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March 30 to April 5, 2025 California has long seen itself as model for the country and the world, but it has become tarnished because of progressive policies that have placed fighting climate change above delivering basic services and creating opportunity. In the first of two reported essays for RealClearInvestigations, Joel Kotkin reports: The state’s effort to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2045 has meant massive subsidies for wind and solar energy, mandates to reduce car emissions and make residents buy expensive electric appliances. The drive to cut dairy and livestock emissions, often through costly technology, has contributed to rising food prices while accelerating the relocation of food producers to other states. California has the highest energy prices in the continental U.S., double the national average, which has exacerbated “energy poverty.” The median California home is priced nearly 2.5 times higher than the median national home in part because of climate policy restraints on development. In 2023, the California Air Resources Board disclosed that current state climate policies would disproportionately harm households earning less than $100,000 per year while boosting incomes for those above this threshold. Despite these heavy investments, California’s own climate law recognizes that the state cannot affect the global climate unless everyone else in the world follows suit. While the benefits of this push are hard to identify, the costs of the state’s failure to address other problems effectively are not. California has the nation’s highest cost-adjusted poverty rate; its second-highest rate of unemployment; and roughly half its homeless population. Since 2020, almost 1.5 million people have left the state. In the second of his two reported essays, Joel Kotkin finds reasons for optimism in facing California’s manifest problems: The appetite for change is growing in an unlikely place: the ultra-liberal Bay Area where tech entrepreneurs and professionals concerned about homelessness and crime worked to oust San Francisco’s progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, and elect a relative moderate, Dan Lurie, as Mayor. In Oakland, many African-Americans backed the removal of a progressive mayor committed to lenient policing in what is now California’s most troubled, if not failed, major city. Pressure for change is also building across the state from Asian, Jewish and Latino voters who appear more open to appeals from the right. In response, Kotkin writes, a focus on the basic needs of Californians is imperative: education, energy, housing, water supply and public safety. This effort would include housing policies that allow new growth primarily outside city centers, in interior areas where land is cheaper and lower-cost, moderate-density new developments could flourish. Other reforms would be reducing taxes and regulations to encourage business growth across the state, especially outside expensive major urban areas. Education reforms round out the agenda: building a more dynamic workforce by revamping failing public schools and supporting alternatives such as charters and homeschooling. In RealClearInvestigations, Lee Fang uncovers internal documents and WhatsApp messages from Democratic strategists describing the ill-fated "brat" influencer effort for Kamala Harris – which included social media payoffs and other workarounds of campaign finance law: As it turns out, the initial tidal wave of enthusiasm for Harris was quietly funded by an elusive group of Democratic billionaires and major donors in an arrangement designed to conceal the payments from voters – payments disclosed in RCI for the first time. Way to Win, one of the major donor groups, spent more than $9.1 million on social media influencers, a post-election memo from the group says. The effort supported over 550 content creators who published 6,644 posts across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and X. Way to Win coached creators on phrases, issue areas, and key themes to “disseminate pro-Kamala content throughout the cycle,” the memo notes. The look behind the curtain reveals that at least some of the image-making around Harris was carefully orchestrated by the same types of covert social media marketing often used by corporate brands and special interest groups. Way to Win structured the funds through nonprofits that paid various influencer talent agencies. The money was not listed in Federal Election Commission disclosure portals. While television or radio spots require disclosures on groups paying for the ads, there are no equivalent mandates for campaign-paid TikTok stars or Instagram personalities. Democrats are hardly alone in spreading payola for influencers. Republican campaigns have done it too. Waste of the Day
by Jeremy Portnoy, Open the Books 956 Federal Workers Outearned President, RCI
NYC Spending $20M to Boost World Cup, RCI
Over $1 Billion Touting Foreign Shrimp, RCI
Let Others Pay, Say Officials in Lynn, Mass., RCI
NASA Blended Science with DEI, RCI Trump 2.0 and the Beltway The Day Trump’s Tariffs Shook Corporate America, Wall Street Journal
Picking Winners, Trump Is Sabotaging 'Drill, Baby, Drill' Agenda, Reason
Trump's NSC Chief and Staff Used Gmail for Work, Washington Post
Signal App Used Widely in Government, Politico
FBI Chats Reveal 'Gag Order' on Hunter Biden’s Laptop, X
ICE Mistakenly Deported Man to El Salvador, CNN
In New Book, Biden Aide Ron Klain Calls Boss ‘Out of It’, Guardian
Trump Targets Billions in Harvard Funding, Washington Post
DOGE’s New Target: ‘Strangely Wealthy’ Members of Congress, NY Post
Georgia: Sen. Warnock Lives Rent Free in $1 Million Home, Free Beacon
Trump Just Pardoned ... a Corporation?, Intercept
These Democrats Are Beating Trump - in Court, Wall Street Journal Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Illegal immigrants afraid of deportation are using Tik Tok and other social media platforms to stay one step ahead of the law. This article reports that people online are rushing to post and re-share alleged sightings: Amid a crackdown on illegal immigration by the Trump administration, immigrants and their advocates are using social media platforms to share real-time locations of ICE vehicles and officers. … People Over Papers, a collaborative map that shows alleged ICE sightings across the country, has received more than 12,000 reports since it went viral on TikTok in late January, according to one of its organizers, Celeste, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retribution from the government. … On Reddit, people across the country have flocked to r/LaMigra, a forum dedicated to documenting and discussing ICE activities. Some name specific sightings – “ICE at Market Basket in Chelsea,” says one post re-shared from r/Massachusetts. Others funnel users toward nationwide tools such as Juntos Seguros, a shared map where people could report ICE sightings and attach photos. But Juntos Seguros shut down in mid-March – its owners left a message on the site saying they could “no longer maintain this project in the way it deserves.” This article reports that while social media “is helping some people avoid run-ins with ICE, but it’s also led to a flurry of unverified reports as well as backlash from activists who favor President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach.” Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff not to release expert assessments that found the risk of catching measles high near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica: In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show. A CDC spokesperson told ProPublica in a written statement that the agency decided against releasing the assessment “because it does not say anything that the public doesn’t already know.” She added that the CDC continues to recommend vaccines as “the best way to protect against measles.” But what the nation’s top public health agency said next shows a shift in its long-standing messaging about vaccines, a sign that it may be falling in line under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines. This article reports that during Kennedy’s first week on the job, HHS halted the CDC campaign that encouraged people to get flu shots during a ferocious flu season. As America debated race in response to Black Lives Matter protests, an academic paper got wiode attention reporting that infant mortality is higher for black newborns with white doctors because of racial bias. The study, which determined that patients are better served by medical providers of the same race, was used as a rationale for affirmative action by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, among others. But now, this article reports, the influential paper “omitted a variable” that undermines its conclusion: A September 2024 replication effort concluded that the original study authors did not statistically control for very low birth weight newborns at the highest risk of dying. Applying that control zeroes out any statistically significant effect of racial concordance on infant mortality. Now, evidence has emerged that the paper’s lead author buried information in order to tell a tidier story than the one his methods and data originally illustrated. The article reports that the study’s lead author, Brad N. Greenwood, was aware of the problem. “I’d rather not focus on this,” he wrote in a note. “If we’re telling the story from the perspective of saving black infants this undermines the narrative.” The $8 billion Mellon Foundation has been radicalizing higher education through its financial support for leftwing programs, this article reports: At Columbia University, the Racial Justice and Abolition Democracy Project created a curriculum to help college students imagine a “society without jails and prisons.” At Morgan State University, the Black Queer Everything initiative developed “transformative pedagogies” about “racism, inequality, and injustice.” And at UCLA, the Race in the Global Past through Native Lenses program promoted using “tribal critical race theory” to interpret precolonial history. Beyond their radical bent, these programs have one thing in common: the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds them. … Mellon Foundation funding shapes every rung of the higher education ladder, not just academic hiring. Dozens of universities – including Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton – host a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. The plan gives a stipend and academic mentoring to undergraduates interested in social-justice issues. ... More than 850 recipients are now college professors or instructors. “A critical mass of MMUF PhDs is now transforming teaching and scholarship in the humanities and social sciences,” its website boasts. In a separate article, the Federalist reports “more than 40 left-wing organizations (and/or some of their affiliates) opposing Republican efforts to prevent noncitizen voting in U.S. elections have collectively received more than $150 million from groups funded by leftist billionaire George Soros.” Back when educational and career opportunities were limited for women, it was common for college-educated men to marry women with less schooling. Now, this article reports, the tables have turned: women are now more likely to marry a less-educated man than men are to marry a less-educated woman. The reason why has little to do with female economic empowerment, the increase in online dating, or shifts in preferences: A growing body of research suggests that women are indeed marrying less-educated men simply because that’s who is available – not necessarily because of changing preferences. In 2021, about 1.6 million more women than men were enrolled in four-year colleges in the United States, Clara Chambers, a research associate at Yale University, told me. But according to a recent paper she co-authored with Goldman and Joseph Winkelmann of Harvard University, marriage rates among college-educated women have been broadly stable. The explanation for that is fairly straightforward: Without enough college-educated men to go around, college-educated women must be marrying men without a degree. | 