Politics
The two separate lives of Gavin Newsom detailed in new memoir
SACRAMENTO — Gavin Newsom writes in his upcoming memoir about San Francisco’s highborn Getty family fitting him in Brioni suits “appropriate to meet a king” when he was 20 years old. Then he flew aboard their private “Jetty” to Spain for a royal princess’s debutante-style party.
Back home, real life wasn’t as grand.
In an annual performance for their single mom, Newsom and his sister would pretend to find problems with the fancy clothes his dad’s friends, the heirs of ruthless oil baron J. Paul Getty, sent for Christmas. Poor fit. Wrong color. Not my style. The ritual gave her an excuse to return the gifts and use the store credit on presents for her children she placed under the tree.
California’s 41st governor, a possible suitor for the White House, opens up about the duality of his upbringing in his new book. Newsom details the everyday struggle living with his mom after his parents divorced and occasional interludes into his father’s life charmed by the Gettys’ affluence, including that day when the Gettys outfitted him in designer clothes at a luxury department store.
“I walked out understanding that this was the split personality of my life,” Newsom writes in “Young Man in a Hurry.”
For years, Newsom asserted that his “one-dimensional” public image as a slick, privileged politician on a path to power paved with Getty oil money fails to tell the whole story.
“I’m not trying to be something I’m not,” Newsom said in a recent interview. “I’m not trying to talk about, you know, ‘I was born in a town called Hope with no running water.’ That’s not what this book is about. But it’s a very different portrayal than the one I think 9 out of 10 people believe.”
As he explores a 2028 presidential run and basks in the limelight as one of President Trump’s most vociferous critics, the book offers the Democratic politician a chance to write his own narrative and address the skeletons in his closet before opponents begin to exploit his past.
A book tour, which is set to begin Feb. 21 in Nashville, also gives Newsom a reason to travel the country, meet voters and promote his life story without officially entering the race. He’s expected to make additional stops in Georgia, South Carolina, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The governor describes the book as a “memoir of discovery” that sent him interviewing family members and friends and digging through troves of old documents about his lineage that his mother never spoke about and his father smoothed over. Learning about his family history, the good and the bad, Newsom said, helped him understand and accept himself. Mark Arax, an author and former Los Angeles Times journalist, was his ghostwriter.
“I’ve changed the opinion of myself,” Newsom said when asked if he believed the book would revise his glossy public image. “It kind of rocked so many parts of my life, and kind of cracked things open. And I started to understand where my anxieties come from and why I’m overcompensating in certain areas.”
Newsom writes that his interest in politics brought him and his father, William, closer. His mother, Tessa, on the other hand, didn’t share his father’s enthusiasm.
She warned him to get out while he still could, worried her only son would eschew his true self.
“My mother did not want that world for me: the shrewd marriage of tall husbands and tall wives that kept each year’s Cotillion Debutante Ball stocked with children of the same; the gritted teeth behind the social smiles; the spectator sport of who was in and who was out based on so-and-so’s dinner party guest list,” Newsom wrote.
At the heart of her concern was her belief that Newsom’s “obsessive drive” into business and politics was in response to his upbringing and an effort to solve “the riddle” of his identity from his learning disorder, dyslexia, and the two different worlds he inhabited.
“As I grew up trying to grasp which of these worlds, if either, suited me best, she had worried about the persona I was constructing to cover up what she considered a crack at my core,” Newsom writes. “If my remaking was skim plaster, she feared, it would crumble. It would not hold me into adulthood.”
Newsom’s mother was 19 years old when she married his father, then 32. He learned through writing the book that his mother hailed from a “family of brilliant and daring misfits who had carved new paths in botany and medicine and left-wing politics,” he writes.
There was also secret pain and struggles with mental health. His maternal grandfather, a World War II POW, turned to the bottle after returning home. One night he told his three young daughters to line up in front of the fireplace so he could shoot them, but stopped when his wife walked in the door and took the gun from his hand. He committed suicide years later.
Newsom’s father’s family was full of more traditional Democrats and Irish Catholic storytellers who worked in banking, homebuilding, law enforcement and law. Newsom describes his paternal grandfather as one of the “thinkers behind the throne” for former California Gov. Edmund “Pat” Brown, but his family never held public office despite his dad’s bids for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the California Legislature.
The failed campaigns left his father in financial and emotional turmoil that crippled his marriage when Newsom was a small boy. A divorce set the stage for an unusual contrasting existence for the would-be governor, offering him brief exposures to the wealth and power of the Gettys through his dad.
Newsom said he moved casually between the rich and poor neighborhoods of San Francisco as a boy.
“It was a wonder how effortlessly I glided because the two realms of my life, the characters of my mother’s world and the characters of my father’s world, did not fit together in the least,” Newsom writes.
Mayor Gavin Newsom and his dad, Judge William Newsom, have lunch at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco.
(Christina Koci Hernandez / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Though William Alfred Newsom III went on to become an appellate court justice, Newsom’s father was best known for his role delivering ransom money to the kidnappers of J. Paul Getty’s grandson. He served as an adviser to the family without pay and a paid administrator of the $4 billion family trust.
The governor wrote in the book that the ties between the two families go back three generations. His father was close friends with Getty’s sons John Paul Jr. and Gordon since childhood when they became like his sixth and seventh siblings at Newsom’s grandparents’ house.
Gordon Getty in particular considered Newsom’s father his “best-best friend.” Newsom’s dad helped connect the eccentric music composer “to the outside world,” the governor wrote.
“My father had this way of creating a safe space for Gordon to open up,” Newsom writes. “He became Gordon’s whisperer, his interpreter and translator, a bridge to their friends, a bridge to Gordon’s own children.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his sister, Hilary Newsom, in a promotional portrait for the Search for the Cause campaign, which raises funds for cancer research, on Nov. 21, 2025.
(Caroline Schiff/Getty Images)
His father’s friendship with Gordon Getty exposed Newsom and his younger sister, Hillary, to a world far beyond their family’s own means. Gordon’s wife, Ann, and Newsom’s father organized elaborate adventures for the Gettys’ four sons and the Newsom children.
Newsom describes fishing on the Rogue River and riding in a helicopter while studying polar bears on the shores of the Hudson Bay in Canada. He recalled donning tuxedos and carrying toy guns pretending to be James Bond on a European yacht vacation and soaring over the Serengeti in a hot air balloon during an East African safari.
Throughout his travels, Newsom often blended in with the Gettys’ brown-haired sons. He wrote that the actor Jack Nicholson once mistakenly called him one of the “Getty boys” at a party in a 16th-century palazzo in Venice where guests arrived via gondola. Newsom didn’t correct him.
“Had I shared this encounter with my mother, she likely would have asked me if deception was something I practiced whenever I hobnobbed with the Gettys,” Newsom said in the book. “Fact is, I was always aware of the line that separated us from the Gettys. Not because they went out of their way to make us aware of it but because we, as good Newsoms, paid constant mind to the distinction.”
Newsom wrote that his mother seemed to begrudge the excursions when her children returned home. She raised them in a much more ordinary existence. Newsom describes his father’s presence as “episodic.”
“For a day or two, she’d give us the silent treatment, and then we’d all fall back into the form of a life trying to make ends meet,” he wrote. “After enough vacations came and went, a cone of silence took hold.”
Newsom’s mother worked as an assistant retail buyer, a bookkeeper, a waitress at a Mexican restaurant, a development director for a nonprofit and a real estate agent — holding as many as three jobs at once — to provide for her children. His mother’s sister and brother-in-law helped care for them when they could, but he likened himself to a latchkey kid because of the amount of time he and his sister spent alone.
They moved five times in 10 years in search of a “better house in a better neighborhood” with good schools, taking the family from San Francisco to the Marin County suburbs. Though his mother owned a home, she often rented out rooms to bring in extra money.
Tired of his mother complaining about finances and his father not coming through, Newsom wrote that he took on a paper route.
In the book, Newsom describes his struggles with dyslexia and how the learning disorder undercut his self-esteem when he was an emotionally vulnerable child.
Eager to make himself something more than an awkward kid with sweaty palms and a bowl haircut who couldn’t read, Newsom mimicked Remington Steele, the suave character on the popular 1980s detective show. He chugged down glassfuls of raw eggs like Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky” and ran across town and back like a prizefighter in training.
He found confidence in high school sports, but his struggle to find himself continued into young adulthood. Newsom wrote that he watched tapes of motivational guru Tony Robbins and heeded his advice to remake yourself in the image of someone you admire. For Newsom, that became Robbins himself.
“Find a person who embodies all of the outward traits of personality, bearing, charisma, language, and power lacking in yourself,” Newsom described the philosophy in the book. “Study that person. Copy that person. The borrowed traits may fit awkwardly at first, but don’t fret. You’ll be surprised by how fast the pose becomes you, and you the pose.”
His father scoffed at the self-help gurus and nurtured his interest in business.
More than a half-dozen friends and family members, including Gordon Getty, invested equal shares to help him launch a wine shop in San Francisco. Newsom named the business, which expanded to include restaurants, hotels and wineries, “PlumpJack,” the nickname of Shakespeare’s fictional character Sir John Falstaff and the title of Gordon Getty’s opera.
“Gordon’s really inspired me to be bolder and more audacious. He’s inspired me to be more authentic,” Newsom said. “The risks I take in business … just trying to march to the beat of a different drummer and to be a little bolder. That’s my politics. But I also think he played a huge role in that, in terms of shaping me in that respect as well.”
Newsom described Gordon and Ann Getty as like family. The Gettys also became the biggest investors in his wineries and among his largest political donors.
In an interview, Newsom said there are many days when he feels his mother “absolutely” was right to worry about the facade of politics and the mold her son stuffed himself into.
Gavin Newsom heads for his home neighborhood on Nov. 3, 2003, to cast hisvote for San Francisco mayor.
(Mike Kepka / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
He described the day the recall against him qualified for the ballot amid the COVID-19 pandemic as humbling and humiliating, though it later failed by a wide margin. Still today, he said, there’s a voice in his head constantly questioning why he’s in politics, what he’s exposing his wife and children to and doing with his life.
By choosing a career as an elected official despite his mother’s warnings, Newsom ultimately picked his father’s world and accomplished his father’s dream of taking office. But he said the book taught him that so much of his own more gutsy positions, such as his early support for gay marriage, and his hustle were from his mother.
Newsom said he’s accepted that he can’t control which version of himself people choose to see. Writing the book felt cathartic, he said, and left him more comfortable taking off his mask.
“It allowed me to understand better my motivations, my purpose, my meaning, my mission… who my mom and dad were and who I am as a consequence of them and what truly motivates me,” Newsom said. “There’s a freedom. There’s a real freedom. And it’s nice. It’s just so much nicer than the plaster of the past.”
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Mallory McMorrow announced Sunday that she is suspending her campaign for the U.S. Senate in battleground Michigan.
The Michigan state senator’s decision leaves her party’s primary as a two-way race between moderate Rep. Haley Stevens, who is backed by longtime Senate Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and the establishment, and former Wayne County Health Department Director Abdul El-Sayed, a left-wing candidate endorsed by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
McMorrow’s name will remain on the ballot for the Aug. 4 primary as ballots have already been printed and distributed to absentee voters, according to Bridge Michigan.
The eventual Democratic nominee will face off in the midterms with former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who is on a glide path to the GOP nomination, in a crucial midterm race to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat.
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Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow speaks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
The seat is a top Republican target and is a must-hold for the Democrats as they aim to win back the Senate majority from the GOP, which currently controls the chamber 53-47. The leading nonpartisan political handicappers rate the Senate race in Michigan as a toss-up.
In a video posted on X announcing her decision, McMorrow did not provide a specific reason for ending her campaign. She instead thanked her staff and supporters for helping build what she described as a campaign powered by small-dollar donations and no corporate PAC money.
But McMorrow, who has seen her national profile expand in recent years and was running as a progressive in an ideological space between El-Sayed and Stevens, suspended her campaign amid faltering polling numbers and fundraising that weren’t keeping pace with her two main rivals.
McMorrow also pledged to fully support whichever Democrat wins the primary and faces off with Rogers, who is running for the Senate for a second straight cycle and lost in 2024 to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin by a razor-thin margin.
“So here’s what we do next. Every day through November 3rd. We win this Senate seat and send Mike Rogers back to Florida for good,” she said. “Whoever wins this primary on August 4th will have my full support.”
MICHIGAN DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE CLAIMS ISRAEL ‘JUST AS EVIL’ AS HAMAS
Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., speaks during the House Democrats’ news conference in the Capitol on Feb. 6, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Following McMorrow’s announcement, Stevens praised her fellow Democrat by calling her an “important voice” for policies that benefit Michigan families.
Stevens then argued that she is the strongest Democratic candidate to win the primary and defeat Rogers in November.
“As we enter the final month of the primary election, I’m excited to continue to make my case to Michiganders why I’m the strongest Democrat to defeat Mike Rogers this November, lower costs, protect manufacturing jobs, and stand up to Trump’s abuses of power.”
MAMDANI-BACKED SOCIALISTS LOOK TO TAKE NEW YORK PLAYBOOK NATIONWIDE AFTER PRIMARY VICTORIES
Abdul El-Sayed, speaks before Sen. Bernie Sanders and takes the stage at Mumford High School on May 3, 2026, in Detroit, Michigan. (Sarah Rice/Getty Images)
In his statement, El-Sayed praised McMorrow for having the “courage” to challenge what he described as a rigged political system, accusing Democratic Party insiders of spending millions to influence the primary. While he did not name specific groups, the remarks appeared to reference corporate PACs and party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who has endorsed Stevens.
He then invited McMorrow’s supporters to join his progressive movement to combat big money in politics and defeat the political establishment.
“Throughout this campaign, Senator McMorrow showed what it looks like to fight back against politics that rigs the system against too many of us. While we have policy disagreements, I never questioned whether Senator McMorrow would fight for a better America for my daughters and hers,” he said.
“The same party insiders she had the courage to challenge have been bullying anyone who opposes their chosen candidate. After spending $30 million to drown Senator McMorrow and me out, they’re now spending even more to attack me. It’s everything we are standing up against.”
“I welcome her supporters to our movement to stand up against money in politics, to put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for All. We cannot allow the establishment to decide our nominee for us.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stands with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed after speaking at Mumford High School on May 3, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. (Sarah Rice/Getty Images)
El-Sayed, who, if elected would make history as the nation’s first Muslim senator, is an epidemiologist who unsuccessfully ran for governor as an insurgent candidate in 2018. He has made support for “Medicare-for-all” a major component of his campaign.
El-Sayed also calls for abolishing ICE, and he’s a vocal critic of Israel in its war with Hamas. He has characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” against Palestinians. And El-Sayed, who served as a top surrogate on Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, has also vowed not to accept PAC donations.
Schumer and the party establishment view Stevens as more electable than El-Sayed, who has sparked controversy with his past comments. They worry that El-Sayed as the party’s nominee would jeopardize the Democrat-controlled Senate seat by pushing the party too far to the left in a state that President Donald Trump carried two years ago.
Meanwhile, Stevens has been backed by millions in super PAC spending, including big bucks from Israel-aligned groups.
AOC JOINS BERNIE SANDERS IN BACKING SENATE CANDIDATE OPPOSED BY SCHUMER
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, seen speaking with Fox News Digital, is on a glide path for the 2026 Republican Senate nomination in Michigan, as he campaigns for the Senate a second straight time. (Paul Steinhauser – Fox News )
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), in a statement reacting to McMorrow’s move, pointed to the burgeoning battle between the far left and the establishment for the future of the Democratic Party.
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“Bernie Sanders’ radical socialist flank is completely taking over the Democrat Party. It is now up to Chuck Schumer to combat Abdul El-Sayed’s clear momentum and get Haley Stevens over the finish line in their messy primary,” NRSC Regional Press Secretary Samantha Cantrell argued in a statement.
Greg Manz, the Michigan GOP senior communications adviser, said in a statement that “Michigan’s Senate Democrat primary has shifted from a three-car pileup to a head-on collision.”
Immigrants detained at two federal facilities in California have launched a boycott in protest of increasing and, in their view, burdensome prices at the facilities’ commissaries for items including tampons, coffee and soup.
The Times reviewed a grievance letter and spoke with three detainees who are involved in the boycott at the California City Detention Facility, about 80 miles east of Bakersfield, and at the Golden State Annex in McFarland.
More than 300 detainees are estimated to have signed grievance letters sent recently to facility administrators, according to advocates with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
Both facilities are operated by private prison corporations — the California City facility by Tennessee-based CoreCivic and the Golden State Annex by Florida-based GEO Group.
Ryan Gustin, public affairs director for CoreCivic, said the company cares for people at the facility safely, humanely and with dignity while their cases proceed. He said the facility provides three nutritious meals per day and accommodates religious, therapeutic and cultural diets, and that commissary items are a supplement.
Proceeds from commissary sales, per the facility’s contract, are put into a detainee welfare fund, Gustin added. Those funds are used to buy electronics or recreational or educational items.
“We regularly collaborate with our outside commissary vendor and government partners to review and set commissary item pricing that is reasonable,” he said. “It’s important to note that the commissary program is not a profit mechanism.”
The Times also reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and GEO Group for comment.
Detainees are provided certain essentials, such as food and soap, free of charge, but many also purchase items at commissary stores that are of better quality or otherwise unavailable.
Detainees said shampoo and other hygiene items sometimes run out for days and that meals are small or exacerbate diabetes and other health issues. One detainee said the facility provides a pint of milk twice a week and that he has never received fresh fruit.
“The three daily meals that CoreCivic provides at California City Detention Facility are the bare minimum to keep a person alive,” they wrote. “Because of this, charging inflated prices on necessities is considered price gouging and profiteering against vulnerable incarcerated population who have no ability to refuse or shop elsewhere.”
The detainees said an 8-ounce jar of Folgers instant coffee costs $18 at the California City facility, a single instant ramen soup is 75 cents and a box of 40 tampons costs nearly $21.
At Walmart, the same Folgers coffee costs $8.97, Maruchan chicken ramen soup is 50 cents and 40 Tampax tampons are $12.19.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains immigrants for civil purposes. Detention is meant to facilitate removal proceedings but is not meant to be punitive.
Detainees are paid $1 per day under a voluntary work program for cleaning or cooking. Many detainees rely on money from family and friends.
In their grievance letter, the detainees called the markups an unacceptable business practice with no apparent limit. They said they view the situation as an example of captive market exploitation and economic coercion.
The detainees requested a review of commissary pricing by facility leaders, a comparison of prices with prison industry standards, an immediate reduction in prices of essential items and the implementation of reasonable price caps. They also requested an increase in the portions of daily meals, including meals meeting religious requirements, which they said are particularly small.
In May, the California State Senate passed a bill that would prohibit the excessive markup of products sold at private detention centers, limiting prices to 35% above the vendor cost. Existing California law already limited such markups in state prisons.
“It’s just a cycle of unnecessary exploitation,” said Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista), who wrote the bill, which is now in the Assembly. “If someone is under contract, they should engage in ethical business practices.”
Priya Patel, an attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, represents people who have been detained at both facilities. She said that during legal service consultations, the topic of commissary pricing frequently comes up.
“The higher the prices get, the higher of an impact the conditions have on people and the more difficult it becomes to fight their cases,” Patel said.
The collaborative is one of the organizations that brought a lawsuit last year alleging inadequate medical care, as well as insufficient clothing, food, water and outdoor recreation time, at the California City facility, which can hold more than 2,500 people. The lawsuit remains ongoing; in March, a U.S. district judge in San Francisco appointed an external monitor to ensure the facility provides “constitutionally adequate health care.”
The lawsuit describes multiple commissary-related issues. For example, it says the facility doesn’t provide headphones for tablets, making private phone calls — including privileged calls with attorneys — impossible unless the detainee can afford to purchase headphones from the commissary.
“One detained person has difficulty walking and standing for extended periods of time without shoes that provide arch support,” the complaint says. “He arrived at California City with appropriate shoes to accommodate his mobility disability, which were approved as an accommodation at a prior ICE facility. California City staff confiscated those shoes and instead provided him with plastic, orange sandals.”
“Several weeks after staff confiscated his shoes, he had an appointment with a doctor at California City,” it continues. “The doctor told him … to buy different shoes from commissary to accommodate his foot condition.”
Gustin disputed those accounts, saying that detainees are given headphones at intake and that attorney calls typically take place in private booths. He said that the company provides orthopedic footwear for any detainee with a medical provider’s order, and that he couldn’t review the case detailed in the complaint without specifics.
A contract between CoreCivic and ICE for the California City facility, dated April 1, 2025, says that the contractor must provide notice of any price increases and that “any revenues earned in excess of what is required for commissary operations shall be used solely to benefit aliens at the facility.” A 2019 contract between GEO Group and ICE for Golden State Annex and two other facilities in California includes the same language.
Alfredo Parada Calderon, 52, has been detained at the California City facility since September. He said commissary prices were already high before they increased around mid-June.
Parada Calderon said he asked an ICE officer why the prices had increased so much. The officer said he wasn’t aware of the change but that the vendor is Keefe Group, which supplies commissaries at prisons and immigrant detention centers across the country.
Detainees in his dormitory submitted a grievance about commissary prices, Parada Calderon said. The answer was vague.
“They’re blaming it on inflation,” he said.
Parada Calderon said his family sends him about $100 per month for commissary items, which he spends on packets of crackers, coffee, soups, soap, shampoo, deodorant and chips.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “It’s a horrible enough place to be in and you guys are making it even more horrible, not just for me but for my family. The detainees want to be heard and this is the only option we actually have — a peaceful protest.”
Tommaso Bardelli, a researcher at New York University who studies mass incarceration, said the families of most people in prison are working class and may sacrifice their electricity bill or credit card payment to send money to their incarcerated relatives. The money they send no longer pays for small luxuries, he said, because prisons have over the years reduced how much they spend per person on necessities such as food.
Bardelli published a research article in 2022 about inequality within prison commissary stores. Commissaries are often now the difference between starving and having a semi-normal diet, he said.
Politics
Expert who fled Cuba warns of ‘vicious cycle’ that will lead to ‘communists in double digits’ in Congress
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A national security expert who fled to the U.S. from Cuba is warning that one “vicious cycle” currently dominating American politics could lead to “communists in double digits” serving in Congress.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who fled communist Cuba in the 1970s, said in an interview with Fox News Digital that the socialist “threat is real now.”
Gonzalez likened this trend to a “takeover of a host body, the Democratic Party,” saying, “It’s being taken over by body snatchers and they’re not able to mount any defense of it whatsoever even if they wanted to.”
Under the current political environment, Gonzalez predicted, “We’re going to get communists in double digits in the House of Representatives at least, there’s no doubt of that.”
BILL MAHER’S DIRE MIDTERM ELECTION WARNING TO DEMS AFTER ‘REALLY CRAZY’ SOCIALISTS WIN PRIMARIES
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America gather outside of a Trump owned building during a May Day rally in New York City in 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Over the course of a year, New York City elected a socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, while three of his endorsed socialist congressional candidates — Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier — defeated establishment Democrats, including two incumbents. On the other side of the country, Seattle elected a socialist mayor, Katie Wilson. Just this week, Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, further illustrating socialists’ ability to topple entrenched party figures.
While these politicians identify as socialist, Gonzalez pointed out that to the authors of the communist manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “there was no difference between socialism and communism, they were interchangeable.”
“These people are communists, and when you catch them unawares, they actually say, ‘Oh, yeah, I know we want communism,’” he said.
According to Gonzalez, the widespread success of socialist candidates in races across the U.S. is due to several factors, including the breakdown of immigrants assimilating to American culture, increased hatred of the U.S. and even White guilt combined with a real affordability crisis in cities like New York.
“A very important component of this and one that conservatives sometimes forget is that a lot of these votes are White votes, White young kids who have come in from the suburbs, who feel guilty about a number of things,” he explained.
SOCIALISM GOES WEST AS DSA-BACKED CHALLENGER OUSTS LONGTIME DEMOCRAT
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC Congressional candidate Claire Valdez at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“They have gone to very expensive Ivy League schools and they’re trying to make a living in New York City without being a banker. And you can’t make a living in New York City if you’re not a banker, sorry, you’re going to have an affordability crisis.”
This, Gonzalez said, makes socialist promises of handouts, such as free tuition, free bus fares and public-run grocery stores, an easy sell.
“So, they end up voting for this. This is a very bad vicious cycle that is taking place and that is going to produce communism in this country if we’re not careful.”
Meanwhile, Neetu Arnold, a young immigrant to the U.S. who now works as a policy analyst for the Manhattan Institute, emphasized that the socialist trend is not just isolated to cities like New York but becoming increasingly prevalent in cities across the U.S.
“The rise in the socialism in America, it’s going to shape our politics. I think it’s going to make things more extreme,” Arnold said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
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Members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation filmed children supporting the regime in Iran, during a protest on Saturday, March 7, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Asra Q. Nomani/Fox News Digital)
“What the socialist candidates have tapped into are real frustrations and grievances, but the solutions that they’re offering is essentially more government involvement rather than trying to address the underlying problems,” she explained. “What a lot of younger people are finding out is that it’s not that easy to get housing. They’re in student debt, they are struggling to find stable jobs, and so the things that they were promised are not necessarily coming true.”
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As a naturalized U.S. citizen, Arnold said she hopes both sides of the political aisle recognize that “socialist policies are a threat to the American way of life.”
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“In this country we value merit, we value wealth, and the ability to move upward in this society,” she said. “I’ve seen my life change before my eyes by being here in this county, by having the opportunities that I did, and that I saw for my family, and I think that was only possible because of free markets and the opportunities that we had in this country.”
“Socialist policies essentially restrict what we are able to do,” Arnold continued. “So, I do take it seriously and I hope that Democrats, Republicans, they all take the rise of socialism seriously.”
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