(California Today)

Tonight, President Donald Trump will deliver his State of the Union address. Immigration is expected to be a major theme of the night, though officials have been hesitant to say much about what’s in his speech.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra of California, who has made his office the center of the Golden State’s resistance to the Trump administration, will be watching the speech closely — and preparing for his own.

He was chosen to deliver the Democrats’ Spanish-language response to the State of the Union, a practice that dates back to 2011 and is seen as a kind of audition for ambitious political figures.

I talked to Becerra, who’s set to deliver his response from his alma mater, C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento. Here’s our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: What are you expecting to hear from President Trump, and what will be your response?

A: I suspect it’ll be vintage Donald Trump, whatever year of the vintage we’re going to get. And I suspect we’re going to hear a lot about walls; I suspect we’re going to hear a lot about “No collusion.” We’ll probably hear that everything’s been a wild success, and I think I’ll be ready to talk about what’s really going on in America.

Q: Your office has been seen as a leader in California’s fights with the Trump administration. What’s the count of lawsuits you’ve filed against the administration?

A: I think we’re at about 45.

Q: What do you consider your most important battle?

A: It is hard to narrow because so many of these are consequential — these aren’t lawsuits that affect just a small community or part of California. Most of these lawsuits impact the entire state, plus people outside. I suspect that because health care has become such an expensive commodity and finally we were beginning to find the secret sauce on it, our defense of the Affordable Care Act for not just Californians, but every American carries consequences that reverberate way beyond just one state.

Q: What do you consider your biggest victory so far in any of those lawsuits?

A: We’ve had success on the health care side, stopping some of the erosion of services under the Affordable Care Act — for example, women’s reproductive rights services. We were able to get injunctions to stop the Trump administration from eliminating some of those services. That was critical.

The protection of all people, if they want to give service in the military, to our government, they should be able to regardless of their gender identity status.

I think the victories we’ve had so far in our litigation on the census, which could easily be the most consequential because it impacts trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of people. Those successes today, I hope will lead to a thorough trial that will lead us to the right conclusion. I suspect it’s going to get all the way to the Supreme Court.

Q: What do you hope Californians or any Americans take away from your speech? What do you hope that they feel?

A: Major takeaways from the speech will be that it’s an opportunity for everyone in America to hear what the state of the union is and to hear the other side. Today, it’s pretty commonplace to have the response in Spanish — 20 years ago it would’ve been a bit of a surprise to people. I think that’s a great sign about where America’s heading. We want every American to understand where the country is, for everybody to be included. That message, just the fact that there’s a response to the State of the Union in Spanish is a truly critical message we’re sending throughout America — especially for those that are going to rely on a Spanish language response. I think they’re going to feel like they count.

Q: Is there anything you anticipate you’ll have to respond to besides “the wall,” related to immigration? What are your key points about immigration?

A: I wish I could fact check quick enough to be able to respond. There’s always good, bad and ugly about anything in life. I think it’s important to give a true and candid picture and not to try to mask or misrepresent what the state of our union is.

And Finally …

Her lush, abstract paintings captivated visitors to the exhibit “Made in L.A. 2018,” at the Hammer Museum. Soon, Hauser & Wirth is set to dedicate three floors of its gallery in New York to her figurative drawings.

The artist Luchita Hurtado’s work spans micro- and macroscopic worlds; it’s laden with environmental and feminist symbolism that feels of-the-moment.

Now, at age 98, the Venezuelan-born artist works in a Santa Monica home studio, but her career bridges the continent and decades. She talked to Anna Furman for T Magazine about her recent ascent.

“The older I get, the more I want to tell you how old I am,” Hurtado said. “I’m showing off.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.