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

“This is about stability to allow people to stay in their homes and stability for our neighborhoods,” Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin told the Contra Costa Times. “We're a mixed-income community, and we want all of our neighborhoods to be stable. Our low-income residents are as important as every other resident, and we don't want them to be without a home.”   read more

Instead of the time-honored Superfund route used in many of the lawsuits that preceded them, the cities are suing the company as a public nuisance. Noah Sachs, professor of law at the University of Richmond, told ThinkProgress back in March that a “blockbuster verdict” could cost Monsanto “tens of billions of dollars.” But, first, a court has to declare them a public nuisance.   read more

Friends of the Los Angeles River denounced the secret talks with famed architect Frank Gehry to help design a new master plan for developing the entire river. Founder Lewis MacAdams thought the Garcetti administration was being a tad too controlling and told the Times, “Last time there was a single idea for the L.A. River it involved 3 million barrels of concrete.”   read more

a child in Los Angeles County was likely infected while camping in Yosemite last month came just days after an adult died of plague in Colorado. The child is reportedly recovering while investigators trace the family’s contacts during the incubation period and do an environmental evaluation in the Stanislaus National Forest. There have been 42 confirmed human cases since 1970.   read more

Governor Jerry Brown’s office said on Friday that it would not block a decision by the Board of Parole Hearings to grant the 51-year-old convicted killer parole, probably ending a court-ordered obligation to provide her with sex re-assignment surgery. But even as the state made one final gesture of defiance toward the courts and Norsworthy, it did a 180 and agreed to a settlement with another prisoner for her surgery.   read more

Ontario sued Los Angeles, LAWA and the L.A. Board of Airport Commissioners in June 2013, claiming the airport was losing business to LAX because legal agreements were being violated. Passenger numbers dropped from 7.2 million to 4.9 million at Ontario during the first three years after the economic crash of 2007. It was down to 3.9 million in 2013.   read more

People have been trapping bobcats for more than a century without much of a fuss being made. But a combination of heightened awareness (ht Cecil the Lion) and overeager trappers with new technology have made it an issue. The state recorded 1,639 takes in 2013-14, more than three times the total in 2010-11.   read more

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder would periodically make sounds about lightening up on states where medical marijuana is legal despite federal laws banning the drug. And then U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, a 2010 appointee of President Obama, would bust a bunch of dispensaries and give voice to a far less conciliatory policy.   read more

It’s a year or two, depending on the source, until the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Justice Department’s (DOJ) first official attempt at cleaning up the Los Angeles County jail system, an occasion certain to be enhanced by the presence of the newly-appointed federal monitor. The county has agreed to accept federal oversight of the jails while a wide range of reforms involving excessive use of force and suicide prevention is put in place.   read more

Judge Melanie M. Darling’s 49-page ruling said Edison illegally used backchannel communications to discuss public matters with the PUC concerning who was going to pay for the $4.7-billion cost of closing San Onofre in 2013. Customers got stuck with $3.3 billion of it and investors skated. The emails in question are related to a meeting in Warsaw, Poland, between then-PUC President Michael Peevey and Edison executive Stephen Pickett at which they discussed a framework for settlement.   read more

Plains All American Pipeline (PAAP) revised upward its estimate that 101,000 gallons poured out of a corroded pipeline that burst to 142,800 gallons. Its earliest estimate was a far more rosier 21,000 gallons.The Texas company said it came up with the new number from an analysis of the badly corroded 10.6 miles of pipeline it removed.   read more

More than 45,000 convicted felons out on probation—no, NOT PAROLE—will be allowed to vote in California after Secretary of State Alex Padilla reversed a decision by his predecessor, Debra Bowen, and dropped an appeal of a judge’s ruling last May. There is no uniform national law governing voting rights for felons.   read more

The new letters now make it clear that the state would very much like senior rights holders to stop using water because of the drought, but they can keep doing it—at the risk of paying a penalty. Water districts complained that the board was still using “coercive” and offensive language in its new letters left over from the original letter.   read more

The judge ruled, “NAF would be likely to suffer irreparable injury, absent an ex parte temporary restraining order, in the form of harassment, intimidation, violence, invasion of privacy, and injury to reputation, and the requested relief is in the public interest.” He also said the federation “is likely to prevail on the merits of its claims”   read more

Judge Koh, in San Jose, ruled that the government would have to show probable cause and get a warrant to receive 60 days of cell site location information (CSLI). She said the easier standard for acquiring a permit, merely stating specific and articulable facts, did not protect the 4th Amendment right against warrantless searches.   read more

Mother Jones wrote about a study this week from researchers at the USDA who grew the Wonderful variety of pomegranate trees using “deficit irrigation” on experimental farmland south of Fresno. The fruit were smaller and more were cracked. But the overall crop yield was not affected and in some instances increased. It was also tastier than usual.   read more