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There He Goes Again: Cynical Gavin Newsom Repudiates Another Element of His Own Record

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  May 15, 2025 1:15 PM

The Governor of California is backtracking against his own record and legacy, yet again.  Gavin Newsom correctly identifies his extremism and failures in California as a threat to the national job promotion he thinks he deserves, so he's been pivoting -- cynically and often.  He performed a 180 on the fairness of biological males in women's sports in a much-discussed podcast interview, as if some sensible sounding words erases his track record on such issues in his state.  As if to confirm the emptiness of his phony change of heart, he quickly admitted that he wouldn't actually do anything about this newfound embrace of fairness in athletics.  He should just be honest and admit he's captured by the same fringe ideology that Sen. Chris Murphy just espoused on this issue.  He also mocked the wokery of the made-up 'Latinx' term, invented by activists but rejected by actual Hispanics.  He averred he and his office had never employed that nonsense language.  But they had.  He had.  Repeatedly.  

He also appeared to stand up to his party's wild-eyed and disturbing radicalism on solicitation of minors for sex, but his 'leadership' (in the form of a statement) was instantly discarded by the legislature.  Plus, his gubernatorial signature on multiple crazy and alarming laws paved the way for this madness to take hold.  In addition, Newsom is embracing insulting and feeble spin on the breathtaking disaster that is California's high speed rail boondoggle.  And now, we turn to the law he signed expanding taxpayer-funded healthcare to cover all illegal immigrants in his sanctuary state (where he's very selectively waived sanctuary policies, based exclusively on political optics and calculations).  To the surprise of zero sentient, thinking human beings, that plan is also crashing and burning.  He bragged about his state's "progressive" leadership on this front, and how he's confronting obvious fiscal realities and beating an embarrassing retreat.  Who could have seen this coming, aside from everyone?

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025-26 revised budget proposal reneges on his signature policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants as costs exceed expectations and the state anticipates challenging economic times ahead. Newsom’s office said the governor’s spending plan, which will be released late Wednesday morning, calls for requiring all undocumented adults to pay $100 monthly premiums to receive Medi-Cal coverage and for blocking all new adult applications to the program as of Jan. 1. The cost share will reduce the financial burden on the state and could lower the total number of people enrolled in the healthcare program if some immigrants cannot afford the new premiums. Freezing enrollment may prevent the price tag of the program from continuing to balloon after more people signed up for coverage than the state anticipated. Newsom is expected to project a deficit for California in the fiscal year ahead, which includes higher than expected Medi-Cal costs, and more significant shortfall estimates in the following years. In the current budget year, the governor and lawmakers approved a $2.8-billion appropriation and took out a separate $3.4-billion loan just to pay for extra expenses for Medi-Cal through June.

The math was inevitable.  He moved forward anyway, making this a "signature" "achievement," only to beat a hasty and humiliating retreat, as his state's finances stare into the abyss.  Perhaps this guy should have spent less time traveling to successful red states to troll and attack Republican governors -- and less time playing the loyal Biden surrogate -- and more time tending to his own state's fiscal health.  This reminds me of Newsom signing the catastrophic, job-killing AB 5 giveaway to unions, only to have his one-party-rule regime peel much of it back, piece by piece, as it ruined livelihoods all over California.  There seems to be no policy harmful or stupid enough for Newsom's Democrats to reject.  But it also seems like he's willing to backpedal on virtually anything in order to burnish a new image for a likely presidential run.  What a leader.  Meanwhile, let's check in on California schools, shall we?  


Why was such a federal court order even necessary?  Newsom would have aggressively backed this district's radical anti-parent nuttiness in the very recent past.  But now he's trying to sing a new tune.  Will he also pull an about-face and oppose this characteristic "equity"-driven attack on merit and excellence that is the natural outgrowth of the woke, immoral, student-hurting DEI insanity that has consumed his party and state?


I'll leave you with a pitiful update on the wildfire recovery effort in a state that has long been strangled by onerous regulatory burdens, deep mismanagement, bloated government, and abject incompetence:

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National Democrats see California as the governing model for the whole country.  It's not even coming close to working in California.