ICE agents have reportedly claimed to be police officers to gain consent to enter a person’s home – a tactic that is viewed as unethical, but within the powers granted to the officers. Civil rights groups supported Kalra’s bill, looking to stymie the Trump administration’s promise to use any and all available tools to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Many groups fear Trump will expand deportations to include all undocumented immigrants, their families and relatives.   read more

Domaine Javier says California Baptist University (CBU) kicked her out of school for being transgender. The school says they gave her the boot because she lied on her application form by saying she was female. They will settle the matter in court.   read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) got rid of the contaminated soil in Mountain View and extracted the poisonous vapors, but the toxic groundwater was going to take “many decades” to clean up while they constructed slurry walls and water treatment systems. Time isn’t always kind.   read more

Southern California Edison, striving to win approval for restarting at least one crippled nuclear reactor at San Onofre, told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Monday that it could meet the agency’s requirement that it be able to run safely at “full power,” but would redefine “full power” to be 70%.   read more

The National Sheriffs’ Association overcame whatever reservations its members may have about selecting a heavily criticized officer under investigation by the FBI and picked Los Angeles County’s top cop, Lee Baca, as its annual Sheriff of the Year. Not everyone loved the choice.   read more

A lot of parolees, most of them sex offenders, are disabling the GPS tracking bracelets they are forced to wear by the courts with little fear of retribution. They know that a state realignment program, initiated by Governor Jerry Brown in late 2011 to shift responsibility for certain inmates from overcrowded prisons to county jails, is making it difficult for local authorities to control parolees with GPS.   read more

California is more than just an attractive venue for professional athletes to establish careers and ply their trade. It is also a lucrative and convenient place to file worker’s compensation claims after that career is over, even if they’ve only spent a small amount of time in the state.   read more

The National Center for Law & Policy (NCLP), on behalf of Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock and their two elementary school children, sued in San Diego Superior Court to suspend the yoga program already instituted in half the district’s schools. They claim it promotes Hinduism and teaches religious doctrine in place of state-required physical education.   read more

Clear Channel Outdoor wants its lucrative digital billboards scattered all over Los Angeles, and it’s not taking “no” as an answer from the California Courts. In an 11-page letter to the city, lawyers for the communications company threatened to sue Los Angeles for more than $100 million if the city doesn’t get over its judicial victory in December and strike a new, favorable deal with the company.   read more

On Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Los Angeles County Department of Health had asked the federal government to help control an outbreak of TB that has already exposed 4,650 people. “This is the largest outbreak in a decade,” Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, told the Times.   read more

Democratic State Senator Michael J. Rubio surprised his party and the governor when he announced last Friday that he would be resigning his seat to take a job as the manager of California government affairs for Chevron Corporation. Rubio, 35, said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two young children, one of whom as special needs.   read more

Four months after record-high gasoline prices—widely blamed on a perfect storm of events—elicited a call by California Senator Dianne Feinstein for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), prices in Southern California are setting new speed records. Prices haven’t reached that October level yet, but they are headed there fast.   read more

The good news is that the water guests were drinking and bathing in at the Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles was found to be free of disease-causing bacteria. The bad news is the tank atop the hotel roof, where the water came from, had the body of a dead woman in it for two weeks.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed 2013-14 budget earmarks $192 million for various proposals, financed by a surcharge on investor-owned utility electricity bills. The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) said in a recent review of the budget that it might not be a good idea to count on that money because the Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) never received authorization from the Legislature to collect the surcharge, which it has been diligently doing since January 2012.   read more

It is not a crime for a company to make billions of dollars, or stash those billions of dollars in overseas tax havens, or fail to report that tax benefit to the government. The Bay Citizen calculated that the top 50 Silicon Valley corporations have $225 billion overseas, accumulated through foreign subsidiaries, and all but three of them dodge U.S. taxes by designating the funds “permanently reinvested.”   read more

It’s been a decade since energy companies took advantage of California deregulation to generate price spikes, cause rolling blackouts and rip the state off for billions of dollars. Last week, an administrative law judge for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recommended that a dozen companies that participated in some of those schemes pay back $1 billion to the state as compensation for their misdeeds along with $600 million in interest.   read more

One hundred and thirty-eight years ago, downtown Los Angeles was linked by rail to the coast 18 miles away. It’s been 51 years since that link, and rapid mass transit in the region, was broken with the disappearance of the famed Red Cars. Los Angeles would like to rekindle the connection, but if the wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills has a say, the nine-mile, $5.6 billion subway extension might be delayed for a while.   read more