Just days after Donald Trump’s victory, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — a vocal Trump critic — called for state lawmakers to convene a December special session ahead of Trump’s second term in the White House.
The goal: to “Trump-proof” the Golden State. Newsom emphasized he wanted to safeguard the state’s progressive policies on climate change, reproductive rights and immigration from the far-right agenda the president-elect and his administration will enact.
Ahead of Inauguration Day, Democratic governors across the country are working to implement guardrails to protect constituents against the most dangerous elements of Donald Trump’s agenda.
The degree to which they are approaching a second Trump administration with opposition versus conciliation varies from state to state. Most Democratic governors have expressed hope of finding “common ground” and areas on which they “can work together.”
But clear red lines have also emerged, including strident opposition to any Trump administration efforts to restrict abortion rights or to politicize the way in which federal funds are distributed to states.
“We will work with the incoming administration and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans,” Newsom said in a statement on the first day of the special session. “But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action.”
‘Trump Proof’ California
Among Newsom’s goals for the legislative session, which is still underway: a new litigation fund with up to $25 million for the California Department of Justice and other agencies to help fight Trump administration’s policies that might harm the state. The fund would be mainly utilized for court challenges and administrative actions.
Last time Trump was in office, the California Department of Justice filed 122 lawsuits against the Trump administration’s actions, investing approximately $42 million to support litigation, according to the governor’s office.
Several of those were around immigration. In a big win, California — alongside several other states — challenged the Trump Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), and won a 5-4 victory before the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act and had not offered a sufficiently detailed justification for ending it. The Golden State also was a high-profile example of states’ efforts to resist federal deportation of undocumented immigrants, becoming the first sanctuary state.
Trump and those around him have been touting mass deportations as among their top policy priorities. In a recent TIME interview, Trump vowed he would use the U.S. military to deport a record number of migrants — and reiterated that he hopes to begin on day one.
That priority came with threats that the Trump administration might withhold funds from so-called sanctuary cities who do not cooperate with the mass deportations as well as attempts to mobilize the National Guard from red states to carry out arrests and detentions in blue states.
“The best antidote to the threats is readiness,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Rolling Stone, adding his team will be ready to respond to the agenda laid out in Project 2025. “All we have to do is cross the T’s, dot the I’s, press print, and file.”
‘You Come For My People, You Come Through Me’
Also among the more outspoken of Democratic governors in the run-up to inauguration day is JB Pritzker (D) of Illinois, who has repeatedly said since Trump won reelection that his state is bracing for Trump’s second term.
Pritzker told reporters in November his administration has worked with the Democratic-led General Assembly to take “proactive steps” to fortify abortion rights and other laws that might be under attack over the next four years, according to Politico.
“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said, just two days after the election, adding that minority communities across Illinois remember “chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied.”
He also emphasized that the state will take action if the Trump administration tries to curtail government grants that are headed to Illinois, saying he’s had similar conversations with fellow Democratic governors around the country.
“We have like minds about protecting certain rights and making sure that we’re going to be able to withstand four years of a Donald Trump presidency and also the areas where we might work with the administration, whatever those may be,” Pritzker said.
A week after Election Day, Pritzker, alongside Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), launched a new organization, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, that seeks to unify state-based opposition to Trump’s agenda.
“We’re all facing a potential onslaught,” Polis told Rolling Stone. “Let’s pool together so we can share a common response.”
That onslaught includes a wide range of MAGA policies Trump has promised — including deliberately withholding disaster aid from states who do not implement his policies or who are antagonistic to him and his administration and cutting federal funding to schools who push what he describes as “transgender insanity” or “any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.”
Those examples are not out of reach scenarios. During his first term, Trump initially refused to release federal disaster aid for wildfires in California in 2018, withheld wildfire assistance for Washington state in 2020, and severely restricted emergency relief to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017 because he felt those areas were not supportive of him, according to his former administration officials.
Joining fellow Democratic governors, former Vice Presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has also been vocal about his efforts to protect his state from Trump’s “hateful agenda.”
“The other side spent a lot of time campaigning and talking about and promising that they would leave things up to the states. Well, I’m willing to take them at their word for that,” Walz said during a speech in his home state after the election.
“The moment they try and bring a hateful agenda in this state, I’m going to stand ready to stand up and fight,” he added, saying “a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions” and “our kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in their classroom” will be protected in Minnesota, he said.
Similarly, Washington’s outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee (D) told ABC News, “Democratic governors should approach this with strength and resolution and an activist agenda. Because this is the place where we can make progress too.”
