A $114 Million Bridge to Nowhere

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The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC) in California broke ground in 2022. Still under construction, the project will build a bridge over the 101 Freeway so that wild animals can safely cross. As WAWC leader Beth Pratt told Christopher Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp, the overpass is “for everything from monarch butterflies to mountain lions.”

But the project is both delayed (it was supposed to be completed in 2025) and over budget (estimated cost: $92 million; total cost: $114 million). California Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t seem to mind. The project has been a boon for jobs, after all.

But “some of these jobs are absurd,” Rufo and Schrupp write. “A fungi whiz, Pratt says, worked as a WAWC habitat designer, periodically scrutinizing root samples under a microscope. A contracted soil scientist said his process involves assessing local dirt to ‘rebuild it . . . as close to nature as possible.’”

Read more about what Rufo and Schrupp call “a multimillion-dollar bridge to nowhere.”

Tennessee lawmakers are debating a bill that would allow the state’s child-welfare agency to send foster kids—many exhibiting severe mental problems or even violent behavior—to juvenile jails. Many in the state are outraged by the idea, but child welfare officials often have no other choice, thanks to “a lack of beds in therapeutic mental-health facilities or group homes,” writes Naomi Schaefer Riley.

The conditions in Tennessee, and in many other states, are a “direct consequence” of the federal Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), argues Riley. The 2018 law was intended to keep troubled kids out of the foster-care system and congregate-care facilities, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office shows that it has had the opposite effect in many states.

“Since the law went into effect in 2021, more than half of state child welfare agencies have reported an increase or no decline in the percentage of kids placed in congregate care,” writes Riley.

Read here to see why Riley calls the FFPSA “poorly written” and an “unqualified disaster.”

Earlier this week, Judge E. Grady Jolly of the Fifth Circuit died at 88. Ilya Shapiro recalls his days clerking for Jolly: “From the first day in chambers, Judge Jolly made clear that our job was to help him ‘get the law right’—to follow constitutional, statutory, and common law wherever it might lead. He had no interest in grand theorizing or showy opinions. He was there to decide cases.”

And it’s not just Jolly’s devotion to the law that he will be remembered for, Shapiro writes. He was not only a professional role model but also had a great sense of humor and treated his clerks like family.

“It was my great good fortune to have met and learned from this remarkable man,” Shapiro writes. Read his remembrance.

“There’s a saying: When adults say they are trans, those adults are mentally ill; when children say they are trans, their mothers are mentally ill.