by California was proud of its stance against Donald Trump during his first term as president and will hardly have to face the same role the second time around.
Indeed, as the foundation of the Democratic party’s strength in a country that is moving sharply to the right, it has been preparing for this moment for a long time.
“California will continue to be the vanguard of progress, the fulcrum of democracy, the champion of innovation, and the defender of our rights and freedoms,” vowed supporters of Adam Schiff, the newly elected state senator and a frequent target of Trump’s ire. on election night.
On Thursday, Gavin Newsom announced a special session of the California legislature to ensure that the attorney general’s office and other state agencies have the funding they need. “We will not sit idle,” the governor said. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”
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Even with Trump out of power as of 2021, California is setting up guardrails to protect the rights of its residents under an adversarial federal government. The state has enshrined abortion rights in its constitution, passed a ballot initiative expressly protecting the right of same-sex couples to marry and pushed for stricter gun laws that still adhere to the supreme court’s narrow interpretation of the right to bear arms.
He even considered setting up state funding to meet the costs of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters in case the Trump administration decides to withhold emergency funds from states it deems politically hostile, as it has done at times during his term 2017-21.
“We’ve tested the place with Trump,” said Elizabeth Ashford, a political consultant who has worked for governors on both sides of the aisle and was chief of staff to Kamala Harris when she was California attorney general. “The work involved implementing measures that could withstand shifts in Washington and the supreme court. These projects have been going on for years.”
Asked how ready she thought California was for the new administration, Ashford said: “On a scale of one to 100, we’re starting at about a 90.”
California is the most populous US state and its most powerful economy, making it an unusual counterweight to the power of the federal government. For example, he negotiated directly with automakers over tailpipe emissions standards, defying the desire of Trump allies to end a longstanding rule that allows states to set their own standards.
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When he can’t work around the federal government, he can try to challenge any hint of government overreach in the courts, as he did more than 130 times during the first Trump administration. Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, told the policy news outlet CalMatters last week that his staff had prepared briefs and tested arguments on a range of issues — everything from limits on abortion drugs to gun laws and upholding civil rights of transgender youth.
“The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to prepare,” Bonta told CalMatters. “Unfortunately, it’s a long list.”
In a statement Wednesday, Bonta said California will continue to move forward because of our values and the continued pursuit of progress”. He added: “I will use the full force of the law and the full authority of my office to ensure it.”
It is unlikely to take much time for California and the new administration to make progress. Newsom has a long history as a Trump opponent and spent much of the election campaign traveling the country to promote Democratic candidates – making him likely to be a lightning rod for Trump’s Ireland.
Trump called Newsom “one of the worst governors in the country” and called him “New-scum”. Their rivalry is also personal, since Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.
Former Trump staff have made little secret of their desire to disrupt the Democratic party’s battle for California politics and have spelled out their intentions in documents such as the Project 2025 blueprint that became a lightning rod during the election campaign. . Despite Trump’s efforts to distance himself from it, California officials have carefully studied Project 2025 and are assuming it will be the new administration’s policy backbone. One California consultant, Jared Huffman, has described it as a “dystopian nightmare”.
There are several ways in which the state can try to interfere with that nightmare. During Trump’s first presidency, for example, state agencies including the California highway patrol refused to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency tasked with aggressively rounding up undocumented immigrants. Police in so-called “sanctuary cities” were protecting their immigrant populations in a similar way.
For all the preparation, though, state officials fear that the new Trump administration will be more organized and radical than the old one, and that it will have more of a political mandate since California voters were first invited — much more than was in 2020 or. in 2016 – expressed sympathy for parts of Trump’s agenda.
Newsom said last week that he was particularly concerned about the prospect of widespread immigration raids, which could be devastating to California’s immigrant-dependent economy, including the vast agricultural concerns that are based on most in the inland Central valley.
There may be other parts of Trump’s agenda that, if enacted, could be difficult to reverse — a national abortion ban passed by Congress, say, or a repeal of the Affordable Care Act from the Obama era. And many advocacy groups are deeply concerned about the vulnerable populations they serve.
“Our community is very worried and uncertain,” said Terra Russell-Slavin, a lawyer with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, “especially given the number of attacks that Trump has explosively directed at the LGBTQ community and especially the community cross.”
In response, Russell-Slavin said her organization was working with state and local governments to find alternative funding streams should the federal government cut gender-affirming health care or homelessness or senior services. “We are very fortunate that our lawyers are very supportive,” she said. “We are very confident that they will fight for protections for us.”
Is that enough? So far, California officials are showing their teeth and vowing to fight. But Newsom, for one, has no illusions about how much is at stake. “There is no state,” he said last week, “more to lose or more to gain in this election.”
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