Newsom Signs New Laws Targeting Election Interference And Outside Military Intervention In California.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed several high-profile legislative bills on Saturday to deter either electoral or military interference in California.

Much of the legislation seemed to be enacted with President Donald Trump and the upcoming November mid-term elections in mind.

“Donald Trump won’t stop until he can exert dictatorial control over your free vote and disenfranchise millions of people this November. California will stop him at every opportunity. We have no bigger task than fighting to protect the right to vote from interference and meddling – the future of democracy is on the line”, Newsom’s statement on the new electoral legislation read.

13 bills in total were passed. One such new law will make interference with the delivery or return of a mail-in ballot a felony.

Newsom’s legislation comes days after the supreme court rejected Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in voting before the mid-terms.

Trump had signed an executive order in March decreeing that the U.S. postal service keep a federally approved list of eligible voters and block mailed ballots from anyone not on the list. Critics argued that the order would have given federal, rather than state, officials ultimate electoral authority.

The supreme court upheld an injunction on Monday which stopped the rules from becoming law before the mid-terms. 31% of Americans, of which there were more registered Democrats than Republicans, voted by mail in the 2024 election, according to the States United Democracy Center.

The bill prohibiting external military intervention seemed equally targeted at Trump.

“At a time when the Trump administration is increasingly treating states as targets rather than partners, Senate Bill 1354 by Senator Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera) makes clear that California will not surrender its constitutional role, its values, or the rights of the nearly 40 million people who call this state home”, Newsom’s office wrote in relation to Bill 1354.

The bill, which is now law, will give the Californian Governor the ultimate authority to decide whether U.S. National Guard troops from outside of California are authorized “to perform military duty or law-enforcement functions”.

“Unfortunately, California is well aware of what it’s like to have a National Guard activated in our state without the express permission of the governor”, the bill’s proponent Senator Archuleta said while discussing the proposal in June.

Archuleta was referring to events in June 2025, when the Trump administration sent thousands of National Guard and hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests against ICE raids on alleged illegal immigrants.

Newsom called the military intervention a “brazen abuse of power” at the time.

However, it is unlikely that the bill could stop such an intervention; troops were called to Los Angeles under Title 10, which puts National Guard troops under federal and, ultimately, presidential control.

This bill makes exceptions for forces “lawfully called into active federal service under Title 10 and acting under the authority of the President or Secretary of Defense”. The bill only applies to Title 32, which keeps guard members under the command of their particular state governor for domestic missions, but whose funding is determined on a federal level. .

Some of the new legislation also seemed to address state, as opposed to national, disputes.

One approved bill will make it a felony to seize ballots, election records or voting technology before election results are officially certified.

This bill may have originated from an electoral dispute involving law enforcement officer and former Republican gubernatorial candidate for California Chad Bianco. Earlier this year, Bianco ordered the seizure of more than 650,000 ballots from the Californian redistricting special election in November 2025, citing concerns about electoral integrity.

Voters in that election approved Newsom’s proposal to redraw Californian congressional districts in a way that would likely flip 5 Republican-held house seats in the state for the Democrats.

The seizure prompted a legal challenge and the subsequent intervention by the California Supreme Court, which has not yet reached a verdict on the case. Newsom’s recent legislation would make actions like those undertaken by Bianco unlawful.