California governor calls special session to protect liberal policies from Trump presidency

[November 08, 2024]  By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session ahead of another Trump presidency to safeguard the state’s progressive policies. Meanwhile, attorneys general in blue states across the country announced they were also gearing up for a legal fight.

The move — a day after the former president resoundingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race — effectively reignited California's resistance campaign against conservative policies that state Democratic leaders started during the first Trump administration.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom, who reportedly has ambitions on the national stage, said in a statement.

Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws. He called on the Legislature to meet in December and give the attorney general’s office more funding to fight federal challenges but did not give specifics.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office spent the past year reviewing more than 120 lawsuits the state filed during Trump’s first term in preparation for new federal actions.

Bonta said to look at the votes in California: “We rejected him. We rejected his values. We rejected his agenda.”

He said his office has been working with Democratic attorneys general across the nation in anticipation of Trump winning to prepare game plans. The states could face a more robust battle this time around with a Republican-dominated Senate and possibly House.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she, Attorney General Letitia James and their senior staffers plan to meet regularly to discuss legal strategies to protect “key areas that are most likely to face threats from the Trump administration” such as “reproductive rights, civil rights, immigration, gun safety, labor rights, LGBTQ rights and our environmental justice.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who as state attorney general filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump during his first term, said they will “have to see if he makes good on what he promised and ran on in terms of Project 2025 or other things.”

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat who has just been elected governor, said he was especially worried about Trump’s recent comments suggesting the military should be used domestically against “the enemy from within.”

“It’s deeply un-American,” he said.

In some states, including Connecticut, officials are hoping to codify progressive policies into law, "but there are limits to what our ability is to do that,” Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon said.

Even in losing California, Trump appeared on track to surpass his 2020 record of more than 6 million votes in the state, at the time more than any GOP candidate before him. Jessica Millan Patterson, who heads the state Republican Party, said in a statement that “Out-of-touch California Democrats continue to prove their commitment to moving California away from the mainstream and down a destructive path.”

Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

After Trump's win, Newsom vowed to work with the president-elect but added, “Let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”

President Donald Trump talks with then California Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, left, during a visit to a neighborhood impacted by the wildfires in Paradise, Calif., Nov. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. Democrats, which hold every statewide office in California and have commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation, outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide and Harris easily carried the state in her losing presidential bid.

Trump called the Democratic governor “New-scum” during a campaign stop in Southern California last month and has relentlessly lambasted the Democratic stronghold and nation’s most populous state over its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, its homeless population and its thicket of regulations.

Trump also waded into a water rights battle over the endangered delta smelt that has pitted environmentalists against farmers and threatened to withhold federal aid to a state increasingly under threat from wildfires.

In a speech Wednesday morning, Trump vowed to follow through with his campaign promise of carrying out the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status and prosecuting his political enemies.

Speaking Thursday, California’s attorney general vowed to protect them.

“I can promise to the undocumented immigrant community in California that I and my team have been thinking about you for months, and the harm that might come from the Trump administration 2.0. We’ll do everything in our power and use the full authority of our office to defend you,” Bonta said.

Over the last two decades, state attorneys general have increasingly embraced the role of challenging federal executive policy — most often when it originates with a president of the opposite party.

During Trump’s first presidency, Democratic attorneys general banned together to file suits over immigration, Trump’s travel ban for residents of Muslim countries, the environment, internet regulation and other topics.

The challenges typically have mixed records. But Trump has one possible advantage this time around. He was aggressive in nominating conservative jurists to federal courts at all levels, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We learned a lot about former President Trump in his first term — he’s petty, vindictive, and will do what it takes to get his way no matter how dangerous the policy may be,” state Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire said in a statement. “California has come too far and accomplished too much to simply surrender and accept his dystopian vision for America.”

Newsom has called California — which has passed dozens of laws to protect abortion access — a sanctuary for people in other states seeking abortions. The state was also the first to mandate that all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids by 2035. California also extends state-funded health care to all low-income residents regardless of their immigration status.

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Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia; Eugene Johnson in Seattle; and Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles contributed to the report.

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