Hours after his own Department of Finance published data showing California shed more than 50,000 residents last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom went on national television and told viewers the opposite. Appearing on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday evening, the governor declared that California has experienced population growth and urged critics to "update our talking points."
The talking points, it turns out, needed updating in a direction Newsom did not intend.
The Department of Finance press release, issued earlier that same Friday, showed that legal international migration, long the engine keeping California's population numbers afloat, fell by more than half in a single year, from 248,400 people in 2024 to just 126,400 in 2025. Four of the state's ten largest cities lost population. The ten largest counties, home to 72% of all Californians, shed a combined 52,000 residents. And 333 cities across the state lost people, compared to just 148 that gained.
The agency's own officials tried to soften the blow, describing the loss of tens of thousands of people as a "slight" population drop representing less than one-seventh of 1%. They pinned the decline squarely on Washington, blaming "a full year of restrictive federal policy changes" on legal international migration for slashing the state's population growth by more than half.
The timing could not have been worse for Newsom. The Department of Finance press release landed on Friday. That same Friday evening, the governor sat across from Bill Maher and made this claim:
"We've also seen the last three year population growth, we've got to update our talking points."
Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host and leading Republican candidate for governor, did not let the contradiction pass. He pointed directly to the gap between Newsom's on-air claim and the data published by Newsom's own administration:
"This shows that Newsom was blatantly lying to Bill Maher on Friday night, when he claimed California's population was actually increasing. His own statistics show the opposite!"
Hilton also took aim at the state's housing record, noting that officials were celebrating results that fell well short of their own targets. "Now they're bragging about hitting less than half their goal, it's failure on every front," he said.
That housing record tells its own story. California added 115,165 housing units in 2025, a 0.77% increase, down from 0.84% the prior year. Nearly a quarter of those units, 29,710, were accessory dwelling units, backyard cottages and garage conversions, not the kind of large-scale construction the state's affordability crisis demands. And wildfires wiped out 11,160 housing units in the Eaton and Palisades fires alone, erasing a significant share of the year's gains.
Hilton framed the stakes in personal terms for Californians weighing whether to stay or go:
"This is the most amazing place anywhere in the country, and yet people just can't afford to live here, and they can't take the crime, chaos and homelessness anymore. That's why we've got to vote for change in November."
The Department of Finance press release leaned heavily on a single explanation for the population loss: federal immigration enforcement. State officials stressed that absent those policy changes, California's population would have grown by 66,000 people. The agency's statement laid out the math plainly:
"Net legal international migration has been a significant driver of California's overall population, offsetting declines in natural increase, the net number of births and deaths, and net domestic migration from California."
Read that sentence carefully. California's own finance officials are admitting that without a steady stream of international migrants, the state cannot offset the number of people dying, the low birth rate, and, most tellingly, the ongoing flood of residents leaving for other states. The admission is remarkable. It means the state's leadership has built a population model that depends on one input it does not control: federal immigration policy.
Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, rejected the blame-Washington framing entirely. In a text message, she pointed to Sacramento's own record:
"Californians are not leaving because Washington finally started enforcing the law. They are leaving because Sacramento made this state too expensive, too unsafe, and too hard to build a future."
Rankin's argument gains force when you look at where people are going within the state. Sacramento County added 9,000 residents. Placer County, in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento, posted the fastest growth rate at 1.39%. Yuba County grew 1.24%. The pattern is consistent: Californians who stay are moving away from the state's most expensive, most regulated coastal metros and toward inland areas where housing costs less and governance leans more moderate.
The cost of living under Newsom's policy agenda has drawn sustained criticism from across the political spectrum. Experts have previously dismantled the governor's claims that Texas and Florida tax their residents more than California does, and the state's regulatory burden on housing, energy, and business continues to grow.
Los Angeles, the state's largest city, saw a 0.9% population decrease, leaving it with 3.8 million residents. Los Angeles County as a whole, 9.8 million people, declined by 0.6%. The fires that tore through parts of the county earlier this year compounded the problem, destroying more than 11,000 housing units and displacing families who may not return.
Not every corner of the state is shrinking. San Diego added 10,102 residents for a 0.7% growth rate. Sacramento city grew 1.3%, adding 6,809 people. The Riverside and San Bernardino regions continued to see modest gains. But these bright spots cannot mask the statewide picture: more cities are losing people than gaining them, by a margin of more than two to one.
The governor's own press office appeared more interested in trolling than in addressing the data. An embedded post from the @GovPressOffice account on X, dated May 3, 2026, read: "THIS CLIP TRIGGERED DONALD TRUMP'S LATEST TRUTH SOCIAL MELTDOWN!", a reference to Newsom's Maher appearance. When your state just lost 50,000 residents and your official communications team is posting taunts on social media, the priorities speak for themselves.
Nick Poche, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, offered a pointed summary of the situation: "Gavin Newsom is only losing his mind because President Trump is taking away his biggest supporters."
The population loss is not a one-year blip. U.S. Census data previously showed California's population falling for a third straight year, dipping below 39 million as of 2023 after peaking at 39.5 million in 2019. The state lost roughly 75,000 residents between 2022 and 2023 alone. Prior to 2020, California had never recorded a single year of population decline since 1900.
The political consequences are real. California already lost one U.S. House seat after the 2020 Census. Continued domestic out-migration could cost the state additional seats, and additional electoral votes, in the decade ahead. For a governor who has positioned himself as a national Democratic leader, these numbers represent a structural problem that no amount of television appearances can paper over.
Meanwhile, Newsom's policy agenda continues to generate friction on multiple fronts. Lawmakers and industry groups have warned that his climate policies could push California gas prices above $8 a gallon, adding yet another cost burden on the working families least able to absorb it.
The governor's office has also drawn scrutiny for its handling of criticism more broadly. When a YouTuber exposed what he described as $170 million in alleged government fraud, Newsom's office responded by mocking the whistleblower rather than addressing the substance of the allegations, a pattern of deflection that tracks with the administration's response to the population data.
Even voices within the Democratic coalition have begun to raise alarms about the governor's political standing. MSNBC's Chris Hayes has warned that Newsom carries the same kind of political baggage that hurt Hillary Clinton, a sign that the governor's vulnerabilities extend well beyond Republican criticism.
The Department of Finance wants Californians to believe that population loss is Washington's fault, that if only the federal government let more immigrants in, the numbers would look fine. But that argument concedes the deeper problem. If your state's population model depends entirely on international migration to offset the residents fleeing to Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Arizona, you do not have a federal policy problem. You have a state policy problem.
Housing costs that force families into two-hour commutes. Energy prices inflated by climate mandates. A tax burden that drives businesses and high earners to states with no income tax. Crime and homelessness that have reshaped daily life in once-thriving neighborhoods. These are Sacramento's failures, not Washington's.
Newsom can go on television and claim the state is growing. His own Department of Finance can describe a loss of 50,000 people as "slight." The press office can post taunts on social media. But 333 cities lost residents last year. The ten biggest counties lost 52,000 people. And the governor's response was to tell Bill Maher that critics need to update their talking points.
The people packing U-Hauls already have.