Elias: Trump ‘War on California’ continues unabated in many subtle ways

It’s not exactly the Hundred Years’ War, but Donald Trump’s undeclared “War on California” is carrying on this fall just as intently as ever.

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No, it’s not as obvious as when he defied the governor and several judges to send National Guard and U.S. Marine troops by the thousands to quell a riot that wasn’t. It also isn’t merely that the count of California lawsuits against him is higher today than at the same point in his first presidential term.

In some cases, Trump lets other Republicans carry his water and in others he is harming California more than other states with his nationwide moves, including the tariffs he has (possibly illegally) imposed on California’s largest trade partners. These things will not likely knock California off its pedestal as the world’s No. 4 economy, just ahead of India and just behind Germany. For one thing, the large amount of rebuilding construction that will soon follow last January’s Los Angeles County firestorms will keep the cost of goods created here higher than before, suggesting a potential move up in the worldwide economic rankings.

Make no mistake, though, that Trump is doing what he can through a wide series of moves to make life less pleasant, more expensive and even less truthful for Californians than others. Start with the Clean Air Act, on which Trump coerced every Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote last spring for elimination of the California waiver in the Clean Air Act of 1970.

That’s the Richard Nixon-signed provision allowing this state to clean up its air (not completely, by far) through measures like catalytic converters and electric vehicles, pioneered here and often imitated and resented elsewhere. Such resentment was why 35 Democrats voted with the House GOP. Trump tried for this repeatedly in his first term but was voted out before he could finish, rendering any legal cases surrounding his effort moot.

Now it will be up to Democrats in the Senate to stop this effort to dirty up California air. There is also significant legal debate on this. The federal Government Accountability Office has stated that waivers like California’s are not subject to congressional review, suggesting Congress lacks the authority to overturn them.

If this measure goes through, with a smirking Trump signing it, that issue would eventually be decided by the courts. That’s just one move against California. though. Below are a few others (not the complete list).

• Termination of a study on guaranteed income. Trump halted a $9 million UC San Francisco clinical trial providing $500 monthly to 300 low-income Black young adults that aimed to show whether this tactic can cut crime and homelessness.

• An executive order to Attorney General Pam Bondi to halt enforcement of state laws on climate change, explicitly challenging California’s cap-and-trade program that, among other things, produces electric and natural gas bill credits of about $50 per customer twice a year.

• Another order opening floodgates in two Central California reservoirs, supposedly aiming to address wildfire issues. No fires were near those reservoirs, though, and none of the water reached any fire area, most of it flowing into depleted San Joaquin Valley aquifers.

• Trying to eliminate past California atrocities from the Smithsonian Institute and all other government-sponsored exhibits purporting to deal with all aspects of California history.

• Ignoring his braggadocio while visiting the January fire zones and again in an Oval Office meeting with Gov. Gavin Newsom — to provide quick federal aid to wildfire survivors. The reality is Congress has made no movement toward passing California’s request for $40 billion in fire aid.

Taken together, these moves comprise an attack on California’s ability to control its own environment and fix its problems with tax money paid by this state’s citizens, who annually put far more into the federal treasury than they get back. These moves would instead put this state on equal or even lesser footing with Republican-controlled states like West Virginia and Alabama, where smog and water safety issues have never been taken seriously, as they are here.

Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.