If there's one thing positive to say about California, besides the glorious weather 44 weeks a year, it's that the state serves as the perfect antidote to a political columnist suffering writer's block.
As the rest of the world continues to watch American military personnel and assets array themselves into attack formation around the Straits of Hormuz for a seemingly inevitable confrontation with Iran, and Olympic mixed doubles curling fever captures the country's imagination, it's otherwise been kind of a meh couple of days to start the new week. Fortunately, there's a cluster of California-centric stories that deserve a little attention and a lot of mockery.
In a Super Bowl that was one of the more lackluster games in recent memory, it was at least fun to see a quarterback that so many teams had given up on come into his own against a very capable defensive unit in New England and play just well enough to get his ring. I'm talking about Sam Darnold of the Seattle Seahawks. The former Jet, Panther, Forty-Niner, and Viking earned $3.2 million in the first year of his contract with the Seahawks, and also pocketed a $32 million signing bonus. In addition, as part of the winning team in the Super Bowl, his share of the bonus was $178,000. Now he reportedly got extra money from the team in incentives if the team got to the Super Bowl and/or won it, but the point is that because the game was played in Gavin Newsom's Hotel California, the jock tax here took a sizeable bite. Here's former Bengals quarterback and CBS analyst Boomer Esiason with the call on WFAN:
🚨 ABSOLUTELY INSANE: Sam Darnold just WON the Super Bowl.. and LOST $71k because it was in California
— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) February 9, 2026
California's jock tax bills him $249K
Boomer Esiason: The NFLPA should shut down ANY future Super Bowls in California!
Super Bowl is in LA Next Year
pic.twitter.com/9VWqSWmOse
The good news for California is they get three bites at the Super Bowl cash cow apple in the next ten years - one more in San Francisco, and two more in Los Angeles. I'm not saying Darnold has to get a second job to pay the taxes, but it's still pretty absurd that because he's required to spend a week of "duty days" in the Golden State as part of the build-up to the big game, Gavin's Franchise Tax Board gets to crack open his entire salary to impose a draconian tax, in essence costing Darnold $71,000 just to play in the game. You want to know why movies aren't made in Hollywood anymore, preferring Canada, Georgia, or other locales? It just costs too much money to the celebrity limousine liberals who like to tell you how bad Trump policies are. Most of them have bolted for greener pastures and bottom lines.
The second fun fact out of California is after a year of Governor Newsom trying to muscle the state employees' union to relent, forcing workers in the Golden State to show up to work in the office for four days a week (I know what you're thinking - the inhumanity of it all), well, the union is not taking this outrage lying down (on the couch). They have assigned one of their stooge representatives from the Bay Area to craft a bill in the State Assembly that would allow for a two-day workweek in person, and the other two kind of on the honor system, I guess.
The measure, authored by Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Milpitas Democrat, would require state agencies to offer work-from-home options “to the fullest extent possible” and provide written justifications when they require employees to work in person, according to a press release from the Professional Engineers in California Government. The union represents more than 15,000 state engineers who mostly work for Caltrans and in environmental agencies.
The bill would also require the state to establish a dashboard to document the annual savings as a result of remote work. The Department of General Services, which manages contracts and real estate for the state government, published that information until ending the practice in 2024.
“The intent is absolutely to establish a state policy that flexible telework can and should be provided to state employees, because it serves state government, it serves taxpayers, and it certainly serves state employees,” said Ted Toppin, executive director of the union.
On the legal front, there was news out of California this week. And I'd like to say that it comes as a surprise, but that would be a lie. From the passing of the law, to the filing of the inevitable lawsuit, to the obvious outcome of that filing, and the predictable response by Gavin Newsom, exactly no stage of this process was unexpected, but it was sure fun to see it play out.
Just under a year ago, in California's State Senate, a bill called the "No Secret Police Act" was introduced by a progressive Democrat who wanted to go after ICE agents well before it became chic to do it with SUVs and concealed weapons in Minneapolis. After clearing the State Senate hurdle with ease, it passed the lower house, the Assembly, in early September and was signed into law by Gavin Newsom by the 20th. It was one of a stack of nonsensical legislative measures that took effect at the stroke of Midnight on January 1st, 2026...or would have, except for the Department of Justice, which took issue with the legislation. On November 17th, their lawsuit was filed in federal court. The judge, a Bill Clinton-appointee, took in time what amounts in the judicial review world of about five seconds, and tossed out the unconstitutional law. Here's Fox News' Bill Melugin with the call.
🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: "A federal judge has just BLOCKED California's new law to BAN ICE agents from wearing masks in the state."
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 9, 2026
"The judge, who is a Clinton appointee, argued that that new law violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and it singles out federal… pic.twitter.com/ehn93x31et
Christina Snyder ruled in her preliminary injunction that California's law exempted state law enforcement from doing their work without the use of masks, and only applied their masking ban on federal agents. That violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause; therefore, ICE and Border Patrol continue to do their work unimpeded by California's lunatics in the state legislature.
Judge Snyder further stated in her ruling that a subsequent law "might" be Constitutional if state and federal officers and agents were treated equally. Not would be, mind you, but might, at least in theory. She also said agents should identify themselves by name, badge number, or agency.
The No Secret Police law was unconstitutional on its face, and even a Clinton federal judge knew it and tossed it out with haste. How did Gavin Newsom respond? About as you'd expect.
A federal court just upheld California’s law REQUIRING federal agents to identify themselves.
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) February 10, 2026
California will keep standing up for civil rights and our democracy.
That's our Gavin - get legally kicked in the teeth, then declare victory on X and spike the ball.
And speaking of getting kicked in the teeth, after eight years of Newsom promising to make a dent in solving California's growing homeless and drug addiction problem, Nick Shirley, who has left the bitter cold of Minnesota after exposing hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, has come west to warmer temperatures and more disturbing images to show you from Gavin's Golden State.
Welcome to California…
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) February 9, 2026
Here they will let you overdose on their streets, give you the narcan to revive yourself and then give you the supplies to kill yourself again đź’€
The homeless industrial complex has corruption, fraud and waste all over it. pic.twitter.com/8f3tXX7g50
Finally, in an update to a California scandal older than three of my four children, it appears that last week's press conference in Fresno by Gavin Newsom announcing that finally, before too long, we would soon see a day where at some point in the near future, the golden age of rail in the Golden State would begin with the potential for an eventuality of actual track being laid...someday soon, may have been a little premature.
Right on cue, 24 hours later, the wooden platform erected behind him in Fresno for a photo op caught fire. But that's not even the update. Just wait. There's more.
The New York Post reports that California's beleaguered high-speed rail project from nowhere to nowhere is about to set another all-time record, one for which no one else wants to compete for the title. The record is for a settlement payment to make a lawsuit with one of the many contractors in the Scam Tram project go away.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s High-Speed Rail project is right on track — to becoming an even bigger epic waste of taxpayer money.
The state is preparing to shell out a record-breaking $537 million to a key contractor over a costly lawsuit related to work delays on the train-wreck project.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority greenlit the highest payout in the project’s history to contractor Dragados-Flatiron Joint Venture to resolve a bitter fight over hundreds of change order requests that they say cost them money and time as the project dragged years past an initial launch date.
$537 million dollars is the settlement offer. Half a billion. Just to put that number into context, we here in California like to talk about the fact that much of the state is a desert, and water is fairly scarce. I know you laugh at that proposition because we are bordered for hundreds of miles by the Pacific Ocean. Desalination plants make all the sense in the world, but we keep voting them down here. Do you know what those suckers, literally and figuratively, cost each? A medium-sized one will run you about $120 million. The settlement that taxpayers just paid is the equivalent of about four plants up and down the state to supplement the freshwater supply.
That kind of money...for just a settlement? It makes you wonder what the contractor was seeking, right? Go on. Admit it. You're curious now. Dragados-Flatiron Joint Venture was seeking...$537 million in costs they incurred due to incessant change orders coming in by the hundreds from the High-Speed Rail project that clearly has no clue what they actually want, when all is said and done. They just paid the money because they knew they were going to lose in court, and got tired of adding lawyer fees onto the costs per mile of track laid, which are infinite. You literally cannot calculate how much in dollars-per-mile of track this project has cost to date, because no miles of track have been laid. None. It's a divide-by-zero error. It cannot be computed.
To add insult, and corruption, to injury, also reported in the California Post, is the fact that Gavin Newsom has been working with Assemblywoman Lori Wilson to draft legislation specifically designed to hide the fraud, corruption, and incompetence surrounding the 30-year boondoggle.
State Transportation Committee chair Lori Wilson has introduced Assembly Bill 1608, which would allow the rail project’s Inspector General to withhold reports if they describe or reveal weaknesses that could be exploited by individuals attempting to harm the interests of the state.
Newsom’s administration has introduced nearly identical, through separate legislation, according to CalMatters.
Assemblymember Macedo, whose Central Valley district overlaps with parts of the planned rail corridor, blasted the proposal as an outrageous effort to silence critics.
”We want to know where our taxpayer dollars are going,” she said. ”And now the California Legislature is hearing that cry and saying, ”Let’s hide more information from taxpayers”.
Slick hairdos and Vogue in-kind campaign donations disguised as journalism aside, Gavin Newsom wakes up every day, looks at his embarrassingly handsome reflection, and yearns for the ability to MACA - Make America California Again. I'm here to tell you that the reasons you do not ever want to fall for that are as numerous as the one-way U-Haul trucks leaving the Golden State the last few years, potentially costing California up to four Congressional seats in the 2030 Census if the trend continues for the second half of this decade.
Steve Hilton is still polling right at the top in a proposed jungle primary for the Republicans, and did not miss the chance to capitalize on the fleecing of Sam Darnold.
Next year, as the new governor of California I will:
— steve hilton (@SteveHiltonx) February 9, 2026
- include in my first budget a proposal to end the insane Athlete Tax that COST Sam Darnold for winning the Super Bowl
- welcome everyone to Los Angeles for a Super Bowl, and a California, free of this Democrat tax insanity. pic.twitter.com/qLnLAEaal6
California can break the cycle of one-party dependency this fall. It probably won't, but it certainly can. Vote Republican. Do it for Sam.
Editor's note: We now have the room to run outside commentary by some of our favorite and most provocative thinkers on the Right. That only happens because of the support of our readers, who ensure that we have the resources to keep providing an independent platform and independent voices in a sea of Protection Racket Media domination.
Help us maintain that fight! Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member