Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, California — Gavin Newsom vowed Wednesday to tax any payouts that California residents receive from a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that Donald Trump secured in a settlement with his own Justice Department, as Democratic lawmakers in states across the country ramp up efforts to counter the president on the measure.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that his administration will seek to impose a 100 percent tax on any California residents who receive money from President Donald Trump’s newly created $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Speaking to reporters, Newsom denounced the fund as a “slush fund” and pledged to block Californians from financially benefiting from it. “Anyone from California that receives any of those funds, we want to tax 100 percent of those proceeds,” Newsom said during a press conference. “He pardoned all of those folks that were beating up cops and absolved them, providing them 1.776 billion dollars,” Newsom said....

Gavin Newsom has pleaded with Donald Trump for help in containing the Orange County chemical plant as officials warned there was still a risk of catastrophe. The California governor asked the president to issue a federal emergency declaration to bring in more support as the Garden Grove disaster continued into a fifth day. It comes as officials on Sunday revealed they had found a crack in the container that could be easing pressure in what they described as a “critically positive” moment. Meanwhile around 50,000 people have had their lives upended amid a mandatory evacuation zone in the immediate area,...

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency on Saturday evening as experts warned that the chemical tank that is overheating in Orange County could explode. 40,000 residents in Orange County, California, were evacuated on Friday amid a chemical leak at an aerospace facility. On Thursday, a valve overheated on a 34,000-gallon tank used to make plastics. Authorities said the tank, located in Garden Grove, could either explode or spill thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals. Several evacuation centers were opened; however, many residents are still refusing to leave their homes. On Friday evening, Orange County Fire Authority...

If you believe the governor of California, the state is laying track that it hasn’t bought yet. ================================================================== It was an induced hallucination, happily shared by a crowd of professional journalists, and a useful reminder of Gavin Newsom’s tendency to swagger like a winner on the lightest of pretexts. Back in February, the California governor spoke to the media in a crowded railyard, posing in front of a long line of freight cars and the piles of construction materials they had just delivered while he bragged about the extraordinary new progress the state was making toward a functioning high-speed rail...

When Xi Jinping rolled out the red carpet for Gavin Newsom inside the Great Hall of the People in October 2023, the staging told you everything you needed to know about who the meeting was actually for. The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party does not summon backbench governors for ceremonial handshakes. He receives heads of state. And the American official sitting across from him that day was not a head of state. He was the governor of one state in a federal union, traveling on what his own office called a “subnational” diplomatic mission to a hostile foreign...

The once Golden State has a jungle primary, meaning the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party. As in the 2024 Senate race, Democrat party leaders are determined to repeat their primary strategy to set up a general election between a Democrat and a Republican. In the 2024 senatorial primary, then-Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter held the one-two spot for a long time. But the last thing Democrats wanted was for Schiff and Porter to win the jungle primary and advance to the general election, where the two Democrats would spend months and dollars...

California’s two-term treasurer, Fiona Ma, has met with high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials and intelligence personnel dozens of times in the last several decades, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation discovered. During these many meetings in the U.S. and China, the Democratic frontrunner in California’s 2026 lieutenant governor race has introduced American lawmakers to Chinese intelligence officials and also repeatedly presented awards to CCP members and influence operatives, according to DCNF translations of Chinese government and state media reports. “We really should be more integrated,” Ma said during a 2023 interview with state-run media outlet CGTN. “The more that...

...“As in every movement, the more mistakes the government makes, the more chances we have to get support from the general public,” Wong said in an interview during his week-long visit to Los Angeles. He was invited here by UCLA to take part in a seminar on democracy movements. Wong, a co-founder of the student protest group Scholarism, became possibly the best-known face of the so-called umbrella protests that brought parts of Hong Kong to a standstill for nearly three months last year. For Wong, the election protests were only the latest chapter in a youth spent organizing on Hong...

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former top aide Dana Williamson pled guilty to federal fraud and tax charges after reaching a deal with prosecutors. Williamson, who was Newsom’s chief of staff from 2022 and 2024 and a top Sacramento power broker, appeared at Robert T. Matsui U.S. Courthouse in Sacramento Thursday to enter her guilty plea to counts of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return and making false statements. “Dana Williamson and her co-conspirators weaponized public trust for personal gain,” said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel in a statement. “They stole from...

Amid soaring gas prices following attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran, proposals to suspend California’s gas taxes are getting a no-go from Gov. Gavin Newsom.California has the highest gas tax in the nation at 61.2 cents per gallon, The Sacramento Bee previously reported. According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in California reached about $6.16 on Monday, May 11. Prices have climbed about $1.50 per gallon in the state since the Iran war began.President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to suspend the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon...

Gavin Newsom hasn’t launched his rumored White House bid, but already has one deep-pocketed Hollywood billionaire fully in his corner. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is all in on Newsom for president in 2028 — gushing over the publicity-loving California governor as a Democrat who can unify the flailing party and beat a Republican successor to President Donald Trump. “Gavin is the candidate who can motivate both the left and the center,” Hastings told the LA Times. The comments come as Newsom not-so-subtly lays the groundwork for a presidential bid — raising millions through a national committee, Campaign for Democracy, and...

The founder of an organic baby formula company has branded Gavin Newsom’s plan to offer free diapers to all new babies born in the state as “grifting nonsense.” Newsom announced the Golden State Start initiative on Friday, a partnership with nonprofit Baby2Baby that will give every newborn delivered in participating hospitals 400 diapers for free.

Gavin Newsom has announced that the state of California will be paying out $20 million to the company Baby2Baby in order to provide families free diapers. However, the one issue that critics have pointed out is that the co-CEO of the company, Norah Weinstein, sits on the board of Newsom's wife's California Partners Project. Newsom made the announcement for the diapers ahead of Mother's Day, this upcoming Sunday. "California is taking on the cost of raising a family head-on — delivering free school meals, making preschool free for every four-year-old, expanding after-school programs, and now making sure parents leave the...

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom did his best to insult several Southern states in a social media post Thursday. “Confederate states are rushing through rigged maps to erase Black districts off the map,” Newsom wrote above a map demonstrating the possible effects of redistricting in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina. It is strange we should have “black districts” in the first place. Newsom makes no acknowledgement of this. “If this doesn’t make you angry, it should,” Newsom continued. (An aside: Why wouldn’t a dispassionate analysis suffice? I find the constant encouragement to anger, or joy,...

Last week, the FBI raided 22 shady day-care businesses in Minneapolis, Minn., as the federal government expanded its investigation of social-services fraud there. On Monday, Vice President JD Vance added Columbus, Ohio, to his fraud task force’s agenda in the wake of a new report alleging a billion-dollar Medicaid scam. Both investigations were spurred by the dogged work of citizen and independent journalists like Nick Shirley in Minneapolis and Luke Rosiak in Columbus, who knocked on doors and interviewed dozens of supposed service providers to uncover the truth about fraudsters who may have bilked the federal government of billions. And...

Critics of California’s long-overdue high-speed rail project are aghast after statehouse Democrats pushed through legislation that would give the rail auditor the power to shield its reports from the public. The bill, which passed the California Assembly on Monday and sits at the state Senate, lets the Inspector General do so if publication “would pose a substantial and articulable risk to the project or to state operations if publicly disclosed.” The role of the Inspector General has gained even more prominence in light of new estimates that the total cost of the train has ballooned to $231 billion. The fantasy...

AB 1608 would rename and expand the powers of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s Inspector General while creating broad exemptions to withhold records California’s high-speed rail project, originally pitched to voters as a $33.5 billion endeavor under Proposition 1A in 2008, has spiraled into a staggering taxpayer nightmare with estimates now exploding as high as $231 billion — a more than 700% increase. Against this backdrop of relentless cost overruns, Assembly Democrats are advancing legislation critics say is explicitly designed to conceal the extent of the waste and shield the failing project from public accountability. AB 1608, authored by Assemblywoman Lori...

California’s soaring cost for its dragged-out high-speed rail construction was inflated by another recent political embarrassment for the state: labor icon Cesar Chavez.

Calls are growing for California’s high-speed rail to be abandoned completely after revelations the estimated cost of completing Gavin Newsom’s fantasy train project has ballooned to a staggering $231 billion. The latest cost revisions for the project — revealed during a Senate Transportation Committee meeting — left lawmakers fuming after the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office flagged numerous concerns. State Sen. Tony Strickland, vice chair of the STC, said the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s plan continues to obscure true costs — and now he’s calling for the entire project to be scrapped.