Gavin Newsom Faces a Climate Revolt—From Democrats

I think Newsom could be the new leader of the Dem Party...with $8/gallon petrol to help America go green!

Gavin Newsom Faces a Climate Revolt—From Democrats

Lawmakers and would-be successors backed his policies and now run away from their consequences.

By Allysia Finley, WSJ

June 8, 2025 12:21 pm ET

California Gov. Gavin Newsom must be grateful for the ugly divorce between President Trump and Elon Musk. It’s a useful public distraction from a crack-up in his own party over the state’s burdensome climate policies, which are driving energy costs up and jobs out of the state.

Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento experienced a political awakening of sorts after two major refineries recently announced they will shut down. A study last month by a University of Southern California business school professor projected that gasoline prices could rise to more than $8 a gallon because of the constricted supply.

Now the lawmakers who backed the Newsom climate diktats that brought about the refinery shutdowns are up in arms. “We have a crisis on our hands that may have been self-created by the actions perhaps taken by the state, by regulators,” Assemblyman David Alvarez huffed at a legislative hearing last month with the governor’s energy regulators.

Mr. Newsom claimed the Legislature needed to give his regulators more power to punish refineries for price-gouging. “I don’t hear today any evidence” of such gouging, Mr. Alvarez said. Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris asked: “If California companies were raking it in, why did we have two refineries announce their intent to close?”

Assemblyman Mike Gipson mused that increasing fuel imports once the refineries are closed could increase pollution. California Air Resources Board Chairman Liane Randolph concurred. But when asked whether the board considered costs of its regulations, Ms. Randolph demurred: “We don’t analyze a retail cost” of gasoline or “specific costs to specific consumers.”

After the hearing, Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains demanded Ms. Randolph’s resignation: “CARB has been given so much power, they were prepared to ban gas and diesel cars and trucks single-handedly. It is outrageous that the director would pursue such policies without even trying to analyze the impact on prices.”

Yes, it is. But who gave the board so much power? And who authorized Mr. Newsom’s other energy regulators to tax refinery “excessive” gross margins and micromanage their operations despite warnings from oil and gas companies that such laws could cause refinery shutdowns and increase gasoline prices?

Only last week Democratic lawmakers voted down GOP legislation that would block a new California Air Resources Board regulation, set to take effect next month, that independent economists estimate will increase prices by 65 to 85 cents a gallon. After abetting Mr. Newsom’s war on fossil fuels, they are running for political cover as the economic and political fallout hits.

The goal of California’s climate regulations is to raise gasoline prices to goad people to buy electric cars. Democrats, however, don’t want to pay a political price for the costs and consequences of their policies. So they are lashing out at Mr. Newsom’s regulators.

The governor’s response to the fury over sky-high gas prices? Let them take trains. Fueling California’s high gasoline prices are its cap-and-trade and low-carbon fuel programs, which raise costs on fossil fuel businesses and consumers to subsidize electric vehicles and the construction of the state’s high-speed train to nowhere.

Mr. Newsom has also lambasted the USC analysis projecting higher gasoline prices—as he dismissed studies predicting his $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers would cost jobs. According to government data, 37,000 jobs have been lost since Mr. Newsom signed the fast-food law in 2023. Expect Democratic legislators soon to berate Mr. Newsom for these job losses.

Fortunately for the governor, he is term-limited, so he won’t face irate voters next November. Democrats running to succeed him are trying to show they feel Californians’ pocketbook pain. At a candidate forum last month hosted by the California Labor Federation and the State Building Trades Council, candidates took turns lamenting the refinery shutdowns.

“We are not yet generating enough clean energy to shut down our existing supply of traditional fuels,” said former Rep. Katie Porter, an Elizabeth Warren acolyte. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis emphasized that “jobs are sacred. We have to make sure refineries stay open.” Former state Controller Betty Yee noted: “We can’t create a clean environment on the backs of workers. . . . It’s offensive to say we can just retrain workers.”

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, another Democratic candidate for governor, wrote in a recent Bakersfield Californian op-ed: “We shut down our own production—some of the cleanest in the world—and outsource the environmental destruction to places with weaker protections and no union labor. That’s not climate leadership. That’s climate hypocrisy.”

California’s plunging oil production has forced its refineries to import about three-fourths of their crude from the Middle East and South America. There aren’t pipelines, or enough U.S. vessels that comply with the federal Jones Act—a 1920 law that requires ships carrying cargo between U.S. ports to be built, owned and creed by Americans—to transport crude from the Gulf Coast. To replace the closing refineries, the state may have to import gasoline from China at a premium. The result? More pollution and carbon emissions.

Don’t expect the Golden State’s oppressive economic climate to change until voters wake up and break up with Democrats in Sacramento.