Protection......

Newsom said he's going to 'Trump-proof' California. What does that mean?

By Alec Regimbal

With President-elect Donald Trump heading back to the White House, Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed to “Trump-proof” 

Just two days after the election, Newsom said he would convene a special session of the state Legislature to prepare California for a second Trump term, and he made good on that pledge last week.

“We will work with the incoming administration and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans,” he said in a statement on Dec. 2. “But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action.”

But what exactly does all this mean in practice?

Essentially, Newsom is hoping to get some bills signed before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. His main priority is supplying state Attorney General Rob Bonta with a war chest of money that he can tap into in case California wants to sue the Trump administration, something the state did 122 times during Trump’s first term. For example, one of those lawsuits prevented the 2020 census from including a question about a person’s immigration status.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat from Encino, has already introduced two bills that would allocate money to the California Department of Justice. The first would set aside as much as $25 million in funding for Bonta’s office to cover costs associated with filing lawsuits. The second would immediately send $500,000 to Bonta’s office to pay for initial case preparation.

“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,” Gabriel said in a statement. “We’re not going to be caught flat-footed.”

The Dec. 2 statement indicates that the governor plans to sign both bills before Trump takes office.

But financially bolstering the state’s Department of Justice is just one move the Legislature hopes to achieve as the Golden State braces for another four years of Trump. Democrats in both chambers are already signaling plans to shore up abortion protections, shield immigrants from deportation and continue progress on combating climate change.

Democratic Assemblymembers Maggy Krell, from Sacramento, and Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, from Winters, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday that they plan to introduce a bill to protect abortion pill makers — as well as distributors and health care providers — from being prosecuted for distributing abortion pills in California. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms)

Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat from Orinda, also told the outlet Monday that she is planning to author a bill that would prevent cities from blocking the opening of new abortion clinics. And on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach, introduced a bill to streamline services and create grant programs for immigrant and refugee families in California, a measure she says is directly related to Trump’s victory.

“In the face of an incoming Trump Administration that has promised to take hostile actions against immigrant communities, California must be prepared more than ever before,” she said in a statement. “Trump’s promises of mass deportations and the unprecedented threat of deploying the US Military to remove undocumented Americans would hurt not only immigrant families, but all California families, our economy, and the cultural and social benefits that new Californians bring to our communities.”

On the climate front, Newsom unveiled a proposal late last month that would create a new version of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, a program phased out last year that offered residents rebates up to $7,500 if they purchased or leased certain zero-emission vehicles. In a statement on Nov. 25, Newsom said that proposal would come into play if Trump axes the Biden administration’s federal tax credit for electric vehicles.

Newsom is also mulling the creation of a new fund dedicated entirely toward natural disaster cleanup, a contingency plan in case Trump refuses to allocate federal dollars to help with wildfires or floods — something he has threatened to do.

Most of these bills likely won’t become law before Jan. 20. The state Legislature’s special session will begin in earnest when members reconvene on Jan. 6, and pushing every measure through the legislative process in a matter of days would be an extraordinary feat. But the bills demonstrate that lawmakers are already thinking of ways to get ahead of whatever may come from Trump’s second term.

For his part, the former president bristled at Newsom’s call to “Trump-proof” the state.

“He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Nov 8. “People are being forced to leave due to his, & other’s, INSANE POLICY DECISIONS.”