Gavin Newsom preens in Brazil — while California – Latest News
Gov. Gavin Newsom is prancing round overseas while Californians endure by a natural catastrophe — and never for the primary time.
The well-coiffed presidential hopeful has a behavior of being out of the state during main storms.
In 2023, he left during a lethal blizzard for a trip in Mexico. While residents of California’s high nation have been trapped in their houses, Newsom was sunning himself on a seaside in Baja on a “personal trip” he wouldn’t cancel.
This time, Newsom is away on the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Brazil, hobnobbing with overseas leaders.
His aim: to pose as president for a week, attacking the Trump administration for its absence while signing toothless agreements to avoid wasting the planet.
On Saturday, as Californians have been evacuating their houses and dodging “catastrophic” flash floods, Newsom was posting excitedly on X about assembly the vice mayor of Rio de Janeiro.
It’s not that he was unaware of the hazard: His official “CAGovernor” account reposted a number of warnings from federal, state and native authorities companies back home in regards to the imminent hazard posed by the storm.
These posts alternated with videos of Newsom climbing into the Amazon to go to an indigenous group, and to see a 15-story weather-monitoring tower.
Apparently, Newsom cares much less in regards to the climate at home than the climate in the rainforest.
Not that he cares in regards to the rainforest all that a lot.
As Newsom lamented the Brazilian ecosystem’s destruction, his own insurance policies have accelerated it.
California imports more oil from Brazil — 20% of its whole provide — than from any nation different than Iraq.
That’s as a result of Newsom and his Democrats have restricted manufacturing in oil-rich California.
While pretending to remove fossil fuels, California has develop into more depending on overseas oil, together with offshore oil in Brazil, the place drilling will quickly start close to the mouth of the Amazon..
That is only one instance of California’s climate hypocrisy.
Newsom and his occasion have dragged their ft in clearing brush from state land, and have prevented the logging industry from doing so — again, supposedly to avoid wasting the planet.
The end result: large wildfires that, in only one 12 months, erased all of the emissions beneficial properties from practically twenty years of “green” insurance policies in the state.
The current Palisades Fire started on state land, partly as a result of Newsom’s environmentalist extremism.
Newsom has one other rationalization: the Palisades Fire, he informed a gathering in Brazil, was as a result of climate change.
“We’re on the tip of the spear of climate change,” he mentioned. “Simultaneous droughts and simultaneous floods.”
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our each day Post Opinion publication!
Thanks for signing up!
That is a shift from Newsom’s different current rationalization, when confronted with a lawsuit from devastated residents: He blamed the arsonist who allegedly began a New Year’s Day blaze that reignited because the Palisades Fire in high winds on Jan. 7.
At the time, Newsom claimed that he had pre-deployed firefighting sources throughout Southern California in anticipation of the hazard.
But he didn’t ship crews to the location of the New Year’s Day fire, the place the hazard was most acute — and the place state land was concerned.
Newsom didn’t make sure the state’s emergency response was ready for the worst, his most important duty as governor.
And with these newest storms, Newsom is actually phoning it in from Brazil.
Newsom has attacked Republicans — usually — for leaving their states during disasters.
One of his favourite targets is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was infamously caught leaving his state for Cancún, Mexico, during a lethal winter freeze.
“To be fair, he knows a lot about fleeing,” the governor posted in August, above a photograph of Cruz on the airport.
With that historical past in thoughts, Newsom should have been on the primary flight home to California to steer the storm response.
But no — as of Sunday, Newsom was nonetheless in Brazil.
He stayed as a result of he is aware of the media — particularly in California — won’t ever apply the identical requirements to him because it does to Republicans.
And he stayed as a result of he’s betting that Democratic presidential major voters care much less about a candidate’s efficiency than about how arduous she or he fought Donald Trump.
It’s why Newsom has put $40 billion in fire assist at risk by attacking the president as a substitute of working with him.
Climate change can also be a helpful excuse for Newsom and for different Democrats to shirk fundamental governing obligations.
If fires and floods threaten California communities, that’s as a result of of fossil fuels and the nasty Republicans who help them — not as a result of Democrats have refused to clear the comb or to construct new dams.
If no one is in charge during disasters, forcing residents to face hazard alone, a lot the higher: Disaster drives home the climate-hysteria level.
Newsom’s aim in Brazil goes past typical inexperienced ideology: He is pursuing his own personal political ambitions.
Fresh from his Proposition 50 victory, he needs the “B-roll” footage for future presidential marketing campaign advertisements, exhibiting him urgent the flesh on the world stage.
If Californians need to endure torrential rainfall, flash floods and mudslides on their own, so be it.
After all, he has greater, world issues to unravel on his strategy to the Democratic nomination.
Joel Pollak is The California Post’s Opinion Editor. The California Post, a sister publication to The New York Post, will likely be launching early in 2026.
