Los Angeles. Washington. Next? Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oakland. For a White House that is chary to send troops overseas, the Trump team likes to deploy them across this great land of ours. Though it is not yet a certainty that the president’s National Guard deployments will come to the city by the bay, the city should be ready for it, because politically, Trump benefits each time he “cleans up” a major American Democratic-governed city.
On Friday, President Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office and said “Look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco. They’ve destroyed it. We could clean that up, too. We’ll clean that one up, too.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie responded in a statement: “My administration has made safe and clean streets our top priority, and the results are clear: crime is at its lowest point in decades, visitors are coming back, and San Francisco is on the rise.”
Which he probably has to say, though it will have no effect. Nor will the meaningless order signed by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, which basically restated the refusal of the city’s agencies to work with the federal government and told the feds not to go there. Likely more successful will be the efforts of a better politician, in particular Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who gave a tough and energetic response to Trump’s plans, even making the case that “Trump is defunding the police.” (Democrats in the state and in the Windy City have been pointing to Chicago being on track to have the fewest murders in a year since Lyndon Johnson was president, which, for our younger readers, was really long ago).
The activation of National Guard troops is by law supposed to be done by a state governor, though under certain limited circumstances (such as responding to invasions or enforcing federal laws) the president can federalize state troops. The state of California, in its lawsuit against the Trump administration for its deployment of troops in Los Angeles earlier this summer, argues that “The Trump Administration is making direct, active use of military personnel to execute the law, including through the provision of armed perimeter support and blockades, apprehension and detention of civilians, and — in the weeks following the June mobilization orders — participating in an estimated three out of every four immigration raids in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.”
Lurie probably had to say that safe, clean streets are a priority, crime is down, and visitors are back, though it will have no effect. Nor will the meaningless order signed by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
We’ll see how the judge (and later appellate judges, no doubt, and probably ultimately the Supreme Court justices) interpret all of that. But if the issue comes down to local police not having enforced federal law — which to the Trump administration is focused on immigration — it’d be hard to argue that cities have been doing so when they have laws explicitly saying they won’t do so. But we’ll let the lawyers figure that out; better them than soldiers.
As often with Trump, it’s hard to say which statements by him are heartfelt and preplanned and which are him being egged on by reporters’ questions and feeling like he needs to double-down on some controversial previous action or statement. Unlike his first term — and every term of all of the other normal presidents —Trump this time has surrounded himself with activists who are determined to make the dear leader’s words come to life, regardless of controversies, contradictions, and arguably sometimes the law.
Which means, there’s a good chance that National Guard troops will be sent to San Francisco.
Mayoral press releases aside, a smarter response by California might be the governor’s deployment of state police to major cities in the state. Portraying it as his “next phase” of crime-fighting efforts, Newsom said the California Highway Patrol teams will work on crime tracking, prevention, and enforcement in San Diego, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, Central Valley, Sacramento, and the San Francisco Bay Area. (Newsom takes apparent delight in highlighting the often much-higher homicide rates in Republican states, such as Mississippi, whose homicide rate is 380 percent that of California’s. Trump’s not threatening to send troops to those states, so maybe this isn’t about crime after all.)
It’s a smart move because, like Newsom has been doing of late, it calls Trump’s bluff. This isn’t about crime; this is about using federal force to find and deport undocumented immigrants. Newsom wins the crime argument; Trump probably wins the immigrant argument.
Also, critics will ask, justifiably, if the governor can do an emergency deployment of state police when crime is falling, why didn’t he do it more widely in the previous seven years when crime was higher? Newsom did send some state police into San Francisco in 2023 to help deal with the fentanyl crisis. If that was worth doing, then maybe it was worth deploying state resources to tackle crime that surveys continued to show was a high concern of voters.
So Newsom and Trump will continue slugging it out in court and on social media. Even if Trump were to somehow lose on both of those fronts, he’ll surely win whenever activists get violent, burn cars, trash stores, and do other things to protest the troops (troops that almost certainly would rather be back at home at their jobs). Those actions would validate for many Americans what Trump says about big cities, that they’re violent and out of control.
So hardliners to the left of ya, hardliners to the right. The rest of us just along for the ride?
