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

Around one-fifth of the nation’s nearly 1,000 reported drone incidents happened in California from April 1, 2014, to August 20, 2015, according to the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). More than half of the California incidents were within 5 miles of an airport. More often than not, that airport was LAX, where 42 of the incidents occurred. But 60 communities in the state reported incidents.   read more

The 11 killer whales at SeaWorld San Diego can have a new, expanded $100-million habitat, but won’t be able to breed anymore. Those were the terms laid down by the California Coastal Commission last week when it voted to allow the expansion over the protests of animal rights activists who would rather the orcas be freed.   read more

Senate Bill 27 “addresses an urgent public health problem,” Governor Brown wrote in his signing statement. “The science is clear that the overuse of antibiotics in livestock has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance and the undermining of decades of life-saving advances in medicine.” He vetoed a similar measure last year, arguing that federal regulations (which proved ineffectual) were good enough.   read more

Governor Brown vetoed Assembly Bill 573, which would have helped 13,000 students who attended nearly two dozen campuses operated by Corinthian Colleges. The legislation would have restored up to two years of Cal Grant and National Guard Education Assistance awards, and provided $1.3 million to nonprofit community service organizations to help the students navigate the world of “federal and private loan discharge and other financial aid relief.”   read more

Californians don’t register, and if they do, they don’t vote. Assembly Bill 1461 directs the DMV to send information to the Secretary of State’s office on all successful applicants for driver’s licenses and state identification cards. Those records will be considered a completed affidavit of voting registration and eligible drivers will automatically be on the voter rolls unless they specifically ask not to be.   read more

The law requires the authorities to obtain a search warrant before rummaging through someone’s private emails, text messages and GPS data whether it’s stored on a smartphone, a computer or a remote server. The authorities must also alert the subject of such a warrant within 90 days that it has been issued. “Tell me how a letter in your mailbox should have more protection than an e-mail in the cloud. It doesn't make sense,” the bill's author, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), said.   read more

The report found that oil companies violated their drilling permits 822 times in 2014 and in 17 cases started their operations before receiving one. Most of the transgressions were dealt with by sending the oil company a notice of violation. But DOGGR’s internal review was most critical of operations in the Los Angeles basin, where only 22% of drilling operations underwent a mandatory annual Area of Review (AOR). Only five of the projects received a review in the last five years.   read more

The governor signed Senate Bill 172 this week, suspending the exam as a requirement for receiving a diploma until July 2018 and applying it to everyone going back 11 years. Students who qualify can apply retroactively for a certificate. Students who couldn’t get into the military, a four-year college or vocational school without the diploma a decade ago may now reapply.   read more

Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) took a snapshot of the “Impacts so Far.” Violent crime did not increase and there was no “dramatic change” in recidivism rates. The county jail population did not rise by as much as anticipated, so the total number of people incarcerated in California declined. Auto thefts, however, did rise.   read more

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Fort Bragg Public Works Director Tom Varga told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The Northern California town, 15 miles from Mendocino, lost 30% of its water supply in a hurry when the low flow of the Noyo River caused a spike in salt content from ocean water backup. That made it unusable, so the city ordered a leap from a largely voluntary Stage 1 Water Emergency to Stage 3.   read more

Nevada claimed the events were isolated and not systemic, but the Sacramento Bee, in a series of stories beginning in April 2013, claimed as many as 1,500 patients were given bus tickets to go from the state-run Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas to other cities between 2008 and 2013. Five hundred were said to end up in California.   read more

The commission voted to approve construction of what one critic called “America’s largest beach-front nuclear waste dump.” Edison wants to move 2,700 spent fuel assemblies from above-ground pools to steel canisters, wrapped in concrete, topped with steel and more concrete, and buried beneath the bluffs between Los Angeles and San Diego. The waste will lay 125 feet from a seawall and be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.   read more

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) denied permission to use the railroad right-of-way for its 43-mile pipeline. The agency said Cadiz would have to apply for its own right-of-way permit, which would be subject to the public scrutiny of a full environmental review. Critics say the Cadiz plan could not survive that.   read more

The justices refused without comment this week to hear an appeal from San Jose officials who have been trying to wrest the Oakland A’s franchise from its Bay Area neighbor. Major League Baseball (MLB) resisted the move and beat back the argument that it had used illegal monopolistic power to have its way. The high court is fine with that kind of monopoly, as was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in January   read more

Governor Brown remained noncommittal about the issue until two days before the deadline to approve or veto the legislation. But after listening to “varied, contradictory and nuanced positions,” the 77-year-old governor said in a signing statement, “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death.”   read more

The complaint profiled in detail a number of individual distressed goats suffering from injury, disease and neglect―some near death. It also accuses the company of demonstrating “bad faith” by hiding an unidentified number of regulated animals in undisclosed facilities to avoid inspection. The Santa Cruz Sentinel said the number is around 800.   read more