Gavin Newsom just watched one of America's greatest veterans advocates pack up his foundation and move to Tennessee.
Now he's giving interviews – and everything he’s said about California is devastating.
What he said about California is another nail in Newsom’s political career.
The California Gas Prices That Finally Broke Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise is 71 years old, with a Golden Globe, a 15-year foundation, and one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood history.
He could afford to stay in California.
But he decided to leave – and the moment that crystallized it was a gas station in Nashville showing $2.59 a gallon.
Not crime. Not homelessness on the sidewalks.
A gas pump.
"I visited California, and they're up at like $5.79 a gallon," Sinise told Fox News Digital. "They're a full $3 more a gallon for gas in California. I don't understand it."
California layers on a gas tax, a cap-and-trade surcharge, a Low Carbon Fuel Standard fee, and a unique reformulated fuel requirement that exists nowhere else – costs Gavin Newsom's government built deliberately, over decades, to fund a radical leftist green agenda while working families fill up their tanks.
And that is just the gas.
California has the highest state income tax in the country – 13.3 percent on top earners – while Tennessee charges zero.
For a man managing a foundation that reported $86 million in revenue in 2024, that gap is not a rounding error.
What the Gary Sinise Foundation Moving to Tennessee Actually Cost California
The Gary Sinise Foundation is not a celebrity vanity project.
Since 2011, it has built 100 specially adapted, mortgage-free smart homes for catastrophically wounded veterans – hitting that milestone in November 2025.
It has served more than one million meals to service members.
The Snowball Express program brings 1,600 children of fallen soldiers to Walt Disney World every year.
When a veteran cannot pay his bills or buy groceries, the HOPE program covers it.
All of it is now headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee.
California's Socialist Democrat government spent years raising taxes, strangling businesses, and telling productive residents the state needed more from them.
Los Angeles County alone lost 53,421 residents between July 2024 and July 2025 – the largest county-level decline in the country.
They aren’t leaving because the weather changed.
The Son Behind the Foundation
Sinise stepped away from acting in 2019 – not for politics, not for burnout, but for his son.
Mac Sinise was diagnosed with Chordoma, a rare cancer of the spine, in 2018.
For the next six years, Gary Sinise was his battle buddy.
Mac died in 2024.
He left behind music – three posthumous albums – with a final wish that all proceeds flow directly into the Gary Sinise Foundation to fund the veterans his father spent a career honoring.
"I'd rather give it to my kids later on," Sinise said of the wealth California would have consumed in taxes. "I don't want to give it all to California and property taxes."
Newsom's government did not just lose Gary Sinise.
It lost everything Mac Sinise wanted his music to build.
The California Exodus Pattern Gavin Newsom Cannot Explain
Chevron left for Houston. Oracle left for Nashville. In-N-Out Burger – born in Los Angeles – left for Tennessee. Playboy left for Miami. Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, Larry Page – all moved wealth and operations out before the proposed wealth tax deadline hit.
One analysis estimated California lost $1 trillion in billionaire wealth to outmigration in a single cycle.
The Washington Post – not exactly a Trump newsletter – warned Newsom he was killing the Golden State's golden goose.
Every one of them made the same calculation Sinise made at that Nashville gas station.
California keeps taking. The people with options keep leaving. And what Newsom cannot explain is why the most naturally wealthy state in the country keeps chasing out everyone who creates something worth taxing.
Sources:
- Gary Sinise, interview with Fox News Digital, May 2026.
- Gary Sinise Foundation, garysinisefoundation.org, program documentation and financials 2024.
- Fox Business, "Los Angeles leads nation in massive population exodus," April 2026.
- Fox Business, "Exodus accelerates as tech titans and companies flee blue states," May 2026.
- Yahoo Finance, "Billionaire exodus sees $1T in wealth exit California," January 2026.
- Tax Foundation, "2025 State Income Tax Rates and Brackets," 2025.
- WEHOonline, "2025 Exodus Out of California Continues," December 2025.