Oliver Wiseman

As goes California... …so goes the nation. The Golden State is used to its trailblazer status. But in recent years it has been a harbinger of what is to come across America for all the wrong reasons. Endemic homelessness, soaring overdose deaths and rising crime dominate politics in the state’s cities. An increasingly hostile environment in which to do business has fueled an exodus from the state that only accelerated once the pandemic, and the associated restrictions and mandates, arrived. Now, California looks poised once again to be a sign of things to come with regard to the backlash against the progressivism that has got the state, and in particular, its cities, into the current mess.

Janet Yellen makes her excuses Did Joe Biden ignore the advice of his treasury secretary when compiling the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the early days of his administration? That is what a new biography of Janet Yellen suggests. On Friday Bloomberg reported that, according to Yellen biographer Owen Ullmann: “Privately, Yellen agreed with [Larry] Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly.” According to an advance copy of the book, out in September and titled Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All, Yellen told the White House that the Covid spending package should be scaled back by a third.

Bully-pulpit Biden won’t save the day It’s been a bully-pulpit kind of week for Joe Biden. Against a backdrop of ever more detailed reporting of a disgruntled White House, the president implored Americans to “meet the moment” on gun regulation in a speech yesterday. On Tuesday he put his name to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on how to fight inflation. (Please send any ideas to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!) On Wednesday, Biden popped up in the New York Times to establish “what America will and will not do in Ukraine.” (The Spectator’s editors are still waiting for the president to file...) Now, as for the wisdom of this strategy: count me skeptical that Biden, of all presidents, can turn things around with the force of his words.

Why Michael Shellenberger is taking on Gavin Newsom Michael Shellenberger is an unusual political candidate. He’s also arguably the only person with a chance of stopping Gavin Newsom from spending four more years as governor of California. A fifty-year-old environmentalist, Shellenberger is a former Democrat running for governor as an independent. And he has form when it comes to aiming leftwards. A self-styled ecomodernist, he has been a vociferous critic of the environmentalist movement, its insularity, economic illiteracy and fetish for scarcity. More recently, he has set his sights on the progressive approach to homelessness and addiction.

Michael Shellenberger is an unusual political candidate. He’s also arguably the only person with a chance of stopping Gavin Newsom from spending four more years as governor of California. A fifty-year-old environmentalist, Shellenberger is a former Democrat running for governor as an independent. And he has form when it comes to aiming leftwards. A self-styled ecomodernist, he has been a vociferous critic of the environmentalist movement, its insularity, economic illiteracy and fetish for scarcity. More recently, he has set his sights on the progressive approach to homelessness and addiction.

Hello again, readers. It’s good to be back with you after a restful and refreshing break changing a few thousand diapers and pushing a stroller while daydreaming of an uninterrupted night’s sleep. If you see a sudden uptick in pro-natalist DC Diaries arguing for taxpayer-funded financial support for young families, you know why. Inside a White House that still doesn’t get it Washingtonians feeling a little sluggish as they head back to work after Memorial Day Weekend at least have an unusually detailed, gossip-laden look inside the floundering Biden White House to distract them from the long to-do lists waiting at their desks.

Loan forgiveness would be an unforgivable mistake “A major waste,” “irresponsible,” and “expensive.” This verdict on broad student debt cancellation — something the Biden administration looks as if it is seriously considering — could have come from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, or, indeed, The Spectator. But the source of this critique is the impeccably liberal Washington Post editorial board. “A broad cancellation [of student debt] would offer huge, undeserved benefits to doctors, lawyers and others who do not need taxpayers to foot the bill for their valuable educations. The vast number of American taxpayers lacking university degrees would subsidize well-heeled, white-collar professionals,” argues the editorial.

Beware of pundits bearing scare quotes Three days after the announcement of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, the great freak-out over the future of the platform rumbles on. Amid many hyperbolic warnings about what the maverick tech billionaire’s ownership means not just for the social media site but for democracy as we know it, one argument sticks out for its perniciousness. It’s not the idea that Musk, a professed free speech absolutist, will under-police the social network and let the trolls run wild. Even if I think Twitter has been far too censorious in recent years, there is a reasonable debate to be had about how social media companies should police speech on their networks.

Does the White House have a border plan? If there has been a theme to the Biden administration’s border policies, it is a debilitating reluctance to grasp the nettle. Caught between Democratic factions with strong feelings on an inflammatory issue, Biden and his colleagues have sought to narrow questions, not widen them, defer to government agencies and the courts at every opportunity, make broad, self-excusing statements about complicated “root causes,” and avoid at all costs an overarching strategy to deliver a secure southern border and defend it on its merits.

MTG’s day in court A strange spectacle has been playing out in a Georgia courtroom in recent days. A sitting member of Congress has had to testify in a lawsuit that seeks to remove her from the ballot. The lawmaker in question is outlandish Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she finds herself having to deny the accusation that she was involved in an insurrection to obstruct Congress. The lawsuit cites a post-Civil War provision of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution that bars from Congress representatives who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States or who have “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Boring isn’t always best for Biden A new week in Washington starts as it often does in the Biden era: with news of the president’s mid-morning return from Wilmington to the White House. AP correspondent Mark Knoller notes that this was Biden’s thirty-third weekend in Delaware since taking office. Biden, welcomed as a bland palette-cleanser by many after the Trump years, has settled into a downright stultifying routine. Low-key weekends in Delaware, a diet of orange Gatorade, chicken salad and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, zero state dinners and early bedtimes. If the president of the United States pushes the boat out, he may treat himself to a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Obama sets his sights on ‘disinformation’ When Obama was elected president in 2008, his campaign’s innovative use of social media to organize and fundraise was seen as central to his success. In 2012, Obama’s successful re-election campaign was heralded as an even more sophisticated technological triumph. Dozens of fawning profiles of the campaign team praised the genius deployment of “big data” and “microtargeting” to deliver victory. Fast forward a decade and the first internet president has decided to make online disinformation the subject of a series of public appearances.

It isn’t just moderates who oppose Biden’s border plan “I’m a dad, a senator, a pastor. But a magician? I’m not.” This is the, er, inventive approach taken by Georgia senator Raphael Warnock in his most recent TV commercial. Warnock tells voters that his lack of supernatural powers is why he hasn’t managed to fix Washington in “just a year.” Instead he touts bread-and-butter achievements: jobs, infrastructure and healthcare. “That’s not magic, that’s doing the job for Georgia.” This may be an unusual way for a first-term senator to frame his track record, but it is of a piece with Warnock’s strategy ahead of what promises to be a tough re-election battle, probably against Herschel Walker, who leads polls in the Republican primary.

The White House is in a mask muddle What is the White House’s plan on mask mandates? At the start of the day yesterday it wasn’t clear whether the Biden administration would contest Monday’s ruling that scrapped the rules with immediate effect or, as I suggested in the Diary, whether they might see this as an opportunity to quietly drop the rule with minimal fuss. Things got no clearer as the day went on. Jen Psaki delivered stern denunciations of the ruling and reminded people of the advisability of masking up. Joe Biden, meanwhile, went for more of a you-do-you approach. It’s up to individuals whether they wear a mask, he said when asked about the ruling by a reporter.

Elizabeth Warren’s magical thinking In an article for the New York Times, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren claims to have the answers to her party’s woes. There are good reasons to be suspicious of Warren’s plan. Not least Warren’s own political performance in recent years. Despite plenty of very flattering media coverage, she lost every primary or caucus she took part in during the Democratic presidential primary. She somehow managed to finish third in her home state of Massachusetts. But leaving Warren’s track record to one side, the biggest tell in her plan to save the Democrats is the absence of any kind of trade offs and the failure to grapple with any kind of inconvenient truths or uncomfortable facts.

The year of totalitarian failure Perhaps the great theme of the first quarter of 2022 is the way in which the West’s main adversaries have come crashing down to earth. In Ukraine, Russia’s army has been revealed to be something of a paper tiger. Before the invasion, it was assumed by both the Kremlin and Western officials that Ukraine was there for the taking, and that a successful invasion could not be stopped. Events have proven otherwise. That doesn’t mean an angry, nuclear-armed and callous Vladimir Putin isn’t dangerous, but the Russian threat has been found to be in many ways less worrying than many thought it was before February.

The biggest divide on the war in Ukraine is generational The Russian invasion of Ukraine has, in many ways, been a rare point of unity in American politics. The overwhelming majority of lawmakers are on the same page when it comes to sanctioning Russia and arming Ukrainians. Polls find that both Republican and Democratic voters have similar views on the war and its protagonists: for all the talk of the GOP’s pro-Putin wing, disapproval of the Russian president is all but universal. But look a little closer and some surprising divides start to appear. The biggest is generational. A recent YouGov survey for the Economist asked people who they sympathized with more in the conflict.

Can Elon Musk save Twitter? “I made an offer,” tweeted Elon Musk this morning, with a link to an SEC filing. The document details Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. In an accompanying letter to the company’s chairman, Musk gave his reasons: I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. As a result I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.

The G-word Menlo, Iowa, may seem a surprising spot from which to issue major foreign policy declarations. But such is the nature of the American presidency. One minute you are cheering Midwestern farmers with the news of a suspension of ethanol fuel regulations, the next you are describing war crimes committed thousands of miles away. The two are connected, of course: Biden was in Iowa yesterday to tackle the domestic fall out of the war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the thing that Biden’s trip to Menlo will be remembered for was his characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “genocide.” Asked about his choice of words by reporters after the speech, Biden said: “Yes, I called it genocide.