Gavin Newsom and His Cruel Notion of ‘Cruel’ Gavin Newsom calls law enforcement “cruel,” while presiding over chaos, crime, and policies that punish Californians just trying to survive his idea of compassion. By Victor Davis Hanson
https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/09/gavin-newsom-and-his-cruel-notion-of-cruel/
Recently, Gov. Newsom weighed in on the Trump administration’s efforts to undo the last four years of border destruction, when an estimated 10-12 million illegal aliens entered the U.S. unlawfully—among them thousands with criminal records.
Of the recent Los Angeles efforts of ICE to detain those who entered and reside here illegally, the governor proclaimed:
“Continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”
Dissect that statement, and almost everything Newsom said was either not factual or misleading.
“Chaotic?” What is chaotic is allowing 12 million unaudited migrants into the U.S. ahead of those waiting years for background checks and legal permission.
The current antidote to a truly chaotic, nonexistent border was to bring some legality and order back to immigration—and not to perpetuate a wild-west border, drug smuggling, cartel profiteering, and child trafficking and abandonment, which were the Biden-era norms.
Chaotic is 1,000 rioters in southern California swarming ICE officers, endangering their safety and lives—and then being contextualized, excused, or even supported by the governor of the state, who supposedly is an upholder of our laws and their enforcement.
Each time Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom side with violent protests and the intimidation of ICE officers, the greater the chance that an officer will be seriously injured or killed—and the violence will spike. Apparently, both think they are riding a wave of public support, when in fact the latest CBS poll found 54 percent of Americans support such deportations.
California’s elected officials seem clueless that the optics of illegal immigrants torching autos, attacking law enforcement, or pelting bystanders, while waving Mexican flags, are terrible. What is the logic of waving the flag of the country to which one is violently opposed to returning, while assaulting the officers and infrastructure of the very nation in which one is demanding to remain?
“Arbitrary arrest quota?” Consider the math. In just four years, Biden allowed between 10–12 million illegal entries, or 2.5–3 million a year, or somewhere between 200,000–300,000 per month, or between 7,000–8,300 a day.
Trying to find, audit, and deport even 10–20 percent of that daily figure, or 800–2000 a day over four years, is not an “arbitrary arrest quota.”
It is instead a formidable but often vain effort to return illegal immigration numbers to where they were before Biden’s systemic lawlessness.
In other words, with the current level of deportations, ICE cannot possibly reduce the population of illegal aliens back to the pre-Biden range of 10–12 million resident illegal aliens before the additional and contrived 10–12 million four-year influx.
In Newsom’s world, how many million breaking the laws and swarming the border are acceptable? Ten, twelve, or twenty million?
“Reckless?” What is reckless is destroying the southern border. Reckless is also allowing an unchecked amount of cartel fentanyl, disguised as prescription or less toxic illicit drugs, to kill 70,000–100,000 Americans per year.
Reckless is empowering the cartels with lucrative trafficking fees for facilitating illegal immigration across a destroyed border.
Reckless is drumming out of the military 8,500 American soldiers who balked at the experimental mRNA vaccine while allowing more than 10 million illegal aliens to flood the border without any medical or inoculation scrutiny.
Reckless is demanding 2–3 forms of independent IDs from U.S. citizens to qualify for the required “real ID” to fly, while allowing tens of thousands of illegal aliens to be exempt from even rudimentary identification.
Reckless is a governor leveling the highest income tax rates in the U.S., the highest gas taxes, among the highest aggregate sales taxes, and still ending up with annual multibillion-dollar deficits.
Reckless is driving 200,000–300,000 middle-class taxpayers out of the state every year, who cannot afford sky-high California prices and receive so few services in return for such high state taxes.
“Cruel?” Cruel is overtaxing state social service facilities with hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, whose sheer numbers imperil the health care of California’s own beleaguered citizen population.
As far as ‘cruel’ governance, perhaps it is defined as the highest gas prices in the nation while sitting atop some of the largest gas and oil reserves in the country. Cruel is watching poor people in Fresno or Tulare County buy gas in increments of $30 in cash rather than filling up their pickups at a prohibitive cost of $130.
Cruel is the California high-speed rail boondoggle that has wasted nearly $30 billion without a single foot of track rail installed and may well be abandoned—its concrete overpasses now testaments to our modern Stonehenge monoliths.
Cruel are the state’s ossified “freeways”—especially the 101, the 99, and I-5—that have remained unchanged for the last half century and record some of the deadliest traffic statistics per mile driven in the U.S.
Cruel is what the state and city of Los Angeles did to their own residents during the recent fires.
Cruel is a derelict mayor—shamelessly attacking those who are trying to enforce federal law—junketing in Ghana of all places at the height of the fire season. Mayor Bass has about as much concern over violent protestors burning cars in Los Angeles as she did for neighborhoods burning while she junketed in Ghana.
Cruel was the Los Angeles deputy mayor (tasked with public safety, no less), who was arrested and convicted for reporting fake anti-Israel bomb threats.
Cruel was the Los Angeles water and power director who allowed a life-saving reservoir to remain abandoned and empty.
Cruel was the fire chief who obsessed over DEI hiring while leaving scores of fire hydrants across the city inoperative.
Cruel were state directives that prevented sane clearing of brush kindling that guaranteed plentiful fuel to ensure an inferno among Pacific Palisades homes.
Cruel were the Coastal Commission and the city of Los Angeles that make it almost impossible to rebuild burned-out homes promptly.
Cruel are destructive regulatory policies that have driven out of the state everything from Tesla to refineries to insurance companies, ensuring that the struggling and vanishing middle classes cannot afford the staples of life.
Cruel are the roughly 40,000 annual traffic accidents in Los Angeles County, after which the culpable drivers often flee the scene of the accident. Does the governor or mayor ever ask why that is so, or worry over the some 8,000 victims who are killed or injured?
Cruel are the state’s “renewable energy” mandates that have skyrocketed the cost of electricity and impoverished state residents—one in four of whom now default on their monthly power bills.
Cruel is the boutique leftism of a generation of elite multimillionaire Bay Area politicians—from Jerry Brown to Nancy Pelosi to Gavin Newsom—whose wealth, office-holding, influence, and zip codes ensured that they were never subject to the baleful consequences of their virtue-signaling ideologies that fell only on distant and vulnerable others.
Trust? Who could trust the state of California, which has become a bifurcated medieval society of the very rich and the subsidized poor, with a complete disdain for the struggling middle class who cannot afford houses, power, fuel, or insurance?
“Undermining?” Undermining is better defined as a governor and mayor deliberately ignoring or nullifying federal law in neo-Confederate fashion and siding with violent protestors, while offering the offenders implicit assurances of impunity.
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