In the spring, Harris promised an “end of summer” decision on whether she would run for Governor of California next year, or whether she would stay out of that race in order to make another run at the White House in 2028.

Now, over halfway through the summer, Harris finds herself at a crossroads: take the – likely – easy win and become the state’s 41st Governor, or instead, commit to a grueling primary process with a spot in the general election hardly guaranteed.

To that end, new polling may push Harris to give the presidency another shot, but that does not necessarily mean she should.

Indeed, Echelon Insight’s July Omnibus poll shows that, among Democratic primary voters, Harris (26%) leads a 20-candidate field in an early 2028 presidential primary ballot test.

According to the poll, Harris leads her two biggest competitors – former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and California Governor Gavin Newsom – by 15 and 16 points, respectively.

Viewed strictly through this poll, it may seem that Harris has a considerable advantage and possibly an inside track to represent the Democratic Party again in three years. 

And yet, it would behoove Harris and her camp to ignore this poll and instead declare her candidacy for the governorship. 

Put another way, despite a seemingly encouraging lead, Harris’ position atop the field almost certainly reflects name recognition more than a genuine desire for her to run for president again.

Despite presenting respondents with more than 20 possible candidates, only the three mentioned above and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (6%) could be considered “household names” at the national level. 

Moreover, the 2028 Democratic National Convention is roughly three years away. It is extremely difficult for voters to know now who they will prefer then, thus, they often default to the familiar face.

In the summer of 2005 – analogous to right now in the 2028 presidential cycle – Gallup released a poll among Democratic primary voters. 

Hillary Clinton (40%) was dominating the field, trailed by John Kerry (16%) and John Edwards (15%). The eventual winner – former President Barack Obama – was not even considered a serious enough contender to be included in the poll. 

All of this is to say that it is entirely possible that the Democrats’ eventual nominee is not even among the list of more than 20 candidates polled by Echelon Insights. 

Underscoring the necessity for Harris to discount this poll is something I discussed in these pages earlier this month. 

A separate 2028 poll from Emerson, reported Buttigieg (16%) leading Harris (13%). 

At the time, I wrote that Emerson’s data points to a wide-open race for the party’s nomination, and Echelon’s poll showing Harris with a lead reinforces the conclusion that there is no established Democratic front runner, including Harris.

Finally, were Harris to read this poll as a desire for her candidacy in 2028, its highly likely that she will confront many – or all – of the same challenges that hobbled her 2024 candidacy. 

Back on the national stage, voters would be reminded of Harris’ position in the previous Biden administration, which was deeply unpopular at its end. 

One can easily imagine how awkward the primary would be when Harris was forced to defend the Biden administration – and her role in it – against competitors from her own party.

Throughout her campaign, Harris struggled to separate herself from former President Biden throughout her campaign, nor was she able to truly define a wholly new platform or agenda for a Harris presidency.

And, when Harris did take decisive stands on various policies, she was seen as either too far-left or inauthentic. 

Taken together, it appears that Harris’ best bet for a continued political future would be to enter the race for California Governor. 

She is almost certain to emerge from the state’s jungle primary either against a much lesser-known Democrat or a Republican, against both of whom Harris would be the clear favorite. 

As Governor, Harris would be able to gain experience in an executive position, remain politically relevant, and build a platform if she chose to run in 2032, when she’d only be 67 years old.

In that same vein, with the Democratic Party as a whole facing its own crossroads in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in New York City, Harris would be able to survey shifting political landscapes and decide what type of candidate she wants to be in 2032.

Further, despite California’s shift to the center on certain issues such as crime and homelessness, Harris’ more left-leaning platform would not be the same obstacle in California that it would be in a national election.

Ultimately, nobody – possibly even including Harris – knows what the former vice president will decide, and few could fault her for wanting a redo after the unprecedented circumstances that led to her presidential candidacy. 

However, if Harris hopes to have another shot as a truly viable candidate, her best course of action is undoubtedly to try her hand at the job in Sacramento. 

Viewed in that light, Harris’ advisors would best serve her by convincing her that Echelon’s poll is a flash in the pan, not a sign of genuine desire for her return to the presidential conversation. 

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.

I still found it reassuring that majorities hold a “very or somewhat favorable” view toward the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. However, 17% were favorably disposed toward the Dark Ages. Even funnier, 9% held the Black Plague in high esteem, with 32% positively inclined toward the Crusades—small, but not insignificant numbers. Such people live among us, although maybe they just have a great sense of humor.

Such polls confirm one of my favorite maxims: “Whoever sets the agenda wins.” Basically, if I start a public debate about whether to launch nuclear strikes against Myanmar or start electing housecats to state legislatures, some percentage of the public will support it. Once an idea is placed on the agenda it gets legs—no matter how absurd. A more thoughtful expression of this is called the Overton Window.

Developed by the Mackinac Center’s Joseph Overton, his theory explains that politicians promote policies that fall within a window of widely accepted ideas. He believed think tanks (and others) could, as The New York Times described it, turn the “politically unthinkable” into the “mainstream” by talking about ideas outside the window. Such debates shift the window—and then politicians are willing to embrace policies that had been off limits.

We’ve seen dramatic shifts in acceptable policy discussions over the past few years, mainly because of Donald Trump, who has gotten Americans talking about once-unthinkable ideas. Some of the resulting debates would strike Americans from just a decade ago as bat-guano crazy: making Canada the 51^st state, taking over Greenland, deporting celebrities, ending support for vaccines, etc. Anything Trump says—and he always has something unusual to say—instantly shifts the window (whether he’s serious or trolling) quite dramatically.

Unfortunately, his ability to shift acceptable policy debates poses dangers given that many of the shifts obliterate Democratic norms. Even if he does respect the courts’ ultimate rulings—and he’s given mixed signals—his actions erode long-held constitutional principles. When his administration dismisses the importance of due process, depicts habeas corpus as the opposite of what it means, dispatches federal troops on U.S. soil and sends alleged illegal immigrants to a Salvadoran gulag, it pushes the envelope of acceptable governmental behavior.

Given the intensity of support Trump receives from his followers, anything he says or does will instantly gain support from nearly half the public. That leaves Americans—and our republic—in the hands of Trump’s whims. Other presidents have abused executive orders, but Trump is trying to rule by edict in a way that goes much further.

Presidents from both parties have played this game to a degree, but Trump doesn’t appear bound by the usual self-imposed restrictions, or norms. Even if the guardrails hold—and that’s far from certain at this point—Trump has used his normative power to undermine faith in our institutions and in democracy itself.

Norms are exceedingly important. They are the ultimate check on big government. As a simple example, I’ve lived in neighborhoods where the norm is to maintain one’s property, be friendly and look unkindly toward any criminal behavior. I’ve also lived in the opposite, where one must always lock the doors, look out for dog poo on the sidewalk and deal with all-night parties. All the municipal codes and cops in the world cannot turn the latter into the former. Likewise, our institutions simply are not designed to resist a president who thinks he’s Juan Perón.

The obliteration of political norms has a habit of spreading. Check out Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent statements, which echo the pettiness and nastiness of the president. It was only a matter of time before Democrats, facing impotence in the face of Trump’s fusillades, would start to echo his strategies. This is how even the most stable democracies head into a death spiral, even if many Americans enjoy the ongoing spectacle.

I wouldn’t tell a pollster it’s as bad as the Inquisition or the Hundred Years War, of course, but we can all try harder to stop pushing boundaries and start rebuilding support for the fundamentals.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group Editorial Board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

It would not be easy.

The entire idea of Harris running for governor, a run in which she would have to commit to serving out a full term, thus giving up on running for president in 2028, is predicated on her having an easy time of it. The presumption is that today’s crowded field of Democrats would thin out quickly to give her a virtually free “top two” primary election finish next June. This would assure her a slot on the fall ballot, most likely against either a Republican-turned-Democrat like developer Rick Caruso – who lost a run for mayor of Los Angeles three years ago – or far-right Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

But that scenario might not come about. As Harris contemplates, none of her prospective Democratic primary rivals has dropped out quickly.

Yes, Harris can take comfort she is the early-book leader in this race. Against a host of other declared and rumored candidates, she enjoyed 24 percent support in a poll by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology. But placed in a hypothetical race against an unnamed Republican (right now, Caruso and Bianco are the most likely to be there), she led by only 41-29 percent, with heaps of undecided voters.

Undecided voters have long been poison to Harris. Their late decisions made her 2010 run for state attorney general against then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley a horserace lasting until the very last days of vote-counting, almost a month after Election Day. They made what looked like an easy 2016 Senate run against then-Orange County Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez tighter than most observers thought it would turn out.

And last-minute choices of the previously undecided in a few states cost her the presidency against Republican Donald Trump last fall.

So a contemplative Harris should be able to recognize a very tight race in the making and realize she just might lose – and forfeit any hope of ever becoming president.

She might even have trouble securing what figures to become the lone Democratic slot in the 2026 November runoff.

Yes, she leads the second-place Democrat, former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, by a 4-1 margin in the early polling and has even larger edges over other Democrats like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ex-federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, current  Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and ex-state Senate President Toni Adkins.

Some of them are bound to drop out of the top-of-ticket race before it gets extremely serious in late fall. But others will stick with it and – like Kounalakis, Porter and Villaraigosa – likely raise enough money to compete heavily against Harris.

History, of course, shows that when she faces stiff competition, Harris can have problems, as when she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in 2020 even before the first primary.

So even though Dean Jon Gould of UC Irvine’s Social Ecology program told a reporter that “The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” it ain’t necessarily so.

Caruso, for one, will see these findings as extremely encouraging. Should he win a top two slot, he would likely see Harris as at least as soft a target as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, still weakened by the fact she left town when wildfire warnings were being issued before last winter’s Los Angeles area firestorms.

In debates, where Harris has never done very well, he would try to turn Harris into a pseudo-Bass, suggesting she might be a Bass clone.

This still makes a Harris entry to this race likely because of her standing as the early leader in every poll. But she’s never demonstrated an abiding interest in top California issues like homelessness or insurance company rates and performance.

All of which makes a Harris entry into this key race very much a question mark for the moment.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

He’s similar to the old one – same hair, hand jives while speaking – but this one oozes machismo and has a brand new backstory.

California’s governor is working feverishly to reinvent himself as he plods along on his never-ending campaign for president, apparently accepting that the old Newsom is limited in appeal.

In California, old Newsom is unpopular among the voters who know him best. His approval rating is underwater at 44%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and a majority of voters think he, at best, puts the needs of Californians over his own only “a little” bit of the time, according to a Berkeley IGS poll.

Old Newsom’s list of actual accomplishments is so small that he defaults to bragging about things for which he deserves no credit, like the size of California’s gross state product and the state’s population of Nobel Laureates, that also do little to affect the lives of most Californians (except those lucky Nobel laureates!).

In other words, Gavin Newsom needed a new Gavin Newsom fast.

Back in Newsom HQ, everyone must have been scrambling: What do voters want?

Someone manly, for starters. Democrats bombed last November, and they blame their repulsiveness to men and a rejection of popular male podcasts, like The Joe Rogan Experience. So this week Newsom went on the Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast hosted by a former Navy Seal.

There’s nothing more manly than Navy Seals, but Newsom could only steal so much masculinity. To prove he’s one of the guys, Newsom started swearing a lot and calling Ryan “brother.” He unveiled an apparent love of bow hunting and skeet shooting (who knew?) and said he was a big Second Amendment supporter (again, who knew?).

The only thing Newsom could have done to be more manly would have been to gobble down a raw buffalo liver and then challenge Ryan, barechested, in arm wrestling. This is new Newsom, not the guy who railed against “toxic masculinity” and condemned as misogynists the same male voters he’s now courting.

At times, Newsom broke character and slipped back to the old, elitist self, like the Nobel laureates gaffe, but quickly moved on to Fortune 500 companies because men know Gordon Gekko was badass and had amazing hair too.

Newsom made clear Ryan was his bro, but don’t be fooled by the tone. Polling shows that Democratic voters want a fighter and Newsom is here to deliver.

An NBC News poll from March showed that nearly two-thirds of Democrats want their elected leaders to fight Trump, even if it means getting nothing done. And when it comes to getting nothing done, Newsom the man.

The swearing is not enough. Newsom’s social media game, complete with a team of towel whippers to hoot and holler, has the sass cranked to 11. The gang says it all, true or not, and Harry Potter fans will love the Voldemort memes. So tough.

These guys are brave. After all, J.K. Rowling is persona non grata with liberals and men don’t read a lot of books about teenage wizards. But the towel guys followed up with a particularly sassy post calling White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a “fascist cuck.”

In a different era, that post would be unbecoming from a taxpayer-funded account. But not this era. Not this moment. And certainly not this version of Newsom. Newsom said he would not apologize for the post. Men don’t apologize.

All of this is cosmetic. To finish the job, Newsom needed some distance between new him and old him, with his well-known and often touted (by him) record of ineffective, far-left policies.

Democrats abroad are leery of importing California policies to their states, as Newsom learned during a recent campaign trip to the early primary state of South Carolina. So he made up a whole new history.

Newsom brags about California’s strictest gun laws, but to Ryan, who said he carries a gun wherever he goes, new Newsom said he’s “deeply mindful and respectful of the Second Amendment and people’s constitutional rights.”

During COVID Newsom ran one of the longest and most restrictive responses of any state. A year into COVID, he indicated he had no regrets (besides dining unmasked with lobbyists at the French Laundry) about the severity of the response.

But Newsom told Ryan this week that shutting down beaches and open spaces, which was widely panned at the time by me and many others, was foolish.

“What the hell are we doing shutting down the beaches and open areas and you know and not understanding that early on,” Newsom said.

What the hell, indeed. The prevailing public health consensus at the time was that COVID was not particularly transmittable outside, but Newsom was thirsty for national praise (even back then) and worried about backlash from liberal hypochondriacs who saw a photo of people on the beach. The horror!

“I know folks say, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town,’ and that’s true because it’s true,” Newsom said at the time.

But men don’t clean. So Newsom told Ryan this week that that story was “complete bulls—.”

Tough talk, tough on COVID, Newsom cleans for no one. Be still my male heart!

There are countless other examples out there and surely more to come. This version of Gavin Newsom is here to stay – at least until polling says it’s time to pivot.

Matt Fleming is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Email him at flemingwords@gmail.com and follow him on X @FlemingWords.

It was the wrong number; it minimizes the state’s chronic gap between income and outgo, as the state’s official budget summary released this week confirms.

The budget projects that the state will receive $208.6 billion in general fund revenues during the fiscal year that began on July 1, but it will spend $228.4 billion, a gap just shy of $20 billion.

The $12 billion figure stems from counting a $7.1 billion diversion from one of the state’s reserve accounts as revenue — an assumption that violates common sense as well as any legitimate accounting scenario.

The more accurate figure of $20 billion is important because it squares with projections by Newsom’s Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst’s Office that California has what’s called a “structural deficit” in the range of $10 billion to $20 billion a year.

In other words financing all of the programs and services now in state law will indefinitely cost that much more each year than the state is likely to receive in revenues.

The budget closes about a third of the $20 billion gap with an aforementioned $7.1 billion shift from the emergency reserve — money that’s supposed to be used to cushion the impact of an economic downturn or calamities such as the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, earthquakes or destructive storms.

The deficit isn’t a genuine emergency because it resulted from irresponsible political decisions, particularly Newsom’s declaration in 2022 that the state had a $97.5 billion budget surplus and thus could afford a sharp increase in spending.

The surplus was a mirage, based on assumptions of a $40 billion annual increase in revenues that never happened. Last year, the Department of Finance acknowledged that revenues over four years would fall short of expectations by $165 billion.

However, much of the phantom money was already spent, thereby creating the structural deficit that Newsom and the Legislature basically ignored in putting together the current budget.

The $12 billion gap left after the reserve fund shift was mostly papered over with on- and off-budget loans from special funds, shifting some spending into future years and using accounting gimmicks, such as shifting some current year spending, the June 2026 state payroll for instance, into the next fiscal year.

One could liken the state budget to a family that takes out loans on its credit cards to finance a lavish lifestyle, or a city that provides pension benefits it cannot afford.

States cannot file for bankruptcy, no matter how distorted their finances. If they could, California would not qualify because of its almost unlimited ability to borrow money from special funds.

However, there will be a day of judgment if California’s spending continues to outpace its revenues, particularly if the state’s economy continues its sluggish performance.

Newsom and legislators implicitly assume that at some point revenues will increase enough to cover their spending and pay off their debts — just as a debt-ridden family buys lottery tickets in hopes of avoiding bankruptcy.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

To be clear, I want more green energy from more sources, including wind, solar, geothermal and whatever other promising avenues innovation makes possible. But subsidies like those of the Inflation Reduction Act are the wrong way to get there. They distort the tax code, misallocate capital and favor companies already in the game, to the detriment of new entrants that might bring something more transformative.

The result isn’t more abundance; it’s cronyism masquerading as climate policy.

The promise to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act’s sprawling tax credits and handouts was once a central part of the GOP’s economic platform. According to a Cato Institute analysis, these at one point were going to amount to $1.2 trillion over 10 years, many times the originally projected cost. The House version of the budget took a meaningful swing at it, with hard deadlines for wind and solar tax credits and tighter eligibility geared toward projects that could begin construction within 60 days of enactment and be in service before 2029.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a real attempt to inject discipline into a policy that had run off the rails. The Senate, however, had other plans, and the reform was diluted. New carveouts were added. Key provisions were extended, and the effective phaseout was punted years into the future.

Thanks to generous grandfathering language, projects that start construction within a year of the bill’s enactment can lock in 10 more years of production or investment tax credits. And what, by the way, counts as starting construction? Spending just 5% of expected costs on solar panels or booking a consulting firm. In Washington, that’s good enough.

The good news is that even this watered-down reform is expected to cut green subsidies by about $500 billion over 10 years. That’s no small feat, especially in a town where “cutting” usually means “slightly slowing the growth of programs we already can’t afford.” It’s doubly impressive given that the forces fighting to maintain the subsidies outspent reformers by orders of magnitude.

Now, we’re hearing the usual refrain — “But fossil fuels are subsidized too!” — as evidence of the outrage and unfairness that it is to trim green energy subsidies down. I sympathize with the desire to end fossil fuel subsidies.

I want an end to all private-sector subsidies. If your business model depends on special treatment in the tax code, then, as economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin once put it, you don’t have a business. You have a tax shelter.

Yes, there are some lingering fossil fuel subsidies on the books. Cato’s Adam Michel helpfully identifies them: credits for enhanced oil recovery, for marginal wells and for carbon capture and sequestration. These are targeted giveaways, and they should also go.

However, what most people clamoring for the end of fossil fuel subsidies are pointing to aren’t subsidies at all but simply neutral tax treatments — like expensing and percentage depletion — that apply across many industries. They might distort investment decisions in general, but they are not special favors for oil and gas.

In other words, the idea that green subsidies got eviscerated while fossil subsidies thrive isn’t correct. That’s not an argument for maintaining fossil fuel subsidies; that’s an argument for taming the outrage.

If we’ve learned anything here, it’s that cutting subsidies is hard. Once they’re in place, armies of rent-seekers mobilize to preserve them. Renewable energy developers, financial firms and politically connected manufacturers descend on Capitol Hill to keep the money flowing.

But we’ve learned something else: Fighting back can work. Even this partial rollback shows that reformers aren’t powerless. The next time someone says eliminating tax preferences is impossible, point to $500 billion in savings. We got that rollback not because the politics were easy but because some people stood firm.

Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Not only do unions protect workers, they say, unions gave us the weekend and the middle class.

I say, capitalism created the middle class. Employers, competing for better workers, gave us the weekend.

But whatever you think about capitalism, few people question the claim that unions help workers.

But I will. It’s the focus of my new video.

A couple years ago, the Teamsters demanded more pay from UPS. Seemed like UPS could easily afford it. The company made almost $13 billion in 2021.

UPS used some of that money to hire more union workers. Then they offered them raises.

But Teamster boss Sean O’Brien wanted more. He threatened a strike.

UPS gave in.

MSNBC called that “collective bargaining at its finest!”

Today, full-time drivers make $170,000 a year.

Good for them — for those who still have jobs.

But paying for the new Teamster contract meant UPS wasn’t as competitive as before. They raised some prices and lost business to other shippers.

Profit dropped.

In 2024, UPS laid off 12,000 workers. The next year, 20,000.

It wasn’t just the wage hikes; it’s also the work rules.

The Teamsters agreement includes hundreds of pages — limits on subcontracting, bans on employees working long hours, etc. … many of which made it hard for a company to adapt and cut costs.

“These headline-grabbing union deals are delivering short-run sugar highs with long-run hangovers,” says Mercatus Center economist Lily Palagashvili, “UPS is just one example of this.”

Another was Yellow Corp — once one of the largest freight carriers in America.

Then the Teamsters threatened to strike, demanding faster payments of healthcare and pension benefits.

The company warned that a strike could bankrupt it.

But O’Brien kept pushing, saying, “The company has two more days to fulfill its obligations, or we will strike. Teamsters at Yellow are furious and ready to act!”

Yellow gave in. The strike was averted.

Days later … the trucking company shut down for good.

Thirty thousand people lost their jobs.

Asked if he felt responsible for the lost jobs, O’Brien said, “No, not at all … they were so mismanaged.”

“That’s true,” says Palagashvili. “(Yellow Corp) was having a lot of financial issues. But if you’re on the verge of collapse, the last thing you need is a Teamsters Labor Union contract that says you have to increase labor costs. Yellow is basically covered in gasoline, and Sean O’Brien comes and lights the match.”

Meanwhile, union leadership help themselves. The Teamsters now brag that they have $1 billion in assets. Sean O’Brien pays himself more than $430,000 per year.

The same year Yellow went bankrupt, United Auto Workers went on strike against Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler. Stellantis gave in, giving the UAW a pay raise and promising to open a new plant.

But then Stellantis started laying off workers: 1,340  during the strike and2,450  more the next year.

One month later, Boeing announced a 10% workforce cut.

When I grew up, Midwestern states were called the “Steel Belt.” Now they’re called the “Rust Belt.”

The media blame, “Free trade!” and, “Globalization!” On social media, people say, “Foreigners took our jobs.”

But Palagashvili says, “It wasn’t trade that killed the Rust Belt. It was labor unions. Unions in the Rust Belt were striking. Companies said, ‘Higher labor costs, tons of strikes, productivity isn’t going up, we’re going to relocate,’ and they did.”

Unions help some workers. But they hurt many more.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Government Gone Wild: Exposing the Truth Behind the Headlines.”

Not Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who sees it as her mission to be “the last secretary” of a vast bureaucracy known more for its aspirations than its successes.

In the meantime, McMahon wants to cut the behemoth down to size. So, in keeping with President Donald Trump’s agenda, McMahon ordered nearly 1,400 layoffs. Predictably, the usual suspects protested. The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued an unsigned order Monday that allowed the layoffs to proceed, pending further litigation.

The three justices picked by Democratic presidents dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

Lawlessness? It tells you everything when Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, thinks it’s illegal for a president to cut the bureaucracy. At least without the participation of Congress.

It’s hard to watch this scrap and not think about how much good will Big Education has squandered in the course of my career, particularly since COVID-19 closures showed work-from-home parents how the sausage was made.

More than 40 years ago, the then-new federal education bureaucracy was supposed to improve student learning. Yet only 31% of fourth-graders performed as proficient or better at reading in last year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test; 40% of fourth-graders were below basic.

No surprise: According to a recent Gallup poll, 73% of adults are dissatisfied with the quality of public education.

“A lot of money gets spent paying people in the bureaucracy” as opposed to the classroom itself, Bill Evers, a senior fellow at the libertarian-leaning Independent Institute, told me. And, Evers reminded me, he’s a former assistant secretary at the Department of Education.

There’s a lack of rigor in public education, but also, too much politics.

Evers is a veteran of the Math Wars and the Reading Wars of the 1990s that pitted concerned parents against an establishment that wanted to reshape classroom instruction to echo its left-wing politics.

The education establishment tried to turn math into a political exercise, for which there were no wrong answers, but too many essay questions.

Prolonged COVID-19 school closures, supported by teachers unions, kept students out of the schoolhouse. As Evers offered, “Under the supervision of the department, a year and a half of learning was lost, particularly with low-income kids.”

I don’t think that today’s K-12 students are going to be shortchanged because of some D.C. layoffs, at least not the way kids were left out in the cold during COVID-19.

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote of her belief that the Department of Education safeguards “equal access to learning.”

But that’s not how the system really works.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

On Saturday, Florida state representatives and congressmembers visited Trump’s infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center in the Everglades where about a thousand individuals are being held. The tour was limited – they were not allowed to examine the conditions up close or speak to the detainees and were denied access to the medical facilities.

According to Congressman Maxwell Frost, “We saw humans being held in cages. 32 people per cage, three toilets in each cage for these 32 people […] There’s a little spigot on top of the toilet, and that’s where they drink their water as well. […] it’s gross and it’s disgusting, and this is where people are being held.” Frost reported hearing an inmate yelling out that he’s a US citizen.

Speaking to MSNCB, Florida Representative Anna Eskamani stated that, “We have animals that are in better conditions.”

The Miami Herald reported that conditions in the cages range from freezing at night to sweltering during the day. Giant bugs and mosquitos are ubiquitous. Some toilets fail to flush and at times, human feces floods the cages. Detainees are not allowed showers or confidential calls with their attorneys. 

The wife of a detained man with a green card claimed that, “They eat once a day and have two minutes to eat. The meals have worms.” She also claimed that the detainees, despite already being underfed, went on a hunger strike in protest. The facility has only been open for two weeks. 

Immigration attorney Katie Blankenship shared that one of her clients within the facility is a 15-year-old boy.

It’s no wonder that the lawmakers who visited the tents reported hearing people screaming, “Help me, help me”.

Despite Trump specifying that the detention center was for “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet,” hundreds of those detained within have not been charged with any crime and have no criminal record.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has responded to criticisms of the detention center saying, “I wish they would have said that back during the Biden administration and back when Democrats were in the White House and they were piling people on top of each other on cement floors and literally didn’t have 2 feet to move. They never did that, and that’s why this politics has to end.”

Well Kristi Noem, they did and we all remember it because Biden’s presidency only ended earlier this year. You can read more about the criticisms levied against Biden’s treatment of immigrants here, here, here, and numerous other places. Overcrowded and inhumane conditions at Biden-era detention facilities were widely reported and condemned. ICE abuses during his tenure were also well-documented.

Trump’s current program of dehumanizing treatment toward immigrants and rights violations are simply a dramatic expansion of Biden-era indecency – Alligator Alcatraz is even worse than the already awful conditions that detained immigrants had to endure while Biden was in office. 

Now, it’s not only people who have arrived at the border and held for processing. It’s also hispanic-looking people being randomly approached on the street or at their jobs and being sent to a hell hole to eat maggot sandwiches. It’s unconstitutional, politically motivated racial-profiling that leads to cruel and unusual punishment – all sanctioned by the president. 

What we have now is a government agency whose job it is to roam the streets looking for Hispanic-looking people, detaining them because of how they look, and sending them off to cages, some of whom have green cards or citizenship, and many of whom are hard working and never committed a crime – all because the president has built a movement around scapegoating immigrants. 

That’s really the important point here. All of this suffering is being created in service of Trump’s political goals – giving people a target to direct their scorn and making a big spectacle out of human misery to show how much he’s “winning.”

Last week U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled that ICE must stop racial profiling practices, approaching people without reasonable suspicion, and must provide access to legal counsel. She wrote, “Is it illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based upon race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status? Yes, it is” citing “a mountain of evidence” that this is happening. 

I would not hesitate to bet every cent I have that ICE is currently ignoring those orders.

If this doesn’t sound like a horrible stain on American history to you, congratulations, you now have a perfect understanding of how the Nazis were able to get away with what they did to the Jews without the German people revolting.

It turns out that human nature is such that not only can it ignore the brutal suffering of fellow people, but it can have a good laugh about it. What do you have to disconnect in your brain to find entertainment in people being forced to endure absolute misery? The project of dehumanization continues.

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.

First, does Mamdani’s win offer definitive proof of the power of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, or was it a relative fluke due to circumstances too unique to be replicated in other cities, states, or on the national level?

Second, as it relates to California specifically, will Mamdani’s victory boost a progressive movement that has seen voters increasingly reject it in recent years?

To be sure, there are legitimate arguments for both sides of these questions.

Indeed, Mamdani not only won, but, in receiving 56% of the final vote, soundly defeated the competition led by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Moreover, the 33 year old state Assemblyman was carried to victory by an extremely diverse coalition, winning Asian voters (+15), Hispanic voters (+6), and White voters (+5) according to an analysis by the New York Times.

Similarly, the winning formula behind Mamdani’s campaign – savvy use of social media – is not particularly hard for other progressive candidates to replicate.

All of this has emboldened progressives across the country.

Common Sense, a progressive news outlet, has declared that Mamdani’s win proves the need for Democrats to welcome the rise of socialists within the party and the start of a total shakeup of the party to give more influence to the far-left.

Conversely, there are reasons to believe that, rather than underscoring the dominance and appeal of progressives, Mamdani’s victory could simply be chalked up to a perfect storm of circumstances that are not present in other elections.

Mamdani’s top challenger,  Cuomo, had spent a decade as governor of New York and was seen as the establishment candidate at a time when 69% of voters say the Democratic establishment is “out of touch” per Washington Post polling.

Further, New York City itself is idiosyncratic, giving Mamdani a base that may not exist, at least to this scale, elsewhere.

New York City Democratic primary voters tend to be considerably further to the political left than one would see in other states or on the national level, including a heavy concentration of young, college-educated, and progressive voters.

According to a post-election survey from SurveyUSA, “very liberal” voters (32%) made up the biggest share of primary voters. 

This compares to data from Gallup which indicates that less 1-in-10 (9%) voters nationwide consider themselves “very liberal.”

Put another way, it’s difficult to imagine Mamdani’s self-described Democratic Socialist agenda being received as well in purple districts in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Georgia.

In that same vein, assuming Mamdani wins the general election, how he governs will severely impact the fortunes of progressives across the country. 

If his more extreme policies cause the city financial distress, capital flight, or a breakdown in public safety, any enthusiasm he’s generated thus far for progressive leadership will rapidly evaporate.

Of course, the flip side is that if anger towards the Trump administration grows over issues like deportations, tariffs, or other executive overreach, it may further embolden progressives. 

Or, given the far-left’s tendency to be the most vocal contingent of the Democratic Party, and the most willing to voice opposition to Trump, it may make their candidates look more appealing to Americans turned off by the administration. 

The second question that arises from Mamdani’s win is whether it translates into renewed strength for progressives in California, or even the possibility of a far-left candidate making their mark on the upcoming gubernatorial election.

As the biggest solidly blue state in the country, California politics are often further to the left of other states, but in recent years, progressives have seen their influence wane.

However, progressives there are viewing Mamdani’s win as a “harbinger” of things to come, according to a recent Politico article. 

And yet, there are signs that Californians may not be ready to return to progressive governance.

Consider San Francisco, a former bastion of the state’s far-left. Just three years ago, voters recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, amid mounting exhaustion with progressive criminal justice policies. Then last year, the city elected centrist Democrat Daniel Lurie as mayor, doubling down on a shift towards the center and away from progressive candidates.

At the same time, the 2024 election showed a considerable shift to the right among California voters. 

Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 20-point margin of victory over President Trump was the smallest for a Democrat since 2004, and Trump flipped 10 counties that had voted for former President Biden in 2020.

The state’s voters also passed Prop 36, reinstituting tough-on-crime laws.

With that in mind, is it possible that a reinvigorated progressive wing will impact the gubernatorial election?

The former VP leads most polls, including a recent UC Irvine survey showing her 15-points ahead of 2nd place Rick Caruso (24% to 9%). 

But, if Harris does not run – she has yet to decide – the race could theoretically be wide open for a progressive candidate.

Ultimately, the Democratic Party remains at a crossroads, caught between the growing influence of the far-left, and the more politically viable moderate wing. 

Whether or not Mamdani’s victory heralds a new era of a progressive-dominated Democratic Party remains to be seen, but it is far too early to declare a widespread desire for similar candidates.

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.