Politics / November 15, 2024

Democratic Governors Join Forces to Resist Trump’s Extreme Policies

California and the other powerful Democrat-led states will be the first line of defense under Trump’s new administration.

Sasha Abramsky

President-elect Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on November 13, 2024, for his meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.


(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

As the new Trump administration begins to take shape, the MAGA leader’s cabinet picks are dominating the news cycle. Matt Gaetz, one of the most unethical members of Congress, as attorney general? A Fox news host with no governmental experience as defense secretary? Pro-Putin conspiracist Tulsi Gabbard in charge of national intelligence? Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heading the health department?

If 2017 was a preview of President Donald Trump’s using bizarre, offensive appointees as a way to wreck the effectiveness of the “administrative state,” 2025 promises to be the feature show. There’s no mystery here; it’s going to be a combination of kleptocracy, autocracy, and idiocy—and not necessarily in that order.

There is, however, another important story shaping up: the inevitable clash that will unfold between a Trumpified federal system and Democrat-led states desperate to protect their populaces and their progressive policies. Push the federal nuttiness and cruelty too far, and ultimately something will give. If the DOJ is turned into a MAGA commissariat, if military members are brought out onto the streets to clamp down on protesters, it will fall to Democrat-led states to work to keep the country’s justice system and public safety agencies functioning. And if their state National Guards are federalized in an effort to force their participation in immigrant roundups and militarized policing, it will fall to Democratic political leaders and the public to resist the march toward the Führerprinzip as best they can.

Earlier this week, the governors of Illinois and Colorado announced the formation of a coalition of states ready to take on the feds. They named it Governors Safeguarding Democracy and put forward the idea that through pooling legal expertise and political resources, state governments would have a fighting chance of standing up to Trump’s extreme policies.

Although California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is not one of the group’s founders, his state, by virtue of its size and its economic clout, will play a key role in this process, as it did in 2017. After all, California has generated a cache of environmental and healthcare advances over the past few years and won’t stand by as these policies are eroded. Newsom has pledged to slow down the Trump administration’s efforts to go after immigrants—and the state will have to if it wants to avoid the calamitous economic dislocation, including unprecedented inflationary pressures and massive upheavals in the state’s housing market, that would follow in the wake of any serious effort to deport the millions of undocumented migrants who live and work in the Golden State. And knowing that Trump’s people will likely respond by withholding funds for disaster relief or other needs from states that don’t toe the line, it will have to sue the Trump administration repeatedly to access dollars that it is entitled to.

Last week, before flying to Washington, DC, to lobby the Biden administration to sign an array of waivers that California has applied for concerning environmental and health policies in particular, Newsom announced that he would be convening a special legislative session in early December to shore up state laws against the expected onslaught. The governor, who has national political ambitions for 2028, said this was necessary to get a jump on fighting the “unconstitutional and unlawful federal policies” he anticipated would be flowing out of DC come January 20. Legislative leaders agree. Over the coming years, the state’s House speaker, Robert Rivan, and Senate president pro tem, Mike McGuire, will almost certainly be two of the more important political figures nationally as states take sides in what is shaping up to be brutal political trench warfare in the years ahead.

Current Issue

Cover of April 2025 Issue

McGuire (D-North Coast) says he is prepared to “defend the people, policies, and values that make the Golden State great.” State legislators will, he argues, look to work with the incoming administration where they can, “but if the president-elect tries to undermine our state, our freedoms, or our democracy, he will quickly see how determined the people of California truly are.”

In other words, buckle up.

Newsom is particularly interested in using the special legislative session to secure funding for the state’s justice department, so that it can prepare to file a raft of lawsuits against Trump policies. With the federal DOJ in the hands of a bomb-thrower such as Gaetz, who will presumably gut it of professionals and put in their place people willing to persecute Trump’s perceived enemies, it will fall to progressive state attorneys general to do the work of protecting workers’ rights, ensuring access to the ballot box, investigating corporate corruption, and so on.

In this most dire of moments for American democracy, the world will look to California and the other powerful Democrat-led states to navigate the country’s way out of the twisted wreckage.

Sasha Abramsky

Sasha Abramsky is The Nation's Western correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar, and most recently Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. Follow him on Bluesky at @sashaabramsky.bsky.social.

More from The Nation

Loot Hauley

Loot Hauley Loot Hauley

Not disappeared.

California Governor Gavin Newsom looks on during a press conference on February 1, 2023, in Sacramento, California.

Governor Newsom, It’s Time to Get Off the Sidelines Governor Newsom, It’s Time to Get Off the Sidelines

The California governor was careful not to provoke Donald Trump after the election, but that didn’t stop the president from launching a full assault against his state.

Sasha Abramsky

Billionaires Suck

Billionaires Suck Billionaires Suck

Public action, visibility brigade, Route 4, Paramus, New Jersey, January 2025.

OppArt / Karen Guancione

Katrina vanden Heuvel Resumes Editorship of “The Nation”

Katrina vanden Heuvel Resumes Editorship of “The Nation” Katrina vanden Heuvel Resumes Editorship of “The Nation”

D.D. Guttenplan, Nation editor from 2019 to 2025, returns to his reporting roots as special correspondent and host of a new Nation podcast.

Press Room

A protest in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, New York, on Saturday, March 29, 2025.

You Don’t Get Trump Without Gaza You Don’t Get Trump Without Gaza

Fascism doesn’t just appear. It must be invited in—and the bipartisan repression of the anti-genocide movement did just that.

Ben Ehrenreich

Senator Cory Booker speaks on the Senate floor on April 1, 2025. The New Jersey senator broke the record for the longest Senate floor speech by holding the floor for more than 25 hours.

Cory Booker Makes History. Donald Trump Will Never Erase It. Cory Booker Makes History. Donald Trump Will Never Erase It.

The New Jersey senator broke Strom Thurmond’s record for speaking on the Senate floor. May Booker break the back of the neo-segregationism that Trump represents.

Joan Walsh