Matters of Policy & Politics

Only two months into 2022 and already a turbulent year for K-12 education: voters recalled three members of San Francisco’s Board of Education; parents and schools districts at odds over student masking; questions of funding priorities are moving ahead, and on and on. Austin Beutner, former Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, discusses lessons learned from his tenure as the head of the nation’s second-largest school system during the pandemic, plus his plans to go to the ballot this November with an initiative to rejuvenate California’s student arts programs. 

Each year, California lawmakers fail to implement single-payer healthcare and curb homelessness – 2022 being no exception to the rule. Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, join Hoover senior writer Jonathan Movroydis to discuss why this annual exercise in futility, the easing of mask mandates, the challenges in fast-tracking new housing construction, and adding more yellow school buses across the Golden State isn’t as black-and-white as it may seem.

This past weekend marked Ronald Reagan’s 111^th birthday. Peter Robinson, the Hoover Institution’s Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow and a Reagan White House speechwriter, discusses the late president’s relevancy in this day and age – in the American heartland, on the global stage, and within a Republican Party whose current infighting contradicts Reagan’s “11^th Commandment” of intraparty civility. 

On the back-burner in an otherwise ambitious first year of the Biden presidency: a dramatic overhaul of America’s immigration policies, a new pathway to citizenship, a revamp of family-based immigration, and additional diversity visas. Tim Kane, a Hoover Institution visiting fellow and author of the newly released The Immigrant Superpower: How Brains, Brawn and Bravery Made America Stronger, discusses America’s immigration conundrum past, present, and future and what policy changes might strengthen the nation.

A state assembly committee advances a single-payer healthcare scheme without debate, California’s public employees unions dodge a political bullet, Nancy Pelosi plans to stick around the House for at least two more years, and what does Sunday’s Rams-49ers clash say about the Golden State’s notorious north-south divide? Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, join Hoover senior writer Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest from the West Coast.

On the one-year anniversary of President Biden’s inauguration, his administration’s struggles seem to lend truth to the adage: campaigning is easy, governing is hard. Tom Bevan, Real Clear Politics publisher/co-founder and a Hoover Institution media fellow, assesses the good, the bad, and the ugly of the first 12 months of the Biden White House.

A big news week in Sacramento includes Governor Newsom unveiling a record $286 billion budget proposal and a Democratic lawmaker offering a massive tax increase to cover the cost of a statewide single-player healthcare system. Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, join Hoover senior writer Jonathan Movroydis to discuss what Newsom’s spending blueprint says about California’s priorities and what effects a single-payer system would have on California’s economy and outbound migration.

An unusually long Supreme Court hearing (three hours in all) regarding two Biden Administration vaccine mandates raises thorny questions regarding federalism, states’ rights, and balance of power between the three branches of the federal government. John Yoo, a Hoover Institution fellow and UC-Berkeley School of Law professor, explains why conservative justices may strike down at least one mandate and the he previews two upcoming landmark cases involving Harvard’s admission practices and New York’s gun restrictions.

What issues resonate with today’s Republicans? How has the party morphed since the rise of Ronald Reagan? What is Donald Trump’s influence upon next year’s GOP primaries and beyond? David Brady and Douglas Rivers, Hoover Institution senior fellows and Stanford University political scientists, and co-authors (along with Hoover senior fellow Morris Fiorina) of a survey of self-identifying Republicans, discuss their findings and reflect on what transpired politically in 2021.

A pandemic, a recall election, a year-end crime wave and the question of how to invest a revenue windfall next year. Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, join Hoover senior writer Jonathan Movroydis to discuss what transpired in the Golden State in 2021, and what 2022 may offer in the way of policy and political developments.