Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo tore into California Gov. Gavin Newsom for endorsing Prop 42, accusing the Democrat of selling out workers to block new taxes on billionaires.
Ruffalo went after the governor on X on Wednesday, tying the Prop 42 fight to what he called a familiar pattern of siding with the rich. Breitbart reported the latest blast from the Avengers star as another public break with Newsom on taxes and regulation.
The flashpoint is Prop 42, a California measure Newsom has endorsed that opponents of new wealth taxes describe as a barrier to taxing billionaires. Ruffalo cast the governor’s support as a giveaway to the top tier.
He did not say much.
Ruffalo wrote on X:
"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."
Newsom framed the same proposal in opposite terms. He cast Prop 42 as a shield for ordinary Californians’ nest eggs, not a favor to billionaires.
In his endorsement statement, carried on the Yes on Prop 42 site, the governor said:
"I am 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 taxes on wealth would put retirement and life savings at risk. Both men are talking about the same endorsement. They are selling two different stories about who pays and who gets protected.
Wednesday’s post was not Ruffalo’s first shot. In September he hit Newsom over the Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery merger fight. He called the related settlement a betrayal and a “huge win to Trump.”
Early this month he went after Newsom again for vetoing a state AI bill. Ruffalo joined a TIME op-ed titled “Governor Newsom’s Veto on the AI Bill Was a Mistake,” urged the public to “follow the money,” and argued the technology already reaches into everyday life.
In that piece he wrote that “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.”
Prop 42, the merger fight, and the AI veto now form a short string of progressive attacks on a Democratic governor from Hollywood’s left flank. Ruffalo’s complaint is not that Newsom is too conservative for California’s voters. It is that Newsom will not go far enough on wealth taxes and tech rules.
Ruffalo is a major Marvel star and a longtime progressive voice. He is also a wealthy entertainment figure lecturing a statewide elected Democrat about the “working class.” Newsom answered by lining up firefighters, unions, veterans, seniors, and small businesses behind Prop 42 and calling the fight about retirement security.
California voters will decide how much of that rhetoric sticks. Wealth taxes sound simple on a celebrity feed. On a real ballot they raise hard questions about capital flight, double taxation of savings, and who actually funds pensions and small-business payrolls when the state reaches for more.
Newsom’s statement treats those risks as real. Ruffalo’s post treats resistance to a new billionaire tax as proof of capture. One side talks about protecting nest eggs. The other talks about making it “impossible to tax the wealthy at all.”
Left-wing celebrities can afford purity. Governors still have to count votes, jobs, and the people who keep their savings in California.
