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 administrator, who has held her post for nearly six years, resigned after an e-mail she wrote October 25 to a Latina student was made public. The note pledged that the school was working “to better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold.” The student body is 43% white, 12% Latino, 10% Asian-American, 8% mixed race and 4% black.   read more

Oakland joins a growing list of cities suing Monsanto as regulators around the nation order them to take expensive mitigating steps to shield people and the environment from this omnipresent pollutant. The State Water Resources Control Board made a recent determination that polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) in the Oakland’s storm drains was messing up fish and wildlife in the bay and wasn’t all that pleasing for the humans. The cleanup could cost $1 billion.   read more

Only Alaska was better, with a C. Eleven states failed. The ratings were based on 245 questions in 13 categories, including lobbying disclosure, ethics enforcement, electoral oversight, budget processes, procurement and legislative, executive and judicial accountability. “In two-thirds of all states, ethics oversight entities regularly fail to initiate investigations or impose sanctions."   read more

The researchers did linguistic analyses of the books and found that 279 clauses containing 2,770 words discussed global warming. The books communicated that there is a chance the world was warming, humans may or may not have something to do with that and it was uncertain whether anything should or could be done about it.   read more

WalletHub ratied Bell, in Los Angeles County, last among 1,268 small cities surveyed nationally, based on 22 criteria. As usual, high-priced California gets massacred on affordability. Only seven cities in the state are in the top half, compared to 198 that are not. One hundred are in top half of the list of economic health, compared to 106 that aren’t. Only 25 cities are in the first half for education & health and 96 make the cut for quality of life.   read more

Shootings by Los Angeles police officers have nearly doubled this year, to 45, according to the city's police commission, and 19 civilians have been killed. But, in keeping with the nation's practice of secrecy about police shootings, those were about the only numbers made available during a wild commission meeting Tuesday.   read more

According to new data from the state, there have been 32 deaths from 512 cases of West Nile in 30 counties. There were 31 deaths all of last year and 642 cases reported last year at this time. Last year’s death count had been the highest recorded since West Nile turned up in the state in 2003 and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) began keeping track of it.   read more

Morro Bay signed a memorandum of understanding last month with Trident Winds LLC to explore a “long-term commercial relationship” to construct an offshore wind project. Offshore wind farms have huge potential, albeit with huge drawbacks. They are expensive, tough to construct, vulnerable, unsightly, hard on the ocean environment and a danger to birds. Despite being a tad cleaner than fossil fuels, they have elicited deeply divided responses from environmentalists.   read more

A new study from UC Davis’ Institute for Population Health Improvement found that cancer patients covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, died more often and weren’t as likely to receive recommended treatment. Their health results were similar to people without insurance. Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the state and nation.   read more

State law frowns upon public officials having state employees use state resources for personal reasons. The Brown administration denies that happened. “The governor is interested in the history and geology of his family ranch in Colusa County—not drilling for oil or gas,” Brown deputy press secretary Gareth Lacy told the Los Angeles Times. The documents were all public records and any citizen was entitled to ask to see them, he said.   read more

“This is definitely reason to celebrate,” Orange County GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker told the Orange County Register. He complained about AQMD treatment of gas stations and the prospect of regulations governing trucks carrying goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Councilman Robinson, the AQMD board member, is vice president and general manager of Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal.   read more

In December 2006, 11 months after Clarence Ray Allen became the eleventh, and last, man executed in California using drugs, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel shut down California’s administration of lethal injection. He found numerous deficiencies in the drugs used, how they were administered, the awful prison conditions and the generally inept handling of executions. But the judge invited the state to keep trying, which it did.   read more

The class-action lawsuit, filed in May 2014, alleged that students in some Los Angeles County and Oakland schools attended sham classes, slogged through make-work assignments, performed menial tasks, ran errands for teachers and went home early. The schools are in disadvantaged, mostly minority areas. The settlement’s effect is expected to be widespread.   read more

Somewhere between 30 and 410 people (depending on who is asked) are on a hunger strike, following similar protests in at least three other facilities in the nation. Civil rights groups and others have complained about poor conditions, bad treatment and awful medical care since the facility opened in 2011. They were not happy when ADC-operator GEO Group, Inc. received permission from ICE to add 650 beds and 29 congressional supporters signed a letter of protest to the agency in July.   read more

At least 15 U.S. stations, including Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Houston and San Francisco, were connected to G&E Studio in Southern California’s West Covina. It is majority-owned by a subsidiary of China Radio International (CRI). That bumps up against at least a couple of federal laws.   read more

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a report in June that said the dam was unsafe and could fail if rain ever returned to the area. They estimated it could take two years to make the needed repairs. But winter is upon us, and El Nino looms, with the potential to bring record precipitation and cause unprecedented damage. So, California’s Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) began work on a quicker fix and announced what it was doing and why this week.   read more