After calling a special legislative session to “defend California values” in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, Gov. Gavin Newsom backed away from his initial antagonistic stance towards the president and focused on wildfires raging in Los Angeles.

But on Tuesday, he upped the ante, taking aim at Elon Musk and the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump tasked Musk with leading. In a press conference at Accenture’s Los Angeles headquarters, Newsom claimed that, actually, the Golden State had pioneered the use of technology to make government more efficient — the same day that his administration sued DOGE to stop it from shutting down AmeriCorps.

At the press conference, Newsom announced that the California Department of Transportation, Department of Tax and Fee Administration, and Government Operations Agency had entered into agreements to use generative artificial intelligence technology developed by companies like Anthropic to analyze and reduce highway traffic, improve road safety, and aid customer service during tax filing season.

Caltrans will use Azure Open AI technology and Gemini GenAI developed by Accenture, Microsoft, and Deloitte to analyze real-time and historical traffic data to predict bottlenecks, identify where to improve road safety for bikers and walkers, and identify traffic accidents faster, according to Secretary Toks Omishakin, who joined Newsom in Los Angeles.

Generative AI is a kind of AI that uses preexisting data to generate new content such as text, images, audio and video.

Musk, a government adviser whose exact role remains unclear, has become a focus of ire as his DOGE agency has fired thousands of government employees. He has also dubiously claimed to save billions of dollars by shutting down or slashing agency budgets.

“We’re DOGE, but better, and we’ve been DOGE but better for literally six years,” Newsom said Tuesday.

“You know, you can go back ... we still have the tapes of our announcements around (Office of Digital Innovation) and all of these reforms and efficiencies that we’ve been advancing for years and years and years.”

The governor said he had recently been approached by another parent at his son Dutch’s basketball game, who asked why California hadn’t adopted its own DOGE agency to cut through red tape.

“I started explaining what we were doing, and his eyes glazed over. He wants to see the chainsaw. He wants the sunglasses,” Newsom said, referring to Musk’s chainsaw stunt at CPAC earlier this year.

Democrats have made Musk the focus of their resistance against Trump’s agenda in recent weeks, as polling shows Americans largely disapprove the billionaire.

Newsom also doubled down on widespread discontent with Trump’s tariffs in a Monday podcast episode where he interviewed small business owners in California and Minnesota who said the tariffs would force them to close up shop and potentially lose their homes.

“The bad news is there’s no state in America that is more impacted by uncertainty and these tariffs imposed unilaterally by Donald Trump and the Trump administration,” he said. At the same, Newsom trumpeted California being the first state government to file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s ability to levy the lawsuits.

“I am ... confident we’re going to win that,” he said, “and we’re going to get clarity on that in the next few weeks.”

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