News Roundup & Midweek Memery

The left keeps getting Trumped. . .

Let’s update and extend a couple stories.

• My item yesterday suggesting that the move by California Democrats to roll back the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) may represent a major turning point against Environmentalism, Inc. appears to have some legs. One sign is that it turned into a two-day story for major media, with the Wall Street Journal reporting today with a story offering additional details of just how perverse CEQA has been over the last several decades:

“This is major, major reform,” said Sean Burton, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles-based multifamily developer Cityview. “We are thrilled.”

In 2020, lawsuits using this environmental law tried to block about 48,000 approved housing units statewide. That was nearly half of the state’s total housing production for that year, according to a study by a California land-use attorney, Jennifer Hernandez. . .

Burton is one of many developers who have been paring back projects in California over the past few years. Instead, he said, he is expanding in Dallas and Denver, where lighter regulation makes it easier to secure financing. Some of his peers gave up on building new housing in California altogether. “A lot of investors have redlined California,” he said, referring to developers who crossed it off their lists of possibilities.

I thought liberals were against red-lining? Heh.

But this sentence in the WSJ story is the one to highlight:

California, by some estimates, has a housing shortage of about 3.5 million homes.

That number is part of what Thomas Sowell calls “the housing cost of liberalism.”

It is important to keep in mind, however, that California did not repeal CEQA in total; it merely exempted certain kinds of residential and commercial projects from CEQA’s reach in urban and close-in suburban areas. “Sensitive habitat” was excluded, and as such CEQA will still apply fully. Here’s the relevant portion of the statute laying out domains where CEQA will still be in full force:

Note especially Section (j), which might include, for example, the so-called “Los Angeles River,” which is really a drainage channel that sometimes comes close to flood stage in big winter storms. Thus we can expect environmental groups to attempt to erode the CEQA reforms through lawsuits aimed at expanding what qualifies as “sensitive habitat” or other classifications under the revised statute. Look for tendentious claims for how an infill project near downtown will somehow threaten endangered condors 250 miles away, or overfill the Los Angeles River. We’ll just have to see how many leftist judges give legs to these kind of claims.

• One of the things I like most about the second Trump Administration is how it is using the favorite tools of the left, build up steadily over the last 50 years (especially civil rights laws) against the left. And thus we can savor the capitulation yesterday of the University of Pennsylvania for agreeing to strip “Lia” Thomas of his swimming awards won after Thomas switched teams (in both senses of the phrase) to dominate women’s swimming. The Trump Administration invoked Title IX and was going to withhold $175 million in federal funds from Penn if they didn’t agree to reverse course. Democrat administrations have long used the suspension of federal funds under Title IX to compel colleges to change their practices, but usually liberal colleges were only too happy to comply. Now they’re getting a taste of their own medicine.

The agreement also requires Penn to issue an apology to all of the women athletes who were deprived of medals, privacy in their gym dressing rooms, etc. I think they’re owed more than an apology. Penn should have to pay some serious monetary damages. When the Thomas controversy came up in 2021, Penn’s administration intimidated women athletes into silence, threatening to revoke their athletic scholarships and perhaps even their graduation if they made any public complaints about Thomas. Perhaps women affected by these craven diktats can now bring private civil rights lawsuits against Penn for their deprivation of basic civil rights.

But the biggest question being left out of all the news stories about the Penn settlement is this: When is Penn going to end its persecution of Amy Wax, and apologize to her as well?

• Finally, some memes to help you get over the hump of Humpday:

Wut?

Said no one ever. . .