Free Republic

  Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leading a coalition of 21 attorneys general, filed an amicus brief in support of a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion care in Preterm-Cleveland, et al. v. Himes. The case involves an Ohio law that criminalizes abortion before viability based on a woman’s reason for seeking abortion, running in direct conflict with the Supreme Court precedent set in Roe v. Wade. The amicus brief reaffirms the coalition’s previous support for Preterm-Cleveland and argues that the preliminary injunction issued by the Sixth Circuit Court should again be upheld by the en banc panel.“This year marks the 100th anniversary...

Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the California Natural Resources Agency, and the California Environmental Protection Agency today filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for failing to protect endangered fish species from federal water export operations.The lawsuit asserts that biological opinions prepared by federal agencies under the Endangered Species Act to direct water project operations lack safeguards for protected species and their habitat in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, including the Bay-Delta. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit requests that the court declare the Trump...

FULL TITLE: Judge Denies AG’s Request for Gag Order Censoring Pro-Life Reporting on Bogus Trial of David Daleiden A judge has denied the California Attorney General’s Office’s request for a court gag order Tuesday that could prevent the public from learning the truth about David Daleiden’s shocking undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood. Daleiden and Sandra Merritt face 15 politically-motivated felony charges for invasion of privacy in California after they exposed Planned Parenthood’s allegedly illegal sales of aborted baby body parts. Their preliminary hearing began last week with a witness for the abortion industry admitting that the Center for Medical Progress...

A judge has dismissed more of the bogus charges against Sandra Merritt, who helped expose Planned Parenthood’s sales of aborted baby parts along with David Daleiden. Judge Christopher Hite of the San Francisco Superior Court has already dismissed one and a half of the 15 felony criminal charges brought against Sandra Merritt by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for her undercover journalism work which exposed Planned Parenthood’s trade in baby body parts. The statute of limitations has run out on these dismissed charges so they cannot be brought again. The undercover videos, most of which were recorded at the National...

California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding “travel ban” list because of that state’s new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid. The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university. Becerra’s authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and...

The state attorney general’s office will review how the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles handled sexual abuse allegations over the last two decades in a probe that victims advocates say could send shock waves through the religious institution. A letter, dated Thursday, from Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra to Archbishop Jose H. Gomez requests that church officials preserve an array of documents related to clergy abuse allegations. “The California Department of Justice is conducting a review of your archdiocese’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations involving children, including whether your archdiocese has adequately reported allegations of sexual misconduct, as required under California’s...

And then there were 50. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra launched another lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday, raising the state’s legal battles with the White House to more than four dozen filings... Monday’s lawsuit builds on a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ruling from earlier this month that removed a state’s authority to pay third parties for Medicaid provider costs, including health insurance, skills training and employee benefits. During a press conference to announce the new filing, Becerra said the latest lawsuit aims to preserve $6.5 billion in federal funding that helps support in-home services to...

Abortionists convinced California AG to file charges over 'privacy' A preliminary hearing in California to decide whether or not to try two reporters who went undercover to expose the abortion industry’s sale of the body parts of unborn babies has been postponed. Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed 15 felony counts against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who went undercover for the Center for Medical Progress, producing more than a dozen videos in 2015 that captured Planned Parenthood executives and others on camera. He accused the reporters of violating California’s strict privacy laws regarding making recordings, even though the videos often...

California attorney general Xavier Becerra called Thursday for unauthorized immigration to be decriminalized, saying those crossing the southern border are “not criminals.” “They haven’t committed a crime against someone, and they are not acting violently or in a way that’s harmful to people,” California’s top cop told HuffPost. “And I would argue they are not harming people indirectly either.” “If you call them criminals, it’s a lot easier to get people to turn against them than if you call them undocumented immigrants,” he added.

When California's attorney general counters the president’s State of the Union address with the Democrats' Spanish language rebuttal Tuesday, it won’t be the first time Xavier Becerra has taken swings at Donald Trump's policies. In fact, according to the Democrats, Becerra has filed more than 100 legal actions - 45 of them lawsuits - against the Trump administration. Becerra's response will be delivered through Spanish language media outlets live Tuesday night, while Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully for Georgia governor, will deliver the Democratic response in English. This will be the first time the Spanish-language Democratic response has been delivered...

A federal judge declined to give jail time to former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan Tuesday, saying he has “suffered enough” at the hands of politicians “at the highest levels of government.” In addition, the Department of Justice said it did not find any evidence that supported criminal charges. Imran choked back tears, saying, “We want to thank the prosecution, the FBI and the Capitol Police,” while his lawyer submitted a letter referring to President Donald Trump, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other Republications as “deranged,” “pathetic” and “without a shred of decency.” Judge Tanya Chutkin gave Imran three months of...

Lawsuit Hearing To Remove Xavier Becerra as California Attorney General Should the powerful be allowed to ignore or change the laws they don’t agree with? Of course not. But that issue is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in May by former Attorney General candidate Eric Early against the unelected, appointed California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is running to keep his office. The case was heard Friday morning in Sacramento Superior Court. When Becerra filed his election paperwork with the California Secretary of State, he represented that he was qualified for the position of Attorney General. However, according...

A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.” In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems ... shortly after an IG report came...

The Trump administration announced Monday night it will be reinstating a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020, prompting threats of lawsuits by prominent Democrats. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra separately announced they will file respective lawsuits to stop the citizenship question from being asked during the census. Holder’s statement called the move by the Trump administration a “direct attack on our representative democracy.” Becerra called the decision, “illegal.” The Commerce Department, which oversees the census, issued a statement announcing the decision: Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that a question...

California has asked a judge to dismiss the Trump administration's lawsuit concerning the state’s sanctuary laws that protect immigrants in the country illegally, Bloomberg reported. According to a court filing from Friday, California is arguing that its targeted laws “are consistent with the federal constitutional and legislative framework governing immigration enforcement,” Bloomberg reported. “California’s laws work in concert – not conflict – with federal laws and are fully constitutional,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “The 10th Amendment of the Constitution gives the people of California, not the Trump administration, the power to decide how we will...

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The father of Imran Awan — an IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who investigators concluded made “unauthorized access” to House servers — transferred a USB drive to a Pakistani senator and former head of a Pakistani intelligence agency, the father’s ex-business partner, Rashid Minhas, alleged. Minhas told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Imran Awan’s father, Haji Ashraf Awan, was giving data to Pakistani official Rehman Malik, and that Imran bragged he had the power to “change the U.S. president.” Asked for how he knew this, he said that on one occasion in 2008 when...

California will appeal a decision allowing construction of a portion of President Donald Trump’s border wall after a federal judge found the administration can waive environmental laws governing such projects. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra called the proposed barrier “medieval” and vowed to continue protecting the state from “federal overreach.” The lower court decision ensures the barrier can be built on an accelerated timetable. “When we said that a medieval wall along the U.S.-Mexico border does not belong in the 21st century, we meant it,” Becerra said. “There are environmental and public health laws in place, and we continue to...

The Newport Beach city council voted unanimously earlier this week to challenge California's sanctuary law, joining a dozen other cities that are not interested in complying with the sanctuary policies. It's the third city in the past two days to take such action, joining about a dozen others in recent weeks.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is leading a multistate lawsuit to block the Trump administration from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census. The 54-page complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was brought by 16 other states, Washington, D.C., six cities and the bipartisan United States Conference of Mayors. In announcing the lawsuit Tuesday in New York City, Schneiderman called the citizenship question dangerous and damaging. “This is a blatant effort to undermine the Census and prevent the Census Bureau from carrying out its clear constitutional mandate,” he...

Earlier this month, we noted that California faced a lawsuit from the Department of Justice over its new status as a “Sanctuary State“. Several red and purple states have now boarded this particular “Trump Train”. Texas and more than a dozen other states led by Republican governors got behind the Trump administration on Monday in its lawsuit over California’s so-called sanctuary laws that protect people in the U.S. illegally. California’s laws are designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement but the state does not have that authority, the other states said in a court filing in the U.S....