It’s a difficult time to be an honest Californian.

The state faces the highest cost of living in America and some of the highest taxes, levied to fund a massive welfare state. For that investment, taxpayers do not get less poverty or a better quality of life, but rather an epidemic of fraud — with an estimated $180 billion or more stolen under Gov. Gavin Newsom alone.

Consider this a warning for America as Democrats look to export the state’s model nationwide. Fraud is not merely an enforcement problem, as the Left wishes to believe. It is the inevitable result of policies that ignore human nature and expand government beyond its constitutional and moral bounds.

America’s Founders understood an essential truth: People are not angels. They are shaped by human nature and by incentives. Government can only influence the latter, and California’s handout economy is incentivizing joblessness, fraud and the breakdown of social order.

DAVID MARCUS: BLUE STATE FRAUD SCANDALS HIGHLIGHT SHOCKING REALITY IN RED STATES

Take the state’s unemployment insurance program, among the most expansive in the country. With no time limit on benefits, no work requirements and minimal oversight, it has turned joblessness into a vocation and the program into a magnet for opportunistic criminals. At one point, there were more applications for jobless benefits than Californians over the age of 18. One rapper bragged in verse, “You gotta sell cocaine, I can just file a claim.”

The pattern repeats across programs. In the state’s hospice system, hundreds of sham facilities — some with addresses at burrito stands and auto body shops — have received millions for nonexistent dying patients. Medi-Cal’s budget has ballooned following Newsom’s push for “guaranteed health care” for all, only to lose around a quarter of its spending to fraud each year.

This is a moral collapse, and not just on the part of the fraudsters. California’s government is betraying the fundamental duty of any government, which is to protect law-abiding citizens and the fruits of their labor. By transferring those fruits to the unscrupulous, it forces middle-class taxpayers to pay twice — first through punishing taxes, and again through degraded services and a worsening quality of life.

CALIFORNIA MAN ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY STEALING MILLIONS IN HOMELESS FUNDS

Our Founders also understood another truth on display in California: The bigger a government grows, the more self-serving it becomes.

Consider how San Francisco spends more than $100,000 per homeless person per year on “eradicating homelessness,” with few improvements to show for it. It’s because the funds go to a shady network of nonprofits with a clear and perverse incentive. Why would these groups solve homelessness when it would mean the money stops flowing?

It is equally unsurprising that dozens of California public employees have been charged with fraud or embezzlement since 2024. Even the governor’s own chief of staff faced corruption and fraud charges, only to receive a $50,000 payout for unused vacation time after she resigned.

CALIFORNIA DEM LAWMAKERS PROPOSES BILL TO DECRIMINALIZE WELFARE FRAUD BELOW $25K OVER ADMINISTRATIVE ERRORS

Most revealing of all is the state’s response. Instead of combating the fraud, Democrats in the state Assembly want to make it harder to expose and prosecute.

One proposal, the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” named after the journalist who exposed the Somali day care fraud in Minnesota, would allow fraudsters to conceal their identities while criminalizing efforts to expose them online. Another would lower penalties by raising the threshold for felony welfare fraud from $950 to $25,000.

Whose side are these lawmakers on? Certainly not the taxpayer, but not the needy either. Even in a world with zero fraud, their welfare schemes would only subsidize poverty and homelessness, not lift people out of them.

RED STATE GOVERNOR TOUTS MEDICAID SAVINGS AS MINNESOTA GRAPPLES WITH WIDESPREAD FRAUD ALLEGATIONS

Wisconsin faced a similar problem in 1996. The state was spending enormously on anti-poverty programs with few results. So it began requiring recipients to search for work and created new incentives for the welfare bureaucracy: Counties would be allocated funds not based on the number of recipients, but on the number of recipients placed in jobs and taken off benefits.

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This led to a swift reduction in poverty and a cascade of welfare reforms across dozens of states. These policies succeed today because they acknowledge human nature and incentivize the values of hard work, honesty and self-reliance. They understand that government is not a parent — that its capacity to help is limited but its capacity to harm is not.

Thomas Jefferson once warned about a government intent on “wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

That’s the California system — but it’s never too late to improve it, nor is it particularly difficult. The state can do more by doing less: shrinking its welfare programs, allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money, and fostering the virtues that sustain a republic.

We won’t hold our breath. But for the rest of America, California’s predicament is our choice. We will either learn from its example or repeat it nationwide.

Rob Noel is a speechwriter who serves as president of Washington Writers Network.

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Claims of Democrat naysayers notwithstanding, President Trump understandably saw a need to take military action in Iran. Allowing a regime that has called the United States “the Great Satan,” and has promoted terror across the world for more than half a century, to have a nuclear weapon would pose an unacceptable threat to the American people.

But because roughly one-fifth of all global oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict has caused a temporary shortage of oil and gas. Thankfully, however, President Trump realizes that the solution to this real problem for American families lies right here at home — by increasing production of reliable, affordable American energy.

The President recently determined that “domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity,” along with coal and gas transmission and supply chains and energy infrastructure, are “essential to the national defense” under the Defense Production Act. These determinations will allow for government purchases of important technology items, along with other actions “for the encouragement of exploration, development, and mining” of these vital natural resources.

STEVE MOORE: FIVE ENERGY TRUTHS THE MEDIA IGNORE AS AMERICA’S OIL BOOM BLUNTS THE IRAN WAR’S IMPACT

The President’s statements rightly noted that oil “fuels the nation’s armed forces, industrial base, and crucial infrastructure,” and that inadequate gas production and storage capacity “would leave the United States and its partners dangerously exposed in times of crisis.” Indeed, some Asian countries are having to implement work-from-home orders and four-day work weeks due to ongoing energy shortages. These developments overseas echo scenes from the oil crises of the 1970s — and we should work night and day to make sure they never happen on our shores.

Thankfully, President Trump has spent the past 15 months working to promote domestic energy production, including in the Last Frontier. On Day One of his second term, he signed an executive order overturning many onerous restrictions the Biden administration placed on energy development, as part of a strategy to unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential. 

As part of that energy dominance strategy, President Trump has promoted the Alaska LNG Pipeline on multiple occasions, including his 2025 State of the Union address. This major pipeline would facilitate the easy export of liquid natural gas to nations like Japan and South Korea, creating jobs in Alaska and making these countries less dependent on energy sources controlled by hostile powers. Action by Alaska’s Legislature in the coming days could help clear the way for this economically and strategically important project.

Congress has likewise acted to encourage energy exploration and dominance. Last year’s working families tax cuts act included provisions reducing the royalty rate for oil and gas extracted on federal lands, which will incentivize companies to purchase additional leases — and drill hundreds more wells. The law also required new rounds of onshore and offshore oil leases, including in Alaska.

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By contrast, the Biden administration worked to squelch energy production domestically, as part of its campaign to appease leftist climate activists. The last administration blocked access to areas required by federal law, and cancelled leases on Alaska’s Coastal Plain, which a judge called illegal.

The Biden administration’s actions didn’t end Americans’ need for affordable oil and gas. Instead, they just made us more dependent on hostile powers like Russia and Venezuela for our energy supply. But with Alaska alone holding proven reserves of 3.4 million barrels of oil and 125 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, it makes no sense for the United States to give money — not to mention crucial leverage — to foreign dictators when we have abundant, affordable energy resources here at home.

Thankfully, President Trump realizes what his predecessor did not. His latest determination under the Defense Production Act continues the efforts of the past year-plus. Individually and collectively, those actions will make Americans more secure, help bring down gas prices for hardworking families, and increase energy production and jobs in the Last Frontier and across America. 

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Since the battle with Iran began on February 28, there have been so many reports of “deals” with the rump regime atop the ruins of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it seems almost silly to respond to another one.

But Israeli journalist Amit Segal usually cross-checks all reports of deals — including the most recent one from Axios’ Barak Ravid — with senior Israeli officials, so I pay attention to Segal’s posts. On Wednesday, Segal quoted Ravid, posting on X:

“According to @BarakRavid the U.S. and Iran are at the closest point to an agreement since the war began. The framework includes:

STEVE FORBES: NO MORE DELUSIONS — AMERICA HAS TO FINISH THE JOB IN IRAN

That would be a terrible “deal,” one that would draw fierce criticism from the GOP’s Iran hawks who want President Trump to “finish the job” and do so in dramatic fashion.

The “end game” doesn’t have to be humiliation of the remnants of the rump regime atop the ruins of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps atop the shattered Iranian “government.” But they are “lunatics” as both President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called them — “insane in the head” Rubio added Tuesday from the White House press podium — and that’s generous.

The “leaders” left standing in Iran (the ones with the guns at least) are fanatical killers who cannot be trusted. The blockade should stay in place until full commercial traffic to every country not named Iran resumes through the Gulf. The repudiation of enrichment has to be complete and the remains of the highly enriched uranium, now buried under rubble at various sites after U.S. precision strikes, has to be dug up and turned over to us. The Iranian missile and drone programs must have caps on its numbers of missiles and their range, and those programs must be subject to a strict verification regime. Finally, the regime must turn on the internet for its people and turn off the money spigot for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

These are reasonable demands and the fanatics in Iran — unless they are irrational (they may be) — must see them as such. President Trump doesn’t surrender leverage. He’s got it. We have to hope he uses every ounce of it.

Special Envoys Steve Witckoff and Jared Kushner don’t want their names on a “second Munich agreement,” and they have walked away before. President Trump should not want to risk the victory he has won that is one for the ages by letting Iran off the floor.

I don’t believe anything, but worry about everything. Iran is finally cornered and desperate. Let’s pray that President Trump finishes off this radical and piratical regime and goes down in history as the the president who brought stability to the Middle East.