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

Law enforcement authorities in California will have to be more circumspect about restrictions on paroled registered sex offenders after a state appellate court ruled last week that a law banning them from living 2,000 feet from a park or school was unconstitutional. Voters approved Proposition 83, known as Jessica’s Law, in 2006 to further restrict the movements of sex offenders and reduce the threat of predators in areas with children.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown signed $55-million emergency bailout legislation for the Inglewood Unified School District, approved on the last day of the legislative session, that effectively transfers control of the schools to the state. Inglewood Unified was expected to run out of cash three months into 2013. It is not the only school district teetering on the brink.   read more

With its one-year anniversary looming, the Occupy Movement confirmed what it suspected from Day 1: It is under surveillance by the FBI. Material obtained by the ACLU of Northern California through the Freedom of Information Act documents FBI coverage of Occupy Oakland events, strategy planning for continued surveillance and coordination with private security companies. A complete assessment of FBI activities was not possible because it refused to release most of the available material.   read more

The federal government plans to auction off drilling rights in California to a big hunk of the largest source of shale oil in the United States after declaring that the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, would have “no significant impact” on the environment.   read more

The rich get richer, and the richest, apparently, still run for Congress. California retained its stake in the Roll Call annual survey of the wealthiest members of Congress, placing four members from the House of Representatives and one from the Senate on the list of the Top 50.   read more

When state redistricting forced Democratic congressional stalwarts Howard Berman and Brad Sherman into head-to-head competition, party leaders hoped that one of them would step aside to avoid a primary spectacle. They didn’t get their wish.   read more

Record-breaking temperatures were recorded across the country this year, but the new record for the highest temperature ever, in California’s Death Valley, is actually an old record made new. Ninety years after the all-time highest temperature of 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit was allegedly recorded in El Azizia, Libya, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has tossed out that reading and moved Death Valley—and its 134-degree reading from July 10, 1913—to the top of the list.   read more

What happens when a city’s redevelopment agency has “almost no internal and accounting controls,” makes loans that are “just gifts of public funds,” and hands out credit cards used to pay for trips that “did not serve the public’s interest”? The answer is it makes $50 million in expenditures between 2005 and 2010 that, in the words of State Controller John Chiang, are “absolutely incredible.”   read more

After a four-year decline, the U.S. poverty rate finally leveled off at 15% last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but California’s suffering grew for the fifth year in a row, reaching its highest level since 1996.   read more

It didn’t take long for GOP congressional candidate Doug LaMalfa to revisit the latest research and determine that it doesn’t support his assertion—in a televised debate Monday—that abortion causes cancer.   read more

Four months after the media headline in most any California school district could easily have been “Deadline Looms for Teacher Layoff Notices,” the State Superintendent of Public Instruction is warning of a looming teacher shortage. “At the very moment the need for outstanding educators seems most urgent, talented teachers are being displaced by budget cuts and discouraged by trying working conditions,” Superintendent Tom Torlakson wrote at the beginning of a new 96-page report.   read more

While an estimated 8,000 homeless veterans wander around Los Angeles, the largest Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center in the country—centrally located with lots of vacant land on its 388 acres—is making millions of dollars for the VA by leasing out property to private enterprise.   read more

As the deeply divided House and Senate struggle to pass a five-year $500 billion farm bill before a September 30 deadline, 100 small farms in California have made a pitch to redirect subsidies created during the Great Depression back to the small farmers they were originally meant to help.   read more

Many community college students across the state—at least those fortunate enough to weather shrinking aid, higher fees and fewer class offerings this Fall—won’t have the same problems for the winter semester.   read more

California Watch apparently impressed the Pulitzer Prize committee—with its internet series last year on seismic safety deficiencies in public schools—more than the Legislature, which quietly let die a bill to enforce earthquake standards and reform the agency that oversees school construction.   read more

You give up a lot of things when you’re homeless, but your constitutional Fourth Amendment right to due process isn’t one of them, according to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 2-1 decision handed down last week, the court upheld a U.S. District Court ruling against Los Angeles that blocked the city from scooping up those personal possessions of homeless people left temporarily on the street, unless they are a threat to public safety or part of a criminal investigation.   read more