Christopher F. Rufo

This week’s big news is that Graham Platner, Democrats’ far-Left candidate for Senate in Maine, has dropped out of the race after rape allegations surfaced. This accusation came from a woman named Jenny Racicot, but it wasn’t the first accusation of sexual misconduct against Platner. The New York Times reported in early June that Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican political operative and ex-girlfriend of Platner’s, also claimed he had abused her.

It’s midafternoon outside KIPP Academy of Opportunity, a charter school serving children in fifth through eighth grade on South Figueroa Street in residential Los Angeles. As children inside prepare for their futures, a young female struts by in high heels, wearing nothing but a bikini and a jacket. “We’ll see some police officers roll by and some young women out here just prostituting. They’re walking right by, and the police drive right by them,” the school’s gun-toting security guard said.

The big event for me this week was my appearance on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast. Because we’re in the era of Trump 2.0 and “woke” has waned, it was especially interesting because much of the podcast revolved around renegotiating the terms of debates in which the Left simply refused to engage for many years: on immigration, race, demographics, and other emotionally fraught and previously off-the-table issues.

Every day, thousands of Los Angelenos take a deep breath, step out of their houses, and plunge themselves into a transit experience straight out of Mad Max. The city’s buses have become rolling homeless shelters, replete with drugs and feces. Its trains are home to murder and mayhem. As Daquan, a daily rider who works near the North Hollywood station told us, “You could kill somebody down there and just get away with it.” The transformation has been swift and stark.

As many readers are no doubt aware, last week saw a thundering victory for candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City’s Democratic congressional primaries. Three candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani—Brad Lander, Clare Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier—beat establishment-endorsed but still highly progressive Democrats, including sitting congressmen in the cases of Lander and Chevalier. There’s no sugarcoating it: These were hyper left-wing candidates.

Gavin Newsom is reportedly under federal investigation. Last week, the California governor released a recorded statement claiming that federal agents are combing through records as part of an inquiry targeting him and his wife. “In recent days,” Newsom said, “federal agents have knocked on the doors of friends and former employees—not because they found a crime, [but] because they’re simply trying to find one.” As federal agents examine Newsom’s connections, we decided to do the same.

Some on the Right have expressed the view that, if culture is downstream of politics, right-wing dominance in the political sphere will gradually lead to the adoption of conservative norms, values, and sensibilities. Michael Anton, one of the Right’s most influential writers, and, until recently, an official in the State Department, argues that for conservatives to truly regain influence in popular culture, it will require more than just brute political force.

Americans are used to handouts for favored groups. Affirmative action in university admissions, corporate “diversity” initiatives, and minority-owned contracting requirements direct opportunities, resources, and contracts to supposedly “oppressed” groups, such as women, Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics. In California, state Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism: contracts for state-certified gay-owned businesses.

On Election Night, I fairly certain that Spencer Pratt would make it into the runoff in the Los Angeles mayoral race, although I did add the caveat that while it appeared likely, it was not a foregone conclusion. There was always the possibility that the late votes would come in in a way that was unfavorable to Pratt—the only right-of-center candidate in the race. Lo and behold, that is exactly what happened.

Last year, in the aftermath of Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires, California Governor Gavin Newsom to speed up “” wildfire-prevention projects. Newsom issued an emergency proclamation to “cut bureaucratic red tape” and “fast-track critical projects,” brush clearance, forest thinning, prescribed burning, and other forms of fuels reduction. “These are the forest management projects we need to protect our communities most vulnerable to wildfire,” Newsom said last spring.