A former Los Angeles Unified School District employee and the owner of a technology vendor were charged Thursday for their alleged involvement in a $22 million kickback scheme that funneled taxpayer funds away from classrooms and into their own pockets.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced charges against Hong “Grace” Peng, 53, of Pasadena, and Gautham Sampath, 53, of Flower Mound, Texas.

‘This case involves a blatant abuse of public trust — funneling taxpayer dollars intended for students into personal coffers.’

Peng previously worked as a technical project manager for LAUSD between 2018 and 2022. She was accused of illegally participating in the awarding of contracts. Peng allegedly unlawfully issued contracts totaling over $22 million to a company owned by Sampath.

Sampath was accused of laundering over $3 million to Peng.

Peng resigned from her position with LAUSD following a late-2022 search warrant related to an investigation into alleged illegal activity. Peng was charged with money laundering and one felony count of having a financial interest in a contract or purchase made in an official capacity.

Sampath was charged with money laundering, having a financial interest in a contract or purchase made in an official capacity, and aiding and abetting a government official to have a financial interest in a contract or purchase made in an official capacity.

RELATED: FBI raids home and office of Los Angeles school superintendent, outspoken critic of ICE raids

Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

If convicted on all charges, they each face up to seven years in jail.

Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Peng and an extradition warrant for Sampath.

“Between 2018 and 2022, Peng was involved in signing, approving, or recommending over $22 million in funding from LAUSD to Innive through Change Orders, Work Orders, Invoices, and Contract recommendations,” the felony complaint read. “Between 2017 and 2023, Innive received over $39 million in payments from LAUSD. Between 2018 and 2022, Peng received over $3 million in payments from Sampath, Sampath controlled companies, or Sampath connected third parties.”

The complaint claimed that Sampath sent texts to Peng in February 2018 instructing her to “delete all” of their messages.

“If anyone sees the text about these internal things it will be a prb,” Sampath allegedly wrote.

In June 2018, he allegedly wrote to Peng, “What r the other opportunities in Lausd. That we can exploit. Any other area.”

According to the complaint, Peng responded by telling Sampath that there were “a lot” of proposal requests from the district.

“This case involves a blatant abuse of public trust — funneling taxpayer dollars intended for students into personal coffers,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman stated. “This vendor, working with an LAUSD project manager, allegedly carried out a multi-year, multi-contract pay-to-play arrangement that siphoned millions of dollars from our schools. We will not tolerate public officials who sell out their responsibilities or contractors who line their pockets by gaming the system. Both will be held fully accountable.”

RELATED: Thousands of students drop out of Los Angeles schools over ‘climate of fear’ from deportations, superintendent says

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

LAUSD released a statement in response to the charges.

“Los Angeles Unified is aware of the charges filed by the District Attorney’s office against an individual who worked for LAUSD as an information technology employee from 2018 to 2022. As recounted in the District Attorney’s Felony Complaint, this former employee was referred to the Office of the Inspector General for investigation in April 2022, as soon as an LAUSD supervisor learned of a potential conflict of interest. LAUSD Office of the Inspector General then notified the District Attorney’s office,” the district wrote.

“LAUSD is committed to full compliance with all applicable laws, and we expect our employees and business partners to comply with the highest standards of ethics and integrity. The District will continue to cooperate fully with relevant authorities,” the district continued. “We will not comment further on the specifics of the case while legal proceedings are ongoing.”

Sampath, Innive, and Peng did not respond to a request for comment.

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A Los Angeles-area father fed up with his city’s inaction apparently painted “stop” on a street and installed 30-inch reflective stop signs at his own cost. He has been arrested.

Joseph Brandlin said he had seen numerous near-crashes at the intersection outside his home in El Segundo, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The neighbors immediately organized and wrote 74 letters of support for Brandlin, who handed the letters over to city officials shortly after his arrest.

The 44-year-old has lived at the location for nearly four decades and said the city was ignoring complaints about the intersection of Loma Vista Street and Acacia Avenue.

“I care deeply about the safety of our neighborhood and the families that live here,” Brandlin told the Times.

He got together with other residents and presented a petition with about 50 signatures asking the city to install additional stop signs. The city said its traffic analysis found insufficient reason to merit the signs, but residents said they saw no evidence of the survey.

“There’s a park right there, and it’s a magnet for children,” said Gary Sanders, a 62-year-old resident of the neighborhood.

“A tragedy could occur,” he added. “I wonder if a tragedy does have to occur for the city to do something about it.”

Brandlin said the last straw was when his son was nearly hit by a car at the intersection because of low visibility.

He began installing the stop signs on the early morning of March 14, according to the El Segundo Police Department.

While the city may not have made the requested safety changes at the intersection, the city rushed to prosecute Brandlin when he took matters into his own hands.

He was arrested at about 1:30 a.m.

Brandlin said the arrest was excessive, as he was charged with multiple felonies. Among the charges were interfering with a traffic control device, grand theft, and vandalism exceeding $400. He was released later that day and is scheduled for a court hearing in June.

The neighbors immediately organized and wrote 74 letters of support for Brandlin, who handed the letters over to city officials shortly after his arrest.

“I’m asking the council for a straightforward action to install stop signs on intersection of Loma Vista Street and Acacia Avenue or complete and transparent evaluation with the community,” said Brandlin at a city council meeting days after his arrest.

The Times report noted that there have been other incidents in which residents have been arrested for their vigilante improvements to street safety.

RELATED: ‘I am mortified’: Video shows ‘serial defecator’ nabbed by police drone in city park

Brandlin says the city council has not responded to his requests.

The Times said the city council did not respond to request for comment.

“The city just wasn’t listening,” Brandlin said.

The single dad told KCBS-TV that he would do it again to keep kids and families safe.

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Democrats unconditionally surrendered early Friday morning, passing funding for the Department of Homeland Security after their five-week shutdown ground airport security lines to a halt, stopped paychecks for TSA agents and other employees, and crippled the department’s ability to prepare security for the World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) promptly tried to claim victory anyway, posting on X: “After weeks of negotiations, Republicans caved to our demands to fund DHS without a blank check for ICE and CBP.”

House Republicans should not panic because Democrats staged a little theater for their own base. They should take the win.

That is false.

Republicans did not accept any Democrat demands, though they came close as recently as last weekend, had Democrats been willing to negotiate in good faith. And both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection already have billions in funding, with much more easily available by June through reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate.

So what exactly were Democrats demanding?

The minority party wanted judicial warrants, against court precedent, that would have crippled enforcement. Democrats also wanted to ban the face coverings agents use to protect their families from violent activists. They wanted to end patrols, stop enforcement at courthouses and other key locations, bar agents from relying on observations such as accent, occupation, or appearance, and place use-of-force investigations under the jurisdiction of often politicized local police departments.

They got none of it.

The remarkable part is that they could have walked away with something. As recently as last weekend, Republicans were still trying to bring Democrats to the table.

“We got on our front foot by negotiating in good faith last week and through the weekend and offering low-hanging concessions,” a senior White House official told the Beltway Brief. But Democrats wanted more and kept moving the goalposts.

As for ICE and CBP funding, the panic on the right is misplaced. Both agencies already have billions. Neither gave up a single enforcement tool. And now that the shutdown is over, both can be funded again through reconciliation.

That is the same process that already delivered more than $100 billion in funding to begin with and insulated both agencies from the Democrats’ theatrical shutdown. Reconciliation requires only a simple majority, though it can address only spending matters that directly affect the budget.

That is also why reconciliation cannot be used to pass new policy such as the SAVE America Act. The Senate parliamentarian enforces those rules. But she has already allowed ICE and CBP funding through reconciliation, and nothing suggests she would rule differently this time.

Democrats had an opening here. President Trump had no interest in handing the minority party concessions, but Senate Republicans were more open to it. Democrats refused because they wanted to tell their base they shut the government down and would not budge. Now that face-saving fiction is all they have left while funding resumes and ICE and CBP money likely arrives within the next two months, according to White House projections.

Then came the frustrating part.

Friday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) found a way to snatch defeat from victory, issuing a forceful statement that the House would not accept this outcome. His hand is being forced by conservatives furious that the Senate stripped the funding from this measure and worried about the precedent. But that reaction misses the strategic reality.

They’re making a mistake.

House Republicans should not panic because Democrats staged a little theater for their own base. They should take the win. Democrats shut down the DHS, inflicted weeks of pain, gained nothing, and then surrendered.

Call it what it is: a Republican victory.

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The man convicted of a heinous lethal attack on an 84-year-old man got his prison sentence suspended by a San Francisco judge on Thursday.

The horrendous attack on Vicha Ratanapakdee in 2021 was captured on video and helped inspire the “Stop Asian Hate” movement. Antoine Watson was 19 years old when he ran violently into the victim and shoved him to the ground. Ratanapakdee died from his injuries.

‘Today’s sentence is deeply disappointing. An 84-year-old man was killed in a cruel, unprovoked attack, and our family will live with this loss every day.’

Watson was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but acquitted of the murder charge earlier this year. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, but the trial judge suspended the sentence and gave Watson credit for five years of time served while awaiting the conclusion of the trial.

The man’s family is outraged at the decision.

“Today’s sentence is deeply disappointing. An 84-year-old man was killed in a cruel, unprovoked attack, and our family will live with this loss every day,” reads a statement from the victim’s daughter. “This is not about revenge — it is about accountability. When consequences do not match the harm, it sends the wrong message about protecting our seniors and public safety. We are concerned about what this means for other families.”

The family has accused Watson, a black man, of having a racial motive for the attack, but he was not charged with a hate crime.

A defense attorney for Watson said he intentionally pushed the victim but did not intend to kill him, arguing that Watson had a mental health breakdown over a police encounter earlier that morning.

Watson was also ordered to undergo weekly therapy sessions and submit to searches of him and his property.

Critics see the “Grandpa Vicha” case as yet another terrible example of lax criminal prosecution that does nothing to discourage further crime and violence. Others decry the alleged racial component of the lethal attack.

RELATED: VIDEO: Thug sprints across street, slams into 84-year-old man, flattens him on driveway. Victim later dies.

However, if Watson does not follow the rules of probation, he could be forced to serve the rest of his sentence, which is three years.

Watson’s public defender, Anita Nabha, said he was remorseful about the incident.

“As a grandson, it is really hard for him to accept the conduct that he did and that he took two children’s grandfather away from them,” Nabha said.

The victim’s family says justice was not served by the suspended sentence.

“The bottom line is that he’s out in, like, five years on probation for killing our father-in-law, and it’s unacceptable,” said the man’s son-in-law, Eric Lawson.

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The U.S. Secret Service says an agent guarding former first lady Jill Biden had a “negligent discharge” and shot himself at an airport.

Police said the bizarre incident unfolded at the Philadelphia International Airport on Friday morning just before 8:45 a.m.

Biden was not in the vicinity of the negligent discharge.

A witness told KYW-TV it appeared that the agent was trying to get into the back of an SUV at the airport when the gun accidentally went off.

Police said the agent shot himself in the leg near an unmarked Chevrolet SUV at the Pennsylvania Tower outside Terminal C. The agent was transported to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in stable condition, according to police. No one else was injured, and the airport operations were not interrupted.

Biden was not in the vicinity of the negligent discharge.

Police remained at the scene to investigate the incident for hours, according to KYW.

“The Secret Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility will be reviewing the facts and circumstances of this incident,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

RELATED: Jill Biden mocked for comparing Hispanics to tacos at ‘Latinx Incluxion’ conference: ‘Previously unimaginable level of cringe’

The former first lady also recently made headlines when her ex-husband was charged in the murder of his second wife in February.

William Stevenson, 77, was indicted for the murder of 64-year-old Linda Stevenson, who was found dead on Dec. 28 at their home. Stevenson had been friendly with Joe Biden but later became a supporter of President Donald Trump.

Stevenson was married to his second wife for nearly four decades.

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Turn on Fox News, scroll social media, or listen to talk radio, and one message comes through loud and clear: Many Republicans think the SAVE America Act is the key to saving the GOP in the November midterms.

It is not.

The SAVE America Act is not a magic wand. It will not erase 14 months of drift, dysfunction, and broken promises.

Yes, requiring proof of citizenship to register and identification to vote is necessary. Yes, most Americans, regardless of party, support the idea. But Republicans are kidding themselves if they think that alone will persuade voters to reward them in November.

The rot runs much deeper, and no “one simple trick” will fix it.

Trump surged to victory in 2024 on promises to change the country’s direction in dramatic ways. Fourteen months later, too many of those promises remain unfulfilled. Some died at the hands of weak and ineffective congressional leadership. Others were thwarted by feckless Cabinet officials, such as the new czarina of the Shield of the Americas, Kristi Noem. Others fell victim to Trump’s own choices.

The core promises were clear: mass deportations, a stronger economy, lower inflation, and no new long-term foreign entanglements. Those themes helped Trump assemble a broad coalition, including a majority of young men, and deliver the biggest Republican Electoral College victory since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Now, with just over seven months until the midterms, nearly all of those promises remain unmet or badly compromised. Facts aren’t partisan — they are just facts.

Start with immigration. For all the left’s hysteria over ICE raids, Trump has deported fewer people than Barack Obama did in the first year of his second term. That came after four years of unprecedented illegal immigration under Biden. The promise of mass deportation remains unfulfilled.

Congress hasn’t helped. Ineffective Republican leadership has let the Department of Homeland Security go without funding for over a month, slowing deportation efforts while creating chaos at airports as TSA employees go unpaid. The public sees dysfunction, not competence.

RELATED: Mullin inherits a mess at DHS. Here’s how he can still save Trump’s legacy.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Then comes the economy.

The cost of living has not gone down. Signs point the other way. Inflation could surge past 4% as energy prices rise because of the war with Iran. Food prices remain high and may climb higher as petroleum-based fertilizer gets more expensive just before planting season. Homes remain unaffordable to most Americans. The job market sits on the edge of an AI-fueled bust. The promised relief in the form of larger tax refund checks has not materialized.

The labor market struggles as rampant H-1B visa abuse keeps importing cheaper foreign labor into high-paying STEM jobs that Americans want and are trained to do. Trump and Republican leaders still talk about H-1B as though it were a strategic advantage rather than a direct threat to their own voters.

Guess what? Voters have noticed.

Recent polling shows Democrat James Talarico leading both Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn in Texas. Former Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper holds a commanding lead in the race to replace Sen. Thom Tillis in North Carolina. Even in Maine, the Democrat challenger accused of sporting a Nazi tattoo leads Sen. Susan Collins.

RELATED: Texas Democrats just gave Republicans a gift-wrapped hypocrisy story

Bob Daemmrich/Texas Tribune/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The bad numbers do not stop there. A glance at RealClearPolitics tells the terrifying tale.

Special elections are just as ugly. In those races, including the district that encompasses Mar-a-Lago, Democrats have run strongly among independent voters, the very bloc that helped solidify Trump’s 2024 coalition.

That is the problem Republicans refuse to face. The SAVE America Act is a common-sense bill, and Congress should pass it. Elections should be protected from ineligible voters. But the bill is not a magic wand. It will not erase 14 months of drift, dysfunction, and broken promises. It will not lower prices, deport illegal aliens, fix the job market, or persuade disillusioned independents to come back home.

Republicans do not face a midterm problem because they have failed to pass one bill. They face a midterm problem because they have failed to deliver on the reasons voters put them back in power.

​Opinion & analysis, Save america act, Congress, Republicans, 2026 midterms, Special elections, Democrats, Polls, James talarico, Ken paxton, John cornyn, Susan collins, Kristi noem, Promises, Ice raids, Mass deportations, Department of homeland security, H1-b, Fraud, Cheap labors 

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is taking aim at Gavin Newsom after the California governor proudly compared himself to Patrick Bateman — the infamous fictional serial killer portrayed by Christian Bale.

“Gavin Newsom is not the king of trolling. In fact, Gavin Newsom is bad at it. He’s so bad at it that he accidentally trolls himself,” Gonzales says.

“For so many years people have been saying that Patrick Bateman and I look alike. Now this pic has been going all over the place. What do you think?” Newsom posted on X, alongside a photo of him next to Bale.

“Patrick Bateman is like the worst person in the world. Like, he is obsessed with his appearance … he’s a total narcissist. Also happens to be a psychotic serial killer, rapist, cannibal, torturer,” Gonzales comments.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, we agree. There’s a lot of similarities between you and Patrick Bateman, Gavin.’ Like, you’re just setting yourself up to be trolled, which he was,” she continues.

A post on X from Fox News reported on the humble comparison, writing, “Governor Gavin Newsom is sparking widespread mockery after ‘bizarrely’ comparing his own look to the fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman.”

Newsom quote-tweeted the article, writing, “They still don’t get it.”

“Gav, I think you’re the one who still doesn’t get it,” Gonzales comments. “Unless you’re trying to tell us that you are, in fact, a psychotic serial killer.”

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