National Review's Radio Free California Podcast

San Francisco mayor London Breed says she had to dance maskless in a nightclub, and blames the “fun police” for documenting the moment. How Newsom explains his recall win. L.A. County kills oil drilling (to kill working-class jobs). California liquor licenses remain a prerogative of the rich (because the poor shouldn’t drink). Newsom signs bills to end single-family zoning. Bonus: The only sitting U.S. senator to die in a duel was the California abolitionist David Broderick.

Lessons learned — and reasons for hope — following Governor Gavin Newsom’s overwhelming win in the September 14 California recall. Bonus: A brief but heated disagreement over the firing of University of Southern California football coach Clay Helton.

California’s Democrats have weaponized the courts through the Private Attorneys General Act, the state law that allows anyone to sue anyone else on behalf of the state’s “interests” — from Prop. 65 to civil rights to employment law. Now that Texas will use the same mechanism to end abortion, Nancy Pelosi and other pro-abortion activists have suddenly discovered the Constitution. In other news: Newsom pulls ahead on the recall, bad teachers get their camera time, and a good teacher — that’d be David Bahnsen — takes over a high-school econ course.

Governor Gavin Newsom’s experiment in legalized weed is failing, and the weed industry says government is to blame. As Newsom gavels to order the nation’s first state reparations committee, David and Will consider the racism inherent in Democratic policies. Congressional Republicans say California ought to return $27 billion the state received in the Biden bailout. The Ninth Circuit says a shareholder can sue the state over its “woman quota” on publicly traded California-based companies. Google will pay millions to social-justice groups in exchange for permission to build a San Jose facility.

We celebrate the 175th anniversary of John C. Fremont’s description of the San Francisco Bay as “a golden gate,” consider the possibility of a Tulsi Gabbard run for California governor, CalPERS’s role in a lefty shareholder revolt at Exxon, the rising number of male inmates in California’s women’s prisons, the decline of a once-powerful government union, and the meaning of the 1997 murder in Los Angeles of rapper Notorious B.I.G. Bonus: Is it time for the Wiener Watch?

Thanks to a one-time bump in taxes paid by California’s wealthiest families, Governor Gavin Newsom is handing out cash prizes to Californians he’ll need to beat the recall campaign. The state Department of Education says advanced high-school math courses are racist, the Disney Corporation tells its employees that punctuality is a feature of white supremacy, and the governor launches a new commission to consider reparations. Also starring National Review’s inimitable Jack Fowler, race-car designer Carroll “Cobra” Shelby, and Vans shoe manufacturer Paul Van Doren.

Twelve years after the Great Recession, California lawmakers lay the groundwork for another global real-estate crisis. In other news, David and Will discuss Representative Maxine Waters’s call to violence during jury deliberations in the George Floyd murder case, ethnic and Marxist studies in K–12 schools, and Tucker Carlson’s problem with Ronald Reagan.

A new poll shows California voters have short-term memory loss when it comes to Gavin Newsom. Tom Steyer thinks Tom Steyer would make a good governor. Cindy Marten ran San Diego Unified into the ground, and Joe Biden thinks that’s good enough for the No. 2 post at the U.S. Department of Ed. California’s teachers' unions refuse to get back into schools, but San Diego says it’s got teachers for undocumented minors just in from Mexico. California state agencies have lost billions to fraud, but state lawmakers think they'd be great running a public-funded debit-card for the poor.

When they’re not spreading disinformation about COVID to keep schools locked down, California’s teachers' unions are promoting an ethnic and gender studies curriculum based on ancient hatreds and tasty Aztecs entrees. In other news, Newsom celebrates Biden’s catastrophe at the border, Iran criminalizes California hip-hop artist Sasy, and San Francisco finds new ways to make homelessness worse.

Kevin D. Williamson educates New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who just wants California to stop embarrassing the progressive project. Gavin Newsom’s gift to campaign contributors. Joe Biden’s nominee for the No. 2 spot at the Education Department runs into some criticism for her incompetence at San Diego Unified. All this and prophylactics, maskless brides, and more.