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

The state’s largest facility for the developmentally disabled, Sonoma Developmental Center, is feeling the heat from federal authorities to upgrade the care of its 500 patients or face decertification, according to California Watch, which obtained a 495-page government report.   read more

In what may be the state’s final arguments to an administrative judge deciding Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) responsibility for the San Bruno gas explosion, a top California Public Utility Commission (PUC) official blamed the company’s bias toward shareholder interests over safety for a voluminous list of violations that contributed to the disaster.   read more

Much of what organized religion does has little to do with charity and more to do with institutional self-preservation and even political activity. In 2008, for example, giving to the Mormon Church spiked while it was playing a crucial role in passing a California ballot measure banning gay marriage.   read more

A slaughterhouse in Hanford that was shut down last week after secret video revealed inhumane and potentially unhealthy treatment of cows, was allowed to reopen after promising to reform its practices. No more dragging, pulling or lifting of so-called downer cows that can’t stand on their own.   read more

If you are in Lancaster . . .look up and smile. You may be on a live video feed to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dispatch center shot by a plane flying overhead. The inaugural flight of Lancaster’s first law enforcement aerial surveillance unit, a small 33-year-old Cessna aircraft, took place on Friday and marks somewhat of a hallmark.   read more

The TRUST Act, known to some as the Anti-Arizona Act, is favored by the state Legislature, opposed by the federal government and splitting the ranks of local law enforcement. The legislation cleared the Assembly Friday after some changes in the state Senate and now it’s up to Governor Jerry Brown whether California will prohibit police from detaining person on an immigration hold if they are not charged with or convicted of a serious or violent crime.   read more

When lawmakers stripped the California Judicial Council of its authority in June to spend any more money on a failed, half-built billion-dollar computer system without legislative approval, it dealt a heavy blow to the state judiciary’s central bureaucracy.   read more

The headline screamed doom and gloom: CALIFORNIA SALES TAX REVENUE DROPS 33.5%. Granted, it was Breitbart.com—a noted right-wing, liberal-hating, California bashing website that takes pride in its outrageousness. But this time it was just citing a report by California’s State Controller John Chiang, who found that revenue collections in July were “disappointing.”   read more

A Southern California hospital chain that has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding Medi-Cal of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless people to receive unnecessary medical care, will have all criminal charges dropped if it pays back $16.5 million by March 2017.   read more

The state has been told by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the levee system for Sacramento—the most flood-prone city in America—is so bad, and the state’s plan for fixing it is so deficient, that it won’t help pay to rebuild if disaster strikes.   read more

A high school in the race-torn city of Anaheim has canceled an annual seniors week event that featured students dressed as demeaning Latino stereotypes and U.S. border patrol agents.   read more

Accidents happen. The Senior Care Action Network (SCAN), a health plan that serves 127,000 Medicare Advantage patients in California, voluntarily kicked back $327 million to the state after an audit by the state Controller’s office uncovered overpayments to the HMO that stretched back years. The Long Beach-based organization settled with the state, but admitted no wrongdoing. In fact, it had not actually been accused of any wrongdoing.   read more

State lawmakers have decided, upon review, that the 42-year-old cornerstone of enlightened California environmental regulation ought not to be rewritten in a few days without public input. Although discussion of amending the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been going on informally for months in the Legislature—and for about 42 years in Republican circles—it only surfaced as a hot topic for debate in the last few days of the legislative session.   read more

The scrap business is booming in Southern California, where a $7 billion metal export trade keyed to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has spawned a proliferation of legal and illegal operations with virtually no oversight by government officials.   read more

State and federal investigators have known for more than 20 years that chromium 6, made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich, was present in groundwater under the sprawling San Fernando Valley in Southern California.   read more

Richard Masato Aoki, the only Asian to hold a prominent official position with the Black Panther Party in Oakland during the 1960s and who is credited with giving its members some of their first weapons training, was allegedly an FBI informant, according to a book published this week. But filmmakers Mike Cheng and Ben Wang, who made the 2009 documentary Aoki, dispute the allegation.   read more