The final time Donald Trump was president, California led the liberal resistance to his agenda. Now it’s poised to reprise the function.
The truth is, as Trump’s return to energy got here into focus late Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta mentioned he already had a plan to take action — that the state was “1000% targeted” and able to struggle, in courtroom and past, for California’s progressive lifestyle.
“We’ll use the complete pressure of the legislation, the complete authority of the workplace, to defend and shield California’s progress, our individuals, our values,” mentioned Bonta, who’s eyeing a run for governor.
“We’ve been spending months, in some instances over a 12 months,” Bonta added, “planning on potential assaults and our responses to them throughout all of the totally different points and areas — from attacking our surroundings to attacking reproductive freedom, our widespread sense gun legal guidelines, our LGBTQ+ neighborhood, our civil rights, totally different constitutional rights.”
California sued the primary Trump administration greater than 100 occasions — usually efficiently — and Bonta mentioned a equally litigious method was virtually sure in the course of the former president’s second time period.
“If Trump doesn’t break the legislation, if he doesn’t violate the Structure, if he doesn’t overreach his authority in illegal methods, there’ll be nothing for us to do,” Bonta mentioned. “But when he does what he did final time, and if he does what Mission 2025 suggests he’ll do, in fact we’ll conflict with him in courtroom — as a result of he might be breaking the legislation.”
Bonta’s messsage was one among defiance within the face of a sweeping defeat for Democrats and a stinging one for Vice President Kamala Harris, a Californian who was ridiculed by Trump as a “radical left lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.”
Trump in his early-Wednesday victory speech mentioned the American individuals had given Republicans an “unprecedented and highly effective mandate” to usher of their conservative agenda — which incorporates the largest mass deportation in U.S. historical past, sharp restrictions on abortion, slashed environmental laws, strengthened gun rights and fewer queer rights.
“It will really be the Golden Age of America,” Trump mentioned.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Basis — which produced the arch-conservative and anti-California Mission 2025 playbook that Trump has distanced himself from however many see as a probable coverage information for his second time period — mentioned Trump had “triumphed over a relentless left-wing machine intent on stopping him,” and “the whole conservative motion stands united behind him.”
Within the Golden State, the nation’s most populous and economically mighty, Trump’s claimed mandate appeared muted, like a rumbling from elsewhere.
As of Wednesday morning, Harris was beating Trump in California by practically 1.7 million votes with practically half the state’s ballots nonetheless to rely — or by greater than the whole inhabitants of many U.S. states. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, one among Trump’s chief antagonists throughout his first time period, had been swept to victory because the state’s latest senator.
In that method, Californians gave their leaders a mandate of their very own, mentioned Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Legislation.
“There is a gigantic ideological distinction between California voters and Donald Trump,” Chemerinsky mentioned. “California officers, such because the lawyer normal, will use the legislation to struggle again.”
Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Research at UC Berkeley and writer of the brand new ebook “Partisan Nation,” mentioned he has little doubt that California will proceed to be a “focus of resistance” to Trump.
“It matches usually the place the state’s voters is, and definitely the nationwide ambitions of any individual like Newsom,” he mentioned — referring to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Harris surrogate and fixed Trump critic.
Nevertheless it additionally “does carry downstream dangers or prices,” Schickler mentioned, notably given Trump’s penchant for “retribution politics” and outright threats to the state.
Throughout a marketing campaign cease in Coachella final month, for instance, Trump blasted the state as a wasteland of excessive prices, overregulation, homelessness and crime, mixing actual issues dealing with the state with a litany of falsehoods.
He additionally blasted Newsom over the state’s dealing with of its water provide — and threatened to chop off federal catastrophe assist for wildfires if California doesn’t make extra water out there to farmers and householders.
“We’re going to deal with your water scenario, pressure it down his throat, and we’ll say: Gavin, if you happen to don’t do it, we’re not giving any of that fireplace cash that we ship you on a regular basis for all the fireplace, forest fires that you’ve got,” Trump mentioned.
Newsom didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Wednesday. However simply final week, he mentioned “no state has extra to lose, or extra to realize, on this election.”
Trump’s promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants alone would devastate California’s economic system — and the nationwide and world economies in consequence — if applied, Newsom mentioned, with “impacts from valley to valley, Silicon Valley to Central Valley.”
Such a transfer would hurt California’s popularity as a land of alternative and innovation and entrepreneurial spirit for multi-generational American households and newcomers alike, he mentioned.
Newsom was calling on voters to dam Trump from energy. However his remarks echoed a resistance to Trump going again years.
Simply months into Trump’s final time period, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom gave a rousing speech on the state Democratic Occasion’s 2017 conference about California preventing for all the identical progressive beliefs that Bonta touted Tuesday — on immigration and the surroundings and the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
“We’re all Californians. Put on it with pleasure. That is our second,” Newsom mentioned then.
By August 2020, simply months earlier than Trump would lose his reelection bid to Joe Biden, the state had made good on its guarantees. Then-California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra — who’s now Biden’s well being and human companies secretary — introduced the state’s a centesimal lawsuit towards the Trump administration.
Greater than half of these fits alleged the administration had undermined or did not adjust to federal environmental guidelines. Others challenged the administration’s insurance policies on immigration, training, healthcare, weapons and civil rights.
“I’m stunned that any president in any administration would no less than 100 occasions be caught red-handed violating the legislation,” Becerra mentioned on the time. “I’m not stunned we’ve needed to sue, as a result of we’ve to guard our individuals, our assets and our values, and we use the rule of legislation to do this.”
Democratic attorneys normal gained 83% of the 155 lawsuits they introduced towards the primary Trump administration, based on a tally by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette College.
California Democrats have been already pledging to struggle once more because it grew to become clear Tuesday night time that Trump was ascendant as soon as extra.
“To be clear: California will struggle to guard our democracy, our freedoms [and] the essential dignity of all individuals,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, wrote on X. “California gained’t roll over for fascism.”
Schiff hit on comparable themes in his victory speech. “California will proceed to be on the forefront of progress, the bulwark of democracy, the champion of innovation and the protector of our rights and freedoms,” Schiff mentioned.
Trump didn’t communicate on to the concept of profitable over blue states like California in his personal acceptance speech, however did promise to ship for all People. He known as his victory a “historic realignment” of various teams of People behind him, and advised his mandate was not simply from them, however from God — given his having survived a near-deadly assassination try.
Schickler mentioned California will face particular challenges throughout Trump’s second time period.
“There simply are a variety of federal insurance policies that Trump will push that may have a huge impact on the state, and the instruments to withstand it might be restricted, particularly given Trump’s aggressive willingness to make use of government energy, after which the truth that the courts are usually managed by conservatives who take a powerful view of presidential energy,” he mentioned.
There could possibly be huge fights over a bunch of main points that the Trump administration and California maintain vastly totally different positions on — together with the distribution of abortion drugs within the mail, the give attention to variety, fairness and inclusion and race-conscious training in public universities and faculties, and protections for weak populations akin to transgender individuals and kids.
Extra unstable than anything, Schickler mentioned, could possibly be the standoff over immigration.
“Immigration goes to be one of many fundamental flash factors, assuming there are efforts at mass deportation,” Schickler mentioned. “That’s going to contain the federal authorities doing issues inside the states, and you’ll think about some resistance to that from of us in California.”