Even before the Los Angeles wildfires broke out, 6 in 10 Californians said the state was heading in the wrong direction. Add in the blazes that have since exposed Gavin Newsom's incompetent governing, and it's clear that Newsom's flacks have their work cut out for them.
We can almost sympathize, then, with the Newsom administration’s pathetic response to a deeply sourced report from our Andrew Kerr and Susannah Luthi that detailed Newsom's decision to disband a volunteer firefighting unit known as Team Blaze.
The move left the California National Guard without a complete firefighting force in L.A. for 10 days. We're not the only outlet on the story. And yet Newsom's press team responded not by disputing the facts but by calling Kerr—an award-winning reporter—a "pizzagate peddler." They also called the firefighting unit "inadequately trained."
"That's weird," our editors write, "because the Newsom administration tapped the group to help fight the 2021 Dixie Fire, the largest single-source wildfire in California state history, according to the transcript of a September 2021 National Guard press briefing, and the volunteer unit, which was funded by generous donors, met federal standards for combating wildfires set by a little-known federal agency known as the National Wildfire Coordinating Group."
Far from being "inadequately trained," it wasn’t long ago when the Newsom administration praised Team Blaze as an integral part of California’s ability to respond to the type of out-of-control wildfires that destroyed the Palisades earlier in January.
Back then, members of the Newsom administration praised Team Blaze as a "strike team" that "builds upon the state’s response efforts during times of need." Former Newsom spokesman Brian Ferguson hailed the unit as a "creative way to increase our firefighting capacity & ability to protect communities." Were they lying then or are they lying now?
Read the report here and decide for yourself. Read the full editorial here.
Kamala Harris may have stepped down as vice president just a week ago, but her husband (and Free Beacon Man of the Year) Doug Emhoff has already stepped up to bring home the bacon.
Emhoff, our Andrew Stiles reports, has joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, the white-shoe law firm best known for its disgraced former co-chairman, Gordon Caplan, who served a month in prison for his participation in the notorious Varsity Blues scandal. (He paid $75,000 to fraudulently boost his daughter's ACT score.) Now Big Doug can rake in as much cash as possible before he has to step down over "conflict of interest" concerns when California makes Kamala governor in 2026.
His return to Big Law isn't without controversy.
Emhoff's tenure at the Los Angeles office of Venable LLP, you may recall, was plagued by sexual misconduct allegations. He hired a "trophy secretary" named Katya who was "widely considered unqualified." To operate at peak form at his new firm, he'll need another Katya—and Stiles reviewed Emhoff’s job posting for a new personal assistant. Here are some of the responsibilities and qualifications required:
- Laugh in a soothing and reassuring manner at the boss's jokes. No cackling.
- Must be willing to travel and work from anywhere, including but not limited to hotel swimming pools, in-home massage parlors, and trampoline parks.
- Because the vast majority of our senior employees are male, the firm's mission to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion would be greatly enhanced if you happen to be female.
- Because most of our senior employees are married, the firm's mission to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion would be greatly enhanced if you happen to be single.
- Because the vast majority of our senior employees are over the age of 60, the firm's mission to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion would be greatly enhanced if you happen to be between the ages of 22 and 27.
Check out the full listing here.
When the Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Samidoun, it described the anti-Semitic organization as a "sham charity" that exists solely to serve "as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization." On Sunday, the Washington Post cited Samidoun and described the group as an "activist network supporting Palestinian prisoners." Sure!
The Post's piece highlighted a number of "Palestinian prisoners" freed as part of the Israel-Hamas hostage deal. It linked to a Samidoun blog post titled, "90 Palestinian prisoners liberated by the Resistance on the first day of the Flood of the Free," which included photos from Gaza of Hamas flags and referred to "the jails of the Zionist occupation regime." It dubbed the PFLP, which participated in the Oct. 7 terror attacks, "a small leftist armed group," and described Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terror organization that is holding a female civilian Israeli hostage, as a "militant group."
"The piece," writes the Free Beacon's Lexi Boccuzzi, "reflects the extreme anti-Israel bias seen at the Post in the wake of Oct. 7. As of last summer, at least six members of the Post's foreign desk previously wrote for Al Jazeera, the Doha-based news outlet bankrolled in part by Qatar's Hamas-friendly government, the Washington Free Beacon reported." Jeff Bezos has his work cut out for him.
Away from the Beacon:
- Scott Bessent supplanted Pete Buttigieg as the highest-ranking gay official in American history when he was confirmed as Treasury secretary on Monday evening. Congrats!
- Dartmouth, like many elite schools, made standardized testing optional in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in an attempt to help disadvantaged students. Without test scores, they were less likely to gain admission according to a new study.
- Trump already won the tariff war with Colombia, but that didn't stop Black Rifle Coffee from putting AOC in her place. Responding to her claim that Trump's teased tariffs would "make every American pay even more for coffee," the company responded: "We source our beans from all over the world. The price of coffee will not increase. AOC needs to keep quiet on matters she knows nothing about." Preach.