Gavin Newsom convenes legislative session to resist Trump

SACRAMENTO, California — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling a special session of the Legislature to shore up the state’s legal defenses against President-elect Donald Trump, he announced Thursday.

Newsom said Trump’s campaign statements and first-term policies on abortion, electric vehicles, immigration and disaster aid warranted immediate legislative powers ahead of lawmakers' planned return to Sacramento.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the special session, which will start in Sacramento on Dec. 2.

California served as a stronghold of the “resistance” to Trump during his first term, filing more than 120 lawsuits challenging the administration over its actions on air pollution, immigration, gun control, health care, union dues and other areas.

The proclamation from Newsom — an eager surrogate for President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris who was himself considered a likely contender after Biden dropped out of the race — signals the state is ready to step into that role again.

Lawmakers are already scheduled to return to Sacramento at the start of December to prepare for next year's session. Newsom's proclamation specifically calls for the special session to authorize more funding for Attorney General Rob Bonta and state agencies to combat Trump's actions.

Newsom billed it as "the first of several actions" he and lawmakers would take against Trump. Legislative leaders issued statements in lockstep with the governor.

"California has come too far and accomplished too much to simply surrender and accept his dystopian vision for America," state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire said in a statement.

“Voters sent a clear message this election, and we need to lean in and listen," Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said in a statement. "But we also must be prepared to defend California values, no matter the challenges ahead."

The proclamation targets Trump's dismantling of clean-vehicle rules, his repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and his withholding of disaster aid. It also references potential restrictions on abortion medication, and casts a net beyond Trump’s statements to include “statements and policy papers issued by individuals close to his campaign and by Republican congressional leadership.”

California, with its overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, is rare in its ability to have the governor convene the Legislature with the express purpose of challenging an incoming Republican president. He’s called lawmakers to Sacramento outside the regular legislative calendar twice in the last two years — most recently in September — both times to pass aggressive new regulations on the oil and gas industry to try to prevent price spikes at the pump.

Members of the state’s Democratic supermajority, including Rivas, had already said they were open to coming back again to take on Trump.

Among those who have said they’d come back is Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Orange County who chaired the committee that ran Newsom’s most recent special session.

Petrie-Norris said she supported another bout of lawmaking but warned against performative politicking.

“We were certainly the heart of the resistance during Trump’s first term, and I think that that will continue in the second term," she said Wednesday. "But I also don’t think we want to get ourselves trapped in this position where it’s resistance for resistance’s sake and performance art.”