The Brief

In the wake of the Andrew Do corruption scandal, we’ve heard from Orange County residents wondering if his younger daughter, who recently received a law degree from UC Irvine School of Law, will be approved to become an attorney.

They’ve asked because Rhiannon Do, now 24, admitted to violating criminal laws — including perjury and mortgage fraud — connected to a taxpayer-funded scheme that led to her father’s federal prison sentence for his actions while a powerful O.C. supervisor. To become a practicing attorney in California, she would have to pass the bar exam, as well as a State Bar review of whether she has “good moral character.”

The first opportunity for her to take the bar exam after graduating law school is later this month. The list of people who pass this month’s test is scheduled to be publicly posted on Nov. 9.

Financial dishonesty is one of the top areas the state bar looks closely at in their review of applicants, said Mario Mainero, an associate dean at Chapman University law school and expert on the bar application process.

Speaking generally, Mainero said any applicant with a history of serious financial dishonesty will face a longer review process before the bar decides whether to clear them to become an attorney. The reason is that attorneys are often entrusted with handling money for their clients and dividing it up appropriately between fees and what the client should get.

“Any history of dishonesty is going to be an issue for the state bar,” said Mainero, who has been helping students prepare for the bar process for two decades and leads those efforts at Chapman.

Rather than being cleared at the initial stage — a review by a state bar investigator — the more serious cases often go to a process where the applicant is interviewed, and potentially a hearing, he said.

“The State Bar of California is not a social group, it is a consumer protection agency. And so its job is to ferret out, or gatekeep” risks for clients who hire attorneys, said Mainero, who also served until 2010 as chief of staff to then-OC Supervisor John Moorlach.

It’s not a black-and-white decision, according to the State Bar. No crime in and of itself disqualifies someone from becoming an attorney, the bar says.

Rhiannon Do’s attorney, Dave Wiechert, declined to comment when asked if he or Rhiannon Do had anything to say for this story.

What’s the backstory?

Rhiannon Do’s home purchase, and more than $200,000 in payments to her, featured prominently last fall in her father’s plea deal in which he admitted that the down payment and money to Rhiannon Do was a bribe to him for millions in tax dollars he steered to the nonprofit Viet America Society to feed needy seniors. Nearly $8 million of the meal money was diverted, Andrew Do admitted.

The $1.035-million home in unincorporated Tustin was purchased by Rhiannon Do in summer 2023, when she was 22 years old and a full-time law student.

At the time, she was also working at Viet America Society, which had started up in the early days of the pandemic. The group ultimately received more than $10 million in taxpayer dollars at the direction of her father, Andrew Do. Most of that money was COVID-19 relief funds meant to feed needy seniors, and millions of it was routed to a company called Aloha Financial Investment.

Last spring, as LAist investigated what happened to millions that the group was failing to account for, we asked Rhiannon Do questions about the purchase of her home — including why Aloha’s president was named in the purchase paperwork. Rhiannon Do was working as an intern for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office when LAist reached out.

She wrote back calling the questions part of a “false narrative.”

“Your insinuation that there was something untoward with the use of VAS funds is fabricated to further your false narrative from the beginning,” she added, referring to Viet America Society.

Rhiannon Do told us a few days later via email that she didn’t know why Aloha’s president was mentioned on the deed, and that the company president had referred her to the home after deciding not to buy it.

“I have worked hard to purchase my house,” she wrote.

[Click here to read LAist’s email exchange with Rhiannon Do about the home purchase.]

Records later obtained by LAist showed there was much more to the story. Down payment money for the house came from Aloha, according to an escrow receipt LAist obtained of a wire transfer. And Aloha’s president originally was a co-buyer of the home with Rhiannon Do, according to the original purchase agreement.

Part of an escrow receipt for $350,000 towards the downpayment on Rhiannon Do’s home purchase, later filed in court by prosecutors. Millions of the meal dollars Andrew Do awarded the nonprofit Viet America Society had been routed to Aloha, according to public records and Andrew Do's plea deal.

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U.S. Attorney's Office filing in federal court

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What did she and her father admit to?

Last October, following a criminal probe sparked by LAist’s investigation, Andrew Do admitted the home purchase — plus $224,000 in payments to Rhiannon Do — were bribes to him, through his daughter, as part of a scheme to divert millions of dollars in money he had awarded to feed needy seniors.

“As part of the implied agreement, VAS and Co-Conspirator#1 knew they had to pay money for the contracts. This money was done in the form of payments to defendant’s daughters,” Andrew Do’s plea deal states.

Rhiannon Do also signed as Viet America Society’s president on two mental health services subcontracts her father had voted to authorize, according to public records and her father’s plea deal.

Rhiannon Do admitted to violating four criminal laws around the purchase, including mortgage fraud and perjury. The deal she made with prosecutors avoided criminal charges but included requirements that she continue attending school and study for the state bar exam to become an attorney, or to work or seek work.

The mortgage application for Rhiannon Do’s house “was obtained by a mortgage application containing false information and with fabricated documents,” her father’s plea deal states.

Rhiannon Do’s deal says she signed a final loan application that contained false statements from “third parties” intended to influence the lender, without reviewing the application “in willful blindness” of whether the statements were true or false.

Andrew Do, who served on the O.C. board of supervisors for almost a decade, was recently sentenced to five years in federal prison. He must turn himself in to the low-security Lompoc federal prison in Santa Barbara County by Aug. 15. Earlier this month, federal agents seized custody of the home Rhiannon Do purchased, which she and her father forfeited any ownership of as part of their deals. Meanwhile, the county has an ongoing fraud lawsuit against Rhiannon Do, Andrew Do and others.

What would Rhiannon Do need to do to become an attorney?

Rhiannon Do went on to graduate from UC Irvine’s law school in May, according to a university spokesperson.

To become a practicing attorney in California, she would have to pass the bar exam as well as a State Bar review of whether she has “good moral character.”

As part of that review, applicants are required to disclose to the State Bar any lawsuits against them, as well as any complaints that they engaged in fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.

What factors does the bar look at if a candidate engaged in misconduct?

Here’s what the review looks at, and what Rhiannon Do admitted to.

According to the state bar’s guidelines, a review looks holistically at the circumstances, including the applicant’s age at the time of any fraud misconduct, their role, how often they engaged in misconduct and their level of remorse and accountability.

When it comes to past fraud by an applicant, the bar’s guidelines say there are a variety of factors they consider, which could work for or against an applicant, including:

• Length of time since misconduct
• Severity of the misconduct
• Number and frequency of acts of misconduct
• Role of the applicant
• Age of the applicant at the time of misconduct
• Time since the misconduct
• Their intent
• Their remorse, insight and accountability
• Payment of fines, restitution, other financial obligations
• Rehabilitation related to misconduct
• Pattern of misconduct
• Attempts to conceal or mislead
• Financial or emotional impact on victims
• Misconduct involving abuse of authority
• Number and type of victims

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.

The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.

The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.

 ”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”

The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”

Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.

CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.

State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.

Who the changes apply to:

• Asylees
• Refugees
• Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
• Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
• Conditional entrants
• Victims of trafficking
• Battered noncitizens
• Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
• Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
• Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024

Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.

That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.

Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.

Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.

“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.

Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”

In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.

“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”

Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.

“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”

Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.

San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.

“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”

In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”

Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.

“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”

According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.

Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.

The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.

Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”

The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.

“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”