June 30, 2026, 4:05 a.m. ET
In addition to being governor and a probable Democratic presidential hopeful, Gavin Newsom is now something else: duplicitous.
On June 26, in a video posted to X just one day after a California billionaire tax proposal was confirmed for the state’s November ballot, Newsom called for a nationwide tax on billionaires and “a new social contract,” dubbing it an “economic reset.” But in a Substack post accompanying the video, the governor said he opposed a tax on billionaires in California.
I have two words for Newsom: You first.
It’s the height of hypocrisy for Newsom to publicly push a billionaire tax for the rest of the country while opposing one in his own state. It shows he’s willing to shape-shift his beliefs to fit his political goals ‒ courting Democrats nationally with one policy while protecting his own power at home by rejecting it. And it shows something else: He knows exactly how devastating a billionaire tax would be to the wealthy. That’s the only reason he’s fighting one in California.
Newsom’s disingenuous war on billionaires
A nationwide billionaire tax is a terrible idea. That didn’t stop Newsom from making his case for one anyway. In the video, California’s governor-turned-presidential-hopeful claimed that 10% of people in this country own two-thirds of the wealth, evidence, he says, that the system is “fundamentally broken.”
“There is a working coalition in this country of blue-collar and white-collar, urban and rural, the people who built this country and the people who are trying to find their place in it,” Newsom wrote in his Substack. “They did everything right, and the system still has nothing for them.”
He also called for ending tax perks that give wealthy people “their own private tax code full of loopholes and exemptions that most people have never heard of.”
Translation: Working Americans have been ripped off, and our democracy is rigged for the rich.
It’s true that wealthy people use the tax code and catch breaks where they can. Thanks to accelerated depreciation, Tesla reported zero federal income tax on $2.3 billion in income in 2024.
But I can’t blame wealthy people for that, because the rich still pay more than their fair share of taxes:
Newsom purports to side with the working class by leveling the playing field for them across the country. But he won’t do it in California ‒ or for himself. His own net worth is approximately $30 million, and he last disclosed a tax return in 2022, despite pledging to be the first California governor to release his tax returns every year in office.
“The fight to make the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes is not one we should be fighting state by state,” Newsom wrote June 26. “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.”
California has competition now
Newsom is right that the proposed billionaire tax drives people away.
A Hoover Institution study estimated that nearly 30% of the eligible billionaire tax base has already left California, just on the possibility that the legislation might pass. Six billionaires fled before the Jan. 1 deadline ‒ avoiding $26.7 billion in potential taxes.
Texas and Florida lead the list of states people are migrating to, and it’s not an accident ‒ both have tax policies that reward work instead of punishing success. The result isn’t that business owners get away with paying next to nothing while the working class picks up the slack. It’s that with their tax-free wealth, they build businesses that hire people and make products people actually want.
At some level, the California governor understands this. That’s why he opposes the very policy he’s selling to the rest of the country. Newsom says, “We must democratize the American economy to save democracy” ‒ a mantra that sounds more like socialist gobbledygook than sound economic policy. He probably wants to believe it, because economic equality sounds warm and fuzzy on paper.
But a democratic republic doesn’t promise everyone equal wealth. It promises equal opportunity. Newsom is watching that play out in real time, as billionaires flee California for states where opportunity is expansive, not punitive.
If Newsom truly believes a billionaire tax is essential to the country’s future, he should prove it works at home first. The fact that he won’t says everything. Newsom isn’t just duplicitous. He’s calculating ‒ he knows exactly what this policy costs, and he doesn’t want California to pay it.
So no, Governor, you first.
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
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