WaPo Board Member On Editorial Shredding Gavin Newsom For Punishing Walgreens: We Are ‘Against Coercively Using Power of the State’

James Hohmann, editorial writer and columnist specializing in domestic policy and politics at the Washington Post, joined host Charlie Sykes on the Bulwark Podcast Tuesday to discuss the latest news of the day.

After a lengthy conversation about Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) statement on Ukraine policy to Tucker Carlson and the state of play in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, Sykes asked Hohmann for the inside scoop on a recent editorial from the Post criticizing California Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

“Okay, so I have to ask you this, because I’m going to write about this later this week. And I know you’re on the editorial board and you’re all like, anonymous, right? I’m sorry. I just mean you all assume the editorial position. These are not personal opinions. These are the opinions…” Sykes began.
“It’s the institutional position. That’s right,” Hohmann interjected.

“This is the institutional position,” Sykes repeated, jumping into his question:

So I was very interested by The Washington Post editorial position, you took a shot at Gavin Newsom on the abortion pill. And I think it’s interesting because as you point out, Republicans are not the only ones finding opportunities to bully private companies in culture war battles. And you wrote about, you know, Newsom axed a $54 million contract with Walgreens over abortion because they were not going to be offering the abortion pill in the 21 states where the attorney generals had threatened them.

So talk to me a little bit about this, because I’m sure you got a lot of blowback, both sidesism, he’s not nearly as bad as Ron. I mean Ron DeSantis is kind of the symbol of putting the bully back in bully pulpit in the bully states. But Gavin Newsom is and California seems to be trending in that direction. I mean, that was rather extraordinary. So talk to me about Gavin Newsom, why you took a shot at him?

“The Washington Post is against coercively using the power of the state to get things that partisans want,” Hohmann replied, clearly stating the thought process behind the editorial published Tuesday.

“And so The Washington Post editorialized against the takeover of the Disney tax district and punitively going after Disney and what’s going on in California is very much similar,” Hohmann continued, adding:

It really is Gavin Newsom taking away contracts from a company that is working in good faith to comply with local laws. I mean, it’s, one it’s unfair to put this on Walgreens. These are complicated, hard legal issues. And Walgreens is sort of squeezed in really a federalist fight between state and federal government. And Walgreens is trying its level best to comply.

And I think Walgreens got extra scrutiny because they actually replied to the letter from the attorneys general and the other pharmacies just ignored it. But they’re caught in this really difficult place. And so it’s deeply unfair for Gavin Newsom to then say we’re going to take away the state contract. It’s basically to provide prescriptions to people in prison because we’re angry that you’re complying with local laws in other jurisdictions.

“That is an abuse of power,” Hohmann declared.

“And you know, what’s particularly annoying is that Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom have been shadowboxing with each other for a year, and they’re both trying to call themselves the freedom governor, and they both are trying to fight over the language of freedom,” he continued, concluding:

And both of them often want to use the state as a coercive power that is very at odds with freedom. Whether it was when the cruise ships wanted to require vaccination, they blocked them from being able to do so. That is interfering with private business trying to manage itself. This fight has played out over abortion and Covid vaccines and all that stuff, but neither DeSantis nor Newsom, when the sort of the rubber hits the road or whatever analogy you want to use, is really taking the side of true freedom.

Sykes and Hohmann ended the discussion by laying out the dangers of governors climbing up the “escalation ladder” in a bid to outdo one another by using the power of the state to punish the other side. “We only climb off of it [the ladder] when the American people reject it. You know, if Ron DeSantis is the nominee, it worked — politically. And so then more people are going to do it,” Hohmann warned

Listen to the clip above and the full podcast here.

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