Hollywood. Silicon Valley. An agricultural sector that grows more than three-quarters of fruits and nuts in America. All contributed to April’s news that California had officially overtaken Japan to become thefourth biggest economy in the world, its GDP of $4.1tn trailing only the entirety of the US, China and Germany.
But two months later this superpower is locked in a bitter power struggle with Washington DC. Days of protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles prompted Donald Trump todeploy military forcesagainst what he called “insurrectionists” despite strenuous objections from state and local leaders.
The US president even endorsed the arrest of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who accused Trump of manufacturing a crisis,filed a lawsuitagainst the administration and warned in a televised address that America was on the brink of authoritarianism unless citizens take a stand.
It is a fight that Trump has been spoiling for.Californiahas long occupied a special place in the imagination of his “Make America great again” (Maga) movement. Its name has become a cultural signifier for coastal elitism, illegal immigration and “wokeness” in Republican eyes. It is a $4tn enemy within.
“California, in a way, stands for the opposite of Trumpism,” saidBob Shrum, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles. “It stands for tolerance. It stands for diversity, the word that’s now verboten in the administration. It stands for helping poor people and people who’ve been left out. And it stands for giving a fair hearing, unpopular as it may be, to people who applied for asylum.”
Immigration is in California’s cultural DNA.Even former governor Ronald Reagan, a diehard conservative, championed America’s status as a nation of immigrants when he was US president. In 2018 California became the first “sanctuary state” in the nation when its legislature enacted a law limiting local and state officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Trump has lost California in three consecutive elections, most recently against Vice-President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants to the Golden state. It wasa leader of the “resistance”against Trump’s first-term agenda, filing more than a hundred lawsuits to challenge the administration’s policies on immigration, environmental regulations, healthcare and other issues.
The battle looks set to be even more intense second time around. Newsom secured $25m to fund legal fights and “Trump-proof” the state. California sued the administration 16 times in the first 100 days, nearly double the pace of Trump’s first term, over issues including birthright citizenship, healthcare, education, federal job cuts and tariffs.
Hostilities broke out during California’s devastating wildfires when Trump sought to blame Newsom and other officials and threatened to withhold federal aid unless the governor changed the state’s environmental policies.
The president has since repeatedly spun a yarn about how he sent Los Angeles critical water that its leaders failed to provide. “I invaded Los Angeles, and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down,” he boasted in March. Yet the 2bn-plus gallons of water that Trump ordered to be released from two dams in the Central valley agricultural hubdid not actually go to Los Angeles.
California’s leadership in climate action, including strict tailpipe emissions standards under the Clean Air Act, has also been a target. The president’s advisers proposed limiting the state’s authority to set its own emissions standards, a move that failed in his first term but could gain traction with a more Trump-aligned supreme court.
Then, inevitably, came the showdown over immigration, a political gift for Trump as he sought to deflect attention from his feud with the tech billionaire Elon Musk and Republican divisions over his tax and spending bill.
The spark was aggressive raids by federal agents against immigrants in Los Angeles’ fashion district, in a Home Depot car park and several other locations. Protests started in downtown Los Angeles before spreading to Paramount andneighboring Compton.
Most were peaceful but some demonstrators attempted to block border patrol vehicles by hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear unleashed teargas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.
As images of blazing cars and masked protesters waving Mexican flags went viral in rightwing media, with an assist from the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’sX social media account, Trump realised his opportunity to strike California had come.
He sent thousands of national guard troops and marines to Los Angeles, telling reporters: “You have violent people, and we’re not gonna let them get away with it.” It was an extraordinary breach of state sovereignty that Newsom said was unwarranted, politically motivated and likely to pour fuel on the fire.
But it was a familiar playbook for Trump, who revels in spectacle and haspreviously promoted a videoof Venezuelan alleged gang members having their heads shaved or being manhandled by guards. The show of strength allowed him to highlight his core issues: immigration enforcement, “law and order” and a battle against a state that is the ultimate bastion of progressive values.
Shrum, who worked for Al Gore and John Kerry’s presidential campaigns and is director of the Center for the Political Future at USC Dornsife, said: “He likes to make an enemy of California. California can be his bete noire, an example of everything he claims is wrong. It can appeal to parts of his base that resent the so-called coastal elites that they claim have run the country up to now.”
He added: “The whole thing in LA is confined to about two square blocks; 99.99% of one of the world’s great cities is functioning in a very normal way. But Trump has been able to use this as a pretext to do what he’s wanted to do all along – and wanted to do in 2020 – which was call out the armed forces to suppress dissent. In the meantime he is enjoying the prospect of a fight withGavin Newsom.”
There is personal animosity and political rivalry between Trump and Newsom, who is seen as a potential future presidential candidate. Trump has used derogatory language such as “Newscum” and even publicly backed his border czar Tom Homan’s idea of arresting Newsom for potentially interfering with federal immigration enforcement. He said: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.”
Newsom responded defiantly, “Come and get me, tough guy,” andwrote on X: “The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation – this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.”
Newsom and the state also pushed back against the federal intervention through legal means and public statements. California is suing the Trump administration over the troop deployment, arguing that it is illegal, immoral and unconstitutional.In televised remarkson Tuesday, Newsom said: “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes – the moment we’ve feared has arrived.”
But some argue that the governor is playing into Trump’s hands.Bill Whalen, a political consultant and speechwriter who worked for Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Republican governors of California, said: “You have Democratic leaders all insisting these are peaceful rallies and peaceful protest and then you see the visuals which show rocks and cinder blocks being thrown and cars on fire and people on motorcycles coming out of the smoke to wave Mexican flags. That’s not peace. That’s not a 60s love-in by any means.”
Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University, added: “Elissa Slotkin, the senator from Michigan, made a comment about her party not too long ago. She said the problem with the Democratic party is it’s perceived as weak and woke. That is what Trump feeds on: the perception of weakness and wokeism. Here in California Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, California’s leaders writ large play into that perception.”
The duel has highlighted a shift from traditional conservative defences of states’ rights towards a more centralised approach under Trump, who has sought to expand executive power and enforce a rightwing agenda through federal coercion.
ThePolitico website has reportedthat the administration is considering cutting federal education funds to California. Democrats point out that California contributes significantly more in taxes than it receives back. The state sent$83bn moreto the federal government than it received in the fiscal year 2022.
Drexel Heard, a Democratic strategist who lives in Los Angeles, said: “California represents everything that is the United States: 39 million people from all over the place, different ethnicities, different religions, different socioeconomic backgrounds.
“We are the antithesis to the Stephen Miller – ironically, from Santa Monica – view of what America should be. We are the immigration state of the country. We are the socioeconomic state of the country with the fourth largest economy in the world. AndDonald Trumpdoesn’t like the fact that nobody in California gives a shit about him.”