Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center. A journalist for nearly three decades, he began by covering international business in 1990, was founding editor and publisher of Village Voice Media’s OC (Orange County) Weekly, and editor of Watchdog.org, a national network of investigative reporters. Will graduated summa cum laude (in journalism and with honors in theology) from the University of Southern California. He earned an MA in history from UC Irvine where he was a California Regents Fellow. A seventh-generation Californian, he has written extensively about California business, media, politics and religion, and is the winner of several print journalism awards and a Southern California Broadcasters Golden Mike award for public affairs commentary. With CPC board member David Bahnsen, he hosts National Review’s Radio Free California podcast. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, LA Daily News, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and National Review.
Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center. To contact Will, email him at will@calpolicycenter.org. You can also follow him on Twitter @WillSwaim.
As the sun set last Friday, sanity returned briefly to California when a judge told University of California employees to end a strike aimed at disrupting the last few weeks of the school year. In ordering members of United Auto Workers Local 4811 back to work, Orange County Superior Court Judge Randall Sherman sided with...
By Will Swaim
For years, the state’s auditor had issued warnings about the unemployment office’s vulnerabilities. No one, certainly not Su, acted on that intelligence. Thirteen months after President Biden announced it was his “honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country’s next Secretary of Labor,” there’s good news, bad news, and even worse bad news to report. Among those...
By Will Swaim
Governor Gavin Newsom helped create — and is now faced with — the biggest budget deficit in Golden State history. In the summer of 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom, apparently high on the smell of cash, announced that California had just smashed through the state-budget equivalent of the first four-minute mile: a one-year surplus of $100...
By Will Swaim
The state’s laboratory of policy chaos has produced another misbegotten experiment for progressives to replicate elsewhere. Gavin Newsom doesn’t need to run for president in order to shape national policy. The Biden administration has made clear it’ll follow California off a cliff, taking Newsom’s campaign against independent contractors national with a March 2024 Department of Labor...
By Will Swaim
The new chancellor is sure to exacerbate the problems in a network already roiled by progressive administrators. In February, when she was tapped to run California’s troubled community-college system, Sonya Christian had cheerleaders, foremost among them Governor Gavin Newsom. “Dr. Christian is one of our nation’s most dynamic college leaders, with a demonstrated record of collaboration...
By Will Swaim
The Thursday night debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Ron DeSantis was over before the Klieg lights went up. The facts of California’s decline are evident to everyone but the most disingenuous. As the old saying goes, “Facts is facts,” and on the facts, DeSantis had the debate won by Wednesday. All that...
By Will Swaim
For fans of dark comedy, California politics is as good as any entertainment – shot through with grim irony, corrupt politicians, and laughable hypocrisy. Consider Attorney General Rob Bonta’s legal campaign to crush the practice of seven school districts to notify parents before gender-transitioning their children. Parent notification, as it’s called, “places transgender and gender...
By Will Swaim
‘You need a policy where children aren’t told to keep secrets from their parents or other caregivers,’ he says. Since late July, six California school districts have adopted a transparency policy that has state officials wigging out. On its face, the parent-notification push at the local level would seem unnecessary, embedded as it is in state...
By Will Swaim
Were you or your child denied admission into medical school on the basis of race or ethnicity within the last 5 years? Click here to document your experience. In doing so, they ignore the real scandal in the state’s education system. * * * Among the weirdest reactions to the Supreme Court’s June 29 decisions on...
By Will Swaim
In the devil’s workshop we call the state legislature, government union leaders are hard at work — destroying another of California’s democratic institutions. Fresh off the shutdown of Los Angeles Unified schools and the overthrow of their own elected president — and facing steep declines in membership and revenue — Service Employees International Union (SEIU) activists are...
By Will Swaim
We’ve seen Gov. Gavin Newsom impose questionable — even dangerous and illegal — policies by declaring states of emergency or merely “crisis” with regard to Covid, climate and energy. He’s done it again on the issue of housing. The problems of housing affordability and homelessness constitute a crisis so compelling, the governor says, that they...
By Will Swaim
Among the most diabolical innovations of late-twentieth century newspapering was the so-called “factcheck.” The flagship of these projects, Politifact, goes to war against falsehood under a simple banner: “Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.” Factchecking pretends that reporters are godlike – objective, neutral, free...
By Will Swaim
San Francisco parents run over three school-board members in a stunning recall vote. Common sense scores a huge win over Covid-19 panic at the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, and West Coast rap and hip-hop shine at halftime. Also: California and bovine flatus. Music by Metalachi. Listen to the new episode: HERE
By Will Swaim
Governor Gavin Newsom unmasked at the NFL Championship. Former California AG Xavier Becerra will take the fall for Biden’s ham-fisted Covid response. Why the state takeover of California health care died a quiet death in the Assembly. Sacramento moves ahead on a plan to manage the fast-food biz. The relationship between postmodern philosophy, identity politics,...
By Will Swaim
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