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In an essay accompanying this speech. Governor Newsom wrote:
Two hundred and fifty years ago, in Philadelphia, 56 men adopted one of the most radical sentences ever written: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That clause was treason. It was the line that made monarchy tremble, and made America possible.
Today, on this Independence Day, the radical idea behind that clause is under threat from one man who embodies the very instincts our Founding Fathers fought against. Our corrupt and unstable President is forcing us to ask a once-unimaginable question: Do we still have a government that belongs to the people?
The core of our democracy, the thing that separates us from a monarchy or a dictatorship, is the fundamental right to vote. If we lose that, we lose everything.
That’s why, on America’s 250th birthday, we need a declaration of election independence — a proclamation of freedom from the manipulators and deniers, from the threat of imprisonment for refusing to go along with Trump’s schemes.
In a few months, the American people will go to the polls, and President Trump knows what’s coming. He knows that a Congress accountable to the people will put an end to the lies, the corruption, and the sale of this government to the highest bidder. And, because he knows that, he is afraid for himself. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about America, and he hardly cares about his own political party.
A man like Trump does not lose gracefully. He grabs every lever of power within reach, cheats, lies, and steals to hold on.
We don’t have to guess whether he’ll try again. He’s already done it. In the weeks after the 2020 election, Donald Trump picked up the phone and asked Georgia’s Secretary of State to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the result. At the same time, attorneys connected to his campaign organized slates of fake electors. Private citizens aligned with Trump falsely declared themselves the duly appointed electors of their states. They tried to hand Congress a fraudulent set of results to count on January 6th.
And on that shameful day, as Congress gathered to certify the peaceful transfer of power, Trump sent a violent mob to storm the Capitol to smash windows, to beat police officers, to threaten death to members of Congress and his own Vice President. It was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history, but it didn’t stop there.
We watched a coordinated campaign install loyalists in county election offices across this country. We watched the U.S. Department of Justice seek sensitive voter information in at least 30 states. Right here in California, we watched a MAGA sheriff seize hundreds of thousands of ballots in defiance of state law that protects ballot security.
And we watched Trump seize control of California’s own National Guard and march our soldiers in the streets of Los Angeles against the will of this state, against the law, against everything those uniforms are supposed to stand for. Hear me clearly: that was a test run, a rehearsal. He was seeing how far he could go and who would dare to stop him.
We know the U.S. Supreme Court and MAGA Republicans won’t stand in the way, not after the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, the outright hostility to equal representation, particularly for Black Americans, and the slicing and dicing of Congressional districts.
There is no warning loud enough to match what is happening to this country right now. But we’re not powerless. The Constitution that Trump is trying to shred gives us the tools to defend ourselves: direct democracy, the franchise guaranteed to all people. We can shape the future, but we need to stand up and stand firm.
I’m proud of my home state of California, because last November, we did just that. We fought back, and we won. With Proposition 50, the people here stood up to Trump by voting new Congressional maps into place, a direct response to his attempt to rig the election before even a single vote was cast. We stood up to Trump’s twisted logic that an election is legitimate only when he wins it.
In California, we have a message for anyone considering helping Trump interfere with our election or our count. If you violate California’s laws, if you interfere with our voters, tamper with our ballots, or meddle in our election, you will be prosecuted. It does not matter who gave the order. In this state, our vote is sacred. Our polling places will be free of intimidation. Our counting will be open, honest, and complete.
And California will use every power it has — every lawyer, every law, every ounce of will — to defend our democracy against any illegal order this president dares to issue. That’s why I’m working with the Legislature on new legislation in California that would make it a felony to seize ballots before the vote has been certified by state and county officials. We will be the wall he cannot get past, because we believe that once an election is decided, the winner governs for everyone.
That is the architecture of American liberty. Trump does not believe in that architecture. He works for himself. He has added more than $4 billion to his personal fortune while sitting in what is supposed to be a public trust. He told you he was going to drain the swamp, but he gave it a presidential suite. He is degrading the concept of American self-government in a way that no king and no foreign power has ever managed to do.
The question on this anniversary is whether we let them. What is happening with Trump is unprecedented, but this is not the first time our country has been tested this way. Women marched by the thousands and chained themselves to fences for the right to vote, a right secured only 106 years ago. Americans marched, sat at lunch counters, walked through schoolhouse doors, faced lynchings and beatings, fighting for equal citizenship and the right of Black Americans to vote without interference and without intimidation.
Every single time, this country’s answer has been the same: We expand the promise. Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of farmers, printers, doctors, lawyers, and merchants looked at the most powerful empire on earth and refused to kneel. They faced certain death if they failed. But what they had was an idea that ordinary people are fit to govern themselves. At times in our history, we have been wrong, we have been cruel, and we have fallen short of our own words, but we have never stopped reaching for that idea. Every generation has taken that promise and carried it down the road.
That is the spirit that lives in every American who still believes their voice counts, and who acts like it. You guard our freedom when you show up, when you vote, when you participate, when you rise and refuse to let go of the wheel. So let us keep our democracy. Let us prove once more that this is a government of the people.
Happy Independence Day. Now let’s defend it.
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