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Angelica Salas is used to hearing from people who have opinions about her work providing legal aid to immigrants. She knows many people have different views on immigration, including ones that contradict hers.

But she wasn’t prepared for the moment that a stranger showed up at her mother’s house looking for her.

“I was very shocked. My mother said somebody came looking for you,” said Salas, the executive director for the The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. “It’s OK if someone decides to picket me if they don’t agree with what I’m doing. … That’s their First Amendment right. It’s very different to go to your mother’s home.”

Incidents like that one — and the threatening phone calls Salas and her staff regularly receive — led her organization to support a bill that would expand a privacy program that allows certain workers to hide where they live from public databases.

It seemed noncontroversial at first. An expansion of the Safe at Home Program the Legislature approved last year passed with little opposition.

But the new proposal set off a firestorm among some Republican legislators and conservatives who argue that it is unconstitutional and has the potential to silence independent investigations into government wrongdoing.

“Not only are we unwilling to investigate fraud, but our Legislature is quite literally moving in the opposite direction,” Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom said at a GOP press conference about fraud last week.

The proposal passed the Assembly’s public safety committee this week and is moving through the Legislature.

Expanding Safe at Home program

Originally established to help victims of domestic violence, California’s Safe at Home program helps participants keep their residential addresses confidential and out of public records by providing a substitute mailing address through the California secretary of state. People who live in the same residence are also eligible.

Since its creation nearly 30 years ago, eligibility has expanded to include victims of stalking, sexual assault and human trafficking, as well as to people who work in reproductive health care and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health care officials. To be eligible, individuals must provide evidence that they have received credible threats of violence.

Last year, California passed a law expanding it to people who work in gender-affirming health care. Though the bill advanced through the Legislature mostly on a party-line vote, it received bipartisan support in the Assembly’s public safety and judiciary committees, and two Republican assemblymembers voted for it on the floor.

The new measure, Assembly Bill 2624, would widen the eligibility for the Safe at Home Program to “immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer,” such as Salas and her colleagues.

Stopping independent journalists?

Some GOP assemblymembers, particularly Carl DeMaio of San Diego, have railed against the bill, arguing that it violates constitutional protections for the press, and that it limits journalists’ ability to investigate organizations for fraud, waste and abuse.

At a privacy committee hearing earlier this month, DeMaio pointed to a provision of the bill that would ban a person from knowingly posting on the internet “the personal information or image of any designated immigration support services provider.”

The provision goes on to say “with the intent … to cause imminent great bodily harm” and “reasonable fear.”

DeMaio dubbed the bill the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” after the conservative social media influencer whose 2025 video accused child care centers in Minnesota of widespread fraud. His pieces triggered a surge of federal immigration enforcement activity. In February, Shirley visited several Somali-run day care centers in San Diego where he accused owners of running “ghost facilities” with no children present.

DeMaio argues that the bill would curb Shirley and other “citizen journalists” from investigating taxpayer-funded organizations by intimidating them with costly fines and sanctions.

“This is not about protecting people from violence,” said DeMaio. “This is about threatening and intimidating people who are trying to shine a light on bad behavior. If you have nothing to hide, why fear the transparency?”

During a Fox News segment, Caroline Sunshine, President Donald Trump’s former deputy communications director, urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to denounce the bill, calling it “an authoritarian piece of legislation … designed to silence journalists and cover up the mess that is California.”

Shirley himself posted a 25-minute video confronting Democratic legislators about the proposal, and pointing out that the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblymember Mia Bonta of Oakland, is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“Instead of going after the fraudsters,” said Shirley in the video, “They’re trying to make it criminal to go after the people committing this fraud.”

Reaction to bill called ‘shocking’

Assemblymember Bonta contends that the bill attempts to prevent the misuse of personal information — especially actions tied to threats or incitement of violence — not to limit lawful speech. But her measure has drawn so much ire from the right that Bonta said she and her staff have received death threats over it.

“I can’t imagine how it must be for immigrant service providers who are doing their job every single day to have to deal with this level of hate,” she said at the public safety hearing.

The proposal has since been amended to exclude mentions of social media, though that language was in the law making gender-affirming health care providers eligible for the confidentiality program.

Aydee Rodriguez, who testified in support of the bill as a fellow for the Solís Policy Institute at the Women’s Foundation of California, said the reaction has been shocking.

“This law has been in existence for 30 years. No one had an issue for 30 years until now, when we wanted to protect immigrant service providers,” Rodriguez said. “That’s the trigger, it’s ‘immigrant,’ and that’s what’s sad for me.”

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CalMatters reporter Nadia Lathan contributed to this story.

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Ferndale’s Valley Grocery closed its doors earlier this week, and a three-day notice posted on the front door threatens legal action if the store’s current operators fail to pay $27,832.03 in past-due rent, property tax and insurance payments by 5 p.m. today.

The legal notice, affixed to the front door with clear packing tape, is signed by Eureka attorney Randall Davis, “Attorney for Landlord.” It’s addressed to Ranjeet Singh, Rajinder Buttar Singh, Monty Walia, RRR&M Corp. “and any and all other persons in possession of the premises located at 339 Main Street, Ferdale, CA 95536.”

The sudden closure of Ferndale’s primary grocery store, should it last, will have major impacts on residents of the Victorian village. Built in 1872, this Main Street building has operated as a grocery store ever since, though it suffered major structural damage in the earthquake of 1906 and again in the magnitude-7.2 quake of 1992. (In 1906, the storefront collapsed onto the street, killing two cows. In 1992 it crumbled again, this time flattening a Chevrolet and a Volvo, whose owner had just stepped inside to buy cigarettes. Check out a photo of the smashed Volvo at the U.C. Berkeley Seismology Lab’s website.)

In addition to your standard supply of food provisions, beverages and snack items, Valley Grocery carried Ferndale souvenirs and operated a popular deli that sold pre-made items such as sandwiches, salads, burgers and Mexican food.

Voicemails left for Ranjeet Singh were not returned by the time this post was published. 

According to the Humboldt County Assessor’s Office, the current owner of the building is a corporation called Umar, Inc., which lists its mailing address as a P.O. box in Davis.

The phone number listed online for Valley Grocery has been disconnected.

The three-day notice on the front door, dated April 20, says the tenants owe $11,430.89 in rent from the past three months, plus $9,401.14 for a property tax bill and $7,000 for the annual property insurance invoice. Failure to pay the total amount of nearly $28,000 within three days will result in “legal proceedings,” the notice says. 

We tried to reach attorney Randall Davis, who works with the Eureka firm of Dun & Martinek, LLP, but we were informed that he’s out of the office.

A Ferndale resident tells the Outpost that the lights in Valley Grocery have been out since Tuesday, though a generator was running at the back of the store this afternoon.

Here’s a photo of the notice on the front door:

ANOTHER UPDATE, FRIDAY MORNING: Yes, as some commenters have noticed, the above image was an AI-edited thing, which we probably should have noticed at the time.

The intent of the editing, we are told, was to bring out the letters on the sign. Unfortunately, it also smashed some of the people’s faces and made them hideous. The original image is below. Did it really need editing?

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UPDATE, THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Well, my goodness. This afternoon, the Outpost received a call from Petrolia store owner Denise Goforth, who told us that she has talked to the people in the community group in the past, but that she has not agreed to sell the store to them. Also, she said the store is not currently on the market, nor has it been, and neither is it struggling.

So it sounds like the group’s dreams of taking over the store are at least a little bit more pie-in-the-sky than what was presented below. We should have more on this soon, but in the meantime: We regret the errors.

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ORIGINAL STORY:

After nearly 160 years of serving the Mattole Valley, the Petrolia General Store may be entering a new era as the Sugarloaf General Store, a community-run cooperative named for the iconic rock formation located just off Cape Mendocino. 

Over the coming months, the newly appointed board of directors plans to expand the store’s grocery offerings to include more locally produced items and other products that aren’t readily available in the far reaches of the Mattole Valley, which is about 35 miles from the nearest chain grocery store. Eventually, the board hopes to set up a small café with an espresso bar, soft-serve ice cream, homemade baked goods and ready-to-eat lunch items to draw in tourists passing through town and provide a “third place” for residents. 

The board is launching a donation campaign to bring their vision to life. 

“We’re really looking to emphasize the store as a place for community,” board member Joshua Lyon told the Outpost. “The store is the only commercial entity we have in town, and there is so much potential there for our community. We envision this store as being a place that encourages people to come and hang out from all over Humboldt County. We’re also hoping to make it a destination for hikers and campers passing through on their way to the Lost Coast.”

The history of the Petrolia General Store dates way back to the 1860s, when white settlers made their way to the remote Mattole Valley in pursuit of oil and vast expanses of land for homesteading. Back then, it was known as the John Rudolph Store, which was torn down in the 1940s and replaced by the Hart & Johnson building, and renamed Petrolia Cash Grocery. The H&J building burned down in April 1992 after three major earthquakes rocked Cape Mendocino, damaging more than 1,100 buildings across the county. 

Petrolia resident Denise Goforth bought the general store after it was rebuilt 30 years ago, but now she’s looking to retire and enjoy some time with her grandkids. Goforth put the store on the market about a decade ago, but she’s had a difficult time finding a buyer.

“Denise is 73 now, and she just doesn’t want the responsibility. … It’s been tough to find somebody who has the energy and the money to purchase it, especially with the change in the industry out here,” Lyon said, referring to the once-thriving cannabis industry. “This is the only commercial entity we have in town.”

In the video linked below, Petrolia residents describe the store as the “beating heart of the community.” And if you’ve ever been — especially if you’ve had a turkey sandwich made by the loving hands of a woman who reminds you of your own grandmother —  you know exactly what they’re talking about. 

“This place kinda holds everything together,” said one resident. “You can come down and see friends always.”

Worried that the store would close without a prospective buyer, community members started looking at other options. The idea to form a member-owned co-op burbled up during community conversations last November, and a core group was formed to get the ball rolling. 

“We started off with, I think, seven steering committee members that were just people in our community who were willing to give up their personal time and skill sets,” said board member Amber Dawn Pickett. “We all have different backgrounds, and it’s just been fantastic to bring together all this talent. It’s been no small effort … to get everybody on the same page in understanding the vision, but it actually feels like it’s possible.”

The articles of incorporation were finalized earlier this month, allowing the co-op to form an official board, establish bylaws and accept donations. The board is still working out a tiered system for its shareholders, Lyon said, but those who purchase a membership will get an annual refund based on their patronage.

“We’re still pretty early on in the process,” Lyon continued. “We have over $50,000 in pledges from our community, and we’re working on a donation campaign to help provide a larger portion of the working capital that we need in order to begin operations or potentially get a business loan.”

The board is hoping to make the official transition to the Sugarloaf General Store this summer. Even though the name and the structure of the organization are changing, Lyon and Pickett offered reassurance that the little store will keep its small-town charm.

“This is a renaissance of this institution,” Lyon said. “The store has so much potential.”

Check out the video below to learn more about the donation campaign. Want to support the cause? You can find the store’s website at this link.

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Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

On April 22, 2026, at approximately 7:00 p.m., officers with the Eureka Police Department (EPD) responded to the area of W. Henderson Street and Albee Street for a report of a disturbance involving a subject who implied he was in possession of a firearm.

Upon arrival, officers contacted the reporting parties who stated they had been confronted by two males unknown to them. During the encounter, one of the suspects grabbed his waistband and made statements indicating he had a firearm.

An additional officer located both suspects nearby and detained them. One suspect, identified as Freddy Alvarez, an 18-year-old Eureka resident, was detained along with a 17-year-old male. A firearm, later determined to be a BB gun, was recovered from the juvenile.

Alvarez was taken into custody for conspiracy to commit a crime and participation in criminal street gang activity, and was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility. The juvenile was taken into custody for conspiracy to commit a crime, participation in criminal street gang activity, brandishing a BB gun, and violating his probation terms. He was transported and booked at Juvenile Hall.

Anyone with information related to this incident is encouraged to contact Detective Bailey with the Criminal Investigations Unit at (707) 441-4300.

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PREVIOUSLY

• ‘It’s Just Gone’: GOP Funding Cuts for Public Media Pose Existential Threat to KEET-TV, Station’s GM Says
• California’s NPR and PBS Stations Will Cut Staff and Programs After Funding Slashed
• As the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Winds Itself Down, KEET-TV Cancels its Flagship Local News Program
• NO MORE PBS KIDS: KEET-TV Whittles Itself Down to One Single Broadcast Channel in Effort to Stay Alive

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Humboldt County’s PBS member station, KEET-TV, continues to reel from the Trump administration’s cuts in funding for public broadcasting. Today, the station issued a press release announcing that it will be outsourcing major components of its broadcast and transmission services.

Reached by phone, General Manager Amy Stem-Faulk, who took over the position back in January, said KEET’s staff has been slashed by more than half over the past year, going from 13 to just six employees.

Meanwhile, the equipment that the station has long used to capture and save broadcast signals and then rebroadcast programming to local audiences is getting old.

“Because [that infrastructure] is aging and becoming obsolete, it either needs to be replaced or we had to find a workaround,” Stem-Faulk explained. After investigating the options, KEET’s board of directors realized that it would be less costly in the long run to partner with a pair of companies for those services: Public Media Management (PMM) and Transmission Services Group (TSG).

Stem-Faulk said the station will retain its tower atop the hill in Kneeland, so this transition won’t impact viewers, even those who still get their signal through rabbit-ear antennas. Station management has been communicating with its member base about this possibility for weeks. Now the contracts have been signed and the transition is moving forward.

“This is in response to staff reduction and ridiculously high cost of replacing our infrastructure,” Stern Faulk said.

Here’s a press release with more info:

KEET PBS is undertaking a major transition in how it delivers television service to the North Coast, following the loss of critical Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding and rising costs associated with maintaining broadcast infrastructure and PBS programming.

To ensure long-term sustainability, KEET is moving to a new, cloud-based broadcast and transmission model in partnership with Public Media Management (PMM) and Transmission Services Group (TSG). This shift will modernize operations and reduce the burden of maintaining aging, costly equipment.

“This was not a change we made lightly,” said Amy Stem-Faulk, General Manager of KEET PBS. “The loss of federal funding, combined with increasing costs to deliver PBS programming and maintain our technical systems, made it clear that we had to adapt in order to continue serving our community.”

The transition allows KEET PBS to move away from a traditional, equipment-heavy broadcast model to a streamlined system managed by specialized partners. This reduces long-term costs and operational risk while helping ensure reliable service for viewers across the region.

For more than 50 years, KEET PBS has provided trusted educational programming, local content, and emergency information to the North Coast. However, the financial structure supporting public television has changed significantly, placing increased pressure on small, rural stations like KEET.

“Public television has always depended on community support, but that need is more critical now than ever,” Stem-Faulk said. “The reality is that producing and delivering PBS programming is expensive, and recent funding losses have made local support essential to maintaining the service people rely on.”

KEET is encouraging viewers who value PBS programming—from children’s educational shows to documentaries and local productions—to consider making a contribution.

Community members can support KEET PBS by visiting www.keet.org and clicking the “Donate” button.

“This transition is necessary, but it is not without cost,” Stem-Faulk added. “We are doing everything we can to operate efficiently and responsibly, but continued community support is essential to sustaining this service.”

KEET PBS will continue to provide uninterrupted service throughout the transition.

PREVIOUSLY:

• POTTER VALLEY DAM UPDATE: The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Says That a Municipal Water District in Riverside County is Interested in Taking Over the Project
• Statements From PG&E and Friends of the Eel on SoCal Agency’s Potter Valley Dam Bid
• That SoCal Water Agency Says It’s Just in the Very Initial, Exploratory Phase of its Potential Bid to Take Over the Eel River Dams

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U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman this morning came out swinging in response to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ recent announcement that a Southern California water district has expressed interest in taking over PG&E’s defunct hydroelectric dams near the headwaters of the Eel River:

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Here’s what he had to say in a newsletter to constituents:

I want to alert you to some very disturbing breaking news about a scheme to export Eel River water from my North Coast district to southern California — why I oppose it, and what I’m doing to stop it. We’ve learned from media reports and statements by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that the Trump administration is trying to federalize the Potter Valley Project — to make it part of the Bureau of Reclamation, ostensibly as a way to block PG&E from removing two obsolete hydropower dams on the Eel River.

Just a couple days ago, Secretary Rollins tweeted that she has “found a buyer” for the project: the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District in Riverside County. The district confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle that they are interested in buying it in order to secure new water supplies from the Eel River.

Here’s why that’s a problem. Right now, PG&E and our local water managers, tribes, and environmental partners have an agreement to secure local control of PG&E’s water rights for the first time in a century — and to build a new reliable water supply and fish‑friendly diversion so PG&E can remove its dams while maintaining water deliveries for Mendocino County and the North Bay. This two‑basin solution is supported by state agencies, Governor Newsom, elected officials across the North Coast, the fishing and environmental community, and local tribes. It restores salmon, creates jobs, and protects our water supplies.

The only holdup is the Trump administration — and now we are seeing the outlines of their plans for our water. Secretary Rollins is leading the effort to federalize the PVP, to fold it into the Bureau of Reclamation, and she wants PG&E’s to sell its water rights and infrastructure to this southern California water district as part of that takeover.

Big Central Valley water interests have targeted Eel River water for decades. They once pushed to add it to the State Water Project, and the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a massive dam that would have flooded Round Valley. Governor Ronald Reagan rejected that plan after fierce local and tribal opposition. But these zombie water‑export schemes have a way of coming back.

There are red flags all over this shady water grab. I’m going to fight against it – to protect our Eel and Russian River water supplies from being federalized and taken over as part of this scheme. I urge everyone who cares about North Coast water, rivers, and fisheries to take this threat seriously — because it’s coming directly from Secretary Rollins and the highest levels of the Trump administration.

I’m demanding answers from Secretary Rollins, Secretary Burghum, the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, and anyone else involved in this southern California water‑export scheme. We need to stand together to ensure that not one drop of our water is exported to southern California or the Central Valley.

To keep up with the work I am doing as your representative, please subscribe to my newsletter, and follow me on Bluesky, Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Threads.   

Thank you, and stay well,

Jared Huffman
Member of Congress

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A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down California’s requirement that masked federal agents identify themselves, a blow to the state’s ongoing resistance to the Trump administration’s deportation program.

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel handed down a ruling prohibiting California from enforcing a section of the 2025 mask law that mandates federal law enforcement officers visibly display identification while carrying out their duties.

The law was destined to face critical scrutiny from the federal judiciary. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute federal law enforcement officers acting in the course of their duties.

The law also ran headlong into the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which holds that states may not regulate the operations of the federal government.

The Trump administration sued to challenge the law soon after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it. On Feb. 19, a federal judge issued an injunction against the mask law. The new ruling by a 3-0 decision makes that injunction permanent, pending appeal.

“If a state law directly regulates the conduct of the United States, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with federal functions or operations,” wrote judge Mark J. Bennett.

California’s lawyers argued that, even if the mask law does violate the Supremacy Clause, the court should have also considered the state government’s concerns about federal immigration enforcement’s effect on public safety.

“We decline to do so,” Bennett wrote. “Because the United States has shown a likelihood that the Act violates the Supremacy Clause, it has also shown that both the public interest and balance of the equities tip ‘decisively in…favor’ of a preliminary injunction.”

Democrats passed the mask ban to rein in the anonymous federal agents carrying out the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement program.

Lawmakers this year are advancing more bills targeting the administration’s immigration agents, including proposals that would bar them from employment in California law enforcement agencies and a measure that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents over civil rights violations.