Free Republic

A federal judge ordered a temporary injunction Thursday against California’s first-in-the-nation law requiring candidates to disclose their tax returns for a spot on the presidential primary ballot, an early victory for President Trump but a decision that will undoubtedly be appealed by state officials. U.S. District Judge Morrison England Jr. said he would issue a final ruling in the coming days but took the unusual step of issuing the tentative order from the bench. He said there would be “irreparable harm without temporary relief” for Trump and other candidates from the law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July. Morrison...

California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding “travel ban” list because of that state’s new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid. The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university. Becerra’s authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and...

With the recent passage of two anti-cop pieces of legislation, lawmakers in California proved their utter contempt for the men and women who risk their lives to protect and serve in the Golden State. Cop-hating California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 392, placing even more restrictions on when an officer can use deadly force unless it is “necessary.” It’s as if there are already not enough restrictions codified in law. The standard previously was that of “reasonable” fear of imminent danger to themselves or others, just like currently held in Supreme Court decisions on use of force by...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is poised to sign a bill into law that would prohibit both traditional public and charter schools in the state from suspending students in grades K-8 for willfully defiant behavior. Senate Bill 419 intends to address racial disparities in school discipline. The Sacramento Bee reported: Students of color are disproportionately suspended for unruly behavior in California schools. Black students made up just 5.6 percent of the total enrollment for academic year 2017-18, yet accounted for 15.6 percent of total suspensions for willful defiance, according to the education department. By contrast, white students made up 23.2 percent of total...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, on Tuesday signed a bill that no longer requires any "able-bodied person 18 years of age or older" in the state to help an officer who requests assistance during an arrest. The Sacramento Bee reported that the old law, the California Posse Comitatus Act of 1872, was common in the country’s early days, but Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the old law a “vestige of a bygone era." The law was employed to help catch runaway slaves, the report said.

Republicans in California are crying foul over a new law that requires gubernatorial and presidential candidates to disclose tax returns in order to appear on 2020 primary ballots -- worried about voter turnout implications for their party in numerous races, even though the law is largely aimed at President Trump. The Presidential Tax Transparency and Accountability Act – signed in late July by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom – was an obvious bid to compel Trump to make public his financial records if he wants his name on the ballot. But the president is unlikely to cave to the law’s provisos...

The California legislature has been batting around Assembly Bill 392 for most of the year without getting across the finish line. The legislation was crafted in response to “deadly shootings of unarmed black men” in the state and it had originally been billed as one of the toughest use of force laws regulating police activity in the country. But negotiations with law enforcement officials resulted in some changes being made to the language (without which it wouldn’t have passed) and activists are saying it’s too watered down to be effective. (Including some complaints from a very curious choice of people...

A new independent audit found multiple errors and flaws in the rollout of California’s automated “motor voter” system California’s ambitious effort to automate voter registration at Department of Motor Vehicle offices produced almost 84,000 duplicate records and more than twice that number with political party mistakes, according to an audit released Friday by state officials. The analysis covered just the first five months of the new “motor voter” program, which was launched in April 2018. It found a wide array of problems with the rollout of the DMV system, including a limited amount of testing as well as inconsistent and...

The accurate name for "criminal justice reform" is pro-crime. According to Garden Grove cops, the Hispanic gang member who stabbed and slashed 4 people to death, in California was a thug with a history of violence who should never have been freed, and was only set loose due to Assembly Bill 109. Also known as the The Public Safety Realignment Act. "This suspect is identified as Zachary Castaneda, who has been identified as a documented gang member," the Garden Grove police chief announced. "This person should have been imprisoned and not allowed to be in our community committing these violent...

A “documented gang member,” who police said "should have been in prison," was responsible for a two-hour stabbing and robbery rampage in Southern California that killed four people and injured two, authorities said Thursday. Garden Grove Police Chief Tom DaRé told reporters that Zachary Castaneda "could have injured or killed many other people" had he not been apprehended as he walked out of a convenience store in the neighboring city of Santa Ana, dropping a knife and a gun he had taken from a security guard he had just killed. Police told reporters the violence appeared to be “random," with...

CINCINNATI – President Trump, at his campaign rally Thursday, bemoaned the state of American cities, broadening his days-long onslaught against Baltimore to accuse Democrats of running urban areas across the nation into the ground. “No one has paid a higher price for the far left’s destructive agenda than Americans living in our nation’s inner cities. They have paid a dear price,” Trump told his supporters near the start of the event at U.S. Bank Arena. The president argued that funding provided by the federal government has been "stolen" and "wasted" by local officials. “For 100 years it’s been one party...

File - Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses a 2016 voter-approved ballot initiative that will require Californians to undergo criminal background checks every time they buy ammunition starting July 1 during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday June 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli) California Gov. Gavin Newsom says it is inexplicable that a weapon “of godd—ned mass destruction” was used over the weekend during the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting. The Democrat told a Santa Clara audience that a semi-automatic rifle that Santino William Legan, 19, used to kill three and wound 12 others exists in the U.S., in large part,...

Governor Gavin Newsom of California sits in the catbird seat. His state is falling apart - with homelessness, medieval pestilence, millions of unvetted foreigners coming to claim services, stratospheric housing costs, choking greenie regulations, faltering electrical grids, out of control wildfires, and soaring crime -- yet in his rigged blue one-party state, he hasn't got a thing to worry about. The state will always be blue, right? No need to try to improve anything to stay in office. They've got it rigged. So instead of fixing things, he's focused on what's important to him: Keeping President Trump off the state's national election ballot...

Trumps records are sealed by Obama's executive order https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/presidential-records https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2009-01-26/pdf/E9-1712.pdf

ALBANY — The tax filings of President Trump and all public elected officials in New York will be fair game for congressional Democrats under a new law. The state Legislature on Wednesday approved a bill that allows the state Department of Taxation and Finance to release tax returns of thousands of New Yorkers upon an official request by Congress. Gov. Andrew Cuomo previously said he would support the idea. “This bill stands for a principle of transparency in regards to top officials’ tax returns and recognizing that shedding light on conflicts, potential conflicts of interest is for a public purpose...

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t exactly Earth-shattering news, but nearly every time we cover a story involving California Governor Gavin Newsom it deals with him doing something either stupid, foolish, outrageous or some combination of the three. So when the occasion rises to note him doing the right thing, I think we owe it to him to point it out in the interest of fairness. California is generally considered Ground Zero for the #RESIST movement and there’s no lack of people bashing the President out there. And yet, in the wake of two powerful earthquakes,...

For the first time in state history, the flag of LGBTQ Pride flies above the California Capitol. The Rainbow Flag, which sits below the U.S. and California state flags, will fly til July 1.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has a plan to triple spending on a tax break that puts money in the pockets of low-income families, and top Democrats in the Legislature are pushing him to open the program to undocumented immigrants.

R. Lopez moved to the United States from Mexico when she was 3. By the time she was in high school, the aspiring Spanish teacher from Oxnard needed glasses to drive and to see the whiteboard in her classes. Although her family’s low income qualified her for government-funded health coverage, she wasn’t eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal for much of her childhood because she lacks legal status.

California’s Education Department has issued an “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” and is soliciting public comments on it until Aug. 15. The legislatively mandated guide is a resource for teachers who want to instruct their students in the field of “ethnic studies,” and was written by an advisory board of teachers, academics and bureaucrats. It’s as bad as you imagine. Ethnic studies is described in the document as “the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity with an emphasis on experiences of people of color in the United States.” But that’s not all it is. “It is the study of intersectional...