The last time Donald Trump was president, California led the liberal opposition to his agenda. It is now ready to resume the role.
In fact, as Trump's return to power took center stage late Tuesday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he already has a plan to do that — that the state is “1000% focused” and ready to fight, on and off the court, for California's progressive lifestyle.
“We will use the power of the law, the full authority of the office, to protect and defend the progress of California, our people, our values,” said Bonta, who is looking to run for governor.
“We have spent months, in some cases a year,” added Bonta, “planning attacks that would have our answers to all problems and areas – from attacks on our environment to attacks on reproductive freedom, our common weapon.” laws, our LGBTQ+ community, our civil rights, different constitutional rights.”
California has sued the Trump administration for the first time more than 100 times — usually successfully — and Bonta said a similar pattern of litigation was almost certain during the former president's second term.
“If Trump doesn't break the law, if he doesn't break the Constitution, if he doesn't abuse his authority in illegal ways, there's nothing we can do,” Bonta said. “But if he does what he did last night, and if he does what Project 2025 suggests he will do, of course we will fight him in court – because he will be breaking the law.”
Bonta's message was disrespectful in the face of a major defeat for Democrats and hurt Vice President Kamala Harris, a Californian who was derided by Trump as a “left-wing lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.”
Trump in his first victory speech on Wednesday said the American people had given Republicans an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” to deliver their conservation agenda – which includes the largest deportations in American history, stricter restrictions on abortion, reduced environmental laws, stronger gun control. rights and few rights.
“This is going to be the Golden Age of America,” Trump said.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — which produced the arch-conservative and anti-California Project 2025 playbook that Trump has distanced himself from but which many see as a policy guide for his second term — said Trump “has won a relentless victory. The left-wing machine is out to stop him,” and “every human rights organization stands together behind him.”
In the Golden State, the most populous and economically powerful state, Trump's authority seemed muted, like thunder from elsewhere.
As of Wednesday morning, Harris was beating Trump in California by nearly 1.7 million votes, nearly half of the state's votes still to be counted — or more than most US states combined. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, one of Trump's biggest opponents in his first term, won as a new member of the state.
In that way, the people of California gave their leaders their authority, said Erwin Chemerinsky, director of Berkeley Law.
“There is a big difference of opinion between California voters and Donald Trump,” Chemerinsky said. “California officials, like the attorney general, will use the law to fight back.”
Eric Schickler, 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 “place of resistance” to Trump.
“It generally fits where the state's voters are, and certainly the national ambitions of someone like Newsom,” he said – referring to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Harris' surrogate and frequent critic of Trump.
But it also “carries a risk or a cost,” Schickler said, especially given Trump's penchant for “revenge politics” and threatening the country.
During a campaign stop in Coachella last month, for example, Trump blasted the state as a place of high costs, excess, homelessness and crime, mixing the real problems facing the state with a bunch of lies.
He also blasted Newsom over the state's handling of water — and threatened to cut federal disaster aid for wildfires if California didn't make more water available to farmers and homeowners.
“We're going to take care of your water situation, force it down your throat, and say: Gavin, if you don't do it, we're not giving you any of that fire money that we're sending you all. Time for every fire, forest fire that you have,” Trump said.
Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But last week, he said “no country should lose much, or gain much, in this election.”
Trump's mass deportation of undocumented immigrants alone will hurt California's economy — and the national and global economy — if it happens, Newsom said, “with ripple effects from valley to valley, from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley.”
Such a move would damage California's reputation as a land of opportunity and innovation and the spirit of entrepreneurship in multigenerational American families and newcomers, he said.
Newsom was asking voters to keep Trump out of office. But his words have proven to stand up to Trump over the years.
Just a few months into Trump's final term, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom gave a rousing speech at the 2017 Democratic Party state convention about California championing all the progressive beliefs Bonta expressed on Tuesday — on immigration and the environment and the LGBTQ+ community.
“We are all Californians. Wear it with pride. This is our time,” Newsom said at the time.
In August 2020, a few months before Trump lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden, the country had fulfilled its promises. Then California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra – now the secretary of health and human services in Biden – announced the 100th federal case against the Trump administration.
In more than half of those cases, it is said that the management underestimated or failed to comply with the environmental laws of the organization. Others have challenged the administration's policies on immigration, education, health, guns and civil rights.
“It amazes me that any president in any administration can be caught at least 100 times breaking the law,” Becerra said at the time. “I'm not surprised we had to sue, because we have 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 cases they brought against the Trump administration, according to statistics by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University.
Democrats in California were already promising to fight again as it became clear on Tuesday night that Trump had risen again.
“To be clear: California will fight to protect our democracy, our freedom [and] the basic dignity of all people,” said Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, wrote in X. “California will not be cut down by fascism.”
Schiff struck similar themes in his victory speech. “California will continue to be a leader in the process, a bedrock of democracy, a champion of innovation and a defender of our rights and freedoms,” Schiff said.
Trump did not specifically address the idea of winning green states like California in his acceptance speech, but he promised to bring it to all Americans. He called his victory a “historic conversion” of the various groups of Americans who followed him, and suggested that his authority was not just from them, but from God – because of his survival of a near-fatal assassination attempt.
Schickler said California will face special challenges during Trump's second term.
“There are many government policies that Trump will push that could have a major impact on the government, and the tools to resist them may be limited, especially given Trump's willingness to use executive power, and the fact that the courts are often controlled by conservatives who have a strong view of the president's power,” he said.
There could be major disagreements over a number of major issues that the Trump administration and California have very different positions on — including the distribution of mail-order abortion pills, a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and race-sensitive education at public universities and colleges, and protections for vulnerable people such as transgender people and children.
More volatile than anything else, Schickler said, would be the debate over immigration.
“Immigration will be one of the key areas, we think there are efforts to deport a lot of people,” said Schickler. “That would involve the federal government doing things in the states, and you'd think Californians would be against that.”
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