A snowflake melting in the sun.

Amber Smith, a baseless warrant, the First Amendment and life as we know it.

On the night of Jan. 4, 2026, the Ring app on my phone made a slight ping. I looked, and this is what I saw …

I wasn’t home, but my wife was. So I texted her that I didn’t recognize this dude, and she probably shouldn’t open the door.

One night later, while taking out my trash, Hoodie Man returned. He pulled up in front of my house, asked, “Jeff Pearlman?”—then handed me an envelope stuffed with papers and said, “You’ve been served.”

That is how I learned about the attempted restraining order.

•••

To end the suspense of this post, Amber Smith—a local right wing zealot and the person behind the @reformcapousd Instagram feed—was the woman responsible for the man responsible for handing me the material. If you want, you can read the entirety of the packet here. I don’t have anything to hide (though I redacted my address and Amber’s address) …

And if you value your time enough to have skimmed past the nitty gritty, what Amber sent to my home was a Request for Civil Harassment Restraining Order, which followed her failed effort to have the court issue a restraining order against me.

According to the documents, Amber and I were required to appear inside the Superior Court of California, in Santa Ana, on the morning of Jan. 9, to sit before a commissioner and have her request heard. It was, to me, wild stuff. Like, wildly wild stuff. And as I read through the pages, I found myself simultaneously laughing and shaking my head.

Traditionally, when one thinks of a restraining order, they picture, oh, an abusive spouse, or a jilted lover, or a creepy teacher, or … I dunno. Folks who actually have some semblance of a personal relationship (Exception to the rule, I reckon: the weird dude sitting in Justin Bieber’s bushes). Amber, in her own hand writing, accused me of “stalking/repeated unwanted contact.” She said my actions, “caused [her] substantial emotional distress and anxiety, as a result of the ongoing harassment, I sought medical care and was prescribed anxiety medication. I am concerned the conduct will escalate if not [sic] restrains.” She said I have, “demonstrated an ongoing fixation by repeatedly publishing content about me … respondent’s harassment is ongoing and has included repeated publications about me.”

Which, in print, sounds pretty awful, right? Stalking! Unwanted contact! Emotional distress! Ongoing fixation!

But here’s the thing. The important thing: For a long-ass time, Amber Smith has been one of the leading voices and agitators in the local hard-right school board-infiltration movement. She is uber tight with the four MAGA/Mom’s For Liberty-inspired Capo Unified School Board members, and has teamed with them on multiple (batshit crazy) efforts and endeavors (Google: Gays Against Groomers and grab your popcorn). Hell, recently one of the board members gave Amber an important role in determining which books should be banned from school libraries. If you’re looking for someone to speak out against trans athletes, Amber’s your woman. If you need someone to remind you how awful Covid masks were, Amber’s also your woman. If you want to make a case against books with “suggestive” themes, Amber all day, every day. This is what she has devoted much of her life to, and (to her credit, I guess), she’s built a semi-rabid following.

With that, however, comes necessary scrutiny. When I started this site a year ago, my goal was to shine light upon people like Amber Smith; Trump-aligned folks who fight and scratch and claw to instill ludicrous MAGA-infected disorders upon local venues and entities. With the death and demise of regional media, I figured someone should give it a try—so why not me?

Amber is Grade-A material, because A. She’s passionate; B. She’s engaged; C. She’s unlikeable and snarly; D. She’s (in my opinion) not particularly bright; E. She has the ear of the Capo Unified Board; F. She wants to (again, in my opinion) fuck up a REALLY great school system that educated both of my children; G. She’s a Phyllis Schlafly-level agitator.

So I’ve written about her a solid amount. Oftentimes, it starts with someone e-mailing me, “Hey, did you see what Amber did?” or, “Can you believe this shit Amber is up to?” I wind up asking around, or watching videos, and usually thinking, “Sheesh—people need to know about this.”

Well … if you’re Amber Smith, you probably don’t want people knowing about this. At least via the filter of my (admittedly progressive) perspective. Pre-Truth OC, she could huddle with Capo Unified School Board members, she could make crazy-ass statements at meetings, she could butcher spelling and grammar on her IG feed—and nobody would be the wiser. She existed in the comfort of a right-wing regional silo, where the primary acknowledgment she received was (from mindless lemmings), “Great job!” and “Keep handing it to the libs!”

With this site, I believe, that changed.

Germs hate Clorox.

•••

I enlisted an attorney. He came recommended, and from jump the dude was amazing. He looked over the documents and said, “She has no shot.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“First,” he said, “this is a First Amendment issue. A freedom of speech issue. She doesn’t like what you’re writing, but not liking someone’s writing isn’t the same as being harassed.”

I agreed.

“Second,” he said, “I don’t actually see any harassment here. Literally zero. Satire isn’t banned speech. This is clearly satire. She just doesn’t like it.”

Again, I agreed.

“You won’t have a restraining order against you,” he said. “No way. It’s laughable.”

Amber, it seemed, was particularly bothered by these two Truth OC posts: A and B. The first, which ran on Dec. 4, celebrated the news (as told to me, then reaffirmed by her own website) that Amber was relocating to Texas, and that we’d no longer have to deal with her obnoxious buffoonery. Amber appeared particularly mad that I ran a link to her Texas real-estate operation—a public website that can be located with a two-second Google search (I honestly thought nothing of it. She literally has a website). The second, which ran on Dec. 18, was a deliberately satirical piece about the ridiculousness of aspiring book banners showing us all how smutty and inappropriate material is … by reading the smutty and inappropriate aloud for e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e to hear.

Anyhow, on the morning of Jan. 9, my wife and I headed over to Santa Ana and Superior Court. We walked inside, sat on a bench, saw Amber (and, I assume, her husband) from afar, met with my attorney—who, again, reiterated this was the dumbest shit ever. Then we entered a small courtroom, where a commissioner called us forward. His name is Glenn Mondo. He has a white bushy mustache of the Gods, as well as a refreshingly pointed demeanor. My attorney told him we were requesting a continuance (which we were guaranteed), and Mondo nodded. Before we left, however, Mondo directly addressed Amber, who was sitting at a table 20 feet to my left. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically told her this appeared to be a First Amendment matter, and—from his vantage—she ran the risk of not only having her request swatted away, but being forced to pay my attorney fees.

To which I thought, “Yes-fucking-please!”

We were told to return to court on Jan. 29.

•••

The next day, I received this letter in the mail …

I showed it to my wife and my attorney, and we actually wondered aloud: Had Amber Smith hired a lawyer, or was this, like, a lawyer friend doing her a solid?

Either way, it’s a weird letter filled with weird requests. In my life (not including our time in court) I have been in Amber’s presence, I believe, twice. Ever. I DMed her on Instagram a long time ago when I first learned of her feed, with a (genuinely sincere) request to sit down over coffee and talk local issues and see if there’s common ground. When I found out she was moving to Texas, I e-mailed her a link to the post I wrote about her (admittedly, I wanted her to read it because I aspired for her to know some of us were thrilled by her departure), then a follow-up e-mail, asking (again, sincerely) why she was still involved in local politics if she no longer resided here.

That’s, literally, it.

That’s the harassment.

•••

I was pumped for court today.

I wanted Amber Smith to talk about why a volunteer political blogger and veteran journalist … one who has literally never been sued for libel or accused of unethical behavior/tactics … is a threat. I wanted to hear her arguments. I wanted to watch Mondo’s face as she told him that being written about was causing her anxiety; that having her actions chronicled was cause for concern.

I wanted Mondo to laugh at her. I wanted my legal fees paid for. I wanted the experience. I was legitimately excited for the experience.

I wanted to see the American legal system in action.

I wanted to see a snowflake melt in Southern California.

I made it clear to my attorney that I would—under no circumstances—concede to any of Amber Smith’s conditions. I didn’t want mediation; I didn’t want to make any editorial promises. I didn’t want to back down, or curl up into a ball, or slink away, dignity tossed into a dumpster. I was not going to be bullied by a bully. I would roll up my sleeves and face this thing head on, just as people in Minneapolis are (beautifully, courageously) facing their tormenters head on. I was fired up. Inspired. Pumped. We live in an age where the hard-right is devoting itself toward hate-slugging anyone who dares disagree with or oppose their brutality. It’s Schoolyard Bully: 101—the brainless dolts forcing their way through society, deliberately stealing the nerds’ lunch boxes and eating all the sponge cake.

Well, I’m fed up with it.

Then—fucking fuck—this came …

Amber Smith backed out. She filed for a dismissal, and that was that.

My attorney—again, just the coolest dude alive—told me he wasn’t gonna charge me a cent. “I only had to put on a suit once for you,” he said. But I think there was more to his kindness. We spoke at length, and he’s actually a fairly conservative guy. But, as a legal practitioner, this one genuinely annoyed him. The audacity of aspiring to silence free speech. The lengths one might go to suppress expression that she finds unfavorable.

And one might assume I would be mad at Amber Smith, or that I hate her. But, sincerely, it’s the opposite. In a way, this nutty experience makes me feel badly for her. It’s weird, that (in the documents) Amber seems to think I’m trying to keep her from taking a position, taking stands, throwing elbows, barking, snarling, brawling.

Truth be told, I would be disappointed if she lost her passion for civic involvement. I agree with nothing she stands for, but I can acknowledge her willingness to at least stand, when so many Americans do not.

I never want to be responsible for shutting Amber Smith up. Never.

What I want, instead, is to expose her arguments for the festering garbage they contain.

There’s a difference—even if people like Amber Smith fail to grasp it.