California prepares for Trump 2.0: Here’s how things will be different this time

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SACRAMENTO —  Hello dear readers. Laurel Rosenhall here, The Times’ California politics editor, filling in for Anita Chabria. There are 48 days until President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration and today we’re looking at how California leaders are preparing for his second term.

In a nutshell: It’s complicated.

That was obvious Monday as lawmakers gathered in Sacramento to take the oath of office and kick off a special session devoted to gearing up for legal battle with the incoming Trump administration.

On the one hand, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to call the special session less than 36 hours after Trump won the election signaled the Democrat’s yen to jump back into the fight against a Republican president he’s long decried as a threat to California’s liberal policies.

Democratic lawmakers followed Newsom’s lead and introduced legislation to set aside $25 million for the state to spend on federal litigation, anticipating legal battles over environmental policy, abortion access, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. They’re expected to approve the funding before Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

“What we’re doing now with this special session, is not waiting to react to” Trump’s attacks on California, Newsom said to reporters in a Capitol hallway. “We’re preparing for that in a much more sober way.”

But California’s other problems may temper the fight

On the other hand, the tone from legislative leaders Monday was much more subdued than it was eight years ago. When Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Legislature’s most powerful Democrats issued a feisty statement vowing to “lead the resistance” against him. They opened their legislative session that year with a slew of bills to protect immigrants and speeches decrying the president’s appointees as “white nationalists and antisemites.”

This time around, there was no talk about resistance. California Democrats seemed to get the memo that voters’ primary concern in this election was the cost of living — and that their party had failed to address it. The need for lawmakers to embrace policies that can lower costs for Californians was a theme in the opening day speeches by both Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate leader Mike McGuire.

“Are we going to fight to protect the people, the policies and the progress that make California great? Absolutely, we’re going to go to the mat for them. But we also can’t forget we have a lot to fix in this state as well,” McGuire said.

“This Senate must double down on our efforts to make life more affordable and livable, make our economy work for all, and not just a privileged few.”

Rivas talked about a couple who runs a bakery struggling to keep prices down as the cost of their ingredients rises, and about a school janitor taking on a second job to keep up with the cost of housing.

“Our task this session is urgent, and it’s clear,” Rivas said. “We must chart a new path forward and renew the California dream by focusing on affordability.”

It’s not just the message from the top that’s changed since the last time Trump entered the White House. Most of the lawmakers are new too.

A huge freshman class was sworn in Monday, making up about one-third of the Legislature. A few interesting facts:

• Women (finally) make up half the Legislature. When Trump was elected last time around, women made up about 22% of the lawmakers in Sacramento. Now, for the first time in state history, the number of women lawmakers is almost equal to the number of men, with women holding 49% of the seats.
• The Legislature is gaining Republicans. Though one close race has not officially been called, Republicans are on track to flip three seats previously held by Democrats. It’s still not enough to block Democrats from using their supermajority to pass tax increases, change political ethics laws or put constitutional amendments on the ballot with no GOP support. But the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento is getting a little bit smaller.
• The GOP caucuses are getting more diverse. Several of the newly elected Republicans are Latino or Asian American. They include: Assemblymembers Jeff Gonzalez of Indio and Leticia Castillo of Corona, and Sens. Suzette Martinez Valladares of Santa Clarita and Steven Choi of Irvine. “It’s huge. It represents a realignment,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher told my colleague Anabel Sosa. “We’re starting to see more and more Latino voters that were loyal Democratic voters and have started to break away from that.”

So how will Trump 2.0 be different for California?

I put that question to Newsom as well as a few other Californians who were at the Capitol for Monday’s swearing-in ceremony.

Newsom, in his brief scrum with reporters, said he expects Trump to bring “a little more intensity and ferocity” to the battles with California. “It requires us to be diligent to focus yes, on what happened in the past, but prepare for Trump 2.0, where his rhetoric is only heightened, and his call for retribution, revenge is pretty clear.”

Dolores Huerta, a leader of the farmworker rights movement, said she thinks California is better prepared this time but that progressives need “to do a lot more work. You got to do a lot more education and a lot more organizing than what we did before.”

David Chiu, San Francisco’s city attorney, said Trump’s upcoming term will be “more intense and challenging” for California because the federal courts have more Trump-appointed judges than they did at the start of his first term and because his allies have learned from mistakes during his first term.

“And then third,” Chiu told me, “The fact that they control all three branches of government has many implications on what our what our recourse will be. So you know if, if a lawsuit is successful, Congress could make their move and the president can then sign it. So, we’ll have to be that much smarter and fight that much harder.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Biden pardon, Patel FBI nomination fuel debate over politics and justice
The latest on SCOTUS: Is the Supreme Court about to let red states ban hormone treatment for transgender teens?
The L.A. Times special: Newsom tries to redefine the California-vs.-Trump narrative
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