When it comes to pandering for progressive votes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is going even Barack Obama one better.
One of the signature moves of the Obama presidency was expanding the federal government’s Lifeline program from government assistance for monthly telephone bills to wireless services and hardware, giving birth to what became known as “Obama phones.”
But billing American taxpayers to provide government-funded smartphones is one thing. Newsom is now dunning Californians to subsidize phone bills for illegal aliends.
On Oct. 6, Newsom approved a bill passed by the Golden State’s Democratic legislature that allows a $19 a month subsidy for California residents who meet income requirements.
And for the state of California’s purposes, recipients not only don’t have to be American citizens; they don’t even have to be in the state legally.
As Politico noted in an April report, California lawmakers have been trying for a decade to remove onerous burdens like being in the United States illegally from participation in the state’s Lifeline program.
With the help of a governor with his eyes on the prize of the 2028 presidential nomination, they’ve finally succeeded.
Not only will participants not have to provide a Social Security number to sign up for the benefit, Politico reported, they will be shielded from having their information shared with immigration authorities in the federal government — without a warrant.
“State government should not be an accomplice to these attacks against law-abiding undocumented Californians who contribute to our economy and society every day,” state Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal told Politico for that report.
At this point, do Democrats sound more like American politicians or Confederate politicians?
But there’s a fairly obvious logical problem with the stance taken by Lowenthal, his fellow California Democrats and, now, Gavin Newsom.
The fact is, “undocumented” in the current parlance is a euphemism for “illegal.” So what Lowenthal is worried about is all those supposedly “law-abiding” folks — who are actually breaking the law every minute of every day they’re living in the United States and breathing American air without any authorization.
Now, thanks to Newsom, they’re going to be eligible for a $19 a month discount on their calls to the family back to Venezuela and Colombia and Mexico, courtesy of the California taxpayer.
And if anyone from the Trump administration gets curious about all the illegals living in California, the bill orders the California Public Utilities Commission to stiff-arm the feds in the absence of a court warrant.
The fact that this idea has been kicking around for a decade — as another Politico report noted in September 2024 — should tell Americans all they need to know about it.
A year ago, the nation was locked in a presidential race that appeared to be closer than it ultimately was. No serious political observers doubted how California would vote, but no one could be sure who was going to be sworn in to the presidency in January.
Now that Trump is in the White House, ambitious Democrats like Newsom and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are pulling out all the stops to prove to their party that they are the real face of the anti-Trump resistance.
That explains Newsom’s willingness to approve the discounts.
At the same time, they need to not appear to be complete lunatics to their fellow non-leftist Americans (that seems like a low bar to meet, but these are the times we live in).
That explains the fact that the publicity-hungry Newsom has been largely quiet about Lifeline subsidies for the “undocumented.”
He knows the audience he’s trying to reach for the 2028 primary campaign will love it — few things titillate the Democratic base more than free stuff for illegals.
And he knows the audience among general election voters — who have grown understandably tired of the whole Democratic scam when it comes to illegals.
And therein lies the problem for Democrats. When their leaders take positions like Newsom’s, the effect isn’t so much “resistance” to the Trump administration as it is “resistance” to the whole idea of federalism — a country made up of largely self-governing states that are subordinate to a federal government.
Because what the Democrats are pushing these days — with law like Newsom’s “discount” and lawbreaking like the mobs attacking ICE agents in California and Chicago and elsewhere — is more like secession and nullification, the twin abominations that pushed the Democratic South of the mid-19th century onto the ruinous road of the Confederacy.
But Newsom cares nothing for history, no more than he cares for the future of his country. What he cares about at the moment is pandering to progressives. And that means outdoing even Barack Obama.
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