After taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, one year ago, President Donald Trump turned west to offer a preview of his presidency. “From this moment on, it’s going to be America first,” he declared from the Capitol steps.
To many Californians, however, Trump’s turbulent first year in office has felt as if it’s come with a different mantra: California last.
From stepped-up immigration enforcement to plans for opening up offshore drilling to threats of a marijuana crackdown, the Trump administration’s policies seem to millions of Californians like a direct attack on a state that voted overwhelmingly against him.
Trump’s actions have dramatically reshaped California politics, pitting state leaders against the federal government in a way that’s nearly unprecedented. California’s elected officials have lobbed a volley of grenades back at the administration, filing lawsuits that have tied up his immigration and environmental policies in court and passing laws aimed at blunting his effect on the state.
“Donald Trump has had California in his crosshairs,” state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, said in an interview this past week. “This is an extraordinary moment in our political history.”
Average Californians, meanwhile, are feeling more alienated than ever from much of the rest of the country, as the president’s actions widen the gulf between Red America and the Golden State.
Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation “has thrown my life in a tailspin where I don’t even know what’s up and down,” said 28-year-old Santa Cruz resident Gabriela Cruz, a DACA recipient who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by her mother when she was 1. Cruz said she’s proud to live in a “sanctuary state” where leaders “understand that California depends on its immigrants.”
Sustained Resistance
The sustained resistance from California during Trump’s first year in office represents the most vigorous dispute between a state and the federal government since Southern politicians fought desegregation measures in the 1960s, said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor who’s written several books about the civil rights movement.
“There hasn’t been anything else like it in these last 50 years,” he said. “As the sixth largest economy in the world, California has a lot of wherewithal and ability to resist.”
The frontlines of the fight have been drawn in the courts. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration over his first year in office, working alongside other blue-state attorneys general in many cases.
California has joined 24 multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration in 2017, almost double the number of multi-state lawsuits filed by a state in any previous year, according to data compiled by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
“I look at our actions as a defense of everything that’s made California the most important state in the nation,” Becerra said in a recent interview. “It’s not because I don’t like Donald Trump. It’s not because I like to sue.”
Most of the lawsuits are still working their way through the courts, but in several cases, Becerra’s office has notched some notable victories. One suit led a federal judge in San Francisco this month to temporarily allow DACA recipients nationwide to apply for renewal of their status, and California was also involved in cases that watered down the administration’s travel ban on residents of several Muslim-majority countries.
The actions filed by California appear to be “serious lawsuits that are supported by a strong argument,” and not just publicity stunts, Nolette said. “Attorneys general are throwing the kitchen sink at the administration to try to push back, and some of it is already working.”
In some ways, Becerra and his counterparts are following in the footsteps of Texas and other conservative states. Lawsuits filed by Texas derailed several of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies, including his attempt to protect several million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Former Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, now the state’s governor, once described his typical workday this way: “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home.”
Playing poker
Facing off with the Trump administration makes Becerra recall his days as a teenage poker player — a habit that he says provided invaluable lessons for politics.
“I would love to play poker with Trump,” he said with a smile. “I would want to call most of his bluffs.”
As Becerra’s lawsuits wind their way through the courts, the state Legislature has found itself locked in its own back-and-forth with the federal government.
After the Trump administration widened the net of undocumented immigrants eligible for detention and deportation, legislators responded with the “sanctuary state” law, which now largely bans the cooperation of local and state law enforcement officers with federal officials — the most expansive such law in the nation.
After Trump signed a major tax bill capping key deductions for state and local taxes — a big deal in a high-tax state like California — de León proposed a workaround law that would to let residents designate their state taxes as charitable donations.
And after the Federal Communications Commission scrapped net neutrality regulations last month, California lawmakers introduced two bills aimed at reviving the policy within state borders, as Becerra joined a lawsuit over the repeal.
In the span of 24 hours earlier this month, the Trump administration released a proposal to open coastal waters to oil and gas drilling and then threatened to enforce federal laws prohibiting marijuana, just days after Californians inhaled their first legal recreational cannabis.
Just two days before that, Thomas Homan, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, vowed that deportations would rise in California and that the state “better hold on tight,” he said, suggesting that elected officials who passed sanctuary policies could face criminal charges.
“They certainly know where to find me,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg replied in a tweet.
Hasn’t been back
Given the animosity, it’s not surprising that Trump hasn’t set foot in California since being sworn in — becoming the first president since Dwight Eisenhower not to visit the state in his first year in office. (Trump’s expected to travel to San Diego next month to review prototypes of his border wall — which, of course, California has sued over.)
“California has been a political island for a decade,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor. “Trump is expanding that gulf — his brand is so toxic for Republicans in California that it’s hard for any of them to escape his shadow.”
Marvin Morris, a retired San Jose State physics professor and a supporter of the president, said each new anti-Trump move by California leaders — especially the sanctuary state law — makes him angrier and angrier.
“Why is it that they oppose him on everything he wants to do?” asked Morris, 79. “It feels to me like California is at war with the nation,” not just Trump.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But Jim Brulte, chairman of the California Republican Party, said he thought the idea that the president was specifically targeting California was “more fiction than reality.”
“California Democrats spend a lot of time talking about Donald Trump because they don’t want the voters of California to focus on their record,” Brulte said.
Climate change
To be sure, there have been opportunities when the Trump administration could have taken a harder line against California and chose not to. After wildfires and floods ravaged the state last year, federal officials came through with disaster aid. Although the Department of Transportation delayed a federal grant for Caltrain’s high-priority electrification project, it ended up approving the funds. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t denied California’s waiver that allows the state to set higher air pollution standards.
California leaders have also taken on roles that Trump isn’t interested in. As Trump belittled global warming, Gov. Jerry Brown criss-crossed the planet to sign carbon emission agreements and headline climate change conferences from Brussels to Beijing, where he met with President Xi Jinping.
The four-term governor has also railed against Trump’s tax bill, labeling it “evil in the extreme.”
Still, Brown has tried to hold onto his role as the adult in the room over the course of the roller-coaster year, in some ways moderating the Golden State’s anti-Trump rhetoric. He vetoed a bill that would have forced Trump to release his tax returns in order to get on California’s 2020 ballot, and he struck a deal with Democratic lawmakers that watered down the sanctuary state law.
Last week, Brown downplayed the idea of a war between his state and Trump, telling reporters, “I wouldn’t want to portray a California-Washington battle.”
“I wouldn’t call it enmity,” Brown said. “There are certain policies that are radical departures from the norm, and California will fight those. But in general, Californians are going about their business.”
Even those limited moves toward conciliation seem likely to evaporate with Brown’s successor. All four of the Democratic candidates for governor blasted Trump during a debate in Los Angeles on Saturday, decrying him as racist. “How can I work with him? With great difficulty,” said Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner in the race, said in an interview this week that California was simply practicing the federalism that conservatives profess to love.
“They believe in states’ rights, except when it comes to protecting an immigrant or giving someone the ability to get a flu shot,” Newsom said. “We didn’t choose the fight, but you know what? You punch a bully back, or he’ll keep bullying you.”
