Special Episode: CA vs. Donald Trump – Keynote by California Attorney General Rob Bonta

CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: On Wednesday, February 26, 2025, Capitol Weekly presented an online conference, The Resistance: California vs. Donald Trump.

President Donald J. Trump launched his second term with a flurry of executive orders on immigration, energy and climate, health care, civil rights and more. California led the resistance to administration policies during the first Trump Administration, suing the federal government over 100 times; Now the state’s Democratic leadership is gearing up for Round 2.

In this episode we present The Keynote, by one of the officials in the forefront of that battle, California Attorney General Rob Bonta. He is introduced by Rich Ehisen, Capitol Weekly

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

RICH EHISEN: Hello everybody and welcome back. Hopefully you’re coming back from being at the first two panels of the Capitol Weekly Conference, California vs. Donald Trump. We’re thrilled today to have a fabulous keynote speaker with us – California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

If you’ve been paying any attention to California, or any politics really, in the last ten years, you know that California led the way in countering some of the administration’s policies that we don’t agree with here in California. Last time we filed over 120 lawsuits, most of them quite successful. Attorney General Bonta has been tasked now with picking up the mantle on that. And so he’s here today to talk about what he and his office will be doing as we move forward in this very trying time for a lot of us.

So Attorney General Rob Bonta, thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the Capitol Weekly Conference. We’re very pleased to have you here.

ROB BONTA: It’s my pleasure. Thank you, Rich, for the kind introduction. And thank you to Capitol Weekly for having me.

Hello to everyone who is watching today. I’m looking forward to our time together and to the question and answers that we get to share, after I make some opening remarks.

I’m honored to have the opportunity to talk about the work that we’re doing at the California Department of Justice to protect the rights and the freedoms and safety of all Californians, especially amidst challenges presented by President Trump’s second administration.

I first want to acknowledge something I’ve been hearing so often in conversations with Californians across the state, and that is this, that people are scared. They’re worried. They’re anxious. They’re uncertain about what’s happening in the federal government and if it’ll impact their lives and their loved ones uncertain about what’s real and what’s rhetoric, confused about what’s bluster and what could create tangible changes to our laws, our institutions, and our policies.

“If the president violates the law and violates the Constitution, then of course we’ll go to court to uphold the rule of law and to uphold the Constitution.”

Sadly, I think it’s pretty clear that that’s part of the president’s strategy. Flood the zone, overwhelm us with a barrage of damaging, dangerous and illegal executive orders and actions that impede on the laws and values that make America so strong. While the Trump administration may intentionally create confusion, employ scare tactics, and spout off divisive rhetoric, while the president may resist the forward momentum of progress, I’m here to provide facts, reason and assurances of California’s nation-leading protections.

I’m here to enforce our laws, defend our rights, and protect our people. I’m here to ensure progress prevails in California, regardless of who is in the White House.

In the first five and a half weeks of the second Trump administration, we’ve been busy. As of today, we’ve had to file five lawsuits against the president, all of them in partnership with fellow attorneys general across the country. And let me just be clear about one thing. Any action that we take as the California Department of Justice, as Democratic attorneys general, is fully dependent on what the president does. If the president and his administration follow the law, comply with the Constitution, we will not sue. We will not go to court. There’s nothing to do with respect to those acts, those lawful actions. If the president violates the law and violates the Constitution, then of course we’ll go to court to uphold the rule of law and to uphold the Constitution.

When the president attempted to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship on his first day in office, we sued. It was a full frontal assault on our Constitution, on American citizens, on children. It was un-American. And this was day one, an action that planted a flag in the ground for what the Trump administration would do, would be willing to do. And the president made a promise on the campaign trail that he would seek to revoke birthright citizenship, though it’s a constitutional right. I made a promise to take him to court when he violates the law, and so we did.

And a judge, who happened to be a Reagan appointee to the federal bench, a Republican appointee, quickly granted our temporary restraining order blocking this executive order while our case proceeds. That judge said that this was the clearest case that he had seen in his four decades on the bench, that it was clearly unconstitutional.  He questioned the attorneys for the Department of Justice about their ethics in advancing the arguments they made in defense of what they argued was a constitutional action. So this was not close.

“Musk is wielding authority that far exceeds what the Constitution permits. He and DOGE are ransacking federal agencies, creating chaos and spreading distrust among the American people.”

And that was day one when the Trump administration illegally granted the Department of Government Efficiency, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, led by billionaire, unelected, unconfirmed private citizen Elon Musk. And granted access to Americans’ private sensitive information. We sued within hours. A judge immediately blocked DOGE’s access to the data when the president froze $3 trillion in critical federal funding. We sued again. Again, a judge quickly blocked the freeze and then a week later, granted our motion to enforce their court order. When Trump didn’t fully reinstate access to the funds, we had to move to enforce to ensure that the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Actwere flowing.

When the president attempted to unlawfully decimate National Institute of Health funding for medical and public health research, we sued again. And we’re talking here about research that develops cures for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, that advances humanity, that saves lives, improves health. Research happening at our UCs and CSUs. The cuts that would have put countless California jobs at risk, including scholars, medical professionals and workers who help the research institutions and labs function, again within hours, not days hours. A judge immediately blocked the cuts.

And most recently I, along with 13 fellow attorneys general, sued Musk and the Trump administration for granting Musk unconstitutional and unprecedented power over federal agencies, sensitive systems, and important government programs that are vital to the American way of life. Musk is wielding authority that far exceeds what the Constitution permits. He and DOGE are ransacking federal agencies, creating chaos and spreading distrust among the American people. This unlawful access to power must be stopped.  While we weren’t granted our initial request for a temporary restraining order on this one, our case is still proceeding and I fully believe the law is on our side.

In addition to filing our own lawsuits, my fellow attorneys general and I have also submitted numerous amicus briefs to support others who’ve challenged the Trump administration’s policies, from challenging the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to challenging the refugee ban and refugee funding suspension to challenging the attempts to stop crucial, crucial gender affirming care and others. Amicus briefs are an important way for us to unite behind our shared mission to protect our rights, freedoms and the future of our democracy.

In addition to lawsuits and amicus briefs over the last five and a half weeks, I’ve also spoken out against Trump’s executive orders on abortion, on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs, schools, the federal worker buyout, and gender affirming care. I reminded California hospitals and federally funded health care providers that they have a legal obligation under state anti-discrimination law to provide equal access to health care services, including gender affirming care. I assured concerned hospitals, including Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, that I’m committed to upholding that law and protecting both health care providers and patients.

Make no mistake, our state supports the rights of transgender youth to live their authentic lives. After hearing from concerned and confused educators, parents and students, I also put out guidance about public K-12 schools in California, including on forced outing policies which are illegal in our state; on California’s requirements for inclusive curricula to ensure students are taught LGBTQ plus history, and have access to LGBTQ+ themed literature on the rights all students have to an education, regardless of their immigration status or that of someone in their family, including the right to keep education records and personal information confidential, and guidance on what a school should do if federal immigration enforcement shows up at their door.

We’ve also heard from many immigrant families and organizations that support them who are worried about the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. California is home to 11 million immigrants, including my mother, more than any other state in the nation. Proudly so. Immigrants who bring in new ideas, innovations and perspectives, who grow our food, run flourishing successful businesses and lead our communities. Who enliven our cities with their rich cultures and favorite traditions. Who are our neighbors, our friends. Our loved ones. It’s no coincidence that California is the most diverse state in the nation, and also the fifth largest economy in the world.

“The sort of silver lining is that we anticipated this. We were, we are, ready for this. Between Trump 1.0 and Project 2025 and the president’s campaign, we had a good sense of what the new administration would bring, and we began preparing for this reality months ago.”

Immigrants drive California’s workforce and economy. Immigrants like my mom, who was born and raised in the Philippines and had me in her home country. Immigrants who deserve every opportunity to pursue the California dream, same as anyone else. My team has put together a wide array of guidance and bulletins and resources for our immigrant community on everything from immigrant rights and protections under California law, to how to spot immigration related scams, to information for public institutions. All of that and more can be found on our website. It lives there at https://oag.ca.gov/immigrant/resources.

I urge you to take a look and share it with anyone who you think may benefit from it.

Just two days into the president’s term, I had to remind the Trump administration that the federal government cannot bully state and local law enforcement into carrying out their inhumane mass deportation agenda.

California law is very clear. Except in certain narrow circumstances, state and local law enforcement cannot use taxpayer money to enforce federal immigration law. It’s a law that Trump challenged during his first term and lost. We can’t prevent federal agencies from conducting immigration enforcement themselves. They have a right to lawfully conduct immigration enforcement, but they can’t make us do their job for them.

I know there are people who like to jump on this and muddy the waters. So let’s be very clear. California law does not prevent state and local law enforcement from investigating and prosecuting crimes. Immigration enforcement is civil. Criminals need to be and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of immigration status. Period. Full stop. As chief law enforcement officer for California, nothing is a bigger priority for me than keeping our community safe.

I could go on about what we’ve done since January 20th, but I want to be mindful of time. Let’s just say things have been moving at a fast clip and we don’t expect it to let up. It really shouldn’t be too much to ask for the president of the United States to follow the law and uphold his oath to serve all Americans. Yet, unfortunately, here we are.

“I’m not looking for a fight. I’m not looking to be the face of a ‘resistance.’”

The sort of silver lining is that we anticipated this. We were, we are, ready for this. Between Trump 1.0 and Project 2025 and the president’s campaign, we had a good sense of what the new administration would bring, and we began preparing for this reality months ago. We learned a lot during Trump’s first term, when California DOJ filed 120 lawsuits against him and won the majority of them, over two thirds, including fighting Trump’s border wall, preserving DACA, providing for birth control, saving critical state funding. We’ve been here before and we can do it again. We hoped we wouldn’t have to, hoped his second term would be different, but that’s just not the case. In fact, the president seems even more inclined to flat out ignore the laws that Congress has enacted and plow ahead his own hateful agenda, steamrolling over the constitutional guarantee of a separation of powers.

My team is working around the clock, watching and monitoring everything that the president and his administration do. Joining forces with fellow attorneys general and other states and collaborating with the governor’s office, the legislature and agencies across the state. I’ve got one message for the president. If you break the law, we’ll see you in court. We already have.

California DOJ is here to protect, defend and serve every single Californian. No matter how you look, where you’re from, what language you speak, how you pray, who you love, or how you identify.

I’m not looking for a fight. I’m not looking to be the face of a “resistance.” But I also won’t sit back and let the federal administration attack our people, violate our Constitution, and pull us backwards. I swore an oath to serve and protect all Californians and to uphold our Constitution. It’s an honor of a lifetime to be in this role, and one I don’t take lightly.

Over the next four years, as chaos and confusion streams out of DC, know that you can always look to California for calm resolve, for a commitment to justice, to equity and law and order, for a commitment to progress. In California, we’re not looking back. We’ll meet any challenges head on and rise to the occasion.

It’s no accident that we’re the fifth largest economy in the world. It’s because of our commitment to forward momentum, because of our commitment to protecting workers, consumers and the environment, because we’re the largest and most diverse state in the nation, because we believe in the power of equity and inclusion, because we believe in embracing progress, not resisting it.

I have no doubt that what we do here, the California values that we lead with, will have a great impact not only on our state, but also beyond. After all, as so often is said, as California goes, so goes the nation. Thank you. Rich. I’ll turn it back to you.

RE: Thank you, Attorney General Bonta. I really appreciate that. Let’s get to some questions. Let’s start with this: “As a nonprofit providing critical services to our undocumented community members, can we be liable for ‘harboring’ them? We are looking for your guidance.”

RB: There’s a delicate line not to cross. You cannot interfere or obstruct lawful federal immigration enforcement action.

You can certainly advise immigrant communities of their rights that they have. Make sure that they are known. You can encourage them to exercise their existing rights. There are requirements set forth in California law, for example, if you are in a worksite and ICE shows up, they are allowed to be anywhere the general public is allowed to be. But if they seek to go to non-public areas of work at the workplace, they need a judicial warrant and they need to present it to you. So that’s all existing law.

But there is a line that can be crossed that, that you are prohibited from that includes a category of action and activity that you’re prohibited. One would be anyone is prohibited from getting involved in. And that’s when the action turns to obstruction and interference with immigration, lawful immigration enforcement actions.

RE: We have another immigration related question here. “What way is the state providing immigrants with information so that they can protect themselves from deportation or detainment. Is there anything on the DOJ website?”

RB: Yeah. That website that I referred you to earlier, that’s the place to go. We’ve had press conferences and we’ve announced and released guidance for many different types of scenarios involving our immigrant communities, guidances for employees and employers and guidances for health care facilities and schools and know your rights guidances for immigrants, so they know all the rights that they have and what’s required and what protections that they have. And those all live on our website. That I mentioned earlier, https://oag.ca.gov/immigrant/resources.

RE: Let’s see here… You noted last time, for Trump administration 1.0, California filed over 120 lawsuits. This time, we know lawmakers have set aside a significant amount of money, which just about lines up with what they spent last time to offset legal costs for all these legal challenges. Given this tsunami of stuff we’ve seen already just in this first month, do you anticipate that that will be enough? I mean, are you geared up to go back to the legislature, if need be to say this is bigger than we even anticipated back in December.

RB: As you know, the governor called a special session. That special session had resulted in a final vote and passage of $25 million of funding mostly for my office, to ensure the rule of law and the Constitution are complied with, and to make sure that billions of dollars in funding that the Trump administration has sought to take away be secured and not be able to be taken away unlawfully. That OMB memo that sought to freeze $3 trillion nationally was included $160 billion over the course of this year alone. That would have been withheld from California.

So the $25 million is not insignificant, and it already has a massive ROI in that we helped ensure $160 billion of funding continues to flow to California throughout the course of this year because of the actions that we took in court. So I’m grateful for the $25 million.

“We fully expect there to be you know, an onslaught of actions that seek to uplift the fossil fuel industry and push us away from a clean energy future. But it’s too late for that.”

$25 million is less than what was given to the California DOJ during Trump 1.0. That was about $40 million. And the $25 million is a sort of a depleting fund, if you will. We can draw on it as we need to hire up and build up as necessary to meet the need. Right now we don’t have any plans, any concrete or immediate plans to go back to the legislature for more funding. We’re grateful for the $25 million that the governor and the legislature afforded us. We will use it wisely and prudently and efficiently. And right now, we have great teams in place that are able to respond to the Trump administration.

We have capacity to give. We’re ready for more. We expect more. We’re not overwhelmed or under-resourced and who knows what the future will hold. So if we if we need more, we’ll ask and we’ll raise our hand. But we will do everything that we can to make those investments count and to maximize their impact. And we believe we’re doing that already.

RE:  Another question: “The Trump administration has made it clear that they want to target states rules on clean air, etc.  Can you talk about what protections California has against having our state laws overridden?” You’ve addressed this to some extent already, but maybe specific to clean air or anything else. Any specific laws that you are looking at right now?

RB: Under the Trump administration, 1.0, the 120 approximately cases the California DOJ brought, the plurality were about protecting our natural resources, and they were environmental in nature. I think one of the top issues that arose during Trump 1.0 and people anticipate could arise here under Trump 2.0 is our Clean Vehicle Waivers that we get from the federal administration.

The Biden administration granted a number of waivers before his term ended, and those are important to California, to many other states that also implement the same standards that we do. And it’s important. And it’s good that those waivers were granted. There’s a process for them to be revoked. It’s not just purely discretionary. There are standards to meet and legal requirements to observe. And so there is definitely a level of protection. Doesn’t mean that the Trump administration won’t try. It doesn’t mean the Trump administration, as it so often does, as Trump so often does, won’t try to just simply revoke them by executive fiat instead of in the way the law enumerates and designates as the appropriate process to go through. But certainly if he did that, the executive fiat route, we could challenge him and I believe we’d have a strong chance of success.

So we fully expect there to be you know, an onslaught of actions that seek to uplift the fossil fuel industry and push us away from a clean energy future. But it’s too late for that. We already are embracing a clean energy future, and we will continue to fight for our values and make sure that we bring actions as appropriate under the law, in court, just as we did in under Trump 1.0. We expect to be taking a number of actions on environmental issues and to be as successful under Trump 2.0 as we were under Trump 1.0.

RE: “Do you have any comments on the recent announcement about immigrants need to register and be fingerprinted?”

RB: We’re analyzing that. We’re identifying if the order is consistent with existing law, or is new and potentially unlawful. And what the legal analysis and legal deficiencies would be. So certainly aware of it. Certainly concerning and certainly evaluating.

RE: “We are seeing an attack on the judicial system. What can we, being the community and California government, do to protect and or fortify our court systems, including immigration courts?”

RB: Let me take the immigration courts question first, since they are different than some of our other court systems. We have a federal Article III set of federal courts from our federal district courts to our federal circuit courts that lead up to the US Supreme Court. Each state has its state court systems, our county superior courts, and then our intermediate appellate courts and then our state supreme courts. And then we have a court systems that are mostly administrative law judges. They live in the executive branch with these sort of quasi-judicial administrative law judges that hear cases.

And again, immigration enforcement actions are civil. They’re not criminal. There is no right to an attorney. The protections that you have as a criminal defendant, you do not have as someone involved in civil immigration enforcement and potential removal proceedings.

So one of the most important things, and the legislature and the governor, I applaud them for observing this truth and acting on it… it’s important for the immigrants and immigration removal proceedings to have an attorney to know their rights, to explore their legal options, and to have someone who is experienced and knowledgeable with the system to navigate them through the system. So that’s why the legislature and the governor provided for $25 million in to support legal representation for California immigrants involved in in removal proceedings and immigration enforcement proceedings. Nonprofits foundations help fund this work or do this work as well. That’s important work. That’s work that helps make the system functional.

But then separately, of course, we’re seeing some disturbing indications of lack of appropriate deference to our courts. And when I say that I’m referencing J.D. Vance’s tweet saying that the judicial branch can’t tell the executive branch what to do. It absolutely can when it interprets the law and identifies executive overreach. That’s black letter law. He should know that. He probably does know that, but he’s saying something different. Unfortunately, I’ve seen Mike Johnson, the [U.S. House] Speaker’s comments about the courts should stand down and stand back.

They absolutely should not. They should lean in. This is their time. We have very critical, legal issues that are before them that require their thoughtful, prudent, wise, learned analysis and decision making. That’s this is how our system is built.

And so far generally in the cases that we’ve brought in as Democratic attorneys general, we’ve had broad compliance and good faith efforts to comply with the orders when we secure an order from the court, the US DOJ sends a memo to the departments and agencies that are impacted by that order, indicating what the order is and how they must comply. We’ve seen some slowness in compliance. And we’ve moved to enforce when there has been a different interpretation of an order between the parties.  And when we won the motion to enforce the order was complied with.

So you know, we’ve also seen Trump say that if he doesn’t like a district court order, then they should appeal. And that’s appropriate. That is the way, to seek another viewpoint from another court that has direct appellate jurisdiction is to use your right of appeal, to make your case and see if the appellate court sees it any differently.

So I’m not naive about some of the disturbing indications of what might be in the future, but so far, I think our system, certainly while stress tested, has operated the way it’s designed to when you have an executive branch that’s overstepping its jurisdiction and overreaching on its authority. And that’s not normal, by the way, but if that happens, there is a remedy to go to court to challenge it, to have a court order issued and then have that order complied with. And generally that’s been working so far.

RE: There’s a lot of confusion – and this is my question – in the public as to the ramifications of anyone within the administration not adhering to some of the court’s directives. And as we’ve seen with the Trump administration, they’ve declined to honor subpoenas and all kinds of things in the past, and as you noted, if they don’t like a court decision, they’re simply not going to comply with it. I think there’s a lot of confusion in the public as to what is the remedy after that. We hear about, you know, federal marshals maybe could be called in, but whether or not that would happen, given that they answer to the president. What about here on the state level? Again, I think there is a lot of confusion about what the process is like in the case of an administration lawyer who refuses to comply with a court order? What happens then?

RE: Yeah, a number of things happen. And it’s basically a progressive set of steps. If you secure a court order against the federal administration, in that general time honored scenario and reaction by the federal administration, under those circumstances, is they follow the order.

If they are not.. and there’s a whole lot of reasons why they might not… they might interpret the order differently in good faith. They might just have a different perspective. They might intentionally be violating the order. But if there isn’t proof of intentionality, then the next step is a motion to enforce the existing order. We’ve done that in one case already. And then the parties make arguments to the judge about why the order should or should not be enforced in that scenario, as applied to, in our case, it was the funding for the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Act. And then after that, if there’s intentional non-compliance with the court order, you can move for civil contempt. And civil contempt is the court enforcing the authority of its orders. You can even put someone in jail. And it’s not criminal. The fact that they’re in jail, it’s civil, and they have the keys to the jailhouse door. Meaning if they comply with the court order, they can walk out of jail today.

They just have to comply with the court order. But there is a coercion that the law provides for by putting someone in jail for civil contempt. Most all of the actions that we’re talking about are not implemented by the president of the United States.

They’re implemented by someone in his administration, a department head or an agency head or someone else. And those people, if they don’t follow the court order, can all be held in civil contempt. You could get to criminal contempt, which is, instead of enforcing the court order and seeking assurance of its implementation, it’s meant to punish for severe violation of a court order. And certainly there’s, you know, US marshals. There’s bailiffs that are all part of the enforcement arm of the judicial branch. And this is all about the judicial branch’s authority.

So I think we’re we’re many steps away from some of these actions. They all exist in between now and what may be. But we haven’t gotten to any civil contempt proceedings or criminal contempt proceedings. No one’s been put in jail with the key to their own jailhouse door at this point. And hopefully we’ll never get there because we’ll never need to.

RE: Well, Attorney General Bonta, thank you so much for coming here today to talk with us about all of this that’s been going on. We really appreciate your insights. I think we’re out of time here. We’d love to keep you around all day and ask you a lot more questions, but we know you have somewhat more pressing duties to attend to. So we’re going to go ahead and wrap this up. But thank you once again. We all really appreciate your willingness to come here today. And like I say, share your insights and knowledge with us. It’s been very helpful.

RB: My great pleasure. Thanks for having me, Rich.

RE: All right. Take care everyone. And we’ll be back with panel number three here in just a few minutes. So, please, if you’re sticking around for that panel it’ll be coming up pretty quickly. And if you’re not, thank you for joining us here for the attorney general, Rob Bonta keynote address. We’ll be right back.

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