by jpitney | Jan 6, 2026 | California Politics, Economic Policy
Vince Ybarra at KFSN-TV: A new U-Haul report suggests the California exodus is still happening despite an increase in population. For people looking to move, California is not a desired location, according to data collected by U-Haul. The moving company compiled more...
by jpitney | Jan 5, 2026 | Polarization, Public Opinion
Arthur Brooks at The Atlantic: Achieving ideological diversity in the workplace is especially tricky because, in aggregate, people’s resistance to accepting political differences is growing. According to the polling firm YouGov, back in 2016, only 10 percent of both...
by jpitney | Jan 4, 2026 | Free Speech, Higher Education
Greg Lukianoff at The Dispatch: For most of my career, the biggest threat to free speech on campus came from inside higher education: the on-campus left (students, yes, but more importantly administrators) using the power of investigation and discipline to punish...
by jpitney | Jan 3, 2026 | Civility, Local Government
From the Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Inauguration Speech: The majority will not use the language that we often expect from those who wield influence. I welcome the change. For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask...
by jpitney | Jan 2, 2026 | Crime, Police
Michael Fortner at The Washington Monthly: Peter Moskos’s Back from the Brink is both oral history and urban epic—a ground-level account of New York’s astonishing, world-historical crime decline, narrated by the cops, commissioners, city officials, and civic leaders...
by jpitney | Jan 1, 2026 | Budget, California Politics
Yue Stella Yu at CalMatters: The deficit is projected to reach nearly $18 billion next year, mostly because the state is expected to spend so much money that it would offset, if not eclipse, the strong tax revenues driven by an AI boom, said the nonpartisan...
by jpitney | Dec 31, 2025 | California Politics, Journalism, Journalists, Los Angeles, Newspapers
Peter Weinberger at The Claremont Courier: Local newspapers continued disappearing at a pace similar to — or worse than — 2024. More than 130 local news outlets closed this year, averaging over two per week. This trend has expanded news deserts with little to no local...
by jpitney | Dec 30, 2025 | California Politics, Economic Policy, Education, Environment, Homelessness, Poverty, State Government, Taxes, Transportation
Jim Geraghty at NRO: As I wrote earlier this year, U.S. News and World Report ranks each state on a wide variety of categories. In the most recent assessment, California ranked dead last in opportunity, dead last in affordability, 47th in employment, 47th in energy...
by jpitney | Dec 29, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence, Internet, Journalism, Journalists, Mass Media, Newspapers
Sipho Kings at the Nieman Lab: This moment feels like rock bottom. And in this crisis, there ought to be so much opportunity. But we’re not learning from the past. Instead, we’re approaching this new era of generative AI much like we did platforms. Big Western...
by jpitney | Dec 28, 2025 | Congress, House of Representatives, Senate
Paul Kane at WP: With fewer than 40 bills signed into law as of Monday, the House and Senate set a modern record for lowest legislative output in the first year of a new presidency, according to data maintained by C-SPAN and Purdue University. Despite that lack of...
