Our City Betrayed the Concerns of Our Citizens Regarding ICE

 

ICE has been active in Escondido…and the City of Escondido has been active with ICE.

No one expected ICE to ignore Escondido. Many in Escondido would agree that if there is illegal activity that our laws should be enforced. But the majority of Escondido residents also recognize that the rule of law is a two-way street – that not only do citizens and non-citizens residing in the United States must follow the law, so do we expect the government and law enforcement to abide by the Constitution, law and decency.

ICE does not play by the rules…and the rules they choose to ignore have  included warrant-less invasion of homes, the trauma of masked men in unmarked vehicles grabbing people off the streets without identifying who they are and the reasons for their actions; ignoring their Constitutional rights for due process; both legal immigrants and US citizens caught in ICE’s wide net and improperly detained; excessive force against both those they apprehend and observers; inflicting physical harm on many ranging from pepper spraying the face of a one-year-old to a total of 53 deaths of those in ICE custody or during an ICE raid during the past 12 months including six this month alone.

Because of this – and in particular light of the filmed evidence of the recent killing of two US citizens who were using their cell phones to film ICE activity – the majority of Escondido residents do not want our city partnering in any way with ICE.

Therefore, it is disturbing and unacceptable that the City of Escondido signed a contract with ICE on January 14^th to allow ICE to practice shooting at our Police Department’s firing range in exchange for $67,500.

ICE will train 200 agents 20 days per year annually in groups of 20. According to the ICE San Diego field office, they needed “a secluded location” that would accommodate training with firearms and tactical medical exercises.

The need for “seclusion” and unsupervised privacy makes residents still more suspicious of ICE operatives who already make citizens both uncomfortable and afraid in that they prefer to wear masks to hide their identity.

The City Council has scheduled discussion on the contract at the February 25^th City Council meeting as public concern and pressure has mounted. At this hearing the contract not only needs to be discussed, but the judgement that failed to see that it would be problematic within the community also needs to be addressed. The City Attorney must be directed to review the contract and determine how the contract might be voided. If not legally able to cancel the contract, then they should consider how to amend it to place restrictions on ICE and require objective supervision of ICE proceedings during their training exercises.

The City demonstrated poor judgement in not being able to identify the mood and concerns of the community they serve, if not also revealing a shared mindset when it comes to how ICE operates. It makes no difference that prior administrators had cooperated with ICE…that was pre-Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Nome ICE. The City negotiated a new contract and signed this pact with ICE one week after the Rene Good killing and after a year of observing this edition of ICE’s terrorizing tactics.

Given the documented measures of inappropriate methods and cruelty by ICE Escondido does not want to see similar incidents victimize our residents. We don’t want children pulled out of their schools. We don’t want a five-year-old child used as bait to trap his father. We don’t want a one-year-old pepper sprayed. We don’t want a disabled woman yanked from her car. We don’t want an innocent 56-year-old man taken from his home without warrant wearing nothing but his underwear and left standing in freezing temperatures. We don’t want someone executed by ICE thugs for attempting to aid a woman shoved onto the ground by ICE while filming their deeds with a cell phone.

Our City Council needs to partner with the citizens of Escondido, not with the masked, unidentified thugs of ICE.

 

 

Two Escondido Teachers Put At-Risk Youths at Risk

 

Homeless.

40% of children who are homeless had been evicted from their family homes because their parents refused to accept them being gay or transgender according to homeless surveys. Studies show that gay and transgender teens are 120% higher at risk of being forced from their homes by their parents than any other group.

Prostitution and drug addiction.

Survival on the streets most always results in those gay teens resorting to prostitution in order to survive according to studies by various agencies such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the National Network for Youth. Coping with the harshness of rejection by family, living homeless and depending on prostitution for survival most often leads to drug use and drug addiction.

In cases where a parent refuses to accept their child’s identity, eviction is not always the punishment. The child may remain in the home, but according to interviews with unwelcomed gay teens, they report physical and/or emotional abuse while remaining in the home. Many of these become runaways, all suffer emotional scarring and often psychological trauma.

This is the tragic result of those parents who cannot tolerate having a gay or transgender child. While we can assume most parents in this day and age are enlightened and loving enough to accept their children should they discover their child is gay or believes they could be transgender, the reality is that there are many parents who do not.

That is why it is important to accept a teenager’s understanding of their own parents and their own family situation. That is why it is important to allow the teen to determine if it is best to share the child’s sexual identification and if so, when to discuss it with the parents. Only that teen has a full understanding what the parental reaction will be and what the risk of consequences might be.

US District Judge Roger Benitez disagrees.

Benitez agreed with two Escondido Middle School teachers that it is instead the right of teachers to violate the teen’s privacy and be allowed to contact the parents to report to the parent that their child believes that they are transgender or gay. Those two teachers filed a lawsuit challenging the policies of the Escondido Elementary School District and the State of California.

Those policies attempt to protect the child by assuming the child knows their parents and their homelife better than anyone outside of their home. The policies also assume that the teen has better insight into their own body and that the teen has the right to question their own sexuality. Therefore, the existing policies prohibit school personnel from going behind a teen’s back to inform the parent if they overhear or are directly told by the student that the student believes they are gay or might be transgender.

The teachers had stated that instead such policies are a violation of their rights. Conservative Christians, they argue that their religious freedom and their freedom of speech is being violated if they are not allowed to pass on to the parents how the teen refers to their own sexual identity. Without understanding the teen’s family’s dynamics, without understanding the teen’s biological makeup much less apparently not understanding the conclusions of science and not understanding statistics revealing potential consequences, these two choose to interfere.

Benitez sees their point. He adds his concern that teens who have these sexual identities are possibly mentally ill as well.

“(These policies) harm the child who needs parental guidance and possibly mental health intervention…They harm the parents by depriving them of the long-recognized 14^th Amendment right to care, guide, and make health care decisions…and by substantially burdening many parents’ 1^st Amendment right to train their children in their held religious beliefs.”

“And finally,” he continued, “they harm teachers who are compelled to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs…”

For the record, the 14^th Amendment defines national citizenship, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law to all persons. It does not apply to this situation nor support the teachers’ argument. Additionally, it is debatable that the Constitutional right to Freedom of Religion gave citizens the latitude to enforce their “sincerely held religious beliefs” on others. In fact, it exists for the very opposite reason.

Benitez has an extremely conservative perspective on issues and judgements. It is routine for his decisions to be overturned in appeals court. In the past eight years he has had four significant decisions overturned, as well as a decision in 2010 where he was refusing to uphold the Constitutional requirement for separation of church and state by ruling that public schools should be allowed to hang religious posters and banners inside classrooms.

Hopefully the Court of Appeals will toss this ignorant and harmful ruling into the same trash bin.

How Donald Trump Feels About Our Veterans in His Own Words

 It's Veterans Day. A time to honor our veterans. It is also a time that we turn to our president to represent this special day with tributes and the president's own views on those who served our country in the military. Given that our current president Donald Trump hugs the American flag and in public speaks favorably about our veterans, it is important to know exactly how he reveals his true mindset when discussing those feelings with people who are also conservative Republicans and who themselves are veterans who worked under him in his first administration. Here are quotes from these military heroes on what they shared are Trump's private conversations with them:

General Mark Milley, Trump's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after a Veterans Day event in which Milley wheeled a multiple amputee veteran up to Trump for Trump to shake his hand: "Why do you bring people like that here? See the wounded, no one wants to see that...Don't do that again."

General John Kelly, Trump's Chief of Staff shared an incident: In planning a military parade, Trump insisted "Look, I don't want wounded guys in the parade." Kelly says he responded "Those are the heroes. In our society there's only one group of people more heroic than they are -- and they are buried over in Arlington."

To this Kelly says Trump replied "I don’t want them. It doesn't look good for me."

Trump insisted that General Kelly cancel a scheduled visit to a cemetery in Paris of American war dead. "Why should I visit that cemetery? It's filled with losers" and he referred to marines who were killed in France as "suckers."

When visiting Arlington National Cemetery to honor our war dead, Trump said to Kelly "I don't get it. What's in it for them?"

Trump publicly had no trouble making his feelings about veteran John McCain, disagreeing with people who considered McCain heroic for refusing to be released from a Vietnamese prison camp until other POWs were also released: "He's not a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." 

And what do these veterans and conservatives who served Trump in his first term think of him as our nation's leader?

“Trump will fundamentally never understand service those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he is unfit to be commander-in-chief” – Alyssa Griffin, Trump’s Communications Director

"Donald Trump's disdain for the American military and admiration for dictators like Hitler is rooted in his desire for absolute, unchecked power." and "he has no idea what America stands for and what America is all about"..."He admires autocrats and murderous dictators"- General Kelly.

"Trump would rule like a dictator (if given a second term)...Trump has fascist tendencies" and "Trump is the single greatest threat to American democracy" -- General Kelly.

"Trump is a wannabe dictator...He is fascist to the core" -- General Milley.

"Trump doesn't care for our (the military's) values...He needs to leave office. The fate of our Republic depends upon it" -- General James Mattis, Trump's Secretary of State.

Trump is a dangerous threat to our democracy “undermining our institutions and that makes me worry for the direction of our country” -- Admiral William McRaven, who led the successful killing of Osama bin Ladin.

For those who support Trump and do not want to pay attention to these assessments from conservative Republican military heroes who worked for Trump and who had heard these remarks directly from Trump they must ask themselves why would they repeat these remarks and come to these conclusions? They know Trump personally, you do not. They know firsthand the real Trump, you do not.

Why are they doing it? To reveal the true Trump, to warn us all about the dangers of the Trump presidency and to call upon us all to be on our guard and protect democracy and our rule of law from who they are alerting us to what they know to be our single greatest threat.

Californians Can Help Rescue Democracy

Californians have the opportunity to be heroes. Not just heroes to our own community and our own state, but to all the people living in our country.

That opportunity is Prop 50.

Donald Trump doesn’t intend to play fair in next year’s midterms. He has reason for concern: polls show that he is poised to lose control of Congress in 2026 as Democrats are expected to take the majority in the House. District-by-District polling indicates he will fall five seats shy of his needed majority.

Given that knowledge, he should be stumping in those Districts. He should be campaigning hard. Or he should shift to policies and behavior that would prove to be more acceptable to voters.

Instead, he decided to take a different approach. He decided to try to fix the results ahead of time in his favor. And that is precisely what Prop 50 which we will be voting on is all about. It is an attempt to head him off at the pass, to counter his moving his Bishop by us blocking the move with our Queen.

Reminiscent of 2020 when election night projections showed Trump lost the electoral college, prompting Trump to call the Trump-supporting Georgia official in charge of that state’s balloting to request he somehow "find me 11,780 votes" which would then turn the outcome in Georgia inside out, give Trump Georgia's electoral votes and help him be re-elected. Fortunately, this Republican official realized that what Trump was asking him to do was illegal, prudently taped the conversation, and refused to cooperate.

This time Trump called on a more reliable supporter, Texas Governor Greg Abbott. He instructed Abbott to gerrymander Texas' districts in a manner that would cost five currently elected Democrats their seats and turn those seats into safe Republican seats. Abbott agreed.

We can sit back, do nothing and allow this dishonest fixing of the midterms to take place, or we can counter it. Governor Newsom chose to attempt to counter it. He warned Texas that should they proceed with their plan, he will counter by doing the same in California to maintain the rightful balance. Texas proceeded. Newsom responded with Prop 50.

Unlike Texas, here voters will decide if we should change the districts, not the politicians. The legislature drew up the proposed districts, but it is up to us voters to approve them. California voters, then, are ultimately the decision makers, not the politicians. The bipartisan Redistricting Committee is not terminated. Prop 50 decrees this to be a temporary redistricting. In five years, the Redistricting Committee will again address our shift in population and demographics to objectively draw up our districts.

Gerrymandering districts is something all who believe in ethics and democracy wish to avoid. Trump attempting to steer the course away from defeat in an underhanded way such as this is no less undemocratic than when his campaign attempted to send fake electors into seven State Houses after he had lost the popular vote in those seven states. Just as those 84 fake electors were blocked from entering their respective State Houses to preserve the democratic integrity of the people’s will, we in California now have an opportunity to block Trump’s latest illicit maneuver. And if the only possible tools available to us is to literally fight fire with fire – to fight gerrymandering with gerrymandering – we have to rely on that option barring no others.

If you have been concerned, frustrated and upset with the direction politics and authority has taken in America; if you have wanted to contribute to finding a means to curb the undermining of our democratic processes, you have that opportunity November 4^th by casting a Yes vote on Prop 50.

If This is Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day, Then Remember Charlie Kirk Correctly

 

October 14 has been declared by Donald Trump as Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day.

That being so, let us remember Mr. Kirk accurately. Charlie Kirk was the Pied Piper of MAGA. Dedicated to Trump and the MAGA agenda, he recruited youth into MAGA through the open doors of Turning Point. Dedicated to Trump, he sent 350 of his youths to participate at Trump’s January 6^th showdown with democracy.

A man's own words reveal the man. Here, then, is Charlie Kirk:

When asked if it is acceptable that people are killed in shootings, Kirk responded: “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so we can have the 2^nd Amendment…” – 4/5/23

We can assume he doesn’t feel any need to have empathy for the shooting victims. “I can’t stand the word empathy… I think it does a lot of damage.” – 9/10/25

Referring to Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Joy Reid, but with the topic of Black women in general, Kirk said “You do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.” – 7/13/23

“We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s… The Civil Rights Act created a beast, and that beast, has turned into an anti-white weapon.” – 4/24

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” – 1/18/24

Of the man Trump and Republicans continue to compare Kirk to, he once said “Martin Luther King was awful. OK? He’s not a good person.” – 12/23

He preached anti-Semitism. “Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies…This is a beast created by secular Jews and now they’re coming for Jews.” – 10/26/23

Does that anti-Semitic blame for a country’s potential problems sound familiar to students of history?

According to Kirk, gays are committing sin, and we owe it to them to wake them up to this fact and not allow events like Gay Pride. “You love (gays) by telling them the truth, not confirming or affirming their sin.”

What is the truth according to Kirk? “In Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death. So, Ms. Rachel (Rachel Accurso, who was championing Gay Pride), you quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. (But) the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” – 6/8/24

“Gay couples are not just happy with marriage; they now want to corrupt your children.” – 4/22

“One issue I think that is so against our senses, so against the natural law and dare I say a throbbing middle finger to God, is the transgender thing happening in America right now.” He followed that up by comparing surgeons who perform transgender surgery to Nazis.  – 9/11/23

He’s tough on politicians who disagree with him. “Joe Biden is a corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.” – 7/4/23

Not so tough on those who attack those who disagree with him. When Paul Pelosi was beaten with a hammer by a Right-Wing fanatic in what the culprit confessed was a failed attempt to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, Kirk weighed in on the plight of the attacker. “Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.” – 10/31/22

And regarding capital punishment, Kirk thinks all executions should be televised. “You could have it brought to you by Coca-Cola, and no, I am not kidding.” – 2/15/24

Not to mention young people should be encouraged to watch. “I think at a certain age it’s an initiation” was his response to two others discussing the possibility of televised executions being age appropriate for children as young as 12. – 2/15/24

It is tragic that Kirk was murdered for his beliefs, for exercising his Freedom of Speech. But those beliefs he championed are racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and cruel. He supported violence as a political solution. These are not American values. And, if we are to honor and celebrate people for their deeds in this country, it should be those who do represent and speak out for American values.

War on Democracy: Trump's Reichstag Moment

 

September 10, 2025, will not only be remembered as the day Right Wing activist Charlie Kirk was murdered, it will be remembered as Donald Trump’s Reichstag moment.

In 1933 Germany’s parliament building – the Reichstag – was ruined in a fire. Arrested on the scene was communist Marinus van der Lubbe. Accused of arson and sentenced to death by a Nazi court, the act of political violence gave Hitler the opportunity to declare war on all political opposition, resulting in censorship, control of the press and the nation’s entertainment, outlawing all political parties other than his own, making unjustified arrests and abandoning due process.

Tyler Robinson is proving to be our van der Lubbe. Kirk’s murder has become Trump’s Reichstag.

Little is known of Robinson and his motive. The limited clues that have been shared with the public is that he was raised in a MAGA family, favored Trump as recently as last year, followed Alt Right Nick Fuentes online and is registered as an independent. We also know he has a transgender lover and that he took offense at Kirk’s condemnation of transgenders for undermining our society. We know he messaged his lover that Kirk’s hatred had to be stopped, and he believed murder was the only recourse.

Yet Trump has invented his own evidence, immediately blaming Left Wing politics and Democrats for the assassination, promising he would seek out and end Left Wing activism and commentary that is critical of him.

Trump has declared “The radical Left causes tremendous violence in our country…I think they hate our country.” He says this even though his own DOJ and FBI data shows 71% of political violence is from Right Wing extremists and only 10% from the Left. Data which Trump had removed from the DOJ website after he made these comments. Trump also ignores that two months earlier a MAGA extremist assassinated a Democratic Senator and her husband; in April another MAGA attempted to murder a Democratic Governor and his family by burning them alive while they slept; and in 2021 MAGA violently attacked the Capitol to overturn election results they did not favor

Trump declared ANTIFA, a loosely knitted conglomeration of people opposed to fascism who do little more than march with signs critical of Trump, a terrorist organization. That makes it against the law to participate in ANTIFA.

Trump has declared war on liberal non-profits such as the Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Type Media Center, threatening to label them terrorist organizations as well and remove their tax-exempt status. He is taking aim at the magazine The Nation.

He has ordered the DOJ and the FBI – two government entities that are supposed to be distanced from the presidency so they are not under political pressure or political direction – to round up his political opponents. The hit list includes Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey, NY AG  Letitia James, his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger among others.

He previously installed Trump loyalist and Project 2025 co-author Brendan Carr as FCC Chair with, in Carr’s own words, to put an end to media criticism of Trump.

Networks that include criticism of Trump, the president says, should lose their licenses. He called negative reporting on him “…really illegal” and that “action should be taken.”

Carr took action this week against critic Jimmy Kimmel. Carr warned ABC affiliates they would suffer consequences if they continued to air Kimmel and that ABC risked losing their broadcasting license. Kimmel was suspended.

Trump has already stated that Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers and The View will be next. Why? “They only give me bad publicity,” Trump explained.

Print media is also targeted. They now must receive authorization from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to report on any unclassified information or activity in the Pentagon.

Visas for foreigners are being canceled if they have made negative comments about Kirk and Trump. Employers are being encouraged to fire employees who harbor negative views of Kirk and Trump. Trump has directed the DOJ to arrest anyone he defines as using “hate speech,” which would impact rights to Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press given Trump’s definition, which is anyone speaking negatively of him, his policies and MAGA, while he himself remains the nation’s most high profile and constant voice of hatred and division.

Trump has attempted to undermine the press, the courts, our system of checks and balances and laid the foundation for a police state prior to the Kirk tragedy. But what is noted today has transpired in a little over a week, which illustrates that this is Trump’s pivotal Reichstag moment to both accelerate and justify his authoritarianism.

Protect Our Children, Protect Our Communities

 

Again, our flags are at half-mast. Again, children are murdered for no other reason than for sport. Again, firearms are the weapon used to slaughter the young.

Fletcher Merkle, age 8. Leaves behind a mommy and a daddy.

Harper Moesky, age 10. Leaves behind a mommy and a daddy.

The two most recent children hunted down for sport while learning their ABC’s in the classroom. In total, there have been 148 children killed in school shootings since 1989. College students at study bring the total to 212.

We are horrified. We are saddened. We are angry…And then we become complacent.

Our lawmakers push speed dial to rush out their monthly texts conveying their “thoughts and prayers” and then just as quickly desert the issue, diverting our attention to the plight of the gas stove and gender identification, for example. It seems that while our children now practice duck-and-cover in case of a future school shooting, our politicians have established their own form of duck-and-cover.

Our leaders’ lack of attention to mass shootings in America is as horrific as the crime itself. This is a crisis, and yet our leaders do nothing in what the entire world clearly sees as America’s disturbing culture of gun violence and mass shootings unique to anywhere else on the planet.

70% of school shooters are teens who either attend the targeted school or once had. In the Catholic school shooting this month it was again a former student who shielded himself outside of the school, firing at his pint-sized targets through a window. What can be done beyond thoughts and prayers to help protect our children at school?

 Surrounding the schools with fencing and a security gate requiring visitors to request access could become a state and/or federally funded necessity. In a survey of America’s teachers, only 18% want to be armed as proposed by many conservative lawmakers. However, having armed security on campus makes sense to many. Increase the age to 21 for gun purchases. Parents who don’t secure their firearms to prevent the youth access to the weapon need to be held legally accountable.

Circling the wagons around our schools wouldn’t have protected the patrons watching a movie at the Aurora Theater, concert goers outside of the Mandalay Bay resort, shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket or clubbers at a Miami nightclub, however.  How do we protect all of us in any situation? We start by identifying the usual contributors: mental illness and guns.

Providing mental health care is essential, but it isn’t the lone factor considering that the Nashville school shooter was receiving mental care and that all countries have a mentally ill population – yet those countries don’t experience 1714 victims mass shootings in the past 25 years as we have had in the US according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government. So, what stands out as a difference between us and other nations? Our gun culture. We are only 5% of the world population, yet we possess 42% of guns in private ownership. That doesn’t equate into cataloguing guns as bad, but when it comes to one firearm, that weapon does need to be placed in a police lineup. 85% of deaths in mass killings are at the barrel of assault weapons.

The statistics suggest that more lives might be saved should this weapon favored by mass murderers be eliminated. Before proposing a ban, outline the benefits of the weapon vs the risks, and if there are conclusive risks, are there alternative firearms that could provide the same benefits? The risks are obvious: in the wrong hands it kills more people in less time than other weapons. For example, at a concert the gunman’s AR15 hit 925 people in less than ten minutes - 58 dead, 867 wounded. As for the benefits, there are far better alternative firearms for hunting – what good is shredding your venison -- and for home security the use of a rifle or handgun in your home is safer for your family and neighbors.

Would a ban work? It did from 1994-2004 when a ban was adopted and the number of mass shootings dropped 17%. When the ban was lifted, mass shootings tripled. Countries that experienced assault weapon mass shootings and then banned assault weapons have not had a mass slaughter since.

At a minimum, requiring universal background checks, gun registration and denying gun ownership to the mentally ill could go far to save lives.

There is evidence that stronger gun policies work. There is evidence that doing nothing has failed. A recent poll reports 71% of Americans want stricter gun laws and 62% want assault weapons banned. It is time our legislators ignored the tantrums of the minority and the dollars of the gun manufacturers’ lobbyists and paid attention to the death toll. Sadly, if you think your Congressman will act by conscience without your nudging, you are wrong. Legislation can be driven by you, if only you would make your voice heard.