That’s the best one can say about Gov. Gavin Newsom and the rest of California’s Democratic ruling class following revelations this week from a City Journal investigation.
The results of the probe, published in The California Post, found colossal fraud in nearly every large program the state administers.
Wrote the investigators: “The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch [since 2018], fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.”
REUTERS It represents an abysmal performance by state government –– a record that calls for change, accountability, and a massive shift in culture.
The striking aspect of the City Journal probe was less about the details, many of which were already public knowledge, than the big picture:
From unemployment benefits to subsidized health care for the poor to in-home health care benefits to welfare and homelessness programs, to, allegedly, a member of the governor’s own office …
Christopher Rufo, one of the authors of the investigation, estimates –– based on intel from federal officials –– that 25% of the state’s $197 billion [2025-26] annual Medi-Cal [health care for the poor] budget was lost to fraud.
That’s almost $50 billion in one year … in one program alone.
Gov. Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and other state officials can no longer dismiss examples of fraud as “small,” or isolated, or “dealt with,” or the product of partisan politics.
On the contrary: Fraud here is colossal, rampant, ongoing, and well-documented.
State programs have proven easy targets, with little oversight, few guardrails, and a vast supply of other people’s money.
The governor and legislators knew, or should have known, that these lax controls would send a valentine to thieves and scammers: Come on over.
That’s why it’s good to see the federal government –– including prosecutors and President Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President JD Vance –– take the case.
No one should expect California’s governor and legislators to fix this, given their record as enablers.
Some of them, in fact, deliberately make it worse.
In at least one case, a state legislator has sought to ease penalties for fraud in state welfare programs.
City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, reported, “In April 2025, state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas sponsored a bill that would raise the threshold for felony welfare fraud from $950 to $25,000. The measure would also make it more difficult to charge perjury based on misstatements to county welfare departments. Republican state Assemblyman Carl DeMaio has said that if the bill becomes law, it will effectively ‘legalize welfare fraud’ in California.”
It’s almost astonishing that any legislator would propose such a measure.
But as Assemblyman David Tangipa told the investigators, “Sacramento is pervaded by a culture of corruption” and the governor himself has helped “create an environment where corruption thrives.”
The fraud in California, enabled by an arrogant political class, is epic.
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