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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday threatened to sue the Trump administration if National Guard troops are sent to San Francisco.
“Send troops to San Francisco and we will sue you, @realDonaldTrump,” Newsom wrote on X.
“We’re going to be fierce, we’re going to be focused in terms of our response. Quite literally, this is the lawsuit that I will file within a nanosecond of any effort to send the military to one of America’s great cities, San Francisco,” he said at a news conference while raising a document.
The governor said California officials “will push back with clarity and conviction,” adding that they will “continue to win in court.”
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This comes after President Donald Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that the National Guard is headed to San Francisco next, after it was already deployed to various U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., to help reduce crime, support federal immigration enforcement and respond to protests.
“We’re going to go to San Francisco,” Trump said on Sunday. “The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco. San Francisco was truly one of the great cities of the world, and then 15 years ago, it went wrong. It went woke.”
The administration is also deploying 100 agents from Customs and Border Protection and from Coast Guard Base Alameda to San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Newsom also vowed on Tuesday that California would challenge the federal government in court if it deployed troops to San Francisco.
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“We’re a nation of laws and accountability — not a nation that turns a blind eye to abuse of power,” he said in a statement. “Donald Trump, himself a convicted felon who pardoned felons convicted of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, is misleading the public with his false narrative that America, and especially California, is some lawless wasteland.”
“But California is proving him wrong — in the courts and on the facts,” the governor continued. “We don’t bow to kings, and we’re standing up to this wannabe tyrant. 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. We’re drawing a line: California will always defend the Constitution, our people, and our values from authoritarian overreach.”
Newsom has touted San Francisco’s drop in homicides, and the city’s mayor, Democrat Daniel Lurie, affirmed that the city is safe.
“We got this in San Francisco,” the mayor told The Associated Press last week.
Lurie said on Monday that San Francisco would welcome more federal help to crack down on drug dealers and drug markets but that he opposed the deployment of the National Guard.
“The National Guard does not have the authority to arrest drug dealers — and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to get fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” he told The Associated Press.
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California officials sued the administration over the summer when it sent the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to gain control over anti-ICE protests.
“California has seen enough. President Trump and Stephen Miller’s authoritarian playbook is coming for another of our cities, and violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos. Help keep yourself and your communities safe. Remain peaceful,” Newsom wrote Wednesday on X.