On Tuesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta was at the West Bluff picnic area just north of Crissy Field, tallying his wins against President Donald J. Trump. Bonta explained to the assembled members of the press how his office has successfully used the courts to curb the worst of the administration’s excesses.
The occasion for the announcement was the first full year of Trump’s second term, which has seen the president double-down on his “sweeping, often illegal campaign to remake America,” Bonta said. A cold wind blew Bonta’s usually neat salt and pepper hair into whipping strands; his comments were periodically punctuated by a sea lion’s bark.
“We have been successful in our efforts pushing back against Trump’s repeated lawlessness,” Bonta, who was flanked by supporters who represented the wins, including Dr. Gina Fromer, the new CEO at GLIDE, told a small crowd made up of more TV cameras than people. “More than once, the Trump administration has thrown in the towel, waved the white flag, and accepted defeat.”
He added: “If Trump wasn’t used to losing in court before, he sure is now.”
With his easy smile and near perfect teeth, Bonta cuts a dashing figure. He also has the kind of biography and career that has prepared him for this fight. Born in Quezon City, Philippines, he went to college at Yale, studied at Oxford for a year, and returned to Yale for law school. He’s also a former deputy city attorney in San Francisco and state assemblyman.
On Monday, he had numbers to back up his claims.
In the last year, Bonta said, California has sued Trump 54 times (more than once a week), winning 80 percent of the time. The litigation has produced 12 favorable final rulings, and 35 preliminary injunctions or other emergency orders. Half of those lawsuits have centered on restoring federal funding cuts; Bonta claims he’s returned $188 billion to California causes.
Bonta pointed to California ending Trump’s federalization of the National Guard, and other court decisions protecting birthright citizenship, blocking voter restrictions, and preserving AmeriCorps.
GLIDE’s Fromer also addressed the crowd, saying she correctly predicted that with Trump’s reelection, the lines for free meals that routinely wrap around the block from GLIDE’s doors would grow longer. (During the government shutdown, 112,000 San Franciscans lost SNAP benefits.) In October, Bonta joined a lawsuit (his 45th) and won a temporary order blocking Trump from withholding those essential benefits. This month, he was forced to ask the court to enforce the order. Another ruling is pending.
During the first days of the SNAP shutdown, GLIDE served a record number of free meals. According to Fromer, that record was broken this month when at a single lunch service at GLIDE fed more than 1,000 people. She cited estimates that due to H.R. 1, aka, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, by the end of next year 20,000 San Franciscans may lose SNAP benefits, and more than 25,000 residents stand to lose medical coverage.
“This is only the beginning,” Fromer said. “The next three years will be difficult.”
As convincing as the numbers and anecdotes were, the problem with Bonta’s optimism is that while he and other Democratic attorneys general may be winning in federal district court, Trump is winning more often in his appeals of those wins, usually in rulings by judges he appointed, often in his first term. According to an analysis by the New York Times, the Trump administration won 25 percent of the decisions coming from federal district court last year.
That figure jumps to 51 percent in appeals courts, and to 88 percent at the Supreme Court.
I raised that analysis at the press conference and Bonta responded by saying that many of the appeals courts rulings simply pause the lower district court rulings, where the litigation returns to and judges often have the final word. He pointed out that only a tiny fraction of cases get to the Supreme Court — and that even there, the justices “closed the door” on Trump using the National Guard as his personal police force.
As I listened to Bonta’s response, I noticed a bullet point on a poster his team had placed next to his podium suggesting that he was “Stopping the Militarization of American Cities.” I thought of the ongoing federal assault on Minneapolis and the point-blank shooting of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. I pressed Bonta further, suggesting that despite the court wins, it doesn’t seem like the litigation is able to keep pace with Trump’s agenda. An appeals court recently sided with Trump in the conflict there.
“He’s upping the ante with all sorts of things,” Bonta said, including his decision “not to prosecute, or at least not even investigate the killing, potentially murder, of Renee Good and instead to investigate Governor Walz and Mayor Frey.”
Bonta said that Trump is sticking to his playbook, Project 2025, and that AG’s are constantly preparing complaints and are ready to file them within minutes of the President’s next violation. In Minneapolis, Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the National Guard; attorneys are ready to respond should that happen.
“I understand that people are anxious and worried, and that they're scared about the future, but our democracy is resilient and strong. And it is definitely being stress tested by one man and his lawless agenda,” Bonta explained.
“He’ll try,” Bonta said, “and he will lose in court.”
