Politics
Column: Trump has big plans for California if he wins a second term. Fasten your seatbelts
Donald Trump is running against California — again.
In his campaign to win a second term, the former president frequently excoriates the state as a terrifying dystopia — the inevitable product, he claims, of Democratic policies.
“The place is failing,” he told a conservative conference last month.
“It has become a symbol of our nation’s decline,” he told California Republicans last year.
“They don’t have water,” he said. “Rich people in Beverly Hills … [are] only allowed a small amount of water when they take a shower. That’s why rich people from Beverly Hills, generally speaking, don’t smell so good.”
He accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of telling undocumented migrants, “If you come up, we’re going to give you pension funds…. We’ll give you a mansion.” (Newsom has never promised migrants pension funds or mansions.)
Under its current policies, Trump charged, the state can “take children away from their parents and sterilize them.” (California does not seize children to sterilize them.)
“He’s destroyed California,” Trump said of the governor, whom he recently gave a new and strikingly unattractive nickname: “Gavin New-Scum.”
California-bashing has become a standard feature of GOP rhetoric, of course. A national survey for The Times this year found that almost half of Republicans believe the state is “not really American.”
What makes Trump’s version more than mere blather is that he could be president next year, and he has big plans for California if he wins.
He has promised to use an expansive view of presidential power to undo state laws and policies on many fronts, including areas such as law enforcement and education where states, not the federal government, have traditionally been in charge.
Some examples:
He says he’ll close the U.S.-Mexico border on his first day in office — the day he has set aside to act as “a dictator” — and launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
His Santa Monica-born immigration advisor, Stephen Miller, says that if Democratic states such as California don’t cooperate, Trump could order National Guard units from red states such as Texas to cross their borders — a recipe for constitutional crisis.
Trump has promised to scrap President Biden’s programs to promote renewable energy, including subsidies for electric vehicles and charging stations. His advisors have proposed limiting California’s power to set fuel emission standards for automobiles.
He says he’ll stop the state from allowing Sacramento River water to flow into the Pacific to protect the Sacramento Delta. “We’re not going to let them get away with that any longer,” he said. (Water experts say it would be impractical and environmentally disastrous to divert the river’s flow completely. Newsom has already suspended some environmental laws to send more water to reservoirs and is preparing to build a new water tunnel under the delta.)
Trump says he’ll send federal law enforcement officers into Oakland and other cities to stop rampant shoplifting. “If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store — shot!” he said.
And he says he will prosecute California healthcare providers if they comply with a state law that prohibits releasing information about minors’ gender-related medical care to other states. (He called the law a “sick California scheme for violating federal laws against kidnapping [and] sex trafficking.”)
Those proposals suggest that a second Trump term, like the first, would produce major collisions between the White House and California’s Democratic state government.
“If campaign promises have any meaning, you’re looking not just at a second term; you’re looking at Trump on steroids,” said Larry Gerston, an emeritus professor of political science at San Jose State University. “The impact on California would be very real. Abruptly removing huge numbers of undocumented immigrants, for example, would disrupt all of our lives … and be a big hit to the economy.”
Many of those proposals are retreads from Trump’s first term as president from 2017 to 2021. Some, like his attempt to repeal California’s emissions standards, were blocked by courts after state lawsuits.
But Trump may stand a better chance of success the second time around.
His first term was launched with little preparation and no detailed transition plan. This time, he’s likely to appoint a more thoroughly Trumpified White House staff and Cabinet, with fewer moderates applying the brakes.
The Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees in its six-seat majority, is friendlier too.
And pro-Trump policy wonks have already produced a 920-page handbook of policy proposals for a second Trump term, “Project 2025.”
“This is a very big deal,” said Donald F. Kettl of the University of Texas, an expert on federal-state relations. “At the end of the first Trump term, there was frustration among his aides that they had finally figured out what they wanted to do, but ran out of time. They’ve spent four years planning, learning from their mistakes and compiling an action plan.”
Some of their ideas would still be difficult to carry out, Kettl noted.
“Sending troops out into the country to look for migrants waiting for their court dates would be very tough to implement,” he said.
But even the less bellicose actions Trump has proposed could have major effects on California and other Western states. I’ll explore them in more depth in future columns.
James Gagliano on anti-ICE protests and threats against agents
Retired FBI Special Agent James Gagliano discusses anti-ICE protests and threats against agents in Newark, New Jersey. A new curfew has curbed chaos after violent clashes, with one Brooklyn man arrested for threatening to kill an ICE agent. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin vows ‘zero tolerance’ for attacks, while Sen. Cory Booker, D- N.J., calls ICE ‘out-of-control.’ Gagliano warns against allowing these protests to continue.
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A Canadian national accused of slapping a teen wearing political clothing at the Jersey Shore has been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a representative for the local jail told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Kaitlyn Tracey, 33, was reportedly seen on surveillance video confronting a group of teens in Point Pleasant Beach, some of whom were wearing pants with the words “Trump” and “ICE” on them, local media reported.
Tracey, a Canadian national who entered the U.S. on a passport in 2024, then allegedly struck one of the girls and recorded the confrontation, according to court documents reported by NJ.com.
An official who picked up the phone at the Ocean County Jail in Toms River confirmed to Fox News Digital that Tracey had been released into ICE custody as of Monday.
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She was reportedly taken to Delaney Hall in Newark – the site of months-long clashes between left-wing agitators and ICE.
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Billboard at Trump rally in Wildwood declaring historical blue New Jersey is “Trump Country.” (The Image Direct for Fox News Digital)
Tracey’s criminal charges include endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault, according to reports.
The alleged victim was reportedly uninjured.
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While New Jersey at a state level has adopted sanctuary-type policies, Ocean County is known as one of the few Republican strongholds remaining, and retains the state’s longest-serving lawmaker of any party: Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., in office since 1981.
People enjoy the Jersey Shore in Seaside Heights, N.J., as businesses prepare for the holiday weekend on May 23, 2025. (Asbury Park Press via IMAGN)
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It was not immediately clear on what immigration basis ICE initiated proceedings against Tracey. Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for clarification and comment.
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday for Todd Blanche, President Trump’s pick for attorney general, will be a referendum on far more than his individual merits.
Blanche, the acting attorney general, served as Trump’s defense attorney before taking office and has been closely linked to many of the most consequential — and controversial — issues that have dominated the first two years of Trump’s second term.
Blanche is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to approve his nomination and send it to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. The committee hearing will continue Thursday.
“I would expect committee Democrats to treat Mr. Blanche’s hearing as an opportunity to conduct oversight of the Department of Justice,” said Phil Brest, president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal nonprofit and a former top Democratic staffer on the committee. “It’s a test of the Senate’s willingness to probe the department’s operations and to actually serve as a check on the department and the administration more broadly.”
Democrats on the committee are expected to push Blanche on a host of topics, including the $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization fund” that critics derided as a slush fund for the president’s allies, the Justice Department’s rollout of the so-called Epstein files, and the department’s prosecution of several perceived enemies of Trump, notably former FBI Director James Comey.
“While deploying the Justice Department as a shield for the president and his cronies, Blanche has also used our top law-enforcement agency as a sword against Trump’s political opponents,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the committee last month. “The independence of DOJ has been decimated under Blanche’s authority.”
Blanche was confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general in March, 2025, and was elevated to his current role after Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was fired in April.
More critical to the success of Blanche’s nomination will be whether he can win the support of two lame-duck Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who expressed some reservations about Blanche soon after his nomination was announced.
Cornyn raised concern about Blanche’s independence from Trump, while Tillis said Blanche’s stance on protesters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would be critical to his consideration.
Some of those Jan. 6 protesters were expected to be the beneficiaries of the $1.8-billion fund announced as part of a settlement to a lawsuit Trump and his sons and business brought against the IRS.
In a scathing ruling this week, the federal judge wrote that the lawsuit was improper and recommended sanctions against two Justice Department attorneys who worked on the case, though not Blanche himself.
Cornyn told Semafor on Tuesday that the ruling raised a number of issues, including “the potentially collusive nature of the lawsuit.”
He has said previously that he will hold off on making a decision about whether to approve Blanche until after the hearing.
Tillis, meanwhile, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday that the weaponization fund would need to be completely off the table for him to support Blanche’s nomination.
Trump touted Blanche’s record ahead of the hearing.
“Todd Blanche is doing a PHENOMENAL job as Acting Attorney General of the United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “He is a great lawyer, always very fair, and every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP!”
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death means that Republicans currently only enjoy a one-seat majority, but a replacement for Graham on the committee could be in place before it votes on whether to move his nomination to the Senate floor, which will likely come two weeks after the hearing.
Blanche, 51, spent 12 years working for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, working largely on drug and violent crime cases, and rose to the level of co-chief of the district’s White Plains division.
He left the office in 2014 for private practice and joined the prominent law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2017 as a partner. He left the firm in 2023 and went independent after other partners expressed concern when he took Trump on as a client.
Blanche went on to represent Trump in several criminal matters, including the New York case about hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s alleged efforts to block the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election and his alleged retention of classified documents.
He listed all three as among the 10 most significant cases of his career in the questionnaire he completed ahead of the hearing, along with his work at the Justice Department on a lawsuit challenging the construction of a new White House ballroom.
A group of more than 1,200 former Justice Department attorneys wrote a letter opposing Blanche’s nomination, asserting that his leadership has resulted in mass departures of career staff. That has “meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable,” the lawyers wrote.
Former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer is scheduled to testify as a witness for Democrats on Thursday. She has said she was fired for refusing to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
Oyer will be joined Thursday by Dani Bensky, one of many victims of the deceased sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein who has criticized Blanche’s handling of the release of the so-called Epstein files — millions of pages of records detailing the Justice Department’s investigations into Epstein’s crimes.
Numerous victims have said that their names and other sensitive information were not properly redacted in the files and criticized Blanche and the department for failing to investigate Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.
Blanche has also come under criticism from survivors of Epstein’s abuse for the interview he conducted in July, 2025, with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in facilitating and participating in Epstein’s abuse.
Days after their interview, Maxwell was moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
Politics
Biden special counsel’s ‘runaway train’ scooped up sensitive lawmaker info: ‘Abuse of power’
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Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump swept up text messages from nearly 50 members of Congress, bypassing a required review process in what one victim alleged is a direct constitutional violation.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the situation is more proof Smith’s probe was a “runaway train” of abuses of power, and the elder statesman and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., jointly released their filings Tuesday evening.
Grassley and Johnson’s findings were from a full-scale probe of Operation Arctic Frost, the code name for Smith’s endeavor to investigate Trump for alleged corruption and election malfeasance, an operation top Senate Republicans call “worse than Watergate.”
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Jack Smith, former U.S. special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 2025. (Getty Images)
Forty-four members of Congress had the contents of their text messages obtained and reviewed by Smith’s team in a way that bypassed protocol. A “filter team” was tasked with reviewing millions of documents in the case and should have had first crack at determining whether such messages were relevant or potentially violated statute or ethics.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the lawmakers whose texts were swept up in this way, said Tuesday such reviews amounted to clear violations of the Constitution’s speech and debate clause that protects lawmakers from being questioned in “any other place” than the Capitol for legislative acts.
Internal communications have been historically included in that clause in the courts as technology has advanced.
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Stefanik said in a statement that the new records prove Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
She said she long suspected there had been “unconstitutional spy[ing] on members of Congress.”
The records were provided by the Trump Justice Department to Grassley and Johnson, which the chairmen said indicated Smith’s team had “circumvented its own filter review process.” The process is additionally meant to protect attorney-client privilege, they said in a statement.
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Former special counsel Jack Smith says the Pledge of Allegiance before he prepares to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill Jan. 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
The news also complicated some of Smith’s prior depositions under oath, including an excerpt in which he answered “no” to a question from a congressional counsel whether records he requested from congresspeople included text messages.
Johnson called the situation a “grotesque example” of Biden-era “weaponization” of the executive branch.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley added Tuesday.
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
Grassley added that he hopes Democrats caught up in the otherwise bipartisan text tranche will finally discard their partisanship and recognize the severity of the alleged violations by Smith.
He also indicated he planned to recall Smith before Congress to “hold him accountable.”
Of the 44 members swept up in the text reviews, several were Democrats, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.
Grassley, Johnson and Stefanik were also swept up in the situation, along with top figures like senators Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky., former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and the late Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
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Former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was one of the victims, along with current House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as well as House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of New York, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins of Georgi, and prominent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
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Several lawmakers sounded off on the news soon after Grassley announced his findings, including Hawley, who called for “everyone involved [to] be prosecuted.”
“Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” the Missourian fumed.
Paul called the allegations a “blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about,” while citing Smith’s past denial under oath.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment.
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