Folks,

Donald Trump stood at that podium Tuesday night and told a nation of people skipping doctor visits, doubling up in apartments, and watching their grocery bills eat what is left of their paychecks that America has never been bigger, richer, or stronger. 

He blamed California for immigrant crime and demanded an end to sanctuary cities, which I see as a direct policy threat to California. 

He uses these national moments to paint immigrants as a source of chaos, even manufacturing moments of division to make people choose sides.

When he attacks immigrants, he attacks us all. 

Trump's vilification of immigrants was the foundation of that entire speech, the political fuel that powers the ICE raids tearing through our communities as we speak. 

The Green Party is calling for the end of the deportation machine entirely, because California will either protect all of its people or be complicit in their destruction, and this campaign has no interest in complicity.

Trump boasted that he ended DEI and then went after transgender youth in the same breath, and what we witnessed was a systematic campaign to erase people from public life, cheered on by a room full of cowards. 

Californians have fought to protect LGBTQ+ families and providers of gender-affirming care, and we are proud of that, even as our governor finds ways to hedge and equivocate on transgender rights from the comfort of his podcast while real people's lives hang in the balance. 

Every person in this state has the right to live fully and freely, and I will defend that right against anyone who comes for it, including the people who are supposed to be on our side.

This was a State of the Union address indistinguishable from state propaganda, all spectacle and manufactured enemies, designed from the first word to the last to keep us at each other's throats while the people who bought both parties pick our pockets clean.

The Green Party has been warning for a generation that a political system owned by corporations cannot produce anything else, and last night was yet more proof that we were right.

Later in his speech, Trump began laying the groundwork for war with Iran. And members of the Democratic opposition stood up in that chamber and applauded.

I want you to hold on to that image. 

These are the same people who cheered on the invasion of Iraq on the basis of lies that anyone paying attention could see through. 

The same political class that has sent a generation of working-class young people to die in wars that made defense contractors rich and left our communities with nothing but folded flags and broken veterans.

They have not learned a single lesson because learning a lesson would require admitting that they were never actually the opposition to begin with.

That is the moment that tells you everything about why we are in this race. 

Not to be the best version of a broken system, but to build something that is genuinely accountable to the people. 

California is the fourth-largest economy on the planet, and a Green Party governor of this state would be something neither Trump nor the Democratic establishment has ever had to reckon with: a true opposition.  

One that cannot be bought, cannot be intimidated, and has no interest in playing its assigned role in political theater that has been killing our people for generations.

Chip in today and help us build the only campaign in this race ready to be the opposition this moment actually demands.

Peace and power,

Butch Ware

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Paid for by Butch Ware for Governor 2026