Expect 4 years of pitched battles between Trump and Democratic-run states [Video]

Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office has officials in Democratic jurisdictions preparing to defend against a barrage of presidential executive orders, angry social media posts and legislation from a Republican-controlled Congress that could run counter to their own policy preferences.

Some are even forming loose alliances to push back against what they see as possible “threats of autocracy” from the incoming administration.

In his first presidential term, Trump and Democratic politicians at the state and even local level engaged in typical debates stemming from differing liberal and conservative viewpoints on a range of issues.

But at other times, as Atlantic writer and CNN analyst Ron Brownstein has argued, Trump and others in his administration “sought to use national authority to achieve factional ends to impose the priorities of red America onto Democratic-leaning states and cities.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently said the state filed 120 lawsuits in opposition to Trump administration actions in his first …