Politics

California speaker rejects national unity, promises to fight incoming Trump administration

California fight trump illegal immigration
Screengrab: Sacramento Bee

So much for accepting the results of November’s election.  On Monday, Breitbart.com reported that Anthony Rendon, Speaker of the California State Assembly, used Monday’s swearing-in ceremony of the California legislature to issue a call to arms against the federal government and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

According to Breitbart:

“Californians should be wary of the national calls for unity and healing,” Rendon (D-Paramount) said, according to the text of his remarks as prepared for delivery. “Unity must be separated from complicity. And we must be defiant whenever justice, fairness, and righteousness require.

“Californians do not need healing. We need to fight,” he declared.

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Rendon called the Trump administration a “major existential threat” on a par with the Second World War. He also repeated false charges against Stephen K. Bannon, the Executive Chair of Breitbart News (on leave) who was appointed CEO of the Trump campaign in August and has been named incoming White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor.

“White nationalists and anti-Semites have no business working in the White House,” Rendon said of Bannon.

Reuters added:

“Immigrants are a part of California’s history, our culture, and our society,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat from Los Angeles, responding to Trump’s calls to deport undocumented immigrants and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

“We are telling the next Administration and Congress: if you want to get to them, you have to go through us.”

California voted decisively for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election, choosing the former first lady over Trump by 28 percentage points.

Democrats hold two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature, and every statewide office. The most populous U.S. state, California has more than 2.7 million undocumented immigrants – about 7 percent of its 39 million population.

Brown’s nomination of Becerra last week positions the state to fight back against efforts to weaken progressive policies with a reliably progressive attorney general steeped in the ways of Washington.

The Sacramento Bee noted:

Members of both houses directly confronted Trump’s tough-on-immigration rhetoric, which has included calls to deport millions and block immigration by Muslims. Lawmakers passed a resolution that says “California stands unified in rejecting the politics of hatred and exclusion” and exhorts Trump “to not pursue mass deportation strategies that needlessly tear families apart, or target immigrants for deportation based on vague and unjustified criteria.”

“We have all heard the insults, we have all heard the lies, and we have all heard the threats,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, adding of an undocumented immigrant population that is the nation’s largest, “if you want to get to them, you have to go through us.”

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, opened his chamber’s business by accepting the election results but rebuffing Trump. He urged Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to “treat immigrant families and children humanely, with a modicum of dignity and respect.”

According to Reuters, the legislature passed resolutions demanding Trump renege on his promise to deport criminal illegals.  Lawmakers also introduced measures to protect illegal immigrants from the incoming administration.

Republicans, however, are not happy at all.

“Democrats stole a page out of President-Elect Trump’s campaign playbook and pushed a rhetorical, divisive agenda designed to inflame tensions many of us seek to soothe,” Reuters quoted GOP leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley.

“To throw down a gauntlet and say ‘here we go’ without ever having time to discuss this” is inappropriate, Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside, said, according to the Bee.

Here’s video, courtesy of the Sacramento Bee:

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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