Newsom Gambles in Showdown With Trump Over Riots

Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and many other state and local politicians over the last 48 hours argued they had rioters in Los Angeles under control before President Trump usurped their authority by calling in the National Guard, a step they blame for inflaming tensions and causing even more violence and chaos.

Throwing aside all previous efforts to reconcile differences with the president, Newsom on Sunday called Trump a “stone-cold liar” over claims the two exchanged in a phone call, told Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to “come and get me, tough guy” for threatening to arrest public officials who impede ICE raids, and blamed the increasing violence in Los Angeles over the weekend on Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles without his consent.

Newsom on Sunday accused Trump of trying to create a chaotic spectacle and formally requested he rescind the National Guard order, which the president deployed in response to violent riots and attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during and after raids in the area. At least 118 immigrants were arrested in ICE operations across the city over the past week, with angry protesters and agitators gathering outside businesses believed to have been raided.

Those crowds, only in the hundreds at first, lit a car on fire, waved Mexican and Palestinian flags, and hurled rocks at police with the activities escalating and attracting thousands of rioters over the weekend.

While Newsom on Sunday claimed that local police could have handled the situation without federal intervention, videos playing out on the local news showed thousands of protesters taking over the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police officers stranded in vehicles that were damaged and immobilized by the onslaught.

Before sundown Sunday night, rioters had destroyed several California Highway Patrol vehicles trying to re-open the freeway with hundreds of rocks thrown off freeway over-ramps.

It’s been 60 years since a president has sent in National Guard troops to deal with civil unrest without the cooperation from a state’s governor, but back then, the circumstances were far different. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 deployed the Alabama National Guard to protect a march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, the state’s capital, after George Wallace, the state’s segregationist governor, declined to provide the protection.

Civil rights supporters argued Johnson was protecting the rioters from Wallace’s callous disregard for their safety. This time around, support or opposition for the National Guard’s deployment is also deeply dividing the country, with Trump’s critics arguing he’s overstepping his presidential authority and instilling fear in immigrant communities with the aggressive ICE raids. Supporters, meanwhile, argue the Guard troops deployment is necessary to safeguard ICE agents, continue the crackdown on illegal immigration, and maintain peace.

In Los Angeles Sunday, Newsom continued to blame the escalating violence on the National Guard’s deployment even though troops remained posted outside the Federal Building, which includes an ICE detention center, and didn’t join in police efforts to control the riots in other locales.

“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved,” Newsom asserted. “This is a serious breach of state sovereignty – inflaming tensions while pulling resources where they’re actually needed.”

“Rescind the order. Return control to California,” Newsom demanded.

Earlier Sunday, Newsom accused Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of trying to provoke unrest, arguing Trump was trying to create a spectacle and “hoping for chaos.”

Still, even Bass acknowledged that these were not peaceful protests – that two days of violent unrest had ensued before Trump called up the National Guard, a step she also described as inciting more violence.

“It’s not peaceful for people to throw rocks or bottles,” she said. “That’s not peaceful.”

“I don’t think there’s any equivocating on non-violence,” she added. “If you are going to entertain violence, if you’re going to take over a freeway, then you are going to suffer the consequences of doing that.”

The problem with Newsom’s claim of local control of the riot and Bass’ insistence on consequences is local authorities’ abysmal track record of responding to recent unrest that had nothing to do with federal interference.

Over Memorial Day, a Los Angeles block party got so out of control that the mob vandalized train cars, businesses, and a police cruiser, injuring four police officers in the process. When the LA Metro’s A Line stopped in South Los Angeles, troublemakers blocked trains, spray-painted the train cars’ exteriors, banged on the windows, and set fire to a train-station roof. Police were called but made no arrests.

“Our officers were heavily outnumbered and so the decision was, clear the area rather than make arrests,” Los Angeles Police Department Commander Lilian Carranza told reporters at the time.

The destructive scene wasn’t a one-off.

After the Dodgers’ World Series win over the New York Yankees last fall, the celebration turned ugly with revelers setting a metro bus on fire, looting several shops, and throwing fireworks at police, scenes described as “absolute chaos” in downtown Los Angeles according to a witness.

The lawlessness isn’t limited to Southern California. Last summer, partiers at least twice shut down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco around 2 a.m., with nearly 150 cars taking part in what police called a “side show” that involved setting off fireworks and cars doing donuts and other stunts. Just months earlier, a driver was viciously beaten and his car stolen during a similar takeover of the bridge.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump pledged that he wasn’t going to tolerate left-wing lawlessness on American streets and would use his presidential powers to shut them down.

This weekend, the president made good on that promise, blaming the local Los Angeles police for a slow response and a failure to protect the federal ICE agents.

“Waiting several hours for LAPD to show up – or them telling us that they’re not going to back us up until they have an officer in a dangerous situation – is something that just isn’t workable when you have violent protests going on,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CBS News.

The Trump administration, Noem added, isn’t going to allow a redux of the 2020 summer of protests of George Floyd’s death when Black Lives Matters protests in Minnesota quickly spread unchecked throughout major cities across the country.

Over Newsom’s objection, Trump federalized 2,000 California Guard soldiers, and Hegseth warned that U.S. Marines were also on “high alert” to deploy, readying active-duty military to engage against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

By Sunday morning, Trump was declaring victory and thanking the National Guard for restoring peace, even though they had yet to fully assemble. The speed with which Trump acted clearly demonstrates just how prepared and eager he is to have this fight. Trump doesn’t have to run for reelection, and law and order and aggressive immigration enforcement only energize his base.

Newsom, who has a long history of clashes with Trump, is in a far more tenuous position. The likely 2028 presidential candidate has tried to moderate his positions on everything from trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports to cutting back health insurance for illegal immigrants – albeit the latter was forced by a multi-billion budget shortfall.

Newsom also is still waiting for Trump to provide the $40 billion in federal funds he requested to help Los Angeles rebuild from the wildfires.

“Newsom was trying to move to the middle on immigration, so this complicates his plans,” Steve Maviglio, a longtime Democratic political consultant, told RealClearPolitics. “Clearly, Trump wants this fight. It’s clear that Newsom is squirming – trying to figure out how he can be moderate on immigration and supportive of law enforcement while trying to defend protests that are turning violent.”

“It’s tricky, and that’s why he’s trying to portray this as an issue of state’s rights vs. federal intervention,” he added.

As California Democrats lined up squarely behind immigrants’ rights over the weekend, Newsom was under pressure to come up with his own strong, anti-Trump stance.

Bass was one of the first out of the gates. On Saturday the mayor vowed to fight the immigration raids taking place across Los Angeles in an X.com post that garnered more than 26 million impressions.

“As mayor of a proud city of immigrants, who contribute to our city in so many ways, I am deeply angered by what has taken place,” Bass wrote on Friday. “These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city. My office is in close coordination with immigrant rights community organizations. We will not stand for this.”

The mayor’s statement drew immediate pushback from conservatives, with many pointing out criticisms of her leadership failures and city’s lack of preparedness and response to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year that killed 30 people. 

But dozens of prominent California Democrats backed up Bass. On Sunday, elected officials from the Bay Area to the San Diego southern border were condemning the ICE raids and Trump’s National Guard deployment.

“Our city is being targeted because we’re a sanctuary city,” Rep. Maxine Waters, who has represented Compton in Congress for more than three decades, said in a media interview. “Trump hates us. He does not like the city. He’s trying to intimidate us, and he sent his guns in here on us … we can’t be intimidated. We’ve got to get the people out [protesting.] We’ve got to get the elected officials out. We’ve got to resist them.”

Garry South, a veteran Democratic operative who ran former Gov. Gray Davis’ successful campaigns, said Newsom has no choice but to push back on Trump’s “unprecedented militarization of domestic policy.”

“[Newsom’s] doing it not for political benefit but because it’s the right thing to do,” South said. “It’s a fraught moment for our democracy, for a president to turn troops loose on the American people, and we better have a lot of people who step up and speak up, so we don’t turn into Chile under [Gen.] Pinochet.”

(Pinochet was a Chilean military officer and politician who was dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1981, using his power to persecute leftists and critics and resulting in the executions of 1,200 to 3,200 people, the internment of 80,000 and the torture of tens of thousands.)

As of late Sunday night, protesters and rioters were still clashing with police and National Guard units using non-lethal efforts, such as tear gas and pepper-spray balls, to force the crowds to comply with their demands to move or disperse.

Rob Stutzman, a GOP political consultant who served as deputy chief of staff to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, cautioned that the riots in Los Angeles this weekend are too fluid to predict political fallout.

“It’s impossible to calculate at the moment,” Stutzman argued. “Will the National Guard ever clash with rioters? How long will this go on? Are ICE raids going to remain focused on criminals? All of this has to play out before we see how the politics will work.”

As night fell across California’s Southland, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell held a press conference pleading with rioters to stop the violence. The LAPD had made only 39 arrests on Saturday and Sunday but pledged to step up arrests in the hours and days ahead.

McDonnell also denied that he failed to respond to ICE calls for assistance earlier in the weekend but argued that their response takes time to mobilize and is not “instantaneous.”

“This violence I’ve seen is disgusting,” he said. “It’s escalated since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad, but what we’ve seen subsequent – that is getting increasingly worse and more violent.”

McDonnell described commercial-grade fireworks being thrown at officers and rioters using hammers to break up cinder blocks to hurl at police. In the first two nights, McDonnell said they believe their forces would have been capable to handle the level of violence, but as it has escalated, he is now reassessing the need for the National Guard.

“We are overwhelmed, as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity and they types of things they’re doing,” he concluded.