Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells attendees at a closed-door meeting that Texas has overtaken California and has become the nation’s “center of gravity,” according to reports. Multiple outlets describe his remarks as a “tale of two states” that contrasts Texas and California’s approaches to governance and energy policy. The reporting says Bessent attributes the shift to differences in state decision-making and energy-related strategies, which he characterizes as having contributed to divergent outcomes between the two states. The accounts do not provide extensive supporting data within the summaries, but they frame the comments as an argument that Texas’s policies have enabled broader progress while California’s approach has fallen short. Overall, the coverage presents Bessent’s statement as a comparative political and policy assessment rather than a detailed economic forecast, and it centers on the idea of a geographic and economic pivot from California toward Texas.