Meanwhile, his own Democrat-controlled state legislature passed $50 million in 2 bills — at his request — to fund legal challenges to Trump administration policies, including immigration, the environment, and anything else.
Nothing better encapsulates the adolescent state of mind in California governance. We are like rebellious teenagers who smoke pot in the house and wreck the family car but still expect our parents to pay our way through college.
Newsom wants Trump and the federal taxpayers to pay to clean up the mess in California, out of the goodness of their hearts — but he still wants to be able to oppose everything Trump does, as if California is some kind of success story.
That is how California behaved in the first Trump term.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra — a nonentity as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration — filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump policies, usually in reliably liberal jurisdictions. California was able to obtain nationwide injunctions against Trump, and California politicians — Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris — led efforts to impeach Trump and remove him from office.
Regardless, Trump always came through with emergency funds for California, as even Newsom himself has conceded. That is why, Newsom says, Trump should do the same now — no matter how much California continues to rebel.
But this time is different. And not just because Trump is stronger and wiser. This time, Trump won the popular vote — over a candidate from California.
The country, as a whole, has already taken sides in the California-Trump fight.
And this time, the failures of state and local leadership are too glaring to ignore.
The fires spread in brush, often on state land, that had not been cleared. The city failed to pre-deploy firefighters or to send police to guide traffic. The local water utility failed to keep the reservoir full.
Newsom is blaming climate change, but climate change does not explain why Rick Caruso was able to save his Palisades mall while the state and city saved almost nothing around it.
The Trump administration has taken charge of the recovery effort, finding state and local leaders in total disarray.
President Donald Trump himself traveled to the Pacific Palisades just days after taking the oath of office, and he has sent Ambassador Ric Grenell to coordinate the agencies and to cut through red tape.
Most of the residents of the Palisades understand that if not for Trump, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass would have kept them from visiting their homes.
Newsom accused Trump, early on, of trying to politicize the fires. But it is Newsom, and his party, who have brought politics into everything, as they try to lead a new version of the so-called “Resistance” to Trump in his second term.
The right thing to do — the manly thing, if one can still say that — would be for Newsom to veto the $50 million and concede that maybe now is not the time to be poking President Donald Trump and federal taxpayers in the eye.
It might have seemed courageous, to a Democrat-dominate electorate, to fund massive lawsuits against Trump. But circumstances have changed.
Southern California has been through hell. The state is in no position to fight. Newsom should admit that, and back down.
Will he do it? Maybe. It would suggest he has character, and would boost his presidential hopes for 2028. Country before party, that sort of thing.
But — who are we kidding? This is California. This is Gavin Newsom.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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