The Brief

California’s tribal casinos won a key vote on a gambling bill earlier this month after showering members of an obscure legislative committee with more than $1 million in campaign donations since the start of last year.

That included funneling $92,500 in campaign donations to key members of the committee in the weeks before the vote.

The tribes’ competitors, private card rooms, see the legislation as an existential threat both to their businesses and to city budgets across the state. But the card clubs lost the vote despite giving members of the committee nearly $393,000 in campaign donations over the past year and a half.

They did get support from the committee’s chairperson, who received the largest share of the card rooms’ cash.

Her opposition wasn’t enough to kill the bill, which needed 12 of the 22 members of the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee to pass. In the end, Senate Bill 549 passed with 15 “aye” votes including two from legislators who unexpectedly broke with local governments in their districts, and one from a legislator who was temporarily placed on the committee to fill in for an absent member.

It is illegal for legislators to pledge a vote in response to a cash contribution. Members of the committee told CalMatters the influx of gambling money to their campaigns didn’t influence their decisions.

But the fact that two influential interest groups showered committee members with so much money in the lead up to a key vote suggests spending big makes a big difference, and the public should assume it does, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager for California Common Cause.

“No politician is ever going to tell you that money affects their vote, but the public isn’t stupid,” McMorris said. “It’s pretty darn suspicious that most of them voted based on where they got the most money from.”

The vote also shows why the Governmental Organization Committee is known as a “juice committee,” which typically considers high-stakes legislation for businesses likely to try and influence the vote by donating to committee members. The committee has twice as many members as most legislative committees, and it provides the leaders who make committee assignments with a way to reward political allies.

“That’s why they’re called ‘juice committees,’ so you can squeeze the money out,” said Stacy Fisher, a former political scientist who studied juice committees as a professor at University of Nevada, Reno.

High-dollar gambling fight

For the lawmakers on the G.O. Committee, as it’s commonly called, there are few issues as juicy as this gambling dispute. The fight has become one of the most expensive political battles in California. Combined, the competing gambling interests have donated at least $1.4 million to the committee’s members since 2023.

It’s been part of a years-long lobbying blitz. Last year, one card room alone, Hawaiian Gardens Casino, spent $9 million on lobbying – the second most any group spent to influence state policy. Only the international oil giant Chevron spent more.

Meanwhile, both sides spent a combined $176 million on a failed, tribal-sponsored sports betting initiative in 2022 that included a provision that would have allowed the tribes to sue card rooms.

The tribes, however, outspent their rivals on the initiative three-to-one, nearly the same ratio they outspent the gambling halls in the months before the G.O. Committee voted to advance the measure.

The tribes and card rooms have been fighting ever since voters in 2000 approved an initiative that gave tribes the right to negotiate compacts with the state to host certain house-banked, Las Vegas-style gambling on their lands.

The tribes argue that the state’s 80 or so privately-owned gambling halls have been cutting into their exclusive gambling rights by illegally offering games such as blackjack, baccarat and pai gow poker. By doing so, the tribes contend, the card rooms have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from historically disenfranchised tribal communities across California.

They want to sue the card rooms for allegedly breaking the law. But because the tribes are sovereign governments, California courts have found they lack the legal standing to take their business competitors to court. Senate Bill 549, authored by Fullerton Democrat Sen. Josh Newman and 20 bipartisan coauthors, would give tribes a brief window to file a case.

James Siva, chairperson of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, representing 52 tribal governments, framed the issue as a matter of legal – and social – justice for native peoples.

Noting that Gov. Gavin Newsom has “acknowledged the past atrocities and issued a formal apology for the state sanctioned genocide of native people,” Siva argued that passage of the bill would help California atone for the crimes purportrated against tribes. He said card rooms should also want a judge to settle the matter for good.

“If card rooms are confident in the legality of the games they operate, they should welcome the chance to prove it in a court of law,” he told the committee.

Visitors play the slot machines at the Valley View Casino & Hotel in San Diego County on July 1, 2019.

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Cities count on card room revenue

The card rooms say the measure and the lobbying push behind it from the state’s 70 tribal casinos is unfair. They say card rooms’ annual earnings are barely 10% of what tribal governments make. They argue that if the tribes are allowed to sue, the card clubs wouldn’t be allowed to sue tribes back, and they could go out of business from the ensuing legal fees.

Card room lobbyist Ed Manning told the committee that the California Attorney General’s Office has permitted the disputed games for years. The tribes, he said, are merely looking to kill their competition.

“This is sort of the equivalent of a local government giving a land-use permit to Starbucks,” Manning told the committee. “Starbucks opens up, operates, but the coffee shop down the street doesn’t like it, and so they want to sue Starbucks instead of the city government that gave them the permit.”

The card rooms also have allies in cities across the state whose budgets are tied to card room revenue, the largest being San Jose. The cities say that if the card rooms stop offering the disputed table games, it could force the municipalities to cut police, fire and other city services because their budgets are propped up by the taxes and fees that the card rooms pay local governments.

San Jose City Councilmember Sergio Jimenez told the committee that the city receives $30 million each year from card rooms, enough to fund 150 police officers or 133 firefighters.

“This bill would inject uncertainty into city budgets across the state at a time when revenue levels and economic activity are just beginning to stabilize after the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

Breaking down the G.O. vote

Card room lobbyists thought the July 2 vote by the G.O. Committee would be closer, but two members surprised them by voting with the tribes. One was Oceanside Republican Laurie Davies, whose Assembly district has a card room, Oceans Eleven Casino in Oceanside. Both the city and the card room oppose the bill.

Her campaign received $53,000 from tribal casinos and $12,000 from card rooms since January 2023. She didn’t discuss her position at the hearing, and her office declined to comment.

The other surprise was from Assemblymember Evan Low, a Democrat from Cupertino. He voted to support the measure over the objections of San Jose, which is in his Assembly district.

Low is running for Congress and is leaving the Assembly at the end of the year. His campaigns received at least $18,100 from tribes and $12,000 from card rooms since January 2023.

Despite voting for the bill, Low told the committee he had concerns “about the potential for the loss of revenue and also the loss of jobs.” He urged the bill’s author to consider amending it and he suggested he might vote against it if the bill advances to the Assembly floor.

Low’s spokesperson Eddie Kirby said the lawmaker explained his vote in the committee and that “suggesting any other motive is not factual.”

One other potential swing vote was absent from the committee vote.

Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, was recovering from a knee surgery. He told CalMatters he wasn’t sure how he would have voted, though he said he does have concerns “about anyone using the courts to extinguish a business.”

In his absence, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas subbed in Gregg Hart to temporarily take Jones-Sawyer’s seat. The Democrat from Santa Barbara voted to pass the measure. Hart has received $43,000 from tribes and no money from card rooms in the past year and half.

Rivas didn’t respond to CalMatters’ request for comment. Hart told CalMatters that Rivas didn’t make any mention of why he chose him, but he was glad to take the assignment to support tribes, including one in his district. Hart said the tribe’s members pulled themselves out of “abject poverty” thanks to their casino. He said they deserve their day in court.

“I think this question about gaming is a legitimate question that needs to be resolved,” he said.

Jones-Sawyer is leaving the Assembly at the end of the year, and he placed last during the March primary as he sought a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. His city council campaign received at least $9,000 in donations in near equal amounts from tribes and card rooms, according to donations reported to Los Angeles County elections officials. He has no card rooms or casinos in his Assembly district.

Jones-Sawyer has been on the G.O. Committee for much of his time in office, and he told CalMatters that both factions have donated to his Assembly campaigns over the years.

“It’s been very fortunate that they’ve both been able to help me get back into the Assembly, and then having …faith in me running for city council,” he said.

Another Los Angeles County Democrat, Blanca Pacheco, who received $19,126 from card rooms and $43,500 from casinos, told the committee that given the importance of card rooms in her district, she had no choice but to side with them.

“It is a very, very, very tough vote, and I feel for both sides,” she told the committee. “At some point, I would love to see both sides just come to the table, have more discussions, and hopefully everything can be worked out. But at the end of the day, I do have to vote my district.”

Pacheco ended up not voting, which counts the same as voting “no.” Her office declined to make her available for an interview, but a spokesperson told CalMatters in an email that “often, a decision not to cast a ‘no’ vote is a courtesy to the author.”

Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from Los Angeles, talks to a colleague at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Aug. 17, 2023.

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Another notable non-vote came from Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, the committee’s chairperson. Her campaign reported $27,500 in contributions from card rooms and affiliated groups in the three months leading to the vote, bumping her total donations from card rooms to $125,000 since January 2023. She also received $95,000 from tribal casinos.

Rubio, who doesn’t have a card room or a tribal casino in her district, told the committee she couldn’t recommend voting for the bill, given the harms the bill posed to communities that depend on the tax revenue from card rooms.

Her office declined to make her available for an interview, but in a written statement she said her position wasn’t influenced by the card rooms’ cash.

“During the last eight years in the Assembly, I have sat on over a dozen committees and voted on thousands of bills,” she said. “Campaign contributions have never been a consideration during any of those votes.”

The bill will next be heard before the Assembly Appropriations Committee, another juice committee.

The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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