President Trump may be in California as state begins filing lawsuits against executive orders

SACRAMENTO — President Donald Trump may visit California this week as state Attorney General Rob Bonta begins filing expected lawsuits against the president’s new executive orders. 

Mr. Trump announced he will be visiting the Southern California fire zone Friday to tour the devastation from the historic wildfires in the Los Angeles area. During his inauguration speech, the president criticized California’s response to the fires. 

As the legal battles begin between Democratic state legislators and the president, California’s GOP, including Republicans in Sacramento County, was celebrating on inauguration night. 

The Capitol Lincoln Club held an inauguration party in Fair Oaks. Newly elected Sacramento County Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez was part of the crowd. 

“Trump reminded us where we were four years ago and where we could be today,” Rodriguez said. 

“The Republican Party has never been in a better position to succeed,” Capitol Lincoln Club board member Christian Forte said. 

As state Republicans celebrated, Bonta, a Democrat, prepared for legal clashes with the Trump administration, including over plans for mass deportations. Nearly half of the country’s undocumented immigrants live in California. 

Following the president’s executive orders, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas issued a statement saying, “I will always fight for immigrants, especially children because America is a nation of immigrants, and I believe in our country’s promise.” 

Besides mass immigration policies, Trump is also seeking to revoke the federal waiver allowing California to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035. It’s another move expected to end up in court. 

“California is only able to do that because the federal government grants us permission to smart that standard and, apparently with Trump’s executive order, he basically campaigned on this as well. He’s ordering the [Environmental Protection Agency] to revoke that authority from California,” said UC Berkeley Professor Ethan Elkind, who is also the director of the climate program at the university’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. 

During Mr. Trump’s first term, California sued him more than 100 times.