sacramento

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have earned at least $11 million since he took office, with most of their income coming from wineries, restaurants and other investments, according to tax returns from 2019 through their most recent filings for 2024.

The tax records show the couple has earned between $1.4 million and $3.5 million per year, putting them in the upper echelon of Americans when it comes to annual income.

Newsom allowed reporters on Thursday to view four years of the couple’s jointly filed tax returns after receiving criticism for not disclosing his filings since he last released the information for the tax year 2020.

The release of the tax records comes just weeks after Newsom accused the Department of Justice of launching — at President Trump’s request — a baseless and politically motivated investigation into him and his wife, including her business interests and charity work. The governor said the probes, which federal officials have not confirmed, were a personal vendetta launched because he’s considering a run for president in 2028.

Siebel Newsom leads the Representation Project, a nonprofit that advocates for gender equity through film and education programs, and Girls Club Entertainment, a for-profit production company she owns that holds the copyrights to her documentaries. The nonprofit has faced criticism for accepting donations from companies that lobby the governor, including Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and AT&T.

The tax records released Thursday showed that her salary from the Representation Project was $145,000 to $150,000 annually from 2021 though 2024, similar to prior years. While Girls Club paid her $100,000 in 2021, and $11,700 in 2022, she did not report any income from the production company in the two years that followed.

The governor’s office, in a summary of the tax returns provided to reporters, stated that financial documents contradict “the FALSE right-wing claims that the Newsoms ‘enriched themselves’ through new ventures and nonprofit organizations.”

The memo stated that their income has declined since Newsom became governor. The tax records also show that Girls Club Entertainment has been losing money in recent years.

The governor signed a law during his first year in office to require presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to appear on the primary ballot. Democrats passed the law in response to Trump’s refusal to make the information public.

Less than six months later, the California Supreme Court struck down the portion that required presidential candidates to comply with the law. Gubernatorial candidates are still required to disclose their tax filings during election season.

Though tax returns became a flash point in the California vs. Trump political saga, Democrats have for decades demanded that candidates for governor and president release their income tax filings.

Presidential candidates dating back to the Nixon administration routinely shared their filings, with only President Ford and Trump refusing to do so. Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican opponents also declined to share their tax returns before the 2010 and 2014 California gubernatorial elections.

Newsom released his tax returns during his campaigns for governor in 2018 and 2022, again in 2020 and before he beat a recall election in 2021. California candidates, elected officials, judges and some public employees also file annual economic interest statements.

“In the interest of transparency, he’s now voluntarily making all remaining filed tax returns available — going beyond what the law requires — as part of his longstanding commitment to transparency,” said Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement.

The governor and his wife put their investments in a blind trust when he took office. Their earnings, which have totaled more than $1 million per year since at least 2011, stem from investments in wineries, restaurants, bars, hotels and hospitality management companies based in San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Lake Tahoe, according to economic interest disclosures filed with the state.

The latest batch of tax returns covers 2021 through 2024. Reporters were allowed to view, but not copy, more than 700 pages of tax records at the governor’s office in Sacramento on Thursday. Their 2025 tax returns were not available because, as he has done most years, the governor filed for an extension with the Internal Revenue Service and he doesn’t expect to file until October.

The couple’s reported income was the highest in 2021, when they sold their home in Kentfield, a wealthy enclave in Marin County, for $5.9 million. The Newsoms reported receiving more than $55,000 in rent for leasing out the home that same year, but declared an overall loss for tax purposes of $70,000 due to their mortgage payments, taxes, legal fees and depreciation.

The family previously moved to a mansion in Fair Oaks that they purchased for $3.7 million in 2019 following a brief residence at the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Sacramento.

The family kept the Fair Oaks home and purchased another $9.1-million estate in Marin County in 2024, where they primarily live and their four children attend school. Newsom and his wife also spend time in Fair Oaks while working at the state Capitol.

During those four years, Newsom and Siebel Newsom paid a high of $1,253,187 in federal income taxes in 2021, and a low of $488,821 in 2023. Their state tax income bill ranged from $34,307 to $213,331 during that time. The annual property tax bills hovered between $48,000 and $64,300 over that span.

The governor’s income included his government salary, which ranged from $167,647 in 2021 to $192,087 in 2024.

Newsom also was paid more than $150,000 during that period as an author. In recent years, Newsom has published a book for children with dyslexia and a memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry.”

The tax returns showed the family paid from $154,000 to almost $200,000 each year for household employees from 2021 through 2024. The returns showed that they paid for Social Security coverage, Medicare and the state’s unemployment benefits fund as part of those expenses.

The governor and his family donated more than $200,000 to charity from 2021 to 2024. While most of those donations were in cash, they also gave $4,900 in “Armani Business Wear” to the Oakland nonprofit organization Restorative Justice, and toys, furniture, appliances, books and other goods to Goodwill in Sacramento.

Among their listed expenses in 2021 was $3,542 in storage costs for silver and platinum holdings. Previously, the couple made nearly a half-million dollars trading silver bars in 2011 alone.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom was frustrated.

She was standing behind her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, at a February press conference to celebrate a new bill that would give Planned Parenthood emergency funds. A throng of women’s advocates, including herself, had spoken about how the law would help women access healthcare. But now reporters were asking a barrage of off-topic questions, from the California High Speed Rail to the 2028 Olympics.

She paced, she swayed, she laughed with displeasure. Finally, she stepped closer to her husband and gently nudged him aside. She found it “incredulous,” she said, that they had assembled all these allies only for the reporters to ask about other issues.

“This happens over and over and over and over again,” she said as Newsom smiled awkwardly. “You wonder why we have such a horrific war on women in this country and that these guys are getting away with it. Because you don’t seem to care. So I just offer that with love.”

All of a sudden, Siebel Newsom herself was the news. One of Sacramento’s top female journalists, Ashley Zavala, shot back on X that reporters were just doing their jobs and the way they were treated “was not normal.” Right-wing media blasted out headlines from “Gavin Newsom’s wife scolds reporters” to “Gavin Newsom’s wife slams reporters for ‘horrific war on women’ in extraordinary rant.”

The scene underscores Siebel Newsom’s predicament as her husband positions himself as Trump’s chief antagonist and prepares for a possible 2028 White House run.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom with California Surgeon General Diana Ramos.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

She came to Sacramento with a mission to speak up for women, calling herself “first partner” to signal she would carry on the theme of her work as a documentary filmmaker and nonprofit leader: dismantling gender norms. But as her husband raises his national profile with a podcast, a memoir and daily trolling of President Trump, she finds herself under mounting scrutiny.

In June, Newsom accused Trump of weaponizing the Department of Justice to launch a politically motivated attack on his spouse after federal agents knocked on the doors of the Newsoms’ friends and former employees, asking about Siebel Newsom’s taxes and nonprofit businesses.

“To get me, he’s coming after my wife,” Newsom said.

A federal source said the investigation began not with Trump, but after federal officials spoke to whistleblowers in Sacramento. Whatever the origin or merits of the probe, Siebel Newsom has long faced questions about her finances — specifically her nonprofits’ partial reliance on donations from companies that lobby the governor, a strategy that does not violate California law but raises concerns about the influence of large corporations in Sacramento.

Her decision to use the title “first partner” and her work “deconstructing” gender are also attracting criticism from the right in the post-#MeToo era as many Americans chafe against what they perceive as radical attempts to undermine traditional values and policing of what they say and do.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks on at his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

(Mario Tama / Getty Images)

To Siebel Newsom, the critiques of her work and the federal probe are part of a broader hounding of women who enter the public sphere. When federal agents targeted her associates, she was promoting “Miss Representation: Rise Up,” her new film examining the role technology plays in fueling what she describes as “the rising backlash against women’s progress.”

“We are seeing young women hold themselves back from wanting to pursue careers … not just political leadership, and it’s extremely disturbing,” Siebel Newsom told CNN in June. “It is a backlash, a backslide, and it is happening at an unprecedented scale, where ultimately we are silencing women’s voices.”

She disagreed with those who say scrutiny is the price of admission for being in public life. “Women and girls deserve to be protected,” she said. “Anyone aspiring to a public service career deserves to be safe. It should be fundamental.”

Untangling legitimate political criticism from deeply ingrained gender bias is not easy. Women in the public eye are frequently held to a different standard than men. But some political experts question whether a woman who refuses to stand on the sidelines — raising her voice on radioactive culture war issues and benefiting in part from her marital status to fund her nonprofits — can reasonably expect to be excluded from the rough and tumble of her husband’s political life.

Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and political commentator, said Siebel Newsom had been subjected to heightened public scrutiny for years. “That I think is likely fair,” she said, “in the sense that she has said that she’s very much a partner of the governor, and she has used this platform to advocate for causes that she cares about.”

Still, Levinson said, Siebel Newsom’s availing herself of the public forum did not mean she had violated the law.

“Does the fact that she has created and run nonprofits that receive behested contributions from Gov. Newsom put her and her actions in a different spotlight?” she said. “Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean that she’s doing anything nefarious. It just means that their life and their finances and their jobs are a little bit more complicated than other first families.”

Raised in an affluent suburb in Marin County, Siebel Newsom, 52, grew up in privilege. Her father was an investment manager and prominent GOP donor, her mother a co-founder of the Bay Area Discovery Museum.

After studying Latin American studies at Stanford and volunteering in Ecuador and Africa, she returned to Stanford to earn an MBA. Then she moved to L.A. to try to break into Hollywood. She got small parts in “Mad Men” and “Rent,” but has said she “was typecast as a trophy wife and kind of put into this box.”

That sparked her interest in getting behind the camera.

Around the time she married Newsom in 2008 and got pregnant with her first child, she began work on “Miss Representation,” her debut 2011 film that examines how mainstream culture limits female potential and power by focusing on youth, beauty and sexuality.

When Newsom was elected governor, she announced she would eschew the traditional title of “first lady.”

The “first partner” title, she has said, is not just gender inclusive and gender expansive. “It disrupts some of the male-coded language we associate with leadership, versus a ‘lady’ who sits on the sidelines.”

Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Over the last 15 years, Siebel Newsom has worked on a series of documentaries and founded nonprofits focused on gender equity, the Representation Project and California Partners Project.

“She walks the walk,” said Amy Ziering, a documentary filmmaker whose films Siebel Newsom helped produce. She did not take the role lightly, Ziering said, noting she watched cuts and took notes, made introductions and brought people to screenings. The fact that Siebel Newsom kept pressing women’s issues as her husband became governor, Ziering said, reflected her integrity.

“She’s not diminishing her beliefs, her values, her principles or any other kind of long-term goals” Ziering said. “She shows up, ‘This is what I believe,’ and maybe it’s not politically efficacious to believe this right now, or to say ‘I believe it’ … but she does.”

In 2022, Siebel Newsom took on another public role, testifying in Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial.

“She did not have to do that, she could have been Jane Doe,” Ziering said. “That’s about showing up for other women and for all sexual assault survivors.”

Cristina Garcia, a former assemblywoman who represented southeast L.A. and worked with Siebel Newsom on women’s legislation, said she thought Siebel Newsom would be a target no matter what.

“But I think she sees the power that she has, and it’s like, why should she just sit in the background?” Garcia said. “Why shouldn’t she use her power to uplift women and children … these things she’s been really passionate about?”

In Sacramento and across liberal California, Siebel Newsom’s ideas on women and gender are relatively mainstream.

But as the 2028 election looms, conservatives have dredged up old clips, highlighting Siebel Newsom’s comments about parenting and deconstructing gender roles to portray her as “radical” and “woke.”

In one video, Siebel Newsom said that when she reads to her children she changes the protagonist’s gender from “he” to “she” to show women matter and can center a story.

In another, she raised concerns about boys being exposed to “alt-right socialization online that we know is very, very dangerous.” She and her husband, she noted, were alarmed to find their son had encountered misogynist influencer Andrew Tate while watching sports online.

Some conservatives have noted, with glee, that Siebel Newsom could be a liability for her husband as he seeks national office.

“Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the very avatar of Democrat Woman,” a New York Post columnist wrote. “Haughty, hectoring and pleased with herself, she is single-handedly wrecking her hen-pecked husband Gavin’s lofty political ambitions.”

But former state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Oxnard) pushed back on the idea that Siebel Newsom was some kind of strident activist or woke scold. After working with Siebel Newsom on equal pay and bringing more women onto corporate boards, she said Siebel Newsom was adept at working with corporations to find common ground and recognize what businesses need to be successful.

The scrutiny of Siebel Newsom comes as her husband tries to stake out a more centrist stance on some issues.

Last year, Newsom inspired the ire of some Democrats by launching a podcast in which he chatted with right-wing figures, such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. On its debut episode, Newsom distanced himself from his party’s left flank, calling the dismantling of police departments “lunacy.” Allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports, he said, was “deeply unfair.”

Asked why, Newsom told The Times his party had become out of touch with ordinary Americans. “They think we’re elite,” he said. “We talk down to people. We talk past people. They think we just think we’re smarter than other people, that we’re so judgmental and full of ourselves.”

On this point, it’s not clear whether the Newsoms are in sync.

For all her talk of women as allies, Siebel Newsom portrays conservative women who criticize other women as dupes manipulated by MAGA leaders.

“What’s interesting is that the far right really is using women to go after other women,” she said in June on the “Hysteria” podcast. “So I find it very intentional on their part that they have essentially sent the women out to humiliate, demean, ridicule, mock, silence another women. But that’s just the patriarchy, right? … And that’s what we have to fight.”

Still, she has voiced doubt about whether she would continue to go by “first partner” if her husband were elected president.

Asked in 2023, Siebel Newsom said she didn’t know if Americans were ready for a “first partner.”

“Sadly,” she said, “I don’t know if they are.”

But even as conservatives mock Siebel Newsom’s patrician “girl power” message and activist jargon, she shows few signs of backing down.

As she has taken “Miss Representation: Rise Up” to film festivals in New York and Washington, D.C., she has upped her call for more Big Tech regulation.

An advisor from the first partner’s office said Siebel Newsom had been an advocate for women and girls before she met Newsom. That was unlikely to change, they said, as she faced growing right-wing scrutiny or a federal investigation.

“There’s no strategy change here,” they said.

SACRAMENTO — The Dodgers scratched Shohei Ohtani from his scheduled Wednesday start against the Athletics and said he would instead start Friday at Dodger Stadium against the San Diego Padres.

The Dodgers did not immediately say why they delayed Ohtani’s start or who would start in his place Wednesday. Ohtani is in the lineup at designated hitter for Tuesday’s game.

This series marks the Dodgers’ lone scheduled visit to Sacramento during the A’s three-year stay here. The A’s plan to move into a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028, the next time the teams are scheduled to face off.

Ohtani would have been starting on his usual six days rest. However, with the Dodgers on a run of 13 consecutive games without an off day, pushing Ohtani back at some point would allow the Dodgers to better manage his workload.

He is 8-2 with a 1.58 earned-run average this season. Among National League pitchers with at least 70 innings, his ERA is bettered only by Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers (1.46).

Ohtani already has pitched 79-2/3 innings this season, his most in three years. He spent all of the 2024 season and the first half of the 2025 season rehabilitating from elbow surgery.

On Monday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani, already elected as the NL designated hitter for next month’s All-Star Game, would not pitch in that game if he were not the starting pitcher.

“He’ll obviously DH and then we’ll go from there,” Roberts said. “I don’t know where he is with the pitching thing. We’ll see.”

The Dodgers have carefully managed Ohtani’s workload as a pitcher and might well prefer he be limited to DH in the game. It also would be impractical to have him warm up during a game in which he were hitting, and Misiorowski and Cristopher Sanchez of the host Philadelphia Phillies are top candidates to be the NL starting pitcher.

Voters in California may get a chance to remake the state’s open primary system in two years.

Political consultant Steve Maviglio filed an application Friday with state officials that seeks to alter California’s voting system by reverting to a traditional primary. Under the proposal, the top candidates from each party would advance to the general election in November.

The current system allows the top two candidates, regardless of party, to move on to the runoff. That has led to instances in which two Democrats or two Republicans have faced off in the general election.

The state’s gubernatorial election, for example, has prompted concern that two Republicans could shut out the Democratic candidates. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton have polled high in various surveys and are facing a large field of Democrats.

Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans in California, yet some political consultants said they feared there were so many Democrats running that voters wouldn’t coalesce around one candidate and the field would be split. Those fears have eased somewhat in recent months as some Democratic candidates advance from the pack.

The state’s top-two primary system has been in place since California voters passed Proposition 14 in 2010. The goal was to help end partisan gridlock in Sacramento and force candidates in primaries to appeal to a wider range of voters, rather than just those in their own party.

Proposition 14, as well as the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process, has led to some dramatic races, including the 2012 face-off between Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman for a congressional seat in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Amid aspersions and attack ads, the pair nearly came to blows at a community debate.

Maviglio described the ballot measure as a simple repeal of Proposition 14, and said he was inspired by the governor’s race.

“It was extremely scary to envision the November ballot for governor with Republicans on it,” Maviglio said.

The New York Times first reported on the ballot measure proposal.

A news release from Maviglio states that the proposed repeal of Prop. 14 “is fueled by concerns that California’s primaries are disenfranchising a majority of California voters by limiting choice to candidates from one party.”

A website for the effort includes criticisms of the current primary system by Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks and Ron Nehring, former chairman of the California Republican Party.

Maviglio’s ballot initiative proposes to appear on the 2028 ballot and take effect in 2030.

Talk of changing Proposition 14 has been swirling in Sacramento for months.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber told reporters at an unrelated news conference last week that she had voted years ago against Proposition 14. She questioned whether it had actually succeeded in creating more diversity.

“I did not like the open primary,” Weber said. “I didn’t think it would solve any problems. They had a list of problems it would solve, and none of those have been solved.”