California governor calls special session to protect liberal policies from Trump presidency

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session later this year to safeguard the state’s progressive policies on climate change, reproductive rights and immigration ahead of another Trump presidency.

The move — a day after the former president resoundingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race — effectively reignited California's resistance campaign against conservative policies that state Democratic leaders started during the first Trump administration.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom, who reportedly has ambitions on the national stage, said in a statement. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws. His announcement Thursday called on the Legislature to give the attorney general’s office more funding to fight federal challenges when they meet in December.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office spent the past year reviewing more than 120 lawsuits the state filed during Trump’s first term in preparation for new federal actions. Bonta said the governor has called the special session to line up the resources that will be needed for the state to fight any Trump encroachments on its policies without giving more details on exactly what the plans would entail.

He said his office has been working with Democratic attorneys general across the nation in anticipation of Trump winning. He said to look at the votes in California: “We rejected him. We rejected his values. We rejected his agenda.”

California's move is part of a growing discussion among Democratic state officials across the country seeking to protect policies that face threats under Trump's leadership. Other blue states are moving quickly to prepare game plans and expect a more robust battle this time around with a Republican-dominated Senate and possibly House.

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she, Attorney General Letitia James and their senior staffers plan to meet regularly to discuss legal strategies to protect “key areas that are most likely to face threats from the Trump administration” such as “reproductive rights, civil rights, immigration, gun safety, labor rights, LGBTQ rights and our environmental justice.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who as state attorney general filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump during his first term, said they will “have to see if he makes good on what he promised and ran on in terms of Project 2025 or other things.”

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat who has just been elected governor, said he was especially worried about Trump’s recent comments suggesting the military should be used domestically against “the enemy from within.”

“It’s deeply un-American,” he said.

In some states, including Connecticut, officials are hoping to codify progressive policies into law, "but there are limits to what our ability is to do that,” Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon said.

California Republican lawmakers called Newsom’s announcement a “political stunt.”

“The only ‘problem’ it will solve is Gavin Newsom’s insecurity that not enough people are paying attention to him,” Republican leader of the state Assembly James Gallagher said in a statement about the special session.

Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

After Trump's win, Newsom vowed to work with the president-elect but added, “Let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”

Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. Democrats, which hold every statewide office in California and have commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation, outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide and Harris easily carried the state in her losing presidential bid.

Trump called the Democratic governor “New-scum” during a campaign stop in Southern California last month and has relentlessly lambasted the Democratic stronghold and nation’s most populous state over its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, its homeless population and its thicket of regulations.

Trump also waded into a water rights battle over the endangered delta smelt that has pitted environmentalists against farmers and threatened to withhold federal aid to a state increasingly under threat from wildfires.

In a speech Wednesday morning, Trump vowed to follow through with his campaign promise of carrying out the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status and prosecuting his political enemies.

Speaking Thursday, California’s attorney general reassured the state's immigrant population, the nation’s largest.

“I can promise to the undocumented immigrant community in California that I and my team have been thinking about you for months, and the harm that might come from the Trump administration 2.0. We’ll do everything in our power and use the full authority of our office to defend you, to protect you,” Bonta said.

Over the last two decades, state attorneys general have increasingly embraced the role of challenging federal executive policy — most often when it originates with a president of the opposite party.

During Trump’s first presidency, Democratic attorneys general banned together to file suits over immigration, Trump’s travel ban for residents of Muslim countries, the environment, internet regulation and other topics.

The challenges typically have mixed records. But Trump has one possible advantage this time around. He was aggressive in nominating conservative jurists to federal courts at all levels, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Newsom has called California a sanctuary for people in other states seeking abortions. The state has passed dozens of laws to protect abortion access, including setting aside $20 million in taxpayer money to help pay for patients in other states to travel to California to get an abortion. Newsom also leads a coalition of 20 Democratic governors launched in 2023 to strengthen abortion access.

The state was also the first to mandate that all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids by 2035 and give state regulators the power to penalize oil companies for making too much money. California also extends state-funded health care to all low-income residents regardless of their immigration status.

“We learned a lot about former President Trump in his first term — he’s petty, vindictive, and will do what it takes to get his way no matter how dangerous the policy may be,” state Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire said in a statement. “California has come too far and accomplished too much to simply surrender and accept his dystopian vision for America.”

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Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Geoff Mulvihill in Philadelphia; and Eugene Johnson in Seattle contributed to the report.