For years, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats have paraded themselves as the gold standard of the climate left. They attacked oil companies, blocked permits, and sued the very industry that keeps the state running. They cheered refinery shutdowns, piled on taxes and regulations, and left families paying record-high gas prices.
Now that energy costs have soared and the electrical grid teeters on the brink, Newsom is scrambling to backpedal and pretend he can fix the very crisis he and his allies on the Left created.
Last Friday, he signed what his office called a “historic package” of bipartisan energy legislation, boasting it would stabilize gas markets, save billions on electric bills, and cut pollution. The media dutifully repeated the talking points. But anyone filling up their tank or opening an electric bill knows the truth: this is political theater from a governor who made the crisis worse and now pretends to be the cure.
What’s been overlooked is that the package he signed does nothing to prevent one of California’s biggest energy threats: refinery closures. Negotiations to keep two Bay Area refineries open collapsed. Without a deal, the Valero plant in Benicia (the city’s largest private employer) will close by the end of the year. More refinery closures are scheduled, further shrinking capacity, killing jobs, and locking California into even higher prices and deeper dependence on imported fuel.
That’s the crisis Newsom refuses to admit. California cannot survive without oil and gas. The very refineries he spent years demonizing are now the lifeline he cannot afford to lose.
In Los Angeles, take a drive down the 405 freeway at night and you’ll see it: the glow of massive refineries in Carson, Wilmington, Torrance, and El Segundo. For decades, these plants have been the beating heart of California’s energy supply. They don’t just make gasoline for commuters. They produce jet fuel for Los Angeles International Airport, diesel for trucks hauling goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the everyday petroleum products that power one of the world’s largest economies.
But under Newsom, California Democrats waged war on them. “Price gouging” laws, punitive regulations, and endless mandates forced plants to scale back or shut down. When demand spikes, supply tightens, and Californians get hammered with $7-a-gallon gas.
READ MORE: The Hidden Cost Californians Pay for Flawed Energy Policies
This isn’t an accident. It’s the deliberate outcome of the Left’s crusade to “transition” California away from oil, no matter the cost to working families.
Now reality has caught up. Families are furious. Businesses are fleeing. And Newsom, suddenly worried about his national ambitions, is rewriting the script. He’s no longer threatening refineries; he’s begging them not to leave.
This is classic Newsom: squeeze families until they scream, then offer half-baked relief and call it progress.
California’s oil and gas crisis is not the result of global markets or greedy corporations. It is a self-inflicted wound. Experts warned for years that cutting refinery capacity while demand continues to increase was a recipe for disaster. Newsom and his party ignored the warnings, blocked drilling, fast-tracked shutdowns, and refused to invest in infrastructure.
The result was predictable: fewer refineries, tighter supply, and higher costs for everyone.
Who paid the price? Not Gavin Newsom. Not the green-energy investors. Not the Sacramento lobbyists. The bill landed squarely on working families.
California Democrats painted refineries as villains standing in the way of their green utopia. But when gas prices soared, Newsom discovered that without these refineries, planes don’t fly, trucks don’t roll, and the ports grind to a halt.
So now he’s forced to do what he hates most: acknowledge reality.
Newsom built his brand on waging war against oil and gas. He thought he could bully refineries into submission, virtue-signal to the climate lobby, and ride the wave to national office. Instead, he deepened an energy crisis that made California the most expensive state in America to fill up a tank or keep the lights on.
His flip-flop proves one thing: even the climate crusader-in-chief knows California cannot survive without the very industry he tried to destroy. The question is whether voters will keep falling for the Left’s con.
Editor’s Note: California is the poster child for everything that is wrong with the Democrat Party and the “progressive” movement.
Help us continue exposing Democrats' plans to lead America down a dangerous path. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.