As soon as once more, Gov. Gavin Newsom is dipping into Californians’ wallets to bankroll an electric-vehicle handout — this time a $3,500 “MyFirstEV” rebate for first-time patrons.
This, whereas the state can’t preserve the lights on for fundamental issues and the governor performs nationwide politics with different individuals’s cash.
This system sinks roughly $135 million of taxpayers’ money into immediate reductions for a choose few. That’s cash yanked from employees and households already paying among the highest taxes in America.
It’s going to shave just a few grand off sticker costs for sure vehicles — whereas housing stays unaffordable, homelessness festers, wildfires rage, roads crumble and on a regular basis prices preserve climbing.
Prioritizing EV automobile subsidies over these crises isn’t management. It’s an insult.
And let’s not faux that is some noble coverage. Newsom is waving the rebate slip round as California’s massive rebuke to federal tax credit score rollbacks.
He’s forged himself because the progressive hero standing as much as Washington.
Too unhealthy the invoice lands on California taxpayers. We’re footing the price of his nationwide photo-op.
The precise advantages? Slim and lopsided. First-time patrons of EVs costing below $50,000 new (or $25,000 used) get the break. Loads of lower- and middle-income households nonetheless can’t swing the remainder of the worth, the upper insurance coverage or the house charger. House renters are principally out of luck.
So the broad tax base subsidizes a really slim slice of better-positioned patrons. Traditional.
Market actuality makes it worse. The federal EV credit vanished on the finish finish of 2025. EV gross sales cooled, and seller heaps crammed up with sluggish movers. Large automakers took tens of billions in write-downs whereas delaying or killing off EV fashions in a panic.
Ford, GM, Stellantis, Honda and others hit the brakes. Personal business is strolling away from the precise phase Newsom is now propping up with our public {dollars}. Nothing says “good funding” like Newsom throwing extra money at a product the producers themselves are scaling again.
A July 2026 Public Coverage Institute of California ballot confirmed 66% of adults and 65% of possible voters reject Newsom’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered vehicles.
Opposition is up sharply since 2021 and now consists of half of Democrats.
Taxpayers are underwriting a imaginative and prescient from Newsom that almost all of Californians have already rejected, whereas the governor milks it for nationwide applause.
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This isn’t a one-off. It’s a part of a sample of problematic handouts.
State auditors documented roughly $20 billion in fraudulent pandemic unemployment funds by way of California’s Employment Growth Division.
A whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} flowed to unlawful immigrants’ authorized protection, utilizing public cash to combat federal regulation enforcement.
Add the diaper giveaway tied to Newsom’s spouse and the image will get clearer: massive checks, mushy oversight and priorities which can be extra political than sensible.
In opposition to that monitor file, what’s one other $135 million for EV rebates? Simply pure salt within the wound.
Californians already pay by way of the nostril and cope with each day complications.
We watch the waste pile up, then get instructed our earnings will now underwrite autos in a mushy EV market whereas the governor scores political factors for his 2028 presidential bid.
The anger he receives is earned. Taxpayers shouldn’t need to preserve bankrolling handouts that profit a choose few regardless of majority skepticism.
The MyFirstEV rebate is simply the newest instance of hard-earned cash spent by Gavin Newsom on the unsuitable issues for the unsuitable causes.
California deserves higher than this.
Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based mostly in San Francisco.
