California's legislature just sent Governor Gavin Newsom a bill that would compel every major company doing business in the state to dig through its archives for historic connections to slavery — and the only people who stand to profit are the activist class and trial lawyers preparing the next wave of extraction.
Assembly Bill 2599, which passed the state legislature this week, would require companies with more than $100 million in annual worldwide sales to search their records for evidence that they, their predecessors, or subsidiaries bought or sold enslaved people or provided financial support for those transactions, including through insurance or loans. Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto it.
This isn't about truth-telling. California already forced insurers to disclose past policies covering enslaved people under an earlier law. New York Life, Aetna, and AIG have already disclosed ties to slaveholders. The insurance industry is pushing back on the new measure, arguing it largely repeats that existing requirement. So what's really new here? The scope: dragging every large corporation into a guilt-manufacturing apparatus, regardless of whether they have any meaningful connection to American slavery.
Follow the money. The bill only takes effect if the Legislature sets aside funding for it — a late amendment that suggests even its sponsors know this is an unfunded mandate designed to grow. Once funded, the California Civil Rights Department would build a "digital platform" for the disclosures. Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, D-Jefferson Park, dismissed the cost concerns: "This is not big dollars," he said, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune. "And it's not something that's not going to happen." Notice what he didn't say: what it costs, who pays, or where the money goes after the disclosures are made.
The answer is obvious. Disclosure is step one. Liability, litigation, and settlements are step two. Every corporate confession scraped into that digital platform becomes a roadmap for lawsuits and shakedowns. Reparations advocates themselves are split — some call it a significant step forward, others question its actual impact — but the direction of travel is unmistakable. Manufacture guilt, monetize guilt.
Meanwhile, Newsom is playing both ends. While his desk awaits a bill that treats insurance companies as targets for historic guilt, he spent the same week trying to shield those same insurers from recouping wildfire losses from investor-owned utilities whose equipment keeps burning California to the ground. KCRA reported that lawmakers blocked Newsom's push to end insurance subrogation — the process where insurers recover payouts from utilities that caused catastrophic fires. After his staff's proposals were rejected, PG&E's stock dropped nearly 10 percent in a single day. The governor wanted to protect utilities from full liability for fires that kill people today, while his legislature prepares to punish companies for what their predecessors may have done centuries ago. That's the priority: shield the connected, shake down everyone else.
The question for ordinary Americans isn't whether slavery was evil. It's whether this bill delivers anything besides a publicly funded database for trial lawyers and activist groups to mine for settlements — and who in Sacramento is going to get a cut.
