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STATE OF THE STATE - Newsom touted a 9% reduction in unsheltered homelessness, but lawmakers were restrained in their responses to him claiming success on the issue.
Gov. Gavin Newsom promoted California as an antidote to the Trump agenda on Thursday, telling lawmakers during a wide-ranging State of the State address that California still leads in a host of critical areas such as manufacturing, technology, education and agriculture.
“Every year, the declinists, the pundits and critics suffering from California derangement syndrome look at this state and try to tear down our progress,” he said, instead pointing to technological advancements and engineering talent as a metric of his administration’s success.
“California’s success is not by chance — it’s by design. We’ve created the conditions where dreamers and doers and misfits and marvelers with grit and ingenuity get to build and do the impossible.”
He touted a 9% reduction in unsheltered homelessness, cheaper insulin and increased clean energy use in California as among his accomplishments, in a speech delivered with an eye toward higher office.
The address, his first State of the State to lawmakers in the Assembly chambers since 2020, was light on policy details. He mentioned only a few specific goals such as renewing a business tax credit and cracking down on large-scale investors buying up houses — a day after Trump also announced a similar effort.
Instead, he used it mostly as an opportunity to highlight progress on some of his most ambitious promises on housing affordability, expanded health care coverage, universal pre-kindergarten and going fossil fuel-free. Some of those haven’t yet been met, like his promise to build 3.5 million new housing units or creating a universal public health care system. But he pointed to accomplishments such as the state’s production of $11 insulin.
He targeted the Trump administration on a range of issues, including excessive policing and immigration raids, saying the state “faces an assault on our values unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime.” And in a common talking point for Newsom recently, he indirectly criticized the president for deprioritizing clean energy as China dominates electric vehicle production, and pointed to his own visits to international climate conferences.
“In California, we are not silent. We are not hunkering down. We are not retreating. We are a beacon. This state is providing a different narrative,” he said.
In a closing segment that roused the most support from lawmakers, he renewed his call for Trump to back a requested $34 billion aid package for Los Angeles to recover from last January’s wildfires.
California’s relationship with the president has steadily deteriorated in the past year, between the state’s frequent lawsuits, Trump’s deployment of immigration agents and the National Guard to Los Angeles, federal funding fights and Proposition 50, Newsom’s successful redistricting measure to help Democrats gain five new seats in Congress this year. But Newsom attempted a nod toward unity on the issue of fire aid, pointing to the recently deceased Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s support for it.
“It’s time for the president of the United States to act like a president for all of the United States,” he said, later adding, “we’re home to more Americans than any other state.”
Newsom casts homelessness as a win
On homelessness, the reduction in the number of Californians sleeping on the street, in vehicles and in other places not meant for habitation is an important figure for the governor as he seeks to show improvement on one of California’s most stubborn challenges in his final year in office.
A humanitarian and public health crisis and the most visible consequence of California’s housing shortage, Newsom is sure to face national criticism on homelessness should he make an expected presidential run in 2028.
Lawmakers were restrained in their responses to Newsom claiming success over the reduction. It comes after years of increases in homelessness despite Newsom’s campaign promises to tackle it and pouring over $24 billion to 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. That year, homelessness also spiked nationally.
Newsom did not announce the number who were homeless overall in 2025. The federal government in the coming weeks is expected to release the results of the 2025 homeless census for each state, including California. In the meantime, many California counties have already released their individual results. Several, including Contra Costa, San Diego and Los Angeles, indeed are showing progress.
“I think the question always comes back to us, is it enough?” said Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, to reporters after the speech.
Newsom touted his administration’s focus on sweeping street encampments and building new mental health facilities paid for with Prop. 1, a $6.3 billion bond he promoted and which voters approved in 2024.
He also spoke about making the state more affordable, an issue over which Democrats and Republicans nationally are jockeying for credit after the 2024 presidential election showed voters were heavily motivated by the high cost of living.
(Jeanne Kuang is an accountability reporter covering labor, politics, and California state government, with a focus on whether laws are actually enforced and how policies affect disadvantaged communities.
She previously reported on homelessness and economic inequality for CalMatters’ California Divide team and has earned SPJ NorCal and Best of the West awards for her wage-theft reporting. Kuang joined CalMatters in 2022 after covering politics in Missouri and local government and criminal justice in Delaware and Chicago; she is based in Sacramento. This was first published in CalMatters.org.)
