Gavin Newsom has settled on a theory of why so many Americans think California is a hard place to live, and it isn’t the cost of living, the homelessness, or the exits. It’s you — or more precisely, right-wing media. Campaigning in South Carolina, the governor told the San Francisco Chronicle that the state’s reputation is the product of “lies” peddled by conservative outlets, adding that critics “come after California” precisely because its success proves them wrong. It’s a bold thesis. It has one problem: the people fleeing California aren’t watching Fox News to decide where to live. They’re watching the moving-truck rates.
I pay $22,00/year in Property Taxes in LA County and politicians use that money to give illegal aliens free things.
Gasoline is $6/gallon in LA County.
Facts.
Not perceptions
Newsom is a criminal
— LilRascal (@rascal113646) September 8, 2026
The trouble with “it’s all a media narrative” is that the most damning numbers come from the state’s own government and the federal government, not from a cable chyron. California posted net domestic out-migration of roughly 216,000 for the year ending July 2025 — people voting with their feet — and IRS data shows the departures skew toward higher-income households, the taxpayers a state can least afford to lose. The state lost a congressional seat after the 2020 census and is projected to shed several more after 2030. You cannot spin a reapportionment table. Either the population left or it didn’t, and it did.
Nope, just the citizens of CA telling the truth. https://t.co/Ewk5FKoaiY
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) September 8, 2026
Then there’s the honest part, because the strongest version of this argument doesn’t overclaim. Newsom is not entirely wrong that some coverage got the story wrong in one direction: San Francisco crime actually fell sharply in 2025, with homicides at a multi-decade low and property crime down significantly by SFPD’s own numbers. The doom-loop caricature of a city collapsing into anarchy is genuinely overstated, and conservatives who insist otherwise are arguing with the same kind of selective framing they accuse the Chronicle of using. Credit where due.
Governor @GavinNewsom took out a federal loan, basically gave it all to fraud, defaulted on it, and raised taxes on all Californians to cover it. https://t.co/Rjn8KVnU3a pic.twitter.com/CpL1R4fmYD
— Kane ??? (@kane) September 7, 2026
But that concession doesn’t rescue him, because a drop in this year’s crime stats doesn’t erase years of documented retail theft, open-air drug markets, and quality-of-life complaints that residents logged in real time — nor does it touch the second-highest unsheltered-homelessness rate in the country, a 17 percent poverty rate, or the nation’s highest gas prices. A governor can point to one improving metric. He cannot use it to wave away every other one, and pretending the whole picture is a fabrication insults the residents living the rest of it.
That’s the real tell in Newsom’s pitch. The Chronicle piece reportedly ran thirteen paragraphs of praise before conceding a few of the state’s problems — which is how a “narrative” actually gets built, just not the one the governor is complaining about. A supporter he met in South Carolina told the paper she trusts him because he’s managed the fourth-largest economy. She’s absorbed the story she was handed rather than the ledger.
Newsom wants to take his California record national in 2028. The most persuasive argument against that isn’t anything a conservative said. It’s the moving vans, the IRS files, and the census.
