WASHINGTON—Two California Democrats could run for president in 2028: Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Republican operatives must be thinking: Bring it on. Under Newsom, California’s image has become less golden than it used to be. The high cost of living has taken a toll. The IRS announced last month that California is the state experiencing the highest net loss of taxpayers, with one taxpayer leaving every 1 minute and 44 seconds. Nearly 39,000 Californians moved to Nevada last year. Hope that the Silver State newbies don’t bring their progressive politics with them. And good luck with that. The entertainment industry has been decamping from Hollywood for some time, but the decline of greater Los Angeles as an industry town accelerated after the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes of 2023. On-location production in the area fell more than 22% from January through March 2025, according to FilmLA, which tracks filming in Southern California. California’s loss could be good for Nevada. Actor Mark Wahlberg and others have been working to turn the Las Vegas area into a more affordable home for the industry, a Hollywood 2.0. The Nevada Legislature, however, has rejected rich transferable tax credits as a carrot to create film studios in southern Nevada. Much of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech has decamped to the Lone Star State because of its lower taxes and less restrictive regulations. In 2021, Elon Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. In 2024, Musk moved the headquarters for X (formerly Twitter) from San Francisco, and his personal home and other operations in Silicon Valley, to Texas. I’ll never forget interviewing former eBay CEO Meg Whitman when she was running for California governor in 2010. I worked for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. Whitman told me how eBay executives had begun to talk about where they would rebuild if eBay had to start all over again. Whitman’s answer was not California. “Probably Texas,” she offered. Energy companies fled. Chevron left San Ramon, California, for Houston. California doesn’t look like a can-do state anymore. Consider the Southland’s inability to prevent fires from scorching Pacific Palisades and Altadena, as city, county and state governments seemed more interested in imposing their politics on the public than providing essential services and infrastructure. With all that failure, hypocrisy doesn’t look so bad. Republican rivals may not even bring up Governor Handsome’s infamous COVID-19 dinner with fellow big shots at the tony French Laundry in Napa, even as his team was lecturing Californians that they should not to have Thanksgiving dinners with members of more than three households. So run, Gavin, run. As for Harris, well, she will have to answer for her erstwhile boss, former President Joe Biden, who opened the border to millions of unvetted immigrants without any inkling of the likely consequences. Harris famously made a verbal blunder in October 2024, when the ladies of “The View” asked what she might have done differently than Biden and she answered, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” California Democrat political consultant Darry Sragow wonders if, after losing the world’s biggest prize, Harris might turn out “to be a very different candidate than she’s been” if she does run for the White House again. Sragow warns against assuming Harris did not learn from 2024’s missteps. As for Newsom, Sragow offered that voters have been “waiting for someone to go toe to toe with Donald Trump,” and the slick-haired Democrat could be the man. Newsom has served as anti-Trumpers’ favorite troll. Sragow notes that while the rest of America may see California as cray-cray (not his words), events can change everything. Besides, Californians enjoy a balmy climate that New Yorkers and Washingtonians envy. The economic climate, I would counter, is another issue. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Two Californians Are Eyeing a White House Run in 2028. Republicans Rejoice appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As of Friday, President Donald Trump is considering signing an executive order which would reclassify cannabis (marijuana) from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA) to Schedule III. That unprecedented action would allow physicians to prescribe cannabis to treat patients’ medical ailments. The president’s decision to reschedule marijuana would be a mistake on multiple levels, as I have explained previously.   Executive Orders Cannot Take the Place of Agency Notice and Comment Rulemaking Procedures Most presidents make policy in the White House and leave the actual lawmaking to the relevant administrative agencies. Here, those agencies would be the U.S. Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration. By contrast, Trump prefers to issue executive orders to combine policy and law into one ukase. That is a mistake. Congress did not create the administrative process because Congress has tried to take decision-making authority away from the president. Instead, agencies were created to complete a notice and comment period because the public needs to know what expert federal agencies, like the FDA, think about an issue involving a drug like cannabis. The agencies use the APA “notice and comment” period to solicit opposing information, evidence, and arguments.  By issuing an executive order, the notice and comment period becomes a farce because the outcome is fixed from the outset. It is a fait accompli. Unless the agency officials want to be fired, they must reach the conclusion that the president ordered them to find. Moreover, the president can force agencies to remain silent about their views on an issue even after the APA process is completed.  If they don’t want to be dismissed, agency officials asked  “Is the cannabis plant ‘safe’?” can say no more than that “The President has decided the issue, and I must obey his order.” As a result, the public aren’t informed about the pros and cons. The Cannabis Plant is Not a “Safe” Drug On the merits, the cannabis plant is not a “safe” drug. More importantly, the FDA has never found botanical cannabis to be safe, and the agency could not make that finding today. Cannabis is currently Schedule I, the category for drugs lacking a legitimate medical use. For 87 years, the nation has entrusted the FDA with the responsibility to decide what is a “drug” and what drugs are “safe.” Why is botanical cannabis unsafe? First, today’s cannabis sold is far more powerful than the version smoked at Woodstock. Back in the 60s and 70s, the THC content was 3-6%. Now, some concentrated products approach a 100% THC content, meaning that comparing the two is the same as comparing near beer to grain alcohol. That difference matters. Most recent studies have found significant risks in use of today’s ganja. Second, growing evidence links cannabis use to adverse physical problems such as oral, head, and neck cancers; cardiovascular disorders; pulmonary disease; acute, short-term hallucinations; earlier onset of psychosis; Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome; harm to the adult executive functioning of unborn or nursing children; reduced IQ; childhood poisonings. Atop all these side-effects are also adverse social outcomes such as amotivational syndrome; increased school absenteeism; and a reduced likelihood of graduating high school, enrolling in a university, or completing higher degree requirements. Heavy cannabis users and people who begin its use as minors and continue into adulthood are particularly susceptible. Third, the cannabis plant can contain a host of dangerous, unhealthy, or disgusting contaminants, such as a microbials (e.g., E. coli, fungi, mold), toxins (e.g., aflatoxins), hazardous chemical solvents remaining from the extraction process (e.g., butane, hexane, propane), pesticides (e.g., organophosphates), heavy metals (e.g., arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury), and other harmful (e.g., formaldehyde) or distasteful (e.g., insects) substances. Fourth, the claim that no one has died from smoking cannabis is a canard. Rescheduling cannabis as Schedule III will lead to increased use, and some users will drive under its influence, crash their vehicles, or harm and kill other drivers. States with medical or recreational cannabis programs have already seen that occur. The FDA has found that some cannabis plant ingredients have legitimate medical uses, such as synthetic THC analogues dronabinol (Marinol) and nabilone (Cesamet) for treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and emesis. However, this is only the case when those ingredients are properly manufactured by a reputable pharmaceutical company—not by members of Chinese transnational criminal organizations, Dwight “The General” Manfredi, or hippies left over from the 1960s. The FDA could not find that the plant itself is “safe.” The Cannabis Plant is Not an ‘Effective’ Drug The most common justification is that cannabis has a calming effect, and therefore a legitimate alternative to opioids for pain. But cannabis is too weak to substitute for opioids as a treatment for severe pain—in fact, cannabis use hinders cessation of opioid use by anyone trying to kick an opioid dependency—and scientific proof is lacking that THC is a valid treatment for lower levels of pain. “[E]very intoxicant would pass that sort of test because you don’t experience pain as acutely when you are high. If weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser,” as Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explained. The Cannabis Plant is Not a ‘Uniformly Made’ Drug To be FDA approved, a drug must contain precise and uniform ingredients, formulations and potency in every batch. Cannabis plants cannot qualify because of differences in their genetics, region, cultivation conditions, growing environment, growth conditions, harvesting stage, and storage time. Cannabis and its products are sold as the botanical flower (and its components), hash, hash oil, ointments, and edibles, whether solid (e.g., brownies or “Gummy Bear” look-alikes) or liquid (e.g., soft drinks or sauces). Those forms vary in their composition and potency. A physician in Maine would have no assurance that the cannabis grown (or processed) in that state is the same as what is grown (or processed) in the other 49. The Chinese Will Laugh at Us if We Reschedule Cannabis The primary beneficiaries of any rescheduling decision will be the Chinese transnational criminal organizations who control 75% of the illegal cannabis industry—which means that the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China will also benefit. CCP and PRC’s profits from selling black market cannabis will help underwrite their efforts to become the leading military and economic power in the 21st century. If the president reschedules cannabis, the next sound that you hear from Beijing will be laughter. The post Why Rescheduling Cannabis Is a Very Bad Idea appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Left-wing Canadian lawmakers are working to introduce a new bill that would end existing protections for people of faith against prosecution under national “hate speech” laws. Canada’s Criminal Code, which bans what the government deems “hatred against any identifiable group,” contains a so-called religious exemption that protects Canadians who “in good faith” cite religious texts or beliefs. But the left-wing Liberal and Bloc Québécois parties are currently negotiating new legislation, Bill C-9, with an amendment that would remove this exemption. The bill’s sponsors say it is necessary to combat hate crimes, but conservatives warn that it could be used to suppress Canadians’ most basic civil rights. “Bill C-9 was already dangerous as far as freedom of expression and civil liberties are concerned, but if the proposed amendment is adopted, it will amount to an all-out assault on religious freedom as well,” Conservative Member of Parliament Andrew Lawton told The Daily Signal. “The state will be able to jail people who express religious beliefs or quote religious texts the government finds offensive for up to two years.” Canada’s bill mirrors new laws in the EU and Britain criminalizing what governments deem to be “hate speech,” which has been shown to include insulting government officials in Germany or silent prayer near an abortion clinic in the U.K. Bill C-9 broadens the definition of “hate speech” under the Criminal Code, prohibits interfering with access to places of worship, bans “hate symbols,” and removes the requirement that Canada’s attorney general approve “the prosecution of hate propaganda” crimes, making it easier to charge Canadians for expressing offensive thoughts. Legal analysts say that if Bill C-9 passes, it could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and freedom of faith in America’s northern neighbor. “Canada already fails to protect freedom of speech, and now some Canadians are proposing to give up on the freedom to exercise one’s religion,” Philip Sechler, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal civil rights organization, told The Daily Signal. “Canada’s descent into government censorship underscores why it’s crucial that the United States fully protect free speech.” In October, Conservative Member of Parliament Leslyn Lewis stated in Canada’s House of Commons that the bill “omits the protection of Christians, despite the fact that more than 100 churches have been burned and vandalized in Canada since 2021.” By removing the attorney general’s required consent to hate crimes prosecution, it would “risk hate speech being weaponized as a political tool by any party in power by letting the government minister decide who gets charged,” Lewis said. And it would “water down the definition of ‘hatred’ to something so vague and subjective that it would risk encroaching on the very right contained in [Canada’s] Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” The bill faced some obstacles getting through parliament. The Liberal Party, although the largest in parliament, lacks a majority and needs the support of the Bloc Québécois to pass the bill. As a concession to the Bloc an agreement was reportedly reached to add an additional provision ending the religious exemption for “hate speech” crimes. There were reports last week that Canada’s Justice Minister Sean Fraser, who brokered the deal with the Bloc Québécois, failed to get buy-in from the Prime Minister’s Office, which could delay the bill further.  Although the bill’s sponsors claim that it protects churches, critics remain skeptical. “A Liberal cabinet minister is on record as saying he believes certain verses of the Bible and Torah are ‘hateful’ and should warrant prosecution,” Lawton said. “The government has no right to legislate on how people of faith practice their religion.” Many civil rights groups and church leaders are likewise criticizing the bill. “As drafted, Bill C-9 risks criminalizing some forms of protected speech and peaceful protest—two cornerstones of a free and democratic society,” Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said in an issued statement. New definitions of “hate crimes” in the bill are “far broader than existing prohibitions and could criminalize peaceful protests simply because they are seen as disruptive,” McNicoll said. “The penalty of up to ten years in prison is very severe and could push activists into silence.”  On Dec. 4, the Council of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops stated in a letter to Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney that the religious exemption “has served for many years as an essential safeguard to ensure that Canadians are not criminally prosecuted for their sincere, truth-seeking expression of beliefs.” The council asked for Carney’s assurance that “good-faith religious expression, teaching, and preaching will not be subject to criminal prosecution under the hate-propaganda provisions.” The Anglican Church of Canada told The Daily Signal in an official statement that it was “monitoring the discussions currently taking place regarding Bill C-9, and … participating in conversations with church partners about its implications and a potential collective response.” In what appears to be an increasingly restrictive trend, Canada launched gun confiscations this year and crushed trucker protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2022. In response to thousands of protesters occupying downtown Ottawa, the government forced banks to freeze participants’ bank accounts and credit cards, threatened online donors with similar treatment, and prosecuted organizers for causing “mischief.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post New ‘Hate Speech’ Bill Targets Canadians’ Freedom of Speech and Religion appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Speculation swirls over New York City’s incoming socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and whether he will be “rational” or a radical once he’s in office. While that matter is yet to be settled, a review of Mamdani’s transition team indicates that, at the moment, it may be best to bet on radical or maybe just wildly irresponsible and incompetent. On Tuesday, Fox New Digital reported that Mamdani had “appointed a convicted armed robber” to advise him on the criminal justice system. Mysonne Linen had been in prison for seven years after he committed a string of violent robberies in the 1990s. Mamdani defended the appointment. “We put together a team of more than 400 New Yorkers who are on 17 different committees, and these are New Yorkers who bring with them both a fluency of the policies and politics of the city, the places that they’ve succeeded, the places that they’ve failed, and we will take all of their experiences and their analysis into account as we build a city for each and every person,” he said to Fox News. It should be no surprise then that that team of 400 is filled with mostly a combination of staffers from the disastrous administration of former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, another far-left figure, and a whole lot of extreme folks. It’s worth pointing out the backgrounds of just a few of the people on Mamdani’s list. Alex Vitale Despite the fact that Mamdani called for defunding the NYPD in 2020, saying on X that they are “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety,” he changed his tune on the campaign trail. Mamdani insisted that he no longer wanted to defund the police, quite convenient given the idea’s now radioactive poll numbers, but instead wanted to fund more social workers who would respond to 911 calls. Keeping the competent NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch at her post is a good thing as long as that lasts, but Mamdani was likely showing his true colors with the appointment of Alex Vitale to his Committee on Public Safety. Vitale literally wrote the book on police abolition. He wrote “The End of Policing” in 2017. Here’s a snippet of what it’s about, from Fox News: “The book, which opens by explaining that police don’t exist to help citizens, argues for an end to traditional policing for certain criminal activity, including narcotics use, prostitution, patrolling borders and ‘misbehaving adolescents.’ The book also argues that police shouldn’t combat street gangs.” In addition, Vitale argued that policing the border is racist. In fact, he wrote that basically all policing is racist in America. “Racism in policing is structural, not simply a product of bad attitudes,” the book notes. “Training officers to recognize implicit bias without changing what they are tasked with enforcing is like teaching a soldier to be sensitive while sending him to occupy a foreign country.” Tamika Mallory Remember the “Women’s March” of pink hat-wearing women that was sort of like the “No Kings” protests of President Donald Trump’s first term? I’ll forgive you if you’ve forgotten. The movement collapsed and was seemingly memory holed by the legacy media after it was revealed that several founding members of the protest group had been accused of antisemitism. Well, one of the accused is back and on Mamdani’s transition team: Tamika Mallory. Mamdani also appointed Mallory to the Committee on Public Safety, despite or perhaps because she had called for defunding and perhaps, on that beautiful day when human nature wholly changes, outright abolishing the police. Mallory has been a longtime admirer of the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, and once called him the “GOAT,” or “greatest of all time.’” She did somewhat qualify her admiration for Farrakhan, however, saying in a 2019 interview with “The View,” “I didn’t call him the greatest of all time because of his rhetoric. I called him the greatest of all time because of what he’s done in black communities.” Kassandra Frederique It’s hard to stop pointing out members of the now oxymoronic “Committee on Public Safety,” but it really is stuffed with some fringy folks. Kassandra Frederique is the head of the Drug Policy Alliance and is now a member of this esteemed body. Like that old, and not quite accurate joke about the Opium War, her organization isn’t for curtailing drug use, it’s fighting on the side of the drugs. Frederique and her organization are against “prohibition” of basically any drug, no matter how destructive. When asked in an interview how she felt when she heard of celebrities dying of drug overdoses she said, “As someone who is an abolitionist and also works to be a drug policy reformer, every day I have to fight the prohibitionists inside of me.” She continued: “When I heard that Whitney Houston passed, when I heard that Prince passed, you know, yesterday when I heard Michael K. Williams passed, it was a blow. And I go through my own existential crisis about like what am I doing? Is this, am I on the right side? I always come back to the point that the work that I do, the things that I believe in are right.” ? Mamdani "Community Safety" Pick Says Some Revolutionaries “Need To Be High” To “Take Over The State”Meet Kassandra Frederique, head of the Drug Policy Alliance and now a member of Zohran Mamdani’s Committee on Community Safety.In this interview about overdose deaths like… pic.twitter.com/UubI49FZkL— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) November 26, 2025 I hate to keep citing memes here, but she seems to be saying, “Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong.” Her organization was reportedly “integral” to the decriminalization of hard drugs in Oregon in 2020, a policy so immediately catastrophic that even Democrats in the state backed repealing the law. Those who don’t learn from history may be doomed to repeat it, but it appears that some who made those mistakes in history are also liable to learn nothing and repeat them. Good luck, New York. Demetre Daskalakis Dr. Demetre Daskalakis already drove one brief news cycle as of late when he resigned from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late August due to conflicts over vaccinations with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He was President Joe Biden’s monkeypox czar. Here’s how The Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine recently described Daskalakis: “New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s public health brain trust includes an accused Satanist who advised former president Joe Biden on the 2022-2023 monkeypox outbreak, the architect of the Empire State’s race-based COVID-19 policies, and a former city official who denied the NYPD’s request for masks during the pandemic.” Daskalakis essentially refused to recommend a cessation of the behavior that would allow the transition of monkeypox that in most cases happened between gay men. He said in 2023 that the administration would make, “sure [they] got the word out in a way that supports people’s joy, as opposed to calling them ‘risky.’” Biden monkeypox advisor Demetre Daskalakis says the Biden administration aims to "support peoples' joy as opposed to calling them 'risky'":"One person's idea of risk is another person's idea of a great festival or Friday night." pic.twitter.com/nKsRQNmOwY— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 18, 2023 I’d post more about Daskalakis here, but this is a family-friendly website. Rabbi Abby Stein Mamdani’s transition team features a far-Left, anti-Israel transgender rabbi, who has been placed the Committee on Public Health. Abby Stein was a prominent supporter of Mamdani’s campaign. He appeared in an ad with female rabbis making the case that Mamdani would help New York. WATCH:The Free Beacon tracked down the “rabbis” from Zohran Mamdani’s new “Jews for Zohran” ad campaign. You won’t believe it, but one of them, “Rabbi” Abby Stein, is a transgender rabbi who was booted from a Biden White House shindig for disrupting the event with demands to… pic.twitter.com/TLV0h0KvMA— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) October 28, 2025 “We know Zohran will fight to make our city affordable and safe for our families,” Stein said in the ad. “As Jews, as rabbis, as New Yorkers, we believe that all people deserve to thrive. Zohran agrees.” Stein has been controversial even among Democrats. He said that he had been kicked out of the White House in 2024 after hectoring first lady Jill Biden about creating a ceasefire in Gaza. The post Meet 5 Radicals (Among Many More) in Mamdani’s Transition Team appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said she expects to see success from the Labor Department taking on the responsibilities of the Education Department. The Department of Education and the Labor Department integrated the federal government’s education and workforce portfolio. The change positioned the Labor Department as the headquarters for all federal workforce programs and executed the two agencies’ joint workforce development agreement. The Education Department also transferred the office of elementary and secondary education, as well as the postsecondary education office, to the Labor Department. “We’re just deploying those dollars because we see what the market demands are,” Chavez-DeRemer told The Daily Signal. “This is going to be successful because I think the states are gonna appreciate that they have the access to those dollars closest to the ground.” “I will look to Congress to say here are the metrics, here’s what’s been proven, and if you wanna codify that … ” she said, “because I think the president’s been clear we’re failing our education system through the federal Department of Education, and we wanna get that to the state education departments in order to deploy those dollars to that future workforce.” Chavez-DeRemer said she is able to use her connections from her time in Congress in her position at Labor. “I worked really hard while I served my time in Congress,” she said. “I was on the Education and Workforce Committee, Transportation and Infrastructure, Ag Committee. That’s why all of this matters. So, certainly, I built those relationships. Now, as the secretary of labor, it’s my job to give them technical assistance when they’re drafting bills and legislation.” She said it’s helpful that she maintains relationships with her former colleagues in Congress. “It’s up to them to do the legislative side of that, but the relationship building doesn’t stop,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I think that that really comes from the leadership of this president, where he says, ‘Listen, work with your congressman. Understand that work with your respective states.’ And it’s helpful that I was there before in order to build those relationships.” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon previously told The Daily Signal she is talking to “dozens” of Congress members about codifying her plan to move certain Education Department functions to other agencies. Chavez-DeRemer is working with McMahon by taking on some Department of Education employees and grant dollars, she said. “We’re not forgetting about the perspective workforce and the education we’re addressing, that education is our future workforce,” the labor secretary said. “It’s a great coalition between Department of Education and the Department of Labor,” she said. “And I don’t think it should be a surprise to anybody that recognizing that they are our future workforce, and they deserve those dollars in their hands.” The post Exclusive: How Labor Secretary Is Helping Linda McMahon Dismantle the Department of Education appeared first on The Daily Signal.