Gavin Newsom prepares to battle Trump 2.0 with $25 million infusion

On the same day that outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed that Donald Trump had defeated her fair and square and calmly presided over the transfer of power, another California Democrat was girding for the next battle.

While Harris and the Senate certified Trump’s victory Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom spent 45 minutes laying out his topline budget priorities and trying to shore up his vulnerabilities, touting a $332 billion budget without a deficit after two years of tens of billions in budget shortfalls.

Afterward, however, there was little talk about how Newsom managed to erase such deep budget deficits. Instead, reporters pressed him about upcoming clashes with his longtime foe and what he was doing to try to “Trump-proof” California and prepare for a long-anticipated attempt to win back the White House in 2028.

Newsom missed his opportunity to face off against Trump for control of the presidency when national Democrats decided not to leapfrog over the vice president to tap the charismatic fellow Californian serving as President Biden’s top surrogate – and waiting in the wings.

Sidelined from the big show, Newsom disappeared from the national spotlight for most of the general election campaign, stealing only a few headlines. During Harris’ coronation convention, he openly mocked the process in which Democratic party leaders pressured Biden to step down and gave the nod to Harris even though she hadn’t received one vote in a nearly non-existent primary.

“We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process,” Newsom snickered during a “Pod Save America” interview. “It was bottom-up – I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say.”

Just days after the election, Newsom anointed himself the leader of the anti-Trump resistance, convened a special legislative session, and announced he wanted to boost the state Justice Department’s budget by $25 million to wage legal fights with the incoming administration.

It’s familiar ground for Newsom, who played the role of Trump foil during the fiery Republican’s last two years in office. During Trump’s first term, California sued the federal government over environmental rules, immigration policies, and other regulations more than 100 times.

The $25 million legal budget increase is before legislative leaders now, an expenditure Newsom said would be needed to protect “California’s values and programs” on everything from its sanctuary state law protecting illegal immigrant criminals to electric vehicle mandates. Newsom expects his fellow Democrats in the state legislature, who control a supermajority, to pass the request before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration while giving him the green light to spend far more.

No one, not even labor leaders in California, believes Newsom won’t end up spending the $25 million. The union representing state attorneys are already expressing concerns that state Attorney General Rob Bonta could hire outside counsel to help fight Trump on high-profile cases after Bonta tried to hire a private law firm to help sue big oil companies until the union’s opposition prevented it.

“The bottom could fall out,” Newsom warned. “Trump could impose 60% tariffs against China … it could move to deport millions and millions of undocumented Americans, or at least undocumented people living in America, and impact millions more mixed-status families, many that include American citizens, and that could impact the labor market, could impact interest rates … inflation could go up.” California Republican Party leaders and mayors from the Central Valley, where Trump is far more popular than in the rest of the state, at their own Monday press conference fired back at Newsom’s budget priorities and plans to use taxpayer funds to fight Trump’s agenda.

“I talk to Californians all the time, and the Californians who I speak to across the state tell me loud and clear that they want a governor who’s interested in working with our president to improve our lives and not one who spends money on suing the president,” said Corrin Rankin, vice chair of the California Republican Party. “They want our roads fixed, reliable and reasonably priced electricity, and [to] not have to choose between providing food for our families or putting gas in our tanks.”

Joel Campos, Stanislaus County GOP chairman, said voters in the Central Valley had rejected Newsom’s priorities in the November election and urgently need help bringing down the state’s exorbitant cost of living.

“State policies like the gas tax harm Central Valley super commuters and folks who can’t afford an electric car,” Campos said.

Even before Trump takes office, Newsom is headed to Washington this week to try to secure more federal waiver extensions and disaster money from Biden. He still has a two-week window with a friendly Democratic administration to help build a firewall against Trump 2.0.

Newsom Monday acknowledged he is seeking Biden’s assistance in fulfilling several outstanding disaster funding requests, including reimbursements for $5.2 billion in emergency COVID spending by state and local governments even though the state stills owes the federal government tens of billions of dollars in pandemic-related unemployment insurance lost to fraud. California Democrats increased payroll taxes on businesses across the state to pay it back.

Newsom wants Biden to help fulfill the disaster funding in the face of renewed threats from Trump to withhold the relief from California in the future. The governor wants to set aside an undisclosed amount of California’s budget to supplement any lost disaster aid. He will also ask Biden for eight waivers that California has yet to receive from the Environmental Protection Agency to allow it to continue imposing electric vehicle mandates banning the purchase of fossil fuel-burning vehicles by 2035. The waivers would allow California to enforce stronger air standards than the federal law requires. Trump has promised to revoke these rules or simply deny the waivers to federal law California has requested.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration approved a waiver allowing California to proceed with requiring 35% of new 2026 cars sold in the state to be zero-emissions. It also allowed another 2020 regulation requiring reductions in nitrogen oxides emitted by heavy-duty trucks and buses. The Trump administration is expected to challenge the waivers in the courts and deny any other pending waivers for California vehicle standards.

Newsom is also seeking approval of his signature state health care initiatives aimed at improving access to health care, including mental health care, that passed on a narrow margin in early 2023 and uses Medicaid dollars.

Another easy target for Trump is California’s often-lampooned high-speed rail project, attempting to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco since 2008. Its original budget in 2008 carried a $33 billion price tag that has since ballooned to an estimated $105 billion. Even the New York Times has deemed the bullet train a “tortured effort” and a case study in how public works projects can become “like the now-crippled financial institutions of 2008, too big to fail.”

After years of ridicule by House Republicans and efforts to defund the project, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi secured $6 billion for state rail projects from the Biden administration last year, including $3.1 billion for the Central Valley section of the bullet train. Republicans and the Trump administration have signaled they will try to claw back those funds and stop any future federal investments.

During Monday’s press conference, Newsom accused Trump in his first term of “raiding” nearly a billion federal dollars the state has secured for the high-speed rail project. “It took years to get that back,” he remarked. “We were able to get that back. So that gives you a sense of our sensibilities.”

Newsom also took a jab at the Department of Government Efficiency and Trump’s appointment of billionaire Elon Musk, one of Newsom’s most prominent sparring partners, to run it.

“[Trump’s] celebrating that they intend to eliminate the Department of Education,” he said. “He’s celebrating the leaders of DOGE that are talking about $2 trillion in [government] cuts. You can’t cut $2 trillion without literally gutting entitlements. So that’s a level of uncertainty that’s next-level uncertainty.”

California’s most contentious fight with the Trump administration is already taking shape. After Trump’s electoral and popular vote victory, the city of Los Angeles and San Diego County passed “super-sanctuary” ordinances designed to further preclude cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

Jim Desmond, a Republican County supervisor who opposed the beefed-up sanctuary policy, says this makes it easier for immigrants charged with some heinous violent crimes, gang activity, and weapons offenses to return to San Diego County streets.

“You know, we all want legal immigration, but if people come here illegally and then commit felonies and beyond, and we’re talking about kidnapping, we’re talking about rape, we’re talking about using a gun in a violent crime,” Desmond told Newsmax in mid-December. “These are people that nobody wants on the streets, and so I think this is going to make us less safe and could put more strain on our law enforcement if we can’t deport these heinous criminals.”

San Diego County’s top law enforcement official, Sheriff Kelly Martinez, immediately countered that she would not follow the new policy and would continue to allow immigration authorities access to illegal immigrants who committed crimes and are held in local jails.

In late December, an organization led by Trump adviser Stephen Miller sent a letter to San Diego County supervisors and 248 other elected officials in sanctuary jurisdictions warning them that they could be “criminally liable” if they interfered with federal immigration enforcement.

In a Dec. 23 letter, the America First Legal Foundation informed San Diego County supervisors that it had identified the county as a sanctuary jurisdiction violating federal law. It warned the officials that they could face “legal consequences” and could be held civilly liable under federal anti-racketeering laws. The legal nonprofit sent similar letters to Bonta and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.