Ezra Klein

With great fanfare, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed “historic” legislative package designed to “advance an abundance agenda.” It’s a nod to the recent (and fashionable) book Abundance by the liberal bloggers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and it’s supposed to reform a state best known for a punitive cost of living and chronic shortages of everything essential – including housing, water, and energy.  Key to Newsom’s new legislation are Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131, both of which make fundamental changes to how the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is enforced.

TikTok’s days may be numbered in America after all. Following a presidential campaign in which both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris promoted themselves heavily on the platform, despite bipartisan national security concerns over its ownership’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a federal appeals court today ruled that the app must break ties with the Beijing-based ByteDance within a few weeks or be banned in the United States.Until the decision, everything was looking up for TikTok. Trump trounced Harris on the platform, and his campaign and top surrogates were active all over the popular social media app.

Welcome to Thunderdome: have you placed a bet yet on if Chris Christie actually shows up to the debate with a pair of brass knuckles? It certainly would be entertaining to see the New York and New Jersey guys just ignore the rest of the field and tangle — it’d be enough to justify having the debate itself. But Trump might skip it, which makes the prospect of a DeSantis/Newsom debate the most interesting possibility on the horizon — and presents a make-or-break chance for the Florida governor. Meanwhile, Republicans struggle with how to aim their message in a time where culture war is the dominant narrative but perhaps not the most salient one.