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If Donald Trump is elected president, Attorney General Rob Bonta will immediately begin filing nearly daily lawsuits against him

By Thomas Buckley, November 4, 2024 12:01 pm

If Donald Trump is elected president, a few things will happen here in California.

First, Attorney General Rob Bonta will immediately begin filing nearly daily lawsuits against him, most likely even before Trump is sworn in. Bonta will do this to burnish his anti-Trump credentials in the run up to the 2026 gubernatorial election, keep his name in the papers, and be able to fund raise off the fact that he is the “only person trying to Trump” from laying waste to the wonderful and beautiful and perfect state of California.

Overstating the case? In Trump’s first term, the state filed – really – a record-setting more than 100 lawsuits against him and his administration by then AG and now invisible Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Bockarhea (at least that how Biden pronounces his name).

Second, the powers that be will immediately start telling Californians that Trump will definitely order the killing of fish, the creation of LGBQTIA+ camps (hold on to your property in Inyo County – the feds will surely come a knockin’) the burning of forests, the wasting of water, the banning of every book except “The Art of the Deal,” the legalization of condor hunting, and maybe just maybe he’ll order the placing of nuclear devices along the San Andreas Fault to make sure that the coastal counties that don’t like him just float away.

He is perceived and deemed as a terror ready to strike at the very heart of being California.

Why? Well, first of all he has criticized how the state is run.

In a September speech in Rancho Palos Verdes, Trump said the state “is a mess,” that crime and homelessness have skyrocketed, that California has high taxes, high gas prices, high utility prices, is absurdly over-regulated, a terrible place to start a business, and allows things like “sanctuary cities” and the paying of public benefits to illegal aliens.

How dare he.

Of course, all of that is true.

But just to emphasize how the press does not really understand that Trump is to be taken seriously but not literally, CalMatters valiantly tried to “fact check” his claims into oblivion, but, well…nice try.

The Los Angeles Times is preparing its readers – those that have cancelled recently, at least – for the coming deluge of awful. Trump has already created a “culture of retribution,” and that he will be vengeful, he will be mean and nasty and endanger the lives of, say, illegals? Or Trans babies? Or authors? Well, you get the point.

Also at risk is, of course, the environment and California’s glorious effort to lead the world into a greener, all-electric, completely unaffordable future.

“There are two distinct threats. One is the Trump administration, and one is the courts,” said Ann Carlson, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under President Joe Biden (now an environmental law professor at UCLA, of course).

While at NHTSA, folks should be reminded, Carlson championed the idea of a “kill switch” for personal automobiles.

A Trump administration could, for example, make sure California doesn’t get the special EPA waiver that would allow the Air Resources Board to implement absurdly draconian regulations and even require the use of “clean air” technology that literally does not exist.

Another California fantasy – high speed rail – could also come under renewed pressure. During his first administration, Trump not only stopped federal money from going to the project but even had the temerity to try to get the state to pay back hundreds of millions it had already wasted.

It is true that, given the chance, Trump will kill the project. And that is not at all a bad thing.

So, does California hate Trump? No matter what happens nationally Tuesday, the state will vote for Kamala Harris, though a big question is by how much. If she doesn’t bank a few million vote margin here, she will not be able to claim, like Hillary Clinton when she lost, that she at least “won” the popular vote if she suffers the same fate.

So does Trump hate California? No – Trump hates how California is being run.

And, looking at the latest poll numbers, so do most Californians.