By Katy Grimes, August 26, 2026 5:28 pm

Originally published at California Globe

Wednesday, the Stop Nick Shirley Act rally at the California State Capitol was huge, and well attended. Senator Tony Strickland lead the press conference, and walked the crowd through the unconstitutional anti-transparency law that will have major implications for free speech, government accountability, and transparency. Accountability and transparency are essential to good government, and this law moves the state in the opposite direction, Strickland said. Strickland noted that instead of sending a thank-you note to Nick Shirley for exposing fraud inside immigrant communities in hospices in California, Governor Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, and elected Democrats went after him with AB 2624, the Stop Nick Shirley Act, to penalize him, fine him, and any journalist who uncover state government fraud.

As Sen. Strickland notes, Nick Shirley uncovered the fraud, but the Attorney General is not investigating it or prosecuting it.

“You’re not going to silence us. We will continue to fight” was the message throughout the rally and press conference.

Nick Shirley got to the heart of the matter immediately when he spoke – unconstitutional restriction of free speech, and freedom of the press. He covered the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” AB 2624, now law in California. He said the bill was created by the California Attorney General’s wife Mia Bonta after he exposed widespread fraud inside immigrant communities in America. Now they want to penalize journalists and citizens for looking into potential fraud inside of “immigration support service providers, Shirley added.

Nick was accessible to the crowd, who showed their love for him the entire rally.

Before the rally started, the Globe was told that two of the listed guest speakers – Republicans Assembly Minority Leader Alexandra Macedo and Assemblyman David Tangipa – were under lockdown in the Assembly Chambers during session by the Assembly Speaker, and not allowed to leave. So much for elected representatives representing their people at a rally.

Antifa made an appearance as the anti-patriots – loud and obnoxious, offensive and not interested in bipartisan dialogue – which made it necessary for the Capitol police to bring in reinforcements. The police presence was impressive and welcome.

Ben Bergquam with Real America’s Voice got some of the best footage:

The group of overweight, pasty Antifa outcasts made most people laugh at them – especially at their signs, one of which called rally attendees “KKK.”

So original.

Fortunately for the rally attendees, the messages from speakers were positive, and encouraging. And several said it was up to the crowd to fight back against the unconstitutional bill by fighting for constitutional rights, and voting.

Candidate for Attorney General Michael Gates questioned what Rob Bonta even does since he does not prosecute fraud. He promised rally goers he would, as well as doing the actual job of the Attorney General.

Congressional Candidate Jenny Rae LaRou (CA-47), business owner and entrepreneur, currently serves as executive director of CAL DOGE, the state-level effort modeled on efficiency and waste-reduction initiatives by the federal DOGE team. She has focused on rooting out government waste, fraud, and abuse in California, and said at the rally her first call was to Nick Shirley when she first started.

She assured everyone she would continue to root out fraud, asking “when in history have the good guys ever censored anyone?”

Pastor Jack Hibbs encouraged everyone to get involved, and recruit friends and family, if California is to be saved.

Sonja Shaw, candidate for California Superintendent of Public Instruction, featured prominently, as well. Shaw is the Chino Valley Unified School District board president, and emphasizes parental rights, academics, specifically noting low proficiency rates in reading and math, opposition to certain gender-related school policies, and reducing what she describes as political ideology in classrooms.

The Antifa thugs did not disperse, and during speeches, increased their noise level, horn blowing, chanting, blaring loud speakers.

That’s the best they had.

Here are a few of the deadbeats up close…

the swim mask is innovative:

I don’t know what this is.

Her parents must be so proud.

Ew. Creepy guy.

Socks on the arms is a new one.

And these lovelies were dressed as Trump supporters. Amy Reichert filmed them:

Nick Shirley posted this little “Fun fact, Newsom has directed over $300 million to nonprofits while governor and AG Rob Bonta when he was an assemblyman directed over $500,000 to nonprofits associated with his wife.”

It sounds like there is plenty to continue investigating – for Nick Shirley, and hopefully for more of California’s journalists.

But don’t hold your breath on the Capitol crowd.

After I posted “Nick Shirley rally was a rousing success” to X with photos, Ian Calderon, former Democrat Assemblyman posted this in response. Aaron Parnas posted the photo at 11:43 when the event was being set up. Nice try guys.

Here is my photo of the crowd behind me:

For details of the Stop Nick Shirley Act bill, Assembly Bill 2624, be sure to read our report:

Gov. Newsom Wails About Assaults on the Free Press, then Signs ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ into Law

‘California Passes a law making it a crime to report a crime’

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, August 23, 2026 8:56 am

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” Assembly Bill 2624, by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) into law Saturday August 22, 2026. Bonta claims her bill is about “privacy for immigration support services providers.”

Gov. Newsom two days ago screeched on X about unfair attacks on the free press:

“A free press cannot function under constant threats and retaliation from the government. Reporters must be free to hold those in power accountable — without fear of retribution. The assault on the free press must end!”

And then he signed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” into law.

Republicans nicknamed the bill the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” for independent YouTuber and citizen journalist Nick Shirley after he exposed Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota.

Bonta, wife of California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, claims it does not fine or jail journalists simply for “uncovering” Democrat fraud.

However, her bill will fine citizen journalists a minimum $4,000 for exposing fraud inside “Immigration Support Service Providers” – illegal services to illegal aliens.

Bonta’s bill would impose huge civil sanctions on independent investigative reporters for “harassing” what Bonta calls “immigrant services” workers who, in fact, are providing taxpayer-funded goods and services to illegal aliens. It is designed to use as a weapon to intimidate and punish journalists who dissent from mainstream views.

AB 2624 is reminiscent of AB 2098 from October 2022 when Gov. Newsom signed a bill to censor California doctors accused of “Spreading COVID Misinformation” during Covid. Assembly Bill 2098 put unconstitutional restrictions on free speech by medical professionals, and subjected them to disciplinary actions by the Medical Board of California if they did not adhere to the “approved COVID treatment consensus.”

Even before AB 2098 went into effect, it was already used as a weapon to intimidate and punish doctors who dissented from “mainstream views.” However, the bill was ultimately ruled unconstitutional and the governor and COVID “experts” were defeated over their law to punish doctors for “Covid Misinformation.”

California legislators are trying to make investigating fraud illegal, as Elon Musk correctly noted on X.

The Babylon Bee got it right when they headlined: “California Passes a law making it a crime to report a crime.”

Within days of announcing her new bill, Ms. Bonta claimed “Right-wing agitators, ineffective legislators, and Trump loyalists are intentionally spreading significant misinformation about Assembly Bill 2624.”

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) calls it what it is:

CENSORSHIP: The “Stop Nick Shirley Act” that makes it illegal to post videos of fraud against taxpayers is now law. Democrats decided to stop independent journalists from investigating fraud instead of stopping the fraud.

DeMaio should know. On Wednesday, Assembly Democrats censored him on the floor of the Assembly during debate over Bonta’s bill.

“California Democrats don’t care about freedom of speech. They silenced @carldemaio when he attempted to debate the Stop Nick Shirley Act bill. Who is next?” I posted to X.

It is curious that Gov. Newsom signed the Stop Nick Shirley Act into law given that it is an unconstitutional attack on free speech… something he claims to care about, but only for people in his tribe.

Governor Newsom, what was that you were saying about “a free press?”

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio just announced Sunday morning that he is asking the US Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights to intervene to block implementation of what he says is a “blatantly unconstitutional” law.

DeMaio said AB 2624 also imposes stiff financial penalties on citizen journalists for posting videos – and the final version of the bill even removed exemptions for journalists under the California Shield Law (Evidence Code – EVID § 1070).

The Office of Civil Rights is currently challenging a number of California state laws and policies in court for violating constitutional rights.

“Newsom and California Democrats have a bad record of repeatedly imposing unconstitutional laws – only to be stopped by the US DOJ and the courts,” DeMaio noted. “But the damage is done because while we fight in court our constitutional rights are being infringed upon.”

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, August 7, 2026 8:13 am

California passed Assembly Bill 2098 in 2022 to punish doctors for spreading “Covid misinformation.” That horrible period of time seems like many years ago, but the Orwellian after effects have lingered.

AB 2098, authored by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), punished physicians and surgeons for “unprofessional conduct” for advocating for the potential benefits of early treatment with off-label drugs, or to those who dare to ask questions about COVID vaccine safety.

After several years and numerous lawsuits, Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb of the Eastern District of California just granted preliminary injunction in Kory et al. v. Bonta et al.

The order applies Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Le Trinh Hoang, and Dr. Brian Tyson, and has taken two and a half years, three courts, four rounds of opposition, and one Supreme Court decision that had nothing to do with COVID, according to Kory’s attorney Rick Jaffe.

Dr. Pierre Kory explained the decision in a compelling Substack article: “As of Last Night, the U.S Government Will Never Get to Tell Doctors What They Can Say Anymore.”

This is huge.

Dr. Pierre Kory explains:

In the case Kory v. Bastard, err, I mean Bonta, senior United States District Judge William B. Shubb granted our renewed motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered not only California’s Attorney General but also the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board, as well as ANYONE acting on their behalf, to stop investigating us, stop prosecuting us, stop harassing us. Most importantly, stop threatening our licenses over any professional opinions we might share with our own patients about Covid-19, the “vaccines,” ivermectin, anything. The order names me and my two colleagues, Dr. Le Trinh Hoang and Dr. Brian Tyson.

The decision “puts the boards on notice that a federal judge has found their Covid misinformation policy unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Every investigator and every board member now knows how this judge sees it. Anyone board employee who opens or continues a Covid misinformation investigation from here on is doing it with a federal injunction and a federal ruling on the record, and with no ability to say later that nobody told them,” attorney Jaffe explains.

Pending a final determination on the merits, it enjoins California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the Executive Director of the Medical Board of California Reji Varghese, the Executive Officer of the Osteopathic Medical Board of California Erika Calderon, and their agents and employees from investigating, prosecuting, accusing, or sanctioning doctors based on the viewpoint of the information, recommendations, or advice they give patients about COVID-19, including departures from public-health authorities’ positions.

And the Legislature was forced to repeal AB 2098 in 2023.

The Globe had a lengthy conversation Thursday with Dr. Bryan Tyson about the federal preliminary injunction, and the long, difficult and Orwellian road leading up to it.

Dr. Tyson said in 2022 he was running for Congress and had several interviews on air with One America News. They asked him about his medical clinic in El Centro in Imperial County, where he had treated thousands of Covid patients successfully. He recommended “Don’t take the vaccine, only take Ivermectin.”

Someone anonymously reported Dr. Tyson to the state medical board for “misinformation and disinformation.”

“Doctors should be able to speak to their patients” without interference from the state, Dr. Tyson said.

“What incorrect information?” he asked. “I would be considered a Covid expert,” he said, after treating more than 20,000 patients. “None of the federal ‘experts’ had ever taken care of patients – not Fauci or Walensky,” he added.

Dr. Tyson said during the investigative process to revoke his medical license, he told the board that “everything we used was FDA approved. I can use medications off-label as long as I explain/disclose to the patient.”

“We used monoclonal antibodies, Hydroxychloroquine, Melatonin, Albuterol, Inhaled steroids, Vitamin C, Zinc, Vitamin D, Zithromax, Steroids…”

But he was told by the California Department of Public Health to “do nothing” – send the patients home for 14 days, and if they are still sick, send them to the hospital.

With all of the in-person care at his clinic, Dr. Tyson said there were no malpractice lawsuits, no wrongful death accusations, and with the 80% mortality rate at the nearby hospital, he said families were checking their family members out of the hospital and bringing them to Dr. Tyson’s clinic for treatment.

“The government guidelines were written by people who don’t see patients,” Dr. Tyson said. “For physicians who see patients, there was no channel to report what we saw.”

The medical board did not revoke Dr. Tyson’s medical license, and he said at the end of the process, they wondered why he was ever reported.

Dr. Tyson said the California Department of Public Health was in his clinic for 10 months collecting data on his patients, but never provided much-needed PPE. “We were like an island taking care of the 180,000 Imperial County residents, and the 1.5 million from Mexicali,” he added. They never received help from the CDPH.

The preliminary injunction also means “no more suppressing us on social media, or taking down our videos.”

“This is one step – you can’t punish physicians for speaking out against government protocols,” he said. “I also should be able to speak publicly about my experiences – what I am seeing on the ground, what I am doing, and people are getting better, not sicker. And it’s not medical malpractice or unlawful to do that.”

The Globe asked Dr. Tyson if he has ever experienced this overbearing pressure from the government before. “I’ve never run into anything like this, and the refusal to have a conversation – never before.”

He said practicing physicians used to have conversations with government medical employees regularly. “I’ve never been told ‘don’t do anything for 14 days and if they don’t get better, send them, to the hospital!”

“And the killer of this whole story – we had the CDPH in our clinic for 10 months. We gave them our data – morbidity, mortality, height, weight, age… but they didn’t want to know what the reinfection rate was, or my treatment data. ‘What is natural immunity? Are people protected from natural immunity?’”

“They didn’t want to know, even after we gave them over 4,000 patient’s data who got better. They didn’t want to know!”

He said the effort to “block and downplay and punish and diminish what we were doing was the focus.”

He said he started treatment of Covid patients before day 7, and they got better.

Dr. Tyson said he asked the CA Dept of Public Health why they weren’t interested in publishing his patients’ data on the state website – they did not answer. And then they packed up and left the next day.

“Never in my life and career have I seen anything like this.”

“Never has anyone told me ‘you’re a quack.’ ‘You’re going to kill people.’”

“If I was doing the wrong thing for patients, we would have had an empty clinic.”

“Did I almost lose my license for doing the right thing – this judgment is huge.”

“We were right. They were wrong. And there was no forum provided to prove your case.”

Dr. Tyson said the doctors who lost their medical licenses should be rehired and paid for back/lost wages. “Fauci admitted to no science to back it all up. They should get their licenses back.”

“It’s been a big wake-up,” he added. “We’ve gone a long way, and most of the country seems to understand. People are waking up.”

“Where is the apology?”

As Dr. Pierre Kory concluded, “We continue to have the freedom, even in Clownifornia, to both hold and freely express opinions that contradict those of the priesthood within public health and academia. The court even said, in so many words, that the boards may not dress up a viewpoint prosecution as a “standard of care” or “informed consent” case. That was always the trick, and the judge saw through it.”

Read Attorney Rick Jaffe’s post about the legal case.

Read Dr. Pierre Kory’s Substack post.

and read Rita Barnett-Rose’s legal analysis at the Globe: Federal Judge Enjoins California Medical Boards from Punishing Doctors for Rejecting the Government’s COVID Narrative.

Originally published at the California Globe

By Katy Grimes, July 23, 2026 6:00 am

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, both Democrats, claim that they are fighting California’s climate crisis.

There is no “climate crisis” in California. We have the most beautiful weather in the world. But the real crisis is the high cost of living under the Democrat Supermajority.

And, California only emits one percent of the world’s CO2. No crisis.

At least the fake climate crisis gives Newsom and Bonta something to do, since governing isn’t on either of their agendas.

Governor Newsom claims “extreme wildfire threats” as if he’s ever prioritized wildfire mitigation in his “meeting the moment” rhetoric:

“As the climate crisis brings more sudden and extreme wildfire threats to California, we’re meeting the moment with state-of-the-art firefighting technology and fire prevention work. Our extraordinary firefighters continue to step up to protect communities up and down our state.”

I replied on X:

BS Alert: California has had seasonal wildfires for centuries – long before European settlement – driven by its Mediterranean climate, vegetation, and natural ignition sources – and not Gavin Newsom’s faux ‘climate crisis’. Native Californians used controlled burns to manage landscapes, promote certain plants, and reduce fuel buildup, which helped prevent larger, more destructive fires. Imagine if Gov. Newsom tried this again.

And, 95% of wildfires are started by humans. This includes power lines/utilities, equipment, arson, debris burning, campfires, cigarettes, and vehicles. Lightning accounts for the rest, mostly in remote higher-elevation areas.

California AG Bonta is just as ridiculous:

“As Attorney General, I’ll continue fighting to protect California from the climate crisis. Yesterday, I co-led a coalition in suing the Trump Administration over its unlawful effort to weaken protections against hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—a dangerous super pollutant that accelerates climate change. As communities face record-breaking heat, devastating wildfires, and extreme weather, we can’t afford to move backward. We’ll keep holding the Trump Administration accountable and defending the laws that protect our environment.”

Here’s a headline: Rob Bonta is suing the Trump administration AGAIN. Is this lawsuit number #75?

In 2024, a coalition of 1,600 actual scientists sent a letter to the California Air Resources Board: There is “NO Climate Crisis ” the scientists said.

The scientists also found that “California is in no danger of unusual drought: The annual precipitation in California has fluctuated greatly over the last 150 years, with only a slight decrease,” they said.

California also has record low levels of air pollution that are below the threshold of human health effects, James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH has told us repeatedly for years. He was one of the 1,600 scientists signed onto the letter to CARB.

Gov. Newsom and AG Bonta are tedious and endlessly dreary. The actual problem is that their climate policies are ramping up the cost of living in California.

Watts Up With That, the best scientific climate website in the world, notes that “Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) do not show that California’s number of extremely hot days is increasing beyond what earlier parts of the 20^th century saw, particularly the 1930s.”

In June 2024, the Globe reported, “Climate Change Agenda: Media Hyping ‘Extreme Heat Warning’ When CA Temps are Not ‘Extreme,’” noting how most news outlets were issuing dire warnings that California would be under an “extreme” heat wave. They did it again in 2025.

Fox News reported breathlessly that temperatures in California will reach as high as 120 degrees, without identifying where.

What extreme weather are we experiencing this July?

Extreme Weather Watch reports Sacramento July Weather Records for 1877–2026 starting with the hottest Sacramento July day in recorded history was 114 degrees in 1972:

Here is the daily averages for July in Sacramento according to Extreme Weather Watch:

California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal. So are our hot summers and occasional heavy wet winters, as we are facing this coming winter with an El Niño predicted. It’s not hard to plan for this – if politicians were honest. Our water projects were built and designed to provide a steady 5-7 year supply of water for the entire state, even in drought years.

Close to 60% of California’s water supply goes to environmental uses right off the top. Of the remaining water, urban use is less than 10% and agriculture uses not even 40%.

But their real motive is setting up another crisis and another lockdown opportunity.

Here are California’s statewide temperature averages:

“Whenever there’s a wildfire, Newsom and all the others in denial over their epic policy failures, come shouting ‘climate change,’” Ed Ring reported in 2021. “They have the audacity to tell us to turn our thermostats up to 78 degrees and refrain from using electric appliances, and they claim these fires are evidence of why this is necessary. They embark on a ‘renewables mandate’ that jacks utility prices up to the highest in the nation in exchange for unreliable power.”

“More than anything else, what Newsom and all the rest of these politicians who want California to set a ‘climate example’ to the world are in denial of is their own misanthropy. They know perfectly well that California only emits one percent of the world’s CO2. They know as well that China and India are not about to stop using fossil fuel to grow their economies. They know that fossil fuel accounts for 85 percent of global energy production, with hydroelectric and nuclear power accounting for another 11 percent. All renewables account for only four percent of global energy production. Four percent.

Gov. Newsom just left the state today for another trip somewhere, likely in a private jet, delivered to that private jet in large, black SUV, followed by several other large, black SUVs, to fly somewhere and be picked up in another large, black SUV.

Governor Gavin Newsom has a well-documented history of frequent out-of-state and international travel, particularly in his second term, the Mercury News reported in April.

Their analysis through April 2026 found 45 out-of-state trips totaling 229 days—nearly 20% of his time in office since January 2023, averaging about two months per year. This is more than double his first-term rate, 25 trips, 107 days.

California has among the highest electricity rates in the U.S. – 87-100% above the national average – driven significantly by aggressive climate and energy policies under Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom and Bonta have reached peak stupidity.

Originally published by California Globe

By Katy Grimes, August 6, 2026 10:50 am

Exactly two years ago, as Chevron Oil company announced that it was moving its headquarters to Houston Texas from San Ramon California, California Energy Commission regulators announced proposed government controls of the petroleum industry, ostensibly in order to combat future energy price surges, according to a report released August 1, 2024 by the CEC.

Despite California’s radical and very accelerated green agenda which does not include oil and gas as fuels, the CEC fully expects some of California’s nine oil refineries to be shuttered due to falling demand, which would give the remaining refineries increased pricing power and raise the possibility of a surge in gas prices, the study said.

You read that right – the California Energy Commission proposed a state takeover of oil refineries in August 2024. Venezuela, anyone?

The climate change agenda was really just an attempt at a climate pandemic – an excuse to shut down parts of the country and the economy for power and control. But the masses never bought in, and now, climate journalism is sputtering out. Master Resource reports that Belle de Jong, environment editor at The European Correspondent, recently posted on social media:

“Climate journalism is shrinking, this recent Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard piece shows. CBS lost its entire climate desk, the Washington Post cut 74% of its climate team, and NPR laid off its climate desk editor. The Media and Climate Change Observatory’s 2025 year-end analysis showed a 38% reduction in global media’s climate coverage in 2025, since the high-water mark of 2021.”

The public has climate fatigue. From ice age hysteria in the 1970’s to global warning fear mongering in the 2000’s, to the catch-all “climate change,” the people know that weather changes, and when it does, shouldn’t double and triple their energy bills.

The Daily Wire reports that 15 blue states Attorneys General have petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to keep permitting slow, tangled, and expensive, calling the Trump administration FERC reform a threat to “ratepayers.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black. The other state AGs who are joining this letter — California, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, and the want-to-be-state Washington, D.C. — have no credibility on this topic. FERC should recognize that they represent a who’s-who of the nation’s highest electricity prices. Just ask their own ratepayers how ‘protection’ is working out for them.”

The Trump administration, upon taking office in January 2025, declared an energy emergency and ushered in orders to accelerate domestic production by streamlining the approval process for infrastructure projects that improve existing systems.

California has highest-in-the-nation gas prices and the highest energy costs, which have increased 50% since 2019 according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The blame for the 50% increase in energy costs according to the LAO is California’s “ambitious climate‑related goals,” “intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation and help the state meet its larger climate goals.” This severely affects electricity prices.

“Oil is more than just gas stations,” Hector Barajas reported at the Globe. “It powers transportation, fuels manufacturing, supports agriculture, and keeps supply chains running smoothly. It’s found in nearly every product we use, from the food on our tables to the clothes we wear.”

“When oil prices increase, those rising costs ripple through every sector of our economy, leaving the public to foot the bill.”

Instead of making life more affordable for Californians by producing more of our own energy, and using our own resources to bring down costs and build a more affordable future for everyone, California’s lawmakers continue to push for unrealistic “green energy” mandates. They restrict our car choices, and force many people summer and winter to live uncomfortably because of high heating and cooling costs. President Trump’s U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright promised that his first order of business would be to make energy affordable, reliable and secure for all Americans first.

As the Globe has asked numerous times, “Where is California’s severe air pollution? Who in California is experiencing climate change?”

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has vowed to “get out of the way” of coal, oil and gas, and called the UK’s 2050 net zero target “a sinister goal” that would “impoverish” people.

He also downplayed the threat from extreme weather, and suggested that climate action is part of a plot to “grow government power” and “shrink human freedom.”

Yet, California residential electricity rates rose about 59.1% over the five years since 2020, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration annual data through 2025, on top of already ranking among the highestin the contiguous U.S.

California has had elevated energy costs for many years relative to most other states due to a mix of factors that include:

• Aggressive clean-energy and climate policies (renewables mandates, cap-and-trade, low-carbon fuel standards, and related programs), which add costs that are passed through to ratepayers.

• Wildfire-related expenses and liabilities (prevention, hardening, insurance, and recovery), which have become a sizable share of bills for major utilities like PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E.

• Higher taxes, fees, labor/business costs, a unique cleaner-burning gasoline blend for vehicles, limited local refining capacity (leading to more imports), and grid/infrastructure investments.

• Net-metering/solar subsidy structures that have shifted some fixed costs onto non-solar customers.

The radical climate policies have been cheered on by the media, going so far as to linking “extreme weather events” to climate change. As Master Resource correctly notes, “The public is tired of climate alarmism, now in its fifth decade. Regular weather news can report (and exaggerate), but climate scolds do not have the commercial interest anymore–in the US, at least.”

As the Daily Wire concludes, “One can rightfully ask whether these AGs even knew what they were signing, or whether ‘stop President Trump’ is enough for them to act. Clearly partisanship trumps common sense, especially if it gets Trump; affordability be damned.”

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, July 25, 2026 12:35 pm

In a July 16, 2026 letter from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (and similar letters to officials in New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania), DHS stated that a review of publicly available voter registration data indicated “there may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.” It gave an example of 81,336 registrants matching name, date of birth, address, and Social Security number to non-citizens in DHS files. The combined figures cited for the four states were roughly: California 190,832; New Jersey 35,152; Nevada 15,903; Pennsylvania 14,576, totaling over 250,000.

“The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for immigration enforcement and protecting election infrastructure,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote to SOS Weber. “Both of these responsibilities are critical in my mission to protect the Homeland. I am writing to make you aware of the concerning results of a recent analysis of California’s publicly available voter registration database information. Preliminary review of the records revealed that there may be as many as 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California. As an example, we found 81,336 California registrants for whom the name, date of birth, address and Social Security number match a non-citizen in our files. The most efficient way to ensure the accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification.”

California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada opted not to use a new federal citizenship database, a Homeland Security review found more than a quarter million noncitizens registered to vote, Just the News reported.

Additionally, in President Donald Trump’s speech last week about election integrity, he shared intelligence findings that the People’s Republic of China has “compromised” more than 200 million voter records across at least 18 U.S. states.

Trump said that during the 2020 election cycle the People’s Republic of China carried out “the largest compromise of election data in history,” resulting in the “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” He said the data included names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other details, and that U.S. spy agencies learned in 2020 that tens of millions of records from at least 18 states had been “bought, stolen, or hacked” by China, but instead of exposing this, suppressed the information to benefit Democrats in the election.

USA Today reported:

“U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data – think of that, tens of millions of voters’ data – in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China,” Trump said. “Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden.”

It was, Trump said, “an unprecedented election security nightmare.”

As for California’s 190,000 illegal immigrants on the voter rolls, DHS reviewed voter registrations as part of a Trump administration priority to address concerns about illegal voting in the U.S. using the SAVE system, a controversial citizenship database that includes Social Security numbers, Just the News reported. The administration is offering the centralized records to states to identify non-citizens on voter rolls across the country.

The four states opted not to utilize the SAVE system, prompting the agency to conduct a separate review using publicly available voter records.

DHS Secretary Mullin told California SOS Weber to “please contact elections@hq.dhs.gov at DHS by July 30, 2026. We look forward to thiscollaboration as we work together to ensure free, fair and accurate elections.”

And this is why California voters need to pass Proposition 39 the Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative, and Congress needs to pass the SAVE America Act Requirement for Voter I.D.

Public File Letter California

270KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, July 2026 1:51 pm

California Governor Gavin Newsom has increased California’s state budget 60% to 70% in the 7 years since he took office in 2019.

The 2018-19 enacted budget (pre-Newsom or early transition, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown) was $201 billion.

Gov. Newsom’s first full budget 2019-20 enacted was $215 billion.

Newsom’s 2022-23 budget exceeded $300-310 billion.

Newsom’s 2026-27 final enacted budget, signed June 2026 is $352 billion in total spending, which includes the $251.5 billion General Fund. This is up from the prior year’s $321 billion or so in some comparisons.

From $201 billion in 2018-19 to $350 billion in 2026-27, is an increase of about 74%.

In April, the Legislative Analyst’s Office examined the dramatic increase in state spending since 2019-20, Newsom’s first full budget, as noted above.

The LAO reports that the state faces structural deficits ranging from $20 billion to $30 billion annually. Structural deficits occur when a government’s spending consistently exceeds its tax revenue, regardless of the state of the economy, and current government spending is being financed by borrowing. A structural deficit problem implies that borrowing is becoming increasingly unsustainable or expensive.

“During Gavin Newsom’s governorship, California’s state budget grew over 63 percent, rising from around $200 billion in 2019 to about $327 billion in the current fiscal year ending June 30,” the Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian reported in a 2024 report titled, After California’s Budget Grew 63 Percent in Five Years, Newsom’s Next Budget Needs a Reality Check. “After adjusting for inflation and California’s population losses since 2019, this represents a 38% per person increase in real (inflation-adjusted) state government spending.”

“Put another way, California’s state government spends about $23,000 per household. In contrast, Florida, which is one of the fastest-growing states in the country—meaning that they are building expensive new schools, hospitals and infrastructure to accommodate their growing population—is spending $14,000 per household and since 2019 has increased its per-person spending at less than half the rate of California.”

The 2026-27 budget is described as “balanced” by the governor, with reserves preserved, but structural pressures remain – rising program costs outpacing revenues long-term.

Much of the growth stems from:

• Pre-existing programs (about 70% of the increase sustains commitments made before Newsom, per the Legislative Analyst’s Office).

• Big rises in education (e.g., +$37 billion for community colleges, K-12 expansions like transitional kindergarten and after-school programs).

• Health care, especially Medi-Cal (+$25 billion, with Gov. Newsom’s expansions to cover more people including illegal immigrants).

• Other areas like higher education, developmental services, childcare, in-home support, and state operations.

The LAO says General Fund spending has grown just over $100 billion since the COVID‑19 pandemic – from $146 billion in 2019‑20 to $248 billion under the Governor’s budget proposal for 2026‑27.

The LAO reports Discretionary Choices to Expand or Create New Services or Support:

Since 2019‑20, the Legislature has enacted roughly $12 billion in discretionary choices that expand or create new services and supports. (This estimate accounts for budget reductions enacted in recent years and those proposed in the 2026‑27 Governor’s Budget.) These choices represent about 20 percent of local assistance growth over the period (meaning roughly 80 percent of increases have sustained existing services rather than created new ones). Major actions in this category include: (1) expansion of comprehensive Medi‑Cal coverage to undocumented immigrants; (2) expansion of child care slots; (3) a 10 percent increase in CalWORKs grants, provided on top of other grant increases funded from realignment funding (which roughly kept pace with inflation relative to 2019‑20 levels); and (4) expanded eligibility for Middle Class Scholarships (MCS) to include students who also receive Cal Grant awards.

• Gov. Newsom increased spending for community colleges by $37 billion.

• $25 billion in increases for Medi-Cal, and $21.1 billion for the Department of Developmental Services, up $2.4 billion from the prior year.

• $12.5 billion General Fund for IHSS in-home supportive services (part of $33.4 billion total funds), an increase of $1.1 billion (9.7%) from the revised 2025-26 estimate.

• The budget includes $7.5 billion for child care programs in 2026-27, up ~$150 million from revised prior-year levels, with a 2.41% cost-of-living adjustment.

• California universities will see notable increases, according to EdSource, continuing multi-year compacts while navigating deficit pressures through some deferrals.

• University of California receives approximately $5.3 billion in General Fund support. This includes $350.6 million in new base funding.

• California State University receives approximately $5.6 billion in General Fund support, with $365.7 million in new base funding.

• The analysis also found the state has spent $9 billion more on State Operations, including IT services.

As for the structural deficits, LAO projections have shown annual structural deficits of $20–35 billion in out-years starting 2027-28, are driven by spending outpacing revenue growth. Recent May revision actions (higher revenues, some cuts, and solutions) have reduced future deficits by roughly half, but the underlying imbalance remains.

The LAO explains budget revenue structure volatility:

• Heavy reliance on personal income tax from top earners and capital gains — often 40%+ of General Fund. This amplifies booms (e.g., current AI/stock surge) but also busts (2022 declines).

• Sales and corporation taxes are less dominant but also cyclical.

• Constitutional formulas (Prop 98 for education, Prop 2 for reserves and debt) lock in much of any revenue upside, limiting flexibility.

California’s structural deficit reflects crazed policy goals colliding with volatile revenues and rising mandatory costs in a high-cost state.

And Gov. Gavin Newsom is handing this hot mess off to the next governor.

originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, July 15, 2026 6:30 am

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s disconnect and lack of self-awareness is stunning. He just gave a little talk at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials event, whining incessantly about “the concentration of wealth, the stagnation of wages for working people, the challenges in housing, in education, in healthcare,” as if he has nothing to do with these inequities.

Newsom is a career Democrat politician, and he is the two-term Governor of failing California.

A few million here, a hundred billion there… California is awash in horrific fraud under Gavin Newsom.

In early July 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom addressed Democrat Party skullduggery amid progressive and Democrat Socialist-backed candidates winning primaries. Newsom rejected the idea that socialist-leaning candidates threaten the party, calling the debate “very healthy” and emphasizing a “big tent” approach.

Is Gavin Newsom considering a dalliance with the DSA?

Fox News posted to Facebook:

Gavin Newsom said in a new interview that he’s not threatened by the socialist insurgence in the Democratic Party, calling it ‘very healthy’ and he’s for ‘addition, not subtraction.’

The California governor, who’s widely considered a likely candidate for president in 2028, said, “The Democratic Party needs to be in the addition business if we’re going to get back into the majority. Yeah, we need to get our base out there. We got to turn out. … I’m not offended by this notion of a big tent.”

A series of high-profile Democratic Socialist candidates ousting establishment Democrats in recent congressional primaries has sparked alarm in some circles due to their far-left views and concerns about broader electability.

Is Gavin Newsom just tone-deaf, entitled, or “lacking insight and emotional intelligence?

Is Newsom protecting his ego by avoiding uncomfortable truths?

Notably and ironically, higher-status people and many politicians often score lower on self-awareness, unleashing their inner narcissism.

Listen to his talk at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials) event (Tip: have an airsick bag handy):

Demonstrating that he does not understand the difference between the “Makers” and the “Takers,” here are some highlights.

Newsom: “We have to fundamentally understand that it is broken. We cannot play in the margins any longer. We cannot argue to fail more efficiently. It’s time for order of magnitude change in terms of how we approach the American Dream.”

“We need to democratize the economy if we’re going to save our democracy. That’s the fundamental challenge of our time. It’s not socialism. It’s not the capitalism of today. It’s something fundamentally different. We’ve got to move beyond the old binaries and think in new and creative ways.”

Newsom flails about with open hands, then points and makes fist-like motions for emphasis.

“This is about restoring opportunity. This is about making sure that the American Dream isn’t just a slogan, but a lived reality for more people. We’ve seen the concentration of wealth, the stagnation of wages for working people, the challenges in housing, in education, in healthcare. These are not abstract issues. These are the issues that are undermining faith in our institutions and in our democracy itself.”

Newsom leans forward, using both jazz hands to punctuate points.

“We have to be bold. We have to be willing to challenge the status quo. Whether it’s corporate concentration, whether it’s the role of private equity in housing, whether it’s making sure that workers have a real seat at the table. These are the conversations we need to be having. And we need to be having them not just in California, but across the country.”

Gavin Newsom has a lengthy history of navigating California’s left-leaning politics, including past interactions with the DSA during his recall election. But these remarks explicitly embrace broader inclusion of socialists under the Democrat umbrella for electoral gains – personal electoral gains.

Should you desire more analysis of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political proclivities and disastrous policies, enjoy Top 50 Disasters Gov. Gavin Newsom Has Ushered into California: 2025 Edition: Gavin Newsom is the French Laundry Governor. And this was only the 2025 edition!

By Katy Grimes, July 5, 2026 9:39 am

While you were celebrating the Fourth of July semiquincentennial celebrations, America’s 250th birthday, grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, and smoking try-tip, while the kids and grandkids were splashing in swimming pools, and while families joined in parades, California Governor Gavin Newsom could only think of one thing – himself.

As President Donald J. Trump was putting on the greatest fireworks show in American history, and thousands of Americans visited the Great American State Fair in Washington D.C., California’s whiny governor posted a video carping about Donald Trump, and projecting his own corruption onto America’s President.

“250 years ago, our founders gave voice to one of the most radical sentences ever written: ‘We the People.’ Today, that idea is under attack,” Gavin Newsom said.

Tell that to the thousands upon thousands of Americans at the Great American State Fair, and the thousands who stayed for the 850,000-shell fireworks show.

Newsom claimed that Trump:

• He’s embraced gerrymandering to entrench minority rule

• Donald Trump and his allies are pushing voter suppression laws across the country

• Donald Trump and his allies are trying to end birthright citizenship

• Donald Trump is threatening to use the military and law enforcement against his political opponents

Notably, Newsom just redistricted California to gerrymander and eliminate the votes of specific Republican-leaning areas, something the Founding Fathers fought against.

I don’t think the Founding Fathers would care much for Gavin.

What actually was under attack was California – “Fourth of July descended into mayhem across Southern California as unruly crowds overwhelmed packed-out fireworks displays, looted stores, ignited fires and saw cops charge on horseback,” the California Post reported. “Officers were swarmed by hundreds of people who hurled bottles and other debris at them before the crowd turned on one another and began fighting.”

Compare Newsom’s ridiculous speech, tearing down what he himself is incapable of building, to President Trump’s at the Salute to America Celebration July 4, 2026, praising America, our flags that flew at Saratoga and Yorktown, the founders, American explorers, our military Medal of Honor recipients, and our armed forces: Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force.

Trump railed against the latest attempts to usher in communism, and said “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America.”

“We’re not going to let that happen.”

“It’s like a cancer – you’ve got to cut it out, and cut it out fast.”

While President Trump regaled Americans with patriotism, Newsom is trying to deflect from the tyranny flooding California by making voter ID illegal and mandating universal mail-in ballots to permanently rig California elections through ballot harvesting. Newsom is deflecting from the millions of illegal aliens he is using taxpayer money to support, while our services and health care diminishes. He’s deflecting from the hundreds of thousands of homeless drug addicts living and pooping on the streets.

Newsom is deflecting from how he and Democrats are crushing small businesses, medium businesses and large businesses, driving billionaires out of the state, starving farmers and ranchers of water, defunding police, emptying out state prisons, ignoring lawlessness, turning over state lands to tribes.

And then Newsom lectures about “democracy.” It’s almost laughable that Newsom, a career democrat politician, claims that the government works for the people, when he is stripping power from the elected State Schools Superintendent and creating a new commissioner position appointed by the governor – something a monarch would do.

Californians remember how Newsom locked the entire state down in 2020, and kept it locked down for three years, extending his executive powers many times, while he galavanted around the country, dining at the French Laundry, vacationing in Cabo, and even traveled overseas. Newsom is projecting onto Trump what he does on a daily basis.

President Trump said “Liberty has prevailed here because of the culture and the character of the people who declared it, defended it, and preserved it—We reach a milestone like no other and celebrate with joyful hearts and soaring spirits…” while Newsom ignores that everything he accused Trump of doing, was actually done to Trump by Newsom’s Democrat Party.

Yet Donald Trump forges ahead for the people. No one will remember Gavin Newsom in 100 years, but Donald Trump will go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents.

“250 years ago, a bold idea changed the course of history. Today we celebrate the people, principles, and enduring promise of the United States of America. Happy 4th of July from the White House.” – President Donald J. Trump

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, July 1, 2026 6:30 am

Most Americans appear to be preparing to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday with flags hanging from homes, patriotic bunting across fences, parades and tiny flags lining walkways, but there are quite a few party poopers.

“MS NOW contributor and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr appeared on Tuesday’s Morning Joe to offer his repetitively bleak take on America as the nation nears its 250th birthday,” Media Research Center’s NewsBusters reports.

“Glaude described America as a ‘white republic,’ built on ‘greed and selfishness and grift and hatred.’ Invoking Moby Dick, he analogized the US to an ugly ‘white whale’ that threatens to ‘choke out the life of the country.’ Patriotism is racism.”

Yikes. What a miserable man. NewsBusters added, “As the nation prepares to mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Morning Joe offered viewers another helping of grievance over gratitude from the liberal-media crowd.”

We live in the freest country in the world. Is it perfect? Of course not. But we are so free, we self-correct through our elections, legislation, and ballot initiatives.

America’s founding ideas of limited government, individual rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, remain uniquely influential and aspirational.

The Preamble to the Declaration of Independence stands out as one of the most eloquent and philosophically influential passages in American history:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yet today, I’m seeing upside down flags, derogatory Trump signs, campaign signs for local communists across my city. Sacramento is not alone in this regard.

A Gallup poll from August 2025 survey (their most recent on this topic) found 66% of Democrats said they have a positive view of socialism, while only 42% said the same about capitalism. This is the first time in the poll’s history that Democrats favored socialism over capitalism by this margin.

Yet only 16 years ago in 2010, 50% of Democrats were positive on socialism, and 51% were positive on capitalism.

According to Gallup, Democrats are the only partisan group of the three that views socialism more positively than capitalism — 66% to 42%, respectively. Independents are modestly more pro-capitalism than pro-socialism (51% vs. 38%), while Republicans are overwhelmingly so (74% vs. 14%).

More recently, according to Gallup, in 2021, Socialism held steady or rose to the mid-60s and capitalism dropped to 50%, then further to 42% in 2025.

The angry, white college educated leftists who live in my neighborhood still have their anti-Trump signs posted. Some have even added a few:

Some even openly support local communist and socialist politicians, like Mai Vang, running to oust Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA).

And these “Free Palestine” chalk drawings are all over the streets and sidewalks:

and

The spoiled, self-absorbed, self-loathing college educated white voters feel the need to show you their virtue:

However, even CNN acknowledges that national elections still show socialism polls poorly overall, and Democrats often fare better when emphasizing practical issues over ideological labels. Republicans frequently highlight these gaps to argue the Democratic Party has shifted left.

CNN pollster Harry Enten has pointed out that while this energizes primary voters and the base, it is a vulnerability in general elections.

But why is Socialism taking such a foothold among affluent white Americans?

I listened to a Peter Schweizer podcast recently in which he discussed “Elite Overproduction,” a concept developed by historical sociologist Peter Turchin, and describes a situation in which a society produces more people aspiring to elite status—typically through higher education, wealth, or credentials—than there are available high-status positions in the power structure, economy, or institutions. This mismatch creates frustrated “counter-elites” or “surplus elites” who feel aggrieved, leading to intensified intra-elite competition, ideological polarization, declining social cooperation, and broader societal instability or crisis.

Core Mechanism (per Turchin):

• Societies that generate economic surplus (e.g., through growth or inequality) educate and enrich more individuals who expect elite roles.

• The number of desirable positions (top jobs in government, academia, law, business, media, etc.) grows more slowly or stays relatively fixed.

• Losers in this competition become disgruntled. Some ally with non-elites (the “immiserated” masses) to challenge the existing order, forming counter-movements.

• Outcomes often include political violence, populism, revolutions, or civil strife. Turchin likens it to “deadwood” accumulating in a forest, priming it for a fire—predictable in likelihood but not exact triggers

“This theory seems to fit the moment,” Schweizer says. “The idea is that these elites who went to expensive colleges and got useless degrees are bitter and angry, so they are lashing out by challenging the existing authority. He notes, for example, that the BLM protest movement and turn towards socialism were pushed primarily by cultural elites, well-educated, mostly white, affluent people in New York and California.”

As child, I was fortunate to live for a time in Newport, Rhode Island, the first British colony in America to formally declare its independence, and the first state to guarantee freedom of religion.

We lived in an old home in downtown Newport, which survived the Revolutionary War. Soldiers fought the Brits from the upstairs windows of our home, according to local historians.

Newport was rife with constant reminders of The American Revolution. I used to imagine what life was like in 1776 Newport, when the state repealed its allegiance to King George III of England.

Reflecting upon America’s Independence Day, it’s important to remember the Revolution wasn’t just a rebellion against the King of England, it was a rebellion against being ruled by a monarchy. Our forefathers and many of our ancestors gave up everything and shed their own blood rather than submit unto King George III.

Living in California feels like living under King George III. Gov. Gavin Newsom is even plotting a major restructuring of California’s K-12 education governance that significantly diminishes the powers of the elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, a constitutional office, because a Republican is leading following California’s primary election.

The California Constitution (Article IX, Section 2) requires that a Superintendent of Public Instruction “shall be elected by the qualified electors of the State at each gubernatorial election.” But that won’t matter if Newsom successfully removes powers from the Schools Superintendent.

Re-reading the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty, helps refresh our ties to American history. Thomas Jefferson drafted it, and his words still capture the heartfelt convictions of liberty-loving Americans.

Jefferson rightly focused on the importance of individual liberty, ideals first shared by John Locke and the Continental philosophers.

Jefferson argued in his opening two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence that a people had the right to overthrow their government when it abused their fundamental natural rights over a long period of time:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and independent station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change

We hold these truths to be [sacred and undeniable] self evident, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienables, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to [subject] reduce them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Would Americans today sign such a document, under similar threats as the founders?

Or are we willingly overthrowing the liberties of America, as Samuel Adams warned in 1779?

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” — Samuel Adams, 1779, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence

Can this individualistic ethic be renewed in an America enveloped in entitlements, self-absorption, self-loathing, and lies by the “deadwood” left?

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, June 22, 2026

Limousine liberals and champagne socialists are embracing socialists and commie politicians in local races. What in the fresh hell is the matter with them?

America was built upon entrepreneurs, and some argue that the founding fathers were the original entrepreneurs, risk takers and innovators looking for new opportunity. The United States has entrepreneurialism deeply rooted in its soul.

Yet affluent, highly-educated urban professionals – the “limousine liberal”and “champagne socialist” archetype – often back candidates pushing heavy redistribution, rent controls, wealth taxes, “defund” and soft-on-crime policing, or explicit socialist framing in local races.

The short list of recently elected socialists and/or communists are creepy and chilling at the same time:

• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

• Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson

• Janeese Lewis George who just won DC Mayor

• Boston Mayor Michelle Wu

• Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass

All of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. And it’s primarily the limousine liberals and champagne socialists of those cities pushing them to victories, together with big labor unions – a recipe for disaster. Even within Congress there are Democrat Socialists:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14): DSA member; first elected in 2018, re-elected multiple times (term through 2027).

• Rashida Tlaib (MI-12): DSA member and national endorsee; first elected in 2018, re-elected (term through 2027).

• Shri Thanedar (MI-13): was previously a DSA member but publicly renounced his membership in October 2023; was first elected in 2021.

Former members:

• Jamaal Bowman (D-NY-16): DSA member and local endorsee; served 2021–2025 (lost 2024 primary).

• Cori Bush (D-MO-1): DSA member and national endorsee; served 2021–2025 (lost 2024 primary).

Remember when Boston Mayor Michelle Wu held a holiday party that excluded White elected officials in city government? Her radical sanctuary policies got her sued by the Department of Justice over the city’s sanctuary policies due to “impairing federal detention of removable aliens, including dangerous criminals,” by barring local police officers from accepting federal immigration detainers.

Or Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson who wants to get rid of ShotSpotter because he claims that ShotSpotter contributes to the over-policing of minority communities. But getting rid of it will only hurt the very communities he professes to care about. Johnson was elected even after campaigning on removing the system that had demonstrably improved public safety.

In Chicago over this Juneteenth weekend, 38 people were shot, 7–8 were killed. A total of 45+ were shot across dozens of incidents.

Over the June 12-15 weekend in Chicago, 6 were killed, 15 shot and wounded for a grant total shot of 21.

June 5–8 weekend in Chicago, 3 were killed, 21 were shot and wounded for a total shot of 24.

Rough three-weekend totals: ~16–17 killed and ~70–80 wounded (total shot victims ~90+), with multiple mass shootings.

Mayor Brandon Johnson didn’t authorize police to police more or even convene a task force – he declared a Transfemicide State of Emergency, and announced that his administration has strengthened the City’s capacity to support LGBTQ+ Chicagoans.

Then there is Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a 43-year-old socialist who still lives off of financial support from her parents, yet was elected to manage Seattle’s $9 billion budget. Only months after Katie Wilson took office, terrified residents in the city’s Aurora Avenue corridor spent Memorial Day weekend blocking off their own streets using metal planters, dirt, gravel, logs and chunks of concrete, after weeks of gang-related shootings and high-speed car chases, near-nightly shootings believed to be connected to criminal turf wars, prostitution and illegal trafficking.

Mayor Wilson is also considering getting rid of the public safety CCTV cameras around the city, and has proposed a new sales tax on transportation, specifically for more bus routes and more frequent bus stops, despite that Seattle already has one of the highest sales taxes in the country, and it would only hit working families even harder.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who identifies himself as a democratic socialist and has promisedNew Yorkers rent freezes, free buses, no-cost child care and city-owned grocery stores, proposed a 9.5% property tax hike on three million residential units and 100,000 commercial buildings as an option to balance the city’s budget. And he pushed the NY legislature to go with the “sustainable and fairest” path they have and increase the city’s taxes on residents making over $1 million a year.

Notably, last November, Zohran Mamdani received strongest support from young college graduates, particularly young women, exit polls show, with 84% of 18-29 year old women supporting the winner of the New York City mayor’s race, according to CNN exit polls, Mamdani won the majority of adults who earn between $30,000 and $299,999, annually.

Why do limousine liberals and champagne socialists support these radical politicians and their destructive policies? The answer is one of utmost selfishness – they can afford to.

These voters enjoy class insulation and cluster in zip codes with high home values, private schools, and all of the delivery choices they need, including Uber and DoorDash. Policies that raise costs for everyone else – housing supply restrictions, business regulations, highest marginal taxes – hit their net worth less immediately. Crime spikes or service collapse are “experienced” as news stories or donations to nonprofits, not daily reality.

Progressive cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New York City saw significant rises in property crime, homelessness, open drug markets, and business flight post-2020 policy shifts, while donor-class areas remained relatively buffered according to FBI UCR data, local audits, and migration stats from California and New York tax records.

In elite professional circles within the business worlds of tech, finance, academia, media, and nonprofits, supporting progressive “equity” candidates signals virtue and in-group loyalty more than policy outcomes. This provides status and moral capital, and shows they prioritize identity alignment over track records when personal skin in the game is low.

Even more duplicitous, communist aesthetics get rebranded as compassion, despite many years of historical failures. Venezuela’s collapse, Soviet famines, Maoist body counts are dismissed as “not real” versions or right-wing talking points.

Dismissing this history as “not real communism” or as propaganda really just shields the ideology from accountability.

How did we get here?

Mainstream media, corrupt schools and universities, and social media feeds heavily push leftism, with inequality as the root of all evil, free markets as rigged, and only government is the solution.

Polls consistently show large gaps: higher-education Democrats rate socialism favorably at much higher rates than the general public and underestimate downsides like inflation from fiscal expansion or labor market distortions from minimum wage hikes.

Recent Gallup data from 2025 finds 66% of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism (up from ~50% in 2010), versus 39%of the overall public and just 14% of Republicans. Democrats now prefer socialism to capitalism (66% vs. 42%). Pew (2022) showed similar patterns, with Democratic positive views around 57% at that time.

Higher education correlates with stronger left-leaning views. The Harvard IOP Youth Poll (Fall 2025) found college graduates at 43% support for democratic socialism (vs. 24-30% for non-degree or students).

Local DSA candidates and strong progressives exploit this on issues like housing, completely ignoring what causes supply restrictions; or policing, as the post-George Floyd homicide spikes in many cities (CDC and major-city data), again, ignoring the underlying causes.

And, there is low-to-no accountability for such rhetoric. If only outcomes mattered more than leftist rhetoric and ideology.

The question remains, particularly in California: Why do educated, often privileged or insulated elites become vectors for socialist and collectivist ideas, even when those ideas clash with practical realities or their own lifestyles?

Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek described “intellectuals” not as deep original thinkers or experts, but as “second-hand dealers in ideas.” Journalists, teachers, commentators, writers, artists, and professionals transmit and popularize ideas to the public. They shape opinion without bearing direct responsibility for outcomes.

These dealers spread it because it offers a “vision” of a rationally planned society that flatters their sense of moral and intellectual superiority.

Then, once intellectuals adopt these views, they filter what reaches the masses. Public opinion shifts, then policy. Conservative or classical liberal efforts often fail by ignoring this layer and appealing directly to voters.

He noted the irony: the propertied or successful classes lose cultural influence as education expands beyond them, creating a class of talkers and writers without “first-hand knowledge of practical affairs.”

Intellectuals lack skin in the economic game yet wield outsized power. The limousine liberals and champagne socialists are wealthy, urban, credentialed elites who champion redistribution, regulation, high taxes, or expansive welfare, while living in gated enclaves, sending kids to private schools, and insulating themselves via capital gains, trusts, or geography. The policies’ costs (crime, housing shortages, deadweight loss, eroded mobility) hit working- and middle-class people hardest. Hayek saw this as predictable: abstraction + moral preening + no direct accountability

DSA-style socialists or open Marxists win local races on city councils and school boards, where turnout is low and signaling virtue is cheap. Wealthy donors and professionals provide funding, media cover, and cultural cachet—classic “limousine” behavior.

They rarely live with the results: failing schools, crime spikes, business flight, and housing crises from rent controls. Friedrich Hayek warned this creates a ratchet: intellectual fashions make radical policies seem inevitable and “compassionate,” while market alternatives get dismissed as greedy.

In The Road to Serfdom, he argued central planning and heavy intervention erode liberty and prosperity, regardless of good intentions. Yet the pattern persists because the dealers in ideas face few consequences.

Hayek’s prescription: counter with better ideas, not just electoral machines. Revive classical liberal principles as a living, attractive vision, and rule of law, spontaneous order, individual responsibility, targeted at the same intellectual channels. He was optimistic that ideas matter long-term, but it requires competing on the terrain of intellectuals, not ceding it. The “limousine” hypocrisy is a symptom; the deeper issue is the unchecked cultural monopoly of anti-market abstractions.

And in California, parents and middle class voters are trying to restore sanity to the state by running for school boards, supporting business owners for local offices, and educating friends and families.

California’s entrenched Democratic supermajority (roughly 45% registered Democrats vs. 25% Republicans, with ~27% independents/No Party Preference as of late 2025) makes rapid statewide take back difficult, but it’s not impossible. California was once a politically competitive, moderate-leaning state with a pragmatic bent.

Democrats have dominated the once-golden state since the 1990s. But it appears that even many California Democrats are tired of their policies, the politicians pushing them, and are fed up with the limousine liberals and champagne socialists.

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, June 16, 2026 6:27 am

In August 2025, the California Globe reported, “California is FOR SALE: Gavin Newsom’s Pay-to-Play Politics …and using his wife’s non-profits as a political slush fund.”

On Monday, Newsom announced on X that the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump is investigating him and his wife, First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, over a long list of dubious financial dealings by California’s first couple. Now, our many articles exposing the Newsoms’ financial dealings are more important than ever. The California Globe has extensively documented the financial arrangements surrounding the First Partner’s nonprofit and related dealings for years, long before any current DOJ probe.

Is this all just ‘Quid pro quo’–Latin for ‘something for something’–what this has really been about all along? Is everything transactional for Gavin Newsom’s political brand?

Here is what we reported last August:

Governor Gavin Newsom “used his office to try to block a small tribe from opening a casino in Northern California, after taking nearly $2 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a major California political donor which operates its own gambling compound just 15 miles away from its rival’s proposed site, which broke ground on a $1 billion expansion in 2023,” the Washington Free Beacon reported in July.

Known as “behested” payments, this isn’t the Governor’s first rodeo. He accepted more than $700,000 from two major law firms in 2021 to both create and defend his Executive Order to repeal death penalty rules and dismantle the death chamber at San Quentin, James Lacy reported.

Newsom “behested” $3.5 million in 2018, the year he was elected governor. In 2019, he reported behested payments totaling $12.1 million, the Orange County Register reported in “Behested payments and the specter of corruption.”

But wait! There’s more.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and when the governor’s emergency powers were greatly expanded, payments to various entities – at Newsom’s “behest” – shot up to a whopping $226 million, according to data from the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), Fox News reported:

$45 million from Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente for his housing initiative – and then the governor chose both Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente to help manage vaccine distribution in California.

Between 2018 and 2019, UnitedHealth donated $220,000 to political committees controlled by Newsom, who later awarded $492 million in contracts to UnitedHealth subsidiaries in no-bid and expedited situations.

That’s a $220,000 investment for a $492 million return. Not bad.

There is a lot more, but you get the point.

The Free Beacon continues:

“In April 2024, a few months before Newsom sent his letter to the Biden Interior Department, the Democratic governor requested Graton Rancheria to contribute $500,000 to his wife’s charity, the California Partners Project. And in April 2025, one month before Newsom filed his lawsuit against the Trump administration, he again asked Graton Rancheria to contribute another $500,000 to his wife’s charity. The tribe cut those checks specifically at Newsom’s request, according to California’s “behested payments” database, which discloses whenever state elected officials request others to make donations on their behalf.

While the data doesn’t show an explicit quid pro quo between Newsom and Graton Rancheria, several ethics experts told the Washington Free Beacon that Newsom’s charitable solicitations from the tribe to his wife’s charity just before he used the powers of his office to try to block its rival from opening a competing casino raises major red flags.”

Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project “champions gender equity across the state and ensures our states media and technology industries are a force for good in the lives of all children.”

Siebel Newsom has another charity, “The Representation Project,” in which she produces “Gender Justice” films and sells them to California’s public schools.

“California Governor Gavin Newsom helped bankroll his wife’s charity with nearly $2 million he solicited from a Native American tribe – while fighting on its behalf to kill a rival casino,” The Daily Mail reported this week.

“Now the governor’s office has reacted angrily to questions Daily Mail asked about the payments, called it ‘insulting and offensive’ to even be asked whether his official actions on behalf on the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR) amount to a quid-pro-quo. Records show that the governor personally requested the ‘behest payments’ from FIGR.”

“The Bay Area tribe donated $1.8 million to The California Partners Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Newsom’s wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and another $450,000 to fund his inaugurations.

Newsom and the state then joined the tribe’s efforts to block a casino from opening just 15 miles from theirs, filing a lawsuit in May challenging the federal government’s approval of the project.”

Records show that from 2018 to 2024, the California governor solicited a total of $2.25 million from the FIGR – with the majority going to Jennifer’s charity, the Daily Mail said.

This is pay-to-play politics, or legally known as “quid pro quo”, a Latin term meaning “something for something.”

The many controversies tied to the Newsom family and administration finances include, but are not limited to:

• FireAid relief funds: Following the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the FireAid benefit concerts raised $100 million. Investigations revealed the money went to nonprofits rather than directly to victims. Actor Spencer Pratt publicly accused Newsom and his California Volunteers (Cal Vols) office of receiving a FireAid grant. The Globe detailed how funds were distributed to various organizations, prompting calls for federal scrutiny over transparency and use.

• State Auditor findings: A December 2025 California State Auditor report named Governor Newsom and eight agencies as “high-risk,” criticizing mismanagement of billions in federal COVID-19 funds, public safety lapses, and infrastructure neglect.

• Real estate and LLC opacity: In late 2024, Newsom purchased a $9.1 million mansion in Kentfield, Marin County, through a private LLC. By May 2025, Jennifer Siebel Newsom was listed as the manager of that LLC. The home was acquired from billionaire Hyatt Hotels heir Daniel Pritzker.

• The Newsom’s two large mansions, secretively purchased by shady LLCs only days before closing. Where did the money come from? Who is the LLC? The $3.7 million mansion in Sacramento magically appeared for the Newsoms shortly after his election, despite the renovation of the California Governor’s mansion costing taxpayers $4.1 million to $4.6 million by Newsom’s predecessor Gov. Jerry Brown. And in 2024, Governor Newsom and the “First Partner” purchased a $9.1 million home back in Marin County. The Marin mansion is 5,600 square feet, with Newsoms paying 7% above the asking price through a dodgy LLC.

• Winery and donor ties: Newsom has long held interests in the PlumpJack winery group. Past Globe coverage connected donor networks, including Silicon Valley Bank ties to entities linked to the First Partner’s other nonprofits, such as the California Partners Project.

• CCP financial ties: Newsom has faced repeated criticism for deepening California’s engagement with the Chinese Communist Party, including a 2023 trip to China where he met President Xi Jinping, signed multiple climate and economic MOUs, and promoted subnational ties. Critics, including GOP lawmakers and reports, have highlighted campaign contributions from executives tied to CCP-linked firms (such as BYD), partnerships through the California-China Climate Institute with CCP-affiliated groups, and appointments of allies with connections to Chinese officials. These relationships have raised national security and influence concerns amid U.S.-China tensions.

• Luxury vacations on a public servant’s salary: The Globe broke the story about the Newsom family trip to Cabo San Lucas in 2021 during the governor’s statewide Covid lockdowns. They stayed at a $29,000 per night villa, La Datcha Cabo San Lucas villa, owned by Russian entrepreneur and businessman Oleg Tinkov. At $29,000 per night for the holiday rate, did Gov. Newsom pay for the luxury villa? If not, who picked up the tab for the $203,000 week-long stay at La Datcha Cabo San Lucas vacation villa for the Newsoms? Was it a gift? Gavin Newsom paid $203,000 for a vacation when he made $209,747 in 2020 as governor?

We report, you decide. Maybe the DOJ investigation will look into all of this? Where there is smoke, especially in California, there is usually fire.

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, June 10, 2026 2:02 pm

California Governor Gavin Newsom received $50,000 in campaign contributions from a top executive at a Chinese electric vehicle company (BYD) that Newsom fawned over during his 2023 visit to China. BYD is now on a Pentagon blacklist due to its ties to the Chinese military, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

If BYD rings a bell for California Globe readers, it should. In 2020, we reported that Gov. Gavin Newsom spent over $1 billion in taxpayer funds to buy masks from the Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD at the start of the COVID pandemic.

An electric car company suddenly pivots to making masks — and Newsom chooses them over American suppliers?

Then he went back for more. Newsom signed a second deal worth another $315 million.

The Globe broke the story. RedState amplified it. Even some mainstream outlets in California covered it.

A handful of unhappy Democrat lawmakers in the Legislature demanded an audit of the unauthorized purchases, but they fell silent after a single demand letter to the governor.

And then — POOF — the media lost interest. At least the mainstream media did.

In 2023, the California Globe covered Newsom’s trip to China and reminded readers exactly who BYD was, and how the governor’s corrupt $1.4 billion mask deal went down.

While the mainstream media chased the next shiny object, the Globe kept digging. What we uncovered was a $1.4 billion contract that smelled like well-connected insider dealing at the highest levels of the governor’s office.

Here’s what we found:

BYD — “Build Your Dreams” — is a Chinese electric vehicle and battery giant headquartered in Shenzhen. The company operates a California subsidiary in Lancaster that employs roughly 1,000 people.

Our reporting exposed a web of influential players tied to the unusual mask contract, with connections reaching directly into Governor Newsom’s inner circle.

The prominent lobbyist representing BYD is Mark Weideman of The Weideman Group. Newsom’s campaign received $40,000 in contributions from BYD’s automotive division.

Weideman also lobbies for Bloom Energy, a San Jose fuel-cell manufacturer that retooled its operations to refurbish ventilators during the pandemic. He additionally represents NextGen America, owned by Tom Steyer — the same Tom Steyer who chaired Newsom’s economic recovery committee after his own failed presidential bid.

When the Globe contacted Weideman for comment, neither a phone call to his office on May 19, 2020, at 1:07 p.m., nor a follow-up email sent on May 25 received any response.

Adding another layer of insider access: Weideman’s wife, Jennifer Wada, runs her own government relations firm, Wada Government Relations Group. Few Sacramento insiders realize the two are married. Wada previously partnered in the law firm Wada Williams Law Group with Anthony Williams — the same Anthony Williams who now serves as Gov. Newsom’s Legislative Affairs Secretary and was once described in news reports as the governor’s “chief lobbyist.”

Newsom’s 2023 trip to China raised more questions than answers. The governor never clearly explained its purpose beyond setting up yet another round of sweetheart deals with Beijing.

The most memorable (and telling) moment came when Newsom was filmed behind the wheel of a sleek new BYD electric vehicle. A California Fox News anchor traveling with him apparently never connected the dots, we reported.

The itinerary included stops in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. Newsom billed the visit as a “climate-focused tour,” complete with a wind farm and Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory. Critics saw something else entirely: a governor willfully ignoring China’s industrial espionage, human rights abuses, and military ambitions.

As the Washington Free Beacon reported:

“Ke Li — a Chinese national who serves as BYD’s executive vice president and is reportedly married to the company’s billionaire founder and CEO, Wang Chuanfu, a Chinese Communist Party member and close ally of Xi Jinping — donated $20,000 to Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign and another $30,000 to his 2022 reelection bid.”

That’s more money than Li has given to all other California candidates combined.

Newsom’s cozy relationship with BYD has only deepened. He has showered the company with state contracts and, during his 2023 visit to its Shenzhen headquarters, test-drove a BYD model that floats on water. “Who needs a car when you can have a car and a boat?” Newsom quipped.

Three years later, that relationship is apparently on a crash course. This week, the Pentagon formally classified BYD as a Chinese military company, adding it to a list of entities that help Beijing fuse private industry with its military buildup.

Newsom’s ties to China go back decades to his time as mayor of San Francisco. Just this week, Peter W. Woodat American Greatness published a powerful new piece titled “How China Captured California,” detailing exactly how deep that entanglement has become:

In 2005, the mayor of San Francisco paid a visit to Shanghai, where he worked out some agreements that furthered city-to-city cooperation. Mayor Gavin Newsom was at the beginning of a career that married environmental alarmism to close cooperation with the Chinese state. The memorandum he signed with Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng brought Chinese police officers, attorneys, and judges to the Fog City. Newsom in turn brought bottles of PlumpJack from his Napa Valley winery.

Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, continues:

My organization, the National Association of Scholars (NAS), has spent a year attempting to trace the connections, the political favors, and the interweaving of Chinese state interests with California’s political establishment. We don’t have subpoena power or deep connections to the regime. We are, instead, specialists in higher education, so we naturally learned more about that side of the picture than anything else. But the political side was unavoidable.

My assessment: California’s energy policy is made in China, and California is in many respects a vassal of China. Best of all, from China’s perspective, few Californians realize it. They live in a dream world where high-price energy is just the cost they pay for a really clean environment. NAS’s report, Behind the Climate Curtain: China’s Hidden Role in California’s Energy Mandates and University Partnerships, presents our evidence to back these audacious claims. I can’t say we have the kind of proof that will lead to future perp-walks of politicians by the FBI. But we have wind farms, solar plantations, and tankers full of the kinds of details that investigators might want to examine.

Gavin Newsom’s relationship with BYD isn’t a series of unfortunate coincidences. It is a damning pattern of favoritism that has funneled billions in California taxpayer dollars to a Chinese company now officially designated by the Pentagon as a military asset of the Chinese Communist Party. From no-bid mask contracts worth $1.4 billion to campaign donations routed through a BYD executive married to the firm’s CCP-connected founder, Newsom has repeatedly chosen Beijing over American interests and California taxpayers.

While he grins behind the wheel of floating BYD vehicles in Shenzhen, the Golden State grows more economically dependent and strategically compromised. As Peter W. Wood exposed this week in American Greatness, California hasn’t merely been influenced by China, it has been captured. And no one has held the door open wider, or longer, than Gavin Newsom.

Executive Editor Megan Barth contributed to this report.

Originally published at California Globe

By Katy Grimes, May 14, 2026

“Governor Newsom’s revised budget proposal is a fiscally disciplined, balanced plan that cuts the long-term deficit by more than half and tightens Sacramento’s belt — while supporting our most vulnerable Californians amid Donald Trump’s cruel assault on the state,” says Governor Newsom. “As Trump attacks healthcare, education, and working families, California is staying focused on protecting essential services while advancing fiscal responsibility and affordability.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom unleashed his Trump Derangement Syndrome Thursday during his May budget revise press conference for the first 10 full minutes, blaming the President’s policies–especially tariffs– for contributing to a worsened budget outlook.

But hey! Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final May budget revise is “miraculously balanced,” he says.

Gov. Newsom said he was not only handing off a balanced budget for next year to a new governor, his two-year budget will be balanced in 2028 as well.

Pardon my snicker.

Newsom proposed roughly $322 billion in total spending and about $226 billion General Fund spending. His budget revise projected a $12 billion deficit for 2025-26.

It is important to note that the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) warns, “deficits have persisted even as the state’s economy and revenues have grown, underscoring that the problem is structural rather than cyclical.”

The May budget revise updates his January budget proposal and incorporates the latest revenue forecasts from April tax receipts.

Newsom described this budget as fiscally disciplined and claimed that it eliminates the projected deficit, reduces spending, builds reserves, and protects core services amid economic uncertainty and federal policy pressures.

Here is his X post touting zero deficits:

California’s fiscal future is on a stronger footing for the years to come.

$0 deficit THIS budget year.

$0 deficit NEXT budget year.

$0 structural deficit through July 2028.

Long-term deficit: Cut by more than half.

SacCPA retorted, “ANYTIME a politician adds a modifier in a sentence you know they are hiding something. The modifier here is ‘structural.’ We know there was a projected deficit in the billions just a month ago.”

He’s right.

Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones (R-San Diego) summed up the Governor’s shenanigans nicely:

“This budget just further illustrates what we already know: this governor is a fiscally irresponsible tax-and-spend grifter who cares only about growing his own financial and political capital, not about serving the people of California by boosting or protecting our quality of life.

He’s defied the voters and destroyed public safety by defunding Prop. 36. Now he’s increasing taxes on employers by $5 billion in a move that will devastate our beleaguered business community – a business community teetering already thanks to his refusal to pay off the state’s federal unemployment insurance debt. But sure, let’s just keep spending and taxing with nothing to show for it in the end but a decimated economy and highest in the nation cost of living.”

California’s nonpartisan LAO also directly contradicts Newsom’s claims from their January budget analysis, showing “chronic” multiyear budget deficits.

The LAO directly highlights large multiyear deficits in its January 2026 analysis of Governor Newsom’s proposed 2026-27 budget.

Key LAO Projections (Under Governor’s Revenue and Budget Assumptions)

• 2027-28: ~$27 billion operating deficit.

• 2028-29: ~$22 billion deficit.

• 2029-30: ~$23 billion deficit.

These are the years Newsom claims deficits are $0.

These figures come straight from the LAO’s Overview of the Governor’s Budget, published January 12, 2026. The LAO notes this is the fourth consecutive year of projected multiyear shortfalls, even with recent revenue gains, largely from stock market and AI-related income taxes.

The LAO was even kind enough to make a pretty graphic, highlighting their realistic projections, and the Department of Finance’s rosy projections:

Notably, the Department of Finance works exclusively for the Governor.

The LAO reports:

Chronic Multiyear Budget Deficits Remain. For the fourth year in a row, our office and the administration are forecasting multiyear budget shortfalls. Under the administration’s proposed budget and revenue assumptions, the state faces operating deficits of $27 billion in 2027‑28, $22 billion in 2028‑29, and $23 billion in 2029‑30, as seen in Figure 2. In November, our office projected the state faced deficits around $35 billion per year, with much of the difference attributable to our lower revenue estimates.

The LAO viewed the near-term budget as “roughly balanced” under those assumptions but called the multiyear outlook “alarming” and structural—driven by spending growth, outpacing revenues long-term.

The LAO says deficits persist “even as revenues grow” — meaning it’s structural by definition.

The LAO also has some serious concerns:

Stock Market Poses Serious Risk to Revenues. As we discussed in our Fiscal Outlook, several historically reliable signs suggest the stock market is overheated and at high risk of reversing course into a downturn in the next year or so. Should a stock market downturn occur, income tax revenues would fall considerably. These risks are severe enough that not incorporating them into this year’s budget, as the Governor proposes, would put the state on precarious footing. Further amplifying this precariousness, even under the administration’s more optimistic revenues, the budget is only roughly balanced in the near term.

Multiyear Budget Deficits Alarming. Both our office and the administration expect the state to face multiyear deficits, with estimates ranging from $20 billion to $35 billion annually. These deficits are concerning for three reasons. First, after four years of projected deficits and a cumulative total of $125 billion in budget problems solved so far (see Figure 4), the state’s negative fiscal situation is now chronic. Second, as we pointed out in our Fiscal Outlook, structural deficits have grown—our November outlook is the most negative forecast of the budget’s position since the pandemic. Finally, deficits have persisted even as the state’s economy and revenues have grown, underscoring that the problem is structural rather than cyclical. Taken together, these trends raise serious concerns about the state’s fiscal sustainability.

Republican lawmakers weighed in:

“The governor missed the opportunity to finally present a sustainable and transparent budget,” said Senator Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks), vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee. “Rather, his final performance today was a magic show full of tricks to fool the people. The governor may tout the increase in revenue all he wants, but if he and the Democratic party do not address the seriousness of continued deficits, Californians will pay the price for years of fiscal irresponsibility.”

“Despite record revenues this year, California’s long-term fiscal outlook remains deeply concerning,” said Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Fresno), vice chair of the Assembly Budget Committee. “This budget reflects a pattern of deferred decision-making — kicking structural problems down the road for the next governor and legislature to inherit. Governor Newsom appears to define fiscal success narrowly: if the budget doesn’t collapse on his watch, it’s a balanced one. This boom-and-bust approach to budgeting is simply not sustainable.”

“Since Newsom became governor, state spending grew by 76%, from $140 billion to the $247 billion proposed for 2026-27. This major imbalance, known as a structural deficit, will continue for the foreseeable future.”

“The May Revise failed to adequately address the budget priorities Senate Republicans have been advocating for all year.”

“This budget just doesn’t do it. We’re spending billions on the wrong priorities while we can’t even fully fund the basic things Californians actually need: wildfire prevention, funding Prop. 36 to get people the help they need, fixing our roads. We need to pass a budget that actually gets those things done,” said Assembly Republican Leader Heath Flora (R-Ripon).

The Legislature must pass a balanced budget by June 15, 2026, with the new fiscal year starting July 1. Negotiations will now intensify. For the full details:

• Governor’s May Revise press release: gov.ca.gov/2026/05/14/may-revise/

• Official factsheet (PDF): May-Revise_Factsheet.pdf

• Complete budget documents: ebudget.ca.gov

Here is Gov. Newsom’s one-pager “factsheet”:

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/May-Revise_Factsheet.pdf

Originally published at California Globe.

By Katy Grimes, April 22, 2026

Last week, I reported on Assemblywoman Mia Bonta’s proposed legislation to criminalize independent journalists: “California Democrats Violate First Amendment to Criminalize Investigative Journalism.”

Assemblywoman Bonta’s proposed bill, Assembly Bill 2624, would impose huge civil sanctions on independent investigative reporters for “harassing” what Bonta calls “immigrant services” workers who, in fact, are providing taxpayer-funded goods and services to illegal aliens.

California legislators are trying to make investigating fraud illegal, as Elon Musk noted on X:

Within two days, Ms. Bonta, the wife of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, claimed “Right-wing agitators, ineffective legislators, and Trump loyalists are intentionally spreading significant misinformation about Assembly Bill 2624.”

While the legacy media in California is silent on AB 2624, the Globe contacted the Society of Professional Journalists, the First Amendment Coalition, and Electronic Frontier Foundation for their positions on this gross violation of the First Amendment.

Not one First Amendment organization bothered to reply or to weigh in on this very serious bill.

As I explained, AB 2624 is perhaps the most egregious violation of the First Amendment I’ve seen in Sacramento, and I have first hand history with the California Legislature violating the First Amendment, after my Capitol press credentials were revoked because Democrats didn’t like what I was reporting. My attorneys at the Pacific Legal Foundation filed an administrative appeal and won my press credentials back. Easily. And that is because the First Amendment explicitly protects “the freedom of speech, or of the press,” prohibiting Congress, and by extension through the Fourteenth Amendment, state and local governments from diminishing it.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley is a pioneer in immediate, real-time video journalism. He does research, as he did in Minnesota, and then took video of the local Somali-run Quality Learing Centers, daycares with no children in attendance. Shirley’s video showed facilities that weren’t being used for daycares and there were no children present, despite receiving government funding for this purpose.

And now Nick Shirley is chasing lawmakers down the halls of the California State Capitol with video camera in hand, asking them why they co-authored Bonta’s bill, or why they voted for it. The answers are pure comedy gold.

But how did we get to this place and time where it takes a video journalist to expose government defrauding, armed with the video evidence to prove it? Or to expose lawmakers feigning ignorance of a bill they co-authored or voted in favor of?

This is happening because Democrat lawmakers believe they are above the law in California, above the State Constitution, and above the U.S. Constitution. In their arrogance, Democrats’ supermajority is above any law.

No longer are print, radio, television or online news stories of their antics violations of law or unconstitutional actions ruffling their feathers.

I started in print – newspapers, and moved to online news. At California Globe, we adhere to AP Style and the Society of Professional Journalists (SJP) Code of Ethics:

“Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity.”

SPJ says “Seek Truth and Report It.” So it is particularly curious that they won’t comment on Assemblywoman Bonta’s anti-First Amendment bill.

SPJ says “Act Independently: The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.”

Yet, Assemblywoman Bonta’s bill will criminalize independent journalists. Hmmm.

In California, this has been building for the last 20 years. When Jerry Brown was re-elected and took office in 2011, and the Democrat Supermajority took hold in the California Legislature, the attitude of lawmakers noticeably changed. Many believe they don’t have to answer questions, or speak with any journalist pushing for the truth. During Gov. Brown’s second two terms, much of the mainstream media began carrying water for the Democrats as evidenced by how many former mainstream media members went to work for Democrat legislators, or as PR spokespersons for Democrat-appointed state agency directors. My last count was over 40 former news journalists… and that was in 2013:

“In California’s capitol, I have counted more than 40 former news reporters, television reporters and radio newscasters who now work inside the state Capitol, or for a state agency.”

During Jerry Brown’s two terms as governor (2011-2018), I was a member of the Sacramento Press Club. At one meeting, the club President announced the Board would no longer invite Republican lawmakers to speak at the Club’s monthly lunches. When I pointed out that Republicans are elected lawmakers too, “because they are irrelevant,” was the response I received.

It got significantly worse when Gov. Gavin Newsom was elected and took office in 2019. Gov. Brown’s administration was mostly civil, if a bit terse at times. Newsom’s administration is repugnant, and has openly declared war on X on any member of the media who asks a question they don’t like, or don’t think they should have to answer.

Besides ravaging the state of independent journalism, we are witnessing the degradation of the Golden State as it is run by Democrat supermajorities in both houses of the California Legislature and the governors office.

“California’s political paradox is that voters chronically elect politicians who double down on the failed policies of their predecessors,” the Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian wrote in 2021. “This means that California’s major economic problems—housing affordability and homelessness, cost of living and the highest poverty rate in the country, inadequate water supply, wildfires, underperforming schools, failing infrastructure, unsustainable pensions, the list goes on—continue to deteriorate.”

Apparently frustrated that there are any journalists willing to report on Democrats’ failures – housing affordability, homelessness, cost of living, highest poverty rate in the country, inadequate water supply, wildfires, underperforming schools, failing infrastructure, unsustainable pensions – the California Legislature is attempting to silence the remaining independent journalists and intellectually curious citizen journalists.

One Party rule leads to totalitarian leaders who aim for complete control over society, including thoughts, behaviors, and institutions, and they do this by eliminating any real or perceived opposition. They treat dissent not as legitimate disagreement, but as existential threats to the regime’s ideology and power.

Yesterday, former Newport Beach Mayor Will O’Neill posted relevant details about the state of journalism in California that may shock some:

“Your tax dollars go to Sacramento, which legislators then use to pay journalists that cover the legislature.

Specifically, Democrat Steve Glazer pushed through $25mm in 2023 to start the “California Local News Fellowship” at – where else? – UC Berkeley. The average journalist salary (according to Indeed) is ~$60k, so $25mm could have paid for ~416 journalists. But, according to the LA Times, it paid for … a few dozen? The Fellowship claims ~70. Under either scenario, where did the rest of the money go?

If only we had a journalist who could tell us.

Fast forward to 2024. A long-simmering dispute between Google and newsrooms led to a state-legislated settlement where Google agreed to pay $125mm over 5 years to prop up the California Local News Fellowship in August 2024.

The joke was on journalists, though, because the first $30mm got slashed in half due to the CA budget deficit. That didn’t stop UC Berkeley’s Journalism school from putting out an over-the-top announcement thanking legislators by name like … well, like people paid to say nice things about legislators. How weird.

If the school doling out tax dollars is willing to prostrate itself on the front end, what message is it sending to the ‘journalists’ applying for those tax dollars? Clearly it’s ‘don’t attack the people paying your salary.’

Which means that we are going to have to rely more and more on independent journalists, some of whom have been doing great work (Jennifer Van Laar, Katy Grimes, etc.). Which is why this ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act’ is so insidious. Pay for good coverage or criminalize fair coverage. It’s how lefties in Sacramento ‘preserve democracy.’”

Ouch. That’s hot. But much appreciated.

Well, an Orange County Substacker, rather perturbed with Will O’Neill, picked it up:

“Will, fuck, let’s discuss the two journalists you say are doing “great work”—Jennifer Van Laar and Katy Grimes. One (Van Laar) is actively campaigning for Spencer Pratt to become Los Angeles’ mayor. The other (Grimes) is a right-wing hack pretending to be moderate.1

The footnote said:

A trusted colleague reached out to me, RE: Grimes. And wrote this: “There is only a very small percentage of people in the world and, in a smaller subset, the Capitol community that I truly dislike. I even get along quite well with most of the Republicans around the Capitol. But Katy Grimes… I dislike her intensely. Her investigative journalism consists of her sitting in the back of the chamber during a Senate or assembly session and then going and writing a column for the California Globe, where she trashes everything that went on that day. I have never in my many years of being around this Capitol even seen her talk to any lawmaker, except for the most hard-core Republicans. She is a fucking joke and not a single member of the press corps takes her seriously.”

Do I really care if anyone in the Capitol press corps takes me seriously? No. They can’t or won’t report on the issues I cover. But it’s clear that members of the Legislature do since they tried to boot me out of the Capitol Press Corps, with the help of the Capitol Correspondents Association of California. That is what matters.

And they take Nick Shirley seriously because he is taking video of them pretending that they don’t know who he is, or feigning ignorance about Assemblywoman Bonta’s unconstitutional bill.

@ScarletReeds made this visual of the co-authors of Assemblywoman Bonta’s AB 2624, several of whom were on Nick Shirley’s video:

As Assemblyman Carl DeMaio said after a recent hearing on Bonta’s AB 2624, “If this bill becomes law, the message is clear to every journalist in California: expose corruption and you will be punished. AB 2624 is an unconstitutional direct attack on transparency and the First Amendment – and it needs to be defeated.”

California Democrats are trying to make investigating fraud illegal.

Originally published at California Globe.

By Katy Grimes, April 15, 2026 6:34 am

Freedom of the press protects the right to obtain and publish information or opinions without government censorship or fear of punishment, whether or not government finds the material offensive, or disagrees with it.

Free speech enables people to obtain information from a diversity of sources, make decisions, and communicate those decisions to the government.

But that never stops the totalitarian Left.

Democrats in Sacramento are once again pushing an unconstitutional bill which clearly will violate the First Amendment, but this one is so bad, it is getting national attention.

As the Globe reported Monday:

California Democrats are trying to pass a bill to criminalize investigative journalists for violating “Privacy for immigration support services providers.”

That should say “illegal immigration.”

California Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) is slamming state Democrats for voting to advance a controversial new law, Assembly Bill 2624 by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland), to silence citizen journalists and shield taxpayer-funded organizations from public scrutiny.

AB 2624 is perhaps the most egregious violation of the First Amendment I’ve seen in Sacramento, and I have first hand history with the California Legislature violating the First Amendment, after having my Capitol press credentials revoked because Democrats didn’t like what I was reporting. My attorneys and I filed an administrative appeal and won the press credentials back. Easily.

Let’s review the First Amendment, and what a free and independent press is.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

A free and independent press is fundamental to a democratic society.

The United States is a constitutional representative republic, or democratic republic, with democratic elections for its representatives.

The First Amendment explicitly protects “the freedom of speech, or of the press,” prohibiting Congress, and by extension through the Fourteenth Amendment, state and local governments, from diminishing it.

An independent news media, the “fourth estate” or watchdog media, is rooted in Enlightenment thinking – the Age of Reason – and is enshrined in the U.S. First Amendment. Independent news media serves the public by exposing abuses of power, corruption, waste, or incompetence that officials might prefer to hide, thereby enabling informed consent of the governed and deterring misconduct through the threat of sunlight.

It’s pretty clear that when done thoroughly, with documents, sources, and fact-checking, independent and watchdog media reduces information imbalance and inequality between “rulers and the ruled.”

We living this in real time… 235 years after adoption of the First Amendment.

The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, a radical leftist in her own right, and the wife of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, would impose huge civil sanctions on independent investigative reporters for “harassing” what Bonta calls “immigrant services” workers, who really, are providing taxpayer-funded services to illegal aliens.

California legislators are trying to make investigating fraud illegal, as Elon Must noted yesterday on X.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley, who blew open the $8 billion Somali daycare fraud scheme in Minnesota, describes Bonta’s bill:

California is trying to pass a bill that would criminalize investigative journalism with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown. The proposed bill is titled AB 2624 and was made after I exposed mass fraud by immigrant groups in America. Under AB 2624, government-funded entities like the Somali “Learing” Daycare centers would be protected from being exposed if they operated inside California. The enemy truly is within. When our politicians would rather protect fraudsters and illegal migrants, it’s time for us to stand up or face mass oppression from the traitors who “rule” over us.

So if one of the “immigrant services” workers from one of these taxpayer funded “immigrant service centers” tried to evade Nick Shirley’s iPhone video camera committing fraud, in California she could claim he is harassing her, and Nick would be fined by the totalitarian state.

But wait! Under the First Amendment, “Independent news media serves the public by exposing abuses of power, corruption, waste, or incompetence that officials might prefer to hide, thereby enabling informed consent of the governed and deterring misconduct through the threat of sunlight.”

Assemblywoman Mia Bonta holds a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University, an Ed.M from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a J.D. from Yale Law School. I’m pretty sure Yale Law School teaches the importance of the First Amendment. But, “Mia was raised by activists” who probably taught her “by any means necessary” is more important in achieving what she seeks than Constitutional law.

According to Assemblywoman Bonta:

“AB 2624 strengthens protections for individuals working in immigrant service roles, including nonprofit staff, volunteers, and legal services providers, who may face risks such as doxxing, harassment, or threats due to the nature of their work.

…or threats due to the nature of their work… Well, their “work” is violating the Constitution of the United States.

“By extending Safe at Home Program protections, the bill allows eligible participants to keep their personal information confidential in public records, helping reduce exposure to harm while supporting the continued delivery of legal, social, and humanitarian services. This proposal promotes safety, privacy, and continuity of essential services, reinforcing public confidence and ensuring that those serving communities across California can carry out their responsibilities effectively and securely.”

Bonta frames her bill as protecting workers from doxxing, harassment, and threats amid heightened political tensions around immigration. She will likely argue that AB 2624 is narrowly tailored to stop bad-faith actors, not legitimate journalism, and point to real incidents of intimidation, which is not what is taking place in exposing the gross fraud.

Assemblyman DeMaio calls AB 2624 the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” for the chilling effect it will have on free speech and independent investigative journalism, should Democrats pass it.

Let us not forget that the First Amendment protects the right to record and publish information about matters of public concern—especially government spending, potential fraud in public programs, or operations of organizations receiving taxpayer dollars.

It is painfully clear that the timing and scope of Bonta’s AB 2624 are targeted at curbing the kind of scrutiny Nick Shirley, James O’Keefe and many other legitimate independent journalists have been giving to untold billions of dollars of fraud.

Notably, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed strong protections for First Amendmentrights, particularly free speech, across a wide range of contexts. Also notable, courts are quite skeptical when government tries to shield itself from exposure and embarrassment.

Bonta and her radical supporters claim that the bill doesn’t ban journalism outright – it requires specific harmful intent.

Billions of dollars in home hospice fraud fits “harmful intent.”

Bonta argues “doxxing isn’t journalism” and that fraud investigations can proceed without publishing personal images or home details.

What are they worried about revealing? In the case of home hospice fraud, home details and personal images seem appropriate.

While the legacy media in California is mostly silent on AB 2624, the Globe has contacted the Society of Professional Journalists, the First Amendment Coalition, and Electronic Frontier Foundation for their positions on this gross violation of the First Amendment. The Globe will report back when we hear from them, and continue reporting on the attempt to silence independent journalists.

“Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made is wrong,” @ericswalwell said in his resignation statement.

However, in 2023, when then-Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was under an ethics investigation in Congress, Swalwell wondered what was taking so long to oust the Republican Congressman. “I was in the camp of ‘what the hell is taking you so long?’” Swalwell told host Ali Velshi on MSNBC. Swalwell said Santos admitted to defrauding voters, but Republicans wanted to keep him around as long as he was useful to them.

Isn’t that what then @SpeakerPelosi did with Swalwell… kept him around as long as he was useful to her?

By Katy Grimes, April 13, 2026

Only one day after suspending his campaign for California Governor, Eric Swalwell announced Monday mid-day that he was resigning from Congress, amid multiple alleged sexual assault charges.

Swalwell announced his resignation on his X page, but still denies the allegations made against him in a statement:

“I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make,” Swalwell said in the statement.

“Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made is wrong,” Swalwell said in his statement.

However, in 2023, when then-Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was under an ethics investigation in Congress, Swalwell wondered what was taking so long to oust the Republican Congressman. “I was in the camp of ‘what the hell is taking you so long?’” Swalwell told host Ali Velshi on MSNBC. Swalwell said Santos admitted to defrauding voters, but Republicans wanted to keep him around as long as he was useful to them.

Isn’t that what then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi did with Swalwell… kept him around as long as he was useful to her?

Swalwell’s alleged exploits have rocked California’s Democratic establishment just weeks before the June primary, as he and Democrats are facing an avalanche of political fallout.

Sunday he announced:

“I am suspending my campaign for Governor. To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s,” Swalwell posted to X late Sunday.

I wrote this in February about Eric Swalwell: “what a weirdo he is, and a narcissistic elitist who apparently thinks he’s above the law. ‘King of Cringe’ Rep. Eric Swalwell isn’t just Weird – He May Have Legal Troubles: Swalwell has more pressing matters than just an obnoxious personality.”

I hate to say, I was right.

I highlighted Swalwell’s arrogance and self righteousness, lying about President Donald Trump’s character, demanding that Trump resign. Swalwell accused others of abusing women – Justice Brett Kavanaugh, specifically.

Eric Swalwell’s political career should end. And he’s not alone. Democrats in Congress covered for him for years.

Never forget Fang Fang.

Or this:

Originally published at The California Globe

By Katy Grimes, March 30, 2026

In 2025 Democrats’ approval ratings were in the tank. Remember? CNN’s Harry Enten warned in July 2025 of Democrats’ plummeting approval ratings. He said a blue wave is far from a guarantee in the fall 2026 midterms, and warned that Americans still trust Republicans more than Democrats on issues. The Democratic Party’s approval rating is “lower than the Dead Sea,” Enteneven said.

Enten said “the seat-by-seat landscape in the House isn’t the most appealing for Democrats. Both the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections show more potential pickup opportunities for the Republicans than Democrats. This is without any pro-Republican redistricting that might occur in Texas — or potential pro-Democratic redistricting in other states as retaliation for whatever Texas does.”

Democrats were still reeling from the 2024 presidential election, having missed the message from their voters.

Now, Democrats have allowed the craziest wing of the Party to lead on messaging and policy; the Party appears to be floundering and desperate.

Who can forget when California Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA-14), now running for California Governor, posted his embarrassing weight lifting routine on X, the cringe was felt around the world.

He’s such a braindead narcissist, the post on his X page is still there:

Swalwell “flexed his muscles” in a video he posted to X, while he whined about Republicans recessing Congress for summer. “I should be working right now,” Swalwell said while taking a selfie video of lifting a whopping 135 pounds according to X posters. “I should be at the Capitol. I should be in a suit. Instead, Republicans sent us home because they would rather stand up for Donald Trump than release the Epstein files and stand up for victims.”

Swalwell was savaged on X.

“So, when did you work out?” Kyle Becker asked.

“I guess it’s better than pumping Chinese spies.” Viva Frei said.

“Careful, don’t let the barbell crush your vagina.” Rising Serpent said.

“This is more embarrassing than that time you shit your pants on live TV,” M2 said.

At the time, the Globe noted that Rep. Eric Swalwell could have been working hard in his district office, actually meeting with constituents – those people who voted for him and are suffering under California’s issues with cancelled insurance, high utility costs, high gas prices, crappy public schools, wildfires, crime, homeless drug addicts, water restrictions, or the high home prices in Dublin, Livermore, Castro Valley, Pleasanton, the high cost cities in his district.

Eric Swalwell, as with most Democrats, resorts to stunts – really stupid, cringy stunts. He’s in good company with California’s brat Governor Gavin Newsom, whose stunts are also cringeworthy.

Their desperation and history of bad decisions is leading Democrats down the wrong fork in the road. “They got nothin and it’s almost sad,” a long-time business owner told me.

Swalwell wants to be California’s next governor and Newsom wants to be the next U.S. President. Both candidates are farcical, but considering that Democrats elected Joe Biden… of course they would elect Swalwell or Newsom if that is the ballot choice.

“He has been referred to as a lizard man. As a shapeshifter. As a presidential hopeful who is a human weathervane on every issue, depending on which way public sentiment may be blowing at a particular moment,” Joe Concha says at the Washington Examiner about Gavin Newsom. Notably, these are all descriptions the Globe has used describing Newsom.

“This puts Newsom in a real pickle when it comes to capturing the Democratic nomination for president. He needs to present himself as progressive and as woke as possible to earn votes from the energized far left, who will come out in force in the primaries. So Newsom did what he does best: conform.”

They got nothin’ and it’s almost sad.

What is candidate Eric Swalwell offering Californians? He’s promised to “Abolish Ice.” Again.

As we reported in January, “Proving once again that he’s a few screws short of a hardware store, California Gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell opened his mouth this weekend and inserted his foot, confirming that evolution can go in reverse. Swalwell Vows to Revoke ICE officers’ Driver’s Licenses,” we reported.

“The California Democrat, who is smart as a bag of rocks, also pledged to use local law enforcement against federal agents.”

“Fang Fang’s former lover wants to give drivers licenses to criminal illegal aliens and simultaneously punish law enforcement officers for enforcing the law?” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News.

Ah yes, Fang Fang. The Globe reported that Swalwell’s California gubernatorial campaign received almost $10,000 from the California-based office of a top Beijing law firm that has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and another $5,000 from a Chinese national.

As the Globe reported this week:

U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a contender in the 2026 California governor’s race, doubled down on radical open-border rhetoric Thursday by tweeting “Abolish ICE” while questioning why federal agents were assisting at airports during a partial government shutdown triggered by Senate colleagues blocking full Department of Homeland Security funding.

“If our cities are so dangerous, why can we spare ICE officers to hand out water bottles at airports? Abolish ICE,” Swalwell posted on X, referring to ICE personnel helping to manage crowds and logistics at major airports as TSA staffing shortages stretched security lines to multiple hours.

What does this do for Californians?

Swalwell’s latest campaign pledge follows his January promise to prosecute and imprison ICE agents if elected.

In idealogical myopia, Swalwell parrots the same far-left priorities that have turned California into a sanctuary state magnet for criminal illegal aliens — the very problem ICE is designed to address through enforcement and removals.

It appears Swalwell may be as beneficial to Californians as Gavin Newsom has been:

As the Globe reported Nov. 7, 2024, Newsom issued a bridled threat “to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”

He followed that subtle threat with specifics – lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Newsom issued a proclamation convening a special session of the California Legislature “shoring up California’s defenses against an incoming federal administration that has threatened the state on multiple fronts.”

That meant nothing.

It turns out both Swalwell and Newsom have been more beneficial to China.

Remember Gov. Newsom’s 2023 trip to China was sold to the media as a “climate-focused tour,” centered on electric vehicles providing a greener environment free from fossil fuels. However, what Newsom failed to address with China General Secretary Xi Jinping is that China produces more global emissions than any other country on earth. When Newsom declared that “foundational and fundamental issues” are climate change, it’s curious that he did not inquire about China’s expansion of approximately two new coal plants a week.

“China’s emissions are more than double those of the United States.

Instead he tossed a word salad that should make VP Kamala Harris wince:

“I’m here in expectation, as you suggest, of turning the page, of renewing our friendship and reengaging (on) foundational and fundamental issues that will determine our collective faith in the future,” Newsom said.

That well-tossed and generously-dressed word salad means absolutely nothing. Newsom’s lips were moving and sounds were escaping his mouth, but it may as well have been Elvish.

Perhaps the standout moment of his China visit was when Newsom was filmed behind the wheel of the Build Your Dreams (BYD) Company’s newest electric vehicle, the Globe reported. If BYD triggers a memory, Newsom ordered the purchase of $1.4 Billion of masks from Chinese company BYD at outset of the COVID pandemic using taxpayers funds, when the electric bus manufacturer suddenly pivoted to making masks. We still do not know what was behind Newsom ordering the masks from China when there are U.S. mask manufactures.

And wasn’t that electric vehicle technology China uses stolen from the U.S.?

This has become standard operating procedure with Democrats. The behavior is childish and connotes a petulant child taking his ball and going home rather than losing another game.

How about actually governing the largest state in the county? How does any of this benefit Californians?

Democrats forget or don’t care that Trump won because Americans suffered under the disastrous and deadly Democrat policies of the Obama Administration, as well as four years of the Biden Administration – the open border in which 20+ millions illegal aliens entered the country; the Fentanyl smuggled across the border killing hundreds of thousands of Americans; the highest record inflation in 40 years; cutting energy production resulting in no energy security or independence, massive budget deficits; rampant violent crime on the streets… They’d do it again if given the opportunity.

And Newsom claimed he had “sub-zero interest” in seeking the Presidency. How quickly he flipped, as he does like a human weathervane.

California already lost one congressional seat and electoral vote due to the massive outbound migration of California residents to other states. The once Golden State is facing losing four more Congressional seats – likely Democrat seats, which is why Newsom overturned the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, to re-draw the boundary lines for California state legislative districts to create more Democrat seats.

This is what has Democrats so frantic, because rather than set out to find out why they are losing seats, it’s all about power and control and politics for them. And that is all Democrats care about.

And, another Democrat Party autopsy isn’t going to reveal anything other than Democrats are dying by suicide.

Remember what Democrats did, and Eric Swalwell and Gavin Newsom still pine for:

Opened the borders creating the biggest human trafficking crisis in US history.

Epic foreign policy fails.

Disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.

Tanked the economy.

Record-high inflation.

Expansion of government services on steroids.

Obama administration corruption.

Hillary Clinton corruption.

Joe Biden autopen presidency (term three of Obama admin).

Biden Administration orchestrated President Trump’s takedown through law fare.

Democrat politicians ordered Covid lockdowns, masking, vaccines – three years in CA.

“High income inequality in California coincides with high levels of poverty and stagnant upward mobility,” the Public Policy Institute of California reported last year. That is our reality, and is the result of poor public policy.

Remember that the Governor’s budget surplus turned into a $100 billion budget deficit.

This is just part of the Democrat playbook.

Democrats are not trusted by voters in any of these categories – they offer the people nothing that the people want or need.

Gavin Newsom and now Eric Swalwell are the poster children for only making the Democrat Party, the country, and California worse.

Originally published at The California Globe

By Katy Grimes, March 23, 2026

Is the failure of civic education the primary cause of ideological partisanship in society? That was the question in a debate Thursday hosted by Pepperdine University and The Steamboat Institute, centered around a question that’s becoming increasingly relevant across Los Angeles and all of California:

Are schools failing at civic education — and is that driving today’s political divide?

The timing is especially interesting as California students are failing so significantly in math and English, the state ranks at the bottom of most of the 50 states. On the 2024 NAEP eighth grade reading exam, a meager 28 percent of California students taking the test scored at the proficient level. The story was even worse in math. On the 2024 NAEP eighth grade math exam, only 25 percent—just one in four—California students scored at the proficient mark.

This raises questions about whether students are being equipped for informed civic engagement. At the same time, campuses across Southern California have seen rising protests and tensions over political speech, which has really put a spotlight on issues around civil discourse.

The debate between two very different professors who are seeing these trends firsthand in the classroom, is a back and forth on whether the roots of today’s political division start in schools — or somewhere else.

“Leaders for a polarized political environment need to understand civic virtue and how public policy is made,” said Pete Peterson, Dean of Pepperdine University, in his opening.

Peterson said at Pepperdine one of the texts they use is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and noted that Tocqueville regularly remarked on the civic knowledge he witnessed in meeting Americans.

“One wonders if we are still that way,” Peterson said.

He said even as classical civics is still taught in many schools across the country, new schools of civic education are popping up all across America. “Civics education in the U.S. is important, but with the new movement in Civics Education, are we doing it right?” he asked.

Jennifer Schubert-Akin, Chairman and CEO of The Steamboat Institute, addressed the rising distrust in institutions, and said many are asking, “how did we get here?” Civics Education she said, has eroded or fragmented over time.

“‘Is the decline of Civics Education?’ the primary driver of today’s partisanship?” she asked. “Or is it merely one factor among many?”

The debaters were:

Professor Joshua Dunn: has a PhD from the University of Virginia, and serves as Executive Director of the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse: earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is Professor of Cultural Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Moderator Kaylee McGhee White is a Fox News Contributor and Editor-in-Chief of IW Features, the narrative journalism
and grassroots storytelling division of Independent
Women.

Prof. Dunn, in his opening statement noted that in the debates he’s done with the Steamboat Institute, he’s always been challenged and there needs to be more of this today, he said.

“Americans today do not simply disagree – we distrust, we caricature, we assume the worst, we demonize. Increasingly, citizens do not just think the other side is wrong, they think the other side is dangerous. That’s not normal political disagreement, or healthy disagreement, that’s ideological hostility.”

“The question before us is ‘what is driving this?’”

“So I argue that the primary cause is the failure of civic education – not because civic education explains everything, but because civic education explains the foundation of the condition that allows polarization to grow.”

He explained that people don’t just dislike their opponents, they misunderstand them. “And misunderstanding fuels hostility.”

“Where do those misperceptions come from?”

“Decades of political research shows citizens with lower political knowledge are prone to those political errors or stereotyping and misinformation.”

“When scholars talk about experts, they mean citizens who can answer basic questions. ‘What are the three branches of government? What does Congress do? How does Federalism work?’”

Dunn says those with higher civic knowledge are more accurate in their understanding of public policy, while those with lower civic knowledge are more likely to rely on group identity.

“So when citizens don’t understand how the system works, they cannot evaluate claims about it. They can’t properly situate political disagreement, and so they fall back on identity and suspicion.”

“Ignorance does not produce neutrality, it produces distortion.”

“Civic knowledge increases political tolerance,” and a willingness to engage with political opponents.

“Civic knowledge does not inflame division, it moderates it, Dunn continues. “The problem is that schools are not prioritizing that knowledge,” Dunn says.

He noted that 80% of teachers surveyed prioritize “tolerance” over civics, which was prioritized at only 53%. He referred to this as “deprioritizing” civics while promoting “tolerance.”

Only 1 in 4 students demonstrate basic proficiency in civics. let that simmer – only 25% of students.

And Dunn says, that does not disappear with age.

Without basic civics knowledge, citizens are not able to distinguish normal political conflict from genuine political crisis.

“A Democracy cannot function if citizens cannot disagree without demonizing one another, and citizens cannot disagree constructively if they cannot understand the system in which they are participating.”

That is a failure of education.

Prof. Timothy Messer-Kruse noted that academicians do not get the opportunity to debate as frequently as perhaps they should.

He offered a few caveats: “I do believe in the rule of law. I do believe in the Bill of Rights. I do believe in the importance of Democracy. But I don’t believe in Civics.”

He said that it’s not the failure of Civics that leads to polarization, but the success of civics that leads to polarization. “Polarization has been happening on its own regardless what teachers or academics has done for over a century – and will continue to do so, perhaps.”

“I do believe that teaching might be a possible intervention.”

“We look at every problem as having a solution in scholarship and teaching. We have a built in bias of the favor or a solution that aligns with our skills.”

“We see every social problem as needing to be educated into a solution.”

Messer-Kruse said he doesn’t see polarization lending itself to that and he listed some reasons:

1) civics has been taught for quite a long time, but polarization has been happening since the 1970s.

2) Some sort of decline in civics teaching, or ability to come up with a civics curriculum, is behind what has happened since the 1970s, since over the course of the 20th century, civics has been taught and emphasized.

He says polarization isn’t as much of a problem “like a social problem that needs a specific or artificial solution,” as it is a process.

On his skepticism of civics, “there have been a number of times over the past 100 years when the effectiveness of civics has been tested.”

“The first time was in 1935 to 1938 when the New York regents commissioned an extensive study of New York State schools.”

The 3-year study of 22,584 students concluded that “civics was a null factor” as commitment to voting, or civic principles.

This type of study was done again in 1953 to 1956 by NYU which looked at two years of student data. It found students who took a third semester of civics became involved in “action civics,” getting involved more politically in campaigns. Yet at the end of the study, the study author had to admit that “no significant change of attitude was produced by any of the courses.”

Messer-Kruse said other studies from the 1960s, 1970s, and studies up to last year that have shown “effectively no appreciable statistical correlation between the amount of civics education, or the kind of civics education, and students’ commitment to either voting, or a commitment to the principles to we all hold dear.”

“I think the burden is on civics to show its effectiveness. It seems to have failed so far,” he concludes.

The Debate

“Civics education was developed in 1840 and is a twist on the previous moral education, to instill certain values under the guise of partisan and political neutrality, which it really can’t carry,” Prof. Messer-Kruse said.

“Civics education really started earlier [than 1840],” Prof. Dunn countered, “at the University of Virginia to prepare students to be leaders. But, even before that, so students could understand their rights and duties of being a citizen.”

“I would also include how America has changed over time. You can’t be a properly educated citizen without knowing about the Civil War, progressive era, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, which should all be included in civics education.”

When asked about whether civics education has moved to a more secular framework, Prof. Messer-Kruse called it a “catecistic list of facts, like the answer to ‘how many branches of government are there?’ is supposed to be three, but that is incorrect. There are more than three branches of government,” he said.

“If we think of government as a structure of power and rules, there is the Federal Reserve, which spent $9 trillion in purchasing securities and financial services since 2016, and none of that was Democratically decided. The federal reserve is a government unto its own.”

He included the Department of Defense – Department of War also as a government unto itself. Another he said are those who contribute to political campaigns, as well as “unregulated” dark money.

“Most people don’t live in the three branches world because power affects them in many other ways,” Prof. Messer-Kruse said. “There is cognitive dissonance, just as if there might be with moral instruction when you are told to behave in certain ways that stems contrary to your proclivities.”

Prof. Messer-Kruse said “students should only be asked ‘What is power? How does power manifest? What is government? How is government organized?’ We should try to do this as an investigation instead of as a sort of ‘settled conclusion.’”

Moderator McGhee-White asked Prof. Dunn, “What specific aspects of a civics education are lacking and how would improving those gaps lead to decreased partisanship or polarization?”

Prof. Dunn, who works with K-12 teachers, says they report they never have enough class time. “That would be a basic matter, to devote more time to civics” instead of other non-discipline subjects.

“We should ask ‘How many branches of government does the Constitution establish?’ and move on, Prof. Dunn added. “Even those things have a salutatory effect on people’s attitudes and behavior. If we could just increase that it would go a long way in helping the situation we are in today.”

Moderator McGhee-White posited to Prof. Messer-Kruse “Older Americans tend to be more polarized, while younger Americans don’t.”

Prof. Messer Kruse said polarization is between socio-economic classes, and runs opposite to what most people would presume. “All of the data shows people on the higher socio-economic spectrum are subject to more political polarization than those at the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum” who don’t vote.

“The presumption is that they don’t care or are alienated from the system.” He says “non-voters are motivated in the sense that they see voting as irrelevant to the problems they face – that they are not given realistic policy options in the two-party system that reflect their reality.”

Messer-Kruse claimed that “polarization is an effect of education,” and “civics education is a form of indoctrination just as the old ‘moral’ education was indoctrination.”

“So those who are not exposed to it [civics education] are less indoctrinated or polarized.”

This caused Prof. Dunn to respond: “Civics education is the foundational factor through which all these others are mediated. That’s why civics education and civics knowledge is so important.”

Dunn continued: “Prof. Messer-Kruse pointed out the socio-economic class and polarization – that it’s a generational issue. So younger people who don’t make as much money don’t vote. But as they move along and make more money, tend to start voting. That’s not so much a product of socio-economic class; it’s just their position in life.”

He says it’s the same reason college students don’t vote as much, and noted that “class does not have a lot of statistical power when predicting the voting behavior of American citizens.”

Moderator McGhee White asked about identity politics contributing to polarization.

Prof. Messer-Kruse claimed that the political parties sort along racial identity, and “the huge group that doesn’t vote is because neither political party represents them.”

McGhee White asked if that would improve with increased civics education.

“No, it would exacerbate that,” Prof. Messer-Kruse said. “Because the reason they ‘vote no’ is the system does not serve their interests and community, and offers no policy choices to make any sense in their lives.”

(at this point I questioned if he is talking about legal/illegal immigrants, because he doesn’t come out and say this)

He says civics education is irrelevant to most people because it doesn’t represent what power means in most people’s lives.

Prof. Dunn refuted this. “We have lots of data showing that non-voters look basically like all voters. So if you have everyone show up, the outcomes would not change.”

“There isn’t evidence showing they stay home saying ‘well, this system doesn’t represent me.’” Dunn said it is not because of race. “Plenty of variables go into the the sorting. And part of the issue is polarization is not driven by any coherent ideology – just pure tribalism. Conservatives and liberals changing their positions is based on who is in power.”

Moderator McGhee White: “Including civic education encourages better civic behavior and there is a direct correlation. A 2023 study showed civic education did not lead to better youth turnout. Why should we expect it to affect meaningfully partisan divides?”

Prof. Dunn: “Because those are different things. We know that young people vote – when they get older. We have data that shows with more civic education, you are more tolerant, and less polarized. Just because it doesn’t mean they aren’t going to vote, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect polarization or toleration. Voting is something different.”

He notes that the weakest measurement of political engagement can be how involved you are in your community or engaged in civic associations.

Moderator McGhee White: “Could it be that civic education is a victim of polarization and not its cause?”

“I don’t think they are directly related,” Prof. Messer-Kruse said. “Civics education and polarization are simply in different universes.”

He goes on to say that polarization happened for its own social reasons. “Most importantly, the decision in the 1960’s by the Republican Party to embrace the politics of White Supremacy in response to the civil rights movement, and thereby form a new national coalition to win elections.”

“We know this was clearly a planned effort of the political party, and we know Democrats were happy to align in the other way as well. And both parties by the 1970s had embraced the politics of identity, each in a different way.”

Prof. Dunn asked “is polarization making people not want to have civics education?”

McGhee White noted ” we see this in the different civics education but in Red and Blue states.”

Prof. Dunn said in Tennessee and the university he is with, there is overwhelming support for civics education in the state Legislature. “There was a general recognition that something is not going right and part of it is driven by this lack of knowledge that our students have, and that adults have once they get out of school.”

“We did a survey at the Institute of American Civics to see how many Tennesseans know that we have our own Constitution in Tennessee. It’s 50%, and also 50% across the country.”

Dunn said this is significant because in every state but Delaware citizens have to vote on ballot initiative amendments to their Constitution. “And here in California, you have to vote on them a lot. What that means is there are a lot of people voting on a Constitutional Amendment who don’t know they are voting on a Constitutional Amendment. They are treating it like any other part of the political process.”

“This is unhealthy, at a bare minimum,” Prof. Dunn added. “The more you can equip citizens with knowledge about how their system of government works, the more capable they will be. It also increases their own sense of efficacy.”

“I think across the country people realize that we haven’t done what we needed to – just imparting basic knowledge in students, particularly K-12, so that when they get out, they know how to navigate the political process.”

Moderator McGhee White: “If you could implement one policy to reduce ideological division, what would it be and why would it work better than just bolstering civics education?”

Prof. Messer-Kruse said you couldn’t do just one thing without political and social changes. He added, “neither political party seems to represent the interests of the majority of the public.”

“If there was one thing I could change, I’d like all partisans on all sides, to stop assuming that their opponents are motivated out of ignorance. This is why we get bipartisan support for civics education is because both liberals and conservatives think their opponents are stupid and need to be educated. But in fact, I think most people are pretty intelligent and pretty knowledgable and pretty aware of their surroundings.”

He said that teachers and professors think they have “a great wealth of knowledge they need to bestow upon the benighted public and therefore reform the world.”

“I don’t think that is going to happen because it hasn’t happened in over a century of effort.”

Prof. Dunn: “One thing… get rid of social media. That might be a good start. If we could go back in time and change the McGovern Frazier Commission with changed the method in which we nominate candidates… that had a extraordinary impact on the way our parties’ candidates get sorted and nominated… rewards certain kinds of behavior and certain kinds of individuals and punishes others…”

“Certainly social media is a part of the problem, and cable news as well. Individuals are having trouble navigating what they are seeing on social media and cable news is driven in part by their inability to process it effectively because of their civic knowledge.”

The remainder were questions from the audience.

You can watch the entire debate here: