Merry Christmas!



[INSIDE JW]

California Appeals Court Upholds Injunctions against Corporate Board
Quotas

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This is an important victory for Judicial Watch, as well as
taxpayers and stockholders.

The California Court of Appeal has upheld two
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injunctions
against California quota requirements for corporate boards.

Earlier this year, two California trial courts had found (here
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and here
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state quota mandates for sex, race, ethnicity, and LGBT status
unconstitutional. On December 1, 2022, the California Court of Appeal
denied (here
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and here
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two separate emergency requests by the California Secretary of State
to lift the injunctions.

The California courts again have upheld the core American value of
equal protection under the law. Our taxpayer clients are heroes for
standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts
to undo anti-discrimination protections. Our legal team has helped
protect the civil rights of every American with these successful
lawsuits.
Here’s the background.

We filed a gender quota lawsuit
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in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2019 on behalf of three
California taxpayers. The lawsuit challenged a 2018 law, Senate Bill
826 (SB 826), which mandated that every publicly held corporation
headquartered in California have at least one director “who
self-identifies her gender as a woman” on its board of directors. We
successfully argued
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that the quota for women on corporate boards violates the Equal
Protection Clause of the California Constitution. In May 2022, after a
28-day trial, the Superior Court delivered its verdict
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finding that “S.B. 826’s goal was to achieve general equity or
parity; its goal was not to boost California’s economy, not to
improve opportunities for women in the workplace nor not to protect
California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”

In 2020, we filed a separate taxpayer lawsuit
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challenging
Assembly Bill 979 (AB 979), which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into
law on September 30, 2020. The bill mandated boards of directors of
California-based, publicly held domestic or foreign corporations to
satisfy racial, ethnicity, sexual preference and transgender status
quotas.

Our lawsuit successfully asked the Superior Court to declare the
diversity quota scheme unconstitutional under California’s equal
protection guarantee and to permanently enjoin its enforcement. On
April 1, 2022, the Superior Court issued a ruling and opinion
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striking down AB 979’s diversity quotas and granting a permanent
injunction in favor of our taxpayer clients enjoining the state from
implementing the statute.

EXPOSED: BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FLIGHTS TO MULTIPLE CITIES TO DROP OFF
ALIEN CHILDREN

The Biden administration is delivering unaccompanied alien children
around the country like packages.
We received 16 pages
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of records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
detailing the nighttime transportation of unaccompanied alien children
(UAC) by air from Texas to Tennessee, as well as two other flights
making multiple stops across the country.

The Administration for Children and Families, a division of HHS,
produced the records in response to an October 2022 lawsuit
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filed
after HHS failed to respond to a May 20, 2021, Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request (_Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services_
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(No. 1:22-cv-03044)) asking for:

* All documents related to the preparation and logistics involved in
the transportation of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) to and from
Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center on May 14, 2021.
* All ACF officials’ internal email communications related to the
transportation of UACs to and from Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center
on May 14, 2021.

The records include a May 15 email
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from a person whose name is redacted to an unnamed person at MVM Inc
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Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)
Transport DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) Command Center detailing charter
flights.

One flight travelling from SAN-OKC-CHA-EWR [San Diego, Oklahoma City,
Chattanooga, Newark airports] via “Swift Air
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which was operating a
Boeing 737 with “148 seats” [likely the number of passengers]. It
indicates that there would be two buses at the San Diego Convention
Center, two buses in Oklahoma City, two buses in Chattanooga, and two
buses at Newark.

A second flight, from MFE-ELP-EWR [McAllen, El Paso, Newark] also via
“Swift Air,” and a 737, with 150 seats, notes: “Pecos [TX] will
be bused to ELP [El Paso] to catch charter flight. 1 bus will report
0800. 2 buses to report at 0800 at Delphi EIS [Delphi Emergency Intake
Site
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The records also include a May 13, 2021, email thread
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from a redacted person at MVM Inc
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to
[email protected] [likely Response Force 1
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and others regarding an
Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) transport of minors from Kay Baily Hutchison
Convention Center in Dallas on Friday, May 14, 2021, before dawn, at 3
a.m.

RF1 Badging then replies, “Please be advised that the following UCs
[Unaccompanied Children] … does not match in our system.” He then
proceeds to list the details of nine children.

Also in this thread is an email from an individual at Culmen
International
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stating that one of the minors
is “not cleared to travel.”

The records include a list
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for a charter of 36 children from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and El
Salvador. A handwritten note on the spreadsheet says: “Dallas to
Tennessee Air Charter Flight 5/14/2021.” The record notes that the
children are to be transported to these shelters: La Casa de Sidney,
Lincoln Hall Boys’ Haven, Children’s Home of Kingston,
Children’s Village Shelter, and Cayuga Center TFC. It indicates
three of the minors are “reunifications.”

(Chattanooga’s unaccompanied migrant minor housing facility, La Casa
de Sydney, was closed in 2021 after reports
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of
runaways and sexual battery.)

An undated “Transfer of Custody
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form indicates the transfer of six Guatemalan and Honduran children
from “KBH” [likely Kay Baily Hutchison Convention Center in
Dallas] to La Casa de Sidney.

These shocking documents that we forced out show the Biden
administration effectively trafficking unaccompanied alien children,
dropping them off in city after city like items for delivery. The
Biden open borders crisis is resulting in the most massive child and
human trafficking operation ever.

In a May 26, 2021, letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,
Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, along with
Tennessee Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, detailed their concerns
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regarding unaccompanied minors:

> We write to seek information on the Department of Health and Human
> Services (HHS) management of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in
> federal custody and the facilities used to house them. We are
> particularly concerned about recent reports regarding the use of
> Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a central location for resettling UACs in
> the United States.

> There are media reports that, within the last week, at least four
> planes carrying UACs landed at Wilson Air Center in Chattanooga,
> Tennessee, before swiftly boarding the children onto buses and
> transporting them to multiple cities across the southeastern United
> States for apparent resettlement, with zero transparency regarding
> what was happening. For months, reports have detailed how thousands
> of children are being housed in neglectful conditions at mass
> shelters operated by HHS under a veil of secrecy. We are deeply
> troubled by the lack of transparency and accountability regarding
> the conditions that HHS is subjecting these children to.
In September 2021, we revealed
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HHS documents
that list 33 separate incidents of alleged sexual abuse in a one-month
time period tied to unaccompanied alien children shelters.

Our investigation and lawsuits continue into the Biden invasion, and
we will keep you apprised as events in this crisis warrant.

JUDICIAL WATCH SUES AIR FORCE ACADEMY FOR CRITICAL RACE THEORY RECORDS

Our military academies are infested with Marxist dogma, and we’re
rooting it out.

Our latest action is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit for
United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) training material on critical
race theory (_Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense_
[[link removed]
_(No. 1:22-cv-03510)).

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after
the Air Force Academy, a component of Department of Defense, failed to
respond to an August 5, 2021, FOIA request for all PowerPoint
presentations used for training and/or classroom instruction
discussing critical race theory (CRT) and/or “white supremacy.” We
also requested emails about this issue for Air Force Academy senior
leadership.

This is the fourth lawsuit on the crisis at our military academies:

> On September 23, 2022, we filed a FOIA lawsuit
>
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on
> behalf of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the
> Services, Inc. (STARRS) against the U.S. Department of Defense for
> Air Force Academy records regarding “systemic racism,” as well
> as records of critical race theory at the Academy.
>
> In July 2022 we sued
>
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> the U.S. Department of Defense for records related to the United
> States Naval Academy implementing critical race theory in the
> training of naval recruits.
>
> In June, we received records revealing critical race theory
> instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
>
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One
> training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN
> THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]
Marxist critical race theory and its racial division have no place at
the Air Force Academy, which is training the next generations of Air
Force leadership. And, per usual, the scandal is compounded by the
cover-up of records about the propaganda program abusing Air Force
cadets.

HACKERS TIED TO CHINA’S GOVERNMENT STEAL $20 MILLION IN COVID RELIEF
FUNDS

As Congress considers a staggering $1.7 trillion spending bill, it is
wise to look at what happens to your tax dollars in the hands of
careless bureaucrats. Consider COVID relief money. Combining insult to
injury, China hackers have made off with a huge chunk of it, as our
_Corruption Chronicles_ blog reports
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> Nearly a year after Judicial Watch launched an investigation into
> the theft of U.S. COVID relief funds by foreign hackers, the Secret
> Service confirms that cyber criminals connected to China’s
> government stole $20 million in benefits. This includes Small
> Business Administration (SBA) loans and unemployment insurance money
> in multiple states, according to a national news story
>
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> identifies the perpetrators as a APT41, a hacking group based in
> Chengdu. The report cites U.S. law enforcement officials and
> cybersecurity experts who believe the multi-million-dollar theft of
> government pandemic funds by the Chinese faction “may just be the
> tip of the iceberg.”

> Back in February Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act
> (FOIA) request with the SBA as part of an ongoing investigation into
> the pervasive fraud associated with the government’s COVID-19 cash
> giveaway. Specifically, Judicial Watch requested memoranda, reports,
> email communications, investigative reports, and other
> communications or data concerning the following: COVID-19 Economic
> Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) deposits originating from a foreign
> Internet Protocol (IP) address, account holders attempting to
> transfer funds to foreign accounts of any type and loans approved
> utilizing a fraudulent social security number. On February 23, the
> SBA acknowledged via electronic mail that it received Judicial
> Watch’s FOIA request and issued an official tracking number. So
> far no records have been provided to Judicial Watch and the SBA is
> in violation of the federal deadline—20 working days—to produce
> the information.

> Most government agencies practice similar stonewalling tactics and
> Judicial Watch has repeatedly been forced to file lawsuits to compel
> the release of records. Our goal as a nonpartisan educational
> foundation is to promote transparency, accountability and integrity
> in government, politics, and the law. Pandemic relief has been a
> colossal multi-billion-dollar debacle rife with fraud and
> corruption. The problem is so bad that the Department of Justice
> (DOJ) created a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force
>
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> to “enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related
> fraud.” The special unit has been quite busy prosecuting a
> multitude of scams, false statements, and money laundering related
> to pandemic relief. Earlier this year House Republicans issued a
> report
>
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> documenting 500 days of massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the
> American Rescue Plan. It includes more than $783 million in stimulus
> checks for convicted prisoners including the Boston Marathon bomber,
> $40 million to expand libraries in Delaware, $2 million for a
> Florida golf course and $16 million for electric vehicle charging
> stations in Maine and $20 million to modernize the state’s fish
> hatcheries. The list goes on and on.

> The SBA got on Judicial Watch’s radar because it has disbursed
> approximately $390 billion to nearly four million small businesses
> and nonprofits under its COVID-19 EIDL. The program provides up to
> $2 million in financial assistance to help small businesses recover
> from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Like many of the other
> COVID relief initiatives, the government made it way too easy to
> obtain cash and failed miserably to implement adequate vetting
> protocols. Officials cited in the recent news article confirm that
> other federal investigations of pandemic fraud also seem to point
> back to foreign state-affiliated hackers. The Secret Service admits
> there are over 1,000 ongoing investigations involving transnational
> and domestic criminals defrauding public benefits programs and
> Chinese hackers are key among them. As if it were not serious enough
> that Chinese hacks are stealing American taxpayer funds, one senior
> Justice Department official points out the cybercrimes also have
> serious national security implications.

> Besides the SBA’s EIDL, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic
> Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress to provide over $2 trillion
> in “fast and direct economic aid” to Americans negatively
> impacted by the pandemic, also launched another fraud-infested
> initiative known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). In
> addition to the DOJ’s special task force, federal prosecutors
> across the nation have charged dozens of individuals with crimes
> associated with PPP scams. A recent example includes a father and
> son convicted
>
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> of illegally obtaining $1.7 in loans. A federal jury in North
> Carolina convicted the men of money laundering and other offenses
> with the father sentenced to four years in prison and the son three
> years. This month the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District
> of Virginia revealed that in 2022 her office has charged more than
> 50 defendants
>
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> in 26 cases of fraud schemes connected to COVID relief that
> defrauded the government out of nearly $125 million.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Throughout the year, Judicial Watch engages the government in court to
expose its never-ending efforts to control us. These legal battles
have at times been with the IRS and the Census Bureau, and they have
revealed the government wielding power to stay in power.

None of this is new.

The story we celebrate on December 25th – the birth of Christ –
occurred amid the ruthless imposition of government authority. In his
desire
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to eliminate any pretender to the throne, Caesar Augustus mandated a
census to identify anyone who might challenge him. A census was also a
first step in taxing the people.

And so, despite Mary being in her ninth month of pregnancy, she and
Joseph travelled to his home, Bethlehem, a week-long journey of
perhaps 90 miles through treacherous landscape, and it was there that
Jesus was born.

Herod, who ruled over Judea, had been given
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the title
“King of the Jews” by Rome, so when the Wise Men from the East
used that title for the Christ child they came to worship, Herod was
inflamed. He demanded that the travelers reveal the location of Jesus,
but they refused.

This infuriated him even more. It took little effort for him to order
the national massacre of all boys under two years old. Warned of this
in a dream, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safekeeping, and
they didn’t return until Herod was dead.

But once again a despotic ruler would influence the Christmas story.
When he heard that Herod’s son Archelaus, who had massacred
thousands of Jews, had assumed control of Judea, Joseph resettled his
family in Nazareth outside of Archelaus’ power.

These tempestuous events echo loudly in our time. We can take from
them the realization that the kings of this earth have no power over
the Truth, and, despite the tribulations of our age, we can genuinely
be of good cheer.
All of us at Judicial Watch pause from our labors in this season to
wish you a Merry Christmas!

Until next week,



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