🪖 Governor of California Gavin Newsom called the mobilization of the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to ICE raid protests “a serious breach of state sovereignty,” as it was the first time since 1965 that the National Guard had been activated without a state’s input. Newsom posted on Instagram late Sunday night that California is a donor state—that is, an economy that contributes net-more money to the federal government than it receives—and that if Trump keeps overreaching, California has the financial leverage to resist. Didn’t think ol’ boy Newsom had it in him, but it’s fascinating to watch two men with overwhelming trust fund kid energy go head to head. I smell groundwork being laid for a 2028 presidential run.  A recent Bloomberg piece found that cancer drugs are more expensive and numerous than ever, but there’s bewilderingly little proof they’re actually extending lives. Unsurprisingly, this is a story about regulatory capture—but it also raises some bigger questions about how patients come to misunderstand the risk/reward tradeoff of treatments they’d reasonably believe to be worthwhile.
 Labor journalist Hamilton Nolan interviewed Megan Greenwell about her new book, Bad Company, billed as “Evicted for how private equity affects workers and communities: in-depth profiles of four people who had actually lived through this.” As the kids say: I am sat. It turns out the four biggest elected recipients of private equity funds are Democrats, and it’s Trump who’s talking about closing the carried interest exemption loophole (which allows PE firms to pay lower taxes on their profits). The more you know.
 On that note, is Taylor Swift’s narrative world-building our best hope of outmaneuvering private equity firms? (As we speak, her five-year-old fans are sitting in their play rooms lecturing their little sisters about the importance of owning your intellectual property.) Swift announced a few weeks ago she was finally able to repurchase her original masters from a private equity firm for $360 million (a much bigger business story than it’s being given credit for, in my opinion), a deal made possible because the Eras Tour, a two-year effort to celebrate her life’s work, made Swift a billionaire. The article notes the price was “less, in adjusted dollars, than what Braun is thought to have sold them for in 2020. With the help of fans, she devalued her old music—shorted her own stock—then bought it at a discount.” Let the record reflect that my favorite pastime is reading thinkpieces about Swift’s career in prestigious publications like The New Yorker in which it’s obvious the journalist is desperately trying (and failing) to conceal their diehard fandom.
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