Just as the deranged Roman emperors—Caligula, Nero, and Commodus—turned the empire’s treasury and laws into weapons against their own people, Gov. Gavin Newsom now seeks to seize 100% of any federal compensation awarded to Californians harmed by government weaponization.
Insulated by absolute power, these rulers squandered vast resources on vendettas, bizarre decrees, and self-glorification while their subjects suffered. Caligula’s paranoid confiscations, Nero’s indifferent ruin, and Commodus’s delusional grandeur were not mere failures—they were deliberate punishments inflicted to spite rivals and reality itself.
Newsom follows the same mad logic.
On May 27, 2026, Newsom announced California will impose a 100% state tax on any resident receiving funds from the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund. He branded it a “January 6 slush fund” and ordered every penny seized by the state.
Created from a settlement in Trump’s IRS lawsuit over leaked tax returns, the fund compensates victims of genuine political lawfare—not just January 6 defendants, but parents targeted at school boards, businesses crushed by overregulation, and ordinary citizens caught in federal crosshairs.
California will literally confiscate 100% of restitution paid to its own residents for real political persecution. This is not governance. It is raw, spiteful authoritarianism—Nero fiddling while California burns. Concrete justice for victims is sacrificed on the altar of partisan mania while everyday Californians endure exploding costs, failing services, and unchecked decline.
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California’s Democrat leaders have abandoned any standard of right, wise, or beneficial. They govern by one deranged metric alone: If Donald Trump supports it, oppose it at all costs. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is now official state policy. Sacramento operates as a permanent resistance machine that prioritizes symbolic defiance over practical fixes.
Newsom’s crazed plan to confiscate restitution may be the most brazen display of his madness yet—but it’s only the latest.
When the Trump administration tried to claw back unspent federal funds, Newsom cried “illegal political retribution”—then doubled down on more state spending for his train to nowhere.
Sold to voters in 2008 as a $33 billion system ready by 2020, California’s high-speed rail has devoured $15 billion over 18 years with zero miles of operational track. Projected costs have ballooned to $126–$231 billion while the scaled-back Central Valley segment crawls forward amid lawsuits, delays, and bureaucracy.
Romans built the Colosseum in just 8–10 years. California’s Mad King can only produce excuses, concrete tombs, and endless delays that keep slipping into the 2030s or 2040s.
The same derangement drives energy policy. The Trump administration invoked the Defense Production Act to restart the idle Sable Offshore pipeline near Santa Barbara and expand domestic leasing. Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta responded with immediate lawsuits and declarations that the projects were “dead on arrival”—even as gas prices punish working families, refineries close, imported energy dominates, and Kern County fields sit idle. Ideology and rabid opposition to Trump overrides affordable domestic production.
Newsom doubles down on the same madness with immigration. His sanctuary laws block local police from helping ICE deport criminal aliens. As fentanyl deaths surge and emergency rooms overflow, he sues Trump and shields cities to protect repeat offenders, gang members, and cartel operatives. Public safety has been sacrificed on the altar of open-border ideology and Trump Derangement Syndrome.
California’s legal jihad never ends. Former AG Xavier Becerra brags about filing over 120 lawsuits against Trump—wasting millions while homelessness spending explodes into the tens of billions with 180,000 people still sleeping on sidewalks.
Meanwhile, Newsom burns nearly $40 million in taxpayer funds on self-promotion: New York PR contracts and special “legacy” funds dedicated to honoring himself.
While Newsom declares war on restitution for actual victims of government persecution, Democrats are simultaneously chasing massive reparations for Black Californians.
Newsom signed legislation creating the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery, issued an official state apology, and allowed task forces to float proposals costing hundreds of billions. California was never a slave state, and no living Black Californian endured chattel slavery on its soil. Yet phantom historical grievances get new bureaucracies and apologies—while real victims of recent lawfare are taxed into oblivion.
Coastal elites like Newsom, shielded by their wealth and gated communities, ram through green mandates, soft-on-crime policies, and reparations theater. They treat federalism as a one-way veto against Trump while demanding billions in federal cash with no strings attached.
Their endless talk of “equity” rings utterly hollow against dirty streets, boarded-up stores, sky-high housing costs, and crumbling infrastructure.
Everyday Californians pay the price: punishing gas prices, unsafe neighborhoods, and disappearing opportunity. Billions are flushed into failed programs and endless political fights that aren’t even Sacramento’s business.
Like Caligula, Nero, and Commodus before him, Gavin Newsom has declared war—not on California’s problems, but on his own citizens and on reality itself. His 100% tax on victim compensation is the logical climax of a Mad King consumed by spite, vanity, and obsessive hatred.
California still possesses vast resources: talent, fertile farms, world-class ports, and unmatched innovation. Its steep decline is not destiny—it is a deliberate choice made by a Mad King and his enablers.
History’s verdict is clear: Mad kings eventually fall, dragging their realms into ruin, exodus, and exhaustion. California cannot afford to wait for that final chapter.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
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