San Francisco Settles Lawsuit with Judicial Watch!

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Update: San Francisco Shuts Down Woke Racist Abuse of Tax Dollars
388 Non-Citizens Voted in DC’s November Election
Judicial Watch Sues California Coastal Commission for Records on Lawfare Against Elon Musk
Biden Gun Control Study Omits Obama Gun Running Scandal

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Update: San Francisco Shuts Down Woke Racist Abuse of Tax Dollars

Americans look with amazement at the left-wing extremism in California, especially in San Francisco. But we’re making a difference there.

The City of San Francisco authorized a settlement agreement in our taxpayer lawsuit, agreeing to discontinue its discriminatory guaranteed-income program that favored transgender individuals with a preference for biological black and Latino men who identify as women.

The agreement commits the city to pay $3,250 in attorney’s fees and costs and not to create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.

Ordinance No. 290-24 as passed by a 7-3 vote of the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, and signed by Mayor London Breed, states:

The [San Francisco] City Attorney is hereby authorized to settle the action entitled “Michael Phillips, et al., v. London Breed, et al.,” San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-24- 611915, on substantially the same terms as set forth in the Settlement Agreement.

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The Settlement Agreement provides: (1) payment of $3,250 in attorney’s fees and costs; and (2) injunctive relief agreeing that the City will not continue the guaranteed income program that Paul Wildes and Reed Sandberg alleged to be unlawful beyond September 2024 and an agreement that the City will not create a new guaranteed income program with the same eligibility criteria.

The settlement agreement comes in the lawsuit we filed on January 9, 2024, on behalf of taxpayers against San Francisco Mayor London Breed, City Treasurer Jose Cisneros, the director of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, and City Administrator Carmen Chu for violating the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution (Phillips et al. v Breed et al. (No. 24-611915)).

Mayor Breed announced the launch of the Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) program on November 16, 2022. The mayor’s office stated in a press release that the city would “provide low-income transgender San Franciscans with $1,200 each month, up to 18 months to help address financial insecurity within trans communities.”

This settlement is a huge victory for taxpayers who oppose taxpayer-funded woke racism and transgender extremism. This settlement agreement puts a stop to the illegal use of taxpayer money to hand out free cash to transgender individuals based on race and sex in blatant violation of California’s constitution.

388 Non-Citizens Voted in DC’s November Election

Citizenship means very little in your nation’s capital.

We received a spreadsheet from the District of Columbia Board of Elections revealing that 388 noncitizens voted in DC’s November 2024 general election.

While federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, states and localities may allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. In 2023, the DC Council amended the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 to allow all noncitizen residents, including illegal aliens, to vote in its local elections.

More than 230 of the noncitizens who voted are registered Democrats, the list shows. Less than 20 are registered Republicans. The remainder did not register with a party or registered with a third party. The list does not detail whether the voters are illegal aliens nor whether the noncitizen voters were restricted, as law requires, to voting for only local DC offices.

The noncitizen voter information was produced in response to our December 2, 2024, DC Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for:

Public records identifying the number of non-citizens who voted in the November 2024 General Election; including, information about the wards in which they are located, their party affiliation, and the designators for the ballots they received

In July 2024, we reported that data from the District of Columbia Board of Elections revealed that 113 noncitizens voted in the June “2024 Presidential Primary.”

It is an outrage and insult to every American citizen, and may be a violation of federal law, that DC allowed 388 foreign nationals to vote in the 2024 general election. Congress can and should end this practice immediately.

In May 2024, we received records from the District of Columbia, explaining to illegal aliens and other noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.

In July 2024, we uncovered records showing that, as of June 2024, 583 foreign nationals are registered to vote in Washington, DC. The records from the Board of Elections also confirm that noncitizens can be election workers.

In December 2023, a notice letter was sent to election officials in the District of Columbia notifying them of evident violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), based on their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The letter pointed out that D.C. publicly reported removing few or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The letter threatened a federal lawsuit unless the violations were corrected in a timely fashion. In response to our  inquiries, Washington, DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove 37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”

Again, the new Congress should follow Judicial Watch’s lead and takes action to restore the rule of law in Washington DC’s local government!

Judicial Watch Sues California Coastal Commission for Records on Lawfare Against Elon Musk

The Left’s lawfare is not reserved exclusively for Donald Trump. Elon Musk is also a victim.

We sued the California Coastal Commission for records about the decision to prohibit more Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) rockets from launching out of Vandenberg Space Force Base (Judicial Watch Inc. v. California Coastal Commission (No. CPF-24-518820)).

Are you surprised that a member of the Commission specifically tied her vote against Musk and SpaceX to Musk’s support for President Trump?

Judicial Watch sued in the Superior Court for the County of San Francisco after the Coastal Commission failed to comply with an October 16, 2024, California Public Records Act request for records and communications of commissioners regarding SpaceX, Elon Musk, Starlink, Donald Trump, and rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

On October 15, 2024, SpaceX sued the California Coastal Commission citing that the agency “egregiously and unlawfully overreaching its authority” when it “engaged in naked political discrimination,” punishing “a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO,” who is Elon Musk.

The suit recounts an extensive history of SpaceX launches of the Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg: “For decades, the Commission has, without fail, agreed with the longstanding position of the U.S. Department of the Air Force (Air Force) that the Base’s commercial space launch programs are federal agency activities that are not subject to Commission’s permitting authority or control.” Further:

Now, however … the Commission has decided to ignore longstanding federal policy and law, its own established practices … to impose a different standard on SpaceX. Specifically, the Commission refused to concur with a proposal by the United States Department of the Air Force to increase from 36 to 50 the number of launches that SpaceX can perform at the Base.

The suit refers to an October 10, 2024, Coastal Commission meeting during which they voted 6-4 to deny the request to allow more SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base:

As Commissioner Caryl Hart said: the basis for the decision was not that a commercial operator with a space launch program at the Base was increasing its annual launch cadence, but rather that SpaceX was doing so: “The concern is with SpaceX increasing its launches, not with the other companies increasing their launches . . . we’re dealing with a company . . . the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the Presidential race and made it clear what his point of view is.”

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To make it even clearer that the Commission’s decision was based on its political biases and other irrelevant, misplaced concerns, the Commission recently approved another commercial space launch operator launching up to 60 launches a year from the same Base, accepting that this operator’s launch program, including commercial launches, are federal agency activities.

The powerful California Coastal Commission engaged in naked lawfare and abuse against Elon Musk and SpaceX because of his support for Trump. And now the powerful agency wants to cover up its abuse by illicitly hiding records from the public. Judicial Watch is going to court to remind this agency that it is not above the law.

Biden Gun Control Study Omits Obama Gun Running Scandal

Remember Barack Obama’s and Eric Holder’s deadly gun running scandal called Fast and Furious? Joe Biden’s bureaucrats are pretending they have forgotten. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

The Biden administration’s long-winded project aimed at reducing gun violence by examining criminal gun trafficking over two decades conveniently omits Obama’s disastrous Mexican gun running operation that let drug traffickers obtain U.S.-sold weapons. Known as Fast and Furious, the failed experiment was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which were used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

In 2021 Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the same agency that orchestrated that fiasco, the ATF, to lead a drawn-out comprehensive study, known as National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA), aimed at curbing gun violence and illegal gun trafficking across the nation. This week the Department of Justice (DOJ) published the final volume of the extensive four-part series, which claims to include an in-depth analysis of how firearms enter illegal markets and fall into the wrong hands, including Mexican drug cartels. The analysis covers 20 years of data and is vital to helping law enforcement nationwide solve crimes and take shooters off the street, according to Garland. “This landmark series represents the most thorough research, analysis, and examination ever of firearms commerce and how firearms enter illegal markets and fall into the wrong hands,” reads a DOJ statement announcing the final NFCTA report this week.

The agency, charged with upholding the rule of law and keeping the country safe, defines criminal gun trafficking as the intentional movement of firearms into the illegal market for a criminal purpose or possession. “This final volume of the NFCTA concludes the most comprehensive look at America’s crime gun data in over two decades and confirms that ATF’s advanced intelligence tools are vital to helping law enforcement nationwide solve gun crimes and take shooters off the streets,” Garland says in the DOJ statement, adding that the expanded use of ATF’s crime gun tracing has provided more investigative leads than ever on violent gun crimes and improved the apprehension and prosecution of violent criminals. In the press release Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco is quoted saying: “From conducting enhanced background checks to stopping firearms trafficking by cartels, the Department has prioritized addressing the most significant drivers of violent crime and identifying emerging threats to our communities.” She adds that the government needs to “bring more crime gun intelligence to more law enforcement agencies.”

Yet the exhaustive probe fails to mention Fast and Furious, a major scheme that illicitly sent firearms south of the border under the leadership of Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, who was cited for contempt by Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to the botched operation. The portion of the report dedicated to the southwest border only reveals that firearms originating in the U.S. and recovered in Mexico between 2017 and 2021 represented 74% of all international crime guns traced to a purchaser. It also states that crime guns recovered in Mexico often originate from firearm transfers at Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) in four Mexican border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. “Further analysis indicates that transnational gun traffickers exploit the same criminal channels to divert firearms from legal commerce as domestic gun traffickers,” the report states, adding that relative to all other states the four Mexican border states had a notably higher proportion of “lawful” firearm sales from an unlicensed seller to an unlicensed buyer. “For Mexico crime gun trace requests submitted between 2022 and 2023, 36% (18,206 of 50,409) were traced to a purchaser in the U.S.,” the report says, adding that the guns were not part of lawful exports to Mexico.

Perhaps some were part of the Fast and Furious debacle. In 2016, Judicial Watch obtained Justice Department documents showing that Fast and Furious weapons were widely used by members of major Mexican drug cartels, including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel. The documents reveal that 94 Fast and Furious firearms were recovered in Mexico City and 12 Mexican states, with the majority being seized in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa. Of the weapons recovered, 82 were rifles and 12 were pistols. Twenty were involved in “violent recoveries,” which means they were utilized in several mass killings. Among them was a .50 caliber rifle seized from Guzman’s hideout in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was eventually arrested.

Until next week,

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