With the power and passion he put into his soccer goal kicks, CA Attorney General Rob Bonta has taken on the Trump Administration & Elon Musk, again and again, fighting for the Rule of Law.
Jan 16, 2026
(AG Rob Bonta on the Soccer Field upper photo; and, below, at Stanford Law School (r.) with the author.)
I first met California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta about one year ago at legal symposium held at Stanford University Law School. His opening comments riveted my attention, and made me glad this former Captain of Yale’s Ivy League championship Soccer Team, was leading our State’s team to lash the illegal actions of Donald Trump’s gang to the nearest goalpost for the world to witness.
Coming one month after Trump was inaugurated President for the second time, an emergency gathering of legal minds and activists was convened by California State Senator Josh Becker. It was called: “New Administration, New Legal Landscape: Navigating Emerging Legal Issues Between California and the Federal Government, ” a stultified Stanford Law School-like title which understated the urgency of the moment.
Bonta lived and breathed that urgency of our“sudden death” circumstances. He had been meticulously preparing for it since Election Day, when Trump defeated former California Attorney-General Kamala Harris for the Presidency, and our nation’s Rule of Law and system of justice were set on fire.
Fearlessly, Bonta jumped right into the fray, the way he did on the soccer field in college when he played soccer for the Yale Bulldogs, and as a semi-pro, reminding us that he ran the second biggest Justice Department in the entire country, with an annual budget of $1 billion. He was immediately building our confidence for the battle ahead, and I was motivated by his coaching style—having played soccer for my high school team, whose nickname was also “the Bulldogs.”
“We’ve been preparing for this for a while, “ the Attorney General calmly said. “We will fight for and maintain the Rule of Law.”
Bonta began by noting that, as an infant, he and his his parents, escaped from the totalitarian, kleptocratic, lawless regime of Ferdinand Marcos, who put the Philippines under martial law in 1972, the year Bonta was born in Quezon City. From birth, he knew how fleeting democracy could be. Bonta and his parents—both political activists—fled the Philippines to a United Farm Workers headquarters facility near Keene, California—Nuestra Senora Reina de laPaz. Shortly after that, they moved to Fair Oaks, near Sacramento, where Rob Bonta grew into a stellar soccer star, and went on to become his high school’s valedictorian. He stood in front of the packed Stanford Law School classroom, like a tenacious coach rallying his team.
“I made a promise, “Bonta told us, “that we’d take Trump to court when he broke the law…It is non-negotiable, that you have to follow the law.”
He noted that the California Department of Justice—which had taken Trump to court 120 times during the first Trump reign of lawlessness, winning 2/3’s of the cases—immediately challenged Trump’s illegal 2025 “repeal” by Executive Order of the Birthright Citizenship provision of the U.S. Constitution.
Under Bonta’s leaderhip, California became one of the earliest states’s to challenge the illegal actions of Elon Musk’s “DOGE” and its professed right to access the private data information of all Americans.
“Someone who didn’t receive one vote,” Bonta said, referring to Musk, “shouldn’t have access to the private records of Americans.”
“Everyone must do everything they can to enforcde the Rule of Law,” Bonta repeated. “Federal law does not ‘trump” all other laws. The 10th Amendment gives States specific rights.”
Bonta inspired the team in front of him to never give up, underscoring that class action suits and Amicus Briefs filed by organizations could be very helpful to protecting and preserving the rule of law.
He looked at all of us squarely:
“After all,” he said, “We ARE friggin’ California.”
As of this month, January, 2026, Bonta’s California Department of Justice has filed over 50 lawsuits against the second Trump Administration, winning some 80% of those cases. Those lawsuits have resulted in preserving approximately $168 billion in federal funding for California and our 40 million citizen.
The most recent legal victory by California’s DOJ ended the federal deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles by the Trump Administration.
This week (January 15, 2026), Cal Matters reporter Nigel Duara interviewed AG Bonta about the State of California’s ongoing battles with the Trump Administratio
In late December, 2025, the U.S, Supreme Court sided with the State of Illinois in its effort to stop Trump from deploying the National Guard to Chicago to ratchet-up it’s terrorizing of another “blue” city and state. The court rejected the same arguments used by the Trump Administration to federalize and deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles, when protests erupted there.
“The government has not carried its burden to show that (the law) permits the President to federalize the Guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois,” the unsigned order from the Supreme Court read.
The Trump Administration also withdrew its appeal of a federal court decision that the president could not keep the National Guard deployed in LA forever. That surrender was a clear victory for California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who had filed an amicus brief in the Illinois case.
“The law got developed in a way that will prevent what happened over the last six months from ever happening again,” Bonta said. “I think this door is closed to Trump.”
CalMatters: In terms of what California does next on this issue, is there anything that you all are doing in preparation for maybe (large-scale immigration raids) coming back, or perhaps an escalation in tactics like we’re seeing in Minnesota?
Bonta: We’re ready for anything. I think when you see incidents like we’re seeing in Minnesota, you have to assume that it could happen here in California.
You know, the Trump administration has made no bones about it. They are going after blue states and only blue states. And it’s political, it’s weaponization, it is partisan. They’re trying to own the libs and get the Dems. That’s their whole reason for being. And chief among them, the biggest state in the nation that has rejected Trump three times when he’s running, that sticks in his craw, he doesn’t like it.
CalMatters: In Los Angeles, I don’t recall them going door-to-door to, you know, to try and grab people like we’re seeing in Minnesota. Is this an escalation?
Bonta: I think they’re escalating. Minnesota shows it seems to be an escalation. I mean, there were some pieces that are the same, that are horrific and terrorizing and traumatizing and inappropriate, like removing license plates and being in a moving truck, pulling up to a Home Depot and having people run out of the back and all the profiling that was being done.
I think it’s an escalation, and they’re doing more. They’re really trying to hammer Minneapolis and Minnesota. It’s the home of the vice presidential candidate that ran against Trump, right? It’s the place where their racism is on full display with their attacks on Somalis.
CalMatters: What happened at the Supreme Court?
Bonta: The Supreme Court weighed in and basically said that the theory that the president had been operating on all along was completely unlawful and without foundation, truly a slap in the face and an embarrassing and devastating loss for Trump, who thinks he can always run to the Supreme Court and get what he wants.
And they followed the law, the law that we had argued always applied, and that there was no authority … to deploy the military, that the “regular forces” included the military forces. There was no analysis that they were unable to execute the law, and there was no authority for the military to be even executing any laws, given the Posse Comitatus Act (which prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force). So it was really a devastating and shocking loss for Trump.
CalMatters: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard in L.A. in June, but ruled differently six months later. The district judge’s rationale was that Trump couldn’t re-federalize troops indefinitely.
But does that indicate to you that if the material conditions on the ground in L.A. were to change, similar to what the Trump administration cited in June when they claimed protesters were committing violent acts against federal personnel and property, the Trump administration could authorize a new deployment? Is that your understanding, or am I wrong on that?
Bonta: I think you’re wrong, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to say, but let me just explain my thinking.
That case in L.A. in June was the very first one in the whole nation, and built into the exercise of authority of the federal administration here when it’s deploying the military is a great deal of deference. I think that deference was provided. It was the first case. There were mostly peaceful protests, but some violence, as you just mentioned.
It was the first time they were seeing what the Trump administration was doing here.
And then they saw it again in D.C. Then they saw it again in Portland, and they saw it again in Illinois. The judges saw what was happening, and they saw what’s being said, and saw the rationale, they saw how Trump said that Portland was a war zone when it was a peaceful city, they see how Trump says, ‘I’m going to bring the military in to do the very thing the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits, to enforce criminal law, because these blue cities are not cracking down on crime.’ Exactly what the military cannot do!
And so they saw what he was doing with the military and I think they got a sense of where this was really headed and what was happening here. … So now that the U.S. Supreme Court has said you make sure “regular forces” is military forces, you need to make a showing that all the military forces cannot stop the concrete block from being thrown, or stop the Molotov cocktail from being thrown – he’ll never be able to show that – then you can bring in the National Guard.
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Right on the heels of the Cal Matters interview, AG Bonta demanded that Elon Musk “cease and desist from creating and distributing on his XAI platform “deepfake, nonconsensual, intimate images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), noting that “the creation, distribution, publication and exhibition of Child Sexual Abuse Material is a crime.”
Earlier in the week, Bonta announced that his office was opening an investigation into the proliferation of nonconsensual, sexually explicit material produced using Musk’s Grok, an AI model developed by xAI, to facilitate the large-scale production of these images that are being used to harass women and girls acros the internet, including via Musk’s social media platform, X.
“This week, my office formally announced an investigation into the creation and spread of nonconsensual, sexually explicit material produced using Grok, an AI model developed by xAI. The avalanche of reports detailing this material — at times depicting women and children engaged in sexual activity — is shocking and, as my office has determined, potentially illegal,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Today, I sent xAI a cease and desist letter, demanding the company immediately stop the creation and distribution of deepfake, nonconsensual, intimate images and child sexual abuse material. The creation of this material is illegal. I fully expect xAI to immediately comply. California has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material.”
The actions detailed by the Attorney General are illegal under California law, including California Civil Code section 1708.86, California Penal Code sections 311 et seq. and 647(j)(4), and California Business & Professions Code section 17200. Those actions include:
- Creating, disclosing, or publicizing digitized sexually explicit material portraying the depicted individual when the depicted individual did not consent to its creation or disclosure or was a minor when the material was created.
- Facilitating or aiding and abetting the creation, disclosure, or publication of digitized sexually explicit material portraying the depicted individual when the depicted individual did not consent to its creation or disclosure or was a minor when the material was created.
- Creating, facilitating, or aiding and abetting the creation, distribution, or publication of any image, including but not limited to digitally altered or artificial intelligence-generated matter, that involves or depicts a person under 18 years of age or what appears to be a person under 18 years of age engaging in or simulating sexual conduct.
Rob Bonta’s tough, no nonsense enforcement of the law against the criminal, unconstitutional actions of the Trump Administration and the illegal activities of Elon Musk, both within and outside of government, should come as no surprise.
Anyone who escaped from one lawless, corrupt dictatorship is determined never to live under another, and to do everything in his power to uphold the Rule of Law, protect democracy and the citizens of California.
If you want to inform the California State Attorney General’s Office of another sexually offensive image you’ve spotted on xAI, or some other platform, or wish to report abuses by ICE or violations of citizens rights and immigrant rights, please Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov.