Stop the Fluff, Gavin Newsom

For most of the past year, much of the political left waved off the fight against government waste as a right-wing obsession. This month, Governor Gavin Newsom gathered a room full of tech billionaires to talk about efficiency, and we have one piece of advice for him. Stop the fluff, and start with the fraud already sitting in plain sight.

This month, Newsom convened his California Breakthrough Advisory Group at Turo's San Francisco headquarters. Tech executives (including Ron Conway, Chris Larsen, Jeff Lawson, and Jason Wheeler) and leaders from companies such as Anduril, Coinbase, Instacart, and Snap presented ways to streamline government operations. Their priorities echoed past efforts: improving hiring, modernizing contracting, reducing DMV lines, and preventing fraud.

Newsom emphasizes that his approach differs from efforts in Washington. "We're not blindly slashing programs and taking an axe to our workforce," he said. "We're taking a strategic approach to make California more efficient and effective." Unlike Elon Musk's team, which focused on mass layoffs and public metrics, Newsom is pursuing a consultant-driven strategy involving tech executives, pilot projects, and initiatives such as streamlined job classifications and faster software licensing.

Nick has argued for months that rooting out government waste should be the least partisan issue in America, so a Democratic governor warming to the cause is a welcome development. The trouble is California's actual track record. The state failed to uncover its largest recent fraud, which was instead exposed by Nick Shirley, who then faced criticism from state officials.

Nick investigated California hospices that billed the state for non-existent patients, identifying approximately $170 million in suspicious charges within an industry that saw enrollment increase by about 1,000 percent. Chairman James Comer later estimated the Los Angeles hospice fraud at $3.5 billion. In response, Newsom's press office criticized Nick's reporting, and the Assembly passed AB 2624, which we refer to as the "Stop Nick Shirley Act," by a vote of 57-19. Authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, the bill is now in the Senate, awaiting potential approval by Newsom.

Newsom is selling efficiency to the public while state spending keeps climbing, up more than $100 billion since 2019, even as his own analysts warn the revenue boom could collapse. There is no shortage of places for his billionaires to look, from the hospice billing the state still cannot police to the $126 billion high-speed rail project that still has no working line between two cities. A government confident in its own books has no reason to fear a journalist who reads them.

The most direct way for Newsom to demonstrate his commitment is to clearly state that he will not sign legislation that penalizes those who expose fraud in California.

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For decades, Washington has run on a simple rule. Send the money first, and ask who got it later. This month, the House of Representatives voted to repeal that rule, passing 11 bills that would require the government to verify a payment before it goes out the door. It is a good week for taxpayers, and a quiet admission of how low the bar had fallen.

The House passed the package on June 11, after the Oversight Committee spent a year showing how federal money disappears in state-run programs. The main bills focus on fixing the basics. The Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act would stop agencies from sending checks they already know are risky. Another bill would make the Treasury check who gets the money by fixing the old Do Not Pay system. There’s also the ZOMBIE Act, which would have agencies look for improper payments all the time, not just after the money is gone.

The Government Accountability Office says the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion to fraud each year, and has paid out about $2.8 trillion by mistake since 2003. That’s more than most federal agencies’ entire budgets. This money is taken from programs meant for people who really qualify, and most of it is never recovered. These bills focus on stopping fraud at the easiest point: before the payment goes out.

The Committee’s own statements make the main point clear. Chairman James Comer said the new laws came after his team uncovered fraud in Minnesota, California, and Ohio, including $9 billion taken from Minnesota’s social services. These investigations started with Nick, who visited empty daycare centers in Minnesota and walked through California hospices that billed the state for fake patients. Lawmakers used this work to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and now write new bills. Once again, the key evidence came from one journalist with a camera and and a badass anti-fraud hoodie (which you can purchase here).

The Senate needs to act on these bills, and the government should start doing what any business does automatically: check a payment before sending it. Until that happens, the fraud Nick exposed will continue, and those who uncovered it will stay ahead of those supposed to prevent it.

Usually, when we report on the government, it’s about someone wasting money. This time, it’s just about whether Washington can handle the simple job of helping people report scams easily.

On Monday, Senators Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire and Rick Scott from Florida introduced the ReportScams.gov Act. This bill would create one federal website for Americans to report scams and would require the government to come up with a national plan to help victims. Right now, the process is confusing. The FTC has one site, the Treasury deals with tax fraud, and the FBI has its own cybercrime portal. At a hearing this spring, officials from the FBI and FTC even disagreed about who people should contact.

The FBI reports that cyber-enabled crime cost Americans about $21 billion in 2025, based on over a million complaints, a record number. Under the bill, a single report would be automatically routed to the appropriate agencies, and the person filing it would receive a tracking number and a list of recipients.

A bill from both a Democrat and a Republican that makes reporting fraud easier seems like common sense, but it shouldn’t be so unusual. Still, a website only helps if something happens after you hit submit. If complaints just end up in the same offices that already lose track of them, it’s only a partial solution.

Nick grew his audience by doing what this portal is supposed to do: documenting fraud and showing it to people who can do something about it. If the government wants people to report fraud, it should make the process easy and actually follow up.

Do you think Washington will actually do something about these reports? Let us know what you think.