Trump to visit California, the U.S. economic engine

President makes his first visit to state he lost by 2-to-1 margin.

Donald Trump is headed to the heart of “the resistance” — California, a state that remains the anchor of the U.S. economy even as it has become the forefront of opposition to his presidency.

For the first time since taking office nearly 14 months ago, the president will travel Tuesday to the nation’s most populous state. Trump lost California by a two-to-one margin in 2016, worse than any modern Republican presidential nominee, and the state’s political leaders have since led the nation in challenging Trump’s policies on immigration, health care and the environment.

The state’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, suggested Trump visit a railway construction site during his trip instead of prototypes for a barrier along the Mexican border to keep immigrants out, saying the state’s focus is “on building bridges, not walls.”

Trump has responded in kind, with lawsuits, threats to cut off federal funding and by largely ignoring what would be the world’s sixth-largest economy if California were its own country, one that has consistently outperformed the rest of the U.S. in recent years.

“Washington wants to abandon part of America based on politics,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a likely candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. “Just as I would expect a Democratic president to pay attention to the reddest parts of the country, I expect a Republican president to pay attention to the parts that didn’t vote for him.”

Trump will make the roughly five-hour flight to California and back for a visit that likely won’t exceed 24 hours. He plans to headline a fundraiser in Los Angeles on Tuesday, then review eight prototypes for his promised Mexican border wall near San Diego on Wednesday.

He isn’t expected to intersect with any of the many California Democrats he treats as political scapegoats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi or Rep. Maxine Waters, a black woman who has called for his impeachment, whom he ridiculed as having “very low IQ” at a campaign rally over the weekend.

No president since Franklin Roosevelt has waited so long since his inauguration to visit the nation’s largest state, a fact not lost on California’s leaders.

Brown sent a letter to the White House on Monday imploring Trump to make time in his trip to visit construction sites for the nation’s first true high-speed rail line — a project that Brown suggested fits squarely within Trump’s promised infrastructure development plan.

“In California, we are focusing on building bridges, not walls,” Brown wrote, sharing with the president the motto that he often uses to differentiate his policies from Trump’s.

California’s economy has outpaced the nation’s since 2012, thanks to the technology industry and a resurgent real estate market. By many key measures — personal income, high-wage jobs and home prices — California has seen greater increases than the national average.

But the president has shown far more interest in California’s immigration policies than in its economic development.

The Justice Department is suing the state for laws that block cities and employers from assisting federal agents seeking to deport undocumented immigrants. In February, Trump suggested he would pull immigration enforcement agents from the state altogether — “you’d be inundated; you would see crime like you’ve never seen crime in this country,” he said — and declared in a tweet that he wouldn’t build a section of border wall he said the state’s leaders had requested until his entire proposed barrier is funded.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to Sacramento last week to announce the lawsuit, which challenges three California laws passed last year limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. California’s critics say its leaders have created a “sanctuary state” for undocumented immigrants.

“I can’t sit by idly while the lawful authorities of federal officers are being blocked by a legislative action of politicians,” Sessions said.

Brown responded that the administration was “basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy.”

It’s only the latest legal battle between California and the Trump administration.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who until last year represented downtown Los Angeles in the House for more than two decades, has filed 28 lawsuits against the Trump administration. He’s fought every version of the administration’s travel ban. He sued to block Trump from ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation. He’s also sued to prevent construction of the border wall.