Life moves pretty fast. It is Monday lunchtime when Jennifer Siebel Newsom drops into the Guardian’s office in Washington, just a couple of blocks from the White House, for an interview to promote her new film. Less than two hours later her husband, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, announces that the couple are under investigation by the justice department.
One strand of the investigation specifically targets Siebel Newsom’s taxes and the California Partners Project, a gender equity non-profit she co-founded that received $4.3m in donations solicited by her husband. Gavin Newsom denounced the move as a “personal vendetta” directed by Donald Trump because the governor is considering running for US president.
Even before the news breaks, Siebel Newsom’s verdict on Trump is withering. “I feel sorry for our country right now because when the father figure, the leader, the president is such a broken, damaging, harmful role model, everyone’s being traumatised,” she says, more in sorrow than in anger. “Everyone’s mental health is not what it could be – should be.”
Siebel Newsom, who turns 52 this week, is not a politician but has long engaged in causes that are anathema to the current president. At Conservation International, she helped women in Africa and Latin America start environmentally friendly businesses. After a spell in Hollywood as an actor, she started her own production company to highlight women’s stories.
Her 2011 documentary, Miss Representation, explored the media’s misrepresentation of women and girls and the knock-on effect in positions of power and influence in the US. She went on to launch the Representation Project, a non-profit pushing for cultural change. Her husband became California governor in 2019, but Siebel Newsom rejects the traditional title of “first lady” in favour of “first partner”.
She reflects: “I’ve always had a career. I’ve always been a breadwinner. We don’t pay our first ladies. This is my love. This is my work. It’s my art. It’s my creativity. It’s also my advocacy and it parallel-tracks the work that I’m also doing as first partner. I’m all about centering women and children and making sure California families aren’t just surviving but thriving and I feel good about that.”
Siebel Newsom’s newest film is Miss Representation: Rise Up, a bracing study of the cultural backlash against women and girls in the era of social media algorithms and AI deepfakes, the rise of the manosphere and “trad wives”, and, of course, the pernicious influence of Trump, who bragged on tape about grabbing women by the genitals and has been found liable for sexual abuse.
Siebel Newsom has the clout to pull in big names: former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the senator Amy Klobuchar, the actor Jameela Jamil, and journalists Gretchen Carlson and Katie Couric are among the film’s cast of talking heads.
They sound the alarm about a…
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