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

Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to play with Donald Trump. So he’ll huff and puff and work for the nation to make himself – and his state, which is also mine – the just Avignon to Trump’s crude Rome.

But asking the California legislature, which sets the rules for the least efficient government in America, to focus on “Trump-proofing” the state seems a bit silly. Once upon a time, California could sell itself as a shining alternative, attracting millions from home and abroad while serving as an epicenter for unparalleled technology and entertainment.

Today that reputation is seriously tarnished, in large part the victim of nearly two decades of progressive one-party government. Since 2000, California has lost 3.8 million residents to net domestic migration, a number equivalent to the population of Los Angeles. Once a beacon for young and ambitious people, California now ranks last in attracting newcomers.

It is even losing educated, middle-class professionals, whose outflow increased sharply between 2019 and 2021 (before a slight upturn). Families in particular made their way to the exit. California’s fertility rate was above the national average as recently as 2012, according to data from the CDC Final Births report, and is now the ninth worst in the country. Even immigrants, including in the last two years, appear to be going elsewhere, to places in Texas and Florida that Newsom has portrayed as racist hellholes.

People continue to love California’s climate and spectacular scenery. But they also want to earn a good living and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Today, for all but a few, California is no longer the place to do that. According to a recent analysis by Zen Business, Texas and Florida are now among the country’s high-growth hotspots and are also attracting many tech workers. The entertainment industry, California’s other major high-end industry, is also losing jobs, including at Disney’s storied Pixar, in part because production is moving to other states and countries.

The once magical cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco remain dystopian basket cases with homeless camps and chronic crime. Despite all the hype about AI, San Francisco has the highest office vacancy rate in the country. The core of Los Angeles is dominated by abandoned apartment towers now covered in graffiti.

Of course, not everyone suffered. California remains that way Terroir The city is the top choice for tech billionaires and venture capitalists and is home to three of the world’s top five tech companies. The government employees also did a good job; Since 2022, all net government jobs have been created or supported by the public sector, while private employment has actually declined.

The big losers under the progressive regime are not the fat cats that progressives claim to loathe, but the ordinary people who work in the “carbon economy” – manufacturing, logistics and agriculture. Overall, California is not creating the middle-wage jobs that can support families. When it comes to creating above-average jobs, the country is at the bottom. In contrast, key Trump bastions such as Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have experienced significantly faster income and job growth over the past three decades.

Of course, in the progressive bubble, such facts are not enough to stop righteous posturing. Newsom’s war with Trump is particularly attractive to interest groups focused on cultural issues like abortion, which are not seriously challenged in California. But the more critical conflict with Washington may revolve around efforts to maintain the state’s draconian green agenda.

This focus on the environment could be applauded by green-invested venture capitalists, the progressive media, and the academic idiot box. But in the real world, unlike Newsom’s social justice rush, the green agenda has instead created what attorney Jennifer Hernandez has called a “green Jim Crow” that is driving up prices across the board and shrinking well-paying blue-collar jobs .

With government control over environmental policy, Californians face ever-increasing energy bills. Despite claims that renewable energy is cheaper, state regulators have passed rules that will raise gas prices, already the highest in the continental U.S., by another half dollar per gallon next year.

Particularly problematic could prove Newsom’s commitment to stick to the state’s effective EV mandate – no gasoline cars after 2035. Trump will almost certainly abandon national mandates and force Californians to pay higher prices to buy the gasoline cars, that they actually want, to encourage them to buy the electric vehicles they don’t want. One scenario calls for people to flock to Arizona and Nevada to buy their cars and other gas-powered equipment, allowing other states to benefit from the sales tax. Some have also suggested that California’s roads will resemble those of Cuba and people will drive “vintage” cars as long as they can be maintained.

Remarkably, in his eagerness to dominate the “resistance,” Newsom ignores the extent to which his own voters are turning away from progressivism, particularly in the interior areas, which are now the only places where there is real growth. Although California voters remained solidly Democratic in presidential, Senate and congressional elections this year, they overwhelmingly supported a Republican Party-led initiative to repeal more lenient sentencing laws. They also fired two district attorneys – George Gascon of Los Angeles and Pamela Price of Alameda County – and, out of outrage over rising crime, fired radical Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao with a similar majority.

Newsom can brag all he wants about California’s vast technological and cultural heritage, but many locals no longer believe the hype. Today, 57 percent of adults believe the state is going in the wrong direction, up from 37 percent in 2020. Four in ten are considering leaving. About 70 percent of renters, typically a Democratic constituency, expect “bad times.”

It’s one thing to talk about California’s social justice “values” as Newsom does, but the reality is far from that. Although California has by far the most billionaires in the country, 30 percent of the country’s homeless also live there. Of all states, the proportion of people living in poverty is highest and the gap between middle and upper middle income earners is widest.

Making matters worse, the state is running a large deficit, and the California Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts continued operating deficits through 2028, a result of per capita spending that has tripled on a cost-adjusted basis over the past 50 years. In contrast, competing states like Texas and Florida have increased their budgets while running large surpluses.

So if that’s what California is offering, who’s buying it? Despite its great virtues, this seems a bad time to focus the state’s efforts on fighting Trump, who can simply point to California as living proof of the failure of progressivism. If California really wants to be an alternative to MAGA, rather than trying to save the nation or the planet, perhaps it would be better to save itself first.

Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas