(Subscription required) A Santa Maria man has agreed to plead guilty to detonating a bomb in a Santa Barbara County courthouse in 2024, according to an agreement with prosecutors filed in the U.S. District Court for California’s Central District. Nathaniel James McGuire will plead guilty to one count of using a weapon of mass destruction and one count of using an explosive for malicious destruction of a building.

A federal appeals court has taken the unusual step of steering a class-action case to the California Supreme Court, saying the state high court is best suited to resolve the dispute. The case involves past and current members of the U.S. armed services who were allegedly charged higher insurance rates than military officers by USAA, the high-profile insurer that caters to active service members and veterans.

Clarissa Cervantes has top billing in Cervantes et al. v. Bianco, one of two California Supreme Court cases challenging the legality of Bianco’s Prop 50 investigation. As the Trump administration challenges states’ authority to run their own elections, the Cervantes-Bianco rivalry has eclipsed the borders of the purple county that elected all three and become a broader fight over California’s political future. 

Div. Seven of the Court of Appeal for this district has rejected the contention of a lessor that although a tenant missed a rent payment for January 2023 and paid less than half of the amount due the following month, a three-day notice to quit or pay rent served on Feb. 12, 2025 was not invalidated by the one-year requirement in light of a lease provision that any payment that was made would be applied to the earliest ligation.