Events in the Chino Valley Unified School District over the last two-and-a-half years have had, at the least, a subtle impact on the state’s educational landscape. Now, the district’s board president is looking to intensify the influence the trends she and her colleagues who make up that board majority have had to effectuate deeper impacts on the learning atmosphere in public school settings throughout California.
Republican Sonja Shaw, who was made president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees shortly after she was elected to the board in 2022 by defeating Democrat Christine Gagnier, has now set her sights on running for the position of California state superintendent of public instruction next year.
Elections within the Chino Valley Unified School District for more than a decade and a half have served as a forum in which the fundamentalist Christian/Republican right wing movement has successfully asserted itself in the Golden State, or at least a portion thereof.
At the epicenter of that movement is the Reverend Jack Hibbs, the founder and pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. Hibbs is a denominationalist who holds that Christians have a duty to take over public office and promote their religious beliefs. While he has not expended too much energy or effort on applying his philosophy or approach at the national, state, county or municipal level, he has concentrated his political firepower on the governance of the public school system in the geographical area at the extreme southwest end of San Bernardino County, i.e., the Chino Valley Unified School District, which blankets Chino, Chino Hills and the connecting and immediately surrounding unincorporated county areas.
Hibb’s first political success came with the 2006 election of Sylvia Orozco, a Calvary Chapel parishioner, to the school board. Hibbs followed this with the 2008 election of another Calvary Chapel parishioner, James Na. In 2012, a third member of Hibbs’ congregation, Andrew Cruz, was elected to the school board. Cruz, Na and Orozco, representing a religious trifecta that constituted a majority on the board, set about making significant inroads on the district’s policies.
A major milestone in this regard was making Bible study part of the district curriculum, as well as including benedictions at the beginning of the school board meetings and later, after Na became board president, outright evangelism from the district board dais, with Na telling those present at meetings that they should seek out Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
When the district began to move toward including daily prayer as part of basic instruction at the district’s schools, the Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin in 2014 stepped in and filed suit in Federal Court in Riverside against the district on behalf of two named plaintiffs, Larry Maldonado and Mike Anderson, and 21 unnamed plaintiffs who asserted they were alienated or intimidated at school board meetings because of the insistence of some district officials to engage in so-called Christian witnessing, including “prayers, Bible readings and proselytizing.”
A ruling on the Freedom From Religion Foundation lawsuit by Federal Judge Jesus Bernal resulted in overt religiosity and proselytizing within the district’s schools being eliminated. In 2018, Orozco did not seek reelection and Christina Gagnier and Joe Schaffer were elected and thereafter joined with Board Member Irene Hernandez-Blair to form a board majority that countered Na and Cruz.
For some four years, the denominationalists in the Chino Unified School District were, or appeared to be, in eclipse. In the 2020 election Cruz and Na had been returned to office and Hernandez-Blair did not seek reelection. She was replaced by Don Bridge, who was as committed as was Hernandez-Blair to preventing a religious takeover of Chino Valley’s public schools.
Gagnier, an attorney, had aspirations of moving on to higher office, such as the state legislature and/or Congress. A politician in the mold of Congresswoman Katie Hill or Palm Springs Mayor Christy Holstege, Gagnier had the backing not only of local Democrats but those at the state and national levels, and she was a particular darling of the progressive establishment. She was being groomed to move up to Sacramento in conformance with the strictures of California’s term limits, from which perch she was to eventually launch her run for Congress. This plan was contingent upon her maintaining her status as an officeholder. In 2022, the Democrats, as the dominant party in Sacramento, joined forces to assist her in hanging onto her incumbency. California Superintendent of Public Schools Tony Thurmond, formerly a Bay Area assemblyman, was prominent among the Democrats campaigning on her behalf.
Despite the Democrats pulling out all, or most, of the stops in the effort to keep Gagnier in office, she ran head-on into Hibbs’ denominationalist political machine, which was militating to recapture the high ground it had occupied until the combination of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Judge Bernal, Hernandez-Blair, Gagnier and Schaffer had knocked all of he wind out of their sails. The 2022 election did not go the Democrats way in the 2022 Chino Valley Unified School District election. Two further members of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills congregation, Sonja Shaw and Republican Central Committee Member Jon Monroe, proved victorious, displacing Gagnier and Schaffer on the board.
Shaw was in short order established as the board president. She and Monroe examined the district landscape and were particularly troubled by the district’s provision of “safe space,” consisting of individual locker rooms in which students were allowed to change out of the clothes they had left home in which were appropriate for their biological gender and don clothes associated with the gender identity they maintained at school, if it were different, and then reverse the process before returning home. The district’s policy, in conformance with Gagnier’s, Schaffer’s, Hernandez-Blair’s and Bridge’s direction as board members, was that Chino’s schools, faculty, teachers and employees refrain from informing the parents of those students who were reidentifying their gender that they were doing so.
A little more than seven months after Shaw and Monroe were installed as board members, they voted along with Na and Cruz to change the district’s policy to require that parents of a student who reidentified his or her gender at school from the gender indicated on his or her birth certificate be informed of reidentification their child had made. Prior to the board’s July 20, 2023 decision on that matter, a vote in which Bridge dissented, California Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote a letter to the district opposing the policy change and vowing legal efforts to overturn it or prevent it if it were passed. California Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond sojourned to Chino the day of the vote to personally speak out against the policy change. Both Bonta and Thurmond emphasized their belief that the new policy would submit students to traumatic emotional, psychological and perhaps even physical abuse by parents who were unaccepting of their offsprings’ gender transformations.
During the July 20, 2023 school board meeting, while Thurmond was in the midst of his remarks, Shaw had the microphone to the podium cut off when he reached the one-minute speaking time limit, reduced from the normal three minutes, that had been imposed that evening because of the overflow crowd and the large number of speakers present. Shaw had district security escort Thurmond out of the meeting when he protested.
In the aftermath of Chino Valley Unified’s groundbreaking action, multiple other school districts passed identical or similar policies.
A month later, just as the 2023-24 academic year was about to begin, Bonta, in his capacity as attorney general, filed suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court to enjoin the district from enforcing its policy.
Bonta asserted that the policy “puts transgender and gender nonconforming students in danger of imminent, irreparable harm from the consequences of forced disclosures” and that as a consequence of the school district action, such students were “under threat’’ and “in fear,” facing “the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm from non-affirming or unaccepting parents or guardians.” The policy, according to the attorney general “unlawfully discriminates against transgender and gender nonconforming students, subjecting them to disparate treatment, harassment, and abuse, mental, emotional, and physical.”
In justifying his action, Bonta said, “This policy is destructive,” he said. “It’s discriminatory and it’s downright dangerous. It has no place in California, which is why we have moved in court to strike it down.”
Bonta asserted that the need to prevent “mental harm, emotional harm and physical harm” to those students who are products of families who are not accepting of their choice to deviate from their birth or biological gender trumps the right of all parents to be informed of their children’s sexual identity choice.
Bonta’s filing put the new policy on hold.
On September 6, 2023, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza granted the State of California a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Chino Valley Unified School District from enforcing the policy.
Ultimately, the matter was transferred to the courtroom of San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs. Judge Sachs, reacting to Bonta’s claim that the district’s forced disclosure provisions discriminate against transgender students who are “singled out” and that it ran afoul of California Education Code Sections 200 and 220 and Government Code section 11135 meant to ensure equal rights and opportunities for every student and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression, perpetuated the restraining order preventing the policy’s enforcement. According to Judge Sachs, the provision of the policy requiring that faculty in essence “out” transgender students to their parents was discriminatory based on sex, violating both the California Constitution’ and U.S Constitution’s equal protection clauses.
The district and its board backed up and regrouped, and in March 2024 passed a redrafted parental notification requirement that was more general and did not make any specific mention of sexuality or gender, instead requiring that parents be told if the students made any alteration of their school registration records, such as altering their names. As most students engaging in “gender transition” adopt a name traditionally associated with the gender they are adopting, the revamped policy was inclusive of the intent contained in the policy adopted in July 2023 but maneuvered around the legal constraints Bonta, who was working in conjunction with Thurmond, California Governor Gavin Newsom and a cross section of the California legislature’s Democratic members, was attempting to construct.
Judge Sachs, in considering the district’s revamped policy, which was passed in March 2024, ruled that it was constitutionally valid and enforceable since it was not specific to sexuality or gender identification. Among the advocates of parental disclosure, this was considered a major victory.
State officials then moved to preempt parental disclosure altogether by having Assembly Member Chris Ward, D-San Diego, author AB 1955, prohibiting schools from making a practice of notifying parents if their children are assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth. The bill was passed by both of California’s legislative houses and was signed into law by Governor Newsom on Monday, July 15, 2024.
Almost as soon as Governor Newsom’s signature was dry, the Chino Valley Unified School District and parents Oscar Avila, Monica Botts, Jason Craig, Kristi Hays, Cole Mann, Victor Romero, Gheorghe Rosca, Jr. and Leslie Sawyer, represented by attorney Emily Ray of the Austin, Texas-based Liberty Justice Center, sued Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in an effort to prevent the enforcement of AB 1955.
As this legal back-and-forth has been raging in state court, a federal lawsuit, Mirabelli vs. Olson, relating to a teacher in the Escondido School District suing the district in which she worked over its order that she not inform the parents of one of her students about the name she used in a classroom setting to refer to their child, has been playing out. That case has implications that not only parallel the issues of contention between Bonta and the Chino Valley Unified School District but replicate them with some level of specificity. There have been rulings in that case by Federal Judge Roger Benitez which essentially vindicate the Chino Valley Unified School District in its intention to keep parents abreast of the activity and behavior their children engage in while in a public school setting. One [theme] in Judge Benitez’s rulings is that a school district or educators to whom parents have entrusted their children cannot be actively deceived by the district or those educators.
Within the larger context of California politics, despite the state’s voter registration overwhelmingly favoring Democrats such that all of its major constitutional officers including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, superintendent of schools and insurance commissioner are Democrats and both houses of the state legislature have two-thirds Democratic majorities, polling data suggests that substantial numbers – indeed a strong majority – of parents in the state, whether they are either Democrat or Republican or non-aligned or members of the more obscure political parties, are opposed to the policy of parental nondisclosure when it comes to their children’s gender identity which has been embraced by the state’s leading Democrats such as Governor Newsom, Attorney General Bonta and State Superintendent of Schools Thurmond.
Thurmond, who previously served in the Assembly before he was elected state schools superintendent in 2018 and reelected in 2022, will be termed out of office as superintendent of schools following his current term. He is running for governor in 2026. At this point, twelve individuals, the majority of them Democrats, have given indication they will run for state superintendent of schools in 2026. While the superintendent of state schools is considered a nonpartisan post, party affiliation in the race has historically been a factor in who eventually prevails in the race, as in recent years campaign money in California has gravitated to serious, established Democratic politicians and officeholders.
Two of those who have cast their hats into the ring for schools superintendent are former State Senator Connie Leyva and Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, who is being termed out of California’s lower legislative house after the current term.
Both Leyva and Muratsuchi are Democrats who will need to run, during the California Primary, against a slew of other Democrats. Moreover, in the context of running for state superintendent of schools, both may be hampered by their association with liberal policies embraced by the Democrats, including opposition to parental notification. Muratsuchi, in particular, is the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, in which post he in 2023 successfully thwarted a legislative attempt to mandate parental notification statewide.
Shaw has now leapt into the breach. Her leadership in the fight for parental notification has garnered her not only statewide but national attention, which potentially will bring to her financial backing from like-minded conservatives from throughout the country. In addition, she has affiliated herself with other conservative causes such as banning any flags in classrooms other than the U.S. and the California Bear Flag Republic, removing books with sexually explicit content from the district’s school libraries.
Shaw maintains that there is a cultural war ongoing in which critical basic American values are being threatened by liberals who have seized control of California’s governmental institutions, including the education system. She is inviting those who disagree with the cabal of radical ideologues who have come to dominate Sacramento to leave the sidelines and back her in what otherwise might be seen as a quixotic attempt to reverse what she sees as the perversion of the state’s schools.
For Shaw and her backers, an ideal elective opportunity to reverse the Democrats’ stranglehold on the statewide constitutional offices might emerge if she can get into the November 2026 general election runoff against Muratsuchi. With sufficient financing, they believe they can make an issue of Muratsuchi’s advocacy of keeping hidden from parents the details pertaining to their children’s comportment and representation of themselves in classroom settings throughout the Golden State and his accompanying assertions that the sexual orientation of their children is not something that parents have a right to know about.
“With Donald Trump attacking public education, attacking our students — especially our immigrant students and our LGBTQ+ students — now more than ever, it’s up to states like California to stand up for all of our kids,” Muratsuchi said.
In announcing her run for state superintendent of schools, Shaw said she was running “to put parents back in charge of our children’s education, not the Sacramento politicians.”
Gagnier, despite her 2022 defeat by Shaw, has now launched a bid to wrest from Republican Young Kim her hold on the seat in California’s 40th Congressional District, which stretches from southwest San Bernardino County south and west into Orange and Riverside counties, encompassing the cities of Chino Hills, Corona, Brea, Yorba Linda, Anaheim, Orange, Villa Park, Aliso Viejo, Lake Forest, Laguna Hills, Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and Tustin, as well as the unincorporated Orange County canyon communities, Coto De Caza and North Tustin.
Gagnier, like Shaw, will be fighting an uphill battle, standing on a political foundation that features both political strengths and weaknesses.
It is noteworthy that Democrats at the state level previously saw in the Chino Valley Unified School District and the bully pulpit of its board a forum that offered what was to them a somewhat disquieting opportunity for those voices of dissent to the liberal orthodoxy that pervades Sacramento to be heard. Gagnier, an attorney by profession blessed with the photogenic quality of a Hollywood starlet and political ambition to match it, had evolved into a favorite of the Democratic establishment. Several sitting state Democratic officeholders, including Thurmond, came to Chino in the late summer and fall of 2022 to assist her in her campaign for reelection. Despite that, she was beaten by Shaw, who had the benefit of having Hibbs’ political machine behind her.
Gagnier was not out front in the liberal/Democratic efforts to promote transgender rights to the exclusion of parental rights, but she clearly falls on the Democratic side of the divide. In recent months and weeks, as she has been laying the groundwork for her 2026 congressional run against Kim, she has assiduously avoided, indeed run away from invitations to engage in, discussions of her position with regard to the transgender students rights vs. parental rights debate.
In 2014, Kim , who was then successfully running for the California Assembly, straightforwardly opposed a California law “requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice and participate in sports by their gender identity rather than their anatomical gender.” While stating that transgender people “deserve to be respected,” Kim said she did not believe that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transsexuals individuals were innately oriented into or born with the sexual identities identities they later assumed. She said she was opposed to the law in question out of concern over how it would necessitate the construction of new school facilities, the cost of that construction. She further found troubling that students under the contemplated law would be able to change their identity “on a whim,” and that male-to-female transgender students would have an unfair advantage in sports.

Two Massive Police Responses To False Shooter Reports In Two Days

Revenge, as salami, is a dish best served up cold.
-Eugène Sue

Eleven months after officers in riot gear from multiple law enforcement agencies descended upon a ring of protesters at Pomona College and arrested 20 students, in the course of which more than a dozen were roughed up and one was hit with additional charges for fighting back, a highly-sophisticated operation was carried out this week in which the goal was to illustrate to the public the tendency of police agencies to overreact.
On March 12, 176 armed law enforcement officers from no fewer than six agencies were summoned or dispatched to Loma Linda University Medical Center after an emergency call was made to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department about a man in the throes of a mental crisis who was threatening to kill patients at the regional medical facility’s children’s hospital.
The initial call came in around 6 p.m.
The initial report was that an armed man, who had initially come into the hospital via the emergency room, had moved into the children’s hospital, where he posed a mortal threat to dozens, scores or maybe even hundreds of patients, employees and visitors.
Within less than twenty minutes, multiple media outlets and press organizations were provided with information, including alleged details about the ongoing incident to which the law enforcement agencies were privy and some details which the law enforcement agency did not have.
The man was, television, radio and newspaper reporters were told, armed with an AR-15 rifle, dressed in black, in possession of a bomb and carrying a duffle bag chock full of ammunition and spare weapons. He was in the midst of a full-blown mental-health crisis, hearing voices that were instructing him to shoot patients and was already inside the hospital, walking its corridors and stalking victims, those who were contracted were told.
The intensity of the response, both by the law enforcement agencies and the media was massive, with sheriff’s department helicopters circling the medical center and so many sheriff’s department and police department vehicles around the hospital grounds that neither those vehicles nor those driven by passers-by or the civilians being evacuated from the medical center’s various departments and buildings could transit freely.
Those inside the facilities who were obliged by the evacuation order were scrutinized by not one or two officers with weapons at the ready near the buildings’ entrance/exits but by dozens who were primed to open fire on anyone who so much as looked to be even a bit suspicious.
The Sheriff’s Department received a call around 6 p.m. about a man who said he was armed with an AR-15 rifle and a bomb at the hospital, was experiencing a mental-health crisis and heard voices in his head that told him to shoot patients at the medical center’s children’s hospital.
The potential shooter was described as a man wearing a black shirt and pants and holding a black duffle bag, according to broadcast reports.
For the first hour-and-a-half, scouts wearing body armor and helmets who were outfitted with high-resolution body cameras gingerly walked every corridor of the massive 364-bed medical center, checking every room, hallway, and closet, anticipating a gunfight or shoot-out at any moment. Personnel in the sheriff’s department’s Eagle mobile command post were able to in real time monitor the video being recorded by those scouts, while simultaneously poring over the floor plans of each level in the medical center to ascertain what the next step and overall response to the emergency was going to be.
When no armed individual was encountered by any of the scouts, at around 7:45, a decision was made to begin clearing those patients in the hospital who could be safely moved out of the facility.
Around 8 p.m., the department, which had been purposefully tight-lipped about what the operations consisted of, announced that its deputies and officers from other responding departments were “actively clearing” the hospital.
Later that evening, after 10 p.m., the hospital, after acknowledging that medical care within the hospital complex had been interrupted, put out a statement that “Law enforcement responded to the Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital (at the medical center) this evening after an initial report of a situation in the emergency department. After a thorough investigation, it was confirmed there is no active threat on campus and normal business operations have resumed.”
While Molly Smith, a hospital spokeswoman, indicated there was “no active threat” in the medical center, the sheriff’s department did not make a similar assumption. Deputies lingered at various spots within the medical center, in particular around the children’s hospital overnight and the next morning and into the afternoon, deputies were still making wary-eyed perusals of the medical center grounds.
On the afternoon of March 13, an incensed San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus was making a statement in which he reflected the recognition that his department had been had by a hoaxer who had perpetrated what since 2008 or thereabouts has been referred to by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as “swatting.” The term refers to provoking a SWAT [special weapons and tactics] team to respond to a particular location through a false report of an emergency situation. Dicus vowed dire consequences for the individual responsible if his department’s efforts to track down the perpetrator of the hoax proved successful.
Unbeknownst to Dicus, even as he was speaking the final touches were being put on the preparation for a nearly identical swatting incident, one which took place little more than a stone’s throw on the other side of the San Bernardino County line/Upland-Claremont border,
At 4:44 p.m., a call came into the Claremont Police Department from an individual who said he had a bomb and was holding another person hostage in a restroom on the Claremont McKenna College campus. He had a rifle, the caller said, and he was about to walk out onto the college grounds and shoot anyone and everyone he encountered.
The Claremont Police Department’s dispatch unit immediately contacted the administration department at Claremont McKenna College, providing an alert that a bomb threat had been made and a shooter was at large on the campus.
Within minutes, warnings were being disseminated, followed by a 4:56 p.m. announcement that there was a police presence at the college. In the meantime, the Claremont Police Department had put out a call for mutual aid, and the police departments in neighboring Upland and La Verne responded by detailing several cars to the school, as did Ontario. A 5:11 p.m an email went out to all students stating there was a “potential shooter on CMC Campus” and “Stay away from the area.” The email called upon anyone who saw anything suspicious to call 9-1-1 or campus police with their observations.
Campus security moved to lock down all buildings on or anywhere near the CMC campus, such as the Robert Day School of Economics, dormitories, those at adjacent Scripps and Pomona colleges, Honold Library, the graduate school, and the Peter F. Drucker School of Management. Those already inside were told to hunker down and shelter in place. Security officers approached those on foot anywhere on the campus and told them to leave the immediate area.
Shortly after the first of two engine companies with the Los Angeles County Fire Department arrived, which included members of the bomb squad, one after another ten separate SWAT teams in armored safety vehicles from the Claremont Police Department and other law enforcement agencies arrived, most converging at the corner of Columbia and Eighth Street between the CMC Campus and Honnold Library. Overhead, first one, then two and finally a third helicopter circled and crisscrossed above the campus.
By 8 p.m., after what were termed thorough and exhaustive searches of the CMC and the neighboring campuses and no one matching the description of the shooter/bomber turned up, law enforcement coordinators came to the conclusion that this was a swatting incident.
The following day, today, March 14, spring break commenced, at which point an estimated 70 to 80 percent of the students at the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges – Pomona, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and CMC and those at the graduate school vacated those campuses for elsewhere until school resumes on April 24.
One year ago, there was considerable agitation and protest on the campus relating to
the Israel-Hamas War and the perception that Pomona College was in league with Israel.
At Pitzer College, another of the Claremont Colleges, there had been continuous protests since 2018 that involved Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine along with the Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace to convince that college’s administrators to end Pitzer’s ties with the University of Haifa in Israel which involved a study abroad program. In March 2024, in a concession to those protests, Pitzer officials had called for a vote of the student body about whether the program at the University of Haifa should be suspended, In the midst of the controversy over Israel’s occupation of Gaza, Pitzer students voted overwhelmingly to end the program.
Fresh off this victory, those students at the Claremont Colleges intensified the protests aimed at Pomona College over its ties to Israel in the aftermath of the occupation of Gaza.
A number of students, several of whom were in communication with Claremont Consortium Faculty for Justice in Palestine, began to erect on March 27, 2024 what was intended to be “protest art,” consisting of an eight-panel, 32-foot-long, eight-paneled “apartheid wall” outside the Smith Campus Center. The scenes depicted on the wall were intended to illustrate what the protester said was “unequal treatment of the Palestinian people living under the brutal conditions of the illegal Israeli Occupation” in Gaza. Slogans on the wall included, “Free Palestine,” “Disrupt the Death Machine,” “End the Murderous Occupation,” “Apartheid College; We are all Complicit,” and “Smash Imperialism, Long Live Int’l Solidarity.”
That display was accompanied by demands that Pomona College divest from Israeli companies or American, British, French and German companies aiding or providing military assistance to Israel.
On April 5, Pomona College officials dismantled the apartheid wall, which prompted an intensification of the protesters’ activity, which according to college officials involved blocking the entrances to the Pomona College main administration building and interfering with tours of the campus being given to applicants for admission to Pomona College/prospective students that were being conducted by college officials.
By 2 p.m. that afternoon there was a large gathering of protesters, which resulted in a matching show of force by the Claremont Police Department, which sent seven cars to the vicinity of Alexander Hall, Pomona College’s main administration building around which the main body of protesters was gathering. After about 15 minutes, the patrol cars left.
At around 3:45, a large number of protesters stormed into and then out of Alexander Hall, which prompted a call to the Claremont Police Department. At 4 p.m. , what was later enumerated as 18 protesters reentered the administration building and occupied the Pomona College President Gabrielle Starr’s office.
Another call went out to the Claremont Police Department, where that agency’s commanders did not feel they had sufficient manpower to quell the disturbance. Thereafter, they contacted the Pomona, La Verne and Azusa police departments, which responded by sending more than two dozen officers outfitted in riot gear.
While those officers from the three departments were en route to Claremont, another 50 protesters entered the building
Once the combined force of roughly 40 officers assembled outside the administration building, two officers entered Alexander Hall. While they were inside, the commanding officer on scene used a bullhorn to tell the protesters inside that they were being given an opportunity to leave voluntarily and immediately without any consequence.
It is not clear whether those inside could hear that offer over the chants of the crowd surrounding the building, which included, “Israel bombs, Pomona pays, how many kids will you kill today?” and “Gaza, Gaza, head held high, we will never let you die.” After several minutes passed without any reaction from those inside, the bullhorn was then used to inform those inside that they were being given the opportunity to come out of the building to accept a trespassing citation without being subject to arrest. Several minutes later, the bullhorn was again used to tell the protesters to leave. Less than five minutes later, officers from the four departments, with officers from Claremont in the lead, rushed into the building and effectuated the arrests.
The 20 students arrested taken to the Claremont Police Station where they were held for roughly seven hours, during which time, many of the protesters who had been assembled around Alexander Hall relocated to the Claremont Police Headquarters, where they resumed their protest. Inside, the 20 arrestees, who were enrolled at Pomona, Scripps and Pitzer colleges, were booked and then cite-released.
Before the 13 Pomona College students who were arrested were released around midnight, they had been identified to the Pomona College administration, which prepared emergency interim suspension documents were handed to them at the time of their release by a college employee. The emergency interim suspensions officially expelled the Pomona College students from the college campus, suspended them academically, and banned them from classes, the dormitory room each lived in, all of the college’s halls and any of the halls or classrooms of the other Claremont Colleges, any of the colleges’ dining halls, libraries or residence halls. The action meant that none of the Pomona students were able to complete their classes that semester or gain college credit from them. Any seniors that were due to graduate in May 2024 were not able to do so. Pomona College has not disclosed how many of its students arrested on April 5. 2024 were seniors due to graduate.

Both Rialto Unified School District officials and the Colton Police Department are gingerly seeking to determine the circumstances surrounding a tussle between a male student and female student at Jehue Middle School that took place on March 10, in which the girl was apparently knocked out cold when she escalated the contretemps between them by flinging a laptop computer at the boy’s head.
The final minutes and immediate aftermath of the altercation between the two were caught on video. That footage depicts a mostly-one-sided struggle in which the considerably larger boy holds the girl, who seems intent on injuring him, at bay, showing a degree of forbearance until he determinedly overpowers her by slamming her headfirst into a desk.
There are conflicting reports of what led to the violence that took place, with suggestions that the girl intensified what started out as horseplay initiated by the boy, leading to the matter spiraling out of control. Based upon the initial response of the Colton Police Department, which arrested and booked both students, despite the girl apparently being knocked unconscious, her action has been deemed to be the more serious criminal violation.
Reportedly, the boy was using a squirt gun to irritate other students, and the girl responded by smacking him in the head repeatedly  with what has been described as a metal object. That part of what occurred is not shown on the video. Continue reading →

While San Bernardino city officials are hailing the progress that is being made in the city in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28, 2024 ruling in the case of the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson allowing local governments to be more ruthless in the way the homeless population is handled, the situation with regard to inhumane conditions endured by those who live on the streets has gotten worse.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson essentially undid the previous rulings in the 1962 case of Robinson v. California and the 2018 case Martin v. Boise. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits criminalization of a status, as opposed to criminalizing criminal acts, in striking down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics. By extension, this applied to being homeless, such that it made applying traditional vagrancy laws difficult, problematic or even impossible. In this way, from that point on, at least until very recently, an individual could not be prosecuted for being homeless. In Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that city officials in Boise, Idaho, could not enforce an anti-camping ordinance whenever its homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. The Ninth Circuit includes the nine western states and all of the Pacific Islands.
Both Robinson v. California and Martin v. Boise had the practical effect of preventing government in general and local governments in particular from declaring open warfare on the homeless. Whereas previously, before the Grants Pass vs. Johnson ruling, local officials had to walk a very fine line in evicting homeless from parks and other public areas, officials now have a much freer hand in sending the homeless packing. Continue reading →

Today, one month after the acting assistant secretary for civil rights with the United States Department of Education alerted administrators at California State University San Bernardino and 44 other institutions of higher learning that they needed to end the use of racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities, the U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into why those sought-after reforms were not implemented.
According to documentation generated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, California State University San Bernardino is among 45 colleges and universities that have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by partnering with “The Ph.D. Project,” an organization that purports to provide doctoral students with insights into obtaining a Ph.D. and networking opportunities, but limits eligibility based on the race of participants.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is also investigating six universities for allegedly awarding impermissible race-based scholarships and one university for allegedly administering a program that segregates students on the basis of race.
“The Department is working to reorient civil rights enforcement to ensure all students are protected from illegal discrimination. The agency has already launched Title VI investigations into institutions where widespread antisemitic harassment has been reported and Title IX investigations into entities which allegedly continue to allow sex discrimination; today’s announcement expands our efforts to ensure universities are not discriminating against their students based on race and race stereotypes,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin. We will not yield on this commitment.” Continue reading →

FBN 20250001614
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
THIRD STRIKE BEER CO. 12221 POPLAR ST STE 3 HESPERIA, CA 92344: BVGS INC 12221 POPLAR ST STE 3 HESPERIA, CA 92344
Business Mailing Address: 12221 POPLAR ST STE 3 HESPERIA, CA 92344
The business is conducted by: A CORPORATION registered in California under the number 3324319.
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/ JESSE CANCEL, President
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 02/14/2025
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 K4866
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 21 & 28 and March 7 & 14, 2025.

FBN 20250001473
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
IBRINGYOUPEOPLE 10801 LEMON AVE APT 1727 RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91737: TANNER J GOLDEN
Business Mailing Address: 437 E BENWOOD ST COVINA, CA 91722
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
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/ TANNER J GOLDEN
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 02/11/2025
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 J9965
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 21 & 28 and March 7 & 14, 2025.

FBN 20250001746
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
AFFILIATED DIALYSIS OF CALIFORNIA 8239 ROCHESTER AVE., STE #110 RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91730: HOME DIALYSIS CENTERS OF RANCHO CUCAMONGA, LLC 8239 ROCHESTER AVE., STE #110 RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA 91730
Business Mailing Address: 2462 WASHINGTON RD. WASHINGTON, IL 61571
The business is conducted by: A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY registered with the State of California under the number 200609810171.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: January 1, 2017.
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/ TYSON ASCHLIMAN, CEO
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 02/20/2025
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 21 & 28 and March 7 & 14, 2025.

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