Free Republic

Pay to play is legal in California as there are no statewide prohibitions. California Governor Gavin Newsom has quietly solicited millions of dollars in campaign donations from state vendors, key people, employees, or their affiliated corporate political action committees. While progressives decry corporate money in politics, Governor Gavin Newsom has embraced the highly unethical practice of soliciting campaign cash from state contractors. ... Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 979 state vendors who gave $10,561,828 in political donations to Newsom during his 2010, 2018, recall election, and 2022 election cycles. Meanwhile, these companies reaped $6,201,978,173 in state payments. ... These donations...

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday released the long-awaited details of his tax refund plan to send $400 to Californians for each registered vehicle, a move that would put more money in the pockets of families who own more cars — even the state’s highest-income residents — and exclude those without cars from receiving the payments. *** The governor, who is up for reelection this year, would cap payments at $800 for any person with more than one vehicle registered under the person’s name, though households with multiple vehicles registered to different family members could receive far more than that amount....

Even though 2024 is still years away and President Joe Biden has said he plans to run for re-election at age 81, national publications and pundits have spent gobs of time discussing a hypothetical 2024 Democratic presidential primary. Polls suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris would be the front-runner in such a primary, though her team reportedly expects a challenge from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, among others. The already painfully premature discourse took a turn this week when some prominent pundits began floating a new name: California Gov. Gavin Newsom. All of the speculation is mooted if Biden runs, or...

Freedom is the reason why America is the greatest country on earth. Freedom is perhaps the biggest reason why immigrants come to the United States. And yet Arnold Schwarzenegger ... attacked freedom while pushing for masks and vaccines... As a freedom-loving immigrant and an American citizen, I found Schwarzenegger’s words to be condescending, hypocritical and hurtful. Freedom is bestowed by God and was enshrined in the United States Constitution by America’s Founding Fathers. No issue — public health or otherwise — must prevent law-abiding Americans from making decisions about their own lives. Freedom is the foundation of American society ......

The corrupt way in which California Governor Gavin Newsom rigged his recall election once again confirms why 1.7 million state voters signed the recall petition against him. Newsom and his fellow Democrats reduced the state to the Banana Republic of California with their shameful moves leading to the September 14 recall date. Ballots will begin flooding to Californians’ mail boxes — whether they asked for them or not under COVID-19 “emergency” rules — in mid-August because Newsom and his cronies changed the rules to move up the election by 30 days. ... Changing the date of the election to a...

An investigation found that California Governor Gavin Newsom grossly exaggerated the amount of fuel reduction projects that have been completed on state lands, and he reduced the fire prevention budget. From Capradio, June 23, 2021: “An investigation from CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found the governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in wildfire prevention. The investigation found Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 “priority...

Posh dinners at a cost of €490 euros per head as rest of Paris struggles under lockdown. Even as Parisians continue to struggle under lockdown, members of the French elite, potentially including government ministers, have been caught attending rulebreaking secret restaurants in the French capital. French TV channel M6 aired secretly recorded footage of clandestine dinners taking place at an “underground restaurant located in a beautiful part” of Paris. The clip shows guests at the restaurant without masks openly kissing each other and violating social distancing rules. There also appears to be no restrictions on the number of guests allowed....

Orrin Heatlie was recovering from a back procedure and browsing social media in 2019 when he found a video of California Gov. Gavin Newsom instructing immigrants in the country illegally not to open their doors to law enforcement unless officers had a warrant. The 52-year-old retired county sheriff's sergeant was incensed, believing Newsom's message was an insult to his profession. It was an unsurprising reaction for a Republican who built a 25-year career in law enforcement. What Heatlie did next would eventually slingshot the political neophyte to the center of California's political world: He started researching a recall campaign. Twenty-one...

Recall efforts in California are a matter of the state version of The Swamp versus the citizens with national implications on multiple levels. With nearly 2 million signatures collected, it's clear recall SHOULD go forward. If it doesn't, blame a system that's rigged beyond repair.. In a normal year and a normal state, efforts to recall a governor that yields 2 million signatures when less than 1.5 million valid ones are necessary would be considered successful. But this is 2021 and the state in question is California which means it’s hit or miss. The efforts to recall Governor Gavin Newsom...

California Governor Gavin Newsom posted a video to his TikTok account with celebrity George Lopez on Saturday. The pair were shown inside a restaurant in an area of California that currently doesn't allow indoor dining. In the video, Newsom and Lopez talk about where to find information about coronavirus vaccine eligibility in California. At the beginning of the clip, Lopez is shown wearing a face mask while sitting at a table inside the restaurant. "How do I find out if I can get a vaccination," Lopez asked. Newsom, also wearing a face mask, then appeared in a mirror behind the...

The campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is inching closer to meeting the required number of signatures needed to qualify for a statewide ballot. Organizers said over the weekend they’ve gathered 1.2 million of the 1.5 million signatures needed by March 17. Rescue CA has a goal of getting in enough signatures to help the effort get to 2 million signatures. 1.5 million validated signatures are required to qualify a recall for a special election, according to Anne Dunsmore, Campaign manager and finance director, Rescue California. Currently the Secretary of State has confirmed that the signatures have been 84%...

Sheriffs in 5 Southern California counties with a total population of 17.25 million people – equivalent to the fifth most populous state – are defying that state’s governor. They will not arrest people for violating the statewide curfew that Governor Gavin Newsom has imposed starting today, apparently on the belief that the virus wakes up, and goes out at 10 PM. ... Some city police departments are also demurring: ... Newsom has lost all credibility for restricting activity in the name of suppressing the spread of Covid. He was caught and exposed flouting his own ridiculous strictures on eating in...

<p>Decision will become final in 10 days unless Newsom’s attorneys can raise new challenge..</p> <p>A judge on Monday preliminarily ordered California Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop issuing directives related to the coronavirus that might interfere with state law.</p> <p>Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and was “an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power.”</p>

*** A week before the election — and potentially weeks before the outcome is known — California Democrats are elbowing each other for the chance to sway Newsom on how to fill the state’s junior senator seat should Joe Biden and Harris (D-Calif.) head to the White House. At least a dozen California Democrats are seriously in the mix, and their supporters, donors and staffers are jostling behind the scenes to make their case. In this deep-blue state, where no Republican has won statewide in 14 years, a Senate seat could be the closest it gets to a lifetime appointment....

This case is not about one particular law, but the rule of law. California Assemblymen Kevin Kiley and James Gallagher are suing to stop California Governor Gavin Newsom’s “one man rule.” Kiley and Gallagher filed their most recent Trial Brief, and Gov. Gavin Newsom filed his. The trial will take place Wednesday, October 21, 2020 in Sutter County. The Michigan Supreme Court recently struck down the 1945 law that Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been using to keep the state in lockdown since April. And in September, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Governor Tom Wolf’s lockdown orders were unconstitutional,...

Gotta say, it was bold of Democratic Party convention organizers to let voters know they plan on passing federal energy policies that would transform the rest of the country into California. The Golden State is experiencing rolling blackouts even as the Democrats speak. Millions of people are having their electrical power turned off in the middle of a heat wave — more specifically, their air conditioners. Blackouts aren’t merely an inconvenience, it is an economic drag and dangerous to vulnerable populations. California doesn’t have enough reliable power — which is to say fossil-fuel and nuclear energy – because it depends...

Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, Calif., filed a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), Mayor Eric Garcetti (D-Los Angeles), and other state and local officials, claiming that coronavirus orders prohibiting in-person worship services while officials encourage politically-favored protests violate the California Constitution. ... On July 29, the City of Los Angeles sent a cease-and-desist letter, threatening Grace Community Church and MacArthur with a daily fine of $1,000 or arrest. The letter gave him one day to respond. On Sunday, August 2, health officials came to the church, asking to inspect the premises. The church declined...

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is behind on his property taxes again. Maybe this explains why the governor allowed his Napa Valley winery to stay open but ordered other wineries in the state to close down. ... Marin County Tax Collector's website currently lists Gov. Newsom's property taxes on his Kentfield estate as delinquent. Newsom did manage to pay his property taxes on his Sacramento mansion this year, but not without racking up a late-payment penalty of some $2,094.15. In March, Newsom became the first governor to issue a stay-at-home order in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. A month later,...

In a solemn ceremony today, Governor Gavin Newsom of California dedicated a lions' den for Christians who sing in church against the government's orders. Newsom's advisers had approached him and suggested the move. "May Governor Newsom live forever!" they said, bowing prostrate before him. "We, your humble advisers, have all agreed that you should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who sings to any god, except SCIENCE or Black Lives Matter, shall be thrown into the lions' den." Governor Newsom thought about it and said, "OK. Shall we pass a law or something?" "No, you just declare...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is welcoming women across the country who are seeking abortions to come have the procedure done in his home state. In a Friday letter, Newsom joined Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in urging states "to review their laws and enact their own protections" after states such as Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Mississippi recently passed stringent laws that would curb access to abortion. "In the absence of federal leadership on this issue, states must step up and put in place their own protections – both in statute and in their state constitutions, and...