Another day, another refusal by Karen Bass to cooperate with a congressional investigation.
Page A3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 9 September 2026
Newsom refuses to hand over fire files, gets audited on travel spending instead
As it ran on the front
Karen Bass has spent the past several days doing what her office does now by default: not answering. Congress wants the Palisades Fire investigation documents, and on September 8 Senator Rick Scott said Bass and Newsom must answer for the delays. His exact promise was narrower than accountability — "we're going to get them," he said, meaning the documents. The next day, the federal government came for something else entirely.
The Federal Election Commission is seeking details on Newsom's political action committee travel spending, reporting shows, with Newsom himself described as facing an audit threat over it. Not the fire files. A different federal body, a different set of receipts, the same governor's paper trail, opened on two fronts within twenty-four hours of each other — one side asking where the fire documents went, the other asking where the PAC's money went.…
…(cont) Ten days before that, on August 30, the state Legislature had blocked a Newsom-backed push to stop insurers from suing utility companies over wildfire damage — a change his office wanted specifically to protect the state's wildfire liability fund. That fund exists because utilities have started fires before and will again; the fight over who gets sued when they do is a fight over who eats the bill. Newsom lost that fight in Sacramento the same stretch of days Washington started asking questions in two separate directions.
Three days before that vote, on August 27, Newsom's office was pushing a climate mandate that drew a public complaint from the CEO of Dunlop Tires North America over new state driving rules. A governor with opinions about how residents drive was, in the same month, declining to say where the fire files went.
A travel audit is not a fire investigation. A blocked insurance bill is not a subpoena. But a national political profile runs on the assumption that the paperwork behind it holds up when someone looks, and this week two federal reviews are looking at once — one asking what the PAC spent on travel, one asking what the state knew before the Palisades burned. The governor angling for the bigger stage is currently supplying two federal bodies with reasons to keep him answering questions on this one first.
“Two different federal bodies land on the same governor's desk nine days apart, and they want you to think that's coincidence — one wants the fire files that would show what Sacramento knew before people's houses burned, the other wants the receipts on the PAC that's bankrolling his bigger ambitions. Follow the fire money and the campaign money and they run through the same office, and that office's answer both times is the same: not yet.”
“This is oversight, plain and simple — Congress asks for fire documents, the FEC asks for travel receipts, that's just Washington doing its job, nothing political about it. Sure, both landed on the same governor inside of ten days, but coincidence isn't coordination, and — did I say coincidence? I mean the timing is unrelated. It's unrelated timing.”
The receipts
Sen. Rick Scott says Bass and Newsom must answer for delays in turning over Palisades Fire investigation documents.
The Federal Election Commission is seeking details on Gavin Newsom’s political action committee travel spending as his national political profile grows.
· Gavin Newsom’s nanny state hits the road from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
· California lawmakers block Gavin Newsom’s push to stop insurers from suing utility companies that cause wildfires from the morgue, 30 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.