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How Big Soda nearly killed Measure Z in Santa Cruz
The No on Z campaign mailed fliers to Santa Cruz voters, sent people door to door and blanketed social media and TV with advertisements ahead of the Nov. 5, 2024 election. (Photo collage by Jesse Kathan)
This story is Part 2 of a series on soda taxes in Santa Cruz County. Read Part 1 here. This series is part of Big Food vs. The People, a reporting project with Lighthouse Reports and an international collaboration of newsrooms. Read the rest of the stories here.
SANTA CRUZ >> Hector Marin’s voice — low, impassioned, unfailingly rapid — is familiar to any Santa Cruzan attuned to local politics in the last five years. He has thrice launched unsuccessful bids for Santa Cruz City Council, most recently in June, and frequently decries what he sees as a local government too friendly to landlords and big business.
In 2024, his political targets included Measure Z, a proposed tax on distributors of sugar-sweetened drinks. Measure Z would disproportionately impact low-income residents, he argued, and lower margins for local restaurants could lead to cut hours or lost jobs for service workers.
Marin’s views on Measure Z and his frequent social media posts on the topic during the campaign reflected sincerely held ideals, he said in a recent interview. But he was only able to spend so much time on the effort because of the $5,000 a campaign consultant paid him — a large sum for a political hopeful scraping by on multiple low-paying jobs.
Marin said he wasn’t the only young activist of color recruited by an opposition campaign bankrolled by PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Keurig Dr Pepper. These recruitments were part of a longstanding strategy to ally with Black and Latino individuals and organizations, the same demographics disproportionately impacted by chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity associated with excessive sugar consumption. It’s a strategy, experts say, ripped from the handbook of Big Tobacco.
Measure Z was narrowly approved with 52% of the vote. Now, the fight to kill it has moved to the courts.
The measure flies in the face of a 2018 ban against grocery taxes state lawmakers approved under duress from beverage interests. The industry sought to stem a flight of successful soda taxes across Bay Area cities. Shortly after Santa Cruz city voters approved Measure Z, the lawsuit that everyone expected was filed by the American Beverage Association. In a June 29 court decision, a judge sided with Santa Cruz on its right to implement a soda tax, but an appeal is expected.
If the city prevails, local soda taxes could again take root across California.
An investigation by Santa Cruz Local, Lighthouse Reports and an international group of news outlets analyzed 439 lawsuits from food and beverage companies and trade associations against governments, including a lawsuit from the American Beverage Association challenging Santa Cruz’ soda tax. (Revisual Labs)
State preemptionIn 2017, after three years of fighting taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks in cities across California, the beverage industry was tired. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and other soft drink companies had spent more than $40 million on consultants, canvassers and media campaigns to kill local tax efforts.
In some cities — Richmond, El Monte — the industry succeeded, and voters rejected the taxes. In others, like Watsonville, tax proposals were snuffed out before making it to the ballot. But voters in Berkeley, Alameda, San Francisco and Oakland all approved soda taxes, and the list of cities considering similar taxes continued to grow.
“Big Soda says ‘screw this,’” explained political consultant Larry Tramutola, who worked on soda tax campaigns in multiple cities. “‘We’ve got to make it illegal.’”
In 2018, the American Beverage Association, an industry group representing soda companies, offered the California legislature a choice. They could ban local taxes on food and drinks, including soda. Or else, the industry would throw the full weight of its money and influence behind a state ballot initiative to make passing any local tax more difficult. Already, it had spent nearly $9 million to boost the initiative.
Then-state Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel), who had for years tried unsuccessfully to advance a statewide soda tax, voted against the compromise even as he understood its necessity. “I told my colleagues in a caucus meeting, ‘you know, I can’t in good conscience support this bill,’” he recalled. “‘It’s subterfuge.’”
The Keep Groceries Affordable Act of 2018, which prohibits any local tax on groceries until 2031, was voted into law.
American Beverage Association spokesperson Steve Maviglio, in response to a detailed list of questions, wrote on July 16, “California’s beverage companies work and live in communities across our state and we are proud to support organizations, civic groups and lawmakers who believe as we do that Californians should be protected from discriminatory taxes that raise the cost of groceries for families.”
The statement continued, “We will always back our customers — from restaurants to corner stores to grocers — against measures that threaten their businesses and their employees, which is why we will continue to defend the overwhelmingly popular law passed by the state legislature that prevents the spread of taxes on groceries.”
The effort to tax sweetened drinks lay dormant for six years before reigniting in Santa Cruz in 2024, when the city council decided to defy state law banning grocery taxes and put a soda tax on the local ballot. As word got out, the industry’s opposition campaign machinery again sprang into action. As in other soda tax elections, the opposition amplified voters’ concerns about consumer choice and affordability, in ways as obvious as a flurry of mailers or as subtle as unspoken relationships with local activists.
Santa Cruz taxSoon after the early success of local soda taxes in neighboring cities, city leaders in Santa Cruz looked to join their ranks. But by the time the effort gained momentum in 2018, the preemption had already taken effect, and the idea was dropped.
One major deterrent was a provision of the Keep Groceries Affordable Act that withholds sales tax money from local governments that tax food or drinks.
But in conversations with other groups supporting soda taxes, then-City Councilmember Martine Watkins became convinced that the punishment violated the state constitution. In 2020, she signed on to a lawsuit alongside Fresno-based nonprofit Cultiva La Salud to challenge the punishment provision of withholding sales tax money. The Sacramento Superior Court ruled in 2021 that the provision violated the rights of charter cities like Santa Cruz to make their own laws, and an appellate court in 2023 upheld the decision.
The bulk of the Keep Groceries Affordable Act remained intact, but Watkins and others believed that it could be vulnerable to another legal challenge. In June 2024, the council unanimously voted to place a soda tax on the ballot, anticipating a legal battle but believing they would win.
“The industry is not even pretending they’re not going to sue us over this,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley said at a June 2024 city council meeting. If Santa Cruz became the first city to adopt a soda tax after the court ruling, it would face “the pointy end of the spear,” he said.
Over the next four months, the American Beverage Association’s opposition campaign spent $2.8 million to fight Measure Z. Much of the campaign was extremely visible: ads on social media and streaming services, a steady flow of mailers, a parade of canvassers.
But overt influence has its limits. That’s why consultants like Rodriguez Strategies, which coordinated much of the No on Z effort, emphasize the importance of “coalition building,” a strategy to assemble potential local allies. That work is sometimes much quieter.
In 2024, his political targets included Measure Z, a proposed tax on distributors of sugar-sweetened drinks. (Contributed)
Activist supportMarin was first introduced to Measure Z by Santa Cruz County Supervisor Felipe Hernandez, who represents part of south Santa Cruz County. Over drinks at Lúpulo Craft House in Downtown Santa Cruz, Hernandez explained that local union leaders were concerned that the tax could threaten jobs for soft drink bottlers and distributors. There was an effort to legally challenge the tax initiative, he said, but it needed a city resident. Marin agreed to sue the city in his name.
No one in that conversation explicitly stated who was bankrolling the lawsuit, Marin said. But he understood that it was likely the beverage industry. Court documents show that Marin was represented by San Rafael-based Nielsen Merksamer, a firm with close ties to the beverage industry that went on to work on the No on Z campaign.
Marin’s suit challenged the ballot language for Measure Z, which included a list of health-based programs the tax money could be used for, even though it is legally a general tax that can be used for any purpose. A citizen committee makes recommendations on spending, but they are not legally binding. A tax for a restricted purpose would have required more than 66.6% of the vote, rather than a simple 50% majority.
It wasn’t the first lawsuit to take issue with the language of a soda tax. In 2014, an employee of Rodriguez Strategies moved to Berkeley, and soon after legally challenged its soda tax language as biased. The judge ruled that the ballot question must use the phrase “sugar-sweetened beverages” rather than “sugary, high-calorie drinks.”
Marin’s challenge was not as successful. A superior court judge allowed the ballot question to stand.
Marin continued to oppose the measure on social media, and denied rumors beginning to circulate that he was receiving payment for his vocal opposition. Those rumors resurfaced earlier this year when campaign finance documents revealed that in 2025, he had accepted money from a real estate industry-funded opposition group to oppose the 2025 Measure C real estate transfer tax. Marin had opposed the tax on the grounds it did not sufficiently tax the most expensive property sales.
He and the real estate interests “both didn’t want Santa Cruzans to be taxed, and that’s the only reason why we worked together,” he said on KSQD’s Talk of the Bay radio program in February.
In that interview, he strenuously denied accepting payment for his opposition to Measure Z. But in a recent interview with Santa Cruz Local, he acknowledged that in late summer of 2024, after the legal challenge had fizzled out, he was brought on to advise the opposition campaign for $5,000.
Marin is scornful of the beverage industry’s strategic engagement with Black and Latino communities.
“They were trying to utilize whatever equity that I had locally as a way for them to benefit,” he said. “They were backpacking on these people of color.”
But he did honestly oppose the tax, he said, albeit for different reasons than Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. And he was struggling, as he had been for years, to meet Santa Cruz’s high rents with a low-paying job as a paraeducator and intermittent side gigs as a server and dishwasher. It wasn’t wrong, he said, to take a check for devoting more time to an authentic political belief.
Besides, he said, he wasn’t the only one.
Another prominent young critic of Measure Z was Ayo Banjo, a former UC Santa Cruz student body president and past member of the Black empowerment nonprofit Santa Cruz Black. Banjo said in a recent interview that his opposition to Measure Z stemmed from an overarching commitment to reduce the cost of living.
“I don’t care about soda,” he said. “What I care about is affordability.”
To that end, he has helped advance a taskforce for affordability in the City of Monterey, and hopes to do the same in Santa Cruz.
Banjo has been involved in Santa Cruz politics and activism for years, so he said he wasn’t surprised when he was contacted on Facebook by Joshua DuBois, a former spiritual advisor to Barack Obama and CEO of consultant and Black-led marketing firm Values Partnership.
Banjo said he accepted a contract to help design digital platforms for political and marketing campaigns, plus a curriculum for young organizers and canvassers to be used for a future fellowship program.
Values Partnerships at the time was also working with the No on Z opposition campaign, election filings show. Banjo’s employers had mentioned the campaign, he said, but it had no bearing on his work — or his statements on social media and in interviews urging people to reject the soda tax.
“I’m nobody’s slave — not to the corporations, not to Values Partnerships, not to the city council, not to anybody,” Banjo said.
Banjo’s LinkedIn states that during his tenure with Values Partnerships from August 2024 to January 2025, he led “a high-stakes public health campaign impacting underserved communities,” and “implemented a comprehensive outreach strategy that not only educated the public but also presented equitable public health funding alternatives, enhancing community support and influencing local policy decisions.” Banjo said this verbiage, which he has since changed, was driven by a desire to secure future jobs in public health and did not reflect work on any political campaign.
Maviglio, the American Beverage Association spokesperson, said he could not confirm who in Santa Cruz had been paid by the campaign.
Banjo said he had attended the election night party at Hotel Paradox at the invitation of Values Partnerships, but left after realizing the gathering mostly consisted of industry donors.
Marin said that Banjo had accepted money to fight Measure Z. Towards the end of the campaign, Banjo had stopped work on the effort and Marin was brought on, Marin said.
“They got themselves a new token,” Marin said.
By 2017, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and other soft drink companies had spent more than $40 million on consultants, canvassers and media campaigns to kill local tax efforts. (Stephen Baxter — Santa Cruz Local file)
A political allyIn October 2024, two weeks before the election, the opposition campaign gained a high-profile ally — Hernandez, the south Santa Cruz County supervisor.
Campaign consultants had repeatedly reached out to Hernandez to oppose the tax, he told Santa Cruz Local.
“I just ignored them for a really long time,” he said, but he ultimately spoke out against the tax in solidarity with unions who opposed it and concern for the potential loss of union jobs.
On Oct. 7, 2024, Hernandez emailed Rick Rivas, a vice president for the American Beverage Association, and Pedro Carrillo, the executive director of the Latino Caucus of California Counties, mentioning a recent meeting they had regarding Measure Z. In the email he said he had reached out to the United Food and Beverage Worker Union about the tax. Carrillo also leads Prime Strategies, a lobbying firm whose clients include PepsiCo.
Carrillo did not respond to requests for comment.
The Latino Caucus of California Counties, through multiple political action committees, was a major contributor to Hernandez’s campaign for supervisor in 2022. The caucus’ committee was funded in large part by the American Beverage Association. Neither committee contributed to his unsuccessful campaign for reelection for Santa Cruz County District 4 supervisor this year.
Hernandez said the past campaign contributions had not influenced his stance. He simply did not believe in taxing soda, he said, although he has experienced the health risk they pose.
“I used to have bottles of Pepsi or Coke, the big ones, like two of them,” he said. “And then in 2006 they told me I got pre-diabetes.” He said that now he mostly drinks water, or the occasional Coke Zero.
Hernandez did not respond to follow up requests to comment on the email or his coordination with Marin on the lawsuit to challenge Measure Z.
Loss and regroupOn election night in November 2024, as ballots for Measure Z began to be tabulated, Marin entered a swanky private room in the Hotel Paradox. It was, he said, “a legion of doom situation.”
The whole Measure Z opposition team was in attendance, including representatives from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper. Their political consultant teams, their union allies. Rick Rivas, Hernandez, Banjo.
The group clearly anticipated victory, Marin said. But after the first count of ballots were reported, showing early support for the tax, the mood soured.
In the final tally, Measure Z won with 52% of the vote. It wasn’t an overwhelming margin of victory for supporters — but it was a $2 million failure for the beverage industry.
Their attention soon refocused on the courtroom.
The Measure Z opposition campaign had warned of a costly lawsuit if Santa Cruz defied the 2018 state ban on food or beverage taxes. Soon after Santa Cruz voters approved Measure Z, lawyers with the American Beverage Association followed through on the threat, and sued Santa Cruz city in Sacramento Superior Court. In response, the city argued that state rules only supersede charter cities’ laws in matters of statewide importance — and that maintaining the cost of sugary drinks does not rise to that level.
In a hearing May 8 of this year, lawyers for the American Beverage Association and its co-litigants argued that the courts shouldn’t be in the business of determining if something is too unhealthy to be considered a legitimate grocery worthy of protection from taxation. “As we know, nutritional sciences is something that’s heavily debated,” said one lawyer.
Judge Stephen Acquisto peered down from the bench. “Are you saying the jury is still out on whether soda is healthy?”
On June 29, Acquisto ruled that Santa Cruz’s right to tax overrode the state preemption. But the ruling is expected to be appealed, and could remain tied up in the courts for years.
Over the next fiscal year, the city expects to collect more than $4 million through Measure Z. But though an advisory committee has been formed to make spending recommendations, the money will remain in limbo until the legal fight is resolved.
One upcoming soda tax campaign isn’t waiting on a final ruling.
The next fightThis November, Berkeley residents will consider doubling its tax on sugar-sweetened beverages — a move made legally possible because the initial tax was approved before the 2018 state ban. So far the tax has paid for school gardens and nutrition education, plus grants to community organizations for public health efforts. The new measure would legally protect the money from being used for any other purpose.
Xavier Morales, a Berkeley resident who backed the initial 2014 effort, expects the beverage industry’s opposition machinery to soon start again. He also expects it to fail — in part due to equity measures baked into the original tax design that seek to address the concerns of marginalized communities.
Well before the Berkeley campaign, Morales saw the power of the beverage industry as the executive director of the nonprofit Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, as he tried to advance statewide regulations on sugary drinks.
One of the beverage industry’s opposition strategies, he said, is to prey upon the very real economic inequities and disenfranchisement felt by marginalized communities. In Richmond, for example, a 2012 soda tax effort was resoundingly defeated, in large part due to opposition from Black community leaders. “It was just really interesting to see how the beverage industry was able to drive wedges,” he said.
Beverage industry representatives have consistently argued that soda taxes are regressive because small price increases are felt more keenly by low-income consumers, including Black and Latino communities. The Berkeley organizers learned that was partially true — people of color tend to consume more soda and would disproportionately bear the brunt of the tax.
“A well designed tax, one that reinvests the funds into communities that are experiencing the worst outcomes — to me, that’s not a regressive tax,” Morales said.
The final tax initiative explicitly called out examples of health inequities associated with sugar consumption, including that Black Berkeley residents are 14 times more likely than white residents to be hospitalized for diabetes.
Organizers had initially proposed to use the money to replace a sunsetting grant for schools gardening programs. But they also began to consider the ongoing gentrification of the city, and the health inequities among communities of color. After voters approved the tax, an appointed panel of experts recommended that more than 40% of the money be distributed to community-based organizations, prioritizing those serving marginalized communities.
When Morales in 2014 canvassed Latino neighborhoods in West and South Berkeley for the soda tax, many people he spoke with were concerned about the potential economic impact, he said. But they also strongly supported efforts to stem the consumption of soda and its associated health harms.
Even some who didn’t envision giving up soda said they wanted their families to consume less, Morales recalled.
“A lot of the older adults, the more elderly, they’re like, ‘I’m too far gone,’” Morales relayed, “‘but I don’t want my grandkids to be doing this.’”
Monica Camacho contributed to this story. She is an open source investigator who worked at Lighthouse Reports, a nonprofit newsroom specializing in cross-border collaborations.
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Learn about membership Santa Cruz Local’s news is free. We believe that high-quality local news is crucial to democracy. We depend on locals like you to make a meaningful contribution so everyone can access our news. Learn about membershipThe post How Big Soda nearly killed Measure Z in Santa Cruz appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.
A decade ago, a soda tax effort fizzled in Watsonville. Advocates blame Big Beverage.
An investigation by Santa Cruz Local, Lighthouse Reports and a team of international collaborators examined the legal tactics Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and other food and beverage companies use to skirt regulation. (Revisual Labs)
This story is Part 1 of a series on soda taxes in Santa Cruz County. This series is part of Big Food vs. The People, a reporting project with Lighthouse Reports and an international collaboration of newsrooms. Read the other stories here.
WATSONVILLE >> Juan Manuel Garcia limped slightly as he approached the podium, his black leather boots and plaid button-down shirt tucked neatly into dark jeans. He lifted his head to look at the Watsonville City Council with dark, puffy bags beneath his eyes. His voice was strong and clear.
“For many years, I have had diabetes,” he said in Spanish at the April 2016 meeting, describing how the disease worsened his eyesight, left his feet numb, and required expensive treatment he could barely afford. It was the legacy, he believes, of years working long hours in the fields, drinking sports drinks and sodas.
Garcia asked the council to put on the ballot a tax on sodas and other sugary drinks, repeating the request of previous speakers during the meeting’s public comment period. The tax aimed to nudge buyers away from beverages that drive chronic disease, and to raise money for youth recreation and health education programs.
“Don’t do it for me, for those who are already grown,” Garcia said. “Do it for those growing up, the children who need to be educated.”
Latinos like Garcia, including rising numbers of youth, disproportionately face chronic diseases like obesity and Type 2 diabetes. While there are many reasons for the trend, high-sugar, low-nutrient foods like soda are a key driver, and soft drink companies have long cultivated Latinos as a consumer base. Increasingly, research suggests that taxing sugary beverages can help reduce their consumption.
The beverage industry has fiercely opposed such taxes, through efforts both overt and clandestine.
Garcia had come to ask the council for help after an effort to gather signatures for a ballot measure fizzled out for no apparent reason over the previous months. Coca Cola executives privately took credit for the halted effort, leaked emails show. Eight years later, the same playbook would be deployed in Santa Cruz. And this time, the beverage industry — despite investing millions of dollars — would fail.
An investigation by Santa Cruz Local and Lighthouse Reports uncovered the unseen strategies of the beverage industry to fight the soda tax efforts in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. For more than a decade, the industry has cultivated the support of Latino politicians, even as chronic conditions associated with the overconsumption of sugar disproportionately affect Latino communities. Industry leaders nurture relationships with local and state electeds through campaign contributions, behested donations, gifts, and sponsorships of professional organizations. Organizers who reviewed financial records obtained by Santa Cruz Local said they believe that the soda industry leaned on those relationships to kill the tax effort in Watsonville.
Some on the political left have criticized soda taxes for raising prices on the working class. In Santa Cruz, industry consultants amplified those criticisms by paying at least one local activist of color to build opposition.
These tactics are not limited to California, or to the U.S. A coalition of international media partners including Santa Cruz Local and Lighthouse Reports has documented similar tactics by food and beverage industries in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, India, the United Kingdom and the European Union. A lawsuit from the American Beverage Association challenging the Santa Cruz soda tax is one of 239 instances of these industries trying to stymie regulation by suing the government.
“The beverage industry is playing hardball while everyone else is doing ping pong,” said Oakland-based political consultant Larry Tramutola. “They play politics differently than mere mortals.”
Success in BerkeleyJuan Manuel Garcia was the last of the public commenters in 2016 to ask the Watsonville City Council to consider the soda tax. The first was his son, Christian Garcia.
The elder Garcia moved to Watsonville from Jalisco, Mexico in the late 1980s. He worked long days picking crops and fixing tractors, quenched his thirst with Gatorade, and relaxed at home with bottles of Coke.
Christian was 10 when his father’s eyesight grew blurry and he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Like many immigrant farmworkers, Juan Manuel had in part relied on sugary beverages out of distrust of the local water supply. Soda was integrated into his family back home — as was diabetes. All four of Christian’s grandparents in Mexico had the condition, he said. “My grandfather on my mom’s side died from a diabetic shock, because he didn’t know he had diabetes,” he said.
In part due to a public health epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, Mexico in 2014 instituted a nationwide tax on soda.
The same year, Christian began working on his first soda tax campaign in Berkeley. Then 24, he was working as the political director of TOLA Academy, an Oakland-based organization that trains young campaigners. When a group of Berkeley residents asked the academy to help campaign for a soda tax, Christian Garcia thought of his father. In an interview, he said he realized “how this industry really kind of took advantage of communities like Watsonville — not just across the country, but across the world.”
TOLA Academy was founded by Tramutola, the political strategist, who came up alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as a labor organizer with the United Farm Workers. By 2014, he was well acquainted with soda tax opponents. Beverage industry lobbyists had spent years crushing efforts for a statewide soda tax.
After being approached by the group of Berkeley organizers advancing the tax, Tramutola agreed to put his team on the effort pro bono. Soon after, he said he received a call from a consultant representing the beverage industry inviting him to instead back the opposition, for a hefty fee.
“That was the carrot,” he said. “The stick was that, ‘well, if you’re against us, you’re going to have a hard time finding other clients.’” Tramutola said he declined.
Despite an $2.2 million opposition campaign bankrolled by the American Beverage Association, voters in Berkeley approved the tax in 2014.
After the victory, the TOLA Academy received money from political organizations affiliated with Michael Bloomberg to canvas in other cities and pave the way for a repeat victory. They started envisioning future battlegrounds, places where the health harms of sugary beverages stood alongside the political will to push back: Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose.
Garcia thought of his hometown.
Watsonville City Hall on Jan. 13, 2026. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/Catchlight Local)
Losing ground in WatsonvilleIn summer of 2015, TOLA Academy members descended on Watsonville to survey residents on their support for a tax on sodas and other sugary drinks. Most people said they would support the tax measure if the money was reinvested in parks and other programs to support public health, Garcia said.
Organizers reached out to leaders of the Health Trust of Pajaro Valley, which operates a diabetes health center. A program director at the time, Veronica Camberos, agreed to sign on as the petitioner for a citizen’s initiative.
Soon after, the beverage industry caught wind of the effort. “Coalition-building work is underway in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and Watsonville” to prepare for anticipated soda tax efforts, a Coca-Cola government relations staffer wrote in an email in February 2016. The internal emails were leaked later that year following hacks by the website DCLeaks.
In response to a detailed list of questions for this story, Coca-Cola wrote in a statement, “We believe public health challenges are best addressed through collaboration among governments, public health authorities, the private sector, and civil society. We engage constructively on topics affecting our business and respect the role each stakeholder plays in advancing public health goals.”
“Coalition building” is an industry term used by campaign consultants hired to sway elections. Critics of the practice describe it as astroturfing — faking grassroots support.
“There are certain chapters of the playbook that are routinely used” by the food and beverage industries to defeat attempts at regulation, said Scott Faber, former chief lobbyist for the Consumer Brands Association, which advocates for the producers of food, beverage and other products.
“I’ve never worked on a campaign to make our food safer or healthier or more affordable, or to feed more people, where the industry did not use astroturf to defend the status quo,” he said.
One such consultancy, Rodriguez Strategies, cut its teeth on the failed campaign to oppose the Berkeley tax. On its website, the company touts its ability to form coalitions by “identifying, engaging, and activating diverse stakeholders to influence decision makers and the court of public opinion.”
The American Beverage Association, which represents PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and other major soft drink companies, formed a campaign committee to oppose the 2016 Watsonville tax, and hired Rodriguez Strategies to head the effort. Two Rodriguez Strategies consultants flew in and began building their coalition.
“Within a couple of weeks, we saw them talking to business owners and pretty much bringing in some havoc, and telling them that this was going to be bad for their business, this was going to make them go out of business,” Christian Garcia said.
The American Beverage Association, which represents PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and other major soft drink companies, formed a campaign committee to oppose the 2016 Watsonville tax. (Tyler Maldonado — Santa Cruz Local file)
While consultants worked on the ground to win over business owners, industry representatives touched base with a friendly face in Sacramento – Luis Alejo, a former mayor of Watsonville who represented south Santa Cruz County in the State Assembly. His wife at the time, Karina Cervantes, sat on the Watsonville City Council.
In 2014, Coca-Cola donated $1,494 to Alejo’s campaign for state assembly. In 2015, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and the American Beverage Association gave a combined $3,000 towards his wife’s bid to take over the assembly seat.
In March 2016, at the height of residents’ efforts to support a Watsonville soda tax initiative, support came to Alejo in a different form — a behest.
Behest donations are made by corporations or other special interest groups to a nonprofit on behalf of politicians, and must be reported to state authorities.
They’re common in California politics, and are sometimes received without coordination between donors and elected officials.
But often, behests are offered by corporations seeking to secure future support for their political aims, said former State Sen. Bill Monning, who has supported a statewide soda tax. “It’s just another form of legalized bribery,” he said.
Between 2011 and 2016, corporations and other special interests made 100 donations on Alejo’s behalf. Most were to the nonprofit California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation, which gives student scholarships, distributes grants to other nonprofits, and pays for the travel of caucus members to annual conventions.
On March 15, 2016, the foundation received a $25,000 behest in Alejo’s name from PepsiCo. The donation is tied with another from Chevron for the largest of Alejo’s political career. Later that month, the caucus foundation in turn donated $5,000 on Alejo’s behalf to Alisal DREAM Academy, a Salinas-based youth leadership nonprofit where he serves on an advisory board.
Soon after the behest from PepsiCo, members of the Health Trust of Pajaro Valley, who had initially allied with organizers from TOLA to support the citizen led tax initiative, abruptly stopped communications with organizers. “They just literally would not respond to emails, phone calls, text messages,” Christian Garcia said. “It was all just radio silence.”
Alejo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Christian Garcia remembers collecting more than enough signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot. But local campaigners, including staff from the health trust and the United Way of Santa Cruz County, never submitted a completed petition to the city clerk, Watsonville city officials confirmed.
Camberos, the health trust program director who signed on as the petition organizer, said she didn’t recall exactly what happened— whether organizers had failed to get the required signatures in time, if the petition was invalidated, or if they had just never turned in the paperwork.
“I think what we noticed is that the community still needed more time to digest what this meant,” Camberos said. The six months until the November election would not be enough, they had decided. And although the campaign effort’s legal fees were backed by a donation from the
American Heart Association, the health trust was running out of money to dedicate staff time to the effort, she said.
Camberos said she didn’t recall any contact between industry consultants and the health trust. “To be honest, I don’t know that we ever came close to them considering us as a threat,” she said.
Christian Garcia sees things differently. “We had been organizing for about six months, and they came in [for] about two months and kind of derailed the whole operation,” he said of industry consultants.
“In a community like Watsonville — I could say this, having grown up there — I think all of us are a little naive to the politics around us,” he added. For local businesses and nonprofits, experiencing that full force of the industry’s power for the first time, “it’s a gut punch.”
TOLA Academy “never really figured out what had happened” with their local collaborators, said Tramutola, the head of the academy, “but somebody had gotten to them, clearly.” After Santa Cruz Local informed him of the $25,000 behest from PepsiCo in Alejo’s name, Tramutola said he believed the industry used Alejo’s local influence to disrupt the soda tax effort.
“If you’re the beverage industry, it is far less expensive and less risky to invest in elected officials and relationships with elected officials, so something doesn’t get on the ballot, than to have expensive ballot measures where you may lose,” he said.
In an April 4, 2016 email to executives, a Coca-Cola government relations staffer noted with approval that the Watsonville soda tax proposal had been dropped. “Early organizing and outreach to the business community were instrumental to the successful outcome,” he wrote in a leaked email.
“California’s beverage companies work and live in communities across our state and we are proud to support organizations, civic groups and lawmakers who believe as we do that Californians should be protected from discriminatory taxes that raise the cost of groceries for families,” American Beverage Association spokesperson Steve Maviglio, wrote in response to a detailed list of questions.
“We will always back our customers – from restaurants to corner stores to grocers – against measures that threaten their businesses and their employees,” he wrote.
PepsiCo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
window.addEventListener("message", function (e) { if (e.data && e.data.sodaChartHeight) { document.getElementById("soda-chart").style.height = e.data.sodaChartHeight + "px"; } }); Appeal to council membersThe collapse of the signature initiative drove both Garcias, and other local supporters, to the Watsonville City Council that April. The deadline had passed for citizens to put an initiative on the November 2016 ballot, but the council could still do so.
Following the meeting where the Garcias and others spoke, Councilmember Rebecca Garcia (no relation to Christian or Juan Manuel) requested a discussion on the topic. Such asks were usually honored without question, she said in a recent interview.
Instead, an agenda committee convened with then Watsonville Mayor Felipe Hernandez, Councilmember Lowell Hurst, and Cervantes, the city council member then married to Alejo. Also on the committee were City Clerk Beatriz Vasquez Flores and City Manager Charles Montoya. The group voted to not schedule a council discussion about the soda tax, foreclosing the opportunity to put it on the ballot.
“There was quite a movement” for the tax, Hurst recalled in a recent interview, “but then the movement kind of went away, or didn’t pan out.”
He didn’t think the idea had enough momentum to discuss it in the meeting, let alone put it on the ballot. “There were a number of merchants that were concerned about what it was going to do to their bottom line, and convenience stores and other retailers were concerned,” he said. “And some of the beverage people were concerned.”
Hernandez said he was similarly concerned about local stores, and also worried that people would start buying beverages elsewhere and deprive Watsonville of sales tax money.
On April 26, the same day Garcia requested a council discussion about the beverage tax, Alejo’s election committee received a $1,000 donation from the American Beverage Association. The following week, the association behested another $1,000 to the legislative caucus foundation.
In 2022, the Latino Caucus of California Counties Political Action Committee spent $13,605.73 to support Felipe Hernandez in his run for county supervisor. A closely-related committee spent $20,214 on a campaign against his opponent. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)
Cultivating supportAlejo is a beneficiary of the beverage industry’s longstanding strategy to garner the support of Latino lawmakers.
“They’ll give them reasons” to oppose soda taxes, “like, this tax is going to be paid for by poor people in the community, or it’s going to hurt jobs,” Tramutola said. “But clearly it’s the money and the influence” that drive industry-friendly politicians’ positions, he said.
The strategy extends across the California Latino Legislative Caucus. During the 2016 election season, the average member of the California legislature received $2,800 from the American Beverage Association and associated companies, according to a 2017 analysis from nonpartisan group Maplight. Members of the Latino Caucus received $5,200 — nearly twice as much, the analysis found.
The Latino caucus drew attention in 2014 for hosting a reception sponsored by PepsiCo immediately following a vote where several caucus members in the Assembly’s health committee helped defeat a bill that would have required a health warning label on sugary beverages.
That night, Alejo and his chief of staff joined lobbyists at a tapas restaurant in midtown Sacramento, according to a lobbying disclosure. Also in attendance was Assm. Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona), one of four Latino Caucus members of the health committee who had skipped the vote on the label warning bill.
Lobbyists covered the $400 meal, though records show Rodriguez later paid back his share of the bill.
In 2016, Alejo left the assembly and was elected to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. His seat is now occupied by Robert Rivas, who in 2023 was elected Speaker of the Assembly. Rivas’s self-professed “closet advisor” is his brother Rick Rivas, a vice president for the American Beverage Association. Robert Rivas “makes decisions based on what’s best for the people of California and he operates with independence,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement.
The beverage industry’s targeted support of Latinos in the state legislature has not led to unwavering support. Robert Rivas has supported multiple bills opposed by the American Beverage Association, including a bill introduced this year that would add warnings about added sugar to restaurant menus. On June 30 this year, four members of the Latino Caucus in the Assembly’s health committee voted to advance the bill.
The beverage industry’s targeting of Latino legislators extends to other caucuses, including one representing county-level officials. The Latino Caucus of California Counties is sponsored in part by PepsiCo. The caucus’s executive director is a lobbyist whose clients include PepsiCo. The caucus also operates a political action committee with major funding from American Beverage Association, and PepsiCo.
In 2022, the Latino Caucus of California Counties Political Action Committee spent $13,605.73 to support Felipe Hernandez in his run for county supervisor. A closely-related committee spent $20,214 on a campaign against his opponent.
Hernandez said support from the PAC had no bearing on his lack of support for a beverage tax in Watsonville.
The new tobaccoAs the soda industry targets Latinos to be legislative allies, it also cultivates the community as a key consumer demographic.
“Their corporate goal is to push as much sugar into the mouths of children over their lifetimes as possible,” said Tony Iton, CEO of San Jose-based nonprofit The Health Trust and longtime health equity advocate. “That’s how they make their money, and they recognize that Black and brown kids are even more vulnerable.”
The publicity campaigns that target those kids “use hip hop artists, use music, use a variety of different kinds of cultural approaches,” he said, to secure lifelong customers.
That PepsiCo specifically backs many of the political contributions doesn’t surprise him. In the 1960s, Pepsi was the first major soda company to advertise itself to Black consumers, creating a lasting association as a civil-rights-supporting brand. Iton, who is Black, recalls seeing Michael Jackson’s famous Pepsi commercials as a young fan.
During Iton’s time as the health officer and health director in Alameda County, he saw tobacco companies try to gain favor from local nonprofits serving people of color with large donations and appearances at cultural events, using a very similar playbook as soda industry leaders.
Those same tactics are employed by some of the same people. The elite law firm Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni, has represented both the tobacco and beverage industries in attempts to curb regulation.
“There was very targeted marketing, targeted strategies to reach out to organizations that represented those groups, to try to enlist them to support tobacco,” he said. “The soda industry copied those tactics word for word.”
A Coca-Cola spokesperson said in a statement, “As a total beverage company, we offer a broad range of beverage choices across categories, including water, juice, dairy, sports drinks, coffee, tea, and sparkling beverages, including low- and no-sugar options.”
In Santa Cruz County, the industry’s apparent success in Watsonville was the prelude to a battle that is still playing out in the courts today: the city of Santa Cruz’s soda tax voters approved in 2024.
Monica Camacho contributed to this story. She is an open source investigator who worked at Lighthouse Reports, a nonprofit newsroom specializing in cross-border collaborations.
Questions or comments? Email info@santacruzlocal.org. Santa Cruz Local is supported by members, major donors, sponsors and grants for the general support of our newsroom. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Learn more about Santa Cruz Local and how we are funded.
Learn about membership Santa Cruz Local’s news is free. We believe that high-quality local news is crucial to democracy. We depend on locals like you to make a meaningful contribution so everyone can access our news. Learn about membershipThe post A decade ago, a soda tax effort fizzled in Watsonville. Advocates blame Big Beverage. appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.
Trump Puts Words in the Mouths of Dead Soldiers
President Donald Trump’s open disdain for Americans who have died in war, “losers” and “suckers,” in his estimation, is well documented. But that hasn’t stopped him from exploiting fallen soldiers—this time, the four service members who were killed over the last week as the US returns to full-scale war with Iran—to prop up support.
“All of them said very strongly, ‘We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,'” Trump told reporters as he departed to attend a dignified transfer, the process by which the remains of fallen military members are moved from aircraft to vehicle, in Dover, Delaware, on Wednesday.
There is no evidence that the service members killed, as Trump so confidently claimed, ever said or believed this. It conveniently happens to be one of the exceedingly few talking points Trump has had for continuing an increasingly unpopular war on all his own. And what better device for repeating his excuse than dead Americans who can’t speak for themselves?
The assertion was made, without evidence or apparent shame, shortly after the president appeared to boast on social media about the total number of service members killed since the US first launched strikes against Iran in February. In doing so, Trump referred to the casualties of previous wars, seemingly arguing that 18 wasn’t so bad.
“Afghanistan War: 20 years, 2,000 DEAD.
Iraq War: 9 years, 4,600 DEAD.
Vietnam War: 19 years and 5 months, 58,220 DEAD.
Korean War: 3 years and 1 month, 36,574 DEAD.
Venezuela War: 1 day, 0 DEAD.
Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD.”
The comments are the latest evidence of Trump’s long-held, blatant disregard for those killed in war. Meanwhile, his administration’s celebration of war, both in absurd pageantry and ethos, continues apace.
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Trump’s Top Tariff Negotiator Dodges Key Question on Reimbursements
American families are unlikely to be reimbursed for the money they lost to President Donald Trump’s illegal tariff plan.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer thwarted attempts by the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday to pin down when the Trump administration would return the money it has reaped from American consumers since Donald Trump initiated his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025.
“The question I’m asking the administration: Are you going to give money back to the American people who paid more?” asked Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. “What the data shows is that the American people picked up about 95 percent of the costs of those Trump tariffs.”
Warren then cited a figure from a February 2026 fact sheet compiled by the Joint Economic Committee Minority, which estimated at the time that Trump’s tariffs had cost American families more than $1,700 each over the course of his second term.
“I just want to know if you even have the slightest effort—are making even the slightest effort—to try and get some of that money back into the pockets of American families,” she continued. “Or does that just not matter to the Trump administration?”
“So what happened is the foreign and domestic importers, right? Who were buying foreign goods, not goods from American workers, foreign goods made by foreign workers who had to pay a fee on those foreign goods, those foreign importers … they can file, they had to pay the tariff, they can get the tariff back,” Greer said, throwing the responsibility of the situation on the Biden administration and what he suggested was its poor budgeting.
“I take that what you’re saying … is that the Trump administration just doesn’t care,” Warren said, chastising Greer for fixating on foreign producers rather than struggling Americans. “[The administration] isn’t even lifting a finger to try and get one nickel of the money that was collected from consumers back into the pockets of consumers.”
She then accused the White House of attempting to peel even more money from the American public by implementing new tariffs under an “obscure law from the 1930s.”
“Here’s my question: Ambassador Greer, if the Supreme Court strikes down your next round of tariffs, do you have a plan in place on how to return the money that American consumers pay under those tariffs?” she asked.
But Greer only regurgitated his previous response, claiming that U.S. Customs had already outlined how foreign manufacturers could recoup their losses.
Warren grills Jamieson Greer about if the Trump administration has any sort of plan to return money American families spent on Trump's illegal tariffs back to them. But Greer quickly pivots to talking about importers, revealing that in fact American families are not on the… pic.twitter.com/tHGebnIfYx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2026The Supreme Court deemed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs illegal in February, throwing not only the White House’s economic plan into wack, but also the primary driver behind the administration’s foreign policy agenda. The ruling, however, did not stop the president, who within days had already announced new plans to impose more global levies.
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Looks like FBI Director Kash Patel has another big special trip planned. But this time he’s not jetting off to chug beers with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team or ferrying his fake country singer girlfriend to bellow the national anthem at z-list sporting events. No, this time, he’s going to Russia in October. That’s right before the midterms, where he is likely to be hosted by the FSB…
ART OF OVER THE GARDEN WALL Book Receiving Extended Edition (Excusive)
- The 2014 animated series, Over the Garden Wall, is getting an expanded edition of its original art book. Dark Horse Comics will release Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition.
- Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition will feature exclusive interviews with the cast and crew, as well as new art and content celebrating the series’ legacy.
- San Diego Comic Con will feature a signing of prints of the book’s cover art by series art director Nick Cross and book author Sean Edgar.
With autumn incoming fast, annual Over the Garden Wall watchers are already queuing up to watch the fan-favorite show. This 2014 animated series has made its mark on the collective psyche and has become an essential autumnal watch for many. Of course, those who love the series want to immerse themselves in every last drop of it they can find. This year marks the 10-year anniversary of the Over the Garden Wall art book, a title highly sought after by fans for the past decade. To commemorate this anniversary, Dark Horse Comics is releasing Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition, a supersized version of the book that features countless new pages of content. Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition will include exclusive interviews with cast and crew, as well as many other tributes to the legacy Over the Garden Wall has built since the art book was first released. Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition also features a new foreword from Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls. As a bonus, Sean Edgar and Nick Cross will be at SDCC to celebrate this new Over the Garden Wall release with fans. Let’s dive into our exclusive look into Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition.
Dark Horse Comics
Table of contents- The Over the Garden Wall Art Book Is Finally BACK
- Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition Offers a TON of New Content for Fans
- Celebrate the Release of the Expanded Over the Garden Wall Art Book at SDCC
- When Will Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition Release? And How Much Will It Cost?
Dark Horse Comics
After years of waiting, Over the Garden Wall fans are finally getting their hearts’ desire. Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition will bring the original Over the Garden Wall art book back to shelves, fuller than ever of spooky Halloween goodness, but updated to celebrate the show’s immense cultural impact in the last decade.
Just like the original release of Art of Over the Garden Wall, Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition, written by Sean Edgar, is full of concept art, illustrations, and developmental material from creator and showrunner Patrick McHale and the show’s creative team, offering a definitive exploration into the iconic animated show.
Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition Offers a TON of New Content for Fans
Dark Horse Comics
But Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition takes this companion book to the next level. Dark Horse Comics shares, “This newly designed and updated edition includes all the content from the first edition and adds over thirty pages in a brand-new chapter featuring new cast and crew interviews (including Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, and Collin Dean), artwork from the various BOOM! Studios comic series, concept designs from Mondo’s collectible figures, and photography and preproduction art from a wide range of delights created to honor the show’s legacy since the first edition was published. Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition will also include new cover art by Over the Garden Wall art director Nick Cross and a new foreword by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch.”
Dark Horse Comics
And, of course, it will look good. A 10th anniversary needs to be celebrated, Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition will be available in a standard hardcover and a deluxe edition that features exclusive cover art with foil treatment, gilded pages, and a ribbon bookmark in February 2027. The art of Over the Garden Wall is so gorgeous that it deserves to be gilded and foiled.
Dark Horse Comics
“It’s finally back in print!” said Creator Patrick McHale. “I’m so happy people will soon be able to get their mitts on this book again, now in its new expanded form!”
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Mondo Launches First OVER THE GARDEN WALL Collectibles Celebrate the Release of the Expanded Over the Garden Wall Art Book at SDCCBut that’s not all the good news! If you’re a die-hard fan of Over the Garden Wall, you can celebrate the release of Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition at San Diego Comic-Con. At SDCC, Sean Edgar, the book’s author, and Nick Cross, Over the Garden Wall‘s art director, will be signing prints of the cover art for Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition at the Dark Horse booth (#2615) on Saturday, 7/25, from 1-1:50pm. It will be a wristbanded signing at the Dark Horse, which means that fans need to stop by the booth first thing in the morning on Friday or Saturday for a chance to get a wristband.
Cartoon Network
Nick Cross doesn’t do too many con appearances, so this is truly a rare chance for Over the Garden Wall fans to celebrate their love for the series with one of its creators. If you’ll be attending, don’t miss out!
Sean Edgar shared of this new release, “Revisiting The Unknown and all of the lives it’s touched—from the folks at Aardman to Elijah, Melanie, and Collin—has been a delight. Pat’s created a masterpiece for the decades. We’ll see you all in another ten years when we have long beards and lanterns of our own!”
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OVER THE GARDEN WALL Returns with New Stop Motion Short for 10th Anniversary When Will Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition Release? And How Much Will It Cost?
Cartoon Network
Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition and Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition (Deluxe Edition)(both hardcover, 208 pages, and 10 × 11”) will be available in bookstores and comic shops on February 9, 2027. They are now available for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local comic shop or bookstore for $54.99 and $109.99, respectively.
Over the Garden Wall is a dark fantasy that we truly treasure. It follows two brothers who find themselves in an unfamiliar forest, traveling deeper and deeper into The Unknown and coming face to face with both friends and horrors along the way. It has become a fall/Halloween favorite with its gloomy autumnal aesthetic and unsettling yet very deep story. With Wirt voiced by Elijah Wood and child actor Collin Dean as Greg, the whole show is an odd mix of the uncanny and the whimsical. We can’t wait to watch it again soon and then pour over our copy of Art of Over the Garden Wall: Expanded Edition.
The post ART OF OVER THE GARDEN WALL Book Receiving Extended Edition (Excusive) appeared first on Nerdist.
Nolan Wells Autopsy Raises More Questions About Black Teen’s Death
An independent autopsy report has raised more questions around the suspicious death of Nolan Wells.
Wells was a Black college freshman who went missing on July 4 in the water near Mississippi’s Horn Island while attending a boat party with around 300 other young people. According to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter, Wells stayed behind on the island with a young woman while the friends he came with left, as he was apparently expecting to get a ride home from someone else. His friends brought back his phone and keys, but not him. His body was found two days later.
Ledbetter announced that there was likely no foul play involved before even completing an official autopsy, leading civil rights lawyer Ben Crump to step in and call for an independent one, paid for by former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick and conducted on July 10. It found Wells’s cause and manner of death to be “undetermined” but did not rule out foul play.
The independent autopsy most notably showed “red discoloration” on the back of Wells’s head, just above the start of his neck.
While the toxicology report is still missing, this is much more information than what the state was prepared to provide. The state performed an autopsy as well, but has yet to make its findings public.
Ledbetter’s premature dismissal of foul play, the involvement of the son of a local judge, the lack of pictures or videos from that day on Wells’s phone, and the picture his mother shared on social media of him from the day of his disappearance—smiling with three white peers—fueled speculation that race played a role in his death. This most recent finding will only stoke the flames more.
“We are in Mississippi,” Crump said during a speech at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sunday. “These were three young white men. Nolan was the only young Black man. Had the roles been reversed, we know this investigation would be going differently. It would be like the first 48. They would be interrogating those young, Black boys.”
While there are still questions swirling, claims of foul play or racism are not completely unfounded. Mississippi has a long, disturbing history of anti-Black racism, from the murder of Emmett Till 71 years ago to more recent decisions by state medical examiners to ignore police brutality and other misdeeds during autopsies.
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Trump Puts Words in the Mouths of Dead Soldiers to Defend His War
President Trump tried to claim Wednesday that U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war all agreed with his stated mission.
Trump made the remarks as he was about to board Air Force One and head to Dover Air Force Base for a dignified transfer ceremony to honor the remains of four soldiers killed in the Iran war over the last week.
“Some of you are going with us to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes actually. All of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’ They won’t have a nuclear weapon. So we’re going to honor them,” Trump said.
Trump on fallen US troops: "All of them said very strongly, 'We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.'" pic.twitter.com/q4VklRCFsx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2026It makes sense for a president to say that the deaths of U.S. troops are not in vain. However, saying that they all proudly spoke in favor of the war is another story. Military service compels troops to follow orders and deploy wherever they are told, regardless of their personal opinion.
Iran has responded to U.S. and Israeli strikes on its territory with missile strikes across the Middle East, including on Israel, oil infrastructure in the Middle East, international business targets, and U.S. military bases. That has put U.S. troops on the front lines of the war, and so far, at least 18 American soldiers have been killed since hostilities began in February, with more than 500 wounded.
Some soldiers have accused the U.S. government of downplaying injuries from the war, and even lying about the nature of some of the strikes. For Trump to claim that soldiers who are no longer alive were in full agreement with his war is astounding, and insulting to their memories. Trump has no idea how the fallen soldiers felt about the war or if they agreed with it, and the opinions of U.S. troops are as diverse as those of any other group of Americans. The soldiers honored in Dover Wednesday were simply doing their duty and following orders.
Former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Departs With His Own Paul Walker ‘Furious 7’ Tribute
I don’t know many specifics about former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer—but I do know his goodbye video is baffling.
On Monday, Starmer posted a TikTok video of himself in the final scene of Furious 7, complete with the ending song, “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa and featuring Charlie Puth. The former prime minister’s face was edited onto Vin Diesel’s Fast and Furious character, Dominic Toretto, and a photo of the front door of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence and office, to Paul Walker’s character, Brian O’Conner, as the pair part ways. The actual movie scene served as a tribute to Walker, who died in a single-vehicle car collision while Furious 7 was still filming.
@keirstarmerIt’s been a privilege to serve
♬ original sound – Keir Starmer“Hey, thought you could leave without saying goodbye?” O’Conner—or in this case, the 10 Downing Street front door asks.
And Toretto, a.k.a. Keir Starmer, smiles at O’Conner and thinks to himself: “I used to say I live my life a quarter-mile at a time, and I think that’s why we were brothers, because you did, too.”
The movie continues to a montage of O’Conner in the previous Fast and Furious movies, so of course the typically buttoned-up Starmer replaces it with a montage of what—I guess—he thinks he looks like doing his job well: delivering speeches; walking with his wife Victoria Starmer while a bunch of people applaud him; speaking with members of the military; and doing the “6-7” meme hand gesture with another student in a classroom (something some schools have banned because its ubiquity has become annoying and—I just learned this one—something Starmer jokingly apologized to a teacher over for doing on another occasion).
It’s ridiculous, but it is much better than what the US has at the moment.
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COWBOY BEBOP Was a Dud Until Toonami Saved the Day
- Cowboy Bebop was initially a total dud that was sold cheap and later became an anime legend, thanks to Toonami.
When it comes to anime, there is an endless list of shows and films to choose from. However, there are a few that are truly the cream of the crop that have cemented their place in pop culture. You’d be hard pressed to find a nerdy person who is not at all familiar with Naruto or Bleach. And we’d dare say that same sentiment goes for Cowboy Bebop. From its iconic theme song and opening sequence to its ensemble of unforgettable characters, Cowboy Bebop is a classic. However, many fans don’t know that this show almost met a swift ending before it even got a chance to truly start.
Steve Blum, who voiced Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop, talked about how the show almost didn’t exist during his appearance on Jim Cumming’s podcast. He noted that it took a lot of years to blow up because it wasn’t very popular in Japan when it was recorded. Sadly, Cowboy Bebop suffered from a lack of marketing direction as well as weirdly airing out of order in Japan.
So the licensing fee to bring it to other audiences was really cheap and easily obtainable. A few years later, Toonami aired Cowboy Bebop in early September 2001 and the rest, as they say, was history. It hit a worldwide English speaking audience and became a certified classic with only 26 episodes in total.
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COWBOY BEBOP Complete Anime Series Episode GuideAs we know, Netflix tried its hand at a live-action Cowboy Bebop that didn’t fare well with audiences overall, leading to its cancellation after one season. Personally, we thought it was a decent adaptation for a show that feels incredibly hard to bring to live-action. It is basically physically impossible to replicate some of the character’s movements and the atmosphere of it is hard to capture as well.
No matter what, we are so happy that Cowboy Bebop didn’t fall into the abyss so we could see this space cowboy do his thing.
The post COWBOY BEBOP Was a Dud Until Toonami Saved the Day appeared first on Nerdist.
Hegseth flames out in failed effort to defend Iran war
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to ask Congress for another $67 billion for President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. And to say it went poorly for Hegseth would be an understatement. The unqualified former Fox News host, who never should have been confirmed to his job in the first place, angrily sneered and had toddler-like tantrums as Democrats asked him questions…