Pushing Back Against a Weak Man

Federalizing the National Guard and threatening to arrest California's governor as he seeks to protect immigrant rights and peaceful protest displays the Trump regime's illegality and immorality

“Arrest me,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said of “border czar” Tom Homan’s threat. But “lay your hands off four-year-old girls that are trying to get educated. Lay your hands off these poor people that are just trying to live their lives.” (Screenshot from MSNBC interview)

Donald Trump is a weak man parading as a strong man. We’ll see that with appalling visuals when Army tanks roll down the streets of Washington, D.C. next weekend. We’ve seen it over the weekend with his efforts to escalate conflict in Los Angeles by federalizing the National Guard, just the latest transgression in his plotting to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to silence a fabricated crisis and chill dissent.

Let’s not forget that all this was predicated on the notion that America has been inundated by dangerous criminals from other countries. In Trump’s hostile demagoguery that targets migrants, he’s repeated these lies over and over—without actual evidence—to whip up his nativist base. After lying that he won the 2024 election in a landslide, giving him a mandate, he’s proven that bigoted goons like Homeland Security’s Kristi Noem, “border czar” Tom Homan and anti-immigrant extremist Stephen Miller are more than happy to round up migrant families and children without care for the laws of our land.

History will show that these are the real criminals endangering our country as they run roughshod over the rule of law and deny people the fundamental right of due process. It’s up to all of us to speak out now and say that we know who are the villains in this tragic chapter of our nation’s life—and that we will not kowtow as they trample our Constitution.

I was encouraged to see California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vivid interview yesterday with MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff, detailing Trump’s illegal, manufactured efforts to escalate the conflict. Newsom called the federalizing of California’s National Guard— without coordinating with the governor as required in Title 10—“an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed suit today against the Trump administration for the illegal deployment.

But I was particularly struck by Newsom’s angry and clear-eyed response to Soboroff’s question about Tom Homan’s threat to arrest him. He said:

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 that are just trying to live their lives, man, paying their taxes, living their lives.

The fear, the horror, the hell is this guy. Come after me. Arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy, you know? I don’t give a damn. But I care about my community, I care about this community. [What] the hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop—and we need to push back.

The weak and reckless Trump weighed in today when asked about Homan’s threat to arrest Newsom: “I would do it if I were Tom.” Nothing like a distraction from his collection of failures.

Keep in mind that this is also playing out against a backdrop of Trump threatening to cancel federal funding owed to California, the nation’s largest and richest state. Newsom’s response, posted on X Friday: “Californians pay the bills for the federal government. We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off.”

It’s not hard to see how that dispute, incited by Trump, can escalate, too, as Democratic-led states become increasingly pressured to assert states rights against this authoritarian regime seeking maximum control.

Yesterday America’s 22 other Democratic governors joined Newsom in rejecting Trump’s move to deploy the National Guard. In a joint statement, they called it “an alarming abuse of power,” noting that its both “ineffective and dangerous” to activate these troops without consulting with a state’s governor. “Further,” they added,
”threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”

Newsom, they concluded, “has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation.”

Of course, the reckless occupant of the White House does not care one whit what America’s Democratic governors think. But they can see how what’s happening in California could soon be playing out in their states.

It will be up to millions of Americans who oppose this lawless regime—in both Democratic and Republican states—to demonstrate their constitutional rights by peacefully assembling and speaking out about what they know to be true. A despotic man who yearns to be a strong man must continue to be exposed as the weak man that he is.

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