As in Trump’s last term, California will lead the liberal resistance

The last time Donald Trump was president, California led the liberal resistance to his agenda. Now it’s ready to take on the role again.

As Trump’s return to power came into focus late Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he already has a plan for that — for the state to be “1,000% focused” and ready to fight for California’s progressive way of life in court and beyond.

“We will use the full force of the law and the full authority of the office to defend and protect California’s progress, our people and our values,” said Bonta, who is eyeing a run for governor.

“We have spent months, in some cases even more than a year, planning potential attacks and our responses to them in every area and scope – from the attack on our environment to the attack on reproductive freedom, our common sense weapon.” Laws, our LGBTQ+ community, our civil rights, various constitutional rights.”

California sued the first Trump administration more than 100 times – often successfully – and Bonta said similar litigation was almost certain during the former president’s second term.

“If Trump is not violating the law, if he is not violating the Constitution, if he is not exceeding his authority in an unlawful manner, there is nothing we can do,” Bonta said. “But if he does what he did last time and if he does what the 2025 project proposes, of course we will be in conflict with him in court – because he will be breaking the law.”

Bonta’s message was one of defiance in the face of a sweeping Democratic defeat and a bitter one for Vice President Kamala Harris, a Californian derided by Trump as a “radical left-wing lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.”

Trump said in his victory speech early Wednesday that the American people had given Republicans an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” to push through their conservative agenda – which includes the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, strict abortion restrictions, tougher environmental regulations and a tightening of guns include rights and less queer rights.

“This will truly be the Golden Age of America,” Trump said.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation — which created the arch-conservative and anti-California Project 2025 playbook, which Trump has distanced himself from but which many see as a likely policy guide for his second term — said Trump has “a The inexorable triumphs.” “The left-wing machine wants to stop him,” and “the entire conservative movement is united behind him.”

In the Golden State, the country’s most populous and economically strongest state, Trump’s claimed mandate seemed muted, like a rumble from elsewhere.

On Wednesday morning, Harris beat Trump in California by nearly 1.7 million votes, with nearly half of the state’s ballots yet to be counted – or more than the combined population of many US states. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, one of Trump’s primary opponents during his first term, had won as the state’s new senator.

In this way, Californians gave their leaders their own mandate, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.

“There is a huge ideological difference between California voters and Donald Trump,” Chemerinsky said. “California officials like the attorney general will use the law to fight back.”

Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley and author of the new book “Partisan Nation,” said he has no doubt that California will continue to be a “hotspot of resistance” to Trump.

“It generally fits the state’s electorate and certainly fits the national ambitions of someone like Newsom,” he said — referring to Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Harris surrogate and constant Trump critic.

But it also brings “downstream risks or costs,” Schickler said, particularly given Trump’s penchant for “retaliatory politics” and open threats against the state.

During a campaign stop in Coachella last month, for example, Trump described the state as a wasteland of high costs, overregulation, homelessness and crime, mixing real problems facing the state with a litany of falsehoods.

He also criticized Newsom over the state’s handling of water supplies – and threatened to cut off federal disaster relief for wildfires if California doesn’t provide more water to farmers and homeowners.

“We’re going to take care of your water situation, shove it down his throat and say, Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving any of the fire money that we’re sending to all of you.” “The time for all the fires and forest fires that there is,” Trump said.

Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But just last week he said, “No state has more to lose or more to gain in this election.”

Trump’s promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants alone would devastate California’s economy – and therefore the national and global economy – if implemented, Newsom said, with “impact from valley to valley, from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley.”

Such a move would damage California’s reputation as a land of opportunity, innovation and entrepreneurship for American multigenerational families and newcomers alike, he said.

Newsom called on voters to keep Trump from power. But his comments reflected opposition to Trump that has existed for years.

Just months into Trump’s final term, then-Lt. Governor Newsom gave a rousing speech at the 2017 state Democratic Party convention about California’s fight for the same progressive beliefs that Bonta proclaimed on Tuesday – on immigration, the environment and the LGBTQ+ community.

“We are all Californians. Wear it with pride. This is our moment,” Newsom said at the time.

In August 2020, just months before Trump would lose re-election to Joe Biden, the state had made good on its promises. Then-California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra — who is now Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary — announced the state’s 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration.

More than half of those lawsuits alleged that the government undermined or failed to comply with federal environmental regulations. Others questioned the administration’s policies on immigration, education, health care, guns and civil rights.

“I am surprised that every president of an administration is caught red-handed violating the law at least 100 times,” Becerra said at the time. “It doesn’t surprise me that we had to sue because we need to protect our people, our resources and our values, and we use the rule of law to do that.”

Democratic attorneys general won 83% of the 155 lawsuits they filed against the first Trump administration, according to a tally by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University.

California Democrats were already vowing to fight again when it emerged Tuesday night that Trump was on the rise again.

“To be clear: California will fight to protect our democracy, our freedoms (and) the fundamental dignity of all people,” Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, wrote on X. “California will not capitulate to fascism .” .”

Schiff addressed similar themes in his victory speech. “California will continue to be at the forefront of progress, the bulwark of democracy, the champion of innovation and the protector of our rights and freedoms,” Schiff said.

Trump didn’t directly comment on the idea of ​​winning over blue states like California in his own acceptance speech, but he did promise to help all Americans. He called his victory a “historic realignment” of various groups of Americans who stood behind him and suggested that his mandate came not just from them but from God – given that he had survived an assassination attempt.

Schickler said California will face unique challenges during Trump’s second term.

“There are simply a lot of federal policies that Trump will advance that could have major impacts on the state, and the means to resist them may be limited, especially given Trump’s aggressive willingness to use executive power and the fact that the Courts … “are generally controlled by conservatives who have a strong view of presidential power,” he said.

There could be major clashes over a variety of important issues on which the Trump administration and California have very different positions – including the distribution of abortion pills by mail, the focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, racially conscious education at public universities, colleges, and safeguards for vulnerable populations such as transgender people and children.

More volatile than anything else, Schickler said, may be the impasse over immigration.

“Immigration will be one of the main focal points, assuming there are efforts at mass deportation,” Schickler said. “This involves the federal government doing things within the states, and you can imagine people in California resisting that.”