CNN
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A former marine who used a Molotov cocktail to firebomb a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa, California, was sentenced to nine years in prison Monday, according to the Justice Department.

Chance Brannon — along with his co-defendant Tibet Ergul — attacked the Planned Parenthood clinic and conspired to plot attacks with Ergul and co-defendant Xavier Batten, including a potential attack on a power grid, in “furtherance of a race war,” the Justice Department said in a news release. Brannon was an active-duty member of the Marines when the attack took place in March 2022.

“The defendant’s assault on the Costa Mesa Clinic was designed to terrorize patients seeking reproductive healthcare and the people who provide it. Such violence has no place in the national discourse on reproductive health,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the release.

Brannon, 24, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to one count of conspiracy, one count of malicious destruction of property by fire and explosives, one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device, and one count of intentionally damaging a reproductive health services facility in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, the release said.

In addition to the nine-year sentence, Brannon was also ordered to pay $1,000 in restitution, the release said.

CNN has reached out to Brannon’s attorney for comment.

“Brannon’s deep-rooted hatred and extremist views inspired him to target individuals or groups who did not conform to his neo-Nazi worldview and, in one case, led him to carry out a violent attack which could have killed innocent people,” Acting Assistant Director in Charge Mehtab Syed of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office said in a statement.

Ergul, 22, and Batten, 21, pleaded guilty to their charges related to the case earlier this year and will be sentenced on May 15 and May 30, respectively, the release said. CNN has reached out to their attorneys for comment.

Brannon first considered attacking other targets like the San Diego office for the Anti-Defamation League, but he decided on the Planned Parenthood clinic “to scare pregnant women, deter doctors and staff from providing abortion services, and encourage similar violent acts,” according to the release.

He and Ergul planned a second attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in June 2022 following the overturning of Roe v. Wade that month but abandoned the plan because of law enforcement in the area, the Justice Department said.

The Planned Parenthood in Costa Mesa provides reproductive health services, including abortion-related services, and was forced to cancel dozens of appointments after the incident. No one was injured in the attack, Planned Parenthood said at the time.

The National Abortion Federation, a professional association for abortion providers, reported a “sharp increase” in violence at abortion clinics in 2022.

Prosecutors allege that Brannon was motivated by neo-Nazi ideology and discussed “cleans[ing]” the US of particular ethnic groups, according to the release. Brannon in 2022 kept plans for an attack on a Southern California Edison substation in a thumb drive “disguised as a military-style necklace bearing the motto for the Marine Corps,” according to the release.

There were 25 “actual physical attacks” in 2022 reported on power facilities across the US and one report of “sabotage,” according to statistics available from the Department of Energy, CNN reported last year. The FBI warned in a 2022 bulletin of threats by extremist groups to “create civil disorder and inspire further violence.”

During the summer of 2023, Brannon and Ergul also researched how to attack Dodger Stadium during an LGBTQ+ pride event using a remote-detonated device but were arrested two days before it was set to take place, according to court documents cited by the Justice Department. Days before being arrested, Brannon had also begun planning to rob Jewish people living in the Hollywood Hills, according to the release.

CNN’s Holmes Lybrand, Aaron Cooper and John Miller contributed to this report.

An earlier version of this commentary was published by Carnegie California on March 28, 2024.

What did we learn from the California primary vote on Super Tuesday? With results now certified by California’s secretary of state, it’s an opportune time to assess the official outcome and look ahead to November. The primary vote highlights several concerning trends in the condition of the state’s democracy and offers a preview of the major role that the nation’s most populous state will play in the November general election.

Will enthusiasm and turnout remain low?

Of the state’s 22 million registered voters, 7.7 million (or 35 percent) cast ballots in the primary contest. Voter turnout is frequently a political wild card, and this vote was no exception. In PPIC’s February survey, Californians sent mixed signals by affirming the importance of voting while expressing a lack of enthusiasm. Despite the state’s efforts to increase political participation—requiring all counties to mail every registered voter a ballot and moving the primary date from June to March—Super Tuesday’s turnout remained low. By comparison, 47 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the March 2020 Primary, and 48 percent voted in the June 2016 Primary.

The state’s efforts to encourage voter participation will need some rethinking, with special attention to regions where turnout was below the state average, such as the Central Valley, Los Angeles, and the Inland Empire. These regions include the competitive races that will help to determine the party in control of the US House of Representatives. The March primary also forebodes a November turnout that may underperform when compared with the record 17.8 million ballots cast in the November 2020 election.

What matters in a presidential re-run election?

The lack of drama in the presidential contest likely contributed to the low turnout in the California primary, whose results mirrored other states. President Joe Biden won with 89 percent in the Democratic primary, and former president Donald Trump won with 79 percent in the Republican primary. These results are aligned with the findings of the February PPIC survey. Biden is expected to win in California in the general election, as Democrats outnumber Republicans 47 percent to 24 percent, GOP candidates have not won a statewide race since 2006, and Biden previously defeated Trump by a wide margin.

Two political wild cards raised by the California presidential primaries: the numbers and makeup of partisans not voting in the March primary who will cast their ballots in November, and whether the 29 percent of voters who are not registered Republicans or Democrats will opt for third-party candidates, continue to lean Democrat, or not vote.

Is it time to revisit the top-two senate primary system?

The March senate primary raises issues about the unintended consequences of the top-two primary system. In this system, which was approved in a 2010 ballot initiative, voters cast primary ballots for all candidates in statewide and legislative races, not just those in their registered party, and the top two vote-getters appear on the general election ballot. The March senate primary was the most blatant example to date of a Democratic front-runner deliberately helping a Republican candidate to qualify for the top-two general election, knowing that any Republican has a slim-to-nonexistent chance of winning a statewide race. The primary ballot listed twenty-seven Senate candidates, but only Democrat Adam Schiff, Democrat Katie Porter, Republican Steve Garvey, and Democrat Barbara Lee were likely contenders, with Schiff and Garvey advancing. Schiff’s campaign aired a flurry of late commercials for Garvey, and Porter came in third. The political gamesmanship of a Democrat working to run against a Republican in the fall may increase cynicism at a time when some voters are feeling distrustful of democracy and elections. After a decade of experience with the open primary, it may be time for California to reconsider the process.

Where will US House races matter most?

California voters eliminated legislative gerrymandering when they voted for a citizens’ independent redistricting commission more than a decade ago. The primary outcomes for the state’s fifty-two US House seats still include many lopsided victories that mirror California’s red and blue regions and the inland and coastal partisan divides. In addition, the top two winners in every legislative primary race are either Democrat or Republican, with no third-party or independent candidates on the November ballot. The March primary results in the competitive House districts point to four tight races in the Central Valley and Orange County. These races include both Republican and Democratic incumbents and an open seat that will have national interest this fall, and all will help to determine the party that controls a closely divided Congress.

What does Prop 1’s fate portend for fall ballot measures?

The single measure that was placed on the March primary ballot with bipartisan legislative support passed by a slim margin: 50.2 percent yes, 49.8 percent no. Proposition 1, the government’s response to broad public recognition of major problems facing California, includes a $6.38 billion state bond for mental health treatment and funding for homelessness programs.

There were warning signs in the February PPIC survey that the Proposition 1 vote could be close. In the survey, 48 percent said that now was a “bad time” to issue this state bond, and 50 percent said they disapproved of Governor Gavin Newsom, who championed the measure and made the final pitch for yes in television commercials. The Proposition 1 vote is consistent with the narrow defeat of a state education bond in the March 2020 primary.

In addition, the vote is a reminder that many Californians are fiscal conservatives when it comes to state spending. The latest proof is the mix of red and blue counties where Proposition 1 had difficulty gaining traction. The measure is a wakeup call for legislators’ plans for other state bond measures, and a citizens’ initiative that would limit state and local tax increases may be on the November ballot.

Four years after the start of the COVID pandemic, the age and race of its victims in California have dramatically shifted: Now, a Bay Area News Group analysis finds, those who are dying from the virus are much older, and more often White than Latino, a notable switch.

While COVID deaths in California have plunged across all race and age groups, a comparison of deaths from the first six months of the pandemic to the most recent six months of data compiled by the California Department of Public Health shows 70% of those dying nowadays are 75 or older — up from just over half in early 2020.

And while Latinos made up nearly half of all Californians killed by COVID in the first six months of the pandemic, White residents now account for nearly 60% of all deaths.

The changing demographics and plummeting overall death toll exhibit how Californians built up immunity to the virus, experts say, through exposures and vaccines, and which groups are now the most vulnerable to the worst outcomes.

After four years of living with the virus, life is largely back to pre-pandemic normal. But when the virus first shut down our lives in 2020, face masks and working from home were foreign concepts to most. And while the speed of developing the first COVD vaccines was unprecedented in science, it took until early 2021 — the heart of the pandemic’s deadliest wave — for the public to get immunized. While COVID’s risk has certainly diminished, how much has its deadly wake actually changed in that time?

First, the virus is much less deadly. In the most recent six months for which data is available, from Sept. 1, 2023, through Feb. 29, 2024, there were 3,472 deaths attributed to the virus in California. But in the first six months of the pandemic, Feb. 1 through Aug. 31, 2020, more than four times that number of Californians died from COVID — 14,648.

“Wow, we are doing so much better than we were,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, his first reaction when looking at the data.

The total number of people dying has dropped across the board in nearly every category. More people over 85 died in the first six months of the pandemic, 4,209, than the number of deaths across all age groups in the past six months.

Second, your age is a factor. While older people have always been more vulnerable, they account for an even higher proportion of COVID deaths now.

The proportion of all COVID deaths among those 85 and older has grown from 29% to 42%. But that doesn’t mean the virus is deadlier for our elders: In the first six months of the pandemic, there were three times more deaths from the virus in that 85-and-older age group than there were in the most recent six-month period.

However small the number, there is one statistical peculiarity: The two youngest age groups are the only ones that saw more deaths in the past six months than early in the pandemic.

No deaths were reported among children younger than 14 in the Golden State through Aug. 31, 2020, but three young children have died from COVID, including two children under 5, in the last six months.

While deaths have become more concentrated among older Californians, another factor has changed dramatically: the racial breakdown of the people dying.

Early in the pandemic, “Blacks and Latinos struggled much more … in terms of mortality rates than any other population, primarily compared to Asian and White populations,” Swartzberg noted. “But that has flipped.”

The percentage of Californians who died who are White has nearly doubled, from 30% to 60% of all COVID deaths, from 4,332 deaths through August 2020, to 2,065 deaths in the most recent period. White people make up 37% of the state’s residents.

Moving in the other direction, the proportion of Latino deaths among those who died from COVID has shrunk from 49% of the first six months to just 20% of recent deaths. Latino people make up 39% of the state’s residents.

California’s Latino population is younger and therefore less at risk, Swartzberg said.

And he has some more educated guesses as to why the early pandemic death trends among racial groups have flipped so dramatically: In the first years of the pandemic, many Black and Latino communities were not getting vaccinated as quickly as their White counterparts, a combination of lack of access and insufficient outreach, but that has changed as the pandemic has evolved.

A November 2023 poll by KFF, a nonprofit health care research foundation, found a slightly higher percentage of Black and Hispanic adults reported getting an updated vaccine, compared to 19% of White adults. And the gap grew when adding those who planned on getting the new vaccine but hadn’t yet, 59% of Black and Hispanic adults and just 42% of White adults. The poll also found White adults were less likely to take precautions against catching and spreading the virus during this past holiday season.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UCSF professor of medicine who specializes in infectious diseases, also points to political influence on vaccine uptake as “one of the most compelling trends.”

The KFF poll found Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans to say they had already gotten the updated vaccine, while 55% of Republicans said they would “definitely not get” the new vaccine compared to 12% of Democrats and 40% of independents.

“In the beginning, none of this was political … we were all in this together,” said Chin-Hong. “The differential in mortality was based on structural racism and lack of access, underlying medical problems. But then it became a very polarizing issue, like everything regarding COVID.”