Gavin Newsom’s California is already losing its war against Donald Trump

The governor wants to ‘Trump-proof’ the state. That would be easier if it wasn’t such a basketcase

Gavin Newsom does not want to play with Donald Trump. So he will huff and puff, and posture for the nation, to make himself – and his state, which is also mine – the righteous Avignon to Trump’s crude Rome.
But in calling the California legislature, the rule makers for the least efficient government in America, to focus on “Trump proofing” the state seems a bit of a fool’s errand. Once upon a time, California could sell itself as a shining alternative, attracting millions from near and abroad while serving as the epicentre of unrivalled tech and entertainment.
Today that reputation is seriously tarnished, in large part the victim of almost two decades of one-party progressive governance. Since 2000, California has lost 3.8 million residents in net domestic migration, a number equivalent to the population of Los Angeles. Once a beacon for the young and ambitious, today California ranks towards the bottom in attracting newcomers.
It is even losing middle-class educated professionals, whose exodus increased sharply between 2019 and 2021 (before a modest rebound). Families, in particular, have been heading to the exit. California’s fertility rate, above the national average as recently as 2012, according to CDC Final Births report data, now ranks as the ninth-worst in the nation. Even immigrants, including in the last two years, seem to be going elsewhere, for places in Texas and Florida that have been portrayed by Newsom as racist hellholes.
People have not stopped loving California’s climate or spectacular scenery. But they also want to make a good living and enjoy the fruits of their labour. Today, for all but a few, California is no longer the place to do that. According to recent analysis by Zen Business, Texas and Florida are now among the country’s high-growth hotspots and are also attracting many tech workers. Entertainment, California’s other large high-end industry, is also losing jobs, including at Disney’s fabled Pixar, partly as production moves to other states and countries.
The once magical cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco remain dystopian basket cases, with homeless encampments and chronic crime. Despite all the hype about AI, San Francisco suffers the nation’s highest office vacancy rate. Los Angeles’ core is marked by deserted residential towers now covered with graffiti.
Of course, not everyone has suffered. California remains the terroir of choice for tech billionaires and venture capitalists, and is home to three of the world’s five leading tech companies. Government workers also have done well; since 2022, all the net jobs created were in government or supported by the public sector, while private employment actually dropped.
The big losers under the progressive regime are not the fat cats that progressives claim to detest but those lowly folk who work in “the carbon economy” – manufacturing, logistics, and agriculture. Overall, California fails to produce the mid-wage jobs that could support families. The state ranks near the bottom when it comes to creating jobs that pay above average. In contrast, key Trump bastions like Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have over the past three decades enjoyed considerably faster growth in income and jobs.
Of course, in the progressive bubble, such facts are not enough to stop righteous preening. Newsom’s war with Trump is particularly attractive to pressure groups focused on cultural issues, like abortion, which are not seriously under assault in California. But the more critical conflict with Washington is likely to be over efforts to preserve the state’s draconian green agenda.
This focus on the environment may win plaudits from green-invested venture capitalists, the progressive media, and the academic idiot box. But in the real world, the green agenda, in contrast to Newsom’s hectoring about social justice, has instead created what attorney Jennifer Hernandez has called a “green Jim Crow”, raising prices across the board and shrinking high paying blue collar jobs.
Given the state’s control over environmental policy, Californians can expect ever higher energy bills. Despite claims that renewables are cheaper, the state’s regulators have approved regulations that will raise gas prices, already the highest in the continental US, by an additional half dollar per gallon next year.
Newsom’s pledge to stick with the state’s effective EV mandate – no gas cars after 2035 – could prove particularly problematic. Trump will almost certainly jettison national mandates, leaving Californians stuck paying higher prices to buy the gas-powered cars they actually want in order to encourage them to buy the electric vehicles they don’t. One scenario sees people rushing to Arizona and Nevada to purchase their cars and other gas-using appliances, allowing other states to benefit from the sales tax. Some have also suggested that California’s roads will become like Cuba’s, with people driving “vintage cars” as long as they can be maintained.
Remarkably, in his alacrity to dominate the “resistance”, Newsom is ignoring the degree to which his own constituents are shifting away from progressivism, particularly in the inland areas that are now the only places really growing. This year, although remaining solidly Democratic in the presidential, Senate and Congressional races, California voters backed overwhelmingly a GOP-led initiative to reverse lenient sentencing laws. They also removed two district attorneys – LA’s George Gascon and Alameda County’s Pamela Price – while, disgusted by rising crime, recalled radical Oakland mayor Sheng Thao by a similar margin.
Newsom can brag all he wants about California’s huge technical and cultural legacy, but many locals no longer buy the hype. Today, 57 per cent of adults believe the state is headed in the wrong direction, up from 37 per cent in 2020. Four in 10 are considering an exit. Some 70 per cent of renters, generally a Democratic constituency, expect “bad times” ahead.
It’s one thing to talk about the Californian “values” of social justice, as Newsom does, but the reality is far from that. To be sure, California may have by far the highest number of billionaires in the nation, but it is also home to 30 per cent of the country’s homeless. It suffers the highest percentage living in poverty and the widest gap between middle and upper-middle income earners of any state.
To make matters worse, the state has a deep deficit, and California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts continued operating deficits through 2028, a consequence of per capita spending that has tripled on a cost adjusted basis over the last 50 years. In contrast, competitor states like Texas and Florida have grown their budgets while preserving large surpluses.
So if this is what California is offering, who is buying? Despite its great assets, this seems a poor time to expend the state’s effort on battling Trump, who can simply point to California as living proof of the failure of progressivism. If California truly wants to be an alternative to MAGA, rather than trying to save the nation, or the planet, it might do better to save itself first.
Joel Kotkin is presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas