Gavin Newsom’s California in ‘Existential Freefall’ Victor Davis Hanson

March 18, 2025 

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, as I had mentioned earlier, has had a series of podcast interviews and he’s selected conservatives. Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, and others have been meeting with him.

Steve Bannon was the most recent and they’re asking him a series of questions, but none of them seem to really get to the heart of the matter. And that is to ask Gov. Newsom why this state is a dysfunctional and unsustainable project.

I’m not talking just about the $100 to $200 billion high-speed rail debacle. I’m not even talking about Gov. Newsom’s blowing up of four dams on the Klamath River. Took about a quarter of $1 trillion that he took out of a bond measures fund to do what? To build reservoirs.

I’m not even talking about his cancellation or delaying of three reservoirs— Los Banos Grande, the Sites Reservoir, and Temperance Flat—which would have given us, in a year like this, where we have ample rainfall and snowmelt, about 5 million acre-feet of storage, which would have come in handy in August.

I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about the more dire catastrophes.

Right now, the state started the year 2024 $76 billion in debt. We have the highest income tax rate at 13.3. We have the highest gas taxes at nearly 70 cents a gallon. We have among the highest sales taxes, property taxes.

But here’s my question. Right now, Gov. Newsom, half of all births in California are covered by Medi-Cal. We have spent almost $11 billion on indigent aid, mostly for people who are here illegally. You are now broke. Even that was not enough. You are asking to borrow $3.4 billion from the general fund, which was in arrears, to pay for the health care of people who were largely allowed to come into California illegally. More importantly, in addition to that, almost 20% of all the people who are PG&E—Pacific Gas and Electric—users have not paid their bills. It’s a fantastic multibillion-dollar shortfall. What is your plan to address that?

Pam Bondi Fires Warning Shot Over Women’s Sports

 Mary Margaret Olohan, 02/25/25,  DailyWire.com

Attorney General Pam Bondi [pictured right] ... issued letters to officials in Maine, Minnesota, and California following pushback from left-wing lawmakers and state officials who have refused to comply with the president’s executive order banning men from women’s sports and spaces.

“This Department of Justice will defend women and does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law,” Bondi said Tuesday. “We will leverage every legal option necessary to ensure state compliance with federal law and President Trump’s Executive Order protecting women’s sports.”

Her letter reminds these officials that Trump’s executive order states that allowing men and boys to compete in women’s and girls’ sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls.”

Commentary: Defensive Gun Uses Show Faulty Premise of California Gun Laws

 Amy Swearer | Grace McNabnay | February 18, 2025

As wildfires raged last month in California, tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, often with just minutes of warning. To make matters worse, looters took advantage of the chaos and lack of police resources, showing up in droves to ransack evacuated areas—sometimes as helpless residents looked on in horror as their doorbell cameras captured the looting in real time.

Fortunately for residents of at least some evacuated areas, a handful of their armed neighbors stayed behind to protect their homes and livelihoods from would-be looters—in some cases, bravely patrolling their streets with firearms in what certainly seemed to be open defiance of the state’s public carry laws.

But for countless others, the state’s restrictive gun laws undoubtedly complicated their ability to defend their homes, at the very least compounding their anxiety by raising questions about their legal rights in a state notorious for treating lawful gun owners as the enemy of public safety. Barriers like mandatory waiting periods, meanwhile, ensured that Californians who didn’t already own guns would be kept from exercising one of their most fundamental rights precisely when it mattered most.