I really like Katie Porter. A teacher and single mom. Someone who still knows what a gallon of milk costs; someone who famously used whiteboards while grilling oil executives during her three terms in the US Congress.
In fact, I’m such a Katie Porter fan that I made a small donation in support of her 2024 campaign for the US Senate. That donation got me an official Katie Porter for Senate “I <heart> Oversight” t-shirt. Alas, Porter finished third in California’s free-for-all primary that spring, behind Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey. I still have the concession note Porter sent to supporters on March 6th, in which she struck a defiant tone, saying that her campaign fell short largely because “billionaires fought so hard to keep me out of the Senate.”
Give ‘em hell, Katie! Keep speaking truth to power! Later in that note, she added:
“Special interests and the ultra wealthy like politics as it is today because they control the politicians.”
Do they ever! Now, Porter didn’t name names in the concession note, nor did she have to. Those of us following her campaign knew she was pissed more at fellow Democrat Adam Schiff more than Steve Garvey. That’s because we knew exactly which “special interests” and “ultra wealthy” had bolstered the Schiff campaign.
One of the “special interests” was a crypto PAC called Fairshake, which spent roughly $10 million on ads attacking Katie, making it the largest PAC spending in the race.
The “ultra wealthy” behind the Fairshake PAC include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, co-founders of crypto exchange Gemini, the dumb and titanically dumber venture capital pair of Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, along with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Ripple Labs CEO Chris Larsen. (Please remember Larsen’s name for later.)
Why would these crypto douchebags spend all those millions attacking Porter? In sum, because Porter was viewed as “smug” crypto hater,” while Schiff was rated as “strongly supportive.”
In sum, it’s because the crypto bros were making an example out of Porter.
As the owner of Katie Porter merch, it should now make sense why I’m subscribed to her Substack newsletter called Beyond the Whiteboard. It also probably tracks that I was especially interested in a post that landed on September 14th of 2026, after nearly a year of newsletter silence. Its title? “Bursting at the Seams (with ideas!)”
Awesome! Me and a lot of like-minded people can’t wait to read about your ideas!
Except, in the four weeks since, how many of these ideas have burst from the seams of her laptop? Exactly one.
And this idea, out of what’s allegedly an idea fountain set to burst, also appeared as an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. That single, singular idea was Katie’s opposition to… taxing billionaires.
Wait, what?
I’m so confused now. I mean, you said it yourself, Katie: the billionaires are the ones who fought to keep you from being in the Senate. I’m confused because you know who else is opposed to taxing billionaires? Billionaires. That’s why ultra wealthy douchebags are pouring money - $150 million and counting - into a PAC called Building a Better California. These “builders” have formed a PAC whose sole purpose is the destruction of Prop 40.
By the way, $150 million is literally nothing to California’s roughly 200 billionaires, who have a net worth $2.5 trillion give or take. I’ve written extensively about how it’s hard for the human mind to comprehend the scale of these numbers - of how easily someone like Sergei Brin can afford a donation of $100 million - a donation that would make the recipient of that donation the richest 1% of the 1% globally - when Brin has a net worth of $250 billion.
In any event, am I going to have to read your entire post, Katie? I am, aren’t I?
Ok. I’ve read it now. Hoo, boy.
I’ll start with this: something seems to have happened to Katie Porter for her to write an op-ed like this, and now I have to figure out what that something was. The op-ed piece is so logically flimsy, argued in such bad-faith, that it reads like it could have only been penned (prompted?) by a spokesperson on the payroll of Building a Better California.
For example, one of Katie’s first criticisms of Proposition 40 is that it’s supposedly a handout to health insurance companies. Here’s what she says:
It does nothing to reform our healthcare system and would send billions in tax dollars to private health insurance companies and corporations that dominate our healthcare system.
Correct. This is a strawman argument. Prop 40 is a wealth tax. Millionaires and billionaires generally pay no tax on their wealth.
Funds raised by 40 will replenish federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal. Essentially, it’s putting back money that was taken out of a bank account. Saying that money will go to private health insurance companies is factual, yes, but it’s also using a fact to tell a lie, and as someone who served three terms in Congress, Katie Porter knows this.
As she fully knows, Medi-Cal, like all Medicaid across the US, pays private companies to deliver services. That’s how it’s set up. Medicaid is the insurer who pays the doctors, nurses, and hospitals, etc.
One other note about Medi-Cal, as it’s so central to the rest of this issue: MediCal provides coverage for nearly 15 million low-income Californians, including more than half of the state’s children, 2.2 million seniors and people with disabilities. One in five of all working adults receives their health insurance via Medi-Cal. Porter knows this.
Here’s another of her criticisms of Prop 40:
Despite what its supporters say, Prop 40 is not a solution to our healthcare crisis.
Way to own that strawman, Katie! Not one single Prop 40 supporter is saying that it can, or will, “solve” the healthcare crisis.
The party currently in power at the federal level, who California billionaires spent hundreds and hundreds of millions to help install in power, have enacted legislation - Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill - that takes about $20 billion per year out of Medi-Cal, which again I will point out insures about half of the state’s children.
She continues by saying:
Healthcare costs continue to outpace inflation, leaving most patients falling further behind. That is a serious policy problem that deserves attention. But Prop 40 does nothing to address skyrocketing healthcare costs.
I feel like we’ve covered this… Prop 40 is a taxation measure, not a healthcare measure. And even Katie describes it as “a limited, one-time transfer” to hospitals and clinics Except… that’s something, right Katie? I mean, it may be insufficient, but you saying Prop 40 does “nothing” is hyperbole. There’s not even a pretense of good faith here. (See above: “does nothing to reform our healthcare system.”)
Let’s move on:
Most people don’t realize that the state contracts with private health insurance companies to provide coverage for low-income patients.
No, Katie, everyone knows it! When people go to the doctor and the doctor accepts Medicare, they realize that Medicare is the payer. See above. How many times do I have to say it? Prop 40 is a wealth tax. It’s not the Affordable Healthcare Act, part 2. Why are you fighting so hard against funding the health coverage for children, seniors, and people with disabilities?
One more for good measure:
Progressives who have long fought for “Medicare for All,” as I have, should resist a billionaire tax that entrenches a troubled for-profit healthcare system, rather than dismantling it.
Progressives should do both! You’re presenting a false dichotomy here. Maybe you didn’t write the op-ed yourself, but that doesn’t make it OK. If you’re truly in favor of Medicare for All, then use the space in the op-ed to propose single-payer legislation instead of opposing a revenue measure.
This isn’t difficult! In fact, these are the kinds of ideas that would have made you a much more popular Democratic candidate! These are the ideas that Democratic voters are dying to embrace. Are you trying to out-Schiff Adam Schiff? Please: read the room. If there’s an issue, and you find yourself on the same side of that issue as Donald Trump and Steve Hilton, you should probably rethink that position. Gavin Newsom thinks he’s going to win the 2028 presidency by currying favor with Silicon Valley oligarchs. He is wrong.
Who is giving you advice? Whoever it is, it’s not good advice.
That’s really all the misdirection and outright lies from Porter I have time and space for in this entry. So rather than set up a second essay, I’ll just simply ask: what happened, Katie? Why are you opposing this revenue measure which asks billionaires to pay back some of what they’ve taken?
It’s almost as though you… no. Hang on. You haven’t gotten yourself indebted to a crypto bro like Chris Larsen, have you? You know, the one who ran those all those attack ads during your Senate bid.
You have, haven’t you?
This didn’t make it into your op-ed, but I feel it provides a teensy bit of necessary context: shortly after you finished third in the Senate primary, you proactively contacted Chris Larsen, the CEO of crypto outfit Ripple Labs. Subsequent to that conversation, Larsen and his wife each donated the maximum that can be made to an individual - $39,200 - to your 2025 gubernatorial campaign. (Did they get a t-shirt for their $80k?)
What else has Chris Larsen donated to? Building a Better California, the PAC funding smear campaigns to stop Prop 40. Larsen has donated over $2 million to the PAC, because while there are limits on what you can give to a candidate, you can give as much as you want to a PAC. (Hey! There’s an idea for your next newsletter, Katie, since the ideas that were waiting to burst have apparently run dry… start speaking up against that bullshit.)
That’s kind of a glaring omission. But at least I’m no longer so confused about why the person who once wrote to her supporters about how the ultra wealthy “like politics… because they control the politicians” is now doing the bidding of the ultra wealthy.
Now it makes perfect sense: you’re doing what you were hired to do.
I’m sure you don’t agree with my conclusion that you’re now one of the politicians the ultra wealthy think they control. Maybe you have some logically sound reasons for opposing Prop 40 which didn’t make it into print. All I have to judge you by, however, is what you’ve published, whose checks you’ve cashed, and the sequence thereof.
That sequence leaves a one-time fan like me depressed while scrolling through the Substack comments, seeing how many like-minded people (fellow Katie Porter fans!) were swayed by such flimsy, dishonest rhetoric. It leaves me searching for explanations. And at the end of that search, I’m left repurposing Hemingway’s depressing (and misattributed) six-word story about baby shoes.
Here’s the Poshmark listing for those interested.1
Ms. Porter did not respond to my request for comment.
Proceeds from the sale will be donated the SEIU-UHW, who is the union who sponsored the ballot measure.