In a surprise move, the Yucaipa City Council has apparently signaled that it now prepared to extend City Attorney Steven Graham’s tenure as the city’s legal advisor.
For months, a sizable segment of the Yucaipa community has been saying that Graham, who now uses the last name of Pacifico, is to be a logical casualty in the purge of Yucaipa city employees who either arrived during or prospered under the Chris Mann administration in the city.
In Graham’s/Pacifico’s case, he is the city official most visibly connected and closely associated with Mann.
Graham/Pacifico worked with Mann at Canyon Lake, where Mann was the city manager prior to his hiring by Yucaipa in January 2023. It has been widely assumed and stated publicly that Graham/Pacifico was hired in Yucaipa upon Mann’s advent and that Mann made his acceptance of the Yucaipa city manager’s position conditional upon the city council agreeing to accept the hiring of multiple personnel he was handpicking to serve with him. The same night – January 9, 2023 – that the three-member council majority of Justin Beaver, Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner forcibly persuaded former City Manager Ray Casey to resign and then moved to approve the hiring of Mann, it also voted to fire then-City Attorney David Snow, who had served as city attorney with Casey since 2012.
Others hired into key city posts by Mann’s edict Ana Sauseda, who had been city clerk in Canyon Lake and then came to Yucaipa to serve in that role, and Joe Pradetto, one of Mann’s associates who was given the position of director of governmental affairs and public information officer after he came to Yucaipa.
One difficulty it did not previously seem that Graham/Pacifico would be able to over come was the role he played in Mann’s formulation of a strategy to stymie a grass roots effort in Yucaipa to question, protest and perhaps even countermand the city council decision to get rid of Casey and replace him with Mann. In reaction to the abrupt forced exit of Casey, 194 Yucaipa residents in the districts represented by Beaver, Duncan and Garner filed paperwork with Sauseda’s office declaring their intent to circulate petitions to qualify ballot initiatives asking whether each of those three should be removed from office. Mann then quarterbacked a set of plays that included hiring, at taxpayer expense the attorneys Bradley W. Hertz and Eli B. Love of the Los Angeles based Sutton Law Firm’ to represent Sauseda in making a legal challenge of the recall effort by asserting that one of the grounds cited for seeking to removed Beaver, Duncan and Garner – violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law – was untrue. In responding to Sauseda’s suit, some of the recall proponents were able to establish the accuracy of the Brown Act violation claim and that they had a constitutional right to proceed with the recall. Nevertheless, the legal challenge threw the recall effort into disarray, and the original attempts to recall Beaver, Duncan and Garner failed.
Virtually all 194 recall proponents came to bitterly resent the tactic of having the city clerk file a lawsuit against them to desist in their effort to redress what they felt was a miscarriage of governance in their city. There is an even larger contingent of those recall proponents’ supporters who feel the same way. Many feel that Graham/Pacifico failed them when, as city attorney, he stood by while Beaver, Duncan, Garner, Mann. Sauseda, Hertz and Love trod on their rights.
Ultimately a recall vote against Garner was put on the ballot, and the voters in his district overwhelmingly voted to remove him from office in the November 1994 election. Duncan, sensing the ire of voters in his district over the Casey sacking and Mann hiring, decided against running for reelection in the same contest. Of the members on the council that was in place following the 2024 election, Beaver was the only member of the ruling majority that had cashiered Casey in January 2023. Remaining on the council were Jon Thorp and Chris Venable, who had been opposed to getting rid of Casey. In December 2024, Bob Miller was appointed by the four members of the council to replace Garner.
Thorp, Venable and Miller by January were moving full speed ahead toward relieving Mann as city manager. They sought to do this by holding performance reviews of the city manager in closed sessions, which enabled them to openly discuss with Beaver and Judith Woolsey, who had been elected to replace Duncan, the advisability of having the city part with Mann and who might replace him. At its February 24 meeting, the council during one such closed session performance evaluation, debated whether it should fire Mann, citing cause for doings so, and therefore avoiding the contractual obligation it had with him to confer on him a severance payment equal to his annual salary – $233,535.92 – if it did not give a reason for simply firing him without an explanation. Ultimately, roughly a week later, it was announced that the troika of Thorp, Venable and Miller had decided to provide Mann with a payout of $279,045 and provide him and his family with one year of health benefits in exchange for his making a clean departure from the city.
Two weeks prior to the February 24 meeting, on February 10, the city council had met in closed session to evaluate the performance of both Mann and Graham/Pacifico. After adjourning out of that closed-door executive session and into its public meeting that evening, Thorp, as the mayor, stated that the council was directing staff to put out a request for proposals with a 30-day timeframe for city council attorney candidates. Graham had not termination clause in his contract that would require the city to provide him with a severance.
Thorp’s announcement on February 10 was taken as an indication that Graham was on his way out of Yucaipa.
On Monday night, April 14, however, the city council in closed session voted to extend the city’s contract with Graham Pacifico to provide attorney services for at least another year. That vote was unanimous. The council will take up at its April 28 meeting the financial terms in that 12-month arrangement, meaning whether he is to be provided with a strict hourly rate for billable hours or is to be paid a capped yearly salary for his work on behalf of the city.

Today marks the 83rd Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, April 18, 1943.
As planned, the sixteen Army Air Corps B-25 medium range bombers, led by then-Major James Doolittle, were to take off from the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet at around 5 p.m. while the naval task force that brought them across the ocean from San Francisco was some 500 miles distant from Tokyo and other areas on Honshu, putting the planes over their targets for a night raid before they would continue west to China, where they were to be guided to an airfield in Chuchow by a radio signal, where they would land just as the sun was rising on the morning of April 19.
It turned out, however, that storms over the Himalayas prevented the radio signal equipment the pilots were to rely on for direction finding from being delivered to Chuchow. Worse, at 7:38 a.m. on April 18, the task force encountered a Japanese picket boat some 730 miles from Japan. The picket boat was sunk, but not before it radioed an attack warning to Japan.
At that point, a decision was made to launch the five-man crew planes at once, between nine and ten hours earlier and more than 200 miles further from their target than was originally planned. As the planes reached a point roughly 300 miles from Japan, they flew in a single file at wave-top level to avoid detection. Upon reaching Honshu, the planes peeled off to their several various targets, including ten military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama and one each in Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka.
After climbing to 1,500 feet, fifteen of the planes, which encountered for the most part light anti-aircraft fire and only sporadic interference by enemy fighter or pursuit aircraft, were able to open their bomb bays and drop their payloads over or close to their planned targets. One B-25 did come under heavy attack by fighters and, with its gun turret malfunctioning because of mechanical or electrical failure, dropped its bombs before reaching its target.
Fifteen of the planes gamely headed toward China after completing the raid. The pilot of one, which was severely low on fuel, elected to head toward Russia, which at that point was not involved in hostilities with Japan. That plane alone was able to land intact, at Vozdvizhenka. That crew was interned by the Soviets, who transported them across the country before releasing them in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkmen, some 20 miles from the Iranian border, where they were able to walk to Iran, then allied with the United States and Britain.
The remaining fifteen planes continued westward across Japan, turning southwest upon passing over the Japan’s southeastern coast, making a determined effort to cross the East China Sea to eastern China. As the planes neared 13 hours in the air, they were extremely low on fuel. Twelve of the fifteen were aided by a tailwind, which put them over China. Three were forced to ditch at sea, two off the coast near Changshu, China and one near Wenzhou, China. The twelve that made it over Chinese air space all crashed in the dark of night, six at various points north, northeast, southeast and southwest of Quzhou, China; two in or near Ningbo, China; two near Nanchang, China; and two southeast of Shangrao, China.
Two of the raiders were drowned when their plane ditched in the sea. Another was killed during his bailout attempt over China. Eight of the raiders, including the entirety of one of the crews that crashed south of Ningbo and the three survivors of one of the crew that ditched in the ocean near Wenzhou, were captured by the Japanese. Those eight were sentenced to death by a Japanese war crimes tribunal. Five of those sentences were commuted, but the pilots in those crews, 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark and 1st Lt. William G. Farrow, along with Cpl. Harold A. Spatz, who was an engineer and gunner on the B-25 piloted by Farrow which ditched near Wenzhou, were executed. Another captured flyer, Lt. Robert Meder, the navigator on the plane flown by Hallmark which crashed near Ningbo, died of starvation in captivity.
Doolittle and the remainder of his men were able, with the assistance of Chinese soldiers and civilian, to avoid capture by the Japanese and return to the United States by June 1942.
While the raid was not a spectacular success in tactical or operational terms and Doolittle was concerned after the landing in China that he was going to be court martialed for having inflicted so little damage on the enemy while losing all 16 aircraft, as the first attack on the Japanese home islands it registered as a huge strategic gain for the United States, as the Japanese abandoned some of its more aggressive elements of its strategy and instead devoted resources to protecting the country itself. President promoted Doolittle two ranks to brigadier general, skipping over those of lieutenant colonel and colonel, while he was yet in China. Roosevelt thereafter awarded him the Medal of Honor.
-Mark Gutglueck

FBN 20250002540
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
JOSHUA TREE FLEA MARKET & STORAGE [and] JT FLEA MARKET & STORAGE [and] JT FLEA MARKET 6401 VETERANS WAY JOSHUA TREE, CA 92252: OFF THE GRID PROPERTIES, LLC 56925 YUCCA TRAIL, #243 JOSHUA TREE, CA 92284
Business Mailing Address: 56925 YUCCA TRAIL, #243 JOSHUA TREE, CA 92284
The business is conducted by: A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY 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/ R.L. KURVINK, Managing Member
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 3/12/2025
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 J3256
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 March 28 and April 4, 11 & 18, 2025.

FBN 20250001644
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
ROCKET ADU SOLUTIONS 1881 COMMERCENTER E, SUITE 138 SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92408: CASITA LA PAZ, INC 1881 COMMERCENTER EAST SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92408
Business Mailing Address: 7178 PALM AVE. HIGHLAND, CA 92346
The business is conducted by: A CORPORATION registered with the State of California under the number 6567862
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/ MISTY J GARCIA, President
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 2/18/2025
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 J7527
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 February 28 and March 7, 14 & 21, 2025. Corrected on March 28, April 4, 11 & 18, 2025.

Continue reading →

The White House
April 11, 2025
Dear Ms. Cordova,
Thank you for taking the time to share your views regarding our justice system, public safety, and the rule of law.
As President, one of my most critical duties is to restore the sacred principle of equal justice under the
law for every citizen. That work begins with stopping the weaponization of our justice system and rebalancing the scales of justice in our Nation’s halls of power.
In recent years, the American way of life faced an existential threat from a corrupt political class that has selectively enforced the law based on Americans’ political, religious, and ideological convictions. For far too long, our federal law enforcement agencies abandoned justice in favor of political retribution—allowing violent criminals to roam our streets with impunity while targeting parents, churchgoers, political opponents, and everyday citizens.
This weaponization stood as the single greatest threat to our freedom, our security, and our sovereignty in modern American history. A nation without the free and impartial rule of law is not a free nation at all.
But the decline of the American justice system ended the moment I took the oath of office. For as long as I am President, our federal law enforcement agencies will once again be guided by the cornerstone American principles of fairness and impartiality. Our law enforcement officers will once again be empowered to do their jobs and keep our streets safe.
Violent criminals will once again be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law—and the constitutional rights of every American citizen will once again be protected.
During my term, I will also fire the unelected bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice system against the American people. I will investigate the selective enforcement of our Nation’s laws that has imperiled countless American families. I will impose strict new requirements on grants from the Department of Justice to ensure local jurisdictions abide by commonsense policing protocols, and I will review the cases of all political prisoners who have been unjustly prosecuted.
My Administration is also fully committed to supporting our brave men and women in blue. As President, I will enhance legal protections for our law enforcement officials. I will invest in hiring, retention, and training for law enforcement officers. On my first day in office, I directed the Attorney General to pursue federal charges and seek the death penalty against anyone who murders a law enforcement officer.
Under my leadership, the era of government weaponization is over—and a new era of justice, integrity, and honor has begun. My Administration will work hard to fully restore law and order in Washington, D.C., and beyond.
Thank you again for writing. May God bless you, and may He continue to bless the United States of America.
Sincerely,
Donald Trump

Ruth Cordova, a San Bernardino County resident, wrote to President Trump on March 19, requesting that he ensure the death penalty is sought and enforced against Ryan Dwayne Turner Jr in the death of San Bernardino County Deputy Sheriff Hector Cuevas Jr. Cordova’s letter was published in the March 21 edition of the Sentinel.

Citing California’s Housing Affordability Act, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week rejected an appeal by more than 60 Joshua Tree residents the planning commission’s January 23 approval of the 64-unit Lovemore Ranch residential subdivision.
In an immediate reaction, a cross section of those residents have undertaken to initiate further legal and administrative challenges to the project and both county and the county board of supervisors’ land use authority in the 6,585-population community.
In 2020, Axel Cramer and Dane Hollar, who were then 27 years old and 24 years old, respectively, approached the county, proposing on behalf of their company, Green Collar Builders, what ultimately evolved into the Lovemore Ranch project. There original concept involved construction of 31 ½ acre+ lots, which was in keeping with the half-acre minimum lot size traditionally adhered to in Joshua Tree. To the extent that word about what Cramer and Hollar were proposing reached members of the Joshua Tree community, there were no major objections to the proposal, at least insofar as the density issue.
Cramer and Hollar, who are now 32 and 29 and yet the principals in Green Collar Builders and its more recently-formed corporate offshoot, Lovemore Investments, LLC , last year filed with the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department an application to erect a 64-home project they dubbed Lovemore Ranch, adjacent to Alta Loma Road in Joshua Tree. In presenting the proposal to the county and to the general public, there were a few discrepancies with regard to some of the specific features of the subdivision.
According to Cramer and Hollar, Lovemore Ranch was to simultaneously accommodate what was calculated to be 256 residents on the more than 18-acre project site, which is currently virtually uninhabited, without having any ecological impact on the property. Through the art/science/magic of technical innovation, they insisted, there would be more electricity generated on the property than would be used by those residing there, more water would percolate into the water table than goes into the aquifer at present as a consequence of natural rainfall and no native species of plants or animals would be disturbed by the erection of 64 homes. Moreover, according to the duo, the entire project was to have less than a net-negative carbon impact, meaning, apparently, that after the 64 homes are built and filled with residents, there will be less use of fossil fuel on the 18.5 acres where the homes are to be built than is in use there now. Continue reading →

A wrangle among Ontario residents broke out this week, growing increasingly vitriolic by the workweek’s end over the Ontario Airport’s expenditure of more than $130,000 to send nine of its officials, consultants and staff to conference in Madrid.
The debate over the matter grew more pointed as no one at airport, the airport authority or the City of Ontario, which is a party to the joint powers airport authority that oversees and manages the airport evinced awareness of the trip or the conference or was able or willing to enunciate the reason for the officials’ participation in it and what necessitated having so many individuals take part.
Ontario International Airport Authority Board President Alan Wapner, together with the authority’s executive director, Atif Elkadi; Greg Devereaux, a consultant to the authority with regard to real estate issues; the authority’s director of customer experience, Tiffany Sanders; the authority’s senior vice president of revenue management, Elsa Grey; the authority’s director of government relations, Martha Preciado; the authority’s director of advertising & partnerships, Scott Jacobson; the authority’s senior vice president of finance, Celeste Heinonen and the authority’s chief information officer, Chuck Miwa flew to Madrid to attend the Passenger Terminal Expo 2025 held on April 8, 9 and 10. The conference featured more than 400 speakers involved in the aviation industry, including airport administrators, airline executives, regulators, consultants and associated businesses holding forth about and sharing their knowledge covering trends and issues relating to passenger terminals, including accessibility and assisted travel, facilities management, transport connections, airport design, planning and development, automation, autonomy and robotics, aviation security technology, passenger processing, retail, food and beverage concessions, customer service, digital identity and wallets in travel, future airports, increasing airport capacity and flexibility on the ground and in the air, the extension of technovation through artificial intelligence and digital transformation to baggage systems. Continue reading →

Jury selection in the trial of Justin Halstenberg continued early this week, involving careful maneuvering by the defendant’s defense team to prevent individuals familiar with the case or sympathetic to sheriff’s and firefighting officials from making it onto the panel that will weigh Halstenberg’s contention that he had nothing to do with igniting what was the fourth most extensive forest conflagration in recorded San Bernardino County history.
Pretrial documents outlining evidence, exhibits and witnesses along with motions filed with the court in the run-up to what is expected to be a trial of two month’s duration provide a sprawling but relatively clear and encapsulated preview of the case that is to be made by prosecutors. At the same time, the terse and relatively sparse show of evidence deemed by Halstenberg’s two defense attorneys as exculpatory and a short witness list indicates that their strategy hinges on convincing what they hope will prove to be a broadminded jury that the defendant’s presence in or near the area where arson investigators say the fire originated on the day inferno began does not implicate him as the firestarter. Moreover, the defense’s short witness list betrays its intent to closely cross examine and potentially neutralize the prosecution’s witnesses as to the tightness and integrity of the evidence the investigators gathered, and subject to question the analysis done and conclusions reached by the investigators and the prosecution’s experts.
Halstenberg is being prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney Andrew Peppler and Deputy District Attorney Justin Crocker. He is represented by Deputy Public Defender Justin Ewaniszyk and Deputy Public Defender Luke Byward.
The trial is to be held before Judge Cheryl Kersey, Previous pretrial motions were heard by Judge J. David Mazurek. Continue reading →

Four Chinese nationals were sentenced to federal prison March 17 for their participation in a complex scheme that involved the theft of hundreds of identities to defraud multiple domestic retailers out of at least $1.2 million.
A fifth co-conspirator was previously sentenced to more than four years in prison, and a sixth is awaiting sentencing following a guilty plea.
As part of the scheme, these six defendants stole the victims’ identities – including their Social Security numbers, dates of birth and home addresses – and used that information to make fake driver’s licenses that were used to access credit in the victims’ names at large national retailers, including Ulta Beauty, Sephora, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Williams-Sonoma, Dillard’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue.
The four defendants, all Chinese nationals who entered the country under false pretenses, were sentenced today by United States District Judge Stephen V. Wilson. All four pleaded guilty on January 6. They are:
Kar Kee “Steven” Cheung, 36, of Chino Hills, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of visa fraud, one count of possession of equipment used to manufacture false identification documents, and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud;
Qian Guo, 37, of Chino Hills, was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison for one count of possession of equipment used to manufacture false identification documents and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud; Continue reading →

The White House
April 11, 2025
Dear Ms. Cordova,
Thank you for taking the time to share your views regarding our justice system, public safety, and the rule of law.
As President, one of my most critical duties is to restore the sacred principle of equal justice under the
law for every citizen. That work begins with stopping the weaponization of our justice system and rebalancing the scales of justice in our Nation’s halls of power.
In recent years, the American way of life faced an existential threat from a corrupt political class that has selectively enforced the law based on Americans’ political, religious, and ideological convictions. For far too long, our federal law enforcement agencies abandoned justice in favor of political retribution—allowing violent criminals to roam our streets with impunity while targeting parents, churchgoers, political opponents, and everyday citizens.
This weaponization stood as the single greatest threat to our freedom, our security, and our sovereignty in modern American history. A nation without the free and impartial rule of law is not a free nation at all.
But the decline of the American justice system ended the moment I took the oath of office. For as long as I am President, our federal law enforcement agencies will once again be guided by the cornerstone American principles of fairness and impartiality. Our law enforcement officers will once again be empowered to do their jobs and keep our streets safe. Continue reading →