Gavin Newsom wants to protect California from Donald Trump — but only if it’s his idea | Opinion
Gov. Gavin Newsom is now at his attention-getting zenith as he calls for a special legislative session to thwart the incoming Donald Trump. But it was a very different Newsom who vetoed legislation to protect California from Trump attacks on environmental and labor laws just five years ago. Newsom was so against what he is now all but demanding that he renounced the Democratic lawmaking at the time as “a solution in search of a problem.”
This about-face is a notable reminder of Newsom’s two very different personas: There is the publicity-seeking side of the governor, which is now on full display in all its glory. Call him Performative Gavin.
And then there is the Newsom known for diving head-first into the sausage-making in Sacramento to grind out real progress, confronting messy compromises along the way. This is Governing Gavin.
There is no greater example that has revealed the two Newsoms than one of California’s most contentious issues: Water.
Governing Gavin’s water dilemma
It didn’t take long as president for Trump to make a splash in California water.
Back then, federal regulators were updating rules to operate the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s two big water systems, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.
In what is supposed to be a scientifically-based process, Trump completely hijacked things by declaring that the update must result in greater water supplies for Central Valley farmers, Silicon Valley and Southern California. The new rules followed his wishes, but Trump’s interference poisoned their legitimacy in the eyes of many.
In reaction to Trump, State Senate Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego proposed a sweeping bill to protect California from federal regulatory rollbacks. Senate Bill 1, Atkins said at the time, “provides that any federal environmental or worker-safety standard in place and effective before Jan. 20, 2017 (when Trump took office), shall remain in effect and be enforceable under California law even if the federal government rolls it back.”
Such a high-profile counterattack on Trump would seem natural to Newsom. But his two personas found themselves deeply conflicted.
Performative Gavin would go on to one-up Atkins by supporting Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s lawsuit against Trump’s Delta pumping regulations. Governing Gavin, meanwhile, was finding himself needing those regulations in his quest for a broader, signature water achievement.
A water legacy at risk
The rivers of the majestic Sierra Nevada range in 2019 were in desperate need of better management. At issue was how to divide their flows between the competing needs of humans and the environment.
Governing Gavin was proposing some additional environmental flows combined with more habitat restoration. It was a proposal backed by various water users known as the Voluntary Agreements.
These water users were also threatening to back away from this plan if SB 1 passed and Trump’s new operating rules for the Delta were blocked by the Legislature. Newsom wanted his Voluntary Agreements. While it was clear that Newsom did not want SB 1 to reach his desk, Atkins moved it there anyway, all but daring the governor to veto the bill.
Which he did.
Newsom attempted to belittle the legislation. It, for example, did not “provide the state with any new authority to push back against the Trump administration’s environmental policies.” Yet how precisely can any state legislation magically increase a state’s authority against any federal government?
When “French Laundry” Newsom finds himself caught in a double standard, his explanations rarely make sense.
Newsom’s about-face
Fast forward to 2024.
Newsom has announced a special session to urgently address threats to “California values” posed by Trump. His proclamation seeks to prevent Trump from dismantling “long-standing environmental protections for clean air and clean water.” The governor wants the Legislature to provide the necessary funds to agencies for future legal battles against the federal administration. He is also seeking “conforming changes to existing law” to “mitigate the impacts of actions by the incoming Trump administration.”
The rationale for this special session appears to be a work in progress, at best. Any pending legal costs to fight Trump, for example, are a rounding error in the scheme of the state’s massive budget that do not require a special session. The legislature’s real power here would be to legislate.
What could really stop Trump in his tracks is some new version of 2019’s SB 1, only broader.
Newsom to date has not explicitly sought a return of SB 1, but the very call for a special session on Trump calls it to question. So what has actually changed?
This time, this special session and legislative strategy are Performative Gavin’s idea, not the brainchild of some pesky lawmaker stealing his thunder and dominating the agenda.
And Performative Gavin, suddenly vaulted onto the national stage to thwart the victorious Trump, seems to have less time for Governing Gavin to grind out progress in Sacramento. While the governor finds himself to huddle with Democrats in Washington to plan for the return of Trump, those Voluntary Agreements he once championed for the Sierra rivers still remain unresolved today thanks to the glacial speed of water progress in California. Whether Sierra water management (last updated a quarter century ago) is ever modernized is anyone’s guess.
As for protecting California from Trump in this coming special legislative session, look for a spotlight-stealing performance by Newsom to find that long-elusive solution in search of a problem.
This story was originally published November 18, 2024 at 5:00 AM.