California

Monday

Grace Curley

Gavin Newsom decides to tackle California homeless crisis… now it’s an election year

From our US edition

Watch out California: Gavin Newsom is wearing a T-shirt. You know what that means: the Golden State governor means business! Every few years the well-coifed pol dons his everyman garb (jeans, trucker hat, aviators, et cetera) and puts on an impassioned performance for the press. His latest PR stunt has to do with his state’s worsening homeless crisis. Two weeks ago Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to clear the tent cities and encampments that bestrew the state. To drive the point home, Newsom even put his gloves on and picked up garbage from underneath an overpass in Mission Hills before heading back to the place hefeels most comfortable— in front of the cameras. “We need local government to step up. This is a crisis,” he huffed to the press gaggle.

gavin newsom

Wednesday

Ella Johnson

Trouble in paradise: thousands of Disneyland employees threaten strike

From our US edition

Some 14,000 cast members at Disneyland in California voted by an overwhelming 99 percent to authorize a strike on Monday; however, a coalition of union members reached a tentative agreement with Disneyland Tuesday, mainly revolving around wage increases. The coalition, titled Disney Workers Rising, will open a vote on the agreement at Disneyland for employees on July 29. According to Disney, there are more than 35,000 cast members (what they call their employees) who work at Disneyland in Orange County, California. The terms of the agreement have yet to be disclosed, but if Disney agreed to raise wages by twenty-five cents an hour — which certain employees have hypothesized could happen, though it will likely be by much more — that would cost them more than $18 million per year.

Tuesday

Philip Hensher

Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn

In 1876, writing to his friend Gertrude Tennant, Gustave Flaubert set down a principle that artists and writers should live by: Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres. (Be regular in your life and ordinary as a bourgeois, in order to be violent and original in your work.) The life of the English poet Thom Gunn had its disciplined aspect (he managed to hold down a job at least), but, overall, it was so dedicated to debauchery and excess that it’sa wonder it lasted as long as it did. The story, told in detail by Michael Nott, makes even the least censorious reader sometimes wonder why this seemed like a good idea. Gunn was born in Kent in 1929 to an upper-middle-class intellectual family.

Tuesday

Lucasta Miller

A long goodbye to Berlin

Christopher Isherwood pioneered what is now known as ‘autofiction’ long before it acquired that label. His best known work, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), which later inspired the musical Cabaret, was based on the diaries he kept while living in the Weimar Republic in his twenties. He’d already used the material before in Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), a brilliant black comedy thriller that deserves to be read alongside more supposedly serious works of modernism. Forty years later, he reworked the experiences yet again in Christopher and His Kind (1977), in which he finally made explicit, for the new gay liberation era, what had been suppressed in the earlier works: his homosexuality, which had previously been outlawed.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Banana skins from the UCLA encampment

From our US edition

Cockburn wasn’t sure how he would occupy his time after the season finale of The Bachelor aired last month. As it turns out, following daily updates from the pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of California, Los Angeles campus is better than anything on TV. The latest scene — banana warfare —is particularly absurd. The encampment, which began on April 25 with 100 students, has swelled to over 400 protesters. Organized by UC Divest, the activists are demanding that the university system divest from companies associated with the Israeli military, cut ties with Los Angeles Police Department and academically boycott Israeli universities.

UCLA

Sunday

Juan P. Villasmil

USC’s suppression of the anti-Israel valedictorian is unacceptable

From our US edition

University of Southern California’s 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, will not be allowed to deliver a speech at the university's commencement ceremony due to, according to the school’s provost, security concerns. The cancellation comes following a wave of criticism over what groups such as US-nonprofit StopAntisemitism labeled “her authoring [of] an antisemitic social media post on her Instagram account.” This is a textbook attack on the principle of free expression in the name of security. The move is designed to avoid controversy and save face by unjustly silencing those whose beliefs and speech differs from that of other, often more powerful, groups.  You don’t have to agree with Tabassum. You may well see her position on Israel-Palestine as radical and impractical.

asna tabassum usc

Wednesday

Lukas Degutis

The lost America of Palm Springs

California was once home to a certain vision of the American dream; Mamas & the Papas records, grinning surfers, chrome bumpers. Now LA and San Francisco are full of glass and steel and petty criminals. Escape their sketchy downtowns and you’ll find huge copy-and-paste estates of identical homes. Urban sprawl has choked off California’s charm in everywhere but Palm Springs, a desert valley city to the east of Los Angeles.  Kirk Douglas lived here, alongside Rock Hudson, Janet Gaynor and Frank Sinatra. Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned in the city for the whole of 1967. Producers would often oblige their stars to remain within a two-hours drive of their LA studios. Meanwhile, paparazzi were only reimbursed for travel within 100 miles of LA.

Sunday

Bridget Phetasy

My first year in Texas: the good, the bad and the surprising

From our US edition

I’m reflecting on the good, the bad and the surprising of my first year in Texas. I took a huge risk moving my business and my family away from California. How has it gone? I had a tough entry into my new life. Moving is insanely stressful. So much so that when I arrived in Texas after a cross-country move with a tot, something was wrong with my stomach. I’d never had debilitating stomach pain before and I figured it would just resolve itself. When it didn’t after about a week, my husband suggested calling a Teledoc, who advised me to get to the ER immediately after hearing my symptoms. After fifteen years in Los Angeles, and thanks to a family member who worked in healthcare, I used to have access to some of the best doctors in the world.

texas

Tuesday

Mick Brown

The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus

As any book about the rise of that most nebulous idea ‘wellness’, should, James Riley’s Well Beings begins with Gwyneth Paltrow, purveyor of ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candles, ‘Metabolism-Boosting Super-powder’ and nostrums about mindfulness and ‘self-care’ – for which read self-indulgence. In 2019 Paltrow’s company Goop chartered a luxury liner for a ‘Goop at Sea’ extravaganza, at which attendees were invited to spend $4,200 for the ‘basic’ cruise and a suite at the ship’s onboard spa, and a further $750 for the event itself, the highlight of which would be an appearance by the high priestess of wellness herself. Goop at Sea was cancelled due to Covid.

Tuesday

Matt McDonald

Donald Trump dominant on Super Tuesday

From our US edition

Donald Trump is cleaning up in the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday. The 45th president has secured victories in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Nikki Haley's sole victory is in Vermont. President Biden also bagged easy wins in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. The Democrats also held caucuses in American Samoa and Iowa on Tuesday. Biden won Iowa with 91 percent of the vote, but lost American Samoa to unknown businessman Jason Palmer.

trump super tuesday
super tuesday
Juan P. Villasmil

Four things to keep an eye on Super Tuesday

From our US edition

Today is Super Tuesday, when sixteen states and one territory cast ballots in presidential primaries and caucuses throughout the country. More than a third of all delegates are set to be awarded. Traditionally, Super Tuesday has served as an ender of campaigns, giving a clear indication of which two candidates will move forward to the general election. This time around, there are little doubts of who each of the party’s nominees will be. Still, there are other significant trends worth keeping an eye on.  1. Will uncommitted voters show up and scare Biden? “Uncommitted” voters showed up in droves last week in Michigan, casting over 100,000 protest ballots.

Wednesday

Stephen Kent

California’s next freedom to lose: speeding

From our US edition

There are perfectly practical reasons to study philosophy. That’s what I told my teenage daughter when she came to me with mild complaints about her reading assignments of Plato and C.S. Lewis, for a unit on free will and virtue. Far from being a luxury for elites with liberal arts degrees, everyday Americans gain from even the most basic philosophical study a reason behind the freedoms they enjoy. Why are you ever free to do anything potentially harmful or dangerous, at all?  In California, a state famous for protecting the freedom to do hard drugs in public and live beneath overpasses or in public parks, State Senator Scott Wiener has proposed a set of bills aimed at reducing traffic-related deaths.

speeding

Tuesday

Henry Olsen

How California’s new trucking regulations threaten standards of living

From our US edition

It’s chic to look down on big trucks and their drivers. Former president Donald Trump’s photo op with truckers in 2017 was immediately lampooned on social media and by liberal journalists. It would be fitting, then, if the trucking industry provides the example that kills the push to rapidly move developed economies to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions. The fact is that any serious attempt to make Western economies “net zero” will be costly, technologically difficult and extremely disruptive to our way of life. Nothing captures these inconvenient truths better than the effort to force the electrification of the trucking industry. Trucks are to the modern economy what the circulatory system is to the body.

trucking

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

Pay attention to California’s new mandatory ‘media literacy’ law

From our US edition

While you’ve been preoccupied with Thanksgiving, or following international conflicts or rising inflation, California governor Gavin Newsom quietly signed Assembly Bill 873 last month.Assembly Billy 873 is an “act to add Section 33548 to the Education Code, relating to pupil instruction” on media literacy. In short, government-mandated standards on “ethical media” have now become required teaching for all K-12 students in California public schools. Included in the curriculum outline are several talking points, including that “the proliferation of online misinformation has posed risks to international peace, interfered with democratic decision-making and threatened public health.

Friday

John Mac Ghlionn

Is California the new China?

From our US edition

Recently, Gavin Newsom, the greasy-haired governor who may or may not run for president, made a trip to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. It went swimmingly, according to various reports.  When it comes to US-China relations, “divorce is not an option,” Newsom, who divorced from Kimberly Guilfoyle in 2005, told CNN on November 8. America’s answer to Justin Trudeau argued that the US and China must “reconcile our strategic red lines.” The idea of being cozy with China, a country that actively uses cyber espionage to undermine the US economy, may strike many as odd, even dangerous — but not Governor Newsom. In fact, according to reports, he is so inspired by his trip to China, that he now wants to bring a CCP-like “social credit system” to the Golden State.

california governor gavin newsom

Friday

Dave Seminara

Newsom’s diversity pick is a depressing sign of the times

From our US edition

California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent appointment of Laphonza Butler, a black lesbian, to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat generated headlines but it wasn’t a surprise. Newsom pledged to appoint a black woman if Senator Feinstein resigned more than two years ago. And so, he was all but required to eliminate roughly 97 percent of California’s population, which is just 6.5 percent black, from consideration straight off the bat. The appointment represents mainstream orthodoxy on the left here and in Europe, where diversity has replaced quality as a primary consideration not just in politics but also in the culture.

laphonza butler

Friday

Cockburn

Flashback: Dianne Feinstein smokes schoolchildren in climate debate

From our US edition

Washington was stunned this morning to learn of the premature death of California senator Dianne Feinstein at the mere age of ninety. Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992 and was its longest serving female senator. She was a vocal advocate for gun control and headed the Senate Intelligence Committee for several years, leading a review of the CIA's interrogation and detention program in the aftermath of 9/11. But to Cockburn, the most iconic moment of Feinstein's storied career came in 2019, when she deployed the heft of her decades in Congress to smack down some urchins from the Sunrise Movement who were hectoring her about climate change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

dianne feinstein

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

Is Newsom’s centrist shift for 2028… or 2024?

From our US edition

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that Gavin Newsom is shifting toward the middle in preparation for a national campaign. The only question is how soon that campaign will emerge — and whether his decisions will lead to animosity from the cultural left that could bar him from the Democratic nomination, or help him find success with more mainstream voters found in states outside of California. The most prominent recent decision was Newsom’s decision to veto a bill requiring parental affirmation of trans identification in the context of child custody disputes — one that was passed by a party line vote of 57-16 in the Democrat-dominated California Assembly.

gavin newsom

Monday

Gilbert T. Sewall

Newsom is asking the nation’s high court to right progressive wrongs

From our US edition

California’s derelict legions are everywhere — under bridges, near railroad tracks, blocking off-ramps and weaving unsteadily across busy avenues on bicycles.  The soft-woke rich can no longer hide in luxe enclaves. Taxpayers are fleeing the troubled state, hundreds of thousands of them since 2020. California’s fabled quality of life is taking a rapid dive, yet the cost of housing, already outlandish, goes up and up. Five years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Martin v. Boise, declaring that municipal laws, “prohibiting sleeping outside against homeless individuals with no access to alternative shelter,” violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, thus voiding local vagrancy laws.

Gilbert T. Sewall

Newsom is asking the nation’s high court to right progressive wrongs

California’s derelict legions are everywhere — under bridges, near railroad tracks, blocking off-ramps and weaving unsteadily across busy avenues on bicycles.  The soft-woke rich can no longer hide in luxe enclaves. Taxpayers are fleeing the troubled state, hundreds of thousands of them since 2020. California’s fabled quality of life is taking a rapid dive, yet the cost of housing, already outlandish, goes up and up. Five years ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Martin v. Boise, declaring that municipal laws, “prohibiting sleeping outside against homeless individuals with no access to alternative shelter,” violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, thus voiding local vagrancy laws.