Gavin Newsom manages to destroy almost everything he touches, but he does it with such panache.
Seriously, the man is pure poison for society, but like the character Lucifer Morningstar on the popular TV show, he comes off as charming and rakish, making the girls swoon.
What other politician could sleep with his best friend’s wife, declare himself an alcoholic and falsely claim to go to rehab, run a vineyard, say “clean and sober is one of the biggest damn mistakes this country ever made,” and still become a leading candidate for president?
The man is demonic, and yet another example just popped up thanks to Christopher Rufo.
It’s hardly the most important part of the story, but Gavin Newsom spent $189 million to buy digital tablets for 90,000 prisoners—or, more than $2,000 per tablet. He’s squandering taxpayer cash to give personal sex machines to every state prison inmate. https://t.co/9giORpNVua
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) May 13, 2026
Newsom is, because he is a Democrat, the criminals’ best friend. Disturbed by the fact that rapists, murderers, and child molesters weren’t having enough fun in prison, he gave every prisoner a tablet connected to the outside world so that they could peruse the web for porn and stalk their victims from inside.
And somebody sure made bank on it. The generic plastic tablets were distributed at a cost of $2,000 per tablet to the state. The prisoners paid nothing.
Under Governor Gavin Newsom, California has sought to transform its massive prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program. Newsom has placed a moratorium on all executions, transferred condemned prisoners to facilities across the state, dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row, and turned the notorious prison into a therapeutic center, with art, classrooms, a café, and podcast studios.
As part of this transformation, the Newsom administration approved a $189 million contract to provide new digital tablets—generic, flat-screen devices in a plastic shell—to every inmate in the state prison system, at “no cost” to offenders. The administration heralded the effort to replace inmates’ old tablets—which were piloted in 2018 and given to nearly all prisoners by 2023—as a step toward “digital equity” for “justice impacted” individuals, who could, in theory, use the devices to contact their families, consume “educational” content, and “learn new technology.”
As with all Newsom’s evil deeds, the justification is tailor made to appeal to AWFLs, while the reality is sleazy and corrupt to the core.
In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations. Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection.
When reached for comment, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the tablets were “tightly controlled education tools” that provided inmates with “access to the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime.”
But inmates told us a different story. For some, the devices have become personal sex machines. In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately “horny” criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer.
The idea that prisoners, who can get any illicit drug they want in prison, won’t use an internet connection for nefarious purposes because the rules forbid it is ludicrous. And no doubt Newsom and his cronies know that, but the lure of a scam and the political benefit of pleasing decarceration and criminal justice reformers is far greater than the potential satisfaction of protecting Californians.
The potential for abuse is obvious. The Newsom administration has made the tablet program universal, with no access-restrictions based on offense. And inmates, including child predators, can communicate with members of the public through their tablets, apparently with no age restrictions, at a cost of five cents per text message or 16 cents per minute of video.
In a recent case, Nathaniel Ray Diaz, who was convicted of committing sex crimes against a 12-year-old girl, allegedly used a prison-issued tablet to contact and exploit her from inside Avenal State Prison. Diaz allegedly told the girl to send him sexually explicit images, which he received through a co-conspirator. The girl reportedly told investigators that Diaz forced her to speak with him through the tablet “for hours, every day,” from the time she came home from school until the prison phones turned off at midnight.
Prosecutors alleged that, in total, Diaz made “thousands of calls” to the girl, violating a no-contact order and—by soliciting explicit photographs and exploiting a minor—committing additional child sex crimes. The Eastern District of California Attorney’s Office told us that Diaz is in custody awaiting trial.
Douglas Eckenrod, former deputy director of California’s adult parole operations, indicated that the Diaz case is only the tip of the iceberg. He was in the room as the state discussed expanding the tablet program after an initial test run, and had raised concerns about pornography, grooming, and other abuses. These were apparently brushed aside. Now, he says, there is no way to monitor the nearly 90,000 inmates in the state prison system who have access to taxpayer-funded devices.
Who could have guessed that something like this would happen, aside from every single sentient person on Earth who is not AWFL? Everybody involved knew it, and once it was proven to be a problem, they expanded the program.
Democrats swoon when they hear any words that convey the idea of compassion, and look away whenever the results of their policies reveal themselves to be yet another extension of the evil and dysfunction that pervades our society.
That’s how you get California, the land of “good intentions” and evil results. As long as you can spin things, everybody applauds.
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