Dear Weekend Jolter,
Desperately needed rainfall at last gave Los Angeles–area firefighters a fleeting ally in Mother Nature. But last weekend's relief, not quite enough to end the fire season, brought with it new warnings of mudslides and toxic ash.
The menace of the elements never really goes away in California. As John McPhee wrote of the eternal battle between L.A. and the San Gabriel Mountains, in a 1988 essay included in his prophetic The Control of Nature, "After a burn, so much dry ravel and other debris becomes piled up and ready to go that to live under one of those canyons is (as many have said) to look up the barrel of a gun."
Hopefully, the worst is indeed over, and Angelenos can get about to the urgent task of rebuilding. And when they do, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will have their own rebuilding to undertake.
Both have been battered throughout January by frustrated locals as well as their usual antagonists in GOP politics over the fire response. What happens next is an open question — but Bass's political career appears more immediately threatened. Her polling right now is dreadful. As Jim Geraghty writes, a Change.org petition demanding her resignation has drawn tens of thousands of signatures (more than 166,000 as of publication time; it's unclear how many are L.A. residents). Bass is unlikely to listen, raising the possibility residents could try to oust her:
If city residents want to remove Bass from office before her term expires December 13, 2026, they will need to hold a recall election. The procedure is a bit complicated, but the sense of outrage among city residents from the wildfires — which are still burning, by the way — gives Bass's opponents good odds of forcing a recall election.
Could they succeed? Well, recall petitions require signatures from 15 percent of registered voters who can vote for the office in question or, in this case, about 320,000 people. Jim adds this data point: "For perspective, 420,030 people voted for Bass's top rival, Rick Caruso, in the last mayoral election in 2022."
While California is always vulnerable to natural disasters, Mayor Bass has earned much of the backlash for infamously having traveled to Ghana to attend its president's inauguration despite warnings about wildfire risks and for presiding over a city "woefully unprepared to ensure the safety and well-being of its residents" (as described in the Change.org petition). At the same time, Bass is, quite likely, "being turned into the universal scapegoat for the disaster by others running from their own accountability," Jeff Blehar writes — including a particularly glossy governor "terrified of what the Los Angeles fires portend for his national hopes as a presidential candidate."
West Coaster Will Swaim observes in the latest issue of NR that while previous wildfires scorched rural, generally conservative parts of California, this time the victims include "reliable Democrats and big donors," in turn posing a political challenge for "even the preternaturally clever Newsom."
Californians have been in an ousty mood of late toward once-favored progressive figures. In the last election, they booted hard-left officeholders ranging from the Los Angeles DA to the (now-indicted) mayor of Oakland. And as Noah Rothman writes, they are "waking up" to the mismanagement that at least contributed to the severity of the wildfire catastrophe. Of course, the governor's outlook is national; he likes his houses the way he likes his wine, white. Term-limited, he's got to worry more about his next job than his current one — but his positioning on the national stage as an anti-Trump resistance figure is potentially undermined by the aftermath of the fires.
California columnist Dan Walters noted how the recovery puts Newsom in a bind as he seeks federal relief, as he "must choose between being the governor of California who does whatever is necessary to get the disaster relief his constituents are demanding, and a potential presidential candidate who resists Trump on every point and at any cost." Newsom's greeting of Trump on the tarmac last Friday could be this political era's version of the Christie/Obama shake. Then again, the bipartisan pose he's striking for the sake of his state isn't necessarily a bad look. It could suit him in the task-focused remainder of his term, as he and city officials take up not only L.A.'s recovery but preparation for the 2028 Olympics and 2026 World Cup (for which it is one of 16 host cities).
Jim has his doubts about Newsom's track record and speculates that the crisis could douse his presidential prospects. Yet the governor does possess Trump-like qualities of political resilience (like the mayor, Newsom faces a post-fire recall threat — but he’s dealt with so many of these during his tenure it’s like seasonal flu at this point). If the governor can keep the spotlight on Karen Bass and others' missteps, while rallying support for the city's recovery and getting Americans invested in its success as a host of back-to-back international sporting events, Gavin Newsom could yet emerge from the fire.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Senators should not be fooled: Will the Real Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard Please Stand Up?
A case of prosecutorial overkill: Trump Is Right to Curb Abuse of the FACE Act
Missile defense should be a priority: Bring On Iron Dome
ARTICLES
Philip Klein: The New Fusionism of Wanting to Blow Stuff Up
David Zimmermann: 'We Never Gave Up': Texas Whistleblower Went Toe-to-Toe with the Gender-Industrial-Complex — and Won
Charles C. W. Cooke: Air Travel Is Astonishingly Safe, and This Accident Was No Politician's Fault
Brittany Bernstein: The CIA Backs the Lab-Leak Theory — and the Media Shrug
Brittany Bernstein: Jim Acosta Announces Departure from CNN: 'I Will Not Give In to the Lies'
Noah Rothman: The Covid Iconoclasts Were Right About Everything
Haley Strack: Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Gender Mutilation
Jeffrey Blehar: The Day I Learned About Death
Audrey Fahlberg: Tulsi Gabbard Grilled on Snowden, Warrantless Wiretaps, Assad Meeting in Fraught DNI Confirmation Hearing
James Lynch: RFK Jr. Faces Bipartisan Grilling on Abortion Record in Combative Confirmation Hearing
Jim Geraghty: Iran Suddenly Keen to Avoid 'Provocative' Moves Against America
Rich Lowry: The Pope Should Pontificate About Something Else
Christian Schneider: America's Dangerous Flirtation with RFK Jr.
Jay Nordlinger: Gone, the Assads
Jerald Podair: What L.A. Has Lost
CAPITAL MATTERS
A counterpoint, from Dominic Pino: Some Reasons for Skepticism about Trump's Colombia 'Win'
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White, with the review you've been waiting for: Emilia Pérez — an Ode to Transgender Globalism
Who knew wallpaper could be this interesting? Brian Allen blows up our preconceived notions on the matter: In Providence, French Wallpaper Delectable Enough to Eat
SAVE ROOM FOR EXCERPTS
What belief system, really, unites the Trump coalition? Phil Klein has a theory:
Political philosophy junkies have long evaluated Republicans by where they stood on each of the legs of the "three-legged stool" (comprising economic, social, and national security issues). They have debated whether certain candidates were limited-government advocates or more open to social welfare, whether they were culturally conservative or liberal, and whether they were hawkish or dovish on defense. But this approach isn't particularly useful to understand Trump or his unique appeal. . . .
On values issues, we could describe Trump as pushing for a more pugilistic approach to the culture war if we are talking about transgenderism, but not so much if we are discussing his positioning on abortion, on which he has opposed any national ban and criticized six-week bans passed at the state level. Trump's foreign policy statements have been a mix of noninterventionist rhetoric about ending "endless wars" and hawkish, chest-beating declarations of strength. His personnel picks have reflected all these tensions.
Thus, as a way to represent political ideology, the three-legged stool analogy needs to be moved to the attic (where it can be stored in case it becomes useful again) to make way for an alternate description of the eclectic coalition Trump has patched together. For lack of a fitting furniture item to compare it to, I will simply refer to this partnership as the new fusionism of wanting to blow stuff up.
Adherents to this new fusionism may have previously come from the far right or the far left, but they share an overriding belief that so-called experts and elite institutions have royally messed things up roughly since the end of the Cold War. As a corollary, they believe that those people need to be driven away from all levers of influence and power. And a good number of them believe that Trump is the vehicle by which to make this happen.
This loose collection of individuals may not necessarily have all the same grievances. It could be that they were disillusioned by NAFTA and other trade deals that, they believe, relocated American jobs abroad; by the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; by the financial gurus who tanked markets and the economy; by the intelligence community that wiretapped within the U.S. and said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation; by Big Tech's cooperating with government to suppress speech; or by the campaign to delegitimize, impeach, and jail Trump, spanning the Russia collusion story through the Biden-era prosecutions.
Above all, there was Covid. The same public health experts whose social distancing guidance prevented kids from going to school, businesses from staying open, and people from holding funerals for loved ones supported mass racial justice protests because they agreed with the underlying message.
David Zimmermann interviews the trans-procedure whistleblower who, at last, had his criminal case dropped thanks to the Trump DOJ:
Just last week, Dr. Eithan Haim came days away from going to federal prison — and he has no regrets.
As federal prosecutors were preparing to accelerate the now-dismissed criminal case against the Texas Children's Hospital whistleblower, President Donald Trump's Justice Department stepped in just in time.
On Friday, the Justice Department's new leadership dropped the second superseding indictment against the surgeon, who had been accused by the Biden Justice Department of violating the privacy of patients protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The only problem is he didn't.
Haim disclosed carefully redacted medical records in May 2023, showing that Texas Children's physicians were surgically inserting hormonal devices into gender-dysphoric pediatric patients as part of the hospital's transgender program. No individually identifiable health information was unethically revealed. Furthermore, he exposed that the Houston-based hospital was secretly continuing trans medical procedures in violation of Texas law after it had supposedly ended them.
Haim felt it was his moral obligation to tell the truth, even if he was punished for his actions.
"In the very beginning, I knew if I was gonna blow the whistle that we'd have to go fully in no matter the consequences," Haim told National Review. "I asked my wife, 'Is this something you're willing to die for?' And she said, 'Yes.' And I said, 'Yes,' too. It sounds kind of hyperbolic, but that was the only way we would do it."
Before the charges were dismissed with prejudice, the surgeon faced a decade in federal prison and a $250,000 maximum fine for the alleged HIPAA violations.
If Trump's Justice Department didn't dismiss the case in time, it's possible Haim would have been prematurely jailed over the weekend and gone to an early trial.
Haim and his wife, Andrea, were ecstatic, to say the least, when they learned of the dismissal on Friday.
"We took on the federal leviathan under the greatest odds possible. We won, we suffered, and we paid the price. But we never gave up and we never gave in," Haim told NR.
Another news cycle, another set of revelations that makes America's Covid-era conventional wisdom look foolish. Noah Rothman, on the latest:
Over the weekend, the CIA issued an updated assessment indicating that the agency now believes, albeit with low confidence, that Covid likely originated in a Chinese laboratory. That intelligence agency joins the Department of Energy and the FBI, both of which favor the lab-leak hypothesis.
It wasn't that long ago that lending credence to that notion would have branded you a "conspiracy theorist," and that was gentle treatment. Social media outlets attempted to limit the reach of those who failed to summarily rule that prospect out in accordance with the elite consensus. Heterodox voices at scientific institutions were defamed and intimidated by their colleagues. . . .
Despite this history, the country responded to the CIA's revelations with a gaping yawn. That's understandable, even if it is regrettable. Those who knew long ago that the lab leak theory had too much going for it to be so easily dismissed are underwhelmed by this late confirmation of their priors. Others who enforced the omerta around China's role in the pandemic don't want to dwell on their embarrassment. Thus, a conspiracy of silence has been replaced by a conspiracy of boredom. It should not be so. Those who were raked over the coals by the unduly confident arbiters of American public discourse, whose faith in their own sagacity is matched only by their incuriosity, should be forced to confront their failures.
The lab leak isn't the only arena in which the Americans who postured as enlightened and dispassionate public health advocates failed the public. As Jonathan Turley observed over the weekend, the mid-pandemic status quo governing access to education in the United States was also a byproduct of contagious hysteria.
He cites a new study in the Journal of Infection, which found that "reopening schools did not change the existing trajectory of COVID-19 rates." Indeed, researchers observed "no consistent patterns in cases, hospitalizations, or deaths despite school re-openings or changes to public health measures."
That assessment contrasts with the consensus retailed by educational professionals, their union representatives, and the Democratic politicians who were beholden to both.
CODA
So . . . I was watching a Netflix documentary (highly recommend, by the way) on an L.A.-area guitar shop last weekend, and had a good time seeing the clips of all the famous and not-so-famous musicians who have passed through there and played a little somethin' for the store's YouTube channel. Among them was an astonishing blues talent who's already been discovered, thanks in part to his appearance at that store a decade ago, but was new to me: Marcus King. If he's new to you, too, you'll never believe this voice comes out of this kid (okay, he's not a kid, but young compared with those been-everywhere pipes).
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
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