That is the week that Gavin Newsom stopped considering a lot.
The governor of California has discovered himself in a sizzling swirl of occasions: Federal authorities are patrolling streets, ICE brokers are raiding House Depots, and protests (largely although not completely peaceable) are spreading throughout the state. President Donald Trump ordered the Nationwide Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, very a lot in opposition to Newsom’s needs. He additionally endorsed the thought of Newsom being arrested. Home Speaker Mike Johnson prompt instead that Newsom be “tarred and feathered.” And Senator Alex Padilla of California, whom Newsom appointed to his job in 2021, was pressured to the ground and handcuffed by federal brokers whereas making an attempt to ask Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem a query at a press convention.
“We aren’t going away,” Noem vowed in Los Angeles, referring to the federal officers she mentioned had come to “liberate this metropolis from the socialist and the burdensome management that this governor and that this mayor have positioned on this nation.”
As of this writing, Newsom had not gone away both—in handcuffs, feathers, or in any other case.
He obtained on the cellphone with me yesterday to debrief on the turmoil of current days. Newsom was in his workplace in Sacramento, getting ready for any variety of contingencies—together with what he would do if the feds really tried to throw him in jail. He instructed me that he’d initially shrugged off the chatter about his potential arrest. Tom Homan, Trump’s bull-necked border czar, was the primary particular person Newsom heard point out the prospect. “That Homan, or Hoo-manman,” is how Newsom referred to him. “No matter his title is—the man with the hat on Fox.”
Then somebody despatched Newsom a clip of Trump saying that he wished that Homan would, in truth, arrest the floppy-maned governor. “My first intuition was to dismiss it,” Newsom instructed me. “And my second intuition was: ‘Guys, that is really not humorous.’” He mentioned that he wouldn’t put it previous Trump: “I’ve recognized this man for years.”
Subsequent got here the video of Padilla getting manhandled on Thursday afternoon, which made the threats emanating from the Trump administration even much less humorous. Newsom was assembly along with his employees, discussing technique for a courtroom listening to in his state’s lawsuit in opposition to Trump over the Los Angeles deployments. “What the hell is that this?” somebody mentioned, and abruptly everybody was huddled round a laptop computer. “Folks actually turned their head and had been like, ‘This may’t be taking place,’” Newsom instructed me. “It sickened all of us. I imply, folks had been bodily impacted by it.”
Certainly it crossed Newsom’s thoughts that he, too, would possibly discover himself in the same scenario. What would he do? What are the protocols when a state’s chief govt will get arrested by federal authorities? Newsom and his employees mentioned this chance. “They put collectively an all-hands assembly about how they’d deal with it,” Newsom instructed me. “I imply, I’m speaking somewhat out of college,” he acknowledged. One key takeaway: Don’t resist arrest underneath any circumstances, Newsom was instructed, “as a result of that will be grounds for the precise arrest.”
Newsom has been speaking loads about how Trump is crashing via new guardrails daily. After a sure level, it turns into arduous—or inconceivable—to revert to regardless of the earlier norms and guidelines had been.
Newsom himself has crossed a line of his personal. Like many Democrats within the Trump period, the governor has been susceptible to overthinking issues at instances, worrying about scaring off swing voters by enjoying to woke stereotypes. Polls, too, have prompt over time that voters usually approve of Trump’s proactive method to immigration enforcement, and Democrats have been cautious of being seen as weak on the problem.
In Newsom’s case, he has battled a notion of being slick and wanting to cater to all sides. He lately launched a podcast, This Is Gavin Newsomand has taken criticism from the left due to his willingness to host MAGA friends resembling Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. Pretty or not, Newsom’s popularity for opportunism and political expediency comes up in seemingly each dialogue of his presidential prospects.
Now the Los Angeles conflict has offered Newsom with a nationwide showcase he’s by no means had earlier than. For an bold Democrat, there are worse locations to be than co-starring in a righteous showdown with Trump. “Donald Trump’s authorities isn’t defending our communities. They’re traumatizing our communities, and that appears to be the complete level,” Newsom mentioned in a prime-time deal with he delivered Tuesday that earned widespread reward from Democrats.
The governor resists discussing this disaster in political phrases, however he did describe the episode to me as maybe essentially the most consequential of his profession—much more than when he was mayor of San Francisco and established himself as a nationwide determine by granting marriage licenses to same-sex {couples} in 2004. “That is the one for me,” Newson mentioned of the current discord. “This one is—this isn’t political. That is actually about trying your youngsters within the eyes.”
He has solid the stakes of the battle as elementary to preserving democracy in opposition to the “authoritarian tendencies” of a rogue president. “He isn’t a monarch. He isn’t a king,” Newsom mentioned of Trump, talking to reporters in San Francisco on Thursday. “He ought to cease appearing like one.”
Newsom instructed me that he lately found a change in how he was reacting to occasions—that he was feeling much less restrained and slowed down. “It was, I believe, Sunday,” he mentioned. “Sunday, I awakened a special man.” If nothing else, being subjected to the total power of the federal authorities might be liberating, simply as seeing troops on the street might be clarifying. The occasions of the previous few days go to “the very essence of why the fuck I’m even right here,” he mentioned.
Newsom mentioned it’s “important” that People interact in seen protest in opposition to the army parade that Trump has deliberate in Washington, D.C., in the present day for the U.S. Military’s 250th birthday, in addition to the president’s personal 79th. It’s simply as “important,” he added, that the protests be peaceable. “You’ve these idiots, these assholes, these anarchists,” Newsom mentioned, referring to the inevitable pockets of hassle that come up at such occasions. These folks “have the identical chaos idea of life that Donald Trump has. They need to sow chaos, they usually’re no completely different than he’s.” He mentioned the stress in the US was at a “gradual boil,” and now the whole lot is much more precarious.
“You could possibly lose this factor so quick,” he mentioned. “We’re on the opposite facet.”
