Gavin Newsom made a stand for American democracy in a fiery speech Wednesday condemning Donald Trump for deploying nearly 5,000 troops in LA over ICE raids protests.
In a quickly organized near primetime address coming on the fifth day of unrest in the City of Angels, the California Governor lambasted the “brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.”
“What we’re witnessing is not law enforcement, it’s authoritarianism,” Newsom bluntly told the state, the nation and the watching world, comparing the vainglorious Trump to “other failed dictators” of the last century.
“Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA,” he insisted as a curfew was set to go into effect in the city. “This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next.”
“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes. The moment we’ve feared has arrived.”
“Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals,” Newsom said of the moves by Republican he has long been the foil for to round up undocumented immigrants in LA with masked and heavily armed ICE shock troops. “His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses. That’s just weakness, weakness, macerating as strength.”
Focusing on the cruelty of the mass raids that started late last week, the two-term Democrat and possible 2028 presidential contender stated: “Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities — they’re traumatizing our communities and that seems to be the entire point.”
Bedeviled by technical difficulties at first, Gov. Newsom’s speech on TV and online came less than an hour after LA Mayor Karen Bass issued an 8 p.m. PT starting dusk-to-dawn curfew on a on-mile area of DTLA. Of the thousands of Golden State National Guard federalized by Trump on June 7 as protestors centered on federal buildings being used as makeshift detention centers, 4,000 members of the Guard are downtown along with 700 U.S. Marines.
Seen by many as a prelude to declaring the Insurrection Act, Trump’s order on putting National Guard boots on the tense streets of LA came without any consultation with Newsom, the Governor has said repeatedly the past few days. Newsom’s sharply crafted words followed a failed effort to get a federal judge to move with haste to place a Temporary Restraining Order on Trump’s control of the California Guard. Trump’s DOJ lawyers were able to convince the Bay Area judge to give them more time. Now a hearing is scheduled for June 12.
As protests and other uprisings take place today in NYC and other mainly Blue State cities across America Tuesday, the January 6 insurrectionist pardoning Trump has lashed out at “troublemakers” and what he calls. “insurrectionists.” Reminded by Newsom, Bass, the LAPD chief, the LA County DA, and others that there was no need for soldiers in LA, POTUS and Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth have vowed to keep the troops in America’s second largest city for at least a month.
