The Brief

"Mob behavior." "Rampant corruption." "Strategic manipulation of the electorate."

These are some of the phrases that have been used to describe the wide array of potentially unethical and even criminal behavior uncovered at Anaheim City Hall. But, for years before an independent investigation revealed the broad extent of pay-to-play politics in the city, a small group of community activists called out many of the same alleged misdeeds.

They filed public records act requests, compiled campaign finance data, and gave piercing speeches at city council meetings.

Some worked together, while juggling full-time jobs, coordinating messaging and organizing protests at City Hall. Others left their jobs entirely, determined to bring wrongdoing into the light.

These residents, described as "a small, rag-tag group of rebels" by a former city manager, were largely ignored and sometimes gaslighted by the elected officials they targeted and those who supported those officials. But now, the results of a year-long independent investigation released at the end of July has corroborated many of their allegations.

"I had so many people calling, saying, 'You were right, you were right. Doesn't it feel great?'" long-time activist Cynthia Ward said after the investigators' final report came out. "I'm like, 'No, I'm horrified,’ because this is the public image of my city ... My heart is broken."

Ward and most of the community activists included in this story were among more than 120 witnesses interviewed for the report, which was carried out by the investigative firm JL Group at the behest of Anaheim's previous city council.

The report builds upon the FBI’s investigation into former Mayor Harry Sidhu and several other key players in Anaheim and Orange County politics for corruption and other alleged crimes.

What was in the independent investigators’ report

The report's main findings include:

• A "potential criminal conspiracy” to divert $1.5 million in federal COVID recovery funds to a nonprofit affiliated with the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce. 
• Potential abuse of the city's policies for giving away tickets for major sporting and entertainment events. The chamber and its former CEO have been the biggest recipients of free tickets, worth well over $23,000 since 2016, according to the report.
• Potential violations of city lobbying rules, including failures to register and lobbying on behalf of clients soon after leaving public office.
• Contributions by Angels baseball leaders to Sidhu that the report said "increased notably" after the city executed a deal with the Angels to sell Angel Stadium. In a search warrant released last year, the FBI alleged that Sidhu was planning to solicit a $1 million campaign contribution in exchange for leaking confidential information to Angels leaders during the stadium negotiations. 

To date, no city official or staff member has been charged with any crime in connection with the alleged misdeeds laid out in the report or in the preceding FBI allegations. Two prominent civic figures, former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president Todd Ament and former OC Democratic Party leader Melahat Rafiei, were charged and pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes stemming from the FBI investigation. Neither has been sentenced yet.

Sidhu did not return LAist requests for comment for this story.

[Read more from LAist about the independent investigation.]

Duane Roberts: 10,000 pages of documents

"You scare the hell out of the power structure when you know what's going on," said Duane Roberts, long-time community watchdog and publisher of the blog Anaheim Investigator.

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Duane Roberts said he sat with the city-contracted investigators for 5 ½ hours of interviews and gave them 500-800 pages of documents that he had collected "on one case alone." That case was the city council's denial of a permit to open an Arco gas station across the street from an existing gas station, a Shell, owned by a friend of — and campaign donor to — former Mayor Sidhu.

The gas station case takes up 26 pages of the investigators' recent report on pay-to-play politics in Anaheim. It’s one of several issues in the report that are bolstered by information Roberts gathered on his own and passed off to investigators.

Roberts writes the blog Anaheim Investigator, where he makes ample use of the California Public Records Act to document ties between local politicians and business and union leaders. Roberts estimates that each year he reads at least 10,000 pages of documents from his public records requests to the city of Anaheim.

"Some people like to collect postage stamps, some people like to watch Monday night football, some people like to ride roller coasters, I like to file public records act requests," he said, "and seeing what our public officials are doing behind closed doors."

Roberts dove into activism in Anaheim after he graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 1997, organizing protests against police brutality, then moving on to advocate for affordable housing and immigrants' rights, he said. For decades, he attended and spoke up at city council meetings — the now-shuttered OC Weekly named him Best Gadfly in 2013.

He also had four unsuccessful runs for public office over the years: twice for Anaheim City Council (2012 and 2018), once as a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate (2010) and once for a spot on the Anaheim Union High School District school board (2000).

Since the pandemic, when he lost his job teaching English at a private language school, Roberts has largely focused on writing up the results of his public records requests and other investigations on his blog. "You scare the hell out of the power structure when you know what's going on," he said.

Mike and Jeanine Robbins: A family affair

Mike and Jeanine Robbins in their home in Anaheim. "When you just don't think you're getting anywhere … if you just get their goat every time you've done something," Mike Robbins said of the couple's frequent speeches before city council.

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For Mike and Jeanine Robbins, investigating Anaheim became a family affair. Mike Robbins said he started sending information to the FBI and California Attorney General and asking them to investigate the Angel Stadium deal at least as early as 2020. He would compile news clippings and add bits of his own analysis and tips he got from community members. The Robbins' adult son researched campaign contributions to Sidhu and other city councilmembers and fed the information to be included in the documents.

Mike Robbins never got a response and doesn't know if his prodding helped lead to the FBI's investigation. But he and his wife Jeanine, along with a small group of activist friends, applied constant pressure to Anaheim officials, showing up to nearly every city council meeting or tuning in when meetings were held remotely during the pandemic. They asked questions, lobbed accusations, gave patriotic speeches and crafted stinging poems and songs.

"In Anaheim, everything is done with bribes," Robbins said at the city council podium on July 16, 2019, comparing the city to developing countries. "This is the disruption of the American system of government that men and women died for … It is a disgrace to those who fought for a great ideal to have it slashed by corporate interests and the people that acquiesce to this system of government."

Robbins' eyes twinkled recalling the many times he and his wife got under the skin of Anaheim officials. "The best thing we could do is just make them mad up there," he said.

"When you just don't think you're getting anywhere … if you just get their goat every time you've done something," he said.

Mike and Jeanine Robbins are part of an organization, the People's Homeless Task Force Orange County, that filed a lawsuit in early 2020 against Anaheim alleging that the Angel Stadium deal violated state transparency laws. An Orange County judge dismissed the case (it's now under appeal) but the stadium deal was ultimately voided in 2022 after the FBI made public its allegations against then-mayor Sidhu.

The People's Homeless Task Force Orange County and their lawsuit are cited numerous times in the independent investigators' report. In one section, investigators allege that former Mayor Sidhu "may very well have" violated transparency laws, including by failing to hand over public records to the People's Homeless Task Force Orange County, and to the L.A. Times, as required by law.

Jeanine Robbins, who ran for city council in 2020 and came in third, said she felt vindicated by the investigators' report. "All the time that the city council and city staff put us down personally and as an organization — they belittled us, they mocked us — all of that was just done in their own sense of self-defense, I guess, self-preservation.”

Robbins also said the independent investigators uncovered new potential misdeeds that surprised them. These included alleged irregularities in the accounting for a temporary homeless shelter built soon after Sidhu was elected in 2018.

"The corruption in Anaheim, I mean, it's been going on so long and I don't think we realized it was so pervasive in all aspects of what they were doing," she said.

Cynthia Ward: Pulling boxes out of the attic

In her free time away from civic watchdogging, Cynthia Ward volunteers as a docent at the Mother Colony House, a historic building in Anaheim. "Especially when you live in the cesspool of politics all the time like I do, you need something really pure to kind of clean it out," Ward said.

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Cynthia Ward said she began paying attention to City Hall in the early 2000s. Later, in 2007, she was a founding member of Save Our Anaheim Resort (SOAR), which started as a campaign against a proposed housing development near Disneyland and later turned into a political action committee through which Disney funnels large sums of money to support favored city council candidates.

Ward left SOAR in 2010 because, she said, she realized the organization was more interested in serving special interests than residents. "When I found out that I was being used to lie to people, it infuriated me," Ward said. "I had to make up for the misinformation that I participated in selling to them."

She "flipped" and began questioning resort-friendly policies and supporting candidates who did the same.

Ward said when she first started speaking up at city council meetings to point out what she saw as disparities, she thought her diligence would be appreciated. Instead her input on topics such as the negotiations over the Angels baseball team were belittled.

"I thought we were all on the same team and they'd be glad that I had caught something that we could fix together," Ward said. "And instead, they'd blow me off and disparage my credibility. 'Oh, this woman is politically motivated and misinformed, and there's no basis for her statement.' … That was horrifying to me to realize, no, we're not all on the same team necessarily."

Ward later served as a policy advisor to former city Councilmember Denise Barnes and then ran for mayor in 2018, landing in fourth place.

Ward said she was interviewed multiple times by the city-contracted investigators, plus follow-up calls and emails in which they asked her to back up her assertions with documents.

"In one case, I had an email that was a screen capture and they wouldn't use it until I found the original email," she said. "I had my kids pulling boxes out of my attic to try and find this email."

Despite feeling validated by the report, Ward said she's not celebrating. "In large part, the folks responsible for this behavior are still exactly where they were when they were working with Harry Sidhu," she said. "So the potential for this to continue happening is there. And that's terrifying."

Ward wants to help the city make changes. Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken has appointed her to an advisory committee tasked with reviewing the independent investigation and suggesting reforms.

"We've got a lot of work to do to fix this, then I'll be ready to party," Ward said.

In cities like Anaheim, who keeps watch?

Duane Roberts has become a regular visitor at Anaheim City Hall, where he says he enjoys looking through public records.

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Larry Rosenthal, a Chapman University law professor and former assistant U.S. attorney, said community watchdogs have become increasingly important to exposing corruption as the media landscape shrinks. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, newsroom employment in the U.S. fell 26% between 2008 and 2020, equivalent to about 30,000 jobs.

"Traditionally, local journalists were a far more important vehicle by which local corruption was exposed than community groups," Rosenthal said. "With the decline of local journalism, however, community groups are one of the few remaining sources of pressure for transparency in local government."

Nevertheless, the Anaheim report by independent investigators cites the Voice of OC and L.A. Times several times each, and community activists noted the role these publications played in uncovering new information about alleged improprieties in the city's government.

The investigators hired by the city had much greater access to information and significantly more resources than most community activists or local journalists — the city paid JL Group $1.5 million for the work.

Former Anaheim city manager Chris Zapata praised community activists for asking questions at city council meetings that, he said, city councilmembers should've been asking themselves. Zapata is cited extensively in the investigators' final report, including his recollection of events leading up to his ouster in 2020. He was fired after questioning some of former Mayor Sidhu’s directives, including how to spend COVID-19 relief funds.

Zapata said he's also been interviewed by the FBI.

Remembering the community watchdogs, Zapata said their tactics were sometimes "pretty rough," referring to those who yelled and spat profanity into the microphone at city council meetings. But they watched out for democracy, he said.

"They were, in effect, the loyal opposition, loyal to the community," he said. "They were there from the standpoint of trying to ask questions, speak truth to power, do things that, frankly, I admired."

What happens now?

On Tuesday, the Anaheim City Council will meet for the first time since the independent investigation was released. They’re set to discuss several recommendations made by investigators in their report, including auditing COVID-19 relief money given to the local chamber of commerce, adding a hotline where employees can report misconduct and strengthening the city’s lobbying rules.

Brianna Lee, engagement producer for civics and democracy, contributed to this story.

A federal judge in San Francisco said on Tuesday the government's ban on Anthropic looked like punishment after the AI company went public with its dispute with the Pentagon over the military's potential uses of its artificial intelligence model, Claude.

U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin made the remark at the outset of a hearing about Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction in one of its lawsuits against the Pentagon, which has designated the company a supply chain risk, effectively blacklisting it.

"It looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic," Lin said, adding she was concerned that the government might be punishing Anthropic for openly criticizing the government's position.

Lin said she expected to make a ruling in the next few days on whether to temporarily pause the government's ban until the court decides on the merits of the case.

The hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is the latest development in a spat between one of the leading AI companies and the Trump administration, and it has implications for how the government can use AI more broadly.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei announced in late February that he would not allow the company's Claude's AI model to be used for autonomous weapons, or to surveil American citizens. President Trump subsequently ordered all U.S. government agencies to stop using Anthropic's products.

The Pentagon designated Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" earlier this month, citing national security concerns. That designation is normally reserved for entities deemed to be foreign adversaries that could potentially sabotage U.S. interests.

Anthropic has filed two federal lawsuits alleging that this designation amounts to illegal retaliation against the company for its stance on AI safety. It argues that the label will cost it both customers and revenue, since it will bar Pentagon contractors from doing business with the company, as well.

The lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., allege the Trump administration violated the company's First Amendment right to speech and exceeded the scope of supply chain risk law.

In Tuesday's hearing, lawyers for Anthropic said it was apparently the first time such a designation had been made against a U.S. company.

Lin said the Pentagon has a right to decide what AI products it wants to use. But she questioned whether the government broke the law when it banned its agencies from using Anthropic, and when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that anyone seeking business with the Pentagon must cut relations with Anthropic.

She said the actions were "troubling" because they did not seem to be tailored to the national security concerns in question, which could be addressed by the Pentagon simply ceasing to use Claude. Instead, she said, it looked like the government was trying to punish Anthropic.

But a lawyer for the government argued that its actions were not retaliatory, and were based on Anthropic's disagreement with the government over how its AI model could be used — not the company's decision to speak out about it.

The government also argued that Anthropic is a risk because, theoretically, in the future the company could update Claude in a way that endangers national security.

Anthropic did not respond immediately to an emailed request for comment.

A Pentagon spokesperson said that the agency's policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation.

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An oil pipeline that was shut down after a 2015 environmental disaster is flowing again after President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier this month.

California mounted a legal fight against the pipeline this week. But environmentalists have won court rulings against the pipeline in recent years too.

Before state Attorney General Rob Bonta filed his suit, the Environmental Defense Center, a nonprofit focused on Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, was already involved in its own ongoing lawsuit to keep the pipeline system shutdown. Last year, a judge granted the group a preliminary injunction to keep the pipeline closed.

“ It's a really dangerous project," said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center. “It would not only cause harm to the environment, but it also threatens public health and safety and our local economy.”

The backstory

The pipeline runs through Gaviota State Park, known for its natural beauty and coastal biodiversity.

The 2015 Refugio Oil Spill released more than 123,000 gallons of crude into the waters off Santa Barbara’s Gaviota Coast, killing hundreds of birds and other wildlife, and spreading more than a hundred miles south into Los Angeles.

The Santa Ynez offshore oil platform and Las Flores Pipeline System responsible for the spill (then operated by Exxon) were shuttered — until the federal government ordered it to restart earlier this month, citing emergency powers and an energy crisis caused by the war in Iran.

Who gets to decide?

California regulators previously ruled that the company now operating the pipeline, Sable Offshore Corp., based in Houston, had to repair the pipeline system before operations could resume.

Krop said the federal government agreed in 2016 that the California fire marshal would have jurisdiction over the pipeline’s safety. And in 2020, she said, a court ruled that only the state could approve restarting the system — an agreement the federal government signed.

“It's not proper for the Trump administration or the secretary of energy to override a court order,” Krop said.

Now, the legal battle will be over who is in charge: the California fire marshal or the Department of Energy as ordered by Trump?

The Department of Energy did not respond to LAist’s request for comment.

Krop told LAist that Californians should be concerned from both an environmental and a constitutional perspective.

 “This is not just about Sable. This is about a constitutional crisis,” Krop said. “This is going to be the new precedent. … If they care about the ability of states to enforce their own laws, if they're worried about State Parks saying what can happen within their boundaries, then they should care about this.”

Is an energy crisis the real reason?

In a statement, Sable said the the federal intervention was “to address the energy scarcity and supply disruption risks caused by California policies that have left the region and U.S. military forces dependent on foreign oil.”

The U.S. is a net exporter of oil, though the global oil market’s complexity means that what is produced here doesn’t necessarily stay in the U.S.

Krop took issue with the characterization of an energy crisis to begin with, a sentiment shared by Bonta and other Democratic leaders in California.

Krop also challenged the assertion that restarting the pipeline would help lower gas prices.

“Gas prices are set on a global market, and right now they're influenced by what's happening in Iran and the war. This project will not make a bit of difference with gas prices,” Krop said. “People don't realize probably oil from this project, it's very heavy, low quality crude oil. There's not any guarantee that it's going to even make it to the gas pump.”

SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico jury decided Tuesday that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms, a verdict that signals a changing tide against tech companies and the government's willingness to crack down.

The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case.

New Mexico jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety. The jury determined Meta violated parts of the state's Unfair Practices Act on accusations the company hid what it knew about about the dangers of child sexual exploitation on its platforms and impacts on child mental health.

The jury agreed with allegations that Meta made false or misleading statements and also agreed that Meta engaged in "unconscionable" trade practices that unfairly took advantage of the vulnerabilities of and inexperience of children.

How much does Meta owe

Jurors found there were thousands of violations, each counting separately toward a penalty of $375 million. That's less than one-fifth of what prosecutors were seeking.

Meta is valued at about $1.5 trillion. The company's stock was up 5% in early after-hours trading following the verdict, a signal that shareholders were shrugging off the news and its potential impact on the company's business.

The social media conglomerate won't be forced to change its practices right away. It will be up to a judge — not a jury — to determine whether Meta's social media platforms created a public nuisance and whether the company should pay for public programs to address the harms. That second phase of the trial will happen in May.

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and will appeal.

"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content," the spokesperson said. "We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."

Attorneys for Meta said the company discloses risks and makes efforts to weed out harmful content and experiences, while acknowledging that some bad material gets through its safety net.

Other lawsuits against Meta over children's mental health

New Mexico's case was among the first to reach trial in a wave of litigation involving social media platforms and their impacts on children.

The trial that started Feb. 9. is one of the first in a torrent of lawsuits against Meta and comes as school districts and legislators want more restrictions on the use of smartphones in classrooms.

More than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it's contributing to a mental health crisis among young people by deliberately designing Instagram and Facebook features that are addictive.

"Meta's house of cards is beginning to fall," said Sacha Haworth, executive director of watchdog group The Tech Oversight Project. "For years, it's been glaringly obvious that Meta has failed to stop sexual predators from turning online interactions into real world harm."

Haworth pointed to whistleblowers like Arturo Bejar, as well as unsealed documents and other evidence, saying it painted a damning picture.

New Mexico's case relied on a state undercover investigation where agents created social media accounts posing as children to document sexual solicitations and Meta's response.

The lawsuit, filed in 2023 by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, also says Meta hasn't fully disclosed or addressed the dangers of social media addiction. Meta hasn't agreed that social media addiction exists, but executives at trial acknowledged "problematic use" and say they want people to feel good about the time they spend on Meta's platforms.

"Evidence shows not only that Meta invests in safety because it's the right thing to do but because it is good for business," Meta attorney Kevin Huff told jurors in closing arguments. "Meta designs its apps to help people connect with friends and family, not to try to connect predators."

Tech companies have been protected from liability for material posted on their social media platforms under Section 230, a 30-year-old provision of the U.S. Communications Decency Act, as well as a First Amendment shield.

New Mexico prosecutors say Meta still should be responsible for its role in pushing out that content through complex algorithms that proliferate material that can be harmful for children.

"We know the output is meant to be engagement and time spent for kids," prosecution attorney Linda Singer said. "That choice that Meta made has profound negative impacts on kids."

What the New Mexico jury reviewed

The New Mexico trial examined a raft of Meta's internal correspondence and reports related to child safety. Jurors also heard testimony from Meta executives, platform engineers, whistleblowers who left the company, psychiatric experts and tech-safety consultants.

The jury also heard testimony from local public school educators who struggled with disruptions linked to social media, including sextortion schemes targeting children.

In reaching a verdict, the jury considered whether social media users were misled by specific statements about platform safety by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Meta global head of safety Antigone Davis.

In deliberations, the jury used a checklist of allegations from prosecutors that Meta failed to disclose what it knew about problems with enforcing its ban on users under 13, the prevalence of social media content about teen suicide, the role of Meta algorithms in prioritizing sensational or harmful content, and more.

Juror Linda Payton, 38, said the jury reached a compromise on the estimated number of teenagers affected by Meta's platforms, while opting for the maximum penalty per violation. With a maximum $5,000 penalty for each violation, she said she thought each child was worth the maximum amount.

ParentsSOS, a coalition of families who have lost children to harm caused by social media, called the verdict a "watershed moment."

"We parents who have experienced the unimaginable — the death of a child because of social media harms — applaud this rare and momentous milestone in the years-long fight to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers their products pose to our kids," the group said in a statement.
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Members of Congress are now facing a personal consequence from the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security: losing one special flight perk.

Delta Airlines is pausing special services that make flights more convenient and efficient for members of Congress, as first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"Due to the impact on resources from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta," the airline said in a statement to NPR. "Next to safety, Delta's no. 1 priority is taking care of our people and customers, which has become increasingly difficult in the current environment."

Specialty services include airport escorts and other red coat services. Delta said lawmakers will be treated like any other passenger based on their SkyMiles status.

This comes a week after Delta CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC he's "outraged" by the ongoing shutdown, which has led to TSA officers working without pay.

"It's inexcusable that our security agents, our frontline agents, that are essential to what we do, are not being paid, and it's ridiculous to see them being used as political chips," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA, has been in a partial shutdown since mid-February.

The shutdown means TSA officers are working without pay, and has led to widespread staff shortages and long wait times for travelers.

Other major airlines did not respond to NPR about imminent changes to their specialty services. A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines told NPR the airline "continues to engage with our federal partners and joins the airline industry in urging Congress to fund the TSA and CBP without further delay."

DHS ongoing shutdown

In the wake of the killing of two U.S. citizens by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis, Congressional Democrats said they wouldn't vote to fund DHS until changes — specifically for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — were put into place.

Senate Democrats and the White House have been trading proposals back and forth for weeks, with little progress.

Democrats have pushed to fund DHS with carveouts to not fund ICE and CBP to alleviate the TSA pain points as negotiations continue

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Saturday that Democrats are having "productive conversations" on ICE reforms but that it's an ongoing process "that should not get in the way of funding our TSA workers."

"Let's keep negotiating the outstanding issues with ICE while sending paychecks to TSA workers now," Schumer said. "Let us end those long lines at the airport now. This is the logical, expedient, correct thing to do."

Republicans thus far have objected to votes on those proposals, pressing to fund the entire department.

Last week, a bill from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to prohibit preferential screening at airports for members of Congress cleared the Senate. It has not yet been taken up by the House of Representatives.

Copyright 2026 NPR