Gov Newsom is coming for my estate

You can have my "wealth" when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. You from some other planet?

The Socialist Wave, West Coast Version

Gov. Gavin Newsom endorses a wealth tax for the U.S., not merely for California.

By The Editorial Board

June 28, 2026

California Gov. Gavin Newsom failed to persuade his union friends to drop their wealth tax from the November ballot, so now we’ll find out if he’ll spend political capital to defeat it or instead try to surf the socialist wave to the White House. Bet on the latter.

The Governor had until Thursday to convince the SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West to yank its ballot initiative that seeks to impose a 5% tax on the net worth of California residents with more than $1 billion in wealth. The union said no. Mr. Newsom opposes a state wealth tax because he says it will drive off the wealthy who pay much of the state income tax.

That’s true, but it also punishes entrepreneurship and business success. It won’t fix the state’s budget problems, which are caused by excessive spending on welfare programs and government worker pay and benefits.

Mr. Newsom had myriad levers he could have pulled to get the union to back down. For instance, he might have threatened to repeal the $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers the state enacted in 2023 at the union’s behest. But the Governor has shown time and again he’s unwilling to take on the unions that dominate Sacramento.

The Governor is trying to walk a line between his Silicon Valley donors and his party’s ascendant left wing. The Democratic Socialists of America demonstrated its growing influence and organization last week in New York’s primaries. Mr. Newsom doesn’t want to get swept away by the socialist wave as he prepares to run for President in 2028.

This explains his endorsement on Friday of a national wealth tax—an apparent effort to blunt criticism from the left for opposing the union ballot measure. “The system America’s founders built was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades,” Mr. Newsom said.

Talk about revisionist history, though didn’t someone tell him that today’s young socialists view the Founders as oligarchs and colonizers? If Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani had been around at the founding, they would have demanded that Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and George Washington’s Mount Vernon be turned into communal property.

The Founders designed the Constitution with checks and balances to prevent power from being concentrated in any single branch of government to safeguard individual liberty. They also worried about mob rule. The Fifth Amendment thus prohibits government from taking property without just compensation, which is what a wealth tax would do.

A wealth tax is also probably unconstitutional, as it requires that “direct taxes” be apportioned equally among the states based on population. On that standard, California would still be hit harder than the rest.

Mr. Newsom is trying to keep Silicon Valley donors in his corner by opposing the state wealth tax. But at the same time he’s abetting the union campaign by parroting their arguments. One lesson from the New York primaries is that trying to appease the socialist left doesn’t work. Mr. Newsom may soon discover that too.