San Francisco is having a civic nervous breakdown because the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law is buying a minority stake in the Giants.

Not Donald Trump. Not Jared Kushner. Joshua Kushner. And not control of the team. A minority stake.

Apparently, that is enough to send parts of San Francisco’s activist and media culture into full panic mode.

One Giants employee posted a video from Oracle Park turning in their uniform and quitting because Kushner was buying into the team.

Social media lit up with complaints about “MAGA ownership” and Trump-world influence invading one of San Francisco’s most beloved civic institutions.

There is just one problem. Joshua Kushner is not exactly Steve Bannon in a Giants cap.

He has historically donated heavily to Democrats and has occupied a very different political lane than his brother Jared and the Trump orbit. But nuance never stood a chance here.

For some in San Francisco, the name “Kushner” was enough. That is the story.

The Giants are not some random expansion franchise nobody cares about. They are one of the oldest and most storied franchises in Major League Baseball history — with eight World Series titles and a lineage that includes Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, and Bruce Bochy.

Oracle Park is one of the great settings in American sports. Giants-Dodgers is still one of baseball’s defining rivalries. Generations of Northern Californians are emotionally attached to this team.

Which is precisely why the reaction has been so revealing.

Nobody was arguing about payroll. Nobody was debating the farm system. Nobody was asking whether this helps the Giants close the gap with the Dodgers in the NL West.

The panic was political from the first pitch.

That tells you where we are now.

Sports ownership used to be judged mostly by whether owners were competent, stable, and willing to spend money to win. Now it is an ideological background check.

Who donated to whom? Who attended what fundraiser? Whose brother married whose daughter? Who might show up in the owner’s suite?This is what happens when politics becomes religion. Everything becomes a loyalty test. Even baseball.

The irony is almost too perfect.

San Francisco is not exactly at risk of becoming a MAGA beachhead because a Democratic donor with the wrong last name bought a small piece of the Giants. But symbolic politics runs the city now.

In Democrat circles in San Francisco, politics is not just something people believe. It is something they perform. It is identity. It is status. It is social sorting.

So even indirect association becomes contamination. Joshua Kushner does not have to be Trump. He does not even have to be conservative. He just has to be Kushner.

That is enough.

To be fair, Giants ownership was already politically sensitive. Current owner Charles Johnson has drawn years of criticism for conservative political donations.

So this latest development landed on dry grass.

Still, the reaction says more about San Francisco’s liberal elite than it does about the Giants. The city’s activist class cannot even let baseball remain baseball.

A minority owner becomes a political emergency. A family connection becomes a scandal. A business transaction becomes a moral crisis.

This is not normal.

Fans used to argue about batting orders and pitching rotations. Now they investigate ownership family trees.

And the Giants are not being bought by Donald Trump. They are not being turned into a Trump campaign surrogate. They are not replacing team mascot Lou Seal with a MAGA hat.

A minority stake is changing hands. That’s it.

Yet for the loudest voices in San Francisco, even that apparently requires public anguish.

If this is the reaction to the brother of Trump’s son-in-law buying a minority piece of the Giants, imagine what happens if Donald Trump ever throws out the first pitch at Oracle Park.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics and a lifelong baseball fan, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.

SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is reshuffling her senior staff, naming Esther Handy as interim chief of staff and shifting other roles within the mayor’s office as the administration continues to refine its internal structure.

In a statement to her team, Wilson said Handy will step into the interim chief of staff role while former chief of staff Kate Brunette Kreuzer transitions into “a new special projects role within the office” and continues to oversee intergovernmental affairs work. Wilson said she is “deeply grateful to Kate,” calling her “instrumental in creating a strong internal culture” and “a key leader in launching my new administration during a fast-moving transition period.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Seattle mayor’s verbal missteps prompt national and viral attention, leadership questions

Wilson also said the mayor’s office is “centralizing our council relations under Deputy Mayor Surratt, in partnership with our council liaison Tracey Whitten.”

Wilson said she assembled a team with a mix of experience inside and outside government and that the early phase of the administration has included “learning what works well and what may need to change in order to continue to effectively move forward on our key priorities.” According to Wilson, Handy will continue an ongoing process “to assess and make recommendations related to our staffing capacity and team structures.”

Wilson said Handy has more than a decade of local government experience, most recently as an executive operations manager in the mayor’s office and formerly as director of council central staff. Wilson also cited Handy’s organizational development experience, including serving as an interim executive director at Puget Sound Sage and the Washington Budget and Policy Center.

While I understand change can be unsettling,” Wilson said, “I want to assure all of you of that it is common for a new administration to refine its internal staffing roles.

Wilson also noted two additional departures planned since the beginning of her term. She said that in early July, Jen Chan, director of city operations, will complete a six-month commitment with the office and return later this summer to her deputy executive director role at the Seattle Housing Authority. Wilson said Edie Gilliss will also wrap up a six-month commitment as director of the mayor’s office operations and pipeline in early July and return to her role as government affairs and policy director with the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Wilson said her focus remains on “expanding shelter, making our city more affordable, livable, and safe, creating irresistibly good transit, and building a more inclusive and accountable government.”

Staff shakeup comes after turbulent times in mayor’s office

The staff shakeup comes after a series of verbal missteps by Wilson that prompted national and viral attention, along with questions about her leadership.

On April 28, gunfire erupted near the Yesler Community Center during an event attended by Wilson, prompting security to escort her to safety. No injuries were reported, and police have said there is no indication the shooting was targeted.

In the days after the incident, Wilson said she was “doing great” and described the shooting outside the Yesler Community Center as “a reminder of how much work we have to do” on gun violence. When asked whether the experience changed her views on city policy, including surveillance measures, she initially declined to engage and later indicated her position had not fundamentally shifted.

Wilson later addressed the surveillance policy question on May 5. “I believe that CCTV cameras have an important role to play in our public safety system, and we also have to be very careful to make sure that our data storage and sharing practices don’t make that system vulnerable to misuse or abuse,” she said.

During another exchange with KOMO News on May 1, a junior Seattle Public Utilities staffer interrupted questioning and insisted the conversation remain focused on an event and “on topic,” suggesting a separate interview be scheduled. The moment mirrored a separate on-camera interaction in which Wilson declined to comment on Starbucks moving jobs to new corporate office space in Nashville, saying it was not the topic of her press conference.

The mayor also drew attention after she laughed aside concerns about wealthy individuals and businesses leaving the city, responding with a “bye” when she was asked during an April event at Seattle University whether she was concerned the policy could prompt wealthy residents and businesses to leave Washington state.

However, she praised major employers, including Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, and T-Mobile, for contributing millions of dollars toward affordable housing and homelessness programs during a May 7 event for the redevelopment of the Brighton housing community near Rainier Avenue, striking a notably collaborative tone after recent national attention surrounding her criticism of large corporations and support for new business taxes.