When a policy is too dangerous to impose on your own state but somehow sounds reasonable for everyone else, voters tend to notice.
That was the position California Gov. Gavin Newsom found himself defending this week after quietly working to stop a state billionaire tax — only to pivot and endorse the same concept at the national level once he failed to keep it off the ballot.
The maneuver satisfied almost no one.
Earlier in the week, Newsom made clear where he stood when speaking to The New York Times.
“This will be defeated. There’s no question in my mind,” Newsom said of the California billionaire tax proposal. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state.”
That sentence did not leave much room for interpretation.
But after efforts to block the measure fell short and the proposal remained headed for voters, Newsom changed strategy. In a Friday Substack post, he argued that taxing billionaires is not bad policy — just bad policy for California.
“The fight to make the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes is not one we should be fighting state by state,” Newsom wrote.
He continued: “You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do. Wealth is moveable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes.”
Then came the pivot.
“The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”
That may have sounded like a compromise inside Sacramento circles. Outside that bubble, critics saw something simpler: if the policy would damage California because wealthy taxpayers would leave, why would the same economic incentives magically disappear nationwide?
Even many on the left appeared unimpressed.
Left-wing commentator Matt Bernstein mocked the move, writing, “He is kind of the politician of all time. Changes his view three times a week, transforms himself to please whoever he’s speaking to, [with] no real aspirations besides power for himself.”
Meanwhile, investor David Sacks — who previously served as President Trump’s AI czar and lives in California — blasted Newsom for abandoning the effort to stop the measure.
“Today was the day that Gavin Newsom was supposed to save the tech industry by cutting a deal to kill the Billionaire Tax Act,” Sacks wrote. “Instead he came out as Democratic-Socialists of America adjacent, and the Billionaire Tax Act will be on the ballot in November.”
Sacks added a line that captured what critics fear California has normalized: “See y’all in Texas!”
According to analysis from Newsom’s own Department of Finance, the proposed California tax could initially generate tens of billions in revenue but also trigger long-term losses if high-net-worth residents relocate.
The proposal would impose a one-time tax equal to 5% of a billionaire’s net worth, collected over five years in 1% annual installments.
Supporters, including the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West, say 90% of the revenue would offset healthcare reductions tied to legislation signed by President Trump.
Newsom pointed to another objection entirely.
“This measure dedicates almost all of the revenue it raises to a single category of state spending,” he argued. “It ignores our public schools, as the California Teachers Association has rightly pointed out, by failing to provide sustainable funding that our communities, parents and children deserve.”
Notice what disappeared from the conversation: whether government should keep inventing new taxes instead of fixing the spending habits that created the problem.
California has spent years losing businesses, losing population, and watching residents move to lower-tax states. Now its governor appears to be making a new argument: don’t stop the model — nationalize it.
Voters may decide in November whether that sounds like leadership or simply an admission that California’s experiment only works if everyone else is forced to join in too.
