By Leire Sales
“The freedoms we enjoy in California are under attack and we will not sit back. We have faced this challenge before and we know how to respond.”
That was the first reaction of California Governor Gavin Newson upon learning of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections on November 5.
Barely 48 hours had passed, and the Democrat not only issued that warning, but also took the first step to begin turning California into a state as “Trump-proof” as possible, to protect his policies before the Republican’s second term begins.
He called for an extraordinary session of the state Congress on December 2 , just over a month and a half before Trump takes office.
The goal: to discuss options and increase funding for potential litigation with the new administration on issues such as immigrant protection, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, or the fight against climate change.
The president-elect’s response was swift. Using his favorite nickname for the governor, Newscum — a play on his last name and “scum” in English — and making a nod to his own campaign slogan, he accused him of hindering “all the great things that can be done to make California great again.”
The California Outpost
Leaders in the southwestern state have for years portrayed it as a bulwark against right-wing extremism, and Newsom in particular has emerged nationally as one of Trump’s staunchest critics.
Some say he is actually paving his way to the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.
But if there is any entity that could counterbalance a Republican “power trifecta” — as Washington political jargon calls the scenario in which the president’s party also controls both houses of Congress — it would be California.
Not only because, with its nearly 39 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in the country.
Also due to the size of its economy – it is estimated that if it were a nation, it would be the fifth largest economy in the world – it can shake up markets and thus has the ability to influence national politics.
It is also the state that has received the most attacks from Trump and his allies, and the one that probably, given his election promises, has the most to lose .
One need only look at the potential consequences for California of “the largest deportation in US history” that Trump promises.
“Promises made, promises kept”
On election night, as soon as he knew he had won, Trump announced that his second term would be guided by a simple motto: “Promises made, promises kept.”
And this week he confirmed—in capital letters, on his social network Truth Social—that he plans to declare a national emergency and mobilize troops to return undocumented immigrants en masse to their countries of origin.
California is home to more than 10 million foreign-born people, including about 1.8 million without legal status , according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.
It is also the second state, after Nevada, that is home to the most families with members with mixed immigration statuses – where, for example, the children are U.S. citizens by birth while one or both parents are undocumented.
There are more than six million such households in the U.S., about 5 percent of the total. And about 4.4 million children born in the country live with a relative without a green card, according to Pew.
Given this scenario, a mass deportation would not only be a human tragedy, experts warn, but also a blow to the economy. There are sectors that depend largely on undocumented labor, such as construction or agriculture.
In certain areas of California, a state known as the breadbasket of the United States because it produces one-third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit, undocumented workers can make up as much as 70% of the workforce .
“Sanctuary” for migrants
Thus, the state began to enshrine protections for undocumented immigrants years ago.
In 2017, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Values Act (SB 54) , which prohibits state and local law enforcement from collaborating with federal law enforcement on immigration matters.
And now, as Congress in Sacramento decides on another type of reinforcements at its session on December 2, several Californian cities have already begun to take their own measures.
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday endorsed an ordinance to turn the nation’s second-largest metropolis into a “sanctuary city .” It did so unanimously, but because the bill was amended during the council session, it requires a second vote.
Introduced in 2023, the ordinance is intended to serve as a firewall between federal immigration authorities and city agencies.
According to the law, municipal employees cannot “investigate, cite, arrest, detain, transfer or detain any person” for the purpose of enforcing immigration law , except in cases where serious crimes are being investigated.
They are also not allowed to collect information about someone’s citizenship or immigration status, unless it is necessary to provide a municipal service.
“It will prevent federal immigration agencies from accessing city facilities and tapping into city resources,” Councilwoman Nithya Raman told BBC News.
And in San Francisco, which sued the first Trump administration over its efforts to pressure city police to assist in detaining migrants, District Attorney David Chiu said he plans to again “use every legal tool to defend the city.”
Although Tom Homan , whom Trump chose as his “border czar ,” has already warned that such local laws and measures will not stop the administration from doing its job.
“Nothing will stop us from deporting criminal immigrants. We will get the job done with or without your help ,” said the man who, after being a police officer in New York, served as interim director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) in an interview on Fox News.
Along those lines, state Attorney General Rob Bonta acknowledged that while the California government can provide legal assistance and guarantee due process, state officials do not have direct power to protect those in the country illegally from deportation.
LGBTQ+ rights, climate action and more
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles School Board expanded the concept of sanctuary to include not only immigrant students but also the LGBTQ+ community in the nation’s second-largest school system.
There are fears that Trump and Republicans could try to roll back protections for transgender residents in the state.
Anticipating this, Governor Newson signed a law in July that prohibits school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents if students ask to be called by a name or pronoun other than the one assigned.
That has led the state into a series of battles with districts controlled by conservative caucuses, and experts say Republican leaders may want to intervene, something that could also happen on reproductive rights.
Although Trump softened his stance on abortion toward the end of the campaign, his conservative base is critical of California for amended its state constitution to enshrine the right after voters approved it.
They also oppose Newson’s efforts to ensure that reproductive health services are provided to women from states where abortion is banned or severely restricted.
Trump’s environmental agenda — confirmed by his choice of Christ Wright, a staunch defender of the fossil fuel industry and climate crisis denier, as energy secretary — also risks threatening California policies that for decades have helped set the pace for the rest of the world, such as the state’s vehicle emissions standards.
There is also the precedent of Trump’s first term, when he repealed more than 100 regulations aimed at cleaner air and water, controlling toxic chemicals and conserving wildlife.
The Republican also called global warming a “hoax” and withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement , which aims to prevent global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
Knowing this, Governor Newson traveled to Washington last week to meet with key officials in the Biden-Harris administration.
But he did so above all to pressure the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to give the green light to eight pending regulations on this matter, so that the still-president can sign them before January 19 and thus they come into force.
The path of demands and the power of federalism
Meanwhile, other Democratic leaders in California, including Attorney General Bonta, have been working for weeks on a strategy to protect the state from potential executive orders and other actions by a future Republican administration.
“If Trump doesn’t break the law, if he doesn’t violate the Constitution, if he doesn’t overstep his authority by illegal means, then there’s nothing we have to do,” Bonta told the Los Angeles Times .
“But if he does what he did last time, and if he does what Project 2025 suggests he will do, of course we will face each other in court , because he will be breaking the law,” he concluded.
During the Republican’s first term, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration more than 100 times .
As political polarization has increased in recent years, states have increasingly relied on this resource, and with increasing success.
According to a database created and maintained by Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Republican attorneys general in several states have filed around 60 lawsuits against the Biden administration, winning 76% of them.
And during the first Trump administration, Democratic state attorneys general won 83 percent of the 160 lawsuits they brought against the federal government.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, expects the scenario to be partly repeated.
“The courts are more conservative now than they were when Trump took office in 2017 , and I think this administration will be more aggressive in pushing the conservative agenda, and will do so sooner,” he told The New York Times .
“Although states will also respond more aggressively from the start,” he added.
Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the same Californian university and author of the book Partisan Nation , also speaks of aggressiveness and predicts that in the second Trump administration the legal route will involve new challenges.
“There are a lot of federal policies that Trump will push that could have a big impact on the state, and the tools to resist them may be limited, especially given Trump’s aggressive willingness to use executive power ,” Schickler told the Los Angeles Times .
“And then there’s the fact that the courts are generally controlled by conservatives who have a strong view of presidential power.”
Regardless, Governor Newson has already indicated that his state does not intend to fight this battle alone.
“California will look to work with the incoming President, but make no mistake: we will stand side by side with states across the nation to defend our Constitution and the rule of law ,” he wrote on social media after the election results were announced.
Several Democratic representatives from other states have already announced that they would join the resistance if necessary, such as the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, or the attorney general of Washington and now governor-elect, Bob Ferguson .
“Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It is the United States of America,” Newson concluded in his post on X.
