Opinion | Gavin Newsom: ‘We Failed on the Border’

As it relates to health, yeah, I’m proud of that, because I believe in universal health care. Others may say it; I did it. First state in the country, regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status. I promised that. I promoted it. I ran three times on it. I did it when I was mayor. People knew who I am. We failed on the border. We need to own up to that. Largest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere in my state. Spent a billion-plus dollars to do migrant centers — try to put a lid on things and was quite critical, but I tried to do it in a respectful way of the Biden administration. We failed on the border. We have to own that. But we’ve also failed as a consequence because of that to lead the comprehensive immigration question. We’ve got to get the border right. Then we can get to that. But I say that to make the point: You don’t need sanctuary policy in this country if we have a federal government doing its job. In the absence of that, we’ll deal with the cards that are dealt. And one of the cards that are dealt is people are going to end up in the emergency room, and you’re going to pay for that one way or another. I want to keep people out of the emergency room. I want to keep people healthier. I want to keep people safer. And that’s why we’ve advanced these values. Trump uses it as a cudgel. He uses very effectively to attack our party and our values. But I’ll stand up to it. And good people can disagree. But I’m very mindful. Why did Democrats fail on the border? Because we didn’t own up to the reality. We didn’t take responsibility. But beneath it, what happened? Joe Biden was not a guy who didn’t know that you shouldn’t have chaos at the border. You sent down National Guardsmen at a level of why for policy. I think the why was what happened. Everything’s in reaction to Trump — sort of the overreach of Trump. We come back, and we then move 180 degrees in the opposite direction, when we didn’t need to or shouldn’t have. And you saw a mass migration across the country. It was hardly unique in the United States. You had all of the shock and supply-chain shock and issues around Covid coming out of Covid, et cetera, that created even more pressure. And then it became overwhelming. And then what also became overwhelming was this notion that we can’t do it without Congress. And then Biden then proved Trump right by doing it without Congress. In the last six months, we saw a significant decline in border crossings under the Biden administration that ultimately led to benefits for Trump, claiming he did it all at the end when he really closed the gap marginally. But we paid a huge price for that, and we picked up, I think, the wrong lessons in the midterms. We outperformed in the midterms. And this was a time when all Democratic governors were critical. You saw publicly, and then they did better than we all expected. And they said, why don’t we just focus on these other issues? Mistake.