Donald Trump has suggested California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over his handling of the disturbances in Los Angeles and has branded protesters as insurrectionists.
As he returned to the White House on Monday, the president was asked by reporters if his border czar Tom Homan should take up Newsom’s dare to arrest him.
“I would do it if I were Tom,” he said, before adding: “I like Gavin, he’s a nice guy, but he’s grossly incompetent. Everyone knows that.”
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Newsom hit back instantly, describing Trump’s comments as “an unmistakable step towards authoritarianism.”
The escalating war of words comes after a weekend of ugly clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters in response to immigration raids across California.
Homan had warned on Saturday that anyone who obstructed the enforcement effort, including Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, could face arrest, although he acknowledged that neither yet had “crossed the line.”
“I’ll say about anybody,” Homan had told MSNBC. “You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”
In response, Newsom called Homan’s bluff, urging him to arrest him and “just get it over with”.
“He’s a tough guy. Why doesn’t he do that? He knows where to find me,” Newsom said. “That kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
California has also sued the Trump administration for bringing in the National Guard, branding this as unconstitutional.
“Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” Attorney General Rob Bonta of California said in a statement.
“The President is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends.”
But Trump doubled down on social media, saying that if his administration had not sent in troops, “Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.”
Speaking on the South Lawn on Monday after arriving back at the White House from Camp David, he described the protesters as “professional agitators” and “insurrectionists”.
“They’re bad people,” he said.
Describing protesters as insurrectionists has heightened fears that Trump could, if necessary, invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the authority to quell rebellion or unrest by deploying the military.
Such a move would be a dramatic escalation of the administration’s actions in California so far, where National Guard troops have already been deployed.
This is not the first time the National Guard has been used by Trump. In 2020, he asked governors of several states to send troops to Washington, D.C. after protests erupted following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
However, it is the first time since 1965 that the National Guard has been deployed by the federal government without the approval of the state’s governor.
