A year in, Gavin Newsom is still fighting Trump. Is he doing enough to govern California?

Marco della Cava USA TODAY

Dec 23, 2019

SACRAMENTO – Gavin Newsom, the 40th governor of the state of California, emerges from the door to his private
5office with a sigh.

“Sorry I’m late," says Newsom, 52. "I was watching the impeachment hearings."

For Newsom, President Donald Trump is often unavoidable these days. He and the president continue to be at
loggerheads. In fact, Newsom's position as leader of the so-dubbed California Resistance helped him get elected
on Nov. 7, 2018.

10But some critics contend the governor's first year in office has been diluted by this feud, resulting in a lack of
progress on huge issues – a mushrooming homeless population, astronomical housing prices, a dangerous
electrical grid – that have led pundits to write eulogies for the age-old California dream.

Newsom is resolute. The dream will live on – in spite of Trump.(…)

But while Newsom campaigned last fall on the enduring attraction of the mythic and potent California dream –
15egalitarianism, upward mobility, natural beauty – that postcard image has taken a hit.

Homelessness is soaring (…)housing costs are driving away the middle class; the median home price in California
is twice the national average. More than 28,190 people departed California in the second quarter of 2019, almost
double 2017's rate, according to a regular Migration Report .(…)

And California’s already prevalent wildfires now have an added menace; this year’s days-long Pacific Gas &
20Electric power grid shutdowns wreaked havoc particularly on seniors and the poor. Along with fires, they cost the
state’s economy $11.5 billion, according to Bank of the West chief economist Scott Anderson.

To Newsom's constituents, taking on Trump is one task. Governing the state is another altogether.

“He ran as a leader of the Trump resistance, and he’s been all-in there and gets full marks,” says Thad Kousser,
chair of the University of California, San Diego, political science department and author of “The Power of
25American Governors." “So the next step will be to really get a coherent policy agenda set and implemented.”

California's duel with Trump

Leading that resistance has been time consuming. And Trump is fighting back, in ways that affect the state's
policies.

Over the past year, Trump has threatened to withhold federal aid for wildfire recovery on grounds that the state
30isn’t managing its forests, has suggested federal oversight is needed to fix the state's homelessness epidemic, and
has vowed to revoke the state's authority to set strict auto emissions standards.

Most recently, Trump has ordered that federal lands in California be open to fracking-style oil drilling, just as
Newsom halted all fracking permits so that their ecological impact could be studied first.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Newsom’s overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature passed a bill requiring Trump to turn
35over his tax records if he wanted to be on the ballot in 2020. That chess move was overturned by the California
Supreme Court, but the jab landed.

“California is a disgrace to our country,” Trump told a Cincinnati crowd days after the bill was passed in July. (…)

Extracted from a long article published in USA today