Newsom's Latest Tantrum Ignores his Repeated Coddling with the CCP

California Governor Gavin Newsom is throwing a bit of a temper tantrum over the Trump Administration’s rescinding of four billion dollars of other people’s money from funding the notoriously late and over budget California High Speed Rail (CAHSR) project.

For context, the CAHSR, slated to run between San Francisco and Los Angeles and eventually to San Diego, was originally proposed to CA voters in 2008 with a cost of $33 billion and for completion of the SF-LA portion by 2020. The funding was supposed to come from about 25% of in-state sources, mainly bonds, while the rest from Federal Government and private sources.

As typical with modern California projects, the costs have skyrocketed, and barely any miles of the track are completed. To add insult to injury, only a small portion of the total project is now being seriously considered for completion linking two major cities in the Central Valley by the end of this decade. Barely any miles of track are laid, something Newsom and other HSR apologists fail to mention.

The “California Way” approach to the CAHSR was such a dumpster fire that Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (SNCF), a French railway company who was helping consult the CAHSR left the project and instead focused their efforts on high speed rail in Morocco. SNCF believed Morocco was less politically dysfunctional, and managed to complete a rail project there in seven years.

And while Newsom loves to poo-poo on one of the states receiving an increasing amount of CA refugees (Texas), he completely ignores a relatively successful privately funded, own and operated HSR-lite project already running in another state that lives rent-free in his head - Florida. Also missing from Newsom’s tantrum is the Brightline West project, a privately-funded high speed rail proposed linking Las Vegas with the Los Angeles area.

But the important thing here is Newsom’s bizarre claim the Trump Administration’s “illegal” rescinding of money (the Biden Administration gave the project an influx of cash during the last months of his administration) from the rest of us (including millions in CA who aren’t Newsom’s useful idiots) somehow benefits China.

It’s not just on X where he or his minion who runs his accounts make such a claim.

The Governor’s propaganda office, not to be confused with the LA Times who is surprisingly against the CA HSR, even put out a press release with a testy statement from the hair gel imbecile himself:

Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. We won’t let him. With projects like the Texas high-speed rail failing to take off, we are miles ahead of others. We’re now in the track-laying phase and building America’s only high-speed rail. California is putting all options on the table to fight this illegal action.

How exactly any of this is handing China any part of California’s future is not something Newsom or his bootlickers elaborate.

Furthermore, this entire stunt is a great opportunity for Newsom to cover up his many peccadillos - especially his coddling up with China over the years.

In late 2023, Newsom received well-deserved flak for “cleaning up” parts of San Francisco prior to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit which included both visits by President Biden and Xi Jinping. All the sudden, many of parts of the city plagued by open air drug scenes and “unhoused” encampments were magically reversed. Both longtime SF residents and others were frustrated over years of the city’s decline and neglect and only got another slap in the face from the former SF mayor when he said, "I know folks say, 'Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.' That's true because it's true." This was seen by many as Newsom coddling to Xi Jinping and to extension, the CCP. That may be the case but it only scratches the surface of Newsom’s genuine coddling to China.

Then there’s of course California’s crazed religious desire to be net zero incorporating the replacement of all hydrocarbon sources of energy with so-called renewable or green energy, something that cannot be done without a heavy reliance on China. China with far more lax labor and environmental laws, including record growth in coal use, is ground zero for both the rare earths processing and most of the world’s solar panels.

As

Doomberg

recently wrote in Hoodwinked, China’s use of coal while other parts of the world dig deeper into the net zero and the decarbonization hysteria hole benefits nobody else but China itself and her greater geopolitical goals.

The scale and significance of China’s coal advantage are often underestimated by Western geopolitical analysts, especially those in the Washington establishment who perennially push for military confrontation. While the West argues over how many solar panels and wind turbines it should be forcing onto its own creaking grids (all made in China, no less), the CCP is busy building its manufacturing and military might, far surpassing what anyone could have imagined when the climate hysteria began 30 years ago. The numbers are staggering, to the point where they should give pause to those agitating for war in Asia.

California, which as Newsom continuously brags is now the fourth largest economy in the world, relies more and more on China and her “green energy” manufacturing.

This brings us back to what exactly in the hell is Newsom talking about?

Remember the infamous San Francisco poop map? Florida Governor Ron Desantis brought up in a debate between he and Newsom. Californians with functioning brains know about the map for years.

Well it turns out there is one place in CA with even more of the brown stuff, and it’s on Gavin Newsom’s own nose sourced.

Susan Crabtree and Peter Schweizer’s book Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All documents that much of Newsom’s entire political ascent has been oiled by business entanglements with Beijing going back to his days before he became dictator, er, governor of the state. (Crabtree and Schweizer also sat down to discuss her book with Michael Shellenberger over at Public.)

In the early 2000s, while serving as mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom laid the groundwork for a career marked by political deference and economic entanglement with the Chinese Communist Party. As a thank you to the Chinese community in SF, who helped elect him to the mayor position, his administration doubled down on San Francisco’s sister-city relationship with Shanghai, transforming what was once symbolic diplomacy into a channel for real CCP influence. Of course this was a continuation of similar relationships with the CCP including those by former Mayors Willie Brown and Diane Feinstein.

Newsom’s ally and fixer in Chinatown, Rose Pak, was not only a local power broker but also an active conduit for China’s United Front Work Department, an organization that reports directly to the CCP. Pak and the United Front Work Department played pivotal roles in mediating the city’s interactions with CCP-linked officials, often operating behind the scenes and without public oversight not just in SF, but in Silicon Valley.

By 2005, Newsom was leading trade delegations to China, touting investment opportunities in San Francisco while courting Chinese capital. These trips were widely celebrated in Chinese state media and positioned Newsom as a cooperative Western figure in the eyes of the CCP. Real estate and infrastructure partnerships soon followed, many brokered with state-owned enterprises and often with little transparency. Newsom also managed to get his wines sold in China, mainly as a high-end product to the CCP’s elites.

In 2008, Newsom’s China agenda took institutional form with the creation of ChinaSF, a publicly supported nonprofit embedded directly in the mayor’s office that brought billions in “economic development” to the City by the Bay.

Here’s how Crabtree and Schweizer describe ChinaSF in Fool’s Gold.

Over the years, media and government officials have described this “gateway” known as ChinaSF in countless ways. Sometimes, it’s referred to as a unique “public-private partnership between the Mayor’s Office and the San Francisco Center for Economic Development.” Others have called it a “quasi-government agency,” an “international business program,” or an “economic development organization.” It’s also been labeled as merely an “initiative,” a “collaboration,” a “project,” or a “platform.” Some Chinese business documents refer to ChinaSF as “the China Office of the City and County of San Francisco”—which is probably the most accurate description.

One of the businesses Newsom and ChinaSF helped woo to San Francisco was the solar panel company Suntech. Suntech was one of the businesses courted to a special economic zone in Downtown San Francisco. While normal California entrepreneurs face years in classic California red tape and endless fee regimes for even simple tasks, Newsom openly bragged in a Forbes interview on how he courted the Chinese solar company to the city:

First, we did tax incentives, so we had something to offer these companies the minute they came into San Francisco. We changed our zoning to support these green tech companies. So, we said: “We have the right zoning. We have public-private transaction teams, so that you have one person to meet, and you will never have to deal with the bureaucracy. We will carry your permits through the entire bureaucracy. We’ve got workforce incentives, payroll tax exemptions, and other enterprise support incentives from the state of California, and we’ll pull all of them together for you.”

Newsom’s buddies at PG&E bought Suntek’s panels for solar projects and even the US Department of Energy provided loans for projects using their solar panels. But Suntech eventually caved, like many fiat energy businesses, due to fraud. During the bankruptcy proceedings, the Chinese creditors were paid back first leaving state-side creditors in the dust. Suntek was one of several Chinese solar companies who used their CCP-subsidized products with a heavy dose of intellectual property theft to undermine the US solar industry. ReneSola was another Chinese solar firm wood to the Golden State by Newsom and China SF.

Doomberg had a front row seat to this carnage:

Having actively participated in the solar industry during this period, we are under no illusions about how China pulled off this “miracle.” They leveraged cheap labor, had minimal environmental restrictions at solar production factories, blatantly stole intellectual property developed by Western companies, poured tens of billions of illegal subsides into the industry to support domestic suppliers, and – ironically – used ready access to cheap coal to produce the energy-hungry inputs needed to make solar panels. None of this has anything to do with S-curves and innovation, nor is it particularly sustainable. In fact, China’s behavior has likely stunted the pace of innovation in the industry. Who wants to invest valuable R&D dollars only to watch China steal the work without recourse?

As Newsom moved from city government to statewide office, his China ties scaled accordingly. During his time as lieutenant governor and later as governor, California became an increasingly strategic destination for Chinese capital. Beijing’s long-term interests in “renewable energy,” surveillance infrastructure, and high-end real estate aligned perfectly with Sacramento’s policy priorities under Newsom’s “leadership.” He’s remained notably silent on the darker side of this relationship—ignoring China’s human rights abuses, its IP theft campaigns, and its growing geopolitical aggression.

One of the most egregious examples as explained by Crabtree and Schweizer came in 2020 during the peak of the COVID 19 pandemic, when Newsom bypassed competitive bidding and signed a billion-dollar mask contract with BYD, a Chinese EV firm flagged by federal authorities for CCP ties and substandard labor practices. The deal was rushed, the masks were faulty, and the public was kept in the dark - even Newsom’s buddies at the LA Times couldn’t cover for him.

The pattern continued into 2023, when Newsom visited China on a so-called climate diplomacy tour. He posed for photo ops with children, smiled for cameras in front of gleaming infrastructure, and signed empty memoranda of understanding with Chinese officials. He offered glowing praise for China’s “green investments” while conveniently omitting their skyrocketing coal use and complete disregard for environmental accountability. Once again, Newsom performed as the friendly face of California globalism. He was eager to project cooperation, continue his allergy to criticism, and be blind to the implications of coddling an authoritarian regime. Of course little to none of this was covered by Corporate Press hacks in the state’s major media sources.

And now, with no sense of irony, Newsom claims that Donald Trump is “helping China” by canceling funding for California’s failed high-speed rail.

This is the same Gavin Newsom who, for nearly two decades, has handed over access, capital, contracts, and credibility to the Chinese Communist Party. What was said here only scratches the surface of what was uncovered in Fool’s Gold.

So, who has really given up more of California, and thus the United States to China?