Gavin Newsom hasn’t exactly hidden his presidential ambitions over the past half decade, but only now has the California governor finally conceded that his state has become a political punchline rather than a model, demonstrating the consequences of progressive governance. In a de facto admission of policy failure, Newsom signed two rare bipartisan bills dramatically rolling back much of the state’s 50-year-old California Environmental Quality Act, allowing new housing and property developments to move forward without facing the full force of the environmental leviathan’s regulatory rage.
“To the [‘Not In My Backyard’] movement that’s now being replaced by the [‘Yes In My Backyard’] movement, go YIMBYs,” Newsom said when announcing the CEQA rollback. “Thank you for your abundant mindset — that’s a plug for Ezra Klein.”
