Politico reports:

Donald Trump pledged in one of his final campaign speeches to work with Democratic mayors and governors if reelected. But just hours after the former president was projected to win back the White House, some blue-state leaders were actively plotting against him.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, on Thursday called a special legislative session to funnel more resources toward the state’s legal defenses to preemptively combat Republican policies around immigration, the environment, LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive care.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James — one of Trump’s most aggressive first-term adversaries — pledged to beef up coordination between their offices to “protect New Yorkers’ fundamental freedoms from any potential threats.”

And attorneys general across blue states are prepared to take Trump to court — just as their predecessors did hundreds of times during his first administration.

If Trump’s reelection represented a realignment in American politics, blue-state leaders are choosing to confront it with a return to form, resuming the counterweight roles they played during his first administration as their party reckons with a nationwide repudiation.

“We’ve been talking for months with attorneys general throughout the nation, preparing, planning, strategizing for the possibility of this day,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Trump’s two-year campaign to retake the White House — and polls that for months showed he could succeed — gave Democrats the lead time they lacked in 2016 to shore up their defenses against conservative policies. And they are using as a guide his campaign-trail calls for mass deportations and regulatory rollbacks, as well as Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a Republican administration that Trump has distanced himself from but that dozens of his former administration officials had a hand in crafting. [Continue reading…]