Assemblymember Carl DeMaio voiced strong opposition after his motion to stop AB 2624 — introduced by Attorney General Rob Bonta — failed to gain enough support. The bill has drawn attention from supporters of citizen journalism, who argue it could restrict the ability to share video evidence of alleged fraud online.

DeMaio said the measure could discourage individuals from documenting and publishing wrongdoing, particularly in publicly funded programs. He framed the proposal as a shift away from addressing fraud itself and toward penalizing those who bring it to light.

The legislation comes at a time when independent content creators, including online investigative figures like Nick Shirley, have gained large audiences by posting firsthand footage of suspected misuse of government resources.

According to DeMaio, the bill’s language could open the door for certain groups to request the removal of recorded material — even in cases where the footage appears to show misconduct. He warned that financial penalties could also be imposed on individuals who publish such content.

His attempt to stop the bill was intended to prevent it from advancing further this year. However, with that effort unsuccessful, AB 2624 remains under consideration as it moves through the legislative process.

DeMaio said he plans to continue opposing the measure, arguing it raises concerns about transparency and First Amendment protections.

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The legislation, known as AB 2624, recently advanced through the State Assembly with support from Democratic lawmakers. Supporters say the bill is aimed at protecting organizations that serve immigrant communities from potential threats or harassment. Critics, however, argue the language could have broader implications for transparency and public oversight.

DeMaio, a Republican representing San Diego, has been especially vocal, warning that the bill could discourage citizen journalists from documenting and sharing footage tied to taxpayer-funded programs. He has referred to the proposal as the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” referencing online journalist Nick Shirley, whose viral videos have drawn attention to alleged issues within public services.

During a recent Assembly committee hearing, DeMaio pressed the bill’s author, Mia Bonta, over provisions that would allow individuals affiliated with certain organizations to request the removal of video recordings — even if those recordings were taken in public spaces. He also raised concerns about potential financial penalties for those who publish such content online.

According to DeMaio, those measures could be used to discourage investigative reporting by journalists, watchdog groups and members of the public documenting potential misconduct.

Supporters of AB 2624 maintain that the legislation is intended to improve safety for vulnerable communities and prevent harassment or intimidation. The debate over the bill’s impact on free speech and transparency is expected to continue as it moves forward.

DeMaio’s full statement on AB 2624 is as follows:

“California Democrats are trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far-left-wing NGOs. AB 2624 can only be described as the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ — a bill designed to silence citizen journalists exposing fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Instead of fixing the fraud problems being uncovered, Sacramento politicians are trying to shut down the people exposing them.

AB 2624 would allow activists and taxpayer-funded organizations to demand the removal of video evidence — even if it captures misconduct in plain view — and threatens journalists with massive financial penalties.

That’s not about public safety — it’s about protecting powerful interests.

If this bill becomes law, the message is clear to every journalist in California: expose corruption, and you will be punished. AB 2624 is an unconstitutional direct attack on transparency and the First Amendment – and it needs to be defeated.”

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“This is about silencing criticism of Israeli genocide in Gaza,” UC Riverside graduate Shaheen Nassar, whose family immigrated from the Palestinian territories, told City News Service. “Cheerleaders of the genocide do everything in the way of intimidation against people daring to speak out against it.”

President Donald Trump’s executive order to “Combat Antisemitism,” issued Jan. 30, gave agencies 60 days to submit details on legal resources and options to “punish anti-Jewish racism,” taking aim at “anti-American colleges and universities.”

A few agencies, including the Departments of Justice and Education, have already reacted.

Last week, federal law enforcement agents arrested antiwar activist-organizer Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University, where sit-ins and other pro-Palestine demonstrations have been held since Israeli Defense Forces invaded Gaza in October 2023.

Khalil, who holds a green card, giving him permanent residency in the United States, is under threat of deportation.

Meantime, the Department of Education announced investigations targeting campuses for “antisemitic eruptions.” The schools stand to lose federal educational grants.

“Since Oct. 7, 2023, radical pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas faculty members and students targeted and harassed Jewish students, staff and faculty on the UCR campus,” Eran Vaisben, director of campus-based Inland & Desert Hillel, told CNS. “Legislation and policies that help (in) preventing the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students and faculty are appreciated.”

A UCR statement released to CNS indicated that between October 2023 and February 2025, there were 95 incidents “alleged to be hostile or offensive” to those identifying as Jewish. UCR was among dozens of campuses nationwide where pro-Palestine and antiwar encampments were held last spring. The university noted that “a number of reports” of antisemitism stemmed from “pro-Palestine graffiti, such as ‘Free Palestine’ stickers.” There were no documented acts of violence.

Of the half-dozen other colleges and universities in the inland region from which hate crime data was obtained, only Cal Baptist University in Riverside reported an antisemitic incident, involving unspecified vandalism in March 2024.

“The encampments were very peaceful, beautiful forms of civil disobedience, which is protected by the First Amendment,” Cal State San Bernardino Media Studies Professor Ahlam Muhtaseb, a Palestinian immigrant and member of the Temecula Valley Islamic Center, told CNS. “The encampment at UCLA, for example, was peaceful until malcontents, mainly Zionists, some of them Israelis, started attacking the encampment. It’s well documented. These people incurred on the encampment, and the students there just tried to push back.”

Muhtaseb said the president’s executive order is intended to “squash all criticism of Israel so only one narrative — the pro-Israel side — is prominent.”

“The policy is to give Israel support to continue its genocidal mission,” she said. “You can’t keep pushing anti-Constitutional policies and false narratives when it’s clear there’s a plan to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their lands.”

Both the professor and Nassar have lost members of their extended families in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas raided Israel, targeting the Nova Music Festival. An estimated 1,200 Israeli civilians have died in the ensuing hostilities between the IDF and Hamas, which also took more than 200 hostages.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs indicated that as of March 11, 48,503 Palestinians have been confirmed killed — close to half of them children. Roughly 90% of the population has been displaced, suffering food shortages and lack of electricity. IDF aircraft, drone and artillery strikes have flattened or significantly damaged hospitals, schools, religious centers and homes, according to Amnesty International and other sources.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that at least 170 journalists, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians, had been killed in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and Israel since October 2023.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Temecula, who is of Lebanese descent, told CNS in a statement he backs Trump’s order because “college campuses in every corner of the country and everywhere in between are no longer safe harbors for free speech.”

He acknowledged “the situation in Gaza is tragic,” but stood by his “friend of 20 years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” adding that “with President Trump’s leadership, there is a path to peace in the region.”

Issa’s “No Censors on Our Shores Act,” which recently won House Judiciary Committee approval, underscores the importance of “First Amendment rights” by seeking to prevent foreign agents from infringing on free speech exercised by American citizens at home. The proposal wouldn’t protect foreign nationals joining demonstrations on U.S. soil.

“I’m so Semitic, it hurts,” Nassar said. “Trump’s order against ‘antisemitism’ creates a chilling effect on speech. It’s weaponizing the language of anti-racism. It’s like with Israel, where they’ve conflated an entire population with militants, dehumanizing Palestinians.”

Attorney and Riverside Chabad Hanukkah Festival organizer Virginia Blumenthal told CNS some campuses “allowed things to get out of hand (last year), and that’s where the problems started.”

She didn’t offer an opinion on the justification for the executive order, but asserted the “legal and constitutional rights of people” shouldn’t be infringed because of political differences.

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U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez said artificial intelligence and deepfakes pose significant risks, but he ruled that the law likely violates the First Amendment.

“Most of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate,” Mendez wrote.

The law took effect immediately after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it last month. The Democrat signed two other bills at the time aimed at cracking down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election. They are among the toughest laws of their kind in the nation.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the laws protect democracy and preserve free speech.

“We’re confident the courts will uphold the state’s ability to regulate these types of dangerous and misleading deepfakes,” he said in a statement. “Satire remains alive and well in California — even for those who miss the punchline.”

But a lawyer representing YouTuber Christopher Kohls, who sued state officials over the law, called the ruling “straightforward.”

“We are gratified that the district court agreed with our analysis that new technologies do not change the principles behind First Amendment protections,” attorney Theodore Frank said.

The law was also unpopular among First Amendment experts, who urged Newsom last month to veto the measure. They argued that the law is unconstitutional and a government overreach.

“If something is truly defamatory, there’s a whole body of law and established legal standards for how to prove a claim for defamation consistent with the First Amendment,” David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said in an interview in September. “The government is not free to create new categories of speech outside the First Amendment.”

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Michael Sainato

The largest union of academic workers, which represents more than 48,000 graduate student workers throughout the University of California system, will hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week in response to how universities have cracked down on students’ Gaza protests.

“The use and sanction of violent force to curtail peaceful protest is an attack on free speech and the right to demand change, and the university must sit down with students, unions, and campus organizations to negotiate, rather than escalate,” stated an announcement of the strike vote from UAW Local 4811. Earlier this year, the union voted by a margin of more than 9 to 1 in favor of supporting a ceasefire, according to the announcement.

The graduate workers last went on strike in November 2022 over a new union contract, which was the largest strike in US higher education history. They recently merged two UAW locals, 2865 and 5810, under the single UAW Local 4811.

“We have been calling on the University of California to de-escalate and negotiate with the protesters over their very urgent and moral concerns and it failed to do that and it failed to protect students and workers and allowed this violence to occur,” Rafael Jaime, co-president of UAW 4811 and a graduate worker at UCLA, told The Guardian. “We’re holding a strike authorization vote to hold the university accountable and demand the university respect the members’ right to protected speech and right to protest.”

He said the union also plans to file unfair labor practice charges against the University of California over the university’s use of LAPD against protesters and for changing policies unilaterally in response to the protests without bargaining.

“This is the defining issue of our generation and its really important for all, not just workers at the University of California but across the entire nation to speak up and to ensure every worker has the right to speak on this issue,” added Jaime. “We believe all workers, all students have a fundamental right to engage in protests and engage in free speech and universities need to respect that right.”

The United Auto Workers, with 400,000 active members and over 500,000 retirees, is the largest US union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which they did in December 2023.

UAW President Shawn Fain recently reaffirmed the union’s position. “Our union has been calling for a ceasefire for six months. This war is wrong and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong,” Fain said in a statement on 1 May.

Graduate student workers are also calling on the National Labor Relations Board to weigh in on how universities have been responding to Pro-Palestine protests and whether those responses violate US labor laws and collective bargaining agreements with unions on campus.

The Graduate Labor Organization at Brown University has filed several unfair labor practice charges against the university since March 2024 in regards to Pro-Palestine protests and the university’s responses to them.

Forty-one students at Brown University was arrested and charges remain despite the pro-Palestine encampment dispersing as part of negotiations which included a planned vote by the university’s highest governing body for October 2024 on divesting from companies affiliated with Israel. The charges filed by the union allege Brown University unilaterally changed protest policies without bargaining and that made threats of retaliation toward union members for participating in Pro-Palestine campus protests.

“It’s really about the university trying to leverage this fact that as graduate workers we do have student status and kind of using that as a workaround for violating labor law and this has been their playbook on a whole host of issues,” said Michael Ziegler, political director of the Graduate Labor Organization and graduate worker at Brown University. “In the past five years, we’ve had something like 20 protests on the main green and there was never any issue, the university didn’t take these actions. This is new and I think a dangerous attempt by them to clamp down on the rights of speech and protected concerted action.”

UAW Local 872, which represents around 3,000 graduate workers at USC, has recently filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university over arrests of at least five union members. The union has called for charges to be dropped against all 93 protesters who were arrested on 24 April and for the university to concede to demands from USC Divest from Death Coalition.

“USC’s summoning of LAPD riot police to arrest their own students and workers for peacefully demonstrating is abhorrent and wrong,” said Maile McCann, a Local 872 member and PhD Candidate in the Civil Engineering department at USC, in a statement on the charge. “The administration’s actions show an alarming disregard for our right as students and union members to engage in peaceful demonstrations, and their decisions have put international students in particular at serious risk. USC’s unnecessary escalation has resulted in a shameful waste of public resources for the purposes of silencing dissent.”

A spokesperson for USC said in an email, “we believe the charge is without merit and intend to defend our position before the National Labor Relations Board.”

Brown University and the University of California system did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Brown University has previously said in response to the first unfair labor practice charge, “individuals are not absolved from abiding by Brown policies by virtue of union membership.” The University of California system has not yet publicly commented on the planned strike vote by graduate student workers.

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Adam Sieff | Contributed

Assembly Bill 2408 proposes to punish popular social media platforms for editorial content promotion decisions. But it violates fundamental rights and must not become law.

If California passed a law exposing major newspaper publishers to liability for the selection, arrangement and promotion of articles they print, it would obviously violate the First Amendment. So why are some state lawmakers advancing Assembly Bill 2408 , which proposes precisely the same type of unconstitutional penalties for major internet publishers?

The bill is well-intended, and aims to promote the mental and emotional well-being of young people on the internet. But to achieve these worthy ends, AB 2408 proposes to punish popular social media platforms when their editorial content promotion decisions can be shown to “cause” young audiences to suffer injuries.

That proposal violates core speech rights, and legislators must not allow it to become law in its current form.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that the First Amendment protects publishers’ decisions to select, arrange and promote content to audiences as a basic exercise of their editorial control and judgment. The protection applies regardless of the medium of communication publishers use to convey information, whether they run a newspaper, cable network, website or social network. And the court has expressly held that the amendment applies to online speech and content moderation practices.

Critically, the rule prevents California, or any state, from enacting a law that would penalize an internet publisher for exercising its judgment about what kinds of content to publish and promote to its audience, just as it prevents California from enacting a law punishing a newspaper for its decisions about what to print on the front page.

It makes no legal difference that social media platforms often create algorithms to apply their editorial judgments. An algorithm is just a set of pre-programmed editorial rules that reflects value judgments made by real people about the kind of content to display and promote.

To punish a platform’s algorithmic promotion of popular content is, as a constitutional matter, no different than punishing CalMatters for recommending stories to particular users based on their browsing and reading history. Nor, ultimately, is it any different from punishing a tabloid magazine for publishing prurient content on its front page.

The fact that AB 2408 endeavors to protect young audiences is also, from a legal perspective, irrelevant. The First Amendment prohibits the imposition of legal penalties that restrict the ideas to which certain audiences may be exposed, and the general exercise of editorial discretion cannot be suppressed solely to protect young people from content or ideas that a government censor considers unsuitable.

While one cannot deny that these are difficult times to be a young person, and few policies are more important than those that advance the health and prospects of future generations, AB 2408 is the wrong remedy. Permitting California to punish social media platforms’ editorial decisions, as the measure proposes, would equally permit governments to punish newspapers and magazines, as well as authors of “choose-your-own-adventure” stories, video games and, arguably, any kind of literature if a plaintiff could establish injuries suffered from those authors’ editorial choices — a prospect the Supreme Court rejected in 2011, the last time California attempted to restrict the publication of content to young audiences (in that instance, video games).

There are better ways to achieve AB 2408’s goals that are consistent with the First Amendment values that define our open society. Earlier concerns over new forms of unsettling but constitutionally protected media, including comic books, movies, rock music, cable programming and video games, offer instruction.

After courts rejected attempts like AB 2408 to punish the publishers of these different types of content, governments, publishers, schools and civil society groups came together to develop rating systems, parental controls and public information campaigns to allow families to make informed choices about their media consumption.

The constitutionally required solution to concerns over new forms of speech, in other words, is more speech, not less. California’s lawmakers should embrace that approach and reject AB 2408, at least as written today.

• DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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A memo signed by all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also reminded military members that Joe Biden was duly elected as the next president and will be sworn in to office on Jan. 20.

The memo was unusual in that the military leadership, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, felt compelled to remind service members that it is wrong to disrupt the constitutional process. The language went further than statements by the civilian leader of the Pentagon, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, by describing the assault as an act of sedition and an insurrection. Miller has called it “reprehensible and contrary to the tenets of the United States Constitution.”

It comes as law enforcement agencies attempt to determine the full extent of criminal activity at the Capitol and to discover the extent of participation by current or past military members.

It has already been established that some military veterans participated in the riots at the Capitol, but the extent of any active-duty involvement has not been established. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, on Monday wrote to the Defense Department requesting that its criminal investigative organizations cooperate with the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police in investigating whether current and retired members of the armed forces were part of a “seditious conspiracy” against the government.

The Joint Chiefs memo did not allude directly to the question of military involvement.

“We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law,” the memo said. “The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.

“As service members, we must embody the values and ideals of the nation. We support and defend the Constitution. Any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values and oath; it is against the law.”

Gen. Robert Abrams, who as commander of U.S. forces in South Korea is one of the Army’s most senior generals but is not a member of the Joint Chiefs, wrote on Twitter that no military member should misunderstand what happened Jan. 6.

“There is no ambiguity of what occurred at the Capitol — that was an attempted insurrection,” he wrote. “If you are serving in uniform and think it was something else, I would encourage (you) to sit down and read the constitution that you swore an oath to support and defend. No gray area there either. No room on our team if you are not willing to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign AND domestic.”

Ahead of next week’s inauguration and President Donald Trump’s departure from office, the National Guard is gearing up to provide support to law enforcement agencies. There is no plan to use active-duty forces in security operations.

ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer

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