Category: California

From ACLU

This election reaffirmed the power of people coming together to defend our democracy and the values we share. When the federal government sought to undermine voting rights and intimidate voters, Californians stood firm. And when asked to pass Prop 39 and add unnecessary hurdles to exercising the right to vote, California voters sent a resounding message to those who tried to roll back voting rights: hands off our elections.

ACLU-SDIC Executive Director Norma Chávez-Peterson said:

“Yesterday, California voters showed up at the polls to protect their voting rights and reject an anti-democratic agenda — and they succeeded. Prop 39 has been defeated, but the fight to protect our constitutional rights is far from over.

>Nov. 3rd:– the Day Americans Take Back Our Country

8:40 pm Democrats take the Senate

Democrats Clinch Senate as Voters Deliver Blistering Rebuke to Trump; Democratic candidates won races in Republican strongholds, flipping Senate seats in

• Kansas,
• Ohio,
• North Carolina,
• South Carolina and even
• Texas. On a night shaping up as a Democratic rout, President Trump told The New York Times that he would accept the election results.

8:14 pm Crosby and Abraham take early leads in San Diego City Council races 2 and 4 with 689,666 ballots counted overall county-wide

Nicole Crosby at this stage has a 9 point lead over Richard Bailey in District 2, 54.5% to 45.5%.

Martha Abraham is in a much tighter race with incumbent Henry Foster III with a 3.3 point lead, 51.7% to 48.3%.

8:05 pm Xavier Becerra is first Mexican-American elected as governor of California

Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden administration official, began the race for California governor with poll numbers so low that his own party chairman urged him to drop out. Now, Mr. Becerra will become the next governor of the nation’s most populous state, The Associated Press said on Tuesday, a rise that was considered improbable a year ago. Mr. Becerra, 68, is the first Latino elected as governor of California, a milestone that punctuates a decades-long demographic shift in the state.

By Natalie Hausmann / Democracy Docket / November 2, 2026
The Supreme Court swiftly rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to force California to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 people it alleges may be noncitizens. 

The decision hands the administration its third and final defeat in its effort to intervene in the state’s ongoing election.

The justices denied the administration’s emergency application without explanation, just hours after it was filed Monday. Justice Elena Kagan referred the request to the full Court, which rejected it with no noted dissents. 

By Lindsay Whitehurst / PBS – Associated Press / Nov. 2, 2026

Trump administration appeals to Supreme Court to sideline 20,000 disputed California mail ballots

See Below — Analysis: More than 40% of names on DOJ list of alleged noncitizens not on California’s voter rolls

President Donald Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday — today, Nov. 2 — in its push to sideline thousands of disputed California mail ballots the day before the pivotal midterm elections.

The emergency appeal came after a divided appeals court rejected the request to set aside ballots from some 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens. It also came just hours before another federal judge ruled against the administration’s efforts to make last-minute changes in California’s election.

The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

The Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare.

A district court judge had previously denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

The San Francisco-based court also said federal officials must stop demanding that ballots from selected voters be segregated.

Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney / rsn – POLITICO / November 2, 2026

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution over their handling of disputes about voter qualifications.

U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson also ordered the Trump administration to cease demanding that election workers remove voters from statewide rolls, refuse to issue ballots to specific voters or segregate ballots cast in the midterms based on the administration’s claims that some voters are ineligible.

By Jude Joffe-Block / NPR / October 28, 2026

A federal judge has denied an unprecedented, emergency request by the Department of Justice to segregate thousands of California ballots in the midterm elections.

The Justice Department wants California election officials to stop processing ballots pertaining to 20,000 individuals that federal officials say are “likely” noncitizens.

State and local officials in California have countered that the DOJ’s list of “likely” noncitizens is unreliable, with a preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County showing that many on the list do not have active voter registrations. The officials also claim that setting aside ballots just days before Election Day, when voting and processing mailed ballots are already underway, would be unlawful and infeasible and would disenfranchise eligible voters.

In his 26-page ruling issued Wednesday evening, U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, denied the Justice Department’s request for a temporary restraining order to stop processing the ballots in question.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” he wrote.

Carter also expressed concern about taking action that could disenfranchise eligible voters and create chaos.

From Save Our Heritage Organisation

In June of this year, we first alerted you to this issue and asked for your help. SDG&E has released new information about its proposed Golden Pacific Powerlink transmission project, including three alternative routes, and has announced a series of community open houses. This is an important opportunity to learn more, ask questions, and make your concerns known.

The Golden Pacific Powerlink is a proposed 150-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission corridor. extending from the Imperial Valley to Orange County. With an estimated cost of $1.62 billion, it would be SDG&E’s largest capital project and the longest 500-kilovolt transmission line in its service territory.

It is important to understand that these lines would simply transmit SDG&E’s power to Orange County and the Los Angeles area. They would provide no electricity to anywhere in San Diego County, yet SDG&E customers would shoulder part of the financial burden.

Neighbors for a Better San Diego (NFABSD) continues its leadership of community empowerment with this “Update on 2026 State Legislation.”

The California Legislature introduces thousands of bills every year, and 2026 was no exception.

Working with a statewide coalition of policy analysts, NFABSD tracked more than 100 bills relating to land use and housing development, which were boiled down to the ones that we predict will have the greatest impact on the lives of Californians.

Click here to review the list of bills and see how your state legislators voted.

By Ben Christopher / CalMatters / October 26, 2026

For nearly a decade, California’s Yes In My Backyard activists and other pro-development advocates have wanted to overhaul California’s signature environmental law to clear the way for more housing construction.

Now Proposition 45 is on the ballot. Supporters say it would, among other things, overhaul that law, known as the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to clear the way for—you guessed it—more housing construction.

So why are YIMBYs divided?

Judge: Feds Using “Flawed” Data; Likely Violating Voting Rights Act

By Jude Joffe-Block / npr / October 22, 2026

A federal judge in California is putting limits on pre-election field operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security that the agency says is aimed at trying to find noncitizens who have illegally voted in nine states.

In recent weeks, armed Homeland Security Investigations officers have carried out field operations and visited homes to interview people suspected of illegally voting as noncitizens. The targets can include people who became citizens but voted before they naturalized.

In a 19-page order late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden, wrote that the federal government was using “flawed” data in the initiative and that its efforts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which bars voter intimidation.

Martínez-Olguín referenced a disclosure last month from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower that alleged rushed efforts to match data to create a target list of potential noncitizens on voter rolls, and that the list includes U.S. citizens. She also pointed to HSI’s social media posts, including one that showed agents handcuffing a California man accused of unlawfully registering to vote.

The judge wrote that the government’s use of unreliable and incomplete data along with highly publicized arrests “lead to an objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote.”

HSI field operations were planned in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, according to documents produced in the case and CNN reporting.

By Andrew Childers / Democracy Docket / October 19, 2026

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking a federal court to immediately prevent California from counting the ballots of 20,000 people the Trump administration has accused of being noncitizens who illegally registered to vote.

The request for a temporary restraining order is the latest escalation between California and the Trump administration over the midterms. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) over the weekend accused President Donald Trump of attempting to rig the election.

“California not just refused to act; it made clear that it is committed to treating ballots from those likely noncitizens equal to ballots from American citizens, prompting this suit and motion that seeks commonplace election relief when ballots are called into question,” DOJ said in its filing in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The standoff began last week when the DOJ sent California a thumb drive with a hand-scrawled password on a sticky note that it claimed contained the names of 20,000 suspected noncitizens registered to vote in the state. The Justice Department gave California only 48 hours to validate those names and demanded that California not count the ballots of anyone on the list. State officials declined, calling the request “outrageous.”

We’re asking this outrageous question: could this month — October of 2026 — actually be the very last month of American democracy?

This is preposterous! How hyperbolic you yell back! What are you thinking!?

How could any intelligent American in our present day country even consider that after 250 years of democracy this particular month is the last one? This headline is just click-bait and whatever follows is really not worthy of my time and energy to even consider.

Um, okay. If you’re still here, perhaps curiosity has forced you to remain. Or maybe you are looking for a laugh, or another example of TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Yet, there is a growing gnawing in your conscience. You have enough of an understanding of what’s going on in America to know that this is not normal, this whole Trump affair has taken all of us down a dark tunnel and maybe, just maybe there is a kernel of truth in this question — whether this Halloween month is our last one where democracy still exists. And whether it will still exist after the dust and dirt from the mid-terms settle. Can we even consider what this means?

How could a country with such an experiment in democracy begun by our founding fathers and mothers a quarter of a millennium ago — bogged down with slavery and the mass extinction of native peoples — tested by our bloodiest war ever, the Civil War, tossed about by world wars and the wars of imperialism, by recessions and depressions, floods, earthquakes and wildfires, now still standing by all the reforms of the 20th century, be currently and fatally challenged by the worst and most corrupt and authoritarian president in our history?

How could we be in this place? How could this have happened despite all of our better angels guiding us out of the promise and morass of our history?

But that’s the whole point! This is where we’re at.

Due to all the threats and actions taken by Trump and all his allies they have brought us here.

And just where is that exactly?

We’re on the precipice of the one of the most dangerous moments in modern American history.