California Gov. and 2028 presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom is facing calls to be investigated for his role in a multimillion-dollar diaper deal that’s raised eyebrows across the Golden State.
A government ethics watchdog is requesting that California’s state auditor investigate the deal championed by Newsom after alleging political favoritism and potential waste of taxpayer dollars.
According to the New York Post, Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) asked State Auditor Grant Parks to probe California’s $6.2M no-bid contract with Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with ties to Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
FACT alleges the state may have skirted a typical competitive bidding process and concealed records about the free diaper deal.
Questions mount over Gavin Newsom's $12M diaper deal as ethics watchdog demands state audit https://t.co/iyLLBonEh9 pic.twitter.com/70mQmBaIY1
— New York Post (@nypost) July 13, 2026
“Immediately after the contract was announced, there were public concerns over whether the contract was awarded in a fair and impartial manner and whether the state was overpaying for the diapers and the program was operated at an unreasonable cost,” Kendra Arnold, executive director of FACT, wrote in a letter to Parks.
“The facts relating to both of these issues should have been publicly available, but the Newsom administration has been misleading about whether the contract was awarded in a competitive process and has mired the entire situation with a complete lack of transparency,” Arnold added.
Newsom’s free diaper program, which was announced in a San Francisco press conference just ahead of Mother’s Day, provides 400 free diapers to families discharged from participating California hospitals, regardless of family income.
The California Department of Health Care Access and Information awarded a $6.2 million contract to Los Angeles-based Baby2Baby to administer the program, and a $12 million contract extension was tucked into Newsom’s budget proposal for the coming year.
However, the selection of Baby2Baby to lead the initiative has raised eyebrows after personal connections to the Newsoms have surfaced.
Baby2Baby’s co-CEO Norah Weinstein sits on the board of Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, the California Partners Project.
Baby2Baby’s other co-CEO, Kelly Sawyer Patricof, is a “prolific political donor,” FACT noted in its letter.
Baby2Baby officials have said that any relationship with Siebel Newsom had no role in the diaper initiative and that Weinstein volunteers on the California Partners Project board without pay.
However, the intricacies of the deal have raised questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in California, who say it was pitched as a cost-effective means of distributing free diapers to California families of varying income levels.
“I will say the optics of this vendor is not good at all,” State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat from San Fernando, said at a hearing about the diaper contract last month.
“The administration and the governor is going to be gone, and we’re going to continue to get hit on this,” Menjivar said.
Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland claimed the state is overpaying for the diapers.
“You can go to Target and find diapers for 16 cents apiece. That just shows the waste and inefficiency of government,” Strickland told The New York Post last month.
CBS News reported last week that California officials have not released the Baby2Baby contract or bidding documents surrounding the controversial deal, more than two months after it was announced.
FACT also stated in its letter that state officials have not been forthcoming about the details of its Baby2Baby contract.
A spokesperson for the California State Auditor said the office cannot comment on matters that are not part of a publicly released audit.
This is an ongoing story. Check back for updates.