After six months under Trump, California and L.A. are battlegrounds. Who benefits?

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

Six months into President Trump's second term, his predilection for picking on California has never been on fuller display, turning the state broadly and Los Angeles specifically into key battlegrounds for his right-wing agenda.
There are chaotic immigration raids occurring across the state and military troops on L.A. streets. The administration has sued the state or city over sanctuary policies, transgender athletes and the price of eggs. The state has sued the administration more than 30 times, including over funding cuts, voting restrictions and the undoing of birthright citizenship.
Federal officials are investigating L.A. County's gun permitting policies, and have sought to overturn a host of education, health and environmental regulations. They have talked not only of enforcing federal laws for the benefit of California residents, but of showing up in full force — soldiers and all — to wrench control from the state's elected leaders.
'We are not going away,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference in Los Angeles last month. 'We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country, and what they have tried to insert into this city.'
The antagonism toward California is not entirely surprising, having been a feature of Trump's first term and his recent presidential campaign. And yet, the breadth and pace of the administration's attacks, aided by a Republican-controlled Congress and a U.S. Supreme Court convinced of executive power, have stunned many — pleasing some and infuriating others.
'Trump's been able to go much further, much faster than anyone would have calculated, with the assistance of the Supreme Court,' said Bob Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future.
'In a second Trump term, he's clearly either feeling or acting more emboldened and testing the limits of his power, and Republicans in Congress certainly aren't doing anything to try to rein that in,' said California Sen. Alex Padilla, who was forced to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents after confronting Noem at her news conference. 'It's enraging. It's offensive.'
'What is clear after six months is we now have some measure of checks and balances in California, a counterweight to one-party supermajority control at the state level,' said Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin). 'From securing the border to reversing the ban on gas cars to protecting girls' sports, balance and common sense are returning to our state.'
Rob Stutzman, a longtime GOP strategist in California who is no fan of Trump, said the president's motivations for targeting California are obvious, as it 'is the contrast that he basically has built MAGA on.'
Visuals of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounding up immigrants in liberal California are red meat to the MAGA base, Stutzman said. 'What they've been able to do in California is basically create the live TV show that they want.'
But Trump is hardly the only politician who benefits from his administration being on a war footing with the nation's most populous blue state, Stutzman said. There is a 'symbiotic relationship that Democrats in California have with Trump,' he said, and leaders such as Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also benefit politically when they're seen as standing up to the president.
'If not for Trump's assault on California, was Gavin Newsom in South Carolina?' Stutzman asked, of what many viewed as an early presidential campaign stop earlier this month. 'Would Karen Bass otherwise have been given a lifeline after her disastrous performance with the fires?'
Bass, in a statement to The Times, defended her record, saying both homelessness and homicides are down and fire recovery is moving quickly. She said the Trump administration was helpful with early fire response, but 'now they've assaulted our city' with immigration raids — which is why L.A. has joined in litigation to stop them, as her 'number one job is to protect Angelenos.'
Bob Salladay, a senior advisor to Newsom, dismissed the idea that battling Trump is in any way good for California or welcomed by its leaders. 'That's not why we're fighting him,' he said. 'We're fighting him because what he's doing is immoral and illegal.'
Salladay agreed, however, that the last six months have produced a stunning showdown over American values that few predicted — even with the conservative Project 2025 playbook laying out much of it in advance.
'We knew it would be bad. We didn't know it would be this bad,' Salladay said. 'We didn't know it would be the president of the United States sending U.S. troops into an American city and taking away resources from the National Guard for public theater.'
When protests over early immigration raids erupted in scattered pockets of L.A. and downtown, Trump dramatized them as a grave threat to citywide safety, in part to justify bringing in the military. Local officials say masked and militarized agents swarming Latino and other immigrant neighborhoods and racially profiling targets for detention have undermined safety far more than the protests ever did.
Trump has since pulled back about half the troops, but thousands remain. A federal judge recently ordered federal agents to stop using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate arrests, but raids continue.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is demanding California counties provide lists of noncitizens in their jails.
Beyond L.A., officials and industry leaders say immigration raids have badly spooked workers in farming, construction, street vending and other service sectors, with some leaving the job for fear of being detained. Meanwhile, Trump's tariff war with trading partners has made it more difficult for some farmers to purchase equipment and chemical supplies.
The Justice Department is suing the state for allowing transgender girls to compete in girls' sports, alleging such policies violate federal civil rights law. It is suing the state over an animal welfare law protecting hens from being kept in small cages, blaming the policy for driving up the cost of eggs in violation of federal farming regulations. It is investigating L.A. County's gun permitting process, suggesting excessive fees and wait times are violating people's gun rights.
Trump signed legislation to undo California's aggressive limits on auto emissions and a landmark rule that would ban new gas-only car sales in the state by 2035. His administration just rescinded billions of dollars for a long-planned high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, calling it a 'boondoggle.'
The legal antagonism has cut in the opposite direction, as well, with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta's office having sued the Trump administration more than 30 times in the last six months over a range of issues.
Bonta has sued over billions of dollars in cuts to education funding and billions of dollars in cuts to medical research and development. He has sued over Trump executive orders declaring that California must radically restrict voting access, over Trump's unilateral tariff scheme and over clawbacks of funding and approvals for wind energy and electric vehicle charging stations.
Bonta called the Trump administration's targeting of the state 'a lot of show' — and 'disrespectful, inappropriate and unlawful.' He noted a lot of wins in court for the state, but also acknowledged the administration has scored victories, too, particularly at the Supreme Court, which has temporarily cleared the way for mass layoffs of federal employees, the dismantling of the Department of Education and the undoing of birthright citizenship.
But those rulings are 'just procedural' for now as litigation continues, Bonta stressed, and the fight continues.
'We are absolutely unapologetic, resolute, committed to meeting the Trump administration in court and beating them back each time they violate the law,' Bonta said.
After six months of entrenched political infighting between the U.S. and its largest state, who benefits?
Trump, officials in his administration and some state Republicans are adamant that it is good, hardworking, law-abiding people of California, who they allege have long suffered under liberal state policies that reward criminals and unauthorized immigrants.
'What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?' Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top policy advisors, recently asked on Fox News — before suggesting, without proof, that it would have better healthcare and schooling for U.S. children and 'no drug deaths' on the streets.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to The Times that 'Gavin Newscum' — Trump's favorite insult — is 'destroying' the state, and that Trump 'has had to step in and save Californians from Gavin's incompetence.'
'First, when Newscum was chronically unprepared to address the January wildfires, and more recently when he refused to stop violent, left-wing rioters from attacking federal law enforcement,' Jackson said. 'This doesn't even account for Newscum's radical, left-wing policies, which the Administration is working to protect Californians — and all Americans — from, like letting men destroy women's sports, or turning a blind eye to child labor exploitation.'
Trump, she said, 'will continue to stand up for Californians like a real leader, while Newsom sips wine in Napa.'
Some Republicans in the state strongly agree, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for governor. With Trump in office, Bianco said, 'there's finally someone working and looking out for Californians' best interests.'
He said Trump called in troops only because of the 'embarrassing' failure of L.A. officials to maintain order. He said the only reason ICE is going after unauthorized immigrants in the streets — with some bystanders admittedly caught in the fray — is that California sanctuary laws prevent agents from just picking them up in jails.
'This is an absolute failure of a Democrat-led agenda and Democrat policy that is forcing the federal government to go into our neighborhoods looking for these criminals,' Bianco said. 'Californians are being punished for it because of failed California leadership, not because of the federal government.'
Newsom, Bass and other liberal officials, of course, have framed Trump's actions in the state in very different terms.
In a recent filing in the federal case challenging the constitutionality of ICE's immigration tactics in L.A., California and 17 other liberal-led states argued those tactics had left citizens and noncitizens afraid to go outside, turned 'once bustling neighborhoods into ghost towns' and devastated local businesses.
State and local officials have said they are fighting the administration so aggressively because Trump's policies threaten billions in federal funding for the state in education, healthcare, transportation and other sectors.
California Sen. Adam Schiff, a staunch adversary of Trump, said he has had particularly troubling conversations with farmers up and down the state, who are feeling the pain from Trump's immigration polices and tariffs acutely.
'Their workers are increasingly not showing up. Their raw materials are increasingly more expensive because of the tariffs. Their markets are shrinking because of the recoil by other countries from this kind of indiscriminate turf war,' Schiff said. 'Farmers are really in the epicenter of this.'
So, too, Schiff said, are the millions of Californians who could be affected by the administration's decision to cut environmental funding and curtail disaster preparation and relief in the state, including by hampering water management and flood mitigation work and 'slow-walking' wildfire relief in L.A.
'Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who doesn't believe that it's his job to represent the whole country — only the states that voted for him,' Schiff said. 'The president seems to have a particular, personal vendetta against California, which is obviously [a] deep disservice to the millions of residents in our state, no matter whom they voted for.'
During her Los Angeles news conference, Noem said that federal officials in L.A. were 'putting together a model and a blueprint' that could be replicated elsewhere — an apparent warning against other blue cities and states bucking the administration.
California officials saw it exactly that way. Bass has accused the administration of 'treating Los Angeles as a test case for how far it can go in driving its political agenda forward while pushing the Constitution aside.'
What happens next, several political observers said, depends on whether the antagonism continues to work politically, and whether the administration starts acting on its threats to crack down even more.
When Bass showed up in person to object to heavily armed immigration agents storming through MacArthur Park recently, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino allegedly told her that she and other L.A. officials and residents 'better get used to' agents being in the city, who 'will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.' Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, when asked if Bass would be arrested, said they were 'keeping everything on the table.'
Trump has suggested Newsom should be arrested, too, saying, 'I'd do it.' Padilla was taken forcefully to the ground and handcuffed at a Noem press event. Trump has accused Schiff of criminal fraud for claiming primary residency in mortgage paperwork for a home in his district and one near his work in Washington, D.C., which Schiff called a baseless political attack.
Padilla said it's all to be expected from a Republican administration that hates and fears everything that his state stands for, but that Democrats aren't backing down and will continue to 'organize, organize, organize' to defend Californians and win back power in the midterms.
'We're not the fourth largest economy in the world despite our diversity and immigrant population, but because of it,' Padilla said. 'Diversity and migrants doing well and making our country stronger is Donald Trump's worst nightmare — and that has made California his No. 1 target.'
Schiff said the administration's actions in California in the last six months are indeed producing 'the TV show that Trump wanted to show his MAGA base,' but 'it's a TV show that is not going over well with the American people.'
Trump's approval numbers on immigration are down, Schiff said, because Americans don't want to live in a country where landscapers, car wash employees and farmworkers with zero criminal convictions are terrorized by masked agents in the streets and U.S. citizen children are ripped from their parents.
'The more Trump tries to inflict harm and pain on California, and the more he disrupts life in California cities and communities, the more he makes the Republican brand absolutely toxic,' Schiff said, 'and the more harm that he does to Republican elected leaders up and down the state.'