“AHI alum” Joe Simonson’s political reporting continued last week with a story on plans for radical reparations-driven policies in California. A 2015 graduate of Hamilton College and a former leader of the Alexander Hamilton Institute’s Undergraduate Fellows, Joe was a co-founder of Enquiry: A publication of the AHI Undergraduate Fellows at the college.

His June 2 article in the Washington Free Beacon, “The 8 Most Insane Proposals in California’s 492-page Reparations Report,” describes preliminary recommendations that the state’s Reparations Task Force—“a panel of left-wing academics and policymakers”—has listed for state officials’ consideration.

Among them are: making policies on child support payments more lenient for black parents; the destruction of what the committee calls “anti-Black memorials and monuments”; reducing the number of police officers in black communities; free college tuition for descendants of slaves; free health care for black Californians; and cash payments to shrink “the racial wealth gap.” The task force’s final report is to be issued a year from now.

Among Simonson’s other articles in recent years are “Your Complete Guide to How the Media Tried Ruining the Lives of Innocent Teenagers,” a critical account of the reporting on an incident involving Catholic high school students from Covington, Kentucky, and “Bernie Sanders campaigned for Marxist party in Reagan era,” published in the Daily Caller and the Washington Examiner in 2019.