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MONDAY, AUGUST 11-AUGUST 17, 2025
VOL. 11,
NO. 236
Supervisors rezone Glen Helen areas for commercial development, housing
Trump’s war on big law means it’s harder to challenge the administration
By Joe Taglieri
By Molly Redden, ProPublica
joet@beaconmedianews.com
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
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he San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday amended zoning rules to allow residential and commercial development of over 141 acres in the North Glen Helen and Sycamore Flats areas. Supervisors voted 5-0 for amendments to the Glen Helen Specific Plan that rezones 81.5 acres in North Glen Helen from “destination recreation to corridor industrial” and 60 acres in Sycamore Flats to allow the option of developing the site as either single-family residential or industrial uses. The board OK’d rezoning for 48.7 acres from singlefamily residential to combine single-family with a “corridor industrial overlay” within the Sycamore Flats area that would allow for industrial development along major thoroughfares. The Sycamore Flats Subarea consists of two undeveloped areas bisected by Interstate 15 and Glen Helen Parkway, according to a county staff report. The North Glen Helen Subarea is located along Glen Helen Road, south of I-15 and Cajon Boulevard near the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railways. The board also removed a “high density residential overlay,” which often allows for higher building heights, lot size, reduced setbacks and financial incentives for developers to build bigger and create more affordable housing units. The zoning changes allow more “flexibility in permitted uses and accessory container storage in Corridor Industrial zones,” according to a county statement. Supervisors added an addendum to the project’s original environmental
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The read area is the North Glen Helen area now designated for development. | Photo courtesy of San Bernardino County
impact report that includes an agreement with Pharris Sycamore Flats LLC, TDC Glen Helen Owner LLC and Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. to fund a focused traffic study for the Devore Heights community. In response to community members’ concerns, supervisors deferred a vote on proposed rezoning in the Devore area in order to do additional analysis and community engagement. The 19.2-acre site located at Glen Helen Parkway and Cajon Boulevard near the 15 an 215 Freeways was proposed for rezoning from “commercial/traveler services” to “corridor industrial.” The proposed zoning changes in Devore will return for board consideration at an unspecified date. The project area in Devore “is vacant and undeveloped land that is relatively flat and slopes on
the southeast most portion of the site,” according to a county staff report. “The site is surrounded on three sides by roadways, and the Cajon Wash natural drainage area bounds the site on the fourth side.” During a public hearing on the zoning updates, several area residents voiced concerns over increased vehicle and large truck traffic in the newly designated commercial zones. “This is a gem area and we’re really trying to keep it to be that rural living,” Dee Denton said of the proposed Devore site. “Bringing trucks and trailers and all kinds of other heavy industrial into that area is going to defeat what the intention was from that original plan.” Board Chair Dawn Rowe noted issues not addressed in the initial traffic study for Devore included possible problems arising from
increased heavy trucks through the Cajon Pass wearing out road surfaces, lack of access for public safety vehicles and afternoon traffic delays on the 15. County Assistant Executive Officer Chad Nottingham told the board focused traffic studies would be included in as part of the application process for proposed development projects. Supervisor Joe Baca Jr. said he has concerns about traffic congestion in the Devore area, adding that the Sycamore Flats and North Glen Helen areas were to be less susceptible to slowdowns. “The way they’re set geographically, it makes a little more sense for traffic coming in and out,” Baca said. The addendum to the Glen Helen plan’s environmental impact report is available on the county’s tinyurl. com/4wext7xz.
wo weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration. But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly retributive president. Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit leaders told ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients See Big law Page 07
that Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.” Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the Trump administration. Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those executive orders. “The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.” The bar association itself has struggled to find representation, the lawsuit said.