One day after Donald J. Trump declared victory in the presidential race, Gov. Gavin Newsom resurrected efforts in California to thwart the president-elect by asking state lawmakers to pre-empt potential Republican actions that could impact the Democratic-led state.
California leaders have long seen themselves as a bulwark against right-wing extremism, and Mr. Newsom has positioned himself nationally as one of Mr. Trump’s loudest critics. They could soon be joined in legislative efforts by other Democratic-led states such as Washington, especially given the federal power that Republicans could wield next year if they win the House in addition to the Senate and the White House.
Mr. Newsom called Thursday for a legislative special session to begin in Sacramento on Dec. 2, several weeks before Mr. Trump takes office, “to safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration,” according to the governor’s office. It will initially focus on funding state litigation around Trump administration actions that might impact civil liberties, reproductive rights, immigrant protections and climate action in the state.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”
In a social media post, the governor said the state “will seek to work with the incoming president — but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”
With nearly 39 million residents, California is the nation’s most populous state. Its economy is so large — dwarfing those in all but a handful of countries — that it can move markets and steer national policy. Throughout the four years that Mr. Trump was previously in office, California sued his administration more than 120 times.
The session would be an initial salvo in a contingency plan that has been underway for more than a year in Sacramento, involving not only the governor’s office but also legislators and state regulatory bodies. California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in May that he and his staff had used Mr. Trump’s campaign platform to prepare legal challenges should the former president win another term.
California has partnered with West Coast states in recent years on the environment and other issues. There were indications on Thursday that similar relationships could soon emerge to fight Mr. Trump’s new administration.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington noted that “our state and others formed enduring alliances for progress during Trump’s first term in office,” adding that “when Trump messed with our state we sued him 97 times — only losing two cases on the merits while he was in office.” His successor, Bob Ferguson, has scheduled a news conference on Thursday with the incoming attorney general to discuss the state’s preparations for when Mr. Trump takes office.
Unlike in 2016, when Mr. Trump won in the electoral college but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, the former president is expected to arrive in Washington, D.C., emboldened with a sweeping victory.
“I will govern by a simple motto,” Mr. Trump told supporters in Florida on Tuesday: “Promises made, promises kept.”
In a proclamation calling for the special session in California, which is expected to extend into next year, when Mr. Trump takes office, Mr. Newsom said the state could suffer “significant and immediate” consequences from this week’s presidential outcome.
His list of concerns included attempts by Mr. Trump to limit access to medication abortion; dismantle clean vehicle policies and longstanding environmental protections; repeal immigration policies such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; withhold disaster response funding and victim assistance as political retribution; and “politicize grant programs to commandeer state and local governmental resources for federal purposes.”
Mr. Trump’s stated agenda for the environment alone could threaten California climate policies that for decades have helped set the pace for the rest of the world, such as the state’s rules on vehicle emissions.
Mr. Trump and other Republican leaders have denounced policies that underpin the social fabric in California. During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he would pursue mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. He also criticized California proposals and policies that provide benefits to those immigrants; the state currently provides Medicaid-level benefits to low-income residents regardless of immigration status.
Conservatives oppose the state’s constitutional protections for abortion rights and contraception, and they have resented Mr. Newsom’s efforts to provide reproductive services to women in states with abortion bans. California’s gun laws are among the nation’s toughest, and they are routinely tested through lawsuits that wend through federal courts.
During his first term, Mr. Trump sided with California’s agricultural industry in the perennial tug of war over scarce water supplies in the state. In August, he suggested that he would withhold federal wildfire aid if the state did not deliver more water to farmers.
Mr. Trump and Republicans also could seek to upend protections for the state’s transgender residents. In July, Governor Newsom signed a law that prohibited school districts from forcing educators to notify parents if their children ask to use different names or pronouns. The state has engaged in ongoing battles with conservative-led districts, and it is possible that Republican leaders could seek to intervene.
California is not uniformly liberal, and while Mr. Trump lost the state, he still has millions of California supporters and may have gained support in the state based on initial tallies, though millions of votes have yet to be counted.
Still, Democrats have firm control of the state legislature. In statements on Thursday, legislative leaders expressed support for buttressing the state’s legal options.
“Voters sent a clear message this election, and we need to lean in and listen,” said Robert Rivas, the speaker of the California State Assembly. “But we also must be prepared to defend California values.”
Mike McGuire, the leader of the State Senate, said that Mr. Trump had shown in his first term that “he’s petty, vindictive and will do what it takes to get his way, no matter how dangerous the policy may be.” He called the focus on litigation “an important first step.”
States have increasingly deployed lawsuits with success, particularly as political polarization has increased. According to a database maintained by Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University, Republican attorneys general have so far filed about 60 lawsuits against the Biden administration, winning about 76 percent of them. During the first Trump administration, Democratic attorneys general filed about 160 lawsuits, winning about 83 percent of the time.
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