Under Newsom\u2019s new Golden State Start program<\/a>, California will provide 400 diapers to families with newborns leaving participating hospitals.<\/p>\n Sounds generous. Until you do the math.<\/p>\n California Gov. Gavin Newsom boxes diapers as part of the Baby2Baby nonprofit scheme. Getty Images for Baby2Baby<\/p>\n A newborn can go through eight to 10 diapers a day. So 400 diapers lasts roughly five weeks.<\/p>\n The cost to taxpayers is about $12.4 million this year alone, following on from the $7.4 million allocated in last year\u2019s budget.<\/p>\n Newsom calls this \u201cwhat affordability looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n No. It is what dependency looks like.<\/p>\n Diapers are expensive<\/a>. For struggling families, every dollar matters. There is nothing wrong with churches, synagogues, charities, neighbors, or extended families helping new parents through a difficult season.<\/p>\n But that is not what this is.<\/p>\n The diapers will be provided through Baby2Baby, an LA nonprofit with deep ties to Hollywood and corporate philanthropy. Getty Images for Baby2Baby<\/p>\n This is Sacramento taking taxpayer money, running it through government, partnering with a politically connected nonprofit, and handing some of it back as a \u201cfree\u201d benefit.<\/p>\n The real question is why so many California families are financially cornered in the first place.<\/p>\n California has spent years making ordinary family life harder to sustain.<\/p>\n Housing costs have exploded. Utility bills keep climbing. Insurance costs are surging. Taxes, fees, fuel mandates, labor mandates, and regulation chew up more and more of the household budget.<\/p>\n Then Sacramento acts surprised when families cannot afford the basics.<\/p>\n Instead of lowering the cost of living or letting families keep more of their own money, the state creates another program.<\/p>\n Another announcement.<\/p>\n Another press release.<\/p>\n Another photo op.<\/p>\n Kelly Sawyer Patricof, Newsom and Norah Weinstein pose for photos at Golden State Start event in San Francisco. Getty Images for Baby2Baby<\/p>\n The diapers will be provided through Baby2Baby, a high-profile LA nonprofit with deep ties to Hollywood, corporate philanthropy, and California politics.<\/p>\n The group says it can manufacture diapers far below retail cost. Maybe it can.<\/p>\n But that does not answer the larger question: Why is California creating a new statewide diaper apparatus at all?<\/p>\n Pacific Research Institute\u2019s Matt Fleming points out that California already has diaper-distribution programs serving low-income families through existing nonprofit partners.<\/p>\n So why create a brand-new statewide diaper operation?<\/p>\n Because this is not just policy. It is branding.<\/p>\n California has more than 500 hospitals. This program will start with only a portion of them.<\/p>\n So taxpayers across the state help pay for it, but access depends on where a baby happens to be born.<\/p>\n That is not clean policy. It is political theater with a warehouse.<\/p>\n Baby2Baby itself sits comfortably inside California\u2019s interconnected political and celebrity nonprofit culture.<\/p>\n One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, is also listed in leadership with Jennifer Siebel Newsom\u2019s California Partners Project.<\/p>\n That does not prove wrongdoing. It does prove how small and cozy California\u2019s governing class has become.<\/p>\n The same circles keep showing up: politicians, nonprofits, donors, celebrity activists, state-funded partnerships, and elite philanthropic networks.<\/p>\n The public pays. The politicians get the headline. The nonprofit gets the role. The system gets bigger.<\/p>\n And the families?<\/p>\n They get five weeks of diapers.<\/p>\n This is the deeper problem.<\/p>\n California did not become unaffordable by accident. It became unaffordable through years of policy choices: higher taxes, higher energy costs, higher housing costs, more regulation, more mandates, and more government control over ordinary life.<\/p>\n Then, when families are squeezed, the same people who helped squeeze them show up with a program.<\/p>\n Baby2Baby itself sits comfortably inside California\u2019s interconnected political and celebrity nonprofit culture. AP<\/p>\n Not relief.<\/p>\n A program.<\/p>\n In a functioning state, parents should be able to buy diapers with their own money. Churches, synagogues, relatives, and local charities should be able to help the families who truly need it.<\/p>\n Sacramento should not need a branded diaper pipeline to prove it cares.<\/p>\n Government can hand out diapers. It cannot create family stability. It cannot rebuild community trust.<\/p>\n It cannot replace personal obligation, local knowledge, or the moral formation that comes from family, faith, and community.<\/p>\n Yet California keeps moving in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n The state grows larger while the institutions underneath society grow weaker.<\/p>\n Of course parents will take the diapers. Most people would. California families are already paying punishing taxes while trying to survive one of the highest costs of living in America.<\/p>\n But that is precisely the point.<\/p>\n Sacramento takes away the economic room families and communities once had to care for themselves and one another.<\/p>\n Then it returns a small piece of that money through a government-branded program and expects applause.<\/p>\n The scandal is not that some families will receive diapers.<\/p>\n The scandal is that California has become so expensive, so bureaucratic, and so dependent on state-managed solutions that even diapers are now treated as a government \u201caffordability\u201d strategy.<\/p>\n Of course, Gavin Newsom really only wants you to answer one question:<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t a governor who can bring you free diapers be your president?<\/p>\n Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters <\/p>\n California Post News: Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, X<\/a>, YouTube<\/a>, WhatsApp<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a>![\"California](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/31f4e2f288a4419be68cc8e815122af2.jpeg\"\/)
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