Gov. Gavin Newsom lauds California’s state of the nation progress

from Jeanne KuangCalMatters

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Gov. Gavin Newsom will promote California as an antidote to Trump’s agenda Thursday, telling lawmakers during a wide-ranging State of the State address that the state still leads in a number of critical areas such as manufacturing, technology and agriculture.

“Every year, denialists, pundits and critics suffering from California derangement syndrome look at this state and try to stop our progress,” he said in prepared remarks released ahead of the delivery. “California’s success isn’t by accident—it’s by design.”

He will tout a 9 percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness, cheaper insulin and increased use of clean energy in California as among his accomplishments in a speech delivered with an eye to higher office.

The address is his first address to lawmakers in parliament since 2020. He will use it as an opportunity to highlight progress on some of his most ambitious promises, some of which have not been fulfilledwhile positioning California and its leader as worthy of national leadership.

He targeted the Trump administration on a range of issues, including excessive policing and immigration, saying the country “is facing an assault on our values ​​unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” And in a joint conversation with Newsom recently, he criticized the president for deprioritizing clean energy as China advances electric vehicle production.

“In California, we are not silent. We are not cowering. We are not retreating. We are a beacon. This state offers a different narrative,” he said in prepared remarks.

On homelessness, the announced reduction in 2025 of unsheltered people, or the number of people sleeping outside, in cars or anywhere else that is not intended for habitation, is an important number for the governor as he seeks to show improvement on one of California’s most persistent challenges in his final year in office.

A humanitarian and public health crisis and the most visible consequence of California’s housing shortage, homelessness is sure to be an issue Newsom will face national criticism if he is expected to run for president in 2028.

But the reduction came after years of rising homelessness, despite Newsom’s promises to address the problem and his administration pouring more than $24 billion into it during his two terms. In 2024, the year before the announced reduction, homelessness in California hit a record high: 123,974 were unsheltered, while 63,110 were sheltered. Homelessness has also increased nationally this year.

Newsom on Thursday would not announce the total number of homeless people in 2025. He will tout his administration’s focus on cleaning up street encampments and building new mental health facilities paid for with Prop. 1, a bond he promoted that voters approved in 2024.

He will also talk about making the state more affordable, an issue on which Democrats and Republicans nationally battled for credit after the 2024 presidential election showed voters were heavily motivated by the high cost of living.

He plans to pursue policies in his final year in office crackdown on big investors foreclosures, forcing would-be homebuyers to compete — a day after Trump also announced a similar effort. This is a new area for him in housing policy, after years of trying to spur construction. Newsom followed through on a promise to build 3.5 million new housing units; the state is much less than that.

Newsom also embarked on a promise of a universal public health care system; he has since moved to expand access to Medi-Cal, the state health care program for low-income residents that faces punitive federal cuts under Trump. On Thursday, he will tout the state’s $11 insulin as one way his administration has tackled health care costs.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.