Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) on Monday introduced a bill that would make it a form of rape to remove or tamper with a condom during sex without consent.

Garcia said the legislation is necessary because it is unclear whether the practice of "stealthing" is illegal under current law. To introduce the bill, she used the "gut and amend" process, stripping the contents of a previously introduced proposal that sought to allow people between ages 18 and 21 to work in gambling businesses, as long they did not perform jobs that involved playing a game.

Toughening repercussions for rape and sex crimes was at the center of legislative debate last year after the notorious sex assault cases of  former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner and comedian Bill Cosby. The stealthing bill follows another proposal by Garcia to expand the legal definition of rape that became law this year. 

Dan Schnur, the former chairman of the state campaign watchdog agency, has agreed to pay that agency $4,500 in fines for failing to properly disclose and handle some campaign contributions to his unsuccessful 2014 run for secretary of State.

Schnur was chairman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission before he ran for office. In a report released Monday, the FPPC said Schnur failed to disclose within 10 days a contribution he made to his campaign and didn’t process some campaign expenditures through his campaign account.

The latter count involves $12,658 in travel expenses that Schnur paid using personal credit cards though they were disclosed as campaign expenses.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Monday she will oppose the confirmation of every Transportation Department nominee until the Trump administration funds California's electric train.

On Monday she said she plans to vote against Jeffrey Rosen’s nomination as deputy secretary of Transportation.

In the recent spending bill, Congress directed the administration to fully fund the Caltrain Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project, but the administration has not yet released the funds. In February, President Trump delayed making a final decision on the project after the 14 Republicans in the California delegation asked him to, a move that caused panic from the governor's office and local leaders.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is in Washington on Monday and Tuesday, hoping to sway transportation officials into fast-tracking $1.3 billion for the final stage of the city's new Metro line to Westwood ahead of a decision on the city’s 2024 Olympic bid.

The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to choose in September whether Los Angeles or Paris will host the 2024 Games, and officials just spent three days in Los Angeles doing a final walk-through. Traffic and congestion have been raised consistently as potential pitfalls of the city's bid, and Garcetti said in an interview Monday that having the subway funding assured and the project sped up by September could help L.A.’s chances.

Garcetti made the request directly to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in a meeting Monday.

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on Monday sharply criticized the decision by President Trump's administration to reinvigorate federal prosecution of drug crimes, saying the decision will have a disproportionate impact on communities of color.

"I think it's crazy," Becerra said during a speech to the Sacramento Press Club. "I don't understand it."

Last week, U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions told federal prosecutors to pursue "the most serious, readily provable offense" in drug cases. That would include triggering federal drug sentencing laws that the administration of former President Obama had often avoided.

The California Chamber of Commerce is taking its case against the cap-and-trade program to the state's highest court.

Joining with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, the powerful business organization is appealing a recent state appeals court decision upholding cap and trade.

The chamber had argued that the program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions, functions as an unconstitutional tax because it was not approved by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, the legal threshold for raising new revenue.

Sample ballots for Los Angeles' special congressional election have been going out in the 34th District the last couple of weeks, and there's one change voters may not have noticed. Unlike in the primary election, candidate Robert Lee Ahn is no longer calling himself a "lifelong Democrat" in his candidate statement. 

That's because it's not true.

Ahn, who said in an interview that he first registered to vote as a Republican, and later switched his registration to the Democratic Party in 2012.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s committee for the 2012 tax measure Proposition 30 has agreed to pay $1,500 in fines to the state’s campaign watchdog commission for not properly reporting all contributions.

The committee, which was controlled by Brown, failed to properly report receiving $5,000 or more within 10 days on two occasions. The missing reports should have reported $1,531,427 received from Californians Working Together to Restore and Protect Public Schools, Universities and Public Safety, and $15,000 from the California State Council of Service Employees Issues Committee.

Proposition 30 was approved by voters and temporarily raised taxes on people earning more than $250,000.

The California Democratic Party has agreed to pay $3,500 in fines for mishandling a pair of six-figure contributions, but state investigators stopped short of accusing party officials of laundering donations from the oil industry to the 2014 reelection effort of Gov. Jerry Brown.

The findings released Monday by the state Fair Political Practices Commission grew out of a complaint by the activist group Consumer Watchdog in September that alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars were given by energy companies to the state party, which shortly afterward made large contributions to the Brown campaign.

The commission's enforcement chief on Monday issued a warning letter to Brown and his campaign, saying it had failed to deposit $1,318,316 into the designated campaign bank account, and instead deposited the funds into the campaign savings account.