california democrats

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s repeated calls to “nationalize” elections drew swift resistance from California officials this week, who said they are ready to fight should the federal government attempt to assert control over the state’s voting system.

“We would win that on Day One,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times. “We would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours, because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

“We’re prepared to do whatever we have to do in California,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office recently fought off a Justice Department lawsuit demanding California’s voter rolls and other sensitive voter information.

Both Bonta and Weber said their offices are closely watching for any federal action that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia, or target the counting of mailed ballots, which Trump has baselessly alleged are a major source of fraud.

Weber said California plays an outsized role in the nation and is “the place that people want to beat,” including through illegitimate court challenges to undermine the state’s vote after elections, but California has fought off such challenges in the past and is ready to do it again.

“There’s a cadre of attorneys that are already, that are always prepared during our elections to hit the courts to defend anything that we’re doing,” she said. “Our election teams, they do cross the T’s, dot the I’s. They are on it.”

“We have attorneys ready to be deployed wherever there’s an issue,” Bonta said, noting that his office is in touch with local election officials to ensure a rapid response if necessary.

The standoff reflects an extraordinary deterioration of trust and cooperation in elections that has existed between state and federal officials for generations — and follows a remarkable doubling down by Trump after his initial remarks about taking over the elections raised alarm.

Trump has long alleged, without evidence and despite multiple independent reviews concluding the opposite, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He has alleged, again without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes were cast, including by non-citizen voters, and that blue states looked the other way to gain political advantage.

Last week, the Justice Department acted on those claims by raiding the Fulton County, Ga., elections hub and seizing 2020 ballots. The department also has sued states, including California, for their voter rolls, and is defending a Trump executive order purporting to end mail voting and add new proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote, which California and other states have sued to block.

On Monday, Trump further escalated his pressure campaign by saying on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting his party. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

On Tuesday morning, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to try to walk back Trump’s comments, saying he had been referring to the Save Act, a measure being pushed by Republicans in Congress to codify Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirements. However, Trump doubled down later that day, telling reporters that if states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Bonta said Trump’s comments were a serious escalation, not just bluster: “We always knew they were going to come after us on something, so this is just an affirmation of that — and maybe they are getting a step closer.”

Bonta said he will especially be monitoring races in the state’s swing congressional districts, which could play a role in determining control of Congress and therefore be a target of legal challenges.

“The strategy of going after California isn’t rational unless you’re going after a couple of congressional seats that you think will make a difference in the balance of power in the House,” Bonta said.

California Democrats in Congress have stressed that the state’s elections are safe and reliable, but also started to express unease about upcoming election interference by the administration.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said on Meet the Press last week that he believes the administration will try to use “every tool in their toolbox to try and interfere,” but that the American people will “overcome it by having a battalion of lawyers at the polls.”

California Sen. Adam Schiff this week said recent actions by the Trump administration — including the Fulton County raid, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put Trump on the phone with agents — were “wrong” and set off “alarm bells about their willingness to interfere in the next election.”

Democrats have called on their Republican colleagues to help push back against such interference.

“When he says that we should nationalize the elections and Republicans should take over, and you don’t make a peep? What is going on here?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “This is the path that has ruined many a democracy, and our democracy is deep and strong, but it requires — and allows — resistance to these things. Verbal resistance, electoral resistance. Where are you?”

Some Republicans have voiced their disagreement with Trump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday that he is “supportive of only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places,” but is “not in favor of federalizing elections,” which he called “a constitutional issue.”

“I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said.

However, other Republican leaders have commiserated with Trump over his qualms with state-run elections. House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, took aim at California’s system for counting mail-in ballots in the days following elections, questioning why such counting led to Republican leads in House races being “magically whittled away until their leads were lost.”

“It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream,” Johnson said. “But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system.”

Elections experts expressed dismay over Johnson’s comments, calling them baseless and illogical. The fact that candidates who are leading in votes can fall behind as more votes are counted is not magic but math, they said — with Democrats agreeing.

“Speaker Johnson seems to be confused, so let me break it down. California’s elections are safe and secure. The point of an election is to make sure *every* eligible vote cast is counted, not to count fast,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “We don’t just quit while we’re ahead. It’s called a democracy.”

Democrats have also expressed concern that the administration could use the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with counting mail-in ballots. They have specifically raised questions about a rule issued by the postal service last December that deems mail postmarked on the day it is processed by USPS, rather than the day it is received — which would impact mail-in ballots in places such as California, where ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to be counted.

“Election officials are already concerned and warning that this change could ultimately lead to higher mailed ballots being rejected,” Senate Democrats wrote to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner last month.

Some experts and state officials said voters should make a plan to vote early, and consider dropping their ballots in state ballot drop boxes or delivering them directly to voting centers.

SACRAMENTO — Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José and latest entrant into the jam-packed race for California governor, has in recent years raised his profile outside his Silicon Valley-area city by doing something most other elected Democrats would never: publicly criticize Gov. Gavin Newsom.

With the primary election almost four months away, candidates have already been busy trying to convince Californians that they can lead the state through its biggest challenges, including what they might do differently than Newsom on homelessness, crime and the high cost of living.

Democratic hopefuls have so far done so subtly, without taking direct shots at Newsom.

Until Mahan entered the race.

The 43-year-old-mayor began carving a moderate path in 2024, when he broke with Newsom and other Democrats to back Proposition 36, which increased penalties for theft and crimes involving fentanyl. Despite opposition from Newsom and legislative leaders, voters overwhelmingly approved it.

Mahan has also given mixed reviews to the Newsom administration’s approach to homelessness; he has praised efforts to make it easier for cities to clear homeless encampments but criticized inconsistent funding from the state to help local governments build interim housing.

Although most Democrats running to replace Newsom have praised his fiery opposition to President Trump and the Republican-led Congress, including the governor’s outlandish online trolling of Trump and his allies, Mahan was not impressed.

“Instead of spending so much energy attacking his opponents, the governor and his team should be addressing the high cost of energy, helping hard-pressed families make ends meet and keeping them and their employers from fleeing our state,” Mahan wrote last summer in a piece for the San Francisco Standard.

Mahan told reporters last week that his disagreements with Newsom are “rooted in substance” and praised the governor for muscling through major reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act and behavioral health treatment.

“I see the job of the next governor” as “building on many of the initiatives [Newsom] has championed,” he said, adding he would use those new reforms to build more housing and treatment facilities for people struggling with addiction and mental illness.

Newsom has routinely won approval from the state’s Democratic base, as well as respect and deference from its elected leaders, and his notoriety as a top foe of Trump continues to rise. Because the perch of California governor provides Democrats with an effective cudgel against the Republican administration, attacking Newsom could easily backfire in this left-leaning state.

“It’s a very delicate balancing act” to campaign to replace a leader of one’s own party, said Democratic strategist Garry South, who has worked on four California gubernatorial campaigns.

“The traditional way to do it is to try to project that you will build on things that the incumbent has done: programs they started, successes they’ve had,” he said.

South, who ran Newsom’s first, short-lived, campaign for governor in 2009, took issue with Mahan’s criticisms of the governor.

“To stick it to the incumbent of your own party might be OK if that person is viewed as a failure. … The fact is, Newsom is not unpopular. This guy’s had four massive victories in California,” he said, listing Newsom’s two elections in 2018 and 2022, defeating a recall in 2021 and overwhelmingly passing Proposition 50 last year.

Like Mahan, billionaire venture-capitalist-turned-environmentalist Tom Steyer has cast himself as an outsider of California’s Democratic establishment. Though he has so far avoided disparaging anyone directly, Steyer dinged “Sacramento politicians [who] are afraid to change this system” when he launched his campaign in November.

Early on in his campaign, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa indicated he would backtrack on Newsom’s strict oil drilling limits and what he calls heavy-handed regulations, which the industry has blamed for the state’s high gas prices.

A Phillips 66 refinery shut down last fall and a Valero refinery in Northern California plans to idle by the end of April, raising concerns that prices in the state’s isolated fuels market could climb even higher.

Villaraigosa previously told The Times he is “not fighting for refineries” but “for the people who pay for gas in this state.”

The former mayor took a more aggressive approach in the California’s governor’s race in 2018, when Villaraigosa accused Newsom of selling “snake oil” with his support for single-payer healthcare in order to win over the nurses union and progressives. Villaraigosa, who ran on a moderate platform, finished in a distant third place in the primary, and Newsom went on to win two terms as governor.

Former Rep. Katie Porter has gone in a more progressive direction on oil. When asked in October to name a policy arena in which she would act differently than Newsom, Porter said she would not have signed recent legislation to allow 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County.

“Drilling new wells is locking us into 100-plus years of energy of the past,” she said. “I absolutely know that we need our refineries to stay open. … But I’m concerned about the environmental consequences, the environmental justice consequences, the shortened lifespan and pollution that we see in some of our fossil fuel-producing places.”

While Newsom and most other candidates for governor have raised concerns about a proposed statewide ballot measure to tax the assets of billionaires, primarily to raise billions of dollars in revenue to blunt the impact of federal healthcare cuts, Tony Thurmond, the state superintendent of public instruction, has embraced the idea.

Even before the potential ballot measure drove some billionaires into leaving the state, Thurmond said that if elected, he would introduce a tax “solely on megamillionaires and billionaires to hire more teachers, healthcare workers, firefighters, construction workers and social workers,” who would earn “decent middle-class wages” to bolster the state’s economy.

Thurmond has also repeatedly said he would pursue single-payer healthcare in California, a promise Newsom also campaigned on before his first term but did not fully deliver.

Betty Yee, a former state controller and budget director, has pitched herself as the most qualified candidate to fix California’s ongoing budget deficits, and took swipes at accounting tricks Newsom and other governors have used in the past.

Newsom and state lawmakers have faced criticism for using short-term tactics like deferred spending and internal borrowing to fill budget shortfalls while ignoring the larger issue: The state regularly spends more money than it brings in.

“No more gimmicks. We can’t kick the can down the road anymore,” Yee said during a recent interview with KTLA. She said she would implement “spending cuts — not like DOGE” and explore “corporations and upper-income earners” potentially paying more tax revenue.

Newsom, aware that he’s entering lame-duck status, has jokingly called himself “a milk carton with a sell-by date” and admitted “these questions about who’s next and all that are uncomfortable.”

Asked specifically about Mahan’s criticisms, Newsom on Thursday declined to fuel any supposed rivalry with the San José mayor.

“I don’t know enough about him,” the governor said. “I wish him good luck.”

Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.

California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.

They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens there.

The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.

“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant. “It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”

Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks — a period of time that in theory will allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure still will need to be approved by the House, though it is not clear when they will hold a vote — meaning a short shutdown still could occur even if the Senate deal is accepted.

Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate the controversial measures in question — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.

Senate Democrats vowed to not give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, take off masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without judicial warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage of the broader spending package earlier Thursday.

“Anything short of meaningful, enforceable reforms for Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability and enforcement for both the agents on the ground and the leaders giving them their orders. I will not vote for anything less.”

Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.

Even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires, immigration operations would not stop. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year — part of an unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the mega-bill.

Trump said Thursday he was working “in a very bipartisan way” to reach a compromise on the funding package. “Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown, we are working on that right now,” he said. “I think we are getting close. I don’t think Democrats want to see it either.”

The administration has eased its tone and admitted mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign since Pretti’s killing, but hasn’t backed down completely or paused operations in Minneapolis, as critics demanded.

This week Padilla and Schiff joined other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in calling on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter addressed to Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, they questioned her office’s decision to forgo an investigation, saying it reflected a trend of “ignoring the enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of carrying out President Trump’s political agenda.”

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said there is “currently no basis” for such an investigation.

Schiff also has been busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops into American cities. Trump has threatened to take that move, which would mark a dramatic escalation of his immigration campaign.

A spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats during a caucus lunch Wednesday on potential strategies for combating such a move.

“President Trump and his allies have been clear and intentional in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification and could exploit the very chaos that he has fueled in places like Minneapolis as the pretext to do so,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he does so in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we must not be caught flat-footed if he takes such an extreme step to deploy troops to police our streets.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have blasted for allowing and excusing violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti “horrific and shocking,” so much so that even some Republicans are acknowledging the “severity of what happened” — creating an opening for Noem’s impeachment.

“It’s unacceptable what’s happening right now, and Noem is at the top of this agency that’s completely rogue,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) went to Minneapolis this week to talk to residents and protesters about the administration’s presence in their city, which he denounced as unconstitutional and violent.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone after a slew of Trump immigration policies both in California and across the country — including by backing a lawsuit challenging immigration deployments in the Twin Cities, and joining in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi denouncing the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for federal agents leaving.

California’s leaders are far from alone in pressing hard for big changes.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.) and a top ally of Pope Leo XIV, sharply criticized immigration enforcement this week, calling ICE a “lawless organization” and backing the interruption of funding to the agency. On Thursday the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) arguing that ICE should be “fully dissolved” and that Homeland Security funding should be blocked until a slate of “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.

Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California’s leaders have a clear reason to push for policies that protect immigrants, given the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “tied into the fabric of California.”

And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials clearly realize “how far out of touch and how damaging” their immigration policies have become politically, he said, California’s leaders have a real opportunity to push their own agenda forward — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the recent “egregious, extra-constitutional violation of rights” that many Americans find so objectionable.

However, Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity after the unrest around the killing of George Floyd by calling to “defund the police,” which was politically unpopular, and could fall into a similar pitfall if they push for abolishing ICE.

“You’ve got a moment here where you can either fix [ICE], or lean into the political moment and say ‘abolish it,’” he said. “The question becomes, can Democrats run offense? Or will they do what they too often have done with this issue, which is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”