“As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive. Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.”

That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a September 30 signing statement for Assembly Bill 3121 which “establishes a nine-member task force to inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations.” For all its faults, California was never part of the Confederacy, and Californians might wonder about a stronger case for reparations from damages caused by the China virus.

Evidence points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, recipient of funds from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which banned “gain of function” research in 2014 because of danger that a manipulated virus might be released into the population. The NIH revived the dangerous research in 2017 but kept it secret. The Wuhan Institute was an ideal place to hide gain of function, and Anthony Fauci backed the lab with more than $7 million. Dr. Fauci has been evasive about what, exactly, went on at Wuhan but there can be no dispute about the aftermath.

The China virus claimed more than 200,000 deaths in the United States alone and touched three leaders of G7 nations: President Trump, British prime minister Boris Johnson, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whose wife Sophie tested positive for the coronavirus in March. The economic damages are undeniable: millions unemployed, businesses going bankrupt, mounting debt, and all the social wreckage now on display.

President Trump is on record that this was all “China’s fault,” and China is going to pay “a big price” for what they’ve done to the United States and the world. One U.S. state is already taking measures. In April, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit charging that Chinese Communist officials are “responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians.”  For Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, the Missouri lawsuit was the problem.

“We launch a series of unknown events that could be very, very dangerous,” said Feinstein in a July 30, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.  “I think this is a huge mistake.” And Feinstein had only praise for China, “as a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time” and as “a country growing into a respectable nation among other nations. And I deeply believe that. I’ve been to China a number of times. I’ve studied the issues.”

Indeed, as Feinstein told James Areddy of the Wall Street Journal during a 2006 visit to Shanghai, the San Francisco Democrat had been coming to the Communist nation for 31 years. Feinstein compared Tiananmen Square to Kent State, and as Rosemarie Ho reported in The Nation, Democrats in general and Feinstein in particular ignored the Communist crackdown against Hong Kong.

As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, the Chinese spy on Feinstein’s staff for 20 years even attended Chinese Consulate functions for the senator, who has her own version of Hunter Biden. As Ben Weingarten reported in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.”

None of this has touched off an investigation, which confirms that FBI favors for Democrats go far beyond Hillary Clinton. A party that functions as a cheerleader for China will not seek any reparations from China, or any other entity that has inflicted vast damage on the United States.

On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists claimed nearly 3,000 American lives and caused billions in damages. If that not a case for reparations, it is hard to know what one would look like. Democrats made no case, and the president formerly known as Barry Soetoro shipped billions in cash to Iran, the major sponsor of terrorism in the world.

President Trump pushed back on terrorism, taking out Iranian master terrorist Soleimani and ISIS boss al-Baghdadi. Democrats were critical of these actions, and their diversionary push for slavery reparations has no merit. Neither does Gov. Newsom’s charge of “structural racism,” which as David Azerrad explains, lacks proof on the historical, legislative, and even the subconscious level.

The nation can only thrive, Gov. Newsom contends, “when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive.” As it happens, the most powerful figure in recent California history is the African American Willie Brown. The thriving assembly speaker set up his girlfriend Kamala Harris in lucrative sinecures and backed her career all the way to candidacy for what she has called a “Harris administration.”

Meanwhile, old-money Democrats are grooming Gov. Newsom for a presidential run in 2024. Should he succeed, the nation would never get reparations for terrorism or the China virus. On the other hand, the entire nation would soon look like California, whose rapid decline reminds Bill Maher of “Italy in the 70s or something.”  As President Trump says, we’ll have to see what happens.