What happens when a president feuds with nation’s largest state?

The rift between the White House and California has become a chasm, raising questions about the future of states’ rights and whether the tension will harm the nation’s largest state.

It has become a battle royal: the leader of the world’s largest economy versus the leaders of the fifth largest, with little incentive for a cease-fire.

We are talking, of course, about President Donald Trump and California. Last week, the president combined a visit for campaign cash with a mighty strike at the blue state – revoking the state’s decadeslong ability to set its own tough auto emissions standards. He also castigated its cities for “allowing” the homeless crisis, warning San Francisco that it’s violating environmental rules over the issue.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders are fighting back. On Friday, California, along with 22 other states and several major cities, filed a lawsuit against the administration’s emissions action – its 60th suit against the administration. On Monday, the governor spoke at the United Nations climate action summit, touting California’s leadership in the switch to clean energy, with such jobs outnumbering those in the fossil fuel industry 5 to 1, and California outpacing U.S. economic growth.

“I don’t know what the hell happened to this country that we have the president that we do today on this issue,” he said, adding that President Trump is turning the conservative argument of states’ rights on its head. A serious problem with smog led to a waiver for the state to set its own tailpipe standards under the Clean Air Act, signed by a Republican president (Richard Nixon) while a Republican governor (Ronald Reagan) was in office.

The widespread feeling here is that the president feels snubbed by four automakers that agreed to California’s standards. He won one last week, though, when a federal judge blocked a new California law requiring disclosure of tax returns to qualify for the presidential primary ballot.

“I’ve never seen the animus so strong,” says longtime political observer Barbara O’Connor, speaking of the combat between Sacramento and Washington. And it’s not limited to those two capitals, she says. “It has huge ripple effects” across the country, with the potential to turn red states like Arizona against the president.

“The ripple is coming. It’s based on clean air and water and the Constitution, and whether or not there are really three [branches] of government in Washington,” she says. San Francisco and Los Angeles are hardly alone in having to deal with homelessness, though their challenge is severe, and voters are also impatient with the slow pace of various lawsuits against the administration, according to Professor O’Connor.