A new California Assembly bill is the latest of many efforts beginning in the Clinton era by Democratic elected officials nationwide to weaponize government censorship to silence conservative voices in the news media and nonprofit advocacy communities.

The proposed Privacy for Immigration Support Services Providers (AB 2624) was introduced by California State Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D), who is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D). The attorney general would be the main enforcer of the proposal should it become law. The Assembly’s Judicial Committee approved the proposal on a 11-2 vote earlier this month, and it is expected to be adopted by the California legislature and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

At first glance, the bill is simply an attempt to protect providers, workers, and volunteers with state and local social service programs for immigrants with a right to privacy as a defense against threatened violence. According to the Assembly Legislative Counsel’s summary of the proposal, it would create “an address confidentiality program for a designated immigration support services provider, employee, or volunteer, as defined, who faces threats of violence or harassment from the public because of their affiliation with a designated immigration support services facility.”

And, according to the summary, “existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.”

The proposal immediately sparked allegations in California and elsewhere that the bill hands state officials a powerful tool to combat media access to public meetings, facilities, and personnel. Independent investigative journalist Nick Shirley, whose underground video-based reporting has exposed billions of dollars in immigration services waste and fraud in Minnesota and California, branded the proposal as an attempt to “criminalize investigative journalism,” and, he said, “government-funded entities like the Somali ‘Learing’ Daycare centers [in Minnesota] would be protected from being exposed if they operated inside California.”

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio branded the proposal as an effort by Democrats in California government to enable political “activists and taxpayer-funded organizations to demand the removal of video evidence — even if it captures misconduct in plain view — and threatens journalists with massive financial penalties … If this bill becomes law, the message is clear to every journalist in California: Expose corruption, and you will be punished. AB 2624 is an unconstitutional direct attack on transparency and the First Amendment — and it needs to be defeated.”

The proposal arrived on the legislative priorities list almost simultaneously with the end of independent journalist David Daleiden’s successful 11-year battle against a host of transparently spurious charges initiated by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris after he made public video evidence that Planned Parenthood officials were selling body parts of aborted babies.

The controversial California proposal is the latest in a lengthy list of examples of Democrats turning the law enforcement power of government against journalists and researchers viewed by officials as threats. Such actions also meet with widespread approval among Democratic voters, according to Pew Research. In the July 2023 survey, 70% of those surveyed who identified themselves as either Democrat or leaning Democrat agreed, “The U.S. government should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information.”

Pew summarized this finding, saying, “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online (70% vs. 39%).”

Former President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) was especially active in using government against news media considered to be critical such as Fox News, which reported in 2013 that “newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation, even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter’s parents. The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal ‘co-conspirator,’ citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.

The Obama administration is also remembered for systematic IRS harassment of tax-exemption applicants associated with the Tea Party political movement, conservative activists, and defenders of evangelical Christianity. A 2014 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee report found that:

“Investigations by [the Treasury Inspector-General for Tax Administration] TIGTA and the Oversight Committee found clear evidence that Tea Party and other conservative organizations were targeted for enhanced scrutiny because their organization’s names reflected their conservative beliefs. Neither TIGTA nor any other investigation has found evidence that a liberal or progressive group was targeted for enhanced scrutiny because its name reflected liberal or progressive beliefs.

“A May 2013 review of the IRS tax-exempt applications found that not a single group identifying itself as ‘Tea Party’ was approved by the IRS after February 2010, when the new targeting criteria were instated, while dozens of ‘progressive’ groups were approved.”

During the eight-year Oval Office tenure of former President Bill Clinton, politicalization of the federal government accelerated into high gear, according to a 2013 analysis by James Bovard of the Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF):

“In perhaps the least recognized media bombshell of the Clinton era, the Associated Press reported in late 1999 that ‘officials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s.’ … Permitting congressmen to secretly and effortlessly sic G-men on whomever they pleased epitomized official Washington’s contempt for the average American and fair play.”

Bovard also noted that, in addition to the bipartisan harassment enabled by the Clinton administration, the same kind of harassment was utilized by officials of President Richard Nixon’s administration. “After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff (SSS) mastermind [to oversee] ‘all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar types of organizations. … The IRS was also given a list of Nixon’s official enemies to, in the words of White House Counsel John Dean, ‘use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.’”

Official efforts to cover up information and activities of those in power should recall what Jesus Christ said about transparency (John 3:19-20): “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”