Jennifer Siebel, wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, seized the podium at a press conference on Wednesday and scolded female journalists for failing to ask questions about women's health — after apparently deciding their actual questions weren't good enough.
The press conference had been called to tout a newly signed bill delivering a $90 million boost to Planned Parenthood clinics across California. However, when reporters directed questions at Governor Newsom about other topics, his wife intervened to clarify the issues.
According to the Daily Mail, Siebel, 51, was seen whispering in Newsom's ear before approaching the microphone. What followed was a lecture that managed to be both condescending and oddly personal — a governor's spouse telling working journalists what they should be covering.
"We just find it incredulous that we have Planned Parenthood here and women are 51 percent of the population."
"And majority of these questions - all of these questions - have really been about other issues."
She then wrapped the rebuke in the thinnest possible veneer of graciousness:
"You don't seem to care. So I just offer that with love."
There's something deeply revealing about a politician's spouse — someone who holds no elected office, answers to no voters, and carries no constitutional responsibility — marching to a microphone to discipline reporters for doing their jobs. Journalists ask questions. That's the arrangement. The governor stands at the podium, and the press decides what matters. Not his wife.
But Siebel wasn't merely frustrated. She had a thesis:
"This happens over and over again. You wonder why we have such a horrific war on women in this country, and that these guys are getting away with it."
"It's just fascinating, you have this incredible women's caucus and all these allies, and you're not asking about it."
So the reporters — many of them women — weren't asking the right questions about women. A woman married to the most powerful man in California lectured less powerful women about how they were failing womanhood. The irony practically glows.
This is the progressive feedback loop in miniature: women must be empowered, unless they exercise that empowerment in directions the movement doesn't approve of. Then they need correction — offered, of course, "with love."
The bill that occasioned this spectacle was approved on Monday, directing $90 million in state funds to Planned Parenthood clinics in California. The legislation was positioned as a response to President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which prevents states from using federal Medicaid money to fund Planned Parenthood's non-abortion services for one year. That federal funding is set to resume in July 2026.
Governor Newsom framed the federal action in the starkest terms available:
"These cuts were designed to attack and assault Planned Parenthood."
"They were not abortion cuts. They were attacks on wellness screenings. They were attacks on women's healthcare, period, full stop."
Notice the sleight of hand. The federal provision specifically targets Planned Parenthood's access to Medicaid dollars for non-abortion services — for one year. California responded by allocating $90 million in state funds. The funding gap is temporary. The rhetoric is permanent.
This is what California does. It converts federal policy disagreements into existential crises, stages press conferences draped in pink, and then gets irritated when the press corps asks about anything else happening in a state with a housing catastrophe, an energy grid held together with hope, and a budget deficit that never quite seems to close.
The deeper issue isn't Planned Parenthood funding — California was always going to backfill that money, and everyone in Sacramento knew it. The real story is the casual authoritarianism of the moment.
Supporters behind Newsom started chanting during the press conference. Newsom began chuckling. And then his wife took the microphone to tell journalists they were failing women by exercising editorial judgment about which questions mattered on a given news day.
This is the posture of a political class that believes its priorities are the only legitimate priorities. It's not enough to hold a press conference. You must also control the questions. It's not enough to sign a bill. The media must celebrate it on command.
Conservatives have watched this dynamic for years — the left demanding not just compliance but enthusiasm. Disagree with the policy, and you're waging a "horrific war on women." Ask the wrong question at the wrong press conference, and you "don't seem to care."
It's worth pausing on the timeline. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act pauses Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood's non-abortion services for one year. By July 2026, that funding will resume. California's $90 million bill covers the gap.
So what exactly is the emergency? The state already solved it. The federal pause is temporary. And yet Newsom's team staged a rally-style press conference, complete with chanting supporters in pink, to frame a twelve-month budget adjustment as an apocalyptic assault on half the population.
That's not governance. That's content creation.
Jennifer Siebel holds no title in California's government. She was not elected. She does not set the press conference agenda, and she certainly has no standing to evaluate whether journalists are asking sufficiently feminist questions.
But she took the podium anyway — after whispering instructions in the governor's ear, as if the entire apparatus of California's executive branch were a family operation that occasionally lets the public watch.
The reporters in that room had every right to ask about whatever they deemed newsworthy. That's not a flaw in the system. That is the system. The moment a politician's spouse starts grading press questions on ideological loyalty, something has gone wrong — and not with the press.
Siebel told the room she offered her criticism "with love." The reporters didn't need her love. They needed her to sit down.