In the aftermath of a series of recent court setbacks to the Donald Trump administration, the federal government has dropped its opposition to a court order returning control of National Guard troops in Los Angeles to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
In a terse filing with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers indicated they are no longer opposing the administrative stay of the State of California’s request to ban the use of military forces in the enforcement of federal immigration law. The federal government will, for the time being at least, withdraw its request to keep the state militia under federal control.
The federal government is now up against four federal court rulings which have seemingly ended the Trump Administration’s ability to rely on back-up from military force when the agencies devoted to immigration control encounter rough sledding in the form of civil resistance when rounding up suspected illegal aliens. One of those rulings applies to California, one applies to Oregon and a third applies to the situation involving the Illinois National Guard in Chicago. A fourth decision by the U.S. Supreme Court let the ruling against the Trump Administration in Illinois stand. That determination presumably applies across the board to all cases where President Trump had assumed the authority to use the National Guard to support federal law enforcement in situations where the nation’s citizenry passively or even actively obstructs federal agents.
Immediately after Donald Trump’s second inauguration on January 20, 2025, his administration began gearing up for an aggressive enforcement of U.S. immigration law. That effort included Tom Homan, who had served as the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency during Donald Trump’s first term in office and had been designated to act as his “border czar” during his second term in office, taking charge of the former agency he headed as well as orienting himself with regard to all aspects of the function of the Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the Department of Justice.
California, with its roughly 2.7 million undocumented foreigners within its confines, was a priority for the administration’s intended immigration enforcement program, and Homan and others recognized that there would be strenuous resistance to their efforts in the most heavily populated and Democrat-leaning areas of the state such as Los Angeles and San Francisco counties. Consequently, they hoped to initiate the enforcement program in areas such as San Bernardino, Riverside, Amador, Santa Barbara and Tulare counties, where they believed sheriffs Shannon Dicus, Chad Bianco, Gary Redman, Bill Brown and Mike Boudreaux would provide federal agents with the necessary support to conduct sweeps on a massive scale. A show of resolve and effectiveness in which approaching 300,000 unregistered aliens would be detained, processed and expelled from the country within three months would send a message that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE meant business and reduce the incidence of resistance, federal officials calculated, thus bolstering the effort throughout the state and serving to convince a substantial number of illegal aliens to self-deport and accept government assistance in doing just that. However, Dicus and Bianco, the highest ranking law enforcement officials in the state’s fifth and fourth most populous counties at a combined 4.5 million and some 127,681 undocumented foreigners and approximately 145,882 in their respective counties, indicated that they were unwilling to lend their deputies to an effort to round up those without federal permission to be in the country because they did not want to risk the Hispanic population in their jurisdictions discontinuing its cooperation with law enforcement. This stymied Homan and the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Enforcement, and the immigration effort in the Golden State, dubbed Operation Alta California, did not start in earnest until April.
Meanwhile, Homan and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security initiated action in Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington. Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Tennessee, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio, which ranked as the states with the second through the nineteenth largest number of undocumented foreigners living within them. Less intense, what were referred to as “token” efforts were taking place in Oregon, Indiana, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Montana.
When Homan and other Trump Administration officials launched Operation Alta California in April, they encountered obstruction and active resistance. In 2017, during the first Trump Administration, the California legislature passed into law and then-Governor Jerry Brown signed California Senate Bill 54, commonly known as the “California Values Act” which prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies. Senate Bill 54 was passed in response to Executive Order 13768, an initiative in the early stages of the first Trump Administration to neutralize the creation of sanctuary cities, a large number of which had cropped up in California, declaring themselves jurisdictions outside the reach of federal immigration authorities while simultaneously codifying ordinances, regulations and restrictionss and creating policies that prevented state and local public employees from assisting federal authorities in the deportation of illegal immigrants.
As Summer 2025 approached, intense resistance to the federal government’s immigration law enforcement was in full swing, most notably in California, Oregon and Illinois. The Trump Administration asserted, with some though not an overwhelming degree of evidence, that the resistance was organized and coordinated, aggressive and potentially or actually violent and dangerous. On June 7, over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Trump called upon the California National Guard to assist with maintaining order as crowds of protesters and resisters began throwing rocks, bricks and bottles at ICE agents and overturning vehicles in Los Angeles. Some 700 national guardsmen were dispatched to hotspots around Los Angeles.
After a degree of back and forth, President Trump relented, instead sending over 700 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms to specific locations in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties to “protect federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
Subsequently, with the spectacle of Marines on patrol in the nation’s second largest city sinking in on all concerned, the Marines 2nd Battalion was withdrawn and were replaced with 300 National Guardsmen.
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 – Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto, Isaac Antonio Villegas Molina, Jason Brian Gavidia and Jorge Luis Hernandez Viramontes – who had been taken into custody by the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May, United States Judge for the Central District of California Maame Ewusi-Mensah 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 Marsha Berzon, Jennifer Sung and Ronald Gould upheld Judge Frimpong.
Ultimately, however, the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal in September rejected in a 6-to-3 ruling the lower courts’ conclusions 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 speaking of Spanish to be a criterion 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.
Meanwhile, as the California case was playing out before Judge Frimpong, Justices Berzon, Sung and Gould and the Supreme Court, the intensity of the deportation effort was being focused elsewhere. Resistance on the streets of Portland in Oregon and in Chicago was proving to be as spirited as it had been in Los Angeles in June, which prompted the administration to revive the approach of utilizing the National Guard as a martial element in the immigration control program. In the case of Chicago, the federal government turned to the Illinois National Guard. Fresh from the federal victory in the Perdomo, et al case, the Trump Administration moved to send members of the California National Guard to quell the civil disturbances in Oregon.
Ongoing throughout the duration of the Trump Administration’s reliance on the National Guard to shore up the immigration enforcement activities of several agencies in various locales across the country there have been multiple challenges of the president’s authority to bring those state militias to bear. In virtually all of those cases, the federal use of the National Guard has continued, with motions to have them stand down pending the outcome of the litigation. Over the course of the first ten months of Donald Trump’s second term as president, there developed a pattern of lower federal courts generally making findings or rulings favoring the state authorities in those states with Democrat leadership who have challenged the Trump Administration only to see the Supreme Court, with six of its nine current members having been appointed by Republican presidents, reversing the lower courts again and again in one fast-track decision after another, reliably granting the administration’s emergency appeals, consistently setting aside rulings from district judges or appeals panels that had temporarily obstructed the Trump Administration’s programs.
On only a handful of decisions relating to immigration enforcement had the administration suffered setbacks. When the administration acted to quickly and summarily deport migrants with criminal records who were tied to foreign criminal gangs or organizations or terrorist groups by labeling them “enemy aliens,” the Supreme Court checked the administration, ruling that it had to provide those to be shown the nation’s door with due process to give them an opportunity to challenge the accusations against them.
With the overwhelming number of resolutions in such cases with regard to immigration across the country that came before the U.S. Supreme Court registering in President Trump’s win column and defeats that could be counted on two fingers, the administration’s assumption that the president held sway over virtually every state governor in the union when it came to directing the use of National Guard troops seemed sound. From late spring through the summer into the fall and into the winter, virtually everyone, including better than 40 of the country’s 50 governors seemed to accept that no matter how much governors of the states whose military forces had been commandeered by President Trump howled in protest, the naton’s chief executive had the authority to order the National Guard into Chicago and Portland and Los Angeles to ensure that his immigration policy is carried out.
After President Trump sent the National Guard to Chicago, Illinois Governor J.B.Pritzker objected and the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago sued the Trump Administration, asserting the federalization of the Illinois National Guard was illegal. In October, U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled in favor of Pritzker, Illinois and Chicago, finding that the federal government had greatly exaggerated the lawlessness in Chicago that it claimed justified making the deployments in the Windy City. The Trump Administration’s rationale for ordering the federalization and deployment of the National Guard within Illinois lacked credibility, Judge Perry said, and she issued a temporary order blocking the Trump administration from taking command of the National Guard.
In November, Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee to the U.S. District Court in Oregon, sided with Democrat-aligned Oregon state government officials, including Governor Tina Kotek, who sued the Trump Administration for mobilizing the National Guard to assist in immigration law enforcement in Portland. Judge Immegut stated, “[T]hese deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority” and violated both the 10th Amendment and Title 10, Section 12406 of the U.S. Code. She issued a temporary restraining order blocking the mobilization.
Subsequently, in California, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer likewise ruled against the Trump Administration in a lawsuit brought by the Golden State’s overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled state government, saying the president did not have the authority to federalize the California National Guard, and blocked its deployment to Los Angeles, directing that control of the state’s military arm be returned to Governor Newsom.
Breyer also said the Trump administration was improperly and “effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops” by sending California National Guardsmen to assignments outside California, including Oregon and Illinois.
Despite the plethora of pending lawsuits within various federal courts asserting the president was overstepping his power and was violating the Constitution in making use of state militias, no one was rushing off to Las Vegas to place money on the prospect that the administration was going to lose in any of those suits. Motions made in conjunction with both the California suit and the Oregon suit were held in abeyance while the Illinois suit and the decision by Judge Perry were being appealed to the U..S. Supreme Court.
On December 23, the Supreme Court left Judge Perry’s ruling barring the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois in place. In a three-page unsigned order, by margin of 6-to-3, the justices turned down the government’s request to put the temporary restraining order issued by Judge Perry on October 9 on hold while litigation continues in the lower courts. “At this preliminary stage,” the court said, “the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”
Three justices dissented from the order. Justice Samuel Alito, in a 16-page decision joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote, “Whatever one may think about the current administration’s enforcement of the immigration laws or the way ICE has conducted its operations, the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared to side with justices Alito and Thomas on their position that the federal government’s request was not unreasonable. Those three votes were not enough to carry the day, however, with six justices backing Judge Perry.
Although the dispute came to the Supreme Court in its preliminary stages, the case was an important test of the president’s power to utilize federalized National Guard troops, which are normally controlled by the states, domestically where martial law has not been declared. President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to the Chicago area, announced in early October, followed the use of National Guard troops in other major cities with Democratic mayors, including Washington, D.C. In deploying the National Guard, Trump cited lawlessness on the streets during protests of the federal agents’ presence and/or the agents’ need for back-up in their enforcing efforts.
In her November 7 ruling relating to the use of troops for crowd control during immigrant round-ups in Portland, Judge Immergut acknowledged that “violent protests did occur in June.” Nevertheless, she stated that the Trump Administration’s expression of need for National Guard troops to quell protests near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility there did not comport with the actual circumstance. The June protests, Judge Immergut determined “quickly abated due to the efforts of civil law enforcement officers.” Since that time, she wrote, protests at the facility have been “predominately peaceful.” Immergut concluded that “even giving great deference to the president’s determination,” his administration “did not have a lawful basis” to call up the National Guard in Portland.
The departments of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department, which already went to Plan B when they did not get law enforcement agency help with implementing Operation Alta California, are now formulating Plan C, consisting of utilizing access to communications, digital data and other information pertaining to the presence of unregistered foreigners in “soft” locations such as residences and other places where obstruction by a substantial number of protestors is unlikely or impossible. “Swarms” of agents are then to quickly detain and hand them off to transportation specialists before moving to the next designated location. The transportation specialists will deliver these pre-identified targets, for whom paperwork is to be prepared in advance, to an immigration detention facility augmented with on-site hearing facilities manned by an attorney working for the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and designated as a federal immigration judge, thus expediting deportations to be effectuated within 24-to-36 hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading →

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

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

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