During the first days of the U.N. COP30 climate talks underway in the Amazon city of Belém, it felt almost impossible to miss California Governor Gavin Newsom. With the Trump Administration sitting the conference out, Newsom was the best-known American official there, and many attendees seemed to be hanging on his every word. Sitting for a while in the main artery of the conference center, I watched Newsom periodically breeze by, surrounded by a phalanx of security, journalists, and delegate photo-seekers.

Newsom had two main talking points this week. The first was to the international community, to which he emphasized that state and local governments in the U.S. can help make up for the pullback in Washington. And the second, for which he received the most coverage, was his needling of T

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