Tulare County’s Republican party is taking a page right out of Donald Trump’s playbook: Lie about your opponents. Why would they do that?
Here are some reasons.
One big one is they are desperate for someone to run against a popular City Council member, Emmanuel Hernandez Soto, and are trying again to smear him with lies. Back in September, they tried to run Soto off the council by saying he was “sympathizing with those who justified the assassination of Charlie Kirk”. That, of course, is a lie. Here’s what really happened.
I wrote a Facebook post, in which I said the following:
I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy to spare for one particular victim out of the hundreds that will be injured by guns today in the United States. Many of them will die from their wounds. Most are innocent of any crime, and are victims of the easy availability of guns in this country.
Charlie Kirk may die because of the hate he fed our country. He has consistently attacked various communities, spreading lies and hatred. It’s not surprising to me that someone finally broke, and fought back.
Violence is only acceptable to me in immediate self-defense, but that’s never really been what this society has taught its members. The easy availability and glorification of guns has turned what in the past would have been fistfights into shootings.
Whether Kirk lives or dies, he’s now a martyr for the christo-fascists and Christian nationalists. They won’t take the lesson that hate breeds violence, they’ll go after the same minority groups they always have, but with more fervor than ever before.
In the next hours, claims will rocket around the internet that the shooter was gay, or transgender, or an illegal alien, or an atheist, or an Islamic terrorist, or…
Now we wait. Will Kirk live or die? Will the shooter be caught? What were their motivations? How did they acquire the weapon?
The only ones I really feel sorry for are his children. They don’t understand why this happened to their daddy. They don’t deserve this pain.
Soto “liked” my Facebook post. Desperate to get another Republican on the Visalia City Council, the local GOP jumped. They tried to skew my post to mean I was justifying the murder of Kirk (it wasn’t an assassination – Kirk wasn’t that important), and by “liking” my post, Soto was justifying it, too. Of course, that’s not what I said, and that’s not what it meant.
That didn’t stop the Republicans of Tulare County. Ten people got up and spoke at a City Council meeting on September 15, 2025, strong in their performative outrage at Soto. They called for his resignation. He did not resign.
Their post claims Soto “consistently votes against District 4’s best interests”. They then claim he voted against Chik-Fil-A and Sam’s Club, but did not provide the dates for those votes.
They really shouldn’t open the “District 4’s best interest” can of worms, though.
Checking the minutes available on the City’s website as of publication date, Soto’s record in the last 71 votes show him voting with the majority 60 times. He voted “NO”, or voted “YES” with the minority, 3 times. He was absent (for his wedding) for 11 votes. (these are total votes, not number of council meetings)
Soto votes with the majority at just under 85% of the time.
If Tulare GOP wants to claim he “consistently votes against the city’s and District 4’s best interests”, they need to admit so do all of the other Council members.
But, as is the case with MAGA and the GOP, facts don’t matter. Tell the lies, because nobody in the base will check what you say. The only priority is to get someone they think of as “liberal” off the council, and fill that seat with a conservative they can control. They can’t control Soto, and that frosts them.
If you live in District 4, vote Soto this November.
Mt. Whitney High School – Oak Tree status
July 21, 2026
Jim Reeves commentary, News, Personal Mt. Whitney High School, MWHS, Oak tree ordinance, oak trees, visalia, Visalia Unified School District, VUSD Leave a comment
On Tuesday, July 21, 2026, the Visalia Unified School District held a meeting in the Mt. Whitney High School library, regarding expansion plans for the campus. Dominate in the minds of many at the meeting was the fate of several large oak trees.
One is dedicated to the “winningest coach in Pioneer history”, Douglas P. Rudolf, with a water fountain (his mantra was “hydrate!”) and sitting area created around the large oak tree. The proposed building you see in the lower left of the image above will sit where the tree is now. The other trees seen in the first picture also stand in the proposed building’s footprint. The alumni and general community did not like that idea. VUSD held a meeting to do damage control.
The lower building is new construction. The building above it is currently the administration building (and some classrooms on the second level, at least when I went there in 1972-1976), and is slated to be demolished and a new building put in it’s place. Several other oak trees are in the construction zones.
When word got out, the uproar was immediate. School staff, the wider Visalia community, and Mt. Whitney alumni (class of ’76 for me) let it be known destruction of that one specific tree was a non-starter, and the loss of the other trees was concerning, as well. They demanded changes to the plans. VUSD sent the Superintendent to try and smooth the ruffled feathers. If his words end up being the facts, it might have worked.
Superintendent Kirk Shrum said in the meeting that the District recognized the importance of the tree(s), and every effort would be taken to protect them. Action at the next Board of Trustees meeting is to hire and pay the architect to begin designing the new buildings, including their placement on the Mt. Whitney campus. The architect will be studying the design of the building(s), utilities, and the trees when designs begin. Placement of the building(s) may be able to be adjusted to protect the trees.
The next steps are to analyze the grounds, do the environmental studies, and determine the exact features of the buildings. Staff and committees will work on the plans, and Shrum insisted the preservation of the tree(s) would be a driving focus.
But.
If they can’t make it work any other way (according to them), the trees will come down.
(Removing optimist’s hat, putting on cynic’s hat)
I hope the words spoken at the meeting are what come to pass, and the school’s newest buildings can be built without destroying these ancient giants. I’m concerned that lip-service will be paid to their preservation, and at the last possible moment it will be determined that they “have” to be removed. It would be a great loss to the community.
The Mt. Whitney Yearbook is “The Oak”. It would be a shame if there were no more of them on campus after this project is completed in four or five years.
Share this:
Like this: