California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is making California the front line in the resistance to the Trump administration’s revamped health care policies under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in what experts see as a politically savvy move that previews what a “Balkanized” public health landscape could look like as states lose faith in federal agencies.
Throughout 2025, California was at the center of state-level efforts to depart from new public health guidance coming from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Kennedy, primarily those having to do with infectious diseases and vaccines.
According to California Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio, health policy has given Newsom a clear platform to position himself diametrically to President Trump.
“The governor wakes up every morning and sees what Trump does and tries to do the opposite, and I think that’s the case here,” Maviglio said. “And he’s positioning himself as the leader of the Democratic resistance to Trump and to be very aggressive.”
After the Trump administration carried out layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and alienated agency leadership — several senior officials left in protest of what they claimed was political interference — California joined with three other states to launch the West Coast Health Alliance in September.
The West Coast governors blasted the administration for turning the agency into a political tool that “peddles ideology” and said their coalition would provide “evidence-based unified recommendations.”
In October, California joined another collective of more than a dozen other states in launching the Governors Public Health Alliance, which Newsom described as a “public health system that puts science before politics.”
Weeks later, Newsom hired Susan Monarez, former CDC director, and Debra Houry, former CDC chief medical officer, to join the California Department of Public Health following their high-profile departures from the agency. They are tasked with helping to launch the Public Health Network Innovation Exchange, a California-led initiative that will “modernize public health infrastructure and maintain trust in science-driven decision-making.”
The state’s rebuke of the Trump administration’s health care policies moved to the global stage last month when Newsom traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, where he met with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
There, he committed California to becoming the first state to join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, right as the U.S. officially exited the organization.
John Swartzberg, an infectious disease physician and emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, commended Newsom’s efforts to insulate the state from “political interference by HHS.”