California Governor Gavin Newsom rallied Democratic members of the state’s California delegation as they steeled themselves for a Trump presidency in a closed-door lunch meeting over sandwiches in a Capitol office building Wednesday afternoon.
Newsom told reporters he and the lawmakers talked about getting on the same page ahead of California’s upcoming special legislative session as they worked to prepare their legal defenses for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
“We talked about the 122 lawsuits we were involved in in the Trump administration. We talked about the special session and how we’re going to move aggressively, to be proactive and not reactive to the incoming Trump administration,” he said. “We talked about the playbook that’s very familiar, that goes back even before Donald Trump, to the George W. Bush administration, as it relates…issues related to the environment — clean air.”
As for questions about a potential 2028 presidential bid for Newsom, other Democrats dodged.
“We didn’t really talk politics. It was just policy,” said former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
