Newsom assails right-wing assaults on rights, and on California values

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom in San Francisco on Wednesday assailed conservative assaults on voting rights, LGBTQ rights and books, tying the success of California’s companies to “blue-state” Democratic values.

“I’m watching 50 years, a half century of progress being worn out,” Newsom mentioned in a chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the software program big’s annual “Dreamforce” convention.

“I’m very apprehensive about what’s happening nationally. Of us need to deliver us again to a pre-1960 world. This rights regression must be referred to as out.”

Newsom held up the far-right ideology of former President Donald Trump and different leaders espousing hardcore conservative views as obstacles to social, environmental and financial progress.

Newsom decried the banning of books, mentioning particularly the blocking of a guide by a southern California faculty board over its point out of slain homosexual rights chief Harvey Milk, who served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The California governor — who has cultivated a nationwide profile in recent times partially by going after right-wing politicians — criticized his New Hampshire counterpart Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, over strikes by that state’s training division to permit course supplies from the right-wing group PragerU into public faculties.

And Newsom took a swipe at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis whereas touting California’s success in know-how, enterprise capital, manufacturing and different arenas. “It is a state that has lengthy prided itself on being on the leading edge,” Newsom mentioned. “We dominate in each single class. We merely don’t have any friends — eat your coronary heart out, Ron DeSantis.”

California, he mentioned, has turn out to be a goal for conservative outrage from pink states. “For the previous few years there’s been this anger machine … simply bashing states like California,” he mentioned. “I don’t like what’s occurring in these states.”

However the values held by most California voters that maintain it a blue state play a key position within the economic system, Newsom mentioned. He likened tolerance, empathy, caring and collaboration to a “business-competitive technique.”

“We’re a expertise magnet,” the governor mentioned. “Values do matter. A part of that system for fulfillment is that capability to get one of the best and the brightest, as a result of folks really feel included.”