28 September 25
During the kickoff to the 20th gathering of his Clinton Global Initiative, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Clinton said partisan disagreements have become so deep that they are poisoning U.S. politics and threatening the country as a whole.
“I’m worried because we’re pulling further and further away from one another,” Clinton said, citing the rise in political violence, including the killings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this month and a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband earlier this year.
“I’m worried that we’re at risk of losing our freedom of speech and that the weight of the government is being used to restrict expression, from journalism to comedy,” he said, one day after the return of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” following the comedian’s recent suspension over comments he made about Kirk. “Once we take three-dimensional people and turn them into two-dimensional cartoons, it’s hard to come back from that. ... And it’s bad for all of us.”
In a rare public appearance, the 79-year-old president who served two terms from 1993 to 2001, said, “Vigorous debate and disagreements and dissent are necessary and healthy in a functioning democracy, but violence, intimidation and repression are not.”
Clinton then invited California Gov. Gavin Newsom to join him on stage for a 30-minute conversation about everything from wildfires and the solvency of the homeowner’s insurance system to climate leadership and renewable energy.
“California is America, but only more so,” Newsom said in response to a softball question about what is going well in the state.
The size of 21 state populations combined, it is also the country’s most diverse state, with 27% of its residents born in other countries, Newsom said. He attributed the state’s success as the fourth largest economy in the world to its embrace of diversity, helping it attract business startups, foreign investment and trade.
Yet even with the state making enormous investments in forest management and fire suppression and LA County having more firefighters per capita than anywhere else in the world, Newsom said its “next-level resources” still were not enough to prevent 16,000 structures from burning in a pair of devastating wildfires earlier in the year.
The threat of wildfires, he said, isn’t just a California issue but a global one — and one that affects the viability of homeowners’ insurance as insurers flee expensive markets with significant losses.
“This may be one of the most pressing global issues as it relates to the issues of climate change. It’s a challenge for me. It’s a challenge for (Gov.) Ron DeSantis in Florida, for governors in most states,” Newsom said, saying the issue should unite Republicans and Democrats.
“So I’m here with you, here during U.N. Climate Week, reasserting California’s leadership in this space in the absence of national leadership,” Newsom said, one day after President Donald Trump spoke to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly and called climate change a “con job” and green energy a “scam.”
Newsom praised the Republican former California Gov. — and later U.S. President — Ronald Reagan with establishing the California Air Resources Board in 1967 to address pollution in Los Angeles. He also praised Republican President Richard Nixon for passing the Clean Air Act in 1970 that gave California the power to pursue its own environmental policies to reduce emissions.
That power is currently under threat as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers revoking the Clean Air Act's endangerment finding that has provided the legal basis for California to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they jeopardize public health.
“We’re the only game in town right now as it relates to large-scale environmental leadership,” Newsom said. “We’re on the other side of the debate.”
California, he said, has six times more green tech jobs than fossil fuel jobs. Two-thirds of the state’s electricity grid is completely renewable. As of last Friday, he said, 217 of 243 days so far in 2025 were run with 100% clean energy.
“California has been a successful model in this space," Newsom said, "and we’re just trying to navigate this new space as it relates to the macro head winds coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
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