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California Tag

California isn't just at war with Donald Trump. It is conducting a culture war against several red states in the form of Assembly Bill 1887. The measure prohibits state-funded and state-sponsored travel to Alabama and several other red states Thursday due to laws that could discriminate against the LGBTQ community (e.g., prohibiting adoptions).

Legal Insurrection readers may recall that Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, an illegal immigrant who had been deported numerous times and was a convicted felon, was acquitted of murder by a San Francisco jury in the July, 2015 fatal shooting of Kate Steinle while she was walking along the city's famous pier with her father. The small solace that many of us had after this travesty of justice was that the federal government immediately unsealed an arrest warrant that included violations related to the charges of a felon in possession of a firearm, involuntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon. He was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshals to be transported to the Western District of Texas pursuant to the arrest warrant, and remains incarcerated.

Schools all over the country allowed students to participate in walkouts to protest and demand gun control. But what would happen if students wanted to stage a walkout to protest something like abortion? Would the politics of such a demonstration be equally accepted? California high school teacher Julianne Benzel posed this question to her class. Now she has been placed on leave.

President Donald Trump finally visited California when he landed in the San Diego area to tour the border wall prototypes as part of a whirlwind trip that also included an address to the troops at Marine Air Station Miramar and a swank fundraising dinner in Los Angeles.

At South by Southwest, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his big plans to sue the oil and gas industry. Schwarzenegger claims the oil and gas industry intentionally caused climate change and "knowingly killing people all over the world." To date, no complaint has been filed, but Schwarzenegger said he is currently working with several law firms.

It's clear that Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) wants to be president.  What's not clear is in what country she wants to president. She wants to be president of a country with no borders, with a Supreme Court that bases its decisions on "feelings" rather than law, with few (preferably no?) gun rights for citizens, with "free" college, with government-run (i.e. single payer) healthcare, with severely restricted speech, with unrestricted abortion funded by taxpayers.  To be fair to Harris, this is the same imaginary country in which all Democrat presidential hopefuls aspire to be president. Harris' ongoing, if not yet announced, 2020 presidential campaign is currently focused on flouting foiling our nation's immigration laws.

The big news from California that Democrats are trying to promote is that there is over $6 billion in an unexpected budget surplus.
"We have to be on our guard. It's not exciting, it's not funding good and nice things, but it's getting ready" for the next recession, [California Governor Jerry] Brown said. But in the five months ahead of a budget revision in May, when the governor's Finance Department will offer updated revenue and spending figures, Democrats in the state legislature are likely to offer their own ideas about how to spend the state's $6.1 billion surplus, beyond the constitutionally mandated $1.5 billion contribution to the rainy day fund.

It appears that over 200 illegal immigrants in Northern California ignored the warnings of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who warned on Twitter of impending ICE raids.
Federal immigration officials concluded Wednesday a days-long sweep of Northern California in the days since a warning of their raid was blasted out by a public official — a move which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says “created another magnet for more illegal immigration.”