MAGA is Taking Over California One School Board at a Time + N Word at a SoCal School Board Meeting Causes Chaos
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In this episode, Brad discusses the troubling rise of MAGA and far-right extremism within California's local politics, specifically focusing on the state's school boards. Brad speaks with the anonymous founder of SoCal Extremism Watch (S.C.E.W.), who highlights the strategies and impact of these extremist groups.
The conversation covers recent incidents, such as a school board member casually using the N-word without repercussions, and the coordinated efforts of national organizations like the Council for National Policy to influence local elections and politics through dark money and organized activism. The episode emphasizes the importance of vigilance and active participation in democracy, even in states perceived as liberal strongholds like California.
Episode links:
socalextremismwatch.com
Bluesky @socalextremismwatch.com
The CMD Article featuring the 2022 Dana Point CNP meeting secret audio.
Glendale Extremists
TheChartyB
Pride at the Pier
The Riverside Watch
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163
Check out BetterHelp and use my code SWA for a great deal: www.betterhelp.com
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Axis Mundi It's easy to feel like the entire country is under siege.
But some places are supposed to be bastions of democracy and liberalism.
Places that have not lost their minds to the MAGA cult.
That have not gone down the road of Trumpism.
My home state of California is often assumed to be one of those places.
But today I speak...
With an activist who is embedded in the networks, at school boards, and in other places that have their sights set on taking California for the Republican Party and the MAGA movement.
Their work is bearing fruit.
There were double-digit returns in terms of voter turnout and voter changes in the last election.
They flipped three seats in the state legislature.
The country's symbolic liberal figurehead is ripe for the taking.
This all starts at the local level.
It starts in our schools.
It starts in our communities.
It starts in places you wouldn't expect, like those running for the local water board.
Today we talk about that with the leader of Southern California Extremism Watch, somebody who wants to remain anonymous, but who, along with her team of researchers and reporters, is covering.
All of the extremism that is infiltrating Southern California's school boards and local politics.
One of the most distressing things we talk about is a recent incident where an elected school board member said the N-word in a meeting and instead of facing repercussions, was vigorously defended at the next meeting by a coordinated gaggle of conservative political actors and local churches.
I'm Brad Onishi.
And this is Straight White American Jesus.
Straight White American Jesus.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi.
It is great to be with you on this Monday.
And joined today by a first-time guest who I'm so excited to talk to.
And as I just mentioned, this guest is the founder of SoCal Extremism Watch, or SKU.
And we're going to get to hear all about the story of how that organization came together.
But even, I think more importantly, we'll get into the ways that the Republican Party and Trumpists are really trying to plan a takeover of California politics, which may seem very surprising to some of you.
It may seem as if that's not possible.
It is.
And it's worth talking about, I think, for a number of reasons, one of which is democracy is not something that just happens.
It's something you have to exercise and practice and ritualize and protect, even in what some of you might think of as the most liberal place in the country, and that is the state of California.
So all that to say, thanks for joining me.
We agreed you're going to stay anonymous.
We're not going to use your name.
We're not going to talk about all that.
So I just want to say.
Yeah, I'm so excited to be on your show.
I mean.
Your show and Matthew Taylor is basically how I got my start into all this stuff, with Charismatic Revival Fury and just your podcast in general, your book.
Well, and we got to meet at an event last year, and I got to learn all about what y 'all are doing at SoCal Extremism Watch.
I was already familiar with your work and with the website and with the stuff you're doing in school boards.
And then when we got to meet, I was so excited, like, oh my gosh, this is important work.
So before we jump into...
What's happening in California?
What's happening in schools?
What's happening in my home region of Orange County?
How did you get into this work?
You just alluded to it a little bit, but I think your story will be inspiring and those you work with will be inspiring.
Yeah, I think anybody can do what I do.
I got into this work because of extremism happening locally in my own community.
And before it was happening, I was completely, you know, naive to all of this.
And then when I started seeing things like Christian nationalism.
In our local churches and actual, you know, neo-Nazis showing up in our neighborhoods, I started looking into it and I entered a world that I can never look away from again.
Just the sheer amount of information on this subject that's not being catapulted into the media is mind-boggling to me.
I got hooked up with some people doing the same thing.
And that led me to more people doing the same thing.
And we just formed this really amazing, tight-knit community of researchers that we just share information, like, literally all day long.
So this is kind of how it started.
it.
Thank you.
I love talking to you when we met last year, and I love following the work because, you know, on this show, we cover things all over the nation, all over the country.
We talk about local, we talk about national, we talk about theoretical.
But the work you're doing is focused.
It's focused on a region.
It's focused on issues related to school boards and local politics.
And I love that because, as you just said, You were not somebody who was a lifelong journalist.
You were not somebody who was an academic.
You were somebody who was a concerned citizen who said, I need to learn more.
I need to dig in.
And then what did that lead to?
You found other people who were like worried about this too.
And you all have a weird hobby.
I'm not going to lie.
Other people play pickleball.
But it's awesome.
It's awesome to see.
And I mean, I wonder if you wouldn't talk a minute about the community aspect of that and the way that.
Concern for what's happening in your region led you to a place where you actually linked up with folks who have become colleagues and friends.
Actually, it's kind of funny.
Most of us are just moms.
I mean, yes, I don't have a background in journalism or anything like that.
My day job is completely separate from all of this.
I have a family.
I work.
And so this is all in my spare time.
And I have to tell you, all the researchers I work with are literally just doing all this in their spare time and for free.
There's nobody getting paid to do this work.
I have some shout-outs to do at the end of the podcast so you guys can all follow these people.
And I would love to put that in there at the end.
But the community part is really important because I feel like a lot of these radical right agendas are being wedged into our communities.
And people don't really know how to fight back against them or they're just too busy with life.
And it's really important to make this information available.
Another reason I got started making a website is because I was active on Twitter and I just felt like that wasn't secure enough.
I feel like I just really wanted the normal average person, like the mom like me, who has children in school boards, to realize where these attacks are coming from.
It's not grassroots.
They always say they're grassroots.
It's a top-down playbook.
And digging into that is a lot of information.
It really is overwhelming.
And I really wanted normal people to be able to ingest this information and use it and spread the word.
You just wanted people to be able to follow the dark money.
All the, like, ways these candidates and politicians get started, they're astroturfed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like a lot of people would just be swayed by what they're seeing at school board meetings.
Like, oh, there's all these crazy issues happening and the culture war issues they throw out there.
You know, they really weaponize these culture war issues.
They get people riled up.
And the church is also weaponizing religion to their congregants to get votes.
I mean, it's all about getting a voting block is really what it's all about.
If everyone just knew what was in my head, they would make better decisions, you know?
I was just like, let me just put what's in my head in your head.
You know?
So that's why I started blogging and writing.
And you know what?
I have to also mention another thing that was really important to me.
As I was getting this community of researchers together, I noticed they would work so hard to gather research and information.
Very fact-based stuff.
And they would gather it and they would just hand it to reporters.
They would just hand it to them if they could get someone to pay attention to run a story.
And then the editors would just butcher it and they would both sides it.
And I'm just like, this can't be, like, we have to get the real information out there.
So the whole concept of SKU is just my crazy brainchild to just get the information out there.
That's all it is.
But what I love about what you're doing is this is exactly what we're used to seeing from the other side.
We're used to seeing...
Christian nationalists.
We're used to seeing dark money flow.
We're also used to seeing Moms for Liberty and parents who have decided to get really involved in their school boards, get really involved in their PTA, their community, their local politics.
What is, to me, one of the reasons I'm so fond of your work and what y 'all are doing is this is exactly what we need on the other side.
We need people to say, hey, I'm an average person and I just want to research, learn.
And cover and get involved.
And oh, look at that.
There's like 10 other people.
Yeah, yeah.
I have to mention a term that Catherine Stewart coined and it's reactionary nihilism.
And it's very important to understand that term because what these people on the right are doing is they're always against something.
It's always against.
And they're reactionaries and they're always against, you know, they're nihilistic.
And then what the community really is about is the loving, inclusive community that should be out there active is about love and inclusion.
And so...
That's the kind of representation that's hard to hype up to get involved, right?
Because we're just going about our day, like trying to make the world a better place.
We don't have all these angry issues to fight against.
And of course, we want to fight against all the discrimination and the marginalization.
That comes with doing loving acts.
And these people aren't doing any loving acts.
Anger is such a motivating force.
And I think the American right learned that a long time ago and has been drawing on that sentiment for a long time.
Let's jump into California.
Let's jump into school boards.
Give us a little history of the ways that right-wing politics in schools in California have always been a kind of locus of activism and ways that folks have tried to win over local communities.
People are writing about this now, and there's going to be articles coming out about it soon.
But there is one very important article that came out from the Center for Media Democracy, which is a great...
It's on my website.
If you look at the Extremism Hub, they're on there.
So they put out an article that was based on undercover footage that was captured at the Council for National Policy.
The Council for National Policy, if you don't know it, look up Ann Nelson's work.
She writes books about it.
That is a huge think tank where the doers meet the funders.
And this was a meeting in 2022 at Dana Point.
The topic was focused on The efforts in Virginia and Loudoun County, where a lot of the school board stuff got started, their plan was to capture at least three school boards that would resist transgender standards.
And they did.
And although they didn't win some of those seats, they did garner a ton of Republican voters.
And so they saw, after the 70s, abortion was their issue.
They saw a new issue that could gain voters.
And so at that CNP meeting...
They gave a whole lecture on how this is going to be the focus now.
We're going to garner school boards that'll pick up these anti-trans policies and agendas, and we're going to use that as our new culture war wedge issue.
Along with the book banning and the sexual, you know, the people against sexual health education and all that stuff.
So, yeah, CRT.
CRT was, I know, it's kind of a...
Weird how COT didn't pick up as fast as transgender issues did.
But yes, CRT was always in there.
And so that's where it pretty much all started was that Council for National Policy meeting in Virginia.
And that was in 2021 that that happened in Virginia.
So from 2022 on, you saw a lot of these transgender issues being the main culture war wedges being driven.
So, you know, when you see a school board meeting and they're talking about transgender people, which honestly, they make up less than 2% of the population.
It's like a it's like a, you know, shiny toy.
Look over here.
But they knew it would activate voters.
They knew that was like a wedge issue that they could use.
So that's actually where it started.
And starting with all of this research we were doing, we noticed a lot of the foot soldiers on the ground.
When we researched them and looked into where they're from, who they're with, who they're meeting with, you know, the assemblies and the meetings they were having and all the events, they really all fed back into the Council for National Policy or members.
Or former members, whether they're active or not, they were members.
And a lot of this policy is top-down driven exactly from the Council for National Policy.
So that's why I talk about the CNP so much.
And I know people are like, oh, we don't want to hear about the CNP anymore.
But like, it's a huge issue.
People need to know who they are.
So as you mentioned, Anne Nelson's written, for me, the really go-to book on this.
It's called The Shadow Network.
I've interviewed Anne several times on this show.
You can look up those episodes.
I've also drawn heavily on work in my own book, Preparing for War.
So the Council for National Policy is something we have discussed over and over again on this show, and I don't think you can discuss it enough.
It is the connective tissue that links so many think tanks and activist groups on the American right together.
So you may not think that, like, the Susan B. Anthony list and the NRA and a Christian nationalist organization trying to stop abortion full stop.
You know, without exceptions, are linked.
The CNP is that connective tissue that gets them together, gets them coordinated.
And so if I just recap here, it seems to me what you're saying is something that people have kind of become aware of is over the last four or five years, 2021, 2020, you target the trans community as the scapegoat and as the target of your ire, the target of your outrage.
And then you bring it to California in 2022.
You mentioned Dana Point, and the goal is Get to Orange County, a place that has a long and storied conservative heritage.
Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon.
John Birch Society.
John Birch Society.
See if you can't get school boards in that California region over to the extremist Trumpist side by way of the trans issues.
Yeah, and I'll give you an example of how that works.
I mean, you know Pastor Ron McCoy from Godspeed Calvary Chapel.
He's huge.
I mean, he's with TPUSA.
He's a huge influence.
Charlie Kirk's pastor.
He's actually co-founder of TPUSA Faith.
So Ron McCoy is on the CNP at that time, 2022.
He's at that meeting.
He's one of the speakers.
And he comes back, and guess what happens in his area, his Coneo Valley School District?
There's a huge transgender issue war happening at the school boards.
Speakers are coming.
We call them the traveling circus.
You know, we have Proud Boys.
We have J6ers.
We have Three Percenters.
And a lot of this started also with the COVID vax mandates and stuff like that and the lockdown.
So we can go back to that later.
But at this time, it's 2022, 2023, we have just like this huge outburst of anti-trans reactionary ground game.
And so that's just one example of how it happens.
And it happened everywhere.
It happened in Temecula, Redlands, Chino Valley.
I can go on and on.
If you're not a Californian or a Southern Californian, what we're talking about here is basically the area that goes from the northern tip of San Diego all the way up to Ventura counties and Santa Barbara counties, which are just north of Los Angeles.
These are coastal towns.
This is not the Central Valley.
These are places that I think many people assume across our nation are liberal, but they have a long conservative history.
And I think what you're highlighting is...
Yeah.
One of the things that I talked about at the top here was there's an ultimate goal of taking back California for conservatives, for the MAGA movement.
They picked up double digit gains in terms of voter records in the 20th.
They flipped three seats in the state legislature.
There are signs, like there are all over the country, of the ways people have allowed the gender reproductive sex issues in politics to bring them over to the other side or vote for the first time in a long time and do so for Trump and or Republicans.
So the larger game here, if we zoom out, is to say California is in play.
And that might seem crazy, but I'm old enough to remember a California that was conservative, had Republican governors, had Republican representation, and was not considered this bastion of super liberalism as it is now.
And so I can talk all day about school board politics, honestly.
But honestly, it all leads up to the higher agenda, which is to gain voting blocs.
That's what they want.
They don't really care about trans issues.
You know, it's not about CRT.
It's not about any of that.
It's about getting people riled up.
If I can give you an example of how that works, kind of, the top-down way it works is that the CNP would get these issues going, and then they would filter it down to foot soldiers, as you call them, right?
So you got, like, the traveling circus.
You got Proud Boys coming, Neo-Nazis, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, J6ers, which is kind of what got me into the school board drama, because I'm an extremism watch page, right?
I want to cover any kind of extremism.
Those kind of groups led into the more, you know, I wouldn't say respected, but normie groups.
So again, like Moms of Liberty, TPUSA, Lexit.
Lexit was a big one.
That's the Latino exit from the Democratic Party.
Blexit, Moms for America, Gays Against Groomers, Mom Army, Dad Army, Moms on the Ground, Leave Our Kids Alone, and the list goes on and on.
So from a top-down perspective, these groups would get riled up, and when they got trans issues on the agendas at school boards, this traveling circus would just arrive.
So when you say traveling circus, are you saying like the same people go to just different school boards all across Southern California?
They all show up and we know their names and who they are because they literally show up to every single school board meeting.
And it's the same group and they're outsiders.
They're not even from the community.
And I mean, we would go into CAPO later.
I'll give you another example of that.
But so, you know, they would totally just pounce on these school boards when they had issues like that.
And it gave the illusion that there was bigger support for these kind of issues.
I mean, whole megachurches would get their whole congregation out to attend.
I mean, it would be all these extremists and then church people.
So it was actually genius.
I mean, they really are doing it right.
They know what they're doing.
And I'm afraid the Democrats don't understand what they're up against.
They don't see this strategy.
They don't care.
Like, we've called offices, we've talked to people, and they kind of just laugh it off like, you know, there's a huge school voucher push for 2026.
And it's the CEO Act.
And a local mayor from a little town, the Kanao Valley, again.
Kanao Valley is a hotbed for this activity.
A local mayor was actually spearheading this attempt.
And, you know, you would go to people and you say, there's a school voucher initiative, and they would laugh.
You know, they don't understand what's at stake.
They don't follow this kind of stuff.
So I think they really need to start paying attention.
They need to start putting money into the people doing this work, because I don't know where they put their money now.
Well, but let's just stay on this because you're hitting stuff that we mention all the time, but we have a chance here with you who's completely embedded in this work and in these communities.
What you've outlined is a picture that goes like this.
Hey, I'm at a school board.
So here's me, Brad.
I have kids.
I'm at the school board meeting.
And instead of there being the normal 30 people there.
Which never happens at a normal school board meeting.
School board meetings are usually boring.
They're usually not that exciting.
If I have Thursday night, I'd rather go play in my softball league or my pickleball league rather than go to this boring meeting.
But here's 300 people, and 90% of the 300 are super angry and yelling into the microphone about groomers and perverts and trans people, and I can't believe this teacher made my kid transgender.
And everyone's looking around like, wow, I guess this is like a real problem.
Or the majority, the super majority seems to be against this.
And in reality, as you're saying, a lot of the angriest and loudest folks there are professional school board attenders who go from meeting to meeting.
And then the ones in the backs cheering them on is where they got like, you know, 280 folks to come out and just sort of be the extras in the background, like doing the raw.
And now your school board's been AstroTurf takeovered.
And the parents are looking around like, wait a minute, I'm a parent.
I'm in my kid's school.
I know the third grade teacher.
I helped out at like recess the other day.
What?
This is not an issue.
I don't see this anywhere.
But it's completely conjured out of the ether and made into a thing.
And as you said, there's money coming from the top.
If you're the Council for National Policy, you are a professional like...
They are the best in the business at funneling money to that whole alphabet supergroups you just named.
Billions.
Billions of dollars.
Billions of dollars.
Where did that, like, dozens of group you just named off the top of your head, where did those come from?
How did they get money?
How can they do what they're doing?
They can do that because it's coming from a national organization full of dark bugs.
Well, I'll tell you what, most of those people I did mention, they're at the TPUSA AmFest every year, and they have booths.
I mean, TPUSA is...
So much money.
And they're just giving it out.
They're giving it to people.
They're like, hey, come to one of our meetings.
We'll pay for your travel.
There is a lot of money in this.
And it's funny, sometimes you'll hear them claim like, oh, we're just up against all this money.
It's like, no, it's not like that.
It's the other way around completely.
And being on the inside is how you know that.
I could tell people that, but how would they know?
And you just mentioned that you and your researchers all do this work for free.
There's no one calling you being like, hey, we got 50K for you for the next six months.
Like, hey, we got 100K.
Here's your budget for the next year.
But that is what's happening on the other side.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And yeah, nobody's funding our websites.
Nobody's paying us to do this work.
And it's just, we're just like screaming into the void, somebody publish this or put this out there.
All right, let's zoom in.
So there is a school district called Capo Capistrano.
And this is in the southern part of Orange County.
So some of you out there might be able to envision this.
If you drive from San Diego north, it's kind of...
What you might envision is the real OC.
So if you are old enough to have seen the OC TV show, when it came out, Capo is like kind of part of the real OC.
It's wealthy.
It's tremendously white.
It's famous in Beach Boys.
So I'm not that old, people.
Okay, so just take a breath.
I'm not that old.
But when my dad would play Beach Boys songs, not me, you might hear about like Doheny.
Doheny is kind of like where Capo is.
It's famous for a couple of...
Surf spots down there.
All that to say, I'm just trying to set the scene of a school board that we're going to talk about now that has, as you put it earlier, a Pandora's box of issues.
And it's one of those that really has succumbed to this takeover that we've been discussing for the last half an hour here.
So tell us what happened at a school board recently that is going to sound bad enough on its own.
This is all going to sound terrible just as it is, but it's really the appetizer course to the main entree here.
What happened at Capo?
Who is the school board member that we need to know about?
And then that'll lead us into everything that's happening underneath the surface.
Yeah, yeah.
I could start with that one school board member that you're talking about, which is Judy Belukas.
Judy Belukas has been on the board since like 2018, I believe.
A couple years.
She kind of breathed in.
She didn't really have any opposition.
She's been on there a while.
Even back in 2018, they were a pretty conservative board.
And there were some major elections we'll go back to recently at Capitol, but here's Judy Belukas, right?
She's kind of the, they call her the human windsock, because she'll pretend she's not ultra-conservative, but she'll always vote with the conservative side.
And so she's, they're in a meeting, and they're talking about this book called James, which is like an offshoot of Huckleberry Finn, and it involves, you know, some African-American characters.
And she just, the whole issue was, are we going to approve this book for reading?
Because there's a bunch of book banning stuff going on down there, too.
And so they're, like, going to throw the community a bone.
They're going to be like, you know, we're not, like, we're not extreme.
We're going to approve this book.
See, we're cool.
But in the process of doing that, she uses the N-word, and she doesn't quote the book.
She just references some of the book, one of the characters, and, you know, drops the N-word.
Very offensive.
Sucked the air out of the room from people who were in the room that told me about that.
And this led to a huge outrage, which helped amplify a lot of other stuff that was going on in Capo.
I'm going to play the clip, and I'm going to warn everybody that it is offensive, period.
And if you want to jump ahead here, fast forward, you're welcome to do that.
So we will play it, you will hear it, and it may be jarring and quite unnerving, but here you go.
Here it is.
I mean, what went through him every time he thought about Katie, him being hidden in the room when she was being raped, and it came back to him and came back to him.
It just showed him not as just some dumb leader, but a very smart, compassionate, real person.
There's no way to make that out to be anything but truly disgusting.
And as you mentioned, if that wasn't enough, that drew a bunch of attention to Capo and its school district and what's going on there, sort of the entire board.
So give us some insight.
Yeah, so there was a recent meeting, which I have a huge update about.
But before that meeting, I started digging into Judy Belokas because they do have an extremist board.
It's the majority.
But I hadn't dug into Judy yet.
So I dug into Judy.
And of course, I find some, you know.
Dark money activity.
Even back in the day, she's got a lot of involvement with the Lincoln Club and TPUSA and all that stuff.
So it was there.
She's kind of flown out of the radar.
But you can read all about it in my blog on my website.
There's a lot more to that.
But Judy has become the main character recently.
But actually, the main characters were happening before.
There was a huge election there.
It was Lisa Davis was rerunning.
She was on the board for a long time, too.
You had Lisa Zollinger.
And then you had Jennifer Admins.
And those three candidates were actively campaigning with the local Calvary Chapel Church.
You know, these churches that are supposed to be non-profit and not get political, they're literally, they have panels, you know, with these three candidates, they're fighting hard for the anti-trans issues, and they all get elected.
So now they have like a four to five super extreme board majority.
So these issues just pass when they're presented there.
So then Judy Blockus now is part of this extreme group now because of her actions, and she's not flying under the radar anymore.
There was a recent meeting, which was very interesting because they realized they had to fight hard against this narrative because it blew up so bad.
So I don't know if you know who Frank Rodriguez is from Gays Against Groomers.
He's a major player.
He's been showing up to school board meetings.
He's part of the traveling circus.
He's a former member of Gays Against Groomers.
They have a whole gaggle of LDS students they brought in.
They had a huge showing up of circus people, you know, the traveling circus.
Although 80 to 95 percent of the crowd was the crowd that wanted Judy to take accountability for what she did, they got there early and they all held places in line.
And the LDS and Frank's people, they all, they got all the speaker cards.
My name is Noah and I am a eighth grader at Vista Del Mar Middle School.
At the last board meeting, every trustee voted for to approve the book James material for high school students.
In doing so, the board recognized that students like me have the maturity to engage.
So, literally for the first hour, it was just them.
Talking about how they're going to divert attention from Belucas and they're going to attack Trustee Castellanos.
Here is Representative Judy Belucas speaking about the backlash to her saying the N-word and attacking Trustee Castellanos.
You have slandered my name.
You have run it through the gutter.
You have asked for my resignation.
You have Trustee Christa social media.
No, that is political theater.
So I can't trust that we can have an honest conversation.
Because I have had that in my community.
And like you, they support me.
The emails and the texts I've received is, they know my heart.
And if I made a mistake and I misspoke, they understood what I was trying.
They listened to the whole message, the whole conversation.
You couldn't get out of that conversation that I was against the book, against blacks, against slave owners.
But that is the direction you took it.
That is the direction that happened that night as of 10 o 'clock when this meeting ended.
It started all over social media.
So therefore, tonight, I wouldn't be speaking to the people that are hurt by my words.
This was political theater.
Happy to have a good conversation, but not when you're asking for my resignation.
So, Lucas is saying she can't have a good conversation when Trustee Castellanos is calling for her resignation.
But to be clear, she was calling for her resignation because she said the N-word casually in a school board meeting.
So, they target this other trustee.
And they totally stripped the narrative.
And people were pissed.
They were so pissed that they were yelling and screaming.
And they had to empty the room.
The board emptied the room.
They kicked everybody out.
And they continued their meeting without anybody in there.
And that was how they tried to control the narrative.
But if you looked at some of the video, you could see Frank Rodriguez literally handing these scripts to these kids who were talking.
He was handing them scripts.
People were asking these kids, do you even know what happened at the last meeting?
Do you even know what was said?
And they're like, no, I have no idea why I'm here.
So, and if you want to read more about this, Jeffrey Perlman is on Substact, and he writes a lot about this stuff, and he wrote about the last meeting, so you can catch that there.
Let's, so let's recap here.
So, we have a board meeting.
We have a board in Southern California that has a heavily majority MAGA representation.
There's one board member, Judy Bilakis, who...
Tries to fly under the radar.
She's not the super out-front MAGA person, but, you know, people know where she stands, even if she's not the Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Actually, you can find her wearing her MAGA hat in the community, but that's a little tidbit.
What I'm hearing you say, though, is on the board, she's not known as that kind of inflammatory Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yeah.
So here's Judy.
She's been on the board 2018, 19, 20. So she's not new to this.
She's not brand new.
If you dig into her history, you've got money coming from TPUSA and from other organizations you might suspect.
Nonetheless, a couple of months ago, we have a book that is up for review.
In this debate about whether or not the book is going to be approved by the school board, she drops the N-word.
And it's not like Judy's like, I'm going to read from page 8. She's referencing pages.
She is referencing things that happened there.
But when she talks about the character, she just drops it.
I think this is one of those moments, friends, where we have to observe where we've come as a country.
Even in Trump's first term, you drop the N-word like that, and you resign the next day.
And everyone will just say, hey, just go away.
We don't need it.
Even the other people in your party on the school board who are allies, they're going to be like, just resign so we can be done with this whole hubbub.
Now what I'm hearing you say is, at the next meeting, parents who are mad that this happened, they get there early.
They get there an hour, two hours, three hours.
They're eating their dinner out of a piece of Tupperware, waiting in line, okay?
They're skipping their kids' soccer practice or game because they're in line for the school board.
They get in, but the speaker cards, the people who are allowed to speak to the board, all go to the traveling circus of AstroTurf school board takeover people, and you're giving young religious kids, LDS, Latter-day Saints, Mormon kids, scripts to read about...
This other trustee who they've attacked as the scapegoat, and then they get exactly what they want, which is the ruckus is so loud, they have to stop the meeting, kick everyone out.
That is where we've come in this country.
And you're like, oh, was that Alabama?
Was that Georgia?
Was that Louisiana?
Was that...
Nope.
That was Southern California.
If you ever go to Capistrano, you ever go to Dana Point, you ever go to any parts of that area in Orange County, it is beautiful.
The ocean is right there.
You can surf, you can paddleboard, you can get a great seafood dinner.
It is an idyllic place to live.
There's a ton of money.
It was a huge, performative event.
You know, it was all planned.
Again, they did a good job.
You know, they did a good job.
Yep.
Yep.
Strategically.
So people were pissed.
People were so pissed.
So who knows what's going to happen at the next meeting?
You know, sometimes these areas, they blow up and then they calm down.
It's worth stopping here, friends, just to add in one more piece of information.
Since recording this interview, I've obtained emails from a parent in the Capo School District and their correspondence with one of the trustees.
Trustee Zollinger is...
On the Capo board, a parent emailed them expressing their concern.
Trustee Zellinger wrote back, and in their email was something that I think is really worth considering.
The email says Trustee Belakas was possibly the only board member to have read James, the book up for discussion and vote of approval, cover to cover before the board meeting.
Just like to point out, this is one of those instances where school boards are considering banning books.
And we have trustees admitting they haven't read them.
Pretty fascinating, right?
You're going to allow it as part of the school district's curriculum and you haven't read it.
The email goes on to say, Although a trustee is held to a higher standard than public speakers, one would wonder why hearing the word twice wouldn't have invoked immediate response from trustees and the audience.
The implication here is that, I guess, if an audience member says the word for any reason, it's okay for a trustee to say it.
That it's a whatabout.
If someone says this, then why can't a trustee say that?
Trustee Zollinger goes on to say, if the word was used in a way to cause harm, I would argue most people in that room would have immediately condemned the usage.
In response to that, the argument that most of us would make is that any person who is not black using the N-word is always a way to cause harm.
That to even use that word is to recall the dehumanization of chattel slavery, and thus it's a word that should not be said in any context by somebody who is not black.
Zollinger says there will be no request for a belluchus to resign.
Once again, here is...
The leader of SoCal Extremism Watch talking about this issue and more.
And I really try to report on other things besides school board extremism, but it's just the stuff that's happening constantly.
It's like you can't, you know?
I love to report on the events that are happening, like the Leadership Institute events or these crazy little conferences they put together with these speakers.
I like to send moles in and get information from them.
So that's the other stuff I like to report on too.
So if we go back to the conservative takeover stuff, I'd love to highlight some of that.
Let's spend a few minutes.
I know I need to let you sign off here in a second.
And so let's highlight for people the ways that some of you are listening and you're still like, Brad, just come on.
You got to be kidding me.
They're going to take over California.
But let's talk about the mechanics.
Let's talk about the strategy.
Let's talk about how the funding happens.
So tell us about the conferences.
Tell us about the gatherings.
Tell us about the ways that they, Just chip, chip away.
They just chip, chip, chip away.
Well, let's talk about community for a minute.
They have community.
It's not the majority, but they do.
They have a lot of people who have started lots of little orgs.
And sometimes at these events, conferences, they'll advertise.
You'll see the little logos at the bottom of all these events.
Some of them are run by the same people.
The same, like, five people.
You know what I mean?
Or they're all members of each other.
That's my point.
It's like, there's like 10 organizations and you're like, oh, that must be 10,000 people.
But it's like, oh no, the same eight people.
Exactly, exactly.
And they're all working together.
It's like a, it's a busy beehive model.
As Catherine Stewart coined, you got to read her new book, Money Lies in God.
It's amazing.
She coined this term beehive model and it's like, they're all buzzing in the same beehive.
You just can't tell.
So anyways, so they have this event in February called the Reclaim Education Event.
And it was just, you know, your common Christian nationalist talking about.
God, we got to put God back into school, cultural Marxism, anti-union, anti-vax.
It was basically a fundraising event to get money for some lawsuits that are happening from COVID era stuff.
And, you know, at this event, it was interesting.
I had a mole go and I got some good notes on it.
I wrote about it on my blog.
But then it was really crazy.
The exact next Saturday, we start seeing some stuff on Instagram of another secret meeting they're having.
And it was pretty huge.
We noticed.
Everybody who was speaking, we knew them right away.
I mean, it was like on-the-ground people like Mom Army, Dad Army, Sean Fredrickson, who runs these huge revival events down in SoCal.
Ron McCoy was there, and then Chad Bianco was there.
Yeah, I don't think he's, I don't know if he's still running, but he got a little pushed out by Hilton.
Sarah Stevens was running it.
She has an org called Make California Gold Again.
She lost a gubernatorial race like a few years ago.
Anyway, so all these people are there and we're like, oh my God.
And also all the same people who were just at the last Reclaim Education thing.
And so we're like, what is this?
And so we're looking into it and basically it's called the Conservative Takeover.
And all the big players are there.
And it was very interesting because we never heard that term Conservative Takeover before.
Maybe we're on to something.
So this event happens.
We don't have details.
Nobody was there, but we know who was there.
We know what they were talking about.
They were talking about...
Funneling money from their PACs.
They were talking about supporting candidates who are running for positions in local politics, school boards, water boards, city councils, everything.
I mean, the way that they get in is these small board elections, and that's why people really need to pay attention to what's happening.
And they have plans to get into all these little small election seats.
And they have the money.
They have the PACs.
Every little community has their own PACs, and they have these billionaires funding it.
So the takeaway from that is that there was these two figures there, Denise Aguilera and Tara Thornton, and they're from the Freedom Angels.
And they started this new group called Grassroots California.
And they just had a meeting recently too, which is going to be my next blog I'm going to put out.
And it was basically a comprehensive outline to chip away at the Democratic supermajority in California.
So they're targeting seven seats, really hardcore.
And they have a whole outline plan.
It's a whole, let me see, what did they call it?
They called it the Grassroots Summit.
Oh, I didn't write that part down.
Anyways, they have a whole outline plan.
And basically what they want to do is they want to use wedge issues at doors.
They want people out there talking about it in conferences.
I mean, they are really gung-ho about ballot harvesting, using churches as town halls, voter guides, and using churches for panel discussions, social media training.
Voter registration training.
I mean, they're going to go hard after these seven seats, and I don't think people know what's going to hit them.
And the only way you can find out about this stuff is to go to these conferences and mingle among the people and hear what's going on, you know?
And that's why I think it's so important to report on this stuff.
Nobody's reporting on this stuff.
I used to do a weekly update on Twitter, and it took so much of my time.
By the way, shout out to my family for dealing with all my hours of research.
Anyway, so I used to do this weekly update.
And I would just focus on events they were having around SoCal.
And it would take up, like, 20 tweets.
Just all these conferences and events they're having.
So, like, people really need to start paying attention to this stuff.
Because in 2026, we could really, you know, be in big trouble.
Well, and we have Gavin Newsom, who is tweeting that we should make America film again.
He's having Charlie Kirk on his podcast.
Yeah, Gavin's really done it.
But the way you just ran that down...
I think is something that people should just keep it.
And it doesn't matter if you live in California or New York or in Massachusetts or in Minnesota or in Washington State or Oregon.
Places you think are these liberal kind of bastions of the United States.
What you just mentioned there was so enlightening.
You have these little conferences.
And when you see the flyers for these friends, some of these flyers are on your blog.
They look so cheesy.
Like, it's always, like, red background, American flags everywhere.
And, like, some people have, like, standard headshots.
And then there's other people doing, like, glamour shot.
Like, I'm kind of, like, turning over my shoulder toward the camera, like, hey.
And you're just like, who?
What's this conference?
These people are jokers.
And in reality, all the money, they are drawing on this endless well of megachurch attendance to get people interested.
And they have a plan.
They have a strategy.
They have a way to drive a wedge in your community.
They're going to show up at your door and ask you if you want perverts and other people.
How do you feel about the government telling you to get a vaccine?
How do you feel about lockdown?
I mean, they know which issues to bring up.
And their goal is to target Democrats that voted for Trump.
They have all the, you know, the voter identification information.
They know how to target.
They know how to talk to each person at each door.
And they want to either switch them to independent.
Which is a little bit of a win, or they want to switch them to Republican.
They're going to carry voter registration things around with them.
They're going to be like, you should switch.
Here.
Here's the paper to switch.
I think the takeaway for me, and I know we've got to sign off, is some of you might have gone into this episode thinking, why are you guys talking about California?
We need to talk about these other places in the country.
And the reason is, if you don't pay attention, if you don't practice and flex the muscles of democracy, if you don't, like...
You just mentioned waterboard.
Like, who thinks that running for a seat on the local waterboard is a way to take over California?
But there is a direct line.
That comes actually directly from a leadership institute meeting I went to.
And a leadership institute, if you don't know, started by Morton Blackwell.
It all leads back to the C&E every single time.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yeah, every single position is up for grabs.
I tell people this all the time, and all the work you do confirms this, which is they look for every ligament, every soft tissue, every tendon in the American body politic, and then they go there.
And you're like, hey, I'm a normal mom.
I'm a normal suburban whoever.
Why would I want to be on the water board?
Who the hell cares?
What do people think?
And the other side is like, oh yeah, water board, PTA, school board, county seats.
And next thing you know, there's people saying the N-word at your school board meeting, and that person's being protected rather than facing consequences.
And if you're gay, trans, lesbian at those schools of color, if you have a book that's about Black history, Asian history, sorry, we probably can't let that in.
Like, it all cascades.
I write about this in my book, N. Nelson, Sarah Posner.
I mean, there's so many great books out there about this.
Of course, Katherine Stewart and many others.
So, all right.
We need to stop.
I know you've got eight more hours in you about all of this.
I just want to mention, like, can I just mention a couple more things?
Okay.
People need to pay attention to Bill O'Saley.
Bill O'Saley is a major player in all this right-wing radicalism.
He was just appointed the U.S. Attorney Central District of California.
He has yet to be approved by Trump.
If you see any action to counter that at all, people need to get involved.
They need to vote Bill O'Saley out.
He cannot be approved.
He is bad news.
And also, the new wedge issue, I just want to put it out there now, the new wedge issue has sort of drifted a little bit from just transgender issues in general to transgender participation in sports, in youth sports.
And it's big right now in Riverside, USD.
It's happening.
They're targeting and they're doxing literal student-athletes.
I mean, it's just, I think, Bill Asaley, actually.
Oh, Jessica Tapia.
Sorry, Jessica Tapia.
She's a big activist.
They're literally doxing these kids, high school students.
So I just want to put that out there.
I also want to give a shout out to a couple of orgs that are doing amazing work that everybody should follow.
Our School's USA.
They cover the school board stuff extremely well.
Riverside Watch is doing a really good job of activity in Riverside.
The Charty B. Everything I mentioned, she maps.
It's a huge map.
If you go on thechartyb.com, it's just, it'll blow your mind.
Yeah.
Charty, let's just, so Charty B makes these like, like...
There's graphic diagrams where you can go in and it's like these interactive, like you can see where the traveling circuits are all related.
You can see where people are getting their money.
Like you can just all in a visual format that sometimes when you're listening to a podcast or you're reading, it's hard.
But like if you can go to the Charity B and see it.
Yeah, yeah.
Once you learn how to navigate the system, you can put in search terms and stuff.
It's really amazing.
A Glendale Extremism watch is really a good one too if you're in the Glendale, Burbank and, you know, general LA area.
And Pride at the Pier is doing amazing work.
They're out of Huntington Beach.
And there's another one that I like to mention.
It's called the Cassandra Report.
And she kind of does what, oh, whoever Cassandra is, she or he, they kind of do what I used to do with the weekly updates.
If you subscribe to her doomsayer.me site, she'll give you updates once a week about what's going on locally.
And I think that's it.
I covered it.
Well, yeah, there's so much more.
So, friends, if you want to keep up on this stuff, SoCal Extremism Watch, SKU is the place to do it.
And there's just a plethora of information there.
We've only hit the tip of the iceberg.
But I hope you've come away from today seeing how the American right, fueled by Trumpism and the rise of, you know, what Catherine Stewart calls reactive nihilism.
They don't look at California like, oh, yeah, that's just out of reach.
We shouldn't even try.
Let's just go to brunch.
Let's just get a mimosa.
Who cares?
They're like, let's run for waterboard in a small town outside of L.A. And if we do enough of this chipping away, we will turn the behemoth, the giant whale of democratic politics in the United States, to the Republicans, to MAGA, and so on.
And all the work you're doing is highlighting that.
So thank you for that.
We'll get all this stuff in the show notes so people can go to the website and...
