States' rights? 3 key ways a Trump administration could affect California

LONE PINE, CA - MAY 09: The Los Angeles Aqueduct carries water from the snowcapped Sierra Nevada Mountains, which carry less snow than normal, to major urban areas of southern California on May 9, 2008 near Lone Pine, California. Urgent calls for California residents to conserve water have grown in the wake of the final Sierras snow survey of the season indicating a snow depth and water content at only 67 percent of normal levels. The Sierra snowpack is vital to California water supplies and officials are preparing plans for mandatory water conservation. In Southern California, the Metropolitan Water District, cut deliveries to farmers by nearly a third and growers in Fresno and Kings counties have not planted about 200,000 acres of crops, a third of the land irrigated by Westlands Water District. Many farmers are now selling their government-subsidized water for profit instead of using it to plant crops. Much of the California water supply comes from the Colorado River where a continuing eight-year drought has lowered water storage to roughly half of capacity. Dry conditions across the West have already doubled the wildfires this year causing fire officials to brace for a possible repeat of the devastating 2007 southern California wildfire season. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Is California headed for a clash with president-elect Donald Trump? Last week voters pushed forward a broad progressive agenda, from legalizing recreational marijuana to strengthening gun control.

Is California headed for a clash with President-elect Donald Trump? Last week voters pushed forward a broad progressive agenda, from legalizing recreational marijuana to strengthening gun control.

And they chose Hillary Clinton over Trump by nearly 30 points.

The state is also home to the most ambitious climate change plan in the nation while Trump has rejected the science on climate change and called it a" hoax" to benefit China.

California could emerge as a counterweight to a Trump administration's aggressive push to the political right, said Larry Gerston, professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University – and that resistance could draw from what has in recent years been seen as a conservative argument: states rights.

"It could come from California and other states that claim that the federal government is encroaching on California rights," said Gerston.

Here are three key issues of importance to California and how a Trump administration could approach them, according to Gerston.

Climate change. "Number one, Trump says he supports the Keystone XL Pipeline. He also wants to roll back President Obama's curbs on coal and emissions from coal plants. California has banned coal from coming into the state, so really the question here is not so much just Trump, but Trump and Congress and whether in fact they'll get together and pass legislation that undoes California, or at least supersedes California, in terms of some of our cap and trade programs, [and] allows for fracking and drilling on federal lands. All of these things could have an impact on California."

Immigration. "Certainly on immigration, it would seem to me [that] the federal government has always laid a strong claim to managing who comes in and who leaves this country. In that area, I would think that the federal government under Trump would have as much power as possible."

Water and the drought. "In terms of federal water sources here in the state we have a whole pipeline, a canal that goes north to south, that's under federal control. We have federal dams. And [federal agencies] can decide literally how much water goes where. So far the federal government has been pretty understanding, as far as balancing farmers needs with the needs of urban areas and environment areas. But the Trump Administration may take a very different lead on that."

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