While a pair of bombshell stories dominated the news cycle in Fresno last week, one local news organization, Fresnoland, sat conspicuously silent.
The surprising silence on the pair of stories – bombshell revelations that Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno)often attended to state business impaired by drugs and alcohol and, separately, a nonprofit’s illegal use of composted human remains along the San Joaquin River – often unmentioned, but deep financial and organizational ties between the nonprofit website, Arambula, and his family.
Rewind: Arambula returned to headlines on Thursday on the revelation he was facing divorce from his wife of 11 years, Elizabeth.
- Court filings by Elizabeth Arambula revealed the five-term State Assemblyman suffered from significant substance abuse issues, writing that she and taxpayer-funded drivers had to drive him to official meetings due to his being impaired under the influence of alcohol or marijuana.
- In his own filings, Arambula wrote that his issues with sobriety led him to decide to voluntarily enter an in-patient drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in January, leading to a five-week excused absence from the Legislature to start 2026.
- Elizabeth Arambula has openly questioned her husband’s post-rehab sobriety, pointing to security footage of him handing a THC pen to a friend at their home.
Elsewhere: Earlier Thursday, members of the San Joaquin River Conservancy excoriated the nonprofit San Joaquin River Parkway Trust for acquiring and spreading composted human remains from a Washington company at Sumner Peck Ranch, near Solitary Cellars winery.
- The San Joaquin River Conservancy, a government agency that is separate from the trust, discovered the human composting and called on the Trust to stop.
- Following a press conference held by Fresno and Madera County leaders, the Trust said it would stop bringing more human compost onto the property, per a report from GV Wire.
Postcards from Arambuland: Fresnoland, a nonprofit website heavily funded by far-flung. billionaire-backed endowment funds, hasn’t shied away from pointing out the often thorny relationships among Fresno’s media players, regularly highlighting the relationships between management of competitors, including GV Wire and The Sun, with various local officials.
- Things, however, are quite different when it comes to its own relationship with Arambula and his family.
- In 2022, Miguel Arambula, Joaquin Arambula’s brother, joined on Fresnoland’s Board of Directors.
- The news site also lists Miguel Arambula as a donor who gave under $10,000 to the nonprofit for 2024-2025.
Shipping up to Boston: Dating back to 2021, the Rappaport Family Foundation – the nonprofit foundation launched by Arambula’s Boston-based maternal grandfather – became a funder of the organization’s coverage when it was then publishing under the masthead of The Fresno Bee.
- Arambula’s grandfather, Jerome Rappaport, is best known as a major developer in Boston whose early career was deeply entrenched in Democratic politics and capped by two different accomplishments: first, assisting a three-term Congressman, John F. Kennedy, make the jump to the U.S. Senate in 1952; the other: flipping Boston’s City Hall and pressing for a wholesale campaign of gentrification in the city’s urban core.
- The legacy of Arambula’s grandfather, in an ironic twist of fate, has come under the same withering criticism doled out regularly by Fresnoland to local developers, by pointing to his work to forcefully clearing the working class neighborhood of the West End, displacing 7,000 residents in post-war Boston, in the pursuit of gentrification for the construction of luxury urban housing.
- Historians note that the Boston magnate used his wide political influence not only to force the gentrification of the West End – and eventually be named by city officials as its developer – but also “fought fervently to degrade tenant rights,” raised rents on the back of property tax cuts, and worked to completely undermine the city’s rent control regulations.
Deep dive: Along with silence on the jarring allegations unearthed from Joaquin Arambula’s divorce, Fresnoland rarely discloses its ties to the Democrat lawmaker and the fact that his brother sits on its board…