“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.

The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and Searles Valley Minerals have reached a comprehensive settlement of the legal actions each had outstanding against one another, clearing the way for a water conservation, sharing and distribution arrangement impacting the westernmost extreme of the Mojave Desert and the northwestern tip of San Bernardino County.
The settlement reduces, but does not eliminate the procedural and legal complication which attends the struggle with regard to water availability in one of the driest areas of California.
Searles Valley Minerals is a 152-year-old company, now owned by Mirma Limited, located in Trona, a San Bernardino County community immediately adjacent to the Inyo County line and proximate to Kern County. Searles Valley Minerals uses solution mining, which involves soaking portions of the company’s dry Searles Lake in San Bernardino County with water to precipitate brine which is then extracted and processed to produce boric acid, potash, sodium carbonate, sodium sulfate, several specialty forms of borax, and salt. The litigation between Searles Valley Minerals grew out of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s application of previously nonexistent water use fees on water used by the company despite the company having the the longest-standing claim on water rights and water use of any entity in the region. In response to the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s imposition of those water use fees, Searles Valley Minerals filed a lawsuit against the groundwater authority, which responed with a countersuit. That litigation dragged on for several years.
In 2014, in the face of a persistent drought, then-Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency with regard to California’s water situation and then signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which classified 21 groundwater basins in the state, including the one in Indian Wells Valley, as being in a state of critical overdraft, i.e., a circumstance in which the amount of water being used exceeds the amount of water coming into the area naturally, predominantly through rainfall.
That designation triggered the creation of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, a joint powers agency overseen by a board comprised of one voting representative from Kern County, the City of Ridgecrest, Inyo County, San Bernardino County, and the Indian Wells Valley Water District, as well as two non-voting members representing the U.S. Navy/China Lake Naval Air Station and the United States Bureau of Land Management.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority took as its charter the commitment to ensure a sustainable water supply for the region by overcoming the depletion of the groundwater basin and its aquifer which underlies 597 square miles and includes the northwest tip of San Bernardino County, the southwest tip of Inyo County and the northeast corner of Kern County.
Based upon a survey of water usage patterns undertaken by an engineering consultant, Carlsbad-based Stetson Engineers, the authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District sought to derive a strategy for both reducing water use in the valley and increasing groundwater recharge to reach a balance of both that will end the overdraft. Several different plans, or models, were contemplated. Basically, the concept was to decrease the drafting of water from the regional aquifer through conservation, increased recycling of water and perhaps the minimization of evaporation, augmented by the importation of water from outside the valley to achieve, no later than 2040, a balance of water coming in with the amount of water usage, such that the depletion of the aquifer will end.
Stetson Engineers was designated the water resources manager for Indian Wells Valley, and the authority’s board in January 2020 passed a tentative proposed groundwater sustainability plan and voted to submit it to the state. Thereafter it made adjustments to the plan, which contained water use limitation elements and water replenishment measures. The plan incorporated a farmland fallowing option as well as an increase in the monthly assessment or fee that was imposed on the extraction of water by major pumpers. That fee had been previously collected to cover the costs associated with the administrative activity of the groundwater authority.
After a survey of water use by well owners both collectively and individually was made, the authority assigned water use allowances to the region’s well owners. Excess use fees, referred to as augmentation fees, were formulated for application to those well owners who pump above their allowances as well as on any farmer whose use exceeds his respective share of the water supply set aside for agricultural usage. Money generated in this way is used to purchase imported water and pay for the infrastructure needed to bring in the imported water.
In September 2020, Searles Valley Minerals, based in the San Bernardino County community of Trona, represented by Eric Garner, Jeffrey Dunn and Maya Mouawad with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger, filed a lawsuit in Kern County Superior Court against the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in an effort to protect what Garner, Dunn and Mouwad asserted are the company’s groundwater rights within the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin, and to stop the collection of what they characterized as an illegal and unfair groundwater replenishment fee and a tax disguised, they assert, as an “extraction fee.”
The disputes over water in the Indian Wells Valley Region were assigned to the Orange County Superior Court to avoid bias that might manifest if the hearings were held in a court in Kern, Inyo or San Bernardino counties.
In a separate suit, other entities impacted by the groundwater replenishment fee, Mojave Pistachios, Sierra Shadows Ranch, John Thomas Conaway and the Nugent Family Trust collectively sued the groundwater authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District as the lead agency in that joint authority, contesting the imposition of the fees.
In reaction to the Searles Valley Minerals suit, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority contended that there was a hierarchy of water use and that in accordance with the limitations on water availability and that hierarchy, all entities utilizing water in the Indian Wells Valley had to participate in the effort to end profligate use, engage in responsible stewardship of the available water and share in the cost of and effort to achieve a balance of water table recharge and water use to end the overdraft.
One issue complicating the matter is that both the Bureau of Land Management and the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, as federal entities, are exempt from the groundwater sustainability plan and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Accordingly, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority was moving toward exempting the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station from the restrictions to be imposed in the finalized groundwater sustainability plan. The China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station encompasses two ranges and totals over 1,100,000 acres or 1,719 square miles, much of that within Indian Wells Valley. While the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station made strides over the previous decade in reducing its water use, it 2021 it was still drafting some 1,600 acre-feet of water from the aquifer annually.
Garner, Dunn and Mouawad took issue with the fashion in which the China Lake Naval Air Station was not subject to the restrictions in the plan nor its fees.
“Searles Valley Minerals’ right to pump water in the basin for domestic uses is senior to any water right reserved to [the] Weapons Station, and because [the] water district’s groundwater pumping began no earlier than 1955, its appropriative right, if any, to basin water remains junior to Searles Valley Minerals’ right,” according to the lawsuit. “The authority falsely asserts in its groundwater sustainability plan that any pumping allocations under the groundwater sustainability plan will be ‘consistent with existing groundwater rights and priorities.’”
Garner, Dunn and Mouawad asserted the groundwater replenishment fee was both unprecedented and exorbitant, and would increase the company’s water costs by 7,000 percent or $6 million per year – pushing Searles Valley Minerals out of business after more than 140 years of operation, thereby threatening the livelihood of the company’s 700 employees.”
In October 2025, it was announced that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and Searles Valley Minerals had come to a tentative agreement to end the litigation they were involved in against one another.
In November, Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and Searles Valley Minerals filed with the court comprehensive settlement and mutual release agreement by which both entities permanently dropped – i.e., “dismissed with prejudice” – all pending lawsuits filed against each other.
According to the groundwater authority, “The agreement is intended to support cooperative planning, management and implementation of projects that enhance the long-term groundwater sustainability in the Indian Wells Valley basin” and “creates immediate environmental benefits by incorporating reclaimed water into Searles’ operations, taking pressure off the overdrafted basin. By moving to reclaimed water for its industrial operations, Searles can stop pumping roughly 2,000 acre-feet per year of drinking-quality groundwater from the basin.”
Under the agreement, the groundwater authority has relinquished its option on approximately 2,000 acre-feet per year of reclaimed water from the City of Ridgecrest so that supply can be made available to Searles Valley Minerals on mutually agreeable terms. The agreement specified that Searles Valley Minerals will attempt, where feasible, to prioritize using the reclaimed water before exporting additional groundwater from the basin, so to reduce drafting of local groundwater resources.
“By establishing a framework for cooperation with the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, this agreement advances responsible groundwater management in the basin. Both parties view this outcome as a mutual benefit that supports local jobs, regional economic stability, and a more secure water future for the Indian Wells Valley,” according to a statement by the groundwater authority announcing the lawsuit resolution.
“We are very pleased to work in partnership with Searles Valley Minerals to achieve a sustainable water future not just for Searles, but for all the residents of the valley and Trona,” said Ridgecrest City Councilman Scott Hayman, the chairman of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s board of directors.
As part of the agreement, the groundwater authority certified that Searles Valley Minerals will be eligible to receive imported water in the future through the authority’s planned pipeline. In return, Searles Valley Minerals stated it recognized the regional benefits of bringing non-native water into the basin and committed to not oppose implementation of the pipeline project.
In announcing that the agreement with Searles Valley Minerals had been reached, the groundwater authority revealed that a similar settlement had been obtained with Mojave Pistachios with regard to the litigation that company had brought against the authority.
“It has always been our goal to shift from conflict to collaboration,” said Keith Lemieux, general counsel for Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority. “Last year we reached agreement with Mojave Pistachios, concluding our disputes with the farming community. With the Searles’ dismissals, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority has now resolved its differences with every private-party pumper in the basin. Ironically, the only remaining lawsuit is the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s action against other pumpers. We hope today’s resolution renders that lawsuit moot so all parties can collaborate to solve our water problems.”
A sidelight to the matter, alluded to in Lemieux’s statement, is water rights litigation initiated by the Indian Wells Valley Water District that was initiated in 2021 by the Indian Wells Valley Water District, titled Indian Wells Valley Water District v. All Persons Who Claim a Right to Extract Groundwater in the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin.
Both the Indian Wells Valley Water District, which serves as the region’s local water company, and the groundwater authority are intent on achieving a balance of water use and water recharge within the valley by 2040. Nevertheless, some differences between those two entities emerged on how to best achieve that goal.
Based upon the mandates contained in the Groundwater Management Act and its survey of the pattern of water usage by local entities, the annual natural recharge into the water basin through annual precipitation and the resultant then-current overdraft and projected overdraft into the foreseeable future, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority came to the conclusion that the most viable solution to the water shortage was to limit ongoing water use, impose the groundwater replenishment fee and ultimately use the proceeds to construct a 50-mile pipeline extension from Indian Wells Valley to the California Aqueduct in California City in Kern County so water could be imported and used to recharge the aquifer. That pipeline would need to extend from where the Antelope Valley East Kern County Water Agency’s furthest extension of facilities importing water from the California Aqueduct ends near California City to Ridgecrest.
The Indian Wells Valley Water District, along with numerous local entities including the Ridgecrest Area Association of Realtors, the Ridgecrest Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Wells Valley Economic Development Corporation consider that proposed project/solution to be prohibitively expensive and believe it would likely cause economic harm as well as double the rates paid by the Indian Wells Valley Water District customers for their water.
To a greater extent, the voting board members of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority representing Kern County, the City of Ridgecrest and Inyo County were on board with the water importation concept, as was San Bernardino County to a lesser extent. The Indian Wells Valley Water District, however, was concerned that the cost of the water importation infrastructure would raise the cost of water beyond what its customers could reasonably sustain. It pressed for alternate solutions to redress the water shortage, including water use efficiency, recycling and measures to lessen evaporation, as well as purchasing water from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has already constructed a pipeline conveying water from Owens Valley to Los Angeles through the area.
In 2021, based upon its contention that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority formulated its strategy to overcome the basin overdraft without having first completed a scientifically sound survey of the extent of the overdraft and the full range of methodologies that could be applied to overcome it, the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s initiated Indian Wells Valley Water District v. All Persons Who Claim a Right to Extract Groundwater in the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin in Orange County Superior Court in an effort to adjudicate water rights throughout the Indian Wells Valley basin.
That legal action took place in the context of other water use management/water conservation measures being instituted which imposed limits, hardships and expense on companies and corporations in the area involved in agricultural and industrial production and the lawsuits brought by Searles Valley Minerals, Mojave Pistachios, Sierra Shadows Ranch, John Thomas Conaway and the Nugent Family Trust.
This led to the rather remarkable circumstance in which the two major entities in the region devoted to the management of water resources found themselves working at cross purposes.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority objected to the water district’s water rights adjudication effort, asserting that the adjudication interferes with the groundwater authority’s efforts to manage and reduce the overdraft and that the adjudication will have the effect of benefiting certain agricultural interests and Searles Valley Minerals, who they claimed were the most profligate users of water in the basin, while threatening, or at least challenging, the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s federal reserved water rights.
Attitudes of the public with regard to the legitimacy of the groundwater authority’s water management/conservation/importation plan or the water district’s adjudication effort was a matter of personal perspective. To some, the water district was being obstructionist and blocking a joint powers authority from moving forward with what seemed to be a practical, if somewhat costly, solution to an intractable problem. To others, the water district was taking a time-honored approach in seeking to ensure that all parties, large and small, powerful and weak, connected and unconnected, governmental and private sector were dealt with fairly and were given no greater or lesser entitlement to the elixir of life, and simultaneously seeking to ensure that a combination of governmental agencies were not embarking on a project that was going to impose an enormous financial burden on residents, landowners and businesses.
One issue that was taken up as part of the water district’s adjudication effort was the fashion in which the groundwater authority had presumed that there was no mechanism in the law, administrative processes or the Groundwater Management Act to include the China Lake Naval Air Station in the water use limitations or subject it to financial participation in the proposed solution to the overdraft dilemma, i.e., constructing the pipeline to the California Aqueduct and they paying for the importation of water from the State Water Project to Indian Wells Valley for injection into the water table.
As it turned out, the water district’s raising of that matter resulted in a judge’s determination with regard to water allotments and fair water distribution that the Navy cannot simply monopolize a significant portion of the desert’s water without regard to the water needs and rights of other entities there.
The matter of Indian Wells Valley Water District v. All Persons Who Claim a Right to Extract Groundwater in the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin was divided into two phases. The first phase, which was heard earlier this year by Orange County Superior Court Judge William Claster, hashed out what water rights the Navy has. The second phase, which will go before Judge Claster next year, will make determinations as to the water rights of the other entities in Indian Wells Valley.
On July 31, 2025, Judge Claster ruled that the China Lake Naval Air Station is entitled, under the water rights adjudication the Indian Wells Valley Water District is requesting, to far less water on an annual basis than the Navy had previously asserted. The Navy had requested the court to recognize that it is entitled to 6,783 acre-feet of water per year.
An acre-foot is the amount of water that covers an acre of ground to the depth of one foot, i.e., 43,450 cubic feet or 325,851.4 U.S. gallons.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority had supported the Navy in that claim. The City of Ridgecrest, which has roughly 6,500 inhabitants employed at the China Lake Naval Air Station, held that the Navy should be provided with even more water than the military service had asked for, stating in a filing with the court that it should be free to pump up to 7,988 acre-feet per year.
Searles Valley Minerals participated in the first phase of the adjudication trial conducted over seven days between April 28 and May 14, 2025 before Judge Claster, and its expert witness testified that according to the numbers he had run, the Navy is entitled to no more than its most recent 10-year average of 1,644 acre-feet per year, consisting of 1,536 acre feet for all base uses plus 108 acre-feet reserved for firefighting.
Meadowbrook Dairy, a major agricultural concern in Indian Wells Valley, made a similar argument, but conceded through its expert witness that an increase in the China Lake Naval Air Station’s water allotment to about 2,000 acre-feet per year was not unreasonable.
Ultimately, Judge Claster found that 2,008 acre-feet of water should be reserved for the Navy’s use at the air station yearly.
In filings with the court for the adjudication, the groundwater authority has stated its analysis has determined that average natural annual recharge of water into the Indian Wells Valley basin is 7,650 acre-feet per year. The Indian Wells Valley Water District has disputed that estimate as scientifically unsound and that the amount of water coming into the basin on average is closer to 14,000 acre-feet per year.
The groundwater authority’s previous willingness to allow the naval air station to monopolize without question more than 80 percent of the entire valley’s annual recharge of water was a major factor in the legal and procedural resistance water users in the valley were mounting the authority’s water importation solution to the overdraft.
While lawyers for both the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and Searles Valley Minerals made no such official or on-the-record statements relating to what factors had led to the settlement agreement between their clients, it has widely circulated that Judge Claster’s determination that the China Lake Naval Station is entitled to less than 30 percent of the water the groundwater authority was prepared to grant it, set the table for the settlement to take place.

By Kevin Kiley and Mark Gutglueck
The California State Auditor earlier this month released a report that offered an assessment of the expenditures by what are categorized as the state’s high risk agencies which indicates the state government is potentially squandering in the neighborhood of $76.5 billion.
The nonpartisan audit, released December 11, 2025, went beyond being outright gloomy to alarming in spotlighting California’s use and distribution of pandemic relief funds, its spending on social-welfare programs, homelessness programs and major infrastructure projects in a way that underscore misgivings long expressed by Governor Gavin Newsom’s critics about the way he is managing the most populous state in the Union.
Of immense fiscal consequence, according to the report, is the way in which $32 billion in COVID-19 relief funds was misspent or in some measure fraudulently applied through various emergency aid programs overseen by the Department of Finance; $2.5 billion was improper spent or utilized within CalFresh, the state’s food-stamp program; $18 billion was thrown into the state’s high-speed rail project without any scheduled spans of track actually being laid down; and a completely unaccounted-for amount of money of at least $24 billion and as much as $37 billion having been utilized to eradicate or otherwise address homelessness without any significant inroads against the problem being realized, while the incidence of homelessness throughout the state has risen some 20 percent.
In contrast, Governor Newsom, who has insisted in the past that California sets the standard for efficient, responsive and accountable government throughout the country, continues to maintain that he and the Democrat Party-controlled apparatus in Sacrament are apply sound fiscal management tools California’s operations.
In this year’s report pertaining to what the auditor’s office identifies as high-risk state agencies, State Auditor Grant Parks said he was broadening the number of agencies he defines as “posing a high-risk of serious detriment to the state or its residents. To be considered high risk, an agency must not only exhibit serious waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement, but must also have failed to take adequate, corrective action.”
Though the auditor’s office is considered to be nonpartisan, Parks, who was appointed to the post by Governor Newsom in 2023, is a Democrat by party affiliation. For that reason, his scathing analysis of fiscal misdirection under the supervision of Newsom is considered to be telling.
Park identified eight separate state agencies as high risk, four of which were moved into the at-risk category during the Newsom Administration, which came into being on January 7, 2019, following his first election as governor in November 2018. One of those agencies is the Department of Social Services.
Among the findings of why the eight agencies are considered high risk is that massive payment errors in the Cal-Fresh Program could cost the state $2.5 billion in federal funds. Another ongoing problems is determining the eligibility of recipients for Medi-Cal benefits. Medi-Cal is California’s version of the federal Medi-Care program. According to Park, there are persisting problems in determining who is eligible, which extends to Medi-Cal continuing to make payments to people who do not meet the income threshold or who have left the state entirely. This has put over $2 billion in federal money that would otherwise come to the state at risk. Continued fraud and overpayment with unemployment insurance benefits are continuing to cost the state as much as $13 billion per year. This is in addition to $32 billion in fraud during the COVID years. The state has missed six straight deadlines for its annual comprehensive financial report, which puts the state’s credit rating as well as federal funding in jeopardy. The auditor’s report documents IT projects that languished for months or for years as antiquated systems beleaguer the state’s bureaucracy, despite Silicon Valley being a stone’s throw away. There are state entities that continue to “fall short of minimum standards for information security,” putting state government’s and private citizens’ data at risk to exposure, as well as leaving data relating to the state’s physical infrastructure vulnerable to hacking. The auditor found that there are 49 dams throughout the state that pose “an extremely high risk to life and property.” This risk is increasing, according to the auditor’s office. In the last two years the number of dams rated poor or unsatisfactory has increased by 73 percent.
Of the state’s 1,472 dams which play crucial roles in flood management, water storage and hydropower generation, 39 of them are in San Bernardino County.
According to the audit, the quality of government service is unacceptably low. With the California Department of Employment Development and Disability there is ongoing, continuing and mounting fraud and overpayments, while some of those entitled to legitimate payments have difficulty accessing the payments they are entitled to. The auditor found that a typical legitimate claimant had to call the Department of Employment Development and Disability two to five times per week to get assistance. The Department of Employment Development and Disability has failed to meet federal benchmarks for timely benefits for payments to those deserving benefits while there are thousands of examples of those who are defrauding the system who seem to have no trouble obtaining money to which they have no real claim.
According to the auditor’s report, “The Employment Development Department continues to struggle with improper payments, claimant service, and eligibility decision appeals. The Employment Development Department’s efforts to reduce unacceptably high levels of improper payments including fraudulent payments in its unemployment insurance program are not yet adequate. The Employment Development Department has not provided state residents with sufficient customer service, resulting in significant challenges to claimants obtaining unemployment benefits. The Employment Development Department has consistently failed to meet the federal standard for first payment timeliness. Many of the Employment Development Department’s unemplyment eligibility decisions are not upheld on appeal. The Employment Development Department’s eligibility decisions continue to be frequently overturned on appeal to the appeals board, which contributes to some unemployment insurance claimants waiting much longer for decisions than federal standards consider acceptable. In 2023 and 2024, the appeals board overturned or modified in favor of the claimant more than 43 percent of the issues claimants appealed.”
During the COVID years, the Department of Employment Development and Disability ordered 7,224 mobile devices consisting of hot spots and cell phones for employees who were not reporting to state offices so they could could continue to work. The state continued to pay for the mobile devices after the end of the pandemic while they were no longer being used costing the state millions of dollars.
According to the auditor’s office, one California Air Resources Board employee in particular was paid $171,446 in salary for 15 months after he or she was no longer working.
The auditor founded rampant nepotism within the Department of General Services and the California Department of Transportation relating to hiring practices. There were instances where managers gave interviewees answers to interview questions in advance of the oral phase of the hiring process to assist them in getting the jobs they had applied for.
With regard to California’s High Speed Rail project, accoring the California Auditor’s Office, the anticipated cost of the project has escalated to $128 billion, several more times than the original anticipated cost. No track has been laid for the project despite the state having spent $18 billion of the $128 billion thus far.
In highlighting the “systemic issues” plaguing the state, the report states “The state’s management of federal COVID-19 funds continues to be a high-risk issue. Late financial reporting remains a high-risk issue. The Department of Health Care Services has not adequately demonstrated progress to resolve problems with Medi-Cal eligibility determinations. The state’s information security remains a high-risk issue. The California Department of Technology has not made sufficient progress in its oversight of state information technology projects. California’s deteriorating water infrastructure and climate change may threaten the lives and property of its residents and the reliability of the state’s water supply.”
According to the report, the California Department of Social Services evinced “a high rate of errors in calculating CalFresh benefits” at a cost of up to $2.5 billion annually if not corrected and the issues with dams and water project delivery could become critical by 2043 if infrastructure needs are not addressed. e issues to avoid further financial and infrastructure challenges.
While Republicans cite the audit as a confirmation of “dysfunction” in the Newsom Administration, in which the state budget has grown by 50 percent, or $124 billion, in the last five years with a regression in the quality of government service, Newsom’s office, while acknowledging ongoing challenges in the Department of Social Services, asserted that with regard the auditor’s issues of concern, reforms are already under way and patience is required to train staff and finalize strategies for improvement.
Kevin Kiley is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 3rd Congressional District. Mark Gutglueck is the publisher of the Sentinel.