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Felton Fire leaders have proposed a charge on property owners to maintain an independent district. (Amaya Edwards —Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

FELTON >> Property owners in Felton Fire Protection District are considering a new annual charge that could help the embattled district secure a future with paid fire staff. The district has faced years of mounting pension debt, decreasing volunteers and a rotation of chiefs, leaving residents uncertain about its future.

Supporters — including Felton Fire leaders — say the proposed property assessment would be the most cost-effective option, and would provide the best response to 911 calls. But detractors question whether the proposed $1.7 million income boost is truly needed.

If the assessment fails, Felton Fire could dissolve or try again to pass a different tax or assessment. Felton Fire leaders said that without a cash infusion, the district could run out of money to pay staff and volunteers by 2028.

(function() { window.mc4wp = window.mc4wp || { listeners: [], forms: { on: function(evt, cb) { window.mc4wp.listeners.push( { event : evt, callback: cb } ); } } } })(); Stay informed on Santa Cruz County’s biggest issues. Santa Cruz Local’s newsletter breaks down complex local topics and shows residents how to get involved. Email address:
mc4wp.forms.on('subscribed', function(form) { // gtag.js if(form.id == '6954') { gtag('event', 'subscribe', {'event_category': 'newsletter_prompt', 'event_label':'top_of_story'}); } }); Leave this field empty if you're human: Key Takeaways

• Property owners can turn in mail-in ballots until July 24. Owners who would pay more get a bigger say. 
• If the tax isn’t approved, Felton Fire leaders could propose another way to raise money, or ask another agency to take over. 
• It’s unclear if other agencies would be willing to absorb Felton Fire, or how much residents would pay.
• Volunteer-driven response is currently meeting the community’s need, but is unsustainable, Felton Fire leaders said.
• Regardless of the vote outcome, emergency service will continue.

What is the assessment, and how do I vote?

The property assessment is proposed under state Proposition 218, which differs from elections for parcel taxes and bonds. Only property owners can vote, and each vote is weighted according to the amount they would pay — essentially, those who would pay more get a bigger say. The assessment requires 50% approval of the weighted ballots. 

Ballots were mailed out in late May and must be returned by July 24. They may be submitted:

• By mail, using a pre-paid envelope included with the ballot. Send to 131 Kirby St., Felton, CA 95018. 
• In person by July 24 at the Felton Fire district office at 131 Kirby St. in Felton.
• In person at a public hearing for the assessment, 6 p.m. July 24. 

Voters who want to change their vote or request a replacement ballot can call 831-335-4422.

Property owners who believe the assessment doesn’t comply with the California Constitution have until July 6 to submit a written objection. If the assessment is approved, it may only be challenged in court by those who have submitted a constitutional objection.

Who would pay, and how much?

The assessment must also be priced according to how much each property owner would benefit from the improved service. The assessments have been priced according to property use, property value, fire hazard and distance to the station.

Each ballot includes the amount of the property’s proposed assessment. A typical single-family home would be assessed $697.43 annually. The assessment can increase up to 3% a year to match inflation. A citizen panel would annually review Felton Fire’s finances and assessment spending.

All properties are legally required to pay the tax. But though homeowners could face a lien for non-payment, churches, nonprofits, or government buildings like schools would not.

What would the assessment pay for?

Felton Fire collects about $1.1 million annually through property taxes. The new tax would increase the district’s revenue to $2.8 million.

The district has long relied on volunteer firefighters. Until 2024, it also had a part-time administrator, a full-time chief and up to two full-time firefighters and two full-time captains. But the district can no longer afford the full-time employees, said Interim Chief Issac Blum, and is currently staffed entirely by volunteers. 

Volunteers receive a $120 stipend for a 12-hour shift. Blum receives up to a $2,500 stipend each month, though some months he has opted not to take it, he said. Blum said he usually works at the station four days a week, in addition to a full-time paid position at NASA Ames research center near Mountain View.

Blum said he intends to vacate his volunteer position at the end of the summer. The board is interviewing six candidates for the role, one of whom is set to receive a job offer after the assessment vote. If the board offered him the role, “I would have to think very hard about it,” he said. “What we want to ensure the next fire chief is the best person for the job.”

About $1.6 million of the expanded $2.8 million budget would go to training and salaries, including health care and retirement:

• A full-time chief and for $166,000 to $193,000 base pay. 
• Three fire captains.
• Six firefighters. The staffing plan also accounts for two on-call volunteer firefighters.  

The Proposition 218 assessment must be linked to the cost of a specific benefit to property owners. In this case, Felton Fire leaders say, the money would allow the re-hiring of three full-time firefighters and a full-time chief, ensuring faster response times and more firefighters responding. It would also pay for training and equipment.

District leaders previously considered a $700 parcel tax before pursuing the assessment.

What happens if the tax doesn’t pass?

If property owners reject the proposed assessment, the station will not immediately close, and 911 calls will still be answered. The station’s reserves are expected to be mostly depleted by an agreement underway to exit California’s CalPERS pension system, a move to make future hires less costly.

The reserves have enough money to also cover a $400,000 shortfall in this year’s budget and staff the station for one year with a slightly larger paid staff — a chief, two fire captains and an administrative assistant.

Without an assessment, the station may not have enough money to continue to maintain that staffing after 2028, Blum said.

If the assessment fails, Felton Fire leaders could propose a lower assessment, or renew efforts for a parcel tax. Director Erica Schwanbeck said she is unsure if she would propose another revenue measure or move towards dissolving. 

“I would hope that there’s a through road there” to continue without dissolution, “but I don’t know for how long.” she said.

Could another agency absorb Felton Fire?

If Felton Fire leaders are unable to find a sustainable way to provide emergency response, they could ask another fire agency to absorb the district. But no district would be obligated to take on Felton Fire’s coverage area.

A 2025 report from the Local Area Formation Commission of Santa Cruz County included a dozen possibilities for Felton Fire’s future. The report’s four top-ranked options are to be absorbed by another fire agency. 

One of those agencies is County Service Area 48, also known as Santa Cruz County Fire. The agency is part of the county government, though leaders have discussed becoming an independent fire district. CSA 48 has two existing assessments, which total about $367 for a typical single-family home. But if CSA 48 takes over Felton Fire, it could decide that the existing assessments won’t be enough to provide service to Felton residents, and propose an increase.

CSA 48 is in the process of absorbing Pajaro Valley Fire Protection District, which opted to dissolve after years of unsuccessful tax proposals. Pajaro Valley Fire Chief Dave Martone said the move is a win for residents, who will now have more robust emergency service. Martone did not take a position on the Felton assessment.

Former interim Aptos/La Selva Fire Chief Don Jarvis, a Pajaro Valley Fire District resident and past consultant for LAFCO, presented the South County dissolution as a cautionary tale for Felton Fire residents. Single-family homeowners will pay more to CSA 48 than what Pajaro Valley Fire proposed as an assessment. It’s unclear how much CSA 48 would charge Felton property owners if it absorbed the area. A county spokesperson declined to comment on whether CSA 48 would be willing to absorb Felton Fire, or how much it would charge.

The neighboring Zayante Fire Protection District could also offer to absorb Felton Fire. Zayante Fire Chief Jeff Maxwell said that neither he nor Zayante Fire’s board of directors have taken a position on the tax or the possibility of taking on Felton Fire’s service area, and that said Felton Fire leaders have not reached out to discuss the issue.

Blum said Zayante’s staffing model wouldn’t work for Felton Fire long-term. Zayante, which takes on fewer calls than Felton Fire, employs two daytime fire fighters and relies on volunteers at night. Like CSA 48, Zayante Fire leaders could decide they need to raise taxes to take on the expanded service, he said.

“Maybe we could tread water for a few years, but the reality is that it still does not provide a long-term solution for the Felton community,” Blum said. 

Ultimately, Felton Fire residents will not have a firm idea of how much a takeover would cost until the district signals an intent to dissolve.

LAFCO Executive Officer Joe Serrano had encouraged directors last year to start the dissolution process at the same time they pursued a new assessment, to create a “Plan B” in case it fails. That would have triggered a process for LAFCO to consult with neighboring fire agencies and create a report on the possible cost and viability of being absorbed by another agency. The directors opted not to start that process, leaving the other options unclear.

“It’s a little misleading to say that there’s other options out there,” Serrano said. “There are, but there’s no analysis, there’s no commitment, there’s nothing.”

Does Felton Fire need 24-hour paid staff?

Supporters of the assessment say that it assures an industry-standard three-person response to emergencies — and it makes a four-person response, with the assistance of a chief or volunteer, more likely.

Labor protection laws stipulate that with fewer than four people, fire fighters can enter a burning building only for search and rescue. With four people, two can enter to fight the fire from within while two stand outside.

Felton Fire has 25 volunteer fire fighters, including 21 with enough training to respond to calls, Blum said, but only three live in Felton. The rest may not be available on short notice.

Blum attributes the difficulty of recruiting local volunteers to the increasing gentrification of the San Lorenzo Valley with more commuters to Silicon Valley. Within a decade, “you’re going to see this transition all the way through the valley,” he said.

Maxwell, the Zayante Fire chief, said his agency has had success hiring daytime staff while relying on local volunteers for nighttime coverage. “I think it takes strong leadership to create an environment that is welcoming for those members of the community,” he said. “It’s absolutely not easy.”

Serrano said the fact that other agencies have survived on a smaller budget thus far doesn’t mean the model is sustainable long term.

“If you lose your legacy fire chief and you have to hire someone new, you know, they may not want to take a pay cut like the current fire chief is taking,” he said. “You can easily compare somebody, but at the end of the day, Felton Fire is struggling with its current model, and it’s looking for ways to address that.”

If voters approve the assessment but later push to reduce paid staffing, fees could be lowered with the vote of three board members.

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Telco giant T-Mobile appears to be transitioning away from VMware and fighting a court battle for support it says Broadcom is bound to provide, according to court documents seen by The Register. The dispute relates to a deal T-Mobile struck with VMware in August 2023, which saw the telco acquire perpetual licenses and two years of support for some software, plus the option for a further year of support. When Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023, it stopped selling perpetual licenses and standalone support deals for customers with those licenses. Broadcom also reduced the virtualization giant’s product range from over 150 products to two subscription-only bundles. Broadcom now mostly sells its Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Customers including AT&T and Tesco tried to exercise their right to extended support, but Broadcom declined to do so. AT&T settled on confidential terms. Tesco is pursuing the matter in the courts. When customers exercise their option for extended support, Broadcom argues it can’t deliver because the products covered by the contract don’t exist anymore, its contracts allow it to deny support for dead products, and subscriptions are now the industry standard. T-Mobile started using VMware’s products in 2008 and, per court documents, runs it on at least 303,000 CPU cores. In one hearing, the carrier’s counsel described T-Mobile’s VMware implementation as “the base of the entire internal network” and “the place where 1,000 applications reside.” Court documents allege that in 2024 Broadcom notified T-Mobile it would not renew support after the initial two-year deal expired in 2025. The two parties kept talking about possible new arrangements. T-Mobile also sought an injunction that would compel Broadcom to provide extended support. Broadcom opposed the injunction, arguing that T-Mobile deliberately waited too long to seek it. At one point T-Mobile suggested a $20 million deal for another two years of support. An affirmation filed last week by T-Mobile vice president of technology Kevin Luu says the carrier sought that arrangement “to be able to complete T-Mobile’s transition away from VMware at a more deliberate pace.” The court eventually granted the injunction forcing Broadcom to offer support beyond August 2025, but required T-Mobile to pay $5.28 million and post a $500,000 undertaking. Broadcom continued to provide support but also sought damages on grounds that the injunction meant it missed out on a new deal with T-Mobile. The telco has rubbished that argument in part because the two parties were still talking about a new deal. Broadcom later proposed to charge $24 million for extended support covering six products, a sum it said would cover over 20 staff needed to support T-Mobile. The carrier fired back by pointing out that it has made just two support calls in 2026, which hardly justifies such a massive staff and expense. The matter is now somewhat urgent because the injunction expires on August 3, 2026, so T-Mobile may soon be unable to get support for its very substantial VMware estate. We’ve asked the carrier how it will cope if it can’t get support but haven’t received a response at the time of writing. One fascinating wrinkle in the case is that the presiding judge, The Honorable Jennifer G. Shecter, also heard the case between VMware and AT&T. The parties reached a confidential settlement in that case, but in in an October 2025 hearing Shecter said she thinks T-Mobile’s case is stronger than AT&T’s. “I think this case is even more compelling and to be sure I was very compelled both in AT&T and very convinced,” she said. VMware’s counsel argued that the cases differ because AT&T acted quickly, but T-Mobile waited many months before seeking extended support and an injunction. “Just to give some perspective, there are 10,000 customers. Thousands upon thousands have successfully migrated to subscription,” VMware’s counsel argued. “T-Mobile is the outlier here that is in litigation. AT&T is the other outlier. Thousands upon thousands of customers have already transferred under these sorts of provisions and accepted and understood that end of availability applies.” VMware last week named one of those customers that signed up for VCF: the UK’s Nationwide Building Society. But Judge Schecter was not convinced by the argument that T-Mobile and AT&T are outliers, suggesting that some customers “don’t just want to fight Broadcom. I don't know. Or it's not worth it and maybe they're smaller scale and transitioning is easier.” Broadcom argues that customers who move to VCF subscriptions emerge with a more efficient infrastructure that can help to improve overall business performance, and points to strong revenue growth for VMware as evidence its strategy is appreciated and working. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• Netflix is using AI to recreate Gene Wilder’s voice for its upcoming competition series Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.

For some reason, Netflix is making a competition reality show based on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. No, it is not about an eccentric rich man who kills children and gets away with it. This show will have 12 golden ticket winners who have to “navigate a series of Wonka’s games, tests, and temptations designed to challenge them physically, mentally, and morally.” The sets take inspiration from the infamous 1971 movie starring Gene Wilder as the titular character. And, in groan-inducing news, Netflix will use AI to recreate Gene Wilder’s voice for Wonka’s The Golden Ticket. 

You can check out a taste of what to expect in this show in the video above. Apparently, Netflix and Eureka Productions got permission from Gene Wilder’s estate to use an AI generated version of his voice. Wilder passed away in 2016 before AI really started to gain the foothold it now has in the entertainment industry. We don’t know what his feelings would’ve been about this choice. But we are sad that he doesn’t get to have a choice about his likeness in this show. However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, his wife is in charge of his estate and made a statement supporting this move.

Netflix/Paramount Pictures

“More than five decades after Gene brought Willy Wonka to life, people of all ages and backgrounds around the world continue to find joy, laughter and inspiration in his performance,” said Karen B. Wilder, Gene Wilder’s wife, on behalf of the Gene Wilder estate. “Gene had a remarkable ability to bring humor, wonder and heart into people’s lives, and that connection has endured for generations. We are delighted that Wonka’s The Golden Ticket celebrates the warmth and imagination that he brought to the role, introducing that magic to a new generation while honoring the fans who have cherished it for decades.” 

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Wonka’s The Golden Ticket will premiere on Netflix on September 23.

The post Netflix Recreated Gene Wilder’s Voice With AI for WONKA’S THE GOLDEN TICKET appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• DC’s Absolute series, featuring Batman, Catwoman, Wonder Woman, and more, have become their most popular lines.
• Now, Green Arrow joins them with his own gritty alternate storyline.
• Issues #1 and #2 have come out, told from the perspective of Absolute Black Canary a.k.a. Dinah Lance.

It is no secret that DC’s new Absolute comic line is doing well. From Batman to Wonder Woman, classic heroes are getting their time to shine in alternate, gritty storylines. Absolute Green Arrow is one of the newest installments in the series, and its first issue officially surpassed Absolute Batman‘s in preorders. According to PopVerse, the first printing of the first issue was 300,000 copies. With each selling at $4.99 an issue, that is over $1.4 million to DC on a first printing. It sold out immediately, and its second printing came out on June 17.

DC Comics

The Absolute series is all about changing canon, essential character-building events in the lives of heroes. In Absolute Batman, this means Bruce Wayne grew up in Crime Alley, creating Batman without the unlimited budget. He doesn’t kill, but he definitely doesn’t show as much restraint as other iterations of Bruce Wayne. He is brutal and unforgiving. In Absolute Wonder Woman, Circe raised Diana in Hell. The circumstances in the Absolute series change the characters in fundamental ways, but also answer the “what if” questions.

Absolute Green Arrow is a ruthless killer, targeting corrupt and predatory billionaires. Absolute Evil, released in October 2025, was our introduction to this version of Green Arrow, an entry-level vigilante hoping to kill the DC equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein. It also showed that the group labeled the “Justice League” in this universe is made up of billionaire villains. That comic revealed the “Justice League” had murdered Oliver Queen. Now, audiences are curious who, if not Queen, will take the helm from this murderous Robin Hood. Or, did Queen somehow survive? Is it a group hiding behind one unified identity? The story is told from the perspective of an ex-lover, Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Absolute Black Canary. This ex-MMA fighter-turned-bodyguard takes on investigating a series of killings linked to Oliver Queen and committed with his trademark green arrows.

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The series brings in horror elements, too. We have seen that style developed in other Absolute series, which don’t shy away from blood, suspense, and disgusting monstrosities of villains.

The preorder frenzy on Green Arrow is more than just a testament to the public’s love for Oliver Queen—it says a lot about the popularity of the Absolute series itself. Audiences are loving these gritty reimaginings of their favorite heroes. Green Arrow came at a great time for the comic line, especially with Absolute Batman getting an animated series. This popularity may open the doors for the series to continue to grow.

Issue #3 of Absolute Green Arrow is expected to come out sometime in July.

The post ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW Presales Surpassed ABSOLUTE BATMAN 1 appeared first on Nerdist.

When Donald Trump returned to the White House, one industry was convinced it had finally elected its champion: crypto. Trump didn’t just promise lighter regulation on cryptocurrency. He declared himself America’s “crypto president.” He vowed to make the United States the crypto capital of the world. He appointed a White House crypto czar, David Sacks. He hosted crypto executives at an…

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Remember the right-wing families who moved to Russia? Here’s where they are now. Spoiler alert: It’s not going well. Supreme Court’s leader doesn’t care about the Constitution The justices’ pocketbooks are sacred, but anything else is up for grabs.

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What if one pitch changed everything? The next company nobody has heard of yet is building something that will matter. It could be yours.

Now more than ever, we modern-day court jesters need your support! Become a paid subscriber to any (or all!) of the platforms below to keep Keef gentleman-cartooning into the future and beyond! www.patreon.com/keefknight keithknight.substack.com ko-fi.com/… kchronicles.com/… Related | Trump threatens to sue over reporting on Reflecting Pool scandal…

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Claude Code users are reporting that the app is silently deleting conversation transcripts – yours may even already be gone if you don’t know to change a default setting that the platform never bothers to tell users about. Claude Code’s GitHub repo features multiple open issues from the past couple of months, as users of the coding tool are finding their conversation transcripts gone. The problem appears to come down to the cleanupPeriodDays configuration option, which defaults to 30 days and runs every time Claude Code starts up, wiping out any .jsonl file it finds that isn’t fresh enough. Anthropic suggested the blame lies with users for not checking the documentation, telling The Register that the 30-day erasure policy has been there since Claude's launch as a security measure, and is documented. "Keeping plain text transcripts of coding sessions on disk indefinitely creates real security and privacy risks, since they can contain source code, credentials, and other sensitive material," the company said in a statement. "The 30-day default balances the ability to resume recent work against not holding that data on disk longer than needed. This has been part of Claude Code's design since launch as a security measure." This might not be such a huge deal if Claude Code bothered to inform 8naware users that their 30-day-old conversations with the bot would be wiped out the next time they opened the application, or informed them that the setting exists. But users are saying that's not the case. “Cleanup runs out of the box with no install-time disclosure or first-run dialog,” GitHub user FTSBrand wrote in his original post, which has since become the issue of record. “Users who treat their conversation history as durable working knowledge are silently mistaken about the persistence model.” Another user in their own issue thread reports that code and git history for a project remained after the cleanup wipe, “but the reasoning trail - design discussions, debugging context, analysis - is gone.” “For research work that context is the artifact,” GitHub user joekhochstetter said. This cleanup feature appears to bypass any form of recovery, with no soft-deletion option, grace period, or option to restore. User reports also suggest there’s no log of what’s deleted either, leaving people with no way to confirm what’s been wiped after it happens. Moreover, one might assume that simply changing the retention period to a higher number would render the issue irrelevant, but several users say setting a large value for retention isn’t working properly. GitHub user ojura’s root cause analysis suggests that’s because deletion is keyed to a transcript’s mtime (modification time) rather than its actual last activity timestamp. "Because mtime is externally mutable, anything that touches it flips the outcome: a restore, a sync client, or a script that sets mtimes to a session's true (old) last-activity date makes a present session look old, and it is silently deleted on the next sweep,” ojura explained. The only solution in the thread is to ensure Claude Code transcripts are backed up, with several different iterations of such a workaround suggested. That hasn’t been enough to satisfy some Claude Coders - they want it fixed. “Backups are good hygiene, but they don't replace product-level disclosure/provenance for a destructive retention sweep,” writes GitHub user caioribeiroclw-pixel. ®

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In a bit of news that we all should have seen coming, President Donald Trump is using a secret no-bid contract—that means taxpayer dollars, y’all—to build his big, dumb ballroom. How much, you ask? Just a wee bit, hardly worth mentioning, really: $500 million. Honestly, this whole thing is like a greatest hits of how Trump has utterly corrupted the government. First…

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The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to curb birthright citizenship on Monday, dealing a crushing blow to the administration’s efforts to redefine a central tenet of the American constitutional order.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote for the court in Trump v. Barbara. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Roberts was joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a fellow conservative, as well as the court’s three liberal members: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Standing athwart the majority were Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, who all wrote separate dissenting opinions.

Thomas, who led the charge, argued that the Citizenship Clause meant to affirm citizenship only for formerly enslaved Black Americans after the Civil War. He leaned heavily on the idea that one’s parents must be “domiciled” in the United States to acquire U.S. citizenship at birth, as well as a burst of right-wing legal “scholarship” that emerged last year to sloppily backfill a legal rationale for Trump’s executive order.

“I am not sure that today’s opinion will stand the test of time,” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “The Citizenship Clause ‘added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship.’ Today’s opinion devalues that citizenship.” Alito, who wrote separately, also lamented that the court had “made a serious mistake” in his view in “one of the most important decisions in the history of the court.”

Alito is right, if nothing else, about the decision’s significance. By affirming the longstanding rule of birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court prevented the Trump administration from robbing millions of Americans of their constitutional right to live in the only country that they have ever known. In short, as our nation’s 250th anniversary nears, it is a victory worth celebrating.

Congress and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 to resolve a variety of post-Civil War legal disputes, mainly involving the rights of formerly enslaved Black Americans in the South. Among the amendment’s provisions is the Citizenship Clause, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already affirmed the citizenship of formerly enslaved Americans by statute, but Republicans in Congress sought to entrench it even further and place questions of citizenship beyond future political dispute. The Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification also permanently nullified the Supreme Court’s disastrous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford that held, among other things, that people of African descent could never become citizens of the United States.

The Citizenship Clause’s sole exception was for people who were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States at birth. This language applied, according to contemporaries, to children born to foreign diplomats who possess diplomatic immunity, as well as to Native Americans living under tribal governments beyond U.S. jurisdiction. The former exception is still operative; the latter was superseded by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, in which Congress extended U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans by statute.

In 1898, the Supreme Court affirmed the clause’s protection of birthright citizenship in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The plaintiff was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who had emigrated to California prior to the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Acts. They returned to China with Wong in the 1870s, where he lived until adulthood before returning to California multiple times. On the second trip, in 1895, customs officials detained Wong and denied him permission to enter the country because, in their view, he was not a U.S. citizen.

The Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion when it ruled on the case three years later. Justice Horace Gray, writing for the high court, held that Wong had acquired U.S. citizenship by virtue of his birth on U.S. soil, even though his parents were not U.S. citizens themselves and later returned to China. As a result, the court affirmed the principle of birthright citizenship for anyone within U.S. jurisdiction. The Nationality Act of 1940 later repeated the clause’s language into statutory law.

At odds with this longstanding view of American citizenship is the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has long viewed himself as the arbiter of who is and isn’t an American. His initial entry into the American political scene came in the early 2010s when he falsely claimed that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus not a natural-born citizen. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump also proposed ending birthright citizenship, but he did not seriously pursue it during his first term.

On the first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” It claimed that the Citizenship Clause only meant to extend citizenship to people of African descent who had been denied it by Dred Scott. Trump ordered the executive branch to deny recognition of U.S. citizenship to children born on U.S. soil whose mother and father were undocumented immigrants or on temporary visas. Legal challenges naturally followed.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, Trump and his allies had congealed around a few overlapping arguments. They argued that “children of temporarily present aliens” and “children of illegal aliens” were not subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction. Proponents had to add “political” to the clause’s text because the idea that they weren’t subject to the ordinary jurisdiction of the United States is patently absurd: They can be arrested, sued, fined, taxed, and so on.

The Justice Department also argued that their interpretation did not clash with Wong Kim Ark by leaning heavily on that decision’s references to Wong’s parents as domiciled in the United States. Again, there was some flubbing here. The administration had to add “lawfully” to “domiciled” to read the concept of illegal immigration into the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a concept did not exist in American law or practice in 1869.

Roberts, writing for the court, dispensed with this nonsense handily. He traced the American law of citizenship back to its British roots. (I’ll refer to those origins as “British” for coherence’s sake even though some sources predate the Act of Union 1707.) British subjecthood, Roberts explained, was a reciprocal relationship between king and subject. It did not extend to those born to foreign diplomats, who served another sovereign, or to those born under foreign occupation.

That relationship attached at birth under British law. “A foreign mother could enter the British Isles, give birth, and leave with her child the very next day, and that child would remain a British subject,” Roberts explained, citing a famous 1608 decision known as Calvin’s Case. “Why? Because the child owed an implied allegiance to the sovereign who protected him at his birth—no matter how ‘momentary and uncertain’ his presence in the King’s realms.”

Even children born to parents “subject to expulsion,” the chief justice wrote, fell under that rule. “For those children, and all others born in Britain, the rule was the same: With protection came allegiance, and with allegiance came the status of a natural-born subject,” he wrote. This rule “crossed the Atlantic with the colonists” and was “adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” albeit by changing “subject” to “citizen.”

Deviating from this norm were Southern states that held the children of slaves in permanent servitude. “The common law ‘made no distinction on account of race or color” when it came to citizenship, Roberts explained. “But the slave states did.” Dred Scott, the chief justice wrote, “imposed the Southern states’ beliefs onto the nation. […] For them, blood, not soil, was made the rule.” Only through the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification was the proper rule restored, which endures to the present day.

Describing this as a 5-4 ruling or a 6-3 ruling would oversimplify the different positions of the dissenting justices. The only justice who endorsed the executive order in its entirety was Alito. His 39-page dissent is primarily focused on undocumented immigration, writing at length about various policy decisions since the 1970s that led to the current status quo.

“As a result of the events of the past 50 years, the United States now has a huge contingent of people who entered or remained in this country illegally, as well as a large group of people who were born here to such parents,” Alito wrote. “The Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment makes all the members of this latter group citizens.”

Alito disputed Roberts’ account of the rule of citizenship before 1869. In his view, it was “unsettled” and there was “little litigation about the meaning of American citizenship.” He argued that the Citizenship Clause established a new rule that only children who are “not subject to any foreign power.” Alito is also the only justice who took issue with Wong Kim Ark itself, arguing at first that it “showed little respect for precedent” before reconciling himself to a much narrower reading of it.

Towards the end of his dissent, with a whiff of desperation, he also claimed there were national-security risks to the majority’s approach due to birth tourism. “Suppose that country is a strategic adversary or enemy of the United States,” he warned. “Suppose the child never visited the United States while growing up and was inculcated with hatred of this country. According to the Court, that person is a citizen of the United States.” One hypothetical person’s imaginary crime does not seem like a very good reason to exclude millions of people from American citizenship.

Alito’s position drew the support of no other justice. The only other isolationist was Kavanaugh, who concurred with the majority on the outcome but sharply disagreed on how to reach the result. Kavanaugh disagreed with the court’s interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, but argued that the executive order was still invalid because it ran counter to a provision in federal immigration law known as Section 1401(a).

Section 1401 defines those who are “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth,” and Subsection (a) says that one of the categories is “a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” In other words, it simply restates the relevant text of the Fourteenth Amendment. If you are baffled by this approach, you are not alone. Both the government and the plaintiffs stipulated at oral arguments that the clause and the statute should be read identically. No other justice adopted this interpretation either.

This too-clever-by-half approach allows Kavanaugh to vote with the majority on the outcome, but also propose that Congress could end birthright citizenship by legislation—namely, the legislation that merely repeats the Citizenship Clause. He argued that the clause’s exceptions were not fixed or closed at ratification; instead, Congress or the courts could add new ones to confront new situations.

This is not really how the Constitution or citizenship works, either. As Roberts said, citizenship is essentially the “right to have other rights.” Even Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch highlight its special significance in their own opinions, and they all found constitutional principles to anchor it in, disparate as they may be. Kavanaugh’s approach is simply “we’ll know it when we see it.”

The third and most important dissent is by Thomas, which Gorsuch joined. The court’s seniormost justice argued for narrowing the Citizenship Clause by hinging its application on the parents’ domicile status. “Both the Civil Rights Act [of 1866] and the Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizenship to persons born and domiciled in the United States regardless of their race,” he wrote. “Neither guaranteed citizenship to persons who were not domiciled in the United States.”

It is worth noting, of course, that the word “domicile” is not present in either the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the Citizenship Clause. It can be found instead in Wong Kim Ark, where the court frequently noted that Wong’s parents were “domiciled” in San Francisco when he was born. Roberts interprets this language to be merely descriptive; as he noted, this conflation of domicile with citizenship does not follow either historical practice or common understanding.

This emphasis on domicile does not take Thomas and Gorsuch as far afield from Roberts’ majority opinion as it may seem. Indeed, in some crucial ways, they are much closer to the majority than to the other dissenters or the government. The greatest gap with Roberts is with children of temporary visa holders and “birth tourists,” where the domicile question is much more cut-and-dry.

On undocumented immigrants, however, both Thomas and Gorsuch are much less enthusiastic. Most of their respective dissents are focused on the non-domiciled temporary visitors. When it comes to the children of long-term undocumented immigrants, there is palpable discomfort with excluding them categorically.

The two justices’ position was that the government need only prove that the administration’s order was valid to survive a facial challenge like the one brought by the parties. Under his and Thomas’s domicile reading, that held true for children of temporary visa holders, so they voted to uphold it. Nevertheless, they declined to conclude the executive order was constitutional in all circumstances.

The Trump administration (and some of its allies) claimed undocumented immigrants could never claim domicile status. “About that, however, I harbor doubts,” Gorsuch noted. “Perhaps Wong Kim Ark does not squarely foreclose the government’s position. After all, that case addressed a child born to parents who lawfully resided in this country. Still, I wonder: Is a child born here to parents who have long chosen to make this Nation their permanent home not a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment solely because his parents’ presence violates statutory law? If those parents are not domiciled here, then where are they domiciled? And if the answer is nowhere, how can we reconcile that conclusion with this Court’s longstanding recognition that every person is domiciled somewhere?”

Thomas also did not view it as a closed question. “That said, many others understandably have suggested that long-term resident illegal aliens satisfy the elements of domicile because they reside here with the intent to permanently remain,” he added, pointing to Gorsuch’s separate dissent. “Such questions are best resolved in the context of as-applied challenges.” Thomas is rarely hesitant to share his thoughts on future legal questions for the court to consider, so his reticence to take a stand here is notable.

This distinction might seem arcane, but it could be crucial in a future as-applied case. Imagine a modern-day Wong Kim Ark: a child born to two parents of undocumented Somali immigrants in Minneapolis who lived there for 20 years. The child’s parents returned to their home country during Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, but the child returns to the United States as an adult sometime in the 2030s.

A future Republican administration, adopting Alito’s reasoning, tries to challenge Barbara by arguing that immigration agents could exclude the child from re-entry as a non-citizen. Their parents had no allegiance to the United States and therefore the child did not obtain U.S. citizenship at birth. If Thomas and Gorsuch are still on the court, they could consistently hold that this 21st-century Wong Kim Ark was a U.S. citizen by birth by virtue of their parents’ domicile status, no matter their lawful immigration status.

To sum up: President Donald Trump and the Justice Department argued that children of undocumented immigrants are categorically excluded from U.S. citizenship at birth. On that proposition, it lost 8-1. Roberts and the other four justices in the majority say those children are always covered by the Citizenship Clause. Thomas and Gorsuch say they might be covered by the Citizenship Clause if their parents are domiciled. And Kavanaugh says they’re covered by statute, at least for now.

On whether the children of temporary visa holders and birth tourists are categorically excluded from U.S. citizenship at birth, it’s a 6-3 result. Again, Roberts and the majority say they’re covered by the Citizenship Clause and Kavanaugh says they’re covered by statute. Thomas and Gorsuch say that they aren’t domiciled so the Citizenship Clause does not apply.

In an ideal world, Trump v. Barbara would have been a 9-0 decision. It should have been one. In April, I wrote about my concerns that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority might limit or narrow birthright citizenship in some way even when ruling against Trump’s executive order. Fortunately, those fears were unrealized. Roberts’ majority opinion is clear, eloquent, and uncompromising. Future generations will likely rank it among the finest of his judicial career.

Whatever the count, Tuesday’s ruling is ultimately a triumph. There is no reward for second place at the high court, and the right-wing legal scholars who claim to have shifted the Overton window must still reckon with their failures, both moral and professional. In an era where the promise and the power of the Reconstruction Amendments is fading once more, any victory is better than a defeat.

The Bay Area will host one more World Cup match, which is slated for Wednesday at 5 p.m. — and it’s a big one. The U.S. men’s national team takes the pitch for a high-stakes knockout match against Bosnia-Herzegovina just a short drive up the road from Santa Cruz County. 

There are still last-minute tickets available at Levi’s Stadium through authorized resale sites, as FIFA’s primary sale has ended and the organization is no longer selling tickets. Those resale platforms are StubHub, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats.

However, jumping at the opportunity will be costly. To the surprise of no one, even the cost of the cheapest tickets dwarf most prices you’ll find for a typical sporting event. No single ticket is priced beneath a four-digit dollar amount.

On StubHub on Tuesday afternoon, tickets ranged from $1,407 to $3,487. Tickets from SeatGeek were similar, ranging from $1,386 to $5,852. Vivid Seats tickets started at $1,329 and reached all the way to $9,316 and above for the Category 1 and 2 seats — considered the best views in the house.

If those figures don’t scare you away, make your way to one of those providers as soon as you can. Tickets are going fast and there is only a limited number remaining.

Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.

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The free open source agentic program is finally invading your phone.

President Donald Trump invited Tina Peters, the former Colorado county election clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, to the White House on Tuesday.

Trump took to Truth Social to brag about the “honor” of meeting up with a fellow election denier.

“Tina Peters just came to the White House to thank me for getting her released from prison in Colorado,” the president wrote. “She was put there because she found Election Fraud, but instead of arresting the people that committed the Fraud, they arrested her!”

Trump posted a photograph of the two of them smiling from behind his desk in the Oval Office.

Peters became a mascot of the MAGA movement’s supposed victimhood after she was sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiring to publicize the voting machine records in Mesa County. She turned all the cameras off while allowing fellow election denier Conan Hayes to copy, photograph, and download information in an effort to prove Trump’s election fraud claims in 2020. Peters was freed from prison after the Trump administration pressured Democratic Colorado Governor Jared Polis into granting her clemency.

“What she went through should never happen to anyone again,” Trump wrote. “Just think of it, she caught the Democrats cheating, and they put her in jail for Voter Fraud.”

Of course, the Mesa County district attorney’s office uncovered zero evidence to back up Peters’s claims of voter fraud. The only evidence of any election meddling in 2020 came from Trump’s own camp.

Poor Kash Patel. Talk about a dude who really, really isn’t cut out for his job. It’s not just that he’s woefully unqualified to be the director of the FBI. It’s also that he really, really isn’t interested in it. The man just wants to post on social media. But nearly every time he does this, it’s a disaster—a product of Patel popping up to show that, hey, guys, he does too matter!

Source

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Mamdani’s got Trump and Fox News big mad…

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s complaints about media coverage came back to bite him Tuesday.

A federal judge ordered a preliminary injunction against the Defense Department’s restrictions on press access to the Pentagon, based in part on “a consistent stream of derisive comments beginning shortly after the confirmation of Secretary Hegseth and continuing through the present.”

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman temporarily blocked a rule stating that all journalists visiting the Pentagon were required to have an official escort while a lawsuit The New York Times filed against the rule is reviewed in full by the court.

“This court has spoken at several points about the critical importance of protecting the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, and that evergreen message bears repeating,” Friedman wrote.

Hegseth has criticized media outlets whose coverage has not reflected well on himself or the department. The judge quoted Hegseth’s March attack on the Times, where he accused the paper of “slashing and burning people to ruin their reputations.”

Friedman quoted Hegseth’s complaints about the “legacy Trump-hating press” peddling “endless stream of garbage,” as well as the time he compared reporters to the biblical “Pharisees” who “held counsel against [Jesus]” and “scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative.”

The judge also made sure to include several quotes from Sean Parnell, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, including when he called the Times “garbage.”

In October, the Department of Defense said that it would revoke the press passes of journalists who shared classified or unclassified information without the Pentagon’s preapproval. The Times sued, and Friedman ruled in the newspaper’s favor in March, after which the DOD issued a revised policy with the escort rule. In May, the Times sued again over the new rule, which prevented journalists from free movement around the building in authorized spaces without an escort.

The DOD has argued that reporters have gained sensitive information based on roaming around Pentagon headquarters, alleging that they “maintain a persistent physical presence near sensitive spaces within the Pentagon.” It has also granted press credentials to friendly right-wing media outlets and influencers at the expense of critical outlets. On Tuesday, though, Hegseth and the rest of the department had to face the consequences of their own words and actions.

EquiLibre Technologies, a Prague-based AI lab founded by three ex-DeepMind researchers is now valued at more than $500 million.