Image: US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) speaks at a rally in Folsom, California on April 15, 2025. (Photo by Paul Kuroda for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
US Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to rally in California on Wednesday with frontline healthcare workers and other supporters of a proposed ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of the roughly 200 billionaires who reside in the Golden State.
Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime champion of efforts to redress massive income and wealth inequality nationwide, said in a statement ahead of Wednesday’s rally that he “strongly” supports the proposed wealth tax in California, which is home to more billionaires than any other state in the US.
“While US billionaires became $1.5 trillion richer last year, the average worker in America has just $955 in retirement savings and 21% of seniors are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year,” Sanders wrote in a social media post earlier this week. “That’s why I’ll be in LA this week fighting for a wealth tax on billionaires.”
Sanders’ appearance at Wednesday’s rally in Los Angeles, which is set to begin at 5 pm local time (Note: Time changed to 7 pm), comes as organizers behind the California wealth tax push are working to collect the roughly 875,000 signatures required to get the proposal on the November ballot.
“Union leaders believe the visit by Mr. Sanders will energize their campaign, which has already trained more than 1,000 volunteers and doubled the amount per signature that it is paying petition circulators,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
…Newsom, widely seen as a possible 2028 presidential candidate, has publicly vowed to defeat the proposed wealth tax, which is aimed at raising funds to prevent a looming healthcare crisis spurred by federal Medicaid cuts that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans approved last summer.
“This will be defeated—there’s no question in my mind,” Newsom said in January. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state.”
Proponents of the tax estimate that it would raise around $100 billion in revenue—much of which would be placed in a “Billionaire Tax Health Account” designed to help shore up the state’s healthcare system.
Find your US Representative: Click Here
