On Friday, Newsom announced the Golden State Start initiative, a partnership with the nonprofit Baby2Baby. This initiative will provide every newborn delivered in participating hospitals with 400 diapers for free.
This is a joke. The anti-family, pro-abortion Democrats want naïve California voters to think that they are suddenly pro-life and pro-family, when all this does is cost taxpayers more money. Peter Basios, the founder of an organic baby formula company, can see through the scam and has branded Gavin Newsom’s plan to offer free diapers to all new babies born in the state as “grifting nonsense.”
Simple math proves what a farce this is. The program will siphon $7.4 million from the 2025-2026 budget. Next year, the cost is estimated to be 12.5 million. Peter Basios argued that it would be cheaper to give every low-income new mom $100 in cash and tell her to go to Costco than for the state to pay 50 cents per diaper.
He posted this on X:
“100,000 babies × 400 diapers = 40 million diapers. “$20,000,000 ÷ 40,000,000 = $0.50 per diaper. Now walk into any Costco in California, and you can buy the same quality diapers for .12 to .15 cents each!”
“That’s $48 to $60 for 400 diapers. So the state is paying 8–10x more per diaper than a regular family buying in bulk.”
He went on to call the plan “peak government stupidity,” and criticized Newsom for “funding another bloated nonprofit-government grift.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton echoed those sentiments, saying Newsom’s diaper program is “three times more expensive” than what someone could buy at the store.
Newsom's office is promoting a "first-in-the-nation program" as part of a broader strategy to address affordability by leveraging the state's bulk-purchasing power to provide high-quality, mass-produced diapers directly to families.