Laird plans to defend California against ‘smarter’ President Trump

State Sen. John Laird and former president Donald Trump share two things in common. On Nov. 5, both men secured reelection to a second four-year term in their seats; Laird to the California Senate, Trump to the Oval Office. Both are also septuagenarians. 

That is where the similarities end. During the first two years of Trump’s first term, Laird was finishing out his tenure as then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s pick for Secretary of Natural Resources — the front line defending California against Trump’s attacks on environmental protections. Now, Laird heads to Sacramento with a Democratic supermajority bent on playing defense once again. 

This time, however, Trump is smarter, Laird said, and the job of defending California will be more difficult. 

I met Laird on Thursday morning at his Santa Cruz coffee haunt of choice: Lulu Carpenter’s on Mission Street. He walked in flaunting a Cal State Monterey Bay cap and puffy blue Patagonia jacket stamped with the California bear and a Pride flag. Laird, sipping orange juice, explained how crucial President Joe Biden’s victory was against Trump in 2020. 

“If Trump had beaten Biden in 2020, he would have been able to do a lot more, because he would have started the processes in his first term” and made progress on them in his second, Laird said. “Biden rolled a lot of stuff back, so now we’re back at ‘go,’ but this time Trump’s a lot smarter.”

Yet, those years leading the state’s Natural Resources Agency revealed to Laird some of the many avenues the Trump administration could put pressure on California, from slow-rolling disaster reimbursements to overriding essential environmental protections and appointing combative agency heads. Then there are the Trump threats around deportations and funding for schools that recognize transgender identity. Laird said the state will need to get creative. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Lookout: How are you interpreting Trump’s promise to exact revenge against California? How seriously are you taking this rhetoric? What have the conversations been like with legislators? 

John Laird: Revenge might mean we have a nasty fire, and the federal government either doesn’t reimburse us, or they really drag their feet. That is the one that rises to the top concern, really. 

But there are others: He might want to drill off of California’s coast, and I have a long history of that issue. My last two years as Secretary of Natural Resources were the first two years of the first Trump administration, and I’m the point person for trying to fight offshore drilling. I think what ultimately saved us in that process is that it would have taken forever, well, longer than four years, which in the political life for a president is forever. 

Lookout: What about offshore wind? California is moving forward on projects off the coast in Morro Bay and Humboldt. Is that under threat? 

Laird: He has said he’s strongly against it. The state is doing all this work on the offshore wind projects but ultimately the projects are federal leases and you hope he can’t revoke them. 

There are other environmental concerns, though. Everybody expects him to pull back out of the Paris climate accords. When he pulled out the first time, we did all this stuff as California on oceans, and I was heading the state’s ocean programs. We formed an international alliance to fight ocean acidification with Washington, Oregon, but then countries like France, Netherlands, Fiji and, if you’d believe it, the United Arab Emirates. I actually went to the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York and spoke. 

Lookout: Really? How common is that for a state department head to speak at the United Nations? 

Laird: It’s not all that common, but California is an independent state in some ways.

Our international agreement was modeled on agreements like the Paris accords, in which everybody, together, commits to do their own plan. So we committed to do things on ocean acidification. With the absence of federal leadership, it really requires other leadership. If the federal government steps away from protecting the oceans, it doesn’t mean we have to step away.

Lookout: How realistic is it that Trump could successfully drill off the coast of California? 

Laird: Well, it’s been a no-go for all these reasons, but you can undo most of them, and then you have to go through this lengthy environmental impact report process, and that’s why it could take longer than four years. 

It’s all about showmanship. So what is showmanship, and what actually shows up in the policy?

Lookout: What can the federal government really do that would impact life for Californians? 

Laird: Well, decades ago we passed new standards for tailpipe emissions, which we fought and fought over with the Bush administration about California having stricter standards. The automakers were caught in the middle because they couldn’t manufacture a car just for California and a car for the other 49 states. So many of them made the decision to manufacture to California standards. Then the Obama administration ended up adopting California’s tailpipe policy. 

But the federal government can roll back certain things. I’m not sure what’s on that list, but that gets us into the attorney general getting involved and everybody suing everybody. And, you know, AG Rob Bonta has said that’s what he wants to do. 

Lookout: Ah, so the [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton playbook. 

Laird: Well, I don’t know. It started with Democratic attorneys general suing the Bush administration, and then it was Republican attorneys general suing the Obama administration, and then Democrats suing Trump and then it was Ken Paxton and the Republicans suing the Biden administration. So, that’s why it really matters who gets appointed to the courts, and that’s a federal thing. 

Lookout: On Election Night, you told me that you were preparing to head back to Sacramento to play defense. What kind of conversations have you had about this already?

Laird: There was a group of progressive senators who Zoomed and they were shouting about messaging and my reaction was, well, let’s let the dust settle and then let’s figure this out. You have to be strategic and you have to pick your fights in this. People are regrouping and trying to figure out what to do.

There are ways this is going to have impacts that we don’t fully understand yet, such as on homelessness.

Lookout: Is the impact on homelessness a funding question?

Laird: That’s primarily the question.

Lookout: Is funding primarily the question in all of this?

Laird: Not necessarily. It could be funding, together with some really draconian policy things. Immigration and citizenship come to mind.

Lookout: Can you get more specific?

Laird: The specifics are going to become clearer when he’s in office.

At this point, Laird did not want to get into specifics for fear of pointing the Trump administration to ways it could force California backward.

Lookout: In what ways was he successful in impacting California during his first term?

Laird: Well, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta [the hub of California’s water supply], is a joint federal and state operation and he could do what he did last time and say, “We don’t care about fish [such as the endangered delta smelt] and we should just take however much water out of there that we have to take.” He had some success with that last time and he has announced his intention to do that again.

Lookout: What about on immigration? Trump has promised to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history. What can the state do to protect undocumented immigrants living here? 

Laird: That’s going to catch California agriculture, because if he truly deports people, it’s going to cut the agricultural workforce and it’s not like I expect there will be people wanting to take those jobs and move in behind [the deported immigrants]. 

It’s really a question of where he can be satisfied with trying and not succeeding in some parts of the country. He could claim a victory and his supporters who benefit from it can claim a victory. But we don’t know if that’s how he will play it.

Lookout: What are you hearing from constituents who are concerned about this rhetoric?

Laird: I have a new district as of last Tuesday that became much more Latino [due to 2020’s redistricting effort that pushed Laird’s district boundaries farther toward the Central Valley]. I’m hearing fear, and we’re going to have to figure out ways to stand up for them.

Lookout: What are some of those ways?

Laird: Well, we’re all going to get out SB 54 and reread it. [Senate Bill 54, passed in 2017, articulated existing state law that says local law enforcement cannot do the work of federal immigration agents. Last week, local law enforcement officials gathered to reaffirm their commitment to not participating in deportation efforts.] 

We’re going to see. Are there ways we can protect them and can we build unusual coalitions? A lot of farmers might be Trump supporters, but they depend on agricultural labor and if they can’t harvest the crop then they have no business. So there’s a likelihood they would join the coalition to try to protect people from being deported. And then there’s the tech industry, where there’s a lot of special visas that exist for people in the tech industry.

Lookout: Well, now Trump has Elon Musk as part of his administration. 

Laird: That’s the irony. Two of Trump’s three wives were immigrants. You’ve got Elon Musk, you’ve got all this stuff. So, you know, is there anybody from within that speaks up? Musk might speak up on electric vehicles.

Lookout: That’s an interesting point. 

Laird: But all this presents a dilemma. If you’re poking a stick in his eye every single day and trying to build a coalition, do those serve adverse purposes? Because our goal is to protect people. I’m not necessarily proposing collaborating with him, but we have to think about how are we going to be successful in protecting people.

Lookout: Another community that’s concerned are those under the umbrella of LGBTQ+, particularly those who identify as transgender. Trump has said he would remove funding from public schools that recognize gender identity. 

Laird: That one is going to be hard. I expect them to do that and we’re going to have to defend.

Lookout: You expect them to remove funding from schools?

Laird: Well, that’s one way but it’s not clear what way they’ll come at it. I don’t know if they will do federal legislation, or there could be a court decision that does something and the federal government doesn’t do anything to reverse it. There could be any of a number of ways that comes.

Lookout: What are some ways that you saw during his first term that Trump could impact California that might not necessarily be the marquee issues?

Laird: The Chumash [Heritage National] Marine Sanctuary [off San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties] will be designated officially and complete before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, but the Trump administration could choose not to fund any stuff related to that. They can choose not to fund national parks. Federal agencies appoint heads based on state. Someone who completely disagrees with California could get appointed to head the Bureau of Land Management California. Some of those appointments people don’t see, but they have impact.

Lookout: So you’re headed back to Sacramento in December for a special session to game plan a Trump defense plan? 

Laird: Just for a day. It gives us a chance to really decide what we want to do and it gives the legislature a chance to balance the governor. This is just a thing to figure out where we’re going to stand up, are there legitimate things we should be preparing for? We’ll have a chance to plot this out.

Lookout: As far as your own plan, senator, is there any legislation that you’re thinking about or want to pursue? 

Laird: Not yet, but it’s like, I may well do it.

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