Opp Now sat down with four law and First Amendment experts (from the Bay Area and beyond) to parse a burning question about AB 957: Does considering, in custody decisions, “affirmation of a child's gender identity” part of health and welfare mean that parents' speech is unjustly compelled? Nuanced insights below in this Opp Now exclusive.

Manhattan Institute legal policy fellow Tim Rosenberger, Jr. recently graduated from Stanford Law, where he was Federalist Society chapter president (during the infamous heckling of a guest speaker, supported by now-resigned DEI Dean Steinbach). In this Opp Now exclusive, Rosenberger, Jr. parses the Ortiz/Torres/Candelas kerfuffle SJ media's already swept away: How on Earth is using city stationery to pressure a business into unionizing one big whoopsie?

A recent study out of Northwestern University found that SF's rent control policies have managed to release a wave of, yes, more frequent evictions. Progressives are gawking and puzzling through the irony, but Jennifer Liu—Business and Housing Network's (BAHN) president—isn't all that shocked. Liu's Opp Now exclusive perspective below on why CA's restrictive housing laws harm landlords and tenants alike.

Santa Clara County citizens definitively oppose affirmative action in college admissions. But almost all local politicians oppose the Will of the People on this issue—except for Greg Tanaka, City of Palo Alto councilmember. He explains in this exclusive Opp Now interview about SCOTUS' Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard decision. 

Are local unions saber-rattling over a potential strike, or is it just an oblique way to throw hair at a mayor who beat their chosen candidate last fall? Planning Commissioner and former CM Pierluigi Oliverio chats on the phone with Opp Now about the latest skirmish between City management and unions over new contracts. An Opp Now exclusive.

CA isn't the first state to attempt to legally codify the access to housing (see ACA 10 perspectives here): for instance, if we look at NY's '80s-established “right to shelter.” Brooklyn Law School Real Estate Finance professor David Reiss discusses how local housing shortages are exacerbated by zoning codes that constrain and discourage new construction. He emphasizes our need for comprehensive, long-term strategies to increase housing supply—which are more effective than top-down controls, like laws guaranteeing shelter rights. An Opp Now exclusive.

Gavin Newsom is sounding like John Calhoun. Ash Kalra channels the wild fringes of Critical Race Theory. All because SCOTUS enforced the 14th Amendment. Local GOP chair Shane Patrick Connolly unpacks why the Left is so insistent on discriminating against Asian Americans in college admissions. An Opp Now exclusive Q&A.

In this Opp Now exclusive, Tobin Gilman chimes into the ongoing debate on whether SJ Council should direct funds primarily toward short- or long-term supportive housing projects. Whereas some like Khamis and Holtz posit the Measure E reallocation stemmed from “competing visions” about housing, Gilman says it was much simpler: all about consequences for our General Fund.

San Jose State University locked Dr. Elizabeth Weiss out of the skeletal curation facility because she posted an allegedly offensive Twitter photo in 2021. Weiss then sued SJSU for suppressing her First Amendment rights, and the case has reached settlement. Opp Now exclusively chats with Weiss about De Anza College's termination of “not Woke enough” director Tabia Lee—and how both situations highlight narrow-mindedness in local higher ed.

In 2021, tenured San Jose State University Anthropology professor Elizabeth Weiss was punished—her research facility access was revoked after a scathing public letter by the Provost—for posting a Twitter picture of herself with a human skull. Weiss's legal challenge just reached a settlement, contingent on her resignation from SJSU. Here, she exclusively discusses the university's “cowardly” submission to Woke cancel culture with Opp Now.