The 84-year-old is making his rounds across California this week
By Anabel Sosa,Senior California Politics Reporter Feb 19, 2026 (SFGate.com)
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with reporters in Washington on Jan. 29, 2026. Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive from Vermont, is creating urgency around the need to pass a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California. The 84-year-old kicked off a weeklong California tour to campaign for the proposed tax in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
“The billionaire class no longer sees itself as part of American society. … They see themselves as something separate and apart … like the oligarchs of the 18th and 19th centuries,” Sanders said to a crowd of 2,000 at the iconic Wiltern theater. “… These guys literally believe they have the divine right to rule and are no longer subject to democratic governance.”
The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, a health care workers union, is behind the tax proposal, which would apply a one-time 5% tax on residents of California whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. The tax, supporters argue, would fill in a $100 billion gap in federal health care funding, with the rest going toward food assistance and education.
“For them, in many ways, that is pocket change,” Sanders said of the state’s wealthiest residents during his 30-minute speech. He later called the “grotesque level” of wealth inequality the “most important economic and moral issue of our time.” He was the only elected official to speak during the SEIU-hosted rally.
More than 200 billionaires reside in California. Among the highest earners of that group are Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, with a net worth estimated around $220 billion, and Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, with a net worth of about $201 billion. Both men got specific shoutouts from Sanders.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you can afford to pay your fair share of taxes so that people have health care,” the senator said.
Sanders has been in Congress since 1991 and has built a political legacy around probing income inequality. His populist ideology garnered massive popularity on the national stage while he campaigned for president in 2016. After President Donald Trump was elected for his second term in 2024, Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled around the U.S. together on a “Fight the Oligarchy” tour. Their stop in Sacramento County attracted a 3-mile line in one of the state’s most conservative pockets.
Opponents of the tax argue the wealthiest Californians would be incentivized to move out of the state and that tax revenue and job creation could be lost as a result. Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly made that argument in his recent public appearances opposing the proposal. But Sanders says he begs to differ.
“I doubt that they will flee the great state of California,” Sanders said Wednesday. At another point in the speech, he said of billionaires: “They lie a lot.”
A few billionaires have already changed their residences or moved their businesses, presumably to get ahead of any wealth tax. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Google co-founders, relocated their business entities to Nevada. David Sacks opened up an office for his venture capital firm in Austin, Texas. Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and Palantir and is worth $25 billion, opened an office for his investment firm in Miami.
The Los Angeles Times also reported Thursday that director Steven Spielberg recently moved to New York, and the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla are considering buying property in Florida, though it’s unclear whether that could impact their ability to be taxed. If the measure makes it to the ballot, and it passes, the tax would retroactively apply to billionaires living in California as of Jan. 1, 2026.
Sanders, in his effort to convince the crowd a tax is direly needed, emphasized the degree to which the wealthiest own “what the American people see, hear and read.”
Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, worth upward of $844 billion, owns public speech platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Sanders recounted. Then he listed other rich men who own American media companies, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns Twitch and the Washington Post; Zuckerberg, who owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp; and Ellison, who owns CBS and Paramount Skydance in addition to a major stake in TikTok.
“So if you wonder why issues like income and wealth inequality, issues like corporate greed are not talked about too much in the media, it has a lot to do with who owns that media,” Sanders said.
Sanders also pointed out the large sums of money that the wealthiest are legally able to give to super PACs to sway elections. Zuckerberg, via various Meta super PACs, has just poured in $65 million across California and other states to support AI- and tech-friendly Democrats and Republicans.
“At a time when the very rich are becoming phenomenally richer, when the very rich have been given a massive tax break by Donald Trump, when millions of people in this state are struggling to be able to afford health care, maybe billionaires should start paying their fair share of taxes,” Sanders said.
The tax proposal is in the signature-gathering stage. It needs 874,641 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Sanders said he is headed to Palo Alto next to interrogate those executives, as SFGATE previously reported. According to a statement from his team, he plans to question how working-class people will be impacted by artificial intelligence and who will benefit most. He is scheduled to be in the Bay Area on Friday at Stanford University in discussion with Rep. Ro Khanna.
Feb 19, 2026
Senior California Politics Reporter
Anabel Sosa is the senior California politics reporter at SFGATE. She previously covered the statehouse and elections for the Los Angeles Times. She has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from UC Berkeley. You can reach her at anabel.sosa@sfgate.com.
