Given the recent Supreme Court ruling that (surprisingly!) said Trump did not have the executive power to commandeer National Guard troops to aid and abet law enforcement/deportation efforts in Illinois, this ruling [PDF] from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court was, perhaps, inevitable.
If it’s illegal to do it in Illinois, it’s equally illegal in California (as well as Oregon and any other state the administration has targeted). It may still be legal in Washington DC, but it’s probably only a matter of time before that deployment of National Guard troops (especially those from other states) is declared equally illegal.
The extremely short order by the Appeals Court vacates the stay it had placed on the lower court’s ruling in favor of the rule of law (which is, of course, a ruling against the Trump administration), allowing it to take force. It only runs two pages, but it does contain at least one surprising element: capitulation by Trump’s DOJ.
On December 23, 2025, this court issued an order directing defendants to file a supplemental brief “explaining why the partial administrative stay should not be lifted” in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443 (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025).
Defendants filed their supplemental brief on December 30, 2025. Defendants represented that “[w]ithout prejudice as to any other arguments defendants may present, defendants do not oppose lifting of the partial administrative stay and hereby respectfully withdraw their motion for a stay pending appeal.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he was, for now, abandoning his efforts to deploy the Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Ore. But he suggested that the administration may deploy them again the future.
“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
There’s the patented Trump bravado — something that runs on a clean blend of bigotry and ignorance. Because this loss came at the hands of SCOTUS, administration officials are unable to deploy their usual “activist judge” bitching since the activist judges in the Supreme Court are mostly MAGA-cooked.
And they can’t claim this is the “liberal” Ninth Circuit going rogue, since its ruling is based entirely on the precedent set by the nation’s top court. All that’s left to do is the sort of social media sour grapes shit Trump is known for. At least until the administration decides to break every pane of glass in the Overton Window and just start turning every “Democrat” city into the Kent State campus.
But until that happens, the threats of bringing “liberal” states to heel by commandeering their National Guard are as empty as the heads of the administration’s most powerful members.
This administration runs on vengeance. If it’s not Donald Trump aiming the DOJ at his personal enemies, it’s the DOJ itself taking a shotgun approach to justice (read: filling it full of holes) by filing as many criminal charges against anti-ICE protesters as possible. The charges have been transparently bogus — an obvious attempt by the administration to intimidate protesters into silence. And juries — even extremely submissive grand juries — have refused to buy what the government can’t even be bothered to sell properly.
Every loss by this administration is a win for what’s left of America and its constitutional ideals. Here’s one to cherish, just because the DOJ decided to brag about this supposed slam dunk a couple of months before a California jury went Wembanyana and swatted this shot halfway across the court.
A tow truck driver from South Los Angeles has been arrested on a federal criminal complaint alleging he illegally towed a government vehicle used by law enforcement during an immigration-related arrest.
An affidavit filed with the complaint states that on Aug. 15, Nunez interfered with federal law enforcement officers conducting immigration enforcement in downtown L.A. This particular case involved a 23-year-old Colombian woman named Tatiana Mafla-Martinez, whose vehicle was boxed in by two government vehicles, preventing her from getting away.
Here are some more details about the case, albeit supplied solely by the government:
While the second man was being addressed by the officers, Nunez allegedly got into his tow truck and towed one of the government cars blocking Mafla-Martinez’s car. Per the DOJ, the car he towed had its keys inside and also had a firearm, although it was locked in a safe.
“Addressed” of course means “arrested.” And while the officers were otherwise occupied, Nunez towed their vehicle away because it was blocking access to the apartments. Nunez apparently resided at these apartments. The government says it found the tow truck “parked in its assigned parking space” two days after this incident (August 17). Somehow, it didn’t get around to arresting him for another two weeks.
“Apparently he thought it would be funny to interfere with our immigration enforcement operations,” he wrote on X in September. “Now he can laugh behind bars while he faces justice. Nunez is looking at up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.”
Whether or not the tow truck driver, Bobby Nunez, thought this was funny remains (like the rest of the case) an unproven allegation. But it is objectively funny, as this recording clearly demonstrates:
Essayli should know better than to run his mouth in public. His career with the Trump administration has basically been a long run of failures in courts while pursuing federal charges against protesters, journalists, and anyone else the administration thinks needs to be vindictively prosecuted.
The South Los Angeles tow truck driver who was arrested in September on a federal criminal complaint charging him with “stealing government property” after he towed a government vehicle whose occupants were making an immigration arrest in DTLA was acquitted last week, prosecutors say.
We see what Essayli said about this. Nunez’s lawyers — both public defenders — pointed out the actual facts of the situation:
Deputy Federal Public Defenders Rebecca Harris and David Menninger, argued that the law enforcement vehicle was blocking the driveway to the apartment complex and that their client moved it only one block away to stop the impediment of traffic in the high-density apartment complex. It was returned less than 15 minutes later, they argued.
The jury apparently agreed: no (lasting) harm, no foul. The government suffered some temporary embarrassment but it still managed to carry out its arrests even if one of its cars was now located a few hundred feet away from where officers had (deliberately and carelessly) parked it.
Bill Essayli managed to handle the loss with whatever grace he has left in his body, simply stating that Nunez had been found not guilty and that he had no further comment. Local abhorrent/Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, of course, had to get up on his bitchiness horse and ride off into the sunset of his own humanity:
“Another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city,” Miller wrote on X on Sunday. “The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire legal system.”
Good luck trying to parse whatever the fuck that is. I’ve tried multiple times and the best I’ve come up with is “Froth froth froth froth blue city froth.” Complaining about jury nullification is something someone does when they don’t like the outcome. And what makes this nullification more “blatant” than any other goes unexplained, although we all know it just means that it happened in Los Angeles.
If the DOJ is going to insist on being Trump’s vengeful marionette, things are never going to improve. Juries can be swayed easily, but they also tend to know when the government expects them to be the kangaroos in the court. The more extreme the government’s actions, the less likely they are to be complicit in obvious bullshit. No one in the administration is learning anything from this, which means they’re doomed to repeat their own recent history ad infinitum.
With national public health being run by RFK Jr., or run into the ground if you prefer, it’s been left to individual states to figure out where and how to fill in the gaps. Some states, such as Florida, have fully embraced Kennedy’s anti-scientific posture and are moving as quickly as possible to dismantle public health mandates and programs that have kept people, particularly children, from being infected with horrific infectious diseases. In other, saner states such as Colorado, state laws have been enacted such that state health policy no longer relies strictly on federal agencies like HHS and CDC, but instead takes into account other recommendations from NGOs that are more, well, let’s call them “traditional”.
It seems like California is about to go a step further than that and is constructing its own “Public Health Network Innovation Exchange” that will work with state health departments to advise on policy and advance public health in the state. Leading the charge for PHNIX (eyeroll) will be some familiar names.
The leaders of the new project are former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez, whom RFK Jr. forced out of her job just 29 days after the Senate confirmed her, and Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer, who resigned after Monarez was fired.
At a presser announcing the initiative, Newsom called the leaders of the new project a “dream team” of public health experts, noting that Drs. Monarez and Houry would also be joined by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, the founder and chief executive of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter. She’ll be advising the California Department of Public Health on building confidence in public health, which is kind of desperately needed after years of rightwing attacks on institutions and expertise.
Monarez is the former CDC director who was summarily fired by RFK Jr., reportedly for refusing to rubber stamp the anti-vaxxer nonsense that everyone knew would come out of Kennedy’s handpicked immunization panel at CDC. Kennedy disputes that as the reason for the firing, but his claims are as dubious as those he has about vaccines generally. Houry, meanwhile, was one of the senior CDC professionals that resigned in the wake of Monarez’s firing.
On the one hand, it’s an embarrassment of riches for California, to suddenly have leadership for public health in the state of the caliber of former high-ranking CDC professionals. The downside is that they’re now confined to 1 of 50 states instead of all of them. States like California shouldn’t have to do this sort of thing. And states should also not be in the position of jockeying to gobble up this talent before other states get there first simply because RFK Jr. is completely out to lunch.
But leadership isn’t about wishing for the best case scenario; it’s about making the absolute best you can with the hand of cards you’re dealt. I generally don’t think much of Gavin Newsom, to be honest, but in this case I’m impressed by his decision to lead for the benefit of his state.
In her new role, Monarez will be in charge of coordinating with the private sector, technology and academic partners, while Houry will engage with existing public health alliances.
“This collaboration,” the release continued, “is critical at a time when our public health community needs to coordinate our response to evolving gaps in federal leadership.”
Somebody has to do this job at the state level, in other words, because the Trump administration is too busy playing games with plaques about former presidents and installing gravel-mouthed charlatans in positions of authority over public health to do their damned jobs.
A California judge ordered the end of a dragnet law enforcement program that surveilled the electrical smart meter data of thousands of Sacramento residents.
The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents’ electrical usage data with narrow exceptions. For more than a decade, SMUD coordinated with the Sacramento Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to sift through the granular smart meter data of residents without suspicion to find evidence of cannabis growing.
EFF and its co-counsel represent three petitioners in the case: the Asian American Liberation Network, Khurshid Khoja, and Alfonso Nguyen. They argued that the program created a host of privacy harms—including criminalizing innocent people, creating menacing encounters with law enforcement, and disproportionately harming the Asian community.
The court ruled that the challenged surveillance program was not part of any traditional law enforcement investigation. Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation.
“[T]he process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city zip codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation,” the court ruled, finding that SMUD violated its “obligations of confidentiality” under a data privacy statute.
Granular electrical usage data can reveal intimate details inside the home—including when you go to sleep, when you take a shower, when you are away, and other personal habits and demographics.
In creating and running the dragnet surveillance program, according to the court, SMUD and police “developed a relationship beyond that of utility provider and law enforcement.” Multiple times a year, the police asked SMUD to search its entire database of 650,000 customers to identify people who used a large amount of monthly electricity and to analyze granular 1-hour electrical usage data to identify residents with certain electricity “consumption patterns.” SMUD passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly “high” usage households to police.
While this is a victory, the Court unfortunately dismissed an alternate claim that the program violated the California Constitution’s search and seizure clause. We disagree with the court’s reasoning, which misapprehends the crux of the problem: At the behest of law enforcement, SMUD searches granular smart meter data and provides insights to law enforcement based on that granular data.
Going forward, public utilities throughout California should understand that they cannot disclose customers’ electricity data to law enforcement without any “evidence to support a suspicion” that a particular crime occurred.
EFF, along with Monty Agarwal of the law firm Vallejo, Antolin, Agarwal, Kanter LLP, brought and argued the case on behalf of Petitioners.
We’ll see where this goes from here, but for the moment, this order [PDF], issued by federal judge Karin Immergut still stands:
For the above reasons, this Court concludes that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that Defendants violated 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and the Tenth Amendment and satisfy the requirements for a permanent injunction. Therefore, this Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendants Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Department of Defense, Kristi Noem, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from […] federalizing and deploying members of the National Guard in Oregon
This has already happened once. And, for reasons that went mostly unexplained by two of three judges ruling in favor of the administration, a stay was issued that allowed it to continue exploring its martial law options in a city Trump has already admitted he might have been lied to about in terms of civil unrest.
The judges blocking the injunction basically said we have to trust the government, even when it’s obviously lying to us — something pointed out in the sharp dissent written by the third judge in the case (Susan Graber). Her dissent noted that most of the protest involved people wearing inflatable animal costumes (and, memorably, nothing at all). It also noted the absolute dearth of calls from law enforcement for backup when dealing with Portland’s (non-threatening) protesters. Her dissent also pointed out how none of this could possibly add up to the clear and present danger the administration has used to justify the deployment of National Guard troops.
Judge Immergut makes many of the same points: there’s no real threat, the protests have been almost exclusively peaceful, and the government has lied so often it should not be granted judicial deference. The 106-page order practically dares the Ninth Circuit to again ignore the facts on the ground when it is inevitably appealed by the federal government.
For example, here’s the judge taking the government down a few notches (and suggesting contempt findings are perhaps just as inevitable as the administration’s routine disregard for legal precedent) for pretending it didn’t have time to comply with the first order while it simultaneously scrambled troops from out-of-state in an attempt to skirt the expected restraining order:
Ordinarily, this Court would be inclined to accept Defendants’ explanation for their violation of the First TRO [temporary restraining order] given that “the first shift” at the Portland ICE facility commenced prior to this Court’s issuance of the First TRO. However, in light of the following facts, this Court is deeply troubled by Defendants’ continued deployment of Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility in violation of the First TRO. In the seven hours that Defendants took to “convey the message” of the First TRO “to people on the ground,” Defendants simultaneously “convey[ed] the message” to the U.S. Army Northern Command to send 200 of the federalized California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles to Portland. In other words, Defendants had time to order and coordinate the transport of federalized California National Guardsmen from Los Angeles to Portland but needed more time to communicate with the Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility.
The dissent to the Ninth Circuit opinion — combined with the administration’s attempt to circumvent the court order blocking deployment of Oregon National Guard troops by sending in a bunch of troops from other states — has resulted in a successful petition for an en banc hearing by Judge Susan Graber. That means the government is far less likely to see its bluster, outright lies, and end around plays entertained by a far more representative group of Ninth Circuit judges.
Furthermore, the alleged “escalation” cited by the Trump administration is simply a lie, as those who’ve been on the ground (Portland Police Bureau officials) have already (credibly, according to the court) testified:
Any riotous activity affecting the Portland ICE building peaked in June and had subsided for months before the President’s September 27, 2025 callout of the National Guard to Oregon. Regarding the nature of the crowd and its behavior, this Court finds the following. First, the size of the crowds decreased dramatically from June to September. Second, the number of officers briefly increased in response to the peak activity in mid-June, but it quickly subsided and remained at a low steady state until September 27, 2025. Third, the crowd was not directed by an organized group. Fourth, members of the crowd were rarely armed. Fifth and finally, the crowd’s shift in focus from the ICE building and the federal personnel in June to counter protester disputes in September demonstrates that much of the activity since mid-June had little to no effect on the ICE building and federal operations.
And these are things that were happening most of time, according to local law enforcement leaders:
From September 19 to September 28, immediately before the National Guard callout, there was “[n]othing much” going on outside the ICE building. Throughout the protests, PPB Commander Schoening testified that protesters wore “inflatable costumes.” Similarly, PPB Assistant Chief Dobson described “folks in costumes” at the ICE Facility, as well as “other almost festive-type events going on down there,” including “dance parties.”
Also: the government — the federal government, that is — can’t seem to stop lying:
To the extent that it lacks corroboration from other sources of evidence, the Court does not find reliable ICE/ERO Field Office Director Wamsley’s characterization of the damage to the Portland ICE Facility, which suggested damage was more extensive than that which is reflected in the rest of the record.
[…]
There is no credible evidence, however, that all the doors and windows of the ICE facility were broken. No other witness described damage to this degree, including Commander W.T., who was at the Portland ICE Facility every other week the entire summer. Additionally, Director Wamsley testified that she did not know whether there would be any photos of this damage or whether there was any documentation of the repair estimates.
It does it all the time, even when it has to know its lies will be exposed:
Furthermore, PPB reporting from June 14 show additional inconsistencies in the federal government’s version of events. PPB Captain Schoening’s activity log documented: “ICE calling saying they are barricaded in the building and fire lit. Difficult to get accurate information from them. What they say is happening is frequently contradicted by video feeds and subsequent activity. Air 1 shows no fire.” Also, shortly after they reported being barricaded, PPB observed an FPS employee exit a door and noted that FPS “ha[d] been using th[at] door regularly for employee ingress/egress. Th[at] door was reported earlier to be barricaded.”
You think that’s bad? Get ready for this one:
FPS [Federal Protective Services] reported a fire to PPB, but the “fire” turned out to be candles lit for a vigil set up by demonstrators.
In fact, most of the “violence” observed by federal officers was either unprovoked attacks by officers against protesters or instigated by Trump fans who rolled up on peaceful protests in hopes of picking a fight.
This Court finds that many reported disturbances at the ICE Facility after July 4 did not involve law enforcement at all. This Court also received evidence regarding disruptive behavior between individuals within the vicinity of the ICE building since June. Specifically, this Court received evidence regarding altercations between protesters and counter-protesters. Based on that evidence, this Court finds the following: Violence between protesters and counter-protesters occurred outside the Portland ICE building from June to September 27, 2025, but had, at most, a minimal effect on federal law enforcement’s protection of the building and federal personnel.
106 pages. Read it all. Lie after lie after lie from the administration and the small team of DOJ lawyers still willing to appease Trump, rather than seek justice:
As related to the time period immediately before the President’s callout of the National Guard, this Court heard testimony from FPS officers that PPB does not respond to their requests and that FPS stopped calling PPB altogether. The Court does not find this testimony to be credible.
[…]
The Court finds that there is no credible evidence that protest activities at the ICE facility created more than a minimal interference with Defendants’ ability to enforce Title 8 immigration laws in Portland. Director Wamsley testified herself that “altercations between protesters” do not “inhibit the execution of federal immigration law.”
There’s no “rebellion” happening here, the judge says, quoting the same law the administration is now abusing on a regular basis. There’s no concerted effort to seize control of federal property. There are no persistent attacks on federal or local law enforcement. There’s no organized group hoping to seize power. This is exactly the sort of thing this particular administration is incapable of handing: a persistent display of opposition that rarely, if ever, engages in the sort of behavior that might justify the deployment of military troops. The protesters are a fly the government can’t swat, whose mere existence is annoying enough the Commander-in-Chief and his immediate underlings have to constantly lie about to salvage their unconstitutional acts. And, despite all of their power, they’re losing this battle. Let’s see if the Ninth Circuit is willing to make this loss permanent.
California this week signed a new law that tries to prevent your landlord and broadband ISP from teaming up and preventing you from using broadband competitors.
Starting January 1, AB1414 requires that landlords “allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party ISP, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy.”
The law doesn’t ban “bulk billing,” which usually involves an ISP and a development or apartment landlord striking a deal locking you into one provider. Such models sometimes can be useful in situations where mandated usage is the only way to recoup investment into hard-to-reach areas by smaller providers. But the idea is broadly abused by monopolies trying to elbow out competitors.
California’s new law simply makes it so consumers can opt out of such deals, without retaliation from their landlords. If landlords still try to force tenants to pay for broadband they don’t want and don’t use, the tenant can subtract the cost from their monthly rent.
It needs to be clear that California’s effort is basically the bare minimum to rein in such anti-competitive relationships. So, of course, big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T are having a big hissy fit about it:
“The California Broadband & Video Association, which represents cable companies, called it “an anti-affordability bill masked as consumer protection.”
U.S. broadband monopolies should consider themselves lucky that U.S. regulators have traditionally been too corrupt to truly tackle what generally has been a much bigger problem.
For decades, U.S. broadband providers have struck cozy deals with landlords effectively elbowing out competitors and allowing them to create building-by-building broadband monopolies (in some cases even banning the advertising of a competing service inside a development or apartment). That stifled competition results in higher costs, slow speeds, and worse overall service.
And while the FCC passed rules in 2007 trying to ban the practice, they were never seriously enforced and so full of loopholes as to be effectively useless.
Susan Crawford wrote pretty much the definitive story on this at Wired in 2016, noting that the original rules were so terrible, ISPs and landlords could easily tap dance around them by simply calling what they were doing… something else:
“…The Commission has been completely out-maneuvered by the incumbents. Sure, a landlord can’t enter into an exclusive agreement granting just one ISP the right to provide Internet access service to an MDU, but a landlord can refuse to sign agreements with anyone other than Big Company X, in exchange for payments labeled in any one of a zillion ways. Exclusivity by any other name still feels just as abusive.”
Every so often the FCC tries to update the rules, but because the agency is either under the thumb of Republicans (who actively support predatory monopolization) or Democrats (who nibble around the edges with performative solutions that fail to attack or often even acknowledge monopoly power), things never really get better.
After being nagged about this for fifteen years (!), the Biden FCC finally updated the rules again in 2022. But again, the updated language still didn’t actually fix the problem, in part because the rule revisions only applied to cable and phone companies, not any of the numerous broadband-only fiber, fixed-wireless, or Wi-Fi ISPs that cut exclusivity deals directly with landlords to avoid having to compete.
Now that the Trump administration has basically lobotomized the FCC’s consumer protection authority, there’s zero chance the federal government will be enforcing any of this anytime soon. That leaves things to a small smattering of states that sporadically care about consumer protection.
You’ll find that this is going to be a common theme as a patchwork of functioning states try to step in and fill the void created by a federal government that’s actively hostile to consumer protection and corporate oversight. But in most states, companies like AT&T and Comcast literally and genuinely all-but run the state legislature. Even in “progressive” California it’s an uphill climb to get the bare minimum passed.
It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t choice appearing on the California ballot this Election Day: choose gerrymandering, or have gerrymandering chosen for you. It’s an ugly decision to be forced to make. But, for the moment, at least, one that needs to be made.
At issue is Proposition 50, which would change the law affecting how California Congressional redistricting is done in the near term. Under current California law, it is done after every 10-year census by an independent commission tasked with balancing districts, subject to certain criteria imposed by state and federal law. State law, for instance, requires neighborhoods and local communities be kept together to the greatest extent possible, and the commission is ordinarily prohibited from considering political parties, current office holders, or prospective candidates when it draws its district maps.
The problem is that not every state plays by the same rules. And, in particular, states like Texas have now openly taken steps to redistrict again, even though there has been no new census to provide a basis for making any changes to their existing maps. Worse, the changes they want to make are changes deliberately intended to disadvantage Democrats and instead produce, statewide, as many Republican representatives as possible, irrespective of any local community preference to the contrary, in order to ensure Republican control over the House of Representatives in DC, even if nationwide the party would lack the support to be a majority. In other words, these states, controlled by Republicans, are trying to force the House majority into Republican hands by manipulating the Congressional representation of the people in their own state.
In response, the California legislature put Prop 50 on the ballot primarily to fight fire with fire. If these red states try to artificially inflate the number of Republicans to Congress then California will change its law to produce as many Democrats as possible in order to try to neutralize the Republican advantage those red states are trying to engineer.
There are, of course, strong reasons not to change California’s law this way. Gerrymandering is an incredibly anti-democratic policy, no matter who’s doing it. It dooms some communities to always be in the political minority, even when a fair measurement of the state’s overall political will should result in these minority preferences being entitled to at least some representation. Setting aside a principled approach to apportioning congressional seats that goes out of its way to not gerrymander, to instead join these other states in a race to distort election results is hardly something to enthusiastically cheer.
There’s also a chance that it could potentially backfire. While the goal may be to make sure that overall Democratic representation in Congress is preserved, it’s possible that these manipulations could result in weakening otherwise strong Democratic districts by now remapping them to include more likely Republican voters. Of course, the same is true in states like Texas, which may be sabotaging Republican districts by rolling into them more voters more likely to vote for Democrats.
But there are also points in favor of this plan, and they seem to, on balance, outweigh those against as well as ameliorate some of the concerns. For one thing, the change Prop 50 would bring is inherently temporary. Prop 50 has a built-in sunset provision so that, no matter what happens, we go back to the old system after the next national census in 2030. Prop 50 would only cover the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections, and if we really hated it after 2026 there’s nothing that would keep us from passing another proposition to end it sooner, apart from the logistical burden of running another ballot measure. Which is not negligible, but if the politics really turned against the change, it is still reversible. After all, the current law Prop 50 would change is itself is the result of its own ballot measure.
And that current law itself offers yet another reason to vote for the new one: because there’s actually a problem with the current one. Not in terms of its general approach, which tries to use a politically neutral committee to do apportionment so that communities can best be represented by those most accurately reflecting their political will. The problem with this law is that it hardcoded into the rules for how the committee members should be appointed a requirement that the membership should always include some number of Democrats, and some number of Republicans, as well as some number unaligned with either. A better way to do it would have been to require some number of people affiliated with the two most popular parties, whichever they may be, and the rest be unaffiliated. By hardcoding either party into the law however it means that the law can end up out of sync with the political makeup of the state as partisan politics evolve.
In fact, that’s the problem driving Prop 50: partisan politics have evolved. While it may have seemed, back in 2010 when the current law was passed, that Democrats and Republicans were timeless political forces never subject to change, history has shown otherwise—which is the problem that Prop 50 is responding to. Even though Democrats and Republicans had been around for decades by that point as generally stable parties, now that the Republican party has essentially become the new American Nazi party, continuing to give it a potentially outsized seat at the table seems much less advisable, not just in terms of giving it influence but also because it means that the system itself can’t adapt to any evolutions in the partisan landscape. If new parties become popular, perhaps because people are disenchanted with the old ones, the system won’t be able to treat them as major players so long as the old players get the benefit of this built-in advantage in how they get to participate in the redistricting system.
But the more immediate problem is that, given the way Republicans have changed, giving Republicans any political power threatens the entire democratic system. It would ordinarily be unthinkable to manipulate an electoral system to favor or disfavor a party—except that’s the business Republicans themselves are now in. And adopting a principled position to not engage in such practices unfortunately has the practical consequence of yielding to those eager to weaponize them the power to do so, and in a way inconsistent with the continued function of our representative democracy.
Allowing Republicans to grab gerrymandered power now surrenders our nation to them, which is not a decision we can afford to make if our nation is to have a future. At this moment in history there are existential reasons to ensure that Democrats can get to Congress in strong enough numbers to exert political power instead. Not because Democrats are necessarily all that great, but because Republicans are openly committed to autocratic policies that upend our constitutional order. If our federal system is going to be defended, the party not going out of its way to attack it at least needs a shot at getting into office in sufficient numbers to protect it.
And because Democrats aren’t just the current minority party in those red states but more often than not the party preference of minorities. The goal of getting them elected isn’t just to further that specific party but to make sure that communities favoring them can simply be represented in Congress at all. As long as Republicans have the power to frustrate that representation, it’s important that the rest of us make sure to have their backs so that everyone can participate in directing the future of our country.
Furthermore, the proposition does a bit more than just change how California’s congressional districts are to be mapped for the next few election cycles. Although it is mostly symbolic, the proposition declares its support of the principle that congressional apportionment should be done by “fair, independent, and nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide.” It further declares that there should be federal legislation and even a constitutional amendment to ensure that this approach become the rule nationwide that all states must follow to end, once and for all, the gamesmanship that these red states are engaging in, so that no state is able to frustrate the political will of their people in pursuit of their own disproportionate power ever again.
It seems like years ago, but the Trump administration got itself sued earlier this very year by the state of California for commandeering California’s National Guard to shut down anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. Trump justified this by declaring the city to be under siege, even though (1) most violence was being committed by law enforcement, (2) most of the protest activity was limited to a few blocks in the downtown LA area, and (3) even Los Angeles law enforcement officials stated no help was needed because whatever imagined problem there was, they already had under control.
The law prevents the Executive Branch from commandeering the National Guard. It’s federalism, which is a concept the Trump administration likes when it’s triggering a bunch of state-level anti-abortion laws following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but doesn’t when it allows states to reject help they never asked for — especially when that “help” looks more like a martial law soft launch.
The law prevents the federal government from doing this for obvious reasons — reasons made much more obvious when Trump insisted on doing it anyway, for exactly the reasons legislators built in a safety valve that should prevent presidents from using the National Guard as a vehicle for revenge.
Well, Trump wants to do the same thing in Portland, Oregon. Given the chain of events, it appears Trump was convinced by Fox News programming (yeah, in the other sense of the word) that Portland — and especially the ICE depot — was under constant, flaming, violent attack by protesters. That’s because the Fox broadcasts decided (deliberately) to include footage of protests and riots in that city in response to a heinous murder committed by Minnesota police officer, Derek Chauvin.
Trump briefly reconsidered this move, suspecting people might be using his obvious stupidity and comprehensive malleability against him to “invade” Portland. This moment of clarity was brief, swiftly replaced by Trump’s overriding desire to inflict pain on any place that’s not loaded up with loyalists.
So, the administration (after Trump and Hegseth stroked each other off by calling military officials “fat” and stating that going to war with their fellow citizens was part of the master plan) said it was going to commandeer Oregon’s National Guard to shut down anti-ICE protests that have mostly been no more violent than the hip-thrusting of an inflatable frog, which somehow managed to force heavily armed federal officers to retreat.
Well, Trump and his DOJ already knew what to expect, given California’s response to the administration’s illegal use of National Guard troops. Oregon sued immediately, raising the same arguments, and raising the specter of an immediate injunction blocking the administration from violating the law yet again.
Things got truly stupid and scary during the government’s arguments in the emergency hearing prior to a federal judge’s second successive temporary restraining order [PDF].
The government wanted two things. First, it wanted no restraining order at all. Second, it wanted the almost-inevitable restraining order stayed while it appealed its case.
While the second thing is relatively normal, the tactics the government used to secure its preferred option would be hilarious if both versions of the Trump administration hadn’t made it clear it exists only to beat this country into submission while steamrolling every check or balance that stands in its way.
Joshua Friedman listened to the emergency hearing. His report — contained in a Bluesky thread you’ll definitely want to read all the way through — shows the government doing the sorts of things you wouldn’t normally expect a democratic republic to do.
HAPPENING NOW: Judge Karin Immergut hears emergency arguments as California and Oregon seek to block President Trump's deployment of federalized California National Guard troops to Portland. 🧵
And by that I mean acting like the worst, most disingenuous commenters in any heated comment thread.
I am not even kidding. Since the government knew it wasn’t allowed to take control of Oregon’s National Guard (something made clear by the restraining order it was hit with the day before), it decided to do this instead:
Judge: How could bringing in [National Guard] from CA not be in direct contravention of [temporary restraining order] I issued yesterday?
DOJ: TRO related only to Oregon NG
Judge: You are an officer of the court. Aren’t defendants clearly circumventing my order?
Yeah, that’s what this administration thinks it can use as an end-around: it’s going to send California National Guard members to Oregon because it believes the court can’t stop it from moving the goalposts. In its clouded mind, a restraining order forbidding the federalization of Oregon National Guard troops can easily be avoided by sending in troops from another state… which will apparently also free it of any restraints currently in place in California.
But that’s not all! Perhaps sensing reshuffling California National Guard troops might be a legal headache, especially while still engaged in a lawsuit filed by the state of California, the Trump administration prepared a back-up plan.
DOJ: If the court enters a second TRO, we move for a stay pending appeal. We respectfully request that the court note this in any order it issues.
Judge: Response, Mr. Kennedy?
Oregon: I want to note new info about impending transfer of [Texas National Guard] members. We received at 6:36 p.m., so apologies.
Pure psychopathy. It’s one thing to be so completely stupid that you think this might work. It’s another thing to represent the federal government and the Trump administration and engage in actions that strongly suggest you think federal court judges are even stupider than you are.
Judge: Based on the conduct of the defendants and now seeing TX National Guard called up, I am going to grant alternative TRO requested. Let me ask plaintiffs—I’d prefer not to modify original TRO, but I am troubled to hear of CA and TX NG being sent to OR, in apparent violation of my order.
[…]
Judge: That’s what I’ll do. Prohibit federalization or deployment of any NG troops into Oregon. For all reasons in prior opinion. Deployment of federalized military is ultra vires and contrary to law, violating Title 10, section 12406. I also find it’s likely that defendants violate 10th Amendment.
The government will have to take its Calvinball elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s still got home field advantage at the Supreme Court. But this is exactly the sort of dipshit fuckery that defines Trump and his administration. The problem is that doing it often enough occasionally allows it to rack up unearned wins. When the wins stop rolling in, then we’ll see what this administration is willing to do to impose its will on this country. Chances are, it’s going to be a whole lot more of what we’ve seen already, only without the friction we’ve long assumed would be more than enough to prevent this country from sliding downhill into outright authoritarianism.
ICE made the bed and now California law enforcement officers have to lie in it. The flashpoint of ICE backlash occurred in Los Angeles, as Trump’s mass deportation desires manifested itself in the form of masked officers chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots.
As protests ensued, ICE officers continued to operate without face masks and a deliberate dearth of agency insignias. Then Trump added fuel to a mostly nonexistent fire by sending in the National Guard (illegally) along with a few hundred Marines.
In response, California has done what it can. First, it sued the government, pointing out the illegality of the National Guard mobilization. Then the legislature went further, passing a ban on use of identity-obscuring masks by law enforcement officers, whether they’re local or federal. Of course, California’s ban on federal officer face-wear probably won’t hold up in court, but it at least means those deciding to ride shotgun with Trump’s secret police won’t be able to hide their identities from members of public observing them perform their public duties in public.
Saying it’s the first bill of its type in the country, Newsom — a Democrat and frequent critic of President Trump — said it was a sign of growing authoritarianism to have detentions in by masked men “hidden from accountability, any transparency, any oversight. That’s Trump’s America.”
[…]
The law, called by sponsors the “No Secret Police Act,” comes in response to increased immigration enforcement in California, particularly in Los Angeles. Newsom went to L.A. for the bill signing.
The law hasn’t even gone into effect yet, and already some of the most powerful people in the nation are bitching.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican running in the 2026 race for governor, said the ban showed Newsom and Democratic lawmakers care more about the safety of criminals than officers.
“They didn’t ban criminals from wearing masks, they didn’t tell criminals that they had to identify themselves,” Bianco said while campaigning in Northern California on Friday. “Every single person that voted for that needs to be eliminated in the next election. Anyone that votes for those people are absolute idiots.”
The idiot here is Sheriff Chad Bianco. Laws are already on the book that force people to hand over identification if they’re suspected of committing a crime. And the “ban criminals from wearing masks” law is specifically cited in the law’s text:
Existing law makes it a misdemeanor to wear a mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise, as specified, with the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification while committing a public offense, or for concealment, flight, evasion, or escape from arrest or conviction for any public offense.
So, to paraphrase this law enforcement official, anyone who votes for this sheriff is an idiot, because Chad Bianco clearly doesn’t actually know the laws he’s expected to enforce.
Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, told the AP that the bill was ‘despicable and a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers’.
Whew. Fun stuff. Apparently, Gavin Newsom’s “rhetoric” is responsible for a 1000% increase in assaults on ICE officers. Even if true (it isn’t), that means Newsom has managed to generate an additional 100 assaults on ICE officers since the beginning of this year — apparently with his mouth alone. The DHS, of course, continues to use the percentage because it’s much more impressive to say “1000%” than to say “~110 assaults since 1/1/2025.”
But the stupidest thing said about the passage of this law came from none other than Acting US Attorney for Southern California, Bill Essalyi, last seen at Techdirt berating federal prosecutors from failing to talk a grand jury into indicting protesters on bullshit federal charges.
Here’s Mike Masnick asking Ken (Popehat) White a relevant question about the legal definition of true threats over a screenshot of US Attorney Bill Essayli’s post on X (the social media site where stupid goes to die thrive).
Hey, @kenwhite.bsky.social, do you have any feedback for the acting US Attorney in the Central District about what "true threats" means?
Essayli — another law enforcement idiot — tags in (of all entities) the fucking US Secret Service while quote-tweeting Governor Newsom’s press office.
Essalyi: We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials. I’ve referred this matter to @SecretService and requested a full threat assessment.
The alleged “threat?”
Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today.
You’re welcome, America.
That’s the governor’s office announcing the signing of the face mask ban. There’s nothing threatening about it. Furthermore, the US Secret Service isn’t the person to call even if you idiotically believe (as Essayli does) that this constitutes a “direct or implict threat.” That would be the FBI, which may decide to engage with the people providing protection to Noem if it’s determined it’s a threat worth taking seriously.
It’s one thing for a law enforcement official whose ignorance of the law is a net positive under the qualified immunity doctrine to say dumb stuff out loud about this law. It’s quite another for an actual government lawyer — someone who might actually face punishment or banishment if their ignorance of the law is great enough — to insinuate that a clearly innocuous statement is a possible “threat,” much less take the extra step of “referring” it to federal law enforcement for investigation.
But it always plays well with the home fans. They also believe the law is whatever they need it to be in any given situation. However, most of those cheering on Essayli and local sheriffs aren’t in positions that require them to have more than the average layman’s grasp of legal issues. Statements like these don’t exactly give the impression they’re being uttered by anyone worthy of the title “law enforcement professional.” It’s rookies all the way up and all the way down, which is exactly the sort of climate that allows a species like Donald Trump to thrive.
Techdirt has long lamented how in the modern era, you don’t really “own” what you buy. That game console, smart lock, or smart refrigerator can quickly become less useful (or completely useless) with a firmware update, bankruptcy, or addition of annoying subscription paywall.
The problem is particularly bad when it comes to digital rentals. In streaming video, you often have the option to “rent” or “buy” a video. But the latter is misleading given you don’t really “own” the purchase; you’re given a license — subject to the whims of an amoral, giant corporation — that can be revoked or changed by profit-seeking executives with an eye on enshittification.
That recently appears to have gotten Amazon in trouble via a new lawsuit that alleges that Amazon is misleading consumers by misrepresenting the word “buy.” From the lawsuit:
“On its website, Defendant tells consumers the option to ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ digital copies of these audiovisual works. But when consumers ‘buy’ digital versions of audiovisual works through Amazon’s website, they do not obtain the full bundle of sticks of rights we traditionally think of as owning property. Instead, they receive ‘non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicensable, limited license’ to access the digital audiovisual work, which is maintained at Defendant’s sole discretion.”
Ars Technica notes that a similar lawsuit was filed in the same court back in 2020, but was dismissed in 2021 for lacking standing. The website notes this new lawsuit stands a slightly better chance of success thanks to a new California law that bans the the sale of a “digital good to a purchaser with the terms ‘buy,’ ‘purchase,’ or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.”
The fight has parallels to efforts to hold telecom giants accountable for abusing the dictionary definition of words like “unlimited,” by promising users unlimited data, then imposing restriction, caps, and overage fees to drive up profits.
Such cases generally struggle due to companies that hide such restrictions in overlong fine print, then successfully argue this constitutes an effective and clear warning for consumers. In this instance, plaintiffs have to prove that it was clearly communicated to them that they would enjoy permanent, restriction-free “ownership” in perpetuity, and were harmed when that ownership was taken away.
