The Hill: Leading California’s legal charge

Here are excerpts from a piece on California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s environmental work affecting California and the nation, ICYMI:

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) insists that he doesn’t have an ax to grind with the Trump administration, but he’s not afraid to give the president all he’s got when it comes to defending the environment.

“We’re not looking to pick a fight, but we’re ready for one,” Becerra says.

With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress in addition to the White House, much of the resistance to President Trump’s policies has come at the state level from Democratic attorneys general such as Becerra.

For the Golden State, that has meant 19 separate environmental lawsuits since Trump took office, including nine specifically aimed at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The legal onslaught against the administration, and specifically EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, has helped earn Becerra the reputation of an anti-Trump crusader.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Northern California before moving to Los Angeles and serving the state as a congressman for 24 years, says that California did not purposefully take the lead on many of the environmental suits, but he doesn’t apologize for them.

“Our lawsuits weren’t driven by a desire to be out there first, to challenge an action by the administration simply because they were doing an action. It was because we were protecting California and its people and our values,” he said. Which, he added, “ultimately protects the values and interests of people throughout the country.”

…

California’s first Hispanic attorney general was born when the state was grappling with the effects of intense smog pollution, and he remembers the major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. He said pushing to protect the state’s rights to keep stringent environmental rules is part of its DNA — and his own.

“I still submit to almost anyone that the greatest environmentalists in our country are poor folks. Poor folks are not just environmentalists by choice, but they are environmentalists by necessity,” Becerra said, nodding to his early life near farms. “Growing up it was not a choice, it was a necessity for me to be a good steward of the land and the water. Now as attorney general it just makes good sense and it is a necessity.”

Read the rest of the article here.