SACRAMENTO — Seven months into President Trump’s second time period, California has filed 37 lawsuits towards his administration and spent about $5 million doing it.
Earlier than you go off on a government-spending rant, let me drop this determine on you: For every greenback the state has spent in litigation with Trump, it has recouped $33,600 in funds that the federal authorities has tried to remove from the Golden State, in line with Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.
That, as he put it throughout a Monday information convention, is “bringing the receipts.”
These aren’t {dollars} Californians have been wishing for or begging for from the federal authorities — these are funds which have already been legally allotted to the state however which the Trump administration is trying to cease for causes petty, ideological or each. They pay for instructor coaching, immunizations, monitoring infectious illnesses, preserving roads secure, catastrophe restoration and on and on. And they’re predominantly your tax {dollars}, being withheld out of your state.
“What we’re demanding is that we get the funding that’s already been legally authorized and appropriated,” Bonta mentioned.
However as a lot because it’s about paying for the fundamentals that maintain California going, it’s additionally about defending an inclusive and equitable way of life that defines the ethos of our state. Don’t tread on us! Californians get to spend our cash how we see match.
“Once you add all of it up, you see the totality of what’s at stake: the California dream,” Bonta mentioned. “The concept each Californian, regardless of how they give the impression of being, the place they stay or how a lot cash they’ve, can ship their child to high school, go to the physician after they’re sick and put meals on the desk and a roof over their heads.”
Or as Gov. Gavin Newsom put it, it’s litigation not for the sake of suing, however to “defend, to face tall, to carry the road when it comes to our values, the issues we maintain expensive.”
It’s critical occasions, people. Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t stand for LGBTQ+ rights, for immigrants’ rights, for girls’s rights, for due course of and even public colleges. However up to now, the courts have held, for probably the most half, to their duty to be a verify on this unbalanced administration.
After all, legal professionals win circumstances, typically no matter information. I need to give a shout out to our state Division of Justice. Bonta could be the state’s prime lawyer, however there’s a entire military of authorized people behind these lawsuits.
The $5 million spent up to now has been completely in-house, Bonta mentioned. This money isn’t going to costly outdoors counsel, however, as my colleague Kevin Rector factors out, cash that’s funding the sensible, proficient attorneys and employees who work for taxpayers.
Quite a lot of of them have been round throughout Trump’s first time period, when the state was concerned in additional than 120 lawsuits towards his administration. A lot of these fits have been about course of — the haphazard, rules-be-damned approach Trump seeks to implement his insurance policies.
Our California legal professionals realized then that courts do in reality uphold regulation, and easily mentioning that guidelines need to be adopted was typically sufficient to cease Trump. Whereas we now have a seasoned authorized staff that understands the weaknesses in what Trump is doing, the sort-of-funny half is that he’s nonetheless doing it. Few classes realized, which is nice for California.
Thus far, these lawsuits by California have ensured that about $168 billion that Trump would have lower off as an alternative continued to move to California. Bonta mentioned that within the 19 circumstances which have made it in entrance of a choose up to now, he’s succeeded in 17, together with successful 13 court docket orders immediately blocking Trump’s “unlawful actions.”
He’s additionally secured wins outdoors of court docket, together with when the U.S. Division of Training lately backed down after freezing faculty funding weeks earlier than faculty is about to begin. That funding, underneath risk of a lawsuit, has been restored.
Bonta mentioned that whereas the state is preventing each lawsuit with rigor, two are private to him and “stay kind of crucial when it comes to what they characterize.”
They occur to be the primary two fits the state filed, shortly after Trump took workplace. The primary was about birthright citizenship, and Trump’s bid to finish it. It’s a case Bonta says is “very significant” to him.
Bonta was born within the Philippines and immigrated to the US when he was 2 months outdated, dwelling in a trailer within the Central Valley city of La Paz, the house of the United Farm Staff. His mother and father left their nation to keep away from martial regulation because the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos gained energy, and labored with civil rights leaders together with Cesar Chavez as soon as they settled right here.
So it is sensible that an government order that would go away about 24,500 infants born every year in California with out U.S. citizenship hits exhausting with Bonta.
Bonta, together with attorneys normal of a number of different states, filed that lawsuit the day after Trump took workplace, in response to an government order he signed on Inauguration Day. Thus far, a number of courts have expressed deep skepticism of that order, and the concept the Structure and prior Supreme Court docket rulings must be ignored in favor of Trump’s place.
The second case that Bonta takes personally is a multistate pushback on Trump’s sweeping halt of federal funding. That case put in danger about $3 trillion nationwide, together with that $168 billion in California, a few third of the state price range.
Developing subsequent is a problem to the deployment of Marines and Nationwide Guard troops in Los Angeles. The Trump administration has been quietly eradicating these troopers in current days, maybe in preparation for asking the court docket to drop that case, which looks like a loser for them. No troops, no case. We’ll see the way it goes in a couple of days.
“The Marines and the Nationwide Guardspeople arrived to quiet streets in L.A.,” Bonta mentioned. “The president has been extremely, for my part, disrespectful to those patriots. He’s handled them as political pawns.”
The $5 million the state has spent up to now on authorized fights with Trump is a part of $25 million the Legislature put aside earlier this yr throughout a particular session. Bonta mentioned that even that may doubtless not be sufficient to maintain the challenges flowing for the following three and a half years.
Newsom, for his half, is all in and promised that Bonta “is not going to be in want of assets to do his job.” (And sure, I do know it raises his profile for a 2028 presidential run.)
As a lot because it appears ridiculous that we’re setting apart this large chunk of change for authorized charges at a second when we face a price range disaster, the price of letting Trump run roughshod over our state is far greater. That is cash effectively spent.
As a result of it’s not simply our federal funding at stake, it’s the California dream.
