Happy Friday Slatesters. It's another round of What Next Plus. This is the special bonus show where we talk to some of the hardworking writers of Slate.com about their biggest swings and hottest takes. This week, we're talking about a controversial figure. Our guest is not controversial, but his topic of choice is, because Gavin Newsom,

the long, long time political from California, who's rolled out a new, I don't know what you'd

call this, Ben Mathis Lilley. Would you call this a publicity stunt, political messaging? What's

going on with Gavin Newsom? Why is he what we are talking about this week?

It's a new persona. A new persona. Whoa. He has adopted, for those who have not been keeping up

with it, adopted Donald Trump's mannerisms on social media with the all capital letters and the praising himself and the repeating

other people's praise of him and saying things.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Exactly.

He finishes with the initials now, actually, GCN.

And this is kind of was launched. so it is political messaging because it was launched

in conjunction with his push to get California congressional redistricting on the ballot for

this fall, aka gerrymandering.

Yeah, let me just interrupt you here for a second, Ben. Because I have not fully introduced you.

Ben Mathis Lili, you are filling in for Jim Newell who is on paternity leave, doing the

surge, Jim's weekly email newsletter, which is fantastic.

Everyone should subscribe to it.

Ben is also fantastic.

You should read everything he writes.

Okay. Let's go back to explaining this.

Sure.

Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom, I've been following the fact that he was in this redistricting mess.

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