Politics

Gavin Newsom Takes Vacation To Mexico Days After Extending California’s ‘State Of Emergency’

First State Mandates Vaccinations, Testing For School Employees

(Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Anders Hagstrom White House Correspondent
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Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom left for a Mexico vacation with his family Monday, roughly one week after extending California’s COVID-19 state of emergency.

Newsom left along with his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and their children, and will not return to California until Nov. 28. Newsom signed an executive order on Nov. 15 extending the COVID-19 emergency rules he initially put into place in March of 2020. The rules are now set to expire in March of 2022, unless they are extended once again.

Newsom’s administration has made California among the most stringent in the country when it comes to COVID-19 policy, becoming the first state in the country to mandate vaccines for all K-12 students in October. (RELATED: Medical Experts Are Unsure Why Biden Thinks 98% Of Americans Need To Be Vaccinated)

The state’s fight against the virus remains dire despite the stringent policies, however. The state’s weekly rate of new COVID cases was twice that of Florida’s in early November, despite Florida’s relatively lax COVID rules. California averaged 16 new cases out of every 100,000 population between Nov. 7 and Nov 9., while Florida had just 7.

Newsom himself has faced criticism in the past for not appearing to take his own COVID restrictions seriously. He infamously attended a dinner party at the French Laundry in California with more than a dozen people from different households in November 2020, a violation of the state’s COVID rules at the time.

“While our family followed the restaurant’s health protocols and took safety precautions, we should have modeled better behavior and not joined the dinner,” Newsom said at the time.