Politics
Commentary: This California bill is so bad it has me agreeing with a Trump Republican
For as long as I’ve been a journalist, which is a really long time, public entities have hated public records requests, even while claiming they don’t.
Ask your typical elected or hired official, from the governor to the animal control folks, and they’ll tell you transparency is vital and sunshine in government a key value.
Then turn in the most benign of public records requests — access to a calendar, for example — and prepare for weeks of delays and excuses. Want emails or financial records or, heaven forbid, anything from the police? Months or even years may pass before a single page is delivered, no joke.
That’s why I am deeply concerned about a bill winding its way through the California Legislature that would definitely slow down public records requests and likely make them more difficult and expensive. At its worst, it could push people into costly court battles just for having the audacity to ask for information.
The legislation, Assembly Bill 1821, is authored by Democratic Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, whose district includes Norwalk, Downey and Bell, where legendary scandals are Example 1 of why public records matter.
Pacheco’s office told me Wednesday that the troubles with the bill are far from what Pacheco set out to do.
“It was never the author’s intention to take away people’s rights to a [Public Records Act] request,” said her chief of staff, Nikki Johnson.
Johnson said the bill was meant to curtail malicious records requests, which do happen, where a citizen goes after copious amounts of records just to be a jerk and cost the government time and money.
It was also meant to address the growing problem of artificial intelligence and other for-profit businesses requesting thousands of records with the intent of using the information to create money-making products — think of sites that already sell publicly available personal information as “background checks.”
I believe Johnson on the good intentions of the bill in addressing those real if nebulous difficulties, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans.
The bill passed through the Assembly recently with ease, largely because most of its problematic portions (I’ll get to those in a minute) were removed — though not all. Even in a watered-down form, which basically gave government more time to answer requests, I found myself in the unlikely position of agreeing with conservative Republican Assemblymember and Trump supporter Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who offered some of the only opposition from elected leaders during the Assembly vote.
“We cannot police the public’s right to know, and we want to err on the side of transparency in how government agencies operate,” DeMaio said.
Amen, brother.
But the Democratic-controlled Assembly erred on the side of secrecy and slowdown instead, and the measure sailed to the Senate, where seemingly out of the blue, a bunch of new provisions were added that fill it with loopholes, vague language and tons of room for abuse.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the bill as written now was “comprehensively bad for transparency and therefore for government accountability.”
Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics and accountability program manager for the advocacy organization California Common Cause, put it even more forcefully. He pointed out that “public records are the public’s records.”
“They’re not owned by the government,” he said. But this bill would shift that paradigm and make the public “prove why you need them.”
“It’s going to chill people who want to make requests, and it’s going to complicate the process, and it’s just wrong,” McMorris said.
In its new form, the bill basically allows government entities to decide if they feel a public records request is malicious or for commercial gain. If they do, they can petition a court to intervene — potentially sparking both legal costs and new fees associated with fulfilling the request.
It would also, Snyder said, force a requester to explain why they wanted the records — something California law has repeatedly avoided because it gives power to government to treat those it perceives as enemies differently.
In this age of fairness and reason, it’s hard to imagine a government official misusing power to keep secrets, but I’m told it happens. That makes it all the more crucial that people not be forced to explain why they want information, or if they will use it to, say, expose corruption — be it wrongdoing by a single individual or the entire system.
Faced with unintended consequences, Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco (D-Downey), shown in 2023, will seek to scale back the bill to its original form, according to her chief of staff.
(Rich Polk / Getty Images for Equality California)
“I have little doubt that some agencies will use that provision to overburden requesters that they view as political opponents, requesters that they view as just a hassle, requesters that ask for things the government doesn’t want to disclose,” Snyder said. “They can bring the requester into court, and at a minimum, slow down the process, and probably more likely get the requester to simply withdraw.”
As written, the bill also gives a shoddy carve-out meant to protect journalists, but which in reality could be used to curtail requests from freelancers, student journalists and more.
McMorris said access to public records is a “moral issue,” and fixing any problems with the current law requires “a scalpel, not a meat ax.”
This bill, he warned, is a meat ax.
“I don’t discount that there are abusive requests, and that there are requests that really are a burden on government agencies, but the law right now has ways for government agencies to address that,” he pointed out. “Once these laws go into place, they’re going to be hard to roll back.”
It could “fundamentally change” our access to public records, he said.
Johnson, Pacheco’s chief of staff, told me that faced with all these unintended consequences, the Assembly member is going to ask for the amendments to be removed, and for the bill to progress as it was written when it passed the Assembly. That could happen as early as next week, when the bill with the new provisions is scheduled to come up again in a Senate committee for debate.
Reverting to the bill the Assembly voted on would be better, but slowing down public records is in government’s best interests, not the people’s. The bill does nothing to address the problems it seeks to fix, but stretches out the time officials have to simply tell a requester if any records do exist — never mind delivering them.
So even back to its watered-down form, the bill remains a meat ax for a scalpel problem, chopping up transparency with good intentions.
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President Donald Trump said Friday that far-left Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are now trying to distance themselves from some of the radical positions they once championed, noting he believes she may be after a 2028 bid for the White House.
In an interview with Fox News correspondent Alexis McAdams, Trump was asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s perceived shift away from her earlier calls to defund police departments and other soft-on-crime policies.
“If you really look at it, they’re all saying the same thing,” Trump said of progressive Democrats. “They’re all trying to disavow themselves from what they said about crime and, well, they’re saying, ‘We love sanctuary cities.’”
When asked directly whether he thinks AOC is positioning herself for a presidential bid, Trump said he thinks AOC will run.
The congresswoman has refused to rule out a run for president, but she hasn’t looked past November’s midterm elections.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ SHRUGS OFF PAST ‘DEFUND THE POLICE’ COMMENTS, JOKING ‘WOKE 1 WAS CRAZY’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and President Donald Trump (Liesa Johannssen/Reuters; Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
During an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, the congresswoman attempted to dismiss the extreme rhetoric of the so-called “Woke 1” era.
The term is used by some progressive politicians to describe the pandemic-era social justice activism and far-left political rhetoric in 2019 and 2020, when some called for the defunding of law enforcement agencies, the abolition of police and prisons, the elimination of cash bail, open borders and unchecked migration.
Trump said some Democrats are now trying to distance themselves from sanctuary cities, which generally don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
“I think you’re going to see sanctuary cities start to end, because sanctuary cities are a disaster. And somebody like her, she was big for sanctuary cities,” Trump said of Ocasio-Cortez. “They cause crime.
EXCLUSIVE: LEGAL GROUP TELLS NYPD COPS THEY CAN CONTACT ICE DIRECTLY DESPITE BLUE CITY’S SANCTUARY RULES
Democrats are worried that the “abolish ICE” slogan will age poorly as “defund the police,” The New York Times reported. (Getty)
“That’s when it all started. No cash bail,” he added. “Somebody kills somebody, and they just say, ‘All right, go ahead and come back in two weeks.’”
During AOC’s ABC interview, Jonathan Karl briefly pressed the congresswoman, a member of the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), on radical comments made by fellow socialist and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong in 2020 and 2021.
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” Ocasio-Cortez said while grinning. “And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
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Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has largely ended a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients who marry U.S. citizens.
President Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to end DACA during his first term. This week’s action reflects his administration’s ongoing focus on the Obama-era program that shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants, often referred to as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children.
“It was inevitable that what Trump was going to do in office this time was to embark on a massive delegalization mission,” said Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center in Los Angeles. “That’s what this is.”
Tumlin was referring to a ruling by an administrative immigration court that was published Thursday.
The ruling concerns a travel provision afforded to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program created in 2012. The provision allowed DACA recipients to travel in ways other people without legal status cannot.
DACA isn’t technically a form of legal status, though its recipients are granted work permits.
For immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, leaving the country or being deported triggers a penalty — many are banned from coming back into the U.S. for a decade.
Most people who qualify for legal residency, or a green card, have to serve that 10-year ban before they can apply for the green card, which can lead to citizenship.
But DACA recipients, under the travel provision called advance parole, could leave the U.S. for school, work or humanitarian reasons. When they returned through an airport or border, the stain of their original unlawful entry was erased.
With the penalty wiped away, a DACA recipient married to a U.S. citizen or who had another way to obtain legal residency could start that process for a green card without delay.
Thursday’s ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals does away with that benefit.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Zach Kahler said the decision confirms a “straightforward principle” that departing the U.S. has meaning.
“The immigration laws enacted by Congress impose consequences when someone who has accrued unlawful presence leaves the country and later seeks admission, including when that departure occurs under advance parole,” he said. “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will ensure that immigration filings are decided based on the laws, regulations, and binding legal precedent that govern each case.”
Immigration attorneys and other advocates quickly convened Thursday to determine how the ruling will affect immigrants.
Tumlin said some DACA recipients can still safely travel with advance parole, while for others — particularly those with deportation orders — it would be too risky to leave. She said DACA recipients should consult an immigration attorney before traveling.
“For over a decade, I could reassure my clients that traveling on Advance Parole was a safe option,” Shilpa Malik, an immigration lawyer in Florida, wrote Thursday on X. “What was once a vital protection is now gone.”
Under the ruling, having the travel document may no longer protect certain DACA recipients when they return from their trips abroad, because leaving could expose them to the years-long ban.
The decision also makes obtaining green cards more difficult. Tumlin said some DACA recipients could qualify for waivers that allow them to avoid the years-long reentry ban, but the waivers are granted under limited circumstances.
The latest federal data show there are 455,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. as of March, with about 126,000 in California.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, 45,447 DACA recipients were approved for advance parole as of Aug. 21, 2017.
About 76,000 DACA recipients had become legal residents as of July 31, 2019, most after marrying a U.S. citizen, according to the research service. It’s unclear how many DACA recipients have obtained advance parole or green cards since then.
Path2Papers, a project at Cornell Law School, analyzed 1,600 consults and estimated that around 60% of DACA recipients would be subject to the 10-year ban.
Republicans have viewed advance parole as an abuse of the immigration system.
The office of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) blasted the provision, saying in 2017 that “the Obama administration allowed thousands of DACA recipients to exploit an immigration law loophole to obtain green cards.”
Last year, Grassley introduced a bill to guarantee that it would no longer be used by immigrants seeking to adjust their legal status. This week’s ruling essentially accomplishes that goal.
The immigration appeals board’s decision applies to future travel. People who previously traveled and returned to the U.S. won’t be affected and could still adjust their immigration status.
Tumlin said Thursday’s decision is yet another effort to change the goalposts for DACA recipients by an administration that has resorted to ending the program “through death by a thousand cuts.”
The Department of Homeland Security has arrested hundreds of immigrants with DACA, and in a February letter to U.S. senators, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency had deported 86 DACA recipients between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025.
One of those was Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento mother who was deported a day after her green card interview. A federal judge later ordered the agency to bring her back to the U.S.
Trump admin ends federal funding for youth trans treatments
The Trump administration ends federal funding for youth gender transition treatments as CMS Chief Dr. Mehmet Oz warns of serious long-term health risks. Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ira Savetsky joins Ainsley Earhardt to applaud the move, citing a lack of clinical evidence for irreversible surgeries performed on thousands of minors.
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Three detransitioners claim they were pressured by doctors and hospitals when they were young to pursue gender transition, including medical treatment in two cases while they were minors, according to a new HHS-commissioned report.
The stories of Clementine Breen, Soren Aldaco and Luke Healy were featured in the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine” report released on Thursday. The HHS-commissioned report alleges financial incentives encouraged hospitals and doctors to provide gender transition treatments and identifies insurance billing practices that it says may be improper or warrant further investigation.
Breen was only 12 years old and struggling with a changing adolescent body and unresolved trauma from earlier sexual abuse when the then-minor learned about gender transition online. Breen alleges, according to the HHS report, that doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles told Breen’s parents the preteen was “100% trans” and at high risk of suicide without medical intervention.
According to the report, Breen began puberty blockers at 12, testosterone at 13 and underwent a double mastectomy at 14.
HHS OFFICIAL WARNS OF IRREVERSIBLE RISKS AS TRUMP ADMIN RESTRICTS FUNDING FOR YOUTH GENDER PROCEDURES
Three detransitioners claim they were pressured by doctors and hospitals as impressionable teenagers to undergo gender transition treatment. (iStock)
Breen’s mental health later deteriorated, and the teen stopped taking testosterone at 18 after therapy led Breen to conclude that the distress surrounding gender identity was connected to earlier trauma, according to the report. Breen reported experiencing pain and irregular menstrual cycles and requiring estrogen.
When Breen later sought breast reconstruction, doctors questioned the teen’s mental stability, and some stopped responding, according to the report.
“She did not face this same scrutiny when seeking a mastectomy at 14,” the report states. HHS also said Breen discovered letters in the medical record claiming a lifelong history of gender dysphoria.
Now studying theater at UCLA, Breen said in the report that the treatments and surgery continue to have physical consequences.
“How can a child consent to losing fertility or the ability to breastfeed if no one checks whether she even understand what that means?” Breen said.
Aldaco said gender-related distress emerged during adolescence and that online communities framed gender transition as the “appropriate response” to those feelings, according to the report.
After talking to a doctor, Aldaco was prescribed testosterone with several specialists treating the then-teen for gender dysphoria, and the report says Aldaco gave no indication that providers considered alternative treatment options outside what it calls a “sex rejection” model.
Aldaco began taking testosterone before receiving a double mastectomy to remove breast tissue. Aldaco then began suffering severe complications after surgery, causing pain the young person said “I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
The stories of Clementine Breen, Soren Aldaco and Luke Healy were featured in the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine” report. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Despite these negative developments, providers did not initiate a structured reassessment of her treatment plan,” the report says, adding that the support received after treatments was insufficient compared to the systems that pushed the life-altering decisions.
“Soren’s experience reflects the imbalance of care for cases like hers,” the report reads. “While her pathway into sex rejection medicalization involved coordinated referrals, approvals, and interventions across multiple providers, the pathway out involved no comparable system of support.”
Healy was just 10 years old when first learning of an online community where adults discussed transgender identities, according to the HHS report.
Within three years, Healy says he came to identify as a girl. After discussing the issue with his parents, Healy was taken to a counselor to talk about it.
“The only people who seriously asked what might have caused his distress were his parents,” the report reads. “Meanwhile, institutional figures … treated his new identity as settled and moved quickly to affirm it.”
“Luke’s parents refused to consent to puberty blockers or hormones while he was still a minor,” the report added. “Luke now describes their refusal as one of the bravest things they ever did.”
Still wanting to be a girl at 18, Healy began pursuing transitioning treatments.
Healy started with estrogen and began receiving consultations for surgical treatments before slowly starting to realize that the treatments were not easing psychological stress.
JD VANCE CALLS ON DOJ TO PROSECUTE ALLEGED FRAUD IN TEEN TRANSGENDER TREATMENT
Doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles told Clementine Breen’s parents pre-teen was “100% trans” and at high risk of suicide without medical intervention. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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“Each intervention led to pressure for further intervention,” the report reads. “In his view, the model was built around escalation rather than resolution.”
Healy eventually began to question the procedures doctors were recommending.
“One doctor quoted him approximately $200,000 for facial feminization surgery. Another, he says, spoke to him like a car salesman while encouraging tracheal shave,” the report said. “Luke came to realize he was being sold procedures, not psychological help.”
Rather than continuing the efforts to become a girl, Healy focused on battling the substance abuse problems developed during the process, quitting drinking and drugs.
“He recognized the same obsessive, destructive pattern in gender ideology that he had seen in addiction,” the report reads.
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