How California is gearing up to fight Trump 2.0
Although President-elect Donald Trump has not yet taken office, the government of California is not standing for it. Whatever it is, they’re against it.
“Lawyers from the Attorney General’s office and the Governor’s office have been preparing for a potential second Trump term for more than a year,” declares a bill introduced in the state legislature in early December.
It would authorize $500,000 for “federal litigation expenses” against the Trump White House: in particular, a website featuring “descriptive narratives” about potential legal actions.
A second bill would set aside $25 million to pay lawyers to sue the Trump administration and also to defend the state “against enforcement and legal actions taken by the federal government.”
That’s because, effective at noon on January 20, California could be in legal hot water.
State regulators have been pushing the cost of energy up and grinding businesses down with home-brewed environmental restrictions that are more stringent than federal standards.
These would typically violate federal law, except that California has a waiver: special authority under the 1967 Clean Air Act to set its own standards. Trump has vowed to end the waiver.
State and city “sanctuary” laws are another potential source of legal jeopardy. California law helps shield criminal illegal aliens from deportation. Trump’s “border czar,”
Tom Homan, has said he’ll arrest local officials who interfere with the operations of his officers.
Then there’s elections. Trump has denounced California’s government for prohibiting local voter ID laws, for mailing out tens of millions of vote-by-mail ballots, and for allowing voting to go on for a month.
He might be able to change all that for elections in which a federal office is on the ballot. The entire House of Representatives is on the ballot every two years.
California filed nearly 120 lawsuits against the first Trump administration, but Trump increased his vote share in 45 out of the state’s 58 counties. One factor for this shift may be that California’s stringent climate regulations are raising gas prices.
The California Air Resources Board just updated its Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulation in a way that will push the price of gasoline up by 50-65 cents per gallon in January.
It’s not even possible to calculate the cost of the state’s ban on the sale of gas-powered cars starting in 2035, or its rule mandating a changeover to zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency approved waivers to allow enforcement of California’s “climate-friendly” car, truck, and emissions rules.
Trump could halt these regulations by ending the state’s special authority under the Clean Air Act or by revoking the Biden-approved waivers. California would certainly go to court over that, and it might be joined by more than a dozen states, including New York, that have chosen to adopt the same regulations.
But the legal landscape has changed since Trump’s first term. The US Supreme Court has ruled that bureaucrats do not have the authority to impose regulations that upend significant portions of the national economy unless Congress has specifically granted that authority.
Recently the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case related to California’s Clean Air Act waiver.
The justices will decide whether the oil industry has standing to challenge it.
“Congress did not give California special authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mandate electric vehicles or ban new gas car sales,” Chet Thompson, president and CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said in a statement.
Even some of the states that adopted California’s regulations are having second thoughts. Virginia is going back to the less stringent federal regulations after declaring CARB’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule “unworkable and out of touch with reality.”
State legislatures that adopted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule are under pressure from truckers and truck dealers to delay implementation.
On Jan. 1, the rule required 7% of trucks sold to be zero-emission in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and Oregon.
Back home, the state’s fight against Trump’s “mass deportation” plan is underway. State schools chief Tony Thurmond announced that to protect “attendance and funding,” he’s sponsoring legislation to “keep US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents off California campuses by establishing a one-mile radius safe zone around schools.”
In Washington, California’s Sen. Alex Padilla urged his colleagues to quickly pass his Citizenship for Essential Workers Act, which would fast-track citizenship for more than 5 million undocumented immigrants and immediately grant them permanent legal resident status.
Padilla was California’s secretary of state from 2015 to 2021. He personally implemented, and has fiercely defended, the election and voting procedures that Trump has vowed to “straighten out.”
Who needs foreign wars? California and Trump are the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Susan Shelley is an editorial writer with the Southern California News Group, and VP of Communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. On X: @Susan_Shelley.
