Steven Greenhut
Sacramento After an unusually long delay, the U.S. Senate is finally moving ahead with hearings to confirm California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary. Given the ongoing pandemic and the key role that HHS will play…
Sacramento There’s an old economic maxim known as “moral hazard,” by which “one party engages in risky behavior or fails to act in good faith because it know the other party bears the economic consequences of their behavior,” as one…
Sacramento “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle,” wrote the city of San Francisco’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. Catholics revere the Italian friar — canonized in 1228 — for his great love…
Sacramento California Gov. Gavin Newsom has always claimed that he has based his coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders solely on the “science,” yet suddenly — without any dramatic changes in scientific breakthroughs, albeit following some hopeful decreases in hospitalizations — he announced…
Sacramento California’s unions aren’t accustomed to losing, so it was no surprise that the Service Employees International Union filed a lawsuit this month challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 22, which voters approved by overwhelming margins. That measure allows app-based transportation and ride-sharing…
Sacramento Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom only took office in 2019, yet he has faced a seemingly endless stream of recall efforts mostly related to his handling of the coronavirus situation. To date, he has brushed off several recall signature-gathering drives….
Sacramento California’s Gov. Hiram Johnson propelled the state into its century-long embrace of direct democracy in 1911, as he ushered in the referendum, initiative, and recall process. For conservatives, the fruits of this progressive invention 110 years later are a…
At the onset of the COVID-19 shutdowns, Gov. Gavin Newsom raised eyebrows by repeatedly calling California a “nation state,” which usually refers to sovereign and largely homogenous countries with their own standing armies. California is wonderfully polyglot and, last time…
Sacramento California’s historically severe drought, which ended in March 2019, had dominated Capitol discussions during its eight-year run, yet had not led to any dramatic changes in the way the state manages its water resources. This seems hard to fathom, given…
