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In its first hundred days, through a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has reimagined this country’s social contract with its citizens.

The administration pledges more opportunities and fewer guarantees, less forgiveness and more consequences. Its 139 executive orders issued since Jan. 20 form an outline of American life as imagined by its most conservative residents, concentrating power in a unitary executive who can force changes as transformative as the New Deal.

The deluge means California, usually the state suing to advance a progressive agenda, now finds itself fighting in court to preserve the status quo – playing defense, not offense. Instead of arguing for higher vehicle emissions standards or broadening the definition of a waterway, the state has filed or joined 16 lawsuits against the Trump administration since Jan. 20 on issues ranging from preserving birthright citizenship to restoring billions of dollars in health and medical grants.

That effort continued on Tuesday with a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s extensive cuts to AmeriCorps.

“We’ve had plenty of instances of California needing to play defense, going back to the Reagan administration,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. “I think what’s different from the first term is qualitatively, how much of a disregard they have for the Constitution and the law.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta, who took office in 2021, said the difference between the first and second Trump administrations has been the speed and pure number of executive orders filed early in his tenure.

“The comparison with Trump 1.0 shows that it is high volume, high speed (this time),” Bonta said. “We’ve brought a lawsuit more than once a week in the first hundred days, and during Trump 1.0 there were about 120 lawsuits over four years.

“We’re gonna hit around 100 at this rate in two years, so it’s almost double the pace.”

States and organizations challenging Trump in his first term won close to 70% of their legal battles, albeit a number of them were abandoned when Trump left office in 2021. That encompassed 123 lawsuits over four years, at a cost of about $10 million per year. This time around, state legislators set aside $50 million to cover the state’s legal bills.

Bonta said he expects the pace of the lawsuits to continue.

“Any time and every time the Trump administration breaks the law, we will take them to court,” Bonta said. “It’s very not normal and also not acceptable that we have an administration that so blatantly, brazenly, frequently and consistently breaks the law.”

The verbs used in the executive orders promise to “unleash,” “restore” and “reform” various elements of American life, from oil and gas rights to dominion over the ocean. One order targets “the Obama-Biden war on showers.” But the most far-reaching executive orders are the ones in California’s sights, including tariffs, birthright citizenship and voting rights.

Those at the forefront of conservative legal theory find the executive orders to be a vindication of a textualist, originalist read of the Constitution and an end to the “administrative state” in which regulators and bureaucrats are politically and legally insulated from the decisions they make.

Conservatives celebrate Trump’s strategy

One of the earliest defenses of the Trump administration’s legal strategy was delivered by Catholic University of America law professor J. Joel Alicea at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecture in March.

“Over the last three months, we have seen President Trump directly challenge the delegation of power by Congress to administrative agencies and the insulation of power from presidential supervision,” Alicea said. “Contrary to the press’s depiction of such actions, they are hopeful developments for the rule of law.”

The stakes are high, Alicea said, and the opportunity for constitutional originalists is now, after more than a century of progressivism.

“It required two progressive presidents of extraordinary determination and political skill — Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — to create the administrative state and impose a progressive constitutional and political theory on our structure of government,” Alicea said. “It stands to reason that it will require another president of extraordinary determination and political skill to undo what his predecessors accomplished.”

The presidential administration California is fighting is not the one the state’s lawyers first faced off with in 2017. This time, the Trump administration came better prepared, worked faster and had a more concrete vision for a legal framework, Chemerinsky said.

“I think that they were so much better prepared,” Chemerinsky said. “And they really had the flood-the-zone mentality.”

The difference between the first and second Trump administration’s legal strategy is the 2025 version’s contempt for due process and the rule of law, Chemerinsky said.

“He didn’t try to end birthright citizenship in his first term,” Chemerinsky said. “He didn’t try to put people in a prison in El Salvador in his first term, he didn’t claim the ability to refuse to spend money appropriated by federal statute in his first term, he didn’t claim that he could fire anyone in the executive branch, even if there’s a statute limiting it.

“He’s taking executive power so much further than the first term, than any president ever has.”

Where will U.S. Supreme Court draw the line?

In its lawsuit against the Trump administration over its order that voters provide proof of citizenship, California’s attorneys alleged that the executive order interferes with the state’s right to govern itself and usurps Congress’s power to legislate.

“It bears emphasizing: the President has no power to do any of this,” the lawsuit asserts. “Neither the Constitution nor Congress has authorized the President to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements or to modify State mail-ballot procedures.”

Much of the fight over that order and the others challenged by California will take place under the shadow of a U.S. Supreme Court that has consistently voted 6-3 to uphold elements of the Trump agenda.

“I think that the (Supreme Court) ultimately is gonna rule in favor of Trump’s ability to fire members of agencies,” Chemerinsky said. “I think that there’s others that Trump has done, like end birthright citizenship, put people in prison in El Salvador, where I don’t think he’s likely to succeed.”

Chemerinsky said he’s not sure where the Supreme Court could or would draw a line in the sand.

“I would’ve thought the line would be taking people, putting them in El Salvador and claiming that no court could provide release,” Chemerinsky said. “I still think that’s going to be the red line, but I don’t think it’s gonna be unanimous.”