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MAGA council keeps piling up Huntington Beach legal losses

February 18, 2026

The Huntington Beach City Council majority refers to itself as the MAGA-nificent 7 for implementing MAGA’s Trump-inspired culture-war agenda at the local level, but the results have so far been less than magnificent. The council keeps losing court battles on issues ranging from its Voter ID law to its efforts to censor library books to its thwarting of state housing laws.

The losing streak continues. Late last month, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the city’s challenge to an appeals court decision ditching the voter-approved voter ID law, Measure A, that the council placed on the ballot last June. It has always been clear that the courts would toss this law. Voter ID is largely harmless, but advocates use it mainly to promote debunked voter-fraud theories.

The appeals court didn’t attempt to resolve the underlying issue, but agreed with state officials that Huntington Beach’s charter-city status doesn’t give it the authority over election-integrity issues, which are a state matter. City officials claim they are committed to fighting their Democratic foes in Sacramento, but they’ve given those foes lots to crow about. “No city in our state, charter and non-charter alike, is above the law,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta following the high court’s decision.

These pages have documented the city’s battle against state efforts to reduce permitting hurdles, with the city having “lost multiple, consecutive legal battles,” as AI aptly summarized. And then there’s the council’s bizarre fixation on censoring library books. It also has lost in the courts and at the ballot box. Now it’s losing in the pocketbook.

The council recently picked a fight with Friends of the Library, with the council questioning whether to accept $825,000 from the group. It took issue with the grant’s terms that “the money be spent exclusively on books” and requiring “city leaders to follow a state law that limits what books they can exclude from the library,” per VoiceofOC.

Seriously, who picks a fight with volunteer library groups? Apparently, ideologues who put their losing agenda above what’s best for the city’s residents.

Orange County Register

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MAGA council keeps piling up Huntington Beach legal losses

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