.’ The No Secret Police Act and No Vigilantes Act directly regulate the federal government by dictating permissible uniforms for federal agents and forcing federal agencies to adopt specified policies. But the federal government, not California, has authority to control its own agents and activities.”
According to the U.S. Justice Department, “Not only are the laws illegal attempts to discriminate against and regulate the federal government, but, as alleged in the complaint, the laws threaten the safety of federal officers who have faced an unprecedented wave of harassment, doxxing, and even violence. Threatening officers with prosecution for simply protecting their identities and their families also chills the enforcement of federal law and compromises sensitive law enforcement operations. The danger is acute.”
According to Attorney General Pamela Bondi, “Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties. California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”
“The Department of Justice will steadfastly protect the privacy and safety of law enforcement from unconstitutional state laws like California’s,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
“Assaults against federal agents have exploded over the last few months, thanks in part to recklessness political rhetoric aiming to delegitimize our brave agents,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli of the Central District of California. “Unconstitutional laws such as this one further endanger our brave men and women protecting our community. Our immigration enforcement will continue unabated and unhindered by unconstitutional state laws enacted by irresponsible politicians.”
On her first day in office following President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Bondi, anticipating resistance from state governments around the country, most notably in California, instructed the Justice Department’s Civil Division to identify state and local laws, policies, and practices that facilitate violations of federal laws or impede lawful federal operations. The lawsuit challenging the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act filed in the Central District of California in November was a manifestation of the effort begun in January at the federal level and the controversy that erupted when in April the federal government initiated operation Alta California, the federal government’s undertaking to make good on President Trump’s commitment and that of his immigration czar, Tom Homan, to identify, find, apprehend and process for deportation the 2.2 million illegal aliens they say were present in the Golden State in January 2025.
The issue of immigration law enforcement has exposed a wide philosophical divide among Americans, with two major camps having formed. One of those is President Trump’s supporters, which included a substantial number of the nation’s Republicans, a significant number of independent voters unaffiliated with any party and a smattering of citizens who identify as Democrats or members of the country’s more obscure political parties. They are generally of the opinion that any foreigners who engage in a violation of the nation’s immigration law is by definition a criminal. Most further presume that a substantial number, perhaps even a majority of the undocumented in the country are making use of social benefits to which they are not entitled, detracting from those available to American citizens. They hold that those disobeying U.S. immigration law are unwelcome in the country and that under the law, they can be and should be deported.
The vast majority of the president’s political opponents, consisting primarily of Democrats and liberal unaligned voters and some members of the country’s more obscure political parties, either do not consider the failure of foreign nationals to register their presence in the United States to be a crime or believe it to be a de minimus offense that does not merit an enforcement effort. They are adamantly opposed to the federal government’s enforcement of immigration law against anyone who does not qualify as a “violent offender.”
Several California’s cities, including its larger ones such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, and Sacramento have actively resisted the Trump Administration’s immigration policies by filing lawsuits challenging federal action with regard to immigration law enforcement. They have declared themselves “sanctuary jurisdictions,” passed local protective ordinances and organized, allowed and encouraged large-scale protests against immigration raids to take place. In addition, some of the state’s major political leaders, including Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have led, inspired or sponsored administrative, legislative and legal efforts to shield residents from aggressive federal enforcement action. The California legislature, during the first Trump Administration, passed Senate Bill ???, the California Values Act, which prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from assisting federal authorities in enforcing immigration law.
At present in California, all of the constitutional state offices from governor to lieutenant governor to attorney general to secretary of state to superintendent of public instruction to insurance commissioner to state controller in California are occupied by Democrats. In the state’s lower legislative house, the California Assembly, 75 percent of its members – 60 of 80 – are Democrats. In the upper house, the California Senate, likewise 75 percent of its membership – 30 of 40 senators – are Democrats. In California’s Congressional Delegation, both Senators are Democrats and of the state’s 52 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 43 are Democrats and nine are Republicans. In this way, California’s political establishment is solidly at odds with the Republican president and his administration. While during the first Trump Administration there was an unmistakable degree of tension between Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, during the second Trump Administration there is a constant spectacle of federal law being at odds with California law.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta – California’s highest ranking law enforcement official – has repeatedly characterized the action of federal law enforcement officers and immigration officials in their efforts to enforce federal law as crossing the line into illegality and unconstitutionality, threatening in some cases to have some federal agents arrested and prosecuted under state and his prosecutorial authority.
With regard to the need for both the California No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act, “Bonta is on record as having said, “It’s problematic when Californians can’t tell the difference between a law enforcement officer who is charged with protecting them and a criminal who is attempting to cause them harm. The FBI itself has warned that the practice of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents obscuring their identity has led to a rise in copycats committing crimes, threatening public safety and eroding trust in law enforcement.”
Even though Bonta speaks and acts as the face of state law and the People of California while overseeing a staff of 138 lawyers and a full complement of support staff including paralegals, secretaries and investigators, his primary bailiwick is the Superior Court of California. The federal court system is not one he is unfamiliar with or, necessarily, intimidated by either, but the federal court system remains the principal prosecutorial province of the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. For those entities, steeped in functioning within the realm of criminal law and statutes, they are no slouches when it comes to civil law, in particular federal civil procedure.
Those representing the U.S. Justice Department in the lawsuit filed in U.S. Federal Court in Los Angeles challenging the California No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act include Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who oversees the office’s civil division;
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yaakov M. Roth, who supervises the civil division; Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton, who is assigned to the Los Angeles office’s civil division; Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General Tiberius Davis Sean Skedzielewski; First Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Central District of California Bilal A. Essayli; Alexander K. Hass, the director of the U.S. Attorney’s Central District of California office; Jacqueline Coleman Snead, the assistant director of the U.S. Attorney’s Central District of California office; and both Elizabeth J. Neylan and Cristen C. Handley, trial attorneys in the civil divisions federal programs branch.
Assigned to make a determination of the issues raised in the lawsuit, including whether the California No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act are indeed, as the federal government maintains unconstitutional and contrary to basic law and federal law are Judge Christina A. Snyder and Magistrate Judge A. Joel Richlin. Since November, they have been fully briefed as to the substance of Senate Bill 627 and Senate Bill 805, and all applicable rulings relating to state laws in conflict with federal law and federal administrative authority throughout American history going back to the late 18th Century, as well as the state and federal standards that attend the operational and security/safety protocols for law enforcement officers.
An early expectation was that a decision would be rendered before January 1, 2026, when the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act were originally due to go into effect. Judge Snyder and Magistrate Judge Richlin are by no means required to meet that deadline, however, and they are at liberty to make as full of an analysis of the circumstance, law and legal precedent as they deem necessary to make a correct and binding determination.
As is commonly the case, while policies and laws are under legal challenge, as in this instance Senate Bill 627 and Senate Bill 805, their implementation is held in abeyance until a legal determination is made. As such, the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act will not be enforced until and unless Judge Snyder and Magistrate Richlin make their determination that they in fact pass constitutional muster.
It is of some note that both Judge Snyder and Magistrate Richlin are Democrats. It is equally noteworthy that in an earlier case that came before the Federal Court in California, other judges considered to fall or fall primarily in or within the liberal/progressive/Democratic camp – U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong at the U.S. District Courthouse in Los Angeles and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit consisting of Justices Marsha S. Berzon, Jennifer Sung and Ronald M. Gould who were tasked with determining whether the tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol in carrying out immigration enforcement in California and Southern California in particular were in keeping with the provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
After the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel took up the cause of three immigrants, a single U.S. citizen and a dual U.S./Mexican citizen who had been taken into custody by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year, Judge Frimpong in July 2025 concluded that “masked” federal agents had erred and violated the constitutional rights of those they had arrested by utilizing their place of work, their presence in a particular place, their ethnicity or race, the type of work they were engaged in and their language or accent as the basis of probable cause to detain, question them and ultimately take them into custody. Judge Frimpong ruled that blanket detentions and/or arrests are illegal and that laws relating to specific crimes, such as violating immigration statutes, cannot be applied broadly but must be applied against each defendant specifically, with a credible recitation of the crimes alleged to have been committed by the arrestee and the grounds for making the stop and the arrest. Judge Frimpong opined that the federal agents were engaging, essentially, in racial profiling by questioning those who were speaking a language other than English, engaging in “roving patrols” in areas where those government agents believed undocumented aliens might be present, patrolling places such as big box hardware store parking lots where day laborers congregated or raiding businesses where in the past undocumented foreigners were known to have been employed. She ordered that the federal officers desist in making the arrests based upon the criteria they were using.
Penultimately, when the Trump Administration appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the panel consisting of Justices Berzon, Sung and Gould upheld Judge Frimpong.
Ultimately, however, the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal ruled 6-to-3 rejected that federal officials were engaged in a “racist deportation scheme,” accepting the Trump Administration’s assertion that federal agents working in Southern California, where 71 percent of the illegal immigrants originated in Latin America, were not engaging in discriminatory behavior by considering the use of Spanish to be a criteria distinguishing undocumented aliens from the native population or concentrating their patrols in or around businesses which have a demonstrated prior history of employing or attracting individuals in the country illegally.
With Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Kentanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the balance of the Supreme Court rejected Judge Frimpong’s conclusion that any consideration of race or ethnicity in the evaluation of what constituted reasonable suspicion with regard to the commission of a crime, in this case a violation of U.S. Immigration Law, was unreasonable and unconstitutional. The Supreme Court majority held that a suspect’s race or ethnicity could be a factor when considering it within the context of other factors.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled that roving patrols by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are neither a violation of the Constitution nor racist and that they should be allowed to resume.
Given the trend and guidance inherent in the Supreme Court’s September ruling relating to immigration enforcement standards in California, Judge Snyder and Magistrate Richlin are slightly less likely than Judge Frimpong and Justices Berzon, Sung and Gould to hew to the conclusions favored by the politicians in Sacramento. Whatever determination Judge Snyder and Magistrate Richlin reach, either before, on or after January 1, it is anticipated it will be appealed to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, meaning the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act will not be implemented until well into 2026, if at all.