California Gov. Gavin Newsom is transforming himself into a 2028 populist for the white-collar middle class now threatened by ruthless layoffs and accelerating Artificial Intelligence.
“There’s a reason Donald Trump’s in office, there’s a reason Bernie [Sanders] fills stadiums: they’re both right on the diagnosis,” Newsom told a May 19 meeting held by the pro-migration Center for American Progress.
“The pitchforks, yeah, they’re here, they’re not just coming,” said Newsome, who is widely expected to run for the president in 2028 with much financial support from California’s tech sector.
He explained the public’s alarm at economic trends as he carefully excused himself and his progressive allies from any blame:
The system’s broken. It’s broken, folks. 10 percent of people own two-thirds of the wealth, the same 10 percent own 93 percent of the value of the stock market. [A] A 30-year-old is not doing better than her father for the first time in history. That is a five-alarm fire …
We saw with all the populism and authoritarianism that came from that because of our lousy trade deals … we ain’t see nothing yet, because now it’s the blue collar worker that sounds a lot like 25-year-old white collar workers that I see in San Francisco that are wondering why they’re not getting a call back on a job interview. They’re sounding the same. That’s a different kind of coalition, the white collar and blue collar coalition.
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I don’t begrudge other people’s success, I admire it. Can’t be pro-job and anti-business, but businesses can’t thrive in a world that’s failing, and it’s failing. I mean, you need GoFundMe page now if you have a major medical issue, literally. I have a friend, God is my witness, Suleiman, yesterday literally sent me a GoFundMe. The guy has two or three jobs, and now a GoFundMe. What the hell is that?
“We’ve seen AI is going to detonate all of this, and it’s happening in real time, and we’re not talking about that,” he said.
In reality, Vice President JD Vance has been pushing for major changes in the nation’s economic and immigration policies since at least May 2025 amid deep opposition from investors.
Newsom, for example, dodged the issue of the government-sponsored white-collar migration that has pushed millions of white-collar Americans out of Fortune 500 careers and prosperity. He also ignored the disastrous impact of legal and illegal blue-collar migration on California’s housing costs, wages, and economic equality.
Roughly eight million foreigners fill 22 percent of the nation’s 32 million white-collar science, technology, and engineering jobs, including one-third of the high-tech jobs, according to a February report by the federal government.
In 2023, that huge population included roughly 2 million Indians, said the report, titled “U.S. STEM Workforce: Size, Demographic Characteristics, and Labor Market Outcomes.”
Federal migration programs allow managers to quietly sell Americans’ white-collar jobs to migrants, help investors to accelerate outsourcing to India, and help CEOs divert salaries from most American white-collar workers to Wall Street investors.
But on May 14, Newsom’s press office denounced Trump’s modest curbs on one of many white-collar visa programs, saying:
Trump’s immigration crackdown is hurting California’s economy — slashing student and H-1B visas, cutting legal immigration, and worsening workforce shortages across key industries.
The fix, Newsom said, is a major overhaul of the nation’s workplace rules and wider distribution of stock-market wealth:
I’m thinking about universal basic capital [not income]. I’m thinking about public equity funds and dividends, I’m thinking about [stock] ownership. I’m thinking about what you know you’re seeing in places like Denmark that do 90 percent wage replacement [after layoffs] over a two-year period … I’m thinking [of] doing early warning systems for displacement. I’m thinking about the fact that we’re entitled to a transition [amid layoffs, so] it’s not just a severance [announced via] LinkedIn post. I’m thinking very differently about all these things.
“We’ve seen AI is going to detonate all of this, and it’s happening in real time, and we’re not talking about that,” he said.
Amid AI, “I think businesses are going to make a fortune, and that’s why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and subsidizes automation,” he said, adding, “You cannot save democracy unless we democratize the economy.”
“With all due respect, JD [Vance], you don’t have it,” Newsom said.
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