So far, California has sued the Trump administration at least 50 times, challenging the federal government on everything from health care access for minorities to the slashing of asbestos reporting requirements.
Yet, the steadfast opposition to Washington is not based solely in the courts, according to California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
The state's so-called "resistance" strategy, Padilla said, is rooted in a three-pronged approach: legislation, legal challenges, and civil society organization.
"California has stood up to a lot of what this administration has represented," Padilla told Cheddar on Thursday, adding that the state is especially willing to fight what is antithetical to "Californian values."
Just last week, the Golden State targeted President Trump's taxes, passing a law that would require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to be included on the state's primary election ballot.
"We've seen — among so many precedents broken by this administration — a failure to disclose potential conflicts of interests," Padilla said.
During the 2016 election, Trump refused to release his tax returns — upending a longstanding norm. The White House has since resisted several attempts from congressional Democrats to obtain the president's taxes and examine financial holdings for possible fraud and foreign entanglements.
"If the federal government can't force the issue but California can, then we're going to try to do that," added Padilla.
The Trump administration sued the state in response, arguing that the law violates the First Amendment and restricts voting rights. Seemingly anticipating the challenge, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, defended the law's constitutionality last week, saying that the state "is well within its constitutional right to include" the requirement.
On Wednesday, California Republican Chairwoman Jessica Patterson slammed the law, arguing that it "attacks the heart" of the constitution.
"It is a tactic by the left to make sure that the Republican turnout, which is usually dictated by the top of the ticket, is lower than normal," Patterson added in an interview with Cheddar.
Since the 2016 election, which U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly said was plagued with misinformation and foreign interference, California has also taken control of its own election security — an issue that has largely stalled at the federal level in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The state allocated over $130 million in the budget last year to replace aging voting machines and conducted a state-wide assessment of security apparatuses and firewall protections. California also implemented additional testing standards for new voting systems and a requirement that every ballot must have a paper trail.
"We are doing anything and everything it takes to ensure the integrity and security of the election," Padilla said on Thursday. "Securing the election is one thing, making sure that we don't fall prey to misinformation or disinformation campaigns is an equal challenge."
In 2016, California voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, who won the state by more than 4 million votes. The state is also home to several prominent Trump critics, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Newsom, and 2020 Democratic candidates Sen. Kamala Harris and Tom Steyer, the billionaire businessman and founder of Need to Impeach.
Yet the animus is seemingly mutual, with Trump repeatedly attacking California and its major cities since taking office. It was more than 400 days into his presidential term before he stepped foot in California — the longest delay of any modern president to visit the most populous state in the nation.
On Monday, President Biden announced his new plan to take on inflation by taking down the big meat monopolies - turning to the federal government's antitrust authorities to investigate the major meatpackers that control a significant share of the market. The White House plans to devote one billion dollars to aiding independent meat and poultry producers in an effort to undercut the few powerful meat producers that have control of the sector. Austin Frerick, deputy director of Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James is ramping up a civil investigation into The Trump Organization. The AG's office has subpoenaed Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. They have refused to comply with the subpoenas. Bradley Moss, national security attorney, joins Cheddar News to discuss the next steps in this investigation.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has officially reduced the 110-year prison sentence of truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos to 10 years, calling the initial lengthy sentence “unjust.” Dan Gilleon, constitutional attorney at Gilleon Law Firm APC, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Former Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was sworn in as the newest Mayor of New York City. Adams is now expected to work on a number of issues such as crime and coronavirus. Erin Durkin,, reporter at PoliticoNY, joins Cheddar News to discuss more.
California's new composting law will affect what residents do in their kitchens. As of this week, Californians will have to recycle excess food in an effort to reduce emissions caused by food waste. Cities and counties will turn recycled food into compost or use it as a renewable energy source. California's new law is the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the country. Rachel Wagoner, Director of the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery called the law 'the biggest change to trash' since recycling started in the 1980s. She joined Cheddar Climate to discuss.
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
