Sabra Brucker works as an executive assistant. Her husband, Dagan, is a fifth-generation farmer in Cropsey, Illinois, about 100 miles south of Chicago.

After many years of infertility and miscarriages, they finally became the parents of four young children: Addison, born in 2017; Andi, born in 2019; and twins Aiden and Arie, born prematurely in March 2021.

The Brucker family had never previously endured a run-in with child protective services. A series of medical complications involving the younger twin, Aiden, suddenly changed that. After the parents sought care for their sick child, they were falsely accused of breaking Aiden's ribs and subjected to months of humiliating inequity. And when that was over, the authorities refused to disclose the identity of the actual perpetrator.

"I never thought that this was even humanly possible," says Sabra. "To be honest, I
was probably naive."

When Aiden was 5 months old, the Bruckers discovered he had genetic intestinal malrotation—the same condition that had required emergency surgery to save his older sister Addison's life back when she too was 5 months old.

On August 9, 2021, the Bruckers took Aiden to the OSF Children's Hospital Emergency Room in Peoria, Illinois. He was experiencing intense stomach pain and vomiting, just as his older sister had. Genetic intestinal malrotation can be a life-threatening condition, and it requires immediate, emergency intervention.

Aiden's condition, though serious, was not as immediately life-threatening as Addison's had been. He was given ultrasounds and X-rays for his upper GI track, abdomen, and chest. His intestinal reversal was visualized, but no skeletal concerns were noted. Nevertheless, he was held in the hospital for observation, and subjected to daily, repeated abdominal ultrasounds and chest and abdominal X-rays.

On the fourth day of his stay at the hospital, seven rib fractures became visible on the X-rays. These were all new, non-calcified fractures that had not appeared on earlier X-rays. Rib fractures are viewed by medical profession as evidence of possible abuse.

The Bruckers immediately suspected that the fractures had occurred during the hospital stay itself, possibly due to the extensive handling and exams Aiden had endured. The lack of any signs of these injuries at admission certainly suggested that they had appeared during Aiden's inpatient care. And yet as soon as the fractures were detected, a child abuse hotline call was placed to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) naming the Bruckers as suspected abusers.

Sabra was in a meeting with her boss when she received the news.

"I immediately called my husband—he was at the hospital with Aiden—and I said, 'What is going on?'" Sabra recalls. "I just remember the sheer confusion and fear in his
voice."

Sabra and Dagan were not quick to point fingers, but they did wonder if the hospital was aware of its own potential liability when it accused them of causing the fractures.

Following the call to the child abuse hotline, a state-contracted child abuse pediatrician, Channing Petrak, assumed the role of directing Aiden's medical testing as a suspected child abuse victim. Petrak oversees child abuse cases under a subcontract her office holds with the DCFS for central Illinois. While not a hospital employee, she is viewed as the head of the hospital's child abuse team. In that capacity, she was empowered to decide which tests Aiden needed in order to confirm or rule out abuse.

She was also immediately enlisted to discuss the case with DCFS and the police and to determine whether child abuse had occurred. If she believed it had, her role would include testifying against the parents in the event the case went to court.

Petrak was responsible for testing not just Aiden but the other Brucker children as well. While parents have the right to refuse medical procedures that are not required by a court order or emergency, the fear of CPS retribution looms large.

On multiple occasions, Sabra requested a meeting with Petrak and the OSF team to ensure the timeline of the injuries was clear. She felt it necessary that everyone understand the fractures had not been present on Aiden's body upon admission, as shown by multiple X-ray examinations. Clarifying this, she thought, would allow her and Dagan to work alongside the hospital to identify their underlying cause.

Sabra even wrote on the whiteboard the team used for notes: "Can we clarify Xray finds with DCFS?" and snapped a photo of it.

"I wanted a picture with a time stamp because no one would speak to me," she says.

Sabra's requests were ignored.

Meanwhile, Petrak pushed the family to authorize an MRI, which would require Aiden to fast for eight hours and then undergo general anesthesia and be intubated. As there was no suspicion of other injuries that would have made an MRI useful, the Bruckers tried to object.

In response, the hospital threatened the family with a court order that would require Aiden to remain in the hospital's care pending a judicial order for the MRI. Since complying with the MRI demand seemed to be the only way to bring their son home quickly, Sabra comforted Aiden through the fast, and handed him over to the hospital's staff—who sedated and intubated him, and proceeded with the MRI.

The other Brucker children—ages four, two and now six months—were also subjected to observation at their home. These included visual exams of their genitals.

The state even demanded that the 4-year-old daughter, Addison, submit to a forensic interrogator. This investigator reported that Addison was very "sweet" and "polite," and no concerns were noted from her 2-hour interview.

Meanwhile, DCFS determined that the Bruckers could not take Aiden home by themselves upon his discharge. Instead, the agency demanded the family find someone else to take care of their four children. That person could do so at the Bruckers' home, and Sabra and Dagan could live there—but they would not be allowed to be alone with their children at any time. If they not did find a caregiver to watch the kids 24/7, the children would be taken into foster care and placed with strangers.

Sabra's parents, Don and Shari Boyd, lived 273 miles away. Thankfully, Shari was on hand to help out, even though she was in the middle of breast cancer treatment.

Diane Redleaf, a defense attorney who co-chairs the National Coalition to End Hidden Foster Care, says that the Bruckers' experience is commonplace. Efforts are underway to secure reforms that would allow families like the Bruckers to have some recourse when they are threatened with having their kids taken away.

This arrangement for the children was supposed to last for just two to five days, but DCFS kept extending it. The caseworker even reminded grandma Shari that she couldn't use the bathroom without taking the kids in with her. Sabra and Dagan's nighttime feedings of their baby twins also had to be supervised by Shari.

The Bruckers wanted to object, but they felt they had no choice.

This led to odd situations, such as Dagan not being able to have his kids take turns riding the combine with him—their favorite fall activity. The combine had only two seats, so if one of the children rode along, Shari and the other three children would have to somehow ride along too, or the government's plan would be violated.

As the weeks dragged on, the Bruckers worked to demonstrate that the abuse allegations against them were false. A University of Chicago pediatric orthopedic specialist, Christopher Sullivan, saw Aiden in his office and reviewed his radiology imaging and lab testing, formally concluding that the timing of the fractures' first appearance made it impossible for them to have occurred prior to the hospital admission.

Sullivan also noticed that Aiden had very low Vitamin D and high parathyroid hormone levels, which made his bones extremely fragile. He concluded that the likeliest explanation for the fractures was routine handling at the hospital.

Despite this report—and many letters from the Bruckers' pediatrician, family members, friends, and teachers—DCFS's restrictions persisted.

Meanwhile, DCFS came to suspect that the Bruckers' day care providers were Aiden's possible abuse perpetrators. For that reason, DCFS told the Bruckers they could no longer send their kids there. Everyone who had ever been in contact with Aiden before his hospital stay had suddenly become a suspect.

Sabra requested that their two older children be allowed to keep going to their day care— with their familiar friends and routines—but the caseworker said no. The caseworker also continued to demand weekly check-ins with the Bruckers. Each time, she insisted on strip-searching the twins and commenting on natural bodily features, such as inverted nipples.

As the family languished, Sabra checked the mail one day and was shocked to find a bill from the hospital for over $60,000. Her private insurance provider had denied the payment for Aiden's MRI as "medically unnecessary." The Bruckers told the hospital's billing department that they had not requested the MRI; it was done at the behest of Petrak. Soon after this, the Bruckers' billing records disappeared from their file at the hospital.

Illinois gives DCFS 60 days to complete an investigation. Knowing this, the Brucker family decided on day 60 that they had had enough of the "voluntary safety plan." They hired a lawyer with DCFS experience who confirmed their right to terminate the plan. He notified DCFS accordingly.

Three months later, in January 2022, a caseworker from a different DCFS regional office phoned Sabra to say their investigation file had been transferred. Since the children had not been seen by DCFS in several months, the new caseworker wanted to come observe them. The family declined this request. The new DCFS caseworker also informed Sabra that the Bruckers' case file was completely empty of investigative notes.

In March, and again in October, 14 months after the case had begun, the Bruckers' attorney submitted a complaint to the DCFS Inspector General. In November 2022, he received a response saying the inspector general was unable to investigate this complaint because the case was still open. The Bruckers couldn't help but wonder whether DCFS was keep the status of the investigation ambiguous in order to avoid accountability.

Finally, in November 2023, the Bruckers received a letter from DCFS stating that the case was now closed and Dagan and Sabra were cleared of any wrongdoing. Curiously, the letter claimed that "someone" had been "substantiated" as Aiden's abuser.

The Bruckers filed an inquiry as to who that person was. They were told they had no right to see these records.

Neither Petrak nor the hospital responded to a request for comment. A spokesperson for DCFS declared in a statement: "DCFS is mandated by Illinois statute to investigate any allegations of child abuse or neglect that is reported to our agency."

In situations like the Bruckers', which are far too numerous to be viewed as aberrations, concerns about children's health and well-being are cited as pretexts to legitimize witch hunts against parents and other caregivers. These investigations have lasting consequences. The Brucker children were left with extreme separation anxiety. Sabra experienced debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder. The family considered suing the caseworkers but decided that litigation would force them to relive the horror.

But they did decide to speak out about their harrowing experience. They want people to understand that the state's so-called voluntary safety plan did was neither voluntary nor safe—it was a sham.

Thankfully, Aiden's medical condition has resolved, and he's now in excellent physical shape.

"He's growing, cute, talking, very healthy now," says Sabra.

Meanwhile, Petrak recently became president of the board of directors of the National Children's Alliance. The organization oversees funding and accrediting for child advocacy centers, where allegedly abused children are interviewed and assessed across the country.

The post Illinois Falsely Accused These Parents of Abusing Their Baby—and Now Won't Tell Them Who Actually Did It appeared first on Reason.com.

Donald Trump oversaw some scary moments in international politics. The former president seriously escalated tensions with North Korea and Iran, leading to several war scares. But he pulled back from the brink, sometimes against the wishes of his more hawkish advisers. He avoided a direct U.S.-Iranian war and opened a direct line of communication with North Korea.

Democrats seem to wish he'd gone to war instead. The Democratic National Committee's 2024 platform, approved in a symbolic vote on Monday night, tries to outhawk Trump, denouncing his "fecklessness" on Iran and his "love letters" to North Korea. Although the platform condemns Trump for pulling out of diplomacy with Iran, it also attacks his decisions not to bomb Iran at several crucial points.

Ironically, the Democratic platform is not much different from Republicans' own attacks on the Biden administration. Each side accuses the other of weakness, and neither wants to take credit for diplomacy or own the compromises necessary to avoid war.

It's easy to forget now, but in 2017 the Korean peninsula had become a remarkably tense place. North Korea was testing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting U.S. soil. The U.S. military was massing forces in the region, and Trump was issuing threats.

Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, reportedly called for a military attack aimed at giving North Korea a "bloody nose." McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) publicly warned that war might be inevitable.

And then, in January 2018, a false alarm drove home the lesson that nuclear war is nothing to play around with. During a disaster preparedness drill, authorities in Hawaii accidentally sent an alert about an incoming ballistic missile. For more than half an hour, Hawaiians and tourists were convinced that they were going to die in a nuclear war.

A few months later, McMaster was out of the White House. Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June 2018. Trump met Kim again in February 2019. Stepping over the North Korean–South Korean border in June 2019, Trump became the first U.S. president to visit North Korea.

The meetings failed to secure a permanent agreement—it didn't help that McMaster's replacement, John Bolton, publicly hinted that denuclearization would end in Kim's violent death—but they bought some crucial breathing room.

The Democrats' 2024 platform attacks the very idea of talks with North Korea. Trump's approach, the platform says, was "embarrassing the United States on the world stage including by flattering and legitimizing Kim Jong Un, exchanging 'love letters' with the North Korean dictator."

This isn't a break with past Democratic rhetoric. During the presidential debates in 2019, then-candidate Joe Biden said that Trump gave "North Korea everything they wanted, creating the legitimacy by having a meeting with Kim Jong Un." Another candidate, Kamala Harris, said that there are "no concessions to be made. He has traded a photo op for nothing."

If even talking to North Korea is a "concession," then it's hard to see what alternative Harris would accept, other than continuing to barrel towards nuclear war.

Iran, unlike North Korea, does not have nuclear weapons. In 2017, Trump tore up an international agreement that regulated Iranian nuclear activities, instead betting on a "maximum pressure" campaign designed to overthrow the Iranian government by cutting off its oil exports. Bolton later said in his memoir that "only regime change would ultimately prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons," and then–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was obsessed with killing the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

The Iranian government did not react warmly to the maximum pressure campaign. Iranian forces encouraged rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, and Iran is believed to be behind sabotage attacks on the international oil industry, including a September 2019 drone strike on Saudi oil infrastructure.

The U.S. military massed forces off the coast of Iran during this time. On June 19, 2019, Iran shot down an American surveillance drone. (The two countries disagree on whether the drone was in Iranian airspace.) Trump ordered a bombing raid on Iranian air defense batteries, then pulled back at the last minute, because killing Iranian troops was "not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone."

Although the Democratic platform calls maximum pressure a "reckless and short-sighted decision," it also attacks Trump for failing to hit Iran back at each of these points. "Trump's only response" to an Iraqi militia attack on the U.S. consulate in Basra "was to close our diplomatic facility," the Democrats complain, and "Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies" for the attack on Saudi oil facilities.

The platform is somewhat ambiguous on whether Trump should have bombed Iran in June 2019. "Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team," it says. Perhaps putting American lives at risk to avenge the honor of a robot would be too far even for the Biden team.

Maximum pressure reached its climax in January 2020, when Trump followed Pompeo's advice and ordered the military to assassinate Soleimani. Iran responded by launching 12 ballistic missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq, which injured Americans but did not kill anyone. Trump called it even, claiming that "Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned."

At the time, Democrats were highly critical of the decision to risk war by killing an Iranian officer. "Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox," Biden wrote right after Soleimani was assassinated. After the Iranian retaliation, Democrats immediately put forward a war powers resolution making it clear that the president does not have the authority to start a war with Iran.

The current Democratic platform takes a different tone. When "Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops," the document declares disapprovingly, Trump "again took no action." The platform criticizes Trump for making light of U.S. troops' brain injuries without mentioning the assassination that prompted the Iranian attacks in the first place.

After all, it would be hard for Biden to criticize Trump for bringing America to the brink of war in the Middle East when he has done the same.

After four short years of a Democratic administration, the mood among Democratic leaders has gotten more hawkish, especially as the defense of Ukraine gives them a "good war" to rally behind. But that's not necessarily how the American people, including Democratic voters, feel. Direct talks with North Korea are still popular, and direct war with Iran is still unpopular. Republicans and independents are less likely to call themselves hawks than in 2014, and even Democratic voters are only one percentage point more likely to consider themselves hawkish than before.

There is a public appetite for diplomacy and deescalation. But party leaders don't seem to want to take the opportunity. They would prefer to fight over who can outhawk whom.

The post Democratic Platform Attacks Trump for Not Going to War appeared first on Reason.com.

A few minutes before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump dropped a plan to completely overhaul the relationship between millions of older Americans and the federal government.

"SENIORS SHOULD NOT PAY TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY," Trump shouted from his Truth Social account.

If implemented, that would be a hugely expensive policy change. According to one quick estimate by a former White House chief economist, it would reduce federal revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and would add $1.8 trillion to the national debt. (The extra cost is the result of interest on the new debt that would be racked up in the absence of that revenue.) It would also accelerate Social Security's slide into insolvency. And, obviously, it would be a big tax break for Americans who collect Social Security checks—but not a tax break that would be particularly good at fostering economic growth.

Despite all that, the most notable thing about Trump's announcement was what it didn't include. There was no attempt to reckon with those figures, for example. No surrogates were dispatched to explain why this change is necessary or good for the economy or country. No press releases went out. There was, of course, no attempt to explain what government programs would be cut to offset the drop in revenue. For that matter, there had been no discussion of this idea at the Republican National Convention. It was not mentioned in Trump's (long) acceptance speech and was not included in the party's platform.

Like so much else in the Trump era, this looks like an idea that went from the former president's head to his social media account with very few stops in between.

There is something to be said for that degree of—let's say—transparency. If nothing else, it is quintessentially Trumpian: hastily conceived and not deeply considered, more of a marketing slogan than substance. Let's just call this what it is: a nakedly political play to win the votes of Social Security–collecting Americans.

Coming as it did on Wednesday morning, the "no taxes on Social Security" plan stood in stark contrast to the news the Trump campaign had made just one day earlier. On Tuesday, Trump's campaign had officially (and gleefully) sunk the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025"—a 900-page document in which the conservative think tank had outlined an extensive policy plan for Trump's prospective second term. The project had been headed by Paul Dans, who had served in the Trump administration, and was central to the institutional-wide pivot toward populism that Kevin Roberts, Heritage's president, had executed in recent years.

In a statement, two of Trump's top campaign officials didn't merely bury Project 2025 but also issued a threat.

"Reports of Project 2025's demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you," said Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

Translation: How dare anyone try to substitute actual policy substance for whatever random thought might fall out of the former president's head on a Wednesday morning?

Roberts' mistake "was thinking that Mr. Trump cares about anyone's ideas other than his own. He governs on feral instinct, tactical opportunism, and what seems popular at a given moment," wrote the Wall Street Journal's editorial board in a scathing response to the news of Project 2025 being scuttled and that Dans had resigned from Heritage. "The lesson for Heritage, and other think tanks, is that it's better to stick to your principles rather than court the political flavor of the day."

Amen to that.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has launched her campaign by veering hard into an almost Trump-like policy nihilism of her own. Having already tried to memory-hole her track record as the Biden administration's so-called "border czar"—read Reason's Liz Wolfe if you need to catch up on that controversy—Harris is now seemingly rewriting her positions on a bunch of other things too.

For example, Harris was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal when she was a member of the U.S. Senate in 2019. She voiced her support for the progressive environmental package while campaigning for president that same year.

Now, she's backing away from it. This week, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign told the Washington Examiner that Harris no longer supports the federal job guarantee—a promise that the federal government would provide jobs with "family-sustaining wages" to anyone who wanted one—that was a key feature of the Green New Deal.

As the Examiner notes, Harris has also "backed away from her endorsement of eliminating private healthcare plans as part of a Medicare for All proposal. Her campaign also told The Hill that she will not seek to ban fracking if she is elected. That was after previously telling CNN while running for president 'There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking.'"

Maybe this is Harris embracing her philosophy of being "unburdened by what has been." Maybe she's simply taking a page from Trump's book—after all, the former president has never paid much of a price for making it up as he goes along.

For both Trump and Harris, simply telling voters what you think they want to hear is possibly the most direct route to winning an election. But such a cynical approach to campaigning sidelines any discussion of policy—and means the election is likely to be decided on far stupider grounds.

The post Trump and Harris Are Just Making It Up as They Go appeared first on Reason.com.

Vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, came out in 2016—a few months before Donald Trump won a surprising presidential victory thanks in part to widespread support from within the Appalachian hollers that Vance wrote about. Although he grew up in southwestern Ohio, Vance's family was from the mountains of hard-scrabble eastern Kentucky.

"Elegy" offers a thought-provoking account of the difficulty poor people face as they try to transcend their circumstances. "How much of our lives, good and bad, should we credit to our personal decisions, and how much is just the inheritance of our culture, our families, and our parents who have failed their children?" he asked. The movie was less compelling, but it reinforced that point.

Trump recently said the book was about society's unfair treatment of working class men and women, but that suggests he never read it. Actually, the book focused on the ways poor people often sabotage their fleeting opportunities and blame others for their predicament. Vance went on to become a Marine, attend Ohio State, and earn a law degree from Yale.

My wife devoured the book—and was particularly moved by Vance's depictions of his awkward attempts to fit in among his classmates. She also grew up in a small coal town in Appalachia. Her lumberman father died young, leaving a wife and six daughters to subsist on government aid. Like Vance, she received a scholarship. When I met her at George Washington University, she had never taken a taxi, been in an elevator, or dined at a fancy restaurant.

Unfortunately, author Vance seems far different from vice-presidential nominee Vance. Power is tempting, but Donna and I have nevertheless cringed as he has espoused positions that seem at odds with his book's central point. Instead of recognizing that the American Dream is alive and well—and all of her sisters have lived successful lives—he now blames outsiders for the plight of the working class.

Vance also pitches big-government economic "populist" ideas and engages in nativism. His critics have pointed to his apparent hypocrisy. After all, he's a middle-class Midwestern suburbanite who attended an Ivy League school, married the daughter of immigrants, and is backed by Bay Area techies. I suspect his embrace of an ideology explains this shift more than raw ambition.

Tell-tale signs come from his speech at the Republican National Convention: "America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. … (W)hen we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms." He said that generations of Kentuckians died in wars and are buried in his family's cemetery, noting that, "People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their homes."

I've read myriad critiques on some of Vance's statements, including noxious ones blasting childless cat ladies. That's basically right-wing edge-lording. But the fiercest critique comes in an Atlantic column addressing Vance's "insult to America." Writer Jessica Gavora recalls her dad's harrowing escape from Czechoslovakia after Soviet forces overran it: "My dad came here for a reason, and it wasn't the dirt of a graveyard."

I agree with Gavora, but then again my dad fled Nazi Germany and my maternal grandparents fled Russian pogroms. Almost all of the immigrants I meet—around here they're mostly from Latin America, Russia, and India—are among the most patriotic people I meet. My wife's Appalachian ancestors hailed from Poland before heading to work in the Pennsylvania coal fields. And what's this about requiring them to submit to "our terms"?

Vance's statement defines the central dividing line between paleo-conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan—and classical liberals such Ronald Reagan. The former believe America is a nation built by and for a specific people. They dislike free markets, which are corrosive of their cultural preferences. They want to vastly limit immigration. They have no problem with big government as long as they control it.

By contrast, classical liberals believe America is based on the universal idea of freedom and economic opportunity. They focus on reducing the size and power of government—and creating opportunities for everyone wherever they or their ancestors were born. Classical liberals may want an orderly immigration process, but they're more interested in turning immigrants into Americans than sending them home.

Classical liberals—and I count myself among them—view free trade as a wonder, not a threat. And while I'm a long-time critic of America's endless foreign interventions and wars, I care (unlike Vance) about what happens in Ukraine. We believe in liberty for everyone, not just members of our clan.

The Democratic Party is hostile to freedom and progress in its own unique and terrifying ways. But I wish the Vance who wrote "Hillbilly Elegy"—rather than paleo-conservative changeling we now see on display—were the one on the GOP ticket to make that case.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

The post J.D. Vance Has Changed a Lot Since the Days of <em>Hillbilly Elegy</em> appeared first on Reason.com.

Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free.

Since I'm on vacation this week, I'm afraid readers will have to suffice with a slightly more abbreviated—but hopefully still valuable—newsletter looking at why it's so hard to build a new city in California.

California Forever—Delayed or Doing Fine?

This past Monday, California Forever announced it would not ask Solano County voters to approve zoning changes it needs to proceed with its planned 17,500-acre, 400,000-person community this year, as it had initially planned.

Instead, the development company would work with the county government to approve the rezoning and complete a needed environmental review and development agreement before asking for voter approval in 2026.

"We believe that with this process, we can build a shared vision that passes with a decisive majority and creates broad consensus for the future," said Jan Sramek, California Forever's CEO.

Background

For those who have not been following this story closely, beginning a few years ago, investors behind California Forever have been buying up land in Solano County with an eye toward creating a new urbanist community where more flexible development rules would allow for the kinds of neighborhoods most California cities restrict—dense, walkable, mixed-use, etc.

Most master-planned communities are, well, master-planned—planners lay out exactly what will be built where and try to build it all at once.

The vision behind California Forever's new community is a bit different.

Its East Solano Plan called for rezoning company-owned land to allow for a flexible range of densities and uses. Once rezoned, individual project sponsors could then come and build whatever was allowed by that zoning—new office space, new manufacturing facilities, new townhomes, etc. The idea is the planned community's more flexible development rules and proximity to San Francisco and Sacramento would draw both jobs and residents.

It's a nice vision. It's also one that a lot of people have to say yes to before it can happen.

Getting to Yes

Solano County has an "orderly growth" ordinance blocking new greenfield development.

That means the company needs to get a bunch of zoning changes to make its land legally developable and get those changes approved by voters via a ballot initiative.

Changing county zoning, in turn, triggers the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—which requires local officials to study the environmental impacts of changing land use regulations. These environmental studies can take years (or even decades) to complete.

Additionally, the company and the county need to sign a development agreement hashing out how infrastructure and other impacts will be paid for.

California Forever's initial plan was to run a ballot initiative locking in the needed zoning changes this year and then work with the county to produce a CEQA-required environmental impact report and development agreement.

The New York Times reports that the company's ballot initiative was plausibly headed for defeat later this year. Even local officials who weren't totally opposed to a new city in the county said the company was moving too fast.

So instead of risk a failed ballot initiative, California Forever is now opting to ask the Solano County Board of Supervisors to approve needed zoning and general plan changes first, which will include producing a CEQA-required environmental impact report and a development agreement, and then go to voters with all that worked out in 2026.

Media write-ups of this change of plans describe California Forever's new city as "on hold"—but that doesn't strike me as quite right. The company is still proceeding with its project, it's just changing the order in which it's seeking various necessary government sign-offs.

YIMBY PEMDAS

Whether changing the order of operations of all these needed approvals improves the company's chances of actually getting something built is an open question.

Getting an environmental impact report and development agreement hashed out before running its ballot initiative means the company can give voters a clearer idea of what they're approving. More might say yes as a result.

Going through the Solano County Board of Supervisors first also would mean that a majority of supervisors would be supporting the project by the time it goes to voters. Plus, giving the county more input might also encourage county officials to sign off on an environmental impact report more quickly.

Solano Board of Supervisor Chair Mitch Mashburn, whose district includes the area where the new California Forever city would go, said as much in a joint statement with Sramek.

"Many Solano residents are excited about Mr. Sramek's optimism about a California that builds again," he said. "We cannot solve our jobs, housing, and energy challenges if every project takes a decade or more to break ground."

"Delaying the vote gives everyone a chance to pause and work together, which is what is needed….It also creates an opportunity to take a fresh look at the plan and incorporate input from more stakeholders," he continued.

But there are a lot of risks in doing a ballot initiative last too.

By running a ballot initiative first, California Forever was able to write the zoning changes it wanted for its new community. If that ballot initiative were successful, those zoning changes would be locked in.

In contrast, going to the county first to get its zoning changes approved gives county officials a lot more input over what those zoning changes will look like. It's quite possible the county will try to shrink the project or impose other changes that will make the proposed new community less of the walkable, urbanist "city of yes" that its backers want it to be.

It also remains to be seen whether getting an environmental impact report done first will actually spend things along.

CEQA gives third parties ample opportunity to sue local governments who allegedly approve projects without performing a thorough enough environmental review, and those lawsuits can take years (or decades) to play out.

As such, CEQA suits have become NIMBYs' weapon of choice for delaying projects. California Forever's plans for a new city have been sufficiently controversial that someone will surely file a CEQA suit against them.

Expediting an environmental impact report for California Forever's new city could well just expedite the time it takes for the whole project to end up in court facing years of environmental litigation.

No Easy Options

The fact is that California Forever's quest for approval of its new community faces an uphill climb, regardless of how the company orders its asks for various permission slips.

Ironically enough, the company's vision of creating a new community free from California's typical tangle of red tape and regulation still requires working through a lot of that same red tape and regulation.

There's no easy escape from the Golden State's NIMBY morass, it seems. All the laws and processes—from zoning to CEQA to development referendums—intended to give people a say over how their community grows apply just as much to totally new communities too.

With its planned Solano County community, California Forever is trying to offer an optimistic vision of what a more pro-growth, urban California could be. At a minimum, it's helping to highlight all the problems of an anti-growth California as is.

The post California Forever, Forever appeared first on Reason.com.

In comments from 2021 that resurfaced last week, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) said that childless Americans ought to pay higher taxes than those who have kids.

"If you're making $100,000 [or] $400,000 a year, and you've got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you're making the same amount of money and you don't have kids," Vance said back then, during an interview with conservative activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk.

Here's the good news for Vance: It's already true that childless Americans pay higher taxes than most of those who reproduce. That was true in 2021, and it is true today.

That's because of the child tax credit, which has existed since 1997 and has been partially refundable since 2001. For each dependent that can be claimed, a tax filer gets up to $2,000 credit—with up to $1,400 of that total being refundable, meaning that it gets paid out even if the filer doesn't owe any taxes. As part of the tax reform package passed by Republicans during the Trump administration, the child tax credit was doubled from $1,000 per kid to the current level.

To use Vance's own example: An individual who earns $100,000 and has three kids would qualify for $6,000 in child tax credits. A childless person who also earns $100,000 would not get those credits and would therefore pay a higher effective tax rate.

There's one small wrinkle that's worth pointing out: As currently structured, the child tax credit phases out at a rate of 5 percent for individuals who earn over $200,000 annually and couples who earn over $400,000. That means that every additional dollar earned beyond those thresholds qualifies for 5 cents less in tax credits. The maximum tax credit is $2,000, so by the time you've earned $40,000 additional dollars (as a single filer) or $80,000 additional dollars (as a joint filer), you get zero child tax credit. The most charitable reading of Vance's comments is to assume he wants to expand eligibility for the child tax credit so even wealthy families earning over $400,000 annually can access it.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign and other Democratic-aligned groups blasted Vance's comments around the internet last week to frame former President Donald Trump's running mate as being unfriendly to childless Americans. That's a fair critique, but there are at least two bigger problems here for Vance.

First, his apparent ignorance of how the current tax code rewards people for having kids undermines his status as the supposed policy wonk on the Republican ticket. Maybe it's a good idea to create tax-based incentives for Americans to have kids, or maybe it isn't—regardless, it's certainly not a novel idea that only a guy who grew up in Real America could have.

This is a little bit like a Democrat running for office in 2024 on a promise to mandate that all Americans have health insurance. You'd wonder if they'd been paying attention.

It's also worth considering how Vance, in that 2021 interview, puts this idea into the context of what the populist right is trying to achieve. Parents should pay lower taxes than nonparents, he told Kirk, because policy ought to "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad."

Again, he treats this as if it is a radical break from the status quo, when, in fact, it simply is the status quo. But instead of talking about why parents might deserve to pay less in taxes, he's eager to turn the issue into an us-vs.-them dynamic in order to justify a tax hike.

The second problem is even more revealing in what it illustrates about Vance's skills as a politician. Again, keep in mind that the policy he's proposing already exists. Most politicians would describe the status quo as being a tax break for parents. Vance, however, is eager to frame this idea as a tax hike on childless adults.

Both are true, but only one of those is likely to generate a response like this from Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who seems like exactly the target audience for Vance's edgy, tough guy act:

This is fucking idiotic. You want me to pay more taxes to take care of other people's kids? We sure this dude is a Republican? Sounds like a moron. If you can't afford a big family don't have a ton of kids. pic.twitter.com/oPCYMkq3G1

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) July 26, 2024

Portnoy's reaction seems pretty rational for anyone who hasn't been steeped in tax policy. As Dominic Pino points out at National Review, Americans aren't generally a fan of politicians "siccing the government on a subset of the population." From a Republican perspective, this was a completely unforced rhetorical error by Vance.

More generally, Vance's comments from 2021 leave the impression that "at some level Mr. Vance really doesn't respect people who make different life choices," opines The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, who compared the moment to Hillary Clinton's infamous gaff when she described Trump supporters as "deplorable."

I'd argue that Vance's comments are a bit worse than how the Journal describes them. As a childless adult, I am admittedly a bit biased here—but the problem isn't merely that Vance disrespects that decision. It's that he actively wants to, in his own words, "punish" it.

In this case, the federal tax code is already doing the punishing that Vance wants to dish out. So the only thing Vance has accomplished is finding the most politically toxic way to describe an existing, bipartisan policy.

In doing so, however, he revealed a nasty part of his character and his views on how government should work. Americans should notice that.

The post J.D. Vance Says Childless Americans Should Pay Higher Taxes. They Already Do. appeared first on Reason.com.