As Donald Trump savored a victory in the presidential race, Democratic leaders in at least three state capitals have begun mobilizing to push back against potential Republican policies on issues like reproductive health and the environment.
Much of the burden is likely to be borne by larger and more populous states, such as California. A contingency plan in the event of Trump’s reelection has been underway for more than a year in Sacramento, involving not only the governor’s office but also legislators and state regulatory bodies.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement Thursday. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”
California has nearly 39 million residents, and the economy is so large — dwarfing those in all but a handful of countries — that it can move markets and steer national policy. During the four years that Trump was previously in office, the state sued his administration more than 120 times.
The state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said that he and his staff had been conferring with other attorneys general for months and had prepared detailed legal challenges should the former president return to office. “We won’t be flat-footed come January,” he said.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom called lawmakers Thursday into a legislative special session next month “to safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration.”
Other Democratic states have much to protect, too, or laws similar to those in California. During the first Trump administration, Ferguson’s office in Washington state was involved in dozens of lawsuits against the federal government. His office has said that 55 of those were victorious, while only three of them failed.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker said Thursday that he would ask his state’s legislators, possibly as soon as next week, to address potential threats from a second Trump term. “You come for my people,” Pritzker said at a news conference, “you come through me.”
In Washington, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general and governor-elect, said Thursday that he hoped not to take an adversarial role. But he said that his legal team had been preparing for months in anticipation of a second Trump term, including a line-by-line review of the Project 2025 plans touted by Trump’s allies. “I hope to God, I pray that things we are talking about don’t come to pass,” Ferguson said.
The announcements echoed a vow Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York to “honor” the election results and to try to work with Trump, but also to fight any efforts to curtail reproductive freedoms, expand gun rights or curb environmental regulations.
At a news conference, Hochul addressed Trump directly: “If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way.”
Democratic governors have aggressively opposed Trump since 2017, when he entered office. Several have positioned themselves nationally as leaders in a fight against his agenda, which they view both as extreme and as a threat to the values of their constituents. Newsom and Pritzker, in particular, have risen as standard-bearers for their party and as potential presidential contenders in their own right.
Other Democratic-led states are expected to join the effort, especially given the federal power that Republicans could wield starting next year, particularly if they win the House in addition to the Senate and the White House. Unlike in 2016, when Trump won in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, the former president is expected to arrive in Washington emboldened with a sweeping victory and a mandate.
States have increasingly deployed lawsuits with success, particularly as political polarization has increased. According to a database maintained by Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University, Republican attorneys general have so far filed about 60 lawsuits against the Biden administration, winning about 76% of them. During the first Trump administration, Democratic attorneys general filed about 160 lawsuits, winning about 83% of the time.
“I think that what happened during the first Trump administration is going to repeat itself,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
“There’s a more conservative court today than when Trump took office in 2017, and I think this Trump term is going to be more aggressive, earlier, in pushing the conservative agenda, but I also think states will be equally aggressive in pushing back early on.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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