SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized President Trump’s rejection of local weather science as financial self-sabotage and “an abomination,” warning the nation is “doubling down on silly.”
The remarks got here a day after Trump informed world leaders on the United Nations that local weather change is a “hoax” and “the best con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
“What a humiliation,” Newsom informed former President Clinton throughout a live-streamed hearth chat throughout Local weather Week in New York Metropolis.
Newsom’s rebuttal got here throughout a sequence of high-visibility appearances on the East Coast, together with a spot on “The Late Present with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday the place he known as Trump an authoritarian and raised the prospect of the president making an attempt to stay in workplace illegally after his time period ends.
Newsom homed in on Trump’s local weather change denials whereas chatting with New York Instances reporter David Gelles on the paper’s Local weather Ahead discussion board on Wednesday, saying thermometers will not be political.
“You don’t must consider in science. Imagine in your individual rattling eyes,” Newsom stated.
Newsom accused Trump of making an attempt to recreate the nineteenth century by dismantling clean-energy requirements and incentives, including that the rollbacks cede momentum to China in electrical autos, renewable vitality innovation and different applied sciences. Newsom stated California has labored for many years to be a frontrunner in environmental insurance policies that lowered smog, cleaned up waterways and created the market that led to an inflow of electrical vehicles and inexperienced applied sciences.
“There’s no Elon Musk, there’s no Tesla, with out California’s regulatory framework,” Newsom stated. “It wouldn’t exist.”
On Wednesday, his workplace stated the state now has greater than 200,000 public and shared electrical car charging factors all through the state — with almost 70% extra ports than gasoline nozzles.
Newsom stated California’s financial system has thrived amid investments in inexperienced vitality.
Critics, together with U.S. Power Secretary Chris Wright, stated Wednesday that California’s deal with inexperienced vitality has come at one other worth — excessive electrical energy payments.
“In the event you’re blue-collar, you’re working class, that hurts your high quality of life,” stated Wright, who spoke onstage with Gelles after Newsom.
Final week, Newsom signed a sweeping bundle of local weather and environmental payments that he stated would push California towards a clean-energy future whereas making an effort to stabilize gasoline costs.
Amongst these payments was an extension of the state’s nation-leading cap-and-trade program by 2045. That program caps greenhouse fuel emissions and raises billions for the California local weather initiatives. This system additionally will present $20 billion for the state’s controversial, much-delayed high-speed rail venture, which U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy known as a “boondoggle.”
With Trump pulling again electrical automotive subsidies and making an attempt to override gasoline effectivity requirements, Newsom stated California is “the one recreation on the town proper now because it pertains to massive scale environmental management.”
The governor’s sequence of appearances this week underscored how the combat over local weather change — and Trump’s insistence that it’s a “inexperienced rip-off” invented by “silly individuals” — has turn out to be one other deeply political speaking level. Newsom didn’t waste time pointing that out.
“It’s a shame what Donald Trump has carried out, and it’s a shame what his administration is doing to the setting,” Newsom stated.
In his look on Colbert’s present, Newsom reupped his view that Trump’s authorities is an authoritarian regime.
“Individuals ask, nicely, is ‘authoritarianism’ you being hyperbolic?” Newsom stated. “Bulls—, we’re being hyperbolic. In the event you’re a Black and brown group, it’s right here on this nation.”
Vice President JD Vance stated Newsom’s allegations in regards to the Trump administration are harmful.
“Right here’s what occurs when Democrats like Gavin Newsom say that these persons are a part of an authoritarian authorities, when the left-wing media lies about what they’re doing, after they lie about who they’re arresting, after they lie in regards to the precise job of legislation enforcement, what they’re doing is encouraging loopy individuals to go and commit violence,” Vance stated, talking in regards to the gunman who opened hearth onto a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement location in Dallas on Wednesday.
Vance added that anybody whose political rhetoric encourages violence towards legislation enforcement can “go straight to hell.”
Newsom, on the social media website X, mocked Vance’s remark about going to hell.
“Although once I watch you converse I definitely really feel like I’m already there,” Newsom wrote
Newsom on Tuesday additionally stated he believes Trump will try to make sure he stays president after his time period ends.
“I worry that we are going to not have an election in 2028, I actually imply that within the core of my soul, until we get up to the Code Crimson — what’s occurring on this nation, and we wake soberly to how critical this second is,” Newsom stated.
