Governor Newsom Celebrates 250 Years of American Independence

250 years ago, 56 men in Philadelphia signed their names to one of the most radical sentences ever written. That governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I'll repeat that again, from the consent of the governed. That clause was treason. It was a line that terrified every monarchy in Europe.

It was the line that made America possible. And today on this Independence Day, the radical idea behind that clause, it's again under threat from one man who exhibits the the very behaviors our founding fathers fought against. A corrupt and unstable president is forcing us to ask a once unimaginable question. Do we still have a government that belongs to the people? Strip it all down and what separates a democracy from a monarchy from a dictatorship is the fundamental right to vote.

Lose that and you lose everything. Which is why on America's 250th birthday, we need a declaration of election independence. Freedom from election manipulators and deniers. Freedom from the militarization of election day. Freedom from the fear of imprisonment if you don't go along with Trump's schemes.

In a few months, the American people will go to the polls and Donald Trump, he knows exactly what's coming. He knows that Congress, accountable to the people, will put an end to the lies, to the corruption, to the sale of this government to the highest bidder. And because he knows that, he's afraid. Afraid for himself. He doesn't care about you.

He doesn't care about America. He hardly cares about his own political party. A man like Trump does not lose gracefully. He grabs every lever of power within reach. He cheats.

He lies. He steals to hold on. And we don't have to guess whether he'll try it again. He's already done it. We all watched 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 results. At the same time, attorneys connected to his campaign organized slates of fake electors. Private citizens aligned with Trump falsely declared themselves the duly elected representatives 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, Donald Trump sent a violent mob to storm the capital, to smash windows, to beat down police officers.

One of the darkest days in our nation's history. And it didn't stop there. We watched a coordinated campaign to install loyalists in county election offices across this country. We watched the United States Department of Justice illegally seek sensitive voter information in at least 30 states. Right here in California, we watched.

We watched a a mega sheriff seize hundreds of thousands of ballots in defiance of state law, in defiance of every prohibition that protects ballot security. And we watched Donald Trump illegally seize control of Californians' own National Guard and march our soldiers in the streets of Los Angeles against the will of the state, against the law, against everything those uniforms are supposed to stand for. Hear me clearly. That was a test run, a rehearsal. He's measuring how far he can go and who would dare stop him.

Certainly not our Supreme Court. Not with the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, the outright hostility to equal representation, particularly for black Americans, the slicing and dicing of our congressional districts. There's no warning, no warning loud enough, no alarm sharp enough to match what is happening in this country right now, but we are not powerless. In the very Constitution that Donald Trump wants to shred, we find the tools of our own defense. States' rights, direct democracy, the franchise guaranteed to all people.

We have agency. We can shape the future. We need to stand up and stand firm. I'm proud of my home state of California because just last November we did just that. We fought back and we won.

The voters here stood up to Trump by drawing new congressional maps, a direct response to his attempt to rig the election before even one vote was cast. We stood up. We stood up to Trump's twisted logic that an election somehow is legitimate only when he wins it. Let me speak directly to anyone considering helping President 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.

Doesn't matter who gave the order. In this state, our state, our vote, it's sacred. Our polling places will be free of intimidation. Our counting will be open, honest, and complete. And Californians will use every power, 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 moving forward new legislation that would make it a felony to seize ballots before the vote has been certified by state and county officials. We will not be his victims. We will be the wall he cannot get past because we believe that once an election is decided, the winner governs for everyone. That's the architecture of American liberty. Donald Trump, he doesn't believe in that architecture.

He works for one man. What more evidence do you need? That one man has added more than $4 billion to his personal fortune while sitting in what is supposed to be a public trust. He told you that he was going to drain the swamp. He didn't drain the swamp, he gave it a presidential suite with gold leaf.

This is a corruption story. This is a heist. This is corruption with a flag pin. This is one man trying to do to our American self-government what no king and no foreign power has ever managed to do. And the question on this anniversary is whether we will let him.

What is happening with Donald Trump? It 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 every time this country's answer has been the same.

We expand the promise. We do not abandon it. 250 years ago, there was a group of farmers, printers, of shopkeepers. They looked at the most powerful empire on Earth and refused to kneel. They faced certain death if they failed.

But what they did was an idea. That's what they had. Ordinary people with an idea that believed that they were fit to govern themselves. That's the miracle of America. At times in our history we may have been wrong.

Sometimes we've been cruel. And we've fallen short of our own words, but we have never stopped reaching for that idea every generation. Every generation that promise carried down the road. Seneca carried it. Selma carried it.

And now it's in our hands. That's the spirit that lives in every American who still believes their voice counts, who acts like it. Our freedom is guarded by you. When you show up, when you vote, when you participate, when you rise up and you refuse generation after generation to let go of the wheel. So, let's keep our democracy.

Let's prove one more time that this is a government of the people. Happy Independence Day. Now, let's go defend it.