Marvel star Mark Ruffalo blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom for backing Prop 42, accusing the Democrat of selling out workers to shield billionaires once again.
Actor Mark Ruffalo took to X on Wednesday and charged that Newsom is protecting the ultra-rich at the expense of ordinary Californians, Breitbart News reported.
The flashpoint is Prop 42, a measure aimed at blocking a new state wealth tax on California billionaires. Newsom has come out in support of it. Ruffalo cast that choice as a familiar betrayal.
Ruffalo, known to mass audiences for his role in Marvel’s The Avengers films, framed the governor’s stance as part of a pattern rather than a one-off dispute.
"Once again. Just like the Paramount Merger Gavin Newsom does what he always does. Sells out the working class people for the billionaires again and again. Not only that but endorses a bill that will make it impossible to tax the wealthy at all."
That post put a Hollywood progressive on a collision course with one of the country’s most prominent Democratic governors, over how hard Sacramento should squeeze the rich.
Newsom’s own words cast Prop 42 in a different light. In a statement carried on the Yes on Prop 42 site, the governor said he was standing with working people and retirees, not Wall Street.
He said he was “proud to stand with firefighters, blue-collar unions, veterans, seniors, and small businesses in support of Prop 42.”
"We all agree that Californians deserve to have their retirement and life savings protected from new state taxes so those savings are there when they need them."
That is the core clash. Ruffalo says the measure locks in special treatment for the wealthy. Newsom says new state wealth taxes threaten the savings of people who are not billionaires at all.
Prop 42 is pitched as a stop on fresh state wealth taxes aimed at the state’s richest residents. Ruffalo calls that a giveaway. Newsom calls it a shield for retirement nest eggs.
Wednesday’s blast was not Ruffalo’s first run at Newsom this cycle. In September, the actor tore into the governor over the Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery merger fight.
Ruffalo described the settlement path as a betrayal and labeled it a “huge win to Trump.” He accused Newsom of helping the former president’s interests in the deal fight, an attack line that put a Democratic governor in the crosshairs of his own cultural left.
For conservative readers, the episode is familiar. Hollywood activists demand purity. When a blue-state Democrat declines to match their maximal tax and regulatory wish list, the same activists cry sellout.
Ruffalo’s merger rhetoric also showed how quickly the left reaches for Trump as a cudgel, even when the live dispute is a California corporate deal and a California governor.
Early this month, Ruffalo widened the front. He criticized Newsom’s veto of a state AI bill and took the argument to TIME.
His op-ed ran under the heading “Governor Newsom’s Veto on the AI Bill Was a Mistake.” Ruffalo urged the public to “follow the money” and treated the veto as a gift to the wrong interests.
In the same piece, he wrote that AI is already reshaping daily life.
"AI is now a real-life technology, and love it or hate it, most everyone agrees it will make a massive impact on all of our real lives."
He called the veto “a mistake.” Stacked beside the merger fight and the Prop 42 attack, the op-ed completed a short, sharp arc: repeated public pressure on Newsom from the cultural left over taxes, corporate power, and tech rules.
Ruffalo’s central charge is that Newsom “sells out the working class people for the billionaires again and again.” That line is built for applause in progressive circles.
It also lands with a hitch. The messenger is a wealthy movie star. The target is a Democratic governor claiming the banner of firefighters, unions, veterans, seniors, and small businesses.
Newsom’s stated case is straightforward. He argues new state taxes on wealth can spill onto retirement and life savings and that those savings should be there when families need them. Ruffalo’s case is equally blunt. He says the governor is making it “impossible to tax the wealthy at all.”
Voters can weigh both claims. One side speaks in the language of class war. The other side speaks in the language of nest-egg protection. Only one of them governs California.
None of this turns Newsom into a tax cutter in the mold conservatives prefer. It does show something useful about incentives in deep-blue politics.
When a governor resists a new wealth tax, backs a merger outcome activists hate, or vetoes an AI bill the advocacy class wanted, the punishment comes from his left. The script writes itself: billionaires bought him; workers lost; follow the money.
Missing from that script is any serious reckoning with what heavy state wealth taxes do to investment, jobs, and the tax base once capital can leave. California already knows how fast high earners and employers can vote with their feet. Ruffalo’s post did not grapple with that risk. It simply reloaded the sellout charge.
Newsom, for his part, chose the coalition he named, unions, veterans, seniors, small businesses, firefighters, and tied Prop 42 to protecting savings from new state taxes. That is a political choice with clear winners and losers in the Democratic coalition. Ruffalo made plain which side he is on.
Hollywood can afford purity tests; workers stuck with the bill cannot, and a wealth tax sold as moral theater still lands on the same state they have to live in.
