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Tag: bonta

  • Trump says California is full of fraud. Bonta says the claims are ‘reckless’

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    With the Trump administration reportedly in talks to create an anti-fraud task force for California, state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Thursday vehemently denounced what he described as the administration’s “reckless” and “false” rhetoric about fraud plaguing the state.

    At a news conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, Bonta said the Trump administration’s claims that state programs are overrun by fraud and that its government was itself perpetrating or facilitating this fraud was “outrageous and ridiculous and without basis.”

    Bonta said most states struggle with some fraud from outside actors, saying that “anywhere there’s money flowing there’s a risk” and that the state’s Department of Justice has thrown immense resources into cracking down on illicit activities and recovering funds for taxpayers.

    As a politicized national fight over waste, fraud and abuse led by Republicans have targeted California and its Democratic leadership, Bonta and other state officials have moved swiftly to combat the claims.

    In California, Bonta said, authorities have recovered nearly $2.7 billion through criminal and civil prosecutions since 2016, including some $740 million through Medi-Cal fraud related prosecutions, about $2 billion under the state’s False Claims Act, and an additional $108 million from a task force focused on rooting out tax fraud in the underground economy.

    State authorities have frequently partnered with the federal government in the past on such investigations and welcome a good-faith partnership in the future, Bonta said.

    CBS News reported on the creation of a California-focused fraud task force earlier this week, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the plans. The outlet, whose new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, has been aligned with Trump and spearheaded a major overhaul of the news organization, reported that the president plans to soon sign an executive order naming Vice President JD Vance as head of a group that would also include the head of the Federal Trade Commission as vice chairman.

    Trump’s rhetoric fueled doubts about California programs and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership at the start of the year, when he declared that “the fraud investigation of California [had] begun.”

    On the president’s social media platform, in formal letters and in recent news conferences, officials in the Trump administration have alleged fraud in child care, hospice funding and unemployment benefits.

    Last week, the topic took center stage again when Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread hospice fraud in Los Angeles.

    That viral video received more than 4.5 million views on X.

    Oz’s video received fierce backlash from California politicians and the local Armenian community, who collectively alleged that it contained baseless and racially charged attacks on Armenians.

    The video shows Oz being driven around a section of Van Nuys where he says that about $3.5-billion worth of medicare fraud has been perpetrated by hospice and home-care businesses, claiming that “it’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”

    He also points to Armenian language signs, incorrectly referring to them as written in a cerulean script, and saying “you notice that the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights the fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”

    Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz on Jan. 29, asking the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the “racially charged and false public statements” made in the video.

    On Monday, California Sen. Adam Schiff followed suit, demanding an independent review of Oz’s alleged targeting of Armenian American communities.

    “To suggest markers of Armenian culture, language, and identity are indicative of criminality underscores a discriminatory motive that could taint any investigation into fraud and incite the further demonization of the community,” Schiff said in a statement.

    Glendale City Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian said in an interview that Oz’s statements feed into the Trump administration’s playbook of using allegations of fraud to sow racial divisions.

    “This time the focus just happens to be the Armenians,” he said. “In places like Minnesota, it’s the Somali community.”

    California has been investigating healthcare fraud since a 2020 Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered widespread Medicare fraud in the state’s booming but loosely regulated hospice industry.

    From 2010 to 2020, the county’s hospices multiplied sixfold, accounting for more than half of the state’s roughly 1,200 Medicare-certified providers, according to a Times analysis of federal healthcare data.

    Scores of providers sprang up along a corridor stretching west from the San Gabriel Valley through the San Fernando Valley, which now has the highest concentration of hospices in the nation.

    The state Department of Justice has charged more than 100 people with hospice-related fraud since 2021 and shuttered around 280 hospices in the last two years, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

    But those shuttered hospices barely represent a dent in the massive hospice home healthcare industry. There are 468 hospice facilities in the Van Nuys area alone, according to the state database of medical facilities.

    There are 197 licensed medical practices, including 89 licensed hospices, in a single two-story building located at 14545 Friar St. in Van Nuys — suggesting a concentration of fraudulent businesses.

    When asked why the number of licensed medical practices in Van Nuys and at that address are so high, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said that the department is committed to fighting fraud and unable to comment on pending investigation.

    Recent turmoil in Minnesota has demonstrated the potential ripple effects of allegations levied by the Trump administration.

    Ahead of sending in thousands of immigration enforcement agents into the Midwest state, Trump had repeatedly cited a fraud case involving funds for a child nutrition program involving COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

    He used the case, which involved a nonprofit where several Somali Americans worked, to vilify the immigrant community, even though the organization was run by a white woman. After the state became a lightning rod, Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection plans.

    At Thursday’s news conference, Bonta described major cases in other states, such as $11.4 million healthcare fraud and wire fraud conspiracy involving a nursing assistant in Florida and a $88.3 million Medicaid fraud case in in Ohio involving over billing by a pharmacy benefit manager — to show abuse of state programs is not unique to California — or to blue states.

    “We know Vance hails from Ohio, so maybe he should take a look in his own backyard before leading an unnecessary political stunt focused on California,” Bonta said. “We thought we should set the record straight.”

    Times staff writers Melody Gutierrez and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

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    Suhauna Hussain, Clara Harter

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  • California leaders decry Trump call to ‘nationalize’ election, say they’re ready to resist

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    WASHINGTON — President Trump’s repeated calls to “nationalize” elections drew swift resistance from California officials this week, who said they are ready to fight should the federal government attempt to assert control over the state’s voting system.

    “We would win that on Day One,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times. “We would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours, because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

    “We’re prepared to do whatever we have to do in California,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office recently fought off a Justice Department lawsuit demanding California’s voter rolls and other sensitive voter information.

    Both Bonta and Weber said their offices are closely watching for any federal action that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia, or target the counting of mailed ballots, which Trump has baselessly alleged are a major source of fraud.

    Weber said California plays an outsized role in the nation and is “the place that people want to beat,” including through illegitimate court challenges to undermine the state’s vote after elections, but California has fought off such challenges in the past and is ready to do it again.

    “There’s a cadre of attorneys that are already, that are always prepared during our elections to hit the courts to defend anything that we’re doing,” she said. “Our election teams, they do cross the T’s, dot the I’s. They are on it.”

    “We have attorneys ready to be deployed wherever there’s an issue,” Bonta said, noting that his office is in touch with local election officials to ensure a rapid response if necessary.

    The standoff reflects an extraordinary deterioration of trust and cooperation in elections that has existed between state and federal officials for generations — and follows a remarkable doubling down by Trump after his initial remarks about taking over the elections raised alarm.

    Trump has long alleged, without evidence and despite multiple independent reviews concluding the opposite, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He has alleged, again without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes were cast, including by non-citizen voters, and that blue states looked the other way to gain political advantage.

    Last week, the Justice Department acted on those claims by raiding the Fulton County, Ga., elections hub and seizing 2020 ballots. The department also has sued states, including California, for their voter rolls, and is defending a Trump executive order seeking to end mail voting and add new proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote, which California and other states have sued to block.

    On Monday, Trump further escalated his pressure campaign by saying on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting his party. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

    On Tuesday morning, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to try to walk back Trump’s comments, saying he had been referring to the Save Act, a measure being pushed by Republicans in Congress to codify Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirements. However, Trump doubled down later that day, telling reporters that if states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

    Bonta said Trump’s comments were a serious escalation, not just bluster: “We always knew they were going to come after us on something, so this is just an affirmation of that — and maybe they are getting a step closer.”

    Bonta said he will especially be monitoring races in the state’s swing congressional districts, which could play a role in determining control of Congress and therefore be a target of legal challenges.

    “The strategy of going after California isn’t rational unless you’re going after a couple of congressional seats that you think will make a difference in the balance of power in the House,” Bonta said.

    California Democrats in Congress have stressed that the state’s elections are safe and reliable, but also started to express unease about upcoming election interference by the administration.

    Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said on “Meet the Press” last week that he believes the administration will try to use “every tool in their toolbox to try and interfere,” but that the American people will “overcome it by having a battalion of lawyers at the polls.”

    California Sen. Adam Schiff this week said recent actions by the Trump administration — including the Fulton County raid, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put Trump on the phone with agents — were “wrong” and set off “alarm bells about their willingness to interfere in the next election.”

    Democrats have called on their Republican colleagues to help push back against such interference.

    “When he says that we should nationalize the elections and Republicans should take over, and you don’t make a peep? What is going on here?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “This is the path that has ruined many a democracy, and our democracy is deep and strong, but it requires — and allows — resistance to these things. Verbal resistance, electoral resistance. Where are you?”

    Some Republicans have voiced their disagreement with Trump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday that he is “supportive of only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places,” but is “not in favor of federalizing elections,” which he called “a constitutional issue.”

    “I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said.

    However, other Republican leaders have commiserated with Trump over his qualms with state-run elections. House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, took aim at California’s system for counting mail-in ballots in the days following elections, questioning why such counting led to Republican leads in House races being “magically whittled away until their leads were lost.”

    “It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream,” Johnson said. “But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system.”

    Elections experts expressed dismay over Johnson’s comments, calling them baseless and illogical. The fact that candidates who are leading in votes can fall behind as more votes are counted is not magic but math, they said — with Democrats agreeing.

    “Speaker Johnson seems to be confused, so let me break it down. California’s elections are safe and secure. The point of an election is to make sure *every* eligible vote cast is counted, not to count fast,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “We don’t just quit while we’re ahead. It’s called a democracy.”

    Democrats have also expressed concern that the administration could use the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with counting mail-in ballots. They have specifically raised questions about a rule issued by the postal service last December that deems mail postmarked on the day it is processed by USPS, rather than the day it is received — which would impact mail-in ballots in places such as California, where ballots must be postmarked by election day to be counted.

    “Election officials are already concerned and warning that this change could ultimately lead to higher mailed ballots being rejected,” Senate Democrats wrote to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner last month.

    Some experts and state officials said voters should make a plan to vote early, and consider dropping their ballots in state ballot drop boxes or delivering them directly to voting centers.

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    Ana Ceballos, Kevin Rector

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  • California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta opts against running for governor. Again.

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Sunday that he would not run for California governor, a decision grounded in his belief that his legal efforts combating the Trump administration as the state’s top prosecutor are paramount at this moment in history.

    “Watching this dystopian horror come to life has reaffirmed something I feel in every fiber of my being: in this moment, my place is here — shielding Californians from the most brazen attacks on our rights and our families,” Bonta said in a statement. “My vision for the California Department of Justice is that we remain the nation’s largest and most powerful check on power.”

    Bonta said that President Trump’s blocking of welfare funds to California and the fatal shooting of a Minnesota mother of three last week by a federal immigration agent cemented his decision to seek reelection to his current post, according to Politico, which first reported that Bonta would not run for governor.

    Bonta, 53, a former state lawmaker and a close political ally to Gov. Gavin Newsom, has served as the state’s top law enforcement official since Newsom appointed him to the position in 2021. In the last year, his office has sued the Trump administration more than 50 times — a track record that would probably have served him well had he decided to run in a state where Trump has lost three times and has sky-high disapproval ratings.

    Bonta in 2024 said that he was considering running. Then in February he announced he had ruled it out and was focused instead on doing the job of attorney general, which he considers especially important under the Trump administration. Then, both former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced they would not run for governor, and Bonta began reconsidering, he said.

    “I had two horses in the governor’s race already,” Bonta told The Times in November. “They decided not to get involved in the end. … The race is fundamentally different today, right?”

    The race for California governor remains wide open. Newsom is serving the final year of his second term and is barred from running again because of term limits. Newsom has said he is considering a run for president in 2028.

    Former Rep. Katie Porter — an early leader in polls — late last year faltered after videos emerged of her screaming at an aide and berating a reporter. The videos contributed to her dropping behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, in a November poll released by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.

    Porter rebounded a bit toward the end of the year, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California showed, however none of the candidates has secured a majority of support and many voters remain undecided.

    California hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2006, Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in the state, and many are seething with anger over Trump and looking for Democratic candidates willing to fight back against the current administration.

    Bonta has faced questions in recent months about spending about $468,000 in campaign funds on legal advice last year as he spoke to federal investigators about alleged corruption involving former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who was charged in an alleged bribery scheme involving local businessmen David Trung Duong and Andy Hung Duong. All three have pleaded not guilty.

    According to his political consultant Dan Newman, Bonta — who had received campaign donations from the Duong family — was approached by investigators because he was initially viewed as a “possible victim” in the alleged scheme, though that was later ruled out. Bonta has since returned $155,000 in campaign contributions from the Duong family, according to news reports.

    Bonta is the son of civil rights activists Warren Bonta, a white native Californian, and Cynthia Bonta, a native of the Philippines who immigrated to the U.S. on a scholarship in 1965. Bonta, a U.S. citizen, was born in Quezon City, Philippines, in 1972, when his parents were working there as missionaries, and immigrated with his family to California as an infant.

    In 2012, Bonta was elected to represent Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro as the first Filipino American to serve in California’s Legislature. In Sacramento, he pursued a string of criminal justice reforms and developed a record as one of the body’s most liberal members.

    Bonta is married to Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Alameda), who succeeded him in the state Assembly, and the couple have three children.

    Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

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    Kevin Rector, Seema Mehta

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  • California AG announces lawsuit over frozen family assistance funds

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    California Attorney General Rob Bonta held a rare evening press conference Thursday, announcing new legal action against the Trump administration. Bonta said California was joining other states suing the administration over a funding freeze for child care and family services. The other states taking part in the lawsuit include New York, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, which Bonta notes are all led by Democrats.Across all five states, around $10 billion is frozen, affecting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Child Care and Development Fund, and Social Services Block Grant programs. Approximately $5 billion of the funds are frozen in California. The Trump administration claims there is widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer money in the five states. Bonta and his office allege that the funding freeze violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Separation of Powers by freezing funds already approved by Congress, and the U.S. Constitution’s Appropriations Clause and Spending Clause.”There’s a process for concerns about waste fraud and abuse to occur,” Bonta said during the press conference. “This is the federal government, without any evidence sent to us, cited to in their letter, and I don’t believe they have any, saying that there is fraud in these five Democratic states’ programs and cutting off all funding. And I think it’s very telling as they are cutting off the funding, they are asking for information. You usually ask for the information first.”This marks the 53rd lawsuit by California against the Trump administration in less than a year.Watch the full press conference in the video below: See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta held a rare evening press conference Thursday, announcing new legal action against the Trump administration.

    Bonta said California was joining other states suing the administration over a funding freeze for child care and family services.

    The other states taking part in the lawsuit include New York, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, which Bonta notes are all led by Democrats.

    Across all five states, around $10 billion is frozen, affecting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Child Care and Development Fund, and Social Services Block Grant programs. Approximately $5 billion of the funds are frozen in California.

    The Trump administration claims there is widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer money in the five states.

    Bonta and his office allege that the funding freeze violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Separation of Powers by freezing funds already approved by Congress, and the U.S. Constitution’s Appropriations Clause and Spending Clause.

    “There’s a process for concerns about waste fraud and abuse to occur,” Bonta said during the press conference. “This is the federal government, without any evidence sent to us, cited to in their letter, and I don’t believe they have any, saying that there is fraud in these five Democratic states’ programs and cutting off all funding. And I think it’s very telling as they are cutting off the funding, they are asking for information. You usually ask for the information first.”

    This marks the 53rd lawsuit by California against the Trump administration in less than a year.

    Watch the full press conference in the video below:

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    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • California sues Trump administration over ‘baseless and cruel’ freezing of child-care funds

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    California is suing the Trump administration over its “baseless and cruel” decision to freeze $10 billion in federal funding for child care and family assistance allocated to California and four other Democratic-led states, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Thursday.

    The lawsuit was filed jointly by the five states targeted by the freeze — California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado — over the Trump administration’s allegations of widespread fraud within their welfare systems. California alone is facing a loss of about $5 billion in funding, including $1.4 billion for child-care programs.

    The lawsuit alleges that the freeze is based on unfounded claims of fraud and infringes on Congress’ spending power as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “This is just the latest example of Trump’s willingness to throw vulnerable children, vulnerable families and seniors under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against California and Democratic-led states,” Bonta said at a Thursday evening news conference.

    The $10-billion funding freeze follows the administration’s decision to freeze $185 million in child-care funds to Minnesota, where federal officials allege that as much as half of the roughly $18 billion paid to 14 state-run programs since 2018 may have been fraudulent. Amid the fallout, Gov. Tim Walz has ordered a third-party audit and announced that he will not seek a third term.

    Bonta said that letters sent by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announcing the freeze Tuesday provided no evidence to back up claims of widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in California. The freeze applies to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the Social Services Block Grant program and the Child Care and Development Fund.

    “This is funding that California parents count on to get the safe and reliable child care they need so that they can go to work and provide for their families,” he said. “It’s funding that helps families on the brink of homelessness keep roofs over their heads.”

    Bonta also raised concerns regarding Health and Human Services’ request that California turn over all documents associated with the state’s implementation of the three programs. This requires the state to share personally identifiable information about program participants, a move Bonta called “deeply concerning and also deeply questionable.”

    “The administration doesn’t have the authority to override the established, lawful process our states have already gone through to submit plans and receive approval for these funds,” Bonta said. “It doesn’t have the authority to override the U.S. Constitution and trample Congress’ power of the purse.”

    The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and marked the 53rd suit California had filed against the Trump administration since the president’s inauguration last January. It asks the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s sweeping demands for documents and data.

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    Clara Harter

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  • California Atty. Gen. sues Trump Administration to stop homeless housing cuts

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump Administration Tuesday seeking to stop a federal policy change that advocates say could force 170,000 formerly homeless Americans back on the streets or into shelters.

    The lawsuit focuses on a federal program known as Continuum of Care that sends money to local governments and nonprofits to fight homelessness.

    This month, the Trump Administration announced it was drastically cutting the amount of money the program will pay for rental subsidies in permanent housing and shifting those dollars to temporary housing and services instead.

    With subsidies for permanent housing reduced, advocates say 170,000 people could return to homelessness. Locally, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has warned 5,000 L.A. County households, containing 6,800 people, could be at risk of losing their homes, which would erase the small decline in homelessness reported this year.

    “This [federal] program has proven to be effective at getting Americans off the streets, yet the Trump Administration is now attempting to illegally slash its funding,” Bonta said in a statement.

    HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This month, the department said its policy change “restores accountability to homelessness programs and promotes self-sufficiency among vulnerable Americans” in part by redirecting most money to transitional housing and supportive services that it sees as more effective than permanent housing.

    Bonta filed the lawsuit along with 19 state attorneys general and two governors.

    The lawsuit alleges the HUD policy change violated the law in several ways, including that the department failed to properly notice the change and that the new restrictions on funding violate the separation of powers because they were not imposed by Congress.

    In addition to capping the amount of funds that can be spent on permanent housing, HUD is requiring more total homeless dollars be subject to competitive bidding.

    Bonta‘s office said the new rules also “eliminate funding to applicants that acknowledge the existence of transgender and gender-diverse people” and make it harder for cities and counties to get funding if they don’t “enforce certain policies this Administration favors, like bans on public camping.”

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    Andrew Khouri

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  • Pondering a run for governor, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta faces questions about legal spending

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    As California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ponders a run for governor, he faces scrutiny for his ties to people central to a federal corruption investigation in Oakland and payments to private attorneys.

    Bonta has not been accused of impropriety, but the questions come at an inopportune time for Democrat, who says he is reassessing a gubernatorial bid after repeatedly dismissing a run earlier this year.

    Bonta said the decisions by former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla not to seek the office altered the contours of the race.

    “I had two horses in the governor’s race already,” Bonta said in an interview with The Times on Friday. “They decided not to get involved in the end. … The race is fundamentally different today, right?”

    Bonta said he has received significant encouragement to join the crowded gubernatorial field and that he expects to make a decision “definitely sooner rather than later.” Political advisors to the 54-year-old Alameda politician have been reaching out to powerful Democrats across the state to gauge his possible support.

    Historically, serving as California attorney general has been a launching pad to higher office or a top post in Washington. Harris, elected to two terms as the state attorney general, was later elected to the U.S. Senate and then as vice president. Jerry Brown served in the post before voters elected him for a second go-around as governor in 2010. Earl Warren later became the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

    Bonta, the first Filipino American to serve as the state’s top law enforcement official, was appointed in March 2021 by Gov. Gavin Newsom after Xavier Becerra resigned to become U.S. Health and Human Services secretary. Bonta easily won election as attorney general in 2022.

    Bonta was a deputy city attorney in San Francisco and vice mayor for the city of Alameda before being elected to the state Assembly in 2012. During his tenure representing the Alameda area, Bonta developed a reputation as a progressive willing to push policies to strengthen tenants’ rights and to reform the criminal justice system.

    In his role as the state’s top law enforcement official, Bonta has aggressively fought President Trump’s policies and actions, filing 46 lawsuits against the administration.

    Bonta also faced controversy this past week in what Bonta’s advisers say they suspect is an attempt to damage him as he considers a potential run.

    “Political hacks understand it’s actually a badge of respect, almost an endorsement. Clearly others fear him,” said veteran Democratic strategist Dan Newman, a Bonta adviser.

    On Monday, KCRA reported that Bonta had spent nearly $500,000 in campaign funds last year on personal lawyers to represent him in dealings with federal investigators working on a public corruption probe in Oakland.

    On Thursday, the website East Bay Insider reported that as that probe was heating up in spring 2024, Bonta had received a letter from an Oakland businessman warning him that he might soon be subject to blackmail.

    The letter writer, Mario Juarez, warned Bonta that another businessman, Andy Duong, possessed “a recording of you in a compromising situation.”

    Duong was later indicted, along with his father David Duong and former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, on federal bribery charges. All have pleaded not guilty. An attorney for David Duong this week said that Juarez, who is widely believed to be an informant in the case against the Duongs and Thao, was not credible. Juarez could not be reached for comment.

    Bonta said his legal expenditures came about after he began speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s office, who approached him because prosecutors thought he could be a victim of blackmail or extortion. Bonta said the outreach came after he already had turned over the letter he had received from Juarez to law enforcement.

    Bonta said he hired lawyers to help him review information in his possession that could be helpful to federal investigators.

    “I wanted to get them all the information that they wanted, that they needed, give it to him as fast as as I could, to assist, to help,” Bonta said. “Maybe I had a puzzle piece or two that could assist them in their investigation.”

    He said he may have made “an audible gasp” when he saw the legal bill, but that it was necessary to quickly turn over all documents and communications that could be relevant to the federal investigation.

    “The billing rate is high or not insignificant at private law firms,” Bonta said. “We were moving quickly to be as responsive as possible, to be as helpful as possible, to assist as as much as possible, and that meant multiple attorneys working a lot of hours.”

    Bonta said the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission also has alerted him that it received a complaint against him. Bonta and his advisers believe is about the use of campaign funds to pay the legal expenses and suspect it was filed by the campaign of a current gubernatorial candidate.

    “We’re not worried,” Bonta said. “That’s politics.”

    Asked whether these news stories could create obstacles to a potential gubernatorial campaign, Bonta pushed back against any assertion that he may have “baggage.” He said he was assisting federal prosecutors with their investigation with the hopes of holding people accountable.

    “That’s what I would expect anyone to do, certainly someone who is committed as I am to public safety.,” he said. “That’s my job, to assist, to support, to provide information, to help.”

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    Seema Mehta, Jessica Garrison

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  • California rejoins fight over Nazi-looted painting held by Spanish museum

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    California is once again fighting in federal court for a Jewish family’s right to have a precious Impressionist painting returned to them by a Spanish museum nearly 90 years after it was looted by the Nazis.

    The state is also defending its own authority to legally require art and other stolen treasures to be returned to other victims with ties to the state, even in disputes that stretch far beyond its borders.

    The state has repeatedly weighed in on the case since the Cassirer family first filed it while living in San Diego in 2005. Last year, California passed a new law designed to bolster the legal rights of the Cassirers and other families in the state to recover valuable property stolen from them in acts of genocide or political persecution.

    On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to intervene in the Cassirer case directly in order to defend that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should therefore be ignored.

    Bonta, in a statement to The Times, said the law is “about fairness, moral — and legal — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the state will defend it in court.

    “There is nothing that can undo the horrors and loss experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But there is something we can do — that California has done — to return what was stolen back to survivors and their families and bring them some measure of justice and healing,” Bonta said. “As attorney general, my job is to defend the laws of California, and I intend to do so here.”

    Bonta said his office “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justice for two decades,” and “will continue to fight with them for the rightful return of this invaluable family heirloom.”

    Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, did not answer questions from The Times. Bonta’s office said Stauber did not oppose its intervening in the case.

    Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s office for “intervening in this case again to defend California’s interests in protecting the integrity of the art market and the rights of stolen-property victims.”

    “California law has always provided strong protections for the victims of stolen property and stolen art in particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.

    The state bucked the powerful U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by passing the law last year. The appellate court found in a ruling in January 2024 that the painting was lawfully owned by the Spanish museum.

    Bonta’s latest move ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched around the globe for its potential implications in the high-stakes world of looted art litigation.

    The painting in question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both sides acknowledge it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis in 1939, after she agreed in desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser in exchange for a visa to flee Germany at the dawn of World War II.

    The attention surrounding the case, and its potential to set new precedent in international law, likely makes the painting even more valuable.

    After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the painting from the German government, but the family never relinquished its right to the masterpiece — which at the time was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the current estimated worth.

    In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had also survived the Holocaust — moved with his family to San Diego.

    In 2000, Claude made the shocking discovery that the painting was not lost to time after all, but part of a vast art collection that Spain had acquired from the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist family with ties to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an early 19th century palace near the Prado Museum in Madrid in order to house the collection as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

    Claude asked the museum to return the painting to his family. It refused. He sued in U.S. federal court in 2005. The case has been moving through the courts ever since.

    California passed its new law in response to the 9th Circuit ruling last year that held state law at the time required it to apply an archaic Spanish law. That measure dictates that the title to stolen goods passes legitimately to a new owner over time, if that owner wasn’t aware the goods were stolen when they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the painting legally sound.

    In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law during a small gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s son David Cassirer, who now lives in Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive stand in favor of the true owners of stolen art.”

    In March, the Supreme Court in a brief order ruled that the 9th Circuit must reconsider its ruling in light of California’s new law.

    In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a motion asking the appellate court to rule in its favor once more. It put forward multiple arguments, but among them was that California’s new law was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the museum of its due process rights.

    “Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State may not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transfer property whose ownership is already vested,” the museum argued.

    It said the U.S., under federal law, “does not seek to impose its property laws or the property laws of its own states on other foreign sovereigns, but rather expressly acknowledges that different legal traditions and systems must be taken into account to facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-looted art cases.”

    It said California’s law takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the federal government’s efforts to maintain uniformity and amicable relations with foreign nations,” and “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of federal policy.”

    David Cassirer, the lead plaintiff in the case since Claude’s death in 2010, argued the opposite in his own filing to the court.

    Cassirer argued that California’s new law requires an outcome in his favor — which he said would also happen to be in line with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”

    “It is undisputed that California substantive law mandates the award of title here to the Cassirer family, as Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the last surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.

    They wrote that California law holds that “a thief cannot convey good title to stolen works of art,” and therefore requires the return of the painting to Cassirer.

    Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the bill in the Legislature, praised Bonta for stepping in to defend the law — which he called “part of a decades-long quest for justice and is rooted in the belief that California must stand on the right side of history.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Judge pumps brakes on Bonta’s push to take over L.A. County juvenile halls

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    A judge temporarily blocked California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s attempt to take over Los Angeles County’s beleaguered juvenile halls on Friday, finding that despite evidence of a “systemic failure” to improve poor conditions, Bonta had not met the legal grounds necessary to strip away local control.

    After years of scandals — including frequent drug overdoses and incidents of staff violence against youths — Bonta filed a motion in July to place the county’s juvenile halls in “receivership,” meaning a court-appointed monitor would manage the facilities, set their budgets and oversee the hiring and firing of staff. An ongoing staffing crisis previously led a state oversight body to deem two of L.A. County’s halls unfit to house children.

    L.A. County entered into a settlement with the California Department of Justice in 2021 to mandate improvements, but oversight bodies and a Times investigation earlier this year found the Probation Department was falling far short of fixing many issues, as required by the agreement.

    On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Hernandez chastised Bonta for failing to clearly lay out tasks for the Probation Department to abide by in the 2021 settlement. Hernandez said the attorney general’s office’s filings failed to show that a state takeover would lead to “a transformation of the juvenile halls.”

    The steps the Probation Department needs to take to meet the terms of the settlement have been articulated in court filings and reports published by the L.A. County Office of the Inspector General for several years. Hernandez was only assigned to oversee the settlement in recent months and spent much of Friday’s hearing complaining about a lack of “clarity” in the case.

    Hernandez wrote that Bonta’s motion had set off alarm bells about the Probation Department’s management of the halls.

    “Going forward, the court expects all parties to have an ‘all-hands’ mentality,” the judge wrote in a tentative ruling earlier this week, which he adopted Friday morning.

    Hernandez said he would not rule out the possibility of a receivership in the future, but wanted more direct testimony from parties, including Probation Department Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa and the court-appointed monitor over the settlement, Michael Dempsey. A hearing was set for Oct. 24.

    The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “The Department remains fully committed to making the necessary changes to bring our juvenile institutions to where they need to be,” Vicky Waters, the Probation Department’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement. “However, to achieve that goal, we must have both the authority and support to remove barriers that hinder progress rather than perpetuate no-win situations.”

    The California attorney general’s office began investigating L.A. County’s juvenile halls in 2018 and found probation officers were using pepper spray excessively, failing to provide proper educational and therapeutic programming and detaining youths in solitary confinement for far too long.

    Bonta said in July that the county has failed to improve “75%” of what they were mandated to change in the 2021 settlement.

    A 2022 Times investigation revealed a massive staffing shortage was leading to significant injuries for both youths and probation officers. By May of 2023, the California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar shuttered due to unsafe conditions. That same month, an 18-year-old died of an overdose while in custody.

    The county soon reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the facility quickly became the site of a riot, an escape attempt and more drug overdoses. Last year, the California attorney general’s office won indictments against 30 officers who either orchestrated or allowed youths to engage in “gladiator fights.” That investigation was sparked by video of officers allowing eight youths to pummel another teen inside Los Padrinos, which has also been deemed unfit to house youths by a state commission.

    In court Friday, Laura Fair, an attorney from the attorney general’s office, said that while she understood Hernandez’s position, she expressed concern that teens are still in danger while in the Probation Department’s custody.

    “The youth in the halls continue to be in grave danger and continue to suffer irreparable harm every day,” she said.

    Fair told the court that several youths transferred out of Los Padrinos under a separate court order in recent weeks showed up at Nidorf Juvenile Hall with broken jaws and arms.

    She declined to comment further outside the courtroom. Waters, the Probation Department’s spokesperson, said she was unaware of the situation Fair was describing but would look into it.

    Despite the litany of fiascoes over the last few years, probation leaders still argued in court filings that Bonta had gone too far.

    “The County remains open to exploring any path that will lead to better outcomes. But it strongly opposes the DOJ’s ill-conceived proposal, which will only harm the youth in the County’s care by sowing chaos and inconsistency,” county lawyers wrote in an opposition motion submitted last month. “The DOJ’s request is almost literally without precedent. No state judge in California history has ever placed a correctional institution into receivership.”

    Under the leadership of Viera Rosa, who took office in 2023, the Probation Department has made improvements to its efforts to keep drugs out of the hall, rectify staffing issues and hold its own officers accountable for misconduct, the county argued.

    The department has placed “airport-grade” body scanners and drug-sniffing dogs at the entrances to both Nidorf and Los Padrinos in order to stymie the influx of narcotics into the halls, according to Robert Dugdale, an attorney representing the county.

    Dugdale also touted the department’s hiring of Robert Arcos, a former high-ranking member of the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County district attorney’s office, to oversee security in the facilities.

    The motion claimed it was the Probation Department that first uncovered the evidence that led to the gladiator fight prosecutions. Bonta said in March that his office launched its investigation after it reviewed leaked footage of one of the incidents.

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    James Queally

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  • Commentary: So much winning. Can Bonta maintain California’s legal hot streak against Trump?

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    It was late Sunday evening when President Trump got thumped with a court loss — again — by California.

    No, a federal judge ruled, Trump cannot command the California National Guard to invade Portland, Ore. At the request of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and others, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut broadened a temporary restraining order that had blocked Oregon’s National Guard from being used by the federal government. It now includes not just California’s troops but troops from any state. At least for the next two weeks.

    It’s the kind of legal loss Trump should be used to it by now, especially when it comes to the Golden State. Since Trump 2.0 hit the White House this year with Project 2025 folded up in his back pocket, the state of California has sued the administration 42 times, literally about once a week.

    While many of those cases are still pending, California is racking up a series of wins that restored more than $160 billion in funding and at least slowed down (and in some cases stopped) the steamrolling of civil rights on issues including birthright citizenship and immigration policy.

    “We have won in 80% of the cases,” Bonta told me. “Whether it be a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order, and more and more now permanent final injunctions after the whole trial court case is done.”

    I’ll take it. We all need some positive news. I don’t often write just about the good, but in these strange days, it’s helpful to have a reminder that the fight is always worth having when it comes to protecting our rights. And, despite the partisan Supreme Court, the reason that we are still holding on to democracy is because the system still works, albeit like a ’78 Chevy with the doors rusting off.

    While Gov. Gavin Newsom has made himself the face of California’s fights against Trump, taking on a pugnacious and audacious attitude especially on social media, the day-in, day-out slugging in those battles is often done by Bonta and his team in courtrooms across the country.

    It’s hard to recall, but months ago, Newsom called a special session of the Legislature to give Bonta a $25-million allowance to defend not just California but democracy. And in a moment when many of us fear that checks and balances promised in the Constitution have turned out to be little more than happy delusions, Bonta has a message: The courts are (mostly) holding and California’s lawyers aren’t just fighting, they’re winning.

    “We can do things that governors can’t do,” Bonta said. “No role and no moment has been more important than this one.”

    Bonta told me that he often hears that Trump is disregarding the courts, so “what’s the point of litigation at all? What’s the point of a court order at all? He’s just going to ignore them.”

    But, he said, the administration has been following judges’ rulings — so far. While there have been instances, especially around deportations, that knock on the door of lawlessness, at least for California, Trump is “following all of our court orders,” Bonta said.

    “We’re making a difference,” he said.

    A few days ago, the U.S. Department of Education was forced to send out a final chunk of funds it had attempted to withhold from schools. Bonta, in a multistate lawsuit, successfully protected that money, which schools need this year to help migrant children and English learners, train teachers, buy new technology and pay for before- and after-school programs, among other uses.

    That’s a permanent, final ruling — no appeals.

    Another recent win saw California land a permanent injunction against the feds when it comes to stopping their payments for costs associated with state energy projects. That a win both for the climate and consumers, who benefit when we make energy more efficiently.

    Last week, Bonta won another permanent injunction, blocking the Trump administration’s effort to tie grants related to homeland security to compliance with his immigration policies. Safety shouldn’t be tied to deportations, especially in California, where our immigrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding community members.

    Those are just a few of Bonta’s victories. Of course, Trump and his minions aren’t happy about them. Stephen Miller, the shame of Santa Monica, seems to have especially lost his marbles over the National Guard ruling. On social media, Miller seems to be attacking the justice system, and attorneys general such as Bonta.

    “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country,” Miller wrote. “It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

    Never mind that the Oregon judge who issued the National Guard ruling is a Trump appointee.

    “Their goal, I think, is to chill and pause and worry judges; to chill and pause and worry the press; to chill and pause and worry attorneys general who stand up for the rule of law and for democracy, who go to court and fight for what’s right and fight for the law,” Bonta said.

    Bonta expects the administration, far from learning any lessons or harboring self-reflection during this mad dash toward autocracy, to continue full speed ahead.

    “We’re going to see more, and we’re going to see it fast, and we’re going to see it escalate,” he said. “None of that is good, including putting military in American cities or, you know, Trump treating them like his royal guard instead of the National Guard.”

    Even when the Trump administration loses, “they always have this like second move and maybe a third, where they are always trying to advance their agenda, even when they’ve been blocked by a court, even when they’ve been told that they’re acting unlawfully or unconstitutionally,” he said.

    On Monday, Trump threatened to use the Insurrection Act to circumvent the court’s ruling on the National Guard, a massive escalation of his effort to militarize American cities.

    But California remains on a winning streak, much to Trump’s dismay.

    It’s my bet that as long as our judges continue to honor the rule of law, that streak will hold.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Trump uses repeated funding cuts to pressure California, complicating state’s legal fight

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    The federal Office for Victims of Crime announced in the summer that millions of dollars approved for domestic violence survivors and other crime victims would be withheld from states that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

    California, 19 other states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that such preconditions are illegal and would undermine public safety.

    The administration then took a different tack, announcing that community organizations that receive such funding from the states — and use it to help people escape violence, access shelter and file for restraining orders against their abusers — generally may not use it to provide services to undocumented immigrants.

    California and other states sued again, arguing that the requirements — which the administration says the states must enforce — are similarly illegal and dangerous. Advocates agreed, saying screening immigrant women out of such programs would be cruel.

    The repeated lawsuits reflect an increasingly familiar pattern in the growing mountain of litigation between the Trump administration, California and other blue states.

    Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has tried to force the states into submission on a host of policy fronts by cutting off federal funding, part of a drive to bypass Congress and vastly expand executive power. Repeatedly when those cuts have been challenged in court, the administration has shifted its approach to go after the same or similar funding from a slightly different angle — prompting more litigation.

    The repeated lawsuits have added complexity and volume to an already monumental legal war between the administration and states such as California, one that began almost immediately after Trump took office and is ongoing, as the administration once again threatens major cuts amid the government shutdown.

    The White House has previously dismissed California’s lawsuits as baseless and defended Trump’s right to enact his policy agenda, including by withholding funds. Asked about its shifting strategies in some of those cases, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration “has won numerous cases regarding spending cuts at the Supreme Court and will continue to cut wasteful spending across the government in a lawful manner.”

    Other administration officials have also defended its legal tactics. During a fight over frozen federal funding earlier this year, for instance, Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — sparking concerns about a constitutional crisis.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the pattern is a result of Trump overstating his power to control federal funding and use it as a weapon against his political opponents, but also of his dangerous disregard for the rule of law and the authority of both Congress and federal judges. His office has sued the administration more than 40 times since January, many times over funding.

    “It is not something that you should have to see, that a federal government, a president of the United States, is so contemptuous of the rule of law and is willing to break it and break it again, get told by a court that they’re violating the law, and then have to be told by a court again,” Bonta said.

    And yet, such examples abound, he said. For example, the Justice Department’s repeated attempts to strip California of crime victim funding echoed the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated attempts recently to deny the state disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding, Bonta said.

    Homeland Security officials first told states that such funding would be conditioned on their complying with immigration enforcement efforts. California and other states sued, and a federal judge rejected such preconditions as unconstitutional.

    The administration then notified the states that refused to comply, including California, that they would simply receive less money — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — while states that cooperate with immigration enforcement would receive more.

    California and other Democratic-led states sued again, arguing this week that the shifting of funds was nothing more than the administration circumventing the court’s earlier ruling against the conditioning of funds outright.

    Bonta’s office cited a similar pattern in announcing Thursday that the Trump administration had backed off major cuts to AmeriCorps funding. The win came only after successive rounds of litigation by the state and others, Bonta’s office noted, including an amended complaint accusing the administration of continuing to withhold the funding despite an earlier court order barring it from doing so.

    Bonta said such shifting strategies were the work of a “consistently and brazenly lawless and lawbreaking federal administration,” and that his office was “duty-bound” to fight back and will — as many times as it takes.

    “It can’t be that you take an action, are held accountable, a court finds that you’ve acted unlawfully, and then you just take another unlawful action to try to restrict or withhold that same funding,” he said.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said he agreed with Bonta that there is “a pattern of ignoring court orders or trying to circumvent them” on the part of the Trump administration.

    And he provided another example: a case in which he represents University of California faculty and researchers challenging Trump administration cuts to National Science Foundation funding.

    Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought talks to reporters outside the White House on Monday, accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President JD Vance.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    After a judge blocked the administration from terminating that funding, the Trump administration responded by declaring that the funds were “suspended” instead, Chemerinsky said.

    The judge then ruled the administration was violating her order against termination, he said, as “calling them suspensions rather than terminations changed nothing.”

    Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on executive powers, said Trump aggressively flexing those powers was expected. Conservative leaders have been trying to restore executive authority ever since Congress reined in the presidency after Watergate, and Trump took an aggressive approach in his first term, too, Sollenberger said.

    However, what Trump has done this term has nonetheless been stunning, Sollenberger said — the result of a sophisticated and well-planned strategy that has been given a clear runway by a Supreme Court that clearly shares a belief in an empowered executive branch.

    “It’s like watching water run down, and it tries to find cracks,” Sollenberger said. “That’s what the Trump administration is doing. It’s trying to find those cracks where it can widen the gap and exercise more and more executive power.”

    Bonta noted that the administration’s targeting of blue state funding began almost immediately after Trump took office, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo asserting that vast sums of federal funding for all sorts of programs were being frozen as the administration assessed whether the spending aligned with Trump’s policy goals.

    California and other states sued to block that move and won, but the administration wasn’t swayed from the strategy, Bonta said — as evidenced by more recent events.

    On Wednesday, as the government shutdown over Congress’ inability to pass a funding measure set in, Russell Vought — head of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Trump administration’s purse-string policies — announced on X that $8 billion in funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” was being canceled. He then listed 16 blue states where projects will be cut.

    Vought had broadly outlined his ideas for slashing government in Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for Trump’s second term, which Trump vigorously denied any connection to during his campaign but has since broadly implemented.

    On Thursday, Trump seemed to relish the opportunity, amid the shutdown, to implement more of the plan.

    “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted online. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

    Bonta said Wednesday that his office had no plans to get involved in the shutdown, which he said was caused by Trump and “for Trump to figure out.” But he said he was watching the battle closely.

    Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) chalked Vought’s latest cuts up to more illegal targeting of blue states such as California that oppose Trump politically, writing, “Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies.”

    Cities and towns have also been pushing back against Trump’s use of federal funding as political leverage. On Wednesday, Los Angeles and other cities announced a lawsuit challenging the cuts to disaster funding.

    L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto said the cuts were part of an “unprecedented weaponization” of federal funding by the Trump administration, and that she was proud to be fighting to “preserve constitutional limits on executive overreach.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Judge halts Trump administration cuts to disaster aid for ‘sanctuary’ states

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    A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a Trump administration plan to reduce disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding for states with so-called sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants.

    U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy granted the temporary restraining order curtailing the cuts at the request of California, 10 other states and the District of Columbia, which argued in a lawsuit Monday that the policy appeared to have illegally cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.

    The states said they were first notified of the cuts over the weekend. McElroy made her decision during an emergency hearing on the states’ motion in Rhode Island District Court on Tuesday afternoon.

    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta cheered the decision as the state’s latest win in pushing back against what he described as a series of unlawful, funding-related power grabs by the Trump administration.

    “Over and over, the courts have stopped the Trump Administration’s illegal efforts to tie unrelated grant funding to state policies,” Bonta said. “It’s a little thing called state sovereignty, but given the President’s propensity to violate the Constitution, it’s unsurprising that he’s unfamiliar with it.”

    Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the funding and notified the states of the cuts, immediately responded to a request for comment Tuesday.

    Sanctuary policies are not uniform and the term is imprecise, but it generally refers to policies that bar states and localities — and their local law enforcement agencies — from participating in federal immigration raids or other enforcement initiatives.

    The Trump administration and other Republicans have cast such policies as undermining law and order. Democrats and progressives including in California say instead that states and cities have finite public safety resources and that engaging in immigration enforcement serves only to undermine the trust they and their law enforcement agencies need to maintain with the public in order to prevent and solve crime, including in large immigrant communities.

    In their lawsuit Monday, the states said the funding being reduced was part of billions in federal dollars annually distributed to the states to “prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters,” and which administrations of both political parties distributed “evenhandedly” for decades before Trump.

    Authorized by Congress after events such as Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, the funding covers the salaries of first responders, testing of state computer networks for cyberattack vulnerabilities, mutual aid compacts between regional partners and emergency responses after disasters, the states said.

    Bonta’s office said California was informed over the weekend by Homeland Security officials that it would be receiving $110 million instead of $165 million, a reduction of its budget by about a third. The states’ lawsuit said other blue states saw even more dramatic cuts, with Illinois seeing a 69% reduction and New York receiving a 79% reduction, while red states saw substantial funding increases.

    Bonta on Tuesday said the administration’s reshuffling of funds based on state compliance with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities was illegal and needed to be halted — and restored to previous levels based on risk assessment — in order to keep everyone in the country safe.

    “California uses the grant funding at stake in our lawsuit to protect the safety of our communities from acts of terrorism and other disasters — meaning the stakes are quite literally life and death,” he said. “This is not something to play politics with. I’m grateful to the court for seeing the urgency of this dangerous diversion of homeland security funding.”

    Homeland Security officials have previously argued that the agency should be able to withhold funding from states that it believes are not upholding or are actively undermining its core mission of defending the nation from threats, including the threat it sees from illegal immigration.

    Other judges have also ruled against the administration conditioning disaster and public safety funding on states and localities complying with federal immigration policies.

    Joining California in Monday’s lawsuit were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Bonta demands FCC chair ‘stop his campaign of censorship’ following Kimmel suspension

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Monday accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr of unlawfully intimidating television broadcasters into toeing a conservative line in favor of President Trump, and urged him to reverse course.

    In a letter to Carr, Bonta specifically cited ABC’s decision to pull “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air after Kimmel made comments about the killing of close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, and Carr demanded ABC’s parent company Disney “take action” against the late-night host.

    Bonta wrote that California “is home to a great many artists, entertainers, and other individuals who every day exercise their right to free speech and free expression,” and that Carr’s demands of Disney threatened their 1st Amendment rights.

    “As the Supreme Court held over sixty years ago and unanimously reaffirmed just last year, ‘the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech,’” Bonta wrote.

    Carr and Trump have both denied playing a role in Kimmel’s suspension, alleging instead that it was due to his show having poor ratings.

    After Disney announced Monday that Kimmel’s show would be returning to ABC, Bonta said he was “pleased to hear ABC is reversing course on its capitulation to the FCC’s unlawful threats,” but that his “concerns stand.”

    He rejected Trump and Carr’s denials of involvement, and accused the administration of “waging a dangerous attack on those who dare to speak out against it.”

    “Censoring and silencing critics because you don’t like what they say — be it a comedian, a lawyer, or a peaceful protester — is fundamentally un-American,” while such censorship by the U.S. government is “absolutely chilling,” Bonta said.

    Bonta called on Carr to “stop his campaign of censorship” and commit to defending the right to free speech in the U.S., which he said would require “an express disavowal” of his previous threats and “an unambiguous pledge” that he will not use the FCC “to retaliate against private parties” for speech he disagrees with moving forward.

    “News outlets have reported today that ABC will be returning Mr. Kimmel’s show to its broadcast tomorrow night. While it is heartening to see the exercise of free speech ultimately prevail, this does not erase your threats and the resultant suppression of free speech from this past week or the prospect that your threats will chill free speech in the future,” Bonta wrote.

    After Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said during a monologue that the U.S. had “hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

    Carr responded on a conservative podcast, saying, “These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

    Two major owners of ABC affiliates dropped the show, after which ABC said it would be “preempted indefinitely.”

    Both Kirk’s killing and Kimmel’s suspension — which followed the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” by CBS — kicked off a tense debate about freedom of speech in the U.S. Both Kimmel and Colbert are critics of Trump, while Kirk was an ardent supporter.

    Constitutional scholars and other 1st amendment advocates said the administration and Carr have clearly been exerting inappropriate pressure on media companies.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said Carr’s actions were part of a broad assault on free speech by the administration, which “is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st amendment.”

    Summer Lopez, the interim co-chief executive of PEN America, said this is “a dangerous moment for free speech” in the U.S. because of a host of Trump administration actions that are “pretty clear violations of the 1st Amendment” — including Carr’s threats but also statements about “hate speech” by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and new Pentagon restrictions on journalists reporting on the U.S. military.

    She said Kimmel’s return to ABC showed that “public outrage does make a difference,” but that “it’s important that we generate that level of public outrage when the targeting is of people who don’t have that same prominence.”

    Carr has also drawn criticism from conservative corners, including from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. He recently said on his podcast that he found it “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”

    Cruz said he works closely with Carr, whom he likes, but that what Carr said was “dangerous as hell” and could be used down the line “to silence every conservative in America.”

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    Kevin Rector

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  • Bonta ‘disappointed’ by Supreme Court ruling on L.A. immigration raids

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    California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.

    Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.

    Speaking at a news conference Monday in downtown L.A., Bonta said he agreed with claims the ACLU made in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. He called indiscriminate tactics used to make immigration arrests a violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Bonta said he thinks it is unconstitutional “for ICE agents, federal immigration officers, to use race, the inability to speak English, location or perceived occupation to … stop and detain, search, seize Californians.”

    He also decried what he described as the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket, which he said often obscures the justices’ decision-making.

    “It’s disappointing,” he said. “And the emergency docket has been used more and more. You often don’t know who has voted and how. There’s no argument. There’s no written opinion.”

    Bonta called Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion “very disturbing.”

    The Trump-appointed justice argued that because many people who do day labor in fields such as construction or farming, engagement in such work could be useful in helping immigrant agents determine which people to stop.

    Bonta said the practice enables “the use of race to potentially discriminate,” saying “it is disturbing and it is troubling.”

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    Connor Sheets, Sandra McDonald

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  • Commentary: California has sued Trump 37 times. Here’s what’s at stake.

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    SACRAMENTO — Seven months into President Trump’s second term, California has filed 37 lawsuits against his administration and spent about $5 million doing it.

    Before you go off on a government-spending rant, let me drop this figure on you: For each dollar the state has spent in litigation with Trump, it has recouped $33,600 in funds that the federal government has tried to take away from the Golden State, according to Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

    That, as he put it during a Monday news conference, is “bringing the receipts.”

    These aren’t dollars Californians were wishing for or begging for from the federal government — these are funds that have already been legally allotted to the state but which the Trump administration is attempting to stop for reasons petty, ideological or both. They pay for teacher training, immunizations, tracking infectious diseases, keeping roads safe, disaster recovery and on and on. And they are predominantly your tax dollars, being withheld from your state.

    “What we’re demanding is that we get the funding that’s already been legally approved and appropriated,” Bonta said.

    But as much as it’s about paying for the basics that keep California going, it’s also about protecting an inclusive and equitable way of living that defines the ethos of our state. Don’t tread on us! Californians get to spend our money how we see fit.

    “When you add it all up, you see the totality of what’s at stake: the California dream,” Bonta said. “The idea that every Californian, no matter how they look, where they live or how much money they have, can send their kid to school, go to the doctor when they’re sick and put food on the table and a roof over their heads.”

    Or as Gov. Gavin Newsom put it, it’s litigation not for the sake of suing, but to “defend, to stand tall, to hold the line in terms of our values, the things we hold dear.”

    It’s serious times, folks. Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t stand for LGBTQ+ rights, for immigrants’ rights, for women’s rights, for due process or even public schools. But so far, the courts have held, for the most part, to their responsibility to be a check on this unbalanced administration.

    Of course, lawyers win cases, sometimes regardless of facts. I want to give a shout out to our state Department of Justice. Bonta may be the state’s top lawyer, but there is a whole army of legal folks behind these lawsuits.

    The $5 million spent so far has been entirely in-house, Bonta said. This cash isn’t going to expensive outside counsel, but, as my colleague Kevin Rector points out, money that is funding the smart, talented attorneys and staff who work for taxpayers.

    More than a few of them were around during Trump’s first term, when the state was involved in more than 120 lawsuits against his administration. Many of those suits were about process — the haphazard, rules-be-damned way Trump seeks to implement his policies.

    Our California lawyers learned then that courts do in fact uphold law, and simply pointing out that rules have to be followed was often enough to stop Trump. While we now have a seasoned legal team that understands the weaknesses in what Trump is doing, the sort-of-funny part is that he’s still doing it. Few lessons learned, which is good for California.

    So far, these lawsuits by California have ensured that about $168 billion that Trump would have cut off instead continued to flow to California. Bonta said that in the 19 cases that have made it in front of a judge so far, he’s succeeded in 17, including winning 13 court orders directly blocking Trump’s “illegal actions.”

    He’s also secured wins outside of court, including when the U.S. Department of Education recently backed down after freezing school funding weeks before school is set to start. That funding, under threat of a lawsuit, has been restored.

    Bonta said that while the state is fighting every lawsuit with rigor, two are personal to him and “remain sort of the most important in terms of what they represent.”

    They happen to be the first two suits the state filed, shortly after Trump took office. The first was about birthright citizenship, and Trump’s bid to end it. It’s a case Bonta says is “very meaningful” to him.

    Bonta was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States when he was 2 months old, living in a trailer in the Central Valley town of La Paz, the home of the United Farm Workers. His parents left their country to avoid martial law as the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos gained power, and worked with civil rights leaders including Cesar Chavez once they settled here.

    So it makes sense that an executive order that would leave about 24,500 babies born each year in California without U.S. citizenship hits hard with Bonta.

    Bonta, along with attorneys general of several other states, filed that lawsuit the day after Trump took office, in response to an executive order he signed on Inauguration Day. So far, multiple courts have expressed deep skepticism of that order, and the idea that the Constitution and prior Supreme Court rulings should be ignored in favor of Trump’s position.

    The second case that Bonta takes personally is a multistate pushback on Trump’s sweeping halt of federal funding. That case put at risk about $3 trillion nationwide, including that $168 billion in California, about a third of the state budget.

    Coming up next is a challenge to the deployment of Marines and National Guard troops in Los Angeles. The Trump administration has been quietly removing those soldiers in recent days, perhaps in preparation for asking the court to drop that case, which seems like a loser for them. No troops, no case. We’ll see how it goes in a few days.

    “The Marines and the National Guardspeople arrived to quiet streets in L.A.,” Bonta said. “The president has been incredibly, in my view, disrespectful to these patriots. He’s treated them as political pawns.”

    The $5 million the state has spent so far on legal fights with Trump is part of $25 million the Legislature set aside earlier this year during a special session. Bonta said that even that will likely not be enough to keep the challenges flowing for the next three and a half years.

    Newsom, for his part, is all in and promised that Bonta “will not be in need of resources to do his job.” (And yes, I know it raises his profile for a 2028 presidential run.)

    As much as it seems ridiculous that we are setting aside this huge chunk of change for legal fees at a moment when we are facing a budget crisis, the cost of letting Trump run roughshod over our state is much higher. This is money well spent.

    Because it’s not just our federal funding at stake, it’s the California dream.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Price-gouging charges slowly mount after the fires, but some say it’s not enough

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta accused real estate agent Iman Shaghyan this week of increasing the price of a Beverly Hills rental by more than 30% in the days after the Jan. 7 fires. It’s the fourth charge Bonta has filed since price-gouging rules went into effect that prohibit rent hikes of more than 10% after a natural disaster.

    “Profiting off Californians’ pain through price gouging is illegal and I will not stand for it,” Bonta said in a news release.

    In the weeks after the fires, city officials vowed to crack down on violators as thousands of complaints poured in, with some organizers even compiling spreadsheets documenting the skyrocketing rents. Bonta enlisted teams of lawyers to evaluate complaints, and his office has primarily targeted real estate agents.

    But some critics claim that government officials aren’t doing enough to address the rampant price gouging that appeared across the region in the wake of the fires, saying that the charges filed represent only a small fraction of the complaints submitted to the city and state.

    “More needs to be done,” said Chelsea Kirk, co-founder of the activist organization the Rent Brigade. “It’s been de-prioritized, and all discourse from elected officials and the press around rent gouging has ended.”

    Kirk’s organization checks Zillow for examples of price gouging and said there are currently more than 10,000 active listings that qualify. Her team submits weekly reports to government officials but said transparency is a problem since no one knows exactly what is being investigated.

    As a result, her team worked with L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez to draft a motion that, if passed, would require L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to produce monthly reports detailing the total number of price-gouging complaints received, response times and enforcement actions. The motion has been introduced but not yet placed on the agenda.

    “There’s an utter lack of urgency,” Kirk said.

    In addition to Shaghyan, Bonta filed charges in January against La Cañada Flintridge agent Mike Kobeissi and Glendale agent Lar Sevan Chouljian. In February, he charged Hermosa Beach agent Willie Baronet-Israel as well as Edward Kushins, the landlord of the property.

    All of the cases are active. If convicted, the maximum penalty for the misdemeanor is a year in prison and a fine of $10,000.

    In addition to the charges, state Department of Justice officials said they have sent out more than 750 warning letters to hotels and landlords accused of price gouging. The department also is investigating fraud, scams and low-ball offers on burned properties.

    Bonta is investigating on behalf of the state and Feldstein Soto is filing lawsuits on behalf of the city. So far, she’s been targeting more than just real estate agents.

    In February, Feldstein Soto’s office sued rental giant Blueground, citing more than 10 cases of price gouging. In one instance, Blueground allegedly jacked up the rent of a downtown L.A. apartment by 56% on Jan. 7, the day of the fires.

    In March, Feldstein Soto’s office sued a group of homeowners and companies for $62 million, citing not only price-gouging violations but also violations of the city’s short-term rental ordinance, which places restrictions on rentals such as Airbnbs. The group of defendants included four homeowners and five limited liability companies: Akiva Nourollah, Micah Hiller, Haim Amran Zrihen, Rachel Florence Saadat, Hiller Hospitality, Hiller Hospitality Group, 1070 Bedford, Red Rock and Coastal Charm.

    The Times reached out to all the individuals charged with price gouging or short-term rental violations — except for Zrihen and Saadat, whose contact information could not be located — and did not receive any on-the-record responses.

    In the first few weeks after the fire, Feldstein Soto’s office issued more than 250 cease-and-desist letters to owners, landlords and property management groups based on price-gouging tips.

    The price-gouging rules are set to expire July 1.

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    Jack Flemming

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  • L.A. smash-and-grab trio who targeted Prada, Versace and Gucci charged by AG after LAPD probe

    L.A. smash-and-grab trio who targeted Prada, Versace and Gucci charged by AG after LAPD probe

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    A Los Angeles smash-and-grab theft crew targeting Prada, Versace, Gucci and other high-end stores across California have been arrested by an LAPD task force and charged with 27 felonies, the state’s attorney general announced Tuesday.

    Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the trio is accused of stealing more than $300,000 worth of merchandise in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and San Diego. Bonta said the ringleader of the crew faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted of all the charges related to smash and grabs from December 2022 until last month.

    “To be clear, this isn’t about a couple of one-off instances of a shoplifted Louis Vuitton wallet or swiped a pair of Prada sunglasses. This was organized. These were organized burglaries and attempted burglaries where suspects would rip the bags off the displays, even when the products were secured to displays with locks,” Bonta said, speaking at LAPD headquarters.

    Workers at Burberry, Prada, Sunglass Hut, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Michael Kors, Gucci, Coach, Versace, and Maison Margiela were put at risk by the bandits, who allegedly shoved aside store workers as they snatched designer clothes and accessories, he said.

    “These aren’t victimless crimes,” Bonta said, alleging that the suspects sometimes used force against workers as they ran out of a store. “Other times they overwhelmed the stores with large numbers of people in disguise brazenly ransacking high-end products,” he added. “If you steal from our businesses and put people in harm’s way, if you try to make an easy buck off of other people’s hard work, we will prosecute it as we are today.”

    Bonta said the Los Angeles Police Department organized retail theft task force identified the crew behind the smash and grabs across six counties. The charges carry the possibility of decades of imprisonment, he said, which should send a message to others doing or considering such crimes.

    A string of flash mob robberies of luxury goods stores around Los Angeles last summer drew national attention, with video clips showing group’s running out of stores. Mayor Karen Bass responded by announcing a new task force to target the culprits.

    LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said two of the trio were arrested by the task force while a third was already in custody. Although they were charged with the theft of $300,000 worth of goods across six counties, Hamilton said, evidence suggests that more than $900,000 worth of items may have been snatched by the crew.

    Isaiah Abdullah, Ishmael Baptist and Nickolas Mallory are charged with conspiring to steal with intent to sell on two or more occasions from some of the best-known designer stores. All three have multiple felony convictions for crimes including robbery.

    The run of smash and grabs began Dec. 12, when authorities allege that Abdullah ripped off nearly $3,000 worth of Burberry items from an Orange County store. According to the charges, their biggest score came at Louis Vitton in San Diego County, where Abdullah and Mallory were accused of taking more than $33,000 in merchandise.

    Bonta said that within a day or two of the smash and grab, the suspects would sell the stolen designer wares “through Instagram stories — that was their chosen platform for resale.”

    Two of the thefts involved such force that prosecutors charged Abdullah and Mallory with robbery in connection with an incident last October and Abdullah for another incident in January.

    Hamilton and Bonta said that although firearms weren’t used in the crimes, a total of five firearms were recovered during searches of places tied to the suspects; one of the weapons, they said, was a fully automated Glock pistol. One of the firearms recovered also led to charges in a separate crime case.

    Hamilton said the task force has many other ongoing cases in the works. Pushing back against a reporter’s suggestion that the department was soft on retail theft, Hamilton said there would be additional arrests, more felony charges and some suspects held on very high bail amounts, like the suspects in this case, where bail was set at $1 million.

    Bonta also took umbrage with the narrative that criminal justice reforms such as Proposition 47, which made thefts of less than $950 in goods a misdemeanor, have encouraged smash and grab thieves. The offenses charged in this case weren’t misdemeanors, Bonta said, and the value of goods stolen is well above the misdemeanor threshold, meaning that Proposition 47 has nothing to do with them.

    “We’re not turning a blind eye to these criminal schemes, whether it’s stealing hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of dollars in merchandise,” Bonta, said. “They disrupt our economy, and they endanger the public. They endanger workers.”

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    Richard Winton

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  • How much can your rent go up in California? Check this website

    How much can your rent go up in California? Check this website

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    California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Wednesday announced new consumer tools for tenants and landlords to understand how much rent can rise each year under a state rent cap law.

    The law, which took effect in 2020, restricts rent increases in buildings more than 15 years old. Under the rules, rent can rise no more than 5% plus local inflation, with an ultimate cap of 10%.

    However, until now the state did not provide an online resource that said exactly what the limits were for local areas. As a result, people had to find that information elsewhere or calculate local limits themselves using government inflation figures.

    As of Wednesday, landlords and tenants can go to a state website to learn more about county rent limits, as well as eviction protections provided by the rent cap law.

    Rent limits for individual counties can be found by scrolling down to the section labeled “Know Your Rights as a California Tenant” and clicking on your preferred language.

    It’s unclear whether the state will publish the county limits each year when they change based on inflation data. Bonta’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    “Information on tenant rights should be accessible, easy to understand, and available to all Californians, and today’s consumer alerts aim to do just that,” Bonta said in a statement.

    Under the state law, landlords of buildings older than 15 years in L.A. County can raise their rent no more than 8.8% through July 31, after which a new limit will be set based on inflation.

    The state law does not override stricter local rent control laws, such as in the city of Los Angeles. There, if a property falls under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, rent increases are currently capped at 4%, or 6% if the landlord pays for gas and other utilities.

    Buildings that fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance are generally properties built on or before Oct. 1, 1978.

    Times staff writer Liam Dillon contributed to this report.

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    Andrew Khouri

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  • California hospitals lagged in anti-bias training for pregnancy care providers

    California hospitals lagged in anti-bias training for pregnancy care providers

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    California hospitals and clinics were slow to carry out mandated training intended to combat unconscious bias among workers who care for pregnant patients, the state Department of Justice found in a newly released investigation.

    Less than 17% of facilities that provided information to the state agency had initiated “implicit bias training” in the year after California started requiring it for pregnancy and childbirth professionals, according to the report unveiled Friday by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

    The numbers shot up after Bonta prodded healthcare providers about their training plans: As of summer 2022, more than 93% of medical facilities that responded had trained at least some of their staff, according to the state investigation. By that time, an average of 81% of staff in responding facilities had finished the required training, the investigation found.

    Nearly a third of health facilities contacted by the Department of Justice launched their training programs only after the agency reached out to them, the report found.

    The state law went into effect just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, but Bonta and other state officials rejected that as an explanation or excuse for delays, saying the required training could be accomplished through an online video.

    “It was doable then, “ Bonta said at a news conference Friday in Leimert Park. “It’s doable now.”

    The training mandate was prompted by concerns that implicit bias — unconsciously held attitudes about members of a specific group — can steer the decisions of medical providers, undermining patient care.

    SB 464, which was passed four years ago, required California hospitals, clinics and birthing centers that care for patients in pregnancy and childbirth to confront that problem by rolling out implicit bias programs for their staff. “Refresher” trainings for healthcare providers are also required every two years.

    Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who authored SB 464 as a state senator, said that while drafting the law, she and others were appalled to learn about persistent misconceptions about Black women among medical students. Mitchell said surveys showed that “they thought our threshold for pain was higher, that our skin was thicker and more difficult to penetrate to receive medication.”

    To think that such attitudes persisted in 2019 “literally took our breath away,” she said.

    SB 464 spelled out specific requirements for the training content, including identification of unconscious biases; corrective measures to reduce such bias at both the interpersonal and institutional levels; and information on the effects of historical and contemporary exclusion and oppression of minority communities.

    State officials said such training is urgent due to the crisis facing Black patients in childbirth. Across the country, Black women have been about 2½ times more likely than their white and Latina counterparts to die during pregnancy, childbirth and its aftermath, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a national survey, 30% of Black women reported mistreatment during maternity care and 40% reported discrimination; both rates were much higher than among white or Asian American women.

    California has reduced its rates of maternal death over time, but they have remained more than three times higher for Black patients than for those of many other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

    “Far too many Black women are dying during and post-childbirth in L.A. County, in the state of California, and across the country,” Mitchell said Friday. “And what’s so deeply offensive about that is it’s within our power to change that.”

    In L.A. County this year, family and friends called for justice after the deaths of April Valentine and Bridgette Cromer, also known as Bridgette Burks. Both were Black women who lost their lives after childbirth at local hospitals. Both hospitals were faulted by state investigators in the aftermath of their deaths.

    Mitchell said it was painful to see that women in her county district had “died unnecessarily because they weren’t listened to, they weren’t attended to, they were in hospitals who should and must do better.”

    A spokesperson for the California Hospital Assn., which supported the legislation, said hospitals in the state are committed to reducing health disparities and “still working toward full compliance despite the challenges created by the COVID pandemic that surfaced just a few months after” SB 464 passed.

    Californians can check how far their local hospitals had gone toward training staff as of last year: The report released Friday includes a list of facilities that provide pregnancy care and the percentage of their covered staff that had finished the required training by July 2022. Across the state, those figures ranged from 0 to 100%.

    Bonta said deadlines for finishing the required trainings, clear mechanisms for state enforcement, and consequences for hospitals that flout the California law are needed to improve compliance. He said he was committing to working with state lawmakers “to address these issues with future legislation.”

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    Emily Alpert Reyes

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  • California sues Facebook parent Meta over alleged harm to young people

    California sues Facebook parent Meta over alleged harm to young people

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    California and other states on Tuesday sued Facebook parent company Meta over allegations that it “designed and deployed harmful features” on the main social network and its platform Instagram.

    “Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line. We must protect our children and we will not back down from this fight.”

    The 233-page lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Northern California, alleges the social media giant violated consumer protection laws and a federal law aimed at safeguarding the privacy of children under 13 years old. Bonta co-led a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general filing the federal lawsuit against Meta. Eight attorneys general are also filing lawsuits against Meta on Tuesday in state courts, according to Bonta’s office.

    In 2021, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general, including from California, Tennessee and Nebraska, announced they were investigating Meta’s promotion of its social media app Instagram to children and young people. Advocacy groups, lawmakers and even parents have criticized Meta, alleging the platform hasn’t done enough to combat content about eating disorders, suicide and other potential harms.

    As part of the investigation, the state attorneys general looked atMeta’s strategies for compelling young people to spend more time on its platform. The lawsuit alleges that Meta failed to address the platform’s harmful impact to young people.

    Meta said it’s committed to keeping teens safe, noting it rolled out more than 30 tools to support young people and families.

    “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

    Scrutiny over Meta’s potential damage to the mental health of young people intensified in 2021 after Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, disclosed tens of thousands of internal company documents. Some of those documents included research that showed Facebook is “toxic for teen girls,” worsening body image issues and suicidal thoughts, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2021. Meta said its research was “mischaracterized,” and teens also reported Instagram made them feel better about other issues such as loneliness and sadness.

    That year, executives from the social media company including Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri testified before Congress. Instagram then paused its development of a kids’ version of the app and rolled out more controls so parents could limit the amount of time teens spend on it. Social media apps like Instagram require users to be at least 13 years old, but children have lied about their age to access the platform.

    The photo- and video-sharing app Instagram is popular among U.S. teens, according to a Pew Research Center survey released this year. About 62% of teens reported using Instagram in 2022. Google-owned YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat are also commonly used by teens.

    The amount of time teens spend on social media has been a growing concern especially as platforms use algorithms to recommend content it thinks users like to view. In 2022, attorneys general across the country started investigating TikTok’s potential harm to young people as well.

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    Queenie Wong

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