In the aftermath of the 2024 election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to put a wedge between himself and the Democratic Party. He described himself as “marginally” a Democrat and complained, “I don’t know what the party is.” He launched a podcast in the spring that suggested he might be drifting right: He kicked it off by conducting softball interviews of MAGA extremists, including President Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon, and announced he was opposed to “woke culture” and permitting transgender women and girls to compete in female sports.
Newsom is expressing unambiguous solidarity with the undocumented immigration population in his state.
Everything changed after protests in Los Angeles erupted. As Trump has sought to use the military to quash protests against federal immigration raids in L.A., Newsom has positioned himself as the central figure of the party’s resistance to Trump’s autocratic aspirations. And he’s done it surprisingly well. I harbor no particular affection for Newsom, a weather vane politician with 2028 White House ambitions. But he has been modeling the kind of leadership Democrats have mostly lacked throughout Trump’s second term: bold, clear and anchored in democratic (lower-case ‘d’) values. It’s the kind of approach that needs to spread in his party in this moment of democratic crisis.
After Trump federalized National Guard troops in L.A. to quell small-scale and mostly peaceful protests last weekend, Newsom immediately and correctly identified Trump’s decision as a “breach of state sovereignty” that would only inflame the situation. California’s attorney general soon filed a lawsuit claiming the Trump administration’s actions were unlawful and infringed on the state’s right to control its National Guard.
The day after National Guard troops stormed into L.A., Newsom was asked in an MSNBC interview about border czar Tom Homan threatening to arrest him. Newsom’s response is worth quoting at length:
“He’s a tough guy, why doesn’t he do that? He knows where to find me. But you know what? Lay your hands off four year old girls that are trying to get educated. Lay your hands off these poor people who are just trying to live their lives, man. Trying to live their lives, paying their taxes, been here ten years. The fear, the horror. The hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’ just get it over with. ... I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community.
It was a powerful statement on a number of levels. Newsom is expressing unambiguous solidarity with the undocumented immigration population in his state. He does this not by describing migrants as charity cases, or as problems to be tolerated, or with hemming and hawing about the exceptions to the rule. (Newsom supports deportation of migrants with serious criminal records.) He instead describes them as Californians who ought to be left alone — and presents himself as someone who will take the fall on their behalf.
I suspect Newsom was not truly afraid of being arrested, and there are some undercurrents of “come at me, bro” bravado going on. But it still worked on substantive and emotional levels that Democrats have often lacked as they’ve struggled to form a united front against Trump. Guarding against Trump’s dubious pretexts for repression of civil society requires drawing clear lines in the sand and calling out the true political dynamics of what’s happening.
Newsom continued to take a staunchly oppositional attitude toward Trump on social media and various media appearances in the following days. And he delivered a brief speech on Tuesday in which he sounded the alarms about how “democracy is under assault right before our eyes.” In that speech, Newsom summarized Trump’s authoritarian tactics as “weakness masquerading as strength” and likened his tactics to those of “failed dictators.” He again defended California’s undocumented migrant community. And while he objected to violent protests, he correctly identified most of them as peaceful and effectively called for their continuation, declaring that “most important office is office of citizen.” The speech got millions of views on YouTube.
Newsom’s position wasn’t inevitable. Establishment Democrats are uneasy around protests that slide into violence, often concerned about the optics of looking weak on riots or crime. And their conventional wisdom since the 2024 election has been that immigration is a losing issue for the party and that swinging to the right on immigration is necessary to survive politically.
Newsom could’ve mimicked the feeble response of his Democratic colleagues during a previous authoritarian flash point of Trump’s second term: the attempted deportation of immigrant Mahmoud Khalil in March for his pro-Palestinian political views. Despite Trump’s transparent broadside against free speech rights, Democrats cowered, out of apparent concern that support of Khahil might come across as endorsement of his political views and out of an apprehensiveness about standing up for immigrants. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams refused to weigh in on the administration pursuing a political arrest of a resident of their state. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dragged their feet before releasing mealymouthed statements. As the party dithered, Trump felt emboldened and went after even more immigrants for their speech.
By contrast, Newsom has taken a firm position and stood up for undocumented immigrants, and is owning the chaos unfolding in the largest city in his state. Newsom’s approach might not pass muster with what polling data and party consultants suggest. (Such professionals would be looking for the perfectly calibrated position to address the political liabilities of immigration and urban disorder while maximizing vote share in the next election cycle.) And Newsom’s position could conceivably hurt his potential 2028 dreams — it’s too early to say. But doing what he’s doing is trending in the direction required for a real defense of democracy.
