Free Republic

Utilizing the new Presidential proclamations INA 212(f) and 215, prevents entry into the U.S. of certain non-immigrants. We think that the ban will be announced and come into force around June 15th, 2020.

Riding the momentum of the George Floyd riots, California's legislators have moved to ask the voters to repeal Proposition 209, the voter-passed measure to end affirmative action. According to the Sacramento Bee: More than two decades after California voters banned consideration of race in university admissions, public employment and contracting with Proposition 209, the state Assembly on Wednesday approved a measure that would ask voters to repeal the law. In a 58-9 initial vote, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, secured the necessary two-thirds majority approval needed to send Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5 out of her house and to the state Senate. Only...

The moribund California Republican Party has been showing a few signs of life — not quite vigor, but a sense that it might limp around for another few years. The GOP snatched a congressional seat from the Democrats in a High-Desert and suburban Los Angeles district during a special election last month. The party’s registration levels remain low — five percentage points behind No Party Preference — but there’s renewed optimism that it might claw back a couple of the Southern California congressional seats it lost in the 2018 midterms. That’s thin gruel, perhaps, but after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s...

As president, Biden would replicate California’s repressive AB5 law. “Last year California passed AB5 affording gig workers protections and benefits like a minimum wage and overtime pay,” Joe Biden tweeted on Tuesday. “Now, gig economy giants are trying to gut the law and exempt their workers. It’s unacceptable. I urge Californians to vote no on the initiative this November.” The initiative, qualified for the ballot on May 22, establishes criteria for determining whether rideshare drivers are “employees” or “independent contractors.” AB5 also targets freelance writers and independent contractors in dozens of professions, including health care. Joe Biden was all in...

Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson told them, “I appreciate that some independent contractors are upset… AB5 took away their lollipop.” She thinks their jobs are “lollipops”?

Californian independent contractors and freelancers got quite a shock Thursday evening when a state senator compared lost jobs to “lollipops.” Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson represents the 19th District in western Ventura County and Santa Barbara County. In a Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement meeting officials heard arguments for and against pushing forward SB 806 and SB990. The bills — put forth by Republican senators John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) and Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) — aimed to immediately suspend and amend the disastrous AB5 legislation that killed independent contracting/freelance jobs across the state. Moorlach and Grove have been two politicians at the...

<p>A California assemblywoman has drawn outrage with a blunt attack on Tesla’s plans to quit the Golden state — tweeting, “F–k Elon Musk.”</p> <p>Lorena Gonzalez sent the tweet late Saturday night shortly after Musk, 48, said he would move his pioneering tech company to either Texas or Nevada because of an ongoing spat about reopening in California.</p>

Since California’s controversial anti-freelancer bill was signed into law in September 2019, one (not unpredictable) result has been staffing shortages in the healthcare industry, particularly in fields generally staffed by contractors or locum tenens providers: physicians assistants, nurses, nurse anesthetists, and respiratory therapists. As the Wuhan coronavirus made its way into California, advocates who’ve been pushing to fix/amend/repeal AB5 let Asm. Lorena Gonzalez, the bill’s author, know in no uncertain terms that unless enforcement of AB5 was suspended until the crisis passed Californians who needed care from these professionals would die. Gonzalez didn’t listen, and people are dying. The populations...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwpx-8Rl7lM

TEMECULA, Calif.—Temecula-based destination wedding and event planner Michelle Garibay has run her business for the past 14 years without employees. Garibay has appeared in some of the nation’s most prestigious bridal magazines, including Style Me Pretty, The Knot, and Southern California Bride. However, Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) has impeded her latest business operations, along with many others in her industry who use independent contractors. AB5 essentially prohibits freelance work, with a few exceptions; it mandates that businesses hire employees instead of paying contractors. “This industry isn’t well suited to having employees, because the work isn’t steady,” Garibay said. “And the...

Another casualty in the quest to ‘save’ workers from ‘misclassification’ California’s AB 5 has taken another life: The new law has now killed off the 40-year old Lake Tahoe Music Festival. “After 40+ years of classical music concerts offered outside with family and friends, the Lake Tahoe Music Festival will call a wrap to our summer festival with two performances in August of 2020,” the official festival website says. The Festival also posted the announcement on their Facebook page. Assembly Bill 5 by former labor leader Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), has already significantly limited Californians’ ability to work as...

As the Democratic Party coalesces around 2020 candidate Joe Biden as an alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, onlookers have taken it for granted that the former vice president represents a “moderate” Democratic option. While this is true, it’s only due to the radical extent of Sanders’s far-left socialism; Biden himself is no centrist. In fact, he’s quite left-wing on a number of fronts, and his stance backing job-killing California regulations is just the latest example. In a weekend tweet, the Democratic front-runner touted his support for AB 5, an extremely controversial California regulation that limited companies’ ability to hire...

A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo. Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business's primary scope of operations, and be "customarily engaged"...

A San Diego judge said that the grocery delivery app Instacart has misclassified tens of thousands of its California gig workers who pack and deliver groceries as independent contractors. While the preliminary injunction does not go into effect immediately and is currently limited to San Diego, the decision is a historic first step in enforcing the new California law AB5. The controversial statute, which went into effect on January 1, was written to reclassify hundreds of thousands of gig workers in California as employees, making them eligible for basic labor rights and protections that tech platforms have conveniently circumvented for...

Are California Democrats—responsible for the state’s new anti-gig-worker law, AB5—so out of touch that they’re not aware of the growing anger of their constituents? It appears so. Since AB5 took effect on January 1, hundreds of thousands of Californians are finding their businesses in tatters. Musicians can’t join bands for a one-night gig, chefs can’t join forces with caterers, nurses can’t work at various hospitals, and writers must cap their submissions per media outlet to 35 per year. Under the law, these freelancers can no longer conduct the same business-to-business transactions they have for years or even decades. Clients with...

AB5, California’s new gig economy law, has left the state’s performing artist community in a state of fear and confusion. The law is intended to reduce worker misclassification, making it harder for companies to treat workers as independent contractors. It establishes a test to determine whether workers are employees who should receive minimum wage, paid sick days and other benefits. But the law’s ambiguous language — specifically the use of the phrase “fine artist” without actually defining the term — already had led arts organizations to postpone or cancel productions and has sent others scrambling to raise more money to...

It was only last October that I diagnosed the Democrats as suffering from “prophetic failure.” That’s what happens when the prophecies of a religious cult fail to turn up on cue. And why most politicians are sensible enough to say “we have only ten years to act” before the end of the world. I said back then, “the world was supposed to be all tucked up in progressive heaven by now.” The arc of history was bending towards justice. Then we got Trump. In When Prophecy Fails, according to Leon Festinger et al., the believers don’t just throw up their...

Nancy Pelosi famously proclaimed that Democrats had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it. On the other hand, Democrats in California last year passed legislation outlawing many freelance and independent contracting jobs knowing the disruption it would cause—and voters are now discovering the damage. Ride-hailing app Uber this week rolled out changes for drivers and riders in California in an effort to duck the state’s new labor law AB5. That law reclassified a large swath of independent contractors from freelance journalists to Uber drivers as employees who are owed rest breaks, workers compensation, health benefits and paid...

For many Southern California music fans, the most anticipated moment of the new year is getting the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival line-up, but for nearly 120,000 music merchants, industry insiders and musicians, the annual NAMM Show at the Anaheim Convention Center is where the real excitement is. The National Association of Music Merchants has gathered every January in Anaheim since 1976 to show off new innovations in the industry. With thousands of exhibitors from around the world, the NAMM Show is one of the longest-running and largest music product trade shows in the world. This event is all...

California’s new “gig worker” law does not apply to independent truck drivers because they are subject to federal statute, a Los Angeles judge ruled, handing a victory to one industry that is challenging a state effort to clamp down on labor abuses. The law, known as AB5 and which took effect on Jan. 1, makes it tougher for companies to classify workers as contractors rather than employees, a classification that exempts them from paying for overtime, healthcare and workers’ compensation. Report AdTruckers have mounted the strongest defense against AB5, which is best known for striking at the heart of high-profile...