You know what? We’re just going to say the sentence. One sentence. And then we’re going to spend the next thousand words sitting with it, because honestly, one sentence is the whole article.
California taxpayers are paying for gender transition services — hormones, surgeries, counseling, the full menu — for illegal aliens.
That’s it. That’s the story. Read it again. We’ll wait.
Okay, welcome back. Did the sentence get any less insane the second time? No? We didn’t think so.
Let’s break it down into the three pieces that make this one of the most perfectly California sentences ever constructed by a functioning government agency.
Piece one: California taxpayers. Those are the people who live in California and earn money and pay the highest state income taxes in the country. The people who, according to U-Haul, are the single largest group of interstate migrants in America, because they can’t afford to live in the state they were born in. The people who pay eight dollars for a gallon of gas, get their power shut off during heat waves, and watch their cities burn down every summer while the fire department tries to figure out where all the money went.
Piece two: Gender transition services. Hormones. Surgeries. Psychological support. The kind of medical care that costs, conservatively, tens of thousands of dollars per person per year. The kind of medical care that a working-class Californian with a job and a mortgage and two kids in public school could not afford for themselves or their family without mortgaging the house. The kind of medical care that veterans — actual American citizens who served this country in uniform — have been begging the VA to cover for years, while the VA hands them a pamphlet and a six-month waiting list.
Piece three: Homeless illegal aliens. People who are in this country illegally. Who also don’t have homes. Two conditions that, in any rational universe, would suggest that the immediate priorities might be, oh, we don’t know — deportation? Shelter? Food? Basic medical care? The kind of medical care that keeps people alive, as opposed to the kind of medical care that reshapes their secondary sex characteristics?
But no. Not in California. In California, Sacramento looked at this population and said: You know what these people really need? Elective surgery. And we’re going to pay for it. With money we took from a single mom in Fresno who’s working two jobs and can’t afford her kid’s braces.
Let’s talk about that single mom for a second. Because she’s the one funding this. Not “the state.” Not “California.” Not “taxpayers” as an abstract concept. Her. The waitress in Bakersfield. The contractor in Riverside. The teacher in Modesto who hasn’t had a real raise in five years and just got told she has to teach gender ideology to kindergartners or lose her job.
She writes the check. Every April 15. She sends money to Sacramento, and Sacramento takes that money and decides that the highest and best use of it is to pay for a hormone prescription for a guy who snuck across the border three months ago and is currently sleeping in a tent encampment in downtown Los Angeles. Because to the bureaucrats in Sacramento, that is a moral priority.
Meanwhile — and this is the part that should make every American’s head explode — there is a veteran. Let’s call him what he is: an American. Born here. Served here. Deployed somewhere terrible for a year, came home with injuries the VA can’t seem to fix, and is now sleeping under a freeway overpass somewhere in the same city. He served his country. He paid his taxes. He wore the uniform. And the state of California — the state he defended with his life, theoretically — has decided he doesn’t rate. He gets a sleeping bag and a lecture about substance abuse. The guy who crossed the border last Tuesday gets surgery.
What do you call that, exactly? Because “priorities” feels inadequate. “Moral inversion” is closer. “Insanity” is probably the most honest word. But the technical political-science term is “this is what happens when a state is governed by people who hate the people who live there.”
And let’s be really clear about who’s running this show. This isn’t some rogue county clerk. This isn’t a clerical error in a Sacramento budget office. This is the official, stated policy of the state of California. The budget line exists. It was debated. It was voted on. It was signed. Real legislators — with real names and real office phone numbers — looked at this line item and said yes. Fund it. Write the check. This is what we’re going to do with the public’s money.
Now ask yourself: when was the last time California ran a surplus? When was the last time California balanced its budget without begging the federal government for a bailout? When was the last time California fixed a pothole or finished a high-speed rail project or paid for a single piece of public infrastructure on time and under budget?
Right. But they found the money for this.
Here’s the thing about California that nobody wants to say out loud: the people running the state have stopped pretending they’re serving the people who live there. The budget isn’t a reflection of what Californians want. It’s a reflection of what the activist NGO class has decided Californians are going to pay for, whether they like it or not. And anyone who objects is a bigot. Anyone who asks basic questions — like, hey, should we maybe house the homeless before we medically transition them? — gets branded a monster and run out of polite society.
Meanwhile the people who actually live there are voting with their moving trucks. Texas and Florida and Tennessee are absorbing Californians by the hundreds of thousands. People who built businesses in California. People who raised families in California. People who loved California. And now they’re standing in line at a DMV in Nashville or Austin or Sarasota, shaking their heads, wondering when exactly their home state went insane.
The answer is: Sacramento doesn’t care. Sacramento has made a calculation. The people leaving are taxpayers. The people coming in are dependents. Dependents vote the way you tell them to vote. Taxpayers ask questions. So as the state hollows out, the political math actually gets better for the people in charge — as long as they can keep the subsidy train running.
But this one might be a bridge too far. Because there’s a difference between subsidizing bad policy and publishing a press release that says, in so many words, we are going to pay for elective surgery for people who are in this country illegally while your son sleeps on a sidewalk. That’s not subtle. That’s not hiding the ball. That’s a dare. That’s Sacramento looking at the rest of the country and saying: what are you going to do about it?
Here’s what we’re going to do about it. We’re going to talk about it. Every day. In every newsletter. On every podcast. Every time a politician from California shows up on a cable news show, we’re going to ask him about this line item. Every time a California Democrat runs for national office, we’re going to put this sentence on a billboard with her picture under it.
California taxpayers are paying for gender transition services for homeless illegal aliens.
One sentence. The whole article. And we’re not going to let the country forget it.
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