Democratic states are preparing for Donald Trump’s return

ON A RECENTNFLDACADCICEICEICEAWOL episode of “Politickin’”—Gavin Newsom’s podcast in which he tries to convince listeners that he is their totally normal podcast bro bestie—the Democratic governor of California muses about how his state will react to Donald Trump’s inauguration. “He’s got all the power in the world, but we’re not some small isolated state and we’re not going to be navel-gazing either,” says Mr Newsom. “We’re going to be firm and we’re going to be aggressive.” To this end, he has called a special session of the state legislature to convene on December 2nd in order to “safeguard California values”. One of the governor’s co-hosts, a former running-back, Marshawn Lynch, wonders aloud whether the governor would like to “slap the shit out of” Mr Trump.California and Democrat-run states around the country are preparing legal and legislative strategies to push back against the Trump administration on several fronts. Something similar happened in 2017. After Mr Trump was inaugurated the first time, his crackdown on immigration and rollback of environmental rules led to a cascade of multi-state lawsuits. in 2025, but this time both the states and the Trump administration will be better prepared for the fight.States will react to the Trump administration’s policies in three broad ways: through litigation, legislation and by trying to develop state-centred foreign policies. Start with the courts. Data collected by Paul Nolette of Marquette University suggest that the first Trump administration was subjected to more multi-state lawsuits (where more than one state files as a plaintiff) than that of any president since at least Ronald Reagan (see chart). The federal government was sued twice as many times in Mr Trump’s one term as in Barack Obama’s two. California and New York, the two most-populous Democratic states, were in the vanguard.Rob Bonta, California’s attorney-general, says that all his Democratic counterparts (there will be 21 come January) are co-ordinating on potential litigation. Many confess to going through , a detailed agenda drawn up by a conservative think-tank, line by line to understand what policies may be coming. They will be helped by offices that swelled in size during Mr Trump’s first administration. Bob Ferguson, Washington state’s longtime attorney-general who is about to become governor, reckons that his environmental division increased from two people in 2017 to 28 today. Those offices may get even bigger. Lawyers in the federal Department of Justice who don’t want to work for Mr Trump may decamp to the states. California’s special session will be devoted to securing more funding for the state’s justice department.Democratic states were successful in 83% of their multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration. But the legal landscape is vastly changed from 2017. Mr Trump’s appointments have transformed the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. James Tierney, a former attorney-general of Maine and a lecturer at Harvard University, reckons that Mr Trump’s many appointments to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California and eight other western states, may mean that more suits are filed in the First Circuit, in the north-east. Mr Trump’s team also has a better understanding of what it takes to win legal battles. “One of many reasons we were successful…was that they were often sloppy in the way they rolled out their executive actions,” Mr Ferguson said in a recent press conference. “This time around I anticipate that we will see less of that.”Fights over immigration law will come swiftly once Mr Trump is inaugurated. If he again tries to institute a travel ban for people from certain countries or to end , a programme protecting from deportation migrants brought to America as children, Democratic states will surely sue. They will also challenge executive action rolling back President Joe Biden’s environmental rules. Mr Newsom visited Washington, , in November to lobby the Biden administration to grant California eight waivers so that it can enforce stricter clean-air rules than the federal government on things as diverse as leaf blowers and trains. Even if Mr Biden grants them before he leaves office, Mr Trump has pledged to revoke them.“Over a year ago, shortly after the case came down, we started planning for the potential of a national abortion ban,” says Mr Bonta, referring to the Supreme Court decision that overturned a federal right to abortion. He worries that Mr Trump will try to restrict the use of mifepristone, an abortion drug, and enforce the , a 19th-century anti-vice law that some anti-abortion advocates argue would prevent the posting of all abortion pills and tools used in the procedure. Several states are stockpiling the drug—just in case.States and cities will also tweak local policies to stymie Mr Trump. During his first term many local governments passed sanctuary laws, barring police from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (), the agency that deports migrants. These policies were not born out of the resistance—some municipalities stopped working with during the Obama administration to protest against his aggressive deportation policy—but an aversion to Mr Trump pushed more places to adopt them. The threat of mass deportations will turbocharge such efforts. On November 19th Los Angeles’s city council barred city workers, property or data from being used for federal immigration enforcement. Mayors in Denver and Boston, among other places, have vowed not to co-operate with .There is a risk of overreaction. Nearly 12m Americans across California, Illinois and New York, the biggest Democratic states, voted for Mr Trump. They won’t like their political leaders resisting him at every turn.Finally, Democratic governors will try to boost their foreign-policy activities. This will be most evident in climate diplomacy, where America will abdicate global leadership by pulling out of the Paris Agreement (again). When Mr Trump withdrew the first time Jerry Brown, then California’s governor, wrote that “Trump is but California is…ready for battle,” and sought to rally subnational governments to commit to curbing emissions. Mr Newsom will try to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. California’s carbon-trading market, one of the world’s largest, is already linked to Quebec’s. But no amount of state initiatives can replace federal action on emissions reductions.Two levels of political jockeying are influencing the resistance. Many attorneys-general have ambitions for higher office. Mr Bonta is weighing a run for governor in 2026. Becoming the anti-Trump is a not-so-subtle way to raise his profile. His speeches, however, could use some work (“Us and we over I and me” is a word salad befitting Kamala Harris, once an eager California attorney-general herself).Governors are making a similar calculation, with 2028 in mind. Mr Newsom is brazenly ambitious, and California’s economic and cultural heft give him an excuse to swan around the world (he met Xi Jinping last year). Jared Polis and J.B. Pritzker, the governors of Colorado and Illinois, are co-chairing a group meant to “fortify American democracy”. After the election Mr Pritzker denounced mass deportations. “You come for my people,” he warned, “you come through me.” Tom Homan, Mr Trump’s border tsar, replied: “Game on.”