The Recall’s Meaning for America

A headline in the LA Times today reads: “Make America California Again? That’s Biden’s plan.” Likewise, Gavin Newsom’s chief economic advisor has a new article in Project Syndicate hailing California as a model that “points the way forward” for Biden.

The article does not mention that we have the nation’s highest poverty, most homeless, and second worst inequality. It doesn’t mention we have the second worst schools and roads. It doesn’t mention that over half our residents say they’re thinking of leaving and that nearly two-thirds say the American Dream is dead.

But that, apparently, is Biden’s plan. That’s the “way forward.”

This effort to nationalize catastrophic failure makes our task as the California opposition doubly important: to stop our state’s decline and warn the rest of the nation. We’ve done this once already, helping prevent Biden from naming a rabidly anti-school-choice Education Secretary.

As we know all too well, California showcases not the possibilities of “progressive” government but the perils of a corrupt government. And no one has ever epitomized that corruption like Gavin Newsom. That’s why we see citizens coming together to fight back like never before:

• Last Friday, I took part in one of over 100 rallies across the state with high school athletes protesting Newsom’s monstrous ban on youth sports. The Let Them Play Facebook group has grown to 34,000 members in just two weeks.

• Another county, this time Shasta, has passed our Healthy Communities Resolution, rejecting Newsom’s one-man rule and unscientific lockdowns.

• Our court victory over Newsom, which Phil Willon of the LA Times called “one of the biggest checks on the California governor’s executive authority in times of state emergencies,” is still awaiting a decision by the Court of Appeal, but several more lawsuits have been filed in recent weeks.

And then there’s the Recall, now 1.1 million signatures strong. More than anything else, its success will sound a blaring warning: that California is a failed state, and the rest of the country should take heed before lurching down our path. As a bonus, it will almost certainly stop Newsom from ever trying to take the country down that path himself, quashing his vain presidential hopes once and for all.

For all of us, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and a one-of-a-kind responsibility. For everyone working so hard to gather signatures, you have joined an epochal movement and are advancing it in the most tangible of ways. You are an active participant in history. Together, out of concern for our state and love for our country, we’re giving full expression to that timeless phrase from the Declaration of Independence: “the consent of the governed.”

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