Gavin Newsom Attacks Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, ‘Extremist’ Federal Judges

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) attacked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Republican-appointed federal judges on Wednesday, lashing out after Abbott said mental health is a factor in school shootings, and cited California’s failed gun laws.

Abbott addressed a press conference with local, state, and federal officials in the wake of the shooting in an elementary school in the town of Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were murdered by an 18-year-old.

In his presentation, Abbott stressed the importance of mental health problems in driving mass shootings, and defended Texas gun laws against questions by reporters, noting that California, Chicago, and other Democrat-run jurisdictions had tough gun laws and still suffered from high levels of gun violence. Abbott also noted that the laws on rifle ownership had been in place for decades in Texas, and remained unchanged, yet mass shootings were a relatively recent phenomenon in the state.

Newsom, who has frequently attacked Texas and Florida in past tirades on social issues, claimed that he felt compelled to respond to Abbott and would not otherwise have mentioned the Texas governor. According to the Associated Press:

Shortly before Newsom held a news conference to tout his legislative efforts to strengthen gun laws in California, Abbott spoke about Tuesday’s carnage in Uvalde, Texas, and said the gunman “has to have evil in his heart.” Abbott talked about the mental health struggles of many in his state while calling out tough gun laws in California as ineffective.

Newsom, joined by legislative leaders, urged the public to “not give in to the cynicism and all the crap that you heard today at that press conference around evil and mental health.”

“That completely belies the fact that there’s only one nation on planet Earth that separates itself from all other nations and that’s the United States of America in the perversion of the Second Amendment” guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms, Newsom said.

“I wasn’t even going to bring him up. But Governor Abbott just name checked the state of California. I would caution them from doing that,” Newsom said. He noted that the gun mortality rate in Texas is much higher than California, citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Democrats are determined to attack Abbott, who is up for reelection this year. His Democrat opponent, failed 2018 Senate and 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, crashed the press concurrence on Wednesday and was ejected by police.

Newsom also attacked Republican appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as “extremists.” A three judge panel struck down California’s law against 18-to-20-year-olds buying semiautomatic rifles earlier this month by a 2-1 margin.

Newsom suggested that Judge Roger Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, and Judge Ryan Nelson, a Donald Trump appointee, were to blame for the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and in Uvalde, since both involved 18-year-olds using rifles in mass shootings. ““You can ask Judge Benitez about how he’s feeling about this last 10 days,” Newsom said. As for Nelson, “I wonder how he’s feeling right now (after) what happened in Buffalo and what happened in Texas.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.