How Trump’s victory could hit home in Berkeley

Protesters gathered at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza in 2017 to protest an event being held by the Berkeley College Republicans featuring media personality Milo Yiannopoulos. File photo: Dan Lurie

As they digested the news of former President Donald Trump’s election victory, Berkeley leaders expressed concerns on how voters’ decision to restore Trump to power could impact the city through mass deportation of immigrants, rolling back environmental protections, attacks on transgender students and emboldening white supremacists.

“I believe there will be an unprecedented, broad and coordinated attack on our democracy and the rule of law, and on all the progress we’ve worked so hard to achieve,” councilmember Sophie Hahn, who’s leading the race to become Berkeley’s next mayor, wrote in a letter to the community Wednesday. “But this reality does not break my resolve to stand up and fight back.” 

Immigration

When he was elected in 2016, one of Trump’s first acts was to initiate a ban against travelers from seven largely Muslim countries; he briefly succeeded in ending a program protecting young immigrants from being deported — an act that threatened the future of undocumented UC Berkeley students.

During his first term in office, Trump promised to punish sanctuary cities like Berkeley that refuse to comply with immigration law. Berkeley could have lost up to $11.5 million in federal funds if he went through with his promise.

“We are still committed to being a sanctuary city, and during our transition out of office, we will be sure to relay that to the new administration,” said Stefan Elgstrand, assistant to Mayor Jesse Arreguín. “We are confident that whoever the new mayor is would want to continue that policy.”

Leading up to election day, Berkeley residents had posted online that Kamala Harris’ childhood home would be a gathering place if she won the presidency. Instead, the streets in front of the home were empty Tuesday night. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight Local

Trump’s 2024 campaign emphasized mass deportations and ending protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. 

Depending on their residency status — and if Trump also revives his push to limit legal immigration, including by refugees, foreign workers and international students — this could impact the 25,800 Berkeley residents who were born outside the United States, according to Data USA.

“We have to protect first and foremost the immigrants,” longtime East Bay civil rights lawyer Osha Neumann told Berkeleyside Wednesday.

The California Immigrant Policy Center, an immigrant rights advocacy group, has already led 15 scenario-planning exercises with hundreds of people from organizations across the state to prepare. Masih Fouladi, executive director of the group, said under Trump, immigrant rights groups would lobby to make sure state and local resources are not used to detain and deport people and that non-citizen residents continue to have access to health care and other public services, which the state has significantly expanded over the past decade.

Courtney McCausland, co-director of the immigration unit of the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley, said the center will be “doubling down on our commitment to robust and zealous representation of our clients in exercising their right to obtain the benefits and protections to which they are legally entitled.”

Also, the center is working “to train the next generation of lawyers to be vigilant against manipulations of the systems of the rule of law in the United States, and to recognize the limits of that system as it exists,” McCausland said.

White supremacists

Neumann said that to far-right groups like the Proud Boys, Berkeley symbolizes everything they oppose. 

In 2017, the year Trump took office, white supremacists staged  a rally supporting him in Civic Center Park. When leftist counter-protesters showed up to express their contempt for the president and his supporters, they were attacked by members of the Southern California-based Rise Above Movement. RAM members banded together and stomped, kicked and beat up people they identified as opponents, according to a ProPublica investigation. More than 20 people were arrested, both those on the far right as well as multiple far-left counter-protesters.

Civil rights lawyer Osha Neumann said he worried Berkeley “will be seen as the home base for all of the targets of the new Trump regime.” Credit: Kelly Sullivan

Two months earlier, just hours before right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was to speak at UC Berkeley, a band of black-masked Antifa protesters swept into Sproul Plaza. Over the next few hours, they threw metal barricades, smashed windows, lit a generator on fire, and directed pepper spray at attendees who spoke in favor of the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. The violence led Cal to cancel the speech.

In response, Trump threatened on social media to stop federally funding UC Berkeley. 

Neumann worried that in a second term, white supremacists will be further empowered and Berkeley “will be seen as the home base for all of the targets of the new Trump regime.”

“We have history when Berkeley has been invaded by Proud Boys and fascists — they claimed free speech and set up in the Civic Center Park and hit people,” he said. “We are going to have to depend on our own solidarity and come together to provide what the government is no longer providing.” 

Education

Trump, whose position on education has focused more on cultural ideology than on policies to improve education, has threatened to cut school funding to states, such as California, that protect transgender students and promote diversity, equity and inclusion programs in their schools. 

Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, worries that Trump will give tax cuts to the rich paid for by budget cuts in public education. “The president-elect’s commitment to cutting taxes for affluent Americans means there will be no new funding for public schools,” Fuller said. “Watch out for efforts to expand vouchers and tax credits for well-off parents who opt for private schools.”

A Trump presidency also could have a big impact on how educators teach and on whether they choose to stay in the profession. Trump has claimed teachers have been indoctrinating children with anti-American ideologies. His solution: Create a new credentialing agency to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.” 

He also wants to abolish teacher tenure and give preference in federal funding to states and school districts that support his efforts to do so. 

With an estimated 1 in 10 California children having an undocumented immigrant parent, Trump’s planned deportations would impact many Berkeley families and their children.

Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, fears that many of the families he works with will be terrified.

“What is sad is that today, children will come to Kidango, and some of them will be crying and scared that their parents or a close relative will be taken away from them,” Moore said. “This is what happened in 2016.”

Environment

During Trump’s four years in office, his administration officially rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules. The Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.

“While I wish the next administration would let states like California continue their climate leadership, past experience has shown that it prefers to go to war against our state on this and other issues that are important to working families,” City Councilmember Igor Tregub said in a text.

“I am grateful to our state leaders who are preparing plans to resist, fight, and win to retain our strong clean air, clean water and other climate justice protections. I stand ready to lock arms with our community, which determined a long time ago that we’re not going back,” Tregub said.

Watching election results at Yeti Sports Bar Tuesday night. Credit: Adahlia Cole

Another key issue arose when Berkeley adopted a landmark ban on natural gas in new homes and buildings in 2019, a move that started a climate change-driven effort in dozens of other cities and counties. 

Though the ban was touted as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve indoor air quality, Trump criticized the ban. Eventually, the ban was struck down in court. 

If a bill already passed by the Republican-controlled U.S. House amid the gas stove culture war were to become law, it could become even more difficult to regulate gas stoves.  

A note of hope

Like Neumann and Hahn, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said he was hopeful that local leaders can overcome challenges.

“As we await more election results, I recognize the fear and anger many people are feeling about the future of our country. California has shown that regardless of what happens on a federal level, we can be the leaders that this country and the world look up to,” Arreguin said in an emailed statement. “We can and must be trailblazers in advancing our democratic and progressive values, helping lift up people and focusing on what unites us.”  

“I recognize the fear and anger many people are feeling about the future of our country,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said. “We can and must be trailblazers in advancing our democratic and progressive values, helping lift up people and focusing on what unites us.” Credit: Kelly Sullivan

Adena Ishii, who is running second in the still-tight race for Berkeley mayor, quoted Kamala Harris’ concession speech on social media Wednesday: “This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves!”

Across state government, officials have been gaming out a response to “Trump-proof” California. Gov. Gavin Newsom and his budget team are developing a proposal for a disaster relief fund after the former president repeatedly threatened to withhold emergency aid for wildfire recovery from California because of its water policy.

“The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to be prepared, so we won’t be flat-footed,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose team has been working with advocacy organizations and attorneys general in other states on how they would answer another Trump administration. “We will fight as we did in the past if that scenario unfolds.”

During Trump’s first term, California sued more than 100 times over his rules and regulatory rollbacks. Bonta said his team has preemptively written briefs and tested arguments to challenge many of the policies they expect the former president to pursue over the next four years: passing a national abortion ban and restricting access to abortion medication; revoking California’s waiver to regulate its own automobile tailpipe emissions and overruling its commitment to transition to zero-emission vehicles; ending protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children; undermining the state’s extensive gun control laws, including for assault weapons, 3D-printed firearms and ghost guns; implementing voter identification requirements; and attacking civil rights for transgender youth.

“Unfortunately, it’s a long list,” Bonta said shortly before the election. “We are and have been for months developing strategies for all of those things.”

CalMatters and EdSource contributed reporting to this story.