“Governor Newsom Vows to Fight Trump Over Potential Military Deployment”

Cal­i­for­nia is now for­mal­ly pre­pared to ini­ti­ate imme­di­ate legal action if Don­ald Trump pro­ceeds with send­ing fed­er­al troops into San Fran­cis­co. Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som has inten­si­fied his oppo­si­tion, issu­ing a sharply word­ed warn­ing that frames the issue as not mere­ly polit­i­cal, but con­sti­tu­tion­al and exis­ten­tial for the state’s sov­er­eign­ty. Newsom’s state­ments under­score a deep­en­ing bat­tle between state and fed­er­al author­i­ty over the use of mil­i­tary forces on Amer­i­can soil.

The back­drop to this show­down is the Trump administration’s recent deploy­ments of the Nation­al Guard to cities like Chica­go and Port­land, Ore­gon, which sparked protests and trig­gered mul­ti­ple legal chal­lenges. Over the week­end, Trump again voiced his inten­tion to tar­get San Fran­cis­co, telling Fox News host Maria Bar­tiro­mo that “the dif­fer­ence is I think they want us in San Fran­cis­co.” He char­ac­ter­ized the city as “a mess” and sug­gest­ed it was “on my tar­get list,” adding, “San Fran­cis­co was tru­ly one of the great cities in the world, and then 15 years ago, it went woke.”

Those claims have been met with sharp rebut­tals from state and local offi­cials. In fact, recent data sug­gest San Fran­cis­co is expe­ri­enc­ing a resur­gence. Accord­ing to CNBC, over­all crime in the city has dropped significantly—down around 30 % com­pared to 2024, mur­ders are at their low­est lev­el in 70 years, and car break-ins are rar­er than at any point in the last 22 years. At the same time, the city is see­ing renewed momen­tum in event book­ings and tourism, pres­sure in the hous­ing mar­ket, and the office sec­tor show­ing signs of recov­ery.

As some­one who served as San Francisco’s may­or from 2004 to 2011, New­som has been par­tic­u­lar­ly force­ful in his oppo­si­tion to any Nation­al Guard deploy­ment. He called the notion of troops in the city “unnec­es­sary” and declared in a pub­lic state­ment: “We don’t bow to kings, and we’re stand­ing up to this wannabe tyrant.” He went on to assert, “The notion that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can deploy troops into our cities with no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion ground­ed in real­i­ty, no over­sight, no account­abil­i­ty, no respect for state sov­er­eign­ty — it’s a direct assault on the rule of law.”

San Francisco’s city lead­er­ship has joined in resist­ing the idea. May­or Daniel Lurie acknowl­edged that while fen­tanyl is the city’s biggest street-lev­el chal­lenge, deploy­ing mil­i­tary troops is not the answer. Dis­trict Attor­ney Brooke Jenk­ins issued a clear state­ment: “Let me be clear — no local or elect­ed San Fran­cis­co lead­ers want the Nation­al Guard deployed to San Fran­cis­co at the direc­tion of the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion.” Local offi­cials have empha­sized that fed­er­al law pro­hibits Nation­al Guard troops from act­ing as local police, stress­ing that even deploy­ment would not per­mit troops to make arrests or inves­ti­gate crimes — con­trary to some of the sug­ges­tions made by Trump’s team.

The legal front is already active. Accord­ing to the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, the con­tro­ver­sy sharp­ened when Marc Benioff—CEO of Salesforce—publicly sug­gest­ed the Nation­al Guard could serve as police in San Fran­cis­co. After sharp back­lash, Benioff issued an apol­o­gy. Mean­while, New­som is coor­di­nat­ing with oth­er Cal­i­for­nia offi­cials includ­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob Bon­ta and San Fran­cis­co City Attor­ney David Chiu, all of whom have vowed legal action should Trump move for­ward.

Cal­i­for­nia is not new to legal fights over fed­er­al troop deploy­ments. Ear­li­er this year, New­som and Bon­ta filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the Trump administration’s fed­er­al­iza­tion of the Cal­i­for­nia Nation­al Guard in June, cit­ing vio­la­tions of the U.S. Constitution—including the Tenth Amend­ment and statu­to­ry lim­its under 10 U.S.C. § 12406. That case involved rough­ly 4,000 Guard mem­bers fed­er­al­ized with­out the governor’s con­sent. While some troops have since returned to state con­trol, approx­i­mate­ly 300 remained fed­er­al­ized and were sent to Port­land and Chica­go for train­ing or sup­port roles. A fed­er­al judge in Sep­tem­ber ruled that the deploy­ment to Los Ange­les like­ly vio­lat­ed the Posse Comi­ta­tus Act, which pro­hibits fed­er­al troops from per­form­ing domes­tic law-enforce­ment func­tions.

At a Board of Super­vi­sors hear­ing this week, May­or Lurie said the city is already prepar­ing a coor­di­nat­ed response team, involv­ing pub­lic-safe­ty lead­ers, the city attorney’s office, and depart­ment heads, to mon­i­tor and respond to any fed­er­al action. “We’ve been think­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Nation­al Guard being deployed to San Fran­cis­co since the first day of my term,” he said.

As the rhetoric and lit­i­ga­tion esca­late, the con­flict between state and fed­er­al pow­er is play­ing out in real time. California’s lead­ers have drawn a clear line: if Pres­i­dent Trump sends troops into San Fran­cis­co with­out legal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, they will move swift­ly into court. The ques­tion now is whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will test that line—and if so, how far the courts will go to enforce the bound­aries of domes­tic mil­i­tary deploy­ment in our democ­ra­cy