On the heels of Donald Trump’s decisive victory to reclaim the White House, Gov. Gavin Newsom and California officials in the deep blue state are reviving legal and legislative strategies to push back on the president-elect’s vision to “restore America to greatness” in his second term.
On Thursday, Newsom directed state lawmakers to hold a special session next month to prepare for how to respond to Trump’s agenda, including combating what California Democrats fear will be attacks on reproductive rights, climate measures, health care programs and undocumented immigrants.
Without offering details, Newsom urged the State Legislature to set aside additional funding for the California Department of Justice in anticipation of a potential flurry of litigation against the Trump administration.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”
On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, slash environmental regulations, roll back LGBTQ protections, force homeless people into “tent cities” and threatened to send the military into cities run by Democrats as part of an effort to root out “the enemy from within.”
After a sweeping electoral victory and Republicans claiming likely majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, Trump appears emboldened to push aggressively to realize that agenda.
“I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept,” he told supporters during his acceptance speech in Florida on Tuesday.
During Trump’s first term, California had some success in thwarting his plans and policies. The state sued the Trump administration more than 120 times, scoring victories to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children — defend the state’s clean air rules and halt restrictions on abortion access at federally funded clinics.
At a news conference in the foreground of the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco’s Crissy Field on Thursday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office has already prepared draft litigation, and has been coordinating with other state attorneys general in recent months in the event of a Trump victory. The specific details of those efforts were unclear.
Bonta said California won the “supermajority” of cases it filed against Trump’s administration during his first term and was confident it could be successful again. “We are ready, we are prepared, we have thought through all of the possibilities of the attacks on our values — on our state,” he said.
State Republicans, meanwhile, were quick to dismiss the moves by Newsom and Bonta as a “political stunt” to distract from Democrats’ losses not just in Washington, D.C., but across California.
“Even with the massive deficit he created, Governor Newsom wants to hand his Attorney General a blank check to wage endless battles against the federal government—while our own state is on fire, both literally and metaphorically,” Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, from San Diego, said in a statement, apparently referring to the destructive Mountain Fire burning in Ventura County.
Legal experts and officials expect clashes between California and Trump could come over attempts to pass a national abortion ban or restrictions on abortion medication, revoke the state’s ability to regulate automobile emissions, weaken its gun laws, cut funding to Medi-Cal and Obamacare health insurance exchanges, ban transgender athletes in women’s sports and end protections for undocumented immigrants.
Paul Nolette, a Marquette University political science professor who studies state lawsuits against the federal government, said Democratic attorneys general across the country are preparing an “unprecedented amount of litigation” to file on “literally day one of the Trump Administration.”
He added that when it comes to defending California’s climate policies, the state will likely continue seeking regulatory agreements and settlements directly with automakers, energy companies and other industries. In 2019, the state inked agreements with Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen to comply with California’s emissions standards.
Nolette said California, which boasts among the largest economies in the world, could also seek climate pacts with other countries in Europe or Canada, even if the Trump administration pulls out of international climate accords.
“That can run largely independently of what’s happening in Washington, and it gives an opportunity to really advance California’s goals,” he said.
