Column: California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra: ‘We have a right to say to the federal government, “Hands off”’

Longtime Democratic congressman Xavier Becerra has come home to California – and to a battle, one at least as big as any he’s fought in Washington.  He was Gov. Jerry Brown’s surprise appointment to fill the job of California attorney general, after Kamala Harris left the post when she was elected a United States senator. California has been in President Trump’s crosshairs. He told Fox News that “California in many ways is out of control,” and that defunding “sanctuary cities” could be a “weapon” to bring them to heel.  He lost the state to Hillary Clinton by more than 4 million votes – many of which he claims, wrongly, were cast illegally. His immigration policies could restore widespread workplace sweeps. All of this has generated new states’-rights thinking, very different from the one more than half a century ago, and as the chief lawyer for the nation’s biggest state, Becerra is at its forefront.

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