California Democrats have long fought against Donald Trump. But they had never encountered such a cruel offensive they did this week.
Among the deployment of federal agents to Los Angeles, climate standards and state senior management of the state, the state absorbed one of the president’s power after another. And the power balance between Trump’s administration and the most people’s nation, California was lost.
“We are in the DEFCON 1 conflict between California and Trump’s administration,” said Democratic strategist Katie Merrill. “This is bigger than we have seen than we have seen.”
Democrats of this deep blue state spent many years trying to protect California from hostile White House dating back to their first term. But for them, weekly events registered a new lowland, a multifaceted assault, which not only threatens the state’s liberal values, but also revealed California’s ability to control its destiny when the federal government has other ideas.
“At the time we were afraid,” Governor Gavin Newsom said at Tuesday evening address. “Arrived”.
Trump’s focus is to California. The state was a perennial aim of the first period that Republicans and conservative media allies were mercilessly portrayed as dysfunctional and illegal. She created national democratic figures such as Newsom and former vice president Kamala Harris, who eagerly lifted anti-short advertisements.
The elected officers spent months preparing for the second administration of Trump. They studied the Project 2025 and postponed the money to challenge Trump’s agenda in court.
However, the extent of the assault and aggressiveness still overwhelmed them.
The California Democrats’ brutal stretch began with immigration raids throughout the Los Angeles district. Then, when protests came up, a short deployed thousands of national guard troops to the region due to Newsom’s contradictions. He then moved to abolish the Emotive Standards of California vehicles, when his administration was considering deducting education dollars compared to the California transgender athletes’ policy.
By Thursday, Democrats watched a video with resentment in which Padilla was forcibly removed from the Homeland Security Department’s press conference, pulled on the ground and handcuffs. And that night, a few hours after the federal judge ordered the President to terminate the unilateral deployment of the State National Guard, the Court of Appeal retained his ability to do so at least temporarily.
It marked a great escalation of long -term rage with the president to the new, existential echelon of antagonism.
“The federalization of the National Guard was in the plan of 2025, but we were hoping that it would not make something so drastic and dramatic,” said Dana Williamson, who was the Chief of Staff of Newsom until this year. “He pulls the trigger on everything at a time.”
Trump’s decision to include the national guard and the Marines in their immigration agenda – and in Los Angeles, the Latin American Political Government Bastion, California became a world -looking test case.
A few hours before the judge, Charles Byyer, announced his decision, ordering the Trump to terminate the Guard’s deployment, Padilla retired to a press conference to question the NOEM and forced restraint of the Homeland Security Secretary. The images of Padila, surrounded by federal agents, ignited the universal democratic condemnation and symbolized the California storage packages with the Federal Government.
Many Democrats said the White House pushed California into the fall of authoritarianism. Federal pressure on California’s political luminaires was not only involved in the confrontation of Padila with Noem: officials detained the famous Union leader David Huerta; Senior Josh Hawley launched an investigation into the immigrant defense group in Los Angeles; And Border Tsar Tom Homan threatened to arrest anything, including Newsom, which prevented the federal execution.
“It is about abuse of government. It is about the desire to cross red lines repeatedly,” said Rusty Hicks, Chairman of the California Democratic Party.
“We see it in other parts of the world,” Hicks added about Padilla. “We don’t see it here. If there weren’t enough awakening calls last week, it’s definitely one.”
The treatment of Padilla pointed to the wall to the wall. But it was just one storm of the storm covering California.
Although immigration raids in California immersed in the political Maestrom, Newsom and other officials also opposed Trump’s administration to reduce funding as the president and Education Secretary Linda McMahon attacked the state policy to the trans -statements. At that time, Trump’s step to disregard some California’s signature climate change policy.
“They want to make California in a perforation bag,” said Mike Young, Executive Director of California environmental voters. “We are planned and really disgusted with what is happening.”
California, as the pillar of democratic politics and the fourth largest economy in the world, has long sought to form a broader economic and political agenda. During the first term of Trump, California passed the “shrine” laws to protect immigrants and organized an automatic exhaust agreement announced by Newsom by a “control friend” in a short one.
But it only turned out to be one step in a bigger chess match. And Trump demonstrates that he has the most powerful works: the Republican Congress, the conservative Supreme Court and, most importantly, the federal supremacy against large, rich states.
“The idea that the federal government can come from the government’s government,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “We experience this if you have a fight against the government between the federal government and states, there is a chance that the federal government wins.”
Although Newsom won a victory on Thursday when the judge ordered the Trump to abandon the National Guard’s control, it proved that the Court of Appeal had blocked the ruling for at least a few days, Tuesday. The governor returned his threat to avenge the deducted funding by blocking the flow of taxes from California to Washington.
The Republicans say the Constitution is directly from their side, claiming that they are rescuing California citizens from disruptive immigration and climate policy.
The White House spokesman, Abigail Jackson, said in a statement that the short “correctly engaged in protection in federal law enforcement” when Newsom would not do so. Harrison Fields, a spokesman for the White House, said Trump was active in California’s “expensive, unreal and tyrannical” climate policy.
“The goal is to help California,” said GOP spokesman Kevin Kiley, who led the effort to change the Phase of Newsom’s gas cars, “and, unfortunately, with the help of California, means too often the fight against politicians who have or neutralize our state.”
Democrats say the short transcends the boundaries of the law and regularly violates it.
“Mel has become more inferior. The increase has become more obvious,” said Xavier Becerra, a former state prosecutor and a former secretary of health headed by President Joe Biden. “They collected the severity of their actions, instability, and collected the intensity of their false submission, but at the end of the day there are still the same unlawful actions that the courts first rejected when Donald Trump was the president.”
He said, “This president will not take an answer. He will continue to try to do so in his own way, even if he is contrary to the Constitution.”
The current Prosecutor General of California, Rob Bonta, whose office on Thursday appealed to the court to prevent environmental return and then retreated from the lawyers of the Justice Department related to the National Guard deployment, told reporters that he was seeking twice as much legal action as Trump’s first administration.
He suggested that this reaction is a new need.
“The speed and volume of the Trump 2.0 is fundamentally different,” said Bonta.