California Is Still Doomed

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

 

The State of California probably deserves its own sub-annex at the Carnival of Fools, to honor its MVP presence in our little institution’s history. Imagine a tiny circus tent adjacent to our main hall, with calliope music playing on a loop and Gavin Newsom starring as The Man Who Juggles Chainsaws, Incompetently. (It beats playing the geek — we gave that role to Swalwell when he came begging around, desperate for a job.)

 

However, Governor Newsom is about to suffer sharply for his incompetence; now those razor-edged interest groups that he’s juggling are actively gassed up and running. On June 25, it became official that the so-called Billionaire Tax will be on the ballot in California. The ballot initiative was circulated by the SEIU–United Healthcare Workers West union, and it will be backed by its organizing power in November.

 

It is an impossibly bad idea with obvious negative economic implications: a “one time” extractive tax of 5 percent on every billionaire in the state. A full 5 percent of each billionaire’s total worth above $1.1 billion (including items of estimated historical value) will be automatically expropriated by the state. (It will apply retroactively to anyone who lived in California on January 1, 2026 — so there is no escape now.)

 

Many had assumed it would be withdrawn from the ballot after some kind of backdoor arrangement between Newsom and the unions, at taxpayer expense. Instead, no deal: The deadline has now passed, the proposal is on the ballot, and there is every reason to think it could win in an environment where progressives are lurching to the left so hard and so fast that even Mao Zedong, were he alive, would be sounding cautionary notes. (“Whoa there, you might want to take a step back and rethink that whole abolish-the-prisons thing.”)

 

So now, Newsom has to put on a new act: A California-only billionaire tax is a terrible idea, he says, but since the voters of his state are going to march off the cliff (and his state is so obviously important), the rest of the nation owes it to California to also commit suicide — because we’re all in this together as a country, aren’t we? In a political pivot truly worthy of a man with his head on a spindle, Newsom now argues that we need a nationwide billionaire tax: “It’s time for a national billionaires’ tax and a new social contract. 10 percent of Americans own two-thirds of the wealth. It’s time for an economic reset for America.” His logic is clear: Those dastardly billionaires who want to flee the wreckage of California should not be allowed to save themselves by moving to Florida or Texas. (That way, he hopes, they’ll simply stay where the weather’s great and contribute to his state’s tax base.)

 

Leave aside what will happen to California if this tax passes — a quick infusion of money followed by the collapse of the state’s tax revenue — and imagine Newsom running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 with the legacy of the complete implosion of the Golden State’s finances. There is a reason I am offering him a starring role in the Carnival of Fools, if he wants to take it.

 

And if he doesn’t, I’ll feature him here anyway.

 

Scott Wiener Can’t Go Home — Until After November, at Least

 

Let’s zero in on San Francisco, where it’s going to be yet another beautiful breezy 70-degree day today, as it has been all month. It’s undeniably true that, once you set aside the abundance of human waste, discarded needles, and junkie criminals covering its streets, S.F. remains one of the most gorgeous cities in America — its residents don’t deserve weather and land that lovely, and they demonstrate it daily.

 

They did so once again this weekend. On Friday, State Senator Scott Wiener — currently representing California’s eleventh district and seeking its congressional seat (about which more later) — was confronted on camera by a mob of angry pro-Palestinian queer men, chased out of Mission Dolores Park, and prevented from attending the yearly San Francisco Trans March. Why? Has San Francisco suddenly taken a page from Chicago and become MAGA country? No, it’s merely because Wiener was a day late to calling Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide.”

 

Since you’re reading NR, I can guess what you’re probably thinking: something between “That’s a shame” and “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” And yes, Wiener is a bête noire for conservatives nationally, who have been familiar with the notably queer antics of this exceptionally aggressive left-wing culture warrior for years. (His notoriety, despite his only having been a state senator, speaks for itself — Wiener has courted the spotlight on LGBTQ+ issues in a way guaranteed to raise the hackles of all conservatives.)

 

But watch the video of the confrontation anyway (linked above and proudly posted by its off-camera instigator, a man named Dimitry Yakoushkin). Listen to its inherent theatricality, as Yakoushkin’s voice calculatedly evolves from a normal tone into a hoarse, hysterical rant. “How can you do this to San Francisco?” he wails disconsolately, as if making a direct appeal to the heavens. Quote of the afternoon, heard loudly from a man (?) near the end: “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of sh**.”

 

And all because Wiener acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and hesitated to call Israeli operations in Gaza a “genocide.” (He does now, but his failure to do so quickly enough apparently reveals the depraved Zionist traitor to queer values lurking within.) My esteemed editor Rich Lowry wrote about the strange reality of queer activists who have become militant about the issue of “genocide” in Gaza. It is a “sympathy for the underdog” logic as irrational as it is inevitable.

 

But there’s also a fair amount of grubby campaign politics involved in all of this. Wiener is locked in a bitter congressional battle, which may come as a surprise to NR readers who live outside the state and assume he’s a shoo-in: It is all too easy to forget that California’s “top two” system tends to set up brutal intra-Democratic slugfests in its many ultra-blue districts and local races. California’s eleventh district in particular, composed 100 percent of the city of San Francisco, is obviously one of the bluest in the nation. It has been insulated from California’s Democratic turf wars since 2012 for one reason only: It is the seat occupied, for now, by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

 

And Pelosi has endorsed someone else in the race. Wiener has a statewide and national profile, but apparently that has come at a cost to his local roots, and so Pelosi has thrown her considerable power behind Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. What makes this endorsement even more significant is that Chan is regarded as the more progressive candidate of the two: In the fun house that is city and state politics, Wiener’s prominent “YIMBY” affiliations have perversely opened him to charges of associating with “capitalists” and “developers” against the environment. Wiener is still favored to win — he is practically an LGBTQ+ celebrity among San Francisco’s resoundingly progressive electorate — but given that the leftmost candidates in Democratic-only races across the nation are surging, and since the dean of the Democrats has endorsed his opponent, he cannot take his race for granted.

 

Now guess whom the man who videotaped himself rousing a mob against Wiener is supporting? Connie Chan, needless to say. Yakoushkin, who describes himself as an activist — the theatrical public pleading was a tip-off — was basically doing a freelance oppo hit on behalf of the progressive left. In a race where Wiener is a cultural celebrity, petty differences suddenly become urgent and unbridgeable divisions, and Chan’s campaign will need to drive every wedge it possibly can.

 

The irony remains rich, nevertheless. Wiener has been everything the queer community has ever asked for in a legislative champion — to the point of insanity — and his reward is to be ostracized by the worst of his own people, at least so long as there is a race to be won or lost. You know what? It’s a shame; it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

 

Trump Is Back — in Passport Form!

 

Donald Trump slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, our nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations, and America’s annual national park passes. So it’s really no surprise that, after adding his signature to all new paper money, our endlessly egotistical president has done so to U.S. passports as well. Over the weekend, he announced a commemorative “patriot passport” that features his own hulking visage, looming threateningly over the Resolute Desk, on the first page.

 

It’s yet another pathetically hilarious Trump trifle — the self-tributes will not cease until he leaves office — and it’s not going to become the standard-issue passport design, thankfully. But Trump doesn’t seem to be quite sure what passports are for: He proudly showed off the new design to the world on Truth Social with the incoherent advertisement, “The U.S.A. New Passport, which says, ‘Welcome, but be good!” I don’t know what Trump uses a passport for, but I don’t need or use mine to hang around my own country. I use it to visit other countries. This matters acutely to me, because I have to get my passport reissued, and a Trump-branded one seems like a great way to signal to any foreign airport worker that you would appreciate as much “extra” customs screening as possible.

 

But what if Jonathan Last has been right all along and Trump really is a secret Stalin? What if this betokens the backdoor introduction of a Soviet-style internal passport system? Newsom, at least, would certainly appreciate the value of forbidding internal migration. But imagine if I were legally enserfed as a taxpayer to the Chicagoland Oblast? Most of my colleagues have long assumed that I already am.