California officials said they would immediately sue to block the White House from sending the military to San Francisco after President Donald Trump claimed “unquestioned power” to send in the National Guard after announcing a campaign last month to punish liberal cities with military might.
Attorney General Rob Bonta, Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said Tuesday they were prepared to challenge any federal deployment in court. On Sunday, Trump told Fox News that he was preparing to send the National Guard to San Francisco to “make it great again,” claiming residents asked him to intervene after the city went “woke” and “wrong” 15 years ago.
Newsom, who was mayor of San Francisco at that time, said he would challenge any federal incursion into his hometown, and cited statewide declining crime rates.
“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,” he said in a statement. “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.”
Bonta, who has sued the White House dozens of times since Trump reentered office in January, called Trump’s plan “outrageous,” “indefensible” and illegal.
“President Trump has long abandoned any pretenses for the illegal federalization and deployment of California’s National Guard. He does not care about satisfying the conditions of the law; he cares about himself, and he cares about power,” Bonta said. “Trump has made no secret of his intentions: To use our National Guard as his own Royal Army and our cities as a training ground for the military.”
San Francisco is the latest liberal enclave to draw the White House’s ire after the Pentagon sent troops to Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago, Illinois to suppress anti-deportation protests in those cities. On Sunday, Trump claimed he had “unquestioned power” and has floated invoking the Insurrection Act to claim a domestic invasion and justify using federal troops as law enforcement against Americans.
Tech moguls Marc Benioff, Elon Musk and White House AI czar David Sacks have urged Trump to intervene, claiming San Francisco is overrun with violent crime and homelessness, even as homicide rates have fallen to record lows not seen since the 1950s. Benioff later walked back his comments.
San Francisco leaders like Sen. Scott Wiener, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Supervisors Jackie Fielder and Rafael Mandelman and Mayor Daniel Lurie have all called on federal leaders to stay away.
“I am deeply grateful to the members of our military for their service to our country, but 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,” Lurie said Monday.
Bonta and Newsom sued earlier this month after Trump ignored a court order and sent the California National Guard to Oregon to protect federal buildings there from anti-government protests.
Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a restraining order blocking him from deploying Cal Guard members there.