California voters are less keen on fighting Trump than their state’s political elite.

In a dual survey of California voters and political professionals who are driving the state’s agenda, the electorate is strikingly more likely to want a détente with the White House. Voters are also more divided on issues like immigration and climate change, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers have asserted progressive ambitions that rebuff President Donald Trump’s agenda.

00:16Top Stories from POLITICOSkip AdThe video player is currently playing an ad.

Recently, Newsom has undergone cosmetic surgery for his brand. Newsom spent years presenting himself as one of the faces of the progressive movement, but President Donald Trump’s dispatching of fellow Golden State liberal Kamala Harris persuaded Newsom that to act on his well-established ambitions in 2028, he would need to ditch the unpopular agenda that doomed Harris. 

I was open to the idea behind Gavin Newsom’s new podcast, in which the California governor has been breaking out of his political bubble to talk at length with right-wing media stars such as Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. Democrats need to get better at speaking to people who don’t share their assumptions and at long-form conversations requiring improvisation and spontaneity. They need to be willing to take risks and to use conflict to generate attention.

After a fire that never should have happened burned thousands of houses to the ground in a liberal enclave of Los Angeles through a combination of Democrat incompetence and more Democrat incompetence, you might ask yourself whether the deep blue people of Los Angeles are ever going to come to their senses and start electing people who aren’t a bunch of communist morons more concerned with Ghana junkets and lesbian representation at the fire department then with actually doing their jobs. Don’t bother asking. The answer is “No.” They’re never going to change. They can’t change.

California’s budget deficit has soared to nearly $32 billion, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday as he announced a plan that would cover the shortfall this year while potentially leaving the state with multibillion-dollar deficits in the future.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) unveiled a revised $306.5 billion budget proposal on Friday, while announcing the state’s budget deficit had grown to $31.5 billion.

This shortfall is about $9 billion more than the $22.5 billion gap he projected in his initial January budget proposal, which totaled about $297 billion.