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** SCOTUS Delivers Big Wins for Freedom
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Dear John,

This Independence Day, parents across America are celebrating freedom — thanks to three big wins ([link removed]) out of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week, the Court’s ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor was a decisive victory for parental rights. The High Court made it clear: parents cannot be sidelined in their child’s education.

In a 6–3 decision, the Court upheld the right of parents to opt their children out of “LGBTQ+ inclusive” books and curriculum that conflict with their religious beliefs. The Court reaffirmed what we’ve long known: parents have the right to guide their children’s upbringing — including the right to receive advance notice and opt out of educational materials that conflict with their religious beliefs.

Don’t forget who’s behind the relentless campaign against families. The teachers unions have pushed gender ideology into elementary classrooms, flooded school libraries with hyper-sexualized content, and smeared concerned moms and dads as extremists. The Supreme Court just reminded them — and the rest of the country — that parents are still in charge of their children.

Nowhere has been more of a staging ground for the unions' radical ideology than California, where the Democrat-controlled legislature rubber-stamps union-backed bills. What starts in Sacramento rarely stays there. As California’s teachers unions go, so goes the nation.

But the Court’s Mahmoud decision exposed what unions have tried to deny for years: parents, not bureaucrats, have the final say. The ruling has immediate impact for California, overriding the part of the California School Board Association’s (CSBA) model policy — Administrative Regulation 6142.8 — that explicitly prohibits parental opt-outs from instruction on gender and sexuality.

California school boards would be wise to act fast to give parents in their district an easy way to exercise their constitutional right to opt out.

“The Supreme Court decision sheds light on the rampant indoctrination into sexuality and gender ideology concepts to very young children in America’s public schools,” said CPC attorney Julie Hamill, president of the California Justice Center. “If you are a school board trustee in a district with this policy on the books, rescind it ASAP.”

But that’s not the only win for parents and kids out of the Supreme Court. In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, the Court upheld a Texas law requiring adult websites to verify users’ ages — affirming that states have the authority to protect minors from harmful online content.

For years, parents have been told it’s their job to master complex apps, filters and device settings to keep pornography off their kids’ phones. Last week, the Supreme Court flipped that script. In a long-overdue decision, the Court put the responsibility where it belongs: on the pornographers, not the parents.

And in a third ruling, United States v. Skrmetti, the Court upheld a Tennessee law banning certain medical procedures for minors related to “gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence.”

While California Democrats are unlikely to pass any law restricting these procedures — especially under a governor who has declared the state a sanctuary for minors seeking “gender transitions” — the political and legal landscape is shifting fast. President Trump issued an executive order ([link removed]) in January directing federal agencies to cut funding to health care providers that offer gender “transition” treatment to minors. Last month, Stanford Medicine announced it would stop performing “gender-related” surgeries on patients younger than 19, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced it is closing its Center for Transyouth Health and Development.

These are powerful wins for parents across the country — and especially here in California — who have been fighting tirelessly to protect children from the Left’s coordinated campaign to indoctrinate and sexualize kids.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as the chief obstacle to parental rights in California. When parents flooded school board meetings and the Capitol to oppose hyper-sexualized books in classrooms and school libraries, Newsom signed Senate Bill 1078 into law — stripping local school boards of the authority to decide what students in their district are exposed to.

When parents demanded fairness in girls' sports, Newsom doubled down against them. Last month, the U.S. Department of Education found California in violation of Title IX for allowing biological males to compete against girls in athletics. Then, the Department of Justice warned California school districts that such policies also violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Newsom’s response? The State of California sued the DOJ ([link removed]) to keep males in female sports.

The tide is turning — and Newsom is at the helm of the Titanic. Still, the teachers unions won’t let him jump ship.

The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers drive the agenda in Sacramento. And Newsom’s betting that Randi Weingarten’s support will matter more in his future run for the White House than the votes of parents.

The question remains: Why do unions, whose mission is supposedly to advocate for higher teacher pay and better benefits, wage all-out war on parents and students? The answer is simple: political power. Their political war chests — funded by union dues — make them one of the most powerful special interest groups in America. In California, they make or break the careers of school board members and state legislators.

And nothing makes teachers unions more powerful than breaking up the family. By indoctrinating students, they secure the next generation of voters.

But the unions underestimated parents. When you come for people’s kids, even apolitical families start paying attention. And parents have fought back with force: running for their local school boards, reclaiming the narrative on social media, and holding state legislators accountable in capitols across the country.

At California Policy Center, we’re proud to work alongside thousands of parents — through both our Parent Union and the California Justice Center — to equip them with the tools, legal support and training to win this fight.

Through our Janus Project, we also help government employees and teachers exercise their constitutional right to opt out of union membership. To date, 400,000 California public employees have left their unions — cutting off more than $360 million in dues that unions can no longer use to fund lobbyists and campaigns that work against families.

The Supreme Court’s decisions give us the legal ammunition to keep advancing the fight in California. California Policy Center will continue to stand with parents at the Capitol, at local school boards, and in the battle to dismantle the mainstream media’s propaganda machine.

If you’d like to help us keep up the fight, there’s never been a better time. Your support makes it possible for us to defend parents and children, train local leaders, and hold California lawmakers accountable to the Constitution.

Independence means nothing if parents have no say in their children’s lives. Let’s make sure California remembers what freedom really looks like.

Support CPC’s Work ([link removed])


** California's First Fourth of July
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California’s first Fourth of July was celebrated in the rugged hills of present-day San Bernardino, when the region was still under Mexican rule. On that day in 1842, Daniel Sexton, a Louisiana-born carpenter and early American settler, raised an American flag and celebrated Independence Day with an unlikely group: Native Americans of the local Cahuilla (“ka-WE-uh”) tribe. That event — eight years before California achieved statehood — is recognized as the earliest documented Fourth of July observance in California.

Born in Louisiana in 1818, Sexton arrived in Mexican California in 1841 and went to work for cattle rancher Colonel Isaac Williams on the Chino Ranch. Williams did not mislead Sexton: life was hard, Williams said, but among the hardest things was the unvarying diet of a cattle rancher: he was tired of eating meat, he said. What a body really needed was vegetables.

But raising cattle while growing vegetables is a challenge. Williams and Sexton would need sturdy fences, and fences required wood. Williams dispatched Sexton and two Cahuilla men into the forests that swirled like a green skirt around the San Bernardino Mountains that rose sharply above them.

The trio had not traveled far when one of the Native Americans was bitten by a rattlesnake and died. The two remaining members of the party continued up the foothills and onto the mountains’ flanks. They felled trees, loaded them onto a cart, and began their return journey when the second Cahuilla worker was fatally bitten by yet another rattlesnake. Local history has it that the dying man shrieked, "El Diablo!” His agonizing death led Sexton to give the place the name it has today: Devil Canyon.

Despite their bad luck around Sexton and snakes, the Cahuilla community came quickly to trust Sexton. He was by all accounts a respectful and supremely competent frontiersman. He hired some of the men to cut timber on the flanks of San Gorgonio Mountain and to haul and harvest it in the mill that Sexton built at the base of the mountain.

It's important to note that, contrary to contemporary beliefs about early California, the indigenous people of California often welcomed Europeans — and European Americans — as allies in their centuries of struggle with other native peoples. Nearly a century before Sexton, the Spanish missionary Padre Francisco Garcés and Captain Juan Bautista de Anza blazed a trail from Mexico City into what’s now the American southwest. As they approached the Colorado River basin, they rode through land that was rich with natural resources, especially water. But despite that abundance, the land was nearly devoid of human settlements. In the midst of natural plenty, there was a surreal quiet. Their native scouts explained that local tribes fought so ferociously for control of the region that permanent habitation was nearly impossible.

The Spanish had two options: go to war against all indigenous tribes and insist on imperial authority or offer peace. War was costly. Diplomacy was relatively cheap.

“As political outsiders, [the Spanish] were well positioned to negotiate and sustain peace agreements between the river peoples,” writes the historian Naomi Sussman ([link removed]) . “And, of course, permanent Spanish outposts would guarantee the peace accords’ survival. Spaniards thus used mediation to claim an integral if auxiliary role in Native geopolitics.”

Citing Cahuilla oral traditions and subsequent archeological finds, early twentieth-century historians note the commonality of war with nearby tribes — including the Luiseño, Diegeño, Mohave, and Yuma people. These battles for resources in California’s arid deserts could be extinction-level events for the losers as well as the winners. Sexton’s appearance in that place seems to have been welcomed. Contemporary sources said he acquired such influence that he could have raised a militia of 500 warriors in a few hours.

That growing intimacy — that trust among the Cahuilla and Sexton — revealed itself early. Within a year of his arrival in San Bernardino, Sexton’s Cahuilla coworkers reportedly asked him whether Americans observed holidays as the Californios did. Sexton responded by organizing that first Fourth of July. With the Cahuilla gathered, he raised the America flag he’d made and led what later accounts described as a joyful commemoration of American independence.

Sexton served as a courier during the Mexican-American War just four years later. He went on to help develop Southern California’s early lumber and tin industries. And when he married, it was to the niece of Cahuilla leader Juan Antonio. She was called Pacifica, a name that suggests “peace” or even “peacemaker” and seems today, more than a century later, so poetic, so suitable to their legacy — a legacy that did not end when the couple were ultimately laid to rest, side by side, in the city of Colton. They lay there still in unmarked graves.

Remembering Sexton’s celebration of America with the Cahuilla people — remembering Daniel and Pacifica Sexton – is a small act of celebration, a solemn protest against the fashionable avalanche of misinformation, land acknowledgments and critical race theory schemes aimed at forgetting our shared history on this island in the land.

— The above piece, "California's First Fourth of July," is by CPC president Will Swaim.
New Podcast ()
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** Radio Free California #396: Where All the Cholos At?
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On this week's podcast with CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen: A Southern California city official rallies local gang members to the fight against ICE, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli sues Los Angeles over its sanctuary city laws, Gavin Newsom signs off on the biggest state budget in history — and then breaks the economy and sues Fox News for $787 million. Bonus! Remembering California’s first Fourth of July celebration. Listen now. ([link removed])

SUPPORT CPC ([link removed])

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ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA POLICY CENTER

The California Policy Center promotes prosperity for all Californians through limited government and individual liberty.

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