California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a sweeping national agenda to tax the ultra-wealthy last Friday, calling for a federal minimum levy on net worth above $100 million — even as he actively fights the California ballot measure that would do something similar right now.

The proposal, published in a Substack post, positions Newsom with the Democratic Party's populist left as he approaches the end of his governorship and an expected 2028 presidential run. It drew an immediate rebuke from Rep. Ro Khanna — a Silicon Valley Democrat and likely White House rival — who called the move political cover for siding with billionaires against the state-level measure he helped champion.

Newsom's federal agenda is ambitious on paper. He wants a minimum tax on anyone with a net worth above $100 million, new rules barring the wealthy from borrowing against stock portfolios to fund their lifestyles tax-free, tighter inheritance taxes to prevent what he called "a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth," and a rollback of corporate tax rates to pre-Trump levels.

He also proposed that the federal government take a direct ownership stake in artificial intelligence companies — a "national public equity fund" that, he wrote, would ensure every American owns a piece of the AI-driven economy being built around them.

"It's time for an economic reset for America," Newsom wrote.

The announcement came one day after an influential California health care union defied Newsom and most major liberal interest groups, confirming it would take a proposed 5% one-time tax on the assets of in-state billionaires to November voters. Newsom opposes that measure. His stated rationale: wealth is mobile, and billionaires will simply leave.

"You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do," he wrote. "Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place."

The logic has a certain internal consistency — California has more billionaires than any other state, and any state-level tax creates flight risk for a disproportionate share of the base. But critics note that Newsom's preferred alternative, a federal wealth tax, faces even longer odds in the current Congress.

Khanna, whose district covers the heart of Silicon Valley and who is also weighing a presidential campaign, wasn't having it.

"It's not going to pass muster to say, 'Well, when we were fighting to have a billionaire tax to save healthcare for 3 million Californians, I sided with the billionaires, but in the future, I want to tax these billionaires,'" Khanna told reporters Friday.

The exchange crystallizes a genuine fault line in Democratic politics: whether to pursue achievable, imperfect policy now, or hold out for federal reform that may never materialize. For Khanna — who backed the California measure while Newsom aligned with tech donors opposed to it — the timing of Newsom's national conversion is telling.

The Silicon Valley donors who organized opposition to the state ballot measure, a group that has included some of the biggest names in Bay Area tech, are now the nominal targets of Newsom's federal proposal. The Dissent has previously reported on the coordinated Signal-chat campaign those donors ran against the California measure earlier this year.

Newsom's embrace of wealth-tax rhetoric also marks a notable shift in the national landscape. When Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren centered her 2020 presidential campaign around a 2% wealth tax, she struggled to build momentum even in a Democratic primary. Newsom — long regarded as a centrist on fiscal policy despite his reputation as a liberal — is now staking out a more aggressive position, suggesting the political ground has moved.

Whether his federal proposals can outlast the campaign trail is another question. A national minimum tax on net worth would require an act of Congress and likely a Supreme Court fight. In the meantime, California's ballot measure — the one Newsom is working to defeat — will be decided by voters in November.