With the Los Angeles immigration enforcement protests and riots still ongoing and downtown federal buildings remaining closed, Gov. Gavin Newsom urged Californians to “take peaceful action” against President Donald Trump’s orders.
“Donald Trump, without consulting with California’s law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets,” Newsom said in his address on June 10.
“This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk,” he said.
“I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him,” he continued.
He ended his speech by urging Californians to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully.
“I’ve deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob and some of the radical left,” the president said. “In theory I guess you could say a governor could call. But they don’t call. They let their city burn like in Minneapolis.
“We’re not going to wait seven days and eight days and wait for a governor that’s never going to call and watch cities burn,” he said.
One track is the local line, he said. “When we need additional resources, then we reach out to the sheriff who brings in mutual aid. We have 14 different agencies working with us for that purpose. And then only if we weren’t able to continue to deal with that need of additional help, would we reach out to the sheriff who would then request National Guard from the governor.”
The second track, he said, is that “the National Guard were federalized by the president to support federal agents who are working on behalf of [the Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to do their operation. The Marines were brought in then today, evidently, to join the Army National Guard in doing what their main mission has been identified as, which is the protection of federal employees and federal property.”
“My assessment may not be accurate based on this thing’s continuously churning, but I see two parallel tracks that don’t work together, if you will,” McDonnell said.
“When I look at the people who are out there doing the violence, that’s not the people that we see during the day, who are legitimately out there exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.
“These are people who are all hooded up ... they’ve got face masks on. They’re people who do this all the time, get away with whatever they can, go out there from one civil unrest situation to another, using the same or similar tactics frequently,” he said. “They are connected. ... They’re people that we run across routinely city to city, and this is what they do.”
