The dayslong public scuffle on social media escalated on Thursday evening, when Newsom announced his office was filing a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accusing Oz of discrimination.<\/p>\n
![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Trump_52169.jpg\")
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, leaves the White House campus, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Mark Schiefelbein)<\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s office argued in the complaint that Oz \u201cspewed baseless and racially charged allegations\u201d that risked chilling participation in hospice and home care programs among the community targeted. The governor\u2019s office noted the claims had \u201calready caused real-world harm\u201d by dampening business at an Armenian bakery that is shown in the video.<\/p>\n
Oz and CMS didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint or the content of the video, and they haven\u2019t publicly shared details that confirm the fraud being alleged.<\/p>\n
The video posted on social media earlier this week shows the CMS administrator visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and pointing to a four-block radius that he says is home to 42 hospices, suggesting potential fraud. He references a business that he says was part of a $16 million fraud scheme.<\/p>\n
Then, while standing in front of a building that includes an Armenian bakery, he alleges that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud has taken place in Los Angeles and \u201cquite a bit of it\u201d was run by \u201cthe Russian Armenian mafia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oz describes the Armenian script on the businesses\u2019 signs while the camera pans to the bakery.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect,\u201d says Oz, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. He also claims there \u201chas not been a lot of attention on these problems\u201d in California.<\/p>\n
Turkey and Armenia have long been strained by historic grievances and Turkey\u2019s alliance with Azerbaijan. The neighboring countries have no formal diplomatic ties, and their joint border has remained closed since the 1990s, though late last year they agreed to simplify visa procedures in\u00a0an effort to normalize ties<\/a>.<\/p>\n Newsom disputed the claims in Oz\u2019s video and noted on social media that California had revoked more than 280 hospice licenses and banned new licenses starting in 2022 because of concerns about fraud. Then the two leaders exchanged multiple sharp attacks in a back-and-forth on social media.<\/p>\n The feud is among many that have sprung up between Newsom, seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2028, and the Republican administration of President Donald Trump. Newsom and Trump have clashed over issues ranging from the federal administration\u2019s National Guard\u00a0deployment in Los Angeles<\/a>\u00a0to the president\u2019s efforts to block California\u2019s 2035\u00a0ban on new gas-powered cars<\/a>, a nationwide first.<\/p>\n Oz\u2019s video also points to a larger Trump administration effort to spotlight fraud around the country. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests. Two people have been fatally shot in the city by federal agents this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ALI SWENSON, Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A new front in\u00a0the battle\u00a0between California Gov.\u00a0Gavin Newsom\u00a0and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3500,67552,76678,76677,76676,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-156666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california-governor-gavin-newsom","tag-centers-for-medicare-and-medicaid-services","tag-civil-rights-complaint","tag-dr-mehmet-oz","tag-gavin-newsom-donald-trump-feud","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}