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CA-48 Democratic Campaigns Are Exploiting a Campaign Finance Loophole

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48th Congressional District campaigns find ways around campaign finance rules | KPBS Public Media BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front Three Democratic candidates competing in California's newly redrawn 48th Congressional District — Ammar Campa-Najjar, Marni von Wilpert, and Brandon Riker — are employing a practice called "redboxing" on their campaign websites, posting detailed targeting instructions and messaging scripts that super PACs have demonstrably echoed verbatim in mailers and texts sent to voters. The practice exploits a structural gap in federal campaign finance law left unaddressed by a Federal Election Commission that currently lacks a quorum to conduct enforcement. Legislation to close the loophole has stalled in a Republican-controlled Congress whose members benefit from the same practice. With the June 2, 2026 primary days away and millions in outside money flowing into the district, voters in CA-48 are witnessing a race in which the l...
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Captive City: How Public-Sector Unions Broke San Diego's Budget

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A guide to San Diego’s brutal budget cuts Investigative Public Affairs Report San Diego, California  |  May 20, 2026  |  Municipal Finance & Labor Exclusive Investigation Why City Hall Won't Admit The Cause As arts centers shutter and libraries cut Saturdays, police and fire budgets rise by $42 million, middle management has exploded 461 percent in fifteen years, and a single pension bill now costs taxpayers more than half a billion dollars annually. Investigative Report  |  May 20, 2026 San Diego City Hall ⬛ Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) San Diego faces a cascading structural fiscal crisis that is not primarily driven by insufficient revenue—it is driven by the compounding cost of public-sector union contracts, defined-benefit pension obligations, and a management bureaucracy that has ballooned while frontline services remain understaffed. The city's $563 million annual pension payment ...
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Is the Golden Pacific Powerlink an AI Infrastructure Project in Disguise?

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  Investigative Analysis  |  Golden Pacific Powerlink  /  AI Data Centers  /  Ratepayer Risk  |  May 2026 Follow the Load — Investigative Analysis SDG&E flatly denies any connection between its proposed $2.3 billion Imperial Valley–to–Orange County transmission line and the flood of AI data center proposals now targeting Imperial Valley. The facts on the ground tell a more complicated story — and California's own regulators are sounding alarms. May 2026 Sources: CAISO, CEC, Little Hoover Commission, KPBS, inewsource, CalMatters, CPUC Public Advocates Office When Imperial Valley residents pressed SDG&E at its May 2026 open houses about whether the Golden Pacific Powerlink was designed to power AI data centers, project director Erica Martin gave a response that was technically accurate and strategically incomplete: "There's no particular source that's driving the need for th...
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