• By Adam Shanks | Examiner staff writer |
• Jan 21, 2025 Updated 6 hrs ago (SFExaminer.com)

San Francisco joined a coalition of states Tuesday in one of two lawsuits that aims to block President Donald Trump’s attempts to revoke birthright citizenship in the United States.

Immediately upon taking office Monday, Trump signed an executive order that would upend the 14th Amendment and the historical precedent that, with few exceptions, a person born in the U.S. is an American citizen.

After Trump signed the order, San Francisco and nearly two dozen state attorneys general swiftly took legal action to oppose Trump, who would not grant citizenship to those born to mothers who lack legal status in the United States or are here on a temporary basis.

The City joined 18 state attorneys general suing Trump in a Massachusetts federal court, while four other states are suing Trump in Washington state.

The legal battle about to ensue is especially pertinent in San Francisco, where the percentage of residents who are foreign-born typically exceeds 33%.

The Examiner sat down with San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu hours after the lawsuit was filed Tuesday to discuss its merits, his office’s reactions to Trump’s bevy of executive orders and The City’s place in history. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why was it important for you that the city join this lawsuit given that there’s 18 states already involved? The story of birthright citizenship is as San Francisco as they come. San Francisco has a unique connection with the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship, because one of our own citizens in the late 1800s stood up for his constitutional rights.

Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco on Sacramento Street to immigrant parents. In 1895, he was traveling back from China to his home in San Francisco when he was detained, ostensibly under the Chinese Exclusion Act. It happened during an anti-immigrant era with significant anti-Chinese bigotry.

Despite the era and the anti-Asian bigotry and the fact that it was the U.S. Solicitor General who was prosecuting his case, he had the courage to stand up for his rights. He prevailed.

That’s the historical connection to this issue. Can you articulate the present consequences should this be carried out? This issue is personal to me as the first child born to my immigrant parents. Birthright citizenship is personal to a large majority of San Franciscans who are either immigrants or children of immigrants.

This is going to be harmful to our economy as well as create intense chaos for so many in our communities.

The executive order is going to result in a significant loss of federal funding to local governments like San Francisco. For example, San Francisco is responsible for administering federal-state-funded public benefit programs like CalWORKS and CalFresh. We receive funding based in part on the number of eligible recipients, and eligibility is determined by having a valid Social Security number.

So without Social Security numbers, we can’t verify otherwise-eligible newborns who may qualify for these programs. So this executive order is going to result in the direct loss of federal funding to San Francisco to provide aid and administer these programs, and without that funding, we still have to bear the inherent costs of caring for our residents.

Overturning this 127-year-old legal precedent  is a ruthless attack on our newborns and future generations of Americans. Ending birthright citizenship will impede their integration and assimilation into society, their educational future, which hurts all of us.

Essentially, what this is going to do is it’ll deny some children the same basic rights that other children in our country have, which will create a permanent multigenerational underclass of those who will have been born in the U.S., but will have never lived anywhere else and will effectively be stateless.

These are children who won’t be able to naturalize or obtain citizenship from another country. They’ll live under constant threat of deportation, and as they age, they won’t be able to work legally or vote. They’ll have limited ability to travel and will be challenged in accessing health care. So there’s a whole parade of horribles that will happen for this class of citizens.

The [counterargument] is that you’re demonstrating that these people are a drain on public resources. San Francisco being a city with a large immigrant population, do you feel that there is any truth to that claim? Well, these are immigrants who are paying their taxes. At this moment they are citizens who are paying their taxes, and we know that immigrants provide much more in taxes than they are taking away as far as services, but it will increase our costs.

Have you spoken with Mayor Lurie about this action at all? Do you feel like you’re in lockstep with the administration, or no? I have spoken to the mayor and he is supportive.

Are [there] any other executive orders, or any other actions taken [out] of the many yesterday that President Trump took, that your office is keeping an eye on, or potentially reacting to? As you can imagine, my lawyers have been frantically reviewing and analyzing since they’ve been coming out. There’s a lot of language and in many executive orders that we’re concerned about and monitoring.

Many of the executive orders instruct his agencies and cabinet secretaries to start doing things and to start collecting data, which will likely lead to actions that we may need to defend our city against.

So it’s premature to say at this moment, but so many of our communities are under threat because of the first round of the executive orders issued yesterday. Our trans community, immigrants for sure, our environment.

I was going to ask you to interpret the executive order he signed, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” which targets sanctuary jurisdictions like San Francisco. It is a battle that we’ve fought before and we’ll likely have to fight again. That language certainly caught our eye and has been a topic of discussion in the last 24 hours, and we will certainly monitor what the attorney general and the head of Homeland Security decide to do with that.

Given the breadth of what [Trump] did [Tuesday], and could continue to do in the coming weeks, months, years, what capacity does your office have to absorb all of it, interpret all of it, you know? We asked Sacramento for resources to assist us at this time. We appreciate that Gov. Newsom called for a special session to bolster the bulwarks of California in this space and are very supportive of the $50 million that the legislature and the governor will be providing to our attorney general and legal nonprofit organizations that are defending immigrants. But at this moment, we do not yet have assurances that we’ll be receiving funds, so we are in conversations as we speak with legislators to see if that can change.

I am the chair of the California Civil Prosecutors Coalition, which comprises the largest city attorney and county counsel offices in the state. Many of us were deeply involved in defending our cities and counties against Trump 1.0 and have geared up again, and we all need resources.

I am repeating myself, but why is it important that San Francisco as a city take action in these cases, instead of just allowing the attorney general of California to to take that on? Donald Trump has threatened to target local programs, and local institutions, including public hospitals, local law enforcement, local grants and funding that only San Francisco has the standing to defend in court.

So there will be plenty of times when we’ll work lockstep with our attorney general. There’ll be plenty of times when AG [Rob] Bonta can act to protect us, but there will also be times when we will need to stand up for ourselves.

How are you feeling, in terms of confidence, about the merit of the case that you’re bringing against President Trump? Extremely confident. This is constitutional bedrock, based in the 14th Amendment that has been constitutional precedent for 127 years. We are optimistic that any judge who looks at this will agree with us.

Are you concerned by the ways in which “Trump 1.0” was successful at reshaping the judiciary in his image and that it might be a different set of judges? We’re in a new day, and you’re entirely correct that there are many more Trump-appointed judges and justices sitting on the federal judiciary — but all of them swore to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. There could not be a more clear example of an embedded constitutional principle.

by Randy Shaw on January 21, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)

January 21, 2017 rally against Trump

Election Groups Must Shift to Resistance

As Donald Trump again occupies the White House, recent history offers models for successful resistance. But it requires major donors who opposed Trump’s election to finance these models. The Harris campaign showed that door to door outreach cannot just occur in the months before an election. Instead,  ongoing national grassroots activism, particularly among young voters, is a must.

It’s the best strategy for defeating Trump’s policies and winning future elections.

Psychological Impact and Responses

Many are suffering mental distress since Trump’s election. The United States elected a president whose sexual assaults and felony convictions would have left him unelectable if running for  mayor or city council. Trump defeated a Black-South Asian woman former prosecutor and U.S. Senator who ran a campaign that most deemed brilliant until she lost.

People adjust to tragedies in their own way.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Desmond Patton teaches a “Journey to Joy” class encouraging his students to develop a Joy Plan. “Joy,” Professor Patton writes, “is one of the few things you do have control over. It’s yours to shape, to nurture, to call on when you need it…Joy can -and should- be a vehicle for transformational justice.”  He offers a mini-lesson from the class each week on LinkedIn. An example of a joy plan is here.

Local and State Activism

Many will respond to Trump by addressing local and state problems not controlled by the federal government. For example, Donald Trump is not preventing San Francisco from closing open air drug markets. He did not cause New York’s governor to unnecessarily delay congestion pricing. Trump’s not the force pushing the unnecessary widening of Interstate 5 through Portland’s Rose Quarter. And he’s not to blame for cities using exclusionary zoning to stop new apartment construction.

You get the point.

Most activists work locally rather than nationally. I promoted national activism in a book I wrote in 1999 for the University of California Press —Reclaiming America: Nike, Clean Air and the New National Activism. But it has always been necessary to work locally and statewide. This cannot be abandoned because Trump is in the White House.

What must emerge is what Democrats failed to create in 2009 and 2021: ongoing organizations educating and mobilizing voters to support progressive national policies on health care, housing, education, transportation, immigration and other social and economic justice goals.

Mobilizing Between Elections

Democrats know how to educate and mobilize voters. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party built a massive Obama for America movement connecting previously unaffiliated activists for his 2008 campaign.

After Obama’s 2008 victory I wrote, “After the Victory, Engaging Obama Volunteers.” I saw his massive grassroots campaign as becoming the mobilizing base for his presidency. But Obama disempowered this massive organization just when it was needed most. When the Tea Party emerged to resist Obama’s plans for real health care reform, comprehensive immigration reform, and other big 2009 priorities, the powerful grassroots campaign organization that elected Obama was gone.

Obama wrecked Democrats most effective grassroots activist organization reportedly because his campaign manager did not want Organizing for America volunteers to pressure elected Democrats. Obama tried to rectify his mistake by creating Organizing for Action in January 2013 but Democrats had already lost the House.

What does resistance in between elections look like?

In the late 1980’s my late friend Fred Ross Jr. led the group Neighbor to Neighbor in running a cost-effective national campaign to stop U.S. military aid to El Salvador. Using door to door outreach learned from his years with the United Farmworkers (a legacy I describe in my book, Beyond the Fields), Ross’s dropped organizers into key congressional districts and built powerful local anti-intervention coalitions. In 1988, the group had more than 100 organizers working in eleven states and eighteen congressional districts. It won congressional votes against the George H.W. Bush administration that few thought possible (American Agitators, a film about Ross Jr. and his father Fred Ross, Sr., will be out this year).

Given the GOP’s tiny House margin, picking off the handful of votes necessary to stop bad legislation can clearly be done. Picking off four Republican senators will be more difficult but not impossible on some issues, But both strategies require dropping skilled organizers into key congressional districts and the targeted national activism described above.

This involves more than social media posts. Or national marches.

Rather, it requires groups that raised millions for Democratic presidential campaigns to now fund fulltime organizers to win congressional votes.  And to create vehicles for unaffiliated activists to join the national resistance. The door to door outreach pioneered by Cesar Chavez’s farmworker movement in the 1960’s and 70’s and then used by the Obama campaign in 2008 must be rebuilt.

Obama’s Organizing for America model would maximize resistance to Trump while building a national base for future presidential campaigns. Many national organizations had plans to mobilize to pass President Harris’ goals; now they must invest in defeating Trump’s extreme agenda.

Normalizing Trump

The same national media that spent 2024 normalizing Trump has now concluded that the “vibe” has shifted away from resistance. These reporters don’t know what “resistance” actually means.

Two million did not take to the streets to protest Trump’s 2025 inauguration as occurred in 2017. My  January 19, 2017 story,  “Why Protesting Trump Matters,”  preceded the biggest day of protest in U.S. history.

But national marches are the wrong strategy for 2025.  They require massive coordination and do not stop bad legislation. Direct action can deter and even stop deportations of non-violent undocumented immigrants, but those marches and protests address Trump actions not subject to Congress.  Defeating GOP legislation requires national organizations to wage targeted organizing in key districts and states, not mounting national protests

Election-oriented groups acted fast to add staff and recruit volunteers when Harris suddenly replaced Biden as the nominee. They should replicate this process now.

Resistance to Trump becomes easier when he actually tries to implement his extreme plans. Post-election interviews found Trump voters believing their health care would be safe and their undocumented family members would not be deported. When they see otherwise, these alienated Trump voters need to be offered viable alternative policies; that requires grassroots organizing.

Many remain depressed about what Trump’s victory says about the United States. But as Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles put it, “We cannot let his daily madness become our own.”  Working to defeat Trump’s extreme agenda is a great way to feel better about the nation’s future.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco

More Posts

(Illustrations by Mike Haddad)

If they don’t, the checks and balances that have defined our government since its inception will give way to one-man authoritarian rule.

BY ERWIN CHEMERINSKY 

JANUARY 22, 2025 (prospect.org)

This article appears in the February 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

As a first-term president and more recently as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump showed little understanding of the Constitution and even less interest in complying with it. Many of the proposals he has been advocating are clearly unconstitutional under well-established law. Some are chilling for how they would change fundamental aspects of separation of powers, for how they would infringe individual liberties, and for how they would harm people’s lives.

As was not the case during his first term as president, when some of his worst impulses were checked by those around him, he now seems surrounded by people whose primary qualification is loyalty to Trump. Does anyone expect Kash Patel to stop Trump from using the FBI against his political foes? Does anyone think that Pam Bondi will say no to Trump, as at times even Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr did as attorneys general during the first Trump presidency? Does anyone imagine Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard limiting Trump’s use of the military and the intelligence agencies in irresponsible and unconstitutional ways?

More from Erwin Chemerinsky

Congress is limited in its ability to check specific excesses of power by a president and, with a Republican majority in the House and the Senate, seems unlikely to pass new laws to restrict Trump’s actions. It will take four Republican senators to join the 47 Democrats to stand up to Trump. It is hard to identify who they might be, and even harder to identify the Republican House members who might vote to impose restrictions on him.

In consequence, when Trump acts unconstitutionally, the only plausible check will have to come from the courts. But will the judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court, enforce the Constitution against Donald Trump?

The Supreme Court has had at best a mixed record of being willing to uphold the Constitution in Trump-related litigation. During Trump’s first term as president, in Trump v. Hawaii, in a terrible decision, the Court upheld Trump’s Muslim travel ban. In a 5-4 ruling, split along ideological lines, the Court allowed a Trump executive proclamation that banned individuals from designated countries that were predominantly Muslim from entering the United States. The Court deferred to Trump’s assertion of national security and ignored the overwhelming evidence that the executive action was taken to implement Trump’s repeated campaign promise of a Muslim ban.

More recently, in 2024, in Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court refused to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies a person from holding civil office if he took an oath of office and then participates in a rebellion or insurrection. The Colorado Supreme Court held that Trump was disqualified under this provision from running for president by virtue of his actions on January 6th. The Supreme Court, however, ruled in favor of Trump, effectively nullifying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment by holding that the courts cannot enforce it.

Trump takes office knowing he cannot be criminally prosecuted even for blatantly illegal acts.

And on July 1, in a decision that belongs in the Hall of Shame of all-time bad Supreme Court rulings, the Court held in Trump v. United States that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken pursuant to the Constitution or a statute. Coming from a Court where a majority of the justices are professed originalists who pledge fidelity to the Constitution’s original meaning, it was astounding to see them adopt a view of unchecked presidential power so completely at odds with the framers’ desire to reject royal prerogatives. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in her dissent, the Court’s decision means that a president would have absolute immunity if he ordered the Navy SEALs to assassinate a political rival, or took bribes in exchange for pardons, or used the Justice Department to get retribution by prosecuting his political rivals.

Trump thus takes office knowing he cannot be criminally prosecuted even for blatantly illegal acts.

To be fair, sometimes the Supreme Court stood up to Trump in his first term. The Court ruled that Trump could not rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program without following the procedural requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, the Court held that the Trump Department of Commerce acted improperly in adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census forms. But it also should be remembered that both of these were 5-4 decisions against Trump when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still on the Court and part of the majority. It is an even more conservative Court today.

This history certainly provides a basis for skepticism that the justices will be willing to stand up to Trump and enforce the Constitution. So it is worth considering what Trump might do and how these actions might fare in the courts. The list of presidential actions to be worried about seems endless, but here are some to expect.

Impoundment of funds. Trump has talked about eliminating federal agencies, such as the Department of Education. But agencies are created by federal statute and can be abolished only by a new federal law. It seems unlikely that Congress will go along with this plan because many important federal statutes are enforced by this and other federal departments.

Expand

RITZAU SCANPIX/SIPA USA VIA AP

Trump’s threat to withhold funds to Ukraine during his first term was an illegal impoundment, and the basis for his first impeachment.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-directors of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (until Ramaswamy was ditched right before the inauguration), have spoken of radical reductions in federal spending. Musk has talked about cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, and Ramaswamy has said that the federal workforce should be cut by 75 percent. It is inconceivable that Congress would approve such spending reductions. It would require drastic cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending.

So Trump and Musk have embraced a way to defund federal agencies and cut spending without Congress: presidential impoundment of funds. Impoundment occurs when the president refuses to spend federal money that has been appropriated in a federal statute. The practice is an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’s power of the purse, and it violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

President Trump engaged in illegal impoundment in his first term when he withheld military aid that had been appropriated to Ukraine until its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to investigate Joe Biden—which Zelensky did not do. This was the basis for the first impeachment of President Trump by the House of Representatives.

As a candidate in 2024, Trump explicitly embraced controlling federal spending by impounding funds. Musk and Ramaswamy also did so in an op-ed that they published in The Wall Street Journal.

Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the spending power is assigned to Congress. To be sure, the president has a role in this process; he can opt to veto spending bills passed by Congress. But once a spending bill has been adopted, whether with the president’s signature or over his veto, the president has no authority to refuse to spend the money.

The Supreme Court long has made clear that separation of powers is violated when one branch of government usurps the powers of another. That is exactly what impoundment does: It gives the president control over federal spending and undermines Congress’s constitutional power over the purse.

Impoundment is not new. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to impound federal funds. But Richard Nixon used it more extensively than his predecessors, and his impoundments were challenged in courts. Almost without exception, the courts found that his impoundments violated the law, including the United States Supreme Court in Train v. City of New York (1975). In that case, the Court ruled that Nixon lacked the authority to impound federal monetary assistance under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, a program that he had vetoed, only to see Congress override his veto. The Court unanimously held that the law gave President Nixon no power to impound funds appropriated by a federal statute.

The issue of impoundment has rarely resurfaced in the last half-century because Congress, in 1974, passed a statute, the Impoundment Control Act, that outlaws such presidential actions. The act was adopted in reaction to the repeated impoundments by the Nixon administration and actually was signed into law by Nixon.

The law forbids presidential impoundment of funds, but allows the president to propose rescissions of money appropriated by federal law. If the president wishes to rescind spending, he must send a special message to Congress identifying the amount of the proposed rescission, the reasons for it, and the budgetary, economic, and programmatic effects of the rescission. After the president sends such a message to Congress, he may withhold funding for up to 45 days. But if Congress does not approve the rescission within this time period, any withheld funds must be disbursed. The act also allows the president to defer federal spending in very narrow circumstances, but again with required notifications to Congress.

Musk and Ramaswamy in their Wall Street Journal op-ed argued that the Impoundment Control Act is an unconstitutional usurpation of presidential power and would likely be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Their constitutional argument is both wrong and dangerous. It is wrong because impoundment itself is unconstitutional, even without the Impoundment Control Act, as the president has no such authority under the Constitution, which exclusively delegates the spending power to Congress. Moreover, as Justice Robert Jackson observed in his landmark opinion about separation of powers in Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (1952), the president’s power is at its lowest ebb when he is violating a federal law. The Impoundment Control Act is a clearly constitutional law to protect Congress’s control over federal spending.

It would be terribly dangerous for the courts to declare the Impoundment Control Act unconstitutional and give the president such great control over federal expenditures. The Constitution assigns the spending power to Congress because its authors wanted a broad-based elected branch of government to control how federal money is disbursed. If the president can impound funds at will, there will be an enormous shift of unchecked power to one person.

Trump and Musk have been clear about their plans to use impoundment, and the question is whether the courts will stop this blatant power grab, which would fundamentally alter separation of powers.

The Supreme Court repeatedly has held that the federal government cannot force cities and states to enforce federal mandates.

Recess appointments. Several times, Trump has suggested that he might choose to make recess appointments of cabinet officials and others requiring confirmation, rather than have these nominees confirmed by the United States Senate as the Constitution requires. This would negate a basic check created by the Constitution: the need for Senate confirmation of presidential appointees. Given some of Trump’s nominees, and their dubious qualifications, it is easy to see why he sees recess appointments as a way to easily get them into office.

The Constitution actually provides a way that he could do this. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says that if the House and the Senate disagree about whether to adjourn, the president “may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.” Trump’s plan would be to ask Republican leaders of the House and the Senate to disagree about whether to recess. He then could adjourn Congress until he called it back into session and take advantage of another provision of the Constitution which allows him to make recess appointments that last until the end of the two-year session of Congress.

It is frightening to imagine the president putting Congress into indefinite recess and using this to circumvent a vital constitutional check on the president’s appointment power: the need for Senate approvals. It is imperative that members of Congress not agree to this power ploy and that they take their constitutional duties seriously. Especially given the controversial nature of many of Trump’s appointees, Senate consideration and confirmation is vital. No president in American history has ever tried to evade the need for Senate confirmation of the cabinet in this way and Congress must not allow Trump to do so now.

Actions against noncitizens. Central to Trump’s campaign, and to virtually every speech he has given, have been his promises and threats with regard to immigration. He has talked about ending birthright citizenship, about mass deportations of undocumented individuals and creating deportation camps, of forcing state and local governments to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, of using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport even those lawfully in the country, and even of deploying the military to carry out his immigration policies. Cumulatively, these would terrorize noncitizens and citizens alike, and would change the country in frightening ways.

While all these actions are unwise, many of them would also be unquestionably unconstitutional. Although Trump has pledged to end birthright citizenship—which provides that every person born in the United States is an American citizen—he has no authority to do so. There has been speculation that Trump will issue an executive order directing federal agencies that issue citizenship documents, like the Department of State or the Department of Homeland Security, to deny that documentation to the children of unauthorized immigrants in an effort to deny them American citizenship altogether.

But this is blatantly unconstitutional. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This was adopted in 1868 to overrule the Supreme Court’s tragic decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that enslaved individuals were not citizens even if born in the United States. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment is an unequivocal grant of citizenship to all born in this country. The phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is to ensure that children born to Americans in foreign countries while serving in the military or working in an embassy also are deemed citizens.

The Supreme Court long ago held that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment bestows citizenship on all born in the United States. In 1898, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Court held that children born in the United States are citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

This decision is binding precedent on lower federal courts, so they should be expected to strike down any Trump actions to the contrary. And the hope must be that even the Supreme Court, which has been willing to overrule important precedents, will adhere to the text of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment and say no to Trump on this.

Expand

MARCO UGARTE/AP PHOTO

Trump’s allies have suggested ending birthright citizenship, which Section 1 of the 14th Amendment bestows.

It will be harder to challenge Trump’s efforts to engage in mass deportations, but the way he opts to do it certainly can violate the Constitution. The federal government has the authority to deport those who are unlawfully in this country. But the Supreme Court has been clear that individuals, including noncitizens, have a right to due process before being deported, including the right to be informed of the charges against them, the right to an attorney, and the right to present evidence in their defense.

Practically, the limit on mass deportations may be the lack of sufficient immigration officials, detention facilities, and immigration judges to carry them out. One way that the Trump administration is likely to try to augment its resources is to force state and local governments to assist in enforcing federal immigration laws. During the first Trump administration, it adopted a policy to deny federal law enforcement funds to police departments that did not assist United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement by turning over undocumented individuals.

On December 23, 2024, Stephen Miller, who has been named Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, through his America First Legal, sent letters to 249 elected state and local officials in jurisdictions with sanctuary policies. These are governments that have laws prohibiting their cooperation with ICE and forbidding their schools, public hospitals, and police from turning over undocumented individuals to the federal government or providing information about them. These policies make great sense because otherwise undocumented individuals who are ill, including with communicable diseases, won’t go to public hospitals for treatment. Parents will be reluctant to send their children to school. Crime victims who are undocumented will hesitate before reporting crimes for fear that they could then face being deported.

Miller’s letter said that people living illegally in the United States are subject to removal and that it is a federal crime to conceal, harbor, or shield them. It is an obvious attempt to try to intimidate state and local governments into cooperating with Trump’s deportation efforts. This is sure to lead to a conflict between the Trump administration and progressive cities and states, as it did during the first Trump term. The Supreme Court repeatedly has held that the federal government cannot force cities and states to adopt laws or to enforce federal mandates. For example, the Court declared unconstitutional a provision of the federal Brady Handgun Control Act which required that state and local law enforcement personnel do background checks before issuing gun permits. In Printz v. United States (1997), the Court declared this unconstitutional as impermissibly commandeering state and local governments.

Even when Congress has tried to induce action by putting strings on federal grants, the Supreme Court has said that such provisions are unconstitutional if they are unduly coercive. Most famously, the Court struck down a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which required that states receiving federal funds expand their Medicaid eligibility. The Court said that illegally amounted to “dragooning” the states in violation of their sovereignty.

During the first Trump administration, efforts to require state and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE were challenged on this basis. Most lower courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, declared this unconstitutional. But it never was ruled on by the Supreme Court and the issue is sure to arise again.

Trump has made clear that he believes he has the power to fire even federal workers protected by the Civil Service Act.

This time around, Trump has talked about even more extreme measures to enforce his immigration policies. He has spoken of invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The law gives the president the power to detain or deport the citizens of an enemy nation. The authority includes power over both the undocumented and those who are lawfully in the United States.

The statute, however, applies only if there is a declared war or when a foreign government threatens or undertakes an invasion of the United States. It has been invoked just three times in American history: during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. It was used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The Alien Enemies Act has no relevance now. There is no declared war and no foreign government has threatened to invade the United States. Any invocation by President Trump should be immediately invalidated by the courts.

Using the military within the United States. Among the most chilling ideas advanced by Trump is his using the military domestically to enforce immigration laws and more generally to carry out his policies. In the spring of 2020, during the protests following the murder of George Floyd, Trump apparently wanted to use the military to quell demonstrations—although (or, in Trump’s mind, perhaps because) using the military against dissenters is common practice in the most authoritarian countries.

Can he do it? The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the United States military—including federal armed forces and National Guard troops who have been called into federal service—from taking part in civilian law enforcement. This law reflects a deeply embedded tradition in the United States that liberty and democracy are threatened by the military’s involvement in domestic matters. But the Posse Comitatus Act has an exception permitting the domestic use of the armed forces if authorized by a federal statute.

Trump has talked about using authority under the Insurrection Act, a federal law initially adopted early in American history, to get around the Posse Comitatus Act and to use the military to carry out his policies. The Insurrection Act provides the president the authority to use the military domestically in three situations. Section 251 permits the president to use the military if a state legislature, or a governor if the legislature cannot meet, requests federal help to quell an insurrection.

Section 252 of the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to use the military to “enforce the laws” of the United States or to “suppress the rebellion” whenever “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law in that state by the “ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Section 253 permits the use of the military in a state to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “so hinders the execution of the laws” that any portion of the state’s inhabitants are deprived of a constitutional right and state authorities are unable or unwilling to protect that right. This was the authority President Dwight Eisenhower invoked to use troops to ensure the desegregation of the Little Rock, Arkansas, public schools in 1957.

Most broadly, Section 253 also permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” This is so expansively written that it conceivably could allow the president to call out troops against any conspiracy to violate a federal law.

These provisions give the president frighteningly broad powers to use the military domestically. In fact, in 1827, in Martin v. Mott, the Supreme Court ruled that “the authority to decide whether [an exigency requiring the militia to be called out] has arisen belongs exclusively to the President, and … his decision is conclusive upon all other persons.”

Thankfully, in the last half-century, presidents rarely have invoked the Insurrection Act. It was last used in 1992, when California Gov. Pete Wilson requested military aid from President George H.W. Bush when there were riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers who had been charged in the beating of Rodney King.

Although there have been many calls to modify or repeal the Insurrection Act, that has not happened. And it could be invoked by President Trump to use the military within the United States to carry out his policies. Then it would be the responsibility of the courts to limit the president’s domestic use of the military by narrowly construing the Insurrection Act.

Expand

CHRIS SZAGOLA/AP PHOTO

The law says the military cannot engage in civilian law enforcement, but the Insurrection Act provides an exception.

Controlling federal agencies. Donald Trump repeatedly has expressed a desire to control the federal bureaucracy to ensure that it hews to his wishes. For cabinet agencies, the president has the authority to fire cabinet secretaries and top officials and then to replace them, subject to Senate approval, with those of his choosing.

But outside of these political appointees, the president’s legal authority is much more limited, though Trump has made clear that he will claim greater power and test the law in this area. This might initially be directed against the officials who head federal regulatory agencies for terms fixed by federal statutes, and who can be removed only for “just cause.” This applies to leaders of such important federal agencies as the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and many more.

In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in 1935, the Supreme Court held that it is constitutional for Congress to limit presidential removal of these agency officials. In that case, the Court ruled that President Franklin Roosevelt lacked the power to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.

Some have speculated that the Supreme Court, which in recent years has acted aggressively to limit federal agency powers, might be ready to reconsider Humphrey’s Executor, and to hold that Congress cannot limit the president’s power to remove agency heads. In fact, in 2020, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Court declared that it was unconstitutional for Congress to prevent the president from firing the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. However, the Court also ruled that Humphrey’s Executor allowed Congress to limit the removal of members of a multimember body, like the Federal Trade Commission, but that it did not apply to an agency where there was one person in charge, like the CFPB.

From the perspective of the Constitution, it is hard to see why the president’s power is different depending on the number of people running the agency. It is thus easy to imagine Trump looking for the test case where he will try to fire members of a federal regulatory commission even though their tenure is protected by federal law.

Many thought that the National Labor Relations Board would be a likely target for such Trump actions. But in December, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused to go along with Democratic senators in confirming Lauren McFerran, then the outgoing chair of the NLRB, for another term. Had McFerran been confirmed, there would have been a 3-2 Democratic majority on the Board for the first two years of the Trump presidency. It was speculated that this might cause Trump to try to remove one or more of the Democratic appointees, notwithstanding the federal law that fixes the length of their terms and thus limits their firing. Now, Trump will fill this seat on the NLRB and it will have a Republican majority. But there is every reason to expect that some other federal agency will draw his ire and he will create a test case to establish his power to fire all executive officials.

Since the 1930s, the Supreme Court has recognized the importance of Congress creating federal agencies whose top officials have some independence from the president. Now, however, a majority of the justices appear to believe that there is a “unitary executive,” with the president in control of every aspect of the executive branch of government. This, together with the conservative justices’ hostility to the administrative state, may make it willing to overrule precedent and allow the president to fire any agency official.

Expand

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE HADDAD

At the same time, Trump has made clear that he believes he has the power to fire even federal workers protected by the Civil Service Act. The central idea of civil service—that federal employees should be chosen based on merit and protected from political reprisals—is not new. The Pendleton Act was adopted in 1883 to ensure that most employees within the federal government are chosen on the basis of merit and not political patronage.

In October 2020, President Trump adopted an unprecedented attack on the civil service system. Executive Order 13957 created a new “Schedule F” classification, and deemed these to be positions that were outside the civil service. Trump invoked a provision of federal law that exempts from civil service protections positions “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” This always has been understood, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, to apply to a small number of positions traditionally filled by political appointees. In recent years, the number of such positions has been roughly 1,200.

By contrast, Trump’s executive order reclassified and deprived civil service protections for a huge swath of federal employees. Estimates of its scope range from 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of government workers who could be replaced by the president, including for political reasons.

President Biden, on taking office, rescinded the Trump executive order, but Trump has said that he would reinstitute Schedule F on “day one” of his new administration. This would decimate the civil service and allow Trump to exercise unprecedented control over the federal workforce, firing those he deems disloyal and filling positions with his loyalists. It certainly would violate the very purpose of the Pendleton Act and the civil service system.

These, of course, are only some of the actions of dubious legality that Trump has promised, and there are sure to be many that have not yet been mentioned. Two conclusions emerge from just these. First, taken together, these constitute a clear path to authoritarianism. It is not hyperbole to say that, in aggregate, these actions—giving the president virtually unlimited control over federal spending and over federal agencies, using the Alien Enemy Act and the Insurrection Act, employing the military to carry out his domestic policies—would radically change the United States. They would shred checks and balances. They would create a presidency unlike any ever imagined by the Constitution’s authors, and unlike any ever seen in this country.

Second, virtually all of the actions described in this article would violate clearly established law, including many that are blatantly unconstitutional. But the crucial question is whether the Supreme Court will enforce these laws and stop Donald Trump. The future of American democracy likely will turn on this.

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Coast Miwok Tribal Council, Main Street Moms, Legal Aid of Marin, the Dance Palace, and others rally against deportations and the Trump Agenda in Pt. Reyes Station

By CHRISTOPHER D. COOK

JANUARY 21, 2025 (48hills.org)

         The winter sky above Point Reyes Station on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day—and inauguration day for the convicted felon president’s second tour of American carnage—was a sharp, deep solid blue, sparkling and cloudless. After days of fog and chilly gray, the winter sun shot through strong beaming rays of heat and light.

Instead of hitting the beaches or barbecues on this sunny holiday, the Point Reyes community showed up in force, a few hundred protesters gathering to stand together in a time marked by fearmongering and division.

While Trump launched his presidency surrounded by Big Tech and other corporate interests, then signed executive orders cracking down on immigrants, shredding equity and anti-discrimination protections for transgender people, and gutting climate action, hundreds of thousands protested in cities and towns across the US.

The Point Reyes Station rally, organized by West Marin Community Services, emphasized immigrant rights and community solidarity under the banner of “West Marin Standing Together—Una Comunidad Unida.”

The rally was a community affair, with the crowd seated on hay bales and folding chairs and standing in a broad semicircle after sharing breakfast burritos, pastries, fruit, and coffee donated by local restaurants and cafes, and the town grocery store. Groups supporting the rally included the Coast Miwok Tribal Council, Main Street Moms, Legal Aid of Marin, the Dance Palace, and others.

Amate Perez, founder and director of the Latinx Racial Equity Project, told the crowd  that the coming attacks on immigrants must be met with broad solidarity and recognition of previous civil rights struggles. “We can’t demand immigrant rights without also demanding land back for our Indigenous brothers and sisters and reparations for our Black brothers and sisters,” Perez said. From MLK to Cesar Chavez, “our struggles are really one.”

“I know I get to exist in the US because Black people organized,” Perez added. “We must be grateful to the Black liberation movement,” she said, noting that the Black Panthers picketed Safeway to support farmworkers in the early 1970s.

Perez urged, “let’s build deep solidarity and a movement committed to advancing the rights of all of us…all of us who have been affected by colonialism, racism, and economic exploitation… Black workers, women, immigrants, and Indigenous workers continue to be oppressed… yet they rely on our labor every day”

The protest comes as President Trump promises mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and Point Reyes area farmworkers are facing displacement and meager housing options amid a major settlement that will shut down livestock ranches in the Point Reyes National Seashore. The controversial National Park Service deal, reportedly “hammered out in secret and underwritten by The Nature Conservancy”—without any input from farmworkers—will shutter livestock ranches in the national park and leave about 90 farmworkers without a place to live.

Farmworker families are “afraid of what’s going to happen, that they’re going to lose their jobs and lose their housing,” said Alma Sanchez, program manager at West Marin Community Services.

While Latinx immigrants face discrimination and fear every day, Sanchez noted, “with an anti-immigrant administration we feel it even more. We fear that we are unwelcome in [Trump’s] eyes. We hope he recognizes how we contribute to this country, the economy, the culture.”

Sanchez said the MLK Day rally “made us more united as a community,” by bringing together immigrant families, Indigenous communities, and others.

After a few speeches and a little sing-along music, the crowd marched in silence down Point Reyes Station’s main throughfare, Route 1, then on a stone path into the Giacomini Wetland area, winding through a thick green grassy meadow, then forming a large oval of about 200 people.

Here, the group was invited to pass around a sacred bird feather and share a brief word about what they love and hope to protect in the Trump years. The moment felt powerful and important, one could sense the somber mood but also the strength and vitality of the protesters standing in this giant oval, in a wetland meadow in Point Reyes.

Here are some of the words people shared:

“Imagination.”

“Connection.”

“Families.”

“Co-existence.”

“Cooperation.”

“Generosity and reciprocity.”

“We are all in this together.”

“Love is always more powerful than fear.”

“Open hearts, open minds.”

“Courage and joyful resilience.”

“Housing is a right for all.”

“Un corazon, una familia, una comunidad.”

Fielder to chair Audit and Oversight, Melgar Land Use; Public Safety is all pro-cop supes

By TIM REDMOND

JANUARY 21, 2025 (48hills.org)

The new Board of Supes committee assignments are out, and are fairly predictable based on the unanimous board vote naming Sup. Rafael Mandelman as president.

The Budget and Finance Committee starts off with a conservative majority: Sup. Connie Chan will be the chair, but the other two members—Sups. Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio—are from the pro-police-at-all-costs camp.

But that will change when the committee expands in February, where the real work on Mayor Daniel Lurie’s budget will begin. The Budget and Appropriations Committee will include Sups. Shamann Walton and Mandelman—who will immediately become the swing vote on contested issues.

It’s going to be a brutal budget, with a deficit that could reach $1 billion if the Trump Administration cuts federal funding for sanctuary cities. Chan comes to the job with experience—she did it last year—and her staff has handled the immense load of work in the past. None of the new supes are on that committee.

Sup. Myrna Melgar will chair Land Use and Transportation, joined by Sups. Chyanne Chen and Bilal Mahmood. Sup. Jackie Fielder will chair the Government Audit and Oversight Committee, joined by Sups. Danny Sauter and Stephen Sherrill. That committee gave former Sup. Dean Preston a platform to look into policies of the Breed Administration. Although Sauter and Sherrill are not progressives, most of the panel’s work is holding hearings.

To nobody’s surprise, the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee is completely controlled by pro-cop supes, with Dorsey as chair, joined by Mahmood and Sauter.

Walton chairs Rules, along with Sherill and Mandelman. That could be where Lurie’s package of “emergency” Fentanyl measures will wind up as it works its way through the board—and Walton has been the most outspoken critic of the proposals.

All of the men on the board are on two committees; the women each have one, although three of the five major committees have women as chair. There are seven men and four women on the board, and 17 committee positions.

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 

Tim Redmond

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.

22 JANUARY 2025/SF NEWS/JAY BARMANN (SFist.com)

A Stanford student who was covering the occupation of the university president’s office by pro-Palestinian protesters last year for the campus newspaper when he was arrested alongside those protesters has been cleared of wrongdoing, at least by the school.

Student journalist Dilan Gohill, a freshman reporter for the Stanford Daily, faced criminal prosecution last year at the behest of Stanford University President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, due to his presence in Seller’s office during a student protest and occupation that took place there in June 2024.

13 students were arrested after the office was vandalized, including fake blood that was splashed on the president’s desk. Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies handled the arrest, and despite his wearing a press badge and saying he was only there to observe and report, Gohill was among the arrestees.

Throughout last year, Saller and Martinez maintained that Gohill was culpable. “We believe that the Daily reporter who was arrested inside the building acted in violation of the law and University policies and fully support having him be criminally prosecuted,” they said in an earlier statement.

Gohill’s case caught the attention of free-press advocates and alumni alike, and the Columbia Journalism Review covered the case last month.

“My job on June 5th was to keep our community informed, updated, and aware–and I did just that,” Gohill said in a statement. “Independent student journalism is crucial and my arrest as a first-year student journalist and Stanford’s subsequent response threatens the values that the institution claims to uphold.”

Gohill’s work covering multiple student protests through the school year earned him a prize from the university at the end of the school year, which was a $9,600 grant for him to take a summer internship at the Los Angeles Times.

By the fall, while his disciplinary case was still ongoing, Gohill was allowed to resume classes. But as his attorney and spokesperson Max Szabo says in a release, campus police had confiscated Gohill’s laptop, camera, class notes, and more, and he had to take two classes “incomplete” last spring as a result, also turning in two final papers without his laptop or class notes. Those belongings still have not been returned to him.

On Wednesday, Stanford cleared Gohill of any disciplinary action, as the Chronicle was first to report. And Szabo says this was a surprise to Gohill, as the university had not reached out to him yet.

Still, the criminal case remains in the hands of the Santa Clara County DA’s office, and Stanford has not renegged on its position regarding those charges. Still, no charges have been filed against any of the protesters.

“Stanford correctly declined to pursue disciplinary charges against Dilan, so naturally we’re shocked that the University is standing by their absurd statement calling for his criminal prosecution,” Szabo said in a statement. “Declining to pursue lesser disciplinary charges while advocating for criminal charges is not only inconsistent, it suggests Stanford University is more interested in publicly hanging a journalist who reported something they didn’t like than they are in reaching the correct outcome.”

As the Columbia Journalism Review noted, 46 students were arrested for a similar campus building occupation at Columbia last spring, but Manhattan prosecutors dropped the charges against them less than two months later.

Previously: Protesters Take Over Office of Stanford President, 13 Arrested

Photo: Robert Gareth

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is pictured at President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.

 Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“In the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes. Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country.”

JAKE JOHNSON

Jan 22, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump posed in a garbage truck and performed a staged shift at a McDonald’s as he postured as a champion of the working class.

But Trump “ignored virtually every important issue facing the working families of this country” during his inaugural address, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted Tuesday in video remarks recorded after he attended the event, which was packed with prominent billionaires and corporate executives—some of whom the president has chosen to serve in his Cabinet.

“How crazy is that? Our healthcare system is dysfunctional and it’s wildly expensive,” said Sanders. “Not one word from Trump about how he is going to address the healthcare crisis. We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs—sometimes 10 times more than the people in other countries, and one out of four Americans are unable to afford the prescriptions that their doctors prescribe. Not one word in his speech on the high cost of prescription drugs.”

“We have 800,000 Americans who are homeless and millions and millions of people spending 50 or 60% of their limited income on housing. We have a major housing crisis in America, everybody knows it—and Trump in his inaugural address did not devote one word to it,” Sanders continued. “Today in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had… but Trump had nothing to say, not one word, about the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else.”

Watch Sanders’ full remarks:

Upon taking office, Trump immediately launched sweeping attacks on immigrant families, the environment, and the federal workforce, with more expected in the near future.

Trump also rolled back a Biden executive order aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Sanders said that “in the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes.”

“Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country, and are in fact widely supported by the American people,” said Sanders, pointing to broad backing for guaranteeing healthcare to all as a right, slashing drug prices, tackling the housing crisis, raising the long-stagnant federal minimum wage, and taking bold action against the climate emergency.

“No matter how many executive orders he signs and no matter how many absurd statements he makes, our goal remains the same,” the senator added. “We have got to educate, we have got to organize, we have got to put pressure on Congress to do the right things.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JAKE JOHNSON

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

UC Berkeley • Oct 5, 2024 This is a Weinstock Lecture on the Morals of Trade Oil and gas are the most traded commodities on the planet; they are also the chief causes of the most grievous harm our species has yet faced, the burgeoning climate crisis. This lecture will examine how the export of hydrocarbons, in particular, has become an enormous threat to efforts to rein in greenhouse gasses, and it will examine in particular the role that America–the world’s biggest exporter of gas–plays in this ongoing catastrophe. And it will examine the role that non-tradeable commodities–sunshine and wind–might play in easing this crisis.

AMERICAS

Billionaire former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that his foundation would fund the UN climate change agency after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement. Bloomberg’s pledge will cover the 22 percent of its $96.5 million budget previously provided by the US for 2024-2025.

Issued on: 23/01/2025 – France24.com

By: NEWS WIRES

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that his foundation will step in to fund the UN climate change body after President Donald Trump declared the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement for the second time.

Bloomberg’s intervention aims to ensure the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) remains fully funded despite the United States halting its contributions.

The United States typically provides 22 percent of the UNFCCC secretariat’s budget, with the body’s operating costs for 2024-2025 projected at 88.4 million euros ($96.5 million).

“From 2017 to 2020, during a period of federal inaction, cities, states, businesses, and the public rose to the challenge to uphold our nation’s commitments — and now, we are ready to do it again,” Bloomberg, who serves as the UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, said in a statement.

This marks the second time Bloomberg has stepped in to fill the gap left by US federal disengagement.

In 2017, following the Trump administration’s first withdrawal from the Paris accord, Bloomberg pledged up to $15 million to support the UNFCCC.

He also launched “America’s Pledge,” an initiative to track and report US non-federal climate commitments, ensuring the world could monitor US progress as if it were still a fully committed party to the Paris Agreement.

Bloomberg reiterated his commitment to upholding US reporting obligations this time as well.

“Contributions like this are vital in enabling the UN Climate Change secretariat to support countries in fulfilling their commitments under the Paris Agreement and advancing a low-emission, resilient, and safer future for all,” said UN climate chief Simon Stiell.

(AFP)

By Molly Burke

Jan 20, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)

Lina Pritchard, center, claps after the national anthem at a GOP inauguration watch party at Harry’s Bar in San Francisco on Monday. Benjamin Fanjoy/Special to the Chronicle

San Francisco Republicans spent Monday morning whooping and applauding in Harry’s Bar on Fillmore Street, celebrating the return to office of President Donald Trump.

More than 100 people gathered at the bar for breakfast, coffee and, for some, cocktails as Trump’s inauguration took place.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=faPXEHS5DoM%3Fsi%3D33n4DK0yso0UnjEW

Philip Wing, a lifelong San Franciscan who lives in the Sunset, wore a shirt expressing a sentiment many of the attendees echoed: “Proud to be the Elephant in the room.” With more than 80% of the city’s votes going to the Democratic ticket, and just over 15.5% of voters supported Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Republicans are vastly outnumbered in San Francisco.

“Here, Republicans often feel in the midst of another world,” Bill Jackson, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, said. “Today’s energizing because there is a change in administration that we’ve been looking forward to.”

Jackson said that the inauguration party at Harry’s was likely one of the few places in the city celebrating Trump’s return to power. He, like many other attendees, was hopeful that deportations and tighter restrictions at the border would quickly be implemented.

Jackson also emphasized that the cultural shifts to the right could be felt in San Francisco.

“Even here, I’ve been in touch with leaders in the PTA and schools here who are thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll just dial back a little bit on maybe we’ve gone too far with certain kinds of DEI or certain kinds of language,’” Jackson said. “I think that the cultural shift is impacting a wide range of people here in San Francisco, and that’s going to be important.”

Terry Carpenter, a veteran and general contractor living in Noe Valley, watched the inauguration from a barstool. He came because Jackson, his neighbor, had invited him after realizing they were both Republicans.

Carpenter is typically more concerned with state and local issues, he said, but hopes that Trump will take action on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

While Carpenter typically thinks that Trump is “more bark than bite,” he hopes that the president won’t go too far in deporting all immigrants who came into the country without authorization.

“Our country relies on immigrants a lot. And then you start deporting all of them, what are we left with?” Carpenter said. “We’re left with a bunch of lazy, lazy Americans.”

Stricter action on immigration also brought Nick Berg into the San Francisco GOP. Berg, a newly elected delegate in the party, was not a Republican until two years ago. He said that his involvement in the campaign to recall former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin brought him into politics.

Berg works in property management, and he believes that more law enforcement involved in immigration enforcement could stop the flow of fentanyl to San Francisco. While he supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he still thinks Trump will be helpful in San Francisco.

Berg came in as a delegate to the S.F. GOP as part of a broader center shift. He’s hopeful that the group can begin to mount a more substantial role as an opposition party to Democratic rule in the city.

The Republican is also excited to see deregulation for businesses from Trump, as well as what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy do under the Department of Government Efficiency.

Jennifer Yan, another new delegate, also got into politics through the Boudin recall. She said that continued concern over public safety led to her involvement in pushing to pass Proposition 36 this fall.

She said voters are concerned about education, crime and regulations on businesses, all of which contributed to their support of Trump.

“His election probably represents voter frustration,” Yan said.

Carpenter is also frustrated with local politics, but curious to see what will happen with Mayor Daniel Lurie, his second choice in November. The Nebraska native doesn’t mince words over state politics and Gov. Gavin Newsom, though, calling him a “hypocrite.”

“With Trump and Newsom, I’m excited about watching those two clowns fight. It’s more of a comedy show,” Carpenter said. “I just think Newsom’s a flat-out idiot. I can’t wait for him to go because he is destroying this state on the daily.”

Jackson, who works as an education consultant, said that while sanctuary state and city policies could insulate San Franciscans from changes on the federal level, he’s hopeful that San Francisco’s leaders take a middle ground stance, taking part in “what’s good about Trump and his administration.”

Jackson hopes that leaders “take advantage of Trump and use him as cover” to enact “common sense policies.”

As the inauguration ceremony began Monday morning, attendees grumbled about the televisions being tuned to CBS News, then applauded the switch to Fox News. When a reporter on TV said that former President Joe Biden had pardoned family members in a final act, one person exclaimed to another, “Are you kidding me?”

As Trump spoke, eyes were glued to the blaring TVs, and cheers erupted for his promises to turn toward fossil fuels and away from electric vehicle promotion, and to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as his declaration that the country would only recognize two genders.

Carpenter, who was excited to see the change in administration, said that he thinks often people make assumptions about his political positions because of his affiliations with the Republican Party. But he said he breaks from conservative stances on reproductive rights because he said he doesn’t want any men telling women what to do with their bodies.

“We all are so divided right now. San Francisco is in a bubble,” Carpenter said. “Being a Republican, I get put into a box a lot.”

Carpenter left the bar impressed with Trump’s speech. He thought that while Trump was “a deer in the headlights” during his first term, he was more prepared to take action in this second term. Carpenter said he thought the president was less rambling and more angry in his speech.

“He seemed like he was set and ready to attack the problems at hand,” Carpenter said. “It wasn’t Trump from the first presidency. It was just day and night.”

Reach Molly Burke (she/her): molly.burke@hearst.com; Bluesky: @mollyburke.bsky.social

Jan 20, 2025