Donald Trump hadn't even been sworn in as president before California was declared, in the words of The New York Times, “the vanguard of the resistance.” With a Democratic supermajority, the country's largest immigrant population, and Governor Jerry Brown's landmark policies on climate change, the state was gearing up for battle against the Trump administration. To that end, the California legislature hired Eric Holder, an attorney general under President Barack Obama, to represent the state in legal fights to come. San Francisco, one of 12 “sanctuary cities” in California that protects undocumented immigrants, sued President Trump over his executive order threatening to cut federal funds to the city. The legislature, meanwhile, is moving to make California a sanctuary state. While lawmakers can't stop federal immigration agents from conducting raids, the state can restrict access to databases, kick federal authorities out of county jails, and create “safe zones,” where immigration enforcement is prohibited.
It might seem predictable that California, land of liberals, is leading the charge against the new administration. But the Golden State is also the birthplace of the modern conservative movement and was once an enduring source of anti-government populism. Decades before California launched the political careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, its business conservatives—agriculture barons and utility executives—organized in opposition to the New Deal, purporting to defend citizens from the tyranny of federal government. It's also where the nation's first political consulting firm was established, its operatives discovering that cultural appeals—against minorities and newly independent women—could build broad coalitions of voters more than conservative economic policies ever would.
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