Politics
Florida is winning the political battle with California as Trump takes office
WASHINGTON — The rivalry between California and Florida reached a high mark in November 2023 when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, faced off against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on Fox News over which state held a better model for the country.
Thirteen months later, DeSantis has left the national stage after an aborted presidential run. But his state is winning the political war.
The nation under President-elect Donald Trump will look far more like Trump’s adopted home state of Florida, after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by painting her as an out-of-touch California liberal.
Trump is stocking his Cabinet with Floridians. And his plans to reverse California’s policies on the environment, crime, homelessness and education are facing far less pushback than they did during his first term, thanks to the state’s diminishing clout in Congress and a system of checks on Trump’s power that has eroded.
“These are all folks born and raised in our state and are going to show America our type of leadership,” said Brian Ballard, a powerful Florida lobbyist and Republican fundraiser whose firm previously employed Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and still employs his nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general. (Ballard’s expanded footprint now includes offices in Washington and West Los Angeles, opened two years ago, another sign of his state’s incursion.)
Other high-level Floridians likely to be in Trump’s inner circle include Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of State, and Rep. Mike Waltz, his choice as national security advisor.
Two prominent people in Trump’s orbit with California ties, advisors Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, are sharp critics of the state’s business and immigration policies, which they have pledged to help Trump reverse.
Their unified efforts are expected to unleash a continuation of fights that began eight years ago during Trump’s first term, when he sought to halt California’s policies providing sanctuary for immigrants who came to the country illegally, slash its authority to set environmental policies such as automobile fuel standards, alter water policy to benefit farmers and suspend aid after wildfires.
He was thwarted in many of those efforts by regulators, advisors who found ways to change his mind, courts and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who proved his most formidable adversary.
Democratic attorneys general filed a record 155 lawsuits against the first Trump administration, winning 83% of cases, according to a tally by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University. California was involved in more than 100 such lawsuits.
But Trump has picked staffers for his second term who are less likely to push back against his wishes. The Supreme Court has grown more deferential to Trump, who appointed three of its nine members. And Pelosi is no longer leading her party, while Republicans won control of both the House and Senate in last month’s election.
California Democrats’ best defense appears to be Republican dysfunction, as demonstrated by the party’s struggles last week to pass a bill in the GOP-controlled House that would avoid a government shutdown.
Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to fight the state this time on a variety of fronts, including its homeless policies, its resistance to a border wall, its electric car mandate and his plans to begin mass deportations that would disproportionately affect California, a border state with the nation’s largest Latino population.
Newsom, who declined an interview request, has vowed to continue the fight against Trump’s policies but without what he called “a resistance brand” that defined his earlier clashes. Other Democrats have approached Trump’s second term with more conciliatory rhetoric as the party struggles to coalesce around strategy.
Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat who helped define the party’s liberal wing for decades, argues that Trump will incite his own backlash by overreaching.
“Bring it on,” she said.
“People just decided they weren’t feeling happy about things,” she added. “They didn’t vote on the issues that are now going to hit them in the face,” she said, citing a list of policies from Trump’s allies that could lead to workers losing overtime and residents losing breathable air.
But even if Trump’s policies help Democrats politically, they may have a deep impact on Californians.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who began preparing potential lawsuits months before the election, said he expects to battle the incoming administration over immigration, climate, reproductive rights, gun safety, democracy-related issues and civil rights. He acknowledged the Supreme Court’s rightward turn but pointed out that most decisions are made by trial and circuit court judges.
“We can and will prevail, and we have prevailed in front of the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.
Bonta, who is considering a run for governor in 2026, argued that voters were choosing Trump the man — narrowly — rather than a single state’s governing model.
“The Florida model? You mean Matt Gaetz or DeSantis or Pam Bondi?” he said, referring to the former House member who withdrew from consideration as attorney general over allegations of sexual misconduct with minors, along with the governor and current attorney general nominee. “I don’t think they’re a model for the future of our country. What else is the Florida model? ‘Don’t say gay’ — just absolutely exclusionary and discriminatory? A formal program sending immigrants across the country as political pawns?”
But Bonta and other Democrats concede the party just lost an election and that Trump, even as he lost California by 20 percentage points, gained about 10 percentage points over his 2016 and 2020 margins in the state.
Much of that growth came among the state’s Latino population, which makes up a large proportion of Democrats’ traditional working-class base.
“It’s all centered around affordability. California is the least affordable state when you factor in housing costs,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican pollster who conducted surveys of Latino voters after the election and has focused on their evolving views for decades. “The idea of California values is specific to cultural issues. It is essentially ignoring economic issues.”
Madrid pointed to policies like Newsom’s plan to phase out sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 as an example of a policy that does not speak to working-class voters.
Most Latinos in the state have to live farther from their jobs, because of the high cost of housing, and pay more for gas, but they cannot afford a new EV or benefit from a Biden administration rebate. The majority of their income is spent on housing costs, which have grown in part because of costly building regulations.
New census estimates released Thursday show California gaining 232,570 residents between 2023 and 2024 after pandemic-era declines. But the state lost more residents (239,575) to other parts of the country than any other state, and saw an increase only because of immigrants from other countries, according to the estimates.
Florida’s population gain was among the largest: 467,347 residents, comprising both immigrants and domestic migrants.
California’s long-beleaguered Republicans are gloating as they promise to work with Trump to dismantle Democratic-led projects and environmental regulations.
Rep. Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican who won an election to succeed former Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this year, said he will file legislation to halt funding on California’s high-speed rail project and work with Trump to build a border wall in the state, blaming a porous border for allowing fentanyl-smuggling from China.
In an interview, he praised Florida effusively as a better model for business, regulation, environmental policy and housing costs and welcomed the state’s influence at the national level.
“It’s ironic to me that Gov. Newsom and the Democrats in the state Legislature are now concerned about affordability,” he said. “You hear them talking about it, but it’s their policies.”
He accused Newsom of waging war with Florida and the Trump administration for his own personal gain.
“He is trying to elevate himself for his own political purposes and at the expense of Californians,” he said.
Newsom’s office said the state maintains the world’s fifth-largest economy and ranks first in new business starts and private sector jobs. Brandon Richards, a spokesman, said Newsom is traveling the state to expand economic opportunity.
But many of the nation’s biggest business titans are making their own pilgrimages — to visit Trump at his home in Florida.
Politics
Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
Politics
California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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