Newsom generally enjoys fighting Trump. On letting undocumented students work, not so much.

Gavin Newsom rarely hesitated to fight with Donald Trumpparticularly in matters of immigration.

He did not hesitate last year to sign a law ban on federal immigration agents wear masks in the state. And when he put his name this year to a package of laws aimed at further restricting immigration enforcement, he said he did it to “repel Trump’s Orwellian tactics of immigrants.

But when it came to a bill that would have required the state’s public universities and community colleges to make undocumented immigrant students eligible for on-campus employment, Newsom balked.

Asset responsible, he wrote in a message explaining his veto last month, are “quick to sow destruction for political spectacle.” The risk that they would seek revenge on the schools was too great.