California Prepares to Take on Donald Trump 2.0

The anti-Trump resistance is back

“Trump mentioned that his campaign was about protecting America,” California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas told POLITICO this week. “What you can expect is that California will do everything we can to protect America from Donald Trump.”

California is one of eight “donor states,” meaning it receives less in federal spending relative to what it contributes in taxes. No need to wonder who the other seven are—they’re all blue states.

Not a single “holier-than-thou” conservative state can live within its means. Their supposed economic prowess is so impressive that companies and people have been flocking to their states, yet their economies are so weak that they rely on handouts from the federal government. This has been the case for decades, and it’s likely to worsen soon.

But still, Democrats never seem to learn the lesson of revealing the true economic standing of the Republican party. They tend to wait until things fall apart and then scramble to patch up the leaks.

Between 2016 and 2020, California sued the Trump administration over 110 times, winning numerous victories. These lawsuits helped protect the state’s clean air regulations, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and multiple provisions in the Affordable Care Act.

The cost-benefit ratio of suing the Trump administration has heavily favored California.

California has spent $41 million over the past four years fighting the Trump administration over its regulations and rollbacks involving climate change, immigration, consumer rights and more. The attorney general’s office won 23 and lost five. Six are on hold, and 76 are pending. So far, that’s an 82%-18% win-loss rate over the Trump policies that state officials contested. 

“It’s not just a lawsuit for the sake of filing a lawsuit,” said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin and an expert on U.S. attorneys general. “There are some really important policies that are linked to them and policies that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are at stake.”

Though Donald Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 during the lead-up to Election Day, we can expect his administration—likely filled with figures from right-leaning think tanks—to push at least some parts of the proposed plan.

One area where California could take a major hit is its Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal. After the Affordable Care Act was passed, California expanded it to cover more people by broadening eligibility. “Now, people with slightly higher incomes are able to receive Medi-Cal regardless of disability, family status, financial resources, and other factors that used to determine eligibility.” It’s a widely popular program, covering more than 12 million Californians.

That means 1 in 3 Californians rely on Medi-Cal.

The Trump administration will be scrutinizing every corner of the budget to cut costs, pressured from day one to deliver on the billionaire tax cut. Trump has pledged to reduce corporate taxes from 21% to 15%. Remember Elon Musk telling the crowd at the MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden,

“Your money is being wasted. We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”

Musk wants to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. I agree with Musk, he has to cut the budget somewhere. After all, big boy investments on Trump 2.0 can’t be without returns, can they? Some of them have been working in the background since November 2020 to bring Trump back to power.

Loyalty needs rewards.

Medicare, Social Security, and FEMA are among the areas likely to face cuts.

Project 2025, for example, proposes to cap what the federal government pays for the Medicaid program, which is funded by both the feds and the states. This means that states would receive a fixed amount regardless of their costs. In the health policy world this is referred to as “block grants” or “per capita caps.”

“So that’s a big cut, a big cost shift to states, and states would have no choice but to either raise taxes substantially or far more likely, shrink their Medicaid programs to a great degree, which means more uninsured, more people go without needed care,” said Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy.  

California is now preparing to protect itself against the billionaire-focused policies of the Trump administration that could wreak havoc on its system. This is why Governor Gavin Newsom has called a special legislative session.

Trump immediately lashed out at the governor.

“Governor Gavin ‘Newscum’ is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California,” posted Donald Trump. “He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again.’”

The resistance was reasonably effective last time, though many people may not have realized it. As usual, Democrats didn’t communicate it well to the public. In fact, I’m not even sure they tried to explain what they did.

But their efforts did succeed in protecting the more vulnerable parts of society.