Let’s just get into this, quickly, before something else horrible happens across the pond and this column goes out of date. 1. The Henry Nowak Case It all happened in December of last year, and it’s taken seven months for this to finally come to a head with the release of the bodycam video of Henry Nowak, 18, a white British teenager who was stabbed to death by a Sikh wielding a ceremonial knife, bleeding out while in handcuffs, and telling police he couldn’t breathe before passing out. Nowak, who was attacked by 23- year-old Vickram Digwa, was stabbed no less than five times. When police arrived on the scene, Digwa told them that Nowak had “racially assaulted” him, and the cops immediately arrested Nowak. And when the teenager told the Hampshire police officers that he’d been stabbed, the response he got was “I don’t think you have, mate.” Then he died. What brought this on? Per Wikipedia… Just before the stabbing, Nowak had recorded Digwa walking away from him during a verbal altercation. According to the court, Digwa later grabbed Nowak’s phone to prevent being recorded, which led to a physical struggle; there were no eyewitnesses to the stabbing itself. Digwa falsely claimed he acted in self-defence after Nowak pursued him, made racist remarks and punched him; there was no supporting evidence for any of these claims, leading the court to conclude that Digwa fabricated these allegations in an attempt to justify stabbing Nowak. The jury convicted Digwa of murder on 28 May 2026. Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was found guilty of assisting an offender by hiding the murder weapon. The judge rejected Digwa’s accusations that Nowak had physically or racially abused him. Digwa received a life sentence with a minimum term of 21 years. The police response to the crime was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Over the following days, public protests took place in Southampton, in which two people were arrested; police reported that 11 officers and a police dog were injured. The case has roiled British society in ways that another case, the multiple stabbings of little girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport in 2024, had also done. Britain stands on the cusp of widespread civil unrest, with a government on the verge of toppling from within as it is repeatedly bludgeoned by the voters in every election. (RELATED: The Fall of Britain — and the Warning for America) How did things go so wrong across the pond? 2. The Police in Britain Are Merely the Government’s Hired Thugs The breakdown in British society can be directly traced to the widespread refusal of the police to do anything about the “grooming gangs” — a euphemistic moniker for the rape gangs arising primarily out of the U.K.’s Pakistani Muslim population — who systematically harvested working-class white girls as sex slaves, hooking them on drugs and pimping them out to thousands of men. This happened to an untold, but large, number of British native girls, and the human toll of the atrocity, which for all we know is still going strong after two decades or more, is immeasurable. (RELATED: You Get (and Deserve) What You Tolerate. That Isn’t Good News for the UK.) Nothing meaningful has been done. Yes, people have been arrested and imprisoned. A few. The vast majority of the perpetrators have gone free. No meaningful policy changes were made. And the people responsible for looking the other way as the Pakistanis sexually abused a generation of white girls were never really held to account. This applies to the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, whose hands are filthy with this scandal. Take the time to watch this, and you will find yourself in utter disbelief… Let’s recognize that in a sane society, an immigrant community that engages in widespread child rape of the natives of its adopted country could generally expect rough treatment not from the justice system but from the population as a whole. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: The Bell Tolls for Keir Starmer) Meaning that the population wouldn’t resort to courts but to rope and fire in pursuit of a remedy for such conduct. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: A Glorious Revolution Across the Pond?) But at the moment, Great Britain is not a sane society. To the contrary — it’s a society whose leadership actively looked the other way as the most horrific abuses were perpetrated against its ordinary citizens for decades. Rupert Lowe, a member of the British parliament who formed the Restore Party as a consequence of the government’s paltry response to the rape gangs, took to a House of Commons committee room to read from the report of a commission he chaired looking into the mass rape, and the result was as spellbinding as it was horrifying… The British police have been spending the last several years jailing people for heterodox Facebook posts, and yet this has gone on under the noses of police and prosecutors. For the whole of this century. As such, there is little respect left for British law enforcement or the governing class. Videos like this are absolutely legion… Generally speaking, though there are many exceptions, the British people take an attitude toward most police that they’re doing their jobs and it’s their superiors who are to blame for the two-tier policing system. But this is mere politeness, because it’s only a matter of time before this changes. Especially in the wake of the Nowak case. 3. Asking a Population to Consent to Its Immolation Will Ultimately Lead to the Death of the Asker We’re seeing this across the West, and it is beginning to drive the Left into a panic — ordinary white citizens have begun to reject the woke narrative that retributive justice must be visited upon them for the sins of their ancestors. In America, one manifestation of this is being called “black fatigue,” and it’s being seen in a more social and less political context (though that is quite likely to change soon). For example, there are videos of obnoxious black women demanding to be let in front of lines to get off airplanes, and resolute white men vociferously rejecting those demands, and there are videos of white people knocking out black people who attacked them. These aren’t new — what’s different is how prevalent they are, how many shares they get, and how open the responses are from people who simply do not care whether they’re called racists. An example… That card has been overplayed. Starting on Monday in Frisco, Texas, the Karmelo Anthony trial will offer a very good window into race relations in America. Anthony, who by all indications stabbed fellow high school track athlete Austin Metcalf to death over a dispute at a track meet and whose family lived high off the hog on a very rich GoFundMe thanks to a shockingly racist social media response from the black community after the murder, will face a jury with no black people in it after selection was completed this week. Frisco is about half white and 20 percent Asian; the population is only about 10 percent black, so it isn’t some wild injustice that no blacks are on the jury. Nor does his defense have a lot to go on. It’s pretty clear Anthony stabbed Metcalf, and it’s also clear he doesn’t have self-defense going for him. I bring up the Anthony case because in Great Britain, cases like this one (though often not as severe as murder) are utterly commonplace. It’s perhaps more often a South Asian counterparty, rather than someone of African extraction — though in the Southport case the perpetrator was of Rwandan extraction and may or may not have been a Muslim convert — but from the grooming gangs to the Nowak case to the Southport stabbings, crimes against native Brits by immigrants or children of immigrants occur not in a trickle but a flood. And no, black Americans and Pakistani or Nigerian or Syrian immigrants to the U.K. aren’t fully analogous. What unites these incidents is the perception by increasing numbers of the white majority in the U.S., the U.K., France, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere — but especially in the U.K. at the moment — that they’re under attack and their leadership has no interest in protecting them but is actively fueling the siege. Perhaps the most interesting examination of this phenomenon in the U.K. actually comes from a black guy… What do you think the ultimate effects of this will be? Obviously, you’d expect a voter revolt. But what’s changing faster than the politics is the culture. And that’s a recipe for chaos when the institutions don’t reflect the values of the people. 4. What Ails the UK Cannot Be Fixed Through Its Own Corrupted Institutions Back to Lowe; this is a 14-minute speech he gave on the floor of the House of Commons two months ago on illegal immigration in the U.K. and its effects. Two things are most striking from Lowe’s speech. One is that he can’t even get information from the British Home Office on “irregular migrants” who were processed by the judicial system and then simply disappeared, and how many there were. There are at least 53,000 of those, apparently, of recent vintage. (RELATED: Britain’s Boat Crisis Comes Into Focus) The other is how few members of Parliament even cared to listen. Britain’s institutions are completely and totally captured by an ideology that fears and loathes the country’s citizens and traditional culture on a level far beyond anything we’ve seen in the modern era. All of the schools, all of the corporate and governmental institutions, are forcing their people through the DEI meat grinder and punishing “whiteness” and “maleness” and Christianity. It’s an open and hamfisted assault on everything that Britain has been for hundreds of years — and the assault is expressly defended with denunciations of the British empire and British history. There may be an element of accuracy in those denunciations, but not of context; no nation or region colonized by the Brits was as advanced, enlightened, or just as the Brits were at the time of colonization, something the denouncers don’t like to talk about. Hey guys, British police arrest people for praying silently outside of abortion clinics. They arrest people for social media posts that question the government’s two-tier justice system. They arrested Henry Nowak after he’d been stabbed and laid on the ground bleeding. They… — Megan Basham (@megbasham) June 4, 2026 Lowe, who’s been castigated as far-right, isn’t the only one talking about the weaponization of the U.K.’s institutions. Nigel Farage, who heads the Reform Party and whom Lowe accuses of being a paper tiger on the question of immigration and the rape gangs, gave a public statement on the Nowak case and then did an interview on Thursday, which was explosive — Farage said, essentially, that all of Britain’s governance is rotten to the core and weaponized against its people. If Britain’s elections were today, rather than four years from now (it’s possible that a snap election could be called, but that isn’t likely barring a total breakdown of the government), Farage would be the odds-on favorite to be the next prime minister. His party dominated local elections across the U.K. a few weeks ago, routing Starmer’s Labour Party even in some of its staunchest traditional constituencies. And Labour is breaking down, as many of its members and supporters are defecting to the communist Greens Party. Labour won the 2024 parliamentary elections, gaining a massive majority in the House of Commons, with just 33.8 percent of the popular vote amid a fractured electorate. Starmer’s economic policies are disastrous, his foreign policy has shredded, perhaps forever, the special relationship with the United States, and his immigration and crime policies are ruinous. Amid all of that, and despite calls within his party for his resignation, he refuses to go. All of the most prominent Labour alternatives to Starmer are just as insanely to the left as he is; all of them are furthermore less plausible as the nation’s leader. Meaning that an intolerable situation, which has brought the British people into the streets where they’re surveilled and treated as rebels by law enforcement, will only get worse as the media, government, schools, and employers enforce an informal social credit system on those who have resolved to resist the foreign takeover of their society. This center cannot hold. It will break. It will break because the Henry Nowak situation is neither novel nor unlikely to repeat. There will be more rapes, more murders, more lawlessness, and more callous disregard of the safety and quality of life for the people of a proud country brought lower than at any point in a thousand years, not by military defeat but the treason and incompetence of its own leadership class. And the temperature will continue to rise. 5. Pay Attention, Because These Same Problems Are Germinating Here Above, I mentioned the Karmelo Anthony trial. It isn’t a perfect analogy for the Henry Nowak case in the U.K., but the results might be. I haven’t seen remotely enough discussion of what a massive powderkeg this trial could become. Anthony will almost certainly be convicted. The facts are fairly definitive in the case. The public nature of the Metcalf murder and its aftermath, including the shocking greed and profiteering off the crime by the Anthony family, is going to offend the jurors. Except there are people who are anxious to weaponize anything they can along the lines of race in order to stoke black turnout and create political advantage. To wit, here is Democrat activist and attorney A. Scott Bolden, writing last weekend at The Hill… Led by President Trump, the Republican Party has disgracefully embraced white Christian nationalists and is working to turn back the clock on progress America has made in the struggle against racism and other bigotry. Some 83 percent of Black voters are Democrats or lean Democratic, according to the Pew Research Center. Because of this, Trump has demanded Republican officials make it harder for African Americans to vote and elect candidates of their choosing. Trump has successfully pressured Republican-controlled states to engage in mid-decade congressional redistricting that could enable the GOP to gain more than a dozen House seats and reduce the number of Black House members. This is, of course, a lie. Absolutely no one is stopping black people from voting. And the current round of redistricting was inevitable due to a shift in the legal climate — not to mention the provocation by Democrats in blue-state legislatures like New York, which gave the go-ahead for states like Texas and Florida to change their maps. It was happening regardless of Trump’s involvement. (RELATED: ‘Right Here, Right Now’) Bolden continues… Rather than splitting up Black communities into multiple congressional districts to dilute their voting power and reduce the number of African American elected officials, Republicans ought to adopt policies to attract more Black voters. Instead, Trump and his fellow Republicans are doing all they can to win the support of white voters who resent advances African Americans have made in education, employment and elected office. As a result, Republicans have solidified their shameful and un-American status as the anti-Black party. Trump has issued executive orders declaring DEI programs to be illegal discrimination and has succeeded in reducing the number of such programs. The president has demanded that Congress pass legislation that would disproportionately reduce the ability of African Americans to vote and cut funding for social programs that benefit many Black people. He has fired Black federal officials, appointed only one Black person to his 24-person second-term Cabinet, and ordered federal museums and national parks to whitewash America’s ugly history of racism. Rhetoric like this is intentionally inflammatory, it’s anything but novel, and it’s bound to create an environment — an opportunity, almost certainly — in which a trial with no black jurors convicts a high-profile black defendant of a capital crime in a red state and is weaponized to create chaos. In order to gin up turnout in an election. We already know this is standard procedure. It’s been standard procedure for two decades now, by people who believe the same political ideology as Britain’s out-of-touch socialist elite and share their disdain not just for their white citizens but for the minorities and immigrants being wielded against them. Is it absurd to make Karmelo Anthony the next George Floyd? Of course. But it was absurd for George Floyd to become George Floyd, and the Left is even more solicitous of criminals they could politicize into victims since the Floyd fiasco. Except that since 2020, the culture has shifted. White America is becoming just as fed up with being assaulted as racist and evil and deserving of foul treatment over ancestral sins as White Britain is. And if this is not treated responsibly by people with a historical aversion to responsible treatment of news events, Austin Metcalf could become what Henry Nowak has become in Britain. In both countries, as in the rest of the West, most people are utterly desperate to leave race aside and move on. But those who pursue political power as a tool for utopian social change refuse to leave it be. The race war isn’t the answer. Repudiating the race-opportunists of all shades is the only way to peace. But that might turn out to be a fight to the death — first in Britain, and then everywhere. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Tom Steyer Appears to Have Proven Conclusively That He’s a Loser 60 Minutes Is Burning. Bring Marshmallows. Five Quick Things: Fidelito, At Long Last

We are often told by progressives that unfettered free speech is somehow irreconcilable with genuine equality and social justice. Whereas the traditional view of free expression emphasizes an open marketplace of ideas, in which vigorous debate reveals the quality of competing viewpoints, the progressive approach stresses the need to limit harmful content such as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation — fact-based information used irresponsibly. Unfortunately, the corporate news media has adopted the progressive view, which has spawned censorship and propaganda. The following examples illustrate that sad reality. This article is from The American Spectator’s summer 2026 print magazine. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive the magazine. In January 2023, then–Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced that he would remove Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, from the House Intelligence Committee. Both the Democrats and the legacy “news” media portrayed this decision as uncalled for, but McCarthy remained firm. When they refused to move on to a different topic, he told reporters, “If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee.” He added that the FBI had “red-flagged” Swalwell during the previous Congress, when the Democrats controlled the House, yet then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had kept him on the committee. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine. Consequently, when Swalwell dropped out of the California gubernatorial race and resigned from Congress due to multiple allegations of sexual assault, Pelosi was asked if she and other Democrats knew what he was doing and turned a blind eye to it. She vehemently denied the charge: “Absolutely not true!” The interviewer pressed, “You had no idea?” She answered, “None whatsoever.” Similarly implausible denials have been peddled by Swalwell’s close friend Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona: “Eric Swalwell lied to ALL of us.” Such claims directly conflict with what was clearly an open secret within the Beltway. As Politico phrased it: The broad contours of Swalwell’s alleged behavior, if not the specifics, did not come as a surprise to many working in and around politics, especially in Washington. The 45-year-old cable news darling and Trump antagonist had developed a reputation for unsavory and sometimes unwanted behavior toward women. Those warnings were shared in whisper networks but rarely traveled outside the circle of political insiders…. That is, until Swalwell sought a promotion to lead the nation’s most populous state. Note that Swalwell’s alleged actions “did not come as a surprise to many working in and around politics.” That means Swalwell’s depravity was common knowledge among political journalists, special interest groups, and virtually everyone working on Capitol Hill. Indeed, as Kevin McCarthy said on ABC News on April 12, “Every member of Congress knows not to let any young staffer get around Swalwell or Matt Gaetz.” Why does all this seem so familiar? A prominent politician running for office has a politically fatal flaw that, if known to the voters, will destroy him. And, when it is finally discovered, everyone pretends to be shocked. This seems very familiar, no? Cast your mind back to June 27, 2024. President Biden wants to be reelected, and, during a crucial debate with his GOP challenger, attempts to highlight an achievement of his first term by braying, “We finally beat Medicare.” That bizarre claim was, of course, just one of many mental misfires that confirmed the widespread public impression that he was in the midst of cognitive decline. The most disturbing revelation was that the corporate “news” media had obviously colluded with the White House and congressional Democrats to hide Biden’s true condition from the voters even after the debate. As Marc Thiessen wrote at the time in the Washington Post: One of the worst offenders was CNN’s Jake Tapper. He accused those who voiced concern about Biden’s cognitive decline of “mocking his stutter” and spreading Russian disinformation. Tapper insisted Biden was “sharp” mentally and not the way he is caricatured on Fox…. Now, Tapper has the chutzpah to publish a book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” in which he unironically investigates the very cover-up he helped perpetuate. The tawdry tales of Swalwell and Biden are by no means the only examples of collusion between the Democrats and corporate news media, of course. But they do highlight the metastasis of a disease that endangers far more than decrepit or depraved politicians: progressivism. In a 1789 letter to the British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[W]herever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.” Jefferson advocated a free press that would provide the voters with enough information about the government’s actions to accurately assess the soundness of its policies. Does the corporate media fill the bill? Art by Bill Wilson for The American Spectator Of course not. Most corporate news organizations are populated by editors and reporters steeped in progressivism, and thus they harbor doubts concerning whether objectivity in journalism has any real value. Last summer, for example, the Columbia Journalism Review ran a lengthy essay titled, “Is Objectivity Still Worth Pursuing?” The graduates of today’s journalism schools regard objectivity as “both impossible and harmful” because it impedes social justice. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decoded this nonsense in his April 15 remarks on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at the University of Texas at Austin: The Constitution is the means of government; it is the Declaration that announces the ends of government. The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights…. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with the Constitution. It is no coincidence that the capture of the Democratic Party by what had formerly been a fringe group of progressives occurred during the same time period that the corporate news media began focusing on “truth” over “objectivity.” This brand of “journalism” inevitably favors the policies of progressive Democrats, and it became pervasive after President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. The legacy media became a kind of standing army of news and opinion writers who willingly colluded with the Democrats and the administrative state to invent and publish stories meant to undermine if not actually put an end to Trump’s presidency.  This was combined with a propaganda campaign meant to convince the public that any political system that permitted Donald Trump to become president was necessarily corrupt and undemocratic. Evidence for this claim often focused on the Electoral College system that elected Trump despite his failure to win a majority of the popular vote. The Supreme Court has also been targeted by progressive Democrats and journalists. They accuse the court of creating an “imperial presidency” by ruling, in Trump v. United States, that presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for their official acts. As the New York Times phrases it: Nearly 250 years after American colonists threw off their king, this is arguably the closest the country has come during a time of general peace to the centralized authority of a monarch. Mr. Trump takes it upon himself to reinterpret a constitutional amendment and to eviscerate agencies and departments created by Congress. He dictates to private institutions how to run their affairs. He sends troops into American streets and wages an unauthorized war against nonmilitary boats in the Caribbean. This inevitably brings us to the denunciation of Trump’s war on Iran by the progressives who dominate the Democratic Party and the corporate news media. Both insist that he had no authority to attack Iran without prior congressional approval, despite the failure of four Democrat-led attempts to pass congressional legislation limiting his powers to continue military operations. Meanwhile, Trump has actually been accused of a war crime based on a social media post. The Democratic Party and the corporate news media are in a very real sense trying to undermine President Trump’s effort to protect civilization from genuine barbarians. All of this raises the following question: Does the metastasis of progressivism in the Democratic Party, the corporate news media, and countless other institutions endanger popular sovereignty? Returning to Thomas Jefferson and Clarence Thomas, the former wrote the Declaration of Independence and the latter says that document defines the legitimate ends of government. Its fundamental principles have unquestionably resonated globally for 250 years. If, as Justice Thomas maintains, progressivism cannot coexist with those principles, its rise in recent decades is a clear and present danger to free people everywhere and for civilization in general. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our summer 2026 print magazine.

Money may be the mother tongue of politics, and Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks it fluently, setting Pennsylvania fundraising records while out-raising his Republican challenger, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, by a staggering margin of 10‑to‑one. While promoting his memoir, Shapiro’s campaign brought in $10.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 30.  He ended the period banking $36 million. One single March check outgunned Garrity’s entire three months of fundraising. That $1 million came from California cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, who has given Shapiro a combined $2.2 million since 2023. (RELATED: The Rising Star of Pennsylvania’s Stacy Garrity) The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, gave Shapiro $100,000.  Labor and trade unions combined gave $1.4 million to Shapiro, while Garrity has received nothing. Shapiro’s overwhelming lead is no accident. It reflects a combination of incumbency, national ambition, political branding, and a donor network that extends far beyond Pennsylvania’s borders. (RELATED: Pennsylvania Primary Results Unpacked: Democrats Go Far Left, While GOP Centers) Shapiro has spent years building a national donor network that is paying dividends, money-wise, but not necessarily through voter enthusiasm. Much of his money comes from out-of-state billionaires, tech executives, Hollywood, and national political interests who see Shapiro as more than a regional figure. Those donors can write checks that dwarf traditional instate contributions, giving Shapiro a scale advantage that compounds quickly. As a sitting governor, Shapiro is the odds-on favorite. Donors gravitate toward candidates who look inevitable. With no primary opponent, along with Republicans’ struggles to mount a financially competitive challenge, it reinforces the perception that backing Shapiro is a safe political investment. Garrity held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private Florida club. Other Garrity events were lower-key, including a lunch with supporters in rural Somerset County and an appearance at the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Money doesn’t guarantee victory, but in politics, it defines reality. Approximately half of Shapiro’s donations over $50 came from Pennsylvania, compared to approximately 90 percent of Garrity’s. Heavy investment in digital advertising, staff, and travel reflects a campaign built to project strength and inevitability, not merely to survive. Early spending, backed by massive reserves, helps reinforce donor confidence and discourages serious opposition. Money doesn’t guarantee victory, but in politics, it defines reality. Shapiro’s fundraising dominance is more than just money; it is about momentum, perception, and power. Garrity’s support base is different, as nearly 90 percent of her donations came from Pennsylvanians, a sign that her campaign is rooted in local support rather than national influence. In a governor’s race, that distinction matters. A candidate backed primarily by in‑state donors can credibly argue that their campaign reflects the priorities of the people who actually live and work in the commonwealth. The report shows Garrity running a disciplined, efficient campaign. While Shapiro spent $4.6 million in three months, Garrity spent just $527,000. National organizations such as the Republican Governors Association have not yet prioritized Pennsylvania; their involvement could significantly shift the financial landscape. Garrity’s ability to win two statewide elections for treasurer with comparatively modest fundraising underscores that she can outperform expectations. Her donor base includes a mix of grassroots supporters, elected officials, and conventional Republican individuals. Garrity is building a coalition that spans both grassroots conservatives and traditional Republican constituencies. Incumbents draw money from groups seeking favorable regulatory or legislative outcomes. Garrity can contrast this with her own record as treasurer, where she has emphasized transparency, fiscal responsibility, and independence. The fundraising gap reflects two very different campaign philosophies. Shapiro is running a nationalized, big-money operation, while Garrity’s campaign is built on local support and fiscal discipline without large fundraising advantages. Garrity may be the underdog on paper, but the early numbers show she has the foundation, the message, and the homegrown backing to stay in this fight and maybe spring the kind of upset she pulled off when she won the treasurer’s race. READ MORE from Greg Maresca: The Ballot Is Not a Compliance Form Two Debts, One Nation A Bill Gone Rogue Image licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic.

At the end of May, the California Air Resources Board extended the “Cap-and-Invest” program through 2045, with changes that allegedly provide a “long-term signal for the market.” CARB maintains the path toward the state’s 2030 and 2045 “climate targets,” while supporting “affordability for Californians by managing costs and maintaining a clear long-term signal for clean energy investment in the state.” If that leaves people confused, they might start with the climate targets. The “California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006” fought “anthropogenic climate change” that had “led to higher overall worldwide temperatures, reduced snowpack in the higher elevations, greater fluctuations of temperature and precipitation, global sea level rise and more frequent and severe extreme weather events,” and so on. The Act gave no sense that these issues were a matter of debate.  In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, Steve Koonin shows that the catastrophic prophecies of “global warming” have gone unfulfilled. California policy shows no recognition of this reality. The state targets carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring gas.  The “Cap-and-Trade” program, now called “Cap and Invest,” places a “cap” on businesses CARB deems “polluters” and responsible for most of the state’s “greenhouse gas” emissions. Companies can purchase allowances or “trade” them with entities that have allegedly cut their emissions. Trouble is, CARB regulations do not cover foreign energy importers, and that creates a problem for the state’s oil and gas refiners. CARB’s proposed amendments would revise offset limits, establish an emissions containment reserve, and shift free allowance allocations from gas companies to electric utilities. CARB’s proposed amendments would revise offset limits, establish an emissions containment reserve, and shift free allowance allocations from gas companies to electric utilities. Jodie Muller of the Western States Petroleum Association called that “a move in the right direction,” but California refineries “need long-term certainty to make the investments that keep energy reliable and affordable for consumers.”  Two refineries recently ceased operations, and the state’s seven remaining refineries will be watching. As they face looming shutdowns, Californians might recall some realities about CARB, whose primary target is the people.  Prime mover Mary Nichols, a lawyer, not a scientist, has been touting $5-a-gallon gas since the 1990s. Nichols kept on staff Hien Tran, who claimed to have earned a PhD in statistics from UC Davis, when it was actually from a diploma mill in a New York City UPS office.  Tran authored “Methodology for Estimating Premature Deaths Associated with Long-term Exposure to Fine Airborne Particulate Matter in California.” This report was the basis for new regulations to severely restrict trucking and heavy machinery in California.  Legitimate scholars called the report flawed, but Nichols shrugged off the fakery as “a very annoying distraction.” Tran was suspended and demoted, but CARB kept him on staff. If anybody called for Nichols’s resignation, nothing emerges in the record. True to form, CARB’s Southern California headquarters is the Mary D. Nichols Campus.  When politicians impose misguided policy, the people can remove them from office at the ballot box. That does not apply to CARB, an appointed body of political cronies in the style of the Coastal Commission. (RELATED: California Candidates Ignore Unelected Agencies) The people might wonder if they need an unelected body with an annual budget of $1.2 billion when the state also deploys the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) with a budget of $5.5 billion. The Golden State prefers to build bureaucracies instead of refineries, a dynamic that affects other states.  Last year, in response to refinery shutdowns in California, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo announced “a coordinated initiative to strengthen Nevada’s fuel supply chain and reduce vulnerabilities to regional and national disruptions.” The governor’s state could be the key to a new plan.  The federal government owns more than 80 percent of Nevada. To reduce regional and national disruptions, President Trump should sell or lease federal land to oil and gas refiners. That could help provide the long-term energy certainty the people need.  California, meanwhile, remains at war with refiners. That will not change until reality replaces climate change superstition as the basis for public policy. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: California Candidates Ignore Unelected Agencies Agents Double-0-COVID Bullet Train or Bay Bridge? Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.