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While California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom blames President Donald Trump’s actions in Iran for the price of gas, critics are calling him out for “insane” climate policies as the state’s prices at the pump soar significantly above the national average.
On Tuesday, Newsom, who is widely considered a top contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, took to X to slam “Trump’s war with Iran” over gas prices.
Newsom wrote that “Americans will pay $1.5 BILLION MORE at the gas pump just this week because of Donald Trump’s war with Iran.” He added that California “will continue using the tools we’ve spent years developing to help fight price spikes and lessen the blow from Trump’s recklessness.”
In response, Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for California governor, slammed Newsom, saying, “California has the highest gas taxes and fees in America.”
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“Gavin Newsom is trying to shift blame,” said Hilton, “and he’s blaming these insane gas prices in California, $5.49, $5.69, heading to $6, on the war in Iran. It’s not the war in Iran, because in the rest of the country, they don’t have $5.49, they have $3 gas.”
“It’s entirely because of Gavin Newsom’s insane climate dogma that we have the highest gas taxes in the country,” he continued.
Hilton called on Newsom to end his national book tour and to immediately “suspend the gas tax.”
At approximately $5.33 per gallon, California has by far the highest average gas prices in the U.S., according to AAA. California gas prices significantly exceed those in the next two highest-priced states, Washington and Hawaii, which have average prices of $4.72 and $4.69 per gallon, respectively. Meanwhile, the national average in the U.S. is $3.57 per gallon.
California has the highest gas tax, at roughly 70 cents per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In a 2025 opinion piece on Fox News Digital, Hilton wrote that “California’s sky-high gas prices” are the “direct result of 15 years of one-party Democratic rule.”
He added that “Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and every other leading Democrat in the state have been cheerleaders for this ‘war on fossil fuels,’ endlessly bragging about ‘leading the world’ on climate change.”
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Hilton is not the only one criticizing Newsom’s oil and gas policies.
Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles County GOP, called Newsom’s take “a textbook case of projection, pointing fingers at others while his own record is riddled with mismanagement and failure.”
“Californians have seen the cost of gas be higher than the rest of the USA for reasons having nothing to do with President Trump. He has driven supply down by banishing producers while not fixing infrastructure with gas tax money as promised,” Hoge told Fox News Digital, adding, “We all know that Gavin Newsom has moved on to campaigning for president in spite of his atrocious record at home.”
On Wednesday, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X that “California is KILLING their economy!”
The secretary wrote that while Newsom “continues to close refineries & drive up gas prices for California,” the department approved over 6,000 drilling permits “to advance [Trump’s] American Energy Dominance Agenda & lower gas prices nationwide.”
Chevron President Andy Walz also recently sounded the alarm, warning California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state regulators that newly proposed “cap-and-invest” amendments are a death knell for California’s remaining refineries.
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The California Air Resources Board is aiming to make companies cleaner by aggressively lowering the cap on how much total pollution is allowed in the state. Specifically, the board is proposing to pull 118.3 million allowances out of the state’s market between 2027 and 2030 and has more recently increased its carbon reduction target to 90% by 2045.
The energy giant warns the move will kill more than half a million jobs, threaten national security and spike gas prices by more than a dollar per gallon — all to fuel a state-run “shakedown” of the energy sector — in a letter addressed to Newsom and obtained by The California Globe.
“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry to this misguided program,” Chevron President Andy Walz wrote.
“This regulation will increase transportation and aviation fuel prices for consumers. It will risk significant job losses, including many high-paying union jobs, while reducing funding for essential public services,” he continued, adding that “it will upend California’s fuels market and threaten critical energy and national security assets.”
In the same vein, Tim Stewart, a spokesperson for the U.S. Oil & Gas Association, told Fox News Digital that “California’s energy malaise is beginning to infect the other western states’ economies and unless there is a course change immediately, we will all feel the pain of decades of horribly bad California energy policy led by Governor Newsom.”
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“California’s gross mismanagement of its energy production and distribution economy is becoming a national security issue, and it now impacts all of us,” Stewart continued, adding that in addition to this, “agriculture, manufacturing, housing, the financial system is all impacted.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way, and Governor Newsom knows it,” said Stewart. “He also knows that no matter how hard he tries – he can’t pin this on Trump or our industry. The public isn’t buying it anymore.”
Fox Business’ Kristen Altus contributed to this report.
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