Rob Bonta, legal professional basic of California.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Occasions through Getty Photographs)
For Individuals who care concerning the rule of regulation, these are robust instances. Daily, the Trump administration exhibits its contempt for democratic norms. Simply this month, we’ve seen the White Home seemingly manufacture corruption charges to take away Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook dinner, a vindictive effort to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Uganda, Donald Trump’s flooding of DC with National Guard troops from Republican states, and the suspension of the FEMA whistleblowers for contradicting the president on the risks of slicing disaster-preparedness providers.
We’ve additionally seen a unprecedented degeneration of the language of politics throughout the halls of energy. This week’s cupboard assembly was an exercise in sycophancy the likes of which the world noticed with mid-century totalitarian regimes however which the USA has by no means beforehand witnessed. It was so fawning, so lickspittle-y, so grotesquely despotic that one can solely hope each participant on this charade spends the remainder of their depressing lives having nightmares about these three hours on August 26, 2025, hours throughout which they collectively fed their souls right into a paper shredder.
These didn’t sound like cupboard secretaries talking frankly in a democratic, pluralist setting; somewhat, it was as if these minions desperately hoped to keep away from being despatched to Alligator Alcatraz or having their toenails forcibly eliminated or no matter different sadistic imaginative and prescient the Pricey One would possibly conjure up. These have been fearful, little individuals, extra akin to Saddam Hussein’s enablers than to United States’ nice statesmen of yore. It was the quintessence of pathetic, the purest distillation of mediocrity.
Trump, the poisonous fungus on the American Dream that he’s, is on the warpath towards any particular person, group, or state that he sees as standing in the best way of his fever dream of whole, limitless energy. To this finish, he has repeatedly had California in his sights: He has deployed a federalized Nationwide Guard and the US Marines into Los Angeles and referred to as for the Nationwide Guard to enter Oakland. He has repeatedly lain into “Governor Newscum” on social media, demanded the College of California system pay a $1 billion extortion charge in an effort to get federal analysis {dollars} flowing to UCLA once more; and pushed the US Justice Division to sue California for its redistricting plan—which was, after all, solely triggered by Trump’s preposterous and express demand that Texas and different GOP-led states do their very own redistricting to rig the outcomes of the 2026 midterm elections. Escalating his assault on all-things-environmental, he has additionally gone after California’s rising wind-farm infrastructure and has intensified his assault on the state’s inexperienced transportation plans.
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It’s tempting to take a look at all of this and say, “Recreation over, the nasty, more and more incoherent, orange man has received.” However California Legal professional Basic Rob Bonta, who’s utilizing the courts to attempt to rein within the administration, is surprisingly optimistic. His division has already sued the administration 39 instances, placing California on target to just about double the variety of lawsuits it recordsdata towards Trump 2.0 as in comparison with throughout Trump’s first time period. Within the decrease courts, it has gotten favorable rulings within the nice majority of those circumstances (19 of the 21 the place rulings have been issued), together with the one difficult Trump’s efforts to finish birthright citizenship. And this week, California declared victory in its lawsuit aimed toward stopping the Division of Schooling from withholding billions of {dollars} in already allotted spending from the states. The administration launched the primary portion of those {dollars} in July and has now agreed to launch the rest by October 1.
For Bonta, who sat down with me to speak concerning the state of issues earlier this week at a café close to his downtown Sacramento workplace, it’s a vindication of California’s technique of occurring the offense and submitting lawsuits each time the administration steps outdoors the bounds of the regulation or the Structure. “Sadly, we have now a lawless federal administration, the place Trump is blatantly and openly, persistently and often breaking the regulation,” the legal professional basic instructed me. “And our dedication is: If and when he breaks the regulation or tramples over the Structure, we’ll take him to courtroom.”
Cumulatively, Bonta estimates that the lawsuits have resulted within the unfreezing of $168 billion that the administration has tried to withhold from California—a surprising price of return on the $5 million that the state’s Justice Division has to date spent on placing these circumstances collectively. Whereas the US Supreme Courtroom has pushed again towards a few of California’s filings or has ordered Bonta’s workforce to refile in different courts than those they initially filed in, in lots of circumstances the Trump administration has merely caved as soon as California and different blue states made clear that they might sue.
Like several bully, it seems the administration is cautious of a good battle. “That occurred once we challenged Division of Homeland Safety grant funding that was conditioned on helping in federal immigration enforcement and the anti-immigrant agenda,” Bonta stated. “It additionally occurred on the Division of Schooling formulation grant-funding case,” by which the Trump workforce merely tried to disregard the funding formulation handed by Congress to fund things like ESL courses and after college and summer season college packages. California’s legal professional basic, together with 22 different Democratic attorneys basic and two states, sued. That’s the case that has now been resolved fully in California’s favor.
Bonta stated he believes that, thus far, nevertheless ugly the administration’s actions have been, by and huge the courts are holding agency—and, albeit reluctantly, Staff Trump is abiding by courtroom rulings. However, he stated, he’s clear-eyed concerning the threats. Senior administration officers, from the president on down, are railing towards judges whose rulings they disagree with and calling for his or her impeachment; in the meantime, “enablers or cooperators” are going out of their method to increase the decibel degree of the political discourse. “They’re making an attempt to socialize this concept that not all courtroom orders ought to be adopted—and that’s very harmful,” he stated. “It’s been talked about greater than it’s been achieved. However may or not it’s achieved? It takes a variety of individuals to permit it to be achieved, however I’m not naïve [enough] to suppose that defiance of courtroom orders couldn’t be doable down the road.”
Bonta is especially scathing in his criticism of the administration’s deployment of Nationwide Guard members and Marines into Los Angeles. It was, he stated, in response to a manufactured disaster, and by involving the army in home regulation enforcement, it clearly violated the Posse Comitatus Act. “They have been concerned in visitors enforcement and immigration enforcement with ICE. They have been embedded and took part in 75 p.c of the ICE raids and immigration enforcement operations within the days after they have been deployed.”
By threatening to deploy the army to Democratic-run cities across the nation, Bonta argued that Trump “is saying the quiet half out loud.” The president is, the legal professional basic instructed me, “saying he’ll violate the Posse Comitatus Act. He’ll get slapped down with a courtroom order inside minutes if he tries to do this; he simply can’t do it.”
In Trumplandia, that through-the-looking-glass place inhabited by these degraded cupboard members, the Nice Chief is infallible. In actuality, he’s a dimwitted, getting older thug. The extra that states like California push again towards his agenda, the extra he’s proven to be an emperor missing any garments. The harm he’s doing is immense, however the end result he seeks—a quiescent America lain susceptible at his ft—is as removed from being realized at this time because it was throughout his first merciless and incompetent go-around on the White Home. And that, in these darkish, darkish days, offers me a sliver of hope that the nation can survive this full flowering of MAGA fascism.
On this second of disaster, we’d like a unified, progressive opposition to Donald Trump.
We’re beginning to see one take form within the streets and at poll containers throughout the nation: from New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s marketing campaign targeted on affordability, to communities defending their neighbors from ICE, to the senators opposing arms shipments to Israel.
The Democratic Get together has an pressing option to make: Will it embrace a politics that’s principled and well-liked, or will it proceed to insist on dropping elections with the out-of-touch elites and consultants that bought us right here?
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