'A concerning trajectory': Texas got slammed for acting ‘like California' and micromanaging private business — is the Lone Star State going down a 'disastrous' path?

“The Lone Star State — a great economic success story — is now trying to engage in the concerning practice of micromanaging private businesses,” he wrote in an opinion piece, published by Fox News.

Is he right that America’s two most populous states — and polar opposites in politics — actually have more in common that their lawmakers would like to admit?

California’s ‘expansive regulations’

California and the state’s democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, have been loud and clear on where they stand in the ESG culture war.

In Oct. 2023, California gov. Newsom signed two watershed climate bills into law, which will require large corporations operating in the Golden State to disclose their carbon footprints and their climate-related financial risks, starting in 2026.

He has also been a public supporter of ESG investing and has taken legal action against energy giants — including California-based Chevron — for allegedly misleading the public and downplaying how fossil fuels are contributing to climate change.

Newsom’s climate policies have come under fire on several fronts for reportedly making the nation’s most populous state a tricky place to do business and a risky state to invest in — both things that impact local taxpayers.

While Texas’ politics is on the opposite side of the spectrum, is the Lone Star State edging down the same “dangerous path,” as Arnold put it, of “exceedingly high taxes and expansive regulations?”

Texas’s war on ESG

Texas currently has no state income tax and is therefore unlikely to match California’s sky-high tax rates any time soon — but Arnold believes Texas Republicans are guilty of “implementing California-style … restrictions on businesses in the next culture war front.”