California Gov. Gavin Newsom is threatening to withhold aid from cities that do not follow his homeless policies — while arguing at the same time that it would be wrong for the federal government to withhold aid from California.
Newsom is asking Congress and the Trump administration for $40 billion in aid to deal with the aftermath of the deadly Los Angeles fires — even as he spends $50 million to fight Trump over immigration and other issues.
California officials have generally pushed back against the idea that federal aid for the fires should have “strings,” such as Ambassador Ric Grenell has suggested, or supervision by a Special Master who would control spending.
The governor has said that Trump should not “politicize” the fire. He has also been at pains to show that California is capable of “accountability” on its own, unveiling a website Monday to track the progress of homeless spending.
Yet Newsom is perfectly willing to attach strings to aid that California sends to cities to deal with the ongoing crisis of homelessness, telling local officials who dissent that their communities will be punished by not receiving state funds.
The San Jose Mercury News reported:
Gov. Gavin Newsom is again threatening to withhold state money to address homelessness from local governments that are failing to make progress in moving people off the street.
In a virtual news conference on Monday, Newsom announced that cities and counties that do not meet certain benchmarks — such as closing more encampments and finalizing plans to build more housing — could lose out on their share of hundreds of millions of dollars in future homelessness grants.
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Newsom has repeatedly made similar threats in recent months, including when announcing an executive order last summer directing state agencies to work with cities and counties to ramp up encampment sweeps and move camp residents into shelters.
Newsom has also pressured local communities, such as Huntington Beach, that have opposed his directives to allow so-called “affordable” housing, which residents believe will hurt their communities and downgrade property values.
In 2023, the governor signed a bill to cut funding to school districts that did not adopt the state’s preferred curricula on sensitive topics such as sexuality, despite the fact that reducing funding could have a negative impact on children.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
