Newsom's Diaper Deal Wasn't Competitively Bid |

[00:00:14] Phil, I'm so happy to be here and I'm so glad you got the memo that it is all of shirt Tuesdays. Yeah, I was like, I wonder if hopefully we don't wear the same color shirt because I watched your show today and I couldn't remember what color shirt and I was like might be the same shirt. So we got the same green shirt. We're wearing green because we're gonna be talking a lot about money and corruption and insider contracts and stuff like that, including Shang Tao, which is a whole crime story that we've been following here on the show.

[00:00:43] We were saying before we hopped on there is so much going on today. It's just like crazy. So we're gonna try and get through as much as possible. But first, I want to talk about this story because this came out as of today and this is like really, you know, it's more salacious, I would say it's more like celebrity gossip and page five kind of stuff. But this is from a long time ago.

[00:01:12] If you remember Gavin Newsom had an affair with a staffer. This is when he was the mayor of San Francisco and she came out with an essay in Vanity Fair. I tried to look up the actual essay in Vanity Fair, but I was not about to pay for a subscription to Vanity Fair because why would I pay for a subscription to Vanity Fair? So I found it somewhere else.

[00:01:32] And nice people over at Newsweek came out with this story about the biggest bombshells in terms of what was really said in here. And some of this stuff is actually really kind of eye opening. This was one of the biggest things was that Kamala Harris was involved. She reportedly urged Rippy, Rippy is the name of the girl, Rippy Turk, that was her name. It used to be Rippy Turk before she got divorced because she cheated on her husband.

[00:02:02] Rippy was reached out to by Kamala Harris and advised her to avoid speaking publicly about the scandal in the immediate aftermath. Rippy recalled then District Attorney Harris. Now, keep in mind, she was District Attorney, San Francisco, and then you have the mayor of San Francisco, and you have the district attorney telling her, don't say anything publicly. Rippy recalled the district attorney that more time will give you better perspective. And I advised that she contributed to her decision to remain largely silent for years.

[00:02:35] Randy, I thought this was the party of believe all women and me too. I guess back in this time, what was it around 2007 or what time was this? I guess they said, don't believe all women. Kamala Harris was like, don't say anything. We don't need you to say anything. Let's let this pan out. What do you think of Kamala Harris telling her to just stay quiet? Don't mention anything.

[00:03:01] Well, after nearly 20 years, it looks like Ruby Rippy has quite a bit of perspective and is shining a lot of lights on a very, very ugly chapter in Gavin's history as mayor of San Francisco. And what's interesting is that this comes out about six months after Gavin Newsom comes out with his book, which he says was everything, warts and all, all of my scars, all the horrible things I did.

[00:03:28] And boy, does this shine a bigger light onto a part of his life that he tried to minimize, making it think that, oh, this was a small affair. Maybe this was just one or two times. This thing carried on for nearly a year and it not only destroyed her marriage to her husband, which was Gavin Newsom's campaign manager, but it also destroyed, it seems like, her life at one point.

[00:03:55] I mean, the talk about the excess of drinking and the drug use and, you know, whether Gavin participated or not, it sure seemed like she, and she's the one that's opening up to this, was using cocaine in order to keep up with drinking with these people. It's like, holy cow. It is some of the things she's describing. I mean, I applaud her for being so vulnerable and putting it out there because it looks like this chapter of her life was very painful.

[00:04:25] And very hard to look back on. Yeah. She talks about that. One of her, the next part is, this was a relationship mostly based on the adrenaline of being close to power. And it says, Rippy's account provides far more detail on the origins of the relationship that has been previously been public. In the essay, Rippy was 33, recounts flirtations that developed into a romantic relationship. She writes about events in Napa Valley.

[00:04:55] Those events were largely absent. And she goes on to say, It wasn't love. It was proximity to power. Quote, We meet and we drink. There is sex. But it isn't the point. The point is proximity to power, to being chosen, to feeling newly visible, no longer muted by pregnancy, by new motherhood, by the strain of white knuckling long stretches of sobriety. It isn't love. It isn't romance. It's intoxication.

[00:05:20] The text message is the hit, the glance across the hallway, a hit, the risk floods my bloodstream. So you're right. That's, it's like she's an adrenaline junkie. She was getting a high from this risque. She was married. She's having an affair with this powerful politician who's on the rise. Plus, well, yeah, I didn't alcohol and drugs as well. So that helps as well. So I think she was going through some stuff. She does say I was not coerced.

[00:05:50] I knew what I was doing. So it doesn't look like she's saying that Gavin Newsom didn't take advantage of her. But she was running off that high of just being around Gavin Newsom. So it wasn't love. It was just power. And I imagine that's a big thing for a lot of people is power. What do you think? Well, one of the comments that we're hearing from this time, especially when this relationship began,

[00:06:16] that a lot of reporters, including Susan Crabtree and Jennifer Van Laar have pointed out is Gavin Newsom at a dinner, complimenting and flirting with her while her husband's at the table and saying incredibly creepy things like, well, it looks like you lost the pregnancy wage. Oh, that's really creepy. Yeah. Yikes. Gavin comes off as a very inauthentic person.

[00:06:45] And this kind of gives us a window into what Gavin Newsom is like without the, you know, the manufactured personality that we have seen in press conferences and podcasts and interviews, what have you. I mean, it was well known that, you know, he was a slime ball back then, especially as mayor of San Francisco. You back, you can go back on YouTube and you can see the videos of when he was mayor of San Francisco and him getting asked questions about his drinking habits.

[00:07:15] This even before the affair from ABC sevens, Dan noise. It is one of the greatest videos. He starts going after him just for asking a simple question about all the reports of Gavin Newsom getting loaded every single night as mayor of San Francisco. Just an aside, Gavin wasn't completely innocent around this time. Obviously, he engaged in the behavior. But to your point about Gavin kind of being this slippery, slimy guy, he also after this affair

[00:07:44] and he broke up with Kimberly Guilfoyle, who he was married to at the time, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who we all know now is like a Fox News contributor. She was always conservative, but she was on the East Coast. That's why there was so much opportunity for a wandering eye. After he broke up with her, he had a brief relationship with a 19-year-old social media model. So good for him, Gavin Newsom, you know, always looking for that angle.

[00:08:12] Her sister allegedly contacted Newsom during rehab. She said that Rippey was unwell and entering recovery. Rippey writes that her sister asked the future governor not to see her again. And she says Newsom's reported response was a brief, God bless. Seems a little cold for a guy you've had a relationship with. And, you know, probably ruined your life at that point. But, I don't know.

[00:08:39] God bless is a weird thing to say after you've had an affair with this woman and you were both married. So, well, and then famously, when this thing blows up in 2007, Gavin Newsom blames it all on the fact that he has a drinking problem and says, I'm going to rehab, which didn't take because, well, Gavin will be the first one to tell you that he spends every single night white-knuckling watching Fox News drinking an entire bottle of Merlot.

[00:09:09] Yeah, he always has to be on top of what's going on with Fox News. And he always has to make his little comments and his little handlers, too. This might be the worst is she confessed to her husband in an email. So, she didn't tell him face-to-face. She actually just confessed in an email. She says, I still wonder which was the greater offense, my infidelity or my failure to look him in the eye when I told him about it. So, there we go. So, that was the news. Not a great look. Not a great look.

[00:09:40] I wanted to just kind of bring this up. It was kind of an interesting story. Interesting that it's coming out now, especially right before Gavin Newsom is really gearing up for his presidential run in 2028. Just to kind of remind you, hey, this was who Gavin was in San Francisco. He was the mayor of San Francisco years ago. Just throwing that out there, kind of rehashing this again. So, will it make a difference? Maybe. I don't know. I think it's interesting.

[00:10:05] The biggest twist of this is that Kamala Harris, who also looks like she wants to run for president again, she was kind of implicated in this and saying she tried to quiet Rippy from actually coming forward and saying anything, which if you're part... That's a long time ago. The Democratic Party has changed a lot since then. And I don't think you can get away with telling people who had an affair with a powerful man, oh, you should just keep quiet. Just keep it quiet. Don't say anything. Let it play out.

[00:10:35] I don't think that's going to play really well for Kamala Harris in 2028, right? Well, and it shows that even through the era of Me Too and Believe All Women, what have you, there's still been so many instances of people in power abusing their power, people being asked to sweep it under the rug. I mean, even just very recently, you look at one of the most prominent candidates for governor was going to be the guy who was the frontrunner, was Eric Swalwell, the congressman from Dublin.

[00:11:04] And it turns out all of these things were happening for years and years and years. And it's one of these things where, you know, once the stories came out, so many different staffers and so many other politicians were like, oh, yeah, everybody knew about this. Well, then why didn't anybody speak up? And it sure seems that, you know, the political class makes sure that they protect their own at the expense of others, unless we've decided, all right, this person, we're finally done with them. Then we can all turn on them.

[00:11:33] But, yeah, not a great look for Kamala as well in convincing her to not speak out. It was a different time, but it's not going to look, this story is not going to look good for her as she's starting to whisper that she is going to run again. And it's not looking good for Gavin, who obviously is running for president. And it's not a great look for Jen Newsom as well. Nobody looks good in this story. No. And these are the skeletons that are going to come out when Newsom runs for president. That's for damn sure.

[00:12:02] All right. Before we jump into our next story, DiaperGate, I do want to give a shout out to everyone in the chat. Thank you, everyone, for checking in, being here live. We love seeing the chat here. Central Cali is here. Orange County. Let us know where you are checking in from. Looks like there was a sound issue, but I think it looks like it got resolved. There was a little issue at the top of the show. Should she? She should know. Wasn't she hooking up with Willie Brown? Yeah. Kamala started. She was Willie Brown's girlfriend.

[00:12:32] That's how we know she got her start in politics. So take it for what you will. Gavin and Kamala got their, you know, starts in politics by underhanded deeds. All right. Let's hop into this story about what they're calling DiaperGate because we were laughing before the show that you can't have any controversy in politics without adding gate to the end of it. So this is naturally DiaperGate.

[00:12:57] This story has been developing over the past couple weeks regarding this program that Gavin Newsom started to give newborn parents 400 diapers. So we'll watch the video. CBS did a good breakdown. They have four parts. What's happening with this? They've been continually updating us. So kudos to CBS for actually staying on top of this. So let's watch that video. 40 million diapers. This investigation began back in May as a simple fact check.

[00:13:27] That is what we Californians are actually paying for right now. That comes out to 18.5 cents per diaper. We corrected the critics' math and backgrounded Baby2Baby. Baby2Baby is a highly rated charity. Other than the state refusing to immediately release the contract, there is really only one red flag. This is what the state wants to send home with every new parent, 400 diapers. But experts warn not to buy diapers in bulk for newborns because babies can quickly outgrow diapers in the first couple of months.

[00:13:56] So stockpiling leads to waste. Turns out agency officials had the same concerns, which the records revealed when we finally got them after 66 days. And here we are. Now, the state warned Baby2Baby that sending new parents home with 400 diapers, quote, might be overwhelming. I'm going to just stop right here because if anyone in the chat wants to verify this, I am not a parent. I'm not familiar with being a new parent.

[00:14:25] If anyone in the chat wants to verify, is 300 or 400 diapers a lot to send home with a newborn parent? So just throwing that out there, if anybody in the chat wants to let us know by personal experience. An echo warning signal. How do you lug them out there? Do you have to load them in the back of the pickup truck? While you're also putting in the stroller and the baby, do they ship them home to you? Where exactly do the hospitals store the thousands and thousands and thousands of diapers for this?

[00:14:53] There are so many bizarre questions when it comes to a program that I don't think anybody was actually asking for. That's an excellent point. I mean, where is the hospital keeping these? Because 400 per parent means every parent every single day. That's mind-bogglingly a ton of diapers they're handing out every day. They're going to have to set up like a whole warehouse just for diapers.

[00:15:21] Only offering newborn and size 1 diapers could lead to, quote, waste because babies quickly outgrow them. Now, Baby2Baby pushed back, arguing against offering the additional sizes and saying their boxes, each about the size of a small carry-on bag, weren't hard to carry. Meanwhile, their competitors cited data showing that 83% of families in need actually ask for diapers size 4 and above.

[00:15:48] Several organizations urged the state to rethink their plan. Amazon proposed letting families select sizes delivered to their door with returns. But Amazon is missing from the state's comparison spreadsheet, which has no scores, no rankings. In fact, the closest thing to a score sheet is the agency's final recommendation, listing Baby2Baby and one other nonprofit, which the state notes offered more diapers in more sizes

[00:16:15] and direct-to-consumer distribution, which Baby2Baby could not. Still, the state selected Baby2Baby anyway, locking in a contract with 400 diapers sent home with each baby in newborn and size 1 only, no returns or exchanges. 40 million diapers. Now, the contract also specifies that the program's oversight committee is exempt from California public meetings law and any talking points must be mutually approved by Baby2Baby and the state. Now, there is no...

[00:16:46] Anytime the government says you're exempt from public meetings and you have to ask for permission to do any sort of communication on any sort of meeting or something going on, kind of suspicious. Maybe that's just me. I think everything should be out in the light, but yeah. I don't know. When they say you can't have any meetings about it, that's kind of fishy. And we're going to get to the reason why.

[00:17:14] There's no profit included in this deal, but it does include funding for 12 taxpayer-funded Baby2Baby staff positions, warehousing, shipping, and $0.08 to $0.09 per diaper. Though we don't know how much Baby2Baby is actually paying for each of those diapers manufactured in Mexico, and the records show that Baby2Baby declined to name its manufacturer during the RFI process.

[00:17:39] Now, we asked the state if they do now know who is manufacturing Baby2Baby's diapers. We have not heard back. That's one of many questions that we've asked the state that we're waiting for answers on, and we'll keep you updated when or if we get answers. For CBS California Investigates, I'm Julie Watts. All right. So, DiaperGate 2026. Was that on your bingo card, DiaperGate 2026?

[00:18:09] These allegations that are happening right now, and let's get into more CBS News reporting on this, because this is actually really kind of, this goes deeper than just what's happening with these diapers and why this is a problem in California. This is a systemic problem in California. And it goes on to talk about the state budget, totally more than $1 billion appropriations for programs, ranging from $253 million, blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:38] Because a lot of these deals, two out of three of the exemptions never expire. So, they're talking about these exemptions from competitive bidding. Because these deals are exempt from state contracting oversight, they are largely hidden from public view and don't appear in California's public database of no-bid contracts. Had the governor not publicly announced the baby-to-baby contract, prompting questions about the nonprofit's ties to Newsom and his wife,

[00:19:06] the non-competitively bid contract may never have been discovered. So, this is the issue, is that Gavin Newsom went out there and said, this was a competitive bidding process and this is how we came to it. We ended up on baby-to-baby because we held a competitive bidding process. Well, it turns out the database says something different, that it was a non-competitive contract dating back to 2022.

[00:19:36] So, there's more records, but I want to get your thoughts before I ramble on more about this. So, what are your thoughts initially about this, Randy, and DiaperGate? You there, Randy? Nope. Did we lose Randy? May have lost him. He may have froze. All right. Is everyone still here with me on the chat and everything? Can everyone hear me? Let's see. Anyway.

[00:20:06] It goes on to say, State records label the baby-to-baby contracts as non-competitively bid despite the governor's public description of a competitive bidding process. State law requires competitive bids with few legal exemptions. This contract didn't go through the normal exemption process, which requires justification and public disclosure. Instead, an exemption was buried in the state budget waiving competitive bidding oversight by the state contracting watchdog. They found more than two dozen similar exemptions in 2026 state budget,

[00:20:35] totally more than $1 billion in appropriations. Those contracts are also exempt from public posting and third-party oversight. And this is baby-to-baby's third no-bid state contract, the first listed, and go on and on and on. So this is what has happened, is that baby-to-baby is part of this non-competitively bid contract. And it gets even more dicey because of the fact that, okay, so seeing everyone in the chat that I'm still hearing that, you can still hear me.

[00:21:04] So maybe we just lost Randy for a second. He'll come back. He'll hop back on. Let's see. Still recording. Still here. I don't know. We're having weird technical issues tonight. Gavin doesn't want us to see what's going on. So if you're still here in the chat, let me know. So, all right. This is the really interesting thing. Let me see if I can find this. So this girl, this is why it's more,

[00:21:34] so this is baby-to-baby. This is their board of directors. And it was, let's see, Nora Weinstein is also on the board of directors with Jennifer Sebele Newsom's California Partnership. So let me say that again. The person who's on the board of directors for Baby-to-Baby

[00:21:57] also happens to be on the board for Baby-to-Baby and for this Jennifer Sebele Newsom. Hopefully Randy comes back. It would be nice to have Randy come back and get his opinion on this. Maybe he froze. Let me see if I can, there we go. Try that now. All right. So this is where we're at. We have a diaper contract for hundreds and hundreds of diapers that are being doled out,

[00:22:25] even though a lot of people are, let's see if we got Randy back now. Did he come back? Did we get him back? Guest is in green room. Let's add him to, there we go. There we go. There we go. There we go. I was asking, we were talking about DiaperGate. I want to get your opinion. So I was rambling. You tell me your opinion on DiaperGate.

[00:22:53] So Julie Watts is one of the best reporters the state of California has. She's actually CBS News California's accountability correspondent, which I love that that's saying because she truly digs deep. And when she started hitting all these roadblocks, because this whole thing started as a simple fact check story when Steve Hilton was alleging that we were going to be paying like 40 cents a diaper. So she wanted to see the contract to see how much we're actually paying per diaper.

[00:23:23] Because if you go to Target, it's like eight cents a diaper. And then through public records request, she put in that I'd like to see this contract after Gavin Newsom's big press conference talking about that. Well, we, of course, we need this. We're helping. We're changing the game. And this is such a great company that we're working with. And yes, of course, this was a competitive bidding process. Turns out they dragged their feet and wouldn't give her the contract. And then after the maximum allotted time to respond,

[00:23:52] they said, oh, we're going to need more time to respond. Then we're going to need even more time to respond. And then she started doing some digging on her own, realizing that they're being very secretive about this. She found through different means exactly what we were paying on this contract and found out that even though Gavin Newsom said it was a competitive bid process that rated other companies, went with the lowest price for the highest amount of good. That's not what happened.

[00:24:20] And as you saw from her last piece, part four, which all of these are incredible, Julie Watts is great and is able to break this stuff. That's kind of wonky down into something that you can really understand, is that there were other bidders who had a much better idea of what to do here, including how to get the diapers to the parents easier. And all of these concerns about how 400 size zero and one diapers

[00:24:48] isn't really helping anybody because babies and infants grow very quickly. But Gavin ignored that. Baby to baby ignored that. Of course, there is the relationship between baby to baby and Jennifer Sebald Newsom, but none of that mattered. The biggest issue here is that Gavin said this was a competitive bid, and it was not. They used a loophole in the law to give this bid to their friends. And it turns out there are billions and billions of dollars of contracts

[00:25:17] in this year's California budget that also through little loopholes in the law are not going through the traditional competitive bid process, which makes you wonder, why are we picking these companies? Who is it the relationship with? And it just shows the other layer of corruption that is going on in Sacramento. As Julie says, because we had her on our show, this goes way beyond diapers. This is how business is done in California.

[00:25:44] Yeah, I was kind of going over that while you were frozen in time there for a second. This is a systemic issue with California that she dug more and more and found all these non-competitively bid contracts, about a billion dollars worth of them. And the thing is, when you have a budget that is worth $300 billion and the Appropriations Committee has to go through line by line everything, a lot of people don't go through it line by line, and they don't probably delineate

[00:26:12] that this contract and this appropriation is going out to this company, it's a non-competitively bid contract and it's exempt from competitively bidding. They don't see that and then all of this money just goes out the window for these companies that are, in this case, really ended up backfiring because they're connected to the Newsom's because Nora Weinstein, who is on the board of Baby2Baby, is also on the board with Jennifer Newsom's California Partnership

[00:26:41] or whatever her nonprofit is. So that connection right there, if you're both on the boards and you know each other, that looks horrible and you can only surmise that because of connections, and again, this is all allegedly, we're not saying that this is what happened, but anybody who's looking at this goes, well, this smell stinks to high heaven. If you're on the board of the nonprofit that's making this huge amount of money from this government contract and you also happen to be good friends

[00:27:11] with Jennifer Sebeil Newsom and her husband signs off on this contract, giving you millions and millions of dollars to throw hundreds and hundreds of diapers at newborn parents, it reeks to high heaven. So there's a whole bunch of controversies going on here about, one, how many non-competitively bid contracts are happening in Sacramento, and also, two, what was the connection here that got them this contract, this particular contract? I mean, to me, it seems pretty plain

[00:27:40] that allegedly, I'm saying allegedly because we don't want anybody to come down and be like, oh, you can't say that. Allegedly, it looks like there was this connection between Jennifer Sebeil Newsom, Gavin Newsom, and baby to baby. Is that fair to say, Randy, that it looks just on its face? Again, allegedly, I keep saying that. As a lawyer, I got to protect myself. Allegedly. Is that what you would take away from this? It sure has the appearance of corruption,

[00:28:08] and the thing that I do not understand is who was begging for this? This is not something that you heard like people protesting at the Capitol for. This isn't something you had legislative sessions over the biggest hurdle to raising a child, which the latest study showed in San Diego County. It's about $300,000 to raise a child in the state of California in San Diego. Is the real big hurdle to raising kids,

[00:28:36] buying the first month or so's worth of diapers? It just seems so strange. And this was a press conference that came out of the blue with Gavin and Jen and baby to baby talking about, as Gavin loves to say, what a game changer this is because he is the ultimate king of over promise and under deliver. And it just seems so strange. And the fact that they didn't want to be forthcoming about the contract until you saw Julie Watts

[00:29:06] put out all these pieces. Then they realized how bad they're looking. It just, none of it looks good. And it's all unwanted attention that Gavin really doesn't need in his final year of the governorship. So, who talked him into this one? I think it's, I think you hit it on. I think the answer is what you said. He's all promise and no action. So, this was an easy win in his mind of, I'll give out free diapers and that looks great like I care about the working people.

[00:29:35] When he hasn't come through on a lot of all of his other issues, has he reduced homelessness? No. The loss of numbers show that LA is, saw an increase in homelessness. San Diego's seen an increase in homelessness. More have gotten off the streets, but that doesn't mean there's not more homeless here in San Diego. So, for the billions of dollars he's thrown at that, you have the high speed rail, affordability, going after the gas, you know, going after the oil companies, that was his big tough talking point, never really followed through on that. Gavin,

[00:30:05] Gavin likes to make these big promises. Camille and I always make this joke that we put a pin in something and we're like, come back to this in like six months and let's do an update on all of this stuff that he promises. There was like, after the 2024 election, there was the jobs program. He went through the Central Valley and said there's going to be all these jobs he's going to bring to the Central Valley and I don't think any of them panned out. It was just him walking around with an empty binder. So, that's Gavin Newsom and I guess he saw this

[00:30:34] as a good press conference and as a good political moment to say, I'm helping the working people. How can you not help baby, how can you not love helping babies and moms? Like, why would you not want to help that and newborn parents? So, it is, it's blowing up in their face spectacularly because of the fact that there are still good, honest reporters. Julie is one of them. Ashley Zavala is another one. Joey Safchick down here is another one. We're starting to see way more,

[00:31:05] I think, good, honest reporting here in California, which is amazing. It's great we're seeing more honest reporting. But it's blowing up in their face because now people are going, wait a second, how many contracts are non-competitively bid? Wait, how much are you charging for these diapers? That's the other scandal is that they're charging more for the diapers than what you would regularly pay for the diapers because why not? When it comes to the government, why not pay more for diapers? I mean, it's like that scene from Independence Day. You don't think they really spent $200 on a hammer

[00:31:34] and $600 on a toilet seat, do you? Like, maybe the young kids won't get that reference. It's a movie from the 90s, 1996, I believe it was, 95, 96, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, amazing movie, go see it. But yeah, government always overspends on this stuff. So, do you think this is, we just went over the affair, how that percolated up. Now you have Diaper Gate. Do you think this is another skeleton in Gavin Newsom's closet when he runs in 2028 that they're going

[00:32:04] to bring up is Diaper Gate? There are so many skeletons in Gavin's closet. I mean, bless him that he wants to try, but good luck running across the country on the record of everything that he's done in the state of California because, as we have said, Gavin Newsom is the king of a big, bold proclamation and zero follow-through. Let's give an example, one that you just referenced. When he held two different special sessions that we're going to hold

[00:32:33] the oil companies accountable and we're going to make sure that we find out that they're ripping you off and we're going to punish them and send everyone a check. Well, Gavin Newsom in the first special session gets a new bureaucracy passed that was supposed to investigate why gas prices are so high and see if there was any price gouging. A year later, Gavin's hand-picked bureaucracy comes back and says, oh, there's no price gouging. It's the market conditions, our special blend,

[00:33:02] our environmental concerns with the California Air Resources Board and, of course, the gas tax. So that one just kind of went away. How about Care Court? Gavin called that one a game changer where we were finally going to reform our conservatorship laws. Anybody, a family member, law enforcement could take somebody that is withering away on the streets, not in their right head and refer them to a mental health court. This was, and he would say the term over and over again, game changer. Well, L.A. County

[00:33:32] is a county of 10 million people and a county with 70,000 plus homeless people. When that program came online in January of this year at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, they were asked, how many people do you think will actually be impacted by Gavin Newsom's Care Court program now that it's online in Los Angeles? And again, there are 70,000 people that are homeless on the streets. The vast majority of them have a drug problem or a mental illness. And the public health director came back

[00:34:02] and said, we think Gavin's program will be about 80 people, so it really won't have an impact to the budget. Mm-hmm. You can get me started on Care Court and homelessness and conservatorships. I have a bone to pick with. I work in conservatorships on top, like that's part of my job, so I see it firsthand and I just had a whole case involving hospitals and not knowing what LPS conservatorships are. But if you want to get my full thoughts, I do a whole section

[00:34:31] on it in our homelessness chapter of The Gilded State, my book that's coming out that has just gone to the formatter for publishing Jane for September, I'd go over all of this with the numbers, with the receipts, everything well documented about Care Court and what an absolute failure it has been in terms of solving any homelessness. So make sure you go to thegildedstate.com, sign up. I'll be sending out free preview chapters throughout the month before it comes out in September and exclusive access and all that. All right,

[00:35:01] next story. Randy, I'm going to give you the wheel on this one because you sent this over to me. I've been following it. This is the story of Shang Thao, the Duongs, and Rob Bonta in this story. So you did this on your show today. So I'm going to give you the wheel to kind of tell us what's going on with Shang Thao. What's the new development there? Shangi, you ready? Absolutely. Absolutely. So Shang Thao,

[00:35:30] the recalled former mayor of Oakland, is awaiting trial for a federal corruption probe that involves her and the Duong family, the owners and proprietors of California Waste Solutions, which is a recycling company that has the contract for trash pickup in the city of Oakland. And when she was indicted in January, the original charges stem from a scheme where California Waste Solutions,

[00:35:59] the Duong family, and a guy by the name of Mario Juarez put together a scheme where they were going to take shipping containers and they were going to turn them into homeless tiny homes. And they were going to sell them to the cities of Oakland and San Leandro for about $300,000 a pop. And I don't know if you know anything about shipping, but shipping containers, even refurbished ones, do not cost $300,000.

[00:36:29] This was a straight-up bribery scheme. In Oakland, the deal was Shang Tao would get the contract where Oakland would buy these shipping containers from the Duong family. And in return, they created a fake job for her boyfriend, Andre Jones, also indicted, for a salary of $300,000 a year to be on their payroll. It was a straight-up bribe. They did the same thing with Brian Acevedo, who was a city councilman for neighboring town

[00:36:58] of San Leandro. He was going to get a commission of $25,000 of every shipping container that San Leandro bought, and he actually opens a bank account in his wife's name. Not a very smart guy. He has pled guilty. Shang Tao has pled not guilty, and she is awaiting trial. So, new documents were released today, a fantastic report from the San Jose Mercury News about all kinds of evidence that is now coming to light that Shang and Andre

[00:37:26] and the Duong family want suppressed. They don't want this evidence coming out in trial, and a lot of it is very, very damning. So, let's go back to how long exactly has Shang Tao been a tool for the Duong family. Well, it goes back to at least 2019 when Shang Tao was a member of the Oakland City Council, and at the time, Oakland was suing California Waste Solutions because they were

[00:37:56] overcharging people for trash pickup. It's actually one of the reasons why Oakland is one of the biggest hubs for illegal dumping. It's one of the most expensive places to get your trash picked up because of this crooked contract that originally comes from bribery going all the way back to 2014. Well, in that meeting, an off-the-books closed meeting, Shang Tao leaked the sensitive private information to the Duong family. So, that was the first new allegation. Another thing that came up

[00:38:26] in this was that Shang Tao, who again, was indicted for having this scheme where her boyfriend had a fake job, it's not the first time that she gave her boyfriend a fake job. In 2021, when Andre Jones was unemployed and Shang was working for the Oakland City Council, they wanted to rent out a house, but they couldn't qualify for the lease because he had no job. So, she created a fake job for him saying that he made $150,000 a year

[00:38:55] working for her sister's cannabis consulting company. So, that's another allegation showing a pattern of behavior from then, before she was Oakland Mayor Shang Tao. The other allegations go into how the Dong family, specifically Andy Duong, would videotape politicians in compromising positions, including Brian Acevedo, the city councilman from San Leandro, talking about all the things that they did

[00:39:25] on this big trip to Vietnam with a whole bunch of politicians and other dignitaries where they were on tape discussing prostitution, massage parlors, and drugs. He also apparently was using videotaped evidence of people behaving inappropriately at karaoke bars with scantily clad women to control people they wanted on councils. It is a straight-up crime family story. And there are so many different threads

[00:39:54] and the bribery and the allegations go all the way back to 2014 at least. But there is a bigger connection to this because you wonder, is Shang Tao the big fish here? Is the Dong family the big fish here? Because if you look at political donations in Alameda County and Oakland, the biggest benefactor of donations for years and years and years to the Dongs, it's not Shang Tao, it's now Attorney General, but then Assemblyman

[00:40:23] for the Oakland area, Rob Bonta. He has been the biggest beneficiary of the Dongs. He has got, there's so many pictures of him and Andy Dong together. And there was a letter sent to Rob Bonta in 2024, I believe, where Mario Juarez, who was one of the co-conspirators with the shipping and tater scam, said, and this was when he thought that the Dongs were sending out Hitman to kill him,

[00:40:52] and there was a shootout in Oakland with a guy named Hermalindo Ramos Ramos that the Dongs have a compromising video of Rob Bonta. Now, Bonta has not investigated this, he has not said a damn thing about this, this has been a federal investigation, but here's what's most interesting and why he might be the big fish at the end of this when the trial ends up, because you have a lot of people that have pled guilty that are talking for the feds, we don't know what Shang knows or what she's going to do,

[00:41:21] but Rob Bonta all last year was telling anybody that would listen that he was going to run for governor. He was getting donors ready to go, he was whispering to everybody that he was planning to run for governor, especially once Kamala Harris said that she wasn't. Well, when the indictment of Shang Tao happened, he immediately announced that he decided he's going to run again for attorney general, not for governor, and then just a few months later,

[00:41:51] what do we find out? We find out that Rob Bonta, the attorney general, spent nearly $500,000 of his campaign money on lawyers in depositions related to the Shang Tao Dong family thing, and he said that $500,000 for those lawyers was to, quote, assist them in the investigation. So there is a lot here. There is a lot of straight-up corruption. There is a lot of bribery. There is a lot

[00:42:20] of blackmail. There is a lot of sex and drugs and rock and roll and a trip to Vietnam. It is one of the wildest stories in California politics. It is a lot to cover because this story has slowly unfolded over the course of like a year at this point because it started with Shang Tao and then all of a sudden evolved into then Rob Bonta was also connected to the Duongs and then the Duongs

[00:42:50] went down and then there is Mario Juarez guy who got his house shot up. The story is like I am just waiting for the Netflix documentary on this because there is got to be a Netflix documentary when we get to the end of the road here. And you are right. It is kind of again reading through the tea leaves allegedly. We are not saying Rob Bonta is guilty of anything. Allegedly. He is the Attorney General. You don't want to say anything bad about him because he will come down on you like a ton of bricks. It does seem

[00:43:19] a little fishy that he was all ready to run for governor and people basically assumed he was going to run for governor and then as soon as this story took a weird turn of like oh yeah I am actually going to just run for Attorney General now that I have been implicated or associated with the Duongs so I am just going to run for Attorney General. I am not going to run for governor. So it does seem like an odd pivot for him and you read between the tea leaves of does he know what's going on

[00:43:49] and we had made this comment when we covered this last year this is kind of like the Duongs kind of feel like California's version of Jeffrey Epstein like it's that kind of level of like it's I put you in compromising positions I have money and power and then I put you in these compromising positions and then I videotape you or record you against your will without you knowing and then I blackmail

[00:44:18] you to do things I want and then it's just a whole corruption scheme of money and bribes with sex and all this stuff so it is a very very tangled web that is happening with Shang Tao and it's if you're not paying attention to this story you have to look up this story it is forget the Newsoms for a second the Newsoms are always fun to talk about but what is happening to Rob Bonta is it's like I said

[00:44:48] it's a Netflix documentary like it's I'm interested to get your opinion on now that more people are pleading guilty and working with the feds and becoming informants do you think that are they building in your opinion again allegedly do you think they're building towards Rob Bonta as being a part of this they're just trying to get all their ducks in a row or do you think it's just they think this is so vast

[00:45:17] they want to get all their ducks in a row before they do anything else what is your opinion on that well this is definitely investigation that's been going on for years and years and years and some of these bribery allegations which by the way the feds literally have Andy Duong's phone so they have all of these blackmail videos and videos where they're just straight up talking about the bribery including a six figure bribe to someone at the Oakland City Council back in 2014 to originally

[00:45:47] get this lucrative trash contract it shows that everyone connected to this family is dirty in some way and it's just hard to believe that all of the influence that this family has had over Shangtao over other elected officials in Oakland San Leandro Alameda County that they would also give all kinds of money more money than anybody else to Rob Bonta

[00:46:16] his wife Mia Bonta who took over his seat in the assembly when he got appointed to the attorney general that he was completely clean he never did any favors for them even though when you look back at his time as a member of the assembly he definitely drafted pieces of legislation that was beneficial towards this company California Waste Solutions and if you wonder is it a little on the nose that this mafioso

[00:46:45] style family runs a trash company yes it is it is yeah it's almost like the Sopranos you're right it is very Sopranos esque it's very mafia esque it's very Jeffrey Epstein esque it's everything I mean it's going to make for good TV down the line when we actually figure out what the heck is going on here alright and speaking of Rob Bonta this is actually a perfect segue to our final story Rob Bonta putting his thumb on the scale for the

[00:47:15] upcoming voter ID ballot initiative also anybody in the chat if you have any questions or comments before we sign off for the night I want to thank everyone for tuning in we had a couple technical difficulties for everyone who hung in there with us awesome as always so let's watch this video real quick and we're going to talk about what Rob Bonta is up to his shenanigans with the voter ballot proposition Fox 40 is your local election headquarters the backers of California's voter ID measure

[00:47:45] are furious with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and are now threatening to sue they say Bonta deceptively changed the measure's official ballot title in summary making it confusing and misleading on an effort in their words to rig the election but Bonta disputes those claims thanks for joining us Fox 40 Capitol reporter Eitan Wallace has the latest drama and shares why the Attorney General says he's simply doing his job it's clear that he's trying

[00:48:15] to rig the election GOP Assemblymember Carl DeMaio leveling that accusation against California Attorney General Rob Bonta after Bonta changed the official ballot title and summary voters will see on Prop 39 the statewide voter ID measure set to appear on the ballot this November DeMaio is the measure's author it keeps mail-in ballots but it does require voter ID to make sure that the person casting the vote is actually eligible it requires citizenship verification by

[00:48:45] election officials but no additional burdens on voters while the measure was still garnering signatures before it but after the measure qualified Bonta's office changed the ballot title to this the measure quote prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government issued identification this is so corrupt he wants to change the title

[00:49:15] because he wants to manipulate the voters into voting against Prop 39 so the new title went from voter ID and citizenship verification to prohibit citizens from voting this is absolutely insane it is appallingly dishonest and it is designed to discourage people from voting for an initiative that he opposes Bonta is defending the change he says state law requires his office to write an

[00:49:45] impartial ballot title and summary something he argues he did in this case we have completely fulfilled our duty Bonta also says it's not uncommon for his office to make changes to a measure language after it qualifies for the ballot noting he did just that for all of the statewide initiatives to appear this November all nine of them had changes online so it's very common we we we we as always fulfilling our duties to do so in a way that's fair accurate

[00:50:14] informative descriptive and we achieve that here we believe we have a strong case that what he's doing is unethical dishonest a violation of trust and we also believe it is illegal so we are looking at taking this issue to the other will need to be made very soon by the first week of August when all statewide ballot measure titles and summaries must be finalized

[00:50:44] at the state capitol covering local news that matters etan wallace i'm gonna say this and excuse my language his excuse as to everybody every ballot proposition gets their title changed so this is just normal process i don't know what everyone's whining about bullshit that's what you do because you saw the language how it

[00:51:14] went from oh we you know we want to ensure that everyone who votes has a government issued ID okay when you poll people most Americans and Californians they actually agree with the idea that yeah you should have an ID to vote like people should know who's voting that makes sense that's not an objectionable term or title but then when you flip it and this is why I call BS on this because somebody in his office or him sat down and said hey guys let's

[00:51:44] brainstorm this this is what the title is currently how do we change it and someone goes let's say prohibits people from voting without a government issued ID because that word prohibits sounds bad like we're prohibiting you from voting unless you show an ID and that's that's racist you can't let people not vote because of government issued ID that's that's completely racist so the connotation went from we're shoring up election integrity to now

[00:52:13] we're prohibiting people from voting is a is a calculated choice by the Attorney General's office so that's why I call BS that this is not just oh we just changed the wording a little bit and it's fair mind you I have an issue with the Attorney General being able to do this at all because why should the political person who is a political entity be able to change and name what the ballot is or what the ballot proposition

[00:52:43] is think about Prop 47 by Kamala Harris she named it the Safe Neighborhoods Act and it was anything but safe neighborhoods after Prop 47 so Randy what are your thoughts on Rob Bonta's excuse as to why he changed the title and this is fair you just heard another one of Rob Bonta's famous buckets full of cliches he can say so little in so many words you know he can say this is just what we do but it

[00:53:31] still very likely will pass even with this and this whole issue is bringing a lot more attention to it but it is just not a good look and like you said this should not be something that the elected attorney general should have in their job description the legislative analyst office which is a nonpartisan office already comes out with titles and descriptions why don't we just have them do it because like you said this is an old game that we have played so many times in California you referenced the Kamala Harris one let me give you

[00:54:01] another example ever heard of a guy named Javier Becerra who's running for governor when he was the attorney general of the it was actually on the ballot to repeal the gas tax and do you know what Javier Becerra chose to title

[00:54:30] the repeal the gas tax act the defund roads and bridges act and guess what it did not pass yep yeah there was I think there was a whole lawsuit over that too and even the judges were like no this is fine so I don't I Carl DeMille is going to file a lawsuit I don't have a lot of faith that the judges will actually follow through and do something about this they'll probably say yeah it's close enough because you have to deal with the superior court and state judges

[00:55:00] so who knows what their political leaning is but you're right political animals who are elected by people for a party should not be naming ballot measures that go against their political positions because it's such gatekeeping on the part of the attorney general to say I can rename these and make these deceptive and mind you it's the attorney general and I will take a bash at my own profession here

[00:55:30] lawyers are good at crafting language so it seems one thing but it means another thing and that's probably why lawyers get a bad rep because people don't trust them but it just does seem like something of a bygone era that we shouldn't allow this I like your suggestion of legislative analysts I

[00:56:05] numbers so when Gavin Newsom comes out with his budgets and says I balance the budget go check what the legislative analyst says because usually they say no this doesn't balance the budget there's going to be a bigger deficit or bigger deficit spending so it's definitely him putting his thumb on the scale in terms of this ballot proposition I don't think they were prepared for the fact that this would qualify

[00:56:35] I think they got their signatures plus more like 50% more than they needed submitted early were like they were done they were ready to go like it was slam dunk so I think they thought this will never get on the ballot who cares we can name it whatever now that there's an actual threat of it being on the ballot now they have to change the name to slant the game and I agree with you that this is an issue this is not going to be fought out just on ballot language I expect this proposition

[00:57:04] and the prop 40 for the billionaires tax are probably going to see the most spending on proposition ad campaigns from probably starting in August until election day we're going to see a ton of ads about these two propositions I think these are the headline propositions of this whole election season there's other good ballot measures there's 14 which we will cover throughout the next coming weeks but I

[00:57:34] don't think it's over but you're right it is deceptive enough that there's too many people who just read it and you can name it the free puppy dogs and ice cream and it would be like hey we want to raise your this is completely hit I'm not going to sugar coat it I think it's him putting his thumb on the scale this is just dirty politics at its core

[00:58:04] do you think let me ask you this do you agree that it's probably going to be fought out by campaigns and PACs and stuff like that on the airwaves now that they've changed the title it is that you're going to see so much Mike like you said spent on this proposition and the billionaire's on different news shows and press conferences you're going to see all kinds of rallies talking about how racist an idea like this is even though

[00:58:34] it is a very clean initiative it is even if you want to vote by mail you just put in the last four digits of your social for anyone I think what the problem is with going so hard against this one is the voters not the politicians but the voters most people like yeah that doesn't seem like a big deal so I think the more attention this issue gets it will

[00:59:04] only help it right now you look at what it's polling it would need a huge amount of money but even then it's an issue that has gotten enough attention where I don't know they could throw whatever they want at it it might still pass and that would be a whole lot of money that they wasted then but we'll see what the campaigns look like I mean yeah the language is very deceptive but just the amount of news coverage that it has gotten in the last week or

[00:59:34] two because of this once again in a point where people really shouldn't be paying attention to what's going on the ballot propositions in November guess what more Californians know today that voter IDs on the ballot than did a month ago when it qualified for the ballot yeah yeah this isn't the end he's going to

[01:00:10] it is interesting that they are working hard with the attorney general to try and rig and slant this in their favor which makes you ask the next question as to why are you worried about voter ID and prohibiting people from voting without government issued IDs and you heard this story come out this week that 150,000 ballots were rejected by the post office in California for mail-in ballots so that raises another question and I always say this

[01:00:40] because people think that voting doesn't matter here in California and I always just reply it absolutely does matter it may not matter as much as you think a lot of people see the big wins the state offices and stuff like that it is really the close city council and state legislature races those races are won by a thousand votes here and there so we're talking like a small margin of error for a lot of these

[01:01:10] seats to flip and I think when you add in the fact that voter ID government issue IDs for and they're paying for you to get a voter ID which I'm fine to that plus the U.S. Postal Office rejecting a bunch of mail-in ballots which I think they're cracking down on mail-in ballots now as well these closer races the state legislature races the city council races the county supervisor races are getting

[01:01:39] much much tighter here in California especially what we saw in 2024 voter demographics are changing more counties went red than ever before ever since Reagan I think we're talking about the state kind of moving in a different direction so I think they're kind of freaking out this is why they had Prop 50 they rigged elections and they saw what happened in 2024 and they saw how much more red California got and they started to freak out and go oh

[01:02:09] crap we're losing grip here so I think you combine all this behind the scenes I think they're freaking out and they're trying to stop this at all costs because when you add up voter ID if that passes U.S. Postal office now being tougher on ballots a lot of these smaller races that end up deciding who's in your state legislature your state assembly your state senate all of that stuff which does add up break the super majority all of that stuff does make a huge difference here in California which is why I think

[01:02:39] you got to pay attention to these local races these are the local races you gotta pay attention to so that's my soapbox I don't know what do you think they're freaking out because changing demographics more people are changing they're not voting for Democrats California may be going a little bit more red who knows what are your thoughts well I

[01:03:11] broad and I don't believe there is widespread fraud but just like with Gavin Newsom's diaper deal the appearance of corruption turns some people off to the process you look at how much attention some of these elections get including the June primary and still what 40% of people actually voted and that was supposed to be a big celebration most people even when and this is one of the most ridiculous things about our state we simplified the process to the point where we give you a month

[01:03:41] we automatically send you the ballot whether you asked for it or not and still 60% of people said nah I don't feel like it I got stuff to do and you know what I understand not everyone wants to pay attention to this stuff but there are definitely people out there on both sides of the aisle that do not participate because they don't believe that it is a trustworthy system whether that's true or not anything we can do to ensure that there's also the aspect

[01:04:11] of if you do have the ID process and you do have mail in ballots where it's the last four digits of your social then you don't have to spend as much time with this nonsense with signature verification which is one of the reasons that our counters are giving for why it takes so long to count the votes in California and people are so sick of seeing these races where it looks like it's one way on election night and then you find out the result eight nine days later it

[01:04:54] everybody but if you're the party in power that stays in power because so many people in California don't pay attention and that means that you have a bigger influence on the races if you're the party in power you're the party of the unions you have a lot more control as to who gets what seat because you have a lot of people that are motivated to vote if we get more people on all sides to motivate to vote that definitely upsets the balance of the people that are trying to hold on to their

[01:05:24] power including the super majority yeah yeah and we always say progress to purple I would take a purple California over a deep blue California at this point and that's another thing that we should mention is that it's not only voter ID to show up at the polls there's more verification for these mail in ballots as well so that might be another aspect of why they're fighting this so hard so someone did say in the chat California is still a blue state that's why Steve Hilton needs Democrats

[01:05:54] to vote for him anyways I want to throw that out there I don't know if you saw that he has his ad now like even if you hate Donald Trump why should you vote for me I was like why not just tackle the elephant in the room say like yeah I'm a Republican but try some change right

[01:06:24] well he needs to appeal to everybody actually he was a guest on my show today and you know he is putting out full page ads in the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle saying look I

[01:07:02] dream to you more so I co-host the John Phillips show every single day we're live and statewide

[01:07:32] from noon to three we're on the radio 790k ABC in Southern California you can even hear it in San Diego I hear 810 KSFO in the Bay area and the North state and we're also broadcasting live on YouTube every single day we've made this very easy you just go to the website johnny don't like dot com and it takes you right to our YouTube channel you can subscribe we're on from noon to three every single day we have tons of interesting guests we play videos from up and down the state of California react

[01:08:02] to them we've got a lively chat room it is a heck of a lot of fun every single day from noon to three johnny don't have i also do a news of the day recap show called the news blitz with randy wang that's on 790k abc phil's been a guest many times we're going to get you

[01:08:49] san diego because that's where the jobs are the commute on the i-15 is getting worse and worse and worse a few years ago it would take people an hour now it takes people two hours to go each way so a bunch of the commuters have

[01:09:22] everything has to take so long they probably have to do a study they have to figure out if they're going to hurt like a native turtle or something like that it's yeah it's it's gotten bad if you drive my wife used to drive north on the 15 when she I'll give you another Caltrans story before we

[01:09:52] sign off I was driving home on my lunch hour to walk our dog we're lucky enough to live close to work and I was driving home and Caltrans was doing their routine homeless cleanup because that's something they do now so you get on the 163 if you know what I'm talking about in San Diego from downtown you get on the 163 north they were cleaning up all the homeless encampments right there on the median so they're all cleaned up by the time I came

[01:10:22] home and then left for work that day at five o'clock homeless were all back there so you know just I don't know it's a whole issue but it's just I was like Caltrans literally just came through four hours ago to clean this up and they're already back so but yeah 2050 yeah who knows what's going to be happening in 2050 maybe we'll have flying cars I doubt it but all right

[01:10:52] Randy thank you so much for being a co-host again it's been great having you everyone make sure you tune in to his show 12 to 3 as well as the drive time kabc go check them out and to everyone who was here live thank you so much for being in the chat and all that stuff and supporting us make sure you like share subscribe review this episode all of that stuff helps with the algorithm helps more people find us