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California’s special session prepares for Trump
California’s lawmakers met in Sacramento on Monday, kicking off a special session aimed at shoring up the Golden State’s liberal policies against expected challenges from Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
One key goal of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called for the session, is for legislators to secure a $25-million fund for legal challenges to federal polices that clash with California’s approach to civil rights, abortion access, immigration, climate action and more.
Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) introduced a bill that would set aside that amount, plus an additional $500,000 to cover the costs of “initial case preparation.”
“While we always hope to collaborate with our federal partners, California will be ready to vigorously defend our interests and values from any unlawful action by the incoming Trump Administration,” Gabriel, chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, wrote in a statement. “We know from President-elect Trump’s statements — and from the more than 120 lawsuits that California filed during the first Trump Administration — that we must be prepared to defend ourselves.”
Trump speaks with Newsom in Paradise, Calif., after a wildfire in 2018. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
However, Newsom’s action “is largely symbolic,” my colleague Taryn Luna noted last month, since lawmakers will most likely “pass the legislation at the same speed as they could have through the regular process.”
And as Times political reporter Mackenzie Mays explained, the state’s Democratic leaders are attempting to walk a line between a second Trump resistance and addressing some of the economic anxieties that helped get him reelected.
“Legislative leaders — under pressure to prove that the special session is more than just political theater, as alleged by some Republicans — tried to balance their concerns about a second Trump term with state issues important to constituents such as the rising cost of living,” she wrote.
The state Senate’s nine Republicans all voted no on the joint rules for the special session, with some expressing that it should have never been called and framing their Democratic peers as unpragmatic and fiscally imprudent.
“We do not want to put in place rules for something that shouldn’t exist,” state Sen. Kelly Seyarto (R-Murrieta) said, adding:
“What we’re doing today is sending that exact message that we’re going to fight you tooth and nail for everything. And you know what that means? They’re going to fight us tooth and nail for everything.”
State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) said they should rather “work with the administration to make [Californian]’s lives better.”
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) offered a different perspective, saying the incoming administration would “take a wrecking ball” to education funding and healthcare access in the state.
He also noted Trump’s threat to use military force “to mass deport more than a million Californians.”
“We will act, and we will prevail, and that’s what this special session is about,” Wiener said.
Newsom, left, talks with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta during the assembly’s Organizational Session in Sacramento on Monday. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta had already been strategizing what his office could implement should Trump win, prepping for a potential barrage of environmental, immigration and civil rights lawsuits.
“If Trump doesn’t break the law, if he doesn’t violate the Constitution, if he doesn’t overreach his authority in unlawful ways, there’ll be nothing for us to do,” Bonta told The Times.
Though Newsom built political clout as a key resistance leader during Trump’s first term, the governor is now trying to put some distance between himself and the resistance brand.
“I want our president to succeed and our job — my job — is not to wake up every single day and get a crowbar and try to put it in the spokes of the wheel of the Trump administration,” Newsom told donors last month.
The recent changeup “underscores Newsom’s challenge as he tries to strike a delicate balance between the political brawler that his Democratic base admires and a more measured national leader capable of winning back disenfranchised voters across the country who backed Trump in the election,” Taryn wrote.
The legislature will continue meeting in the coming weeks as key bills move through committees in both chambers. Newsom expects bills to reach his desk and be signed into law before Jan. 20.
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