California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) convened the state legislature for a special session on Monday designed to “Trump-proof” the state, including by passing $25 million for use in lawsuits against the incoming administration.
As Breitbart News noted after the election in November, Newsom announced the special session — not to deal with pressing problems facing the state, but rather for the political purpose of leading the so-called “resistance” (i.e. opposition) to President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump responded on Truth Social, saying Newsom was “using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again’.”
Newsom boasted Monday that his administration, unlike that of his predecessor, Jerry Brown, would not simply react to Trump policies, but would go on the offensive against them. He claimed that the state had succeeded in the past at reversing many Trump policies at the “agency level.” (He may have been referring to Trump’s decision to withhold $1 billion in funding for the high-speed rail system California never built; President Joe Biden restored that funding.)
The governor also claimed that no state leader had worked more closely with the Trump administration during the coronavirus pandemic, and that California had still managed to maintain its lawsuits against Trump, regardless.
Though Democrats control supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, the state shifted right in 2024, and nearly 40% of Californians voted for President-elect Trump rather than California’s Vice President Kamala Harris.
Newsom is thought to be posturing, in part, because he is among the presidential frontrunners for the Democratic Party in 2028. He declined to run as an alternative to President Joe Biden or Vice President Harris in 2024.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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