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Obama-Appointed Judge Dismisses Federal Government's Lawsuit Challenging Los Angeles Sanctuary City Policy

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

A California judge has dismissed the federal government's legal challenge to Los Angeles's sanctuary city ordinance that restricts the use of city resources to assist federal immigration enforcement.

People in the audience hold up signs as the Los Angeles City Council considers a "sanctuary city" ordinance during a meeting at City Hall in Los Angeles on Nov. 19, 2024. Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin of the Central District of California said the federal government failed to support its claim that the city's ordinance violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity. But the judge stated that the government could file an amended complaint.

"The Ordinance does not directly regulate the federal government. Rather, it 'controls the actions of [the City's] own agents and agencies," the judge stated in a five-page order dated June 20.

Olguin rejected the government's argument that the ordinance was preempted by federal law because it "restricts the sending, requesting, maintaining, or exchanging of citizenship or immigration status" by prohibiting city personnel from collecting such information.

The judge said the ordinance's provision "merely restricts a City employee from inquiring into or collecting information about a person's citizenship or immigration status, and says nothing about the City's ability to maintain or share such information."

In a statement on June 22, Los Angeles city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto praised the judge's order, saying it "reinforces the well-established principle that local governments have the authority to decide how to use their personnel and resources."

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the lawsuit in June 2025, alleging that Los Angeles's sanctuary city laws are unlawful because they "interfere with and discriminate against" the federal government's immigration enforcement efforts.

The department alleged that the city's ordinance impeded federal immigration authorities from detaining illegal immigrants who are subject to removal and have been convicted of crimes.

The Trump administration said the city's refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement had led to "lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism that was so severe," which prompted the deployment of the California National Guard and the U.S. Marines to restore order in the city.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

The Trump administration also brought similar legal challenges against several other cities and states with sanctuary policies, including New York City, Minnesota, and Illinois.

In April 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to pursue legal remedies for jurisdictions that refuse to comply with federal law.

"This is a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government's obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States," the president said. "It is imperative that the Federal Government restore the enforcement of United States law."

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 17:40

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Cyberattack Hits Iran's Banking System, Disrupting Card Networks At Three Major Lenders

It seems that the United States and Israel have not completely given up on covert efforts toward regime change in Iran, or at least on sabotage efforts to weaken the government's hold over the population.

The precursor to Trump's Operation Epic Fury was of course the January economic protests, which saw serious clashes with police and security forces, and left thousands dead. Trump subsequently claimed over 30,000 were killed - a very high, dubious number - according to many independent analysts.

At the same time US Treasury Secretary Bessent openly bragged about waging economic warfare to send the Rial plunging, which was a spark and catalyst for the destabilizing protests and unrest.

On Tuesday Al Jazeera reports on what could be renewed efforts to further weaken Iran from within. "Iran's state-owned banking technology provider says attacks disrupted services at Bank Melli, Bank Saderat and Bank Tejarat," the publication reports.

EPA, via Shutterstock

One theory among Washington hawks is that economic collapse can be engineered via external means (though Israel has also long bragged about having many assets on the ground inside the Islamic Republic).

Is the prior failed 'plan A' still on? ...even as direct bombing has failed to achieve regime change?

According to more from Al Jazeera, referencing the major bank-focused cyberattacks: 

This had prompted a temporary suspension of all card-related operations at the three banks to prevent further unauthorized access, the company told state TV, with cybersecurity teams working to restore normal operations.

The company’s public relations head said ATM services, point-of-sale terminals and mobile applications linked to card systems were all affected.

Major banks, including Melli, Saderat, Tejarat and the Export Development Bank of Iran, have faced disruptions first reported on June 14 after a cyberattack targeting a shared communication infrastructure, Iran’s banking coordination council has said.

As far can be assessed, there was no unrest or protests that resulted in this latest incident, and Iranian state media has in follow-up reported that the serious issues and lack of fund access for customers took several days to resolve.

"Iranian authorities have previously blamed hostile foreign actors, such as Israel, for similar incidents. Israel has previously not commented on such allegations," the Tuesday report also noted.

Iran is bracing for more such cyber-provocations, given it is still technically at war with the US and Israel, and despite the signing of the peace MoU with the US, based on extending the ceasefire for at least 60-days, giving time for the nuclear issue to be dealt with.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 17:20

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Randi Whinegarten

Authored by Larry Sand via American Greatness,

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote a hyperbolic piece titled "America's Teachers Can't Afford to Teach," which appeared in Time magazine on June 11.

The excessively whiny article is filled with half-truths meant to make readers feel sorry for impoverished, underpaid teachers. Among other things, she asserts that the vast majority of American educators are living paycheck to paycheck, taking on debt to buy groceries, and facing other financial hardships.

She maintains that the pay gap between "teachers and other college-educated professionals - known as the 'teacher pay penalty' - has grown to 27 percent. To put it plainly, people with the same level of education and experience can make far more doing almost anything other than teaching. We cannot accept this as an unfortunate reality or an accident."

But when you look at the facts, which apparently is an alien concept to the union boss, you get a very different picture. While it is true that teacher salaries nationwide have not quite kept up with inflation, Weingarten tells only part of the story, omitting many perks afforded to educators.

Just Facts, a nonprofit dedicated to researching and publishing verifiable facts on critical public policy issues of our time, analyzes teacher salaries and reports that in the 2021-22 school year, the average U.S. teacher earned $66,397 in salary and $34,090 in benefits, including health insurance, paid leave, and pensions, for a total compensation of $100,487.

Also, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent on lesson preparation, test construction, grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry work an average of 2,045 hours per year, about 37 percent more than public school teachers.

Weingarten also fallaciously claims that teachers in states with union-backed collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) earn 24 percent more than those in states without such agreements.

However, those without an agenda tell a very different story, arguing that CBAs actually hurt the bottom line for all teachers. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute writes that teachers in non-collective bargaining districts earn about 12 percent more than their unionized peers. Other research by Michael Lovenheim and Andrew Coulson produced similar findings. In 2018, University of California, San Diego professor Augustina Pagalayan reported that CBAs do not improve teacher pay.

It's worth noting that union dues for teachers are quite high these days. In Los Angeles, for example, full-time educators pay about $1,500 in dues annually.

Weingarten also never explains where the bulk of union dues are spent. According to a Pew Research poll, about 58 percent of public K - 12 teachers lean Democratic and 35 percent lean Republican. But OpenSecrets reports that in 2024, the American Federation of Teachers gave $3,069,063 (99.89 percent) to Democrats and a scant $3,323 (0.11 percent) to Republicans.

Additionally, while she bemoans low teacher pay, the money she collects from them goes to pay her a hefty salary. As the Illinois Policy Institute reveals, Weingarten's current yearly income is $514,488, making her a one-percenter.

Another fraud perpetrated by Weingarten concerns a book she wrote last year, Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, which she claims will "empower us and give us hope." The problem is that every word from the union boss is nonfactual claptrap.

As Aaron Withe, Freedom Foundation CEO, writes, the book opens by comparing the Nazi occupation of Norway to the current state of American education and "argues that anyone who disagrees with the author's vision for public schools is, in some meaningful sense, a fascist."

Perhaps the biggest deception in Weingarten's book is its portrayal of her role during the pandemic. "I led the AFT in developing a concrete plan to reopen schools as quickly and safely as possible," she claims.

Bald-faced lie.

In reality, she repeatedly argued for keeping schools shuttered throughout the spring and summer of 2020, while her union aggressively lobbied the CDC to revise its school-reopening guidance. Two of her language recommendations were adopted verbatim.

Weingarten also outrageously used members' dues to pay for her fiction-laden book.

Researcher Maxford Nelsen combed through the AFT's most recent LM-2 - the annual financial disclosure unions file with the U.S. Department of Labor - and unearthed a detailed accounting of how member dues were used to produce Weingarten's book.

The AFT paid nearly $1 million to a New York law firm, and its attorney is likewise thanked in the book's acknowledgments for reviewing the manuscript. When the New York Post asked about it, an AFT spokesperson claimed the review was done pro bono, but the union LM-2 says otherwise.

There was also $6,000 for fact-checking, $5,212 for a single-author photograph by a Washington-based photographer, and $64,090 to a literary agency that lists AFT, not Weingarten, as its client.

Nearly 30 AFT staff members are thanked in the acknowledgments, prompting questions about their role in the book's creation. Meanwhile, travel costs for Weingarten's nationwide promotional tour are not itemized separately but were almost certainly substantial.

In other words, teachers paid for nearly everything. Weingarten may not have contributed a single dollar to the enterprise.

Weingarten was also one of the more strident leaders in 2025's anti-Trump "No Kings" movement. She wrote, "At every turn, this president has undermined the rule of law, weaponized the federal government against the people it should serve, and divide and silence us. And now, the same far-right groups that cheered his chaos are smearing those of us who are organizing peacefully for justice."

The hypocrisy here is glaring. This is a woman who has served as AFT president since 2008 and, before that, led the UFT, AFT's New York City branch, for 11 years. Additionally, teachers do not vote for her directly; only delegates do.

At the end of the day, Randi Weingarten is a dishonest, left-wing, hypocritical bloviator who always points the finger at others for various problems.

Other than offending the dishonorable queen, teachers have nothing to lose by saying goodbye to their union and can save a lot of cash in the process.

* * *

Larry Sand is a retired classroom teacher with 28 years of experience and served as president of the nonprofit California Teachers Empowerment Network from 2006 to 2025. He currently works to raise awareness of the shortcomings of our education system.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 17:00

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UN Maritime Agency Initiates Plan To Clear Hormuz Traffic: Hundreds Of Vessels, 11K Sailors

The Strait of Hormuz is supposed to be 'open' now, based on the MoU framework, though things are expected to be extremely slow moving, despite signs of life in terms of an increased transit flow becoming evident only this week.

The saga of just how hundreds of ships will traverse is developing and tenuous: "The UN's International Maritime Organization says it will begin evacuating more than 11,000 sailors stranded in the Gulf due to the Middle East war," per AFP.

via Bloomberg

"This large-scale operation will be carried out in close cooperation with Iran, Oman, all other coastal States in the region, the United States and the maritime industry," IMO secretary-general Arsenio Dominguez stated Tuesday.

"We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations," he adds.

Presumably this simply means UN assistance in seeing the stranded crew make safe passage with their cargo and on their ships. Reuters explains:

The evacuation process under ​the IMO plan, which has been under discussion for months, will be phased, ‌Oman's ⁠defence ministry said separately in an advisory.

"Given the elevated risk of collision in the current environment, a gradual and controlled evacuation of vessel traffic is required," it said.

The Omani ministry said ​the so-called Traffic ​Separation Scheme was "not ⁠safe for use at this time" and two temporary routes to north and south of the ​scheme could be used for evacuation.

"Vessels will be ​contacted individually ⁠and advised of their allocated transit day by the parties coordinated by IMO," the ministry advisory said.

According to a backgrounder in the NY Times:

Today, the stress on the roughly 11,000 stranded sailors in the Persian Gulf may be even greater. Seafarers now have internet access and are often watching livestreams of attacks happening around them, while also seeing explosions from their ship decks.

“The fact that they are sitting on board the ships with real-time information — it is psychologically very traumatic,” said Mr. Khanna, 55.

Three commercial vessels have been hit by U.S. forces this week. One of the strikes killed three people, bringing the number of seafarers killed since the start of the war to 14. All told, there have been 46 attacks on international ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz since Feb. 28, most by Iran and some by the United States.

Scant details have been issued by the International Maritime Organization. There's a backlog of some 500 or 600 vessels, but some are making it through this week.

Notably, lead crew members or captains have all along not abandoned their tens of millions or hundreds of millions in precious commodities/cargo - especially after already enduring the blockade for this long.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 16:40